EP 331 – The Dallas Note Mastermind

NCS 331 | Dallas Note Mastermind

NCS 331 | Dallas Note Mastermind

 

A mastermind is having a group of people coming together working towards common goals. Scott discusses what is in store for the upcoming Dallas Note Mastermind in Texas that marks the 20th Note Mastermind meeting. Scott talks about getting people together who are closing deals and helping them through the event to take that next step in their business. He also dishes out on what separates this mastermind from others, giving us insights on what and who to expect. At the end of the day, this mastermind is a venue for people who have similar interests with one another to close on deals while learning at the same time.

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The Dallas Note Mastermind

It is the day that we head up to Dallas for our Note Mastermind. We’ll spend a couple of days in Dallas for the Quest Expo as well. We’re excited. It’s going to be a great event. We have 55 of our Mastermind students. We have five or six sneak peeks, people coming in to see what this mastermind is all about. We are honored to have them. We’ve got about seven or eight of our vendors coming in too. It’s going to be a great event.

What is a mastermind event? Napoleon Hill coined the term mastermind, just a few years ago. A mastermind is when you have a group of people coming together working towards common goals. There are different types of masterminds. I will tell you first of all what my mastermind is not. My mastermind is not a pitch fest. Unfortunately, I have been to masterminds before where it was more of a, “Let’s get you in the door and then try to sell you to death at our event.” That’s not what my event is. That’s the first and foremost.

We do have some vendors coming in. We’ve got Aaron Young of Laughlin Associates, who is going to come in and hang out. At the Quest Expo, he may join us a little bit. We’ve got Shante Duffy coming in from Madison Management. We’ve got Joel Markovitz and Daniel Singer from the Daniel Singer Law Group coming in to spend a couple of days with us. We’ve got Franco Barile from Sottile & Barile coming in from Ohio, who’s an attorney talking about the markets. We’ve got Dickie Baldwin from Baldwin Advisory Group. Brent Buscay from Laughlin Associates will be there as well.

This is my favorite three weekends for the most when we have our mastermind. We have it three times a year and what it is, it’s not about me. These people are our coaching students, but this whole weekend is not about me. It’s about getting my students together who are closing deals or taking the next step in their business and helping them make that next leap. It’s not just from me talking. It’s more so from everybody that’s there because we have some amazing people coming, not just vendors, but some great people. Other note investors are after closing deals, making things happen. That’s the most powerful aspect of the masterminds. When you have people that are trying to do the same thing that you are, it’s a sharing, giving environment. It’s not something that’s, “I’m going to hoard all my resources, I’m going to hoard my vendors, I’m going to hoard myself,” because we truly do believe in a term called coopetition.

Coopetition is a term coined by Joel Markovitz. We’re all out looking to close deals ourselves. We’re all looking to make things happen. Whenever you can bring people together to cooperate, to help you overcome hurdles like, “Use this vendor, use this realtor.” Who are the people that you’re using in your market that were not buying, getting some more business whether the attorneys or vendors or whatever it is? We also have people that come to our mastermind that want to invest. They just don’t want to do the work. There’s nothing wrong with investing and giving money to somebody else to do the deal. That’s one of the things to keep in mind as well.

What Is In The Mastermind?

What are some of the things that we do at our Note Mastermind group? First and foremost, one of my favorite things that we do besides putting everybody at roundtables, is we have discussions among ourselves. Topics like what’s been your biggest hurdle? What’s been your biggest successful money-raising campaign? What’s been your best marketing tool? What has been your biggest a-ha moment? What helped you get to the point where you’re closing 50 deals a year versus five deals a year? You surround yourself with other people. People who come with their spouses or business partners, we split them up as well. We divorce them for a couple of days so they can meet different people because that’s the best way to mastermind. Try to meet as many people as possible.

I have been to different masterminds in the past and there are a lot of presentations going on. There’s nothing wrong with presentations about who you are or what you are, but when you don’t have the time to network or talk with people and be at the roundtable, you’re constantly at computer working and other people are talking, that’s not an effective mastermind group. It’s also ineffective mastermind group when you have a lot of people that have no experience showing up. That’s not fair for those that have experience. That’s not fair to everybody else there that’s a part of it. We’re honored that we have several investors coming in. We’ve got several vendors coming in, closing a lot of deals so it gives a lot of great real-world investment experience.

Our mastermind is usually three days. It’s usually Friday, Saturday, Sunday. With the Quest Expo being what it is, we took a vote at the last Mastermind event and decided to change it up a little bit, make it Thursday, Friday. That way, everybody could hang around that weekend for the Quest Expo. It’s just an opportunity for our 60 plus people to show up and hang around and network with another 500, or 440 when you take away our attendees, with other people there. It’s an opportunity to raise some capital. We got some cool little swag for them to use to market themselves to the event. For those that are closing deals, they’ll walk out of the Mastermind event with some buttons, some deals they closed.

NCS 331 | Dallas Note Mastermind

Dallas Note Mastermind: Mastermind is something that is just a one-time event. It’s something that you have to build.

 

We started our Mastermind event in 2010. We have been doing this for a while. What’s funny is I see all these other masterminds pop up, “We’re going to have mastermind.” A mastermind is something that is not just a one-time event. It’s something that you have to build on year in, year out, aspect of things. We’ve had our masterminds since 2010. It started off with twelve people spending nine days together in a big house in Davenport, Florida, just outside of Orlando. We bought some notes together and worked some deals that helped launch to where that has grown.

Every time we do a mastermind, it’s always not about what I get out of it. It’s what my students get out of it. It’s what the attendees get out of it. We always have a different discussion on some things, whether it’s marketing, raising capital, and deal sources. This time around, we’ll talk about some deal sources with everybody. We’ll do a social media survey. We’ll see where everybody’s at, how they’ve grown, give some awards out, but more so than anything else, it’s all about case studies. That’s what you come together. You want to hear from other people about the deals that they’re doing and hurdles that are coming.

I’ve done this for a while where I put a lot of my different deals up there, not all of them because it would take forever for us to do that, but a big chunk of case studies up. As of right now, we have about 23, 24 case studies that students have sent and some Mastermind members have sent over that we’ll spend some time going through. That’s one of the fun things is making it a competitive nature at the roundtables. We’ll have eight tables of people coming together. It’s a pretty good size group. It’s not our largest mastermind event, but it’s not our smallest one either. People coming together, we put them in roundtables and as we go through case studies, one of the things that we’ll do is have the tables bid on the assets before they’re given what the winning bid was.

Whoever is the closest person to the final bid offer, that table wins some goodies. They get little things, but they win across the way for the weekend. That’s the fun thing is we put people in a little competitive nature. Every table has to put a bid in, we give them some before information, they make an offering and we’ll see what happens a little afterward. That’s the most valuable aspect. There are some good, there are some bad, and there are some ugly case studies. How do you overcome those things? How do you overcome bad things? How do you find those deals? Where did you get it from? Was it performing or non-performing? What was your exit strategy? What were your returns on the deal? That is the favorite thing by far. I think everybody loves the case studies.

Of course, we have a good time. We usually got a happy hour too. If there’s a little bit longer time, we would probably do a fun excursion, but since we’re condensing three days into two days, we’re not really taking an excursion and it’s hotter than hell in Dallas right now. We’re going to spend the time networking, having a good time, having fellowships, and diving into deals and case studies and everybody’s businesses. Some of the things we’ve done in the past, we’ve done some hot seats. We may do a little bit of that this time around. We’ll bring few people to talk about their businesses, let other people pick their brains. We always give out a social media award or two for those that are doing a great job social media-wise. We’ve got those and we picked those up from the store.

We’ve got a couple of new awards this time around. We’re going to do the most improved investor of the year and then we’ll do an investor of the year. I haven’t done that in a while, but we got some great people that are doing some good things and so we’re going to share some of those things. There’s basically a couple of awards we have. We have two social media ones, most improved investor, and the investor of the year award. We’re excited about that. We have a good time and that’s the most important thing in this business. I think in the note business, it’s more important than what we’ve seen anywhere else. It is a niche business. It’s a little bit more of a longer-term play on deals and I think everybody knows that. What you have to realize too is you’re not in it alone.

Who Are In The Mastermind?

If you can mastermind and reach out to people that have not only their best interests at heart, but they also have your best interests at heart too. We don’t let everybody in our mastermind. It’s one thing that a lot of people I see with new mastermind springing up, they let anybody in and I don’t think that’s a good thing. You’ve got to be selective because a true mastermind, for it to be effective, it’s got to be a little bit narrow-focused. You’ve got to find people. If you have it broad or it’s not a niche, it’s not going to make sense. You can’t help everybody. That just doesn’t work that way. You can help once or twice but for the long-term stability of things, I’m sorry, that’s not going to work in the long run.

The second thing is you just can’t open it up to people like they’re going to show up because if you open up, honestly, I think you’ve got to have an investment of some sort. The reason I say an investment of some sort is then you have people there that have a vested interest. It’s worth them showing up. If you offer up something where it’s a free mastermind or stuff like that, honestly, if there’s no investment, they’re not going to show up. They’re not going to care. You’re going to have a lot of price pigs, people that show up to things on a timely basis that don’t ever do anything and that’s not what you want.

NCS 331 | Dallas Note Mastermind

Dallas Note Mastermind: You need to be doing deals and making offers. It’s great if you are getting to help people there and show up the happier man.

 

What we are more proud of than anything else in what we do is our students are closing deals and that’s what the Mastermind’s all about. When we did our last one in Cape Coral, we had over 2,000 deals closed between those that were there. We’ve got a sizable chunk of assets that I know that they’ve closed there. We’ve got some pretty good-sized hitters who closed 50, 60, 70 assets that are doing an amazing job, people that are rocking the world. Of course, we’ve got people that closed on their first deal or their second deal or still looking to close their first deal. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a beautiful thing. They’re working, they’re making offers, and they’re getting things countered. What they have to realize as well is the numbers game is important too.

You can’t get frustrated. You’ve got to stick to it. You’ve got to keep following up. That’s one of the best things about coming in, is you see people who have been in your shoes who are walking the walk or doing the things that they needed to do and learning from their experiences and they’re willing to share those experiences with you. Years ago before I started my coaching, I was a part of another educational group. I coached for them, getting deals closed, and they had a commercial investor mastermind where people get together once a quarter or once every three to four months. They work in commercial deals. They close zero deals out of that. I’m like, “That’s so difficult. There are so much work and so much time invested not to have any type of success, not to get any deals closed.” I’m like, “We’re not doing that.” We are not doing that with what we do. We want to make sure that people are closing deals, getting things done and rock and rolling.

Steph is a big advocate. She’s a big onboarding for our mastermind group. She loves talking to people, getting to know them, who are coming in, their experiences. She’s the one handling the hotel, the food, the event space, making sure the room blocks are taken care of. She does a great job with that. Steph has been a big part of the Mastermind group. She was there at the very first one. She’s been to every one of them and taking it on. That’s the beauty of that. We cannot do what we do without Steph, obviously. Steph kicks butt. If you’ve had a chance to meet Stephanie, you know this already. If you have not, I’m sure you will agree. Once you get a chance to meet her, she does a great job of working behind the curtains and make sure everybody’s doing well and having a good time. It’s not easy putting on a hotel event, no matter whether it’s twenty people or 200 people.

How To Make The Most Of The Mastermind

There’s always a lot of moving parts, especially when you bring in people from across the country and you have different dietary needs and things like that. The most important thing I can tell you is it is a great group of people that you want to pick out. If you had to go to the family store and pick out your friends and family at the family store, these are the people that you’d be picking out. These are the people that you like hanging out with and you like having dinner with. It’s become a great network across the country to help people do big things.

Somebody asked a good question, “Any tips on how to get the most out of the event? How should attendees prepare?” Show up, come in, don’t put any airs on, be honest. If you closed on a dozen deals, close on a dozen deals, don’t over promise or under deliver. Don’t come in and say something that you’re not because people will feed through that line of crap really fast. Just come on in. If you’re preparing for the mastermind, what’s your biggest need? What’s your biggest weakness? What’s your biggest strength? Those are the things because at the roundtable, those and other topics pop up. You’re going to want to talk about that. You’re going to want to share those topics as we get rock and rolling throughout the thing. Don’t ever eat alone at a mastermind. Grab somebody, have a dance card, “Do you want to grab a dinner tonight? Do you want us to grab lunch together? Do you want to meet in the morning and have breakfast down here early? What are the things that you want to accomplish and what’s the biggest needs in your business?” Just come back to the table and if you have something, “Scott, I’m struggling with this. Is there somebody here that I could talk to about this?” “Talk to this person.”

One of the great things is we have people rotate tables. I’ll tell you, “You’re at this table today, table three today, table four tomorrow.” You’re rotating. If you’re there with your business partner or your spouse, I’m splitting you up because that’s the best way. If your spouse is not in the note business, they can hang out at the pool, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a great time at the pool, there’s a place there. That’s totally fine and acceptable if your spouse is not in note business, but if you’re doing something after night, going to dinner or something like that, bring your spouses along, have fun. Let them have an opportunity to meet other people because that is one of the great things about spouses coming in and say, “You don’t get the chance to meet me.”

Here’s the guy that we watched on TV or whatever. Here are the people we talk about. Here’s Chris Seveney, Gail Greenberg. Here’s Cody Cox. Here’s Karen Peterson. Here are the people that are doing things on a regular basis. Here’s Bill Griesmer. You get a chance to meet somebody. You get to know them personally. If you have an asset in Ohio or an asset in Pennsylvania or asset in Oregon, you got someone to reach out to. Someone that you know, someone who will probably pick up the phone and give you a phone call. That’s what you have to realize, you’re assets to each other and you know business, coopetition. “Who’s buying in these states? Who’s buying in what states? Who’s investing in those markets that can either drive by the asset for you or they have vendors there to help you out with stuff or maybe a deal that you could maybe wholesale to or flip to real fast?” You know they’re serious, you’ve had a chance to meet them, you’ve seen what their business is doing, and that’s a very valuable asset.

That’s one of the big things about the mastermind group. Everybody’s there, they’re coming in, and doing something and it’s a beautiful thing. We bring in attorneys and we bring in vendors. It is not a pitch fest, I will tell you that. We bring in some asset protection and oftentimes Aaron Young or Brent Buscay will be coming in and talk about some asset protection. It’s a different topic to people that are closing 50 deals versus someone who’s never closed their first deal. They’ll sit down with Brent, talking about some of the things that they want to do, estate planning, things like that. I think it’s important. I was surprised to read that with the passing of Aretha Franklin, she left no will, she left no trust, nothing.

We always have a meet and greet happy hour the night before. We have one at night at 7 PM in the hotel bar there at the Westin Galleria. It’s a meet and greet. We open that up for people who want to come and hang out to. You get a chance to meet some people that are not part of the mastermind or not going through a sneak peek. It’s an opportunity to meet a few of the other people coming into town.

The mastermind closed-door, it’s not open to everybody. We offered a few sneak peek seats just for people that maybe are on the verge. They want to get into the mastermind but they don’t know exactly everything. That’s fine, come out, see what it is, and see for yourself. We’re excited to have five or six sneak peek people come in. I don’t know the final number, but we’ve got some great people that I’m excited and I’ve been following online for a while. We’ve got people coming from all across the country, from New Jersey, New York, down to Florida, all across Southern California, all the way up to Oregon. We got people from Michigan, Chicago, Ohio, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Illinois, Kentucky, just some great people.

NCS 331 | Dallas Note Mastermind

Dallas Note Mastermind: We want to make sure that people are closing deals and getting things done.

 

I’m very blessed that we have people that come in from all over to literally spend the two days, three days with us. I’m excited about the Quest Expo. I’m honored to be speaking there. I got to work with my presentation for them, but I’m really honored to be at Quest to help them support on their big expo push as well, being a vendor and sponsor there. We’re doing a little something more at Quest with VIP tickets. We will be doing a VIP lounge for our Mastermind members. If you have meetings with people or investors, you can take them there. They’re a little bit quieter place than the Quest VIP room. That will be available on Saturday. We’ll be around Saturday night for the event, for the Casino Party as well that Quest is throwing on and then head home Sunday night after everything is wrapped up. Then I’ll be back in the office rocking and rolling.

We have a big push out with assets that we’ll be moving over the next couple of weeks as well too. We’re starting to sell and then the next two weeks will be full of me with different case studies. Don’t be surprised if the next five or six days here up in Note Closers Show once we get back from the Expo and the mastermind are just case studies. Here’s a case, here’s an asset, and moving those across the board. That’s our biggest goal. I’m excited. We’ve got some cool guests coming on over the next couple of weeks or two. We’ll be bringing on a Wall Street trader to talk about the business, talk about the market. We’re excited to have them. Scott Duffy will be coming on. He has an amazing book called Breakthrough. He’s coming on to be a guest. We’re just working on some great stuff. You’ll probably see a few of our Mastermind members on. We’re going to bring out a few people on to interview them, to talk about their businesses, talk about what they’ve got going on, and the breakthroughs that they’ve had as well. I don’t have much else to share with you.

You can have masterminds at different REIA club meetings, you can have masterminds and get together as long as you have a common mindset. I’ve been a part of different masterminds in the past. Some have been good, others didn’t do much for me. Not that I did learn from everything, but if it is a long-term for me to spend time and money and days away from my business, I get to make sure that my time is best spent. It’s the most valuable thing I can have. We are excited. I’ve got a couple guys coming in that have done some big things. They’re buying 300, 400 houses the last couple of years and they’re looking at the note space. They’re wanting to learn a little bit more about the note space.

We’re excited to have Scott Brown. He had been a part of our mastermind from USA Private Money coming in. This will be his first mastermind event. He’s been through the Fast Track a few months ago and just changes up your business. We’re excited to have Scott Brown there. He will be able to teach a lot of stuff. We’ve got Mike Jordan, we invited him to the Mastermind. He’s very active with the note space in Michigan. We’re excited to have him there and he runs a big office outside of Detroit. Jason Bible from Right Path Real Estate is actually going to be coming up and hanging out for a couple of days. I know that they’re working on something. Jason just does a great job and they’re doing some transition and some things too. I’m excited to have Mr. Bible join us up in Dallas for a couple days along with him.

He’s also speaking at the Quest Expo. I’m excited to have him there and get a chance to mind meld with those people. We have our vendors coming just providing good stuff. Get a chance to hang out with some things. I can’t tell you how much we enjoy these. If this was a three-day event, we usually take people out on something fun. In the past, we’ve done wine excursions, we took people out wine tasting before we hit to San Diego. We took people to Napa and we ran out of the vineyard for the afternoon. We’ve taken people out in dolphin cruises and sunset cruises down in Cape Coral several times. That’s always a fun thing to do, airboat rides, wine-making things in San Antonio.

We’re excited about this. There are lots of great stuff going on. For those that aren’t joining us, you’re missing out. For those that are thinking about it, our next Mastermind will be the end of the year mastermind, December 7th, 8th, and 9th. That’s down in Cape Coral, Florida at the Westin Resort down there. You may want to circle your calendar for that. We’ll have a couple of sneak peek seats available for that. That promises to be a big event as well.

Other than that, that’s all I’ve got for you. Go out and make something happen. For tho

se coming to Dallas, we’ll see you in big D. The meet and greet, happy hour for those who are not able to make that, hopefully, we’ll see you at the Quest Expo. Lots of great stuff to talk about once we wrap up with these two back to back events. Otherwise, go out and make something happen. We’ll see you all at the top.

 

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