Scott The Distressed Mortgage Broker: The Unleash Your Focus Podcast with Joy Nicholson

Hi, everybody. Joy here. As you guys know, I have started my podcast to share my entrepreneurial journey with everybody. And I thought, what better way to do that than to share the entrepreneurial journey with other entrepreneurs? And today I have Scott and he is going to share his journey with us. Follow along on this podcast where I will be sharing my entrepreneurial journey with you all. This is my podcast, Entrepreneurial Journey. And I am Joy Nicholson. Hi, Scott. How you doing?

I am so honored to be here, Joy. Doing wonderful. Absolutely. Just excited. And you know, I think it's the best way for entrepreneurs to learn about the journey because we all go through trials and tribulations and hurdles and potholes. It is not a straight road. It's not always the easiest road, but I think that entrepreneurs need to know that it's a great way. That way you can seek counsel versus advice for people.

Exactly. And it's not just about the fluff because people actually their struggles and you know, sharing those struggles is so, so important. So in saying that, can you tell people a little bit about you, where you come from, where you grew up, just so they can get to know you as a person?

Yes, ma'. Am. I'm glad to. I am home in Austin, Texas. I grew up in a small town in southwest Texas on the water, the Gulf of Mexico called Ingleside. Dad owned the local hardware store, fix up store, so I worked in there as a young age. So I've always had the entrepreneurial bug to work on the weekends or after school by either doing fix its or mowing lawns or doing whatever I could to make a buck. And that led to me going off to college. I was an athlete and I played American football and had an academic and athletic scholarship for a couple years and enjoyed that and transitioned out of that into studying business, graduated from business school and got into working in kind of the finance markets. I was a banker, a financial advisor, started getting into real estate investing. All about the 2004, 2005 time here in the United States. We did a really great job with mortgages here. And then of course, everything hit the fan with the market meltdowns in 2009, 2010. And fortunately for me, I had some friends that taught me creative financing and how to buy and sell and invest in distressed debt and distressed mortgages that we have here in the state. So luckily for me, I made the jump when everything was hitting the fan and started buying distressed debt, distressed mortgages across the United States. And I've been doing that for the last 10 years and have A lot of other real estate investors and entrepreneurs find success in this very small niche of real estate investing that is a.

Very, very, very unique because, I mean, you hear about people buying and selling houses on ebay and doing all of these things. But what I. What you are saying, I've never actually heard somebody actually telling, you know, about the stress. So when you say that, do you mean that people that are struggling to pay their mortgage and then you come in, you buy the house from them, and then you sell it?

I actually buy from the bank. So where we buy from bank or financial institutions who have made the loans to homeowners, and then the homeowners are struggling through either some sort of distress, they've lost their job, they've gotten sick, divorced, or the market has crashed or depreciated on some sort of fashion, and they haven't been paying for a while. So then I'll step in and buy that debt at a percentage, not the full value, but I bought it at a big discount from the bank or the mortgage company. I become the bank. And then we reach out to the homeowner to say, hey, what's happened? Let's work with you. Let's try to create a win win. And I prefer to keep them in the house. I don't want to actually own the property. I want to own the mortgage because I don't want to do any work. And so I can be their biggest help. But as we like to say, we like to rehab the borrowers, not the profit.

Okay, nice. That is so awesome that you actually give them the option to stay in the house. And that's so awesome. I really love that. Wow, that is really, really cool. Okay, so what is your biggest struggle with this thing that you're doing? Like, what is your challenge?

So the biggest challenge has been everybody knows about fixing and flipping houses and being a landlord and the, you know, the TV shows on TV where they buy it, you know? You know? Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's not what I do. I come from a banking mindset, so it's educating people properly on exactly what we do. So when I'm out in public, oh, look, you're a realtor. I'm like, no. Oh, you're a mortgage broker? No, but I do. And the thing is, it's very. It can be very lucrative if you treat it right and you know what you're doing. But it's just the, you know, people don't have the patience these days to learn something new. Everybody wants instant gratification, and that's the thing that we struggle with more than anything else is getting people that will take the time to learn their business. The 10,000 hour rule that Grant talks about, 10x in your business, you just got to take time and be patient. And the patient still is also for the opposite side, dealing with borrowers who maybe haven't been paying for two, three years. Listen, I know you've been living kind of scot free, but Scott's not here to get. I don't run a charity. I can help you, but I need you to make your payment and let's get rocking and rolling. Otherwise you won't want to deal with me at that point.

Yeah. Nice. I like that. That is so awesome. And okay, so obviously then for you, the patience is a problem. That's the challenge for you, then the patient side. But that's like an entrepreneurial problem. Everybody has a problem with patience. What? Make money now, not yesterday, now. Okay, so. So within this, what has been your greatest accomplishment?

I was actually in a few years back, I was nominated and awarded the Educator of the Year in my field.

Oh, nice.

It was a big accomplishment because when I started doing this over a decade ago, there's a conference that happens every year that awards the Educator of the Year. So I set a goal for myself. I said I would really love to walk across that stage in Las Vegas, won the Educator of the Year award, and it happened out of the blue. I didn't expect it. It's more of a sign that my students have really done well and nominated me for the award. And I was in the running for it again last year and came in the top three in the country of all educators in the industry in the United States. Here. I came in as a runner up. So pretty excited about it.

Fantastic. Congratulations on that. That is really, really something cool. Okay, so in saying that now you say you have this in the beginning of this podcast, you say that you've always been an entrepreneur, you know, in your life. So what is, as a kid, like your own thing? What was the own thing that you did as a kid? Did you do something?

I mowed lawns. I mowed lawns and did lawn care.

Boys to mow lawns.

But I did. I did things year round. So it would go from like mowing lawns to fixing fences to digging ditches. I worked an ostrich farm. I had friends that owned an ostrich farm in South Texas. So on rainy days, I'm sitting there with a pump, pumping out water out of the pens or wipe, you know, doing all that stuff. It's basically anything I do on the weekends to make money. And eventually grew up where I had five, six of my buddies that were working for me to make money as well on the weekend. So I ran a crew by the time I was 14.

That is so cool. I don't think I've ever heard of everybody recruiting their buddies when they were like the team themselves. That's pretty cool.

Well, I made money. And they're like, how are you making money? And I'm like, here, come work for me. You got to put a little bit of elbow grease into things.

That's awesome. I love it. Okay, so you obviously have staff that works for you, right? So what is that? And actually, I don't think I've actually asked this question on my interview before, but what is that thing that you do to look after your staff?

That's a really good question. And I think entrepreneurs, if you want to make six figures or 100 grand, the most important hire for you is you hire your assistant. Hire a good assistant because they will delegate and find ways for you to make money. And a lot of entrepreneurs, we're control freaks that we don't want to delegate. We want to do it all ourselves, or we tell ourselves they're not going to do as good a job. Nobody's going to do as good as a job. But delivered is better than perfected is the way to look at it. And so what I like to do is I like to make sure and hire people that are not my same personality. You know, I'm good at marketing, I'm good at conversations. I'm the life of the party. I would want somebody who's not going to be the life of the party, but who could be more diligent on lists or paperwork. So that's the big thing is hiring somebody that's to your weaknesses, that's their strength, and then finding out what makes them tick. It's not money for everybody. Maybe it's freedom to work from home half the week, or they get excited about the opportunity of what we do, or they want to become a realtor, so we help them get their licenses. So that's what I always tell my staff is like, listen, I understand we all have differences of what we're focused on and goals. What are your goals and how can we help you achieve those things? And maybe it leads to you leaving and not working for me in two years or three years, I'll be the happiest person. If you go on and are able to achieve some Big things. So asking what motivates them, listening. Sometimes you got to be a good listener and having a heart. You can't be black and white on everything in your office. You've got to work a little bit. I mean, we've had a staff that worked in office a lot. Now most of my staff works remotely, which allows for them to have the freedom to work from home and they're actually more productive, you know, so if I can get, if I can get four days out of them, I'm fine. Like, hey, take Fridays off or take it Monday off if you want to have a longer weekend. I'm totally fine with that. A little bit of flexibility and they love that freedom that comes with that.

Yeah, because obviously, you know, happy staff is good stuff. You know, if your staff is happy, they motivated and they give it your all, they give them all to you.

But you're right, they will, they will show up when others won't. Yeah, they won't just clock in. If you need them to work a little bit late, they'll work late. I'm like, okay, take a couple hours off the next day and you know, just incentivize them. Well, sometimes we'll just stop and hey, let's go have a pint at the pub. Or you know, hey, let's, hey, we're gonna go to the movies tonight, you know, or here's tickets to the hockey game or the football game. So we try to have fun with everything.

Oh, that's awesome. That's fantastic. And team building is important. Okay, so apart from money, what is the driving factor in your business?

I would say my girlfriend Stephanie. We've been together for six years now. We're both had our starter marriages. As I say, we're not married. We're happy. And one of the things that we both love to do is to travel. And that's a big thing. We love traveling. We don't have kids except the four legged kind. And so that's the big thing. We always are trying to book two or three big excursions or trips. And that's one thing we've been, I've been very, very diligent. One of my coaches and mentors told me early on that you will, people will work themselves to the bone. And I'm a workaholic. So to make sure to recharge your batteries to go ahead and schedule those vacations, schedule those big trips, even if it's tight and things are going on, it helps you to take that time to have the downtime to refresh Your batteries to reconnect with your spouses, especially if they're not in the business with you. That's an important thing to have that and that's the thing. We love to travel, we love to experience new things. So we like to travel to Europe. We're going to try to make it down to your neck of the woods before too long as well.

That would be fantastic. Make sure that you're on the south island, because that's where I am. So we can always hook up somewhere.

That'd be great.

But it is good advice because I also had a mentor when I started my journey and that was also funny enough. One of the things that he said is that make sure that you've got those things booked in because it's something that you look forward to. And we actually. Yeah, in December, like we will in the next week or so. We also doing exactly the same thing, you know, going away. And it is, it's important to connect with your family because you actually lose touch with the people in your life because you're so focused in your business. It's very true. And I'm a mom of two so I completely have the guilt trip that goes with all of it. They're not so forgiving as the four legged friends that you've got, you know, the furry babies. Okay, so what do you attribute to your success.

Man? What do I attribute to my success? I would say my work ethic that I got from my parents. If somebody tells me no that I'm not good enough, that drives me to prove them wrong. But I was just simply saying having a leadership mindset has helped more so than anything else. I get more excited than anything in seeing success in my students and my clients and having them close deals or make money and them change their lives. That's what really gets me excited about. So I'm always the big proponent that if I can make those who are around me successful, I'll naturally ride with it when the tide rises. And so I've had people tell me that with what we do in our niche that we're the best that we do because we provide more content and more nuggets and then really don't try to hold anything back. We really, hey, here's this, here's a tool, here's a vendor and really have changed the mindset in the industry. Instead of, oh, what can you do for me versus what can I do for you?

That's the thing. Serve your clients. So let's get a little bit into that. So can you Tell me, like, how's that content? Because you're obviously a digital guru, right? Digital marketing guru. You know what you do. So can you tell us a little bit, like, take us to a very, very basic progress, a process, like from start to finish. What is like that basic line that you will take to be a successful sale?

So here's what I do. I'm a big believer that you've got to provide content and that we're not in the tiddlywinks or the notes or whatever space. We're actually all in the media space these days. So we were all competing for eyeballs and earballs, as I like to say. Okay, so we mark our calendar out every day. The first hour of every day is all about marketing. So that's coming in and either filming a podcast episode or sharing an episode replay from a webinar we do on Monday nights or coming up with some sort of content. So that's the thing. We've got thousands of videos on YouTube. And so if somebody subscribes to something or opts into something, I make sure to send a message out to them. You know, like, if somebody opts into one of our text messaging services, I get a notice. So I will take a second and literally do this, take a minute to film a short little, hey, Grant, it was nice to meet you. Love to visit with you. And send it to them and text it to them and note that they're like, Scott Carson's texting me. And that's, you know, that get. Because we have a lot of people that reach out and say, you know, I've followed you for three months or six months now. I'm ready to sign up for class. And, you know, that's a, that's a beautiful thing. And that's the thing that I realized is that, hey, you've got to take time in marketing to let those seeds grow and germinate. And so that's the thing. We know when we do a video, it's not for instant gratification. It may be three or six months. You know, if somebody signs up for a workshop, great. You know, we start them off at like an opt in thing for like 97 bucks and then just 699 and then to a thousand bucks. And then if they really want to go for them, then they can come in and spend a couple days with me, you know, at our advanced coaching stuff. But yeah, it's literally just being, being regular, the content. You know, we do three to five podcast episodes a week. Every Monday night, we do A webinar, we call it Note Night in America. That'll get, you know, 200 to 500 people on. And if we don't do them, I mean, we'll skip every once in a while with an event or the holidays. But if we don't do it, regular people are like calling and you know, are Scott, all right? Are you all okay? And you just have to continue to give content what you think. You know, every up here, people don't know. And we, we as entrepreneurs take for granted on things that we are experts at. That's just one little nugget. May mean nothing to us, but it means a whole lot to somebody else out there who's starting off.

Yeah, exactly. Because you don't actually realize the knowledge that you have until you meet somebody that does not know anything. And then you think back is like, oh, my word, I was actually there a year or two ago. And then you're like, okay, let me take 10 steps and help this person from scratch. And that's something I find with my students that I'm teaching, is that I'm going right in the middle. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You're confusing the jingles out of him. Like, sorry, let's take five steps back. So it's very true what you say. I completely agree with that. Okay, so how do you scale your business?

Oh, how do I scale my business? It all comes down to marketing. And so one of the things that we. We have kind of a two pronged approach. We have the asset management side, we're buying these mortgages, and we also have the education side of the business. So since we're talking entrepreneurial, kind of digital market, let's talk about the education side of the business. Because it all comes kind of similar. The more emails, the more marketing that we put out, the more speaking opportunities I have, the more opportunities I have to offer somebody a program and educational material or get it in a coaching. So one thing that I did this last year in 2019, I started seeing the power of what my podcast was doing. And, you know, we get about 700. We average 759 downloads per day. That ebbs and flows a little bit. Okay, well, we've got 530 episodes, so that helps a little bit.

Okay, that's amazing.

Yeah, we're just under half a million downloads and we're pretty excited about things. But the thing I realized, I started seeing a tick in my downloads when I appeared on other people's podcasts. And so we said a Big thing this year. And the way you have to look at appearance me else's podcast, whether they got 20 people or a thousand people listening, it's an audience and it's easier to do versus flying across country and speaking. And I love Zoom. I do a lot of Zoom webinars as well. For people.

Yes.

But I set a challenge for myself to be on a hundred podcast episodes this year where I was a guest.

Nice.

That's a great. This marks episode or interview number 100 for the year, actually, on your podcast. Seriously. I was like, no, I want to be. I want to be on Joy's podcast for number 100. I didn't tell you about that.

That's so awesome. I love it.

But it's helped us, I mean, tremendously. Numbers going up and it's been just kind of, hey, let me make sure and get at least two interviews out a week. Sometimes we have 10 interviews flows. But I made that a focus and that's helped lead to other things. When it's for assets that we're looking for, it comes the same type of marketing thing. You've got to send email blasts out to our asset managers and bankers. We also jump on LinkedIn. It's been a big time targeting them on there, too. And then dialing for dollars, we also do that. And sometimes throughout the year, we'll employ some of our students to come in and we'll just have a call blitz day where we just dial as many phone numbers as we can in a day or two. And that always leads to an uptick of more deals coming in. So it's all putting in marketing out. You got to go out and find it. Most of the time it's not going to come to you. So you got to go put it out there and go fishing.

That's awesome. I'm 100. I feel special now. But you know what? It's very true to say about the podcast episodes, because I told you before, we actually pushed the record buttons. I've got about two to 300 downloads a day. But in saying that, I have put people in touch with people because I've been building relationships, you know, so I've interviewed this one lady that was doing amazing in Amazon sales and I've just seen to a lot of students that wants to be in that space because I've got no clue and I don't want to know. It's not my thing. But this is the thing. So you just. And that's just one example. But it's like really nice when you Talk to people like, oh, wait, I've got this person that I can send you to for this. And it's just, it's a, it's a really small but really big market at the same time. And that's why I love the podcast, because you just built relationships and networking. That is really, really cool. So tell me a little bit about the Note Closes. Like, how did that, how did that come about? How did a name come about? Because it's a very, very awesome name.

You know, so we started a couple years ago. I have a mastermind that I've taught for 10 years now. We've done 23, 24 mastermind events. And so I started doing a webinar series. I interviewing people that were closing. So the Note Closers is what we called them, people, my students that were closing 50, 100 deals, highlighting them, not me, but highlighting them, their business models, where they were doing things that were working for them. And that little like web series did really well. And we started doing these Monday night webinars and I really didn't want to do a podcast, didn't want to do it at all. But I was sitting in Las Vegas and I saw Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank get on stage and talk about how video is important and the fact that Facebook Live has this daily video feature. You need to be doing more and more video because that's the wave of the future. And so I came back in November 1, 2016 and said, okay, we'll start doing Facebook Live videos. We'll just call it the Note Closer Show. It'll be like people are on a fly on the wall with what's going on in our business and what topics I had. So we just started doing 150 Facebook lives continuously in that process. My buddy that come to me originally to start the podcast, he finally said, hey, you don't have to do all the work. I can help you with production. I'm like, I don't have to. I just have to film it like this and send you the file and you do everything. He's like, yeah. I'm like, done. Let's do it. And so we launched it and we just stuck with the same name because we'd already built a brand around it. And it's just been. It's just blossom. It's not the most precise thing, but we are in such a very, very small niche that it works well for us.

That's so cool. I love it. And it's something so small become something so big. And it's that little Burst of ideas. Right?

Yeah, well, that's the thing too is I didn't want to say the Scott Carson show because there's other Scott Carson's out there, including a very famous goalie for an English football team. Okay. Soccer club. So we want to make sure closing notes and that was the main focus. So if you look for it, you don't see my face anywhere, you don't see my name anywhere. You just see the note closure show podcast. And that's, that's been the focus because it's the focus of the show, not about me. And we bring on, it's, you know, it's half interviews with vendors or other people, entrepreneurs or mindset, and the other half is nuts and bolts training of what we're doing in the node industry.

That's awesome. That's such an idea. It's a great spin to it. It's a really, really cool spin to it. Okay, so, tricky question. Well, you can take it as a tricky question or not, but what is your biggest strategy in your business? Like everybody, because I've spoken to a lot of people that are making a lot of money and they all have a secret strategy somewhere in their business. What is your strategy?

Well, we've had to revamp it. I will tell you this. We revamped what we've done over the last couple years. Originally I was going out and speaking, traveling 40 weeks out of the year. And I wore myself out there and I had to do something different. So we started, we went away from doing live like hotel conferences and seminars. They're basically doing webinar classes nonstop now. So we do three to four workshops online like this via Zoom. We'll have anywhere from like we did one this last week and we had 65 registrants on it for the weekend, for three days, all the way up to we do a three day virtual online summit with two Zoom rooms, 40 speakers and somewhere between 700 and 1100 attendees.

Wow, that is incredible.

Over the last three years we've revolutionized really the real estate is by just focusing on online seminars. That allows for us to reduce the cost because we're not having to pay ten grand in overhead for a hotel, travel, food, beverages. We're not paying a couple grand in printing costs, provide manuals. It saves our attendees about 2000 bucks so they don't buy tickets, airline tickets, hotels. They sleep at home, stay with their family, eat the food, and it becomes evergreen content. Because the minute we do one of these, it's easy to record it. And now we can Share it almost immediately with those that attended or those that missed specific sessions because they were, you know, had family issues or something. So it's really revolutionized how we do business. It's. It's cut overhead and dramatically and increased profitability on events so that we don't worry about, oh, my God, we gotta sell so much stuff to pay for everything now. It gives us a lot more cavalier attitude a little bit about doing the event and really focusing on the content and really focusing on giving the information to those that are online. People can still jump on, like you and me, and I can talk with them. They can ask questions. We do online Facebook groups or a basecamp group, so they can still network or still grab files or other things that we share. And so that was the biggest change, is the whole online thing, focus of doing this and leveraging the power of video and power of online stuff to really get our message out. And it's just absolutely done amazing for our business, Helped us out tremendously.

That is incredible, Scott. I've never heard of anybody having so many attendees on, you know, on a webinar. That is incredible. Wow.

They weren't all there at one point, but they were still 700, 800 people live. I mean, we broke Google. We broke a Google hangout when we did it one time. So we had to go to something else, and that's why we love Zoom.

I can imagine. Yes. That was actually my next question. Don't you break things when you do that?

Yeah, pretty much. You want to make sure you have good Internet connection. We broke lead pages. We broke Google. So that's why we had to change things up in between it. But, you know, that was one of the things we learned. We had. We were filming one thing and delivering via Google, and it crashed on us. We. I immediately jump on through my phone and share it to, like, a Facebook Live, and suddenly it went viral, like, okay, we've got to start sharing our video in our Facebook groups, too. And that's helped us get conversions because we'll have people that watch the Facebook video that will sign up for something that we weren't intending. So it's just extra gravy as we look at it.

That's awesome. That's incredible. Well done, you. Okay, so last question. What is that secret sauce that you can give somebody? Like, if somebody's starting out an entrepreneurial game or they're in it and they're struggling, what is your piece of motivation or your advice for them?

Here's what you should do. There's Somebody who is doing what you've, you're doing as an entrepreneur, but is 3 years, 5 years, 10 years ahead of you the most. And I've always found this, the most successful people are usually the most approachable. Okay, so go and talk to that person, interview that person, take them to lunch, take them to dinner, you know, spend time with them, send them a thank you card ahead of time, you know, but listen to them because they'll tell you the true roadblocks and pitfalls and things to avoid. Listen to them and then stop listening to your friends and your family who have never done it. One of my advisors and mentors, Greg Reed, who's the author of Think and Grow Rich, Three Feet From Gold and a bunch of other books, producer for the Wish man, which is a story about the Make a Wish foundation. He taught me early on to seek counsel instead of advice. Everybody has advice, but they don't have the experience to really give you true valuable counsel to help you along on your journey. So that's tough sometimes because our closest friends and family members want to protect us. And so that's why they may give us bad advice because they've never done it and don't believe that you could do it because they themselves have fears and tribulations that they can't overcome. So go out, seek counsel, not advice. Talk to somebody who's a few years ahead of you. Most of the time they're glad to advise you. If they're not, then it's the wrong person to look for. Seek out somebody who's where you want to be and ask them, not somebody who's sitting next to you on the couch.

I love it. That is awesome counsel. I must remember that one. Where can people find you really easy?

Just go to weclozenotes.com that's our main website. You'll find our podcast there. You'll find everything there. We close notes.com if you'd like. I've got a book that they can download for free. They just go to the noteblueprint.com book. They can download my free 73 page book on the note business for free. No cost, nothing. Love to send it to them, but just go to weclose notes.com everything we have is there and I'm glad to help anybody else out out there. We actually have. Some of our investors are from New Zealand and Australia and we've got some. Actually we got actually a. About 2% of our total listener bases in New Zealand actually listen to what we have going on.

Awesome that's fabulous. That's great. We will pop the links in the bottom of the podcast and on the YouTube video and all of the beautiful things. And yes, Scott, it has been an honor and an absolute pleasure. I had a lot of fun on this interview and I appreciate your time. And I'm still like 100 episodes. That's pretty cool. So I'm for that. That's fabulous. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you and I appreciate your show and I just appreciate everything that you do. Thank you so much.

Hey, thank you. And you guys listening here. Do Joy a favor. Go on over, and if you're listening to this on itunes, subscribe, Leave her a five star ratio. Leave her a nice review. Come on. She's kicking butt and taking names and providing so much great content with guests. I'm not talking about me. She has some amazing people on here going there. She didn't pay me to do that. But it's worth it. Trust me. Do it now.

Thank you. Thanks, God. Bye.