EP 432 – The Power Of The Note Mastermind

NCS 432 | Note Mastermind

NCS 432 | Note Mastermind

 

It is one of the greatest things in the world to witness people coming together and working toward reaching the same goal. This is exactly the power that a note mastermind has. It brings people who come from different experiences to talk about the ways they overcame a problem or found success in the note investing world. A mastermind leads to a lot of great things not only for us but also our friends and the community. Scott shares this powerful way of helping people in the note industry while giving us a look into what goes on inside it and where and when we can expect it to happen next.

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The Power Of The Note Mastermind

I am always excited to be with you. I look back at how productive we have been. I’m looking back at how crazy busy it has been. I’ve been in the office late on some of the nights working through things. We’re in the process of selling a chunk of our portfolio off. We’re working to look at those bids, looking at what we want for them and looking to do due diligence. We have been very busy along with having a very busy schedule as far as having guests on our show and with me being a guest on other people’s podcast. It’s been productive. If you’re reading to this episode, hopefully you’ve had a productive week. No matter what day of the week you’re reading this that it’s been a productive day for you so far. I was thinking back to what we’ve got going on in the office. Hopefully, your goals for the year are on track to get where you want to be.

Note Mastermind

If you wanted to make $100,000, hopefully you made $25,000 so far. If you wanted to close on 100 notes, hopefully you’ve closed on 25 notes. If you wanted to close on 40, you’ve closed on ten hopefully. If you want to build $5,000 in cashflow to help you out, hopefully that $1,250 is coming in cashflow so far. I look back at what the year’s gone and I also look forward for the next quarter. Our next Note Mastermind event is taking place on the 26th, 27th, 28th of April. The next one after that is not until August. Then our next one after that is in December. We space them out about four months apart. I wanted it to spend a little bit time on how the power of the Mastermind leads to a lot of great things for us, for our friends and students. I go from there with this episode a little bit because I’ve been getting a lot of questions, a lot of people going to WeCloseNotes.com.

One of the things that we ask right off the bat when you go to the website is, “What are you looking for? Are you looking to buy notes? Are looking for training? Are you looking for information on our Note Mastermind Group?” This coming up will be our 21st or 22nd Mastermind. I’ve been doing this since 2011, 2012. I think back to what occurred the first Mastermind that I got everybody together on. It was a small group. There were roughly about twelve to fifteen students that I’d worked with at that point. I had a chunk of them to come to Florida with me to hang out for a couple days and focus on their note business, focus on the note business together as a group and take down some deals together. It was interesting because I rented a big house in Davenport, Florida. It was in a golf course that wasn’t finished out. They have been building a dozen homes when it should have been 50. They had the center there.

Luckily for us, the guy that owned the property was Airbnb-ing it. I rented out this house with five, six bedrooms, four baths, pool and hot tub. In the garage was a game room and big two living areas. It was a lot of fun because we came to get it for nine days. Some people came in early, some people come in the second half. We had twelve people sitting there and we were working for deals. We were making offers, reaching out to asset managers, hedge funds, banks and we worked through a lot of stuff. We end up closing on about a handful of assets, covered the cost of it and put a little money in our pocket. It was a great exercise in helping us really take things to the next level. It spawned a lot from there.

The beautiful thing is when you get people together, you get them outside of their environment. You get them outside of their work, you get them outside of their life, no matter what it is. Whether it’s family or work, you get them to take some time away. You can accomplish a lot of things when you’ve got people rolling in the same direction, rolling toward that same common goal. We were all working towards our own business and our own financial goals, but what I love about the note industry is it’s a very friendly space where everybody’s rowing the same direction and believing. As our buddy, Joel Markovitz, coined the term, coopetition. Cooperating together, but in competition for our own investments.

I love that facet of things. The Mastermind has obviously blossomed. I was talking to a guy. He was inquiring about it. He was asking some questions, “What all goes into the Mastermind? Tell me a little bit about it.” I chuckled a little bit. I go, “Really? Okay.” I know he’d already talked to some people that are in our Mastermind group. He knows a chunk of our Mastermind members. I’m so blessed that we have some great people who are doing some amazing things. It’s what goes into it so that you understand why they’re doing amazing things. Why are students of ours going out and closing on 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 or a couple hundred deals in their first couple of years in the note business, in their first year, second year or third year. It comes from the foundation. It comes from where we believe on things.

I’m going to tell you, it’s not all us doing a lot of it. Most of it is actually our students, our Mastermind members actually taking action to find success. They’re actually doing the things that they need to be doing to find success for them. Your success does not depend upon me. Your success is not prevalent on what Scott Carson does. My success is prevalent on what I do but your success, if you’re listening out there, it’s prevalent on what you’re doing on a daily basis, on what you’re doing on a regular basis to help you succeed, to help you get to that next level. I’ve always had the belief that if you gave somebody the tools and they were hungry, they would take those tools and run with it and do something with it. Those are really hungry to do something. There is a sad fact out there that only about 10% of people do something. We’ve all heard of the Pareto Rule, the 80/20 rule where 80% of the income comes from 20% of the activities. 80% of deals closed come from 20% of the people. That’s truly the case, but I think in the note business, especially the non-performing side, it’s close on the 10%.

Ten-percenters are the ones that are actually closing on most of the business these days. It’s not 20%. I don’t think it’s 30%. It’s a very small number. Unfortunately, that smaller number are doing great things, but what happens a lot of times you have other people who weren’t doing things. You have other people who may bid on some assets here and there and they’re not really doing anything because they don’t know. They’re trying to do it with themselves and there’s nothing wrong with bootstrapping your own business. I get that. At some point, if you’re juggling another job or a full-time thing, you may not have the time to learn. You may not have the time to develop the skills that you need to develop or the resources to help you take it to that next level. Hopefully, that makes sense for everybody. You may not have the time or the resources out of your busy life or out of your job that you’re doing to really help you take your business to the next level. You may not have the six years developed to build the relationships that we have. You may not have the years of trial and error when it comes to marketing to be able to help you market your business.

Most people are trying to do this on their own and that’s okay, but you delay your success because it’s trying to figure it out. It’s like being a blind man in a room trying to figure out things and touch it and come across things without being focused on somebody helping you to guide your life. To guide you or give you the light to where you want to go. I love what we have done with our Mastermind and it’s evolved over time. It used to be a funny thing with our Mastermind and Fast Track Training. It used to be me coming out and spending four days with somebody from Monday through Thursday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 or 6:00 at night. A lot of people were ready for me to leave come Thursday evening. They’re trying to kick me out of their house. I was coaching that way because that’s what I learned how to coach before. I was a coach for Bob Lee and with SMI Funding. I coached actually for Lee Arnold for a while where I’d go out and spend four days with a client. I help them with their business.

It started off with short sales, foreclosures, and door knocking. It evolved to focus on the non-performing notes side and focus on end marketing or raising capital. I coached for approximately about four years from 2006 to 2010. I started off with Lee at Lee’s office in Salt Lake City when he lived there. Then it evolved just to Bob and James and Bob’s coaching staff. I learned a lot, not only about myself, but I also learned a lot about marketing and about working with investors. Not only because I was doing the stuff that I was teaching people to do, but I was also learning great tools and techniques that they were using that I would add to my tool belt or my repertoire to help me take deals down.

I won’t say it was a true Mastermind. It was a mind meld with people for four days. Sometimes I’d learn some and most of the time they’re learning stuff for me and we get rock and rolling. What was always frustrating was that people wouldn’t have enough topics. First and foremost, I would give people homework to do before they ever showed up or before I ever showed up. Over half the time, they had never done the homework to get the word out the week before. They hadn’t gotten their letters. That they hadn’t pulled their lists, they hadn’t created their MailChimp accounts. They hadn’t done those things. They hadn’t exported their contacts to dive into the business. That would always be frustrating because I’m spending the day doing minimum dollar job when they were paying a good chunk of money. They’re paying $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 for me to come out and I was getting a chunk of that. It’s frustrating.

They would get together once every three to four months for members. It was four times a year. I was always frustrated when they would get together as a Mastermind when I was working with them because the students were getting together, trying to work on deals together, big commercial deals and they weren’t having any success or getting anything closed. When I stopped coaching and went out my own in late 2009, the only deals that had been done, they only commercial deals had been closed on were the commercial notes that I was buying. The apartment complex in San Diego, the apartment complex in LA, the mixed-use building in Denver that I sold or the mixed-used here in Austin that have brought the note, it was stuff that I was doing. The one that I believe every member of the group was doing it.

NCS 432 | Note Mastermind

Note Mastermind: No matter what, your success does not depend on other people. It only depends on you.

 

New Mastermind Format

When I left and went out on my own and started teaching real estate investors and note investors, I vowed that I would make sure that we get deals closed. That we’d stick behind our name, We Close Notes. We close deals is what I wanted to make sure to do. We stood by that name to make sure people are getting deals closed. That a mastermind was truly a mastermind to bring people together and to get stuff done. It’s not a mastermind to bring people together to look at deals and not pull the trigger, but a real true mastermind to help people pull a trigger and go to the next level in the note business. I started off doing the whole going out and spending three to four days with somebody one-on-one, kicking their butt, leaving and they’d have some success.

Oftentimes when people are taking a week off from work, when they get back to work the next week, they’re overwhelmed with the stuff they didn’t get done the week before. Then that weakened momentum is stalled because they didn’t get chance to spend any time. They didn’t get any chance to respond to their leads. They didn’t have the chance to respond to the voice message or the emails that asset managers have left them and that was frustrating. I could only do so many of those in a year before I was burnt out. If I was doing 30 or 40 of these a year, it doesn’t leave a lot of a room for you to take care of yourself, your health, along with focusing on your own portfolio. I’ve decided to stop doing that. I got into, “Let’s do something remotely, let’s do eight weeks of webinars calls with our coaching students.”

When I started doing that, we had some great success with that because we allowed to piece it together a little bit each week with people. Then once again, what happens when you’ve got an eight-week program? Most of the people flake off after four weeks and a lot of people didn’t do their homework. They didn’t submit their bids and didn’t do their email blasts. They won’t even write their business plans. They get the first week or two in, but then they wouldn’t fall through with anything that we had them do on those coaching calls. That lasted for about a year doing that. At one point I was just like, “We are talking about serious stuff. Let’s tweak it up a little bit.”

We changed it to what the current format is, which I think is working amazingly. If somebody is interested, come to Austin. We spend three days with them here, small group setting of six to ten people. We focus on our business. I don’t keep it big. I don’t want it big because then I won’t be able to connect with our students in a one-on-one basis like I like to do. I wouldn’t be able to understand what their mind blocks are. I wouldn’t be able to understand what handicaps they technically have when it comes to marketing and they are talking to people or doing whatever it is, bidding. We have them do homework, which is mostly the time they’ve got to go through one of our workshops before they come to a Fast Track. They either got to go through our Note Buying Blueprint. You can check that out NoteBluePrint.com, if you’re interested.

I know they’ve gone through our Virtual Workshop or two or they’ve got some experience in the note industry. My experience is asking some questions, “How many deals have you closed so far? Who is your servicer? What’s your focus? What’s the biggest issues and hurdles? Are you focused enough or are you trying to do Jack of all trades?” That’s where we get a lot of people that are trying to be Jack of all trades because that’s what they’re taught. They go to the real estate clubs. They’re like, “You need to learn this. You need to attend this.” That’s great but then you’re running all over chasing your tail all over the place, not having any success because the fact is you’re constantly having to add something new. You’re not giving your focus enough time for those seeds to germinate, for those seeds to take root and start sprouting. You’re running from one thing or another. You’re chasing your tail and you’re wasting time.

More importantly, you’re wasting money that can be spent. If you were to focus on something, you can go from there. That’s what I tell people like, “If you’re going to come into the Mastermind, if you’re going to come to the Fast Track Training, you’ve got to be focused.” If you’re trying to do a multitude of other things, then this is probably not for you. I don’t want your money if you’re not a doer. I don’t want somebody to pay money just to flop. That’s not what we decided to do. We don’t want to do that. We actually turned people away from signing up from our Note Mastermind or refund people’s money back because you’re not focused. You signed up for it but then I find out a week before you’re coming that you’re doing all these things. You’re not focused. No offense. Best of luck to you.

Take Action

The thing that I get excited about is those that do take action, the ones that do come in and spend three days with me. When they leave on a Sunday afternoon, I know if they’re going to be successful. I know that they’ve got the tools that they need to take their note business to the next level. How do I know that? Because we give them so much stuff. By we, I mean myself, Steph and the staff. We dive into our students. Our people are here for three days with this. We dive into their business. We spend a large chunk of time going through and giving them the things they need. What are the big things that they need? It usually comes down to three things. They need deal flow, deal sources, capital, vendors and they need to know how to market. It’s those three or four things. Some people will have one of those things. Sometimes they’ll have the marketing down or going the capital down or they already have the vendors down because they bought a deal or two.

Oftentimes, it’s always lacking of, “I need deal flow.” It’s part of the reason they’re coming here. One of the things that we do that’s unique. I don’t know of anybody else that does this and I mean this truthfully. I’m not here blowing smoke up your butt. I don’t want to blow smoke up your butt, but I had so many questions come in the office, I thought I’d do this episode on this. One of the big things that separates us is the fact is that when you come and spend three days with me in Austin, Texas, one of the first things that I do is I log into my account, my MailChimp, my Infusionsoft account and I do a download of our database. Our database, as far as asset managers, I’ll download our emails, our names, our phone numbers and our contacts from the people that we blast out to, our asset managers that we reach out to on a regular basis.

The asset managers that we’ve pulled from LaneGuide.com. The asset managers that we pulled from ScotsmanGuide.com. The asset managers that we’ve pulled from a variety of other things who was dialing for dollars from us, downloading the Texas mortgage lending department lists. The people that are still on our list is not the people that have opted out. You don’t need those. You want the people that are still getting emails, the people that are still responding. People that are reading our stuff on a monthly basis. We give that to them. We give that to our members. Some people are like, “Why would you do that?” Especially some of the old hat or you say the old crowd in the note investing space are like, “Why would you give away your sources?” I’m like, “Because there’s more than enough to go around.” I can’t possibly buy everything that come across my table. I can’t possibly dive into every asset that we see and close on everything that we make sense and the number that makes sense for us. I can’t possibly do that. That’s impossible. There’s just so much out there.

The thing that you have to keep in mind is why we are so focused on diving forward and closing notes is that we have for a few years now of me dialing for dollars and making connections, we have built this large database. It’s very valuable. Some people come and go and move around, but it’s a valuable list that we give our Fast Track and Mastermind members. I want them to go out. “Are they going to get a list that I may never see?” Of course, they are. “Are they getting the same list that I get?” They’ll get some of those lists. That’s totally okay. I’m not going to get jealous. They go out and find a deal and they follow up with an asset manager, great. Shame on me for not doing that. Good for them. Kudos to them. I don’t look at my students as competition. Some people might think that, “They’re competition.” I don’t look at it that way.

I look at my students that are closing deals as an asset to me because it makes me look good. It makes me feel good knowing that I’m changing people’s lives and I’m helping people retire their spouses, help them leave the job that they hate. I’m helping them retire their parents or pay for their kids’ education. I’m excited when I hear stories of people closing on their deals, whether it’s a one-off or a portfolio. Whatever it might be or the stories from their borrowers is a great thing, of them modifying loans, of them working with homeowners. You’ve got good stories. You’ve got ugly stories. I’ve noticed that Chris Seveney, our buddy, posted a thing where the guy dropped a bunch of manure on a property. The guy just got an asset back that had a lot of crap in it.

We get people all across the country coming into Austin to spend time with us and they go back. They are not only changing their lives dramatically, but they’re changing the people around them. They’re changing their investors, but they are changing the borrowers. That’s why I make the running joke, “We’re trying to make America great again one defaulted mortgage at a time.” We see that happening. I was a guest on Fuquan Bilal’s podcast, PFREI. Go check it out. It was funny that Fuquan mentioned, “I can’t go anywhere without running into Carsonites.” I started chuckling. That’s funny. That’s unique. Our students have done a great job of taking the tools that we give them and running with them. If you’ve got a passion, you’ve got a hunger, you’ve got a desire to find success and someone can give you the tools to succeed, why not take a run with it? It doesn’t mean that we’re rock and rolling every time. No, we have ups and downs all the time. It just is what it is in this business. That’s quite all right to have ups and downs.

NCS 432 | Note Mastermind

Note Mastermind: You wouldn’t appreciate life as much without the downs. The juice wouldn’t be as sweet without the squeeze.

 

That’s what law is all about. If life is always up, you wouldn’t appreciate as much without the downs. The juice wouldn’t be as sweet without the squeeze. One of the great things that I love seeing is seeing people overcoming hurdles, seeing people overcoming obstacles that they have in their lives. Maybe they need help raising capital. Maybe they have a mind block, maybe they don’t have some self-belief in what they can do because we’re all capable of bigger things. We’re all capable of reaching up and touching in the sky, but can you go higher in the clouds? Yes. If you reach up, step on your toes or you can stand up and stretch a little bit higher. You can stand up on a chair or table or the top of your roof, just don’t do that and fall off.

What I’m trying to get at is we believe that people are capable of amazing things. I’m a big believer that as sooner as someone goes out and close 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 100 deals, in the first twelve months they can if they take the actions that we teach them. If they focus, if they put away the distractions and go out and make something happen. We are a big believer that that can happen because I’ve seen it done. I’ve seen it done where the lady in Chicago slowly starts buying for her portfolio and four years go by, she’s closed on 50 deals. I know a guy in Florida who leaves the company he’s working for because he’s closed on 100 deals. I know the software developer in San Francisco who does this in a part-time basis with someone in Houston and goes out and does something amazing. They closed on 58 deals their first year and they’re both looking, “We’re making more from the note business than we are from our full-time gigs.”

That’s a great problem to have. What frustrates me more than anything else is, unfortunately, there are other people out there that don’t believe that. I look at my students like their assets in a great way and friends. I have other people that look at their clients and look at them just as a number, as a dollar bill. That’s not the way I look at things. “Do make some money off of coaching?” “Yes, we do.” I get a lot of that and I don’t deny that at all, but we’re still closing notes. The most powerful thing is when you have somebody who goes from not believing himself or coming from a tough period to evolving. They get a little bit of faith in them. They get that little bit of a step and a little bit of positivity. They go from a place of depression or stressed out and now they believe that they can do something different because you believed in them. You gave them the tools and it was a lot easier for them to take the action. That’s one of the biggest things we get from people that come through our Mastermind and Fast Track Training all the time.

I love talking with people about this and hearing them talk about, “What was the biggest thing that you had a big mind block about or you thought would be a lot harder?” Oftentimes, it’s the marketing or it’s the raising the capital or it’s the finding the deals because they’ve been brainwashed along the way, “I can’t raise capital. Nobody’s going to lend me money. I don’t know how to market them. I’m too old or I’m too dumb. I don’t understand this whole marketing and social media thing.” The big thing is like, “Banks really will send me deals. I can find deals by doing some of this market and doing an email blast and do it on a regular basis.” That’s one of the funniest things that we get. I was in San Diego and it was great to see Jeff Wolfe, Jim Myers and Darryl Isaacs, just to name a few people that had been around awhile and doing some great stuff and seeing some differences to take place in their life. Darryl’s semi-retired and enjoying what he does. He’s been a real estate broker for years. He moved to San Diego with his grandkids and he is doing some amazing things. It’s great to see Jeff Wolfe and he has done an amazing job. Seeing how you can basically ever come to almost dying and getting hit by a car on his bike and seeing how the note business has helped evolve his life. That’s a beautiful thing.

Non, seeing Jim Myers, he is not part of our Mastermind group, but I’ve known Jim for years now and seeing when he’s doing, taking the lessons that we teach in our Note Night in Americas or here on the podcast and applying them. He’s living in Southern California and he’s buying assets back home in Ohio where he grew up or Detroit and other places. That’s what gets me excited. That’s the things that jack me up and get me dancing when I hear somebody, “I just closed on a deal and I made $20,000.” “We closed on a deal and the borrower is paying me $400 a month or I got a letter that went out,” and go from there. That’s exciting stuff. We are so blessed that so many people are doing some things and part of it comes from the fact that we dive in and give them the nuggets that they need. That’s just the Fast Track Training. Three days with me, Friday, Saturday and most of the day on Sunday. We usually wrap up Sundays around 2:00 so they can catch their planes or head home. Honestly, that’s about all that they can absorb. It’s two and a half whole days with me talking nonstop with them to help them and answer their questions and get going.

People In The Mastermind

By the time they leave, they’ve got a plan of action to put some great things in the works. They’ve got a plan of action and steps that’s identified for them, not somebody else but for them on what they need to focus on. If they work that plan, they will find success. If they worked at plan or focus, they’ll find success. That’s exciting. Part of the reason that I want everybody to go through Fast Track is that I know that they’re on the same plane as everybody that’s in the Mastermind. Everybody in the Mastermind, for the most part, except a couple of exceptions here and there, they’ve gone through Fast Track, they’ve gone through the training and they get it. They’ve indoctrinated with the lists. They’ve got the same tools and that allows for a couple of things. One, they’ all speak in the same language. You don’t have somebody coming in who doesn’t understand us and doesn’t get the knowledge of things, who doesn’t understand terminology or who doesn’t understand what it takes to get stuff done.

The second thing that’s exciting because they’re all in the same level is they understand that they’re all in this together. They all got the same goals, buying deals, getting deals for their portfolio and making money. That allows for great conversation because most of the time, everybody’s invested in multiple states. Open conversation or they can share things they’re doing in their business because there’s not really competition between everybody. They’ve got asset lists, they’re marketing those asset lists, but there are so many different ways to market. Not everybody’s sending an email blast out to their asset managers on a monthly basis. Not everybody’s following up with the asset managers on a monthly basis. They’re doing a variety of things because life gets in the way.

They’re living their life. They’re doing other things besides just the note business and that’s a great thing for them. It also makes an opportunity. I’ve been a part of several Masterminds, some real estate and some personal. In some of the real estate stuff, you get people coming together to share. It may not be your niche in real estate. I was part of The Collective Genius Mastermind put on by Jason Medley. It’s a great Mastermind group. It got a lot of fix and flippers, a lot of wholesalers, a lot of landlords, but very few note investors. I took away some tips from people on some things there, but when half the time is spent on other things you want to focus on, it’s not an effective use of our time. If you’re a landlord and doing a bunch of deals or you’re a fix and flipper, by all means, CG is a great thing.

The thing I took away from it though is I wanted to keep that connection. Our Mastermind grows. We have had several hundred people go through our training over the last couple of years. Over 300-plus people have come through our Fast Track and Mastermind. We have a very active group. We have about 150 to 200 people because a lot of people have gone and done some big things. Matt Mueller who bought a portfolio of commercial notes and is working that portfolio. The Alia Otts and Terri Garners out there who are doing amazing things with self-storage. They use the note business to get into that. The Tom Beckers doing some big things with using the note business to help them find some deals.

We’re so excited of all the big things that people are doing. Wayne Snell has closed on 300 assets and basically doing what he wants to do. There are so many amazing people that have come into our Mastermind who are rock and rolling and taking their lives to the whole next level. They’re taking their business to the next level. They’re focused and are using the systems that we teach. The most important thing, the most valuable asset I’d like to share about our Mastermind is the network. It’s the people that are working together, rolling in the same direction to get to that same point, closing more deals, making more money and being able to do what they want to do. That’s what a mastermind is all about. It’s the focus aspect of people that are going in the same direction.

Unfortunately, a lot of times I see a lot of things happening out there and a smorgasbord of people together and there’s no real form, fit or reason to it and that’s great. It’s a great networking event, but I don’t think it’s a true mastermind if they’re doing a multitude of different things. It’s hard to have twenty different people who are doing different things being able to add value to somebody if you’re doing something that’s different from them. I’m not saying there’s not anything that you can’t learn something. You learn some more things in raising capital and things. A fix and flipper or a landlord is a whole different model than buying nonperforming notes or buying nonperforming contract for deeds. It’s a different total mindset. When I’ve gone to these other masterminds and I was trying to explain that, they try to evaluate it from them being the end buyer and that’s not always the case.

The beautiful thing is having a network. That’s what’s so powerful about what we do when I see people that are connecting together or sharing resources. Even I ask people that from time to time, “Who’s got a realtor in this place?” and I get six responses. I get five text messages and I got a realtor now who’s running with the deal. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s the whole thing, when I have a deal, I send it to somebody and they know somebody else is going to fund that deal for them. I send a list to Laura Blunk and Laura is buying four of them and she’s able to get Joe Tomko or somebody else to fund the deal or Joe Kennedy or other people coming together to fund the deal. They’re learning while they’re earning. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s the whole spider web across the country that I love and that was one of the biggest things I’ve seen that happen of people leveraging other’s relationships and other connections to make things happen.

NCS 432 | Note Mastermind

Note Mastermind: The power of the network is how it connects people together to speed up the success.

 

When you see people like Dan Deppen and being able to leave his six-figure job to do this full-time and close on 20, 30 deals to do some things. When you see the likes of Riaz Lakhani, they are closing on 58 deals in their first year and still working full-time but partnering together. One’s in Houston and one’s in San Francisco. That’s a beautiful thing. When you see the likes of Brent Garrett who is a realtor in South Florida who has sold most of his real estate stuff to take advantage of the market and focus on the note business for the most part, besides a little bit of real estate stuff. That’s a powerful thing. Those are powerful stories. They’re not changing their lives only. They’re changing other people around. Maybe it’s other people in the Mastermind they’re helping out, other people in their community and the people in their network. I think it’s easier when you’ve got twelve people, twenty people or a hundred people. We’re all looking, scavenging for deals for ourselves but willing to work with each other to help it out, “Here’s a source or avoid this asset. This is a nasty one. Avoid using this service or avoid using this vendor. Use this realtor. Use this vendor.”

That’s the power of the network. It connects people together. It brings people and it helps speed up success. That’s what you’re going to do if you’re going to join a Fast Track or a coaching or a Mastermind group. You want your six months to go from zero to 60 days. If you hire somebody as a coach to come in and kick your butt, you don’t want to wait six years floundering around like a fish out of water trying to figure it out. You want somebody who’s going to pick you up, run with you and put you back in the water and give you a little swift kick and say, “Go here, go there, use this.” You don’t want somebody who’s going to sit here and be a BS artist and blow smoke up your butt. We’ve had some great people that have helped out our Mastermind coming, the Jason Bibles, the Michael Jordans, the Dan Zitofskys, just to name a few. I look at some of our vendors who are a staple to what we do. Joel Markovitz, Aaron Young and Jillian Sidoti are some of the great people that we love. The Merrill Chandlers and the George Antones, we’ve got amazing people that are doing amazing things that we absolutely love and it’s a true win-win.

We love the fact at how Madison Management has grown in the last couple of years. We love having Shante Duffy to help us out for those that have them as a client. We love being able to pick up the phone and call Ed Babtkis to get an insurance bid from Ross Diversified. It’s a beautiful thing. What’s great is the students of our Mastermind are the ones that are going out and closing deals on a regular basis. They’re the ones making the names for themselves. They’re the ones that you meet at a NoteExpo or Paper Source or DME, NIS or IMN. These are the people that are out closing deals. These are people that are actually making a name for themselves and that’s what’s great. It’s totally great about being a coach like I am. That’s the thing I want you guys to realize is you can do this alone. Unfortunately, too many real estate investors, too many real estate educators are out doing this on their own. They’re trying to be the one-man band and that’s okay.

If you’re a one-wolf, that’s fine. I didn’t get to where I was because I was a one-man band. I got to where I was because I’ve had great relationships. I’ve built a community and I’ve built some amazing relationships with people that I call friends. I call family, #NoteFamily, who I knew that I could reach out to if I needed anything and vice versa. They can text me, call me, drop me an email or get on the phone. That’s the power of a mastermind like that. There are different ones. I’m a part of a different podcasting Mastermind. I’m part of different entrepreneur’s mastermind. We’ve been traveling quite a bit, going to the podcasting summit, the New Media Summit and Podfest and the Traffic & Conversion Summit. Those are not note events. Those are marketing events, but those relationships that I have with a lot of those people are what helps me grow my business. It helps me take my business and this show to new levels. You don’t have to have a fancy mastermind.

Upcoming Masterminds

I started at a simple Central Texas Podcasters Association and a Meetup group just to connect with other people here in the area. There are some people here who are doing a lot of bigger things than I am and I’m learning from them. I’m trying to facilitate them coming together, facilitate them coming as a chance to step out of their lives, step out of their noise and distractions and come to a place and hang out. That’s what we’re doing here. We have our next Mastermind event taking place in Austin, Texas. It’s in our hometown, which is great. It’s central in the United States so people flying can be here. It’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the 26th, 27th, 28th. I am so excited. We’ll probably have 40, 50 people come in. It’s not going to be our biggest one and it won’t be our smallest one. We’ve got a good group that we know are coming in and that are working on deals. They’re rolling on the same direction.

Each time we do a Mastermind event, we’ve got a little different theme to it, a different focus. Sometimes we focus more on raising capital or we’ve done more on marketing. We’ve done more on markets, we’ve done more on asset protection or done more on actual deal flow. The thing you have to keep in mind is it’s here so that people could come together and grow their business. If somebody is joining the Fast Track and Mastermind, they come in and spend three Masterminds with us and after that, it’s just a seat for you to show up. There’s no renewal fee or anything like that. We want people coming in and hanging out. We’ve got some cool people that are coming this time. People from New York and San Francisco and that neck of the woods flying in to spend a couple of days with us.

We’re focused on the network of what’s going on and where are they buying their assets? Where we buying our assets from and how are we expanding our business and what does the future hold? What does the future hold for all of us? What changes are we going to have to make in the next six to twelve months? What tweaks are we doing with the business? Where are you looking ahead? We’re excited because these are my three favorite weekends of the year. The next one after that will be in August. Actually, we’re going to have that one right around the Quest Expo, which is the 23rd, 24th, and 25th of August. If you have not bought a ticket, check out Quest Trust Company or the QuestExpo.com. It’s well-worth coming. They have 530 people there in 2018 in Dallas, but this time it’s in Houston. They expect to have somewhere between 700 and 1,000 people. It’s a great networking event. We will be there, but we’ll be doing our Mastermind a little bit different. We’ll be combining it the same time a day before on Thursday so people are coming in and spend a day, day and a half with us. A day in the frontend and either half-day or full day in the backend before they head home.

It’s an opportunity to leverage relationships, leverage time, meet with a lot of investors, raise some capital, share some deals and do some things that are amazing to your business and to your bottom line. Why not kill two birds with one stone? We have our last Mastermind of the year in December, usually the first or second weekend. That’s how it’s playing out this year. Basically, once every four months we’re doing an event. December will be on the first or second weekend and we haven’t planned on where that’s going to be at yet. Probably, it won’t be in Texas. It will probably be in Florida somewhere and Steph is working hard on it. Maybe Temecula or maybe San Diego, who knows? The thing is our Masterminds are talked-about events. They’re events where people absolutely love it because it’s a chance to spend time with people who speak your same language, who are closing deals and are willing to help support you on your growth as a note investor, your growth as an entrepreneur.

We all come from different backgrounds. We had one Mastermind where we found out that over a third of the people there played musical instruments. We could have a nice band. We also found a big chunk of people who are homeschooling their kids. We found a big chunk of people who were at properties in specific areas so they’re able to work on deals together. We’ve also had some great people who are taking their businesses to the next level by starting local real estate clubs or local Note REIA groups. Todd LaPierre is doing a phenomenal job in Orlando. Other people are doing amazing things in different parts of the country because they understand that aspect of community. They’ve been a part of the Note Mastermind, they’ve been a part of our Carsonite We Close Notes network and they’re doing amazing things in their backyard. They’re taking what they’re learning not just from me but everybody else, their fellow note investors, their fellow Note Crew people and doing some amazing jobs.

I wish we could say we’ve had 100% success rate with all of our Mastermind members and Fast Track students going out and doing something, that’s not the case. The fact that we’re very picky particularly in the frontend, helps us to make sure that we don’t have some bad apples or people that don’t take this seriously. We only got 5% of people that haven’t done anything. Only a few people have come in, spent three days with me and then run hiding the other way, run scared for the door. When I see those people and I’m like, “What’s going on?” There’s a guy in Houston who came in, went through the coaching and want to argue with me about marketing. I got to talk to him, “Isn’t your primary passion and setting up websites and helping people market? Why are you fighting me for you to market your own note business?” He didn’t get it, which is unfortunate. I ran into him a while back. I ran into him at the last Quest Expo and I was like, “What happened with you?” Life gets in the way of all of us. If you need some help, let’s get you back in the class. Let’s get you back working on some stuff.

If you have a deal, you’re having trouble with, don’t wait around, pick up the phone and call me. That’s what I want. That’s the power. If you’ve got troubles and you’re in our Mastermind, please pick up the phone and call me. There are not many things that I’ve not been through. I think one of the most powerful tools and one of the things that I’ve learned from the last year is not everything’s rosy. Everything is not made of gold. I think a sign of a good coach is someone who’s been through an upmarket and down market, making great deals and then lost money on deals and then worked through it. Everybody who’s successful long-term has lost money as some real estate deal. I’ve had our share of deals that have gone south. We worked through them. We keep chugging forward. I’m going to share that. Not everything is perfect, but I will show you a way to help you try to eliminate as much of that risk as possible. I tell people, “Don’t do that. That’s the reason for not doing it. Don’t do that because of this. Don’t invest here because of that. Don’t be buying that because of this.” That’s our whole goal with our Note Mastermind.

There are still plenty of inventory out there and I know some people will complain, “It’s overpriced. All these people, the Eddie Speeds, the Scott Carsons are coming in and teaching all these other people that don’t know anything.” I laughed because the same people that are saying that are people that are complaining. They’re doing the bare minimum versus doing that little bit extra. That’s what I love about our Fast Track and our Note Mastermind is we show you that little bit of extra. It’s not hard. We show you how to take that a little bit extra to the next level. I’m like, “You start doing some things.” I looked on Facebook and I see Melanie Jacobs from Jacobs & Associates who’s doing amazing job. Her and her husband came to the Fast Track. Phil was with me doing the thing, but he’s still working full-time. Melanie has embraced this and has really focused on it. She is now at a point where she’s actually teaching some of the marketing tools and tricks that they’re using their business at their local REIA. I’m seeing other people that are speaking at their local REIA like the Karen Petersons and the Dan Deppens, they’re speaking to different places and other people who are doing amazing things, the Cody Coxs.

NCS 432 | Note Mastermind

Note Mastermind: The same people who are complaining are those doing the bare minimum rather than doing a little bit extra.

 

That’s what we want. We want people going out doing some things. I want people to be able to expand their business. It’s good stuff for people. That’s what we want and that’s what you should be looking for in some Mastermind event. Maybe it’s not notes, maybe it’s fix and flip or maybe it’s apartments or whatever. If you’re going to join a Mastermind, make sure that the people in the Mastermind are closing deals. You don’t want to be somewhere where it’s all theory and not any type of action. The person that you’re talking to, the person who’s leading that isn’t just solely focused on the backend because there are Masterminds out there that’s all about the person that’s in charge of it. My Mastermind is not all about me. My Mastermind is more about my students. It’s all how can we help support them in taking their businesses to the next level? That’s what it’s all about. We only see charging of different stairstep prices for assets that we have. “You’re part of my Mastermind. You’re getting it cheaper. You’re not part of my Mastermind, you’re going to pay more for it.” We don’t believe in that.

The beautiful thing that I love is when we go to events and I’m seeing the people that are out talking. The majority of the people at these events are closing deals. A lot of them are students. A lot of them are our peeps that are doing amazing things. That’s what it comes down to. Whatever your numbers are, whether it’s one deal a month or one deal a year or one deal a day, one deal a week, there are opportunities out there. There are funding sources. You need to tap into the network, tap into what we have to offer to help you take your business to the next level. I encourage you, do yourself a favor, go over to our website at WeCloseNotes.com. You’ll see three boxes that pop up. One talks about getting trained, getting classes, one about buying notes, then about the Note Mastermind.

If you’d like to get more information or schedule a call with me one-on-one to talk about if you think this is something that might be valuable to you, click on the Note Mastermind and fill out your information and then I’ll be glad to reach out to you. We are pretty good about reaching out in the first 24 hour or somebody responds to that. We send you a text message or we send you an email with a link and we can schedule a one-on-one call for 15, 20, 30 minutes or whatever it takes just to visit with you. Then we’ll talk about what your goals are because that’s the important thing. If you don’t have any goals or any type of forward-thinking, you’re not going to succeed in anything. You might have some success in making some money, but long-term success you’re going to dwindle out because you don’t know what your big picture is. You don’t know what your end game is.

I’m going to ask you, “What’s your why? What are you looking for? What do you want to accomplish? What’s your background? What have you done?” I had a couple of people that called me, “I’d like to join your Mastermind.” I’m like, “Tell me about your past.” “I’m brand new.” “Then this is not for you. If you’re brand new to real estate and you don’t know what UPB is versus a BPO, you need to get some basics, maybe you need to watch some videos. Maybe you need to go to a workshop or two. Let’s have you started on that before you invest something that’s a bit more for you.” I love to talk with you. You don’t have to put a credit card down to talk with me. I want to visit with you. I want to hear what your questions are, your concerns are. If it takes 30, 45 minutes going through questions with you, that’s great. If you want to talk to some of our students, I’m glad to put you in touch with people that are doing amazing things that had been a part of a Mastermind group, that are doing stuff. That’s what we’re here for.

Sometimes you need an “Oh crap” relationship where if something goes south, you have somebody to reach out to and we’ve dealt with that. We’ve helped people like, “My investors just walked.” “Let me help you. You did all the things you’re supposed to do in your frontend, let me see if I know somebody who can help fund your deal quickly.” That’s what I love to talk about with on this episode. I wanted to share what was on my heart. We had so many people reaching out and people asking me questions about it. I thought, “I’ll just do an episode and talk about what is involved in our Note Mastermind and our Fast Track Training and my mental thoughts and how I feel about our Note Mastermind.”

First and foremost, I love the people that are going through that. I love what they’re doing. They’re going to spend three days with me here in Austin and eat Torchy’s Taco and go over Fritas or get a steak or some brisket or go to Esther’s Follies with us or whatever it might be. I want to help them find success. I want them to take their business to the next level and help them overcome any obstacles and avoid the pitfalls that we have avoided in our journey. Hopefully, this was a valuable episode. If you’d like to find out more information, just go to WeCloseNotes.com. If you see Note Mastermind, click on it. It will ask for your information and then you’ll probably get an email or a text message from me following up with you to see if it’s a fit for you. If it’s not, it’s not. If you’re not a fit, I’ll tell you as honest as I can, but if I think it is, I’ll give you some options and we can go from there. I want to thank all of you. If this has been valuable, take a second and drop me an email, Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. I’d love to hear from you. If there’s anything we can do, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Until then, we’ll see you all at the top.

 

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