How To Turn Real Estate Debt Into Wealth With Scott Carson From The Real Estate Mindset With Eric Nelson

Foreign welcome to the Real Estate Mindset.

Podcast hosted by Eric Nelson and brought to you by Wild Oak Capital. Eric is a real estate investor, business owner and performance coach. Throughout this series, Eric explores the mindset.

Behind why certain investors are so successful.

And how we can learn from their achievements and failures. Eric asked the tough questions around the.

Habits, discipline, mindset and more required to.

Achieve the most ambitious goals. Thank you for being here and enjoy the show. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Mindset podcast. This is your host, Eric Nelson. Today was another guest that is in a different industry than me and I really kind of love this lately is talking to people kind of doing other parts of real estate because I've said this a million times, there are so many ways to make money. And so Scott's in purchasing bad debt basically. So if someone's foreclosed on a property or about to foreclose or not paying their lender, you can actually purchase that debt at a discount. And so the bank will end up losing money, but you generally will make money and there's lots of cool tips and tricks and stuff. And then towards the end, the mindset piece was just so good. So hope you enjoy the show. Without further ado, I'll bring in Scott. Scott Carson, thanks for being here, man. I very much appreciate your time.

Hey Eric, I'm honored to be here and just always excited to share the, you know, share and talk with another felt real estate who is a similar real estate mindset. That's why you're on the Real Estate Mindset podcast, right?

That's right, man. Well, cool. Welcome in. We were just kind of talking offline a little bit. We were just like jumped right in. I think you and I have plenty to talk about, so maybe a super brief history what, you know, what took you to where you are. And of course we're in a little bit different part of the industry which I love talking to people doing different stuff. So tell us what you're up to now and kind of what brought you there.

Yeah, so for the last 15 years, I guess you could say I've been focused on buying distressed debt. So I'm kind of known across the country as the note guy. I buy non performing mortgages on residential commercial properties from banks, lenders, mortgage companies. And what we do is to not actually own the real estate. We actually buy the debt to work it out with the, with the homeowners and the property owners. Because we buy that the distress debt at such a big discount, it gives us a lot of flexibility to go back to the borrowers and say, hey, what's your country western? So on what happened to you? Do you want to stay or do you want to go? If you want to stay, you got to pay something. So let's figure something out that makes sense. And about 60% of the time we're able to kind of modify, work out terms with them. The other 40% can be some sort of liquidation. Either they're selling the property or we're doing a short sale or they're, you know, sign the property over to us and we're selling it. Or if they won't play ball, then we end up foreclosing and going the legal route there. And. But it's, you know, I got started back in 2007 buying my first note, then went through the wild ride of the last recession. And I will tell you right now, I'm, I'm pretty excited about what's going on in the market right now, both residential, commercial, speaking wise. So I bought over a billion debt. You know, we've got students all across the country, but I, I love this, this facet of real estate investing. It's very smaller niche than what most folks are used to, and that's okay. I like being in the bank, so that's a little bit awesome. Texas home. You know, I'm a bourbon and, you know, bourbon drinker and a cigar smoker. When I've got my free time, that helps.

Me. I love it all. Thanks for the, thanks for kind of a little bit of history there. So, you know, this is cool because I actually don't know that much about note buying and so hopefully you can enlighten myself as well as my listeners. Now. I know, I think basically as much as anyone about commercial debt and all the terms and all that stuff. I have to be, we're buying big properties and we're using other people's money. But when it comes to buying notes that are distressed, help us understand first of all, how do you find those deals? I mean, by now banks probably know you and reach out to you, but let's say you want to get in the business. How do you find these deals and then how do you determine whether one's worth buying or not?

So let's talk about how it's first buy and then we'll go into how we find them there. Because it's like anything else. I mean, one of the great things is, yes, we get banks and lenders, because I've been doing this for 15 years that send us deals all the time. You know, they Send us spreadsheets and that's what we get. We get a tape, they call it a spreadsheet with about 60 rows of cells on it. It may be anywhere from one note to a thousand properties across the entire United States. And we, we start evaluating a distressed note, very similar like a distressed asset, distressed apartment complex. What can be the cash flow, you know, what's our money costs, what type of yield do we want to see? If we have to take the property back, what's the process going to be like for that and profit margin on that? Do we need to rehab? Not so much the property, but we look at rehabbing the borrower. Now we're not sending them to like the Betty Ford Clinic or truck tank, but rehabbing means just kind of working with them. You know the nice thing about what we see as a note investor is we're going to see like all the comments from the servicing company. Has the borrower been, you know, good at responding? Have them or as the they've tried to hide from the bank, you know, what was their payment stream, what were their financials when they took out the note? And so we look at that stuff and say okay, you know, how far in default is it? And for every month that that bar is behind, especially on a newly originated note, that value, that mortgage drops 5 to 10% for every month that they get behind. So if you've ever been like 30 days late in your mortgage, you know that the phone is ringing off the hook and the postman is stopping by your house every other day like a certified letter to get you back on track with the bank. Well once it hits that 90 day or 120 day market, that's really where banks really do not want to be. I mean they don't want to be there 30 days late because the value of the paper drops. But when they, somebody hasn't paid in several months, they really don't want to hold it out because for every bad loan that they have, it costs them roughly about 10 times that in what they can lend out and leverage in lending. Because banks are in the, in the note business and the lending business, not in the property business. So we have to evaluate the property, we have to evaluate the note and then we have to evaluate the borrower and you know, was great. I kind of like stuff that's the more distressed it is, the more, more the banks or the lenders are willing to give us a bigger discount. You know, we're not usually paying above 60% of either the balance of the note or the value of the property, which, whichever is less in, you know what will also determine the factors. What state is it located in? What if we do have to foreclose? How long is it going to take us to foreclose? So we don't buy a lot in New York, New Jersey, you know, we like, you know, we like. Of course everybody loves non judicial states that are fast foreclosures, but that still means that the banks know they can liquidate that stuff faster. So it's more expensive. Like here in Texas where it's the fastest foreclosure state in the country. So we like kind of that mid rate, you know, six to nine months before close. I do like Florida as far as I took God's waiting room because we do buy a lot down there and that's a great thing. We buy some of this distressed. The fact that we bought it at 50 cents a dollar, that gives us a lot of flexibility to go back to the bar and say, hey, you know, like what's the situation? Can you start paying again? I know you haven't paid in a year or two years because of COVID We're not asking you to come to the table the full two years. Can you bring four months to the table? Can you pay $200 extra month? You know, what's your situation? And then we kind of work those numbers out and go from there. So you're not going to walk into your local bank, you know, your local Chase and Bank of America, Wells Fargo, kind of answering your first question here, where do you find these? They're going to laugh at you. And before I got into note business, I was actually a mortgage banker for Bank One and JPMorgan Chase. And I had people walk in every once in a while, hey, we want to buy your debt. I'm like, we don't sell debt. Well, that's not true. Every bank sells debt off. But you're just not going to buy from the big five or 10 banks because they're going to sell stuff off in like huge portfolios, 50 to 100 million. It's not going to be really at a decent price anyway. So we've really carved out a niche for the last 15 years working with regional banks, smaller banks that have at least five branches or more and buying their stuff. And banks usually will have a different department than what you're used to. Most people think, oh, I'll just call the loss mitigation. Well, no, that's all about collecting. They don't handle anything on the debt sale. So it's really your loan sales department or your special assets department is usually what the larger banks call their department that handles the net sales. They had special asset managers or it may go under secondary marketing department. A chief credit risk officer is often a title of person in a bank or whole loan trading for some of your big insurance or REITs, they'll have a department called that. So we track down people that have those titles on LinkedIn with other, with banks and lending institutions because of the people that we can reach out to and say, hey, you've got some stuff on your books that we can tell based on FDIC numbers and what you filed quarterly. You know, do you want to get rid of this stuff? You know, we can help you create a win win. So you having to be the bad guy to foreclose and drag this stuff out. We're willing to give you 50, 60, 70 cents on the dollar right now and take on that, you know, I guess you could say that problem child, that problem loan. And then we make our money by either, you know, like I said, working out with a borrower or taking the property back. But it's your special asset department's usually in a whole different office or building and sometimes state than like your main customer service, is it? So that's, that's one thing that we are constantly doing, trying to track down and you know, especially as a new lender or something like that, who, who's a person that makes the decision to pull the trigger to sell the note. But once you get a hold of that person, they're usually going to send you a list every month, every quarter of all their stuff that they want to sell off. So that's, that's one thing I really like coming from being a traditional real estate investor. Prior to I got in the note business, everybody's, you know, you're sending out direct mail or you're making a lot of offers, maybe get one doing a lot of work. To find deal flow with us. The banks are sending us lists on a regular basis. So one source may feed us 50, 100, 200, 900 notes every quarter versus a lot of folks will find one distressed borrower like a foreclosure. Well, that's one deal you got to keep hunting. Well for us, one source feeds us on a regular basis. And the great thing too is we're seeing these lists usually 6 to 12 months before most retail buyers are seeing it, you know, before it goes to a foreclosure, before it becomes an REO or foreclosure. We see a lot of stuff off beforehand and work it out and negotiate it and get it back performing before it ever ends up that finality of a foreclosure off.

So how much negotiations involved? I mean let's say you get a list, you go okay, these three we like seems like this borrow we can work with whatever. Then you basically have create a relationship with this bank and say hey we'll give you X number. Is there some negotiation on every single one of these basically?

Oh totally. And sometimes they accept your numbers off right off the bat. You're like oh shit, I should offer less. You know what I mean? Or they counter, you're like I'll give you a great example. I signed a contract today on a one off Note in Anderson Indiana. Value of it it's 98,000 is what our broker price, opinion and comp show it's actually the borrower is deceased. So it's not going to be us trying to get the ghost of the borrower's past to perform with. Our goal on this one is to foreclose and just sell the asset off or hold it turn into rent if we want to but most of the time we're just going to sell it off. So worth 98 the borrowed 103 so a little bit underwater. It's in good condition, doesn't need much work, just a little clean out like five grand. It will take us five months to foreclose if we've got to go through the foreclosure if we can't negotiate like a deed Lou or cash for keys with the estate. But so we're getting under contract for 47, you know so 50 cents roughly on the dollar it'll cost us roughly about 3,500 to 5,000 before close. And you know, and that's the great thing in the no business we have vendors that handle do most of the heavy lifting. You know my big part is to find deals and then we raise capital for it and once we close on it, we know which way then we turn it over to a servicing company if it's a live bar to try to negotiate with them. We can tell them our parameters, what we want or if it's a foreclosure then we just put it with our real estate attorney in that state to handle the foreclosure process and then we they'll come back to us with a report. Hey, here's where we are this week. Or is it we get close to the auction, what do you want bidding instructions to be or hey, the Borrower wants to modify, you know, here's what they can't afford. Do you want to stop the foreclosure while we work it out with them? So that's it. I mean, but it's back and forth. Like, I've been working on this deal since May. They wanted originally 60. I was like, I'm not paying 60 for it based on my cost to carry this for five months. It's too high. And finally they came back, back and forth and said, okay, 47. I was like, 47, I can make work and go from there. So, yeah, I mean, I've had deals that took six months. Negotiations I had. We bought a big portfolio a couple years back of 220 notes. And when they wanted to close by year end, I was like, that's too fast for due diligence. We got to do a lot of due diligence on these assets. I can't do it all in like 30 days. So he said, okay, we'll give you a six month buyback period afterwards. So you close and you evaluate your deals. We'll give you six months to swap those assets that you close on out with others. If it hits this parameter, we have some sort of ranking where the asset was just, you know, more fertilized. It should have been lit up with a gas can and filed for an insurance claim for it was good. So that's kind of a unique thing that we see on big pools that they give you a lot, you know, like just like a commercial, like an apartment. It's not a. Usually a 30 day due diligence process location, right Eric?

Yeah, no, we normally have a 60 day close period and usually a 30 day extension. So yeah, it's 90 days because you're right. I mean, there's a ton of work to be done. And also like the paperwork and title companies and appraisers, they're just people you kind of have to wait for. So even if you're the fastest worker in the world, a lot of times you still need, you gotta wait, you know. So yeah, that's totally the case.

As we say hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait. Waiting for that appraiser or that agent to pull comps and you're waiting for title to come in. And you know, the unique thing about what we do, it speeds up a little bit in some cases is we're buying like an individual asset. We'll often close in like seven days because if we check title and there's nothing on there, it would stop us from foreclosing. The existing title is still in place when the loans originated, you know, six months to six years ago. So we're just checking to see if there's anything that's popped up. And then it's a matter of does the numbers make sense? Okay, let's close, let's fund. And then it takes about two weeks to 30 days, depending on who the servicing company is, to transfer the loan servicing from their, from the seller's company to our company because they got to give the borrowers time for transition. And then after 30 days, then we're hot and heavy of let's get the bar back on track. Let's make sure we get right party contact and figure out what they want to do. I mean, most of the times we'll know ahead of time what the bar wants to do based on their servicing notes, if they called in or we do a little social sleuthing, you know, like the bar says, like, oh, I'm gonna, should I pay my mortgage, go to Disney. And they go to Disney. We know that's probably gonna be a foreclosure, right? If a borrower we see online, a borrower's self employed. Like we saw one guy was sick, broke his leg and been. I was like, okay, we'll work with that guy. That's, you know, that's something we saw, we bought. We're getting ready to buy a note in California one time and we're doing a research. We saw that his kid had been killed and he'd stop paying right at that time. I said, well, that's a valid reason if you're depressed and things are happening. Let's work with that guy a little bit. And you go from it. But it's. You see a lot of interesting things. I mean, I foreclosed on things that I thought would be modified or reinstated pretty fast and all the way from ones that I thought I was going to end up turning to great cash flow. And that's really our part. It means like the part your goal is cash flow, right? For the most part, yeah.

I mean, ultimately, yeah. So this actually brings me to the next question. So you kind of touched on it briefly. Where do you guys get your capital? I mean, you're raising capital to do this, right? Because you got to buy in cash, obviously. So where are you getting that from? Is it a fund? Do you like, give us that? Like, let's say we want to invest with you.

So we're borrowing from all the failed crypto investors out there right now.

And I'm just joking yeah. You come from a crypto pool.

Yeah, it's a distressed asset right now you pick up a lot of crypto cheap. But no, it's capital we borrow. We've got some funds that we borrow money from. We're in the process of putting a fund together right now as well to take advantage of all things. But otherwise a lot of our individual deals will just work with individual investors. Like this one deal in Anderson. I'm not going to go to a fund. I got an investor who's got a self directed IRA. His money's been making 0% for the last 16 months. We're paying him 7% on the deal and if it does takes, if it takes less than a year, we'll give him a one year prepayment penalty on it. So his money is going to make 7% which is not bad for it making zero or negative with inflation, you figured inflation, he's up 16% for the most part. But if it's smaller one off deals like that, we partner up with one off investors and go from there. And then if it's a bigger pool, then we'll put a fund together. Syndication.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, this is super enlightening for me. So again, let's say you're going to start getting into this business, right? And you find you maybe make a relationship with local bank, whatever. What are some other due diligence items that you guys tackle aside from payment, like you said, maybe a little bit of history, a little bit of social stuff there any other like surprising methods you could find some stuff out like I mean maybe, maybe like don't want.

To share that too deep. Oh no, I'm glad to share. I'm glad to share because people need to know this because there is a. I just did a podcast episode for my own podcast and up closer show on the five mistakes that most new note investors make. And this is right up that alley. So like the first thing, a lot of new note investors come in from the fix and flip or the owning the real estate side of things. Well, when you're buying a note, you don't own the property. Now you can control the property with that first lien because that's all we buy is first liens. But you don't own it yet. You've got to go through the legal process of foreclosing or having the borrower sign the property for free to own the real estate. So that's one big thing. People will start looking, oh, I own this property. Like no you don't. You can't go change the lock, somebody's still living in it. You know, you can't go be victim and throw them out or have your, you know, your big burly uncle show up at the door and pound on there. You can't do that. It's not, it's not, you know, you're not doing that. So you own the note. You have to kind of take on a banker's mindset. Okay. So that's, that's one of the first thing I look at. Evaluate it as the paper. You know, if the borrower starts paying, what's that going to look like? If they don't start paying, how long is it going to take me to foreclose? What kind of terms? You know, we take a look at the mortgage payment compared to rent rates. You know, mortgage is always going to be cheaper. You know, previously in the last recession, sometimes we would see that like mortgage payments were higher than rent. So we knew in that case we'd have to drop really, if we wanted to keep in the property, drop it down to market rent to help stay in the property. Cause I don't really want to take the property back for the most part. I like the cash flow basis because if they, they start paying, that saves me money without having to pay out, you know, servicing costs, attorney fees for six to 12 months in a lot of cases. And then I got to rehab the property if I, you know, a lot of times light rehab or rehab the property to sell it. If I don't at the auction, if I can get a bar back on track in 30 days, making payments, that's a beautiful thing because in 12 months, it's now considered a reperforming note. If I bought it at 50, I could turn around and sell it now at 85, 90 cents of the dollar without having to, you know, show up with a hammer once or send a crew in, which is kind of nice.

This is so interesting. I like never thought about like a performing note market. So if you can get performing again, you can sell it. That's amazing, actually.

Yeah. And so that's a big thing. Time frame is different. Most people, you know, they like the tangibility of real estate. Being able to go over and pick out paint and carpet. You know, they've watched too many HGTV shows. You know what I mean, Eric? With us, it's a longer timeframe for the most part, like I just said, to get a note reperforming and increase the value. It's about a year of seasoning, but the yield is great. Yield is phenomenal in a lot of cases for that. Because if we bought it at 50 cents on the dollar and let's just say it's got a 6% mortgage interest rate on it. Well, if we bought it at 50 and they start performing, it's now a 12. Cash, cash ROI. It's just like that. If they bring a little extra to the table now we're looking at mid teens. If or they bring a sizable down payment on their taxes, that may be a 20 yield. And then if we sell it off in 12 months, we bought it at 50 and sell it at 80, there's another 30% profit for that year. So that's, you know, it's not unheard of for us to make, you know, ROIs in the 20s for non performing when we get performing the same thing. If it's a, you buy it cheap enough like this Anderson, we'll buy it, you know, close on it at 47, we'll borrow 55, we'll sell it around 85. So that's, you know, $30,000 in profit on that stuff. We'll pay our investor back at 7% on, on their 55. So that's in at 62. So we're, you know, $23,000 on a, you know, that's a pretty good deal, pretty good ROI and $85,000 asset. You know what I mean?

So yeah, no, that's awesome.

Another thing, people worry about raising capital, you know, they're like, I can't go get a banknote to buy a note. No, doesn't work that way. You gotta market for capital, you know. But the great thing is a lot of IRA investors are a great way to raise capital because it's, you know, when I speak, speak at different IRA clubs or I've got quite a few of the head honchos, friends that run these self directed companies. They're always telling me that usually somewhere around 50% of their portfolio is either in paper. Either they've lent that money out on notes or they've bought notes performing or not performing. So there's a lot of IRA investors who might sit on the sidelines. About a third of all IRA money sitting in an IRA fund or a self directed IRA company sitting there making zero right now. So it's great for performing notes or non performing for some people with a higher return.

Oh man, that's like such a good tip for people who are trying to raise capital. It's like maybe target the self directed IRA area.

So I'll tell you a little secret. This is a little bit of that secret sauce that we're just going to share here in the real estate mindset. Okay? Make sure you hit that subscribe button now and leave a five star review and all your dreams will come true. Okay?

100%.

So what we do, I just did this. I got a student of mine in St. Louis and she's getting ready to buy a couple of notes and looking to raise some capital. And we jumped on the county appraisal districts and so she went to Jackson county, which is Kansas city, and then St. Louis county in a matter of five minutes. When we did a search for like equity trust on the county appraisal district looking for people who have used their self directed IRA to buy a property, it pulled up almost 300 people. 300 properties that were financed with self directed IRAs. Well, it gave us their mailing address and doing a little bit of research, we can find their, who their name. If it doesn't show their name but the mailing address. So we're gonna, she's gonna drop letter out to all those investors, you know, 300 investors. Let's just say the average person has what we see. The average two thirds of all IRA investors has at least 150 grand. Okay, think about that. 300 people times 150 grand. That's a sizable chunk of cash. If you get 1 to 4% response rate off a direct mail piece like that, and that's the only direct mail piece we get, she'll have all the capital that she needs. 12 people. That's roughly $16 million in private capital if you think about it that way.

Really good tip. Actually. That's incredible. We actually, I mean, we pride ourselves on being very efficient and helpful with people using self directed IRAs to invest with us. That's one thing people come say, I don't understand what I need to do here. It's like, we'll help you. That's kind of part of being in our business as well. Instead of being like, I'll go figure it out, I'll go talk to a custodian. It's like, how about this? How about I help you talk to that custodian? And the thing is, it's not like, I mean, they really want to invest. People just don't know how or how to get into it, especially if they have retirement money on the sidelines like you're describing.

Well, it's true. I mean a confused mind says no. And we're talking about mindset here. Taking that extra step of 30 minutes and just helping them on a phone call or a zoom call, talking about what they need to do. Especially if they've got money sitting in a traditional trading account like Scott Trade or Schwab or mutual funds, they can't use that money. It's going to take them three days to trade out of that into cash and then another day or two to wire over to the subject ira. So that's a weak timeframe. That can be scary, confusing. So this is why I agree you got to hold their hands through the process. It doesn't take much to get set up, but the opportunity to do it, of course you want to work with somebody who's motivated, somebody's not motivated to, to even pick up a phone and make a phone call or two is going to be harder to get the fund. But yeah, there's a lot of times like, listen, just get the account set up, we'll fill out the paperwork and send it to you to review, to sign and send in. You know, we don't need, you know, they're like, well, what do I check here? What I fill this out? Don't worry about it. We filled out enough. Here's the, here's a template for you, basically. And it can be a little, a pain in the ass, but honestly, those are the clients that respect you and love you and come back for investment two, three and four.

Yeah, exactly. And the thing is, if you're being genuine and you're helping them, that's the goal. If you're actually being helpful, even if it is a giant pain for you, usually it's worth it for both of you. Because then they're like, oh my gosh, thanks for taking the extra step. And then you're right, next deal they'll probably be in, right? Especially if you're making them money.

Well, that's the thing too is self directed IRA companies will love that. They'll bend over backwards if somebody sending clients on a regular basis. So I would highly recommend everybody listen to this. If you've got a self directed IRA company in your area, that's always a great place to go to. But you know, find a rep or somebody you can talk to who's gonna be responsive for you that can, you know, because that helps them. It's helping them. When you're putting, they're opening new accounts, they're bringing investment of money over to them, it's up on you because now you've got almost a liquid cash, but cash is a whole lot more liquid for you to use for your investments. And it's great for the investor because now they're like, oh, I'm in good hands. I don't have to try to fumble through the dark to figure things out in a lot of cases.

Yeah. Well, Scott will shift gears a little bit here. I got a series of questions for you, kind of based around mindset, but absolutely no wrong answer. So I always ask, do you have a morning routine and if so, you want to share it?

Yeah, my morning routine is I get up, I feed the four legged furries we got running around the house here first because otherwise they're going to try to eat my leg coffee and then I usually go outside. Used to I'd go meet my trainer, but with COVID shutting everything down, we turned our backyard into kind of a tropical forest. So my usually the first 30 minutes after the coffee's brewed is, is watering my plants in our garden. And it's kind of a great, kind of, you know, we had the big palm trees and I got tomatoes that are like 10 foot tall. And you know, the birds, we got like 20 different types of birds that come to our house for seeds and to eat. And so that's always nice. And then I've been the last couple months, I go for a walk. I'll just grab my cup of coffee and walk around our neighborhood. We're kind of a gated community here in Austin. And so we'll, you know, get a two to four mile walk in the morning and then I'll come and start the day. I don't even look at my email till 11 o'. Clock. I look at it when I wrap up at 7, then I look at it at 11. But if anybody needs anything emergency, they know to text me. But you know, I used to start updating, I gotta, you know, be reactive to emails and emails and I was like, that's, that will just you lose your day by being a thing. And then usually when I get back, when I get back from my walk, it's about 10 o'.

Clock.

I spend my first hour on marketing my business. Whether it's marketing deals, recording a podcast episode, recording a webinar, or being on somebody else's podcast a lot of times. So that, that first hour really of my true work day is focused on marketing and mindset.

Oh man, love. There's so many good tips there. And I think the email one's awesome. Like, I had a hard time with that too. Like, I tend to want to be very like, available, but responding to an email two hours later doesn't make you even appear unavailable, you know, like people. Generally speaking, email's not that urgent. So I love that tip. It's like, you know, Tim Ferriss talks about this a little bit, like, answer email twice a day or whatever. I'm not quite to that, but I love that tip of like, don't even look at it until you've got your day kind of set and going.

Well, we, you and I both know if you're dealing with deal, sometimes you do got to respond back. Besides, before the end of the day.

Yeah.

Closing day, then.

Yeah, you better be.

Well, that's, that's. I mean, but you're right. I mean, that's the thing is over. I mean, the last few years, we have lost patience. You know, most folks. Well, why didn't you respond back? I'm like, because I was, I'm doing other things. I'm not just sitting here waiting for you to email or waiting for your text to come across. I'm working to get some things done. That's why you're contacting me. So I'll contact you. You know, I'll contact you at some point. But it's. I, I have things. I think that's one of the beautiful things. We're just busy talking about Calendly. I try to, you know, get everybody, hey, go make an appointment accountably on my schedule if, if you, you know, and I think it's another big thing about mindset and success is if you want to be successful, you have to value your time. And if people will not value your time, they will never respect you. And so I had people like, oh, I don't use Calendly. I'm like, well, then good luck. Because if you're not going to jump on my schedule, I'm busy. I'm just not going to try to figure it out and find you when I think you might be available. Schedule a time that works for both of us and it'll make my. Make my day much more productive.

Oh, yeah. Calendly is like, for any listeners who have not used it. It's a scheduling tool and it's fantastic. That back and forth of how about Tuesday? Oh, I can't do Tuesday. How about Wednesday? How about noon? Oh, soccer, whatever. It was like, even commercials making fun of that. Like Calendly is, here's my calendar. Pick a time. It's on there. And you can pick any time that works for you because this is open to you. So I love that tip. I use Calendly daily.

I use it multiple times. I even Went and created a URL. So it was easy for people to just jump on my calendar and just like, hey, like if you want to talk to Scott Carson, just go talk with ScottCarson.com will take you directly to my schedule and it works out really well. And then of course, Eric's going to insert his calendly affiliate link here for you guys to make sure you take advantage of that.

Yep, yep, Free coaching call on there, man. Love it.

There you go.

Well, cool. So next question is what books are you reading or what books can you recommend?

Oh my gosh, we got a ton of books here at the house. I'll give you my couple my favorites. I think Tribes by Seth Godin is one of the best ones about getting the word out what you're doing. I mean we are all a part of multiple tribes out there. Whether it's your pta, your friends, your family, co workers, peers, investors, it's good. We, we and every tribe that we're part of is looking for leadership. So it might as well be your voice leading them in some sort of fashion. And I see a lot of investors that struggle coming from a, you know, a non marketing or a career where they just, you know, showed up for the 40 hours versus stepping into being an investor. As investor, you gotta be a leader. You gotta get the word out what you're doing. Otherwise your leads or deals or money will go to somebody else who is more of a tribal leader. I'm a big fan of this book, Think and grow Rich. It's written by Think and Grow Rich. It's called Outwitting the Devil is written by Sharon Lecter who's the co author of Rich Dad, Poor dad and Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill wrote it back in 1938 and it's actually him having a conversation with the devil. Asking the devil. Theoretically, maybe he did have a conversation. But anyway, how he's able to keep people from being successful. And the devil states why I throw things in front of people. The ones that are the most successful are the ones that are most driven and say no to the most to things. They're very focused, they don't drift. And we as entrepreneurs, we often see that shiny object syndrome or we get that squirrel mentality where we aren't focused and we drift away. And that's why we're not able to accomplish or achieve our goals. Those people, those investors, those entrepreneurs that achieve the most amount of goals are the ones that drift the less and say no. So by saying no to all these distractions, they're Actually saying yes to their ultimate goal out there. So it's outwitting the devil. Great book. A few years ago, I think 15 years ago, they found the. The manuscript because Napoleon Hill's wife wouldn't let him publish it because it's kind of controversial back in the time. So it came out. Sharon Lecter, who's a friend, got the manuscript. She didn't edit it really. She just added how she thought Nicole would think in today's world. So highly encourage you to check it out. There's a movie coming out for that, I guess.

Oh, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, that's a great tip.

And, you know, last book on that, man, there's so I got so many of them here. You know, there's a new one out by Mark Victor Hansen called Ask, Ask and your dreams will come true. We had Mark on our podcast, him and his wife, Christopher Wire Hansen on. It's a really great book about not being afraid to ask what you want to have happen. And working on It's a fable, but it's a great, great story. So those would be two ones that I always recommend. Then one I just haven't finished reading a little while ago.

Oh, man, that's so good. I think there's a ton of power. And all the stuff you just said is, like, even just asking people, you'll be amazed. And you kind of touched a little bit on, like, getting the word out with the tribe thing, right? Like, you kind of do have to do that. That's what most new investors ask me. Say, how do I get started? I say, start telling people you're doing this. Start wearing the hat of a real estate investor, even if you're not yet, because you're starting to get people to think of you as that person. It takes a lot of time to build that credibility. So as soon as you can get educated, one, two, start telling people, hey, this is what I'm doing. And it's the best tool you can possibly do because you're right. They have to be a leader.

Right.

You have to be a thought leader and get out in front of people. So that's another excellent tip from this show. Well, Scott, go ahead.

I was just saying people struggle with that, going from being an employee to an entrepreneur mindset, you know, like, oh, I don't want to brag. No, you're just sharing your journey and people will flock to you. It doesn't mean that you look stupid. Everybody's got to start somewhere with their first deal, and you might as well share that journey and people will identify with you and see, see how far you've come and you know, your supporters will be there. Hey, how's that going? And reaching on a lot of cases. So, yeah, it's one of the most important things. You can't be a secret agent, be successful in anything.

Oh, man. Good, good quote right there. That's like tweetable. I don't, I'm not even on Twitter, but that's like, hang on here.

There we go.

There you go. Love it or answer. What's a. What's a mindset tip you can share with our listeners that they can take from you?

So this kind of piggybacks on the 180 degree angle, what we just talked about. You got to realize that not everybody is going to be your fan too. You know, I think so many entrepreneurs, when they start marketing, they'll send an email blast out or a postcard or something, Facebook post, and they'll, they'll have people that open it and congratulations. But they have a tendency to fixate on that one troll, the one negative Nancy. You know, the people out there that don't want to see succeed, you know what I mean?

Nice.

I come with, equip my own sound machine. But anyway. But that's a buddy of mine and a mentor of mine, Gregory taught me years ago this was a really beneficial thing. About 12, 13 years ago, everybody wants, we all want people to like and love us, but there's kind of everybody falls into three kind of buckets. You got your friends, your families, your biggest fans, your cheerleaders, all this stuff. They're your bucket. That's great. Then the opposite side, you have the bucket of folks that don't like you. And they won't like you because of your age, your sex, your color, your weight, your height, whatever. They just have a dark hole for a soul. Okay? They're upset, they're jealous. They just, even some of our closest friends will fall into that because they think they're not gonna, they're gonna see you taking action that they won't want to take. They're like, what are they thinking, they're better than us? But no, it's just that you have bigger dreams and goals for them. So a lot of times we fixate on those two things. But you really need to forget about the trolls. That's what the beautiful thing about unsubscribe or block or stuff like that. Focus on the fans and people that love you. And then the middle bucket out there, folks that don't know you, you Know what? There's a lot of great people out there that don't know you, that need what you're doing, need what you're sharing. And you'll be a lot happier if you a lot happier. And it was one of the biggest things mindset wise. Like I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I'm not going to make everybody happy. And so if you're not paying my bills or affecting my bottom line, your opinion doesn't mean squat to me. I know that's a lot of heart. It's hard for some people to think, but you just gotta keep that mindset. Hey, I'm working with the folks that love me. I'm gonna go out there and show how awesome I am. To those that don't know.

Oh man, that's, that's such a great tip. And it's true. Sometimes that's hard to let go. And you kind of touched on a little bit too is like sometimes your closest friends can be that, sometimes your family can be that. Unfortunately, I'm not saying you dump those people. There is a lot of advice out there, just cut people off. I don't necessarily subscribe to that, but I think maybe paying less attention to their opinion in a way that affects you is a huge tip. So I love the way you put that.

If you want to grow your income, they always say hang out with. You're the average of the five people that you hang out with most with. So if you're hanging out with five friends that make 50 grand a year, that's really what your income, you're wanting to increase your wealth. You got to hang out with people making more wealth on average. And that means, you know, you got to grow into that mindset of 100,000 or a million dollar earner. It's a whole different activities at the levels along the way. And the higher you go up, the rarer the error is in separating yourself from folks that aren't going to make the sacrifices to that you're making on a daily, you know, hourly basis sometimes to better yourself and accomplish goals, you know, status quo. Nobody ever really got successful at status quo.

Yeah. And I like that tip. And along with that I sometimes use the same one of like you're never going to save your way to wealthy and like it's just, it's just not, it's just a reality. Right. So like talking about being around people doing those things, like I love masterminds for that reason. I get in groups of people that are way bigger earners, way Smarter, way more successful, way more down the road. That's honestly where I love to be. It's extremely uncomfortable, right? Like humbling. But that's when you're really like, oh, like here's a few things those guys or women are doing to be incredibly successful. What can I take from it? You know? And then anyway, so that, that was just a really cool tip. And you're right. I mean, surround yourself with a group of folks that lead you on or like help you out, lead you forward, cheer you on was what I was looking for. That's the group you want to be. Hang on.

And you know too, some of the most successful people are the ones that failed the most along the way too.

Oh, awesome tip.

Yeah, without question, they're in real estate. You're going to have deals that go south. If you worry about the perfect deal, you might as well just stick to your, your, your job. But that's the thing is when we've had deals go south there, things happen. We always went to our mastermind, our folks above us and they're like, listen, don't worry about it. You're on the right path. Here's how you get through that. Here's how you solve that issue and run from there. So that's, that's one of the most beautiful things about that aspect of things. I mean, and then of course, like you said, you're never going to save your, save your way to wealth. Jesus saves. Everybody else has got to invest. Really good tagline as well.

It's funny. Well, Scott, thanks so much for being on, man. How can people reach you? I mean, you kind of gave your calendly, but how can they find you?

It's, it's easy. If you go to weclose notes.com that is our main mothership website, you'll find our podcast or classes. Investing. I'd love to give something away to your audience out there, folks. If you want to learn more about note investing, I have a one day class that I teach every third Saturday, usually of the month. It's a live class via Zoom. It's kind of the Cliff Notes version. We show you how to find fun and flip and how to kind of get your feet wet. Usually 99 bucks. But if you go to noteweekend.com and enter the code mindset all caps mindset will give you the class for free.

Oh, that's awesome. Great giveaway. Well Scott, appreciate it very much. This has been a great show. Once again, thanks so much for being.

On honored and once again, everybody, we as podcasters, we love to hear from our audience. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and make sure you leave Eric a five star review as well.

Yeah, I love it. Even one more final gym. Scott, thanks.

You're welcome. Thanks Eric.

We'll get another great show. I hope you got something out of as well. I mean I love again hearing other parts of this world what people are up to. I'm personally probably not going to get the shiny object, but there's parts of me and sometimes when I talk to these folks making some money makes you think, well, what else could we be doing? I love what we do and I'm seemed clearly that he loves what he's doing. But it's kind of nice just to hear other avenues. So hopefully you got something out of it. Scott kind of touched on it twice, but if you could leave me review, it'd be greatly appreciated. And of course I have to pitch our events coming October 6th. Um, it's really kind of a cool event and so if you have a desire to learn what we're up to, learn more Mastermind with people. Check it out. Multifamily Mastermind. Check it out. It's payetteforwardmastermind.com it's we call it Pay it Forward event because we're kind of doing what lots of people did to us, right? So they we learn from people who are ahead of us and I'm not suggesting them that I'm an expert, but we're bringing in expert speakers and of course we're all extremely available to share our successes and failures. But anyway, payetteforwardmastermind.com, check it out. Love to see you there in October. Thank you for listening to this episode.

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