With how the world is getting serious these days, poking fun at ourselves is a breath of fresh air, especially for note investors. We need to laugh a little more and do out of the box marketing to get people’s attention shifted to you for a couple of minutes so that they keep looking to your direction for a long time. When you think this way, cool things can come from it with satisfying results. Learn the story behind The Note Closers out of the box marketing experiences with the pizza marketing, the blueberry marketing that led to Fifty Shades of Notes and Notes Civil War: Firsts vs. Seconds.

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Out Of The Box Marketing; Note Investing The Sexy Way

This is something that we’re going to literally get a good kick out of. I know that so many of us are rocking and rolling along, trying to come up with ideas to make some things happen. You’re going to have some brain farts. You’re going to not be able to come up with things all the time with your business and expand it. I want to share with you some of the best things that we have done over the past few years, going back almost ten years now. For those that are listening on the podcast, on iTunes, Stitcher, and those neck of the woods, you’ll be able to go to WeCloseNotes.tv and check out this video. You’ll understand it because I’m trying to keep this in bullet point ideas and sharing some stories behind it.

I get my ideas from five basic categories: food, alcohol, movies, holidays or events in your calendar and sports. Those are the five categories that I get most of my ideas from when it comes to marketing on a daily basis or weekly basis or monthly basis. It’s probably no surprise that that’s the case for the most part when you see a lot of stuff. I’m going to run through eight or nine of these things that have done well for us through the years. When you’re thinking about expanding your business, there are two things that we need to keep in mind that are important: getting in front of new people and communicating with our existing tribe. One of the great books that you can read out there is Tribes by Seth Godin. The second book is Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary’s got a new book, Crushing It! The things that come up the most in what we do fall in one of those five categories: food, alcohol, movies, events on your calendar and sporting events, because those are our five passions. If you think about that, four out of the five fit almost everybody. Not everybody is a sports fan but you can draw a lot of analogies from sports. Almost everybody is a movie fan. Everybody’s got to eat. Everybody likes to drink, for the most part. If they don’t drink, they still definitely will respect you.

I love the image of outside the box. If we think about ourselves as kids, I know that I love boxes. When we were a kid, maybe when you get a big box, you would jump into it. I remember when my dad ran a hardware store, we would get boxes of refrigerators, washer, dryers. Christmas was always a great thing. What would we do? We would create and turn those into forts. We’d turn those into planes, cars. We’d stack the boxes on top of a little red wagon and we’d drive through them like it was a wagon of Wells Fargo. We lose a lot of that imaginative spirit as we get older. We get so bogged down we don’t want to play in our imagination. It goes away. Effective marketing is all about imagination. If you can think outside the box or you see something visually that stimulates you or you hear something, the best thing I can tell you is instead of going, “I can’t do that,” just say, “How can I do that? How can I use what I like in my business or that sticks with me?” First thing I want to share with you is blueberries. What’s so great about marketing blueberries?

Going back about ten years ago, teaching workshops, I got a chance to meet my buddy, Greg Reid. Greg is the author of Think and Grow Rich, Three Feet From Gold and a variety of other great books, best-sellers. He’s also in films. He’s a great speaker. He was voted San Diego’s most well-dressed bachelor. Greg invited me to an event that he puts on twice a year, called Secret Knock. I’ve had him come out and speak. He invited me up to this event and I show up and it’s atop of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown San Diego. We were sitting there for three days. We were listening to speakers and it was very much a TED Talk, like a motivational aspect of things. The end of the first day, he brings up this brain doctor, Dr. Fannin. If you’ve ever been to Secret Knock, you know that he always has some interesting speakers on there, always got some thought-provoking definitely speakers. He brings on this brain doctor who’s talking about how our brains work and things like that. He shares two nuggets from it that I still use to this day. That’s my whole goal. When I hear somebody speak and listens to me speak, I want to try to get a nugget or two or three out of what I’m hearing him say. I want to get some nuggets.

The first thing I heard him say was, “If you’re even 10% dehydrated, your brain is only working at about 50% capacity, which means you’re a halfwit.” The second thing I got from him is somebody asked him as he was walking off stage and they go, “What’s the best food I can eat for my brain?” He said blueberry. Blueberries are high in antioxidants. I’m not eating blueberries but I have a blueberry Red Bull. It’s not the same thing, trust me. I love blueberries. I eat a lot of blueberries by chunk. I love them in just about anything. I’ll eat them as snack. When I go and get my shake in the afternoons if I workout, I have them throw extra blueberries in it because it’s a great thing. I don’t know if it’s making me smarter or dumber. Anyway, I hear him say that, blueberries. I asked Greg, “How many people were at this event?” There were 250 people at this event. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?” I was new. I didn’t know a lot of people there. This was a great group. Les Brown was there, that I didn’t have the chance to meet. Sharon Lechter was there, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki. I was sitting next to Forbes Riley, who’s been on stage and sold billions of products. What am I going to do to stand out? This is a great environment full of investors. What am I going to do to expand this little note investors guide? I went to the local David’s, the grocery store, where I was sitting next to the hotel I was at because I was down on the beach. I go into the produce aisle and I see these little canisters of blueberries. This was 10:00 PM.

I grab a cart and I start filling my cart up with blueberries. They only had 60. I go to the guy who’s stocking the shelves and I said, “Do you happen to have more blueberries in the back?” He looked at me like I was crazy. I said, “I need to get 250 packages of blueberries.” He’s like, “Okay.” He goes to the back and said, “We just got a shipment of 200.” I bought the amount of blueberries for the week. It was pretty cheap. It was $2 a bundle and I was like, “I’ll spend $500 on it.” It was in little plastic containers. What I did is I took them back to the hotel. I literally put my business card inside the top of each one of them. The next morning, I showed up early and I asked Greg if I could give away some brain food for everybody in the morning. He’s like, “That’s brilliant. I love it.” There I was handing out canisters of blueberries and so everybody got business card. Everybody just absolutely loved it. To this day, there are still people that don’t know me as Scott Carson. They know me as the blueberry guy. That was one of the creative things that helped set me apart. Every time I go back there, “You’re the blueberry guy.” It was a cool stroke of genius. I met a lot of people, made a lot of relationships that weekend, especially the next day was the big party we had afterwards. I made a lot of friends who I still call friends today. That was one of the cool things that I did with that.

Earlier on in my real estate career, pizza marketing is a great thing that we have done multiple times. We’ve done pizzas and brews, get a bigger slice of the investment and stuff like that. We’ve used pizza as themes for Meetup groups or happy hour. One of the things that I did early on is I went to a local pizza joint. It was Papa John’s and they served the area of Austin that I like to invest in. This was when I was buying a lot of fix and flips, this goes back over ten years ago. I said, “I’m going to create a flyer. If you’ll let me do it, I’ll buy $5 pizza. Get me your cheapest cheese pizza. If for every pizza you deliver, you include this on top of it.” My thought was, “If they ordered pizza in this area, they’re probably budget mindset or they may be in trouble.” Sure enough, I start getting people that would respond to it. It was basically costing me $5 a slice. I put the flyer on, “I want to buy your house. I’ll buy you a pizza. Let’s talk about it.” It worked brilliantly for a while. I printed up 500 things and I had 30 phone calls the first week of sending those out. It worked out really well. That was a great thing. That was one of the fun things that we did marketing-wise.

Wine is one of my favorite things. They helps me market. I’ve used wine to market my business for quite some time. I used to always get a custom label bottle of wine for anytime that anybody has bought a house from us. If we did a fix and flip, if we did short sale, we’ll give a bottle of wine to the buyer of the property or the person we were buying the house from. Wine is a great gift you can give away to people, to your investors. I like to go to wine clubs. Wine club is a great way to market your note business because it’s a great way to relax. It’s usually a networking event. Often, these wine clubs are meeting in the afternoons or the evenings. You’ve got to have a little bit of money if you’re participating in these wine clubs. I haven’t done this recently in a while but in the past, I’ve done this and this was a great thing that we did to raise capital. Sometimes, I’d raise a couple hundred thousand dollars at an event. I go there just to network and share a little bit And when people ask you what you do, I would simply say, “I’m a fix and flipper,” or “I’m a real estate investor.” I still think that Steve Lloyd’s comments that he made at the Distressed Mortgage Expo a couple of years ago about, “I raise capital for real estate projects,” is a great thing because he gets everybody interested.

People embellish themselves a lot. “I want to do this. I really want to do this. Tell me more about that business.” Real estate investing is the sexy side of an entrepreneur business and you want to utilize that, if you can, in your marketing. I don’t care if you’re doing one deal or you’ve done 100 deals a year. You’re doing something. You’re taking steps that 95% of people aren’t going to do. They’re not going to take that first step. They’re not going to make the offer. Get out. Come and buy a couple bottles of wine. I’ve used this with our Mastermind event before. We had one in San Antonio. We went and got some custom bottled wine for everybody. We bottled it and labeled it and gave it to everybody as a gift for the event. We’ve gone to Napa. Wine is a big thing that a lot of people love. A lot of people appreciate it. We’re going to have to do it again at some point. It’s a great little tool for you to use.

Sometimes bad publicity is good press. There are two pictures. One has me in angel wings and wearing a lime green tutu around my waist from the stage. The other picture has me wearing coconuts and lace around my neck and my head. This was the Secret Knock. As you evolve with a lot of your vendors and friends, sometimes you’ll make bets. Gregory loves to make bets. He loves to win and I was a lovable loser. We made a bet about bowling and the bet was whoever won would wear a shirt for 24 hours at Greg’s next event. If I won, Greg would wear, “I’m Scott’s bitch.” He won so I had to wear whatever he wanted me to for two days. The first day, I show up and I’m wearing a white shirt. It was 8:00 AM in front of 200-plus people, a high networking event, I get pulled up on stage and I got to put on this tutu and angel wings. I am talking first thing in the morning. I’m one of the major sponsors for the event. I just turned it into the Angel investor for the weekend. I was able to laugh at myself, laugh at everything. People loved taking photos with me. It turned out to be great marketing because I also stood out as well. The second day I show up, Greg’s got the tutus ready for me. He makes me wear this in front of the stage.

Once again, I’m a lovable loser with that aspect for that weekend but it turned out to be a great marketing ploy because then Sharon Lechter’s coming up. I got a chance to visit with Sharon and talk with her about what’s going on in the note industry, and she had some friends that needed some help. That was a cool thing. It’s very surprising when you put on fake coconuts, how touchy women get with you. I was sexually harassed probably a dozen times that day with that but it’s in good fun. Anytime you can poke fun at yourself, it’s okay. Does that put you in front of the crowd? Yes, it does. You have to realize you’re your best promoter for your business. I like having fun. If I get a laugh and get people laughing, it often brings a wall down and it leads to conversation and people saying, “This guy is not scared of embarrassing himself, I’ve got to find out what he’s doing.” That’s why I say it’s okay to embarrass yourself. It’s okay to poke fun on yourself. It’s okay to be goofy in today’s serious world. I’m probably a little less serious than most people probably should be and that’s okay. I am what I am. If you like it, if you don’t like it, great.

Another thing that we’ve done at different events that was relatively inexpensive is Noteworthy in Vegas a couple of years ago. We brought in an Elvis impersonator and two showgirls. It cost me $1,500 for him to be there for the hour but it was such a great thing. We had the Elvis impersonator sing three songs to kick off Noteworthy. The showgirls escorted us down the aisle as the speakers and they were around to take pictures with everybody for an hour or hour and a half. It’s just a great thing to do. It adds a little bit of levels, going that extra step that most people don’t do. The mayor of Vegas used to have two showgirls who would go around him all the time. That’s what you’re thinking about. We’ve looked at bringing in cheerleaders at events, drum lines, things like that. Anything to spice up what’s going on, it just adds a little bit of gusto to the event. If you have great music that’s kicking, just try to have fun with it. When we have our Note Night in America webinars, I’m always trying to pump music in initially for those who are listening in because it gets the energy up. It keeps people awake versus going on another boring webinar that people often tune off after 30 minutes.

Speaking of Vegas, I love Vegas. I get some of my best ideas when I’m in Vegas. It’s not because I’m drinking. It’s just that I love the showmanship of Vegas. I love some of the fun things that go on. One of the best shows that we went to, they got some great ideas. It’s no longer around. Some that I use and some were so good that I couldn’t use it because it’d be car crossing the line. A couple of years ago, I went to The Cosmopolitan and they had a show going called Rose.Rabbit.Lie. It was a variety show and it was comical. They had people dancing, side shows. I loved it. We saw it a couple of times before it went out of business. Some of those performers have moved around. A couple have moved over to Absinthe at the Caesars Palace. This had a comedy troupe to the people that were in it. This one lady comes out and she’s like, “I’m looking for ass.” I was like, “What did she just say?” She’s going, “I’m looking to help people get more ass. I’m helping looking for people to assist, strategize, and support.” I could remember pulling out my cell phone texting myself that. That’s a great thing to get people to go, “A-ha.” I’ve used that twice with our Monday Notes. It’s usually about a year or two years apart.

The first time I used it, it was for a workshop we were hosting in St. Louis. The open rights to that email was great. A lot of people loved it. I’ve got a lot of great comments from people. I had a few people that were haters. The haters, they’re going to hate anyway so I got rid of them. I didn’t worry about letting them go. The assist, strategize, support, we use this quite a bit. It always goes well. It’s a little bit of a shocker but it’s enough of a shocker that’s humorous. Some people don’t like it. I’m not afraid to lose a few subscribers with our emails because those people aren’t going to be the ones that are going to invest. They’re not going to be the ones that are buying. They’re not going to be the ones that are selling or ones that are going to be funding, so it’s okay not to have everybody like you. I give you permission not to be liked, but doggone it, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” Any time I go to a show or something like that, these guys have spent thousands and sometimes millions of dollars helping them market their events in Vegas because we know it’s a big event. I always like to take what I can. We’ve used the sexy side of real estate, a girl from Fiverr who was all dressed up and she was dancing and flipping cards and marketing the event before or marketing the deal. It just gets everybody to look at stuff. That’s what you ultimately want with your marketing. It’s outside the box. It’s not just, “Look at my deal. Look at my deal. Look at my deal.”

Next thing that we have used in the past. I love movies. We talked about movies being a big thing. One of the best things that we did in 2015, when the first Fifty Shades of Grey came out, is we did Fifty Shades Darker of Notes. We took a movie with a little controversy on it. We adapted it to the note business. We changed the title and we sent that out. It was the highest open rate ever. We got a few complaints but that’s okay. I can remember being in Vegas, walking through Venetians and I came up with the idea of instead of the Avengers Civil War to do the Note Civil War. First versus seconds. I got on the phone, we had an image created where all we did was edit the bottom part of it where it was Notes Civil War default America. We had the date for the webinar. We called my buddy [who’s in seconds and I said, “Let’s get on.” It’s still the highest attended webinar we’ve done. It was a great turnout. It was two guys and then we had a moderator in the middle asking questions as the three of us went back and forth. It was really a different thing. A lot of people go, “It’s awesome. I loved it.” Marvel, Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, use those things that are well-liked. People will take notice of those things. That helps you in your marketing. Could somebody say, “You’re using our image?” You could say that. We tweak it up a little bit and go from there. I’ve used the Note Funding League. We’ve changed it up at least 10%. I use images like four days of Note C.A.M.P. in October. One of the things we did two Valentine’s ago is when we had, “Fall in love with Valentine’s Day. Fall in love with notes this weekend.” We use movies, we use holidays to entice people coming in. We get a lot of people like, “What is this Note C.A.M.P. thing? What is this note stuff? We see Deadpool. We see this other stuff. What is it that you’re doing?” It’s led to us raising quite a bit of capital and attracting some great clients.

Another thing is I like being the pain in the ass sometimes. We were attending Paper Source in Las Vegas. Bill Mencarow, who’s going to be on the podcast, he didn’t like to have anybody speaking in any type of coaching program. I was like, “There’s got to be something available.” He already had this dinner sponsor. I was like, “Let’s just do a happy hour in another part of the casino. Another room, we’ll leave it open that people can come, they cannot come, whatever. It won’t be an official event but it will just be a fun thing.” Plenty of people would do this in other events. They’ll host their own happy hour. I reached out to the casino and they had a spot around the corner. I was like, “Here’s what it’s going to cost. We have this many people there. We’re buying the first round of drinks, the second round of drinks. It’s going to cost a couple of grand.” I reached out to my friends who were there in Gemini Capital, I reached out to Jack Krupey. I reached out to Joel Markovitz who was a VP at the Singer Law Group, “How do you want to co-sponsor happy hour?”

Sure enough there it is. Bringing on three other people, three other vendors, three other friends, it became very affordable at that point. We had about 200 people show up. We had gotten some t-shirts made that were just inverse investments. This was when the theCHIVE thing was going well, “Stay Calm and Invest On.” It was a great t-shirt. I still see people out there wearing it. We gave t-shirts to everybody that came to the show. It was a great marketing ploy. What was funny is the lunch on the second day, they announced the happy hour as now being official. I got up and was recognized. It was a “in your face” one. Three out of four people were recognized. I got recognized, which was a bit crazy. What’s funny is Bill and his wife, Alison, were the last people to leave happy hour that day. It’s like, “I know you many not want me to speak on there, but we’re going to find a way to get some things.” We’ve done this two or three times with other happy hours at events and sponsored things. Anytime you get people networking or talking or showing up, they appreciate a drink.

This is probably the fastest thing that we have come up with. For those who have been around a while know that we were a big promoter for National Social Media Day Austin. Our friends Kristie and Elijah Whites got that approved by the City of Austin. We’re working on something for National Social Media Day. They were looking for sponsors. I said, “We’d love to sponsor you.” The week before, Kristie was like, “Do you have anything for the grab bag or goodie bag for the speakers or giveaways for the people that come to the event?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” It was a week before. I didn’t have any books. I didn’t have any swag created laying around. I said, “Tell me what everyone else is doing.” Some people were given a fanny pack or a corkscrew. The corkscrew came to my mind. I was like, “A-ha.” I thought back to one of my earlier things. I’m like, “Let me check.” I went immediately to the liquor store, Twin Liquors, and I talked to my guy, Robert, there. I said, “Here’s what I’m trying to do. Do you have any champagne or something that’s not too expensive but still decent that we can buy a case, 25, 30 bottles of it?” He had this buckets of nice Prosecco. It’s $9 a bottle. I was like, “Perfect.” I looked at the bottle, came back in the office. We had Nichole design a label and literally, we bought 30 bottles of the champagne.

We had the National Social Media Day. We throw these in the goodie bags. We find out it’s the talk of the whole event. Christine Haas, who was the moderator, who used to be with the local NBC affiliate, we had over 100,000 views as of now on the live stream for that, which is six hours. My bottles got brought up more often than not. People that had the goodie bags took pictures of themselves drinking it and hashtagging it. We got some great marketing for less than $500 with the bottles. It worked well and I got a little bit of extra time to speak at the event. We’ve used that before. We thought it’s a great tactic as well. At Christmas, we took the whole Quest IRA company, all 75 employees, bottles of champagne. We slapped there custom label on as well, thanking them. It would have been a couple of grand to do but it was so well worth it because it’s our vendors. Every time I call over, they’re like, “You’re the champagne guy. Glad to help you out.” That’s helped us with our funding and helped us get things funded faster.

Those are probably our best nine or ten deals that we have done as far as marketing on our events. It’s worked out really well for a lot of stuff. It’s important to think outside the box if you can. You all see something that you like. We went and saw The Greatest Showman with Hugh Jackman. I’m talking about P.T. Barnum and the origins of the circus. I see a little of P.T. Barnum in me. The thing that you want to keep in mind more than anything else is it’s okay to be yourself. You don’t have to be the bearded lady or the guy with three legs or whatever to stand out. You can do some cool stuff outside the box marketing-wise to share your message, share what you have going on. We have used our calendar, especially the Halloween, deals that we killed to talk about bad deals. You never know without asking. We’ve been asked to speak at different events like the Halloween festival at Quest before. Just asking to speak, sometimes seeing what’s available can often come in and play really well with you out there to make some things happen.

Be creative and think out of the box to connect people in your audience. We all have different things that we work on. If you can have something work out well, to share what you’ve got going on, share it. Steph cracked up at me when we were in the Financial Friends Network in Saint Martin and we were walking back to the boat and I see a brand new built one stall, one little shack toilet there. I was like, “I’ll take a quick photo that makes me like in my new office.” That is funky and it’s just poking fun at things, but it gets people talking. It’s okay to be yourself to make things happen for you because nobody is going to promote your business besides you. Nobody’s going to take you serious unless you’re doing these things on a semi-regular basis. You can do it once or twice but then you’re going to miss out. When I talk about marketing, the things that you can do, let’s look at your calendar. Every month has one or two holidays. In January, we can talk about New Year and New Year’s resolutions, new investments. Then we have Valentine’s Day; fall in love with notes. Fall in love with your investments. Those are some great things that you can do to share that will help drive traffic and get people paying attention to you. In March, we have St. Patrick’s Day, April, April Fools. Tax Day is a great way to get your tax workout. May, Memorial Day. June, President’s Day. 4th of July. August, going back to school. September we have Labor Day, Patriots Day. October, Halloween. November, Thanksgiving. December, Christmas, Hanukkah. Those are all great things that you can use to market your business.

One of the things that a lot of realtors talk about is having multiple touch points. You want to have at least twelve to thirteen touch points with your clients every month. The thing I want you to look at is that’s minimum. There’s at least one holiday for every month. That’s twelve weeks of content right there. That’s something you can roll into. If you figure out some of your favorite movies, we’ve got Scarface coming out. They’ve got the new Ant-Man coming out. Somebody did a creative thing, they created Note-Man. I do not have the market cornered on using movies titles. We’ve used Note Wars and the Note Jedi and that stuff to attract attention on t-shirts. That has helped out tremendously and got a lot of people raising capital. JR, one of our Mastermind students, he was walking on the beach in Fort Myers with a Note Wars t-shirt on and somebody asked him about it. It started a conversation and led to the guy investing $500,000 with him. That’s what marketing is all about, getting people to avert their attention for a few minutes to you and then they’ll end up doing more. The more that you do, the more compounds and exponentially grows because they see, “I’m going to go to your Instagram page or I’m going to go to your Facebook page or I’m going to follow your podcast or your LinkedIn.” It’s okay to share this stuff. Some people are so serious. In today’s world, this world is way too serious. Society, we need to laugh a little bit more. We need some laughing gas. We need a little bit more wine and a little bit more blueberry in our diet to make things a little more effective.

If you are listening on iTunes and Stitcher, thank you. You can always catch us with video replay by going to WeCloseNotes.tv to take a look at all our 1,100 plus videos that we have online. This is a great way to help market your stuff and it could be about a variety of things. You can ask questions, things you learn the most. There is no wrong answer when it comes to marketing. The only wrong answer is not doing at something. We all have different things. Some like to cook, cooking with notes, “Here’s how you cook up a good return. Smell the return.” If you see something, it draws your attention, grab it. Put your twist on it.

We have a question, “How do you prime a creative pomp if you’re in a slump or pressed for time and drawing a blank? What are some of the things you do to recharge and get a fresh take? We all do that sometimes.”

I had a chance to meet Mark Victor Hansen a few years back. When I was an early entrepreneur, 2001, 2002, I used to listen to a lot of motivational speakers on tapes. They talked about making your car a classroom. I had Mark Victor Hansen’s tapes and I listened to them over and over and over again. I got a chance to meet him a few years later. I was excited to meet him. I told him, “I used to listen to this tape series all the time. I actually wore the tapes out and had to go buy a new set.” He started chuckling. I said, “What’s so funny?” He goes, “I was at one of my lowest points when I created that, one my lowest points that helped pulled me out of a slump.” That was amazing because I was at one of my lowest points when I started listening to that stuff and it helped pull me out of a slump. If you’re in a slump, get away. If you’re head down so focused on something, you’re drawing a blank, the best thing I can tell you to do is get up and walk away. Go do something. Go to a movie. Go hang out somewhere. Go get your beer. Just relax, get your mind fresh because sometimes you need to shake it off.

Movies are great. I’ll put on movies at the house sometimes and just let it run. Reservoir Dogs, Reservoir Notes. I look at what’s doing well. I was drawing a blank one week. One Sunday night, I’m sending emails out for our Note Night in America. I was literally drawing a blank on what the hell to talk about. I started flipping through my photos on my phone, my images and things like that. What are some things that I’ve seen and have drawn my attention? I came across a picture that Steph had somebody create, which she took my face and put it on top of Ryan Reynolds’ body or a Chippendale’s body as motivation put on for the New Year. I’m like, “I could get six pack abs. I could do that. It’ll just take a bit of time.” I was like, “Strip down. What am I going for? Marketing. We’ll do strip down marketing.” That was a great idea, great image. We sent that out. It was a great image for stuff like that. When you are struggling, look at stuff that you like, stuff that cracks you up. Talk about some things that you’re struggling with. Share the struggle, #EmbraceTheSuck. Read books or things that will make you feel good. Jack Canfield wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul. We got a chance to meet Jack Canfield as well. Just share the stories.

Sometimes sharing the struggle is a good thing. We’ve shared the struggles when we were struggling through things. I like fruit, blueberries obviously. I like to go get a pomegranate and I’ll break it apart and eat it individually. Black cherries are one of my favorite things. Often you’ll have a lot of great ideas just sitting there and going around the water. You’ve all heard or experienced the power of water, whether you get your best ideas in the shower. I get my best ideas just sitting and looking at water or in the water floating around. I’ve got to be in a water for when I’m on vacation. It’s relaxing but it’s also clearing. Steph can vouch for this because we’ve been in some places where it’s storming and raining outside and my crazy ass, I’m going down to the beach, I’m jumping in the water. I like the feel of the waves crashing and trying to suck me out. in the undertow. That’s a great thing to do. If you can get away from everything, stress relief, turning voices off in your head is great. Getting a massage is another great thing that some people do. I’ve enjoyed going to the noise deprivation chamber a couple of times and let my mind go quiet. I’ve gotten some great ideas out of that. Sometimes sporting events is a great one to go to. We’ve got a big one coming up, the Super Bowl. Do I have something up my sleeves for the Super Bowl? You definitely better believe your ass that I’ve got something lined up for the Super Bowl.

We’ve got a question, “Great ideas for our note investors group that meets here in San Antonio. We’ve got a big slump in our meetings since October. We want to do more together in 2018. We’re very small, just few people so far. We’re looking to expand it so we can get more folks together who are interested in notes.”

This is what I would do. One, if you have not created a Meetup group for your group, you need to do that because that will help you automatically share some things in there. Second thing, create an event in Facebook or use Eventbrite. I’ve been using Eventbrite for events but you can use recurring events. We’ve been using that for some stuff and we’ve seen some great feedback from that. Another thing, if you’re in San Antonio, find out when the Alamo REIA or the SAREIA meetings are. They’re the two biggest investment clubs. Go there and ask if you can get up and talk about, “We’re doing a special meeting just for those who are investing or interested in notes.”Those couple of things combined together will help you grow your little group. You got four or five people barely on the verge of being a Meetup group. SAREIA doesn’t focus on notes. Victor Moffitt doesn’t focus on notes because it doesn’t pay his title company that he has as his focus for business. If you talk to Alamo REIA, they occasionally have note investors come through there to talk about it. I guarantee Tom and everyone in that group started with National REIA group. Those are two things that I recommend for you. Just getting out and networking, not being afraid to stand up in front of a crowd is one thing you got to do. I know public speaking is not the easiest thing for most people. I get it. Trust me, it’s 30 seconds, nobody’s going to shoot you at all. I’m struggling with the one thing right now.

I’m speaking in Orlando at the Podfest and I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to talk about in my timeslot. What I’ll probably talk about is the growth of this podcast, what we’ve done marketing-wise. I’ll give some tips. I’ll talk about the marketing octagon. Sometimes when you’re starting off, when you get out, just get up and don’t be afraid to get up in front of people. Get up and say something. I know it’s not easy. Prepare notes, what you’re going to talk about. Keep it short and sweet but prepare, practice if you struggle. That’s one of the best things that will help draw people. I guarantee, people are looking for notes. People are looking for better returns. Steph and I had a typical conversation with fix and flippers who can’t find deals because they’re too busy with that stupid mindset to understand the note game.

2018 is one-twelfth of the way done. I wrote down some goals and I already had one accomplished pop up. I got back after the cruise. I want to go spend some time in the Bahamas. I don’t want to go on castaway cave, a Disney thing or I don’t want to swing through Caribbean. I want to go hang out in the Bahamas for a couple of days. Lo and behold, I got a phone call from an investor who’s been wanting me to come on his event for a Memorial Day weekend. I always have something planned that weekend because it’s birthday weekend. I just simply asked him, “What else do you have that you’re doing? Do you have a webinar we’re going to be on? Do you have another event?” He goes, “I do this breakout session, masterminding this getaway to every January. We’re doing the next one in the Bahamas.” I said, “I would love to come to that and speak at that.” He goes, “You would?” Literally on the calendar, written in permanent marker is this thing, “Bahamas January 16th through 19th.”Don’t know exactly what it all is. I just know I’m speaking there and I’m excited about it. You can expect some marketing for that to go into place. I’m almost like Hannibal Lecter. Give me an hour, I’m good. Give me a day, even better. Give me a week, I’m unstoppable. Give me a month, there’s no way you’re going to hold me in. That’s the beautiful thing about marketing because it builds, it builds, it builds. The more you do it, the better you get. The more you work that muscle, the better you can get with muscle memory and things are going to pop up to make things happen.

I hope this episode was valuable to you all, sharing some marketing successes. We’ve had marketing things we set up that just bombed. Nobody responded. Greatest idea ever. You’re going to have some strikeouts along the way. Don’t be afraid to slam it. It’s okay to be mighty Casey and strike out occasionally. Babe Ruth didn’t hit a homerun at battery time. Barry Bonds didn’t hit a homerun every time. Those guys may have hit the most home runs but they also struck out the most for the record for that stuff. Keep that in mind with your marketing and your note business and your other real estate stuff you have going on.

Thank you for listening. If you’re on iTunes, Stitcher and all those great podcast platforms and you love the episode, make sure to leave a five-star review. Make sure to share the show with other people as well. Have a great day. Go make something happen. Don’t let something pass you by. If you’re not further along in your goals for the year, get started. You can always start today. See you all the top.

 

Important Links

• Tribes
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• Crushing It!
• Think and Grow Rich
• Three Feet From Gold
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• Les Brown
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• Forbes Riley
• Distressed Mortgage Expo
• Fifty Shades Darker of Notes
• Note Funding League
• Note C.A.M.P.
• Paper Source
• Gemini Capital
• theCHIVE
• National Social Media Day Austin
• Quest IRA
• Financial Friends Network
• Mark Victor Hansen
• Chicken Soup for the Soul
• Eventbrite
• Alamo REIA
• SAREIA
• Victor Moffitt
• National REIA
• Podfest

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