Make Money In An Up Or Down Market – Interview With Scott Carson from Unshackled Owner Podcast

Welcome to the Unshackled Owner Podcast, the show where you'll learn the tips, tricks, revelations and realities that it takes to build a real business. A business that works harder for you than you have to work for it. Not just a job, but an asset. No matter where you are in your business, you're in the right place right now.

Here is Aaron Young, the unshackled owner. Episode 11. Hey everybody, this is Aaron Young. Welcome to the Unshackled Owner, the podcast where we teach you everything you need to know to build a business that's bigger than you build a business that becomes a real asset, not just a glorified job. And one of the things that I love to do is to bring you great people, friends of mine, associates of mine, who are living the kind of life that most entrepreneurs are only dream of. And we've got a great guy that we're going to introduce you today to, and his name is Scott Carson of We Close Notes. And what We Close Notes is all about is Scott is an expert, really the leading voice in the whole country of how to buy and sell underperforming and non performing real estate notes. In other words, the mortgages that the banks hold or that hedge funds hold. And not only is he the guy that's doing this on a huge level that, but also training people so they can become really a successful real estate investor. And so that's who we've got here today to teach us all about how we can become even more unshackled by learning how to create other streams of income. So, Scott, are you there? Welcome to the show.

Hey, Aaron, I'm here. Glad to be on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. And when you put it that way, I kind of am blushing a little bit here. It's hard to believe. I guess I am the nation's authority in what I do.

Yeah. Oh yeah, let me tell you, embrace it. Because I've talked to other people that are in your industry and everybody acknowledges Scott Carson. And so, and you know, just full disclosure, folks, Scott and I are friends. He does a lot of events throughout the year and is generous enough to invite me on as a guest speaker to talk to his students because he has a tremendous education platform all the way from weekly free webinars. Right. On Monday nights.

Yep, yep.

What are those called?

We call those the Monday Notes. And we'll have anywhere from 200 to 600 people watching those, taking part of those every Monday night.

And you do a daily Facebook Live presentation. So people that follow you you're giving them up to the minute information about things they need to know in their note business.

Yeah, it's kind of easy. You say it's my little morning riffs. We usually last 15 to 20 minutes long. Just a little topics to kind of get people motivated throughout the day and share kind of what we are doing here at WCN on a daily basis.

And so let me see, what else do you do? Okay, folks, I want you to listen. So, Scott, when I first met you, you were doing all these live events all over the place and I was traveling often to different cities around the country. And then you said, God, this is kind of killing me. I think we can do this virtually. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I was like a lot of people in the real estate world teaching workshops. You know, we were traveling a ton. We were doing probably about 12, 13 workshops a year or events a year. And for anybody that knows that or goes out and publicly speaks, there's a lot that goes into it of speaking in investment clubs or speaking at other people's events to drive traffic to those. Our main goal is not to sell education. Our biggest goal is to help people buy assets because that's where we make the majority of our money, is buying these defaulted debt assets. But you still got to put people in the seats to do it. And so, yeah, when you're looking at your Southwest Airlines frequent flyer miles and you're over a million points and you're hitting your preferred status within the first three months of the year and you're hitting averaging almost a flight a week, it gets old really, really fast. Not to mention just the logistics of putting on so many events with hotels and travel and making sure the speakers are coming in and printing. And don't get me wrong, being single, no kids, I had a lot of fun traveling the country. But like Aaron said, it tends to get old after the first, second or third year. And I realized there's gotta be a smarter way of doing it because we were doing these webinars every week and getting a good amount of people on. I said, well, let's just toy with the idea of making it something completely virtual. I guess there's a seven billion dollar industry either now or in the future of online tr. And we decided, let's give it a try. So we did our first event in August of over a year ago, two August ago, and we had 75 people join us for three full days. It was so much easier. I got to sleep in my own bed at night, eat my own Food. The overhead was just a fraction of what it was to put on a hotel event. And the students were a lot more interactive. They saved money for not having to travel. And so we were like, heck with putting on a class workshop anymore. And for the last year and a half, we've been doing these virtual workshops and even these big virtual conventions now. And I think we're pretty much one of the leaders in the industry when it comes to that, with what we do and what we provide. And I will tell you this, it has unshackled me a lot.

Yeah, that's right.

And that's.

The whole idea is something I've loved. But let's. I'll tell you what, Scott. So let's go back in time just a little bit, just so people know, because we know each other. We could have just a fun chat, but tell us a little bit about the history. Like, how did you get started? You didn't come right out of high school and become an entrepreneur, I don't think, did you?

Well, I always had the entrepreneurial background. My dad was an entrepreneur growing up, so I had that influence because my dad owned the local hardware store and always opened his own shop and worked for himself. And even growing up, I was always doing odd jobs, working for electricians or plumbers on the weekends or roofing in the summers. So I always had an entrepreneurial bug in me. And then I went to college and got a business degree and focused on business management and marketing. And out of college, I went to work for Ryzen Wireless. And then I got into banking and got into financial advising and being a mortgage banker. And, you know, I tried real estate investing like a lot of people. I watched a lot of shows on TV with my wife at the time. I was married before, and we decided to take our dip, our toe in the water. We failed. I mean, I bought a couple houses, and then I got laid off from my job. And it was a very messy time and really got kicked in the teeth and was able to pull my assets out of a sling and started working back in finance. And, you know, kind of we started to recover, started paying our bills on time because I was facing bankruptcy. I was facing foreclosure.

How long ago was this, Scott? How many years ago was that?

That was 2000. I graduated college in 2001. We bought our first house in 2002. So basically 2003 through 2005, it was basically two years.

So you kind of jumped in and it just didn't work. You didn't know enough about what you were doing.

That's exactly right.

Okay.

I thought the fact that I could build a house, knowing how to build a house from the bottom up from working was the way to do it. And I didn't have the education, I didn't have the training. I just failed.

Okay.

And, you know, I licked my wounds for a while and a buddy of mine that I'd worked with before came to me, was starting a mortgage company with a couple other real estate investors and educators that taught the note business. And So I remember July 4, 2005, I put my notice in at JPMorgan Chase where I was the vice president and made the leap to being a full time mortgage broker and did that for a while. But I was able for three years basically to apprentice with this amazing educator who taught the note business. The owner financing and distressed mortgage business.

Yeah, be a little more specific. So the note business means exactly what it's basically.

Creative finance is a better way to put it. If you're a real estate investor and you're looking for financing, we would help structure things. Either doing giving you a traditional mortgage from a bank or working with the person that owned the house to owner finance the property to you to create a mortgage and then sell that mortgage off to like a Boston Note or a New York hedge fund that would pick it up and the owner would walk away with cash and just get creative with it. And so he also dabbled in the distressed mortgage game. He was a mortgage company beforehand. He had stuff that went south. He had a line of credit that had these mortgages on it. He was responsible for that. He had to sell off to pay back the Wells Fargo and the other companies that had given them this line of credit. So for three years, I learned basically every in and out of creative financing when it comes to real estate investing. And then I still had the mortgage company working on. But then in 2009, when everything hit the fan with all these banks going under, things like that, I saw the writing on the wall and so I jumped ship. I sold my interest in my mortgage company to my buddy and started full time just calling the same banks and lending organizations that I was getting mortgages from. I called them to start buying this distressed debt and started recording what I was doing, started recording with video and stuff like that, my failures and teaching people. And I started getting phenomenal deals at huge discounts because the banks and lending institutions just wanted to get this distressed debt off their books at a fraction of what they were owed.

Okay, I want to ask you a question. So, okay, first of all, I hope everybody that's listening is hearing a big takeaway that just was said. Scott said, I'm out there, I'm making money selling mortgages, helping people get mortgages. And then the crash comes. Now, most of us that were in the real estate business when the crash came, we all just went and cried in our soup, you know, and we thought, oh, I'm losing all this equity. I'm losing all this value. What Scott Carson did was said, hey, people make money when the market's going up and when the market's going down. And you went from talking the banks into accepting your. These packages of a mortgage package for some borrower who's saying, let me buy those packages back from you at a discount.

Yep.

Right. Because the banks and the hedge funds want to get them off their books.

Exactly. Especially when you have values that tank or people stop making payments, it becomes a huge liability of these banks. And so me buying them, I can be a lot more creative with the people, the borrowers on there to try to keep them in their house or just have them give me the property, which is worth still something substantially more than what I paid for the debt.

Okay. This is so huge. And I don't want to go riffing off too far off the trail here, but here's the thing. A bank makes a loan and they say, okay, we're going to loan whatever some dollar amount and million dollars or $200,000 or whatever the number is, and the person's paying away. And of course the bank's collecting all this interest. They're getting most of their profits upfront.

Yep.

And then the market crashed. Now, maybe somebody was in a brand new loan, or maybe they'd been in that loan for 10 or 15 years, but they lost their job or now the equity went way down or whatever happened. So the bank says, we can no longer value the loan at this same place. The property is not worth as much and these guys can't pay it. And so this is a huge now liability. It's. We're carrying it as a big liability. It's bad debt. We're not going to get paid on this. But when you buy it, because the fact is it's still a house and there's still a human that wants to live in the house. And so if you could come in and basically reset the table. And now instead of it being a $200,000 loan, you bought it for $40,000.

Right.

So now $40,000, it's a whole new ballgame for that borrower. Right. For the person in the house.

Yeah. I mean, if the house is only worth 100, they're way upside down. I come to him, said, listen, let me forgive you 50 grand in debt or 100 grand in debt. If you just start making a payment or if you don't want to stay, just give me the property back and I'll let you walk on what you owe. And now I've got an asset there that I could either sell it, keep it as a rental, or sell it to somebody else and finance it.

So what was for most people, most kind of novices, guys like me in real estate, you know, because I made a lot of money when the market was going up.

Right.

And I still am sitting on a house that I couldn't sell, that we finished building right before the market crashed. I still own it. I'm still making payments on it. So what you did was your business really took off in the devastation of the real estate crash.

Yeah, exactly. We turned a lot of lemons in. A lemonade is the way to look at it.

Kept people in their homes. Yeah.

Instead of trying to rehab the property, we focused on rehabbing the borrowers.

So you got going. So things started working. You saw this opportunity, you started charging into it and buying debt and renegotiating or saying goodbye or help even. I know sometimes you guys even pay people to leave the house just so they don't destroy it or whatever, make it easy for them to move. So you got going, and things started to grow. And I'm sure at that time, was it mostly just you doing it?

Yeah, I had a business partner at the time, and when we first started, we worked really, really well together. And then things go the way they go a lot of times. We decided to stop working together. I still liked what I was doing. She was a realtor locally here in Austin, and she decided just to go the route of being an agent because it was a little bit more steadier income that way than what we do with the notes, which is when you first start off, as everybody will know, it's peaks and valleys a lot of times. Oh, yeah. And so we partner different ways. And I actually made a decision, really kind of rough decision, because I'm in Austin, Texas, and for most real estate entrepreneurs, they like to invest in their backyard. Well, what I was finding is that most of the deals I was buying and these lists that banks were sending me were all across the country. Very little in actually Austin, Texas, or Texas itself. So I literally sold everything. I sold my Houses, I sold everything except my dog. I now gotten divorced. You know, flash forward a few years, I've been divorced for a couple years. And I just jumped on the road and started traveling across the country to do two things. Not only get the word out, because what I was doing was such a niche, it was also a way for me to expand my market, to actually go see these cities, to meet investors in these cities, to help me develop my, I guess you could say my, my downline. When I got listed, I could move them to these people, these investors. So I literally started traveling NonStop for almost three years all across the country.

And how was that working? I mean, were you kind of being that prophet, you know, and you're getting disciples following you? You had all kinds of people that. Were you starting to make money at it?

Well, I was making money, yes. I was making very good money at it. And then the education kind of came from because people, hey, would you teach us? Would you teach us? So the education kind of evolved from there. But yeah, I was making great money. I mean we were closing on portfolios. Anywhere from single asset up to 300 assets in a big pool and working with other investors to take them down. I don't know if I want to say the right thing called profit, but I guess you could say it was like a note cult without the Kool Aid. Without the Kool Aid.

I'm not saying Jesus, I'm saying just a profit.

Yeah, well, yeah, I guess you could say the no profit. Yeah, guru.

My point is, is that when you have something new and you can. Nobody's really heard of it and the results are. Because they're unfamiliar, they're almost too good to be true. But then people see the proof in it and everybody wants to follow you.

That's exactly right. I let my deals be my talk. I walk the walk. Basically, I'm out here taking videos. I'm in front of this property in San Antonio, I'm in front of this condo in Miami that I picked up for a nickel. It's worth this. Or I would talk with another student who bought this asset in North Carolina or this condo in Michigan that I picked up for $500 and I sold it for scrap metal the next day for 1500. There's a whole bunch of different stories that happened along the way and people that I helped make money along the way along with putting money in my pocket. And I worked my ass off. Literally I was working 18 hour days, but I so passionate about what I did. It wasn't like work you know, we would market and teach people, and I would go from one city to the next, or I'd fly cross country to go speak somewhere. And really, at a point, I was a very professional circus performer of spinning plates as a one man show.

Okay, all right, so that brings me to this question. So you're going along, you're traveling, you're speaking. People are starting to look to you as a teacher and a guru. You're buying things. You've already described a variety of things that we wouldn't normally think of. Buy a condo and sell for scrap metal. I've never thought of that before. But the point is, you're doing all that. Was there ever a place where it all kind of like, converged and just, like, you hit a wall?

Oh, yeah.

Like you're, oh, my gosh, this is wiping me out. Or I. Or something like, what was that wall? What was that point where. Because this is the thing I want the listeners to think about, this is what's unique about this podcast, is there's a lot of people out there who can make money, drive a nice car, live in a nice place. But most entrepreneurs are such hands on. I don't want to say control freaks, except for I just did.

We are, we are.

But invariably, people will hit a wall. And so I want to know what your wall was.

My wall was when I wanted to start dating somebody full time because I'd been divorced for a little while.

Have a life. Have a life.

Exactly. I wanted to have a life where my vacation was flying to California and getting to spend, like three hours having fun at a ball game and I have to jump on a plane the next day. So when I wanted to have a life and have some sort of personal Scott time versus the note guy time, that's when it really started to hit. And I realized I didn't want to travel. I needed an office, someplace I could go because I was tired of juggling FedEx shipments of collateral. And to the point, like, I really needed to hire somebody. So I'd had a few assistants that had helped out who would run their course for six or eight months, and then they would go do something else. And finally I said, like, I've got to change what I'm doing because, yes, is this fun? For a while it is. But my health started to deteriorate. I was working way too much, I was putting weight on, and I just really had no resemblance of a normal life. Living in hotels is only fun for so long.

Oh, believe me, I know that story, too. So Tell me you saw this thing. You hit this wall. You want to be dating somebody, you're falling in love, whatever the story is, and you thought, okay, I got to do it different. So what did you do? I heard you say you got an office, you got an assistant. What did you do to start to turn that around? And did you add a team or, like, what did you do to start rethinking how the note guy can be the note crew or the note team?

Yep. So I started looking because I had a group of very, I would say, loyal and very friendly students who do an amazing job. And people I talked to, they became family for the better word. And that's the word. They're like my note family. And I got. Became closer to them than I am with my own family to the point where, like, they started noticing things. Like, notice, like, Scott, you don't look like you're sleeping much. You look like you're stressed out. Can we help? And I'm like, yes. And so I started delegating things to people and bringing kind of adjusted my training to include a mastermind, where we would get together three to four times a year and really spend three to four days working on each other's businesses or five days really helping each other out and stuff. And that was really the first thing. I started that mastermind, and it freed up a lot of stuff. It allowed for us to have feedback on each other's businesses. Like, it helped me with different vendors or I helped them with different vendors. So it took away a lot of the spinning plates, and we replaced them with stuff that was just solid and streamlined a little bit.

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah, go ahead.

Aaron, let me ask you a quick question on that mastermind idea. So this is interesting, what I think I just heard you say, and I want to get clarity on it. So you're working. You've got all these students that love you. They notice that boy. Our buddy Scott, our teacher, Scott, seems pretty tired and doesn't seem like his old self. So what can we do to help you? And they come to you, and one of the things you do is say, let's start a mastermind group. But everybody that's listening out there, listen to what I think I heard you charged people for that mastermind group.

Yeah, I had to pay for my time. Even though it was great to meet with them, it was still very valuable because I would bring in deals to the table for them. So it was worth them. I incentivized them to be a part of it. I charged them, but I also incentivized them by bringing deals to the table and expanding their own network and really kind of opening up the door. Like people joined the mass. I would literally give them my Rolodex. Here's my list of asset managers, or here's a list of everybody in here so you can network with. It's kind of the whole Google model. I was reading what would Google do? If you remember the book that came out about that and how Google has expanded their network by giving away their source code and opening up for platforms. I read that I'm like, oh my gosh, this is what I have to do. I can't control everything. I have to give away control. And I gave away the list, which my lists are worth a ton of money because they're spent cultivating these relationships and making millions of dollars with these asset managers that nobody else sees. And then also the relationships with everybody else. My downflow of people that I'm selling assets to, giving those away to everybody else in the group. But it was literally such an amazing thing because it took a lot off my plate. It took away a lot of the work that I really didn't need to do. And it opened up for a lot more clear communication with my students and myself. And I realized who were really loyal. My students, who are my friends and my family now, who are really loyal, who would do anything for me, that I would do anything for them. It really became a family versus a paid internship or paid holiday. That makes sense.

It does make sense. But the thing that is the big magic that I heard you say was you were in this situation, you'd hit this wall. You're trying to rethink how to do your life. People saw that you hit the wall. They came together. You said, let's do things differently. And you started this mastermind group which did a few things I would guess. One is it created some predictability about schedule, it created some new revenue. And by you opening up, as they say, opening the kimono, everybody could start to collaborate. And it actually reduced the number of plates you had to spend. Most of us that are out there struggling are thinking that we have to do it all ourselves, we have to pay everybody to do everything or we have to have a big group of our people if we're going to fulfill on something to a client. In the last interview that I did as it related to raising money for your business, the guest Bill Kelly talked about, sure, you can raise outset investment capital, but you can also go to a customer, somebody who would want to buy your product, which is what you did, Scott, and partner with them to provide the money for you to create the thing they need. So that's what you did. Your people bought into a mastermind. You opened up your knowledge base, and everybody prospered together. But it's unusual thinking. No different than taking that condo and selling it for scrap metal. Like you said a minute ago, too many people think transactions are just one way. You know, there's just one way to do a deal, but there's not. There's a ton of ways.

There's a multitude of ways. I think that's one thing I've always been blessed with, is having a very creative, outside the box thinking. I look at problems, I'm like, okay, if I got a problem here, what's the solution to come up with this? How do I fix this? I mean, I'm very good at saying no to things because I don't want to overwhelm my plate with things because I have enough stuff going on. But if there's something I think is really going to be beneficial to something, and, you know, there's more than ways than just writing a check and it being just a win transaction, if I can create a win win scenario with my students, it's even better. And it works so much better. And not only does it build camaraderie, it also builds trust. It also builds in some rapport with people that, hey, if I am falling down on something here or something pops up, they're usually the first ones to pop up. Hey, how can we help? Because we want to help. It's a giving nature, too. I'm like, hey, let me give, give to you guys. And when I need something, they're more than willing to jump on the phone or help me out with anything I need.

So just to review a little bit and summarize. So you figured out you were growing along. You were doing it all yourself, running your tail around the country. You decided you wanted to have a relationship that forced you to think differently. Thankfully, you already had a dedicated group of people that wanted to follow you. We've talked about your mastermind group. You've talked about going from being a road warrior to doing things virtually, workshops and now even conventions virtually. Instead of running around from hotel to hotel, did you start adding team members? Are you still doing it all yourself?

No, no, no, no. I think labor is always a tough thing. Now, the good thing that most of my deals are outside of the state, so most of my students are outside of the state. Or outside of Austin, anyway. And so I started adding team members. I brought on a VP of operations, which she evolved from being an assistant to really taking on a lot of the load. And then we've added other people as we could. Cause I was still traveling quite a bit to last year. But now we've added staff on that are handling a lot of the marketing. We've taken time to help out with that. Don't get me wrong, we still have a lot of things we working on and we've always got projects going on. But it has helped because now I've noticed exponentially things are getting done and we still have our ups and downs like any other entrepreneur out there. But it is amazing to be able to walk into an office, think an idea, say it, get interrupted and come back and your staff is run with it, implemented it, and it's better than you thought it was going to be when it came out of your mind. So the biggest thing I think is with our staff is I've always been the big fan of how can I help them achieve things? What are they focused on? You know, what do they want to accomplish? You know, I have an open door policy. I have a 30 second. I guess you could, I don't know, it's a podcast. I can say bitch session. If we've got a problem, we got 30 seconds to gripe about it, but then let's move on from that. And you try to hire people for their strengths and delegate the weaknesses if you can. I mean, every one of my staff has a different strength and some are stronger than other things, others are weakness. I try to get them focused on their strengths and it makes them a whole lot more productive. And we try to have fun. You know, that's the biggest thing. If you can laugh and have fun at your job, it makes life a lot easier. But also have a caring side. If somebody's going through something rough, hey, what's going on today? Do you need to take some time off? Do you need to take the afternoon to go do something? Or. So many bosses or entrepreneurs, when they have staff, they're so focused internally on what they got going on, they don't take the time to notice what's going on with their staff. And not every person is motivated to get that paycheck for 40 hours. Some don't need other things. You know what I mean, Aaron?

Well, yeah, I do, but what I love is that you're covering so many things that, you know, I teach the unshackled owner class and so many Things that you're talking about are. And I want everybody to hear this. So key, you had a clear vision. You don't dabble around in a lot of other stuff. You do what you do. Is that true?

Totally true.

That you work on your thing.

I am so laser focused on the note business. That's all I focus on. I mean, I get bombarded with people sending me, hey, what about these type of deals or these types of deals or this or that? Every week I say no to people because I'm like, listen, I'm focused on this. I want to be an expert. I have my father's voice in my back of my head when I hear that you can't be a MA Being a jack of all trades equates to a master of none.

Yep, yep. No, it's right. So you have to get a clear vision. Then you brought in great people. You told them about the vision. You said you delegated your weaknesses to other people who had strengths. And you empower them and you build a culture, a culture of trust, a culture of advancement, a culture of come on in, get whatever is off your chest. You're not going to get in trouble for telling me what you're upset about. But then let's find a solution and move on. These are all. And folks, this is why I bring people like Scott Carson on to the program, because they've figured out the system that I see it over and over again in companies that are making money and where the owners have freedom. And I see, Scott, I see you doing a lot of fun things in your life, too. So let me just ask you, just before we go kind of to the last part of the interview, the bullet point segment, I want to ask you. So this is called the Unshackled Owner podcast. And my belief is that the unshackled owner isn't an owner who sold the company or isn't a company or isn't an owner who no longer involved with their business. It's an owner who the business will, in my opinion, it's a business that will function if the owner is there every day or has to be gone for a couple of months or wants to put effort onto another project, but they've got a team that's doing something. But that's my opinion. What. When you hear the word unshackled, how do you perceive that? What's your opinion or perspective of what it would mean to be unshackled or live an unshackled life?

Well, I would agree with part of that comment. I Don't think it's somebody selling off their business and. And sitting with their toes in the sand every day. Because I think if you're a true entrepreneur, you can only sit in a hammock drinking pina coladas for so long. You know what I mean?

You go out of your mind, you start thinking, how can I manufacture hammocks?

Yeah, exactly. Or how can I make a better pina colada umbrella? I'm that same way. I go stir crazy. I mean, don't be wrong. I love sports. That's kind of my way to unwind. I go to sporting events a lot and games and do that stuff. But I think unshackled, it comes in a couple ways. One, you've got to have a staff that, yes, can operate without you. Now, am I in the spot where if I stepped away for two months, would things run okay here? Probably not quite there yet, but we are working to it. And it's a battle every day. It is not something that happens overnight.

Yeah, that's right. It's not a turn key. It takes time.

Yeah, exactly. And don't get me wrong, there are things that I can delegate when I'm away now, which is nice. Like, I just went to Baltimore for a day and a half and spoke there. My staff did tremendous job while I was gone working on things. I was gone for a week in Orlando for our mastermind or 10 days. And my staff did a great job of working on other things. So it's something you work towards. My VP of operations has been off for a couple of weeks, just kind of dealing with individual stuff. And so that's worked pretty fine. It's something that you work towards. The bigger you get. You do have more babysitting issues if you don't empower your employees. I think you've got to give some flexibility. I tell my staff all the time, listen, if you see something or if you got complaint from a client and it costs less than a hundred bucks to fix it, just fix it. I give you leeway. If you would need to refund something back or fix it, just let's just fix it and move on. And eventually that'll go to 500 bucks, and eventually that'll go to a thousand bucks. As my staff becomes more familiar with everything and as they grow and we try to get them moving to think about not what Scott would do, but what would they do to best solve an issue or expand some things. So unshackled is being able to take time away to be yourself unshackled. Is also having some sort of semblance to a life, I think is a big thing.

How has your life changed since you decided to bring on the team, start to empower people, start to do things more virtually, start to remove some of those chains. How is your life different for you now?

Well, I took my first official true vacation in about four years where I literally turned the cell phone off and we took a seven day cruise and that was great. That was last did that for my birthday in May last year and that was the first time and things went fine. Everything went perfect with that. That was a big thing. We've already planned another one, another two vacations this year to do that because I feel very comfortable with my staff taking care of things for a week or two while I'm gone. Having the virtual aspect of what we do and spending more time marketing properly versus the old adage of let me go out and speak somewhere and talk to 20 people or 100 people when I could spend stay here in Austin, do the same thing, but use technology to get the word out where instead of me speaking one to 100, I'm speaking one to a thousand or to 5,000. We've been much more focused on that and that has helped leave time away from the office. I'm not taking my computer home every night. I'm not Saturday and Sundays. I rarely check my emails. Little things that allow us to do things.

Little things. But it changes your life.

It does.

That's the whole point. But you have to make that happen. It doesn't happen automatically. It's done by intention. It's done through planning and it's. But anyway, the long story short is that's how you become unshackled. Okay, so we're going to come right back and go through our bullet point segment. We're going to ask Scott Carson a few critical things that we want to get a quick answer on. But first, we're going to hear from our sponsor. One of the most important things that you can do as you're starting and growing a business is to surround yourself with a tribe of great people and have lessons from a mentor that you can count on. Well, if you don't mind me saying so, I'd love to be your mentor. And twice a month, on the first and third Wednesday evening of every month, I do a private video conference call where I not only teach you what I believe is the most important things for you to be hearing to help your business right now, but also take your questions, answer the things that you need to know, so that you can be getting that help as you're getting that business up and growing and off the ground. It's called the Freedom Call. And if you go to www.theunshackledowner.com theunshackledowner.com Freedom Call, you can learn all about it, see what kind of guests we have on the call, and see how a tiny investment in your business can pay gigantic dividends. Join us on the Freedom Call. Okay, so we're back. Scott, you ready to go through a quick several little bullet points here and get some quick answers from you that'll help our listeners?

I'm ready, man. I got my gun cocked.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

First we'll start with an easy one. Is there a book that you recommend to people when they're just starting off in business or one that particularly inspired you that this is like the first book you recommend to people?

Yeah, there's. I'm going to share two real fast. Sure. I think a lot of people have read Rich Dad, Poor dad, which is great. But I think there's a couple better ones. One is the one thing that Gary Killer released about a year and a.

Half ago, One thing, great book.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs try to do too many things at once and they never get them completed in a timely fashion. I call it the Philosophy of the Unfinished Bridges where we try to create thing and we never, we end up pissing our time away. If you can get one thing done and complete it, it's much better than trying to do 20 things at once.

Great one. That's a great, great takeaway.

Another one that I'm a huge fan of and you know this with it's written by Sharon Lecter and the late Napoleon Hook called Outwitting the Devil.

Oh my gosh. Great book. Why do you love that book?

Because I love it because of the main concept where he talks about how entrepreneurs and people drift. Yeah, it's a conversation. It's a book that was written in 1938 by Napoleon Hill and his wife wouldn't let him release it because it had him basically having a conversation with the devil. And she thought it too crazy at the time in 38 to publish it. Well, it came out just a few years ago. Donna Green.

Two years ago, right?

Yeah, two years ago. I think they're making a movie out of it. But Sharon Lechter was brought on. Who? Sharon is the co author of Rich Dad, Poor dad and a friend of ours to add her part to the story that Napoleon Hill wrote in 1938. She did a great job of just leaving Napoleon's words in there. Talking about talking with the devil and why is the devil so successful? And in this book, he talks about the fact that those that do so much good out there, those that achieve success, are the ones that don't drift as much as everybody else, because, let's face it, we all have distractions. From TV to music to games, our lives are full of distractions. Facebook, oh, my gosh. Social media.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

We are all set up with distractions. And those people that are the most successful are those that are the most laser focused and can remove those distractions from their life. They don't drift if they're focused on getting something done, they strive through until they complete it. And I think that book is. Well, in some places, it's a little dry. Every. We give away so many copies of this, and everybody says, oh, my God, this book changed my life. And this was the best book I've ever read because it hits that point. And I have a copy here right next to my desk all the time. And it kind of serves as a reminder.

Hey, right next to my desk, too.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Looking right at the Outwitting the Devil.

It's same here. I'm like, okay, am I drifting this week? What am I focused on? What do I got to get done today? Before I drift, let me make sure and get the most major. The three or four things that I have to get done. Let me get that done before I. I drift and go onto something else and have a little bit of fun.

Or spend a half hour or the one thing.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What's the most important thing? And once I get that done, what's the other thing? So you're right.

You're right. Yeah. Gary Keller, what's the one thing that if you did, it would make everything else either easier or unnecessary? Those are great books. And actually both of them sitting right here on my bookshelf in my office too. It's no wonder that we're friends. We have the same taste in reading. Okay. If you could go back in time and do it again or what would you change in your life, in your quest? Like, what would you do differently with your business if you could go back?

If I could go back, I would probably write a few more checks. And what I mean by that is I probably would have. Instead of trying to do stuff myself, I would have just written a check to have somebody else do it.

Hired a coach maybe, or a mentor.

Or something like that hired definitely a coach. I mean, I've got coaches, I've got mentors, I've got masterminds I'm a part of. But I would have probably, instead of thinking I could do it myself, I would have gone back and said, hey, write the check for this. You don't know what you don't know. And it's better to get counsel than advice.

Yeah.

And I would have paid for counsel faster than advice.

Okay, so who knows? Maybe it'll be the same thing. But. So favorite quote or song lyric? Some people it's a song lyric.

Well, you don't want me singing here on the podcast. We don't want people's ears.

You can speak it or you, if it's some other quote, just what. What's something that you'd like? Something maybe that goes up on the wall or you find yourself saying it to people a lot in the speech, or what's your favorite quote?

My favorite quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I've had this as the email signature for years and taken off recently. But do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. One of my favorite quotes, the song lyrics. I'll give you this one. This is a song that popped up. It's by Gary Allen. It's the song I'm Right Where I Need to Be. It's a great song. I won't sing it here. We'll save everybody's eardrums. But it's a great song and one of my favorites. I probably play it 10 times in a row every time it pops in ipod, people are like, oh, my God, Scott, can you please change the dang song? But Ralph Waldo and Gary Allen.

Right where I need to be. And so as we leave now, as we end our discussion, Scott, do you have any parting kind of advice? Well, not. No, we don't give advice. We give counsel. Parting counsel to the people that are listening who are thinking, you know, here's a guy who's. Who went out, he found, you know, made lemonade out of lemons. And there are a lot of people out there who are trying to figure out, how do I. How do I make this work? Or how do I start even? So what counsel would you give to people that are listening that want to learn how to be an unshackled owner?

Two things. One is, I would definitely be yourself. There's too many people out there trying to be somebody else. They're trying to dress the same or act the same. And if we're all different for a reason. God made us individuals. It's okay to be yourself, all right? If you got a witty humor or a little bit different, it's better to be yourself than trying to be something that you're not because you're going to struggle with that. The second thing is, I think the most successful people are the most approachable. They're also the people that are most willing to give you counsel and help you avoid pitfalls along the way. Help you turn that six month learning curve into 60 days or six weeks. So if you're trying something new or you're dealing with something, reach out to somebody who's been where you've been or is something that you look up to because I'm willing to bet most of the time they're willing to take your phone call or email or shed spend some time with you one on one. I had a very good fortunate time during my darkest two years back in 2000, late 2002, I was fortunate enough I went to a Tom Hopkins seminar here. Tom the master of sales. And it was a day long thing and I had to basically steal the money to go to it for the day. Had to call into sick to work to make it to it. And it was a great event. All day long listen to Tom Hopkins, another guy talking. At the end of the day, the hotel here in Austin at the Hilton, traffic was horrible at 5 o'. Clock. So I decided just to go to the bar in the hotel and just sit there for a little bit and wait for traffic to die down. And in walks Tom Hopkins by himself. He goes to the bar. These two realtors get up and walk away. And there's two chairs at the bar and Tom sits in one of them. And I'm sitting from like 20ft away, just staring like, oh, somebody should go up and say hi to Tom. So we should go buy Tom a drink. And I'm just sitting there shaking. I mean, I can literally remember shaking. And I Finally, after about 10 minutes of nobody else doing it, I get the huevos enough to walk up to Tom and introduce myself and say, tom, can I buy you a drink? And he's like, oh yeah, that would be great. I'd love a glass of red wine. And you know what, why don't we find a place where we can go sit and talk just by ourselves? And here's this young kid who's going through the worst financial crisis of his life at the time and he thinks the world's ending because he didn't know if he'd had enough money to pay for the drink for Tom, and I got to spend an hour with Tom one on one. Nobody interrupted it. And that was a life changing moment of going up and asking just to say hello and him taking time out of his very busy and probably exhausted day to spend time with a young kid. And I couldn't say that enough. I got phone calls all the time from people asking questions. I'm always glad to give time to help people avoid pitfalls or avoid mistakes so they can find success a whole lot faster and learn from my mistakes.

Well, first of all, it's a great story and it's a truth. You know, here's the deal. I've interviewed Tom Hopkins before on my radio show and I see the way people love you and then, you know, I have my own version of it when I'm out speaking at someplace. But we're all just regular people. We're just like regular people. I'm a goat farmer from Amboy, Washington. It's not very glamorous.

So you are the goat herder in the group.

So the point is that people are accessible and a lot of times they've been at that low spot like you described and they want to help somebody else who's at a low spot or who's trying to really learn. So how can people, how can they get ahold of you? What's the best way for them to reach out to you? And we'll make sure we add that in the show notes too. But what's the best way for people to reach out or to learn about what you're doing or what would you like them to know?

Well, best way to get ahold of us is just go to my website, weclosenotes.com if you want to learn about the stress note game. We've got hundreds of videos on my website and on YouTube. My email is very easy. It's just scott close notes.com and if you want to learn more information, what I'll do if you drop me an email and mention the Unshackled Owner podcast, I'll be glad to send you a 52 page ebook on the topic. And that'll give you a good chance to learn some information and some of the tricks that we use in real estate and other things like that.

I love it. Well, Scott, thanks for being here with us today. And guys, we've been listening to Scott Carson and Aaron Young talking about how you can make eliminate out of lemons, how you can make money in a crashing real estate market, how you can rethink how a transaction works and make a fortune and become an Unshackled owner. So that's the end of the episode for today. Thanks for being here with us. Make sure you share the podcast, you tell people about it, go over to itunes or to Stitcher and write a review and let's pass the word around. Let's get people here and let's help people build a business that becomes a real asset, not just a glorified job. Thanks for being with us here, Scott and everybody else today on the Unshackled Owner.

Thank you for listening to the Unshackled Owner podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you get new episodes right when they come out and help spread the word by liking and sharing the podcast across social media. You can get more information and ideas from aaron@www.aaronscottyoung.com and while you're there, download Aaron's ebook the Critical 20 and grab your copy of the Freedom Formula, the seven step process to Build an Asset, not just a Glorified Job.