Note Investor/Entrepreneur With Scott Carson From The Real Estate Marketing Podcast With Jerome Lewis

All right, we are ready. All right, we're live. All right. Okay, everyone. Welcome to the remarketing podcast where we talk about everything, real estate, business and marketing, or digital marketing for that for that matter. I'm your host for today. My name is Scott Slacker. I'm a note investor based out of New Jersey. I got started in the business about three years ago and I'm very, very excited to welcome on today our guest, Scott Carson, who's been in this industry for a long time. He was actually one of the first names that came up when I actually heard about the note industry. So like, I am super excited to have him on and to interview him and ask him questions. He's done over well over a thousand deals, has been invested in over 30 of the states in this country and has raised over 50 million in capital. He's highly sought after guest and host for popular podcast the Note Closer Show. An active entrepreneur, he's an expert in real estate, investing, marketing and podcasting. He speaks regularly at different events and industry conventions. That's actually where I met him in person at one point regarding real estate marketing and podcasting, he also helps thousands of investors and entrepreneurs each year create wealth with his debt buying classes, podcasts and coaching. He's again a regular podcast guest. He was recently named, well, not. He was named in 2002, the number four entrepreneur to follow. I don't know if there's more to add to that.

That's 2022. If it says 2022.

Oh, that was exciting. So, wow, that's great. Oh my God. We're really excited to have you on. By U.S. news Reporter magazine and avid sports fan. Spends his time traveling, gardening, making memories with family and friends and loved ones, and originates from Austin, Texas, which is my first mentor in the space. Comes from Dallas, Fort Worth, which you and I both know very well. Another big name in the note industry. So is there anything you want to add to that, Scott?

I think he got it pretty well. You know, we've, I've been an active, like I said, active real estate Investor for over 20 years, known investor for over 15, bought over a billion dollars of distressed. But the thing I think that separates me, I think from a lot of folks, kind of like you said, is that we really, we embrace the marketing aspect, I think then more than anybody else does in our niche. And it literally when you reached out to me, I was like, oh, glad to jump on. Because no matter what you're in and for your listeners out there in your audience, you know, no matter what if you're in fix and flips or run a hardware store or sell tiddlywinks or buy or sell notes or real estate? I think people these days have to realize one very important thing is, yes, you're in that, but before that you're actually, we're all in the media space these days in marketing. And in such a loud world where everybody's, you know, competing for your earballs and your eyeballs, you, you really got to stand out. So I'm really, really honored to be on here. I think it's great what you're doing with the show and your co host, stuff like that. So I think that's just one thing. If folks are listening here today, please listen through. I'm here to give and I want to give you guys as many great little nuggets you can use to implement your business digitally or marketing or whatever it might be. Great.

Yeah. Thank you. And that's one thing I've noticed about Scott throughout the years of watching his content is all about giving and helping people achieve their goals through real estate and investing. And I think that's, that's one of the, that's what I aim to do as well with my own business as I build it up over time. So let me get into some business, I guess, or industry type questions for a moment and then we can move on to maybe something more personal. So what is the most important lesson you've learned in the note industry over your entire career there? Like, I started at wholesaling and moved to notes.

Yeah, that's what a lot of people do. They get into real estate as a wholesaler. And that's kind of what we started back in the day was I was fortunate enough to spend like four years traveling the country pitching mortgages. And I learned from Ron Legrand and all the his experts, stuff like that. And I had a four year apprenticeship with my mentor, Bob Leonidi and Jamie Kayla, and then a very smart marketer by the name of Roland Frazier out of California. So I think the most important lesson I've learned is you've got to be flexible, especially as the market changes. You've got to learn to, I hate to use the word pivot, but you got to learn to adjust or tweak your numbers, tweak what you're focused on. One of the biggest mistakes I made early on in my note investing career is I approached it like a fix and flipper and that I was in that I was, didn't want to modify loans. I was, if I was to buy a note I was going to foreclose. They're deadbeat borrowers. They don't. They've had their opportunity. And I wish I would have gone back and modified a lot of those loans. Now, looking back at the numbers, you know, hindsight's always 20 20. Not all of them would have been reperforming or modified, but a big chunk of them would have that I wouldn't have to lay out a lot of cash. So be flexible, learn what's going on. You know, sometimes, you know, wholesaling is a great way to dive into a lot of things. But don't be afraid to change the dynamic of the conversation. Especially, you know, because a lot of people, when you start wholesaling, you're selling to potential investors that are buying us. Those potential investors could be your funding partners. So I always tell folks like, look, wholesale is great, but if you're going to wholesale, a good wholesaler is going to build a good list of investors. You might as well start marketing for private capital right off the bat because a lot of those folks would gladly still make 6 to 12% passively if the deal allows that without having to deal with it, deal with toilets, tents and trash outs or have to do any of the heavy lifting up there. So if you embrace marketing and you've got a good deal and you know how to market, you can raise capital for that deal. So that would be one of the biggest things, I think early on in my career I had that kind of limiting mindset and I'm glad I adjusted it.

That's interesting because I find it's very, it's very weird. We both have the same first name. And when I first got into notes and I started doing just going into events and, and networking, I was called the no guy because no one else had a no guy. But that was actually one of my biggest things to learn in that space as well, was that you have to be able to be flexible and adapt to the changing circumstances of the markets. So for example, we're going through a time right now where it seems like non performance is like the thing like people are. I keep seeing it marketed over and over and over again to buy non performance because we're in the middle of COVID People have not been paying their mortgages. We have the forbearances. Yeah, it's been interesting. But that the market, I think you're 100% like spot on. Like if you can't pivot or move and figure out what it's doing, you're Dead in the water.

Yeah. And here's the thing too, you gotta, everybody loves non performing because there's usually bigger discounts. There's still a bit of a gap between what we as investors want to pay for the note versus what the banks and hedge funds want to sell that stuff at a discount. There's still a gap, so. But there's still plenty of non performing out there even before COVID out there that's not going back. And so what we see a lot of people do, and I hate, I'm not, I hate saying this, but a lot of people that get into the note business, they get very lazy when it comes to marketing because they're, they get hooked up with a couple hedge funds or not sellers that provide lists on a regular basis and that's low hanging fruit that everybody's looking at. And when those lists or companies go away, as inventory's gotten tighter, people don't market all like there's no deals or Scott Carson or Eddie Speed. They're teaching too many note investors are getting a space and too much competition. I'm like, look, there's plenty of deals. We still find deals. You just have to learn the market and go online and leverage LinkedIn or start targeting, you know, creating short videos talking about what you're doing to attract potential investors or going to the county records. Attract down people that bought a note two years ago or 12 months ago or three years ago. Because you and I both are buyers and sellers, right Scott? We're always buying, always selling. And so if you take that same philosophy and go to the county records to find who's actually bought something, they're more likely to be a seller for you. So you also many note investors, many real estate investors, we don't mind paying 12% for funding. Well, in these days where it's gotten a little bit tighter on the return, you can't give 12% to your funding partners because it's going to eat up a lot of your profit. So you've got to reduce that number. Go back to offering 6 and 7% to investors who aren't doing anything because if they're not doing anything, they don't need to get something without doing any of the work. If they're going to want 12%, they need to go to do the work. But if you're going to do the work to find the deals and manage it, then giving somebody 6% passively to do nothing is really great. Especially in a time like today where inflation is at 6,7% and their money's been sitting there dormant for a year or two, not making anything or. Okay, I'm sorry, let me rephrase it. They're making 0.01% in a savings account or.

Oh yeah, I love that. I love bringing it up to people.

Yeah, or 1% maybe in a certificate of disappointment, as we like to say. Cd.

So yeah, I mean there are some out there right now aspirations. One that is offering a 1% on a savings account, but that's the highest I've ever seen, ever. And that's ridiculous.

Yeah, when you look at the fees or other things involved with it, I mean, I mean technically inflation's always been at 3 or 4%. So you're all, if your money's not making at least that, you're losing buying power. And now with things going on, you have to be, you gotta be active. If you're not gonna be active, hey, 6% is great because that's like 600% higher than what the banks are offering.

Definitely.

You know what I mean? So some of the things, some things that people have to start thinking about differently and pivoting.

Absolutely. So let me ask you this. Who's been your most important, important professional mentor? Like how did you go from doing real estate and then moving into doing notes? Like I have my own process. Love to hear about yours.

So I left, I left banking back in 2004 with a buddy of mine, Boyd Pops. And we started a mortgage company together. And our sponsoring broker was a guy by the name of Bob Leonetti and his business partner Jamie Kalis. So he and she, for four years I traveled the country doing mortgages and cash out refis for investors at all these conferences that Ron Graham was teaching or these workshops. I literally like had an MBA in real estate education over that four years. So. But while we were doing mortgages, Bob and Jamie taught me how to get creative with owner financing and terms and simultaneous closings and how to structure owner finances, but then also the non performing side of the business because they had been in the previous term they had been a mortgage banker and had to take some non performing stuff back and structure that and get it all out. So I literally learned, had like this four year apprenticeship from Bob and Jamie and when everything hit the fan in the mortgage industry in 2008, I just left the origination side and then went out and started dialing for dollars and calling banks. And you know, it's a different market now than it was, you know, back in 2008. Nine and ten. I would make 50 to 100 phone calls three to four days a week to get a hold of these bankers that had non performing notes. And then they would send me these lists and we're talking might be one note or it might be like 33 page PDF with all these notes from these major banks. So if anybody ever out there tells you you can't buy direct from banks and hedge funds, that's a falsehood. You can. Doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank, the banks are interested in selling as long as you know what to say and what not to say. And have a team, you don't have to have a lot of experience because you're putting experience with your team, your vendors, stuff like that. So that I would say Bob, Jamie. And then into that process of 2004 to 2008, they started partnering with a guy by the name of Roland Frazier, who is out of San Diego. He's one of the principals at Digital Marketer. If you don't know who Digital Marketer is, their company here in Austin, Texas. But they put on the North America's largest marketing convention every year called the Traffic and Conversion Summit. And we're talking 6,000, 8,000 attendees in marketing. So for a couple years I gotta learn at the knee of Roland, teach me all these creative marketing strategies and how to leverage video and all this other stuff. So I would say that that 2004 to 2008 period was one of the most instrumental when it came to marketing and learning the note business. And then like I said, I started, when I started calling these banks and using video and stuff like that, I would get a list in that I could cherry pick. And so I wholesaled my first note. I bought a crappy property in Detroit for 500 bucks. I flipped it for scrap metal for 1500. I got a note. I got an apartment complex under contract from Capital One and, and wholesaled it for 35,000. 30 days later I got a 16 unit apartment complex. The note, by all means, not the property, but actually the note, I don't know. And wholesale that note for a hundred grand profit. And started just, that's what I started looking and started buying it. And then I started getting people coming like, man, these are great deals. I said, well, I better start sharing this stuff. So I started sharing videos of me, you know, going through due diligence and talking about what the deal was and filling my way, me walking some properties, when that all has blossomed into, you know, I started getting offers to come speak at different investment clubs and I'd walk in like, hey, people, hey, you're that YouTube. You're that note guy on YouTube, you know, and that happened like four nights in a row. One night in San Antonio, one night in Austin, one. One in San Diego, one in la. And I was like, okay, that's kind of, that's where it kind of sticks. Because it is a niche. I mean, right, Scott? It's a small niche when it comes to. Comes to real estate investing. So it's. The riches are in the niches, as they say.

And that's true. I was from my local ria. I was on a panel of note investors, and they all asked me because I had met them before. They're like, so what tree do you come from? Like, are you Eddie Speed? Are you like, they're like, it's a very small. Like, because they didn't know who I was. And I'm like, yeah, I, I started with Eddie and now I've moved on to other things. But, you know, still, that was, that was my, my base education and everything. That's, that's, that's interesting that your main thing was. It seems like you really focus heavily on marketing.

Yeah, I think that's, that's one of the biggest things. And we still do it to this day. You know, every morning I wake up and we say, okay, what are we marketing today? What aspect can we put in place that's going to work to get the word out? We're doing something that we can almost like the whole set it and forget it aspect of things each day. You know, what podcast am I on or what podcast my recording or did. Like, we've been doing a webinar called Note Night in America for 11 years now.

Wow.

And we do it at least 35 to 40 times a year. Take some time off for holidays or stuff like that, too. But, you know, like, that's Monday night, note night in America, 7pm Central. I know what I'm doing. That's a great. Know, we're sending emails out for that in a Monday. And then like, I just, you know, right before we logged on here, the replay video went out to our database and then we've got other videos there live streaming at the same time. Because that's the thing is when I, when we do a marketing piece, video podcast, that's usually something that's going to be 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It's going to get out there and keep feeding you. And a lot of investors, they don't understand that aspect because they come from a job where they've never had to market themselves. They got a job to show up, they had it. They had to do one activity. And the whole idea of marketing scares them. Like, oh my God, I got. What am I going to say? And I'm like, listen, just start sharing simple things. What are you working on today? You know, what are you, you know, what's, what's your focus? Talk about you. Why do people want to invest with you or what? Why did you get into what you're doing? Simple. Like these questions you're asking me now are all great little videos that you can have on your profile. One thing I've been preaching to people for years to do because I wanted to give people a layup to do. It's like they pull it. Go do short videos on frequently asked questions in the industry or terms. I'm like, you can go to my website or other note investors website and see all these FAQs or terminology, do a short video on those. And I was always crack up. People would never do them. So I was like, screw it, we're doing it now. And so we have done that. And that's one thing we're doing okay every day. We got a little term of the day coming out. We got a little term of the day. Just touch base. Because here's the thing for everybody out there, um, and we mentioned before, everybody's a buyer, a seller or a funding source. My big belief. But 80% of, 80% of sales or conversions happens after the fifth contact. And most investors don't have the patience to follow up with, you know, once an email, once a week to their database for five weeks, or posting regular, on a regular basis and just sharing content before they actually ask for something. So I should, I probably should throw Gary Vaynerchuk in there as a mentor as well. Out of New Jersey too. You might know him.

Oh yeah, love Gary Vee, man.

Yeah. You know, his book Jab Jab, Jab, Right Hook is I think is a marketing bible for most people getting started too.

You know, I've never read it. Now I'm gonna have to go read it.

Oh, yes, you need to go read it. It's a couple years old, but so valuable there, Scott. I mean it's, it's. Some of the, you know, some of the social media has changed a little bit. You know, Google is no longer around and things are different, but it's still the value where you give, give, give and then ask for something.

Okay, yeah, definitely. It's funny that you brought up too. Like closing the sale being like five interactions. That was one of the things Eddie taught me when I first got into it was like you're not closing a note deal. The first conversation or the second conversation. It's going to be broken up across five conversations or whatever. And that's what's actually going to lead the process down to you actually making a good investment. Getting a. Yes. Getting an agreed upon price. Yeah. All that I was. It was very. I'm glad you came up with the same conclusion because that was like I didn't even know because I had no idea where to start.

Well, so we approach things a little bit differently. I'm more of going after institutional debt from banks. Eddie talks a little about that. I know but he's more about owner finance notes in a lot of cases. Yeah, me, me. I don't want to deal with mom and pops. Don't be wrong. I love them. I'll take a look at them but it's much easier for me. What I do is we actually reach out and target banks directly and we target the internal departments at banks that handle the note sales. And when I'm talking about note, I'm not talking about the property sales everybody. I'm not talking about REO or buying the actual real estate. We're buying the first debt. But when we contact banks and reach out to one of four different department names, either special assets department, the secondary marketing department, the chief credit risk officer's desk or the whole loan trading desk or portfolio managers, another name it's in the most we use. We leverage LinkedIn to contact these asset managers. And then we also leverage email because there's some different ways that you can download lists of asset managers from some different websites. And the whole thing about drip marketing is we send an email out at least once a month or twice a month in a lot of cases to a lot of folks and just touch base and you gotta give people realize, hey these asset managers may have something but when I get up bank to contact reach out to me it's not just one note usually it's usually a list of 10 or 50 or 900 like we just got in that we can cherry pick from. And it's a repeat business aspect of things. So I don't. I'm not spending a lot of money on direct mail that I. It's. You're only going to see a small return on. It's all about digital and as I say digital marketing in the 21st century. And Scotty's here to beam me up. And I'm giving her all she's got to help you market like it's a new generation.

I mean, that's what I'm starting to learn now is the digital aspect of marketing. Zero background in marketing whatsoever. My background's in psychology and then cyber security. So, like marketing was not my thing. Analyzing things, I'm right on there. So when it comes to analyzing a no deal, it was great. But the marketing part is something that has I needed education on. Thankfully, the founder of this podcast, that's what he specializes in. So he's taught me so many things.

So one of the things I think you actually have an advantage, Scott, is that psychology side of things. What are people thinking and being able be able to touch that hot button. Because people, if you get in a conversation with somebody and just ask questions, people will tell you what their motivation is or what's the pain. Same thing with asset manager. Hey, what are you looking to sell? What's going on? Are you trying to raise capital? Do you got some, some of these deals have some hair on them? Are they problem children you want to get rid of? Have they made your. Not you made your naughty list for being naughty borrowers? Not paying on time, that's an important thing. But it's also too is, I think when it comes to marketing is you kind of got to tell a story along the way. Don't be afraid to tell your story and what attracts you into what you're doing because there's other people. If you're going through something and have same questions or the same fears and same motivated factors, a lot of other people do too. And, and most people, unfortunately, they get really excited like a new puppy dog and they vomit or as I say, get diarrhea of the mouth and throw up on people on the first time. You've got to share a little bit about what you're doing on. And one of the biggest mistakes we see a lot of new investors make is they don't, like I said, they don't realize it takes time. But just being consistent in what you're doing, consistent with an email once a week out to your warm market list and sharing it to social media once a week is not too difficult. And then just following up and a lot of people like, well, what do I share? Well, it's pretty easy. I mean there's basically four weeks, four to five weeks a month. And one of the things we always tell like look at the calendar and they're like, what do you mean by like Every month is a holiday, right? We have President's Day. We had Valentine's Day in February. We got St. Patrick's Day. The one time everybody wants to be Irish. And I mean, and you look at that, well, that's one email out of the month just wishing everybody a happy holiday or whatever it is, okay? Or happy St. Patrick's Day. You know, the second thing could be something that you're doing, like I'm going to a meetup group or I'm going to investment club or I'm going to a conference. Something shows that you're doing something different or educating or a book that you just read, something that would add true value. Third thing could be a past case study or a deal that you're working on now. And the fourth thing could be, hey, I'm looking for funding on this, or I have got some opportunities. Or, hey, if you're, you know, there's a lot of great things. And if you really approach it like that once a week, what's going on? Well, you can eliminate 25% of your marketing right off the bat, make it easy because it's weak and stuff. You look at your past case studies, deals you've offered on that you didn't close, you could tell that story about why you didn't close or what happened during due diligence. You could, you know, talk about something personal, Trip, family. People love seeing that personal side of things. I think so many people market all the time, like notes, notes, notes, real estate. And people don't want to deal with a robot. They want to deal with people that have personalities. And it's okay to be unique and goofy in your own self. And like, we found in a lot of our students that a lot of them are actually musicians or also, like, homeschooling their kids. I'm like, well, that's the great stuff to share. If there's a lot of people that are doing that, share that what you're doing this week or what your difficulties are at worst case. Worst case, if you can't think of anything, you pull two or three articles on real estate and send an email out to your database with those interesting articles. And you share a paragraph of why you thought this was important to everybody out there. So that's kind of the simple format because Rome wasn't built overnight. And, you know, you've got to build it. You know, that's kind of why we have my. If you're listening to this, you can't see it, but my green screen is a brick wall behind Me. And it's. It's that way because each day you're putting. Every time you send something out, posting, you're building your wall, you're building your bridge, one brick at a time. And that's that whole aspect of this. It doesn't always have to be about notes, notes, notes. It's more about what you are doing. And one of the things when we. That you'll find interesting, Scott, is when we launched, when we were starting to think about doing a podcast, the Note Closer show, we'd already been doing a lot of videos, but we were in Vegas at an event. We saw, well, who's a Shark? Not we saw Robert Herjavec, but also the guy that likes to sell everything. You know, I mean, the original Shark Tank. And he got up on stage and talked about, hey, yeah, exactly. So I was like, he got there. So you got to start incorporating video in what you do with everything. This is back in like 2016, okay, six years ago. I said, okay. And this is the time that Facebook Live had just come out. So we went back and I told myself, I said, okay, we're going to do a video a day. We're going to do it live, and we're going to do it for a period of time. It may be three minutes, it may be an hour. We're just going to share what we got going on today, what's going on in life. If people want to be a fly on the wall, what are we doing on a daily basis? So we did that 150 business days straight. Okay, okay. And that's, you know, almost six months of content every day. And it helped build a following. But we just shared goofy stuff. We shared fun stuff was going on and just. And built a lot of rapport. It built a following. So, like, okay, now's the time to launch a podcast because we have this following engagement. People want to hear and see what we do. And always, the most interaction wasn't just always about notes. It was if we were doing something fun or something stupid or I was dressed up as Uncle Sam is Fourth of July, or just being my goofy, big old self. Therefore, people love that and that helps people identify that if I can make fun of myself and have a jovial time and not take myself too seriously, then people will relax a little bit and realize, oh, I can actually be myself and have, have success as well.

Yeah, that's true. We definitely. We respond to people. We don't buy from robots. We buy from people. The more human you can make yourself, the better it's funny you brought up. A lot of your students are musicians before even getting into any of that. I was actually a musician for a long time. Drummer.

I love it. Hey, you know, I played the trombone in, in junior high and love music. I may not be much of a musician these days, but I think we love the, the beautiful sounds of a performing note.

We all do. Oh my God. Performing is the best. You can't beat a performing note.

That's what she said.

All right, so let me ask you the next question. So what's one thing in the note industry that almost everyone disagrees with you about?

So one thing that a lot of people there's always the. This is the thing that I just infuriates me and is when people tell you that they can't find deals, this just bugs the shit out of me. It aggravates the crap because I usually there's two things I'll ask somebody. When somebody says, well, you can't find any deals, I'm like a. Are you marketing to asset managers? Are you actually going after deals? And the answer to that usually is no. Okay. Are you sending an email out to your data based on a weekly basis? No. Well, yeah. If you're not marketing to direct to banks, you're not going to find anything. It's like Lily sitting there. I'm waiting for the love of my life to show up and she's just going to come to me because I'm thinking about her. And that's the biggest aggravating. There's a lot of you could say trolls or people out there, oh, I can't find any deals. There's too many educators. Look, if you know how to market and understand and can go up to the sources versus being lazy and yes, banks will sell to you. You just got to know what to say, what not to say. That's the biggest thing I would tell you. There's plenty of deals out there. Whether you're going after institutional debt or you're going after owner finances, you just got to get off your ass market and you still don't have to do put 40 hours a week into it. If you many an Investor start off 10 hours a week and are working a little bit, you know that side hustle from 7pm to 2am with marketing and LinkedIn and emails, there's still plenty of opportunity there for you. Even if you want to drop letters out, you just got to market and market on a regular basis.

That's actually how I started. I was working a full time Job in behavioral psychology and started part time, you know, five, ten hours a week and all that. And you're. You're absolutely right. Like, you have to get on the phone. If you have to get on the phone, or you have to get in the email or you have to get on the social media or whatever platform and start doing things. If you don't, you get no response. You can't just. You can't just sit there and wait for something to come to you. That's not how things work, how goals work either. You don't achieve your goals in general by just sitting down and waiting. You have to do something.

Yeah. That's the whole thing. Let me sit down and wish in one hand and shit in the other one and see which one's going to fill up first. You know what I mean?

I love that. I love that. So let's move on to some personal questions. Okay. What's the best compliment you've ever given? Gotten?

Ooh, the best compliment I've ever gotten, man. I would. I would say one thing. I was awarded the educator of the year in 2014. And the notes pitchers was pretty cool. But the best thing is success. The best compliment I get is when I see students of mine close on deal. Like, I just had this guy, Larry, he just closed on his first note deal. The guy the seller wanted 15 grand for. We got him down to 13.

Nice.

We had a market. He actually sent out some. We showed him how to find local IRA investors in his neighborhood. So we helped him design a letter, and he sent this letter out to 77 investors. Well, he has had 15 respond to him in a matter of 30 days. He's raised $1 million in private capital.

Wow.

Closed on this deal. It's worth. The property's worth 80. The borrower owes like 40, hadn't paid in over a year. We said, okay, you closed on it. He put it. It's not even with servicing and notes. You have a servicing company that collects payments most of the time. Well, the service hasn't even transferred yet. And we said, listen, contact the borrower with a letter and tell them, here's what you're offering. Here's an option. Well, the borrower called yesterday or the day before and is already ready to modify already to bring $2,500 to the table and start paying $100 extra a month to stay in the property or keep the property as a duplex that he's right now at.500 aside. And the seller just had not really worked the deal. He was Busy doing other things. And now it's a phenomenal return on investment, not only for Larry, but he got cheap money. The investor that he borrowed the 20 grand to buy the deal, he's only paying 6%. So he's only paying $100 a month to his investor, $100 a month to his investor, but he's going to be bringing in 450, $460 like that on a monthly basis, plus. Plus 2500 on the front end. So those are the things that just get me excited about more than anything else. It's compliments, when people go out and take action and success. So that's the biggest compliment I get out of that is, you know, there's not enough people doing enough things. I think you really look at things, only about 10% of people take action.

Yeah, that's true.

You know what I mean? And so those that take action, I get really excited about. That's the biggest compliment is seeing people grow success and, and accomplish dreams. And that light bulb go off when they realize, oh, I can't actually do this, make things happen.

Yeah, that's. That's wonderful. I love, I mean, the same thing when I talk with people as well. Like when I, I, when I was working in the behavioral psychology field like that I worked with mostly autistic children.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I, on a daily basis, was getting them to do things that they weren't doing for their parents or their teachers and seeing people succeed. And the same thing when I talk to people about the real estate investing notes. I've done a number of studies in finance and all that sort of thing. And when I can break down for people these concepts so they understand investing and the light bulb goes off, like, that's the best moment you could ever have is when they understand, like, wait, money doesn't work the way I thought it did.

Right.

And notes for me was the perfect way because it's passive. What you were saying made. He's making 400amonth passively. He made money on the front end. And if he wants to, he could sell it at some point in the future and make some cash. It's really your chalkboard at that point. And when I first got it started in wholesaling, it was a second job. It was not passive at all. And you needed a lot of legwork to really make it work for you. Whereas notes, you still need to put in the work. But it wasn't nearly as time intensive. And once it was set up, it was ready to go. So, like, my first note I bought three years ago and it was putting 200 into my business account every month. I didn't have to worry about. I'm like, this is fantastic. He paid it off. I've got to buy more. But definitely it was great.

No, I was just gonna say that's the beauty about. I agree. Wholesaling, you gotta basically go to work every day, every month to make it. If you can buy notes or something, that's re perform, that builds cash flow. That's really how you build long term wealth is in that cash flow aspect of it. So yeah, kudos to you man. That's awesome. Yeah, it's a great feeling.

Yeah, I love it. I wholeheartedly agree. So here's another personal question. If you can go, if you can go back and give your 18 year old of a piece of advice, what would it be?

18 year olds. I was straight out of high school getting ready to go play college football and I had an academic and FX scholarship. And I think the biggest thing is, hey, realize that you don't know everything. I think a lot of us kids when we're young, we think we know everything, we're invincible. And while I was coachable a lot of times I always say to people, hey, be more coachable, listen to people. You don't know everything yourself. And I think it's a lot. That's a hard thing for a lot of folks. Especially when I came into real estate investing the first time I grew up a small town, Ingleside, Texas. Like when I was living there was like 5,000 people max down by Corpus Christi, Texas, okay. And my dad owned the local hardware store. So I grew up in the hardware store fixing everything, being the weekend labor with electricians and plumbers. And so I've done anything from digging septic tanks, building houses all the way to, you know, fixing stuff as well, putting roof on. So when I got into real estate investing, I thought I knew everything. I was like, oh yeah, I can fix it. I'm going to be your next, next landlord, Lean Lord, you know, landlords, I say, and I screwed up. I totally screwed up and I took that well, I know everything mentality when I should have been seeking out more coaches in the real estate space. And so that would be the biggest thing I tell myself, hey, you're not going to know everything. Seek, seek guidance, don't seek, don't seek advice, seek counsel. And there's a big thing that's different out there. Everybody in there, everybody in the world can give you advice. Everybody's Got advice like they've got an asshole. Okay, yeah, they can give you advice, but doesn't mean they know what the hell they're talking about. I mean, your. Your mom could give you advice about being a note investor, but she's never bought a note. She can't give you good advice. What you want to do is seek counsel. Seek from people who are where you're at or where you want to be or doing the things you want to do. And that's the most. One of the most important things, like seek counsel. Don't seek advice because we all have people in our ears, and if they're giving advice, it's. It's coming from their limited learning experience. A lot of times it's to protect us. You know what I mean? All. You can't do that, which is really say, hey, we want you. We don't want you to get hurt, you know, versus you. You can do it, you know, or go talk to this person. That's why coaches are so important these days. You got to find somebody who's doing what you want to do and listen to what they say, you know, that's. That's. That's the golden rule.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I have a mentor from way back. He used to call advice add, like, as an adding hyphen. Vice is if people have enough vices, they don't need you to add more. And I love that. I was like, that's actually good. I try not to give advice to people. I try to show them what to do or where to go or where to get resources. And, I mean, I've been guilty of this myself. Some of my colleagues, I try to research and do things on my own. And so in recent years, I've really worked hard on being able to, like, go seek out the experts like Ron Legrand you mentioned. I was at an event two weeks ago where he was speaking, and my one colleague, he. He just authored a book that Ron Legrand wrote the foreword for. So that's one of the reasons why we were there. It was really a great event. But, like, if you don't go out to those people, you don't reach out and be first off. You'll be willing to give to them first. You also got to make sure it's worth their time. But if you don't, you're just kind of left, you know, with your hands in your pockets, trying to figure it out on your own. And, I mean, I know you have a strong marketing background. That's your thing. But, like, Marketing is a college subject. You can spend six years learning about marketing. Like, do you really want to spend that time to think you could do it on your own? Or do you want to find someone who's a successful marketer or copywriter, like Dan Kennedy is a huge one. Like, and learn from. Someone's already doing it. Well, like, you have to. Yeah, that's, that's. Honestly, I would probably tell that to myself as well. Like, don't, don't try to do everything by yourself.

Well, that's the thing. And we could, we could, we could throw back to Ron Legrand. And Ron disappeared off the circuit for a couple years.

Yeah.

Because back in, I mean, he was sick and he's recovered from prostate cancer. But back in 2008, he's, you know, 40 years as a real estate, residential junkers, you know, handyman, fixer, stuff like that, wholesaling options. But he got ahead of himself and started buying, getting into the commercial space. But he didn't have good counsel when it came to. He put people that his coaches in charge of commercial projects that had never done a commercial deal. And he was trying to do things creatively and like, it's a commercial space you're gonna have. If you want to do this, you're gonna have to sign on a dotted line and make some things. And he had a lot of these commercial deals that just blew up and bad things. And he literally had to go learn, okay, what do I have to do? How did I make mistakes here and learn from it and go. Even the best in the industry run into issues and you've got to learn to pivot and seek out those that are doing. I mean, I love what you and my ex wife worked with autistic children. She was a board certified behavior analyst. And yeah. And parents going through that, that's a stressful situation because all your dream, all your dreams of your kids have gone away and now you're just trying to have quality of life. And that's a major, it's almost like a death.

There's just survival at that point.

Yeah, exactly.

And it.

Yeah. And that's. Unfortunately, we have a lot of that happening in the United States right now. People are struggling. They don't want. They've been laid off or not working and they're struggling to figure it. And so they have that fight or flight mindset going on, that lizard brain, versus being able to sit here, okay, I need to go find somebody and realize I need to start putting this stuff in now and doing it, you know, versus Trying to just do stupid stuff. And you know, as they always say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And then the next best time is the day. So, you know what I mean with the marketing aspect of things. Just start planting those seeds today and it'll pay off in the long run for you.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's crazy. So let me ask you this. So what does your morning routine look like? You want to remember there are four amers.

No, no, I'm not a foreigner. No.

Navy SEAL style.

Yeah. No, no. I mean I'm usually a night owl. I'll be up to 12 o' clock or something like that, but I usually am up by 9 o'. Clock. Usually the fact that you work for yourself makes it. But I get up, alarm goes off, 8:30, I get up, make sure the cats and our animals don't eat my leg because they're hungry, you know what I mean? Make some coffee. And then one of my favorite things when the weather is nice is I'll go sit up my back patio here in my backyard and just kind of, kind of relax, take a deep breath before I dress the day. A lot of times I'll listen to Tony Robbins and do some of his priming in my head and approach that, the approach that day before I ever check, I don't check emails until usually noon, you know, 11 o' clock sometimes at least if it's an emergency, I look at my cell phone and for text message. But most of the time it's like, okay, what do I have going on today? Who do I, what am I doing? I don't take meeting, I don't take meetings before 10 o' clock. And then it's just rock and roll. So it's that morning. Then I usually will take a little break in the afternoon for about an hour and same thing, walk outside, get some fresh air, relax a little bit and then come back. And I'll usually work till 6, 7 o' clock at night in a lot of cases. So I work a little bit later, this is earlier. But the whole point is unwind, relax. And it takes a lot of stress away when you know what the heck you're gonna do. And then you know, at night before I log off for the day at 7 o' clock or so, I'll look at, okay, what do I have going on tomorrow? What are the big rocks I gotta get taken care of. And then I sleep really good, sleep really comfortably. A lot of people when they don't know what to do they sleep restlessly because they're worried about what's going on, what they need to accomplish?

Yes, totally. I suffer from that a lot.

Well, and here's the thing. Get rid of your to do list. You know, I'm not a big fan of to do list. Yes, there's things that need to get done, but I'm a bigger advocate of big rocks. And every day we try to figure on 1, 2, or 3. As we saw big rocks, these are going to be either income generating activities or capital raising activities. And marketing falls on both that side. So it's either us reaching out to bankers, doing a podcast, reaching out to investors to fund our deals and go on that route, or closing on a trade or close selling an asset. And so that's the thing. Is everything else, like balancing your checkbook or, you know, taking the trash out, that can be done? Minimal. You don't need to put that on your list because a lot of people, we hypnotize ourselves and think we got a lot done when we do a to do list. And, you know, mentally, we see this list of the three big things we need to get done and get all these things that we got done. So we. This false sense of accomplishment. Oh, we got 20 things done today. Well, really? Did you. You really didn't, did you. Are you any further along? Did you make a sale? Did you close on a deal? Did you make some offers? If you didn't do that, if you're not accomplishing things towards your goals, you're not really moving forward. You're lying to yourself, and you don't want to lie to yourself. So that's why we always try to focus on the most difficult things, get those out of the way, and then we can fill the rest of the day with things that aren't the most important things to get done.

It's like being a hamster on the wheel. Like, you're doing things, but you're really not getting anywhere. You're getting your chores done. Sure. All right, fine. You're getting your chores done. That's good.

Yeah, but I mean, I mean, here's the thing. If you look at your daily schedule and this was something that was instilled on us. Look at your daily schedule. Everybody has 24 hours a day, seven days a week to get things done. Look at your schedule and look what you're really doing, and I guarantee you can squeeze an hour a day to do something. If people say, I'm too busy doing things, I guarantee you probably sloughed off and didn't, didn't get what you needed done. Focus on getting the most important things done and then you can slough off after. But you also feel more. It's kind of like the whole thing with the military. They start off with making your bed, right?

Yeah.

Make your bed first. It starts the day off with an accomplishment which sets you up for success if you don't know what you're doing or have no direction or start off with a failure. And that's why a lot of people, when they run into a failure, it seems like bad things happen after again because they, their mind is in that, oh, I screwed up. Oh, something else bad happened. Oh, woe is me. And it's like a domino effect. Whereas if you start with something good or something positive, it can have a whole different outlook on your day for you.

Yeah, definitely. I started doing that a while back. Making my bed in the morning when I get up. When I first heard about it was at Navy SEAL doing a speech.

Yep.

I can't remember the guy's name though, but he was. Very, very powerful speech, very inspirational.

And it's got a best selling book, I think it's titled make your bed. I think it's one of the.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. I don't remember his name though. Offhand. It's. It's driving me nuts right now. What I did, I made my bed and when I came home from work, because I was working at the time, like when I came home and it was time for me to go to bed, like seeing a made bed before I got in it. I don't know what it is about it, but it was a psychological like, oh, this is nice. I don't know what it is.

It's just like.

Even though I went through the rest of the day doing what I had to do, it just felt good to see a made bed when I was ready to go turn in for the night.

Exactly. Well, it's, it's. William McRaven is the author of make youe Bed. Yeah. He was a new. I believe. Yeah. Or Admiral. Admiral, I think is what he was.

Admiral McRaven. That's it. Yeah, that's him. Yeah. His speech was very inspirational to me. I loved it. He went through a bunch of things that people should do. I recommend everyone go ahead and look it up. It's on YouTube. You can find it. And listen to his whole speech. Like, listen to it. This is coming from a man who's done some pretty incredible things.

Yeah.

I got a couple questions as well. So we got Some of the personal questions done, some. Some bonus ones, more related to marketing and then one with you and I talked about before, but I'm going to tag that on the end. So what are some of the biggest challenges you faced in your business when it comes to marketing and branding? You are very big on that. But were there challenges and what were those?

Yeah, I will say yeah. Back in. Here's so, yeah, back in 2009, 2010, in the heyday, I had a couple of fix and flips that the market I bought at a discount that were now upside down because the market crashed. Right. Like a lot of people. And I did know, I just gone through divorce, had just stopped at a partnership that ended and then was dealing with these assets. And I was like, I just got to get out of these. These are like albatrosses. They're literally like anchors pulling me down. So we were able to get rid of those two investment properties and then I literally just sold. I said, I gotta get out of stuff here in Austin. And so I sold everything that I own, basically. Even I had a garage sale and it was going to move in. My brother. I said, I had just taken a little bit of time to regroup, you know, what's my goals, what I want to accomplish and make things happen. And I said, okay, let me just start sharing what I'm doing on a daily basis. Maybe that will help. And so I started a blog. I said, I need to make some money. I need to make 100k this year. I said, well, let me do 100. Let me start a challenge of 100k in 100 days. And I was like, I'm just going to share what I'm doing to try and make 100k in 100 days. So every day I would write a little blog and a little, little video about what I was doing. And by day 55, I was inundated with so many deals and I had to stop doing the blog. Cause I was so busy that I ended up making 100k in 75 days versus 100 days. Yeah, but that's the thing. I think a lot of people come to the point where like I got money, I need, I need money, I need to close. And I was like that. I was like, I couldn't pay my bills, but let me just start sharing where I'm going. And people would like send me deals with this, hey, I got 25 or 50 grand to invest. This looks like a good deal. You're sharing. Let me jump on and partner with you. And so that was one of the things is if you're going through hell, just start reaching out to people, start sharing what you're going through. Because a lot of people are often like, oh, you need help. And let's, you know, you got a deal, let me help you. And then it was kind of funny is I started sharing what I was doing and I said, okay, let me get out of Austin for a little a fresh start. I said, I've got the time now. I'm divorced. Okay, I started making a little money from this. I said, let me think about what do I like to do? I said, well, I'd love to go to all the Major League baseball parks. And one of my biggest goals was always to go to all 30 Major League Baseball parks. And so my mentor, our mentors, I said, write your goals down. Write it down somewhere, right? So I wrote my goals down. I said, okay, start of the 2009 or 10 season. And it was, it was February actually. So. Wow. Now I think about, like, literally right about this time of the year. And so I pulled up ESPN and I said, okay, what's the. When did the Rangers open up and when are they Houston? So I plotted this 30 week trip across the country to hit every Major League baseball park, just in theory. I even put it in my calendar. Who the team was playing and the days for it. Well, over the next couple of weeks, it was funny. I was putting, you know, videos up and blogs. I was like, man, I'm not seeing a lot of traction. You know, one viewer is kind of just disappointing. Well, all you need is one viewer in some cases. So I started getting phone calls from people, said, hey, we saw your blog about what you're doing. We saw your video. Would you, can we use it in our blog for our rea club? I'm like, yeah, sure, go right ahead. Like, what would you like? And they're like, would you like to come speak? I'm like, speak? Yeah, sure, when you want me, come speak. And they're like, well, we got these openings and I looked at my calendar and it lined up perfectly with when I would have been in that city to watch a baseball game. And so literally so, as I always say, it's like divine. You never know who's watching is when you share stuff. That's so marketing. Like people get. I don't see a lot of feedback. I'm not getting opt ins. I'm not getting people to respond. And we all go through that. But I was like, okay, done. So I literally, like, I said, I'd already sold them most stuff. I said, okay, let's do this. So we planned. We went on the road, and what we thought would be 30 weeks of traveling turned into three and a half years, almost four years of nonstop travel. And it led to us kind of building this grassroots effort where I'd be speaking in a meetup group, or I would be meeting with bankers in Florida or Kit Coral or North Carolina and looking at their portfolios. And so that was one of the most important lessons. It was like, listen, just share it. You may get 10 views, but maybe that one view is what you need out there. And it's really easy to give up, give up. Oh, this isn't working. You got to give stuff time for seeds to take place. And so, like that time back in 2009, I was in a really bad spot mentally, and things that's like, I just got to get out of it. I think it comes back to. I had a good chance to meet Mark Victor Hansen back then, and, you know, he's the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he had. I had some tape, you know, cassette tapes, you know, So I was like, okay, let me listen to him. And he had this series that I would listen to when I got really in a bad, bad mindset, I would listen to it. You know, I was driving, or I just go sit in my. My truck and listen to it, and I'd be in a better spot. And I got a chance to meet him last year, two years, actually, 2020, and now we're actually good friends. And I shared with him, I said, mark, I said, there was this tape series back in 2009 that you had. And it really got me through a rough spot, and it helped me do that. And he goes, you know what, Scott? He goes, it's funny you think about that, but if this is a tape series that you're talking about, I was in the worst spot myself when I shared that. And me being able, trying to coach myself and help others get through bad spots helped me get through a bad spot. And that was one of the most powerful things. I was like, okay, I just got to share what's going on. And even no matter what kind of crappy mood I'm in, I got to smile and share something, add value out there, because, like I said, you know, the idea of things going viral these days, it can happen. But most of the time, you just need your core of sharing and listening to your warm tribe of people you're connected with. And you never Know who's going to share it or see it and just be a complete difference maker, not only in your life, but also in their lives as well.

Yes, that's very powerful. Like, I've noticed that myself. When I. When I got started into this space, I didn't do very much marketing because I don't have experience with it, but I started talking about what I'm doing. There was a real estate meetup that I would attend every Saturday at 7 before COVID And it just so happens one of the guys that would come to that meetup was on the board of directors from my local ria and they had no. No people that he knew of. So he was asking me questions about notes. And so I would, you know, I would share with him. And then I can't remember how many months. I think it was three months ago that he said, hey, I want you to be. I was November. Yep, it was November. He said, I want you to be on a panel. We got some note investors coming up and we want you to be on a note investors panel for our main meeting. They just asked me to start speaking very similarly. The same meetup, there was another guy who's in the board of directors for ria, based out of Philadelphia, and he said, hey, I'm doing some stuff remotely with some RIAs and Ohio, would you do a note presentation? And I'm like, okay. So now I'm being asked to do things and all just because I'm talking to people about what I'm working on and, and what my current goals are, and people will pitch in and the same thing happens. If you're going through a bad spot. If you're going through a bad spot and you share what you're going through, people will rally behind you. Especially today, with things being so digitally connected, there's really no reason why you can't just share it. It might be a stranger, but it'll be someone for sure.

Yeah, exactly.

Let me ask you, what is. What do you think in terms of marketing and your experience in real estate is a, like the biggest mistake that people get into with marketing, like just coming into it.

So. So they think it can happen overnight. That's the thing, is that I can just start doing this right now. I've got a friend and a client of mine that she spent all this money on a show that's coming out online, stuff like that. I'm like, well, what do you have? Where are you sending people to?

Okay.

You know, do you have a website? I'm like, no, she Goes like, no, not really. Like, so you filmed this whole show without giving a place for people to connect with you, you know, and these days, you got to have a website, really, more than anything else. And people just don't bother a lot of times, like, oh, or. Or they'll create a website, but they won't go out and create any content that'll send people back to them. And that's. I think it's one of the biggest mistakes people make. They. They go get. They go pay some company to put a website together, and then they just leave it at that. They don't go out and post on LinkedIn. They're not appearing on podcasts. I think podcast is such a great way to get your message out or just work. And there's so many real estate investing podcasts looking for content or marketing. You know, I'm on one after this as well, too. So just. You have to realize, embrace the suck. Okay? You should put that hashtag, embrace the suck. You're gonna suck at it. Your first couple episodes are gonna suck. Your first couple posts are gonna suck. I have to give a big shout out to my. My significant other, Stephanie Goodman. Stephanie is actually working on a. Been a big pet advocate. She's been my VP of operations for years, but she's got a passion for helping animal parents, you know, cat lovers and dog lovers. And she's put. She's wanting to put. She's been. Had a goal for three years, just put this summit on. She's finally doing it.

Excellent.

And she's like, been scared of video, but now she's realized, wait, this isn't as difficult as I thought it was. Oh, there's this cool tool I can use to do a selfie that can read off what I'm saying. The teleprompter app. And so she's totally embraced it. And it's just. It's a beautiful thing. I'm like, listen, just embrace it's going to suck the first few times. You can always go back and delete those, but let's just get the word out. People want everything to be perfect before they send an email or post a video or something like that. Screw perfection. Perfection equals broke. Delivered equals success. Here's the thing, we all have smartphones, right? We've got like, I got my iPhone here, version 13, or whatever it is, version 13. If Apple or Steve Jobs had waited to send the perfect phone out, they never would have delivered the first iPhone. And there's always software. They got to get it delivered. And so I Always say, if you're writing an email, get. To send the damn email. If you're doing a video, just shoot it and upload it. You always can get better and hone your craft. And that's. That's the most. That's another one thing people like, oh, I'm gonna start a website, but I'm Ignore it or I'm gonna. It's got to be perfect. Well, nobody gives a rat's ass about perfect. If you come out of the gate looking so perfect at home, people, you're actually going to turn people off because, like, oh, wow, they've been spending. I can't do what Scott's doing or what she's doing because she just looks too polished. And just, Just get the. Get. Send the email, hit upload. That's one of the most important things you can do.

It's so funny. We were literally one of the guys. So I have accountability group that I'm part of. We meet twice a week, sometimes even more over zoom. You know, we share goals, we hold each other accountable. If you haven't met your objective for the week, like, hey, what's going on? Do you need help or are you just being lazy? Like, what's up? But yeah, I'll see if I can find it. He said a similar thing that you said. He said perfection is like, will make you broke. But this is so funny that I'm hearing it twice in the same day. Yeah, that's. But it's true, though. Like, action is more important. You can always adjust as you go. A colleague of mine helped me with writing a, like, a small primer book on note investing and what notes are. And he said here, he gave me a bunch of things to do. He said, just do it and we can fix it. We can modify it, we can make it better later, but get it up, get it out there, start sharing it with people. Excuse me, I'm gonna drink water. But.

Yeah, nobody sees what's. What's not posted. I mean, you can have all this great knowledge in your head and experience, but if you're not sharing it in some important fashion, it's, you know, people aren't gonna learn from that. And that's. That's always been the thing. We are such a wealth of information, but unfortunately, Vulcan mind melds don't work in this world society. You know what I mean?

Not a thing. Not a thing. So, I mean, I think we've really covered a lot today. I want to ask a couple more questions before we close out. I don't Want to hold you up too much longer for your next podcast.

We're good, we're good.

What are three books that you would recommend to our audience?

So the first one I would recommend is Tribes by Seth Godin. It's an easy book. I'm actually looking at a copy here in my bookshelf right now. It books about how that we are all a part of different tribes, whether it's our work tribe, our PTA tribe or neighborhood tribe or family tribe. And tribes out there are looking for leadership and in the absence of good leadership, they'll go the loudest voice. That could be completely wrong. But they go, you know, look at our political system. A lot of our politicians are not good. Yeah, exactly. But it's an easy read. Talking about, hey, you are, you should be the tribe leader. If you are doing something, it's okay to step up. People are really looking for leadership and if it's not going to be you, who should it be? And that's the first book I would recommend. Easy to read. Second book is a little bit more in depth. It's Outwitting the Devil written by Napoleon Hill.

You've probably heard of thinking I have that on audio. I love it.

It's such a great thinking. Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and co written by Sharon Lecter. So actually Napoleon Hill wrote this book back in 1938, but it was never published. It was actually his wife would let him publish it because it's him having a conversation with the devil in 1938. They would have locked him up, you know, I mean, had psychologists like you come to interview him. You know what I mean? But what it is, it's basically him sitting down, have a conversation with the devil asking how is the devil successful from keeping people from reaching their full potential? And he says, you know, the devil says, well, we just cause people to drift. We put some shiny objects. You know, shiny object syndromes are squirrel where they're distracted. And the people that are the most successful are the ones that are more focused. They say no to these things until they reach their full potential and accomplish some things. And so I was actually Sharon Lengter is a friend of mine. She's the co author of Rich Dad Poor dad too. So she don't know. She was saying that when the Napoleon Hill foundation brought it to her, I don't know, 10, 12 years ago, she didn't want to really tweak it too much. So she went back and added just a little paragraph at the end of each chapter, a little bit thinking and Communicating what she thought Napoleon Hill would think of in today's world. And so it's a great book. I think it's a must read for every entrepreneur because we all drift. We all get that, you know, multiple shiny syndrome, you know, so that's number.

Two in the show. Notes. I know where I heard it. I didn't read it. I. I listened to it on YouTube. There's actually somebody who narrated it in two different voices. So it's. It literally sounds like a conversation between a guy and the devil, and it's great. And I. Sometimes while I'm driving or whatever, I'll put that on my. My audio and just listen to it.

Yeah, I think everybody. Everybody should listen to that one. And then the third book, man, there's so many good ones out there. But I would probably go back to the E. Myth by Michael Gerber. Talking about especially the E. Myth Revisited is I would say, you know, think of Grow rich is also a great one. But I think the E. Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber talks about how we, as entrepreneurs, we wear three different hats, and it's that juggle aspect of things. And if you can delegate two out of the three hats, you'll find a lot of success. Oftentimes, we as entrepreneurs, we end up becoming the person in charge of R and D, or we're also in charge of customer service. When our true blood is on, you know, going forward and creating, innovating, and a lot of entrepreneurs, we drop the ball. We're, you know, I'm guilty of this. We're all guilty of dropping something if we're trying to do it all ourselves. And unfortunately, most of us as real estate investors, we're control freaks. You know, it's hard for us to delegate, but the more you can delegate to staff or virtual assistants or partner with people or align yourself with people that are good at your weaknesses, you'll find success a whole lot faster. So that would be. You know, the E Myth is definitely something I read on a regular basis, and I would throw jab, jab, jab, right hook in there as well if we need a fourth one.

Yeah, I'm gonna read both of those. I haven't read the Emyth or the Emyth Revisited yet. I've heard of it multiple times. I just got sidetracked in other. Other books and things like that, so I'm definitely. And jab, jab, right? Was it jab, jab right.

Hook, jab, jab, jab, right.

Hook, jab, jab, jab, right. Yeah. Because I'M a big fan of Gary Vee. I like his, I like that the energy brings the things. I like his philosophy on a lot of things as well. The funny thing is, like watching videos of him, he still goes like to garage sales. Like on the weekend he and his son go out to garage sales even though he's worth so much and he has all this, this Internet fame, like he's going out the garage sales, making deals and bargaining with people.

Well, because he likes the side hustle. And I think part of that, honestly more so than anything else, is he's just showing his tribe and out there, hey there, there's opportunities around us and I've said that before, Gary, if you're a real estate investor, go to garage sales and talk to the people putting on the garage sales. Because I guarantee it's probably an estate sale, some sort. So somebody's passed on and they have an asset they're looking to move. Or B, we're starting to see a repeat of what happened in 2008. It's becoming a garage sale economy where people bought all this stuff, toys and trinkets when the good, it was good. But now that they've been laid off or other things, they need to sell their stuff to pay their mortgage, it can be an opportunity for finding, finding subject to deals or potentially distressed debt as well that you take over.

That's a really, I mean, think about that. That's a really good point. It's crazy.

And if you take your spouse, they think you're just having fun out looking at stuff and spending that time together, which is good. But it's also a prospecting thing. So now you can write off the mileage as you're driving around looking at these things.

Get your talents in order, everyone. And get your accountants in order. Make sure that you're writing it the right way. Yeah, we'll take everything you got. So what are three podcasts you recommend? Obviously yours. You have a podcast, right?

Yeah, we've got three podcasts. We've got the Note Closure show podcast which is I think our seven. We just recorded our 700 episode. 1.2 million downloads. No Night in America, which is our weekly Monday night webinar. That's a replay out there for you so you can listen to them anywhere. And then we have Note Camp podcast, which is basically it's a replay of our mid year convention with our speakers. And we've got a weekly episode coming out from last year's conference that'll lead up to when we have it in June. But Business Lunch by Roland Frazier is one that I listen to, is a really great one out there for targeting entrepreneurs and business owners. It'd be great for your audience. And then the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with my buddies Matt Wolf and Joe Fear, they're big on digital marketing and tools and software to help you with your, your marketing business. So yeah, I mean podcasts are great. I love them. I think it's becoming the calling card of like having a book to give away these days you have a podcast, but just stick with it. And I want to throw something to your listeners right now. Hey you guys, you're listening to this. Do Scott and the co hosts a favor, go over, hit that subscribe button and then where you see Leave a five star review. Leave a five star review. These guys, we, as podcasters, we love hearing from our audience. And anytime we get any type of, you know, audience feedback or what you liked or hear from you, it gives us a nice little warm feeling in our hearts that you're listening out there. Because sometimes it feels like we're talking out into the void. But when we get those reviews and subscribe back. So hit that right now while you're listening on your favorite podcast and platform.

Thank you for that, Scott. So last question. Where can our listeners find you online?

Yeah, easy one. It's just going to weclose notes.com that's our main website. You'll find our podcasts or classes. I mean if you Google Scott Carson, the note guy, you'll find a lot of stuff too. But if you go to weclosenotes.com that's the main mothership of a channel that we have out there. And then if you're interested guys and gals in learning more about note investing, I've got a one day class that I'd love to give away to your audience. We teach a class every third Saturday of the month called Note Weekend. Normally 99. Note Weekend. Normally 99 bucks if you type in the code. Scott, when you type it, going to sign up for it. We'll give it to you for free and you don't have to wait till the third Saturday. We'll send you the replays, the most recent one and you start learning more about notes and non performing and marketing, all of that. So noteweekend.com special code is slack. I'm not slack. Scott.

Scott, Excellent, Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on. I hope everyone out there, you'll go ahead and take them up on that offer and learn about notes. This is one of my favorite subjects in real estate. It's. It's where I put the majority of my money in my investing. And like I said, Scott Carson has been a big name for a long time now. Has a lot of really good quality information out there about notes. So please check them out. If you don't type, we close notes, go into Google and literally just type Scott Carson notes and it'll come up. It's that simple. Right there. A rank right on top of the charts. Get right into his information and start learning more about him. So thank you again for coming. I'm really, really honored that you would come on to talk with us today. It was very, very touched and grateful for that.

Hey, Scott, thank you for having me on. Always glad to help out and look forward. Anything I can do for your audience or anything out there, please don't hesitate to reach out, everybody.

You're absolutely. And we'll send you a recording as well, so you can go ahead and use the recording yourself and say, hey, I was on the podcast and you can do that. Make sure.

Oh, yeah.

Working it out.

Perfect.

All right. It's got good talking with you. Thank you again.