EP 188 – Note Camp Numbers

On this episode, Scott breaks down the numbers from Note C.A.MP. 4.0.

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Note Camp Numbers

One of the biggest things that we always love doing besides bringing 30 plus together and hundreds on note investors is literally find out what’s making these investors tick. What is their biggest need? What is their biggest goal? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Where are they learning from? Do they have an IRA? Are they using their IRA? Is it their first time to Note CAMP? Is the investor surveyed? We have done this pretty well, especially 2, 3 and 4. I don’t remember if I gave one for Note CAMP 1.0. I think I did but I’m not 100% sure.

“They are who we thought they were.”

Today’s episode is a little bit about, in the words of Dennis Green, “They are who we thought they were.” If you don’t know who Dennis Green is, he was the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings and the Arizona Cardinals. He’s known well. He’s passed on so RIP Dennis Green for having a tirade after the Cardinals or the Vikings played somebody and going out, “They are who we thought they were. They are exactly who we thought they were.” I want to go with you today and share a little bit of the numbers if you missed out on Note CAMP 4.0, some of the amazing things that we discovered from the four-day event.

If you’ve never been at Note CAMP, what we do is we bring out different speakers and we have actually two different speakers speaking most of the time on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Sunday, we’re just into one virtual room. A couple of big things that people really loved based on the numbers alone is just that we had two panels. We had panel discussion with five first lien investors, and we had a panel discussion on seconds with three second lien investors. Those went overwhelmingly awesome people, loved those. We live streamed it to Facebook as well and we got a tremendous amount of feedback from that. One of the great things that I love seeing is just that the amount of content and people really taking the time to dive into it and absorb a lot of information there. There’s no way you can catch everything on the frontend. When we have two speakers speaking at the same time for an hour and fifteen, you can flip back and forth between rooms but you don’t get all the information.

We had 410 people sign up for Note CAMP 4.0. One of the things that we do is we actually bribe everybody. By those that filled out the survey, we send the survey results to them. It’s a phenomenal way for them to not only get the contact information and LinkedIn profiles, their cell phone numbers, email, mail addresses, their interests, if they have an IRA, what their company name is, all that good stuff, the biggest focus, biggest need. That gives them so much information to be able to explode their business going forward. Kudos that we got over 50%. It’s the highest results as far as the survey. Our little Note CAMP 4.0 did have 213 people fill it out.

What I thought I would do is I would literally share the results from the surveys because it’s always great information to see who you’re dealing with. We talked a little bit of this on my Note Night in America webinar we do every Monday night. It was goal setting. I did something a little bit different on Note Night in America that I haven’t done in a while as I opened up the call to live calls. I literally took four live calls from students to help them with their goals for the year. What I thought would be an hour-long turned almost in two hours but it was fun. You can catch that replay by simply going to our Vimeo page by going to WeCloseNotes.tv. That will automatically forward you to our Vimeo account to be able to watch all the replays.

The Note CAMP surveys, we had actually 416 signups. We mapped it all out. For those that filled up the survey, we mapped it out in BatchGeo. We got literally people all across the country. The BatchGeo does not include the people in Alaska, Hawaii, or international listeners. We had over a thousand Facebook views on several of our keynote speakers. Big shout-out to Tim Herriage, the CEO of 2020 REI Groups, and of course our buddy Scott Duffy with Entreprenuer.com and ScottDuffy.com who just provides some great insight as a keynote speaker. A lot of people love their stuff. Scott Duffy is right at a thousand. Tim Herriage is roughly in the 900s right now as far as views. We had over 200 plus social media posts. I think we had more than that. I think it’s double that but I ran it. I quit counting a long time ago. We had 207 answered surveys, last time it was 203, fifteen international campers.

What I want to question, is this your first time in Note CAMP? 54% of those that filled out the survey it was their first time. I’m most impressed that we had 18%, almost 20%, of people it was their fourth time through which really I love because that’s phenomenal. We got people that continue to come back. We have 13% it was their third time, and 15% said it was their second time through the Note CAMP. I like that because when I look at things, it’s always easy to try to keep a client versus adding a client. Although when I say a new event, it does not surprise me that we had a lot of first timers. That’s okay because it means we have a lot of good questions and we had a lot of people that loved the content because it gives a broad overview of a lot of different subjects.

Biggest goal for 2018, 54% of the people wanted to close more deals. 13% of those that came in the second largest deal was that people want to close their first deal. 12% of those surveyed say they were looking to retire or have passive income. 8% were looking to raise capital. Then the remaining 9% was a hodgepodge of other different topics, their biggest goals, I should say.

Close more deals. That’s always one of the biggest things. That doesn’t surprise me.. This was an open-ended question too. When we’re trying to consolidate as close as we can to get the top five or six, it’s what it falls into. 54% of those that surveyed said they have not closed on a deal yet, but 46% have. That almost falls in line with the Yes/No versus the attendants. It’s like almost all the attendees that were brand new have not closed on a deal yet, if you think about it. I know that’s not true. I like the fact that almost half have closed on a deal or more. If we ran the numbers on this by taking the 46% of people that have closed on a deal and how many number of deals have they closed on by asking that, that was the nest question, on average, and I removed myself from the equation so as not to bump the numbers up a little bit, if you removed me and just the other people that answered, the attendees that have closed a deal, the 46% that have closed have an average of seventeen deals. It’s not bad at all. A lot of people have one, two, three, five, that’s not including those that hadn’t closed on a deal. I think if I threw my numbers in there, that bumped the number up to almost 30. I didn’t want to skew my numbers like that so I had Eric, my buddy, remove me from that equation to get a better feel for everybody.

It’s not a fear of breaking down the numbers. It’s maybe a fear of pulling the trigger.

Biggest need was pretty split; 25% were looking for more inventory, more buyers and sellers, 21% were looking for more knowledge, more training, more mentoring. I think Note CAMP is a great place for that and WCN. 18% were looking for more funding, either joint ventured deals or private funding. That’s the thing, if they filled out on a survey, you’re going to form the questions we asked, which I did not. I don’t know if I got it in here, if people are looking to JV. I can cover that in a second. 15% were looking their biggest need to get their first deal closed, 6% were looking for more systems, and then a hodgepodge of other needs filling at 15%. Biggest strength, overwhelmingly 40% said their dealing houses was their biggest strength. It’s not a fear of breaking down the numbers. It’s maybe a fear of pulling the trigger. 19% said they were goal-driven was their biggest strength, 17% came in third with real estate experience. Other people said that they were strong networkers at 11%, and then the final 12% filling the other category.

First timers, if you take 15% and 18%, that’s 33%. The 40% dealing houses may be the people that have attended before. It adds up on that.

Where are you social at? This was interesting. I always like to see what social media platforms they’re being on. We left this as an open-ended question for them to ask more than once. Out of those that surveyed, only 28% of the answers are people using LinkedIn, 26% are second on Facebook, Twitter came in third at 14%, and YouTube and Instagram tied at 13% a piece. We did throw Vimeo as a video channel and YouTube as well. Instagram was a little bit higher than video, and then 6% was the others like Snapchat and a few others. I think there was one person who said MySpace. This was great because it’s always good to see what platforms they’re on.

Who are you learning from? This really is a surprise, considering it’s my event. One of the things that we did is we did ask them who they learn from, and what we did to make it fair is if they said Eddie Speed, Scott Carson, Donna Bauer, or whoever. We treated each one of those names as an individual result, so it was literally over a thousand names that were put into it. Out of those total amount, 34% of people said they were learning something from We Close Notes or Scott Carson, 16% of the results came from either Eddie Speed or the Note Expo or NoteSchool. There’s a hodgepodge that filled up the other 21% of comments. Brecht Palombo, Dave Van Horn, Mike Ruscica, Troy Fuller had a few but nothing more than really 1% across the board for everybody else. What I did add in here was the Distressed Mortgage Expo and Paper Source combined at 2%. It was almost exactly 5% each, almost the exact numbers based on results. We want those in together for a third place. What does that tell me? It tells me that people like going to events. They do like going to Note CAMP. They like going to The Note Expo. They like going to Quest IRA had a couple of comments. Quest IRA is one of the largest that fell on the Others category.

Who do you learn the note business from? This is the breakdown, not a big surprise. One of the great things too is we’ll be posting a link if you need to get signed up for Note Expo or Paper Source.

What area are you focusing on? This is always a good thing so we can help identify the subject matter. No surprise, 44% of those surveyed said they’re looking for non-performing firsts. We also made this an open category where they can pick more than one. 40% of the results are firsts, 18% of those that responded were looking for performing notes, 15% were looking for some sort of other, and that means by other it was either commercial notes, apartments, partials, CFDs. 13% of those that surveyed said they’re looking for owner-financed notes and then 10% of those respondents said they’re looking for NPN seconds, non-performing seconds. That’s the lowest number we’ve seen on the seconds since we’ve done this. That tells me, looking at the numbers, that more people are getting in the owner-financed performing side and doing a lay with the seconds. We substantially reduced the curriculum at Note CAMP for seconds because we just don’t see a lot of it. We’ll probably still have the panel going forward. We had Matt Allan talk this time something about seconds. That was about it, so we’ll probably stick to what we’re doing with that.

Top states. Everybody is asking, ”What are the states we should be buying in?” Here are the top states: Ohio was overwhelmingly first with 12% of respondents. We asked people to pick their top five states. Ohio had the largest amount at 12%, people selected Ohio. Indiana came in second at 10%, Florida a third at 9%, Texas was a surprise at 8%, but a lot of people live here in Texas so I can see why they threw that in their top five. Michigan at 7% was fifth. Tennessee and North Carolina both came in at 6%. South Carolina, Missouri and Georgia are all tied in at 5%. The remaining 40 states was 32%. A lot of people are looking at one, two or three, so less than five percent of the total respondents. We figured we had 203 respondents times five, that was a thousand comments.

Do I have an entity? This is important. We’re going to make sure people are using an entity. Yes, 81% of those surveyed said they have an entity: LLC, S Corp or C Corp. Only about 19% don’t have one. That’s the biggest thing that if you don’t have one, you definitely want to get rock and rolling. That’s why we shared this because we have obviously have Aaron Young with Laughlin Associates doing a great job of taking that entities and corporations; they’re making their books go well. Another thing, since we did partner up a lot with Quest IRA is I asked people do they have a self-directed IRA. Yes, 64% of those said they did. 36% said no, they do not have a self-directed IRA. I like the fact that 64% do. That’s a nice chunk of potential private investors that have filled out the survey. Now you’ve got access to those people and you can send an email out to them.

Who is your self-directed IRA with? It’s the next one we asked. Overwhelmingly, 45% of those that have a self-directed IRA is with Quest. Second was a combination of others, 39% with others. 16% was the third largest and that was with Equity Trust. They are the second largest trustee out there, but the rest of them fell into 39%. Quest is one of the largest IRA customers we have at Note CAMP, especially with their clients. Once again, if they mentioned numerous entities, Quest or Equity Trust, both we’ve treated it all as an individual comment.

What’s great is we’ve also asked a survey on how we can do better.

What’s great is we’ve also asked a survey on how we can do better. We got that out and it’s interesting to see some of the results. With our Survey Monkey, we have five more people who filled out the survey. It’s always difficult getting people to fill out a survey after an event, especially when you’re just asking constructive criticism. We’ve only got 36 people filled out the speakers and event survey, which is okay. It’s just interesting to see what people have to say about the event. A lot of these, we asked about speakers, we asked who their favorite speaker is, what we could do better. We won’t dive in to the speaker stuff yet but I’ll share a little bit of the information. Overwhelmingly it was great as day two was the largest attended date or group. Out of the surveyed, 83% attended Friday. Thursday was actually the second highest attended day. Saturday, 69%, almost evenly on Saturday and Sunday. We only have those that we sent a survey up to only 11% didn’t attend live. Some people just want to catch the replays because they’re working. I can respect that, that’s why we make the replays. 69% of those surveyed watched on the live Zoom channels that we used. 13% watched only on Facebook Live, which is enough to keep you going. 33% of those surveyed said they watched some combination of Zoom and Facebook.

I saw some of the people that were in Basecamp. They were commenting on your Facebook Live video because they were at work. Especially people who are driving around, they find it that the Facebook live streams worked better than trying to do the Zoom thing because of the internet and stuff like that. Then only 11% haven’t watched it yet, but that’s good. It gives us a good combination. People overwhelmingly 64% loved us having two rooms. No, only 6% of people did not like the fact that we had two rooms. We got some interesting comments. The biggest comment was that we do need two separate rooms with Steph handling one and me handling the other one. When I asked if people loved Basecamp group for Note CAMP, yes, 19% really loved Base Camp. Some people use it and only 20% really love it. Some people don’t like it because they get so much email from them, which is okay, but nobody said they hated it. That’s a good thing so far. When we asked them how they would rank the networking opportunities at Note CAMP on a scale of one to five, five being great and one being awful, fives, fours, threes, we’ve got one person said two. We’ll get an average star rating on that here on that before too long. As for the numbers, people like Note CAMP, which is great.

The virtual manual that Nicole has so well-put together got 53% said five-star, 27% said four stars, then we only have that one lone rebel who said three stars on it. You can’t make everybody happy, but we got plenty of good comments. About six comments go through they really like it.

How would you rank Note CAMP overall? 70% basically said five, 28% said four stars, and that one lone rebel gave us a three, so far. It’s basically the same thing, 69% for the speakers, 29% gave us four stars, and that one rebel said three. Somebody just puts three to be average across the board. This is done totally anonymous. Then we asked who’s their favorite top two speakers, which will be good to see because that’s who we’ll have and invite back next time. What topics would you like to see more of? People didn’t like the panels. I didn’t notice that last time when I looked in that. Then we get to the different individual presentations and how people ranked them and whether they liked them, or they had not watched them yet. A big chunk have not watched. Most of the people attended had watched at least half of them.

What’s interesting is I can take into consideration who watched who and look back at the schedule, and see who I’d match others up with next time. Actually what’s funny is that Wayne’s individual presentation by itself did phenomenal on Facebook because I think he shared it across a couple of platforms. I always get a lot of information from this and it helps us be a lot more effective in what we’re doing next time around.

Do you think that other investors, when they do this kind of stuff, do they send out surveys? Do you think they should ask surveys?

Yes. I think everybody, especially if you’re putting on events, you should ask and send a survey out.

I saw some of our investors started doing like little webinars and stuff like that. I think this would be a good thing to put in their tool belt so that they can have future references.

We had Infusionsoft on, Darren Adams. The idea is the more you can niche your list up to find out their interest, what they focus on, what are their five states, or they’re looking for non-performing first, or whatever. That helps you dramatically in moving more products later on. Whether you got a list and you need to whole sell some or sell some, it helps out dramatically. The more you know about your database, the better off you’re going to be. I’ll give you an example here. Overwhelmingly, 97% said they would sign up for Note CAMP 5.0 again. That’s really good. That one lone rebel said he’s not, but he did say we did have 100% of those who surveyed said they would recommend Note CAMP to other investors. I like that. That says it more than anything else. Would they? Yes, I would recommend it even though I probably won’t sign up for it again myself. Then we’ve got a bunch of testimonials. Twenty people left testimonials so far, which is always really nice.

Then of course, how can we make Note CAMP better? We’ve got 23 responses to that that we’ll have to go through. The same thing, what speakers would you like us to add? We’ve added that as well. Lots of great information on that. If you were part of Note CAMP, you’ve got an email from us to please take the time to fill out the survey. That helps. If you were not and you’re just listening to the podcast, you can get signed up for the next Note CAMP, the 5.0 version, by going to NoteCamp.live. We’ve got a very extra, extra early bird sell price at $125. Go to NoteCamp.live. We’ll throw in a Basecamp. Then the next Note CAMP is April 5th to the 8th, so it’s the first weekend in April. That’s actually the weekend right before the Mastermind in Cape Coral. Looking forward to that and a lot of great stuff going on.

The idea is to keep it smaller first until you’ve got a really controlled audience.

One of the great things is if you can take your information that you get from people, you can do surveys for your database as it is. The idea is to keep it smaller first until you’ve got a really controlled audience. First time you have somebody come in, all you really want to get is what you would probably get in a webinar, first name and email address, and then maybe cell phone. That’s all you should really probably be asking for in a survey. There are some people who like to ask ten, fifteen, twenty questions, and initially that’s way too much. Get them to be involved with you a little bit, get them working with you, get them be repeat attendees to something. I probably should do more surveys after my database, but we do such a good job as far as topics. I’ve been able to identify what people are listening, who are attending and going from there, so that we don’t have to do a lot. I think it’s always valuable getting this because now it upgrades my database, it upgrades everybody that filled out the survey. It helps dramatically for everybody involved, not only to find out deals but also raise capital and networking.

One of the big things in there is we did put people’s LinkedIn profiles, they can add it to their database and be networking with everybody. You’ve got 200 plus people now you can email out to on a regular basis for potential funding or a deal flow. We’re a big believer of the network. The bigger your network is, the more profitable you’re going to be.

Go out and make something happen today. Take the information that you get and use it because knowledge is only good if you put it to work. You could be the smartest and most talented database but if you never follow up with an email to anybody, you’re never going to accomplish anything. Unfortunately, when I was talking to people last night during the live calls, that was overwhelmingly the biggest response from people. I asked them if they had these goals to close fifteen or twenty or thirty deals in the next year. Then I asked them, “Do you have a database?” Yeah, they did. I said, “Have you emailed out to them lately?” “No, we have not. I haven’t emailed since June.” It’s really hard to grow a database and keep it growing if it takes you four or five months to send an email out. That’s not effective at all. You need to be communicating with your database on a regular basis at least once a week, if worst case, once every two weeks so that you can stay in front of them, keep them abreast of what’s going on, and keep telling them your story, and keep an eye on you along on your journey to success.

Once again, I have to give a big shout-out to all of our sponsors: Quest IRA, Laughlin Associates, Infusionsoft, Mobit, Ross Diversified Insurance, Madison Management. I actually think Shante’s section in Madison Management was probably one of the surprisingly better ones. A lot of people really loved it. It had one of the biggest replays or views online after the event. Shante did a great job the way she’s bouncing ideas and just talking back and forth. One again, have a great day. We’ll see you all at the top.

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