The New Investor Checklist: Prep Yourself For Future Success

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

Hey Note Investors. So you want to dive into the world of note investing but no know how to get started or you don't want to pay 30, 40, $50,000 for a one on one coaching program that just completely does not deliver the deals or the funding or the access that you need to take your note business to the next level. That's why we have our one on one coaching program. I'm Scott Carson. I've been buying notes for 20 years. I've helped thousands of investors buy their first note direct from banks using either their own funds or other people's money to buy non performing, reperforming or performing notes yielding them an above average return. Now what's involved with my one on one coaching program? It's unlike anybody else's because guess what? You're working with yours truly. Not some paid student, not looking at some recycled list of stuff. Now what we do is differently than anybody out there and that's why we have such a huge success rate with our one on one coaching program. What's involved? Well, once you take in our three day class or not Buying for Dummies workshop, sign up for our coaching. You get 10 weeks of one on one coaching calls. These are on zoom in the morning, the after the evening. What works best around your work schedule. We accommodate this to help you start looking at stuff. And during those 10 weeks we focus on finding deals, making offers, getting your website, your social media stuff set up so that you are a lean note buying machine after spending 10 weeks of Zoom calls with yours truly. That's right, live not somebody else will spend two days one on one. And usually people come to Austin, Texas to hang out with us on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday, Sunday. And those two days are focused on whatever you are still lacking and need the most amount of work. One Sometimes it's making offers like Larry came In, we made 50 offers that he got 20 approved in a weekend. Other people came in to raise capital so we help them find IRA investors to fund their deals so they're able to raise hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for their note deals and other investing stuff. We're also going to give you a list of asset Manager contacts for you guys to dive into. That's right. This will be your LinkedIn profiles, emails, phone numbers, names, all for you to start reaching out to people. No, you don't need to buy notes directly from me. We're going to show you how to go to banks and contact them directly. We're also going to make introductions to our top 12 hedge fund managers that send us deals on a weekly or monthly basis. That's right. You go straight to the front of the line and guess What? There's no 10, 20 or 30,000 upcharge for the deal you buy direct from the hedge funds. Because we make the introduction, that's why.

Because.

Why do we do this? Because we know not, we believe, we know there are more than enough deals to go around. And yes, we make most of our money from buying note deals for ourself. Some people say, oh, you're creating competition. No, because there's plenty to go around. All right, we're also going to give you a one year membership to our WCN membership for one year. That's $97 a month. Usually that's going to allow for you to continue support weekly coaching calls along with access to our base camp group for other things, other tapes, other resources.

For our coaching students.

We're going to help you with raising private capital, putting your pitch deck together, putting sample deals together, or your case studies that we've done, other students have done, or that you're doing so that you help raise capital or help you find IRA investors in your local market or the markets you're looking to buy in, you're going to also basically for you, plus your partner, spouse, person you're going through this with, you're going to have VIP access to me. That's right. Whether you need to jump on a quick phone call, a text message, a quick zoom call to go through tapes or notes that you're making offers on for us to review your bids or help answer a question. When it comes to loss mitigation, foreclosure, bankruptcy, what it might be about a deal you're working through, get VIP access to me most of the time. Come on now, everybody. We're also going to do a six month follow up day after you spent two days with me, six months later, if you want to, we can do a half day, a full day, zoom follow up just to see where you're at, what are you dealing with, where you're looking to go. Because within six months you should have already closed on several deals the way that we teach them. Because we will help you find your first deal and then some. We've had students have closed on their first deal in 30 days. We've got others who closed on six deals in their first 35 days. Other people closed on 100 deals in their first year. We are here to help you because guess what ladies and gentlemen, there is plenty of inventory out there. We're not going to focus on owner finance notes. We're going to focus on how to get people calling you with their deals or how to get banks sending you lists on a regular basis that you can cherry pick and show you how to raise all the capital that you need. Our one on one coaching program is the most complete program out there. That's why you have such a high success rate and it's cheaper than most of the others out there. And we also give you the biggest bang for the buck by helping you make the introductions, looking at the tapes, helping you bid if you're coachable. Now, not everybody's coachable. Not everybody can afford this. But what we can do is we can set up payment plans and different options for you. I encourage you to either book a phone call with me@talkwithscottcarson.com and we can talk about it. See if you're a fit and not everybody's a fit and that's a okay. But go to talkwithscottcarson.com, book a call on my schedule and we'll gladly talk about our one on one note coaching.

Program to see if you're a fit.

One of the very requirements is we do require people to go through our three day class but that whatever you've paid for that three day class is applied to the tuition for your one on one coaching. And we also have a third party provider who's willing to finance this and.

Carry financing for two to three years to help you paid off.

But we're going to work with you until you get your first deal closed. We want to help you make your money back in the first six months, if not sooner. So check us out.

Pick up the phone, give me a phone call.

Talkwithscottcarson.com that's talkwithscottcarson.com book a call and let's see if you're fit to take your business next level. Sometimes all we need is just a hand up to take you to the next step to show you the way. This is not a blow smoke up your tail, give you the crappy tapes left over or upcharge you 10, 15, $20,000 per asset? No, we want you to buy direct. And we've always found if you can show a man how to fish, you'll.

Feed him for a lifetime.

So let's get started.

You being a note investor for the rest of your investing lifetime. So you want to be a real estate investor, but you don't know where to begin. Well, I want to thank today's episode to Cody from writing PA Cody and I Connected on LinkedIn. He was reaching out to real estate investors and he asked if he could pick my brain for 30 minutes. And so good morning, good afternoon, good day, everybody. Welcome this episode of the Note Closer Show. As always, I'm here to help answer your questions and help you on your path. So really had a great call today with Cody and I'm not gonna give his last name, but he is doing well. He's on his path. And like many people, Cody's worked in his career for a while. He started off, he went, he got himself, went to school, started working in banking at credit union. He now works for in the finance industry. He worked his way up at his job. He's been in a new job now for about eight months, but he's doing really well making six figures. And he enjoys his job, but it's not something he wants to do the rest of his life. Does that sound familiar? He's making great money making six figures. He's got a house. Young, but not really, really young. He's got some work experience. I think you said he was in his 30s. I don't remember that exactly, but I asked him, I said, okay, what do you want to do? He goes, well, I want to start investing, but I don't know where to begin. I said, okay, well, tell me about your past. Tell me about your background. And he's why I haven't done anything in real estate. I'm like, that's okay. So that's where, you know, I kind of pulled out to identify what his background is and he's, you know, been a loan officer and we had some similar similarities in background being a mortgage and finance industry. So that's great. You understand numbers. That's good. He's. Oh, yeah, very, very comfortable. Numbers and stuff like that. That's why I know I need to be doing something better. I said, well, the first thing, does your job. When I already knew the answer based on who his employer was.

So your.

Your company probably offers a 401k with matching, right? He's like, yes, it sure does. I said, well, what do they match? Is it like 1%, 3%. He goes, no, they'll match up to 5%. I was like, that's great. Please tell me you're taking advantage of putting away 5% of your own funds into your 401k and having that match. He's like, I am. I said, well, that's the great thing. I said, that's good, because you can't beat that return. That's 100% return on your money right now, as long as you're vested and stay invested. And when, if you decide to walk away in the future, you'll walk with that money. But that's the best thing. The one thing I would do is definitely look at. And I asked him, I said, how are your funds? How's your for 1k performing? Because they probably give you some different investment options. You know, I haven't looked at it in a while. I said, do yourself a favor, talk with somebody. I. I can. I'm glad to recommend my friend Tess Weirsmith, who's been on Note Night in America the past before, to just take a look at it, make sure you're not overpaying for fees, making sure it's performing because you don't be putting money away and losing it. You know, having it even in a little less riskier portfolio in your 401k is not bad because you're getting 100 return on. On money that they're contributing. So that's the first thing. So. Well, and I didn't ask the amount. He told me what the amount was. He's got sizable chunk, which is a 401k. Can't pull it out to invest with. And I said, that's fine. I understand you've asked. That's great. I said, what other type of cash do you have or do you. Well, this is. Well, I only have 15k in savings. I'm like, okay, well, 15k is better than zero. I said, are you looking to put more away? He goes, yeah, me and my wife have been talking. We're looking to put some more away. I said, that's great. That's awesome. I said, you can't really do much with 15k, but you don't have to have a lot of cash to start investing. We talked a little about wholesale and we talked a little about subject to deals. He's in an area outside of Philadelphia there in writing that he's seen some things like, yeah, I wish I had. All my people that live around me have sold their houses. It's kind of turned over the last few years. I wish I could have bought some of these a few years ago. I said, yeah, you could have, but it's a different story back then. I said, it's good to have cash now. I said, speaking of your house that you live in, have you seen some appreciations? Oh yeah, I got a ton of equity in my house. I'm like, okay, well, how's your credit? He goes, it's good, very good. I said, my. When I worked at the previous credit union, we actually did the loan there. I said, well, if you've got a ton of credit. And he said, he's got over six figures in equity. I said, well, why don't you go to your credit union and see what they can offer you as far as a line of credit or whoever your lender is. If you've got good credit, because I've got excellent credit, we'll go get a lot. Doesn't mean you need to pull that money out, but go get a line of credit and see, because it's good to have that in case you get a deal and you need to act fast. That will help you. If you're making, they're going to charge you 6, 7% on line of credit, but you can make 12% or greater. It's good, it's a good difference. They're just making sure you know your payments and how if it's revolving or if it's a fixed rate, those kind of things you need to know. He's like, I understand completely. Talking about great. And he goes, well, I do have, I have an old 401k from my previous job. I'm like, okay, you didn't say. But he goes. I go, how, how much is that? He's oh, it's only about 25,000. I said, well, that's okay. Nothing wrong with that. I said, you can actually, instead of rolling it over into your current 401k, you can take that IRA or that old 401k and move it into a self directed IRA. He's like, what's that? I said, well, that's an account. It's not individual retirement account. But if you move it into a self directed ira, one that's actually with a self directed custodian, not like your 401k company or Schwab or Vanguard or anything like that. Or Fidelity to a company like Camel Plan or Equity Trust or Quest or there's a whole bunch of them. And I gave them a couple names up at the end of the area. I said, you can actually use that 25k to lend to people to make a good return. Or you can use that money to buy, you know, real estate or notes. And all the profit would have to go back in to that IRA because you're, it's a separate entity. You can't realize that profit, it's like, oh, that's great. I don't need to look, I've got to make good money. I said, okay, that's awesome. So you actually have a better path. You got your 401k, your max now. You got 15k in savings. You got 25k in an IRA you can roll over to do something with. And I said, you need to get you a self directed IRA outside of that rollover. Get you a Roth or something. You know, get set one up for you and your wife. That could be $6,500 each year. That's potentially 13,000. I said, you could start an educational IRA for your kids, that's another 2,000. So you could technically put away about another $15,000 a year in savings that you could use to invest. You could partner with your self directed IRA where you're, you know, you know, your old 401ks, new IRA, that's, you know, investing a chunk, buying funding a chunk, and another chunk comes from what you're putting away. He's like, this is awesome. I didn't even think about that. Like, yeah, but the first thing you got to do is you got to get educated. I said, let's find you a real estate investment club in your area. And we did a quick search. We found a couple. I said, you know, one big thing when you're looking at IRA clubs, and I don't remember if I mentioned this, is that there are basically three types of clubs, all right? You have those that you have investors that get together, they have coffee, they network. It's just an informational type of setting. They might have people that come in once in a while to speak on something, but it's all information. There's no sales. That doesn't mean you can't sign up if somebody's offered training, but that's usually it's informational. They'll have the for profit clubs, which usually, I mean, there's nothing wrong with for profit. It costs money to rent spaces, provide refreshments, food, stuff like that. Meeting space is not cheap in hotels where they'll bring in people to speak on different things and they'll offer products. I said, the big thing, big thing you want to do is try to find you a free networking group. That's not it's just information and networking, but then also finding one where they are going to bring in experts, but.

Making sure to talk to the people.

Doing deals in those areas. What types of deals are they doing? What types of deals are they seeing? Unfortunately, you will often sometimes have the third group which is just solely focused on the person running the group. And what I mean by that is that they're only focused on the deals that they're doing. They won't let anybody else come in education if it's. Everything's got to be slanted to putting money or deals into their pocket. Okay. It's not really the RIA group that they're hoping for. It's all towards them. And I've, I've known people that run groups that's all focused on them, not really focused on helping their students out. They use the group as a bird dog. So people bring them deals, but they're not really providing a lot of great value or helping people get out. So make sure you're not in one of those groups, like, thank you very much. And so then also get educated. I mean, there's plenty of podcasts and YouTube channels and stuff that you can find in strategies that work. Just do a search for that and, and follow that for a little while before you actually purchase a class. Education is great. A lot of times to take you over that next step, you've got to pull the trigger and buy a class from an expert like yours truly in the note space who's been doing it for a while. I said, make sure. Before you buy anything, ask that person how many deals they've done in the last 12, 24 and 36 months. Because the market's changed quite a bit. You don't want somebody who's doing deals five years ago that's not doing a deal today. That's not what you want to do. He's like, thank you very much. So another thing that I would do, I said, I asked him, I said, what do you want to do? Do you eventually want your leave your job? He's like, eventually, not right now. That's great. That's good. If you're in that shoes. Here's things that another thing that you need to do. If you don't have an llc, go get you an LLC right now. Okay, Go get you one. Because you're going to want to season an LLC so that if you do decide to leave in two, three years, that LLC's got some seasoning behind it, some maybe some experience and stuff like that. That way you could actually set that LLC up with your bank institutions and can obviously start working to get business credit, business lines of credit that banks like to give, if you've got some seasoning and things like that too. So. And there's also some programs out there where banks are supposed to give you some lines of credit too, for new entities and stuff like that too. But go get that set up because you do not want to be buying in your own name. Okay? And you know, that's, that's the thing. If you're sitting there on the sidelines, you're wanting to get started, you don't know where to begin, where to turn to. Go to a real estate club in a local area, sit in the back, back couple rows, talk to people. You can't be a wallflower real estate club. Get there and talk about the deals. Hey, what kind of deals have you done lately? You're gonna find a mixture of a lot of people that haven't done a deal. That's very normal at real estate clubs. But what you're looking for is the 10% of people that show up these clubs that are doing something. And I told them, hey, the back two rows, usually the back, if I'm in the front of the room and facing the audience, the back far right is where I like to look for, for the most seasoned people in these REIT clubs. And that's often the case. And he started chugging a little bit about that, said, well, let's go talk to them. Ask them what they're doing, what do they focus on, how long they've been investing. Introduce yourself to the president of the club, tell them you're new, or hey, who should I be talking to? Who's new? I said, one of the most valuable things, while you have a little, nice little nest egg, is you got to understand raising private capital and the fact that there are so many IRA investors out there, people with money willing to lend. So you don't need just to look at your county. I have 25 in an IRA or 401k and 15k and I can only invest in 40k. No, that's not the case. There's a lot of money, but you got to understand the fact how to raise private capital and said, hey, go to your IRA clubs, look and see what kind of education they provide. They will often have mixers as well for you to network with. And of course, you know, leverage YouTube, university leverage, podcasts, you know, jump on connected investors, bigger pockets and those things to take a look at too. For you, those are great resources too. But you got to realize oftentimes you'll have people on there that are just talking and not doing people that have 20000 posts or answers the thing they're too busy answering bigger pockets versus going out and doing some stuff. So you got to take things with a grain of salt. But that's what I would recommend. You know, if you've got. You've got a good job and you're making good money, enjoy it. Use the time frame to pad your investment. If you've got a ton of equity in your house and you're working, take the opportunity now while you have good FICO score, good job history, or you're in the same type of industry for more than two years. Go to your bank, see what they'll do for a line of credit. Doesn't mean you need to take that money out. Go see what they will offer you in Texas. They'll offer you up to 80% equity. So if you had a lot of capital or appreciation in your house the last couple of years, like a lot of, except you might be able to just make a phone call and get a line of credit pulled where they can. You can tap into it at any given time off of a signature or even like some banks would use a debit card you can pull off of. And then it doesn't be like a revolving line. If you take a chunk out, you could even say, okay, I want to turn this into a fixed fixed loan, like a second lien against my house or something like that. If you decide to do that, the important thing is knowing what the payments are, knowing what the terms are. If you're going to use it, make damn sure that you're going to get a much higher return, hopefully double the return of what you're having to pay the bank on that line of credit. If you're in that position like a lot of Americans are, go do it now. It takes a couple phone calls. It's worth showing up the day or two and collecting the information you need to get that line of credit available to tap into. Because you never know when you're not going to. Because if you leave your job and then you go try to get a line of credit and you're brand new to job, you're not going to be able to get anything. Or if you get in a spot where you need it, job loss sickness, something happens and you don't have that line of credit available to you and can't qualify for now the only way to tap into that Equity is to sell your house. And I'm not, I'm not a fan of that. You know, I think mortgage debt is not bad. Paying off your house is a great thing but that equity is then tied up in the house and you can't tap into it, it's just sitting there. The only way to tap into it would be to sell a house. So having a line of credit against your house for any equity have available or rental properties too is a great way to do it. That's why I told Cody, I said listen, see if you can get a qualifier line of credit, figure out what's working in your area, learn from local people. If you, if it's an area you don't like and stuff like that, then look for other places nearby. And as always, feel free to reach out to me. And I'm glad to answer any questions too. And I, I put that out to each and everybody out there listening to this or watching this video. Go to talkwithscottcarson.com if you have a question or two about investing, how to get started, what to put in place, Feel free, book a call with me. I'm always glad to answer it. So do a quick recap there. Max out your, your 400, 101k retirement accounts, right? Make sure it's not bleeding money. One of the biggest mistakes my ex father in law did, he kept putting money into stock, stock stock that was going at 20, 30% growth. And then guess what happened. The company worked for gas prices dropped. He lost over half of his retirement in less than a year because he didn't put it into something a little bit. Yes, it's excited to get drunk on those returns. And he's getting closer to the retirement age. I said you need to move this money around into something that's a little bit more stable for you so you don't lose. Oh no, it's going to keep going up 33 year over year. I'm like, no it doesn't. And he sure is that got hit hard in 2010 when things drop. But anyway, so max out your 401k. Make sure you're not paying through the nose on fees for that. Okay. You've got an old 401k, old retirement, roll it into a self directed IRA. Okay? So you use that money to invest. You can't use that money to go like go to the store and go to Neiman Marcus or something like that. But you can use it to buy real estate, buy notes, lend it out to other investors. Okay. Next thing, start An IRA for you, your spouse, your kids, whatever you can qualify for. But find you a self directed IRA company that can help educate you and show you what options are available to you. Get you an llc. Start an LLC and get that rolling so you've got some credit. Get you a bank account with your llc. It's one important. Join your local real estate club. It's important. So you start networking other investors. And then if you've got equity in your house, go see if you can qualify for a line of credit. Now if you've got like five grand, ten grand equity, that's not any equity. You're talking a sizable chunk of 50,000 or $100,000 in equity. And don't go buy Zillow. Talk to a realtor friend, have them pull comps, look at what you owe. If you're at that 80% value, you're probably not going to get too much of a line of credit. But if you start falling below 80, where you get 70, 60% of the true value house, you could probably get a line of credit and every 50,000, 60, $70,000 in equity. And online a credit can help you purchase a deal. It doesn't need to be a huge mansion, but you can pick up a rental you can buy subject to. You can do some private lending. Lots of great things there for you. But that's what I would do. And get educated. Look, don't be a fool. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room, but you also want to be the dumbest person in the room too. So get educated. Go network with those that are pulling deals. I have always found that the most successful investors, entrepreneurs are the ones that are most giving their time to people who are starting off because they don't want you to say make the same mistakes. I made plenty of mistakes in my 20 years investing. I don't want you to make the same thing. All right? So go out there, take some action. Don't just sit on the sidelines. Start putting these things in place. Start making offers, start talking to people. One of the things that I used to do when I traveled and coached new investors is I always say you need a team if you're going to invest locally. You need a local team, you need a good realtor or even starting off, it can pull comps for you. Maybe make some offers in a title company, they close in. Find out an investor friendly title company. Look for local hard money lenders that can also help you with financing on a traditional piece of property and maybe you use your savings to fund the additional piece for rehab. Find two or three hard money lenders and find out exactly what they're lending on. Okay, so that's a realtor, title company, hard money lender, and then final. Also a really good real estate attorney to help you set up your llc, set up your contracts and stuff like that for you as well. Now an attorney may not set up your LLC properly for you. You may want to use a company like Laughlin Associates out of Reno, Nevada that we use. But we do find local real estate attorneys to help us with foreclosure, ask questions or that closings take place. And those four folks look there. Like I said, realtor, agent, sorry realtor and agent, title company, hard money lender, real estate attorney, those four is important. And of course your vendors look for general contractors. Get recommendations from a local real club, real estate club or realtors for vendors like rehab crews, general contractors, landscaping, Sheetrock, external roofing. A good contractor can save you money. Maybe you network at local BNI groups to find that if you've got the time. But if you're working a 9 to 5, you may not have a lot of time during the day, in the morning or the evening to go out and network. So you have to do it at night. So go out there, find your real estate club, tap into it and if you have any questions, feel free. Feel free to reach out to me guys and gals out there. We're here to help in any way we can for you. So go out, definitely take some action. Make sure that the next two years are the most fruitful for you. So that when you are ready to leave that job if you want to, you've built a great path, great savings and already have some cash flow coming in to replace your income. And don't leave your job until you've got your income replaced on a cash flowing basis for you. You don't have to have millions of dollars in profits to leave your job. If you're making and buying rentals or performing notes or even non performing turnover, performing, we're taking over subject to deals or stuff like that that are returning monthly cash flow for you. Hey that's, that's financial freedom. And you'll really find that you're just maybe just a few deals away or a lot closer to financial freedom than you ever thought. So go out there, like I said, take action. And we'll see at the top. Everybody, thanks for listen.