EP 222 – Our Goals For 2018: Bigger Things Come From Long Term Goals

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

Buying notes has an appeal to most people because it gives them a chance to get a touch of the real estate business. Scott Carson understands this very well so his goal for 2018 is to help 10,000 note investors in five years through virtual workshops and live events. One way to do this is through Banking Blitzkrieg where investors will make phone calls and shout outs to asset managers as well as reaching out to existing sources on a regular basis. Because the Note Closers Show has so many avenues to give their information to potential note investors, there is a big chance to hit their long term goals 2018.

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Our Goals For 2018: Bigger Things Come From Long Term Goals

This episode is a bit different from the previous one where we talked about The Business of Bananas and knowing what you have to do to go get bigger bananas. One of the big things you see this time of the year is always people talking about their resolutions. What do they want to accomplish in 2018? It’s always gung-ho right off the bat, they usually come down to a couple of things. They want to make more money, they want to lose weight or they want to close on more deals. Coming from a sales background, being a sales guy and a marketing guy, my biggest goals are always to close more deals. If you close more deals, it often leads to more money.

I did have a good conversation with our good buddy, Robby Woods, from NexGen Coastal. You may know him as one of the co-hosts of the Note MBA Podcast. We were talking about how bigger is not always better. Sometimes when you try to do bigger things, you get so busy doing things you don’t have the opportunity to go back in and fix the stuff that you did, and little things turn into big problems. Our good buddy, David Corbin, who’s a life coach out of California talks about how to illuminate the little issues. If you illuminate them, you get rid of them versus them growing into a cancer, like a spot there growing into cancer or whatever. It’s that aspect of little things. A lot of times little things can lead to problems. Robby has come a long way since being a deadbeat borrower originally and how he got introduced in the note business through actually being one of my borrowers on a note that I bought years ago. I ended up forgiving him the debt. He got interested and turned into the note business. Robby and I were talking about how the fact that bigger things are not always better, and also the fact that he’s been focused on some big things but also turned back in the last six months with internal reflection and focusing on his issues with assets.

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

Long Term Goals: Sometimes when you try to do bigger things, you get so busy doing things you don’t have the opportunity to go back in and fix the stuff that you did, and little things turn into big problems.

We all have issues. If you buy enough assets, you’re going to have issues. He’s figuring out his specific niche. He’s been doing some development stuff. His note business has led to some bigger projects that he’s focusing on and taking a side view to the note business. That’s completely fine. It happens with a lot people. My thing and my goals this year and through the next couple of years, I always try to look at, “Where am I going to be now and where am I going to be in the next five years?” I wish I knew where I would be in the next ten years. If I look back at where I was this time in 2008, I would have been basically at the end of my marriage or divorced, if I remember exactly. The first year, I was newly divorced actually. I turned 30 and things were an uproar for me. Obviously the last year has been really phenomenal for me. This next decade, 2018 to 2028, technically in my 40’s, are going to be more phenomenal. We’ve had ups and downs. We’ve spent a lot of time going back and fixing little things and things like that over the last year. I have never felt more confident than I have now, which is scary for some people. I don’t lack in confidence, I will tell you that. If you know me, I’m pretty confident. I have faith in myself.

What I’m trying to get at is when I look at our numbers, what I want to accomplish for the next five years and then in this year alone because I’m always thinking long-term. I think if you only think a week out, you’re constantly going to be distracted because you don’t have long-term goals to guide yourself. You’ve heard us talking about people who said, “They’re going to buy 1,000 loans or modify 1,000 loans.” I honestly don’t believe I want to buy 1,000 loans this year. I know I’m not going to do that. I’ve set some goals on that, we’ve failed and done like that. We have found that sometimes doing less is best. I have a goal for us deal-wise to close on an average one deal per day for the year. That’s 366 deals for the year, that’s our goal. That breaks down about 30 a month. That means I’ve got to be offering on 300 assets a month. 

There are two ways to get around that. Either I have to have the relationships in place to do that or I have to go out and create some of those. We’re pretty excited and stoked about some of the things we got going on later this month through February with the Banking Blitzkrieg, where we got a group of people getting together virtually to make phone calls. That’s one step. The second step is going to be reaching out to our existing sources and buying from a regular basis. We’ve got our first tape of the year. We expect to probably make another 60 to 70 offers by the end of the day and start that process going through the next few weeks. That’s what we’re excited about. That’s a couple of things.

I have a big goal though that I’m actually going to say I borrowed from somebody. I’m a big fan of DigitalMarketer.com which is a company here in Austin run by Ryan Deiss, Perry Belcher and a friend of mine Roland Frasier who do just a tremendous job in digital marketing. They are the best in the industry. They put on the big Traffic & Conversion Summits every year. I’m really good friends with DeAnna Rogers who runs those events and who was actually my first ever assistant back in the day, going back ten years ago. She’s come a long way in ten years too. I’ve learned a lot from this and it’s helped us with our business on a daily basis, little things that I learned from them. They set a goal to help 10,000 businesses double their size over the next ten years. I think, “That’s not bad at all.” I think it’s a really phenomenal goal through their agencies and the people they work with and then their partners. I think that’s a phenomenal goal for stuff.

I look back at what we did in 2017. Our goals last year, we missed but we still had a really phenomenal year. We said, “We want to do 500 assets.” We ended up missing south of that, but that’s okay. When we did hit 500 assets, we need to figure through what we’ve bought and help broker and wholesale office and stuff so it was still a phenomenal year for us, and we continue to grow as a team here. I could not do this without Stephanie Goodman, Nichole Herrmann, Jennifer Searcy, Greg Arcizo, our interns that we hire. I could definitely not do that without our vendors for sure and our extended team of vendor, whether it’s Madison Management, Singer Law Group, Ross Diversified or AdGuard, a whole variety of vendors that we use on a regular basis. I could not do that without them. Plus if you add in all our students, add in all of our realtors that we work with. We have a pretty extended network across the country. I look back at our numbers. We ended up having especially on our education side, just under 1,999 students for the year. They come through the workshops, gone through it via Blueprint. We’re over 3,700 people over the last year. We have a 40% retention rate from 2016 to 2017. I look at those numbers and I want to challenge ourselves to basically have 2,500 plus students go through our workshop this year. That’s about a 25% growth basis over 2017. I think we can beat that. That’s a goal for 2,500 people to go through our workshops. That’s a 25% growth rate across our Note CAMPS and our Virtual Note Buying for Dummies Workshops. I want to challenge myself to bigger numbers. I want to help 10,000 note investors over the next five years. I want to help create and educate 10,000 note investors in five years. I think we can do that. 

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

Long Term Goals: I’m a big believer of only about 10% of investors are actually doing something on a regular basis.

If I look at the note market right now, I’ve always said if you talk to a lot of people, the traders from Jack Krupey of PRP to Dave Van Horn of PPR, to Val Sotir with Watermark Exchange, I think we all agree there’s probably a good solid 5,000 true note investors in the industry doing things. If you look at that number versus our number for the next five years, that means that we’re either doing one of two things. We’re bringing a lot of competition, which I don’t believe so because I think a lot of people like notes but they get so addicted to that instant gratification of, “They will touch their real estate. Who am I going to go paint it to?” A lot of people get so side-tracked with it. Bringing about 10,000 people to our workshops, 10,000 to our events over the next five years I think will be phenomenal. Honestly, out of those I expect us to really, really, really dive down and really help about 1,000 note investors close deals. It’s about a 10% of anything out there. You’ve heard 80/20 rule, I’m a big believer of only about 10% of investors are actually doing something on a regular basis. Those are the biggest numbers. Let’s try to help 1,000 investors close deals over the next five years, put 10,000 people through our workshops and education.

The big question is, “Scott, that’s great. How are you going to do that?” That’s the idea that whatever you’re looking at your goal, you have to realize and come up with the implementation plan of how are you going to accomplish that. Some people, your biggest goal over the next nine days is closing your first deal. That’s phenomenal. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you love what we’re talking about now about how to implement it, if you love it, if you share it in Facebook or any groups that you’ve got, now would be the time to share it. If you’re listening on iTunes and Stitcher and stuff like that, first of all thank you for listening. Make sure to leave a review. If you find this valuable, I would love it if you tweet it or share an infographic on this episode if it’s something you really, really enjoyed. 

We have a very pretty good sized network. How are we going to accomplish getting though 10,000 people into our workshops and 1,000 people to close deals? Two ways. One, I think our biggest thing is the fact that we do things virtually gives us a competitive advantage. I don’t have to jump on a plane and go speak every weekend or every month at a different event. You can only do so much with that before it takes away from what you have going on in your business. It’s like a letter. I can do more education stuff or I can focus on business. I want it to be more balanced than anything else because I think our virtual classes, our online workshops, our podcasts, the Facebook recordings, the YouTube videos, the Vimeo videos, based on the numbers that we’re seeing, it’s literally the fact that we’re able to help so many people, comes from the fact that we have so many different avenues that people are picking up what we’re putting out. People love to watch videos. They love to watch the Facebook Lives. They love to listen to the podcast. They also like to read on our blog posts. That’s one big thing I think we have a competitive advantage over most people, most of our competitors. We give more content than anybody else.

How are we going to deliver that content? What are some of the big things that we’re going to do to help us hit those numbers? First and foremost, we’re going in heavy with the podcast. We’re going in even heavier with video this year. I’m a big believer that if you’re doing any type of video, you’re going to stand out far and superior from any competition, fellow investors in your local investment groups. That kind of competition is what I’m talking about. You’re going to stand out. I believe that’s one of the great things that we do, standing out. We’re going to have a lot of that. We’re also going to be doing heavy, heavy, heavy influx of using a lot of the Facebook groups or the Facebook lists that we can pull or upload our audience that we’ve pulled into Facebook to help market directly to those individuals. It’s very cheap to do so. It’s pretty inexpensive. Nichole in our office does a great job with infographics and putting some cool videos together that can help target those types of other investors outside of the true note space, the REO refugees, the tired landlords, the fix and floppers, those people that are looking to dive in.

The note game is pretty expansive. You have the defaulted note game, buy defaulted notes that we focus on. You have the other finance game. You have performing notes. You’ve got firsts. You have a very, very smaller niche with seconds investments because there’s just not a lot created. It’s not bashing seconds. We just don’t see a lot of those anymore. How is that relevant? We see a lot of the guys that were buying seconds moving in to the first space. That’s a couple of things. I, as a person, have to maximize my time even better than I have done in this last year. Two years ago, traveling almost every weekend somewhere, 50 plus flights, not a fun thing. Literally, it was killing me. I’m putting weight on, not healthy, not sleeping, not eating right. If you’ve ever travelled, you know how that goes. That has changed a lot in the last twelve plus months. Focus on our health is a big personal goal for me in getting weight off, and that’s a big focus. Eating right, cutting out some more things, cutting out sugars in my diet, cutting out red meat, and focus more so on plant and clean protein, fish, chicken, that kind of stuff to help out. Cutting down portion size is definitely a big thing because I am a very healthy eater. Everybody knows I love to cook too. Tweaking those things to be more efficient for my personal stuff on a daily basis leads to long-term goals. 

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

Long Term Goals: Note CAMP

The same is said for your business goals. We’re going to be focusing on little things each day to help maximize traffic. We’re going to maximize our deal flow. We’re also going to be diving into some cool things with some of our affiliate partners, some of our people that we work with, some of our vendors. We’re going to be working with our vendors a little bit more so with some plans of action on that to help them drive business our way as we drive business their way as well. We’re pretty stoked about that, honing our skills. I will probably be attending less note events this year and more marketing events in 2018 that I can learn from the peers of podcast, more peers in marketing because that’s honestly where it all drives to. If you’re brand new in notes, you’ve got to educate yourself first and foremost going to different events: Distressed Mortgage Expo, IMN, NoteExpo, Note CAMP, Paper Source. Those are all great events to help you learn.

At some point, you have to learn to implement things more and take your business to the next level. I’ll give you an example. Starbucks or McDonald’s or Nike, at some point had to stop worrying about creating a better shoe, a better cup of coffee or better hamburger and they have to work on their delivery systems, their marketing systems, to help make themselves better to get the word out more or their delivery, their franchise system. That’s the beautiful thing. They’re using a lot of the same tools to help deliver and sell products that you as note investors and real estate entrepreneurs can do to sell your products, sell your deals, raise capital, sell the wow in what you’re doing to your tribe that surrounds you to make things happen. If you have not read a book, I would totally tell you that is required reading. It’s a book by Seth Godin called Tribes. It is a phenomenal book. Tribes is an easy enough book to read. Go out, grab it, read it. It’s something phenomenal because we are all this person on the middle down here with a tribe that surrounds us: our friends, our families, co-workers, college buddies, whatever. Easy enough read. Seth makes this stuff valuable and easy to read. That’s one thing that we are looking to grow, the tribe.

This podcast has been a big response for you. We look at some numbers and I’m always glad to share numbers on what we find out. We’re right at 50,000 downloads for the most part. We’re just a little shy of that here, but phenomenal numbers for a very niched podcast in the first 130 days. I had Nichole go back and see how many people actually viewed each of our Facebook Live videos. If you’re listening on iTunes, this is something valuable to keep in mind. If you’re thinking about doing a podcast, if you’re thinking about doing videos out there and how valuable and powerful video can be, we had over 27,000 views on our Facebook Live videos alone on the same 68 episodes that we’ve uploaded. That’s phenomenal. The biggest one was 1,400 downloads that we did with Jason Bible. Partially, it helps that we had somebody on who’s got a good following and also shared the post as well too.

We had several episodes over 1,000. When you look at that and then the fact that we take the videos and we upload them to Vimeo.com for us and then also YouTube, and seeing that the Vimeo plays are right at about just under 10,000 views, which most of that comes from sharing or referring people back to our website which refers them to the video versus our YouTube page, we still have about 10,000 views on YouTube organically. That’s interesting to me because we really don’t promote YouTube that much. A lot of that comes from the organic SEO optimization for key words or titles and things like that. We do get some of it from our website but if you look at that, our video replays between Facebook Lives, YouTube and Vimeo is matching what we get as far as downloads on iTunes. That tells you something right then and there that it’s just as powerful of what you hear, the auditory. A lot of people like to watch that. That gives me a whole different, “I thought it would be good but I didn’t know it would be that good.” It tells us that if you’re doing anything, either you can do a podcast recording where it’s auditory, try to record a video. We know we make plenty of errors with our videos, pretty goof offs. I’m all over the screen sometimes, but it gives us some great numbers to look at driving into 2018. That’s why I really believe we can hit those goals of creating and helping to educate 10,000 note investors. We can help over 1,000 people close deals in the next five years. Those are the big things that we want to focus on. 

I’ve got a big goal to lose at least 50 pounds this year. Personally, that’s a big thing for me. We’ve got some personal travel goals, plan to do some stuff for personal, not work stuff. Over the last couple of years obviously I’ve matched up my personal travel with our work travel for fun things. Nobody’s making a plan about going to baseball game for your travel. I’ve got some bigger, loftier goals we want to accomplish about these other things that we’re focused on that are good. As far as our business and our personal goals, the biggest things out there, I thought I would share that with you on this episode in how we’re planning to get to that point. 

We’ve got a marketing conference in March. We’re going to go to one in February and then probably one in April as well to learn some specific things and find myself surrounded by a lot of peers that know more what they’re doing than I do. I also got to give a big shout-out to Tom and Tracy Hazzard of Brandcasting You. They were guests on the podcast. They do a tremendous job of taking what we put together here as far as episodes and tossing to them and then scrubbing them up. If you want their contact information, please feel free to email me at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. If you’re thinking about doing a podcast, I will be glad to make an introduction to you. They do a tremendous job and they’re well-worth what we pay them on a regular basis to make sure that we look good. If you have any questions or comments or you’re listening on iTunes or Stitcher, you are always welcome to email me direct with questions. I’m going to put something out there too. I don’t usually do this. My cell phone number is 512-585-3810. That’s the number that rings directly to this phone. If you have questions or you love an episode or you enjoyed listening to this episode, I would challenge you to shoot me a text message to 512-585-3810 and say, “Scott, I just listened to episode 222. I loved it. Thanks again. Here’s my goal for the year.” I would love to see what kind of feedback we get from that. I want to feel you responding to things and see how we can help to make things better out there for you. 

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

Long Term Goals: Brandcasting You

We have a question, “What’s the author’s name of the book?”

Seth Godin is the author of the book. Every book he puts out, I try to buy. It’s phenomenal, easy to read, I love his sense of humor. He’s a bald guy that always wears bright colored spectacles. One of the big things I want to make sure to tell you is be specific. Not really have more than two or three big New Year’s resolutions because it’s going to be difficult for you to implement 60 or 30 of them. I know a lot of us like to have action plans, and that’s a phenomenal thing to do, but try to just focus on the big rocks. You’ve heard me talk about that on a previous episode, focus on the big rocks of your business, the most important things. Mine is the health because if I’m not healthy, I can’t be doing things. My health, my back has done tremendous job. I was talking to my trainer who’s been on a previous episode, Thomas Nee, about how far we’ve come in the last year and a half where I’m doing things much stronger. I’m just strong like an ox knocking things out that we do in the gym. I don’t have any problems with my back and very few spasms. I feel much better. My energy is boosting. If you add a reduction in weight loss to that too, watch out. I may just run through a few walls.

When I’m talking about offers, you may have to go to different wells. You can’t always make the same offers to the same wells, especially if other people are diving in that same well. You may need to take your bucket to other places and go find your sources. We’ve had to do that over the years, go to new sources and transfer from this company, we moved to a new company and moved to a different bank, a different lending source to find deals. We are prepared to do that in 2018.

10,000 note investors is our big goal for the next five years. I think we can hit that before so, actually not probably hit it but it’s still a big enough goal. Who knows what’s going to happen between five years and now? There could be a lot of changes. There could be quite a few changes between now and five years from now. That’s a long time. That gives us something that we can be guided by, something that we can knock things out and say, “Where are we? How are we doing to that?” We’ve already added a chunk of that for the year so far with 2,500 people. I think we’ve already got 100 plus ready to roll for Note CAMP 5.0. We’ve already got a chunk of people ready to sign up for our March Virtual Workshop that we’re honored to have. One big thing I wanted to post out there to you as well, if you are brand new to what we do, if you’re a previous military or previous first responder, let us know. We’re glad to comp you into our Virtual Note Buying Workshop the first time around. We’re no longer allowing you to repeat three, four or five times in the New Year. We want to be specific about what we’re doing here. If you’re a brand new listener, ex-military, ex-first responder, current first-responder or current military, we’re glad to comp you into our Virtual Workshops to help you really get things rock and rolling, and then go from there. 

Our next Mastermind event is going to be in nice and sunny Cape Coral, Florida at the Westin Resort, April 13, 14 and 15, so tax weekend. Set that as a goal for you. Challenge yourself. Please leave a review if we can help you in any way, if we can help you accomplish your goals. Leave us a review, we love to hear about it or best yet drop me a text message at 512-585-3810 and we’d be glad to hear about you. I’d be glad to get on the phone with you ten or fifteen minutes to talk about your goals for the year.

We’ve got some episodes that we’re uploading for the most part. I’ll be out of town speaking on the Financial Friends Network, the Quest IRA fun cruise, with Quincy Long and Walter Wofford and a good bunch of other people there. Go out and rock it and make some things happen for you. Feel free to shoot me some more text and things like that. I cannot do this without your help. If you’ve got friends, family members, funding partners you’re looking to help them understand a little more about the note business so that they help fund more of your deals, let us know. We’ll be glad to send them a referral link for you to help them sign up and get educated so you don’t have to teach them how to do things. 

NCS 222 | Long Term Goals

Long Term Goals: If you think about it but never write it down or never share it, you’re never going to be able to hold yourself accountable

Our biggest goal is 10,000 note investors in the next five years. We think we can do it, we know we can do it and we are going to do it. That’s the thing that you have to keep in mind when you’re setting goals. It’s not, “I’m thinking I’m going to get around to it.” If you think about it but never write it down or never share it, you’re never going to be able to hold yourself accountable or have your friends and family members hold themselves accountable. Your biggest thing that you can do is write down the goals that you have, that you want to accomplish, and post them somewhere where you can see them as reminders. Post it on your TV. Post it on your fridge. Post it on your microwave. I have done that in the past and removed it down and forgot about some of the things, but the biggest thing I can tell you, write it down and post them. You’ll feel a lot better about what you do or be the constant reminder that, “Maybe I should put that cheese burger down and buy a salad instead.” 

I’ve got to give a big shout-out to Juliana Ferraro. She closed on her sixth or eighth asset that she got directly from a bank. I think she got a couple of lots from them too. She was one of our guest callers on our live calls that we did. She’s still working full-time, if I remember correctly. We’re going to have her on the show and have her talk a bit more about the deal and what happened and what process, and go on from there. 

You can accomplish so many things and much bigger things. I think it’s one of the biggest things. Bill Griesmer said something about how we are always setting big goals. We set some big goals and we shoot for some big things. It keeps me challenged. It keeps my staff challenged. It gives us a direction that we’re looking to go to. One thing that I want you also to keep an eye out for is this, you’re going to struggle. You’re going to hit walls in your quest to do big things. You’re going to hit setbacks. We’ve had plenty of setbacks over the last three years, over the last five years over the last ten years. I am where I’m at today because I have overcome the setbacks. When you hit setbacks or you fail, the one thing you’ve got to realize is it’s your way of growing. Growth is not accomplished without failing. You have to fail. The strongest sword is bent and folded upon itself over 200 times before it becomes the solid iron that it is. The best samurai sword is pounded down 200 times and bent over. You have to realize yourself that you are an iron. Sometimes you’ve got to be pounded on to get stronger, to be more accomplished, to understand when you have to overcome things. I don’t care if you bend for a short sale or foreclosure, an eviction, a re-possession, a bankruptcy, a divorce, whatever it is. I don’t care what kind of setbacks you’ve had. Welcome to the club. Welcome to those things making you stronger. If you’re not dead and you survived those, then you’re a stronger individual for today and for where you want to be in the future. Every hiccup that we achieve is just a stepping stone on the ladder to success. I challenge you all to accomplish some big things and go get some things done. 

We have a question, “Do I recommend Distressed Pro?”

I think Distressed Pro is a great thing. One thing about that you want to make sure with Distressed Pro is not get so bugged down on the details. Use it to make the right phone calls. Don’t sit there and constantly read everything and dive so deep that you never make a phone call. The one thing I would highly recommend if you’re going to send out a mass email and you’re using MailChimp, use the service on MailChimp for them to give you a better time to send. Sending something at 7:30 AM Eastern Time is not an effective time to send something. Your open rate will be higher if you’re sending it between 10:00 and noon or 2:00 and 3:00 versus sending it so early in the morning. Keep that in mind in your next round. If you don’t see a high open rate, don’t get discouraged. Go back and re-send it and do a replication of that email and send it out at a later time, 10:00 or 11:00 Eastern Time would be more efficient than 7:30.

I do have to give a big shout-out to Scott Van Campen. Scott is closing on his first two deals before the end of the year: one in Sharon, PA and another one in North Carolina. Big, big shout-out to Scott Van Campen for getting those two deals closed before the year ends. It’s been a bit of a journey for you with you working full-time and traveling. Really excited on where you’re going over the next 12, 24, and 36 months. Congrats to Scott Van Campen. Congrats to all of you that are taking the leap and doing some things and setting your goals to accomplish big things in this New Year. That’s all I’ve got for you. Hopefully, it’s been beneficial. Please feel free to drop me a text message at 512-585-3810 and let me know what you think of the episode. Otherwise, have a great day. Go out and make something happen. We’ll see you all at the top. 

 

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