EP 175 – Start Over – Starting From Ground Zero

NCS 175 | Start Over

NCS 175 | Start Over

Scott discusses what he would do if he had to start over from Ground Zero.

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Listen to the podcast here


Start Over – Starting From Ground Zero

NCS 175 | Start Over

It’s always nice to connect with likeminded people.

We had our monthly, every 6 weeks, Fast Track training in Austin. Had a great group of new Fast Track students and new Mastermind members to come join us for a couple of days. That was really good. It’s always nice to connect with likeminded people. People that are out there doing some great things, who are focused. We had some people coming over from the fix and flip side. They couldn’t find deals anymore so they’re more focused on the note stuff. They’ve been looking at the six months transition. We’ve had people who have had chaos in their lives with different things going on real estate-wise or personally who are now coming outside of the fog and ready to rock and roll. The players, they either been laid off from their job, they are looking to transition to something a little bit that they have more control of and people that are looking to really make deals, some hustlers.

A lot of people reached out to me and have asked me over the years, “What would I do if I had to start all over again?” Let’s set the picture. Let’s set the occurrence if something like this were going to happen. If I had to start over doing what I’m doing now, if I had to start over as a new note investor with none of my contacts. Let’s say my whole contact list is wiped up. Let’s say all my videos are wiped up. Let’s say all my asset manager contacts are gone. I’ve got literally to start over and all I’ve got is my phone and my computer, but I don’t have a big budget for marketing.

Today, it’s just sharing what would I do. If you’ve been through an end of the world experience recently, you’ve gone through the big deal of a divorce or separation, or you’ve been laid off from your job or God forbid you’ve been through a national disaster like what happened with Harvey and Irma that hit Florida and you are wondering what the hell to do. Maybe you’re at a market that you can’t find a lot of deals that make sense for you. Maybe you’re in the land of fruits and nuts, California. What would you do? I know a lot of people ask themselves because we’ve had people recently reach out to me because there’s a lot noise going on up there. I had somebody that basically come in and they are going to all these events. They’re going to a different seminar every weekend. I had that people talk to me about that here at the Fast Track, “There’s a lot of noise out there. Should I do fix and flips? Should I do notes? Should I do partials? Should I do seconds or should I do first?”

The thing you have to realize is you have to do some of your due diligence on what you want to do. If I will to start all over again, the first thing that I would do is go to a real estate investment club where the president is out to run a club, not to just put money in his pocket. There are some investment clubs out there with the presidents and the people that run it, it’s solely for their purpose of making money. Maybe they’re an educator that runs a club and they only want to educate a lot of things that they teach people. They don’t have a true spectrum. I know one guy in San Antonio who’s an attorney, he runs a club and he won’t let anybody come in and speak unless it’s going to help him with his legal practice. That’s why he doesn’t like notes because it’s not a lot of stuff in San Antonio. It’s not going to feed a lot of stuff to his law practice. It’s okay, kudos to them. But I would go find a real estate investment club that is truly neutral and talk to the people that are closing deals, and ask the president, “Who here is closing deals? Who here is closing and doing a lot of different things?” Then I would pick that person’s brain. “If you had to start all over again, where would you start? If you’re closing 300 assets a year, what are you doing? Is that feasible for me to do it?”

A lot of people get sold a bag of goodies based on a person being in one market and having control that market. If you can make money in one market alone, by all means, do that. But a lot of people, they can’t. They can’t duplicate what somebody else has done especially in today’s thing but that’s all about notes. You can’t duplicate a lot of things. I will go talk to that real estate club member or the real estate investor, find out what they’re doing. I would find a mentor, somebody who’s actually doing the business. I would go find somebody who’s actually closing deals. There’s enough people out there that talk the talk but aren’t walking the walk. Keep that in mind. That’s our whole #whathaveyouclosedlately. What deals have you close lately? Can I take a look at them? Can you tell me about them? Would you mind sharing your case studies? That’s an important facet. What’s also great about the investment clubs that I would go and start off with, I would go and I would talk to the people that are closing the deals. They’re closing deals. What did they do? How did they get started? You often find a wealth of knowledge in other people that are closing deals, but you find out, “Was this your first deal or was this your 500th deal?”

You’ve got to remember, it’s the end of the world. I’m starting all over again. I would collect as many business clubs at the investment club as possible. I would then take all those cards that I collected and put them immediately into an Excel spreadsheet. Since it’s starting all over, I’ll upload it to a CRM tool like MailChimp, which is free for 2,000 connections. I’ll start emailing, “Hi, thanks. It was great meeting you in the meet-up last weekend.” That’s the first step. Second step is I would want to build a database as fast as possible. One of the things that happened this weekend, several people that came have 200 people in their database. That’s it. They don’t have a big database because they have not focused on it. It’s just is what it is. They have 100 connections on Facebook. They may have 50 people on LinkedIn. What I would do will be one of three things. One, I would go on to LinkedIn and I will start contacting asset managers, secondary marketing managers. I do a search and just start connecting, “What do you have on your books that’s available? Do you have anything you’re looking to get rid of?”

I would create a LinkedIn profile and use just the free version. Use a nice headshot. Since I have my camera, you take a pretty good photo against a white backdrop and you can smile. A lot of people don’t smile on their profiles, which is disturbing. I take that, upload it to LinkedIn and I would just simply say, “I’m a real estate investor.” I couldn’t put any experience because I technically don’t have any experience. I will start contacting people, “I’m a real estate investor looking to buy stuff in most of the major markets.” I’m going to start building my database and my network. I’m going to start connecting with asset managers, reaching out to them, see if they have any tapes that are available. I would find out who’s the best in the industry that I’m working. I would ask the people that are closing the type of deals that I want to be doing that makes sense in today’s market, who do they learn from? Who are the people that taught them? Who are the people to avoid in the industry? Are there jokers out there that just talk it but don’t walk it? That’s important.

I want to find out where their mentor or whoever that is, where that person is. If that person has stuff on LinkedIn or is on YouTube or is on Facebook, I would then go spend time researching what they’re doing. One of the things that I have done personally is I started following Gary Vaynerchuck because I loved what he did. I started duplicating some of the things that he’s doing. It’s a smaller basis but note investing is a niche and there’s nothing stopping you. You don’t have to have fancy camera equipment. Remember, I will start doing stuff with just my camera phone. That’s what I did earlier on. I will just start taking photos of properties that I could find. Hopefully, a few of these asset managers will send some lists, which is what they will eventually do if you just follow up. Try to make it a challenge and connect with 50 asset managers every night when you’re at home through LinkedIn. I will then also go on to MeetUp.com. Meetup is free, and I know that I’ve got to expand my database just outside my local market. You’ll meet a few more people but literally if you’re out really hard in trying to network and canvass an area, that’s a lot of one-on-one conversations. I want to go find something where I can network with many people. That’s why the local real estate club is one of the first in the most important things.

I would go to Meetup.com. I would go jump on the bigger cities in the country: San Diego, San Francisco, Houston, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, Orange County. I’ll go find real estate investment clubs in those areas, join them virtually because there’s no cost to joining virtually, and I would start leveraging their message boards. I’ll start leveraging their mailing lists to then connect with people. I’ll go get that set up. When I have something available, I can send it out to those message boards to connect with people. A lot of people ask me, “Scott, how would you raise capital to begin with all over that people don’t know who you are?” Just start sharing examples. When I first got started, they’re the same things that I would then that I did now. I jump on there. I pull up a deal that I got from somebody, an asset manager or a listing service or something like that and I start marketing the deal, “Here’s the deal that I’m working through.” Use a free service initially to start pulling in information and start generating interests.

You’ve got to realize, a lot of people get upset that they don’t have million in dollars of private money came after them. I don’t need that at first. All I need is somebody who’s got $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 to start off with. That’s one deal. That helps me get stuff funded. How would I put money in my pocket? That’s what’s important. Many people are either leaving their job or they’ve been laid off and they’re surviving on their severance package or they’ve got their 401(k) that they can do something with. I would literally start putting deals together, where they fund 25 and I really only need twenty to fund. That extra five is going to go cover some expenses but also put a $1,000 or $2,000 as a management fee into my pocket. I would jump on Facebook and look at some of the free real estate groups. There are some pretty good large real estate groups on Facebook and also on LinkedIn to connect with. That’s what I would do. I would spend time marketing first to build my database. That will help raise not only private capital, it will help me find the deals to make things happen.

NCS 175 | Start Over

I’m still coming from the point that I don’t have a lot of money if I’m starting all over with.

I would talk to people. If I see people that are doing things or closing deals, I would pick up the phone, talk to them, drop them an email, “Who did you learn from? Is there something I should look at?” I’m still coming from the point that I don’t have a lot of money if I’m starting all over with. You’ve got to use the free services that are available but also, you want to respect people’s time. You don’t want to sit there and turn a five-minute conversation into a 50-minute conversation. You’ve got talk to people, please be respectful of their time, try to get your questions answered in 15 to 30 minutes but just be respectful. Oftentimes, you have to realize some of the most successful people are the most approachable. If you find people that don’t respond to emails or don’t respond to phone calls or just don’t respond, they’re probably not the most successful people. That’s what you got to keep in mind. Don’t get me wrong, they may be busy. They may be overwhelmed with information, but the most successful people want you to be successful because it helps them out as well.

One of the big things I would make sure that I did not do is try to do five things at once. If I go to the local real estate club and they’re teaching different types of things every week, I’m not going to try to do something different every week. I’m trying to stick to one thing and have laser-focused blinders to the outside world of what I’m focused on. We have not mentioned anything about direct mail or yellow letters or sending out postcards or any of that crap, because that costs money. Remember, we’re starting over. I don’t have a lot of marketing budget. I’m going to use the things within my disposal that are relatively cheap if not free. That’s why I love the Facebook groups. That’s why I love doing the things that are inexpensive out there to build a network. Especially in the note industry, there’s a lot of deals in different areas, maybe not in Austin, Texas. What I would do, and this is a nugget, is I would go to the county clerks. I would jump online to NETR Online and look in different counties in the county clerk’s office and do a document search. The main document that gets filed with a note purchase is the assignment of mortgage. In a note deal, an assignment of mortgage is transferring ownership.

I would literally go to the county clerk and do a document type search for the last six months or the last twelve months on assignments of mortgages. That will tell you what mortgages have been bought and sold across the board. That will give you the name of two potential sources right off the bat on each document: the person or the company that sold the note, which is what you’re looking for and the company that bought the note, which is also what you’re looking for because they probably have other notes available. Once again, I would go to a document search for the assignment of mortgages and it will give you a list, the last six or twelve months, how far you want to take it back. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of those will be from the big boys, the Bank of Americas, Chases, Citibanks and things like. You will find plenty of smaller regional lenders and hedge funds that are moving stuff. They may not have a lot of stuff in your local market but they had done something in your market and I guarantee, they are investing in other markets. That’s the a-ha nugget of anything if you can take away from this episode of the podcast of how to find some things out there.

We have a question, “How many times per week should you market the deals you’re working on?”

It varies, it depends on how many deals you’re working on. One of the things that you’re going to see from us is a flurry of things from us currently on the stuff that we get in. We’re congratulating people that are closing deals. Congratulations to you, Eric and then to Gaile for funding that deal last week. We’re proud of our students who are closing things. If you’re working on deals, share it. That’s the only way you’re going to get ahead. If you’re closing on a deal each week or you’re working on a new deal that makes sense, share it. I don’t think people get tired of seeing you close deals. The more deals that you’re working through, the better off you’re going to be. I think it actually helps build it because you end up starting getting new referrals. That’s what happened to me originally ten years ago. I started breaking down assets and I started sharing, “Here’s the deal that I’m working through.” One of the ex-big guru has asked, “Does anybody know anybody closing notes?” They asked it on Facebook. Three of my connections recommended me and then that guru called me up and asked me to come speak at their conference on notes. They actually paid for me to come out and talk about it. Share the deals that you’re working through, “You get that closed on, here’s another deal we’re working on this week. Here’s the deal of the day, or here’s our lunch and learn.” That’s one of the things that would be really, really cool if everybody is doing that.

Lets’ face it, 90% of people aren’t going to do something. It’s just the law of numbers. 90% of people will come to our workshop, 90% of people will go to the Note CAMP but the 10% are going to pull the trigger. That’s unfortunate. I wish it was the other way around. I wish it was 90% who pull the trigger and only 10% didn’t do something. That’s unfortunately not how life is. Not that they don’t want to, it’s just that they either have a mind blocked of whether raising capital or making an offer. They don’t have the confidence. Sometimes they just need somebody to hold their hand. That’s why you want to find out who their mentors are out there that are actually doing things. Then you can reach out, “I’m working through a deal. Do you mind if I run this deal by you?” “Sure, let’s talk about the deal.” I don’t see a problem with sharing on a daily basis. If you’ve got deals you’re working through on a daily basis and you got good photos, share the journey. You’ve got different groups that you can dive into that are free. There are some large LinkedIn groups that have 500,000 investors. If you had to get 1% of 500,000 investors, that’s 5,000 people.

I have implemented something new just the last week since I was out in California at the Content & Commerce Convention. I just added over 150 contacts on LinkedIn just in the last week. It was designed to do something else but as a side thing, it’s literally adding in. I’m not going to share what that is. It’s a little nugget that I’m keeping for myself but it was well-worth it. It’s actually a free version that I’m running right now and then I’m going to update to the paid version when my free version is over. That’s another thing, I would find other tools that people are using that are eventually free to use. MailChimp is free up to 2,000 connections. If I expand my database beyond the 2,000 connections, I might open up a second MailChimp account initially to solve that 2,000 threshold until I could make something. Don’t get me wrong, once you go over 2,000 connections, it’s $35, $45, maybe $55 a month. It’s relatively cheap. For the most part, most of you aren’t going to build 2,000 connections before closing a deal. You’re not going to use that up, unless of course you go on and find some of the free resources that download asset managers or download mortgage bankers that you can tap into. We’ve covered that before our workshops, and we’ll cover that again.

You could literally go to several state segments and lending departments and oftentimes, it will allow you to do a full download of every mortgage banker or servicer doing business in that state. Oftentimes, you’ll get the bank’s info or the mortgage banker’s information as far as their company name, address, phone, fax, email address. Oftentimes, inside the email address, you can tell who the person is that handles that stuff there. That’s another thing that I would do to find asset managers. Besides just jumping on the county records to see who’s bought and sold mortgages in all counties in the last twelve months, I would jump on mortgage banking websites to find those stuff. As long as it was free, because we’re on a limited budget. You don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that’s not going to add immediate impact to what you’ve got.

If you find deals and you’re marketing the deals, joint ventures are a get way to get deals closed. Maybe you’ll find somebody in the local areas, maybe you’ll find somebody who’s closing deals and say, “I’ve got a deal. It looks like it’s a phenomenal deal.” The biggest thing on here is not to be like what I get bombarded with, “I got a tape.” It doesn’t do me any good. I would leverage the Meetup groups with the bigger groups to find where people are looking for deals and that would help me identify the tapes that I will get from sources what areas to focus on first. If I saw Adam Adams was interested in something in Flint, Michigan. I will spend time looking at Flint deals that I can maybe move to Adam Adams or somebody else for a quick wholesale fee, make $1,000 or $2,000. I’m not going to be greedy and try to get $10,000 unless the deal is worth a chunk. I’m going to do something to put some money in my pocket immediately. Anytime you can put a check in your pocket, it builds a lot of confidence. If you’ve got an unsupportive spouse or family member, I like to call that first check a shut-up check, “I’m making this work. Here’s a check, shut the hell up.”

Another question, “Do you create a database of just asset managers or are they a part of your overall database?”

I actually do both. I have 10,500 LinkedIn connections right now, that’s one group. Everybody that I connect on LinkedIn is a part of the group. I have a separate list of asset managers. There are some crossovers in the LinkedIn connections I currently have, there are asset managers, investors and things like that. That whole list gets my generic emails, “Here’s what we’re working on. Here’s the end of the world webinar we’re doing this Monday night. Check out the packets. Here’s the upcoming event schedule.” The reason it doesn’t bother me if a few people opt out is they opt out, it’s fine. I also have the asset manager list that we pulled separately so then when I do send out an email once a month or twice a month, that email is targeted toward asset managers. That’s the beautiful thing about LinkedIn or any email service providers that you use. It’s actually a statistic that we shared at the Distressed Mortgage Expo. The more segmented your list are, you have a 14% to 20% higher open rate.

One of the things that I would do very importantly with my database as I’m growing my database, especially people giving me business cards or connect with them online, I want to find out the city and states that they’re in. I want to find out what states and cities they like to buy in. The nice thing about MailChimp, you can create some custom lists and also create some links in there for people to opt in to your list where you ask that question, “What are your top five states? What are your top three markets?” I would not make your opt-in links 30 questions deep. That’s ineffective. There are some people out there that have a webinar they do or they do other things where they’re asking literally, “Are you boxer or briefs?” Not literally, but you get what I was saying. They go too far when they ask you all these questions and they wonder why they don’t get a good opt-in rate. That’s like literally going on a first date and have them fill out a DNA sample.

NCS 175 | Start Over

Let me do some due diligence first and make sure they’re good looking assets.

What you want to do is keep it simple. If I was going to create a new list on MailChimp, I could go on and create an opt-in list that I could post to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. In that way, I could track where my contacts come from. I could ask their name, their email, their cellphone and say, “What are the states that you’d like to invest in?” Very simple, you have state number one, state number two, number three. That will help you when you get these lists from the asset managers to be able to target, “These five people like Michigan assets, let me send those Michigan assets. I’m giving this list to these guys.” Let me do some due diligence first and make sure they’re good looking assets. I don’t want to send an empty lot or a lien too, or a house that only has two sides to it. You want to add value to your connections and to working with those people. That’s the important thing.

I still see this big fall down from people where they get exclusive list. They do get a fresh list from asset managers. Something that’s been shopped around and they sit on it. They don’t do anything. They don’t reach out to anybody. They look at it and they don’t make any offers on it, when they could be making money wholesale on the deals or doing some simple assignments or things like that over other investors to make some money. At least something is better than nothing.

Another question, “Is there an efficient way to export specific data from LinkedIn? Let’s say I have 1,000 contacts, can I sort it by asset managers and then export, or is it all combined in one?”

What you have to do with LinkedIn is you have to do a download. They’ve changed it up a little bit. It’s not the most easiest thing to find. One of the first things that you’d want to do is you want to try to connect your emails into LinkedIn. I’ve used one ScottCarson@Gmail.com. I also use Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. I would go and connect my emails into LinkedIn so that LinkedIn could log in to my email accounts and see all the people that we’ve emailed to identify people that have the same emails and profiles, to help me connect with them. That’s one thing that I would do. It basically allows for you to do a data download. Export your connections, and it’s a really easy thing to do. I’ve got 10,589 connections as of this moment. I clicked on my number. It takes me to the whole list and over the right hand side it says ‘Manage synced and imported contacts.’ I’ll click on that button. That pops up all my synced and imported contacts.

On the bottom right hand side, it says ‘Advanced actions’ and it says ‘Export contacts.’ I’ll click on the ‘Export contacts’ and it’s going to say ‘Getting an archive of your data.’ That’s what I would do. I would request an archive of my data. I will just need the fast file only. I’d request that and in a couple of hours, you would get an email sent to you where it would have a zip file. Inside of that, you’re going to have a list of everything, from all you posts to all you connections, all the people you sent it to. What you only want to do is the contacts that you’re connected. Not the total contacts but just the people that are existing in your existing network. That’s the spreadsheet. You’re going to have their first name, last name, email. You’ll have their company name and their job title. That’s where you would want to go through and filter through those asset managers and look to see where they’re at to export those or clean your list up into something a little bit cleaner.

Starting over in today’s market is so much easier than if you guys had to start over back ten years ago. Ten years ago, they didn’t have a lot of the Meetup groups that we have now. There’s literally thousands of real estate Meetup groups all across the country. Facebook didn’t have a lot of the great things that it has now. Note investing was a lot more difficult because we’re dealing with larger tapes from banks. You can have a lot of the ancillary, mid-range guys, the smaller funds that are buying 100 or 200 at a time or a $1 million at a time. They were literally scrambling for assets back then. If people are moving and those guys stop buying, it led to an opportunity for people like me to come in and buy stuff whether it was a one-off basis from Capital One or from Wells Fargo Financial or BB&T Bank. Whatever it was, it was opportunity because they were looking to move some stuff. One of the things I would also look at is I would start asking people who are in the industry whether it’s online, “What’s a good event to go to? What’s a good live event to go network? What’s a good spot to go and get some information that I can hone my skills and give me the best bang for the buck?”

Lo and behold, there is the largest live and online event out there of this type called Note CAMP. We’ve got 30 plus speakers. We’ve got over 50 hours of sessions for you to watch live. Every seat’s a front row seat. We’ve got some really great panels. We’ve got some really great speakers for the first time. We’ve got some amazing people coming back. I’m most interested here what Jeff Watson has to say. We’ve got John Hyre, the IRA lawyer coming in this time as well. We’ve got Quincy Long, going to be speaking on it from Quest IRA. We’ve got a tremendous amount of people. We’ve got Kristie Whites who’s going to come and talk about marketing. We’ve got Sue Nelson come in and talk about commercial notes. We’ll have George Antone talk about raising capital. Just a neatly cream of the crop, the who’s who in the note industry who are actually closing deals. We’ll have a couple of panels. We got a first panel and a second panel. We’ve got Daniel Singer Law Group coming. We’ve got Shante Duffy and Kevin Cordell with Madison Management going to be on there talking about servicing. We really got some big players for you. That’s the kind of event that I would look for early on.

Let me give you a little story. This goes back almost eight years now. It’s back to when I first attended my first convention. I wasn’t a real big educator. I’d started teaching in smaller workshops of ten to fifteen people. I heard about NoteWorthy but I was like a lot of people. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something I didn’t know. I didn’t want to spend money on flights and hotel unless I necessarily had to. When I went to NoteWorthy, it was just to attend the first time. There were about 600 people at it. My goal most importantly was there to network. I was there to build my database. I knew a few people. I went in, I took business cards. I remember, I only had a few business cards so I had to go to FedEx office and print some pretty flimmy flammy ones up for $10 but it was well worth it. What I did is I connected with most people but I also asked questions. There was one session that helped build a network for me more than anything else. It helped me really leverage the event. It was the hour-long session that Walter Wofford and Simon Welch. They talked about marketing today’s business.

Walter Wofford is out at Jackson, Mississippi. He has a Love Shack down there where he talks about a lot of creative stuff. He also is one of the co-contributors to the Quest IRA Cruise. He shared that he was filming the insides of all these rental properties in Jackson, Mississippi to help with his business. Simon talked about how to use leverage and asked if anybody is leveraging using video in their business. Nobody raised their hands, except this one white boy from Austin, Texas. That was me. I was leveraging. I shared the fact that I had 20 people and I did a video, then a hedge fund manager reach out to me. At the end, I got slopped with people that were hungry for more knowledge. I ran out of business cards to give out, but they started giving me their cards. I took all those cards from an event, all those connections. Before I went to bed that night in Vegas, I sent an email out to everybody, “It was nice meeting you, look forward to meeting you more. I look forward to connect with you in the next week or so.” I sent an email out almost immediately while it was fresh in everybody’s mind. I made sure to put my picture in the email as an attachment so they knew who they were talking with.

Jack Sternberg, who used to run NoteWorthy will say that years ago, he goes, “If there’s ever been one person that leveraged the even properly, it was you, Scott. You leveraged that. You probably brought home 300, 400 connections. You’ve been following up with people. They’ve been trapped in your email list since then. You’re marketing web for the most part.” That’s what’s important. That’s the only way you’re going to make money if you had to start over. If you’re starting fresh again, is to build you web, to build your network, to build your connections. Everybody is a buyer, everybody is a seller and everybody is a funding source. They’re either one, two or all three of those things. Everybody is a funding source, that’s a guarantee across the board. They may not necessarily be funding themselves but if you leverage them or leverage your marketing properly with something that makes sense, they may just go ahead and post that or forward you to somebody who’s got some money. I’ve seen that happen many times in the last years.

I think that’s an important thing to look at too. In today’s world, you really need to talk to the people that are actually doing the actions that need to be taken. They’re actually doing the marketing. They’re actually doing the asset manager phone calls. They’re actually doing the emails out to the asset managers. There are a lot of people that spout off knowledge but they’re not actually walking the walk. They’re just talking it. That’s okay but I honestly want to deal with people that are actually doing the actions and I want to see the activities. One of the biggest compliments I got was from my friend, Marilyn Green who came in. She loves the staff. They love the fact that we pull that collateral files, “Here’s a dozen collateral files that we’re working through.” They got to open up dead files that we already foreclosed that Greg has worked through. They got to look at collateral files that were live, real loan files and seen a three-inch thick file folders and went all into with assignments and 1003 applications and I walked them all through that. That’s the great thing that you need to have. They loved that. A lot of people are like, “I need to know about a collateral file. I want to know about all these stuff before you even pull the trigger.” No. There are so many vendors out there that will help you with things. You don’t have to have a broke mindset and think of doing everything yourselves. That’s another focal point.

NCS 175 | Start Over

If you’re going to rebuild or start over like many real estate investors are facing right now because there’s no fix and flip deals, there’s no REO deals.

I would ask, as I grow my network and my mentors and my other people that I’ve talked to initially, “Who are the vendors that you use? Why do you use them? Are there other vendors that you would recommend that you don’t use?” That’s the thing I would ask, “Who are you using? I’ll use them.” It makes it easy. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. “What do I do next?” Pick up the phone and call and that’s when it all comes down. If you’re going to rebuild or start over like many real estate investors are facing right now because there’s no fix and flip deals, there’s no REO deals. You can’t buy stuff at the auction because it’s overpriced these days. You have to get drastic on what you’re doing. You have to shake things up to expect different outcomes. So many people keep doing the same activities on a daily basis and expect different outcomes. That’s not the way life works. If you’re having a hard time buying deals, then you need to change what you’re doing. If you’re making offers to the same sources and you’re coming back and you see people overbidding, you’ve got to find another tree to pull a fruit off of. You’ve got to actually build some relationship. You actually got to put a four little word named work. You’ve got to do that. I guarantee you, if you actually work these things, it becomes easier over time. You do this consistently, consistency builds success.

I was watching a movie, The Founder, about Ray Kroc and McDonald’s. There’s a scene in the movie where he’s in his hotel room. He’s upset, he’s a little distressed and he’s putting on that vinyl record of motivation. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the skills or you’re the greatest athlete. If you don’t have persistence and don’t put the work in, all the skill in the world is still not going to help you. You’ve got to actually do the deed. You’ve got to put that grunt work in initially before you can find success. This is another thing that cracks me up sometimes. Some people think that just writing a check is going to make things happen, “I’m going to write a check and learn about it. It just automatically happens.” No, you’ve got to put the work in. I see a huge problem with people who go from workshop to workshop to workshop to workshop. Because they’re constantly going to workshops, they don’t ever have enough time to implement what they’ve learned at the workshop. They may have the time to send the leads out or reach out to people, but they never have the time to follow back up. One of the stats we shared at the Distressed Mortgage Expo is that 48% of people, won’t even follow up with a lead. Over half the people out there makes an email blast out or post something on LinkedIn or BiggerPockets. They might get responses but half of them will never even respond. That’s a downright shame.

One of the things we pride ourselves here is we try to make sure we get back to everybody within a timely fashion. One of the biggest surprise people get was when they got my cellphone number, I actually answer my phone or I’m the one that responds. They’re like, “I was thinking I get someone in your staff.” I’m like, “No, you got me.” That’s what you want, you want to be able to talk to people that can help you. You want to be able to get the people on the phone. I won’t work with vendors that don’t respond. I get everybody being busy, but at least send me a text message or an email, “I saw your voice message, I saw your email, let me get back to you in 24 hours.” I can respect busy, what I can’t respect is rudeness. What I can’t respect is people bad mouthing people for no reason. That just doesn’t make any sense. Be honest, “It is what it is.” Also, I think a big, big component is to be goofed up. Admit it, I’ve done that many a times. It’s better to own it and then come up with a solution versus sit there and hide from it. The truth will set you free. The truth always comes out no matter what you’re trying to hide.

I know we bounced around a little bit there, but it’s a bounce around in one position as far as what would you do if you had to start all over again. We covered a lot of things but those are the things that would set the groundwork and the foundation for you to grow a bigger business is having a bigger network. You can have all the private money in the world, but if you don’t have sources or don’t have systems or you don’t have a network to move stuff, you’re going to end up botching to do a deal.

We’ll spend a little bit more time on the webinar going in to more specifics. Showing the people exactly where I would go, what I would do and how I would do what I do. I’m so overwhelmed with the amount of positive feedback that people have been sending in. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching the videos. Thank you for subscribing to the podcast. We believe that there are plenty of deals to go around. There’s no reason for people to have to hide deal flow. Plenty of stuff to make things happen. The biggest thing you can do though is just be honest with your people. I’ll give you an example. I had somebody reach out to me who said, “I’ve got some sources.” I’m like, “I appreciate it but unless it’s a direct list you got from a direct bank or asset manager, don’t send it to me.” They’re like, “You don’t want to see it?” I’m like, “Probably not. It’s probably going to be from a source that I’m already direct to.” I don’t deal with joker brokers. I have no desire to deal with joker broker. I’m only going to deal direct. I’ve been around business for so long. I get it if you’re brand new, you’re not going to know if it’s a recycled list. This one the things I tell people, “If you get a list in, shoot me over the list and I’ll look at it and tell you if it’s a real deal or just a fake tape, or an old recycled asset list. I’m not here to steal your deal. I’ve got plenty of deals, but I do want to share with you and help save you from spending time on something that’s not real.” I get in many times I got a list and it has assets on it that I own or I bought note in the near future.

If you’re really passionate about getting something done and getting started, start doing something. I got to give a big kudos to Matt Fisher who is doing some stuff online. He added 100 plus asset managers through LinkedIn doing some simple things. It’s great to add those connections but adding them is only half the equation. It’s easy to click on connect, connect, connect on LinkedIn but what’s more difficult is sending an email out and doing that on a regular basis afterwards. If you’re out there adding asset managers like I know some people are doing that on a regular basis, especially off hours that they got from 7 PM to 2 AM, or they’re sitting in a hotel room or sitting in front of the TV watching Sunday night football. You can do that while you’re sitting there. You do it from your phone if you need to. Do it, but then take the connections, export them, download them and actually reach out to them, “I just want to touch base with you. Hi, this is what I’m doing. We’re connected on LinkedIn. We met at a convention. We met at a local real club. Great to meet you, here’s what I’m doing. Would love to connect.” Doing that over and over and over again until it becomes a habit. Doing it every day of the week or doing it the same day, every Sunday night or every Monday night or every Thursday afternoon. Doing that on a regular basis is what’s going to build a business.

Trust me, if you failed once and rebuilt yourself, you will never be scared of failure again. I’ve been down that road before where I had to start over at ground zero. It doesn’t scare me to have to ever start over on anything because I know, I’m going outwork all of you. I know that I’m going to only do more than what most people on a regular basis because I’m hungry. The immaculate words of the famous motivator, Les Brown, “You’ve got to be hungry to get things done.” Some of you out there just aren’t hungry enough. Some of you are sitting on that paycheck you get monthly from your job or your boss. You do the minimum in your business and you pat yourself on the shoulders, “I did something today. I got through my checklist today.” F that. If you’re going to sit there and talk a talk, “I’m real estate investor,” but you’re not doing things on regular basis, you’re not an investor. You’re just a problem. You’re an educated idiot who can’t fill up a bag because you’re full of hot air. That’s an important thing to keep in mind. You want to allow yourself with people that are actually doing the things that they say they do. You want to talk to the investors that are actually closing deals. You want to talk to the people that are making things happen. You don’t want to listen to people who are like, “I can’t find deals, can’t do things.” Don’t waste your time with those. Everybody has got an opinion like an asshole. Avoid the assholes and go find the people that will give you solid counsel, “We’re making things happen.”

That’s been one of the biggest piece of advice that I’ve gotten from my mentors over the year, especially my buddy, Greg Green. Two bits of advice. One is seek counsel, not advice. You don’t want to talk to people that haven’t been where you want to be. You want to talk to people who have made that journey and where you want to be in a year, five years, ten years from now. Not people that sit in the salas not doing anything. Secondly, if people are bitching about getting deals done, don’t talk to those people. They complain, “There’s no deals.” Go find the people that are finding deals. That’s who you want to talk to. Thirdly, most important thing you can think of, get rid of the dead wood in your life. If people aren’t going to help you or people are just going to give you lip service or people are going to lie to you, get rid of them. They’re not your friends. Sometimes your family is going to be like this. They’re not going to help you. You will have to say goodbye to friends, goodbye to family for a while, while you work on things. I know that’s difficult, but it’s the end of the world. You’ve got to do what you have to do to make the money and do the things that you eventually want to do, to live the life that you want to live. The last thing I’m going to do is take advice from somebody who isn’t doing what I want to eventually be.

If you’re helping people out and they’re not helping you back, get rid of them. Cut them loose, move on. Don’t waste your time with them because it’s not worth it. If people are only taking, taking, taking and not giving, fuck them. Get on with your life, move on because I guarantee your life will be a lot sweeter because you won’t have wasted energy, wasted time or wasted money dealing with people that aren’t going to help you. This is still an amazing world in real estate. Note investing is a great market. We believe in coopetition. Cooperate, have a little friendly competition. There’s no reason to throw people under the bus or to lie to them. Just be honest. Trust me, if you lie or throw people to the bus, you won’t be around long. There has been plenty of people over the years that are otherwise. Don’t be afraid of the end of the world. Go out and make some money. Don’t worry about things going rough on you because it’s a very, very, very easy thing to get started to make things happen today.

Thank you again. If you’re out there listening on the podcast via iTunes, Stitcher, Google Music Player or any others, feel free to download it. Leave us a review. Tell us how we’re doing. If you’d like for us to cover a topic, we’ll be glad to. Shoot me an email on Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. Don’t forget to check out NoteCAMP.live. Get your tickets at NoteCAMP.live. If you use the code PODCAST, you might just get a bit of a discount. Have a great day. We’ll see you all at the top.

 

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