REAL ESTATE INFORMATION EVERY STUDENT SHOULD KNOW Featuing Scott Carson With Daniel Botero

Foreign welcome to the Mastering College 2 Career podcast. I am your host, the one that knows the most, Daniel Botero. In a world where 8 out of 10 students are graduating without a job lined up and 40% of graduates never work in a job that require their degree, this podcast is the solution. In this podcast, not only do you hear from my own personal experience countless hours worth of research on this topic, but I bring industry experts to help students take away that fear of graduating without a job and instead teach you how to land your dream job.

Welcome.

Welcome back to this episode of the podcast. Today I have a very, very special guest. I have the CEO of We Close Notes as well as he is the host of the Note Closer Show, Scott Carson. Scott is actually somebody I've met recently, but since the first day I met him, he's been someone who's provided so much value. He's so knowledgeable about real estate and I'm just so excited to have him on the show. Just to even talk about this topic that whether you want to go into real estate industry or not, it's something that you should have some basic knowledge of. So as a student, this is an important topic because your biggest investment most people are going to end up doing in their life is real estate. So hope you guys enjoy the show. Scott, welcome to the show. How are you doing, my friend?

Hey man, I am doing great. I am honored to be on your show and share some nuggets. I look back at my college years, which is now hard to believe over 20 years ago as looked upon as very, very enjoyable time. I had a good time. I'm not gonna say I didn't. I had full experiences at college, but I love to try to give any wisdom I can to anybody else who's looking to get into the industry. Absolutely. Just excited to be here to share some knowledge and drop some knowledge bombs for your listeners, man.

I'm excited just to dive into this topic. This is a topic that I've actually wanted to cover for a long time and I have a lot of real estate friends that are in real estate, real estate agents. And as much as I think that they would be able to provide some good value, I wanted to bring someone that's going to be able to not talk about just buying a house, but talk about investing, talk about different creative ways that students that love real estate and are passionate about this industry can, could get into. And so before we start talking about this, why don't you let the audience tell them a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, no problem. So Great job of the introduction. I have a company called weclosenotes.com and what we do is we specialize in buying actually distressed mortgages. We buy debt on residential commercial properties where we become the bank. And then we try to reach out to the homeowners as best we can to try to get them to re perform and modify their loan. If we can all do that. Now, that doesn't happen all the time. Still, about half the time we're having to foreclose or offer up something called a deed in lieu of foreclosure to the homeowners to let them walk away without us coming after them. But I've been an active real estate investor since 2002. Graduated from college in 2001, married my college sweetheart. We bought our first house, all excited about that. And I grew up in a small South Texas town called Ingleside, and my dad owned the local hardware store. So from the time I was the fourth grade, I was running registered and beanie, I like to say, the slave labor on the weekends, all the contractors coming in, you know, fixing plumbing, digging ditches, you know, running electrical, doing all that stuff. I've done it from laying concrete to the roof, put the roof on. I've done it in, you know, fix and flipping and stuff like that. But we bought our first investment, our first property. We're excited about that in 2002. It was a great time. Financing was pretty cheap. We bought two investment properties and lost our asses on those two investment properties because we did all the wrong things. Luckily for me, I was able to get my assets out of a sling, get rid of those two investment properties, get a lot more education where I wanted to do, went back into finance and stuff like that, and then was fortunate enough to meet up with a couple buddies who were starting a mortgage company here in Austin, but also working with a couple real estate investors that were traveling the country speaking, creative financing and all sorts of great things at all these real estate investment conventions. And for four years, I got to be kind of an apprentice running the mortgage company on one side, but also learning all the creative ways to dive into real estate. And it was great 2008, when the market kind of went south over a decade ago, I stopped doing mortgages and just started buying real estate and getting creative with that. And that led to me buying, you know, diving into the debt game, as we like to say, do where I'm at now. But in the last 10 years, we've helped educate, golly, thousands of real estate investors of all ages. You know, from 18. I was just literally on the phone with a 17 year old kid 30 minutes ago and a 75 year old guy was looking to get in the note business literally this morning. So it's all age groups. I think you're in the right spot here. I think there's a lot of misconceptions when it comes to college kids, sorry, college adults, when they're coming out of college, of what they think they need to have or don't have before they dive into it. And I'm really excited to share some of those things or knock some of those myths out that they may be thinking to dive into real estate.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that because I think when I think about real estate, there is two sides of it. And correct me, you're the expert here. I think about as a college student perspective, one is should I buy my first home as a place as my primary residency? Right. Instead of renting, should I buy an investment property? And so there's kind of like. And that was my dilemma when I did it. And so in my personal experience, my definition of the American dream growing up was always to buy a house. Right. If I bought a house in America, I reached my American dream. And so I was very laser focused and I knew exactly what credit score I needed, I knew what my debt to income ratio needed to be. So I was on it. And I was able to buy my first house out of college. And looking back at it, I necessarily think I could have done a much better. Right. I think I could have probably bought a quadruple X still been and then rented out the three units and lived in one. But I wanted to get your perspective on some of the things that college students can do to position themselves to either get funding from whether the bank or get private funding. Would love to hear your opinion.

So there's two sides to that story. And I think it all depends on where you're living at. If you're. I'll give you example. If you're living in San Francisco and you want to buy in San Francisco, I don't recommend it. It depends on the income. Especially if you're looking at buying one for your primary residence. There's nothing wrong with it. If you can afford it, great. You just want to make sure. I would not get a creative mortgage for your primary residence. Your primary residence. I would do a 30 year fixed mortgage. That's what you're gonna do. Just make sure you're in an affordable area off your base salary. If you're in a job that has a lot of overtime. You do not want to budget your mortgage payment off of your full income. You want to do it off your 40 hours a week or whatever it is, not your extra overtime. That's where a lot of people get upside down, is they count on their overtime being a part of the salary and if there's job layoffs or cut downs and they lose that over time, now they're in hot water. And also, you know, part of the country you're buying a house in Columbus, Ohio, is a whole lot different than buying in Austin, Texas or Orlando for that part. So you need to really spend some time, you know, talk with, talk with realtors who really have a heart that aren't just out to sell you a house, talk with your parents, talk with people that have maybe been where you're at or where you're wanting to go. A great resource, bar none, a great resource to go to, to go to your local real estate investment clubs, and there's many. Every big city, every medium sized city often has a real estate investment club. You can go down to meetup.com, type in real estate, your city, and it'll give you a whole list of different real estate clubs to go to. That would be the biggest thing I tell anybody, whether buying for their primary residence or buying to get into investing is to get education and go out there and talk with people you know and find out what's going on in the market. Because especially a primary residence, if you're going to do, and I love the house hacking thing, buying a fourplex or a threeplex, living one, renting out the other ones. I think it's a very smart thing, great thing to do because we get all the write offs, all the deductions, especially on taxes and things like that. Being a house owner versus a renter, if you can find that, where the other two or three, or even the one unit, if you're buying a duplex, can help you offset your whole house cost, your mortgage payment. That's a smart thing to do to get things rock and rolling, get your feet in the water.

Excellent. And so for students who looking to have real estate as a career, where and where can they start, you know, other than you can become a real estate agent, which is probably what most people do, what are some other ways they can get involved into real estate?

That's a great question. And a lot of people like, oh, I'm gonna get my real estate license, doesn't mean anything. They teach you the legal side of getting that license. And then you got to figure out all right, what we have happen here quite a bit with what we do is and I know other real estate investors that will do this. I would go if you can try to intern with local real estate investors or intern at a real estate office or a mortgage company and learn that aspect of real estate because there's multiple things. There's really a realtors, you've got mortgage, you've got title offices, you have investors. I think that's a smart play. Now if you know how to market, which I think a lot of people take for granted. Marketing skills. If you understand Facebook and social media, there are a lot of older people that don't understand that on the real estate side they're still doing marketing like the 20th century versus the 21st century. And so I think that would be a great place to go. You can meet them at meet real estate clubs or go talk to experts in the industry. If you can hang out with an investor, they'll, you know, they'll pay you an hourly fee and you often learn some great tricks or learn a lot of outside the box moves. But that's what I would do. I wouldn't necessarily look to go get your license right out of college, wait a little bit because a license is great, but you still got to learn how to market and think like a realtor. You still got to learn the marketing aspect. Door knocking, cold calling, calling expired listings. And I know a lot of realtors that don't like that aspect of things. They want to work in a spot where they're getting leads constantly and there's, there's different ways to do it. So highly recommend, trust me. I see. I come across investors all the time looking for somebody help them out for 10, 20 hours, 30 hours, even a full time position after a while helping them with marketing. So that's, that's what I would do if I was that coming to college. You'll learn more. They can often bonus you different things as well. That's the best way to get your feet weight and get a full picture of what's going on the industry, who works well where. It all depends on the market. But I would, I would go network, I would go be an apprentice, you know, on the weekends. Whatever you can do to soak up some of that knowledge is where I would begin before I just go get a license and go from there.

And Scott, what are, you know, what are the top five positions in real estate that come to your head? Right, yeah, real like you said Agent is one. Right.

Real estate agent, mortgage broker, title company. You have also inspectors or appraisers, which I probably wouldn't spend my time. I know that's kind of a boring subject, especially when you're out of college. Last thing you want to do is be crawling under ugly houses.

Yeah, a little bit. Let's dive into a little bit of the ones you said. So we have the real estate agent. We know what they're the ones who help individuals buy or sell their houses. Then you have a broker. So explain a little bit what a broker does.

So a broker is going to be. Usually has to have two years of experience in the industry and they're going to pay some more money for licensing and they're also going to go get a broker's license so they can add real estate agents underneath of them. And they're going to take a cut of commissions. They may just do a flat fee per file or it might be like 75, 25 split for. If you sell $100,000 house and normal commission is three grand, 25% of it may go to the broker to make sure that you're in compliance, make sure that all your paperwork is right. Make sure that if you get in trouble or you get, you know, in legal issue, you've got a broker to help you out with that stuff. They're kind of, like I say, the guardian angel. A lot of times as a real estate broker, they don't do a lot of business, but that's kind of. They've got years of experience, they're looking over their little hens.

And the real estate agents have to fall under a broker. Correct.

You cannot exactly. Cannot be a legit agent unless your license is hung with a broker. Exactly.

Okay, perfect. And then you said something about, you know, when you get your mortgage. Mortgage officer. What is that? What's that position called?

Yeah, you have a loan officer working for a mortgage broker. So the same thing when I, in 2004, I went, got my mortgage broker's license. There's usually a license to take with the test. Got passed an FBI background check, get stamped, pass a state exam. Once you pass that, then you're a licensed mortgage broker on the residential side. Now on the commercial side doesn't require a license, but does require a lot more experience to understand what's going on the commercial side. But it's a, it's been a while but, you know, thousand bucks to take the test and then get everything passed. And then once again, you hang your loan officer hanging it under a Mortgage broker, Same thing. When I was a loan officer, I hung it under a mortgage broker at 10 offices. When we became, when I became a mortgage broker, we expanded and added like 50 loan officers under our company. They were going out and getting loans from everywhere. And it's the same thing. We took a cut. There was a flat mortgage fee we charged and then we took a little bit of percentage that would vary anywhere from somebody's brand new, like 50% the commissions because we're helping them all the way up to like only 20% for the ones that were more experienced.

And so what the mortgage broker does or what the loan officer does is that he's the one who helps you through the financing aspect of buying a property, Right?

Exactly. They get a lot of leads from realtors and also just regular people buying houses are getting to refinance. They're the ones that are looking out, going to the banks and lending institutions, finding a different lending options or the lending programs that are available to the people whether maybe they qualify for a VA loan if they're in the, from the military or fha, like a first time home buyer get refinanced out. You're constantly looking at the different rate sheets and collecting paperwork. You know, a person's W2, their tax statements, their verification of employment, how much are they making, you know, running credit to see what they have on their credit, if they paid on time or if they've got other things they need to kind of get off the credit or their credit cards paid down so that they fall into good debt to income ratios. Making sure the payment for the house based on the loan platform or the loan program doesn't exceed, you know, $0.50 on the dollar of their income. So a loan officer is kind of really spending time going through that with a borrower kind of helping the home in on. Okay, you need to tweak this or this is what you kind of qualify for. Now let's try to find the best rate that fits for the best house and help me get qualified so that you can go meet with a realtor. Go buy a house. First thing you're gonna do when you look at buying a house for you, you're gonna want to go meet with a mortgage broker to see what you can afford and what you can qualify. Before you go talk to an agent. Because an agent isn't gonna deal with you unless you're qualified to get financing in place.

Yeah, and a lot of times agents might have brokers that work for. But I would agree, I think the easiest way for anybody is, you know, go get a broker, get, you know, get their pre approval letter. Right. Then that's like, that's the key to be able to go visit houses. And it gives you as a buyer a better idea of what you can afford. And so that you're not spending your time looking at million dollar houses where your budget might only be 200, $300,000.

Right now I'm going to completely, completely shake that we just talked about on its head when it comes to being a real estate investor in a second. Because we buy a lot of houses without credit or bank financing. We use a lot of private money. But I'll get to that in a second. The third place that a lot of people go to is the title companies. And title companies are the ones that are issuing title policies. Because when a house is sold from one person to another one and a bank is financing a property to somebody else, that bank and that borrower want to make sure that there is clear title, that property can transfer cleanly to them, that there's not somebody else from five years ago that owns it or there's not outstanding liens on the property, that there's other issues to fog up a clear conveyance of ownership. When you buy something, you want to own it, right? Yeah. So that's what a title company does. They're going to take a look at all the issues out there, taking back to when that property was created. They're going to look at the loan, make sure everything falls into the loan. They're going to check a lot of boxes off of what the loan company wants along with what the seller or the buyer wants. And so a title company is kind of the hub that sits in the middle. They're dealing with the agents, both agents on both sides of transaction. They're dealing with the mortgage broker, the bank, the previous bank, to get the payoff amount and really kind of putting it all together in a package so that funding can come in and transfer in and then true closing can take place. I've got several friends that have been in the title business for years. They do a great job, but it's literally kind of making sure that paperwork is all coming together and then sign off on making sure that something that funds cleanly.

Are they like the middle people? Right.

I would compare them. If you're looking at a wheel, they're the hub in the middle of that wheel where everybody branches off of the title company. Okay, excellent.

Okay. So you were gonna talk about how this is a little different when you're Doing investment versus when you're buying your own property.

Yeah, yeah. Many people get discouraged, say, oh, I can't buy real estate because I don't make enough money. I don't have any money saved. I don't have good credit because I, you know, signed up for too many credit cards in college. Okay, that's not the case. It's a real estate investor investor here first and foremost. There's a ton of deals out there and we're never looking to buy something really above 75% of value. I would prefer it to be 60 or less for the most part. But if you can find deals, whether pre foreclosures or motivated sellers or probate leads, there's a whole variety of different ways to find deals out there. In most investment, there are people that will lend you money just based on the asset, based on the property, not based on what your personal history is or what your credit scores is. A lot of times we close deals, they're never even pulling my credit. They're just basing things off the value of the property. And when I'm buying it, if that number that I'm buying in is like 50 cents on the dollar, they'll fund it all day because they know if I don't pay at that point or I don't sell the property, but they can then foreclose and take the property back and then make sell that property at 100 at that point, if I'm paid 50 cents on the dollar. So there's a lot of other people's money out there. Here's a little thing. There is literally $7 trillion, $7 trillion in retirement funds sitting on the sidelines. Okay. And one of the best things that you can do when you're in college or working somewhere, if you can, is start learning about self directed IRAs. We're all familiar with a 401k as a bonus if you go to a job. But you can also get an ira. An IRA is an individual retirement account that you can start putting money away now. Chase Schwab, you know, AG Edwards, they all have IRA accounts that you can do that would allow you to invest in their funds. There's about 50 companies across the country that will allow you to self direct your IRA where you can invest in real estate. You can pick the real estate, the property, the rental property, you know, the deal that you're gonna flip. You can fund it with your own funds if you put it into an IRA and go from there. But there's also a lot of people out There only about 10% of the retirement funds are sitting in self directed accounts. But they're just sitting there waiting for somebody to reach out to them to use their money to help fund the deal and make a good return. Because if you do have an IRA account, a self directed account, you can't touch that money yourself like that. You couldn't use it to buy your own primary residence. You can use that to buy a rental property and then go do all the work on that property. You can't have to be hands free of the deal. So a lot of IRA people that have IRAs like to lend their money and lending it 6 to 12, 6 to 15% to investors like me for a short period of time of like 12 to 24 months. But we go find the good deals, we use their money to fund it, give them a good return on investment, whatever that may be to them and we make the lion's share of the profits because we bought it at 50, we sold it at 90, we made 45 grand and we paid our investor a 6, 8 or 10% return on their 50 grand. And it's a win win across the.

Board and then for an investor. And so that makes perfect sense. And you're like the second person who shared about self directed IRAs. How does the investor is sure that you're going to give them that return? Is it because you're collateral on the property?

That's correct. If you're buying a property, you're going to put a first lien, a mortgage on the property and a deed of trust where that the borrower, I'm sorry, you're the borrower, the investor or you're borrowing the funds from the self directed IRA investor. So it's all, they're named on the collateral. So they're not going to fund until the paperwork is created. And that's what a title company is there for, to kind of make sure that this gets done before we release this and making sure that document is prepared and filed and ready to rock and roll. So if you don't pay, then they have the right to then hire attorneys to foreclose and take that property back to get their money back.

So if a student interested in becoming a real estate investor early on, it's, you know, always thought that the only way to do it is to have some money. But you're telling us there's better ways, there's all the other ways. How do they get started?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the first couple things I would read, I would get Educated. All right. I would go read Rich Dad, Poor dad if you've not read that by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lecter. Phenomenal book. I would also read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Phenomenal book written almost 80 years ago. It still holds true. I would also, like I said, start networking. There's a lot of different things online. I would not trust HGTV and Flip this House. That is a fictional show. Okay? Your shows on TV are dramatized to be interested. That does not mean it's a real thing. So do not trust what you see online or what you see on TV on HGTV or A& E. Do not trust those shows. Those are always fictional. Especially on the real estate Flip and Flip or Flop and things like that. That's not how it actually works. Go out to your local real estate club. Go out and talk with people that are actually closing deals. A great source would be to call a title agent and say, hey, is there a real estate investor you can put me in touch with who's closing deals in your local market? And I guarantee most of the real estate investors out there are willing to spend some time with somebody who's brand new, give you 30 minutes to an hour or allow you to come in and kind of shadow them. Because we all start somewhere and there's a variety of exit strategies being me when I do on the lending side, as far as buying debt is kind of the far advanced thing most people like. When I started off as a real estate investor over 20 years ago, for the most part, it's actually 17. I started wholesaling and what a wholesale deal is, is I go find a deal and then I just flip that contract to somebody and make a quick 1%, 3%, 5 grand wholesale fee. I just am like a bird dog. I go out, find the deal, make sure it makes sense that the numbers look good and find somebody who's willing to buy that deal from me and pay me a finder's fee. Sometimes bird dogs make $500 a deal. Other times good wholesalers are making a good flat percentage. I've had wholesale deals where I was making 500 all the way up to 135 grand on a wholesale deal before. And so wholesaling is great. You can search out a great book to read on. There is Ron LeGrand. He's a guy that's been around for 40 plus years in education. He's actually out of Jacksonville, Florida. He's got a book on Amazon, how to wholesale and what is it? How to effectively wholesale and use options in your real estate business. And so great book. It's a must read on that one. You can just google wholesaling real estate and you probably find some videos on YouTube and other things like that too. But that's the first part. Second step people are wholesaling is they often get into taking over a property subject to and this is was much more prevalent a few years back as the markets have rebounded and grown strong. You don't see as many subject to deals but we still see occasionally we see deals where the borrower maybe can't afford to make the payments anymore and they're wanting to walk away and they owe say 140, the house may be worth 160 and they've got a payment on their mortgage plus tax insurance that falls below what market rent would be. So this is a deal that I like to do. I like to reach out to those borrowers. They want to move, they're motivated and often take over their mortgage subject to or they'll walk away and I'll just start making their mortgage payment and then I'll go out and find either a renter to move in who's going to pay above what their mortgage payment is on that property or I'll sell it. I'll offer up financing and sell it with a mortgage in place. It's basically a wraparound mortgage to the buyer where they make a payment to me and I turn around and make that underlying payment that's sitting on there and I'm making the difference in the spread. So those are a couple of the easies with wholesaling options. And subject to is a great way to get your feet wet when you're brand new real estate investor and then kind of go from there.

Interesting. Okay, so what about you know the timing that we are right now? Right. So we the mark the real estate market, you know it was really bad in 2008. 10 years later now 11 years later is rebounded. It's probably at its peak hot. If you're somebody right coming out of college and you've only seen the good. Right. You've never experienced the bad times in the real estate market. But I mean how do you feel about somebody coming into the industry right at its peak where it could be it could go down at any minute.

That's such a really good question. I'm glad you they asked that because this is why I say it first. You want to talk and get as much education as you can on a market on people that are closing Deals and you want to go network with people. There are a lot of people that have just been jumped on the bandwagon because values have kept going up and up and up and they think it's going to keep going. Well, that's not the case. I'm actually predicting that we're going to see a downturn in the next 12 to 18 months. Already seeing that in areas especially higher dollar areas like Aspen, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas is starting to see days on market. This is why it's important to educate yourself. This is why it's important to go out and talk with people, talk with experienced people and really build a network out there. That's why I would recommend initially being an apprentice with somebody for a few hours a week. If you can learn the ropes, learn what's going on, see and really learn from that, from that years of experience. I'm not saying go on and do like a Vulcan mind meld with that person, but it's about the best thing that you can do to really learn and then educate yourself. What's going up? What happens if the deal drops 20%? And that's where creative financing comes in. And we can talk about owner financing at a later date, but just there are still great deals out there. It just may not be in your market, but there may be other people. And with the use of the Internet today and Google and meetup groups and all the great stuff online, your network or your area to buy real estate shouldn't be confined to your backyard or your city. You should be looking at other areas in the country where affordability makes a lot more sense. Like I'm in Austin, Texas, but I haven't bought anything here in Texan in Texas in over a decade. Most of stuff I buy is in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, outside of Chicago, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, other parts of the country. Because I can find better deals that make sense. We're not talking million dollar homes, we're talking average is probably somewhere between $40,000 homes to $100,000 homes. But they cash flow well I can put get people to buy, I can buy those assets relatively cheap. I can find investors to fund my deals without me putting any money. And I have a variety of exit strategies because what I think you're going to see specifically these days is everybody needs a place to live. And I think the affordable the homes, the sub $150,000 values less are not gonna see as big a hit as we saw in 2008, 9 and 10. I think the higher end homes are gonna Be the ones are gonna be hit. The more so if you can find something affordable in a market that makes sense, you can find some, you know, take over the mortgage in a subject to deal or get it cheap enough and then work with the investors to help fund the deal or do or flip it really fast without having to hold on to it. You're gonna be okay. Yeah, you'll be okay. And then when the market does drop, then you buy as much as you can. Because that's the biggest thing that I wish I did over a decade ago was buy more and hold on to it.

Yeah. So last question. I know we're actually one. One of the last questions that we're gearing up. A student that's graduating. You know, they have no interest to go into real estate, but they're graduating, they're gonna have a great job, right. Great salary, everything like that. How do you think they should be planning when it comes to real estate? And I know there's gonna have to be a generic answer. It really will have to be a more one for one basis. But should they look into buying or renting?

Depends on the market. How affordable is the market? All right, so look at what you're making and look at you don't want your payments, your housing payment. When you buy a house, you really don't want to be over like 40% of your income. And so if to buy a house in an area and your mortgage range will be above 40, that's the time to rent. All right? Now if you can find a place where the market rent or the mortgage payment would be well below that 40% of what you're making, then that's the time to buy. But you've got to be prepared and ready to do that. So there's some things that you want to keep in mind. You obviously want to keep your debt down low. So if you've got a credit card, try to keep the balances below 40%. If your job offers you a 401k and they will match it, max that out. That's the best. Because literally, if they will match you for whatever you put in, that's a great return, whether it's 25% or 50 cents or dollar on dollar, there's no better investment out there. Even if just to keep it in cash, go ahead and max out your 401k. Best thing I can tell you as a new investor, whether it's in real estate or stocks or bonds, is the concept of pay yourself first. Pay yourself first and then live off the Fun stuff. But what you have left after you pay yourself 10% and put that in savings or an IRA or your 401k and live off the remainder. If you can get in that habit versus acquiring assets versus acquiring toys, you'll be a lot happier in the long run. But you know, you got a good job. Just look at those things. What's rent compared to everybody else? What's compared to mortgages in the area? There's plenty of free mortgage calculators available online. Expect to save. Right now, I would be saving a lot so that you can get a better deal. 12 months or 24 months when a foreclosure happens or other things happen. But look at what you're making. There's some areas in the country, they're just unaffordable. San Diego, Louisiana, San Francisco, New York. I mean, people aren't gonna buy there for the most part. You're gonna be looking to rent and try and survive there that way. But you know, the idea, you know, I know some friends have gone in and they bought duplexes together. If you're married to that person, okay, but they're your best friends, stuff like that. Just gotta be careful case the market goes south and you know, have it a clearly laid out plan of what happens when the bad happens. Because the good doesn't always happen, the bad will happen. You want to make sure have a clearly defined path if you're partnering up with friends to buy real estate.

Absolutely. So, you know, we've been talking now for a while about real estate and you shared a lot of great nuggets already. But if, you know, if a student listening to this podcast could only take away one thing, what would you hope that would be?

Pay yourself first, like I said. But it's important because that's what you want to put money away. So you have it for a rainy day. Whether you get laid off, something happens. You want to have that there so you have the options. I think the next biggest nugget is just get educated. Whether you're going to be a wholesaler or a landlord or a fix and flipper or a note investor in the debt game like I am, get educated, learn about it. Take your time. Take six months to learn as much as you can before you make your first decision and ask questions like the most successful people are the most approachable. And if you're in an area of the country, things like that. And I'll put this out to your listeners. If you're in an airport part of the country and you're looking for somebody local. Hey, feel free to reach out me, I've got a network of people across the country. I would be glad to have you talk to them. They'd be glad to spend time and visit with you for 30 minutes or an hour and go from there. No questions asked, not trying to pitch on anything. That's the most valuable thing that I could recommend.

Yes. So that was my next question, which is great. And I'll tell this to the audience. Scott means it. In the short time I've texted him, I've asked him for advice on how to grow the podcast. He has such a niche podcast, but has such a large audience for such a niche podcast. Just amazing. And so Scott, how can people get connected with you and how, where can they listen to you? How can they connect with you?

The easiest thing is just going to our website. We go to weclosenotes.com it's we close notes.com. we have different opt in things there for they just want to get our database or if they want to learn more about our classes or they want to learn more and listen to our podcasts, it's all right there for them. That's the best way. You can always drop me an email@scottclosenotes.com as well. I'd be glad to take time to go there, but literally, usually opting into the website's the better route. There's such a wealth of information out there these days through YouTube and other, you know, Google and things like that, you've got the opportunity to really learn a lot. We've got, I think close to 1500 different videos and training calls and things like that. We have online great ways for people to learn, but there's a lot of niches out there and best thing I can tell you is take time, learn, talk to experts, don't be afraid to ask people who are where you're at. If you go and ask your parents or your uncles or your friends about something that they have no experience in, they're gonna tell you, oh, you can't do that. Alright? So one concept I'd love for you to realize here and keep this in your pocket is to seek counsel. Don't seek advice. When you seek advice from your friends and family members, they can only give you an answer based on their experience and advice is like assholes. Everybody has some, alright? Everybody has one. Doesn't mean they're going to give you the good thing. So if you want to get some advice from somebody or get counsel, go track down somebody who's doing what you're wanting them to do or what you're wanting to do, whether it's being a real estate agent or being a mortgage broker, title, or a real estate investor. Go talk to those people who have experience and seek their counsel, and they'll give you the best advice that they can give you. What they would do if they were to start all over again. I'd also ask him what their biggest mistakes were.

Yeah, no, that. That reminds me of the book the Richest man in Babylon. Have you. Have you read that book? I'm sure you. I do.

I got it here somewhere in my office.

So he talks about the five rules of gold, and one of them being don't ask, like jeweler advice from the. From the bricklayer. Yeah. And one of them is pay yourself first. Right. 10% should always go first.

That's a great, you know, great book. Great concept. That's Richest man in Babylon. I'd also go check out the millionaire next door.

I love that book. Yes. Yeah.

You know, don't get wrong. I know when we're young, we love the Flash. Who doesn't like the Flash? You know, but you got to realize when you. What you see online with a lot of people having their big, big houses and Lamborghinis, that's all just. It's fake. All right? Most of your millionaires, most of your people have real estate. They're probably driving a Ford F150 from a few years ago. They're being frugal with their money because they want to invest. And for every dollar they have come in, they want to put that dollar back out and get it working for them, because that's the only way, honestly, you're going to get ahead in America is not having a job. There's nothing wrong with that. But taking your spare time, whether it's 10 hours or 20 hours a week, and put your side hustle to work, as Gary Vaynerchuk would say, and go find something that can bring money in. Maybe it's not real estate. Maybe it's online marketing, maybe it's advertising. Maybe it's video editing. Whatever. Hey, go pay yourself first and use your skills to your advantage, because there's never been any better time for somebody coming to college to really make an impact and really help their bottom line out.

I love it. Scott, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate your time. Taking time out of your busy schedule to jump in on this podcast. My podcast. You know, this is awesome. I wish I knew all this information. When I was a student, you know, it's like you always think about going back. Like, if I only knew, right? But look, I can't go back. Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. So to student audience, you know, listening to it, you know, take advantage of the resources that you have now, whether you love real estate or not. This podcast, I think, is going to give you a lot of knowledge. And Scott, thank you so much, and I look forward to staying connected.

Come here, man. As I would say, there's an article came out a couple Weeks ago on USA Today about a man in India who back in 1979, was living on a sandbar, desolate, no life, no tree, no fresh water, nothing. One of the worst places in India. And he started planting trees. He'd plant a little tree, one little tree every day on his way back home. You fast forward to where it's at now. Now, that sandbar is a massive rainforest, all sorts of animals, fresh water, just an amazing different place. And the thing I have to leave you with here is if you're going to do something, we're probably going to be in the long run, whether It's a year, five years, 10 years, 30 years, don't be afraid to plant a little tree and watch it grow over time. Have a little patience. Not everybody has patience, but take it, plant the seeds and watch that tree grow, and you look back in six months or six years and you'd be a lot happier that you took the time to do that.

Love it. Scott, thank you so much. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for having me.

If you're listening to me right now, you, my friend, have made it to the end of the podcast. I want to take some time to thank you and congratulate you for being different and taking control of your career. Doing things like listening to this podcast, putting yourself out there and building the experience needed to land your dream job is what's going to set you apart and not be just another statistic. So, great job. Keep it up. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please share it with your friends and make sure to subscribe and leave us a review. Talk to you soon.