Note investors are given the opportunity to travel and this is one of the best things to enjoy in the real estate investment space. Going to different places means you also get to expand your network. You can travel as long as you have internet, a laptop and a cell phone. Having all this expansion means that you’ve already met with vendors. Meeting vendors translates to learning new strategies and exit strategies. Learn the things Scott loves about notes.
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We’re getting ready to start something here that is going to add a lot of value to you. We’re going to start focusing on some specific markets, some specific cities out there that have a lot of value for the note investors in the distressed investor’s game. Although not every one of these cities is going to be the top ten markets to move to, there are a lot of value to these markets that’s why I’m bringing on some of my guest experts, some of the people that are actually investing or working in these markets that have a lot of resources. We have some friends and also some people that I’m interested in getting to know better along the way as well. There are a lot of things I love about the note industry. There are a lot of things that I absolutely love about what we do on a daily basis. I’ll start it off and share a little bit of the inside of what we have and then we’ll go from there.
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Countless Opportunities; The Ten Things To Love About Notes
Number ten on the things that I do, I honestly love the opportunity to travel like we have. We have traveled over the last year quite a bit. I’ve traveled quite a bit over the last seven years to some really cool places for our note business, from speaking at different expos to hanging out in Vegas for the NoteWorthy for almost a month and PaperSource, and other things like that. I made a great episode with Bill Mencarow from PaperSource. Steph and I were talking about when we used to have workshops that we had at hotels, just the great stuff of having Joel Markovitz and Val Sotir and Marc Gold, Jack Krupey, and Aaron Young, just to name a few of the guys that would come out and hang out with us and would have fun in the evenings. I miss that a little bit. Those are some of great the things about travel which was really cool, going places and meeting a lot of interesting people and seeing a lot of things first-hand. Travel is always the best thing.
Number nine, I love the fact that we can do this note business from anywhere. I love the fact that if you’ve got internet and a laptop and a cell phone, you can reach out to asset managers, your borrowers, and your vendors and do it from wherever you’re at. We’ve had students who closed deals from the beaches to Barcelona, to Australia, to everywhere in between. I was in the middle of a cruise ship talking to my vendors and getting some deals done in between excursions. It’s just a fun thing to be able to do this from anywhere and not having to really be in an office unless you really want to be. I love the fact that we actually have more inventory still than a lot of the other fix and flippers, the other apartment investors, landlords. We get a lot of people who come into the note game looking for an inventory because this is still the place where we see it at, where we still find it at.
Ten Things To Love About Notes: If you’ve got internet and a laptop and a cell phone, you can reach out to asset managers, your borrowers, and your vendors and do it from wherever you’re at.
There’s still a lot of inventory out there. It’s still very prevalent with stuff. You’ve got to search a little bit more than you used to but we’re still leaps and bounds ahead of those that are tracking down distressed buyers or distressed homeowners, trying to buy the foreclosures or taking off one or two. We really are far ahead and beyond a lot of those entities or other investors. Number seven, I love our vendors. I love the people that we work with are vendors. Even some of the vendors that we don’t use are still great people and I love to work with them. It’s one of the great things about going to events is given a chance to hang out with our vendors, build some of those relationships up and be able to talk with them about what’s going on and getting to know them as individuals. It often happens that you get to know somebody individually, it often works well together.
Number six, I love the people. I love our note family, our students. I love the people outside of our vendors. It just seems that we’ve got a really friendly group of individuals. Some people have mentioned that they thought when we talk about a note family, when they come to our workshops, when they come to our Fast Track training, they’re surprised at the giving of people. That doesn’t surprise me because we’ve got a great group of people. If you’re an asshole, you don’t last around this business long. Some of my mentors that I have had as mentors over the years have been some of the best and amazing people. I’m still able to call them friends. That’s one of the big things that’s important. You always want to give respect to your mentors, the people that have brought you up and brought you along because they didn’t necessarily have to do that. They don’t necessarily have to give you a lot of information or help you with your outside businesses and things like that. It’s great to be able to help people.
Number five, I love that every day is a different day. It’s not the same thing or monotonous. Some days we’re working on assets, other days we’re working on market and other days we’re working at reaching out to the banks directly. Every day in the office is a little bit different. That’s what keeps me excited to come in here. You have a variety of things that are really happening, raising capital, the workouts. There are a lot of things you can be doing as a note investor that a lot of other people are missing out on. One of the most beautiful things out there is that every day is a little bit different. I love that we’re able to help people, especially with loan modifications or what I’m talking about with our borrowers. For those that are willing to work with us, I’m always glad to help them out. I love to hear them overcoming obstacles.
We can’t help everybody. I wish we could but there are some people that just don’t want to be helped. For those that reached out to us, when we drop them letters, our servicers reach out to them and try to get them to work with us. Those are good people. We’re glad to help those people. There are the people that are just deadbeat borrowers, you just can’t help sometimes. If they’re not going to help, you don’t run a charity and I don’t run a charity so it’s important to keep that in mind. I still get letters from borrowers that we modified a year, two years ago, or three years ago. We’re still paying on a regular basis, and that’s a phenomenal thing.
Ten Things To Love About Notes: You always want to give respect to your mentors, the people that have brought you up and brought you along because they didn’t necessarily have to do that.
I love the money with notes. I love the return on note investment that we see. I love the fact that we make more money by re-performing, keep it re-performing, and often high returns versus foreclosing. It doesn’t matter what aspect of paper you’re in. If you’re re-performing, great. If you’re in performing notes, great. If you’re non-performing, great. If you’re in the business, you’re going to be making money. Paper’s one of the most powerful tools out there and we’re always happy that people are making money. You heard Bill Mencarow talk about how he’s buying mostly performing notes and using his money to make double digit returns. That’s great. It may be a low double digit but it’s still better than anything in the stock market or certificate of disappointments or even a lot of 401(k)s out there.
That’s the thing to keep in mind, if you get into it, you’re buying assets and making offers and using other people’s money to do it, it can be a true win-win if you take care of the deal. That leads us to number two. I love the fact that we have so many different exit strategies, basically ten different exit strategies. For those who are like, “What the hell are the exit strategies? We’ve never been through a workshop or anything with you.”You always have the option to wholesale the notes, if it’s something you’re out here buying. You have the opportunity to get them to reinstate, start making payments on time. You also have number three to have them start a payment plan. A loan modification is a thing that you can do. You can do a loan modification and the opportunity to short sale it. If they won’t short sale it, they always can offer up a cash payoff that’s low enough.
Number six is a deed in lieu, cash for keys. It happens. We’re offering that up to a couple of borrowers Number seven is you can get a lot of them to do a loan assumption. It lets them come in and take over the payments. A lot of people don’t do that. We’ve done that with a couple of our deals relatively in the last couple of months. Just working with the new borrowers through our friends or family members or acquaintance of our existing borrowers to come in and get everything taken care of and taking over. Number eight is to foreclose. It’s our happiest thing to do but it still happens about half the time. Number nine is if we don’t want to foreclose, if we don’t want any of that, we can always sell that note and resell it off to somebody else. Number ten is a lot of things people forget with things like that. I like ten because there are some government programs that are available for different things, not as intense as they used to be with the Hardest Hit Funds and things like that. I only count that as extra gravy and never counted it as a really true exit strategy but the tenth strategy when it comes to that is using hardest hit funds or any other government programs are available out there. They’re all on different states and different things to modify.
The number one thing that we love is we see the changes and seeing people succeed as note investors and overcome a lot of obstacles. That’s our greatest thing that we see from people. We see the changes in people. I’ll give you an example. Wayne Snell has gone through a dramatic change in a great way. Gabe Kass has done a great job out of California seeing his mental changed being from distressed and stressed out with his boss at his job to where he’s at now, loving life. I love seeing the light. I love the fact that people like Gene Chandler has stopped their hotshot business and just focus on notes full time. I love the fact that Robby Woods has gone from being a deadbeat borrower to doing something that he enjoys and has found something that eventually he really loves. We’ve helped so many people overcome things or make money. That is truly our biggest thing.
We love seeing success stories and we love seeing people really take advantage of the opportunities and that they do it in a timely fashion. A lot of people are looking for get rich quick scheme. This is not a get rich quick scheme. Notes are definitely not that. It’s a get rich over time thing if you’re doing it and working it. There are opportunities to have this expedited in six weeks to get on track, or a lot of people take six months. Some people want to take the free route, and the free route has not a lot of value to it. We see a lot of changes taking place in our Fast Track and Mastermind members, and we absolutely love seeing that. That is our favorite thing. It’s hanging out three times a year with our Mastermind members. It’s like Valentine’s Day every four months because we see so much passion, we see so much changes for the good. We see people overcoming obstacles and lights going on brighter than the light on the top of the Rio.
Those are the ten things that we love the most. We love seeing people overcome things. We love seeing people just absolutely do some amazing things. Honestly, notes has served as a launching platform for people and other things. I don’t get upset about that. I love the fact that I see friends of mine like Alia Ott and Terri Garner who started out notes with us. They did well with notes. They progressed at the self-storage side. It led as a vehicle to them to get where they are right now with Investors in Action and they’re starting to teach people in California. I love seeing Joseph Hobbs who’s been a Mastermind member in the past. He’s working with Paige Panzarello, the Cashflow Chick, and they started teaching workshops on note investing down in Modesto or Southern California. There’s plenty to go around as long as you do it with grace and class and things like that. I’m also very proud of the difference that has happened with me over the last ten years. It has not been without trials and tribulations.
It has not been without peaks and valleys, like anything else, but I would not change too many things along the way. I would change a few relationships along the way. You never know what’s going to go south until it’s after the event. I love seeing that a lot of people are networking and expanding themselves, or people partnering with other people, joint venturing on things. That’s always a great thing. As an extra bonus, people raising capital when they didn’t really have any belief in themselves to take things to the next level. That’s the important thing. That’s a sure sign of success. I don’t think it’s necessarily about your success individually. It’s more about the people that you surround yourselves with and how successful they are. That’s one of the biggest things in life that if you’re truly a mentor to people, that’s what’s most important. It’s making the people around you successful. It should not all be about you. One of the best things that we’ve done is instead of, “I Close Notes,” it’s “We Close Notes.”
Ten Things To Love About Notes: The number one thing that we love is we see the changes and seeing people succeed as note investors and overcome a lot of obstacles.
Thank you for listening, as always. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for making this one of the hottest podcasts out there. We really love our growing extended network in the note family. Note CAMP 5.0 which is slated for April 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th; we’ve got some really cool new speakers coming onboard as well. We’ve got some fresh blood coming in at NoteCAMP. We always try to add a chunk of new speakers to it every time so we’re pretty stoked. Some of these speakers I’ve talked to, they’re really excited about some of the things that will be featured on it.
I just wanted to take the time to thank some people. I got to thank some mentors of mine. I want to thank Bob Leonetti who helped me get into the note business. I want to thank Ron LeGrand who I learned a lot of stuff from the frontend. I want to thank Greg Reid who is a very big mentor of mine over the last few years. I want to thank Joel Markovitz who’s been a great friend. I want to thank Val Sotir, Mark Gold, Jack Krupey, just to name a few of the guys out there that run funds that we’ve done a lot of stuff with over the last couple of years. I’m glad to call them friends but also mentors and people to bounce a lot of ideas off. I want to thank Aaron Young who’s really been a great friend. I want to thank George Antone. I want to thank Stephen Epstein. George has done a great job with finance and the banker’s code. Thanks to Stephen Epstein and Mark Huber, who are some of our servicers who have done a tremendous job helping us with marketing. I know I’m going to forget some people here but I’m going to try my best. I want to thank my staff, Jennifer and Greg and our past staff members Nichole and Ryan who’ve done a great job over the last two years with us here.
One person I have to thank who’s done just a tremendous job and has always evolved and grown as much as I think I have in the last few years is obviously Stephanie Goodman, our VP of Operations, my Valentine. She does a great job and always is willing to jump in and do whatever she needs to do to help make things better and has such a big heart as well for our family and our mentoring students and our Mastermind members. Behind every successful man there’s even a stronger woman who does a lot of things that goes unseen. A big shout-out to her as well. If you get a chance to see her at an event, make sure to thank her because she does a lot of stuff that goes unseen behind the cameras, behind the emails, making sure that everything is running accordingly, that the bills get paid and on from there. If I’ve forgotten somebody, I apologize.
I have to thank Sandi Shaner as well, she’s been there, our sales rep early on. I’d like to thank all of our guests from The Note Closers Show, all of our speakers who have been on Note Camp in the past and in the virtual workshops. It is you that has helped make us more successful than others out there. Thank you for giving of your time, giving of your resources to share your message and help share the note love with our note family. I want a big shout-out to everybody. A big thanks to those that have been around and stuck around. We love you.
Going back to the list of ten, I’ll give a recap. I love to travel to places that we’ve been. I love the ability, number nine, that we can do this from anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. Eight, I love the inventory, that we have a lot more deal of love than a lot of other places. I love our vendors. I love the people in the note industry. It’s a very friendly society. I love, number five, that every day is a bit different in the note business, from raising capital to marketing to doing workouts, to speaking, to travel. I love helping people especially our borrowers who need help. We’re glad to help them out the best we can. I love the money, that we make money at this, we do what we do. Two, I love our different exit strategies that we have available to us that allows us to be able to scratch different inches by still being focused on one thing. I love, number one, seeing the changes in the people out there that we’re able to help. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Note Closers Show.
I want to make sure that you’re getting a special love from us here at WeCloseNotes.com. We’re running a very special sale. We’re going to do this good for our listeners through the month of February and right up to our March workshops for the 9th to the 11th. If you signed up for our March Virtual Workshop, go to NoteCAMP.Live and use the special code LOVE and you get a discount ticket for free to our Note CAMP 5 convention. I want to thank you for helping making us one of the hottest podcasts around for real estate investors. As always, feel free to leave us a review or share our podcast with anybody else out there who’s a real estate investor looking to take their businesses to the top. Have a great day and go out and make something happen and we’ll see you at the top.
Important Links
- NoteWorthy
- PaperSource
- episode with Bill Mencarow
- Joel Markovitz
- Val Sotir
- Marc Gold
- Jack Krupey
- Aaron Young
- Wayne Snell
- Gabe Kass
- Gene Chandler
- Robby Woods
- Investors in Action
- Joseph Hobbs
- Paige Panzarello
- Note CAMP 5.0
- Bob Leonetti
- Ron LeGrand
- Greg Reid
- Stephen Epstein and Mark Huber
- Stephanie Goodman
- Sandi Shaner
- NoteCAMP.Live
- Fast Track
- Mastermind