Note Investing is NOT Rocket Science with Tiffany Alexander

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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 panties 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 Nodes, Scott Carson Hey Real estate investors. My name is Scott Carson. I'm known across the country as the Note Guy. And for over 20 years I've been an active real estate investor focused on buying distressed real estate, distressed nuffs, distressed mortgages and foreclosures and working with other investors who are either brand new or experienced to put their money to work in amazing deals. And one of the greatest tools of wealth building that we have here in the United States is a self directed ira. That's right, a self directed individual retirement account that you can put to work in buying real estate, in buying notes or lending money to other real estate investors to make above average returns. And our preferred IRA company is American IRA right here guys. They do an amazing job, customer service second to none, they're out of North Carolina. And Kyle, Janice, the whole team over there are there to support you and help answer your questions when it comes to your investing needs. Now if you're leaving a job, you've got a 401k or an IRA from a previous company. You can't use that to buy notes or real estate. Now yes you can buy and be self directed in the funds of the company, but you don't have the opportunity if you're with a Schwab or Fidelity to go put that your hard earned money to work, to buy your rental property, to buy a performing note, to buy cash flow to help you get ahead of your retirement, your kids education, your spouse retire, your your parents retire. Self directed IRAs, like I said, are one of the greatest resources for you to put the power of compound interest to work to help you get to that end goal. What it might be, maybe it's living more higher on the hog or just taking it easy. But if you need a self directed IRA company, American IRA is the number one self directed IRA company with the best customer service there to help you take advantage of the different loops where you can grow tax free or to tax deferred wealth depending on what you and how you structure it. They can even set up self directed HSAs, Health Savings Accounts, educational IRAs for your kids, your grandkids, your cousins. All right SEP IRAs, solo 401ks, besides just your traditional or Roth IRA. Check them out at American IRA.com tell them that Scott Carson sent you. You will not be disappointed. You have a wide variety of self directed IRA companies but they're not all created equal. If you're looking for great customer service to help answer your questions, to hold your hand through buying a property or buying a Note with your IRA and check it out. American ira.com Tell them that Scott sent you and they'll take good care of you. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. Hey. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure show. As always, Scott Carson jacked up to be with you today. And we've got a very special guest. Somebody who is absolutely kicking butt, taking names and just doing an amazing job and is probably the friendliest person in the note industry that I've met in a long time. Yes, sometimes we have can have plenty of grumpy little a holes running around here. It's kind of a bro session. Everybody's big bad, but I like talking with nice people and I've worked hard in my life to avoid working with and today's special episode deals with somebody who's not only a joy to talk to, but just energy and sheds a little light and blessings on whoever she comes across. And she's like I said, she's doing an amazing job. She is the chief bottle washer over at Aspen Funds. She's been a note investor for a few years now. But when somebody says that note investing is not rocket science, this lady can actually tell you 100% whether it is or not. So who am I talking about? We're talking out of California, the amazing Tiffany Alexander. What is going on today? Tiffany, how you doing?

It's a beautiful day. Always.

It is a beautiful day. Amen to that. We've gotten through Christmas, we've gotten through the holidays, gotten through the cold spell. Although I think you said it's cold out there in Modesto today, huh?

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So let's talk about this. You've got behind. If you're listening to this, you can't see but she's got a picture of the space station taking off over her left sided shoulder on her side. There you go. Exactly. So why is not investing not rocket science? And how can you explain that? Give your insight on that saying, all right.

Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut my whole life. And key people in my life said, hey, you should go to this college. You can be an astronaut. Here's what you do. And that was it. That was the dream I applied for the university in Florida. Excuse me. And they said, yeah, you couldn't be an astronaut. Go ahead, come on over. In like several years into my degree, oh my gosh. It was physics that took me down. Let's just call it what it is. I'm great at math and I decided, oh my gosh, I don't want to do this anymore. And I saw my very first flipping house seminar that led me to, led me to, led me. And now I'm, I'm here at Notes. But the space thing is very real dream. I figured out, okay, if I don't glasses wise because I had glasses, I don't qualify to be an astronaut anymore. I can't do physics. I'm not going to be a scientist in the space shuttle. I need to make a lot of money so that I can pay the next person. Back in the day in 2001 it was like I need to pay Russia so I can get to space. And now it's like, well, I could pay a few people to get me into space. This is the dream right here.

You're, you're funny that you say Russia. I actually know somebody who paid Russia $20 million to train to be an astronaut. He was supposed to go up and then he got scrapped and his 20 million was like, bye bye. You know, he's the author of what is it, the five day weekend. Nick, Nick, Nick. Oh, I can't remember his last name. Nick Hurrick I think is his name. Interesting cat, but it can be done. If you want to pay Russia 20 million to learn how to be an.

Astronaut, I just figured I will get to space, I'm going to go a different manner and it's not going to be the straight laced way. You know, it was like an Air Force rotc. I was going to like, I had it all planned out and then my plan changed.

Yeah, but you know what, that's what happens. That's kind of like note listing. You think it's going to be a modification or a performing note and suddenly it becomes non performing.

Right. All the time.

So let's talk about how, how do you, I mean you like many people, we get into that, go to our first, you know, house flipping seminar. We see HGTV flip this house and the fictional show that, that is obviously. How did you transition to Notes? Tell us about that. That YV turning crazy path to get to Notes.

That is an amazing path. And it was actually one of these things where I met somebody that knew somebody. We were being hired as a consultant in the back of the room. And I, you lean over and you're like, hey, what do you do for a living? And. And I said, I'm here because I'm the expert in the back of the room, the real estate investor. And I said, I said, well, what do you, what are you here for? And he's like, oh, I do notes. And I was like, what, what is that? He's like, oh, well. And he started to explain it to me. And the things that were said in this conversation blew my mind. I didn't know what notes were. I'd been doing real estate now for 12 years. I was the expert in the back of the room. I flipped, I've held, I've tax lien d short sale. And I'm like, knew I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up already. And he has changed my paradigm, my perspective. And he said, I bet you're a tired landlord. My feathers are ruffled. Excuse me, what are you talking about? Defend, defend, defend. Right. No, he was, he was right, man. I, the tenants, I have property in Columbia, South Carolina, which is high and low, right? But I would get these phone calls because the management wasn't doing their thing. Five o' clock on a Friday night. Ms. Tiffany. My air conditioner either A didn't work or B was stolen. And it was like they were stressing me out, they were tiring me out. They should have called the management. Why didn't the management deal with it? I'm trying to find somebody now. You should see, I have like this list, right? It's in my phone. 5,000 people, probably a thousand of them are like, who I need to call in an emergency with all the things that could go wrong with rental property from the idea of, oh my gosh, you, oh, just own paper unfolding. The idea of why do you think all of the buildings in every single downtown are the largest? And it's the name of a bank. Are they in the business of owning property? No, we don't think that they own a bunch of property. They own these big fat stacks of paperwork and they have all the notes against it. And it was just this plan that kept unfolding more and more and more tiff. I bet I could show you how to make a stronger rate of return with no tenants ever, ever again. And I could show you not only that, but how to compound your money. And then you could do it in an infinite man manner if you do it this, this and this. It was mind blow after a mind blow. I came back home after this Event. And I said, hi, dear husband, I know that you know me for who I am and how I've been for this long. And you met me as a real estate investor. I'd like to sell all of our rental property now. And he's like, what happened? What? What happened? So here we are.

You drank the Kool Aid. You literally drank the note Kool Aid, right?

I did. I did. I said you could. You're telling me I can have that cash flow or better the rate of return I was shooting for. Never have tenants, never flip another house, deal with contractors and just. It is what it is. There's like a man world and there's a woman world and I can fight in the man world as much as possible. But occasionally it is harder for women to be like, to show up and be like, hey, can you fix this roof? And they're like, I'm gonna. It sucks. Right? It's just like the lower end of the stick. But not only that, men have that problem too. Like, haha, you're in Oklahoma. I know you're here in Texas. I'm just going to charge him the most. There are disadvantages on every side. And I tell people I could fill up, you know, those silly little notebooks are like a quarter. It's back to school time. I could fill up a thousand of those with everything that could go wrong and possibly has gone wrong for so many people in the land of landlords and flipping, and I think I could fill up like three sheets of paper of what could go wrong with a note. And really the top 10 are the only ones we face. And I love that so much because the engineer in me is like, if I could say all the worst what ifs ever and could actually handle every single one of those wh. Ifs. There is so much comfort in knowing and being able to identify like, okay, I can handle that, I can handle that. I can handle that. Let's move forward, right? It. It alleviates the problem of paralysis by analysis from many people that even are just terrified or scared to get into regular investing. Don't get into regular investing. Come to the note sign.

I love that. And I always joke that engineers are great, but sometimes engineers definitely do overanalyze things, you know, and you have. And that's what I want to ask you next is what's your niche that you like the most? Is it, you know, is it converting tired landlords into owner financing properties to you or buying on owner financing? Or is it buying notes? Or is it. Is it the performing Is it the non performing? Is it residential, commercial? Is it first seconds? What's kind of your, what's the niche or the stuff that you like the most when it comes to note investing?

The stuff that I would say I like the most, it started off on what the people that were mentoring me said, hey, Tiff, do this. So it was like I, I prefer a 70 portfolio of performing notes and a 30 portfolio of non performing notes. And I thought, well, why? What's the reason? I question everything. Well, because of this, this and this. Do you need cash flow? Can you wait for a bigger return, a higher yield in your money to wait for it to come back after so many months and it's grown to like 50, 50 and then it starts to shift. You're like, oh, if I can just hold out for my money, I can do these non performing notes and get into some deals where the discounts are obscene. It's, it's like, man. But also on top of that, since I have a heart in what it is that I do, I actually buy stuff and almost still have the hopes of like, maybe I can just get them squared away. And banks don't think like that. Banks aren't like, yeah, I'm bulk package selling you this note because it's garbage. Peace. Right? No, like, what's wrong? And we're familiar in the real estate investing space. If anybody's ever been to a real estate flipping house seminar or watched hgtv, it's the D's death, disease, divorce and disaster. It causes you to do things you would never imagine or understand. And so when I get a hold of a homeowner and I say, hey, what happened? Like, can I help you? And, and sometimes you don't understand why they've decided to just abandon the house or walk away or stop paying. And the, the idea to get them caught back up isn't even thing. And there are programs out there, there are states that have preferences. There's money that's available, there's, there's somebody that cares about you on the other side that if I can buy their loan from their lender who was helpless, didn't know, didn't, couldn't, what it wouldn't to me to say, hey, I want you to be a homeowner still, can I get you caught up? Like, I'd love to get you squared away. And if they're just like too far deep into these Ds that have happened in their life, then it's like, all right, I, I have a responsible, a responsibility to the unit, the, the property in of itself to keep it ready for the next guy. Right. Like, whatever I can do for you. And the heart in that is like what makes me comfortable. Knowing I've left the landlord space to help people out that can't buy their own home. To like, man, I can keep people in their home.

Yeah. It's a beautiful thing in keeping. I'm gonna ask you to go back and restate the 4D slower because I guarantee everybody that was listening to this like tried to pull over or tried to stop. What were those four Ds again? So staying back a little slow, you like, you're like me. We get excited, you talk faster. You know what I mean? So what are the four Ds again?

They're the death, disease, divorce and disaster.

I'm gonna add one, I'm gonna add one more to you there. Depression.

Oh yeah, that's a depression.

Distress. Like I've had some phone calls with borrowers who can't pay their bills. They're distressed. I mean, I mean distressed like dealing with depression on a regular basis because they're overwhelmed with a lot of things. But yeah, those, those, those four or five, that's the issues. You know, you have a lot of people that are going through bad times or they, they're going through a financial hiccup that they didn't see. And that's one of the things that I've always loved because I was once a distress bar back in the day, is that you have to have some empathy. I think if you're in the non performing space, you know, not, you know, not everybody is a deadbeat bar or trying to get free rent. In a lot of cases there are a few. Don't get me wrong, there are a few. But when you can help somebody, it's actually, I was telling somebody the other day who's big into doing short sales and foreclosures, like, we actually make a higher yield if we actually keep people in the property most of the time. Right?

Absolutely right. Right. It's just you're not turning it over and fixing it up. You're letting them keep their home. And the important thing for people to remember is that these Ds cause you to make irregular or irrational choices. And that even depression being in that, like, it's not a decision you would have thought you would have made. Like, oh my gosh, why don't they just sell their house? They owe X amount. Like they can't even think about that. And let's help them out where we.

Can such a great, great example working, actually. I rushed back here to the house to record this. It has over another house here down the road. That was a deed in Lou. Ladies got a ton of equity. She could qualify for reverse mortgage today. She's old. Old. I'm sorry, not old, but older. Got a ton of equity house, but was facing foreclosure because she wasn't paying her mortgage. And when we approached her wants to go off the note, we were like, hey, do you want to do a deed in lieu. I mean a reverse so you can stay in your house and the bank can actually pay. We'll get paid off, you'll be good. No, I don't want to do that. Well, do you want to sell your house? No, I don't really feel like doing that, so. Well, you got to do something, otherwise we're going to foreclose because we haven't been paid in two years technically. So we were able to give her a lump sum of her equity to avoid a foreclosure and a deed and lose. So it was a win win. And she was all happier than a pick and slop, you know what I mean?

Yeah. And it doesn't make sense and it won't make sense. And the people that are coming this far and want to be a real estate investor, they always ask me, why Tiff, why wouldn't they? Why? I'm like, any answer that you can dream up is an answer as to why. It could be a why.

Now, when you were getting started with your rentals, were you going using your own funds, using third party financing, like DSCR loans or anything like that, or private money to fund your note purchases?

Originally the note purchases or when I had.

I'm sorry, your real estate portfolio prior to note investing. My apology. Thank you.

Well, luckily the very first one I did was a homeowner. Like a, like first time homeowner. That was back in the day. See, I closed in 2009. I can't believe it's like so many years at this point. And I was able to put like I was getting ready to put 5% down because that was the deal. And, and I negotiated differently because I'd attended a seminar that said, go do it this way. Hey, ask for this. And then even the number that I asked for was like, oh, it's listed for 299. And I offered them 200. And my realtor goes, tiff, you can't do this. This isn't something I want to put my name on the line for you and I said, okay, I'll offer them 2:35, 7:34 and 2 cents. And they came back at like 239. And I said, see, if I didn't try or put some crazy number and they were willing to negotiate, I would have lost out on just like taking the offer. And don't get me wrong, anywhere in the state of California, a 4 plex for $300,000 is a killer deal. So the fact I got it in the 200s, I actually did end up saying, hey, there was like something funky that I didn't see. And in my second inspection, I need this, this and this. So I actually ended up getting cash back at closing because they said, okay, we'll cover that. And it was the first time I realized, well, I just need to speak up. And I needed to know what I didn't know and if it weren't for the right people that said, ask for this, ask for this, ask for this money bag. At closing, being able to be able to get my very first four plex, I caught the bug. I drank the Kool Aid of Reynolds and I thought, how many more of these can I buy? That was it.

Yeah. So when you go into, you convert to the note space. If you come to the dark side, the sexy side of real estate investing. Tiffany, Tiffany after duck, do you, do you end up basically just selling off the rentals or do you offer like owner financing to your tenants or do you just cash out and start buying? What was that kind of that transition look like?

Well, when I started buying some of the rentals, some of them I ended up buying in like the hood. You can buy them on auction for 10, 20, 30 grand. It was like I could ask a few friends for money and like, oh yeah, I'll be your lender. So again, getting creative with asking more other people for money, getting hard money, it was still cheaper than not buying the deal in and of itself. Buying them in my self directed IRA for five grand a pop. It was like, how, why are people not doing this? But it's because they would rather go on vacation, they would rather buy a fancy purse or something. And I've always chosen to just be less excessive and less extra. And I, I don't know, even like go to a thrift store instead of like I needed all that money for my next deal. I knew it was like the sacrifice right now to have a bigger portfolio. That was like my driving force of it all was like, need to do all this. So when the time came, how am I going to do this? The first thing I thought of was, oh my gosh, I want to roll it all into notes. Hindsight, I realized, oh my gosh, I could have structured that differently. But the excitement in me is what's gotten me here in the first place. I get so excited when someone says, go do this, I do it, which is why I'm different. Instead of them saying, go do it like this, this, this, this, this. So I went and I listed everything, not considering I could have sold it on a note, pulled out the equity, done something different, lowered my tax, but I did hold some of them long enough so I didn't have crazy taxes. But then taking all that cash, deciding, all right, what do I do now? And that was when I got told, do this, do this, buy this, buy this. And from there it just sort of starts this snowball effect where you buy one and you buy a second. And sitting on the performing notes was fine and nice. But when you get that big chunk of money that comes back from the very first non performing note that I bought in under nine months, I was like, like, are you kidding me? This, this wasn't that bad at all. I then realized, okay, the first non performing note I bought was in Michigan. And I think I paid $55,000 for it. And after I foreclosed for a couple grand a couple months, I ended up thinking, I'm still a real estate investor. I still flip houses. If I could have just like sold that to a wholesaler, would have been able to turn it quicker. Instead, I. I refuse to listen to the advice of people saying you could make more yield or make more money or have less stress and less whatever by just staying on the note side, like, get rid of the property, get rid of the reo. Just, just make it happen that way. So I decided, oh, I'm gonna call a local person, I'm gonna ask them to fix it up, I'm gonna list it. I still luckily, all the way through in the process, the house sold for120,000. So it was okay. I love the deal. I can't wait to do it all over again. But now I understand. Wow. If I could have just sold it as is and not have to wait for that listing, wait for the holding, wait for what the check was. There was even something that happened. Crazy. Right before the house was sold, someone broke into the house and stole the oven and left the bathroom a mess. For whatever reason, I cried for a moment because I thought, this is so dumb. My husband said, I told you this isn't you shouldn't be doing this ever again. I I asked you to not flip houses anymore. Here you are crying about it and I'm like we're still gonna make a lot of money. I'm just so mad, you know. And he's like, oh, oh, okay. So it was just in the heat of the moment so I have to.

Ask you that what is your. Your husband does something besides real estate investing? Supportive it sounds like most of the time. But what does he do outside?

He's my busy bee. He's my like W2 worker that loves clocking in for other people and, and he just works and he works hard for other people. Man, if I could get him to work as hard as he works for other people and we just had a separate business together, it would be to the moon already. But that's okay, right? We, we marry our polar opposites and I am the press on visionary leader that I hope to impress upon my four year old, my seven year old and he's like I just want to clock in and go home and not think about work. I'm like I understand that because I was up at 4 thinking of work this morning.

Well but that's that I mean that's, that gets. It's a good yen to the Yang. It's good to have somebody that can kind of center you. It's good to have a dreamer and somebody a little bit more solid. Although that we, we think solid differently as note investors. You know, solid investments. Oh, this is going to pay me and I'm going to do what the heck I want. I don't have to clock in because I'm getting paid. Rain or shine is the bank. You know that's. That's the beautiful thing about it. So this is awesome. I love it. Yeah, I mean that's, that's a valuable lesson. I learned that lesson one of my first lessons. I always say in my first two years I was foreclosing on everything versus trying to modify or reinstate the first two years when I would made a whole lot more money if I'd done that versus foreclosing and then going back and flipping those properties or you know rehab and selling or just selling at the auction would be more money, you know, I mean a lot less work. So. So your focus now. Let's talk about now. What's. How's it different? How's your business different? Now is primarily non performing that you can get reinstate or my non a mixt mixed bag or performing what's it, what's it look like for you right now, Tiffany?

That's a great question. And even from being where I am currently, it started selling all my rental property, can stop flipping houses, using that money for other purposes. And it evolved into like, well, I. I'm doing these deals still for myself. I'm doing them. I'll tell people. I even at times would get hired as like, the expert in the back of the room to come and help. Other companies say, you can do it too. I believe in you. Buy their coaching because that will teach you how. But also, don't call me when you say it didn't work, because I know you didn't do the steps. Because if you try hard enough and you have enough at bats, you're gonna have results. You're gonna have something close as long as you are following literally steps that you could find for free or you could have a coach take you through from there. It was like, wait a minute, I'm doing all this for myself still. All this for my company. A deal for me, maybe a deal for a friend, A deal for me. I started branching out to say, hey, I have deals that I have access to that you don't even know about. Do you want any of these? And people were like, where have you been hiding this, Mike? You just got in. You have to know people. And I become like, one of the people that I know, and you're just like a phone call or an email away from. Not a website, not a website. It's a phone call or an email away from an Excel document that you need to know how to dissect, analyze, and be able to move into a deal. And that's what people don't know, what they don't know. And it makes them nervous because of the unknown. And I thought, okay, I've got this down. I'm doing this for myself. How. How can I do this bigger? And one of my mentors, to this day, he's out of Puerto Rico. He's like, tiff, you have to go bigger. And I'm like, well, why? Because I'm comfortable. I, you know, we make income. I'm doing the deals, I'm. I'm brokering them to people. He's like, stop. You know what? You know, and now it's your duty to share it. You have to give back to other people in a bigger manner. And so my whole life of being quiet, posting a few pictures on Facebook, right, is now like, create a LinkedIn account. Create, post, encourage, inspire, and share this world. Because in all reality, if you Google, how do I Invest in notes. Not a ton of really good websites are going to pop up. There might be one, but it's hidden on page two. It doesn't even make sense what pops up unless you're paying a lot of money for Google. And in that I felt overwhelmingly compelled to start something else. And I realized people are scared. And it was like, well, how do I help people that are scared in this? So in end of 2022, I decided, you know what, I'm gonna bite the bullet. I'm going to pay a lot of money to get my very own fund created and I'm going to solve the problem that other people are having is that they're too nervous to do their own deal because they don't know what they're doing, they don't know where to get a deal and they, they just want the consistency of someone else to do it for them. So I opened my own fund and it's like a boutique fund. We're only going to ever have a hundred clients. And the idea was, let's cross collateralize and blanket all of our deals together and I'll offer you a consistent return like you have a CD or a savings account. And that, that changed everything because I just, I finally decided to stop doing this just personally and be quiet, but be loud and say, I'll help you. And there are great people that I know now and I partner with or I, I refer because I don't actually want to be the, the coach and I don't want to be the instructor or the teacher. I want to be the doer for you because there are incredible trainings. Like I even went to one of your four hour trainings on a Saturday and the information coming out of your mouth like at the speed of a fire hose. I was taking notes. I'm like, I knew this, but I didn't remember this. Just really good information that's out there. But if you don't have somebody following up with you to continue to put into action, you're going to fall through the cracks or let your investments not get a high of a yield as you get. So you may as well just let someone like me do it for you. And so that's where it evolved into, was like, do want to deal? Flip a deal, Broker a deal more for myself, myself, myself. Okay, other people, let's go other people.

Now I totally agree with that. If you want to go fast, go by yourself. But if you want to go far, you do it as a team and you can grow more. Raising more capital gets Better deals, better discounts, more opportunities. There's a lot of lone wolves out there. And that's okay to be a lone wolf if that's what you want, what you're comfortable with. But you're not going to have the big success that you want to have or need to have some big goals, whether it's a rock, you know, going to the moon on a rocket ship, or, you know, sitting underneath a palm tree and St. Kitts on a monthly basis or whatever it might be. You gotta. You gotta put a team together, people. And there. And that's one of the things that I've always found, is that there's really only about 1% of people that will actually pull the trigger and take action, unfortunately. And if you get up and talk about the action you're taking, you attract more people. But I want to, I want to throw something out to you that I think works in your advantage in a lot of cases, not besides being public, but also when you're raising capital or when you're talking to asset managers. I think being a woman also helps you in a lot of cases. I think it's a great thing. I wish there were more women note investors out there because I think it helps you, especially when you're talking to people. Anybody you're talking to a guy, a wall goes up, like, oh, he was he gonna sell me. It's a sales aspect. All right, okay. And then also I was. I would always joke with the asset manager, like, who do you call back first? You call me back. No, no, I gotta. I got a lady, left a message. I'm gonna call her back first.

It's gonna be more delicate conversation, right? I mean, maybe, but.

But the thing being is, though, too, I was, I was having the conversation with Elizabeth Fairclough from Invest Her Community. She's a good friend of mine. We entered on a podcast a couple weeks ago, and there is a. There's a lot of intimidation because it is kind of a bro network in the note investing space. And whenever I see the different events are taking place, I see a woman or two women on. On the panel or something those who write tune into because they often add a great fresh approach and there's a need for that more so in the community than ever before.

Yeah, yeah. And it's. And it's one of these things that there's almost a stigma with women in their own brain that they've talked themselves out of it before. I can. And like, no, no, don't worry about. I'm just not good With I'm like, okay, that's your first problem, is by telling yourself, I'm not good at something, say, I am good at. I'm working on it. Right? Like, you have to take the positive perspective on how all of that is moving forward with your language that you're speaking and the people that you hang around, the information you're consuming and the actions that are following forward. Otherwise, I tell everybody, like, man, if. If knowledge is power and knowledge is what's going to get you there. Like, all the librarians would be the richest people in the world. But no, it's applied knowledge. It's you taking the steps and doing what it is that you're told. And hopefully you're listening to the right person with the right steps.

Amen to that. So you've got this boutique fund, as you say, 100 clients. How much money are you looking to raise in the next, say, 24 to 36 months for you?

We want to top out at $100 million with our fund. And that's because that's just the first number that we picked. The last person that I talked to, some important people in my life, they said, great, I see you growing this 4 to 600 million. I'm like, I love that you have that for me already. Let's start with our first goal and reach there first. There's no reason for me to grow it that big other than me just helping more people, because at that point, it's like, okay, am I taking a bigger paycheck out of that? Am I working more for free? Like, there's a balance in everything. And I know that there is going to be massive quantities of deals that are available for a shorter amount of time right now, depending on. I mean, we've got people that stopped making payments in Covid and never got help. And some of those are starting to come down the pipeline of like, oh, my gosh, I can help these people out still. Because the big bank refused or the big hedge fund refused. Now, there are statistical percentages that we're staring at, like, oh, if they haven't paid for this long, it's like, well, I'm still gonna ask. I'm still gonna try. So, yeah, that's. That's our goal, what we're working on right now, and our other goal is to invent something that has kind of come and gone. And there are some and there aren't some. And I'm developing right now a website that would end up being, like, my very own private Amazon. Like, hey, I have notes do you want them? Sign an NDA with me and you can come buy from me. Not like a Craigslist, like you can also find a broken launcher. But like, no, just notes that I have that you would have access to that you don't have to be an accredited investor to come buy from me. And you could buy it in your self directed ira. And if you don't know how, boom. Here's some videos, some education on how and what that means to you so that you can take steps. And if you're paralyzed in fear, by the way, here's who you want to go learn from, here's who you should go read a book from. Pick your method of education and pick the note that you want to own.

Very nice. Very nice. When. How far along are you into the, the website or what do you expect to be finished with that, with your listings?

It. Well, we're in the works. I've bought the domain and we've worked with people who we want it to look like. And so building it all out, gathering our list, we've got some placeholders on it right now and it's pretty exciting. And then we need to fill it up with assets. So we're working on more funders, more assets, and then going from there.

Very nice. Have you bought, have you dived into any of the commercial note space?

I, I get offered some stuff and I tend to keep them in the file folder of like, all right, when someone says, tiff, I want commercial, I'm gonna partner them together. One of my favorite things to do is if I'm not the solver of someone's problem, I'm going to connect them with the solver. I want to be known as the person that's not going to withhold the people that I know, but make those connections happen freely, knowing I might get cut out of the deal. That's fine. I think everything happens for a reason. And if you're like, wow, Tiff, you helped me do this amazing deal, I crushed it. You could give me a kickback if you want, but if that's not in your budget, I sent a phone call, I send a text, I sent an email. Right. I put you guys together. I'm not expecting 1% or 40% cut of this deal. So I think I'm just putting it all out there because I know everything that should come back to me, as long as I'm doing as much good as I possibly can is going to work out the way it should work out.

Yeah, it definitely will for you. If you Put good out, you get good back is the way I always say things. Now, you've been. What would you say has been your best marketing tactic? I guarantee people are sitting out there, hey, you know, how are you raising money? How do you expect to get to 100 million? What are some of your capital raising techniques that you're putting in place right now?

I'm going to tell you right now, the only one that has had the most incredible results is word of mouth. And that sounds like, oh, my. What do you mean, tiff? It means I need to talk to people. Yes. If you don't like to talk to people, hire someone that likes to talk to people. And you need to say, here's my goal, here's what I'm doing, here's what I need, and here's why. And just say you want in, like, and you got to be excited about it. They got to wonder why they're in it. And letting people know, hey, what it is that we're doing. But also the end result, like, your end result to work with me is lower risk stuff. I. My phone is like, it's off in the moment, but I got a text message two days ago that was from someone that's in my fund that was like, tiffany, I am so grateful that I'm in the fund right now because I just watched Vanguard, the account that I was just in, take a huge crap today. And in that, I have safety and comfort knowing that I'm with you and I'm getting a steady income and the return is not going to go anywhere because of what you're doing with it. And that is why I do this. Like, people are like, why are you trying so hard? It's because I'm providing the steady return for someone in this really weird world. And they're like, well, how are you getting the steady returns? We're buying stuff at a massive discount. Even if the like properties go wonky, we've bought them way lower than that. Market's probably even going to dip.

Yep. And if something happens, we have insurance. If you have the disgruntled borrower 100%, the air conditioner walks off on a walkabout, you get paid. If borrowers don't pay, you foreclose and you get paid. You know, it's a. I always call it a win, win, win there for you. And it's one of the few niches in real estate where the lower the risk, the higher the return.

Yeah, yeah. And it's silly that it doesn't make sense, which is why? Very logical people like my engineers are like, I don't understand why. It's like, you don't. You have to tell yourself that it really is real and you can see what we're doing and the, and the deals that we're doing to prove to you that's way it is. But also, at some point, you just gotta fake it till you make it and let yourself live and feel it yourself. Own your very first note, say, see the payments come in and understand that even if you had to compare apples to apples, like, well, I have a rental here and I have a note here. You're going to pay vacancy management. That's 10% you're going to pay for this, this, this, all these things. And here it's like, I paid a couple hundred bucks for like a documentation fee and I pay 20 bucks a month to somebody. How much more could you keep in your pocket and not have a single phone call from a tenant again, sign me up.

Yep. That's so, that's so truthful. I love. That's what I love about the note business. And you can do it from anywhere you live. That's the beautiful thing is now are you buying anything California? You're buying most of your stuff outside of the California.

Okay. I've been doing this for nine years now. I have not come across a single note in California personally. And that's okay, because if you really want to think about it, like dollar for dollar or like pound for a pound, when we're talking about, like, heavyweights, we're going to get a better deal in middle America, the flyover states. And I'm 100 okay with that because it's not my house. I don't live there. Not mowing the lawn, fixing the toilet. I just have the paper and they're paying me well.

And it's also beautiful for what you buy one property or one note in California, you could buy 10 or 20 in other places.

100 for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What? I know that you've been doing a lot of outreach to talking to people. What's been your best outreach? Has it been going through LinkedIn or going through your Rolodex or networking, going to local rea clubs? What are some of the things that you found working well for you?

The first thing anybody's going to want to do is go through your phone. Because if somebody's saying, hey, I want to become a note investor, you have to tell people that, hey, you know me as me, right? Tiff. Oh, Tiff owns rental property. Well, all of a sudden, Tiff doesn't own rental property and people think that's the person who I am now. Tiff does notes. Oh, my gosh, what's a note? So that's your own problem. I was on the phone for hours and hours and hours explaining what this was before. I literally invented a YouTube video to tell people, go watch this for three minutes and then get back to me from there. It's letting people know who it is that you are now. And I tell people, I liken it to say, like, all right, here's a hat. I wear a hat as like, oh, I was an engineer right now, oh, I'm a real estate investor. Here's my hat. Well, the hat that I wear now. Yes, I'm a real estate investor. I'm a note investor. I'm a fund owner. What does that mean? Well, I need to call everybody up and let them know. But by the way, you don't know if Aunt Mary is sitting on a million dollar IRA that she needs to roll over because they're giving her like 2% and feeing her to death. Right? You can really help out your friends and family. So those are the first people I went to, and then an extension of that, people I've done business with and just saying, hey, I'm out here, I'm doing this. But. But also, by the way, I will be willing to share my network with you. I'll interconnect you. What also do you need? I'm not calling just to pitch you. I'm calling to say, do you need anything? And I'm probably going to bump into them with the next thousand people. I'm calling my phone right now. Branching out from reaching out to friends and family. You're going to have to probably tell people what you do. I started posting on LinkedIn, posting on Instagram, posting on Facebook. Even though that's like my private group, it's still me being me of who it is that I am. And then at some point last year, I had to hire somebody to create posts for me on LinkedIn. Because in your brain, if you're not good at marketing, which I know you're stunning at marketing, you think to yourself, I've already said this. I'm telling these people over and over and over again. And something wise I heard last year and I said it five times now, so I get to claim it as my own was. Whenever you market to somebody, don't think of it as shouting to a room with an audience like this closed auditorium. Think of it as shouting your message to a moving parade, you have to repeat yourself over and over again because people are not going to remember in 30 days what it even is that you do. So being able to create something and not feel guilty that I'm trying to. I'm not spamming people, but I need to tell them over and over and over again on my LinkedIn page and other places what I do so they can be refreshed to that and be like, wow, I'm keeping you top of my mind. And, and that's how I get even more referrals, because people are saying, I saw that video that you made. What are you doing? Can I send you a friend? Can. Can you send me someone letting people know through ways of marketing. Now I don't pay per click. I. I haven't even gotten that far. That's fine, because the referral is the best way. I started using this tool that I think you can pay for nowadays that adds this trusted feature on LinkedIn. So I started saying, everybody that I know, can you now introduce me to everybody you know? So that way I've just gone a plus one, a plus one. And we're going so many levels deep within the same people that I know because I'm asking them to refer me. So until I exhaust that network, I'm not gonna pay per click or do something else crazy. I did take your advice. I have LinkedIn Navigator and I've activated and I'm gonna do some thing I'm uncomfortable with, but I'm. It's okay. You hire somebody that's gonna do it for you, because if that's not your wheelhouse, that's not your genius zone. You don't love it, you're not going to be good at it. Hire someone else out. Oh, my gosh. Get a VA for all that means, right?

So amen to that. Well, that's, that's the thing is, you know, I love that analogy of shouting to a moving crowd. It's also, if you think about watching TV, how many times we bombarded with drug commercials or McDonald's or Papa John's and like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna order pizza now. It's like the fifth or sixth time, 80% of sales or 80% of closings happen after the fifth or sixth contact. So that was drilled into my head. Like, listen, you just gotta, you gotta keep going, keep sharing. Whether it's once a day or once a week, do that. Not once a month isn't enough because people aren't gonna remember but you gotta build some momentum and go in where people come back to you to watch that video. And, and we see a lot of that with people listening to our podcast or watching our YouTube videos for three or six months before they actually reach out and feel comfortable enough to book a phone call or talk about doing a deal with us. You know, you're doing a great job up there. That's what I love about it. Not enough people doing that.

No, you have to tell people what is you do. Do you think I'm just going to remember? I mean, there's people I've met once at a networking event and they told me their name and their deal and then they're like, hey, could you give me a referral? I'm like, sure. Can you put an appointment in my phone for 15 minutes once a month to call me and remind me even what you do so I can keep you top of my mind? And the people that do are getting referrals from me because they're letting me know what it is that they do in a gentle way. Just saying, hey, Tiff, don't forget, I'm looking for xyz. You have to ask, you have to tell, you have to be loud. And I was so nervous to be loud because I was like, I'm fine, I'm comfortable, I'm doing what I do. I'm making enough money, we're fine. And it's like, no. I read this book called multiplying your God given impact and I had this conviction all of a sudden of like, I have so many things that are gifts that I've been given and I'm actually not helping enough people that I have now responsibility to understand if that was a gift that I've been given is to help people because people trust me and they want to do business with me. I am great at going to drum up business. Why don't I share the reward of that with other people? Because once you've made it and you're comfortable and you're cool, don't just kick up your feet and say, I've made it. No, like, go double it the next year and the next year and then give it away to your favorite charity, you shouldn't stop because that's not what we were designed to do, is just to like make a million dollars and kick up your feet on an island. Which, I mean, you could go and do that. Imagine how much more rewarding you could be to leave the legacy of yourself of like the imprint or the changing people's financial situations. In their lives and then their future generations letting them retire earlier. I don't know. But I'm never going to retire. I just love working in general.

Well, no, you don't like working. Let's, let's face it, you love the note business. And I'm a big believer that real estate investors never retire. We just get smarter. Or real estate investors never retire. They just evolve into note investing pretty much.

It's like delegation, because now I get to do what I love, which is getting in front of people like, hey, can I tell you what notes are? I had someone do that to me, lean in and say, hey, I bet you're a retired landlord. And when I tell people that, you know, I have to say over and over again, because I was told that and I didn't know that I was. I was justifying the heck out of it. And I'm like, did you know you could do this, this and this and just having somebody share whatever the scenario you're going through? I have someone that's heard me talk about this for the last year, and I was on his podcast for the first time, and he said, yeah, my dad, we need to sell his rental so that we could figure out what to do with that. I was like, why don't you create a finance. Why don't you create a note, get him out of the rental space, stop having a tenant and start having a note. And he's like, I didn't even know that was a thing. So talk to us. Tell us what your scenario is. Let us, let us be the person that's outside of your. Your thing and, and show you the creative space out of it. To not go dump your property and realize that you could have had an infinite kind of return instead of just, well, I'm going to pay taxes now. I'm going to do with it. No, like the, the multitude of. Of people for counsel. It's even in the Bible, you know, like asking more people for advice. Not too many, not making a decision forever, but asking people that are doing far greater than what you're doing and understanding. There's so many different things and ways to do it, but you don't know what you don't know. And you're probably paying too much in taxes or not enough, getting a yield in your returns because of it.

So true. It's always good to not seek advice, but seek counsel. Somebody who's been where you're at is where you're wanting to go and talk with them. And I always find the most successful people are often the most giving of time and most valuable time that you want to take and listen to what they say, because they will. They will save you millions and hours of headache by just being coachable if you listen to it and ask the right questions. Right, Tiffany?

Absolutely. I mean, there are so many good pieces of advice that I've been given. I. I keep them written down in my phone. But on top of that, whenever you hit a bump in the road, like, I've had. I've had highs, and I've had lows. I've had wins, and I've had losses. And I had, like, an incredible loss from, like, a flip gone wrong that I thought would never go wrong was a referral from a friend. And I was like. I was so mad about it. So, like, what? This isn't the way it was supposed to go down. And I had a conversation with my mentor and was like, tiff, I'm taking losses of this, this, this, And I'm like, oh, my gosh. I look up to you. I haven't had a loss that big. Like, I've got room to grow. So I turned it from, like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Like, no, Now I'm learning from him. Now I hope I can share that advice with someone else to avoid that for them. I don't want to call it coaching because I don't want to. I'm not available for coaching.

But counseling, counseling, counseling people.

Can I. Can I avoid that hole in the ground over there or that, you know, just. I want to have people get here faster than it took me without them having to go the road that, you know, 12 years to decide, oh, I want to do this. And now another 10 years into it, it's like, I'm 19 years into my real estate investing career, and if I meet somebody in their 20s, I start clapping like, oh, my gosh, I've met you so early. Tell me what. Let me tell you what I've done wrong so that you can go do it. And then what's funny is, at the end of that conversation, like, great, I'm still gonna go flip a house. I'm like, awesome. When you get tired, here's my phone number. I would love to talk to you when you get tired and they're like, what are you talking about? Like, you'll know in a little bit.

Yeah, that's the thing. I think I bang my head against the wall more so than anything else is, especially we get a lot of people. I'm just going to wholesale notes. I'm going to go out and find buyers and wholesale like, well, that's okay. But if you put that same work into raising capital, it's the same thing. You can make a whole lot more money. You know, there's a fear, a facade of fear that a lot of people have. And it's also to depend on you talking to, you know, you get a lot of folks, that ego plays a big role. I, you know, I'm, I want to be the landlord. I'm like, okay, that's fine. There's a smarter way to do things. A lot of cases a whole lot less, headaches a whole lot worse if you let me show you the way. But okay, you gotta go do it your way. Go do it your way.

Yeah, you let them fail and that's fine. And just tell them, hey, when you fail, fail forward. Let's make better decisions next time. Don't repeat the same mistakes again and again and again. Like you find something different. If you're doing it over and over again, don't keep moving forward in it. Change what you're doing and then move forward in something else.

Right. Well that's the thing. There's a lot of folks right now, tired landlords, struggling landlords, not only in the residential side but the multi family side that are really facing issues. There's a lot of fix and flippers out there that can't find deals because it costs more to flip these days and properties are more and financing of more interest rates are higher. So it's, I call it the golden age of note investing. If you can be coachable and learn the opportunities and market, reaching out for capital and reaching out for assets, there's, there's plenty to go around. You just got to pick up the phone, send an email and just rinse and repeat and get rock and roll.

Absolutely. The look on note flippers faces when I tell them hey, yeah, I just buy their loan from their lender at X amount of a discount. And they're like wait a minute, I'm asking them to take nothing or to take a, you know, a tiny check to walk away when you're negotiating lower than what they even owe with the bank. What are you even talking about? Can you teach me this? And I'm like absolutely, yeah, of course I'm doing this. And they're thinking what I didn't even know. What I didn't even know. I'm like of course you don't.

So you don't know what you don't know. It's not rocket science, but you've got to spend some time investing yourself.

That's so much harder.

Oh, yeah, that's so much harder. Amen to that. So. And you can die in space a whole lot easier.

Can get left up there.

Get left. Exactly. Exactly. What's the best way for our listeners and those watching us to. To connect with you, Reach out to you?

Tiffany, you are going to find me on LinkedIn. You're going to connect with Scott. You're gonna follow him. You're gonna see we're connected on there. And then you can find our YouTube channel we have at Aspen Sage and our website, Aspen Sage Fund.com. and if you dig deeper in there, I've got an Instagram channel. Investing with Tiffany. All the fun ways that you can get a hold of me, you can't look that. You can't not look that hard and find me even my own podcast unveiling journeys on YouTube too.

There you go. Definitely want to go out and listen to that as well. She's doing some great work on there with some great folks as well. Tiffany, this has been a pleasure. You got big plans for the rest of your week this weekend?

Oh, yeah. Like, just enjoy the sunshine. It's California.

It is exactly, exactly. Good stuff there. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights, your. Your journey and your goals out there. I should definitely inspires, hopefully inspires a lot more people and definitely a lot more women out there to take advantage of the space.

So you got this.

You got this. Yes, that's right. You got this, girl. You got this. All right, everybody. Well, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the no Closer Show. We'll put the link there to connect with Tiffany there in the description or on the YouTube or the podcast. But as she said here, go out, take some action. Don't be afraid to achieve big things. And those big things become even bigger things, is if you build a momentum and share what you're doing. Because listen, ladies and gentlemen, plenty of people out there hurting. They gotta know what you're doing. And if they don't know what you're doing, they can't help you and you can't help them. So go out, take smacks everybody, and we'll see at the top. Hey, real estate note investors. This is Scott Carson, the note guy. And I've been an active real estate investor for over 20 years. And for the past 15 years, me and my students relied on one company to help protect our assets and also have to create Our LLC and different entities and business formations and our asset protection to make sure that we're protected and aren't violating the corporate veil. What company is that? That's Laughlin and Associates here. They're out of Reno, Nevada. Huge, huge fan of what they do and the customer service that they provide. Not only me, but to my students, not only across the country, but across the world. Especially for those looking to start businesses here in the United States. Whether you're from Mexico, Canada, overseas, one company you want to reach out to is Laughlin and Associates. Aaron Young has owned this company for quite a few years. Laughlin has been around for over 50 years, and it's really the number one place for you to set up your LLCs through the Nevada LLC or Wyoming or Delaware Limited Trust. They're just an amazing company to not only create your LLCs, but also follow up with the regular bookkeeping that you need to make sure that that corporate veil surrounds your business and keeps you safe from near dwellers. All right? And like I said, I have been a huge fan of them. We've used them for every llc, every entity we use. And they do just an amazing job in answering questions and helping to set up also our future, our estate. A Rockefeller plan or asset protection plan, not only now, but as we evolve and grow more wealth and more assets, Lawful Associates is always there to help answer our questions and help structure the things to keep our assets safe. Don't you want to keep everything you've worked for, whether it's your business, your real estate, your investment, safe and sound from the folks out there trying to take you down a notch. But make sure you talk to the team over at Lawful Associates. You schedule a free phone call at 1-800-648-0966. That's 1-800-648-09 66. Tell them that Scott Carson sent you and they'll take good care of you. Or check them out@laughlin USA.com that's laughlin USA.com Trust me, that's one phone call, one meeting you will never regret.

Sam.