Investing in Apartments by Buying Notes with Scott Carson: Multifamily X Podcast

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And welcome to the show. This is Multifamily Chronicles and I'm your host, Adrian Danila. Today we have as a guest, Scott Carlson. Welcome to the show, Scott.

I am honored to be here, Adrian. Just here to serve your audience and I'm honored to be here, man. Glad, glad to, glad to share today.

Scott, as your background shows right there. You are the host of We Closed Notes podcast, right?

Yeah, we Close. Yeah, we close. Notes.com is my main website. And then I've got the Note Close show podcast I've had for six years now, over a million downloads, 700 plus episodes. And then I also am the host of Note Night in America podcast, which is a online basically webinar I've done for about, about 12 years. Every Monday night we do an episode on something in the note industry because that's what I'm known for, known across country as the note guy. I've been buying distressed debt for over a dozen years, and by that I mean I'm buying mortgages where the borrowers haven't paid on either residential, commercial properties. And we work to become the bank and then buy that debt at a big discount and then try to work it out with the homeowners or the property owners of some sort.

So would you like to elaborate a little bit more about your background, personal, professional for our audience right here?

Yeah, so I, you know, graduated college in 2001. It's hard to believe I've been out of school for 20 years. If time flies, I feel like I'm still 24. But who knows, you know, don't we all feel a whole lot longer, a whole lot younger than what we look? But anyway, I always had a passion for numbers. I got into finance right out of school. Financial advisor with the division of Citibank back in the day. Then, you know, worked for them for a little while, did well, that got laid off as they closed the office here in Austin, Texas. So I tried to figure there about, you know, about a year I was trying to figure out what the heck I wanted to do. And it was a tough time, but we bought a couple investment properties. And I always joked that I got into the investing side being a deadbeat bar. You know, we owned our primary residence and then we bought these two investment properties. And not only did I get laid off, but my two tenants got laid off as well and stopped paying. So I got basically thrown in the deep end of real estate investing pretty fast back in that timeframe. Well, luckily for us, we got rid of the two investment properties without losing our primary, kept our primary. I got back into working after doing odd jobs for about a year while trying to figure things out and got hired back in the finance industry. Started working for Chase JP Morgan Chase as a banker and was a top banker for them for a couple years. And a buddy of mine was starting a mortgage company and came to me and told me he was having all the success back, you know, getting all tons of mortgages, but he needed help. He was traveling the country with a couple investors that were teaching creative financing, owner financing, wraparounds, fix and flips and all this stuff. I just went to lunch with him and I realized that's really what I wanted to do. I enjoyed banking, get me wrong, but you know, I, the entrepreneurial bug in me, you know, was dying to get out again. So I quit banking in 2004 and started a mortgage company with my buddy there. And we were doing mortgages in 30 different states. You know, from 2004, 2008 we were traveling almost every other weekend to a big real estate Expo, whether Ron LeGrand or somebody else out there doing mortgages. And of course that was the heyday in the mortgage industry. And then as things started to change, lucky for me, during that four year period I really learned a lot of investing from the investors that were I was around. They taught me a lot of creative financing techniques that how to buy debt, how to do owner financing, how to structure deals, how to fix and flip. So I learned investing the right way on the creative side versus oh, I'm just gonna go buy a property. And then like I said, 2008, when the music stopped in the mortgage industry, I sold my half of the mortgage company and have been a full time real estate investor since 2008. And you know, over the last, it's hard to believe it's been 15 years, but the last 15 years we've focused primarily on buying just, you know, one niche of real estate investing. Not fix and flipping, not wholesaling. I mean I've done all that in my background, but we've bought over a billion dollars in distressed debt, distressed mortgages from banks and hedge funds all across the country. Whether it's a one off note, all the way up to 300 properties at a time, it's made for a very interesting time frame, done a lot of amazing deals, made a lot of money and really excited about where the market's at right now, where it's going to be going the next 24 to 36 months. We really think there's be a lot of opportunity in the distressed debt space. But that's kind of my, you know, background. Austin, Texas is home. I love traveling, I love sports, love going out and hanging out and doing fun stuff and sharing the power of being the note investor. So we've got classes that we teach on what we do here because we're, you know, one of the foremost experts. We've got the number one channel, number one podcast in our nation. Just always trying to help investors achieve success by helping give them the true content and plenty of content to help them, you know, make educated decisions, educated offerings and stuff like that to help them get beyond. I mean, I think back to when I was struggling early in 2000, and then that really kind of drives me to help people succeed.

This is a wonderful, this is a wonderful statement and it's a wonderful drive to have to help people out. You did mention opportunities for people who want to invest in real estate. I happen to be a small one of them. You know, I'm just at the beginning, right. And I do want to ask on for me and on behalf of some in my audience too, because they're, you know, they're looking at the, the little investments that I've done and, you know, they're curious about, you know, how, how I went about it and what would it take for them to start. So would you like to point a few things that, you know, a person will need to know when they first start investing? And then second of all, I like to touch on what are the type of opportunities that you see in the near future for real estate investments? It's. I'd love to have your take on those two topics.

Great, great question. First, I'll answer that first one first. And here's the thing. To be successful as a real estate investor or anything, the number thing, number one thing is you gotta be coachable. And no matter what you've watched on TV or listening podcasts, it's important to find a niche, a strategy that works well for you. It matches your strengths, it works well with your schedule. If you're working full time, you don't have 40, 50 hours a week to put into it. So it's a side hustle. And most importantly, you find somebody who's doing those types of deals in today's market, not somebody doing that did the deals five years ago or 10 years ago. The market's constantly changing, especially with what's going on in the world today. You got to find somebody who's where you want to be and doing those types of deals in, in Your market or in markets that you're tapping into. I mean, there's all sorts of different strategies. The biggest fallacy I see out there, Adrian, is that new investors, we go to local real estate investing clubs and networking events, and those are great things to go to, but we get sold on the idea of, hey, learn this new strategy, add it to your tool belt. Learn this new strategy, add it to your tool belt. New strategy, new strategy. When people are constantly learning, but they're not implementing or they're not taking action because they're constantly going from a workshop to workshop trying to learn something new, and they're never implementing any marketing or any legion, Whether it's sending out, you know, knocking on doors or driving for dollars or contacting asset managers and like what I do in my field, contacting banks and asset managers, you have to implement some sort of marketing into your business. For Legion, people are not going to just come to you out of the blue. Yes, networking is great, but when you're starting off brand new, the most important thing is to realize you have to give a strategy time for success. Not six hours, not six days. We're talking 60 days to six months of focusing on that niche, being coachable, taking the actions that somebody who's teaching you or successful in industry, showing you what to do, and just give it time. So many investors don't have any patience in implementing, you know, marketing to find those types of deals. What are they looking for that they just give up? Oh, this doesn't work. They move on to something else. Well, you got to give it time. You have to be a little patient. 80% of success, 80% of sales in today's world comes after making the fifth contact. So if you're targeting foreclosures or expired listings or asset management, you have to realize it takes that first follow up, follow up, follow up. And that's really, that's one of the major reasons that you see successful investors successful is that they, they follow up, they follow up with leads. They continue to follow up, follow up, follow up. And the second thing is they, they don't try to do 20 things at once. They're focused on one, maybe two strategies that work well, that complement each other, and that's what they focus on. So that's. If you're a new investor, don't try to do 20 different things. Focus on one thing that's working in your market. Talk and find people who are doing it and reach out to them. Because the most success, that's what people that I know are always the most giving of their time and they're, they're willing to share with the resources or the mistakes that they've made. So people don't make the same type of mistake. So that's, that's my long winded answer to a short question on the first one. The second thing I see a lot of opportunities here in what's going on in the market right now is it's changing. With interest rates going up, cost of money is getting a bit more expensive. People are scared out there. Inflation is really eating away at people that they're not putting their money into hard cash flowing or you know, positive cash flowing assets, they're losing money. So the biggest strategies that we see working is one for us is it's an ideal time in the note business with defaults increasing and people struggling to pay their mortgages. It's a good time to be buying non performing notes that you can buy from these banks at a big discount of off of what's owed and then either you know, working it out with a homeowner to keep them in the property by modifying their loans, or give them a second chance to get back on track, or if the borrowers won't play ball with you and come to the table then foreclosing or you know, give them cash to keys walking, then you can do whatever you want with that asset, that property, keep it, rent it, seller, finance it, whatever you want, sell it on the mls, whatever you want to do. But you're buying stuff at a bigger discount than most of the retail buyers that are chasing foreclosures. The second opportunity that we see a lot that we're also focused on is subject to deals. Now subject to deal is basically a borrower may be living in a house, they got traditional financing or I, you know, especially we've had really great historically low interest rates the last few years. So we see people that can't pay their mortgage because they've been laid off, or their unemployment's working or they maybe they're moving away, they can't, they don't have time to sit around and sell a house down because days on market are expanding. So they're motivated to sell, get this liability off their plate. So these are great opportunities for investors like you and me to come in, take over those payments, maybe make up the back payments, but take over the actual property at a low interest rate, low payment and then either turn around and rent it to somebody and making you know, 3 to 500 difference between what the mortgage payment is and what market rent is or owner financing or doing a, an lease option if you're outside of Texas. Something where you're maybe owner financing the property and then making, you know you're at a 2% interest rate on a mortgage but your owner financing at 8 or 9 to somebody because that's what kind of market rates are and you're making that difference in the arbitrage. Those are some great things. Will we see some foreclosures? Yes. It's not going to be like what it was back in 2000, 10 to 15 for sure. Because a lot of this distressed debt that leads to foreclosures gets gobbled up and bought like from big institutions, banks and other companies like me. And then we try to work it out with a homeowner in some sort of fashion like I'm, I'm, you know this is what we do. We're constantly buying debt and with the idea of either getting the borrower back on track for cash flowing assets or if they won't play ball then looking to sell the asset off and double down. So those are the biggest opportunities. You know, if you like commercial assets, you're seeing increased distressed assets on the, the retail side. The. I won't say apartments, everybody loves apartments. I think apartments are a big overpriced. I, I think the opportunity for apartments is going to come in two years or three years when refinance shock hits. A lot of these owner operators who overpaid for assets, overpaid for apartment complexes and their goal is to regentrify the asset and then two, three years sell it or refinance out and cash out and get those refinance options are dying on the vine as we speak. So we, and the reason I bring this up is we saw this back in 2010. A lot of you know, small balance mom pop borrowers or operators, they thought they would refinance out in three years. Well that's, those mortgage programs didn't exist at the rates that they thought would and they had, you know, their, their terms were up and so they end up getting foreclosed on. Even though they were performing note they still got foreclosed on because their term changed. So it was a kind of a, an opportunity for that stuff. And then of course, you know, you always have to worry about what's going on in market. You know I have investors out there, buddy of mine. So you're not going to see a big crash. Well, it's not going to be the same as it was 2008 because of the crash was real estate Focused, you know, you big, all these subprime mortgage companies and things on there, but we still have the same features with borrowers struggling to pay their bills, inflation eating away at what they make. So now their hundred dollars they make is worth 80, you know, 85 or 90 cents a dollar. Gas is expensive. You know, there's a lot of changes going on that are going to cause people to make the, you know, have to come up with the idea, well, do I need to make my mortgage payment or do I eat? Do I make my mortgage payment or do I pay to have the power on? Especially during the winter? You know, you look at, you know, 25% of Americans right now are behind on their utility payments coming into winter here. You know, cost of goods sold, cost of food is driving not through just inflation, but you look at also one of the things that we like to track, you see, is that a lot of these plants across the country, whether it's butchers or, you know, pig farms or processing plants, there has been a rash of explosions or these processing plants that produce the food here in the United States either going under or having bad things happen to them, which is cost. You know, demand is still increasing, but the supply chains have really dropped down. So that's a big, that's why we see a lot of price increases across the country and in meat and vegetables and stuff like that. So it's just getting harder and harder for your, you know, Joe Blow, Mr. America, just to get by and survive. So it's an opportunity. If you've got cash, hang around, you'll find some distressed assets that you know it'll pay to buy at a big discount because you probably see prices that you had never seen before. If you, if you've got money, can act on stuff. So that's my answer to the question number two for you, Adrian.

Another follow up question right here. Let's say that you own a half a million dollar asset, real estate, property. What, what would you say it's a decent cash flow to make under the circumstances under these interest rates right now currently. What would you say would be a, a good decent return, like cash flow amount?

Well, well, that it all varies. That's, I mean it's just having a half a million dollar asset. There's a lot that goes into it, you know, depending on, it's going to vary depending on if it's a single family or it's multifamily. You have to look at and what parts of the country it's in. You know, one of the big Things if you're going to run it out, look at your rent rates. I believe you got, you got to make sure, especially these days right now that you're seeing at least a one and a quarter 1.25 multiplier based on your rents or income coming above what your cost is. That's one, you know, that's one of the most important things that banks are looking at. You start getting below that, banks are getting nervous. When you start falling below 1.25 or 1.1 especially we see this in the commercial debt space where debt ratios are falling below one. And you know, that means that the income coming in isn't even paying your mortgage payment in some cases. So the higher up you can be, the better off. I would not do a skinny deal more so than anything else. If you don't see that one and a quarter rent multiplier in a lot of cases with all your expenses hold off, you know, or if you've got a property and you're struggling to put that really take a look at some things. We've had some people ask me that same question. I said, well, if your borrowers are having a hard time paying on time, why don't you go to section 8? Because the government will pay, usually pays on time. There may be laps where they may be 60, 90 days behind, but suddenly you get an influx and the government will still always pay. And a lot of times that might be a better thing or you know, it might make sense to, with the, with, you know, if your market values drop, don't sell, you know, look at what that asset is, is in your long term play. You know, we have people here in Austin, Texas who bought a house in the last 90 days. They paid top of market. Well, it's dropped 10 to 15. We see an average reduction in value about 17. I don't consider that a crash, Adrian. I consider that a correction because our market was so overpriced. You know what I mean? So if you're, if you're a speculator, and by speculator means like a fix and flipper. Yeah, it's hurting you right now. You've got to change your strategy. Maybe it needs to be a long term hold, maybe it needs to be a rental, section 8, something like that, they can drive income for you, but it's all about buying, right? The biggest mistake I see a lot of investors making is they, they focus on one strategy and one strategy alone. Oh, I'll, I can overlook the fact that I'm paying 90 cents a dollar because My, this one strategy will work still well, what happens when life changes? That strategy doesn't work well now you have no other strategies. Now you're in a negative AM or negative, sorry, negative cash flow basis. That's not a good thing. It's also too important. If you're dealing with commercial real estate or residential real estate and rentals is, you know, especially on the asset, is to look at talk with your accountant about depreciation and write offs and stuff like that, because there are some things you can get creative legally on the accounting, bookkeeping side of things in real estate to be able to write stuff off. So while you might not necessarily see that increase in profit in cash flow, you do see as a bottom line reduction in taxes. So less taxes you pay. That's, that's an advantage compared to just trying to make all cash flow. The more you can save, the better versus paying Uncle Sam too.

Very good information and very valuable. Thank you for sharing.

Yeah.

So, Scott Europe, podcast host, tell us a little bit about how this idea came about, doing a podcast. How did it come about? How did the podcast evolve where you are today and what was your motivation to start everything?

That's a good question. I actually didn't want to do a podcast. I was actually kind of dead set against doing a podcast six years ago. But I, I'm a little bit different. I've always been a big believer that you have to market your business. I've had some mentors along the way that taught me marketing and sharing your message. So like I said before, like my Night in America webinar, I've been doing that since 2011. Every Monday night we did something, it was a conference call or, you know, gotowebinar, or we do it now via Zoom. But we've been doing that as a way to touch base with my audience. Every week, you know, I've been doing that. That wasn't a podcast, it was just a webinar. And we record it and throw the video up on YouTube. Didn't do a lot of editing to it. It was just kind of. And we'd have anywhere from, you know, 30 people to 700 people in that webinar dependent on the topic. But back when podcasts are becoming more attractive, back in 2000, you know, 14, 15, we had a couple students that were starting a podcast and I was like, oh, that's great. That's your thing. That sounds like a lot of work. When they tell me they record for an hour and then four hours to edit the episode. Like that doesn't make any sense to me. I'm too busy. I don't have time for that. I'm a. Let's record it and slap it up, okay? If I mess up, that just shows people that I'm a normal guy, okay? I don't need to be all that polished. And they did a really good job with it. You know, we were still doing our webinars and doing some Facebook Live stuff, but then when they stopped their show, they hit 100 plus episodes and they stopped and they went their separate ways. I'm like, well, you got all this traction. Why would you stop? And I had a friend of mine, Tom Hazard, who owns a company called Potatoes out of California, and I met him speaking at an event in San Diego with another friend of mine, and we met and talked, and Tom runs his production company for podcasters. And he's like, man, you've got some good stuff. You got a lot of video. You should have a podcast. I'm like, oh, I don't want to do all that work. He's like, oh, no, we can do the work for you. I'm like, oh, really? What do I have to do? He goes, just record it and upload it to me. I'm like, okay, maybe. And then I went on a trip, and one of the guys that started his other podcast was on the trip with me. He told me they were stopping. I looked at, you know, my. My better half, Stephanie. I said, okay, we need to do the podcast. So I called Tom up and said, okay, what do I need to send you? And I just started cranking out episodes, and there I was in Vegas at an event as well, too. And Kevin Harrington, one of the Shark Tank guys there, was talking about video, how video is so important in marketing, and you got to market every day, you know, instead of, like, most people. Most people wait to market till the last part of the day when they think about it, and that's why they're not successful, because it's an afterthought. Oh, I'll get to it tomorrow. Get to it tomorrow. Well, I've had, you know, when I, you know, Kevin Harrington shared that. And then I was following Gary Vaynerchuk as well, too, and he was doing his AskGaryVee show daily. And I was like, this is all about the time that Facebook Live came out, too. I was like, okay, let's. Let's. Let's try this. Let's do a video daily. So Monday through Friday, we started doing a Facebook Live. Those were the first 150 episodes of the Note Closure show was Facebook Lives. And we just did a little bit. What are we working on today? What's a lesson? What's something we learned? What's a deal that we're working on? We just shared kind of the, you know, you know, if you're looking over my shoulder, what I was doing, we just shared day in, day out what we were doing. And we did that for 150 days. So literally that's over 30 weeks of like a Facebook Live anywhere from eight minutes. And then that built us build a following on Facebook and YouTube. I say, okay, so we. That's when we launched the, the podcast side of the no Closure show. And that was. It's hard to believe. We've been doing it now for six years over 720, 30 coming up on 750 episodes. We do both audio and video. And then we also take the, the audio and fully transcribe it, turn into a blog, and then reshare it with images. So we really try to do a full court press on every subject matter. But it has become the number one legion for us, for, you know, for raising capital, for finding deals, for finding students that want to learn the note business, that sign up for our classes or membership or our training and stuff like that. Or they just want to invest, so they invest with us, but they gives them an opportunity to really learn, you know, our strategies and, and build rapport with me without me having to talk to them. So I always say it's the one conversation to the masses leads to the one on one conversations that you really want to have. And you know, we've exceed over a million downloads on our podcast. And it's just been, it's open doors. You know, I've been a guest on hundreds and hundreds of other podcasts, other real estate investors and business, and spoken at podcasting conferences across the country as well too. So it's really helped, I guess you could say I'm an icon in podcasting for the most part with a niche, very niche down show just focused on note investing. So, you know, as they say, the riches are the niches. And we've really tried to maximize the, the most by focusing on that one topic. But also every day, the first hour is how are we marketing our show or marketing our business? And that's, that's kept us consistent. It's also helped us be successful to have the, the number one podcast and notes and number one YouTube channel and really the number one website for note investors out there. So that's you know, consistency, it's been a lot of work, but you know, we've been around for the long run. We expect to be around for the long run as well too.

You mentioned a few ways in which the podcast help you grow your business. Could you share with the audience a couple of stories, specific stories, like very remarkable stories that you remember, like for example, abc, this person listened to my podcast or saw my podcast and they reached out and we did an amazing deal. Just some of the best stories that you have that came out of the podcast.

So I, I'll give you an example. I was negotiating a, a non performing note on an apartment complex in Missouri with a bank out of Missouri about a month ago and we were talking and I was asking some questions on the phone and the investor that made the connection was on the phone with us and she was listening to him, you know, ask me questions. I asked some questions back. We got to laugh a little bit. And he somehow we'd already been connected on LinkedIn for years before, but hadn't really deepened that relationship. And he's like, wait a second. He goes, you're the guy that has that podcast, the Note Closer show, right? I'm like, yeah. He goes, I listened to your show. I just realized this is Scott Carson. I'm like, yeah, Scott Carson. He goes, I love your show. I love your videos that you put on LinkedIn. I've learned, I've been a bank president for 30 years. I learned something about the note industry from listening to show you watch your video. So that was a surprise. I had to chuckle about that. And that led to us getting a couple of deals done. And it's been a great relationship. I was in New York City working with another investor and I was getting up early in the morning to catch my flight to the airport, like four or five o' clock in a New York City was rainy, dreary, this is last December actually. And I get in the Uber and the guys and I talk. He's asking what I do. I tell him, he's like, oh yeah, really? I'm learning about that. There's this great podcast called the no Closer Show. I'm like, well, I'm that guy. He's like, he's like, what? And he almost wrecked. It's like, no, no, keep going. So yeah, we got to talk a little bit. And I gave him my car. I said, listen, glad to have you, you know, let me copy into a class. You know, I love your energy, I love what your hustle do that. You know, those are Great things. You know, I get people all the time that reach out to me. You know, right before we got started, I got a text message from one of my students and he's bought. In the last year, he's bought 20 notes, okay, 29 performing notes from different banks, raised over $1 million in private capital. And he started listening to my podcast back before, you know, year. Took him six months before he picked up the phone to call me. And he just put his notice in at his job. He's like, scott, I am making more money as a note investor now by closing all these deals in cash flow than I'm working. I've been making a little bit about the same amount, but now I feel comfortable enough that if I want to quit my job, I can and not be stressed out about it. He enjoys what he does. He makes good money. It's getting a little stressful as people, his company's been laying off people so he has more job for the same amount of money. He's like, I'm getting that point that I think January 1st I'll put my notice in and leave it and then I'll just be a full time real estate investor. So that's, that's a beautiful thing of help, helping people achieve financial success if they'll coach it to it, I mean. And before we were talking another investor on the phone. He's struggling to find deals in his backyard because he's going, you know, sending out letters or postcards or going to real estate club. And when we get notes in, we get lists of them in Adrian, they may be 10 notes, maybe 300, maybe 900 different addresses across the country. And we found a property. A note came on my thing. He lives inside. He lives in Little Rock. He's been looking for some land. We find a property note 15 minutes from him. It's worth 110. The guy the borrower on it owns probably around 90 on it. For him to make an offer on, he'd have to be roughly at $90,000 or close to retail to buy this property. Based on the market, well, we negotiated a discount at $55,000 to buy the note direct from the bank. He'll foreclose and either a take the property back and keep it, or he'll sell it at the auction and make $30,000, 30, $40,000 on his $50,000 investment. He'd rather keep the land. You know, there's a mobile, you know, double wide mobile home. You'd rather parcel off, sell off the mobile home and keep the acres long term. So he's like, I would never have found this property otherwise because I, I don't want to pay value, I don't pay retail value. But the fact that I'm getting this at a 50 discount, he's just tickled pink. And he's been an investor for 30 years in a lot of things too, for you. So we get all sorts of interesting stories. You know, it's, that's one of the greatest things of seeing people reach out to me. Hey, I listened to your podcast and I was able to take what you told me and it saved me money or it made me money, or, you know, I was going down this one path and it wasn't working. And I listened to you and you're exactly right. The reason this thing doesn't work is it's an outdated strategy. And so I pivoted. And, you know, that's, that's the beautiful thing. You never know who's listening to your podcast. And you're doing a great job with your podcast as well, getting out and sharing knowledge, information. If you're listening guys and gals out there, we as podcasters love to hear from you. So make sure, if you're listening, make sure you leave Adrian a five star review. You hit that subscribe button, leave him a five star review because we love hearing from our audiences. You don't have to believe one of you like me, but tell Adrian what you love the best or if it's been impactful, we want to hear that. So that's, that's the biggest thing is I get messages and emails and you know, I, I put my phone number out if anybody ever wants to talk to me. It's really simple, go to talkwithscottcarson.com and I get people across the world that reach out to me who listen to my show. So that's, that's one of the most things that always just drives me. I'm just a normal guy from Ingleside, Texas, a little small town in South Texas, and I have this audience of millions of listeners all across the world and I, I just kind of chuckle at that every day, Adrian. So that's, those are a couple stories that have. The podcast has impacted lives in a lot of cases.

It's truly amazing. Thank you for sharing. I know the power of our podcast. I'm seeing a little bit of it myself as a podcast host, as far as, you know, personal brand that, you know, becoming a, a non individual. And just like you said, you know, I'm just a normal Guy, I'm no, you know, I'm no personality. Just try, try to be out there. Try to, you know, do my podcast regularly, average once a week, you know, one show a week. And try to bring value to my. To my audience. So it's. It's definitely a lot of value in this. You also public speaker. Scott, tell me a little bit about your experience as a public speaker. And then if someone watching us now wants to become a public speaker, what does it take, you know, what tips would you have for them that they could implement to become a public speaker?

So if you're looking to be a public speaker, just start speaking, get out and start talking. Go to your local networking groups, get up in front of the audience. I know most people are scared of public speaking more than dying, but if you've got a message, the world needs people that have passion, and we really need leadership out there. One of the best books you could ever read is Tribes by Seth Godin. It talks about that we all have tribes that we're surrounded by, you know, our people we work with, our family, our friends or bowling buddies or the people at our real estate clubs or whatever, our pta, you know, whatever your neighborhood. We've all got the world needs leaders now more than ever. And there's so much negativity in the world, and we are all part of different tribes, and you might as well lead that tribe or at least let's. Instead of letting somebody else who may not have the same great ideas or great values you do. It pays to be a leadership. So if you want to be a public speaker, just start talking. Start going to your local BNI group, your business, Networkers International. That's a great networking group. They require you to get up every and tell a little bit about yourself. In 30, you know, 30 seconds to a minute, go to Toastmasters. That's a great way to start building your speaking things. If you want to speak at a conference that you're part of, the best thing you can do is reach out to the conference attendees at first and say, hey, how. How can I help? You know, can I volunteer? Do you need help? You know, and then go learn. See, one of my favorite tools is I like to watch comedians. I like to go to comic clubs, you know, comedy clubs, and watch know comedians, how they work the audience and how they poke fun themselves and relax. That's something. But practice, practice, practice is, is what it comes down to. You just have to do it. I mean, I'll give you an example, Adrian. Back in 2010, the was hitting the fan in the world, right? I was here in Austin, Texas, and I came with this idea sitting there, just gotten divorced, had a business relationship, business partnership go sideways. And I was like, I was just focused on the note business, but I didn't have a lot of capital, I didn't have a lot of stuff. So I was like, I got to get the word out. So I just, like I said, I started sharing short videos or YouTube videos of what I was working on and deal flow. And I started having investment clubs reach out to me and say, hey, we see your. Your. We see your blog or we saw your videos. Would you be interested in coming? You know, can we use your blogs in our newsletter? I'm like, yeah, sure, by all means, go right ahead. And they're like, would you like to come out and speak to our meetup area club? I'm like, yeah. And before this, I sat down one night watching TV with my brother. And we were watching. I don't remember what it was, but those Visa card commercials come on. You know, it's like $5 for a beer, $6 for a hot dog. Seeing all 30 Major League Baseball parks in the country. Priceless, you know, I mean, I was like. And I'm a baseball fan. So I was like, okay. You know, my coaches always tell me, like, if I want to accomplish something, write your goals down. I said, I want to, you know, try to see all I want. I want to see all 30 Major League Baseball parks in the next two years. And I said, well, for me to do this, I gotta go figure out when they're playing. I said, well, what if I sold everything I had here in Austin? Just took off. I'm divorced, I don't have any kids. I got my dog, and I'm not selling her, I'm keeping her. But let's plan it. So we planned this 30 week trip across the country to hit all the major league baseball parks by looking and say, okay, when are the Rangers playing? When the Astros playing? When are the Braves playing? So then we kind of mapped out this plan. Well, I said, once we mapped out this plan, suddenly I started having these real estate clubs reaching out to me and asked me if I want to come speak. I said, when do you want me to speak? And the dates that they told me they wanted to come speaker were available, lined up perfectly when I would have been in that town to watch a baseball game. So I call that divine intervention. Okay? So I said, okay. God, I'm not smart, but I hear what you're telling Me here. So in a matter of a month, I sold everything I owned here in Austin, Texas, at my truck and some clothes and my dog. And we went out and I, for the next, what I thought would be 30 weeks of speaking and traveling turned, that turned into almost four years of non stop travel, of traveling the country, speaking in investment clubs. I got asked to speak at conferences, I spoke internationally. It was kind of like, like you, like, see these politicians on these buses going around, like grassroots effort. It was kind of like that. Me driving around my, you know, Ford F150, you know, going from, you know, city to city, meeting with bankers. If I was in a town, I would post on, like my socials, like, hey guys, I'm going to be at the Starbucks, you know, for the day, working. If you want to come by and talk notes or real estate, feel free to. People reached out to me, hey, you want us, I've got a, you know, instead of you staying at a hotel, you want to stay in our guest house for a week? You know, we'd love to work with you on some deals. Like, let's do it. I'll stay. Sure, I'll stay at your guest house for free. I got a dog. Is that okay? Like, yeah. So we made some, made some amazing friends. And that's what you have to realize if you're public speaking, you're sharing your knowledge and you're just storytelling. That's the biggest thing to be a good public speaker is tell some stories, talk about some stories, don't be long winded, have some good hooks. But practice, practice, practice. And I mean, the presentation that I give in front of different investment groups, I've got three or four and, you know, 75 of it is stuff that I say all the time. It's just, I know my punch lines, I know, you know, audience responses if they don't respond, I know what to say to make fun of that. I just like to have fun. And that's the thing is you can tell stories, make people laugh when you're speaking. They'll remember most of, they're not going to remember most of what you say. They're going remember the beginning and the exit, and they're also going to remember how you make them feel. So if you can tell an emotional story or a good story or two or something like that, that draws at their, you know, heartstrings a little bit or hits their hot buttons, depending what the audience is, that's one of the most valuable things you can do. So practice, practice, practice. Watch people Speaking, see what they say, see how they react. You know, you're not going to be perfect. I've screwed up before. When I first started speaking, I screwed up, you know, tried to figure things out. But the more you practice and be. Be prepared for, you know, that's the thing. Don't read it word for word. You try to read it word for word, it's not going to come across, but literally, be prepared. And, you know, here's a little magic. I like to say. If you've got 10 slides, 10 PowerPoint slides, and speed, that works to about 20 to 30 minutes of content. So you want to keep your bullet points on your. Your PowerPoints or your presentations, really, you know, three, four, maximum of five points per slide. But don't tell word for word. Anybody can read that, have the bullet points, and tell a story. Get in the habit of telling a story and be a better speaker that way.

Thank you for the advice. I'm trying to get into the public speaking arena myself. I got a few engagements, but, you know, I'm just at the beginning, so.

Congratulations, man. Congratulations.

Thank you. This is very helpful for me. So any. Any advice is very, very welcome, and I'm sure for some in the audience as well.

Well, here's one thing. Here's a big advantage for you too, Adrian. What's made me a better speaker is being a podcast host. You know, not only asking questions and listening, but doing solo episodes. I mean, with my 700 episodes, half of them are me just speaking to my audience for 30 minutes on a different subject. The other half is having guests on, like, you're having me on here and interviewing them. But, you know, the more episodes you do, the more public speaking, whether it's on video or podcasting or in front of an audience, the more comfortable you get and the better you'll be. So kudos you're doing. Congratulations on having those speaking engagements.

Thank you. In all reality, one of the reasons why I started a podcast was to put myself out there, to force myself into speaking to the camera, to an audience, even though it's not a real audience, it's like a virtual audience. But put myself out there, make mistakes, play my mistakes, you know, learn from them, hopefully, and do better next time.

There you go. Exactly. So.

So it's. It's also, again, it's. It's like practicing pushing myself towards doing something that I'm not comfortable with and just improving, hopefully improving.

That.

That's. That's how to be determined.

Still, if I.

If I have improved or I am Improving, but I'm striving, that's for sure. Scott, my next question to you is personal branding.

How.

How important do you see in today's world with, you know, social media platforms and everything, how important is to build a strong, strong personal brand? And then what type of advice would you have for anyone out there in regards to building their own personal brand?

Those are really great questions. So when it comes to building a brand that's a episode in itself, there's the best, best thing I can tell you about building a personal brand is being consistent. If you're going to start something, be consistent, but be very focused. You know, if you're. You're building a brand about something, it's about putting yourself first. And we have a lot. I'll use a great example. We'll use Realtors, because they're kind of easy to pick on. But Realtors, they work for a company, whether Keller Williams or XP Realty or things like that, and they've got their, you know, their logos on the signs. I always laugh when I see Realtors that don't put their face on anything. They just put the Keller Williams logo or the XP or the Century 21 logo. Well, those brands have already got a developed brand. You're not helping yourself by just putting their information out there. People like, well, I don't put my face up or I got to worry about my makeup. Like, look, you got to put your face first, because that's what people really identify with. They're not gonna remember who you work for. They built. They. They want to work with you because of you and your relationship. So that's important thing is to share. You have to share your story, what you're focused on regularly, and share it everywhere, you know, especially where your audience is at. You know, like, I don't do a lot with Pinterest because my audience is on Pinterest, but we do a lot on LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube because that's where my audience is at. And we. You can tell what's my favorite color? Green. Right. Green thinks of money. You know, my second color that I use a lot of if I'm not doing the green is be blue, because blue identifies trust. And look at politicians. You'll see that politicians are either wearing, like a blue suit or a blue tie, because that builds trust. So look at, look at. There's a thing called the color wheel to take a look at. Look at that, what those colors mean, you know, Tiger Woods, a great golfer, you know, when he's playing on Sunday, what color shirt is he always wearing on Sunday? Red. Because it's his branding. He's that raging bull to close on things when he, when he was playing anyway. But you know, look at the colors of a brand. What does your brand say? A lot about what you do, but share, you have to share yourself, share your story, share your message on the regular thing. Because if you don't share, somebody else is going to share. And it takes people. Like I said, 80% of sales comes after the fifth or sixth contact. So you've got a follow up aspect. Gives you a chance to build that branding. I'll give you a great story. Adrian is. Every month we send an email out to about 5,000 bank asset managers. Okay, every month. We've been doing that for years and not everyone will have something. And we get about a 20 to 30 open rate on this big list, which is, it's pretty good open rate. But not everybody has something every month, every quarter. And I get asset managers that will finally like reach out to me. Okay, I finally have something now for you. I've been on your email list for three years, four years, eight years, and they finally have something. But it's the green. They're like, we get the green emails from you. It makes them think of me. And that's building a brand instead of searing it into like an iron on a steak or on the side of a cow. That's what you do with sharing your message, sharing your logo, sharing your colors. You know, I got a buddy, he's building a brand. So what he's wearing is a red hat. A red hat. Everywhere he goes and speaks, that red hat stands out. He was wearing a red hat with a company logo on him. And I was like, why? Why are you wearing a hat? That company's not paying you anything. Are they like, no, they're not. So we'll get rid of the logo and go get your red hat. You know, it's the same thing. There's, we are all walking billboards. You know, I'm wearing this shirt that says under armor. I was wearing a hat that had something else, but I said screw that. So I ordered some black hats I like with my logo of my podcast. You know what I mean? You know, you don't want to look like a NASCAR car with, you know, tattoos off the side. But your brand is important and building that. And your brand can stand for a variety of things. Consistency or value or trust, you know, you know, being ethical or a straight shooter. And that's what you always try to Figure out what you want your brand to stand for and then look for other companies that share the same type of values or same focus and look what they're using. You don't have to try to reinvent the wheel. I mean all the branding is done for you. You know, if you like color coordinations, look at professional sports teams. You know, if you like blue, then a complimenting, you know, color should be orange like the Denver Broncos or if you like red and red and white works well. You know, or like the Cowboys, blue and silver or blue and white works well, stuff like that. So look at professional sports teams, what color colors match what you want to do and hey, replicate it. And there's great tools like canva.com is a great tool that uses for you to create images or logos that matches up colors that work well with a specific color or photo that you pull in. With social media, you want to try to get the, the all the similar, same handles on your social media, don't have it all be different. There's a great website called Name Check that I use whenever doing a new LLC or something like that to see what you know, what URL is available, then also what social media handles are available and that helps us determine the name that makes sense is available. That's the easiest. Like my handle across all my social medias is one. Scott Carson. It's simple, it's easy people to do or the note closer show. It's very simple and consistent in our branding. We're not constantly changing up. We'll make it easy for people to be able to connect with me in a lot of ways and, and follow what we're doing. So that's, that's the biggest thing. Try to keep it simple, but start implementing things out there and, and you know, I won't say steal, borrow the ideas that all these big companies have already done all the work and paid all the millions of dollars to do it. You can just use what they've they're putting out there for you and your message.

It's not stealing. It's called Model the Masters.

There you go. I love it. Modeling the Masters. Amen to that. I love that.

And I, I didn't steal this. I borrow it from someone else. One of my previous podcast guests.

That's good stuff, man. That's good stuff.

Jack Daly, if you're watching this, thank you. The great Jack Daly. Model the Monsters. I love it. I've been using it since. Scott, what does it take to be a successful podcast host?

Just asking questions, asking the Question that pops in your mind, I think is what makes me good. I get a lot of compliments. People asking me say, hey, you're great guest, because I ask a question. You know, most people start off with having this whole list of like 30 questions and pre scripting the podcast review. And that's good to kind of get an idea of flow. I don't like to do that. I mean, I, I would, I jot down four or five questions. As a podcast host, I'll listen to a podcast episode or two if somebody's been on or trying to find a couple videos they're listening on. And many of these people that are on podcasts, a lot of times they'll say they have their sound bites. They say the same thing over and over again. Well, that's not interesting. I've already heard that three times. I want to, I want to ask a question you haven't answered. So that's the thing I look at is asking questions that people haven't asked before. If somebody says a nugget, you did this really well throughout. This one is you. I say something, you come back to the, hey, that was a hot topic. I want to ask you a bit more about that. So that's the important thing. If somebody, if, if you're listening to a guest answer something and they say something that draws your interest, you're not the only one listening. So it's important to go back and ask that, you know, ask that question that popped your mind off target or off script because that leads a lot of interesting conversations. And you know, I've, I've had many guests on, on my show say, oh, how did you know that you did your research to find out that I was like, yeah, definitely. I want to make sure it's a good, good episode, not only for me, but also for you as well. And, and that's the important thing. Trying to make your guests, you know, your people you have on, try to make it easy for them. That's the easiest thing. Easy for them to share your show afterwards, easy for them to connect and, and schedule a time that makes sense for them. So there's tools that you can use to make it easy for folks. We all start off brand new somewhere and new tools are always, take a little bit time to do it. But that's, that's quite all right. Just don't be afraid to say I don't know. And I think that's important. Across the faces. You mentioned something. What do you mean by that? And that's, that's the thing I have found that podcasting and podcast guests and podcasts are some of the best people in the world. There's always a lot of sharing, a lot of resources because they're not really competing against each other. There's enough earbuds and eyeballs, as I like to say, for everybody to learn from, and if we can help each other out. I'm only where I'm at today because I've had so many other podcast guests or posts who've shared their resources and best practice with me. So network, ask questions, and just continually strive to get better each day. Get a little better each day, and you look back 30, 60, 90 days later, and you've come a long way.

Scott, this is an amazing conversation that we're having right here, and I'm not even halfway through with the questions that I want to ask ask. So this leads to my next question. Would you be interested in coming for a second part?

I would be glad to come on a second time, for sure, Adrian. For sure. I know time is running, but I'd be glad to come on, definitely.

I. I would love to have you. This is amazing stuff. It's really good stuff. In closing, for the first episode, right. For our first meeting, what are some thoughts that you want to share with the audience? Some questions I wish I would have asked or some topics you wish would have covered? And because, you know, we. We ran out of time, we didn't.

Ah, man. I mean, that's, you know, for investors, one of the biggest questions people get into and they worry about is raising capital. So maybe some of the ways that we've raised capital for deals, how we market for money, maybe. Maybe a little bit more notes, you know, what's a note? How does that involved, you know, that kind of stuff. That's always. A lot of folks in the real estate industry are curious about not invest, especially right now. They've heard about it, but they don't know the ins and outs of it. And then, you know, mistakes. I think we always learn more from our mistakes. So I'm always glad to share any mistakes I've made along the way to help people avoid those potholes and minefields out there and. And so that they don't have such a steep learning curve. And, you know, there's a variety we talk about in episode number two down the road here for you. But yeah, I think those would just be a couple of things I think folks would like to listen to and hear about.

Yeah, this was a great list of topics for our next meeting. I, I would love to start with that. And obviously complete with what I didn't get to today.

Well, hey, I'm honored to be here. If anybody wants to connect with me, it's easy, guys. Just go to we close notes dot com. It's my main website. Or you can always schedule a call and pick my brain by going to TalkWithScottCarson.com. that's TalkWithScottCarson.com I'll take you directly my calendar and book a 30 minute phone call, but with me. But once again, hey, if you're listening, make sure you hit that subscribe button. Leave a five star review for Adrian. And Adrian, once again, thank you so much for having me here on the show today.

I truly appreciate and I really enjoy our conversation. Scott, I hope to get you back here very, very soon. Time per meeting, of course. Thank you again for coming. Great seeing you here. Great having this conversation.

Yes, sir. Amen to that, buddy. We'll talk soon.

Everybody. Thank you very much for watching. This is Multifamily Chronicles. I'm your host, Adrian Danila. I hope to see you back here soon. Have a great day.