NLI 003 – Note Investing & Learning From Failure with Scott Carson

Welcome to the Next Level Investing podcast, where we use the power of real estate to take your investing to the next level. We will be interviewing real estate professionals to help you on your next real estate investment. Here is your host, Mike Taravella.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Next Level Investing podcast. I have a special guest today, Scott Carson. He's the founder and CEO of We Close notes. He's raised over $50 million in capital, done over a thousand deals, and most importantly, where I connect with him a lot is he's an educator in the space, constantly putting content out there, and absolutely love his content. Welcome to the podcast, Scott.

How's it going, Mike? Thanks for having me. Honored to be here. It might be President's Day and a lot of people. You're off, but I'm in the office working on stuff. Always trying to stay ahead of the curve.

Yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm trying to do today. Take some time, get ahead while you can. So looking forward to help my listeners out with notes. More importantly, how did you kind of get your start in real estate?

I failed.

Greatest lesson.

Yeah, exactly. So I graduated college 2001 with a business degree. I grew up in South Texas, small little town called Ingleside outside of Corpus Christi. And my dad owned the local hardware store. So I got used to doing everything from laying foundation to digging ditches, mowing lawns, putting roofs up. You know, you name it, I could fix it. I was the Tim the Tool Man Taylor without all the explosives. Okay. And when I got started, when I graduated college, you know, I went and we bought our first house. I got married, bought our first house, and our Realtor's like, oh, you should. Oh, you should look at, you know, bond being an investor. I was like, oh, yeah, we like, flip this house. And we like the idea of picking up paint and carpet. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. But anyway, we bought two investment properties and I got laid off about a month into it. My job as a financial advisor, I was making good money there, but wasn't socking a lot of it away. And so I do whatever I could. We were making six mortgage payments on a private school teacher seller because our investment properties were going vacant because the big employer next to where our houses were, they laid off a bunch of people. So, you know, the thing to keep in mind with everybody is you learn more from your failures. It was a tough time. We were able to get rid of the investment properties, get my assets out of a swing, and keep our primary. And I Went back to work doing whatever I could. I worked for FedEx Home Delivery for a while delivering packages and Chili's waiting tables. And then I've gotten a high tech company here in Austin for about six to nine months, I don't remember exactly. And then got back into the banking finance side and for Chase, JP Morgan Chase and was doing well with that back, doing good. But always like man, I really, you know, didn't like that failure from a few years back. I think I could do better. And lo and behold, I think it was divine intervention. A buddy of mine started a company with a couple real estate investors, we're here in Austin that were traveling the country teaching creative financing, teaching multifamily teaching, you know, notes and all that good stuff and fix and flip. I was like that's what I want to do. So I had lunch with them, gave my two week notice to Chase and in July 4th weekend, weekend after July 4th weekend, 2005, I was on a plane to LAX for a Ron LeGrand conference where I was sitting in the back of the room doing mortgages with my buddy in front of 1500 people. And for four years I was lucky enough to have kind of an apprenticeship with on the mortgage side, but also the investment side with Bob Lee and Eddie and Jimmy Kayla who taught me a lot of great things, you know, investing in apartments and self storage and a bunch of other stuff. And so I just did that. Took as much as I could. I started investing, buying some subject to deals and some small flips and things like that here wholesaling and did really well until the point where I started coaching their students on marketing and going out how to find deals. And when everything hit the fan in 2008 with the mortgage industry, I left the mortgage company and became a full time Investor. And for two years between 8 and 2010, I dabbled in notes. I was doing a lot of other things like a lot of investors out there trying to be a jack of all trades and realized I wasn't going anywhere. I was wasting my time and energy chasing too many squirrels and decided hey, I just need to focus on the note business. And so 2010 I stopped focusing on everything else. I literally, I'd gotten divorced in 2008, so I sold everything I owned besides my truck and my dog and jumped in it. And we thought we were going to travel across the country for roughly 30 weeks to hit all the major league ballparks and do a few things. Turned into a three plus year travel where I was speaking and buying notes and Meeting with asset managers at banks and stuff like that just absolutely revolutionized my business. So that the last, really last 10 years has just been an amazing ride. And that's what we do. We focus primarily, almost exclusively. I'm buying distressed mortgages from banks and hedge funds on residential and commercial real estate. And, you know, that's what we do. That's a little mean.

I mean, the biggest, they say the biggest life lessons, failure and, you know, spinning it and just getting out of it. And that persistence is the key. And fate brings a mysterious way and brought you back into it and, you know, super successful now and why we're here today and connecting and learning from the best. So definitely appreciate that life story, I guess, kind of. What can you go deeper into? Like what is a note? Why you primarily invest in notes.

So the thing I always like to tell people is everybody's in the note game already. You know, if you've got a mortgage or a car payment, credit card, student loan, whatever it is, you're in the mortgage game. You're just on the wrong side of the payment stream. Yep. You know, and the goal is to have payments coming through. That's how you get rich, by having people, you know, pay you on a regular basis with different streams of income. So with the note business, what I do is we can all agree that in 2008, 2009, 2010, one of the first finding worst financial crisis in the country, over 15 million homeowners were underwater on their mortgage. Means they were either late or they owed more on their house than what it was worth. And the banks were looking to move stuff. The people that were traditionally buying that stuff, the big firm stopped buying this distressed debt because it wasn't worth what the mortgage set on it. So it left a big void in the industry that I kind of filled in there along with a smaller niche of people, for the most part, where we would reach out to the banks and buy that debt. What was owed at big discounts, 5, 10, 20 cents of what was owed. The thing, if you realize the bank is selling this huge receivable at a discount, there's still an underlying value to the house. Give you some numbers. Let's say an average deal that we look at the borrow is like 120 grand. The house is worth 100,000. So they're upside down. Maybe they haven't paid in 12 or 24 months because of financial hiccups, divorce, sickness, whatever the existing bank wants the full 20 years, not 24 years, the full 24 months. And most people don't have that. So we come in, we buy the debt at a discount, and then we take over that bank's nightmare. For the most part. If we buy it at 50 cents of value of what the properties were, so we paid 50 grand for it. And then our goal is then to reach out to the homeowner and say, hey, thank you for not paying ABC bank, but now you got to pay us. What happened? You know, Sing me your country western song. Let's have a little bit of heartbreak karaoke and let's figure out a win win solution. Because if, you know, pay, you know, stay.

Yep.

But I'm willing to give you some options. And so our biggest goal as a real estate investor isn't to take the property back. Like a lot of people think. We actually want the borrower to start paying on time. So like we like to say, like we like to rehab the borrower. And if their mortgage payment on $120,000, let's say it's 850, 800. Somewhere between 800 and $900 a month. Okay. Yep. We'll just say 800 to make it easy. If I can get them to start paying on time again, if you get them $800 times 12, that's 9,600 bucks. 9,600 divided by the 50 grand we bought is almost a 20% return on cash. On cash return almost immediately, right? Yeah. If I can pay a little bit extra, I can bring them a couple months to the table or pay it 100 bucks extra. Then we're looking at a 20, 25% or even a 30% return, depending on the situation. And that's a good thing. Now I'm got an assets reperforming. I'm not having to go out and file a foreclosure, which we still end up having to do about a third of the time. I'm not having to pay it, you know, attorneys. I'm not having to pay to fix up the property because somebody's living in there. I'm not paying the taxes. That's a good thing. Now I'm the bank. And after 12 months of on time payments, that loan is now considered a reperforming note that I can now sell off at, you know, 80, 85, 90 cents on the dollar to a fund or a bank or a private investor as well. I can often do some good for the homeowner and forgive, you know, whatever the difference is between what they owe and what the house is now worth, we may forgive them 20, 30 grand, whatever we may, for every extra hundred bucks they pay, forgive an extra hundred and we get really creative with it. But you think about it, we got roughly ten grand in cash flow on payments, and then now we're selling that note at 80 grand versus what we paid at 50. That's another $30,000 in profit after 12 months. That's a pretty good return when you take your cash flow and cashing out the asset over what you paid for the deal.

Absolutely. And you're generating a win, win, win for you, the borrower and the next investor who's.

So yeah, it's also a win for the bank because they get that asset off their books. That affects their numbers. They're now to take the 50 grand we paid for the asset and go leverage that out five or 10 times to make up the loss in profit. I mean, we don't really worry about the banks. Nobody's crying. But anytime you're doing a deal, you want to try to find a win win, whether it's you buying and the person selling the asset. In this case, it's the banks or different hedge funds.

Yeah, absolutely. I know that's great. Great all around and definitely doing well in the market and finding win wins and helping everyone.

We try to. I mean, the thing is, not every deal is a home run. You know, a lot of our base hits, you know, some of them, you know, not every deal has been a home run at all or something we've struck out on. Yep. We buy a lot in bulk. Some great deals, we've knocked out some out of the park. It's just a numbers game like anything else. You're going to have some, some really great wins, you're gonna have some losses. The idea here is you have a lot more wins or a lot more bases than the times that you strike out.

Like they say in baseball, batting three, three, three, that's hall of Fame.

That's right. One out of three, you're batting.300 still means you struck out seven times. Our win ratio is a lot higher than that.

I'm glad that I bet the investors like that instead of the 1/3. So I guess for an investor who wants to kind of get into the notes space, what are some kind of advice that you may have kind of going in? Because if you're a home investor, they're single family, multifamily, there's flips, wholesaling, et cetera. What is the best strategy to get involved that you'd recommend?

So the first strategy I would involve is kind of a basic thing if you're going to be in real estate investing of any sort, focus on one thing. If you can, don't be a jack of all trades. I know that a lot of people love to sell that on at real estate clubs and conferences. Oh, here's another tool for your tool belt. Who wants to be a tool belt? I don't want to be the guy out of him. I want to be the guy writing the checks to the tool belt. Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

So the thing is, I tell people, is focus. If you're gonna be a wholesaler, focus on that. If you're gonna be on a fix and flipper, also if you be on a note investor, focus that. Quit trying to do two or three or four things because you're not. You're gonna end up burnout or unhappy and then that's not a good thing either. So.

Yep.

What I love about note investing, it kind of allows me to itch my itch, you know, not that I've psoriasis or deal psoriasis. I am a deal junkie. I like the fact that I can go contact the bank, not drop a thousand postcards, not drop yellow letters. I can go deal with an asset manager, a special asset manager or secondary marketing manager at a bank, get them on the phone and they'll send me a list, what they've got every quarter, every month. And it may be an asset, maybe one asset, or it may be 400 or a thousand assets that I get a cherry pick from. I'm seeing those six to 12 months before they ever hit the MLS. I'm seeing those at a better price point than what people are buying at the foreclosure auctions or off the mls. And the fact that I'm buying the debt at a discount, I have a lot more exit strategies that I can work with that asset to make money versus actually having to take the property back, fix it up and then try to sell it to rent it off or.

For sure. No, that's a great way. There's only 24 hours in a day and you can't do everything all at once. So.

Yeah, and most people don't have. I mean, most people, even if you're a full time investor, you know, there's other things that you got to do other than you got to spend time with family, you got to eat, you got to sleep. That's the biggest thing. I'm a big believer that if you can put as many systems in place to help you, that's gonna be effective. A lot of people Come into real estate investing and they're doing a variety of things and trying to figure out what works and they just get frustrated because A, maybe they don't have the marketing budget to do everything they need to do or B, they're just chasing too many damn rabbits or squirrels. And you need to pull out in Texas here we like to pull out our guns and kill those damn squirrels. Okay. Because that's the only way you're gonna make more money and go that route for the most part.

Absolutely. And that's been my biggest thing is moving from the single family space to the multifamily. Focusing as just on one you can't do everything. I'm definitely working, investing in systems, leveraging virtual assistants, et cetera. And it's just, it's a different mindset being a manager instead of having to do everything.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of football and I am a fan of the Cowboys. You don't see Jerry Jones slinging hot dogs and Miller lights the game. You don't see him coaching the team. You see him up in the press box. He's the person that delegates to his team. And that's what I love about notes. And that's what a lot of people that are on the multifamily side like about notes as well is you want to be in the manager, you're not going to be the person out fixing the property leasing. You really want to put management in place that makes sense for you. And the notes space is a very big service oriented or servicers or vendors space for us to have success. Yes, we, we reach out to asset managers at banks directly through LinkedIn or some other websites. But it's reaching out, getting listing, identifying deals that make sense, doing some due diligence just like you would anything else. And the thing you also have to realize is that we use servicing companies. We have a company that is reaching out to the homeowner for the most part trying to get on time. If the borrower doesn't pay or tells pounds end, then we kick it over to the attorney to start to foreclosure process. If that works well, great, then we get it re performing and trying to sell it off. But we're also using title companies to pull title updates. We're checking the collateral files, making sure it's a clean loan that we can sell. And what I love, if you learn the note business, it applies not only for residential but also really, really well in the multifamily space. Because I cut my teeth initially, I'm Buying a lot of multifamily loans back in 2008, 9 and 10, and made a ton of money on that aspect as we were able to buy them cheap and either a sell them off to other investors or bring them in and get them kind of regentrified and then sell them off at a higher price 12 to 24 months later.

When starting off in the note space too, with the different asset classes, is there any different way you underwrite the single family versus the multifamily versus the storage unit? I guess if you had high level, kind of, what are the different strategies that you have for each?

It's a big difference because a single family home, you're gonna go get a comp, you know, you're gonna have a realtor pull comps off the MLS and you know what rent rate is or you know what the mortgage payment is. That's pretty, you know, that's pretty bread and butter potatoes, steak and potatoes all the time. When you look at a multifamily thing, especially coming from the notes space and if you're buying distressed debt, you're not often getting the, you're not getting the rent rates, you're not getting the rent rolls. I always kind of compare it on the commercial note space. You feel a lot like Sherlock Holmes trying to track down information. Seeing as the property was ever listed before and the rent rates were listed or the occupancy stats were listed. You have to look at kind of expenses if you can. You've got to kind of run your own NOI and cash flow charts to kind of get a figure for it. Is it individually metered or not metered? One of the tricks that I like to do is I'll call the tenants of a multifamily and say, oh, I'm trying to track down the on site manager. Do you have a number for them? And then, hey, we're contemplating buying the property. What do you like or dislike? And then you'll get every bit of information. You know, oh yeah, the laundry doesn't ever work or you know, there's a gang that hangs out here or you know, all that good stuff like my water, I got a leak in my roof or there was a fire in one of the units. Oh, that's priceless information that helps you out with that stuff and then that allows you to kind of come back in. And we like to try to work numbers where we're buying the debt at a discount and then working with the borrowers on it. But the beautiful thing in buying commercial notes is the minute you buy the note and the minute the borrower stops making payments, you have the right to go and collect rents. Oh wow. And become the management and start collecting rents on behalf. And that takes away a lot of the negative mentality that bars will have about using the property like an ATM and not paying. When you start collecting rents and take over the property receivership. Oh, things get really serious really fast. Yeah, you know and so that's, that's kind of the multifamily. Self storage is a another great play without a lot less of the headaches. Very similar. You got to figure out what, you know, what's it occupied at. You know you're going to have lower expenses where you guys may have 45 to 50% expenses on an apartment side, you're probably going to have somewhere between a 28 and 35% expense ratio on self storage. The big thing about self storage is you always got to do it like a 5 mile radius of where that property is and calling to find out what kind of occupancy rates that they're at because the banks will know a little bit of information when they're selling debt. Oh yeah, this property is only at 50% occupancy. You got a lot of upside. Well if you call around and find that every other thing around in a five mile race is at 50, 55% that's what the market will bear. You got to take that consideration and buy that, take it down, figure out do you have on site management, do you need to put somebody there, do you have others in the area that you could co manage or put an ATM in there that some of our clients are doing to help them with their on site management. So the most important thing you can do hands down though is get as much education as you can, talk with people that are actually doing it in different areas. Don't just trust somebody who just does it and say in one city, look and talk to people that are doing it in either primary or secondary markets and really pick their brain. Hey, what are you doing? What are the things that you would suggest I do or don't do and you know, value their time. Because some of the most successful people will be the ones that are most available to you. Yep. They're also the ones that are going to give you the most amount of nuggets to help you avoid them same mistakes that they made and just be respectful of that and go that route. And that'll solve a lot of your issues right at because it'll give you somebody you Reach out to when you do buy something that you can talk to and pick their brain about overcoming any obstacles or hiccups that you may have along the way.

Absolutely. And I think that's good. Just so investors know kind of the different ways on the expense ratios and how it works so that they can. They don't get burned. And when they get presented a deal, I think that's super helpful to understand so that they're not just like, hey, we're buying this at a discount here. Let's just go and execute. You're really understanding kind of the dive deep in the numbers, because you make money on the buy, not the sell.

Yeah, well, that's the thing too commercial. It's all about cash flow and the cap rates. You got to know what the net operating income is. You got to know what expenses is. You got to know, hey, just because this looks good, just because the rent rates below market is because it's trashed out and you've got the wrong clientele in there. Or do you have a lot of opportunity to add, you know, ulterior amenities, laundry rooms, you know, tweaking the rent a little bit, pet deposits, you know, there's a lot of things that you can do with a multifamily. But the thing that concerns me the most with seeing where the market's at right now, it's seen that some people just way overpaying for properties. You know, they way overpay. They go raise capital for an asset with the idea that they're gonna regentrify the asset and then go get refinanced out with a bank loan in three years. That scares me. Because of where the market is right now. I don't think you can guarantee that you're gonna get bank financing in 36 months. While it's a great idea, it's great on paper. Yeah, yeah, it looks great on paper. But I only say that because in 2008, 9 and 10, I bought a lot of apartment loans. That's what was the exit strategy for the people at that time. They were no getting bank loans. Well, the values had dropped. The banks now wanted 20 to 25% more in deposits before they'd refinance it. And we were buying notes on apartments from some of the big apartment gurus because they just. They weren't in the right spot. So make sure you've got cheap money if you can. Make sure you're buying at a price that makes sense. You know, any type of multifamily or commercial you want to buy in. A higher cap rate and sell on a lower cap rate and make your difference between the two. If the numbers don't make sense, then just move on to the next one or follow back up in 90 days if they haven't sold it. Because oftentimes they'll realize, well, maybe we can sell it at an 8, maybe we got to bump it to a 10 to really make it attractive and go from there.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of deals on the market where it's just I want this much and I want that much and that's what I'm selling it for. And that's not how it works. And there's a lot of deals out there that people think are deals and it's a scary time, but that's why I put in the homework. And I think it's just, I think another point you touched on is ability for long term financing. That's a crucial point. Just because the next couple years can look scary. But make sure you kind of have that out going forward. And kind of like you mentioned even earlier, is having multiple exit strategies at your touch point.

And we get, we on the note side, we see a lot of people coming over from the apartment side right now because they realize, hey, there's a lot of places that overpriced. Let's wait, we'll put in a note, get a good return on investment, a good double digit cap rate on our money. We'll be in not one property, we'll buy five or 10 or something like that and we'll have it leveraged across the board and then we'll be raising capital. So when the market does turn south, we're able to step in and really pounce on those deals that are, whether you believe it or not, everybody, there's a big wave coming. It may not be as big as 2008, 9 and 10, but, but everything I see when you have record default rates across the board, like student loan debt, credit card auto loans, you look at other things that are happening out there. We're going to see a market correction. It may not be as big in some areas, but what I like so much about multifamily and self storage, they're both directly related to each other. Because if people move out of houses and they move in apartments, they gotta have a place to store their shit that they haven't touched in six months.

Yeah, exactly.

And that turns into cash flow for a year or two years. I mean, I got, we got a house, but I got two storage units there that we pay Monthly one for our office stuff extra, and then one for the house stuff. And I looked at like, man, I should just give away these clothes. There's nobody gonna use it. I'm not gonna. If I haven't worn it in six months, I try to get rid of it, but yep, that's the way. You know, when you think back to the. Between 2004, 2008, we were all about making all the money. It was record earnings and real estate, and people were using lines of credit to cash out and buy toys. And then we became a, as I like to say, a garage sale economy. People selling off their toys, trying to pay the mortgage payments. So be careful out there.

Yeah. And even. Yeah, it's. I was not familiar with the self storage, but I did some homework and I couldn't believe that people love their stuff instead of a place to live. And it's. It's a lot of different stuff. Trying to keep up with the Joneses.

But yeah, you want to keep mama's quilt that she made you when you were five years old, you know, you want to keep that letterman jacket from when you scored four touchdowns in a game at Polk High School, you know, winning state championship.

Got to keep the winning. But no, I think that's super helpful, I guess, with the multifamily space being so connected in the notes space. Do you have any recommendations for a multifamily investor or in general investor connecting and seeing how to bridge the gap between the two teams? So we're on the same.

Oh, yeah. So here's one of the tips that we teach in our workshops is so I don't go. I don't go to the mls. I don't usually go to LoopNet or anything like that to find deals. I don't even go to realtors to find deals. What we do is we go direct to the banks. And inside of every bank, they have a couple departments. It's either named one or the other thing. They're called the special assets department. Special assets or the secondary marketing department. And banks have these internal departments for both residential and commercial assets. Okay. And oftentimes they'll have, especially on the commercial side, they'll have multiple people handling different parts of the country. These are great places to find deals that are distressed of some sort. And when I find a deal there, it's usually been distressed for a while. Then I'll go and look on loop. And I can often find a lot of great deals information about that asset after I know that the bank is already willing to sell the debt at a discount. That gives me a lot of flexibility when I'm going to approach the borrower. Now the thing is too the keep in mind there is while they have stuff you've still got to figure out, okay, what's going on, am I going to take the property back or am I going to work on a modification of some sort like that. Just be careful. Now the higher value that mortgage is if it's a million plus loan or more. Oftentimes the banks may be willing to partner with you on the deal or take that non performing note. The minute you take it over, turn it into a performing note and recast it as a new loan. So you're not willing to go out and raise new capital. You've got existing financing place. The big caveat here is the bank's gonna wanna see that you've got a good team surrounding, you've got some experience and you've got a plan to do that. We see that happen a lot. There are also, here's another thing, there's a lot of portfolio lenders out there that are financing apartment complexes. And what a portfolio lender is somebody, it's not a bank, it's somebody who's maybe backed by some wealthy people. They're leaning up their own money, making a good return on it and they originate a loan but they keep it on their books. Well, if it starts to go non performing, these portfolio lenders will want to get it off their books so that they can get their cash back, go forward. That's a great place also to find distressed deals. We use a website called Scotsman Guide. It's Scott with one T. Scotsman Guide, it's a free website. It's like kind of like it used to be like the ESPN the magazine for mortgage brokers. It was big publication, awkward size. But you can go to scotsmanguy.com, look at residential, look at commercial and the commercial allows you to go through and look at all the niches where that's multifamily or hotels or resorts or self storage or mobile home parks is another one. That's a great and literally it'll ask you how big a loan you're looking for, origination, types of apartments. And it'll give you a whole list of portfolio lenders that you can start dialing for dollars. And that's a great place to find some deals that are off market that nobody else sees.

Yeah, and like you said, it's not the MLS LoopNet any broker, it's its own private area that not many people check. So that's definitely a good, good nugget there.

It's not quite the dark web. It's a good place to find some sweet deals.

It's a step before. It's a step before.

Right.

The next segment of the podcast, we call it the Level up lightning round, where I ask kind of five questions, kind of investors get to or listeners get to know who you are and what your aspiring force. So you ready for that?

Bring it on, baby. I'm not gonna be screaming, running away from here.

Perfect. I'm glad I'm not too scary for you, Scott. Question one we have is, what is your next level goal?

Ooh, next level goal. We have been working on a private placement memorandum, a Reg A fund for a little while now. We've had a few tweaks to it, changed it up a little bit, but that's our big goal, really, for 2019. Get that finalized, get it approved. It's a $25 million fund. That's a big. Putting that together has been expensive because a reg A is not cheap. But it's also going to be something worthwhile, especially with what we expect to happen and being prepared for the next downturn.

Absolutely. That's awesome. Question 2. What advice helped you level up?

Best advice that helped me level up was get. Just be focused. I was like many investors, I was going to my local real estate club, and I was wholesaling and doing some fix and flip deals here and some rentals. The minute I was able to really have a short but very sweet, honest conversation with myself and say, hey, where's my money coming from? Where am I making the majority of my money? You've heard of the parental rule. 80% of your income is coming from 20% of your activities. And so I got rid of the other activities that were taking me away, taking my attention away, and just focused full force on the note side. And when you do that, your income will usually skyrocket three to four or five times. We're doing. Because if you put all your energy into one thing and it's something you're making money on already, you'll see that a. Oh, wow. I'm getting a lot more done and being a lot happier because I'm not off chasing rabbits or chasing squirrels everywhere.

Yeah, absolutely. Next question we have is, what is your favorite tool that helped you level up?

Favorite tool that helped me level up would be a simple thing called time blocking. You know, it's simple. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It could Be a calendar, an Outlook, Excel spreadsheet. But that was one of the big things is, okay, let me look at my calendar and let me time block things. Whether it's, we're calling asset managers two times a week, whether it's Tuesday and Thursday, we're following back up with them. Okay. Every, you know, we literally put everything on the calendar. And so the time I roll in the office from 9 o' clock to usually, you know, like tonight, I'll be here in the office till about 8, 9 o' clock at night because we've got a webinar that we're doing at 7 o' clock with people. But we try to time block. We take a focus on those specific activities during that time frame. And you'll see you get a lot more done in a lot less fashion.

Absolutely. Next question is what is the most recent book that helped you level up?

Most recent book. There's kind of two of them. One buddy of mine, two buddies of mine, Matt Wolfe and Jill Fear, wrote a book called Evergreen Profits. It talks a lot about systemizing your marketing systemizing through infusionsoft or your mail campaigns and things like that to really drive profits. That's been a great, great book. Funny. Just got an email from Joe. But I also a book I think is for everybody should read is Outwitting the Devil by Sharon Lecter and Napoleon Hill. It's one of my favorite books. It talks, deals a lot. It was actually written back in 1938 by Napoleon Hill, who's the author of Think and Grow Rich. But what it is is his wife wouldn't let him publish the book because it was too controversial because he's having a conversation with the devil. And in the conversation he's picking the devil's brain about what makes the devil successful, not successful. He goes, well, I love throwing distractions in front of people and that causes them to drift off. They're chasing other things. They're not successful. That keeps them from being successful in life and doing good in the world. Now those that are able to avoid distractions, that are focused, that aren't drifting, those are the people that go out and really do a lot of good in the world. They're very successful, but they also give back. That's the biggest thing is I try to, in his words, trying to get people to drift is what causes people to fail. And that's one of the best books you could read. Sharon Lengter, who's the co author of Rich Dad, Poor dad with Robert Kiyosaki, when she was given the manuscript from the president of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. She looked at it, didn't really rewrite it. She left it pretty much as Napoleon wrote it. But she added paragraphs at each chapter how she thought Napoleon would foresee or see things in today's society versus 1930.

Yeah, I can imagine now with all the drift and phones and everything else, it's definitely probably a good read.

It is. It's a great read. Actually. They got a movie, I think, coming out they've been trying to get done in a couple years. But yeah, you can download it on Kindle. We probably give away 50 to 100 of those copies a year because it's such a valuable book for what we do.

The last question I have is what's the best way you could be reached for any questions or anything about Notes? What's the best contact for you?

So it's really easy. I mean, just our website is primarily the best way. Weclosenotes.com if you type in Scott Carson and notes, I'm all over the place. Whether it's our YouTube videos or the website or our podcast that we have called the Note Closure show. Just go to the website, check everything out there. It's kind of our main funnel area where we try to direct everybody back to. I'm always glad to help anybody else out if they want to drop me an email@scotteeclosenotes.com Glad to send you a link, get a schedule with you and spend 15 to 30 minutes with you. Kind of, you know, answer any questions we can to help anybody out.

Perfect. Thank you Scott, so much for taking the time on the podcast understanding Notes. Kind of your initial failure led to your now success and just making sure that due diligence and generating a process and keeping focus are the keys to any success. And you know, I greatly appreciate it and look forward to keeping in contact. And thank you so much.

Thank you Mike. I've been an honor to be here.

Hi, thank you for listening to the Next Level Investing podcast. Feel free to leave a like comment, subscribe and rating on the applicable channel and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments or feel free to email me Ike at nlinvesting. Com and happy to get back to you and help you level up. Have a great day.