EP 180 – Note Investor Katie Moton

NCS 180 | Note Investor

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Scott interview Katie Moton who is a new note investor to discuss some of the challenges.

Listen to the podcast here


Note Investor Katie Moton

We’re excited to have our next guest here on The Note Closers Show, Katie Moton. Katie is a relatively new note investor who’s not afraid to pull the trigger. I wanted to have her on because we’ve gotten some requests from people. They love hearing my stories. They like to listen to some of the guests we’ve had in the past like Bill McCafferty in the seconds, Wayne who’s done a couple hundred, Adam Adams, and even Cody Cox and few of the others that were on the video show before we had the podcast. A few people were like, “I’d like to hear Scott interview somebody new who’s doing it to discuss some of the different challenges.” I think we get a little jaded or take for granted sometimes the things that we go through when we’re brand new versus if you’ve done it a hundred times. I think Katie is a great example of that. How are you doing today, Katie?

Doing great, hanging in there.

You’re out in Reno, Nevada. Why don’t you talk a little about you and Chris and your foray as real estate entrepreneurs? Where did you come from first?

We came from not real estate. I am a teacher by trade, taught for fifteen years. My husband’s in the navy, a computer programmer. We JV-ed on a note. We had no idea what a note was back in April. The guy we JV-ed was Stan Scott. He then led us to Scott and we started doing some research on what a note was. We went to the Fast Track in May and Chris got deployed to Kuwait. Chris is in Kuwait until April. I took a year off teaching to do this.

You just didn’t want to dip your toe in the water. You dove head first in all the way to the bottom, right?

Yeah. Chris is working a couple hours. His night, our morning, in Kuwait, making phone calls and doing some other stuff and I’m doing the day-to-day stuff here in Reno every day.

You joint ventured with an investor and didn’t know what you are joint venturing on?

He’s like, “I want to buy this note.” We said, “What is a note?” We started learning about what a note was and then we invested with him and then we got more interested.

Have you taken any type of real estate stuff before? Have you gone to any workshops or seminars or anything like that?

No. Totally new to real estate, everything. Chris, I think has taken a couple courses because he just got his Master’s in Business, so he took a couple real estate courses in there also.

Chris called me up. For those that don’t know, we comp past and present military and first responders into our Virtual Note Buying Workshop, that’s three days. We comp in. It’s our way of helping give back to help our past and present military and first responders transition or help them out and boost and say thank you. It’s our way of saying thank you for making America great again. Chris, I think went through that and then he called me up and was like, “We’re all gung-ho. We want to come to the three-day Fast Track training.” What did I say, Katie?

You said no. That’s why I was like, “We’re spending what? You want us to do what? With who?” It’s funny because every night while I was putting the kids to sleep, I come downstairs and your face would be on his computer. I’m like, “Who is this guy that you’re watching? What are you doing?” It was just really funny. I actually did not want to go until you said no because I was like, “He’s just going to take our money. He doesn’t even care that you’re going to be gone for a year. Who is this person that’s willing to accept your money and give you training for something and then you’ll not use it for a year?” I was like, “No, no, no. I’m not going to do it.” Then I heard that you said no and Chris basically had to beg you.

He called me up and he told me what he was doing that he’s getting ready to go leave for nine months. I’m like, “Chris, I appreciate that, but if you’re in this by yourself and you’ve got kids, you’ve got a wife and you’re in Kuwait, there’s no guarantee you’d be able to take action so just wait. It would be around when you get back.” Then he called me back about two weeks later I think after you watched some of the videos.

We were trying to figure out how I was going to juggle the children, juggle life, and everything with him being gone and a full-time job. It ended up being the perfect thing. It just fell in our laps. I interviewed for a teaching job and they called me back and they’re like, “We love you. We want to hire you but we can’t. We hired somebody else.” I was like, “Well.” Chris was like, “I have an idea.” There it is.

You came to Fast Track. You put in a couple of offers. You got two approved, right?

Yeah.

Let’s talk about a little bit of that process because that was a learning curve. Literally, it was like drinking out of a fire hydrant for three days with you here. Our Fast Tracks are a little bit different depending on who’s in the actual group. We keep it small. I think there were about six people total, basically three partnerships. Everybody is different. Katie had this deer in the headlight look. I will give you credit, not the whole time, but part of the time. What was funny was that the first Friday night, you went to dinner and you had drinks with your friend and Chris hung around with everybody else. I was like, “Chris, maybe you should go with the wife.” He was like, “I want to network.” “Okay, fine.” You’ve learned it and adapted it. You were juggling literally getting Chris ready to head overseas too while putting bids in and working through due diligence. I think one of the big questions we get from people that are new and on the sidelines and looking to jump in, what were some of the things that were the biggest a-ha moments during that due diligence process?

It was just scary. I think Chris called a couple of times. He was like, “No. We’re not going to bid,” and you’re like, “Yes, you are.”

I felt like a little bit of a staff sergeant because he gave me, I hate to say, some very wimpy excuses. I’m like, “Let’s just go through these.” I remember one time it was after the gym and lunch, I’m sitting in the parking lot on the phone with him. He’s walking through these two deals that he bid on and I’m like, “What’s wrong with these?” He’s like, “Checklist, check, check, check. That looks good. That looks great.” “Have you got a realtor?” “Yup.” “What’s the values?” “Check, check.” He’s like, “We’re still about a 30% yield on those.” I’m like, “What’s wrong with that?”

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: It’s just jumping in, you just got to do it.

It’s just jumping in, you just got to do it. We did all the due diligence. We felt very confident about the ones that we’ve bid on but I think it’s just that first jumping in, because it’s scary. It’s really scary at first. Things don’t move as fast as you think they’re going to move. Once you bid, it’s not like you suddenly have this asset in your hands that you suddenly have to go and do all the stuff with. I think that was the big a-ha moment for us. Once we got it and paid for it, we were like, “Now what?” It was a slow process. It took almost a full month to get the collateral file, the hard one, and just getting it served. Everything just takes awhile. I think people have this vision or at least I have this vision that once you made the bids, suddenly you’re just going crazy with stuff. It’s a slower process. I think knowing that now, it’s not as scary to make bids because if they do get accepted, we have time to do more due diligence. We have time do more. It’s not just this crazy marathon.

It’s a marathon made up of a series of quick sprints sometimes. You had a week to put bids in, you came back with bids, counters. We have a question here, “The first two notes you purchase or bid on, did you fund them yourselves or did you JV with somebody?”

We funded them ourselves.

You had two that were approved. You only ended up closing on the one though.

We got two accepted. We sent the money over to you and then when you went to go pay for it, they came back and they said one is already sold.

We were collecting bids from everybody at the Fast Track. We placed them, money back to you, stuff like that. You funded it your own. Let’s talk about this. On the one you funded, it took 30 days to get the hard collateral file.

It was sent to the wrong place and then it got sent, and sent, and sent, and that was the one that we were trying to find to get back here.

Seriously, I wanted to fly out and punch some people in the face. What was funny is when we were co-bidding together, your files were sent to another Mastermind student who is out of Houston but he was out of the country, why forward the documents to his business partner in San Francisco? We’re like, “Where is Waldo?” trying to track it down. Your servicing got transferred to you. Who do you use with servicing?

We use Madison. Shante was super wonderful and easy to work with. I just love her to death.

Picked up the phone and talked to her quite a bit?

Yeah and email too back and forth, a lot of emailing. I’m asking her a lot of questions and I’m finally like, “Am I bothering you with questions?” She’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Thank you.” I feel the Fast Track had so much information. I took a whole notebook of notes and I go back and look at those but there’s just some things your brain can’t absorb. After one day, I think my brain was just done. I think I was able to absorb the due diligence. I understand the due diligence stuff, but beyond that I couldn’t remember. I could not process any of the stuff beyond that. It’s a constant learning, going back and checking my notes, asking you a lot of questions, asking a lot of the Mastermind people questions, ask lots of questions.

You came here for the Fast Track, it was May. You came out to the Mastermind in August. By that time, you were at home with the two kids and Chris was overseas. It was great. For those that don’t know, if it’s your first time to come on a Note Mastermind, we make you get up and present a little bit. You’re great talking in front of the room anyway with kids and stuff. How was that for you though?

It was fine. It was fun. I like being in front of people and talking. Adults are different than children. I’m not going to lie. It’s a little more nerve-wracking. Once I get going, I can’t stop.

You had something that brought Chris there. You want to talk about that?

My Chris prop. It’s a photo of Chris on a paint stir stick. One of my friends, we all get together, our families get together for different holidays and stuff and they have two kids each that are all the same age as mine. We always take family pictures of three families together and we’re like, “We’re not going to have Chris in our pictures.” My friend suggested blowing up his face to an 8×10 and then put it on a stick so we now have Chris. We have daddy in all of our family photos. I brought him to present with me at Mastermind so I didn’t have to stand up there by myself. I held my Chris prop the whole entire time that I was presenting.

You transition here with him being overseas right now for a few months and you here. You use a lot of technology to communicate on a daily basis and work through things, right?

Yeah. That’s a little extra twist to our organization. That’s what we’re really focusing on right now, is just how to organize everything and divide it up and keep things organized because we’re emailing constantly back and forth. We do Google Hangouts back and forth. We do Skype back and forth. We have a Google Share Drive that we can share all our documents and everything that we find in there. Organizing with two people, I think in any business, is keeping the organization of who does what and how you do it and everything like that. His big thing that he does is he’s more savvy with the investor side of it. That’s his forte. We’ve had a couple of people call off of our self-directed IRA letters that we’ve sent out and I let him call it back. I find the people, I send the letters and then he calls them. The one who called us, Chris called him back from Kuwait. He calls them back through Skype.

You pulled those letters from the county records because you pulled off the list of IRA investors and you just mailed out letters to them?

Yeah. We looked at the one that you wrote. We changed it and made it ours and put our logo on it and our pictures on it. We included a picture of our first note that we did and some of the stats on it.

How many letters did you send out?

I got a little frustrated because  some counties are really hard to find that information. I thought I was wasting my time a lot just trying to find the counties that I could find the information in easily. We probably sent out 30, 50, 60.

Say 60 letters and you’ve gotten one phone call?

Yes, one phone call.

How did that conversation go with Chris?

I think they’ve been going back and forth. It’s just the time zone, that’s the issue too. Because they would call back, Chris would call back, and then they would call back. I don’t think we’ve actually talked to them just because of the time zone so I think that’s where I need to step in and do that for some of the stuff too.

That’s good though. An investor calls you back, if they invest $25,000 or $50,000 with you, it’s well worth it, right?

Yes, definitely.

You were also working with your guy that you joint ventured with on as well talking and bouncing ideas off each other, right?

Yeah. We talked back and forth. There were a lot of Mastermind people actually. There is other people I text constantly, email constantly, and asking questions. The Mastermind group is just so willing to share and so giving of their time and their stuff. Gail sent over her ROI calculator because we were trying to make our own. I’m like, “Why is every group making their own when we could just go off one and tweak it instead of just starting from scratch?” She sent that right over. The group is so giving and so supportive too.

It’s a good group. No a-holes allowed. A lot of people are like that, like Gail sharing resources and stuff with other Mastermind members and helping out. Karen is a big contributor. Steph does a really good job of herding cats into an event for three days. Once we get it ready together, it’s easy because everybody has a big heart. What are some of the challenges? I know that you’ve also been making bids on other assets and working through it. I was just looking at the text messages from Chris. He sent me a text about something and I was like, “Just figure twelve months of payments, divide what you’re purchasing initially. Just get the rough.” What are some of the things you’re doing?

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: I’ve been spending a lot of time lately just educating myself on foreclosures.

A lot of the tapes we’re getting right now, I’m sure a lot of other people are too, because we’re probably all getting the same tapes, a lot of them are foreclosure and bankruptcy. I’m doing a lot of educating myself on foreclosures and bankruptcy because just learning one thing at a time and making that initial bid and then learning as you go. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately just educating myself on foreclosures. I’ve been asking you a lot of questions on foreclosures and how to bid foreclosures. I think that’s a struggle right now, just trying to understand how that works and how to bid that. The ROI calculator that Gail sent over had that section in it for foreclosures, so that was cool to see how those numbers figure out. That was really nice to see all that. Our biggest problem is getting tapes that other people aren’t getting. We are making bids and then people are coming back $10,000, $15,000 over. They’re coming back with a counter bid and then we run the numbers and they just don’t make sense. There’s no way we can make any money off their counter bids. We’re getting lots of tapes. That’s not the problem. It’s just the bids that we make aren’t getting accepted or they’re getting countered with crazy prices.

Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes the better deals are the ones you don’t do because you don’t overbid, you don’t overpay for things. Especially some of the BPOs we’ve talked about, some of the sellers are smoking some big, big, thick crack rocks. Besides that, anything else you’re dealing or struggling with? Are you dealing with having realtors go out and drive by and give you evaluations?

We haven’t got a bid accepted yet beyond that other one. The one that we got was in St. Louis, it’s in green but it’s red and yellow and oranges all around it.

She’s talking about the heat mapping on Trulia.

Chris just went on Zillow and found someone who sold the house in the neighborhood and that person was awesome. He went out and took pictures for us, had no problem going out and looking for us. I think that’s the best way if you’re buying in a neighborhood. He was willing to go into that neighborhood to look at it. I think Zillow is a great way because it has all the realtors right there on the side.

Did you pay him anything or is it part of the listing?

I think we’ve paid $50 for him. We told him if we have to list it or anything, I would love to work with him again. He was a great realtor out there in St. Louis.

It helps you when you have somebody out locally in a market that you could look at and go back to that well every time. 

We keep looking for more places in St. Louis too.

Let’s talk about the asset you bought. Have you had any workouts on it? Is it performing? Is it non-performing? What’s the status with that thing?

We took the reinstatement and we put it into two payments. They just finished paying the reinstatements.

How many months behind were they?

It ended up being $5,000.

You paid how much for it?

We paid $15,000.

You already got a 33% return on this asset and now they’re paying on time, correct?

They just finished and that was even late though. I was okay with that. We’ve been working with Joel and Daniel Singer. Daniel’s been awesome because I’m like, “He’s not paying.” Daniel was like, “I’ll call him.” Daniel has been on top of it, calling him right away and then he sends me an email back right away letting me know. They’ve been wonderful to work with over there, Daniel Singer and Joel Markovitz. They’ve been just great on top of that stuff.

You dove into that. You bought a note. You’re working out the logistics of being in other sides of the world obviously, but you’re not letting that stop you from moving forward. You’re making offers, if it’s not accepted or too high, you just keep moving forward and marching forward. You’re raising capital. You’re doing what you can because let alone being a single mom home by herself with husband across the world is not an easy task. One thing you’ve been doing over the last few weeks, is you’ve been going out and attending other networking events, right?

Yeah, because you want to try other things. You want to get out there. Reno is pretty small so there are not a lot of Meetup groups and that stuff here in Reno. When something comes here, I’ve been trying to go to it but I have to get babysitters, so it’s a big deal. I have to plan for this stuff and they’ve been massive failures but that’s all right.

What we’re talking about is you’re going out to the free seminars and a lot of the other education platforms where you’ll come by for two hours. You’ve been chronically in some of the stuff. You’ve been using it to try and raise capital and explaining your network when you can.

I went to the Rich Dad Poor Dad thing. It was free to go there. I haven’t read the book. I know Chris has. A lot of people when they got up and presented at the Mastermind in Florida, you have to talk about your favorite book and that was a lot of people’s favorite book. I felt, “This would be great. This would be interesting to go to.” Rich Dad Poor Dad just has the name. It’s a different investor. It was a completely different type of investing, which was actually interesting. I didn’t fully understand it honestly, what he was doing. I think he was being more of a broker is what I think he was doing. He was teaching how to do that part.

Wholesaling is what you are telling me.

It was just interesting. I was taking notes for awhile because I’m like, “This is interesting.” That was the 30 minutes of the two hours and then he went into sales pitch for the next hour and a half. He started off as like, “You could have this but it would be $20,000 but I’ll knock it down to this if you buy it right now before you leave this room.” I’m a stubborn person so even if I was interested in his training, I wouldn’t have done it just because I would have been irritated I think that he was forcing me to make this choice right now instead of think about it and decide if this was a good investment and good for our business.

That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with taking the night to think about things and figure out where you’re going. We’ve dealt with a lot of people who spent $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 on programs or multitude of things and never had any success. Steph actually started off as a Rich Dad student. Doing a lot of things, went through a couple of classes then she found the light of the dark side, the note investing side. Have you communicated or were you collecting business cards from people there too?

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: That’s part of the reason I went, was to meet other people.

No. I didn’t because we went right in and then everybody trickled out and we’re signing up or just left. There wasn’t a time to network really, which is disappointing. That’s part of the reason I went, was to meet other people. But they hurdled us all in. It was like, “We’re done,” and it was just sign up and people were grabbing you. It was interesting. I did get a free book. It started off so good. It started off interesting. I think it’s important to continue learning even if it’s not a strategy that you would take. More or less the wholesaling is not something we’re interested in doing but I think it’s important to understand it. I thought it would be good even if it wasn’t something we use just to understand it a little more.

It’s good to know strategies but it’s good to be focused as well. You have goals though. What do you and Chris focus on in the next twelve months? Because he’s been gone since when?

Since June.

You’re basically a third of the way through him being deployed, right?

Yeah, he’s coming back in April or May.

You’re doing a great job communicating back and forth and making offers and communicating. You aren’t taking no for an answer. You won’t let a hurdle stop you from achieving things. I think a lot of people can learn from that who are working a regular 9 to 5 job and at home with their family every time. You talk in the mornings because it’s night over there and mornings here. Is that correct?

Yeah. From 9:00 in Reno time to noon is when Chris is available, that’s when it’s his night time. That’s our time to talk. As soon as I drop my son off, I come home by 9:30, we’re both talking through Skype about family but also what we’re both going to do that day, where we are on certain things, goals that we have, where are we meeting our goals, where are we doing this. We’ve been doing a lot of strategizing, so talking strategies lately, just trying to get us organized, not making as many bids. We’ve been doing a little due diligence but we get into some of them, we’re like, “Let’s not waste our time. We don’t even want to deal with this.” We haven’t even making that many bids lately. We’re getting tapes but we start doing the due diligence on it and we’re just like, “This isn’t what we’re wanting.”

That’s good because that keeps you clean versus doing stuff that’s going to take away time from stuff. You obviously like St. Louis in Missouri. What are your other four or five markets that you like?

We’ve been looking at areas in Ohio a lot. I know our other note that we JV-ed is in Indiana, Illinois, mid-west area. I went to school in Iowa so a lot of my friends are in Missouri still, in those areas, Illinois and Indiana, so I have people out there. I have a realtor friend who’s in Kansas City and we asked her to go drive by a few and she’s like, “I’m not driving by those neighborhoods.” I don’t think we ended up bidding on those. I know a little bit of that area out there and I’ve driven through a lot of it on road trips and stuff through that area.

You guys have some goals. What’s your main thing? Do you want cashflow? Do you always want to re-instate?

We do want cashflow. Our goal is that when Chris comes back, one of us does not have to go back to a regular job, hopefully, both of us. That would be ultimate if both of us could stay home doing this full-time when he gets back. Ultimately we want both of us to stay home, but one of us not to have to go back. One of us being able to stay and continue doing this full-time. Enough cashflow that we can stay home.

Even $5,000 increments in renewal fees, that’s a good start. What are your goals for this year, as far as you have a number of deals that you want to get accepted?

I’m with five but I don’t think we’re going to get five. I just have this feeling when we get one, we’re going to get several. We’re not just going to get those onesies, twosies at a time. That’s just not going to happen that way. We’re sending out the emails, it just takes time. I do Cross Fit and it’s a small group of people, it’s the same people who come to the 6:30 AM class every time. We support each other in all walks of life. They know that I took off a year of teaching to do this. We talk, and not that I’m trying to make them investors, not even attempting to ask them to invest. They’re just asking what I’m doing and how is it going and they’re constantly asking. One of them I was like, “You watch me videos, right?” He’s like, “You have videos?” I was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “I subscribe to your YouTube channel but I never paid attention to it.” He went and watched my videos and now he’s like, “I think I’m interested in investing.” This has been since May I’ve been talking about it, so it just takes a while. Then actually the owner of my gym said the same thing. It’s just scary to have friends invest with you.

As long as you’re doing the right things.

Yeah, and we would.

You and Chris are both come from a good place. That answers somebody asked the question, “What else are you doing to raise capital besides the postcards and the letters out to investors?” You did a really good cool thing. We got your thank you note with your postcard with your logo on it, which is really cool. What’s on the backside?

These are to my family. I wrote to my family. Nothing’s on. It was a letter to my mom.

That makes it unique enough that you can do some stickies or custom write it and stuff like that. You ordered those from where?

Vistaprint. I was ordering our labels because I got sick of handwriting Colletta Street Capital and our address on every single letter, all 50 of them. I went and just ordered some from Vistaprint so I can put our labels on. They were like, “I’ll throw this in.” I didn’t know what to put on the back, but you have the option. It wasn’t that much more expensive to put anything on the back. I thought we could have these, pass them out in different places, not just for mailing.

A marketing piece that’s multi-faceted that you can use as a thank you letter, a postcard to investors, a business card when you’re out traveling. One of the things that you might do, here’s an idea for you.  You’ve got a good picture of the house that you guys closed on?

Yeah.

On one side, picture of the house, the other side, talk about the deal. You could say the unpaid balance, how many months behind they were, what you paid for the asset, and then what is the result of it. You’ve got $5,000 in payments plus they’re paying $250 a month, and figuring out your annualized ROI on that. You’re at 33% ROI right now.

We figured out it’s 65% if they paid the PNI for a year, plus the re-instatement. I was thinking if they pay us back for a year, that’s $5,000, plus the $5,000 they gave us, that’s $10,000 right there when we bought it for $15,500.

That could be something you hand out, you put your phone number on it and you’re address on there. That could be a business card and you go out to networking events or you’re talking to people as well. If you decide to go stalk the Rich Dad seminar things, it could be possible.

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: They were desperate and they looked like it was something that they could really need and use, an education.

This is why I was sad. A lot of those people didn’t look like they had a lot of money, not that I’m judging people. They look like people who were like, “This could be something.” They were desperate and they looked like it was something that they could really need and use, an education. I think I was more upset for them than I was for me that they couldn’t take something from that time there and go do something with it. They had to pay another $2,000 or $500 or $495 or something they finally knocked it down to. Most of those people looked like they couldn’t pay $500.

That’s one of the biggest belief we’ve always had, that if we give somebody the tools to succeed, they’ll go do it. Too many times there are upsells. A lot of people are so sick and tired of the smoke blowing, dangle that carrot in front of you for two hours and then, sign up for this and sign up for that.

I don’t think they realize that most people would have probably purchased that in the room if he would have given us enough good information that made you still want more. Then he could have spent five minutes talking about his product. I would probably thought about it.

You would have thought about it if you had a little bit more time, a little bit more information, right?

Yeah.

Do you like the note business or do you hate it?

I love it, I do. I’m having a hard time doing a lot of computer, like sitting at a computer. It’s completely different for me but it’s fun. It’s something new. It’s not as hard as you think it is but it’s harder than you think it is. I feel like I’m actually becoming a more worldly person, just understanding a lot of things. Because I used to leave the finances up to Chris and be like, “I trust you.” He was like, “I want to invest.” I’m like, ” If you trust the person, if you trust the investment, I trust you.” Now I’m becoming more knowledgeable in a lot of those areas and avenues. Chris and I can actually have a lot more conversations about other things. It’s opening what we can have a conversation about. It was just new and I’m meeting so many cool people and I’m getting to travel. I just went out to California for the Distressed Expo. I’m doing the IRA cruise.

I think the ultimate big goal for you and Chris though is to travel a lot though, right?

Yeah. . Ultimately, we want to be able to do this overseas. We want to live in Europe. We used to live in Europe. We were stationed in Italy for four years, so we want to get back, maybe in Germany. They’re very organized in Germany. I could live in Germany.

Ultimately, that’s where we want to be able to do this because this is a job you can do it from anywhere. You just need internet. If you need to be able to make the call, you have to set or figure out your time schedule. If Chris can do it from Kuwait, and he’s calling banks, we’re calling servicers.

That’s the thing I want to bring up next. We’ve talked a little bit about this when I called you about this. You were pulling lists and then making phone calls, and he was being able to knock out ten or twenty phone calls a day, is that about right?

Yeah.

You’re a little frustrated because you’re not having as much luck as you have because you’re just pulling it and you’re not having any phone numbers. You’re just contacting the people off of LinkedIn. I was like, “Here is a list of asset managers that you forgot about at the Fast Track.” Now you’ve got phone numbers, now you’ve got emails and stuff like that to reach out to and you had a lot more success. You guys make maybe 50 phone calls over about a week or two?

Yeah. I think I made 20 or 30 originally, and then after a Mastermind, you suggested we go to the servicers. Chris took hold of that list and started calling servicers. Then we’ve gone back to the banks again, like 50, 60, 70, something like that. Our goal is 100 a week, and we’re starting that next week, actually meeting our goal. We haven’t called for a while but next week is a start.

You’re sharing videos of exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going. I think you did one video from your hotel room where you’re like, “We’re here.”

I did one from when I got to Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I did one there and then I did a review after. I practiced it several times but then I only videotaped it once and I was like, “That’s good enough.” It’s never going to be perfect.

Delivered is better than perfect anytime for the most part. We got a question here, “What marketing avenue is working the best for you, Facebook or YouTube?” What would you say?

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: What’s nice about YouTube is it’s a place to house all your videos in one place.

I’d say Facebook, but what’s nice about YouTube is it’s a place to house all your videos in one place. They don’t have to scroll through your whole Facebook to find all those videos. I don’t know how many people are actually going in and actually watching them on YouTube. Somebody said something, to actually upload the video itself on to Facebook, not link it from YouTube. I forgot that and I linked it from YouTube, and I don’t think anybody saw it. It got no views, no likes, nothing. I was like, “Why isn’t this in the feed?” I went back and I realized that I just linked it to YouTube, so I went and uploaded it and instantly it was getting likes and people are watching it and it was in the feed and everything. Just make sure that you upload the video directly to Facebook.

It’s good that your videos are five minutes or less as well. Sometimes if you do have a longer video, go back and shoot a short little teaser video and put the link in the comments on Facebook, “Here’s the full version of the video too.” 

YouTube is just nice to house your videos there, but it’s hard to find. Unless you can get your name on it, it’s really hard to find those. If you just typed in my name, it’s not easy to find YouTube videos in general.

Do you have 100 likes? 

No. I have 68, 60, 50, 60.

For those who are listening, you can go to YouTube, look for Colletta Street Capital, LLC, let’s go ahead and give her likes. Let’s give her likes then she can customize it and it will be easier to find the journey that Katie and Chris is on right now. Dan Zitofsky just said he just subscribed to YouTube. You should reach out to Dan too because he’s got a big trade he’s working on in Indianapolis. 

Okay, we are friends on Facebook.

We have another question, “What are you doing to expand your email database?”

We’re doing the LinkedIn like you suggested and going through and typing in “secondary marketing” and then friending all those people. We typed up a longer paragraph on what our company is. It’s like an executive summary but it’s a really small one for LinkedIn. Then we have a mini one, because you can only put a few little words in the note section, and so we send that. As soon as they connect with me, I send them the bigger paragraph instantly on messaging, so they’re config-ed in. We look up secondary marketing and special asset. We started just doing hedge funds.

Another thing you can do as well is type in real estate investors or note investors. Note investors have a two bigger list, but when you type in real estate investors, you’ll find a lot there. They may even do that real estate investor Reno, that might help you because you can narrow the location down in LinkedIn for you, so that will help you locally.

Once a month, we’re exporting all that into our MailChimp.

Just churn and burning. Just doing the actions one day at a time, right?

Yeah. You gave that check-off list, the 30/30 Matrix, so we have our check-off list.

This has been something we’ve been working on. We looked at yours and so we went through and decided how many times a month we want to do each one so we wrote that up here. Then what days we want to do it on and who’s going to be doing it. Notice there’s a lot without checks on it, but there is a lot of checks where there’s supposed to be. You can see all the highlights that we were supposed to be doing something that day. We have a lot of work to do.

It’s funny what happens when you do the things I tell you to do, it might actually work, right?

It’s nice because it holds you accountable. I look over and I’m like, “Wait, there’s a yellow for today. What am I supposed to do?” It’s that extra little reminder of what you’re supposed to be doing.

If you’d like a copy of the 30/30 matrix, we’ll send you a PDF. All you’ve got to do is email me at Scott@TheNoteClosersShow.com. Send it there, say, “I want the 30/30 matrix.” We’ll be glad to email you over a copy of exactly what Katie has there that she’s working through, not adjusted for what she does but a generic one and then you can run with it yourself. 

I like prettier fonts so I changed the font. I’m a visual person. We took some columns out of things that we don’t do and we added columns in of what we wanted to do, so it’s good. It’s a great way to start with.

What’s funny is we provide that checklist at The Distressed Mortgage Expo during my marketing, and only 30 people picked it up. I still have a stack of 150 of them when I was walking out of there.

It’s just a great visual on it that gets you, “I need to do this. I need to do this. It’s Monday, I’m supposed to send this out.”

Basically it’s got the days of the month, Sunday through Saturday, on the left-hand side of it. On the top, you have all the different things. It’s 30×30, 30 days and 30 activities. You’re not going to do every activity every day, but there’s plenty to do every day like Facebook posting or Twitter posting. Others things you do that once a month like going to a REIA meeting or going to a networking event. Those are some great things. Once again, if you email at Scott@TheNoteClosersShow.com, we’ll be glad to get you a PDF version of that. Katie, you’ve got your website up and running? 

We don’t have a website but it’s something we’re working on still.

I purposely asked you that question because a lot of people will wait to do anything until they have a website. You’re not letting that stop you. 

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: I feel like that should be the first thing you do because then you can start emailing people for tapes.

No. I feel like MailChimp is one of those things you need to do right away so you can start getting those emails to send out. I feel like that should be the first thing you do because then you can start emailing people for tapes, and with all those asset managers you can start emailing for tapes. It’s funny because even family, we started the MailChimp thing right away within the first week, and family members are like, “You do what now? You’re not a teacher?” I’m like, “It’s been since May.” It just takes a while, so if anything, just get that weekly email going.

Have you seen any increased response rate though? How many weeks are you sending out your email blast now?

We’ve sent eight or nine. I think the ones we got the most hit like amazing open rates on and actually the response like emailing because they respond back to Chris, getting emails from investors on are the ones that actually had the deal on them. The ones we’ve been sending out lately, they’ve just been like, “I went to the expo.” It’s still good stuff but not the notes that they want to see with the assets. I need to do a new one on our St. Louis asset because now they’re re-instating. It’s cool to see when we send out those ones where it’s like, “This is just the update,” that’s when the people put it on.

I think we’re both a little uncomfortable with doing ones that we are making bids on because I don’t want to keep saying, “We’re making bids on this one,” and then we don’t get it. I think we’re waiting at least until it gets accepted, and then from there start making videos on the ones we’re doing. You just have to do it repetitively for a while. That’s one of our struggles is finding that rhythm and then sticking with it even though you don’t see immediate results.

The proof is in the pudding. You don’t have to be closing on 300 deals to then send emails out. You start off with one, you start off with zero and get the ball rolling. Like you said, you get people that respond to you. You get a warm market initially, who’s going to love you, “What are you doing now?” The people that you share with your videos at your Cross Fit and other friends are interested in doing things with you. You build a little momentum, the learning curve at first is steep, but when you start taking actions, you see good things come back to you. Right, Katie?

Yeah. The more action you take, the more you learn too. I didn’t feel comfortable at first talking with people about it just because I felt like that I was going to say something wrong. Now look at me, I’m on your show. I feel like the more I go through this, through our asset, and the more learning and the more events I go and the more questions I ask, the more confident I feel and the more confident I come across also. You’ve just got to jump in. You’ve just got to do it. What’s the worst that could happen? You lose your money maybe, but if you do your due diligence, you shouldn’t lose that money in my opinion.

That was the big thing about the Distressed Expo, it was all about looking at your exit strategies and making a plan for each one of those. That’s really what Chris and I have been working on too is looking at all of our exit strategies and coming up with those. Adam Adams and I and Jen Adams were talking at breakfast at the Distressed Expo, and he’s like, “I want to make a flow chart of all of them.” He’s making a flow chart, it’s awesome. He sent it to me and I was like, “Adam Adams, send me something,” so just getting a flow chart of where you want to go and what you could do with all of those.

We have to make a show about the flow chart  We talked about it before about the case studies and stuff like that, which way it is whether it’s performing or it’s occupied or the rate it can go.

 I feel like I soaked in everything about to get it re-performing or to modify at all the training. I’m sure you talked about the other stuff but my brain was so full, so just trying to learn about all the other options and exit strategies and how it all works. It all does come into consideration when you are making the bids. I think if you do your due diligence and you have a good bid, there are not a lot of horrible things that could happen.

Check your values, check the taxes, and then order O&E and title report. Those three biggest things are the most important things to secure your investments. You did these things. You had your realtor on the local area drive by it and they said it was fine, you checked taxes on it before you close, and then you also pulled O&E Report and you looked at it. You also put the asset in capable hands. You put it in Madison Management, with Kevin Cordell and Shante Duffy in there, amazing group over there and with Joel Markovitz and Daniel Singer from The Daniel Singer Law Group who has helped you. Do they earn their fee to bring it out?

NCS 180 | Note Investor

Note Investor: You’ve got to have an organization, you’ve got to learn how to organize yourself.

Yeah. They’re wonderful and they are so supportive too. I’m just asking them questions, “I’m sorry, I’m new. I’m just going to ask you questions,” and they respond to me and answer my questions. They’re educating me too in this whole system. You’ve got to have an organization, you’ve got to learn how to organize yourself because right now, that’s where we’re working on getting a CRM.

I’ve been watching some of Adam Adams’ videos on his podcast. With one asset it’s not that confusing, but once you have more than one, I’m trying to figure out how to keep on top of all your emails too, not yours in general, the ones that come in. Your conversations that you’re having with other people and making sure that you’re staying on top of it and where to sort that and where to find it and put it. It’s just a lot but if you look at it in little pieces, it doesn’t feel like that much.

I have nine emails lined up in my MailChimp to send out. I love that you showed us how to set them up, for the people who don’t open it, to resend, to resend. I put one in and then I set up two more resends after that.

Do me a favor, shoot me an email when you look at the resends, see what your total open rate is over the entire list. If you’ve got 20% the first time that you send it out to your database, and then you got another 6% to the other that didn’t open it, and then another 4% or whatever. Let me know, I’m willing to bet that should be around 30% to 40% probably.

We just have that asset manager who wanted pretty much the same little paragraph that we sent to him on LinkedIn, but it’s now in MailChimp with our logo and picture and information and stuff in it.

You’re branding yourself. 

Trying.

We have another question. “Where do you see yourself in twelve months?”

I think finding our rhythm and keeping with it, and hopefully both of us staying home doing it or at least one of us staying home and doing it. It will be one, but our hope is two staying full-time. I like this working from home thing, it’s nice.

Katie, thank you so much for sharing and being open, answering questions and just sharing exactly what you’re doing. I know a lot of people appreciate it. If you want to find her, go like her page on YouTube, Colletta Street Capital, LLC. You can also find Katie online on Facebook @KatieMoton.

Thanks so much, Katie. Give Chris a big virtual hug and high five from all of us.

Thanks, Scott.

Thanks. 

 

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About Katie Moton

NCS 180 | Note InvestorColletta Street Capital LLC is a Nevada base real estate investment firm specializing in 1st Lien Non-Performing Notes on single family residential properties across the United States. Our strategy is to purchase mortgage debt from banks and other lenders and either negotiate with the home owner or borrower to take control the property or turn the note back into a performing loan. Our focus is to create a win-win for the borrowers, the banks, and our investors.

We source assets from large and small banking institutions, hedge funds and private lenders. If you or your clients are trying to move NPNs before the end of the quarter we would love to talk! Thank you and have a great day!

We have a variety of investment opportunities if you are looking to for investment or joint venture deals. Please contact us directly to find out more information and if you qualify to participate.

 

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