Unlocking Success: Scott Carson on Raising Private Money and Winning with Business-Podcast Fusion

As always, my coach and yours, Coach Stacy V Coach. So we obviously backstage we got to talk a little bit about the painful weekend. So we won't go too much into the Cinderella story ending.

The clock struck midnight just completely fell through for both of us.

It sure did. The clock struck midnight and Joe Flacco became a pumpkin again.

As the Dax. So it was. We both got ran.

Oh my goodness. I seen a video actually of a Cowboys fan just punches tv. It was so bad. There was a lot of collapses. But the thing I do want to talk about with football, which was so kind of shocking I guess in a little bit was. And we talked about this but sorry, I'm trying to turn on do not disturb. I'm getting blown up with stuff right now. But we was. Was Mike Tomlin's press conference. Oh my goodness. I. I seen the video. Well, I seen the headline and I'm like okay, wait like what happened? And you see the video, you can tell he is not, he's not happy obviously. But they got, they got a beaten do and, and he got to be.

Well you did too. At least y' all got beatens with your third string quarterback, not your starter.

True. But what was crazy was he that question. You gotta expect it's gonna come. It's always where they like to.

I mean they never even got to the question and they get beyond the setup.

True. Exactly.

You've got one year left on your contract.

Boom. God, it was so funny. I mean it was such a great I guess response. But he knows it's coming. Come on, Mike. You know that's coming. Like that's. They're gonna, that's the way this, this game works. They're gonna find anything to get it, get it, get some of the eyes out of it.

Never losing season.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And I know that that's been painful for us as music Cleveland fan obviously and I'm.

And I'm pretty old and they've only had three coaches. That's also amazing.

Yeah. Right. So other than obviously football, how was your weekend?

It could not have been better. So my son and daughter in law and grandkids were here for the weekend. So we finally got to celebrate Christmas. Still got a few Christmas things hanging around because we kept everything up until they got here. But it was awesome. So love spending time with the kids. That was great.

I love that. That is awesome. Obviously three day weekend for the kids. So a little bit longer with MLK day. But yeah, we, we got a client with the new new gig going. So that Was. That was fun. That was exciting. But, yeah, other than that, I do want to. Before we bring out our guest. And again, if you guys are joining us, if you're joining us here, he'll be out in a minute, I promise. But we have the. The founder of We Close Notes and the host of the Note Closer show podcast coming out. But, Coach, I had bni, obviously, this morning, and so there I got to meet this amazing guy who owns it's called Two Maids here locally. And one thing that blew me away was right in his book, he spells out that they pay for performance. If you could see that. But so, literally, based on your rating of their service, each cleaning will depend how much the two cleaners get paid for their service. And I thought, wow, that's. You know, I always was. I mean, I've been in sales my whole life. What drew me to sales was commission. So I'm all about, hey, I get it. The harder you work, the more you make. So I think that. And I think you nailed it where you said, like, there might be a few knuckleheads that would screw around, but other than that, it's really going to just drive the point that they're going above and beyond for their service. So good on them.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, men talk about pay for performance, a model of compensation. It's kind of. Kind of wild that they go that route. But then you also said they give free cleanings to cancer patients and things like that.

They do, yeah. So I'm glad you brought that up. So, yeah, actually, the thing that blew me away, he told me about cleaning for a reason. And so it's an Issa charity. But, guys, if you know anybody who is battling cancer, this is literally a free service. They partner with cleaning services just like Two Maids, all throughout the United States and even Canada. And they've donated so far. So they're founded in 2016, they've donated over $17 million worth of service, of cleaning service to cancer, to people battling cancer. So again, with caregivers, that's one thing off of their plate that's going to obviously ease their work. So please reach out to them again. Lee, Shout out to Lee here with Two Maids, the owner here, but they donate a bunch of hours every year as well. So just. Just an amazing kind of charity. That's.

God bless them. That's awesome.

So, yeah. But so next guest. So the guest we're gonna bring out gonna hit the intro, and then we'll. I'll give a proper intro before we. Before we bring him Out. Get ready, y'.

All.

You get one heartbeat so take it seriously. This is your masterpiece don't forget to dream the colors in the air you breathe your master peaceful and feel it.

All.

Don'T stop till it is beautiful don't stop till it is beautiful.

Don'T.

Stop till it is beautiful.

All right, again, everybody, I so excited to bring out our next guest. So this dude, obviously, no surprise that he would be a referral and a recommendation to meet from Rena. Oh, lost coach. So hopefully coach will be back here with us. What was a referral from coach? You okay?

I think so.

Sorry, but. So referral from Rena, but Scott Car is our guest we're bringing out. He is the owner and managing member of We Close Notes, based out of Austin. He is also the host of the nationally syndicated radio show and podcast the Note Closer Show. That's obviously with millions of listeners across AM and FM channels and 130 countries. And just an amazing dude. Can't wait to talk about what he gives because even when we first met Scott, you. Scott, thank you. But when we first met, you were already giving. So I, I want to start there. But before we get into the giving, give it. Give a little background of who you are a little more. And then I want to get into that because I did get to see your training recently as well, which is just more giving.

So I am a, unfortunately a very sad and depressed Cowboys fan. Choke boys, as you guys are talking. So having to go root for the Texans feels kind of like rooting for your little stepbrother. But anyway, no Austin's home, but been an entrepreneur for over 20 years in the mortgage and real estate industry. Sold everything I owned back in 2010 after leaving a business and then also a partnership, stuff like that. And thought I'd travel across the country for 30 weeks hitting all the major league baseball parks. And that turned into four years of non stop travel and kind of led to the me becoming the Note guy, which I focus on a very, very niche inside the real estate investing community where I buy distressed debt. We could go into that, but we don't want to go down a rabbit hole. Compare me to the Christian Bale character in the Big Short. If you like to watch movies, I'm that guy looking at spreadsheets and evaluating assets all day and stuff like that and trying to work to help people out. But now honored to be here, guys. I think what you're doing is awesome. Great show and I'm a big believer. And like what you said is you get back tenfold of what you put out. And I'm. When I. I'm very fortunate to be where I'm at today. Years ago, when I first got started as an entrepreneur, I kind of fell flat in my face and was very fortunate enough to have some mentors that really helped me along the way and always promised, hey, if I got to where I could get give back and help out folks from, you know, the brand, end of the season, investor stuff like that, I'm glad to do that. And so that's one of the biggest premises of when we deliver a class or with our podcast, or when we're teaching a workshop or if I'm speaking on somebody's, you know, zoom call or virtual workshop or in person is, is to give, give, give, because those that need it and those that want to take advantage of it will do it. And, and, and like I said, you'll get back 10 times what you put into it.

I love that. And you nailed it. I actually took that advice from John Hewitt's book I Compete, and he said he tried to outgive his parents. And I was just at a time where I'm like, okay, I had that vision or mission to I want to get to a point where I can give. And then I thought, well, shoot, why don't I just give what I can give now? And so just started to give whatever I could. And, yeah, the universe just has a funny way of responding back.

So I. Yeah, all right, you know, I've got questions.

Yes, yes, yes, please jump on in.

So notes being such a niche, it had to be a journey to get there. It's obviously from what you said, it's not where you started. So how did, how did you land?

Yeah, I. It was an interesting thing. I think everything God puts in front of us is a step on the ladder to our end point. And I started off as a real estate investor, buy my first house, and then we bought two other rental properties at full value with a realtor. And then I got laid off, and then my renters got laid off. So I was a distress bar pretty fast back in 2001, 2002. Fast forward to 2004. If we kind of got my assets out of a sling, I was fortunate enough to hook up with a. A guy, a buddy of mine still as Dave Boyd, who started a mortgage company with two investors by the name of Bob Leonidi and Jimmy Kaylo. They taught creative financing and travel the country, teaching owner financing, buying on terms and stuff like that, along with a bunch of other folks So I left my job in the, in the bank industry at that point to join them. And basically they had a four year apprenticeship in real estate investing and how to get it, do it creatively and learned how to buy notes, learned about distressed debt investing. It was a niche that nobody was teaching because it just is a small niche. I mean, if you've heard of the savings and loan crisis or the RTZ days of the 80s, that's kind of what it was. Well, when everything hit The Fan In 2008, 9 and 10, I left the origination side of the mortgage business and took what I'd learned from Bob and Jamie and some other folks and started calling the same banks that I was originating for to buy their debt at big discounts. And so that's what I did. That's how I got inundated into it. Very fortunate spot to take advantage of what was going on. And you know, the whole dialing for dollars was my like life. Like to making 50 to 100 phone calls to banks to get stuff sent to me. But I just made a game out of it, you know, I know, like, okay, like I made 54 phone calls over two days the first time. And then on my 54th phone call I got a yes. Well, that yes led to a $50,000 commission check, you know, about a month later. And I was like, okay, I found something, let me just stick to it. And that's what I've been doing is literally making connections to banks and asset managers and mortgage companies and been doing that for about 16 years of buying distressed debt. Bought over a billion dollars in residential commercial debt. Over the years, we've helped thousands of real estate investors who want to get into the, the being the bank kind of side of buying distressed debt and performing debt. And by teaching them how to do all that stuff, it's a different animal than going out and buying a property. Buying the mortgage has got some differences to it, but it's been a very rewarding path. And that's kind of how I got started into it. I was once a distressed borrower, I think is what God gave me that way. Knowing that be on the phone talking with people that were, you know, facing losing their house and behind the mortgage payments and having some empathy for them and a heart and say, okay, well let's, let's figure this out. Let's create a win win solution. Let me help you out here in some sort of fashion. If you want help, we can do it, but you gotta make me halfways if you're not gonna Help me. Then we're just going to go ahead and go the route of foreclosure and you can deal with my attorneys.

So 54, 54 times, that's a lot. And I think, you know, maybe after 40 a lot of folks would have just thrown in the towel. What kept you going when you just kept getting.

I knew that they existed. I knew that they were out there. And I was like, what the heck? I mean, you gotta realize this is like 2008 where any mortgage broker worth their weight knew that the, you know, the merry go round was coming to an end, you know, subprime and started to fall off and there was increased defaults. I was like, well, I got this opportunity. Let me just keep making phone calls. And I've been in sales before that. You know, I knew that 80 of sales comes after the fifth contact. You just got to keep following up and following up and following up. And I knew I started getting the right spots when people are like, oh no, we don't have anything, or hey, you know, I knew I was talking to the right departments, which are internal departments of the bank, but I just said, well, let's figure this out. I know I can get a yes. Let me keep going. Let me keep going. And it was at 4:45 on a Thursday afternoon when I got that yes. I know it because I was like, I would have. I almost gave up. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

If you, if you're big in books, there's a book called three Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold that my buddy Greg Reed actually wrote. Greg's a mentor of mine and buddy for over a decade now. He talks about how most people give up and they're literally just like three feet from the gold, from making things happen. So I kept going. And that's not even my longest set of phone calls to get. There you go. You got it. Greg's a good buddy.

There you go.

You'll be happy.

There you go.

And you know, I got into one bit, took me 70 phone calls over three weeks before I finally got the right yes. But that turned into a million dollar relationship. So I think anybody out there that's, that's part of your outbound, you know, your legion is calling. Stuff like that. Don't give up. Usually it doesn't take 54 no's to get a yes. But for me it did. It was a different time. It's just a matter of like systematizing it and following up and having a game plan more so than anything else.

1 I love that you said about making it a game or you made it a game because so podcast I had before this one we had on Andrea Waltz. So she, her and Richard Dent wrote Go for no. And it literally is, it's kind of just flipping the idea of your, you want to get count your nose. And once you really start to pay attention to them, you know, you start to not notice them as much. It's kind of crazy, but it really does. Now you're like looking for the nose and it's another just great way to kind of play with that because again, yeah, obviously, yeah, you, you get the game Dialing for dollars. It's, there's a lot of no's you get. You go through a lot of no's, a lot of hang ups and a lot of heart like so well.

And you also got to realize too that no doesn't mean no. It means not now. 90% of the time it means not now. So if you can make that touch and then 48, only 48 of people will follow up with a second phone call to a prospect that puts you 50 ahead of the game. And if you make a third phone call, I think it's one in 20. Only 25% of people followed the third time. So I had to knew those numbers. I said, okay, well let's just, just pull out these phone calls and we'll just start this touch basis. Let's give it 30 days, let's just keep rocking and rolling and give it time for our voicemails to hit or you know, like the first 10 phone calls, I completely botched it, you know.

Ah, you know, everybody does.

Oh yeah, you get transferred, you're talking to somebody and you're like, who am I talking to? What's the name of the bank? You know, all that kind of stuff. You just gotta realize that people don't really think about you five minutes after you, you know, after they hang up with you and just move on to the next one. So it's just a dogged determination more so than anything else.

Yeah, so.

So back then that your ability to research was a lot less so. I mean you were probably really going in blind on a lot of these calls too.

Yeah, I was looking. The one thing that was good is you could actually go into like with any type of licensing, okay. Any type of state licensing, you can actually go to the state that you're in and they will tell you whose license is expired or has been withdrawn or stuff like that. So I went to the Texas Mortgage Bankers association and I downloaded a list of licensees they get. Literally, you could literally go to their website and click on a few buttons that would download the whole list of all these mortgage brokers and bankers and servicing companies in the state of Texas, including like phone numbers too and email addresses, which is stupid.

Oh wow.

And, and I literally, it gave me a list like 950 mortgage bankers. And that's what I started with. And I said, okay, let me pick the ones where their license expired in like the last six months. Because at this time there's a lot of banks going out of business, people getting out of the mortgage industry. So it's like those, their license has expired last six months. They're looking to get out, they may hold some stuff. And that's exactly what happened is I called this company, Aegis Mortgage out of Houston, Kim Crock was her name, I still remember to this day. I call the phone and she's like, hello? I'm like, is this Aegis Mortgage? Like, yeah, how can I help you? I said, well, I'm looking to your non performing note department. She started laughing. I'm like, well, what's so funny? Did I say something wrong? She's like, no, you're, you're the right person. I said we, I said, I said, it looks like your license. She's oh yeah, we're going out of business. I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. She's like, yeah, it's me and the boss. I said I have one more trade to make. And when I make that trade, I'm, I'm unemployed. I'm like, well, you can start seeing you make one more trade and you're on vacation for a while. She started laughing. She goes, what do you want? I said, what do you have as far as distressed debt? Yes, well, I got one portfolio, it's in Houston. I said, well, I'd love to take a look at it. And she's like, okay, I'll email it over to you. And she emailed it over to me. We flipped it four weeks later for 250 for five points. And I made a, you know, 50 grand off of that. And I still remember that phone call because it was just like she was in such a bad mood. We started joking. She got in a better mood on the phone. I made her laugh and that helped, you know, but that's, you know, you just gotta, that's the thing is so people are so scared to talk with, with people these days. We get so used to, oh my God, somebody coughed and we got coveted for the 12th time or whatever. I mean, I can't text you and you won't fall over. I can't send an email. People are going to fall over with their credit cards or stuff up in the air. Not. You got to put some, you know, a four letter word into it and it starts with a, you know, letter W, it ends with K. It means work, you know. And that's, that's, that's the biggest thing.

I agree. And guys, listen what he's talking about. I mean he really does, he really does show on, on his. So I got to bring this up and I don't know if this was part of what I'd seen, but I seen this Note Night in America and part of, I'm assuming it's another part of the training, but these trainings look up, look it up, look up. We close notes on his channel and subscribe right away if this interest you at all. Because it literally he's giving step by step, like he's talking about right here of how to make this, this happen.

And so that's, I guess I got to share Note Night in America. It's a little interesting story with it. So I started coaching for a guy back in the day and we were, I was in charge of like his coaching students. And we would do like, remember those conference calls before we had Zoom and go to webinar back in the day we had like teleconferences. We get people on the phone and go through some stuff. We started doing that on Monday night with as students. And when I left, I mean I was, we're doing those on pretty regular basis. And I realized that was one of the best things because I would bring people together that I'd have 10 to 200 people on a conference call on, on a Monday night. And when I went on my own, I said, well, they stopped doing it. I said, well, let me still do these. So I started doing webinars. And now we've done Note Night in America for 13 years. Okay, 13 years straight of average about 30, 30 calls throughout the year. And it's either me teaching something or we have an educational guy or a gal on there or a vendor that we use something just a nugget separate from the note closure show. We're supposed to have something last night, but with the weather, it was kind of crazy. So we end up having to rebook the guest the next week. But that literally has become its own podcast, you know, its own a lot of content. You know, it's about an hour long every week. And it's just 13 years straight. It's the longest running, like webinar. I mean, we've only got 156 podcast episodes because that's what only turned into a podcast like four years ago. But it's just, it's that continuous tap into our, our audience. And it may be anywhere from three people to. We've peaked out having over a thousand people on the webinar live at one given time. And it's just. It's just trying to give and give it. I don't give away everything that we do, but we do give away a lot of the nuts and bolts that a lot of others don't talk about. Because, you know, I always want people to think like, if this is what Scott gives away free, imagine what he does if he's signing up for a workshop or something. Yes.

So with the three podcasts and, and a thousand plus episodes, how did. So this was obviously part of how you landed on it.

But.

But how did you really get so heavy into podcasting? And why do you think it's been.

Oh, my gosh, great question. I hated podcasts to begin with. I'll tell you that right now. I had to get talked into it. And so this goes back now that we've had the Note closure show now for six and a half or seven years. I always forget it's 2016. So I came back, I was in Vegas at an event, and I heard Gary Vaynerchuk and Kevin Harrington and Robert Hershevik, three people speak in an event. And they were all talking about, hey, you gotta go video. You gotta implement video into anything. You're marking this, like when Facebook lives are first coming up. Okay. And Gary Vaynerchuk had his, you know, Ask Gary V show every day, Monday through Friday at like 11am or noon Eastern. And so I started, I was like, I came back from that event and I said, well, let's start doing daily videos. Let's just do a little video Facebook Live. We'll use. Use our smartphone here. We don't have any fancy equipment. We'll just do what's going on at. We closed notes today. What are we working on? What kind of deals are we doing? Just to give a, like a fly on the wall kind of view of what, what we do on a day and night basis. And we started doing those live. They would be from anywhere from like eight minutes to like an hour long, depending on what the topic was and stuff like that. And so that started building an Audience on like Facebook and then also on YouTube, because we take those videos and just throw them up on YouTube. And we didn't use like YouTube buddy or anything, but we just threw them up there. No thumbnails. I mean, I had stroke face and like half of them, you know. You know, and then didn't put any description. We just threw them up there. But they started getting views on there too. And I had a couple of my students that started a podcast and they was like, oh, great. It's kind of. That's kind of sounds like a cool thing. And they like, you know, got to 100 episodes and I started seeing. They started building. Well, that's great. Congratulations, guys. That's awesome. And then I was at an event in San Diego, an asset protection event, and I got introduced to a guy. A guy, Tom and Tracy hazard. They own potatize.com. they do all of our production for the podcast. But they're like, as they were, you know, speaking the event, they were researching the speaker. So they can't be like, you got a lot of great video, man, you should have a podcast. Like, oh, no, I hear it takes like four hours of editing for like every hour of content. I don't have that time. And that just sounds painful to me. And they're like, oh, no, you can do it. We can do it. I was like, oh, no, I'm not interested. Well, in this six month period from the time I met Tom and Tracy, I go to this event, wedding in the Dominican Republic with a buddy of mine and my buddy there, my student there is there. And he's like, oh, we're quitting the podcast. And I looked at him like, why are you quitting your podcast? That's like a unique thing. There's nobody else doing that. Why are you quitting your podcast? That. I mean, there's like one smaller one that wasn't a halfway. And they're like, well, we're just having creative differences. I don't want to do it anymore. And I remember looking at Steph, my better half, and she looked at me and we walked back to the room. She's like, you're starting a podcast? I'm like, hell yeah, I am. So I got home, called Tom and Tracy said, what do I gotta do? And they're like, listen, we keep it easy for you. Just record it and you know, via zoom, how you're doing your lives or whatever. How. Whatever you guys Google plus or whatever like that. And we'll do all the work. I was like, done. Let's do it. And so they. I just started cranking out. I said, okay, we're gonna do the Nook Closure show. We've got a little bit of audience. We got some minimum, minimum here with the videos. You know, we did 150 videos. That's literally five months of content daily to see if it would be worthwhile. And then we. I said, okay, let's release episode one, which is episode 151 technically, of the podcast. And we cranked out daily video, Monday through Friday videos for like three years. Then we went to like three, and we hit a little bit of pod fade for a little while. Just took a couple months off. Then we were hit and miss for a little while. But we just. I just uploaded episode 822 today of the Note Closure Show. We got 156 on the Note night in America. And then our Note Camp podcast is like three seasons with like another 70 or 80. And then I've been, I guess, in about 300 other podcasts. But I found it so valuable, Stacy, because nowhere else are you in somebody's ear that they're consuming your info as long as they are, you know, Facebook lives. Facebook videos has, like, about a 1% absorption rate. That's after your 5% of your audience or your connections actually sees the stuff. The algorithm works against you. YouTube is 11 absorption ratio, but podcasting is 86 retention. If they listen to you, they listen to you from the start to finish because they're busy doing something. And we started seeing immediate results of people reaching out and calling us, opting into things, sign up for classes or reaching out to invest with us or to buy assets from us. I've even had bankers that listen to my podcast. I'd be in a conversation like, oh, you're the guy that owns that podcast. I'm like, yeah, yeah. He goes, I learned. You taught me something. I've been banking for 30 years. He taught me something, something. And I'm like, okay. I mean, this is, I mean, literally to the point too, that during COVID I mean, you guys gotta realize I used to travel, like 20 to 30 weeks out of the year. Like, travel out to events and speak for a day or two and fly back or. Hell, there was like four years straight. I lived in. In Vegas in all the whole month of October, which is not good for your liver or kidneys. Okay. I tell you that right now. Nope.

No.

And I basically, about five, six years ago, I said, listen, we don't need to do all this travel anymore. We're going to do online. The podcast was going well. We've been doing these webinars for a while. Let's rethink our strategy and just do everything virtual with a podcast and then zoom events and stuff like that. My sales team was all pissed off. They're like, this isn't going to work. And I was like, well, it did work and I don't need you to work for me anymore. Thank you. It's more successful and like that, but it's, it's just, it's. You have to realize with anything, you got to give it time for your seeds to germinate and whatever you're putting in place, your market, you have time to grow. The podcasting industry is just littered with the carcasses of, of cheap shows. People that thought it was a get rich quick or we're gonna have success overnight, we're gonna go straight to the top of Apple. It doesn't work that way. You've got to be consistent. I think it's. What is it? One, only if you have more than 25 episodes, you're in the top 5 or 10% of podcasters out there. If you've released an episode in the last 90 days and have done it consistently, you, you, you, you're gonna grow with it. And one of the things I did is when I started podcasts, I started surrounding myself with people that were better than me when it comes to shows. And so, okay, what's, what's your growth and tell me how. What's the secret sauce? And overwhelmingly, it was just be consistent, be honest. And when you say you're gonna do something or you're gonna show up, show up. If you say twice a week, show up at least twice a week. If you say once a week, it's great to show up twice a week, but you'd be better make sure you're there the same time every. At least once a week and stuff like that. So that's, that's what we found. That's my long winded answer to your short question there, Coach. No, no, that was good.

No, I think that was a great answer because I think it really gets into the. I love that you brought up Gary Vee. It makes a lot of sense of now why you went to the niche and why you. You get the idea of day trading attention. His new book, it's. That's literally where the world world's going. And you know that with the. The more that's why I see the. Seen the value right away in this too was the more you can Be genuine. Be the real you. So like, obviously you gotta say what you mean and mean what you say, but like, literally you do that and then you give value and before you know it. And that's. I started to kind of connect the dots with a lot of that during COVID was like, hey, I kind of. I'm catching a little bit of how this is all working. You don't have as many as it might seem that you have, and you're not as big as you, but it's just the consistency of it and the consistency of your following really.

And I can tell you a funny story. So there's this other podcast out there with name names, but they were around, they had like 12 episodes when I launched my show, and my students, they had their show and it's finally gone away because they haven't touched it in five years. But what's funny is the gal that ran the other podcast, she came back, she like posted something to social media like, oh my God, I've. I've had 13,000 downloads in the year since I did my show. I'm just amazed. I'm like, no, those are probably followers of me that found your show from finding. She's like, oh, yeah, you're probably right. But that's the thing is you can draft off of other people's audiences. And one of the things that I did that I think is everybody can do is I was like, okay, you know, note investing is this very small niche and there's we. I call it. We have the old school people have been around for years that do it. The old way of thinking versus the new kind of technology. And I put myself in that new technology aspect of it. I'm like, well, how can I draft off these other people's audiences? And they're like, they don't have a podcast. They don't do virtual events. It's all in person events. I said, well, I'll invite them online. So we did this virtual event called Note Camp. It was like a. It was a conference, online conference, before anybody was doing online conference. And everybody's like, oh, that. No, everybody loves the network. They're not going to sign it. Well, we had like 500 paid signups for our first four day summit. And people like, well, you got to pre record this stuff. Like, no, no, we're doing a lot. So we had 40 speakers over four days that we basically we literally broke like Google Live stream. It like went down like twice throughout because we had such a huge traffic. We had 1500 people on it. At one time, which may not seem big, but when you're running your first time, you're like amazed that people are showing up for that. Well then all of our competitors or this. I won't say competitors. Let me put it first. First of all, it was all our peers that were on it. They had their own audiences. Now they would send an email out to their database. Hey, here's my speaking spot on note camp. Feel free to tune in. Well, what do we do? We capture that info or when they show it to their email blast, hey, get a free discount code or hey, get a discount ticket or get a free ticket. If you do A, B and C, like a social media post. Well that led to social proof. Proof before we launched with people sharing things and of course people. So it was literally, it was a huge success. So much that the people told us no. We did year two, the people told us no the first time. We're like begging to get on. You sure I can't speak on your event? You know, I'm like, oh yeah, as long as you do where you share it. Yeah, share with your audience. Because we're drafting our audience and of course we have some sales up. We gotta do a normal split of sales, stuff like that. And then just it's, it's done. We didn't do it with this last year because we just took a break for the summer. We were so busy doing this stuff. But we were already pre planning it for the seventh or eighth year coming up in about four months for it. But it's just we just drafted off our peer audience, you know, some of our competitors. People like why did you have this guy speak? Doesn't he isn't your competitor kind of. So. But you know, it's, we can win. Win. When you, when you're bringing in so.

Many people like that, how do you keep it from just turning into a pitch fest?

You very great question. So when I invited people, we only. When I would ask, ask people to speak, I was very specific to only allow a third of the speakers pitch something. So I had like my core. And if they were going to pitch something, it had to be something of value to the audience. It would be something that was quality. If somebody had a, a crappy product, we knew they wouldn't be on speaking. You know what I mean? And I would always, I would do some research online for folks. So we would do literally it's pretty simple. We only. So we had, if you had 30 speakers, we knew only like 10 that would pitch okay. And those 10 that led to like sponsorship sales too. Like, hey, if you want to pitch, we not only are going to get half, but you also gotta pay to sponsor the event or something. It doesn't have to be anything big, but something. Or if you want to pick your speaking spot, you've got to pay to get a little better speaking spot. So we always made sure that we had one person pitching that both people, you know, usually the obviously the one before, the one after weren't pitching anything. Okay. And then we also made sure that those that weren't pitching, they still gave something of content, something valuable to the audience, whether it's a free report, free download, you know, something that we could use to give as way. And so it was, they got a lot of freebie stuff and they didn't mind so much being pitched because they knew that it was a valuable thing. You know, this guy know is delivering a product defined assets and as software is this. Well, if you got an hour 15 speaking spot, you can't be pitching for 16 minutes. Only get 15 minutes of content. You got to give 16 minutes of content and you only got 15 minutes to make your offering at the end. And I, I, I, I've kicked people off when people went into it where they started pitching 15 minutes in the conversation I literally have stopped. People said, listen, hey Steve, thank you so much for coming on here today, but you're violating your agreement of your pitching a whole hour. You're not giving any content. So we wish you best of luck. And I would like kick them off of Zoom and my audience like, oh my God, they got the hook. I'm like, this guy's not doing what he said he would. So I've got, you know, and I got, always had a presentation lined up, you know, a 30 minutes. I love that content stuff that in.

And of itself would make me want to come back because so many of these you go to, it just, it gets out of hand.

Yeah. When we also did something unique too is we ran two Zooms at the same time. So like I would run Zoom 1 and then Stephanie would run Zoom 2. And so we always make had different speakers. So if somebody like I'll give you like one of our guys, Aaron Young, associates with Laughlin USA, they do a lot with entities and LLCs and asset protection. And my audience has seen him before. Well, we had, we ran another speaker at that same time. That was information that wasn't selling anything that hadn't been on before. So somebody was a regular to my audience or something like that. We would always have somebody else on that they could flip over. Like, oh, we've already seen this guy from another event. We'll go over and watch this other guy. So they could switch back and forth very easily, seamlessly.

Interesting.

And it allowed for us to have like 10 speakers in a day versus just six because we would run our 15 sessions.

Interesting.

That's great. That, that is, I've done it, been.

A part of a lot of events and so that might be more interesting to me than, than others, but I found that that was, that was an awesome few minutes right there.

Well, but yeah, we've all, we've all. I mean, the ask. I mean the mind can only absorb what the asking withstand. Right.

You know what I mean?

So I think the best ever virtual event I've ever seen was when Tony Robbins did his event a few years ago.

Yeah.

Where you went live and you saw it everywhere. And I'm sitting there going through it, I'm just amazed. I'm like, how can we do this? And cool Incorporated. And we, you got to get people involved. You gotta have live stream open for people to ask questions. And that's the biggest thing about a lot of events. They pre record speakers and people can tell what's pre recorded and they will phase out, they'll drift off, they'll go do something else because like, well, I can go back and watch the replays and nobody ever goes back and watch the replays. Let's just be honest about that.

Yeah.

And so you got to have your people live. They've got to answer questions. You got somebody monitoring the chat roll. If, if somebody's not asking questions, the person that's there, as I call the room monitor or the host, has to have a list of questions that can incite other questions. And that's one thing. We always try to have four or five questions lined up that we can ask at the end of the presentation or ask the speaker, you know, hey, what do you want us, Anything you want us to ask. Do you want us to take questions during or after? At the end. And so that helps, you know, getting people to ready to rock and roll. And then of course, the most valuable thing of doing a virtual event for us, it's great to have sales, it's great people show up. But we always like to survey our audience. And this is one thing, if you're an entrepreneur and you have a, a list of clients or social media or database, you gotta be asking your audience on a regular basis what they're looking for. And find out more about them. So we would send out when somebody would register for the event.

Great, great.

Send out a survey monkey to them. If 25 questions, you know, some of the questions were asked because we'd have speakers on, you know, like our sponsor for IRA company. You know, we'd ask like do you have a self directed ira? You know, how many deals have you done? Do you have an llc, do you have a website, you know what those things are. But we would collect so much information with these other 25 questions like what niche are you looking to do? How many deals have you done? What are your three favorite states to invest in? If you had, if you, are you looking to partner with people or use your own money or open to both. So it would tell us if somebody was wanting to partner with somebody, you know what, what niche of note investing? First seconds owner financing private capital. So we'd ask these 25 questions plus you know, like where do they listen to the podcast on, did they have, what was their favorite social media channel, you know, what was their, their biggest need and what was the three thing their goal for the year. So we collected all this information that led to a year of content because then we, you know, when you have 300 people that fill out survey, we got a 35% fill out rate, which is crazy for any type of survey, you know what I mean? And if they, they signed up for, we said, hey, we give you the option. If you fill it in, we will give you the survey results. We'll let you have those so that it helps you with your networking after the event. If you don't want your information released, we won't release it. But if you want it to, we'll you sign up for it. You'll get all the attendees, all their information, stuff like that. So that made it even more valuable because we weren't hoarding all the info but the when people ask you what was their biggest need or the three biggest things they wanted to learn, that led to 180 plus podcast episodes. It led to us being able to hold people accountable. When people told us their top three states to invest in, we know we had a buyer's list in those three states so we knew what niche they were doing. So it helped us in our business be able to hit them not only with our note deals, but if they need an llc, we could recommend an asset protection company. If they needed didn't have an ira. Well, you need to get a self directed IRA with one of our vendors. If you needed a help with a Website. Hey, we've got a website to come in. You know, if you need help with due diligence. Hey, here's a due diligence vendors. So it helped us really not only grow our business, but helped us grow our vendors and our affiliate stuff as well.

And in the end, you literally grew a community is what you did with it.

Well, we grew the community to begin with was the first 150 days of showing up daily and then the podcast and then of course leveraging social media and showing up daily on that. You know, to do that. That helped us build an online following and then just to continuing to give and give and give and give and give along the way.

Yeah, so those, those dailies were, were they live or were your. Those dailies early recorded at any point?

They were all Facebook lives. Those first 150 was going live on Facebook on my cell phone, literally like me holding it there or on a tripod and going live every day. And then we did the first like 200 episodes of the podcast were just like that Facebook lives that we would download and throw them up on YouTube. So it was just all going. This of course is all before like LinkedIn Live and Restream and Stream Yard and all that stuff that make it so simple now. But we would, you know, go live, download it and then re upload it to all the other channels to try to cross promote as best we could.

Yeah, obviously we're on restream, but the ability to go for us to 10 channels every two times a week is. It's.

Well, you're doing 20 because I shared all my channels with it when I registered. Jumped on this as well too. So all your stuff. And my stuff was.

Well, yeah, well, hey, thank you for that, man. This has been.

Can I ask one legit?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

When you're doing, when you're doing the two zoom rooms, you know, everybody has such wonky Internet, myself included. From where they're, where they're coming to you from. How do you ensure the quality of each speaker?

So you. Well, most of that was one of the biggest things. We did a tech check with them beforehand. Like the day before, if we went live on a Thursday, we had to do a tech check with them Tuesday or Wednesday from their location. So most of them were at home in their office, you know, so they usually had a pretty good Internet there. If you know a couple people at other events and they ramp their hotel room to speak in our event. And so that worked really well. We, we did it at our Office location instead of working from home Internet. So I used to have an office executive suite. So they had really high powered Internet. And so we would just basically be wired into the. The outlet for that. And we made it simple where we. We basically said note camp. I bought the URLs notecamproom1.com and not camp room2.com and we instructed all our folks that signed up to make sure you register for both. And here's that way you can go to the main landing page and if you want to just flip back and forth, all you gotta do is hit this one button and you'll. It'll seamlessly let you in. You don't have to register every time. You know what I mean? So we tried to make it a little bit easier versus them to go and register every time. Just say once you register for one, you're good for all four days on both of them.

Yeah, with, with 40 speakers that you haven't. Your mic is muted and all.

I mean it wasn't. I mean it wasn't so bad. Most of these people have done a lot before and we only had a few people that had been on it before. But it was, it was easy, it was lighter. I mean it ran live. We take 10 to 15 minute breaks and sometimes that would be more Q and A we sold. We would run short little videos as advertising like billboards. We had a. A PowerPoint slide that we would run ads promoting the next speaker and then the special of the day or the key word of the day so we could track it on social media. I mean we got close to 2000 social media posts in that first one we did where people shared hashtag note camp everywhere. And then we also. It was kind of fun. We ran a contest where we're given like the, the no camps. The no camp camp. The. The camper of the day where they would get like a free class or free tech. And then at the end of the four days we gave away the note camper of the the whole event and they won a twenty thousand dollar coaching package for free. So you had really people that were really showing in to win it the entire way. I mean we had people did like recap videos and they created their own images in canva of us speaking and then you know, live stream their own videos on recaps. It was a. It was really interesting getting everybody involved in sharing that kind of stuff because we basically rewarded people for doing. We had one thing we called the tub of love one year where we threw in like Five grand in cash. And then everybody that spoke threw in their class for free into the tub of love. So the guy that won it, he won literally like $60,000 worth of education and LLC stuff and support that I saw. I totally borrowed that from Greg Reagan, Greg's event at Secret Knock that he does every year.

So that's clever though. And it's absolutely. Love it.

You know, when you're talking to business owners out there, if you think about this, think about everybody can do this. Doesn't have to be 30 people. You could do it with like four people. Like, we've got a friend of ours who was a following a while, Cassandra McClure. She started doing like Instagram mini events on Sundays with like three. And her thing is health and wealth beauty. Right. All organic beauty products and stuff like that. So she would bring on fine three speakers to come on and talk 15 minutes each about a product or health and wellness aspect. Well, that. She did that every Sunday for like six months. Well, that led to her launching a show and then a podcast, and then she was able to launch her own product line. Now she's got like eight or nine health and beauty salons all across San Francisco. And it all started with her doing those Instagram lives. And then she's got this. I mean, she does well in the stores in the product place, but she actually started a. A box, a wealth and beauty box that would go out once a month at people with different products in it that people would test out who they were on and they paid for. I don't paid 49 or 150 bucks a month for this. So she brought this whole, like, revenue stream from sharing, you know, I mean, hey, here's who's this is on, what they're focused on. So Cassandra's done an amazing job. I still talk to her once in a while, but that's how she got her start. She was. She originally started off like, doing makeup for the stars out in San Francisco and la.

Wow, that is awesome though, man.

This.

Hopefully you guys are loving this info he is sharing. He is sharing gold. Coach. Coach. Any final questions before we wrap this up? Obviously want to stick to the hour.

This is going to seem completely out of. Out of left field. You said you went to 30 baseball parks and you traveled for a while and kind of all these things sort of came together for notes during that trip. I heard you talk about this on another podcast and you also said that when the thing first came to you, the idea you wrote it down. DJ and I are big Believers that writing down that goal is the first physical manifestation of a spiritual idea. And it's very important. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about how that all came.

Yeah, I was sitting there one night in, in early March and I was. This is just ended a business partnership. I. I just basically sold two properties where I wrote checks at closing. That's not what you want to be as a real estate mess. You want to get checked. So I was literally like down my dumps and. But I was starting to do like little short, little videos anyway and going through deals and stuff like that. And like my flip camera, I got it around here somewhere. I always keep it here. But anyway, I saw that ad and I was reading. I don't remember what I was reading, Outwitting the Devil or something, other books. I was like, I need to write my goals down. So I wrote down my goals and I said, let me take it a next step further. So I pulled up ESPN.com and I went to my calendar and I said, okay, if I go to Dallas, who's playing the first weekend? Who are the Rangers playing if I go to Houston? So I literally mapped out this like 30 week trip to go to all 30 major league baseballs. Now, I didn't hit all 30. I got 22 in that year. But what happened is when I put it down and I was sharing information, what happened over the next four weeks? From basically like late February through March, I started getting investment clubs to call me, real estate investment clubs or meetup groups that reached out to me, said, hey, we saw your article. Can we use your article in our newsletter? I'm like, yeah, feel free. You want to learn about notes? Like, yeah, we're getting more people want to ask about distressed debt. And like, would you mind coming out speaking? I'm like, yeah, sure. When do you want me to come out and speak? Like, well, we don't have it for a few months. Like when. So they like, it was so crazy. Like literally the weeks that they gave me or when they would spend, want me to come out and speak. I was literally going to be in that city on this journey, you know what I mean? Like this mythical journey. And I'm like, okay, God, somebody's telling me something here that I need to actually go do this. You know, it all lined up. Quantum physics, however you want to. A manifestation. And so I said, over the next two weeks, I sold everything I basically owned except my truck and my dog and some clothes and, you know, and then basically 1st of April, I Drove to Dallas, I spoke one night there, went to a ball clank game the next day, the Rangers versus I think they're playing the, the Athletics, I remember correctly. And then that led to like going around. I got stuck in Florida for a couple months because I was looking at so many assets and working with people. People started following me. I said, hey, can you meet, you're gonna be in town this day. Can we meet for coffee or hey, I've got an extra, I got a lake, I got a pool house you can come crash in while you're here in town. Like, okay, great, let's do it. So that's kind of, you know, you got to write your goals down and you got to put them somewhere where you can see them every day, you know. I met Jack Canfield one time. He talked about how because I first write his book, he wanted to make a million dollars. So he wrote a million dollar check and posted next to his bed every day so that when he waked up that was the first thing he saw. And I heard him, I read him about, heard him on podcast, talking about, well I gotta be him in person at Houston a few years back, I asked him about that. He started life because I have that frame still to this day. You know what I mean? So if you can write your goals down, especially like this time of year, don't just write them where you're the only one that can see them. Put them on the frame fridge so that you and your family can see them. Or on the, the mirror in your bathroom or in front. If you want to do fitness, put them on the teeth in the fridge and the TV when you're sitting there watching late night TV to get your ass up and go do something.

Yeah.

So again, I love that story. And there, there's, we can say it's woo, woo all we want. It's how the universe works. And I, I'm with you. I believe it's, I believe it's a God.

Totally.

Oh absolutely.

So I absolutely love it. But that was another great book recommendation too. Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. So everybody should take note on that one.

Yeah, I do want to ask one last question on that. So how did you get introduced to that book? So it's like obviously thinking gorich everybody goes to as the big one. But how did, how did it lead to there?

So I got asked to go out to San Diego. I was somewhere and I got asked to speak in San Diego. So I flew out and I, oh it was, yeah, I was in South Carolina, speaking at area. And the guy that ran the RIA in South Carolina, Duncan, he was hosting a summit in San Diego for a couple days to like 150 people. So I fly out to San Diego and I speak there for an hour, hour and a half, and I end up getting like 30 people to sign up for my class. I said, well, I'll just do a class here in San Diego. And the lady that was assisting Duncan, I said, would you mind assisting me and just run logistics? She's like, yeah, I'd be glad to. She comes to me, she's like, hey, would you like to have Greg Reed come and speak to your audience? I'm like, who's Greg Reed? I don't know who he is, you know, at this point. So like, well, he wrote a bunch of books. They can grow rich three feet from gold. That's what I heard. Was thinking. I was like, heck, yeah. So Greg came and spoke at my event for the first time. That's where we first met. And I met his wife Aaron, our ex wife now, but she was pregnant. I said, oh, what are you gonna name the kid? She says, well, you know, it's going to be a boy. We don't know what's going to be called. Well, you know, I'm from Texas. You should have it like, since Greg's getting a little old and fast on the trigger, call him Colt. And she's. They liked it, so they end up naming their son Colt. And anyway, so I had Greg speak at mine and Greg invited me to his event in, in San Diego called Secret Knock. And I went there and I got a chance to meet Sharon Lecter, who wrote Rich Dad, Poor dad, co wrote it with Kabbal Kiyosaki, but she also basically edited the book Outwitting the Devil. The manuscript was given from Don Green, who is in charge of the Nobody Home Foundation. I met him there. So met all these great people, like Les Brown. You gotta be hungry, you know what I mean? And yes, David Stanley, who's Elvis's half brother, and Ron Klein, I just interviewed him on my podcast this morning. Who was the creator of the MLS and the, the credit card strip and all these other things. So just, you know, it's networking. I mean, I didn't hit all 30 Major League Baseball parks in the first year. I'm still a couple short, but I hit so many of them. But it led to so many opportunities. I guess that's the. I think it's another thing is you got to be open to opportunity sometimes it, sometimes it's better to say no, to get things done, to be very driven. But it's also, hey, sometimes it. You say yes and, and find a way to make it work or just go with the flow and make the most of it. And I was very fortunate. I wasn't married. I'd been divorced for about two years now. Didn't have any little wine, little kids that I knew of anyway. So I was in a different thing than a lot of people were. But I still, I work to make that happen. And I just said, yeah, let's, let's, let's do this. If they'll add value. And I'm open for whatever God's gonna put in front of me.

That's amazing. I love it. Absolutely.

I did too. That is amazing. Thank you so much. This is crazy. And that book, that book changed my life. And I actually. What's, what's wild about that book? I was the first was the best man in the wedding here in Virginia Beach. I'm driving back from the wedding and the co host that I was on with the first podcast, Dan just kept talking about that book. So I'm like, I got it. And so the whole eight hour drive just listened to it non stop and I was just like, oh my goodness, it will totally.

It opens your eyes because when you read it, you realize that we get things that are pushed in front of us that distract us, you know, You've heard of the shiny object or the squirrel. Squirrel syndrome. Yeah, that's actually a lot of times it's not, that's not there to benefit us. And, and the premise of the book, if you guys haven't talked with your audience about it, it's literally Napoleon Hill sitting down to have a conversation with a. The devil. It was written in 1938, so it's kind of a very racy topic at that point. And Mrs. Hill wouldn't let her husband publish it because she was afraid they'd put him in a loony bid, you know what I mean? And so it's sat in this red folder in these offices for forever. I think Napoleon Hill's office is near you out there too, in Virginia as well. And they came across it and they gave the, the manuscript to Sharon to take a look at. She's like, well, I'm going to leave this as it is, as he wrote it, but I'll add a paragraph or two at the end of each chapter and what I think Napoleon would think of today. So that's the, that's the, the conversation of the book is how does. How does the devil keep us from succeeding? He goes, well, I cause you to drift. I give you distractions. I throw on all these other things that are taking you away from being driven. I mean, the people that are most successful in life are the ones that are the most driven and say no to the distractions or move. Distractions are very focused. That's why they get so much done. When we think that there's not enough hours in the days, they. They eliminate a lot of that stupid stuff to get. Focus on, on getting more stuff done in a day. And that's the key to success.

Oh, I'm so glad you said that because that was gold. And that is, that is true. It's not what we need to add to our schedule usually it's what we need to remove to free up the time for the things that we really need to do. And I think you nailed it with that, man. This was. This is so great. Seriously, thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing all the gold. Coach, final thoughts and then we'll send them off and then, Scott, I'll give you a last chance to kind of share where they can follow you and how to find you and share this.

Yeah, I don't think I can add anything better than that. That was, that was just awesome. We got to do another. We got to do another hour. I can do this all day. It was just great. So I appreciate it.

I'd be glad to come back on anytime. If you guys are listening to this, make sure you hit the subscribe follow. If you're watching the podcast, listening to the podcast, make sure you hit leave a five star review for DJ and coach here. They're doing an amazing job and we as podcasters love to see that. Love the comments, love to follow up with our audience and make sure you do that for these guys.

Thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. And, and really just to follow up on, because you did nail it with Drifters. I love that he used Drifters. And then so I, my, my personal development kind of sales training first started with Zig Ziglar and Zig Ziglar. One thing I always love to go to, which he nailed, which is lines with Drifters is wandering generality or a meaningful specific. And, and you guys, we get to choose that. Like that's our choice. We are the only ones who can choose that. Do you want to be a wandering generality or meaningful specific? But Scott, man, that was, you know, we'll.

I'll leave you with this. You can follow me on weclose, notes.com or any of the social media, but I'll leave you with what Zig Ziglar used to say. We get up out of bed, clap your hands. It's gonna be a great day. It's gonna be a great day, everybody.

It's gonna be a great day. Yes. So, guys, again, like, and subscribe on Thursday. On Thursday, we will recap this. Coach, I can't wait to recap this show. Oh, my.

That's gonna be.

It's gonna be so much fun. Scott, again, thank you again, everybody. Please follow him on the Note Closer podcast. The Note Closer show podcast. Or again, 13 years going strong night Note night in America. That's Monday nights. Again, please, please follow he again. It's not just real estate. It's not just notes. He's really giving you power that you should really connect the dots of anybody following this. He gave you gold in the niches that the riches are in the niches. That's where he found this. He gave you gold on how to build a community. Coach, I can't wait to break this down. So again, as Scott said, guys, just make the best of this. And remember, feed the good wolf, y'.

All.

I'm just an addict for the moment when the magic is made, when you are who you are, who you really are, it can put you through hell. Spend a day in the skin that you want to live in and see how it feels while the world sleeps under my feet.

Tonight I.