How To Make Money Investing in Real State Notes with Scott Carson in Monumental with Evan Holladay

Hello and welcome to Monumental, where we sit down with entrepreneurs, leaders, visionaries and big thinkers making monumental change. Here's your host, Evan Holiday.

Welcome to Monumental, everybody. I am your host, Evan Holliday. And today we have on with us a a real estate and podcast rock star, Scott Carson. He is the founder and CEO of We Close Notes that focuses on buying pools of distressed assets on residential and commercial properties direct from banks and hedge funds. In business since 2007, Scott and his team have purchased over $50 million in assets in the past 18 months. Scott is also a featured speaker and educator at dozens of investment clubs and real estate workshops across the country and is the host of the Note Closers podcast. So without further ado, let's jump right in.

Scott, great to have you on the show. How are you doing?

I am doing wonderful today, Evan. Thanks so much for having me. I don't know what the heck this weather is going on in Austin. Usually we're pretty warm here. It's like in the 20s today. Kind of weird. I just came from San Diego and Tampa. The last week was like 75, 80 both days. I'm like our little cold spell here in Austin. But I'm excited to be here, man, honored and truly to be a guest on your podcast.

Yes, very glad to have you. And you know, I think the cold weather still won't stop you from closing Notes though.

Not at all, man. We're getting ready to close on a portfolio of 32 assets in the next day or so too. So wrapping up final due diligence on that stuff. So, yeah, beauty is I can do this from anywhere. I'd rather be warm though.

Yes, me too. So let's just jump right in and talk a little bit about your background and how you got into now. You have We Close Notes. Tell us more about that.

Yeah, so We Close Notes. We are an Austin, Texas based real estate investment and education company where we focus on the niche of buying distressed debt, distressed mortgages on residential commercial properties with the goal being primarily in mind to buy the debt and then reach out to the homeowner or the borrower and try to get them reinstated, get back on track of some sort. Because, because we buy the debt at substantial discount. That gives us a lot of flexibility. I've been buying distressed debt since, golly, 11, 12 years now, since 2007. So I've been doing it through a few ups and downs. Absolutely love what I do. It's basically my sole focus. I don't really dive in a little bit of other stuff, but Mostly for the real estate stuff. We're focused on, as I like to say, rehabbing the borrower with the stuff that we buy. But I got into it with a mentor of mine, taught me kind of the note business as I was starting a mortgage company back in 2004 with a buddy and we were doing a lot of lending to investors across the country. You know, that went well for, you know, five years, 2004 to roughly 2008, nine. Then when the music stopped, with the markets changing, I just jumped from the origination side to buying non performing debt full time. So done that for a while. Austin, Texas has been home for most of that experience. In 2010, I sold everything I owned here in town except the dog. And we jumped in my truck and drove around the country for about three and a half, four years of just meeting with local asset managers at banks, speaking in investment clubs, real estate conventions and seminars across the country. And really kind of grassroots effort. I became the note guy for a lot of people across the country because we provide a lot of education, a lot of content on the debt buying side of things because it's a whole little bit different animal than just going out and buying a piece of property. So that's kind of me in a nutshell. I do like pina coladas and walking on the beach at night, but anyway.

That also gets them going.

That's right. That's right, baby, that's right.

I love it. So why notes? What is it about notes that attracted you to get into that?

So first and foremost, I would say it's probably one of two reasons. One, Austin, Texas is a pretty competitive market. I mean it's pretty, it's pretty competitive body thing here in Austin in over the last decade for the most part. And I just wanted to go where there were deals. And in 2009, 2010, yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in the market. I think everybody agreed that with all the stuff hitting the fan and I started getting lists sent to me from banks on a regular basis of stuff. Like they're like, please buy something. I'm like, okay. And started looking at the stuff and started making some deals happen in San Diego or Nashville, South Florida, Charlotte, you know, started getting deals in, started making things happen across the country. Well, I wasn't seeing anything really happening here in Austin because the banks were just foreclosing because we have the fastest foreclosure laws in the state here. And so I loved it because I was doing deals in multiples cities from wherever I was at Whether it was here at home or traveling, my goal isn't necessarily on the property. I mean, we do end up taking quite a bit of property back. But the whole goal, like I said before, is like, you mean I can try to get the borrower to reinstate, I'm buying this at a discount and I don't have to hire attorneys to foreclose, I don't have to go in and rehab the property. I can just get them to start paying and in six to 12 months of on time payments with cash flow coming in, now it's a non performing asset. I'm buying at 30, 40 cents. Well, now it's a re performing asset. I can sell at 80, 90, 95 cents of the dollar in some cases. And I was like, that makes sense. That ROI on that because that's what unites all of us as real estate investors is a return on investment. But secondly, it's the second thing is a return on time. I've done a lot of rehab, done a lot of building, fix and flipping homes here in Austin, other places as well. I don't like fix and flipping. I like to do, trust me, I want to be lazy, I want to travel, I want to have fun. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, fix and flipping or landlording, anything like that. Hey, if you got your niche, stick in your niche. There's nothing wrong with it. But I really love this distressed niche of note investing because I can do it whether I'm here in Austin or over in Barcelona like it was last summer, or Australia. Wherever I'm at, I can do the note business from anywhere because I've got such a great team of vendors and people that surround me that are paid to succeed, basically.

That's awesome. And then you're also, you know, taking it full advantage of that, it sounds like by traveling. And then you also went on the road for a few years.

Yeah, that's the thing is back when I first got started, I was driving by a lot of assets. I was down in southwest Florida, we were buying condos on Miami beach for like five to ten grand. And man, you know, it was crazy, crazy. Now I don't drive by much of the assets anymore. I mean, occasionally I'll take a trip and go somewhere new that I haven't been before. But the beautiful thing about this business is that there are professionals everywhere, real estate agents, attorneys in every state, people that I can pay to drive by and be my eyes and ears. So it allows more me to kind of take that inner control freak that all of us as real estate investors have shake them up a little bit and say, hey, don't work so hard and use the tools. And, you know, this really cool little thing that Al Gorman had called the Internet. Yeah, I can use that to do a lot of my due diligence. I can use a lot of the tools online to track down investors in areas or realtors or investment clubs and really reach out to the professionals in the cities to help me really create a win win scenario if I need to.

That's right. And really, it sounds like you're leveraging all of your partners and helping them make it a win win. So you touched on kind of roughly, your business model is buying the notes from banks or from people that are holding the notes that are typically distressed. And for everybody listening who doesn't know, typically means somebody that's not selling or not paying their mortgage or for whatever reason can't be paying.

Yeah, they're usually going through some sort of country western song. You know, my, you know, I got run over, my grandma got run over by a reindeer. You know, my dog died. I got, you know, laid off. I'm going through the big D and don't mean Dallas. You know, every note we buy is a different country western song. But it also gives us a lot of flexibility with how we buy it at a discount to come and say, okay, I know you haven't paid in 12 months. I know you went through some sort of financial hiccup. Let's talk here. Let's have a conversation. Are you working? Yes. Can you start paying your existing payment again? Yes. Okay, let's start with that and go from there. Unfortunately, most banks, when it comes to noteside the bunks that originated when somebody hasn't paid in 12 months or so, they want the full 12 months of payments. And most Americans just don't have 12 months of payment saved.

Right.

It's a sad, sad thing. So I can come and say, listen, hey, can you bring two months to the table? Great, let's get you started. Let's take another two or three months and spread that, spread that extra amount over the next 12 months. You know, let's try, do a trial payment plan. If you perform at the end of 12 months, I'm going to forgive you on your rearages. You know, I'll probably drop the interest rate or I'll drop the balance down to something that's, you know, if they're underwater too close to market value and really kind of give them that, you know, hand up out of that hole that maybe they dug themselves or maybe it dug itself around it with property values dropping or the market's changing. So.

So could you walk us through an example of like a who you're going to find these? You said you're, you know, you're talking to the banks, you're talking to the REO officers. People that have. Educate me, educate me.

I am. Do not. You do not buy notes by going to REO asset manager. Let's get that clarified real fast when you call. So when we call banks.

Rich.

Not the best. I'm actually glad you say it, Evan. It's awesome. That's a softball to tee me up for getting me all excited.

Yeah, I planned that.

There you go. Exactly. The bank. The departments in the banks that we deal with are called basically by two names. They're called the special assets department or the secondary marketing department. Now for the investors out in your audience out there, if they call the bank and ask to speak to their REO agent or something like that, they're just gonna get sent to a realtor. Like a dark voice, a dark hole for a voice mailbox. You know, banks are like, oh, it's an aria. We've done all the work. Call the agent and make an offering. We don't do that when we call banks. We're either calling the main corporate office or if we can track down, like I said, the person in charge of special assets department or secondary marketing. These are the individuals at the banks that handle the portfolio sales. They're looking at the origination side of what's coming and they're looking at the balance sheets and, and what's performing or what's non performing and some. That's non performing. They really are aggressive in working with loss mitigation to get that stuff back on track. But you're still not gonna call loss mitigation. You're not gonna call the short sale department. Those people don't have a brain. Call the main corporate office and look for special assets or secondary marketing professionals. If you go to LinkedIn and type in special asset managers or secondary marketing managers, that's a great way to track down the people that are handling these departments. There you go. There's a nugget. Hang on a second. Evan's writing a note down there. Hang on here. There's a nugget there for you.

Nugget. I love it.

So we reach out to these asset managers and not everybody has something every month. But in the last decade, we've built a large database of over 5000 bankers that rotate through, we drop them an email about once, twice a month. They'll have different things that are available that they're looking to move, whether it's one asset or 500 assets. The beauty is that once we've made a relationship or reached out to them, it's not like sending out postcards or yell letters or door knocking where you're hoping to get one deal. Often one contact often leads to hundreds of deals, if not thousands of deals for us over a lifetime. So we get a list in it maybe in 30 states. We narrowed it down the areas that we like. That's called cherry picking. For bidding on multiple assets, we send in an individual bid for each property and that's loan level pricing that the asset manager is asking for. So then we're going from there. It's countering back and forth. We don't do all sorts of exhaustive due diligence on the front end most of the time. Usually we get a list in and we're gonna pick five or 10, run some quick numbers on what they've provided so far and submit some bids and wait for them to either accept it or counter. And then if they accept it, then we're really doing a deep dive, putting eyes on the properties, checking the collateral files, the loan files, because that's technically what we're buying is the loan file. And then also doing some due diligence on the borrower, checking their payment streams, as I like to say, or my staff said, we like to social sleuth them, Facebook stalking, basically see what they're doing. We've had borrowers say interesting things in their Facebook profiles like, oh, I'm not gonna pay my mortgage this month, I'm taking the kids on vacation. Or a, or I'm not going to pay my mortgage this month because I got to pay for my implants. Says he, you know what I mean? Guy was going through a bit of a transformation or wow, hey, he got laid off. I don't know what I'm gonna pay. You know, when you see those kind of things online, it paints a different picture of the borrowers when you compare that when you're looking at the loan file because you get everything that comes with it. And that gives you an idea. Does this borrower have an opportunity to pay or is it just gonna be something that we gotta look at, maybe foreclosing? Or do we need to maybe offer the borrower some cash or keys and help them move on? Because they're really not in a spot where they can afford this home anymore.

So what typically, I mean on the negotiation side, you're basically negotiating for the loan from the bank from the second, the secondary markets and the special assets.

Yep. So how we negate borrows a mortgage, let's just say they owe $120,000. Well, let's say it's on a house that's only worth 100. They're upside down. So when we submit our offering, we want to make sure it makes sense as far as investment to value of the property. So a lot of times we may be only offering at 30 to 40 cents of what's owed because that number is going to be at 50 cents or less of the actual value of as is value.

Right.

You know, now if it's vacant, we know it's going to need some work. If it's vacant, we know we're going to have to replace at least one major function either a roof, plumbing, electrical, you know, heating, air conditioning. We know we're probably gonna place that. That's why I don't like buying vacant assets. If I can buy an asset where somebody's living in the property, usually the copper goblins have not shown up yet or the air conditioners or like in a cold day today I don't have to worry about interior skating rink in the basement.

Yep, yep. All the pipes busting.

Yeah, exactly.

It sounds like the, like you said, I mean, I love the line you said rehabbing the borrower, not the house. And you're right because I mean sometimes it can be easier to help a person through a situation instead of spending all the time and money and looking over a team that's going to rehab a property. So you're buying the note from the banks, you're rehabbing the borrower, you're helping them get back on their feet, you know, providing opportunities for them to become a stable mortgage payer and homeowner. And then either at that point you are, are you still holding the notes long term, are you selling them or what do you do at the note once it does perform?

That's a great question. Glad you asked that. So it's one of, it's usually one of two things. One, we look at what type of returns are coming off the mortgage. When the borrower starts paying, they paying extra? What's their existing P and I principal and interest payment compared to what they owe? What kind of yield is that bringing to us? Then we also look, well if it's been performing for a while, what can we sell that note now for? Can we get a nice chunk of change or should we hold onto it for cash flow? And if we've got investors that are joint ventured with us, it's a conversation to have with them. What do you want to do? Do you want to let it sit there and ride, we're splitting profits, or do you want to go ahead and cash out and go from there now? I only, I wish, I want to make a clarification for your audience out there too. I wish every note we bought was able to re perform and go that. Unfortunately, it's not always the case. We'll get to that. Yeah. I'm gonna tell you the truth, the ugly truth sometimes that, you know, we wish everything were preformed, but you're still gonna probably foreclose about 50% of the time. You're going to get about a quarter of your assets to have the borrowers walk away, do a deed in lieu a foreclosure or a cash for key scenario. We just pay them to walk. And then about another, you know, the final quarter percent you'll get reperforming. Now the better you get at your business and the better you look at the assets and due diligence, those numbers increase. Like our numbers are about 50 to 60% of the deals we buy the borrowers because we do such an intensive job on the front end. Big mistake that we see a lot of investors that come on over. The note side though is they start evaluating the note like it's a piece of property and they end up overpaying for the notes because they start going off of ARV after a par value. It's not always the case. One of the biggest mistakes I made early on in my first two years in the note business is I was always trying to foreclose on everything. And so now I'm outlaying attorney fees, I'm outlaying repair costs and you know, in some states it can take six to 12 months to foreclose, if not longer.

No cash flow.

Yeah, that's not a good place to be. I want cash flow. If I had a lot of borrowers early on that could have modified would have been cash flow and been sitting pretty. And that was one of the biggest mistakes I made earlier on was coming into it from the fix and flip side, not thinking about it as a note or you know, as a bank on that aspect. Because that's what the banks make, the money. They love that cash flow. They love that money coming in. They leverage that money 10 to 15, 20 times out there. And really they make their money by being the lender not being the property owner. And I think a lot of real estate investors, they get into the real estate game because they. Oh, they watch Flip or Flop or Flip this House or, you know, stuff like that. I want to be the slum lord or the landlord. Yeah, I don't want to work that hard. All right? I've been there, done that. Got the T shirt and the scars to prove it. You know, I don't want to work so hard as I get a little bit older. I mean, I'm 41 now. I expect to be retired before I turn 50. And just having a lot of cash flow coming in, that doesn't mean I won't have to replace assets. I think we're always going to have distressed debt based on the markets and what we're seeing, things happen. I think we're going to see a bit of a softening in the market across the country. It probably won't be as extreme as it was a decade ago, but we're still going to see some stuff hit the market.

What are you seeing on what you're working on or what you're teaching your students that are working on their own notes? What are you telling them as far as preparing for a potential shift in the market?

Such a good thing. So, first of all, it starts with funding. You know, you're not gonna go to the bank and get a loan to buy distressed note. Most of the deals that we are using or closing on, we're using other people's money. And so I'm telling people, like, listen, if you're giving 12% returns, your investors cut that dollar amount. Now. Now, some investors that are like, well, they may not like to hear that, but look at it. If the best return on the stock market or in Wall street was to have your money in cash last year because it made 1.9%, then if you're offering 10 or 12% for somebody, you're really overpaying for money, take that down. A lot of people would be happy making 6 to 8%. You know, that's, you know, three to eight times more than what they're getting in a certificate of disappointment or something like that. So be smart. Put some cash aside, because you're gonna have some cash available to jump in and take advantage of some opportunities, but stick to your numbers. In the last couple years, we've had kind of pricing go up a little bit on the note business because a lot we have other people coming in from other areas and they're overpaying. I'm just like stick to your guns. Just stick to your guns. Be flexible. You know, if you go into buying a note, deal with the idea that you're just gonna have one strategy and that's the way it's gonna go. That's the biggest mistake you can make. Be flexible. Maybe you've got to turn some of your non performing notes into rentals for a while. Maybe you need to offer up some owner financing and create some notes on the back end if you're buying stuff in Aries. Another thing is if you're used to buying in one market and if price is getting crazy, maybe you need to look in a different state. I mean I used to buy a lot in Florida. I mean I love God's waiting room, but it's recovered. I used to buy a lot in Nashville up your neck of the woods too. It's recovered strong. So I'm buying more in the Ohio's and the Michigan's, Indiana's now because those markets have recovered strong. But I can still buy assets relatively cheap compared to other areas.

So are you looking at the relative cost of an opportunity? But then also I guess it sounds like markets that are, that are maybe doing okay or good but not like crazy good. Like it may be hard to buy in an Austin or a Nashville now or a Miami.

Yeah, well Miami's gonna be underwater in like 10 years anyway.

But literally and figuratively.

Seriously, seriously, there's spots there that are gonna be bad anyway. You have to realize that markets are always constantly changing. You know, it doesn't mean I'm not sitting here waiting for things to happen. And I see, I track banks. I mean if you look at subprime mortgages or if you check there's a lot of non prime, they call it niches, you know, hundreds of other mortgage companies are now giving a 0% finance, 100% financing to people like a 520 FICO again. So we're going to see opportunities. It's just a matter of identifying them and being able to track those down. So just look at your default rates, look at the markets that are slagging a little bit. I mean Miami and Tampa came back strong as gangbusters, but they're starting to drag out a little bit. Dallas here has been just rocking and rolling along, but the market's starting to soften in Dallas. Up there, Houston, Harris county leading the country in foreclosures because of the hurricane effect from over a year ago. So you've got to look at markets, you got to do some research, you got to Talk to local people. But the best thing I could tell people too is take action. If you can buy something, you're going to learn a whole lot more about taking action and buying a deal and getting your fingers dirty and get your systems in place so that you're ready and prepared. So when the market is turned south, then you can really dive into. The worst thing anybody could try to do is just a perfectly time the market look for that perfect deal. That perfect deal doesn't hit, I mean, doesn't happen. And it often turns out looks like it's going to be a base hit to begin with and turns into a grand slam.

Yep. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. It's the deals that, you know, aren't penciled out to be perfect that end up being the perfect deals.

Yeah, Now I'm seeing stuff in commercial loans too. I mean I cut my teeth the first couple years and just buying non performing commercial properties and I'm looking, funny thing, I had a bank call me with a nice mixed use property in Alabama and then another bank called me. Get this, it's a different type of green returns. A dispensary and grow house in California, in la of all places that they want to get off their books. What most people don't realize is we're buying debt and you're dealing direct with the bank. You're six to 12 months ahead of where most investors are playing. Most investors are playing looking for reos or the stuff that's being foreclosed out. That's kind of the end of the river. That's like the New Orleans aspect. I want to be further up the Mississippi, like at the headwaters up by Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota. Where the headwaters of it. I only said it because I'm from Minnesota originally and I know that that's amazing.

I was like, how does he know that?

I've got all sorts of crazy stuff I'll pull out of my ass here in a second. But anyway, that's for a different show and a different time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get some bourbon and cigars for that one.

Hey, there you go. Pull out some Crown or some McAllen 30 year old or some pork with a good Rocky Patel cigar too.

I love it. So go back to what you were saying earlier. Let's go back to. You mentioned taking action. What else would you tell somebody that says, hey, Scott's got something good going on. I want to try this out. What is this? We close notes. How did they get into buying notes?

So the first thing that anybody Needs when they want to get into buying notes is education because it's a different ballgame. And we pride ourselves, we're very prideful. The fact that we have built this media machine and everybody that's listening out there, you're not in real estate, you're not in sales. We're all in the media today. Marketing. And that's what has helped separate us with we close notes from everybody else out there is that we are a marketing machine. We reach out to asset managers on a regular basis. We doing all sorts of videos and training, stuff like that. So get yourself educated. Check out our YouTube channel. I mean we've got thousands of videos. I run a little podcast called the Closer show podcast as well. It's been around for about 18 months, about a quarter, actually over a quarter million downloads. We just signed an agreement though. Our show is going live across 16am FM radio channels this next week. Wow. From Tampa to thank you. From Tampa to la, we've got. We're pretty stoked about that. But get educated, learn, ask questions. We've got a variety of great ways to learn out there. The podcast, the YouTube account. You'll find a lot of our successful students are out doing some great things. But we believe in a philosophy called coopetition. That's where cooperation and competition come together. And every investor out there is looking for their own to boost their bottom line. Let's be realistic. Whether they're paying to leave their job, whether they're wanting to retire or they want to retire a spouse or do something, pay for the kids, grandkids or whatever, we all want our competitive. But in the note space, it's such a small niche. I mean, I'm willing to say there's probably maybe 10,000 true note investors out there that are buying distressed debt like I am or less. And so there's plenty of inventory, millions and millions of loans still in default, but there's just not enough people to buy them all. And that's why we believe in coopetition, because there's plenty of deals out there for everybody. There's plenty of resources. And we really believe that the notes space is one of the friendliest because it's like, hey, you need a realtor. Hey, here, use my realtor. You need a attorney, call Franco Burrill. They'll help you with. Or call the senior law group or you need a servicer. Hey, call Madison Management and they will all work to help you. Tell them I sent you and they'll take good care of you. So that's the thing if anybody's getting started, learn the business, watch it, ask questions. I mean I would look at attending a conference or two but there's so much great information like BiggerPockets and LinkedIn other places out there that that's a great way to get started. You don't have to spend money to learn right off the bat. I mean, yeah, we have an education side of what we do. Yes. But I always tell people like look, go learn it. It's not for everybody. If you're an engineering suffer from over analyst paralysis or you like to chase shiny object syndromes, stick to where you're at. Don't come into our neck of the woods because you really have to be focused with what we do with note investing because there is a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of different things that go on with your deals. And if you're trying to just add another tool to your tool belt, then you probably don't want to add this tool belt just because it's a different mindset for the most part.

Right? Yeah. I love that advice. It's focus, education and you're in this coopetition. I love that, that mindset because you're right. I mean if you want to get far and in really any business you have to look at how can we work together in some cases and you'll get further faster.

Amen to that, Evan. I mean we believe in win win scenarios. If somebody's not winning, that's going to be a bridge that you burnt. There's sometimes we close deals like okay, I could have made five grand more in the deal but it wasn't such a win. You know, the bar wouldn't have been able to get refinanced out or the deal I'm selling to somebody else, they wouldn't, you know, they'd be in a too tight a spot later on if we try to jack it. So that's the thing, you know, just be willing to learn. And finally, hey, it's the 21st century. Let Scotty here beam you up. Hang on here, hang on a second. I'm a beam you up here now, Evan, all right, you're going to start marketing. That's the thing you can learn about marketing. I got all sorts of fun games over here. The thing is, look, just market, learn how to market. Learn how to use an email system like mailchimp or infusionsoft. Don't be afraid of social media. The beautiful thing is you're posting like your LinkedIn profile and things that's projects you're working on. That's one of the great places that bankers and other investors go to. Look is your LinkedIn profile and see how are you really doing something. I don't care if you've got another full time job, but don't say you're a president of a multinational corporation and you have a job working and selling cell phones at Verizon. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's a great point, is I feel like in today's age there's possibility for like what you're doing. We close notes you've created with your podcast, with your show, with your marketing, with your events, your mastermind. Like, you are creating a thought leadership platform that separates yourself, like tremendously separates yourself from all the other people out there that are doing notes or teaching notes. It just, it makes yourself a brand too. Right? I mean, you are, you're doing the.

Same thing too, man. We just got back the Traffic and Conversion summit in San Diego, which is one of the largest marketing events in the country. And that's one of the big things that, hey, podcasting is going to lead the way. And so you're doing an amazing job. I've listened to your episodes. Absolutely love it. And if you're listening now, go hit subscribe, go hit the five star review for Evan that's not paid. Boom shakalaka, tell somebody about it. Evan's doing a great job here. And that's the way they say there's like 600,000 podcasts out there. What they don't tell you is that less than half have recorded episodes in the new year. And so if you're wanting to start a show or start a podcast about your niche or something you're passionate about, do so. It leads to so many opportunities of people networking or investors that are listening, that want to invest or want to take things in a new place, expand your audience, just like Evan's doing here. So many opportunities out there. You don't have to worry, don't come from a scarcity mindset. There are plenty of things to make things happen out there.

Yes. I love it. First off, thank you for that shout out. I appreciate that.

If you had a crappy show, I wouldn't be on here, dude, that's what.

I like to hear, man. We set the bar high.

You do a great job, do a really good job.

But yeah, to your point, I mean, podcasts, that's what I tell everybody. I'm like, you can start a podcast. It's not as hard as you think it is. I mean, it's funny. I tell people the story of how we got started quickly in a nutshell is like, I didn't even have a podcast. I just wanted to talk to this guy. He's like a venture capitalist. I was like, this guy's awesome. I want to pick his brain. I want to learn everything. How am I going to do that? I was like, oh, you know, I've thought about a podcast, but I never did it. And so I told him I had one, and all of a sudden he's like, yeah, I'd love to talk with you. Let's.

Like aphrodisiac for entrepreneurs and things like that. Oh, you got a podcast. You want to invite me on to your audience? Yeah, I have one. One listener. It's mom. And grandma's gonna download next week when she figures out what a podcast is.

Yeah, when she figures out how to turn on an iPhone.

You know, that's the thing. There's. Technology is all evolving. The day of, you know, sending out letters and door knocking. God bless those that are doing that out there. I've done that so many times. It's the hustle. That's what's so important. Just that you have to tweak your hustle to do things. And we've had asset managers and investors that listen to our podcast call me up, say, hey, I listen to your show. Let's talk. I've got some deals on our books we want to get rid of. Or I've got some money sitting in a 401k from old job. I need to roll it over in a self directed ira. Who can I use for that in my podcast? We had Quincy Long on this morning, who's the founder of Quest Trust, or Quest IRA formally, but now Quest Trust Company. There's just a lot of opportunities out in the market. The best thing you can do is take action. And I'll say this again and again, take action. Get yourself educated and do something different. That's the only way that we make the running joke here in the office that we're making America great again. One mortgage at a time. Make your America great because you took action. Make your America great and your circle of influence great because you're taking action and leading your tribe out there like Evan is and like so many else and so many others out there, doing taking action speaks much more volume than just talking. There's too many people talking. We need more people to walk the walk.

Yeah, I agreed. And I think it's. It's the imperfect action too. It's like, you know, don't think, don't build it up in your head. It's like everything's got a line. Before I can ever publish this post or publish the podcast, it's like people don't care when you're getting started, just.

And that's same thing with real estate deals. You're gonna learn more from making offers and then working through those numbers. Then I gotta find the perfect deal. You gotta find the perfect deal. That means you need to go back and get a job. And some people that's just the case. If that's the case and you feel better, work better that way, that's great. There's nothing wrong with it if you love what you do. Hey, more power to you. I just know that I'm unemployable now. So.

Speaking of unemployable, how many employees do you have now at your company? How many people do you have?

So I learned early on that I didn't want to be an adult babysitter. We had quite a few people working in the mortgage company, processors and underwriters and stuff like that. So I've done a pretty good job of keeping it pretty small. I have myself, my VP of operations, Stephanie Goodman, who I could not do without. She's also my girlfriend, so I want to make sure she hears that she's future wife. I have a full time marketing person, Shannon, who just does a tremendous job for our online marketing full time. That's all she does is handle marketing for us. But then I have a full time person, Hazel, who handles my portfolio of about 400 files. She works hand in hand with our real estate attorneys from the Singer Law Group or other companies like Tony Tony Burrill and Franklin Satile and stuff like that. She also coordinates talking with the homeowners too, as they respond or don't respond. And then we've got, let's see here. Then we have, oh, I've got a friend down in Orlando who helps out, assist with the podcast and things like that. But for the most part we have a lot of contractors or 1099 people that we work with or vendors that come in as we need them and then kind of go away as we're getting ready to buy a portfolio. We may bring on a couple interns to dive in or I've got a lady that is retired from a title company. She'll come in just to check it, check collateral files for me as we're closing a portfolio and then she goes back and enjoys working in her garden most of the time. I got a lady we're getting ready to bring on as well, full time to help us kind of move a portfolio that we've had for about 18 months now. It's time to start looking at selling that off. So it may seem bigger, but I will tell you this. You know, it's less than 10 people. You know, I mean, we've bought hundreds of assets. We've closed on over a billion dollars in debt in 10 years. I've had bigger offices. We're in a, you know, Regis executive suite. I got one, my office here, and Shan's got her down there. Steph works from the house. Everybody else works remotely for the most part. If Steph and I worked in the same room, she'd kill me because I'm so damn loud. But that's okay. But that's the thing is if you're an entrepreneur, you're gonna be in real estate. There's probably the most important hire I would tell people, is if you find yourself doing everything you are now, you're now the clog in the drain. Hire yourself an assistant, whether it's 10, 20, 30 hours a week. And your first assistant that you hire is gonna be worth six figures to you because they're gonna help you. You can delegate the little things that are way below your pay grade, whether it's going to getting you a coffee or dropping your dry clean off, or checking Zillow values and random meter numbers for your deal diligence. Hire that assistant. They can help you out and allow you to focus on the two really main things that most investors will be doing. Going out and finding deals and raising capital for the most part. Those are the two biggest things. You're always going to be doing that. And that's where the best bang for your buck is at.

Yes. And I think you hit the nail on the head with, you know, you're leveraging other people's time and so you can double down on the things that you're best at and where your biggest values, your core values or your, you know, your biggest impact on the company is. And it's really just, you know, assistant or somebody there to help you is almost just as impactful on your mindset and your peace of mind. Because a lot of times, like sometimes I'll just stress out about putting together meetings and, or organizing logistics or certain things that I know need to be done, but I just hate. And there's things like that that could easily be taken off your plate.

So here's one of the best things advice I can Give to anybody out there. Get rid of the to do lists. All right? Give the to do list to your assistant and you focus on the big rocks list. And that's one of the big things get rid of. Everybody likes to do lists. And then what we do is we psych yourself out. Oh, we did all this stuff, which is like 10 minutes worth of work, but the list looks big versus focused on the big income generating or the money generating items. Don't get me wrong, we all have little things that sometimes you only have to do. But the more you can outsource, the more money you're going to make because you're going to be able to focus on your biggest big rocks and then feel a lot happier and a lot more accomplished. The other small stuff will fit in around your day, know, around your, your week and stuff like that. But the big things, focus on the big things first. You'll be a lot happier and more productive and more profitable for sure.

I love it. So what, what, what's next for you? You said you have the big portfolio. You're gonna potentially close soon.

Yeah. Well, we're constantly buying and selling. We were buying a portfolio of performing notes at roughly about 70 cents on the dollar. It's thrown off an 18 cap to us right now at the purchase price and that's not including any extras we get from them. But constantly buying and selling. Our podcast is kind of our pet project here. It's kind of blown up, which is crazy, I guess. My old radio DJs at East Texas State University. This is Scott Carson. At nine o' clock at night, you're listening to Easy, you know, on the Eagle. No, it's coming back for that. But I like streamlining. That's the biggest thing. I'm constantly reviewing what we're focused on, cutting back a little bit of the things that don't make sense for us and just being Streamlined and that's 2019 is going to be a good year for us. I can feel it in my bones. I can see it with the numbers and other things that we're seeing happening, just keep plugging away. And if anybody's out there struggling and you're rocking and rolling, just keep your eye on the prize, keep rocking forward. If you've got to put it down. The cross that you're bearing for a little bit to get a job, to pay bills. If you're trying to do this, hey, that's okay. Don't give up on your dreams. Sometimes you got to take a set it down and rest for A little bit before you can go on and get rejuvenated with energy.

I love it, man. Well, let's jump right into our monumental questions.

Okay.

What does success mean to you?

Ooh, it's a good one. What does success mean to me? Success means you get to do what you want when you want to do it. For some people, five grand a month coming in is success to them because they can leave their job and do where they are. Others, it's 50 grand a month coming in. So I think what you have to realize, success is just a number. It's different for anybody else. There's no right or wrong. You define what success is to you. The biggest thing, that biggest harm you can do though, is not to identify that and write it down and then share it. If you can share that, you're likely. I believe in putting things out in the environment and quantum physics and all that kind of work. For you. Success is being able to do what you want when you want it. As John Goodman would have said from the gambler, that's fu. Fu money. If you got your house paid off at 2 million back, that's FU money. You can do whatever you want and everybody else can go F off, you know what I mean? So that's what success, doing what you want when you want without having to answer to anybody.

Yes, we all need some FU money.

There you go. Right.

So what do you have daily habit or ritual that contributes to a good day?

Oh, my gosh, yes. A couple years ago, with all the travel I was doing over five years, I put on about £50. This was all sponsored by rib eyes and Crown Royal. Okay. It wasn't working out. And for the last three years, as long as I'm in Austin here and even sometimes when I travel every day from 12 to 1, my personal trainer comes to my office and we've got an on site gym here and we work out from 12 to 1. He puts me through all sorts of, you know, exercises of push ups, sit ups, squats, one arm things, you know, and so we do a lot of core exercises. But when I'm traveling, like I've been gone for two weeks, I did a little bit on the road. I miss that. And it allows for me to have a clear head in the afternoons. It really boosts my energy in the afternoons, evening, so I'm rocking and rolling along. A lot of people ask me, how the hell do I have so much energy? I'm a big guy. I'm not going to lie. It's just a matter of I'm able for that afternoon energy to kick in. Because the fact is, I took time. I put some money in my own personal wealth bank and it's one of the best habits I can do. Take care of your body. You only got one of them. Take care of your health. Because if you want to work your ass off and have fun later on in life, you got to be able to be healthy to enjoy it. Last thing you want to do is not be able to enjoy the, you know, all the spoils of your hard labor.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that's something to, you know, if you want to accomplish a lot, you got to make sure your body's on board with that and taking care of it.

You don't. Yeah. The last thing you want to do is work your ass off and be sick for a week or two. That's no fun. I've been doing that for. So.

Yeah. All right. What is a favorite book or book you're currently reading?

A favorite book I love, we probably give away 100 copies a year. Is a book by Napoleon Hill. It's called Outwitting the Devil.

That's not what I would have expected.

You were going to say think and grow rich, weren't you? You were thinking that, weren't you?

Yeah.

Great book. I love it. I mean, we have a way ton of those copies. Outwitting the Devil was written by Napoleon Hill in 1938. Unfortunately, his wife would not let him publish the book. Book because it's a theoretical conversation that Napoleon is having with the devil talking about, hey, how are you so successful? How are you able to just keep people from doing big things? And devil says, basically, the fact is I throw them distractions in front of. I make them drift away from their primary focus. And those that. Those people out there that are able to do the most amount of good are the ones that are soul focused. They don't drift. They don't get distracted, they kill the squirrels off. They're focused on one thing. Those are the people I can't stand. And so that's one of the most life changing books I've ever read. When I feel we all drift. Everybody struggles with this, but it's something I can go back to, hey, am I getting away from my prize? What am I really focused on? And it's an amazing book. And the thing is, great is Don Green, who's the president of Napoleon Hill foundation, found the book a couple years ago, took it to Mrs. Hill after Napoleon passed on and she told him about the book. He then took it to Sharon Lechter, who's a friend of mine who co wrote Rich Dad, Poor dad and she rewrote the manuscript, left most of it as Napoleon wrote it. She simply added in what she thought Napoleon would think of the situation being in today's world. And great book. You can get it on Kindle online. Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill and Sharon Leichter. Phenomenal book. Trust me. Everybody we give it to says it's one of their top three books that they've ever read.

That's awesome. That's like a little hidden gem from Napoleon Hill. Oh, yeah, I'll be adding that one to my list.

Can't go wrong there, man.

All right. In closing, how can our monumental listeners reach out to you or follow you or get in touch with you?

So real easy, one or two things. If people have a phone they're listening to, they can go over. If they text the word notes, N o T e s notes, N o T e s to the phone number 72,000, that'll get them access to over 80 hours of free video training and kind of an intro PowerPoint to what note investing is. Or they can always go to weclosenotes.com and check out all the different things we have there available as well.

I love it, man. Well, I honestly had a blast today. I love your energy. This was a great episode. And thanks for being on.

Hey, man, thanks for having me honored as always. Guys, go out there, so subscribe. Leave Evan a five star review. You know you'll love it. Come on now.

Boom. Love it.

Boom.