A-Ha Moment Marketing With Scott Carson of The Note Closers Show Podcast

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Feed you'd Brand. I'm your host Tom Hazard with a very special guest. One of my favorite people in the world, but also one of the best podcasters that I know, and that is Scott Carson of the Note Closer Show. Welcome, Scott.

Hey man, I'm honored to be here as always. And the favorite people. Right back at you, brother.

Yeah, I'll tell you. Well, we've come a long way in a few years, haven't we?

Yeah, we've known each other for I guess about three years now. I think for the most part. Like the first year I said no, no, no. When you were trying to do you should do a podcast, you should do a podcast. I was like, no, diff ham Heisman. And finally I was like, you know what, you're probably right. Even though I was throwing out a lot of content beforehand, the idea preconceived notion in my head it was going to be a lot of work and you guys have obviously taken all those fears away and now I can't even think what my business would be like without my podcast.

You know, a huge part of your identity out marketing your business to the world is all wrapped up in your podcast, isn't it?

It has. I mean, we've never been afraid to market and I actually think that I'm really one of the better marketers in my niche of real estate invest, especially my niche of buying and selling distressed debt, which is kind of what my podcast is all about. But I've never been afraid to do video and we've done webinars for years. I mean, I look back and I think I had my first gotowebinar on like April of 2011. So we've been doing webinars almost weekly for eight plus years. A couple years ago we converted from doing hotel events and educational seminars from live in person to live via zoom and webinar, just like we're doing right now with this stuff. So been not afraid to throw stuff out there.

Yeah. So boy, that I think is one of the big things I want to highlight. There's a few details I want to make sure we cover today. But you really recognize and I think realize, and what I mean by that is not mentally realized, but your bottom line of your business realizes the benefit of the content you create, that you record and you use for marketing. Isn't that right?

That's totally right, Tom. I can actually pinpoint the exact date that I had the whole aha moment of it. All right, Whoa.

Share that with me. Is this like the date that Doc Brown came up with the idea of the flux capacitor? Is it that kind of thing?

Exactly like that. So like I said, we've been doing videos for a while, training calls and things like that. Other stuff. I'm not afraid of making an embarrassment of myself and do stupid online. Okay. We were at an event, I don't remember where it was somewhere Kevin Harrington was actually speaking at. And he got up on stage and talked about, hey, you need to do video. This goes back to right before November was October, sometime 2016. And okay, I'm like, okay, I've kind of toyed around with this video stuff. Okay, yeah, let's be more serious about it. At the same time, Facebook Live was coming out. Right?

Right.

So I was like, okay, fine, we're gonna do it. We're gonna start. I come back to the office, talk to myself, and we're gonna start doing almost daily video on Facebook Live. And we'll do it like a. What's going on at wcn. We close notes for the day. And so we started doing that. And they were like eight minute videos of something we were doing. Trying to be a fly on the wall. It was right around. The Cubs won the World Series too. So I'm wearing a Cubs jacket and I'm sitting outside with a rubber ducky and throwing it over my shoulder. So we just started doing daily videos like that. Like, I'm just gonna be myself and be goofy and we'll share some sort of nugget to touch base with our tribe every day. That's the whole goal. Touch base with the tribe. Touch base, touch base, touch base. And that roughest time is when you and I met for the first time. And you'd already seen some of the videos that we had saved. Cause we had hundreds of videos on Vimeo and a bunch on YouTube. I really looked at YouTube as like the second class. I was like, oh, whatever. I just put it on there. Cause I originally had a YouTube account that got shut down a few years back.

Well, that might make you a little sour on YouTube, wouldn't it?

But then after you know, we talked in 149 episodes of doing these Facebook lives. I was seeing 100, 200, 300, 1,000 views on just that, Facebook Live. Like, okay, we need to take this a little bit more seriously. And we were putting them up on YouTube and everything. And then you're like, you should do this. And I was kind of hesitant at first because I had a couple of my students that started a podcast and they were doing well with it. I'm like, okay, that's their good thing. I don't want them thinking I'm, like, trying to steal any of their thunder. And then I find out that, okay, between May of 2017, they said, okay, we're not going to do the podcast anymore. And I think I'm like, the next day, I was in the Dominican Republic with one of them for a party, and I remember coming home the next week and I called. You were the first phone call I made, like, okay, let's get this thing rolling. And it's. We're coming up on our second full year. August 21st or August 20th was when the first episode actually showed up on itunes. And we're coming up on our 500th episode in our first 23 months. And it's all included video, and I think video. I know looking at the numbers and case studies, that videos helped us double our amount of listeners because we. I'm saying we're a very small kind of niche aspect of real estate investing, but we own that niche. I mean, there's nobody that does not own that niche like I do with what we do with the no Closer Show.

That is true. You do own the niche in distressed real estate. Note investing. You are the guy. Anybody in real estate investing in any facet of it, has heard of you and knows you are the guy. But an interesting thing that I learned from you, I think maybe early on when I met you, is that while that's true, you can't do it all, and you teach others how to do it. And you have this great word. You know the word I'm thinking of, right? It's coopetition. Right? That's a great. I love that word. It's like, hey, you know what? Yes. Other people can be doing the same type of business you are. And maybe there is some competition, but there's also opportunities to cooperate and help each other. You've really built your business around that concept, haven't you?

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to when I kind of went out my own and left working for a guy that in a company that was like I worked for for five years. We started a mortgage company together. I was coaching out to his students. And then when everything hit the fan in 2008, I left that and went to the non performing note side when everything was hitting the fan and really just started dialing for dollars, calling banks. And I would get deals to me that I had no clue what they were. Cause I'm in Austin, Texas, but I had stuff in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Tampa, Florida and so I didn't. I would start reaching out online to hey, here's. Can you. Do you mind driving by? And then fast forward a couple years later I sold everything here in Austin, Texas. I just jumped in the truck and thought I'd drive around for like 30 weeks and hit a lot of baseball parks. And that turned into three and a half plus years. And it helped us build a community of all these real estate investors. There was meeting, driving around and speaking at clubs that really built this great thing. Okay, hey, there's plenty to go around, plenty of deals. Here's exactly how I do what I do. And either you're gonna do it or not do it. If you get a list in from a bank, great. Hopefully I'm the first guy you call so we can do more deals together. So that coopetition thing is one thing I've always prided myself on. I didn't coin a term. My buddy Joel Markovitz actually coined the term a while back, but I've given him credit three times, more than three times. So I can coin it as my.

Own self now, but I think you definitely resemble that word, embody it, even though maybe somebody else came up with the name. I heard it from you first, that's all I know.

Well, that's what I love about podcasting though too. I'm a huge fan of it because I think a lot of people have that same kind of thing in real estate. It can be really cutthroat, whether you're a realtor or mortgage broker. Fix and flipper Landlord the notes space is pretty friendly because it's a small niche of rebels, as I like to say out there. But podcasting, you have so many different ways to do it now. And it's so much easier than it was, I guess, years ago based on the people that have been around longer than two years. But that's why I love it, because I love the network. No matter whether somebody's doing a podcast on Twitch TV like Ms. Click, who I'm friends with. And to you guys doing something on 3D print. We can learn something from everybody. And I'm a big believer that podcasting is really the last unchartered, unscreened, last place for true freedom of speech out there.

For the most part, I agree with you. It's definitely unfiltered. There are certainly media conglomerates and networks that are producing shows that are probably governing themselves by whatever saint like NPR has rules, which they broadcast on terrestrial radio or satellite radio. And I think they're rebroadcasting that stuff on podcasting. So you have to understand, if you listen to that type of a show, it's going to be filtered through some lens. But for those of us that are independent, doing this, yeah, it's completely free speech. That's what I really. I love about it, too. I agree with you. Especially when there's so much out there in our media that is controlled and skewed and programmed. I don't know. There's a lot of words we could use there.

Big Brother.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Scott, you've achieved a huge milestone in this last month. Why don't you share that with everybody?

I think last year we averaged about three and a half episodes a week. So we've been cranking out episodes on a pretty weekly basis, three to five episodes, sometimes more for things like that. So usually average around 20 episodes a month for the most part. But we just hit, you know, I'm a numbers junkie in my line of work.

So you're a data hound, right?

I'm a data hound. I want to track what's coming in, where am I getting views from, who's watching what. And so we hit a big number this month, and it's, you know, with it being the 30th of July when this is being recorded, we have exceeded our biggest month yet was 29,000, where we're now past 32,000 downloads just for the month of July and trending to hit 34 to 35 by the time tomorrow wraps up. And we're excited about that because it's crazy. Look back at the numbers. The first year, we averaged around 11,600 downloads on an average month basis. Well, in the last, the second year, 10 months, the second year, we've almost doubled that number of hitting over 21,000 downloads on an average monthly basis. So we're pretty excited. We hit our first $30,000 download, which is great because I've got some kickers in some of my sponsorship. That means our sponsorship fees go up.

Very good. Well, I'm sure our audience would Be very interested in that. So that's another facet of this that I think is really important for people, because how to monetize a podcast is one of the most common questions that we get. And I'm always very upfront with anybody I speak to in the whole industry, whether they're my clients or not, that you can absolutely monetize a podcast. You can monetize it from episode one. There's probably 50 different ways you could do it. It's just a matter of what's a good fit for your show and your market.

I think that's the biggest thing is I see that a lot of time, people like, oh, how do I get more listeners? I've done 10 episodes. I'm like, well, what's your show about? How big is your niche? Sometimes having too big a niche is too. You're lost in the sound and having a smaller niche, you can cater to those people. But when we started doing this, I didn't expect to monetize this for a while. And luckily for me, we started having some traction because, like I said, my friends stopped doing their podcast. They left a big vacuum that we just filled in, and then we marketed the hell out of it everywhere. So six months, within our first six months, we had a couple sponsors that were paying us a thousand dollars a month. We would do have them on one episode a month, and then we share a lot of things with them. We always help promote their events and email stuff like that. But there were vendors that we use religiously that we were referring out there. So that'd be my first bit of advice. If you're using a service or a vendor of some sort in your podcast or your business, reach out to them and offer them up. Potential sponsorship could be, you know, thousand bucks a month, two sponsors almost paid for what we have as far as costs along the way, for the most part.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the thing. Some people want to ask if their podcast can be a moneymaker and have it be their job. Right. That that's where they make all their money. Well, some people do that, but they have a lot of support teams, and it's like the primary thing that they do. Our philosophy, and I think is similar to your, Scott, is that we have businesses that are operating and generating revenue another way, and the podcast can support that business, help market that business. But then you also can make some money on the show itself to at least cover some of the costs. And sometimes it goes beyond that. I mean, haven't you had three or four sponsors in a given month.

Yeah, we've roughly five sponsors now that are paying anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000amonth. And like, the first year I was like, hey, $1,000 a month. I'm just excited. That's, you know, one sponsor, that's 12 grand. That's 24 grand if you got two, 36 grand if you got three. I was like, okay, cool. But as we started seeing some traction, they started reporting back like, oh, yeah, it was great. We're getting people that are calling us that. They heard us on your podcast. Then they're telling me that. So the second year of my contract, I changed it so that we put some stair steps in there based on number of monthly downloads. So basically, if we hit 20,000 downloads, their sponsorship goes from 1,000 to 2,000amonth. Then after that it goes to 30,000 in a month, it goes to three grand.

So it's proportional to your reach, your downloads of your episodes. And Scott, I want to make sure Everybody understands the 30+000 downloads you've gotten this month, which is great. Congratulations, by the way. That's awesome. Is across all of your library of podcasts that you've done in the last two years. It's not just the ones you published this month, isn't that right?

That's correct. That's for the downloads from all the note closures show podcasts. Now I have two alternative, little smaller podcasts that we just put out for the heck of it. We do a coaching call monthly, sometimes weekly with our students called Note Night in America. And I think that's gotten 50,000 downloads since we started that. And then we've got a couple special purpose ones that. Where we took online summits and we turn those into its own, like, special purpose podcast with 20 to 30 episodes called Note Camp. And that's done. I think that's over 50, 60,000 downloads since we started that one too. So it's pretty exciting. We throw those up and I don't really watch those, but it just adds more content. I think one of the things I always like about it is you and I were at an event, I think it was PodFest a while back, and one guy was talking about owning the itunes search that if people look for you instead of just seeing one image of you, and then these other shows, they see your main show and then another one and another one. So you own that search stuff.

Yeah. So when people go onto itunes and search for a podcast and maybe they type in. In your case, they might type in Real estate investing if they don't know what node investing is. Real estate investing is a keyword in the description of every variety of your show that you have on itunes, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So instead of your one show coming up and then a whole bunch of others for people to consider, if they type in something in search that would bring up one of your shows, it brings up all your shows and you dominate the results. That's brilliant.

That's the idea. I mean, don't be wrong. There's other. Some other podcasts in my niche that popped up. It was kind of funny. I saw one of them was like, oh, man, my show's been gone. I haven't done an episode in a year, and I got 13,000 downloads. They were bragging about. And I kind of chuckled like, well, it's probably because I got this many downloads and you actually show up. And she's like, yeah, you're probably right.

So what that says is you may be. What's a good analogy, Kind of carrying the niche on itunes. It's sort of like you're flying at Mach 1 and the wind in your wake is pulling other people along, too. There's interest in the niche, right?

Yeah, and I'm fine with that. I mean, I've got some students that have launched a couple podcasts that are doing stuff. You know, they're getting 3 to 6,000 downloads a month, which I'm happy for, because I think it's especially our niche. I think the more the merrier, because you never once know when somebody's gonna run through some POD fade. I mean, that's the thing I've always looked at, because people always ask me, like, man, five days a week, how do you come up with episodes? And I'm like, well, half of it's going to be some sort of content, some nugget my neck of the woods. Or it's. I'm going to bring on a vendor or a student or somebody in that's kind of relevant to what we talk about, whether it's notes or entrepreneurship or marketing, so that we can constantly kind of keep a good blend going. So I'm not always having to carry the load as far as content. And I think, what is it? The number is there, what, 650 or 700,000 podcasts out there?

There are seven. Just the latest data. It ticked over 700,000 in the last month. But the data also suggests that maybe 18% or so are active. The others, like you say, have pod faded or have stopped publishing new episodes.

Yeah, 18% have done an episode in the last year.

Right.

I think I saw that, too. And so that's the thing. I look like, okay. Just because people throw stuff up doesn't mean they want to stick to it. So we're coming up right in the next couple days. We'll also hit another milestone of our 500th episode for our podcast, too, which we're. We're pretty stoked about. We're in the process of moving offices this week, and so we may end up doing some sort of live, like, celebration. Do a live episode with cupcakes and things like that and invite some of our local investors out for fun of it. We may just jump on and just treat it as another day. Who knows?

Sure. Oh, that sounds great. Now, Scott, there's another thing that I want to highlight for our listeners is that you were doing video first. Now, that's very unusual in the podcasting world. A lot of times people start with audio first because they're a little reluctant to do video. And I don't think it's a stretch for me to say this because, you know, my own partner, Tracy Hazard, said this when we started our first podcast. She's like, I don't want to do video. I don't have to have my hair done every time we sit down and record. I don't have to worry about my makeup. What am I wearing? What's on the video behind me? Well, actually, you and I have sort of dealt with what's behind us. We have a good, consistent backdrop that supports our brands behind us. And if you're listening to the podcast, go to the blog post@feedyourbrand.co and check out some of the, you know, clip of the video, and you'll see what I'm talking about with these backdrops. But you can control that environment. It's probably a little easier for men, I would agree, than women who don't really care what our makeup looks like or how much hair we have or don't have, as the case may be.

Hey, man, keep fighting. Keep fighting.

I am. I'm working hard, trying to keep it from fading away. But you sound value in. You're already doing video. YouTube's the number two search engine. You're on Vimeo, you're doing Facebook Live, and you were doing Facebook Live when it first came out. So your videos were getting pushed everywhere because Facebook wanted to promote Facebook Live. But you still found value in publishing as a podcast. And can you help share with our listeners some of the differences you found, the unique benefits that you Found as a company and as a podcast by not just staying in video, but also syndicating as a podcast.

Yeah. I'm a big believer that no matter what field you're in, we all are actually media companies these days, and media is everywhere. Like, I'll give an example, like, with my avatar, my audience is a little bit older crowd.

Okay.

45 to 65 is really our ideal clients, and not a lot of 45 plus. I mean, they give listeners to podcasts, but it's not their main thing. They like video. They actually like to read. You know, they still listen to the radio in some cases. So the way I looked at it is that, okay, I wanted to be anywhere I could see, have eyeballs at. And whether they're one of the 375,000 downloads we've had from our show, or they're one of the 6,600 people that view a YouTube video each month, or they're one of another 7,000 or 8,000 people that watch us on Facebook live each month. I wanted to capture those eyeballs, okay, and those ears from the 33,000 people listening each month. So that's the thing is, as people get older, we have more people moving to the podcast that like to listen to it. They're more engaged. Obviously, we see this all happen a lot, so that's why I wanted to capture any type of place I could have it at. So if you do a quick search online, like, you type in. I just did this the other night for a marketing thing. If you look at the top 100 websites that Americans visit, okay, Google's number one, YouTube's number two, Facebook is number three. Sometimes one in three swap. But you go down to the audio side, and there's only one really true audio podcasting thing in the top 100 at Spotify.

Wow.

That's the only one, okay. Not itunes, not any of the others. That's like, way down, like in the 80s, okay? So I was like, I need to have eyeballs on these other things I can get to. And so that's why I started looking. Videos always been good for us. And it gives. Allows for people to kind of build rapport with me. They see how I act, they see that I'm kind of goofy. You see that I talk with my hands, you know, they kind of get a feel for they know me. That's helped out tremendously in the fact, especially if you're trying to monetize your podcast or trying to use your podcast to help you pay, the way for adding clients, whether you're in coaching or workshops, which is stuff that we do. We have a high priced coaching program. It's one of the most valuable things of being in one of those spots because sometimes people will hear me on somebody else's podcast or they'll jump over and listen to me, but then they'll jump over and BINGE Watch on YouTube or, you know, and I get that all the time. They're like, oh my God, I binge watched you and then I watched your old replays from a workshop on YouTube. And so that's the way I look at it is if somebody's gonna listen to us for three to six months before they pull the trigger. And unfortunately a lot of podcasters, they get pod fade before six months goes by because they're not seeing instant gratification. And I just look at it this way, hey, every deal, every video we do, every audio thing, it's a tree that we're planting, it's a seedling that is gonna take it six months to a year really for it to grow. But by the time that it grows, I've got a nice forest of content.

Yeah, there's probably no place else they're going to go when they want to invest in notes, if they're an investor or if they've gotten to the point where they're ready to learn how to do it, to start to go and do a similar type of business to you are. There's probably no place else they're going to go either. So that makes a lot of sense. Now the video, a lot of people have moved from podcast to video because video gets more view on social media especially. But I'm curious what you think, Scott. I'm personally of the opinion that it doesn't matter to me if you started first as a podcast or first as a video. Like I think you started to say, people either want to watch, listen or read. And I think Google's algorithm actually knows what you prefer. I think it actually serves you up more of the kind of content you tend to consume more first. And so if you really serious about marketing yourself everywhere, you've got to be in all three places. And so what have you seen about your website now? Because every podcast is converted into a written blog and that catches Google's algorithm another way. So how have you seen the effects of that improve your business over time?

Well, I think it's pretty. I mean we look at numbers just. And it's gone from like we were getting some views and stuff like that, but we'd get maybe 1500 hits to the website. 1700 hits the website on a monthly basis, which is not bad. But since we started doing the episodes and throwing the written blogs up on there as its own, you know, full transcription, just not show notes, full transcription. The SEO juice, the Google juice, as we like to say, has just absolutely escalated our numbers. I mean, the last time you and I looked, it was like close to 9,000 or 12,000 views on a monthly basis. It's the website.

Yeah, it was impressive. And you know what? I should have looked that number up before I recorded this. But I'll do it while we're talking.

Because I've had people reach out to me like, man, you're everywhere. We googled your stuff and you popped up everywhere and what are you doing? And I'm like, well, I'm just trying to maximize everything that I can. That doesn't mean I'm recording three or four things. I'm using Zoom pretty simply here to record the episode. It gives me the video, gives me the audio tracks that I can just shoot over to you guys to edit, then the video. Then I just upload that via. Couple really cool tools that I use on a regular basis is repurposed IO, which from my Facebook page to my YouTube channel. And then I also use liveleet.net that recognizes when I share my video to Facebook, it'll automatically share it across other pages. So, like, I have a personal page of 5,000 and I have a business page of 33,000. I've got 16,000 people on LinkedIn, so it actually goes to LinkedIn says Scott Carson is going live. I got like 9,000 plus people on Twitter still, so it says the same thing. Set goes. So that's the thing is I want to spread my web across everywhere I can. And trying to do it with the video aspect of it makes it the easiest thing. Because Zoom, I can do it one place. It gives it two different things. So I. Then I can go the audio side or go straight to the YouTube video side too.

Here's the value. And I have two different tools I look at in each report, sort of different levels of things. You've got your unique site visitors are actually up 67% in June. June is the latest data I have. And you had more than 9,000 unique visitors to your website in the month of June. Unique visitors. That's a very amazing statistic. And that's what you want. And that's. I'm looking at the traffic sources, and 31% of your visitors are coming directly from Google search. And that's a direct result of the keywords. Those are people that didn't know you likely didn't know you had a video series, didn't know you had a podcast. They're searching on Google for their areas of interest or their pain points. Your post comes up, boom. They go to your website. Then they learn, oh, he's got a show. Let me listen. Oh, he's got video. Let me watch. And you've got them. At that point, they're on your turf, on your website. Right. That's the name of the game.

Amen to that, brother. So that's basically a 400% difference from when we started off without it, when we have 1700 unique views. So that's the big thing about having a podcast and adding that side to it. Hey, boom. Right there.

Yeah, because that's the thing, everything that you say. And of course, my gosh, how long are your episodes usually? An hour. Ish. Or are they less?

We always shoot for at least 30 minutes, but somewhere between that 30 and hour. So it's maybe 45 minutes on average.

Okay. And the average person speaks about 150 words a minute. I think you have guests up to 200 or 250. So there's a lot of words. And there's just a ton of keyword rich language that otherwise would be locked inside your podcast mp3 file or your video mp4 file that guess what, folks? Google does not know what that is. They don't pay attention to it in search. The only way you get it is through your blog post. And that is the key. So you are really a shining example, Scott, of hitting all those different media types, touch points, ways people like to consume media. And it just drives your business, doesn't it?

It totally does. It's driven it so much that we have in the last year completely changed in how we do some things around here. I'll give you an example. I just had a podcast episode with a student of mine an hour or two ago, interviewing him. He came from hearing me on my podcast and then jumped over, started watching, and then he basically said, hey, called me up. I don't want to spend just 1,000 bucks in a class. I want to write you a $15,000 check. And when I hear that, I'm like, okay, let's do two things. Let's crank out more episodes and let's try to get myself booked on other shows too, to help out with that as well.

Oh, now, you had an interesting initiative. You've done in 2019, haven't you? Regarding that, where were we when we talked? Was it at our private Mastermind in December that you decided to do that or when was it?

Yeah, it was. That was definitely in. Yeah. When you guys and a bunch of other people came into Austin for a couple days. Yeah, I talked about that. Then I said, hey, that's the. I think this is the goal that I can handle. And I have somebody part time, that's what they do. They jump online and LinkedIn and other places and I give her some guidance and she goes out and search for other real estate podcasts and reaches out to him with a little short video, like a two minute video along with some copy paste. She logs in as my LinkedIn and it goes out as my VA to track it down. And it's been very. I set a goal for myself to be interviewed on 100 podcasts in 2019.

And how many have you done so far?

I am over 70, 60 to 70, I think.

And we're just, we're a little over halfway through the year.

Yeah, yeah, I know I've done over 50. I know I had the first month booked. I was a guest on two today or three today. I'll be a guest on two tomorrow. And that's the thing I look at is when I walk into my office each morning, my big focus is, okay, what are we doing for marketing? And that's become a big staple in our marketing budget and marketing actions each day. So that, hey, we're doing something each day and hour. Whether it's me doing an episode or me appearing on somebody else's podcast. We try to at least do one of those each day if we can.

Do you do any paid marketing like Google pay per click or Facebook ads or anything big? Zero, nothing. So everything is organic what you're doing. So I want to make sure that's clear to people. While, yeah, you're spending an hour a day doing this content, that is time and there's money involved in producing it. Not huge dollars, but that is how you're driving business. And I would expect you're getting a very good return on your time spent.

Oh yeah. I mean, we see at least one person a month is paying, is signing up for our mastermind or our coaching at 15 grand a pop. So think about that. One person a month is coming from that. Because I always ask them, hey, how'd you hear about me? Or how'd you come across me? And in the last nine months, it's always been, well, I don't remember. I Think it was either the videos or somebody else's podcast or your podcast. It's always one of those three things. And I'm like, cha Ching. You know, I'm like, hang on here. That was supposed to be a different one. Cha Ching. I have my whole, like, noise.

He has. He's like. You're like the 1920s radio studio, right, that you see stereotypical in old movies, right?

I'm like the William H. Macy character from like, what was that horse movie that he was.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Seabiscuit or something like that.

I'm like that. I'm not like, quite running around with that. But anyway, I got all sorts of.

You know what's funny about this is I hear from our listeners, they like this stuff, they crack up at it, that I do these noise things and the people that I have on and I'm on other people stuff when I do that, people love it because it breaks up the monotony of people just kind of rattling on. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, you're providing very valuable information that is going to help them, but you're entertaining at the same time. Isn't it the classic edutainment? Right?

I try to. And that's why I laugh most of the time. I'll laugh at myself. Even I'll be out doing a solo episode. I will laugh at myself. I'll call myself stupid. I make fun of myself. And I try to do that as a way to realize that, hey, I'm just a normal guy just kind of doing his thing. And, hey, it is what it is that you love me or hate me. Great. I don't care either way. I mean, I prefer that you like me, but it's not gonna stop me from being me. I've got my own message. I think that's a big thing. I tell people out there. I'm not trying to be like anybody else, trying to copy anybody else's message or show. I'm just going to be Scott Carson on the Note Closer Show.

Well, that definitely comes through. And I think, as we all know, and I certainly tell all of our customers, especially new people who are starting podcasts, that the right audience for you today in 2019 and even going into 2020, listeners want authenticity. They're not wanting someone to put up a performance. Right. And they can tell if you're not being real with them, if you're not being you, it'll come through and you probably won't have listenership that increases significantly. Now, you mentioned, you know, so you've got sponsors who are sometimes 3, 4, 5amonth. And you've got this tiered pricing. And I like how you're doing the flat rate pricing. You're not doing a price per thousand plays. You're doing a price per 10,000 plays. Interesting, right? That's a little bit different, but I think it's great. And it's proportional. It's like, it's pretty easy accounting. You don't have to go do some math at the end of the month. It's just pretty simple math. All right, here you go. We hit this many plays. Oh, we did 35,000. So the contract means you pay $3,000 and they got 5,000 listens bonus. Right. And they wouldn't pay unless you hit like 40,000 or something.

Right, right.

Pay more. So you've got that, you got the sponsorship, you got the mastermind. Now, don't you have other things you do, like boot camps and things that are lower cost?

Yeah, I do things that are much lower cost. But also one of the things as I was going to like podfests and podcast movement and you were in traffic.

Yeah.

I was talking to people, hey, how do you sponsor? How do you get monetized? And people are like, oh, I show up at events and I sell T shirts. And I'm like, huh? Yeah, like a $20 T shirt. Like, that's way too much work. And I'm like, let me think about something. I heard somebody talk about a membership site, and we've always had coaching and we do classes and training that are like anywhere from 3, 99 to 700, 800 bucks. But I was like, I wanted to build residual income because I've had people that listen to the show religiously and they've been to a workshop or two they want to repeat. I was like, well, let me try to monetize that with a podcast. We started a membership for our podcast and our kind of training. It's called, we call it a WCN membership. We close notes membership. $97 a month. They get two extra webinars that we do coaching calls each month. They get a swag bag each month. Which is kind of funny because when I bring guests on that have books, I ask them to donate a hundred books.

So you don't even have to pay for some of the swag sometimes.

Oh, yeah, Sometimes I'm paying like I got T shirts I'm paying for.

Yeah, yeah. But not always. I mean, obviously you're going to pay to ship it to the people and all that. Right.

This month we're doing a nice, really nice big Arctic 30 ounce, like Yeti mug, you know, that I bought at a discount. You know, Instead of paying 30 bucks for it, they offered a bulk discount at 7 bucks, so.

Oh, wow. That's a deal.

So the stuff that we send out and we did fun T shirts, stickers, so it ends up costing us about 30 to 35 bucks per person is what we put it out. But that means we're still netting roughly 65 bucks a month. And when you add that you've got a hundred people that signed up for, that's an extra 6,500 bucks each month. That's rolling in automatically. Wow. So we added six figures to our bottom line on the gross side do offering that membership up and we only offer it up once every quarter. So it's a scarcity thing around events. Like I had an event this weekend, we had 10 new people sign up at $97 a month.

So you don't let people sign up all the time. You have windows they can sign up. So the scarcity makes them more interested in taking advantage when you offer it. Yeah, that's brilliant. I've actually experienced some of that scarcity marketing as well. Like we were, Tracy and I were each just speaking at an event in the last week and it was a multi day event and we made an offer was a significant discount, but they had to take advantage of it before the event ended and that worked. So I see how that would work for you. That's fantastic. I believe you also have from listeners of the podcast, gotten investors who want to invest money in notes, right?

Yeah, I have to be very careful with that because we get people that call in and I have to interview them and take them through the process and really have a couple conversations. I'm not violating any SC rules and I've turned probably just as many people away that we've gotten people to invest with us just because they weren't a fit. And so yeah, that's what the biggest surprise people say, hey, I've been following you. I want to do this. I got 100 grand in my self directed IRA that I want to put to work. Can I do it with you? And I'm like, yeah. So I think as of I know we probably raised over pretty close to.

A million bucks from the podcast of invested income. That's not revenue to you. That's revenue that people are investing in notes that you manage and make a profit on in the proper way.

Yeah. Either giving them a flat return on their money or they're partnering up on some deals. It depends on where they fit in and what experience they've got and credibility and things like that too.

Fantastic. And one other thing I just want to mention in case a lot of the listeners don't really understand distress not investing, we should just paint a little picture on it. We don't have to take too deep a dive. But what I really like about it, Scott, is you've really provided a public service. I see it in many ways when the big bank financial institutions in 2008 crash, obviously a lot of people got underwater on their mortgages. And the big banks, even though they had the ability to make a modification of their mortgage, reduce the amount owed or reduce a payment to a point where the bank would still get money and the people could stay in their house, maybe get a reduced payment, the banks had no desire and no mechanism. As I understand it, these are huge bureaucratic institutions and they didn't have an employee who could give it the time of day. Enter Scott Carson as an example where they would prefer to sell that debt. And then you have a lot of options to do whatever you want and try to turn it into a positive thing for the homeowner and you still make money and so does your investor. Isn't that right?

The thing we always like to say is that we like to rehab the borrower versus the property. So yeah, the banks are just too big. They're like the Titanic. They're too big. They're not agile, mobile. And then their staff, they were never meant to deal with all these foreclosures that happened a decade ago. And you had employees that are making 10, 15 bucks an hour. They don't give a rat's ass what happens to the bars on the phone. So there's a lot of companies that go out and buy debt and big funds. Fannie, Freddie, Goldman Sachs has been a big buyer the last couple of years and we've kind of filled in that very kind of living on the crumbs side of the pie. We buy the debt from banks and hedge funds. We buy it at a substantial discount, usually 50 cents of what's owed or value the property, whichever is less. And that gives us a lot of flexibility to work with mom PA borrower to try to keep them in their house if we can. And about half the time we're pretty successful at modifying or doing a trial payment plan, something that's a win, win, win. It's a win for us because we get them re performing and it's a win for Them because they're back on the right track versus a nightmare. They're back kind of the dream of homeownership. It's also a win for our investors because we're also often able to offer them a pretty good return on investment, you know, whether it's through a performing note or if the bar won't play ball with us, and we'll start the legal process to foreclose and take the property back. But that's the route that we go.

Yeah. And I know you well enough over the last several years, Scott, to know that you would prefer to keep the borrower in the house. It's always not only the path of least resistance for you, I think, and the path to profitability fast, because you don't have to spend money going through the foreclosure, but you also are a good person and you're trying to do the right thing and help families recover from whatever circumstance it was that got them where they are. Some people I understand, have just been through the wringer and can't see a path forward or don't want to be helped. And you've got to do what you got to do because you're in business to make money at the end of the day, Right? Yeah.

Everybody's. You know, there was 15 million homeowners underwater in 2010 at the peak. And everybody knows somebody's been through a bad thing. I mean, everybody's got their own country western song.

Something that's gone wrong. So it's just a matter of trying to fit through that. We still people losing their homes today, people that are losing jobs and getting outpaced by inflation or deflation or things like that. So I actually make more money when I can keep them in the house.

So you do. That's good to know.

It's good to know that way. But they foreclose, we're buying at a point where we're going to end up winning. I'd rather work with them and be their knight in shining armor versus their enemy. And I'm very empathetic because back years ago, when I first got college, I became that deadbeat borrower by accident. I lost my job. I was out of work with a property and came really close to losing foreclosure. And luckily for me, the bank was willing to work with me. We were able to keep the house and get our assets out of a sling. So I kind of empathize that with people. But every note we buy is a different kind. Like I said, country western song. You just got to Fit through it and listen to the borrowers is one of the biggest thing. And then kind of work your way to find a solution that maybe is not your best solution, but it's still a win. And there's. What I love is there's like a puzzle, there's multiple ways to skin the cat and make it work for all parties involved.

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing that, Scott. I think it's very helpful because I know a lot of people out there probably do know what it means to invest in distressed debt, but others I'm sure will not. And we spent so much time talking about the positive effects of podcasting, video and marketing yourself out there. People are saying, I really want to know what this note thing is. Well, now they know. So thank you. Fantastic.

I think I helped us to use the word niche. So there's a lot of other that's helped me get booked because there's a lot of real estate shows and we do something a little bit different. I usually have pretty high energy most days, so I can make people laugh and people like the noise machine. Come on, who doesn't like the sound machines of people?

I love the sound machine. That's awesome. It's a lot of fun. It's a nice surprise. You know what, and the last tip I think we should share is something you've done uniquely that I've not encountered anybody else who's done it, but because you put out so much content, so many episodes every week when you've gone on vacation, because I think it sounds like, wow, this guy works really hard. Some people might say, wow, he works too hard. But you take your time off, you take care of yourself. How many weeks did you take earlier this year on vacation?

So In May, basically May 10th to June 6th, we were gone. We took the trip. And you know what? June was our number one downloaded month though too. While we were traveling, which is kind of fun. We had 29,000 downloads that month.

That's amazing.

You know, I just. We had a lot of episodes, we took a little bit extra time, filled some extra ones, and then we just kind of set them all up. We'll just have load them all in the system that you guys do and we're able to have them pre scheduled.

Didn't you have some guest hosts too?

No, we did that last year. We had guests.

Oh, last year. Okay.

Last year when we took our three week trip, we had eight guest hosts that came on and did live episodes and that did really well. It was a nice thing. This year what we did is we already pre recorded a lot of stuff. So what I did is I used Restream IO to go in and pre schedule or pre launch those episodes that looked like I had a live podcast going like I normally do.

You mean like on Facebook Live video?

Yeah. Wow. So people like, oh, they would see us doing it, like, oh, aren't you in your office? And they'd see Instagram of us and Barcelona or in Cannes and like, where are you? Where are you really? But. And kept it going line. Because that's the thing. I didn't want to lose momentum because I learned before last year when I took two weeks off, we went to Hawaii for a week, week and a half to celebrate Steph's birthday. I didn't do anything for those two weeks and it was the worst month downloads I'd ever had. And so I was like, I gotta keep doing consistent stuff and stay out there in front of everybody.

Well, and now that you have these sponsors, you have not only the desire to stay in front of everybody, but you have a financial interest in making sure have enough content for people to consume because your sponsors are going to do better and you're going to make more money from them.

Yeah. And the sponsors, they love it too. I mean, a couple of them are starting their own podcasts because they've seen the power on it that are starting podcasts with you guys. But they see that like we did two episodes for one of our sponsors and we filled up a 60 class of 60 spots for them basically in a week and a half, like, oh my gosh, another one gets referrals every week or so. You know, they're getting somebody to call, say, hey, I heard you on Scott's podcast. Another one, they're like, they wanted me to sponsor their big expo and I was like, I'm good, I'm not really good, nevermind. We'll give you a free table and a free speaking spot and all this other stuff where we're charging everybody else five or ten grand for speaking. I was like, I appreciate that, thank you. But I will pass. But we're still feeding them clients every week that they absolutely love. So I try to make our sponsorships a very symbiotic thing that as long as I'm busting butt, they're going to keep busting butt for me too.

Right. And that's really wonderful to see because I know a lot of these companies and they're not in competition with you in any way. They're completely complimentary. And each of them that starts their Own podcast has a whole new audience now. There's some that'll overlap with yours. Yes. But there's a whole new audience of people of a much wider range of potential listeners that they're going to all gain. One of the most exciting ones I'm thrilled that we're launching very soon is for our friend Merrill Chandler, are you effable? Which means fundable, for those of you that may be wondering, are you fundable so for your business? And you know what? I'm not going to go into too much detail of what that is. We keep an eye out for it, and all of us are going to be screaming that show over social media as soon as it launches here within a month or so. But he's like you, though, and is just recording a ton of content in preparation, and I think he's going to do incredibly well with it on many different ways and is monetizing his show from episode one. Mm.

He's got his book days coming out with it. And they've tweaked up their whole program, too, over the last year, partially because of the podcast. They solved a lot of stuff. So they went from a different pricing model to more of the virtual online stuff. And we've helped coach them along quite a bit, but they're saying, oh, my God, I don't want to do as much work. And we're getting a much higher retention rate because we're educating our clients a lot more on the front end with the episodes.

Exciting stuff.

All right, well, Scott, I am very happy for you. Very happy for the no Closer Show. 32,000. Let's hope we hit that 35,000. I think it'd be a great number to see here before the end of the month. And I'm really happy that you really decided to take that first step toward podcasting a couple years ago. I'm not a pushy guy, right? It's like, yeah, no, no. All right. I'm gonna let it be. If it's meant to be, it's gonna be.

You should have pushed me a little more on that boat trip over the side in San Diego. Harbor says you need. You're going to start a podcast.

I'll be like that kid from Better Off Dead. I want my $2.

Well, it's not just the starting. I mean, you guys, big kudos to you guys because you do a lot of the heavy lifting. Your team produces the show. You get it up, you've got it spread out anywhere. You know, kudos to Alexander for making all the little tweaks on the episodes so people can click and like and follow and getting things uploaded to iHeartRadio and Spotify and all these other chann too to help really cross pollinate it. And then the ego bait that you send out to the listeners and our guests. My guests love that. And then of course taking a full episode and creating a full blog. I crank out a lot of episodes, but I'm willing to bet I might be the one that gets the better bang for the buck with all the work that you do per episode.

We're very happy to do it. It's what we do. So thank you though and boy, you are a great example for not only aspiring podcasters, but existing ones and how to get more out of their show.

So you're listening to this and you're thinking about starting a podcast. Just do it. Just start throwing stuff out there. You'll come to your kind of your rut in your groove. But the thing is that you never know where somebody's going to hear from. So I see so many true podcasters like, oh, I can't do video. That means you're not a true podcast. Like, why would you not want to be on the second largest search engine? Why would you not want to use these free resources, really, and just tweak one little thing to see so much growth happen? And so that's my best advice to anybody that's listening to this, that's thinking about that.

I think it's great advice because everybody's looking for, all right, how am I going to market this? How am I going to get people to watch or listen? And how am I going to monetize it? And that's really what this entire episode today has been about. It's a great case study, so thank you, Scott. I'm looking forward to a great year three with you. Thanks for being on Feed you'd Brand and to all your listeners out there and viewers, I hope you really got a lot out of this. This has been fun for me and hope it was as well for you.

Foreign.

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