NNA 55 – Back To The Basics Of Business: Knowing Your WHY

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

All right, everybody. Hey, welcome to Night in America. Glad to have you guys all here. We are got a lot of stuff to cover tonight. Probably want to grab a pen and pencil or piece of paper, take some notes on because we'll be opening up at the end for quite a few Q and A for your own business no matter where you're at. I'll give a big shout out to everybody that's joining us live on here tonight. Excited to have you guys all here. And we're getting rock and rolling straight into the content here tonight for you guys so you can get back in on doing stuff with your merry Monday night. But anyway, guys, the biggest thing with note businesses or any type of business, any type of business, entrepreneurial thing is knowing what is your why? Okay, what is your why? Because I've talked to so many people here in the last few days and I see this thing again when I'm talking to people where they focuses and they don't really, can't really tell me what their why is and why could be a variety of things. All right, why could definitely be a variety of things out there. And each to his own, his or her, he or she always has their own why. Okay, for some of us it's retirement for ourselves, hey, I gotta create my own retirement plan. Others, hey, I've got kids. I need to try to help pay for their college. Alright. A third reason is, hey, maybe you want to retire your spouse or maybe your parents, you want to take care of parents because they're older or elderly. Maybe you're looking to leave a job because you dislike what you're doing or maybe you're looking to start a new career because you're like, I don't really enjoy what I'm doing. I want to do this. Now. This is where I think I can hang my hat. All right, Maybe it's you want to be your own boss or let's just face it, for a lot of us it's just a better life now. There's no right or wrong why, but you need to have one. You know, if you guys, for those that are joining here, what's your why don't you do me a favor and type in the comments about what your why is. I'd love to see what it is. Kids, you, spouse, new career, making money, retirement. I'd love to see what your why is. So feel free to type in the comments below. That would be really great. Or in the chat roll. That would really be helpful there. Because the thing is guys, you know, depending on what your why is, it's going to lead on which way you're going. Because if you don't have a why, you don't have some sort of direction that you're going for. You're really just kind of a ghost ship. You're just a ship adrift on the high ocean of entrepreneurship. This is a picture of a Russian cruise ship that's been adrift in the Atlantic for years. Seriously, a ghost ship has been adrift? They couldn't find it. They think it was going to run into Britain at some point. There's cannibalistic rats on it. That's about the only people that are on it is the rats. And you have to realize that if you don't have a rudder, you don't have something to steer yourself by what you're going towards, you'll end up drifting a lot. I mean, a great book is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill and Sharon Leichter. You guys have probably heard me talk about it before. Go out, read that book, download it, get you a copy of it. It's one of the most valuable books I've ever read. But, but we all drift. We all have issues with drifting from time to time. And you have to come back and find your rudder, find your North Star, find your point that you want to direct it to and your why will change over time as you get successful, as you get older or younger, things like that. I don't know if we're all getting any younger. That would be awesome. But you don't want to be adrift in the middle of the sea. And I know people like that. I've had students like that. I think we've all been there at some point, drifted for a bit of time as things hit us health wise, working through deal, case studies, sicknesses, whatever it might be, job loss. We're all going to have a difference of a journey. No entrepreneurial journey is the same for anyone. Your journey is different than mine, mine is different from anybody else's. But the biggest thing is you do not want to be just this ghost ship adrift on the ocean. And I know some people out there, I've had some students that are like that. I'm just like, please focus on something. You see a lot of this happening with people that just go to everything they attend, everything they buy, everything. That's the last thing that you want to do if you're struggling. Best thing to do is figure out exactly what you want first and foremost. What does that look like? What does that direction look like? What does it take for you to get there? All right, what's it gonna take you for getting there? You know, you have to look at. When we're talking, your why is probably a longer term issue. It's not something that's gonna happen a week. That's not a long enough why. What's a why? Something longer term. It can be a goal. But a goal to a goal to a goal. A why is often made up of multiple goals. So the thing you have to look at first and foremost, especially we see this in the note business. We're going back to basics here. Taking it back a little bit is, you know, what are you looking for? And we're all made with the same amount of time in a day. It's how effective you are in using your daily hours. Okay? And we all can get better at what we do. You know, how many hours do you have towards your note business or towards your why? How many hours do you have that you can put towards your business? Do you have 20 hours a week? Which is great. If you've got 10 to 15, that's great. If you've got less than 10 hours, that's great. The idea is knowing exactly what you have truly have. Don't say you got 40 hours when you know you aren't going to spend 40 hours. Be realistic. Hey, I got 10 to 15 hours. I got Saturday and Sunday, and I got a couple nights, two nights a week that I could do some stuff with. So, like, I'll give you an example. If I look at my schedule, I've got time on Saturday, Sunday to do something different. Or it would be Tuesday and like Thursday nights, okay? Because Monday night I'm in the office late. Like tonight with you guys, Wednesday night in the office late. So that's what I was going to be doing something different. Those would be the ideal times to implement that. Okay, I got like two hours on Tuesday, two hours on Thursday, and I'll say I'll have three hours on Saturday and Sunday. That's 10 hours total. All right? That's the thing you gotta look at, is be honest with yourself, how many hours and what are you doing with that hour? And what you have to realize, okay, and taking this back is the note business side of things. We're focused on this. You have to think about, okay, I've got 10 hours to put towards my note business. What are you looking for? And you have to figure out, okay, exactly what it is you're looking for. We talk about case studies, we're looking for cash flow. Are we looking for large checks or both? Most of them are looking for cash flow. As we often say about the note business. Basically your income number is to get where you y is back to, you know, an average cash flow, taking the number of deals you need to close on. I'm not gonna go through those numbers tonight. You guys have seen me do that plenty of times before. Or go back, check out an earlier episode. But look at, okay, if I need to make 10 grand per deal, okay, I need to make 100 grand this year. That means I need to do 10 deals this year. Well, that means I need to make 100 offers to get the 10 deals. You're going to be five grand in cash flow a month and you got $500 a month in cash flow per note deal. That means you need to close on 10 deals. That means you need to make 100 offers on cash flow deals. You have to look at what those numbers are. Realize there's probably going to be a mixture of a little bit of both. And then you also go, okay, what type of deals are you looking for? And this will vary. And it's different for everybody performing or not performing. It's like one person responded to a thing on LinkedIn today when I was sending out and making connections. I'm looking for notes. I'm like, well, you're looking for performing or not for anything. And I'm like, okay, that's not the truth. What are you really looking for? What top three? Any state. I'm like, okay, you're a joker broker now you're not. You're just wasting my time. Are you looking for residential commercial notes? Some people, you know, been in residential and now moving to commercial. Some people have been in performing. Want to get down to non performing. Some people that still are in first, usually those that were in seconds are probably now moving to first because they can't find seconds. Those that are and owner finance notes have evolved in the non performing side. There's a whole variety of things that take place. The idea is the more focused you can be, the more successful you're going to be in the long run. You've got to understand what you're looking for and really narrow it down to that. And that's really kind of putting together your business plan for you. All right, how many of you have put together a business plan of some sort for your no business? Taking the hours, taking the numbers, taking number of offers, taking the states and identifying truly what you're looking for. Now, many people haven't even put together an executive summary on their business. Now, an executive summary is a one page thing, talks a little about your kind of focus. It's usually the first part of their business plan. If you don't know what that is, then you haven't done it. A business plan is not meant to be 50 pages long. It could be one page, it could be 20 pages. But the idea is it's going to help you set some goals, some strengths, some weaknesses, some opportunities and threats. At our masterminds, you know, we're known to do SWOT analysis. What's your strengths, what's your weaknesses, what opportunities do you have and what threats do you have? Those go in to help you write your business plan and help you identify those things. If you've never done that, you may want to check out one previous episode. There are some must do's, there are some in this world. As I've been teaching people and I've had very advanced people come through our coaching, I've had very brand new people, very green, who've never done anything. In real estate there's two basic things that really kind of identify things. Well, you always have to have the mentality from Glengarry, Glen Austin. Always be closing. A, B, C. Always, always be closing is the way to think about things. Always be marketing. Alright, now for what we're doing in the note space, it's pretty easy for these things to kind of call in line because these are two things that we're very blessed that we have. Whereas a lot of other real estate niches, other real estate investors are often using a variety of different marketing. They're always looking for different ways to market for deals. We're pretty blessed that we're in the 21st century and you can use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great way to get started. You don't need a website initially. You can start off on LinkedIn and really start working. But as you advance, yes, you'll need a website. But must DOS is having a complete LinkedIn profile. All right, I'm not gonna go through the complete things. It'll walk you through that. But you gotta have a complete LinkedIn profile. Look at mine, look at A variety of others, people out there and you'll see what a complete LinkedIn profile looks like. You're gonna need that. It's where people spend a lot of time on those are successful. Spend time on LinkedIn, not on Facebook. You wanna use this to expand your network on a daily basis. It's relatively easy to do at the office, while you're waiting on your spouse, while you're riding home, if you're commuting and doing a regular job. It's a great way to connect with banks, note contacts, people that have distressed assets. There's also LinkedIn groups to expand your network of funders, people looking for deals or people that have deals as well too. It's a very important aspect of things. So I would like to ask you guys here, how many of you have used LinkedIn in the last week to post about a deal or what you're looking for? How many of you have posted something on LinkedIn about your note business? What you're looking for, Whether you're looking for deals or if you've got a deal and I find it, very few people are doing this. Roughly only 10% of people are actually action takers taking things. If you're like, I haven't posted anything there, been too busy, okay, then you need to go back to the previous thing and see exactly what you have to do. What is your focus if you haven't closed on any deals and we'll get to those questions later on, it's okay. But you can always start today. Always be closing. I want you to think about that. Always be closing. Always be marketing. Because one of the things that you do to help close more deals coming to your way is being active, is being out there in front of people. 5% of only 5% of people will actually do anything. Not 10%. 5%. Do you fall on that 5% or do you fall on the 95%? Now you also need to have an email too. You need to communicate with your list. Yes, you're creating contacts, but you need to actually reach out to them on a regular basis. Good old fashioned email. Now the best you'll probably see is around a 20% open rate. That's the point. Not everybody's gonna read your emails. But it's still the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to marketing. You can't trust Facebook. Fakebook lies. They've said themselves a lie. The minute they stop filtering through, not letting everybody in your audience see your content, it reduce Facebook's value. LinkedIn. Hey, if people are scrolling through they're gonna see your stuff. As long as you're posting same thing emails. It's the best way to reach out to somebody and tap somebody and you use this for. At a minimum, weekly emails are a must to your database of some sort. Weekly emails are a minimum once a week, not once a month, not twice a month, once a week to your database of something. It's very easy. You can follow the very four point formula that we talk about. Email content and weekly email one talk about the holiday that's going on that month. Every month has a major holiday. February is what was Valentine's Day. You could use that two weeks ago. Or we come up in March, St. Patrick's Day. Two could be a meetup group you're going to or networking event you're going to. Hey, share that. That's too event like I went to the Spark Christian Podcast conference this weekend. There's other things that are going on. If you've got a meetup group you go to on a regular basis, that could be something you talk about. All right, so you got holidays meet up and then one thing could be a deal that you're working on, a deal that you're offering on a previous deal case study. Another thing could be some information of some sort, could be something fun that you're doing that month. It does not have to be work, work, work. Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff, buy my stuff. You very rarely will see an email come out for me like hey, straight buy my stuff. Unless we've offered up a series of things. Yeah, we do. We have offer some trainings. Hey, we got some trainings, that's great. But we still provide. Hey, here's our latest episodes. Here's what's going on. Join us for a webinar Wednesday on Monday night wiki are must to your database. I'm talking about your general contacts, your banking contacts should be twice a month, bimonthly, first week, third week. I've gone to saying just once a month. I take that back. With what's going on in the market these days, you need to increase your marketing to twice a month. Still not difficult to do. First and third weeks still follow up with an email on Tuesday and then an email Thursday to those that didn't open the first round and just follow up. 80% of sales comes after the fifth contact. So if you wait and do it once a month, it's going to take five months really to get everything rock and rolling. You guys are not going to sit around from January to May, wait for Something to happen. I would rather have things happen in March, the end of the first quarter. It's your fifth. Email events and not bimonthly. And then, of course, marketing deals to your database when you do have something. Marketing deals for sale, marketing deals for funding and proper way of doing things. Sharing your knowledge, growing your database. Email, CRM, Mailchimp, Infusionsoft, AWeber. I was about to say StubHub, but that's not it. There's a variety of them out there that you can use, but you gotta be doing this, spending time on LinkedIn and then spending time at least in a bare minimum, if you have an hour a week, you can send an email out to your database. These are the two things that ergs no excuse. Must be doing it now if you want to be like Ted Kaczynski and the Unabomber. This is a picture of Ted in front of his house years ago in the woods there. And hide away from everybody. Okay, you'll just be the Unabomber. You will not have success. You will not live a life. There's a lot of people that are out there, though. Their business is like a cabinet hidden in the woods. Nobody knows that you're there. Nobody knows that you're there. If you're not doing something on a regular basis, people don't know you're there. You might as well be a ghost or blowing stuff up, trying to get your revenge on life for the world. But you don't want to be the human bomber. You want to get the word out what you're doing. That's the way you build momentum. And maybe it's not a hundred people, hey, I want to fund your deal, or, hey, I want to buy the deal. But one person responding and it grows. And if you send something out, it may be valuable to one person, but one person is greater than none. Now, of course, you always want to try to grow your audience. This audience you have a variety of. What you've got bankers, you've got note buyers, note sellers and funders. It can be a lonely world. I know. Crap. It can feel really alone sometimes when you're the only person that's doing what you're doing. Yes, flip this house and all this other stuff. Yeah, it may be fun to go bowling or go out drinking, but sometimes you've got to focus on what you need to get done and how many of us are not focusing on what needs to be done, even though we don't like doing stuff. There's things I do every daily basis I dislike doing but it's got to be done. You got to learn to expand. You must expand your network regularly. You can't be sitting at home hiding. It's easy to do with the fact that between email and stuff like this, it's real easy to be hiding at home and doing stuff. So you've got to expand your network regularly. This is going out to meet at groups and clubs on a monthly basis, at least once a month. You should be going out networking at least once a month. Go out networking, sometimes weekly, depending on where you're at. If you're in a big city, there's multiple ways for you to go out and expand your network on a regular basis. Bni, real estate clubs, meetups, networking events. Sometimes there's one every night, depending on how big a city you're in. Okay, conference and expos. This is something you should pick out probably once a quarter to go to. Now. It could be something similar to what you're doing, you're focused on. Note real estate conference. It can be something that you have an interest in, but the idea is it's okay to have interests. Like I just went to a podcasting convention this weekend because that's a big interest of mine. I went Friday, Saturday, had a good time, networked. Picked some tools that are going to help me market my business, market what I do. End of May, we're going to a cat convention. Yes, Pop Cats convention here in Houston and stuff is going to that. I'm going with her to support her big into animals. Her Fur Baby's podcast. It's a great way to meet people they're interested in. And the easiest thing you can do is, though on a daily basis, expand through social media. And by expanding through social media, I'm not talking about just liking a post or commenting on what type of fruit or vegetable you might be or sharing some silly political comment. What I'm talking about is sharing what you're doing. Hey, here's a deal that we worked on, or here's a short little video or hey, I got a deal that I'm working on. You have to share this stuff on a daily basis, at least once a week basis across your other social media platforms. Sharing a LinkedIn on a regular basis where I would recommend it. Okay. Or sharing through YouTube at social media is something I would recommend. Going to the different real estate groups and sharing something that you're focused on. There's a lot of ugliness out there, but you can do things daily, weekly, monthly with your time and you have to look Back. Okay, I only have 10 hours this week. What am I going to do? Oh, I'm going to spend a couple hours at a conference on Saturday, Sunday. That may be all you get done besides your email out. Okay. YouTube videos. These don't have to be long. Could be 5 minute, 10 minute long, short videos from your cell phone. Your idea, something you read about. I think Jeff Wolf posted an article about a lady on A took $7.8 million in fees from somebody because she was supposedly running a preservation company. She was just pocketing the funds. A big thing that I do, podcasts or podcast interviews with people. That's how one way I'm explaining, I want to speak, what I'm doing. I'm an expert at what I do. I want to be speaking. I want to be speaking to audiences. So that's why I'm looking for. I look for podcasts, I can be interviewed on it. There's not a lot of stuff here in Austin, so that's how I leverage my time and place to be on other people's podcast interviews. There's hundreds and hundreds of business and entrepreneurship and real estate podcasts that you all could be on. Alright, if you're doing something, there's plenty of things to be on. Like let's see here, I can go through Bill Griesmar has been on Michelle Hill, Ray Vance. There's all Jody. There's something you all have an enjoyment in that you could all be that you're all an expert in. There's all sorts of podcasts or podcasts, places to get interviewed on. One of the best ways to grow your audience or draw attraction. If you're speaking somebody who's got a thousand downloads in their podcast episode. You just spoke in front of a thousand person audience webinars. If you've got a bigger database, you've run a bigger database. Do a quick lunch and learn. Break down some assets that you're looking to move. Break down some assets that you're looking to close on. Look, you're looking for funding on. Hey, it doesn't have to be long, 30 minutes long about what your focus is, especially if you're out in different places. Hey, that's a great way to network. This is one of my most valuable times this week is this Monday night is connecting with people that are on here. Yeah, we don't see face to face a little bit, but I love taking questions, I love getting feedback from you guys. This helps recharge my batteries as I go into the week. One of the biggest things I Say about getting out and networking with people is it's one of the most important things you can do. Like masterminds. Like, my mastermind's been one of the most valuable things for me over the last seven years. And the 21 or 22 times that we've done it have been valuable weekends. Every time we've done it, connecting, breaking bread, getting to know other people, others interest and what their focus is. Those have been some of my most valuable weekends. And my life is out of masterminds. But you've got to get out of the house now. I get a little bit secluded. I live near where I work. I'm literally in my office most of the day. I'll get out. My trainer comes up. We'll work out two, three times during the week. Sometimes five, I'll go home, see Stephen. Got to get out of the house. I had to get out of the house. Like, that's why I drove to Houston. I wanted to get out of the house. I had to get out and network. I had to get out and go to BNI groups like I've done in the past. Early at the end of the last year and beginning of this year, you have to get out and grow your audience. You are all one person away, one connection away from something major happening in your life, in your business. We all go through ups and downs. Oh my God, have we not. The last six months have been. Been relatively pretty challenging for us. Variety of things and we keep plowing away. And one of the most valuable things is for me has been getting out and communicating with people or even just scheduling phone calls, scheduling phone calls with people and just spending 30 minutes on via Zoom call. Hey, what's going on your business. And I encourage all of you, if you're on here right now or you're watching this either live on Zoom or on Facebook, drop me a message. If you want some help with your business, great. I'd be glad to jump on a call with you to help you with your business. Glad to do that. But you got to get out of the house. Got to get outside of your comfort zone more than anything else. Sometimes we get enjoy where we're at and where we're living. Oh, I don't want to leave the house because then I actually have to go get dressed or put makeup on. It's not for me unless you're Rocky Mountain Horror Picture show, but get out of the house and going in. Networking will help you grow your audience. Okay. And some of the big groups that I've been A part of recently. This is a event in San Diego called New Media Summit that I've been to a couple times. It's been a great event that I've built some really great relationships. And most people here aren't in the real estate field. They're in some sort of something else. But we share something in common, is that we're entrepreneurs or business owners, podcasts. And it's a lot. I've gotten a lot of great counsel from people there, and a lot of these people become really good friends and help me grow my real estate business because I got to go out and network and learn from other people that were outside looking in, was able to talk with them and share what's going on and what we're doing, and they've been amazing. And that's the same thing goes for a mastermind inside of a mastermind. A lot of these people are really advanced podcasters. I've met with some of our entrepreneurs. Actually, all these guys are entrepreneurs and gals are entrepreneurs that we've learned from. Of course, we don't want to forget our masterminds that we do. You know, I like to count it. Most of these people are really good friends, and we've had a huge impact, a huge positive impact on those folks that have come to our masterminds and done some amazing things. I think about what people are doing out there and how we've helped them accomplish the things. I'm very prideful and proud of that. And people are doing bigger and bigger things each day, and we're happy that we were able to help people along with that. So what you have to realize to and foremost is these things that we talk about. If you're not having the success that you're wanting to have, it's probably because you're not rolling up your sleeves and going to work. You've got to put your plan to work. If you've got 10 to 15 hours, you got to work that plan. You've got to know your why. You've got to know what your focus is. You've got to know how much time you actually have. Some of you have no time. If you have no time, that's okay. You have to figure out, do I want to add time? Is my job, or is what I'm doing what I'm happy with? Is it get me to where I want to be? Is what I'm doing now getting me closer to my why, my end game, my end goal? If it's not, then you've got to make some Changes. You've got to put a realistic plan in place. Look, we've all gone through ups and downs, hiccups. It's going to happen. The market's gotten a little bit tougher, but what does that mean more than anything else? Well, it means you've got to market more into work. This is, we gotta put a real estate plan in place to help you make things happen. You've gotta connect with others, you've gotta roll up your sleeves and really go to work. All right? That's the first and foremost. If you're not rolling up your sleeves, if you're just showing up and just being a ghost ship, that's okay. Just be honest about it. So the question I have for you, and you may want to write this down, you don't have to answer this, but when you start looking at things, and I got this from a friend of mine who does it with his group and I thought, man, that was brilliant. I don't know why I've not been using this more often. Question comes down to how many offers have you made? And by offers, this means a variety of things. How many offers have you made? Okay, how many new connections made on LinkedIn in this month? How many new connections? I don't know what was going on this weekend, but some reason my LinkedIn blew up this weekend. I added over 2000 new connections. These were people asking to connect with me. Me not asking them. Some. I had my thing showed up in 1500 searches this weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it blew up. I went from 16,000 connections to just under 20,000 this weekend alone. And I don't know what the heck happened. It slowed down today. But whatever I did, whatever I posted on there, what have I worked through, it's paying off. How many emails out here, investor database, have you done in the last month about deals or just what's going on or your business or hey, just touching base. Octopus has been working fine for me, Bill. As you mentioned about LinkedIn, I use that tool, but these were invites to me, people sending me invites. Yeah, I've been adding 100, 200 invites going out every other day basis. But these were invites coming into me, which is a different story. But Octopus has been working well. Jeff Wolf, I know you love Octopus. A lot of people are loving Octopus. It's been working well. Yeah, it's helped us quite a bit. It's added quite a bit of stuff for me and a variety ways that I'm using it. But going back here, this is also. How many emails to your Investor database, tell them what's going on. Are you still alive? You still in business? Have you moved on to something else like you've done for the last six, seven years? How many emails to your investor database have you sent out in the last month? How many emails to banking asset managers? I know some of you guys are scared to like that you haven't seen anything since last decade. 2019 was the last time I sent an email to my database, my asset manager. There's no deals out there and I just laugh. I see that all over the Internet. There's no deals. How about how many posts about your business have you posted? If I were to pull up your guys social media profiles, how many posts would we see about deals that you're working on? Probably not many. I would see some articles shared, other people's articles that you shared that you found interesting, which is at least something. But do you have a comment in there? Do you have your take on the discussion? And so the thing I come back to, how many offers have you submitted this month? How many note deals have you made bids on this month? If your answer is zero, it's probably because you're not doing any marketing. Another thing is how many events have you attended and how many contacts made? I know that I had an event that had 150 people at this last weekend. I walked out with 68 new contacts. 68 new contacts and more I get, I'm getting some advice from people I didn't collect business cards from or networked with. Right now it was 68 people connected with. There's a lot of people that were in Las Vegas for the 10x con. Hopefully they were smart enough to collect business cards. How many events have you attended? How many contacts made? Now the question is if you're collecting business cards, have you put them in your database? Have you sent a follow up email to them? Hey, it was great meeting you. Do you make one acquaintance? One acquaintance? If you're out for coffee or networking, are you sending those people a hello, a thank you? Hey, it was great meeting you. Those are the little things that you've got to do these days because that's what really is separating. In this crazy world of so many things being bombarded and trying to draw our attention. You've got to stand out from the crowd and do extra. I'm sorry, it is what it is. You've got to do extra to separate yourself from the audience. Okay. And the thing is, if your answer to these are 0,000 or 0, you're not really taking action or just running in place, you're really losing traction. If you have sent an email out in the last couple of months to your database, I guarantee a portion of those emails have now failed. If you're not sending an email out to your bankers, I guarantee people that had had deals have send them on to somebody else. If you're out networking, you take business cart connect with people and you have a problem that they can solve an issue they can put something in. I guarantee if you don't email them, somebody else will and you all are worthy of all sorts of success. Everybody is worthy of success. Everybody has gifts. Everybody out there is looking for somebody to lead them. Those people that are marketing, those that are sharing is what drives success. All of you, all of you that are on this are capable of big things. All of you are capable of doing things, taking your business to a whole nother level and in today's note environment they're looking for deals. It comes down to these things. Less deals out there as everybody complains about means it takes more marketing to find deals. Either you increase your marketing or have you faded away on your marketing. Now more marketing equals sending out more emails, more phone calls, more networking opportunities. And these are simple things that you can do, just getting out and networking. More emails, phone calls, networking. Most people when they struggling as a business, they cut back on the marketing. That's the wrong thing to do. You need to increase your marketing, you need to double your marketing things. That's what we say. Taking the asset manager emails from once a month to twice a month at least it's going to lead to more opportunities. You'll be in front of more people and it's going to lead some great stuff. It leads to more relationships, obviously people who recognize you. A funny story here on Wednesday I was flipping through the roll call for the next IMN convention, IMN having their defaulted thing and I recognized three names of the speakers. People that I used to deal with years ago who have moved on to different banks. Well, I dropped them all an email and just said hey, Carlos was one of the guys. Hey Carlos, it was great. I see that you've moved on. Looks like you've done some great things since we last talked. Awesome stuff and congratulations. If I'm in town I'd love to take you to dinner or grab a drink at some point. And he reached out. Oh my gosh, so great to hear from you Scott. Hope everything is going well. Still buying non performing notes. It was just great. He goes, are you living in Florida now or back in Texas or California. And it was just great. Those are the relationships that we all want. And those relationships come from us doing the day in day out, week in week out, month out, month in month. In marketing, we're not telling you you gotta go out, be a rocket scientist. All the things that I'm talking about here are things that you all can do. We haven't advanced any type of OG of marketing or using drip campaigns. We're sending an email out via mailchimp and honestly, you'd be sending out. If you figure you're sending email out once a week to your asset managers or once a week to your database, it's four emails and then twice a month to asset managers. That's six emails out of 30 days. You are all capable of doing that. But you've also got to realize too, markets have changed. Some people have gone from NPNs to CFDs and are going looking, diving back into owner finance notes or vice versa. People working for owner finance notes are looking for NPNs or now into CFDs. Oh, that were in seconds or back into first because they can't find any seconds these days. Okay. People that are looking for residential are now taking the leap to commercial. You have to adjust your business plan or model so people have their note camp commercial like, oh, I like the self storage side. I'm gonna go to sell storage side. But still focus on the note stuff. Hey, great. You're gonna have to run some audibles. I love what Laura's doing. Laura's like, I got this big tape in, I'm gonna take it down myself. Boom. Rockstar still in the process. But that's the thing. You all are capable of amazing things by just taking action and doing things. Yes, we all get bogged down, we all love to drift. But are the things that we're doing really driving revenue? They're really doing things for the bottom line, for the good of you, your business, your why. What is your why? What is your why, everybody? And what's sad is I asked you to share what your why was and nobody did. Your real why, what's your why? Nobody did. Your business model is going to change over time as you get successful, as you get more tight into what you're doing. We all have a why. Go back and look at what your why is. Building email, building websites is not a why. What's that ultimate why? Bill, you gave one here Travel retirement. Okay, but what does that look like? What does that retirement look like? Where do you want to travel specific. And you don't have to put this in there, but you all need to be specific in things. If you're just throwing something up there like spaghetti on the wall, that's not going to help you. How many times a year, Bill, what does that look like? What year are you going to retire? How much is becoming in Those are the things I'm trying to get at. I don't need to answer to it. What I'm trying to get at is looking at what you want to do, looking at your why and then looking at your time slot. If you've got 10 hours or 20 hours and you got a flexible schedule, you need to put in 10 hours in time block like, honey, don't bother me for two hours, don't bother me for three hours. I've got to knock this stuff out. Son, I'll play with you in just a minute. I got to get this email out. As soon as I get this out, then I can spend the rest of the afternoon with you. But what do we do? Oh, I'll get to it later. I'll get to it later. I'll get to it later. I'll clean that up later. I'll send that out later. Well, you keep pushing off your why? You just have to realize, everybody, we are still very blessed. We still have the ability to do some amazing things. There's still a lot of deals out there. There's still a lot of opportunity available as long as you show up, you're consistent and you continue to market. So going back to the previous slide, I want you to think about this. How many emails to your investor database? How many new connections? How many emails to asset managers not showing up? I'm glad some of you guys love showing up and learning, but I don't want you just to show up. I want you to do something. I want you to take action. When I moved my first my office in Austin, golly, five years ago, now that I think about it here, when I signed my lease in the Regis office, I would get really excited about watching Gary Vaynerchuk and I would spend like an hour as the AskGaryVee show would pop on and I would find at myself, okay, oh my God, the morning's all gone and I got the point where I had to turn off Gary Vee to get focused on what I need to get focused on. And I still love Gary Vee. I still think he's a great motivational speaker. I think he's still a great thing. I see he gets frustrated with saying the same things over and over and people looking for a different answer. It doesn't come down. The answer is W, O, R, K. Yes. Work is a four letter word. Work is a four letter word that you've got to do to get where you want to be. Live is a four letter word. You have to work to live. And for those of you that are willing to do more that extra bit, you will live that much bigger. You will live exponentially greater than those that don't do. And so the thing you want to keep in mind, everybody, is you have to take action every day. There are days that suck. I get that. I have an episode that just came out last week, Overcoming the case of the Mondays. Who does not get a case on the Mondays? Heck, you get a case on the Mondays. On Friday, you still have to do things. You still have to show up. You still have to do things. There are days I don't feel like doing anything, and I'm honest with you guys, but I still show up, I still get out of bed, I get dressed, I come to the office and I go to work. Some days are more productive than others. Other days are just putting out fires. But that's normal. The thing is, I walk out of my office and okay, I did everything today that I need to get done. I did everything today that I need to get done. I did everything today that I could. I did the best of my ability today. He did everything he'd done. Not always, but I know I'm putting one foot in front of the other and I'm one day closer to my why than I was beforehand. And those that didn't. Here's the thing. We all have a journey. And there's so many steps to each person's journey. If you don't take a step today, you delayed your success by a day. If you don't take a step in the right direction for a week, you've delayed success by a week. If you put in something each day, you're one step closer to doing what you want to get accomplished. The devil is out there. The devil is rampant. Shiny objects, squirrel syndrome. You know, they're distracting us and every other, giving us a bunch of bullshit. Putting things out there that take away from what we want and what we love. But aren't our families and aren't our loved ones deserving of what we want to accomplish? And often aren't we the ones that need to be the breadwinners? Whether you're the guy or a gal, you gotta be the person. He's bringing home that bacon and for all some of us, it's just us. How many days this month have you put off success in the future because you didn't do anything? You know, you guys have quoted me before. Somebody's quoted me for saying the only thing you guarantee my not taking action is failure. Look, the only way I've gotten good at sending emails out, the only way I've gotten good as a podcaster, the only way I've gotten good at raising capital is because I failed over and over again. Or I goofed up, or I learned from my mistakes, or I learned from goofing up or send an email. I'm like, ah, damn it all. I didn't change the title. Damn it all. The link was broken. And you guys know, I, I still screw up on that. And that's okay. The idea is I know I'm getting better. I know each day I'm good at what I do because I've got thousands and thousands of thousands of hours behind me. And I've made plenty of many, many, many, many offers. And I'll continue to make more offers. I'll continue to get the emails out to my database. I'll continue to send an email out to you guys. I'll continue to do note night in America because I believe in each and everybody out there, that everybody's capable of things and doing amazing things now and into the future. Okay, everybody. So that is just about all that I've got for you tonight. We do have an event taking place this Saturday. We're pretty excited about it. It's a one day, we call it a note weekend thing. One day online note training basics. Have a mini workshop from 9am to 6pm on this Saturday. Will be live streaming on Saturday and then restreaming the video replays on Sunday. For those that miss, that is $99. That does include access to replays. It's nine to six, not nine to five. That's central standard Time. So Austin time, we'll take a 30 minute lunch break, but otherwise you've got me for roughly eight and a half hours. Right? You can go to noteweekend.com and get signed up there. If you are part of the WCN Monthly Crew membership that you're paying 97amonth, you do get access to this. You just gotta go on to basecamp group and the link is posted there. Or drop me an email and we'll send you the link to that we'll be doing via Zoom. But we've got a couple of dates like February 29, March 28, April 25, May 30. I'm gonna have to bump up a week to the 23rd. Or actually probably we'll just skip May. Cause that's more day weekend. Anyway, now I'm thinking about it. August 29, September 26, October 31. We're doing these one day. If you've got somebody that's you may be interested. Hey, let me know. Great stuff. Love to have them come. Part of it's basically helping them dip their toes. It's not no pitch fest. It's not designed to be a three day virtual workshop in one day. It's really kind of, hey, let's get some nuts and bolts. Let's talk about what note investing is. Let's talk about what you need to focus on. Let's talk about what this, this and this. We've got a full schedule. If you go to noteweekend.com noteweekend.com you can see on that website the schedule, the rundown of the schedule for you throughout the day. I guess it'll be recorded and Saturday will be live stream. You can't make it all day. Don't worry about it. Sign up for it and get Sunday with it there for you. But if you're part of, like I said, WC and crew, go into the basecamp group just for the membership and there's already a link in there for you guys to use. If not, drop me a message and we'll get you over to it. But I want you there to attend. I don't want you just to show up. Just to show up and not be a part of it. If you're gonna be there, be there for the day. That's what we want. That's all I want you to do is be there. But love to have you. It's something we're doing quite a bit here over the next few months, kind of getting out and sharing that out there. So hope you enjoy it. All right, everybody, have a great week. Go out, make some offers, go out and take some action. Please take some action. Please do something with the 5, 10, 15, 20 hours that you've got. Do something with it. You'll feel so much better building that momentum a little bit at a time, a little bit of time. Momentum, momentum will build upon itself and you'll find more assets, more connections and it will lead to something good. Remember, we're all just one connection away from something major happening in our lives and our business. Have a great day everybody. Enjoy the rest of your evening. We'll see you all at the top. Bye.