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New Year = New Plan
It is the first episode of the podcast for 2019. We are excited to be here and wanted to title this episode New Year, New Plan. It’s not a new plan for us per se. We were always constantly tweaking things and trying to build momentum with different training, different focus, a different attack mode you could say. Especially attack mode when we we’re looking at finding and buying new assets. What’s funny is the whole New Year New Plan, a lot of people have to focus on tweaking their focus in the New Year. Many people are trying to do business as normal. Maybe business was two years ago or it was the beginning of last year and that’s not the case. That’s one of the big things if I can push towards you guys to identify that, “It’s not the same as it was a year ago in any form or facet of any type of business.” You’ve got to change what your focus is. You have to change what you’re doing.
It’s one of the things that we are always constantly tweaking with our workshops. It’s like, “It’s different. I can’t teach you the same exact same thing as I did a year ago or five years ago or ten years ago because the market has changed.” Those things are no longer working or the market is past those specific things by. One of the things that I want you to focus on and what this episode is all about is having a new plan, a new focus on where your year’s going. You need to start it off with day one. Hopefully, you’ve put some goals together what you want to accomplish for this year as far as financially. What do you want? How many deals you want to close or how much money you’re wanting to make? That’s a big thing to keep in mind. Throwing a number out there, whether you’re pulling out $100,000, whether you want to make six figures in your new year. You’ve got to have a plan of action to help you get there. I posted a question in the WCN Crew Facebook page about, “What’s your biggest goal for 2019?” Only a few people answered. I was disappointed because if you don’t know where you’re going, what your biggest goal is, you’re going to flounder. You’re going to hurt yourself long-term if you don’t have some focus. If you don’t have some big goals you could say.
Goals don’t have to be necessarily a big thing. It can be, “I want to close three assets a month on average.” That’s great, 36 for a year, great deal. “I want to make $5,000 in cashflow. I want to make $10,000 in cashflow.” A goal is not good if it’s not specific and it doesn’t have a date. “By January 31st, I’m going to close my first three deals, by each month I want to close on three deals.” That’s a specific number. “I want to make exactly $5,000.” “I want to have as much money to do that,” what’s that number look like? What’s that number if you want to retire your parents? You want to have your spouse leave their job to retire them, to come home and be a full-time mom or full-time dad. What does that number look like? Taking the time to sit down and go through that number will help you identify the opportunities as they come across your plate. If you’re a true note investor, you’re focused on a couple of different tactics. Yes, nonperforming because you need to know what happens. Do you start foreclosure, do you work out loan modifications, what do you do?
New Plan: You’ve got to change what your focus is. You have to change what you’re doing.
Executive Summary
Our biggest goal is always to get to where we have performing notes, it’s a dance between performing and nonperforming. We may start off more of nonperforming to get into performing and then there’s always investors out there looking for performing notes that when they go south, “What do I need to do?” It’s a good balance to that and that’s not saying everybody’s also buying institutional paper, which we buy primarily and we’ll look at a little bit of owner finance paper as well or newly originated paper. We’re going to take a big discount and people don’t usually like our prices, which is quite all right. It’s fine. We’ll stick to our guns and you stick to your guns but what I’m trying to get at here is a new plan for the new year for you. Here’s the one basic thing that everybody can do that’s extremely easy for everybody to focus on. Putting together a one-page executive summary is one of the easiest things that everybody can do and it’s not that difficult to do. What goes into a one-page executive summary? A short three to four paragraph and I put it on a one-page flyer. It’s nice and shiny.
It’s something that I can hand out to investors when I go out to local REIA clubs or if I’m out speaking or I have a booth at a trade show or something like that. We have executive summaries that talk about what we do as a business. Some people create handouts, whatever. It’s a one-page thing and it’s talking about what your company is, what’s your focus? Inverse asset fund or We Close Notes is a parent company of Inverse Asset Fund, Inverse Ventures, which is a Texas-based real estate investing company that buys distressed debt in most of the major markets across the country. Our biggest focus is to buy this distressed debt at a substantial discount. It gives us plenty of room to reach out to the homeowners and try to work some sort of win-win loan modification agreement with the homeowners. In case that doesn’t work, then we want to make sure we have enough room where we can foreclose on a property and then sell the asset at a substantial profit.
That’s a basic paragraph about what we do. You may want to talk about your major markets. You may want to talk about exact assets that you’re looking for. It doesn’t have to be long. The executive summary is going to give you a bit of a guide and it’s going to tell everybody else what you’re focused on. We buy notes and we also focus on building our own portfolio. We’re buying apartments and we use debts to help us find apartments. Whatever that is, it’s great. “McCall Assets is focused on wholesaling properties in other parts of the country and keeping assets for our own portfolio in Missouri and Kansas,” whatever. A one-page executive summary, it has your logo across the top and a little bit about your company. You want to have a little bit about your past. “I’ve been an active real estate investor since 2002, a full-time investor since 2005. We bought and sold over $500 million in distressed debt. I’ve been focused on distressed assets or short sales. I’ve been an active realtor, mortgage broker.”
New Plan: If you don’t know where you’re going and what your biggest goal is, you’re going to flounder.
A lot of people are like, “Scott, I’ve been an active programmer, IT or other things. What do I say since I just started investing?” Most people, their biggest investment is going to be their house. Put down when you bought your first house. If you’re a realtor and you don’t have a lot of experience in investments, but you’ve sold an investment property or you’ve negotiated short sales or you worked with other investors, put that down, “I’ve been working with other investors since 2005, 2009.” Put a little bit of paragraph about yourself besides, “I’ve been an active realtor for 2002. Austin, Texas is our home, I’m a graduate of Texas State University with a major in Business and Finance. One of the things I enjoy doing is long walks on the beach with a Pina colada and a good cigar.”
Professional Photo
You put something interesting down. You want to make sure you put a good headshot, a good photo, not something that’s a selfie. You may want to have a professional photo or get a good camera to take a picture of you somewhere. iPhones and Samsung phones are easy out there to get things done. This is one of the most important things I can tell you to do because every year, I already did this. I worked out my new executive summary for 2019. Take the time to have a good photo. I get it, some of us may not be the most photogenic. This reminds me, I had a guy one time who posted a photo in his email looked like he was eighteen years old from his high school prom. I’m like, “You look good, but that’s not how you look exactly these days.” You’re sending an email out with that photo, people aren’t going to recognize you when they see you and meet you in person. He went and took a photo standing outside his house, he’s got the garbage truck driving by him. I finally got him to take it against a white wall, take a photo. He didn’t have to have a tuxedo on. A jacket or a nice shirt, whatever, something so people get it out there. It’s important. That same photo, I recommend that you’re putting it on your executive summary. You’re putting that in your LinkedIn profile. Maybe it’s the photo that you use in Facebook as well.
That brands you so people can find you, people can see what you’re doing. It’s amazing, I’ve been cleaning out people on Facebook that are connected on my personal page. I’m like, “I don’t know who this person is.” I don’t know how we got connected but I’ve been going through and scrubbing my list. I’m amazed at the photos I’ve seen. I’m like, “That’s horrible.” It’s not professional. I get it, Facebook is more of a personal thing but if you use it for business, you’re using it to build your brand or you’re using it to get out to your tribe what you want to focus on, you’ve got to look a little professional. It doesn’t mean you can’t just swap it up every once in a while, I get that. Put something that’s going to be good. As I say, a one-page executive summary is not difficult.
New Plan: A goal is not good if it’s not specific and it doesn’t have a date.
The Back Side Of Your Page
One of the biggest mistakes that I see real estate investors doing as they’re planning their marketing, is that they don’t use the back side of the page. They don’t use the backside of their marketing page. They print off one page and then they don’t use the backside. I get it if you’re in a bit of a hurry. Literally taking the time to plan ahead will come in so handy. Maybe you want to put some of the things that people put on the back side of an executive summary. What I like to do is I’ll put two photos for my Note Mastermind Groups on the backside so people see that we’ve got a big group that follows us, who we work with on buying and selling assets. People like that, people want to belong to a tribe, people want to belong to a group. They want to know that you’re not a one-man band. Definitely use the back side of the page.
Other things you can put it on the backside of your executive summary, you could put the assets you bought in the last twelve months or some fix and flips. Some before and after, there some deals that you’re working on. That’s not too difficult to do, you could literally go into Canva.com. If you go to Canva.com, it’s like $12 a month or something like that for you to use unlimited. You can literally create a professional-looking one-page flyer where you bring in one, two, twelve pictures of assets that you worked on and put that in there and now you’ve got a nice looking marketing piece. One of the big things you always want to do at the bottom, you want to make sure to put your contact information too, your name, your email, your phone number. You want to have your logo on both sides. That’s why it’s important to have a logo that goes nice and horizontally. Not square, bulky ones that are taking a lot of information and leaves a lot of dead space. Start off with a one front and back full page executive summary to help you get the word out on what you’re doing. It’s going to be a great piece if you’re out networking. Let’s face it, if you’re part of a real estate investing club, the most amount of attendees that that club is probably going to see is this month and next month.
Local REIA Clubs
One of the things you can do as well, to use your executive summary effectively is to go and search the local REIA clubs. Go to Meetup.com and type in real estate within 25 miles of your location. Maybe you’ve got to put 50 miles of your location. Real Estate Investment Clubs, go to meet up, type in the city you’re in, in the little box type in real estate and it will pop up a bunch of the clubs around there. Look at the calendar and see when they’re meeting. This is something we’re actually doing because there are a lot of real estate clubs that have popped up here in Austin, Texas. We’ll be attending a few of them. That’s one thing you do, everybody’s going to be out. You want to go prepared, you want to go looking like you know what you’re talking about. Let’s face it, most people that are branded real estate investing, they may have money but they don’t know where to put it. They are making 0% on their certificate of disappointment or their 401(k)s took a big hit over the last couple months. They’re government employees that are worried about the shutdowns. There’re a whole variety of reasons that people are stressed. They’re looking for options. What you want to do is have something that you can go in and say, “I’m experienced. I’ve got some things,” even if you’re not.
New Plan: People want to belong to a tribe, to belong to a group. They want to know that you’re not a one-man band.
Business Cards
Here’s what I do, here’s what I focus on because this blows people away like, “This is nice.” You want to stand out from the crowd versus the regular Joes that show up with nothing. They don’t even have a business card. That reminds me, take some business cards. Make sure your business card has your photo on it. You need to have your face on your business card. People get some business cards and the face identifies with who the person is. That’s basic marketing 101. I don’t care what your logo is. All these realtors or all these mortgage brokers want to have their company name on it. That doesn’t help, market yourself. You’re out to market yourself in 2019, not other people. It’s time that you got the traffic that you deserve. Make sure you take the same face, same picture that you’re probably going to use on LinkedIn and make sure that you can create that on a business card. Put it on the image on there and make it look decent.
Market Yourself
If you’re one of these people that’s a Jack of all trades, that’s got twelve different things that you’re doing, focus on one. Let’s kill this, “I’m a house cleaner, rehabber and wholesaler.” This is the 21st century. Put one or two of your social media handles on there your cell phone, your email and that’s about it. That’s about all you need, you don’t need anything fancy. This is pretty simple, straightforward, don’t have diarrhea of the mouth and throw up on people. This is why you want to keep your executive summary to three to four, maybe five paragraphs on one page. You don’t want to be too long. You want to be in decent font. Let’s be professional in 2019. Let’s take things to the next level.
Maybe you can put a captcha code on the back of the thing where people can scan it and it takes them straight to your Facebook page. Facebook creates that for you. You want to have them to text into a number where you create a little bit link where if you’re an investor, you can go straight to this link and it will take you to my MailChimp account or my Infusionsoft account you can register there. Let’s be smart. Let’s not do the same stupid things that you were doing last year and not having success with. Let’s do the things that make sense because these things will come in handy. You can use the executive summaries if you’re out talking to other investors, you’re off at different trade shows or mortgage banking association, whatever. You want to look like you know what you’re doing. If you’re going from meetings with investors, you’re going from meetings with the local bankers or things like that, have that executive summary available. Bring business cards, make it look uniform, people are like, “This guy or gal knows how to brand themselves.” It’s so important for you to act this way in 2019. I don’t care if you’ve got a great logo. It’s still your kisser that people are going to identify with.
New Plan: You’ve got to put the work in to get things to happen for you.
Pitch Deck
The thing is, some of the things that we’re focused on here a little bit different. It’s always been going directly to the banks. It’s always been one of our biggest things. It’s amazing. What I’m trying to get at is that you’re out and start calling banks and things like that. A lot of them will be like, “Do you have like an info packet?” What’s an info packet? It’s our executive summary, tell them a little about what you’re doing, all the projects you’re working on. It’s not that difficult to do. The new plan, share what your focus on. If you close some deals, great. Have some case studies. Take the time to put the case studies together too. It’s a great little packet you have. We’ve talked about a pitch deck before, like one of our top ten episodes of 2018 with Sal Buscemi. We were talking about having a pitch deck. Put your pitch deck together. It’s a little bit about you, about your history, your focus. It’s the executive summary, have some of your experiences. Talk about some of the deals that you’re working on and what you’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to ask. You’re out talking to local investors and local meetup groups, don’t be afraid to ask, “What are you looking for? You’re brand new? How long have you been investing? What are you looking for?” It’s an important thing to ask because if you never ask, you’ll never get.
If you look to make January a great month, kick butt start doing things. Don’t wait until next year has arrived. You can take advantage of what’s going on in the markets by using that, marketing out to your database marketing out into IRA investors. Your executive summary we talked about, it’s a great insert to have to send out to your database. It’s one of these that we’re doing. I’m actually literally dropping a cup in my book, in the mail along with an executive summary and a little letter out to about 500 investors. Luckily, we’ll be dropping off another 500 more every month, dropping them off to investors here and a couple of other major markets up in Ohio and Michigan as well. Literally, I say, “I wanted to drop my book. I came across your information on public records. We’d love to visit with you. Here’s a book on what we do. A little bit of who we are and make sure to check out the Note Closers Show podcast, a little podcast that we have.”
I know this is not overwhelming like, “Here’s the latest and greatest trick for you to find real estate deals without you having to do any work or using your IRA money sitting on your ass getting rich.” I’m sorry, this is the note business. You have to take action. You’ve got to put the work in to get things to happen for you. If you want your new year to be phenomenal, you know where you want to go and start working those numbers backwards. We talk about planning in October of last year already. Many people didn’t know where to go, didn’t know what to focus on. Get things rocking with putting things together and start planning things out.
New Plan: Do a little bit more than what you did the day before.
We’re excited, we’ve got our Fast Track and we’ve got a couple coming in. He knows he’s going to be laid off in a year. He knows that 2019 will be his last year at his job because they’re closing down, he’s getting laid off. He’s already been told that he’s got twelve months left at this job and then he’s been laid off. He and his wife are using this year to propel themselves so that it’s not a big thing for them to walk away from that income there. It’s not a big thing for them because they are going to replace what they were making that way with what they’ve got coming in from the note space. They’re not going to replace that in one month. They’re not going to replace that in two months. They might if they get lucky with some different things but they’re coming in to put the work in, to start putting those little pieces in place. Reaching out to asset managers, reaching out to IRA investors, reaching out to their local tribe to share what their focus is and that’s one of the biggest things that I would challenge all of you is don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid to talk to your tribe. One of the big things I see a lot of people struggle with at local REIA Clubs, they don’t know what their focus is. They always have haves and wants. Most good investment clubs will have a time where they allow the audience either stand up and say what they’re working on or they have somebody focused on. Take this time to stand up, go to the front of the room and say, “My name’s Scott Carson. My Name’s Donna Lucia. My name is Laura Blunk. If you don’t know me, I’m a local real estate investor who focuses on buying distressed notes. If you come across any distress debt, mortgages, people behind their mortgage, I’d love to visit with you. We also have a lot of phenomenal investment opportunities. If you love to talk to me more, here’s my phone number. You can reach me at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com for us to help you get rocking and rolling.”
Those are some simple things that you can do, your executive summary, not be afraid to go to your meetup groups and network with those. Don’t be afraid to talk to your tribe, be awesome because I know all of you are capable of doing amazing things. We’ve all got many opportunities available to you. Take advantage of the opportunities. Do a little bit more than what you did the day before. Give yourself a little bit of 5% extra. It’s literally three extra minutes, an hour. It’s an extra 72 minutes a day. It’s a whole lot of time when you add all that numbers up over a year. Do a little bit extra and you’ll go a whole lot further in 2019. We love to have you. Thank you always. Make sure always do me a favor as well on iTunes, make sure you go ahead and subscribe. Click on the button and subscribe the episodes. Make sure to feel free to share.
If you found value in what we do, please do me a huge favor. Please feel free to hit the share button and share it to your tribe as well, especially if you got real estate investors in your community in your tribe, feel free to share this. Hopefully, this finds value across the board. Our biggest goal of the podcast is to keep delivering content that is actionable and easy enough for everybody to be able to follow for you. There will be some things we discuss that are complex from time to time, but we want to help you make 2019 the best year yet. 2018 was great, we look forward to what 2019 has to offer for all of us. Go out and make something happen. Thank you and we’ll see you at the top.
Important Links
- We Close Notes
- WCN Crew Facebook group
- Note Mastermind Groups
- Canva.com
- Meetup.com
- Sal Buscemi – previous episode
- Fast Track
- Scott@WeCloseNotes.com
- iTunes – The Note Closers Show