EP 396 – 2018 Year In Review

NCS 396 | 2018 In Review

NCS 396 | 2018 In Review

 

Another New Year means another great year left behind. Nothing makes you reflect more and be more excited of the future than nostalgia. As 2018 has come and gone, it is time for you to up your game and remember what you have learned from the past to claim 2019 as your year. For a 2018 year-end review, Scott Carson breaks down some of the highlights and the top ten episodes of 2018 for the podcast. Hitting over 155,000 downloads, he shares the episodes that made a huge impact to the majority of listeners. He gives out the things he has planned for the New Year for the company and the show, as well as some of the goals he personally set for himself.

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2018 Year In Review

First and foremost, thank you for being such a big part of our extended Note family. I’m amazed at the amount of success of the show has had in 2018. It’s crazy beyond expectations of what’s going on here. Let’s get rock and rolling here in a little bit. 2018 was an absolutely fruitful year of a podcast from January through December 31st. The numbers have been absolutely crazy and outstanding. I was looking at numbers a day and we have had over 155,000 downloads for 2018, which is a good size number for what we expected, and we continue to deliver a lot of content on a regular basis. We try to shoot for 150,000 and we beat that number. We went for 100,000 and went over 100,000 reviews. We are at a 105 five-star reviews on iTunes. Thank you for those who are watching, sharing and responding. We had a lot of episodes this year and it was right about 200 episodes for 2018. I’m able to log into my dashboard and be able to see what the top ten episodes are. I thought I’d share those top ten episodes with you.

I’ll talk a little bit about what we have planned for the New Year. Some of the goals that I’ve set for myself and the show and for WeCloseNotes.com. One of the great things about seeing some on a regular basis is you never know what episodes are going to resonate with a lot of people. I try hard to make sure that we are delivering good content and great speakers or vendors or investors or people that will add something to your business. I know we often have speakers that aren’t note investors. We’ve had a few people that aren’t real estate investors, but I believe they share a lot of great content that has something that is important whether it’s a mindset. It’s something to think about as you’re working through your note business.

#10. Episode 306

The tenth most downloaded episode was episode 306. This is the episode that featured Tyler Sheff from The Cash Flow Guys Podcast. The title of it is Mistakes, Multifamily and Raising Capital with Tyler Sheff. It drove over four figures in downloads for 2018. He is a great buddy of mine and also a fellow podcaster. I learned a lot from him. He came in just over a thousand downloads for the year which is exciting. Our episodes are averaging about a thousand downloads an episode which is exciting. Kudos to episode 306 with Tyler Sheff. He is a great friend and fan even though I’ve only met him since February 2018 at Podfest Expo in Orlando. I’m pretty stoked to spend some time with him and he’s added a lot to our show. He’s learned a little bit from us and we learned from him as well.

#9. Episode 332

The ninth most downloaded episode was episode 332. We talked about what was going on at the Quest Expo and the Dallas Note Mastermind. I was surprised about that but it did well, which is great. What’s funny is most of the time, we’re not doing any promotions of extra episodes. I’m not posting extra episodes into Facebook and then promoting them or running an ad on specific episodes. Most of it is from us posting or doing a live stream and then sharing it across our different platforms, which we’ve got enough of those. The thing to keep in mind is a lot of this is just people downloading episodes after episodes which were great for people taking advantage of the different content and sharing it.

#8. Episode 227

The number eighth most downloaded episode is a guy that we did earlier in 2018. He’s also a past student and a very active note investor. The eighth is episode 227 with our investor friend Bob Malecki and the specific title is Bob Malecki, Experienced Note Investor Helping Newbie Note Investors. What’s great about Bob is we spoke about BiggerPockets and what he’s doing this fund up in the Pacific Northwest and what his focus is. Bob is running a fund and he started a lot with his own IRA money and had been doing a good job. He buys a couple of notes here and there every couple of months and every quarter for their own portfolio. He is a good friend and he’s very active on BiggerPockets. He was the number eight most downloaded episode of 2018.

#7. Episode 230

NCS 396 | 2018 In Review

Bulletproof Title Due Diligence: Protecting Your Investments

The number seventh was no surprise. This might rank a little higher because we do such a big thing with them. It is episode 230, Bulletproof Due Diligence: Go from One to One Thousand Notes with Alex Goldovsky. Our buddy over at ProTitleUSA came in at number seven most downloaded episode. It was a close neck to neck with Bob and Alex Goldovsky. Alex pulled forward in the last minute. It was just above over Bob Malecki but Alex did a great job. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a great guy. He wrote Bulletproof Title Due Diligence. It’s a great book on reviewing your title, reviewing your collateral files, making sure things look forward to making sure that you’ve got a bulletproof deal when it comes to note investing. Alex is a great friend. He’s the CEO/Owner of ProTitleUSA as well. That was surprising, but it might be a little higher.

#6. Episode 223

Our next one is somebody that we love and who does a big job for us and for many others. She is our good friend. The top sixth episode of 2018 is episode 223. It’s the wonderful Shante Duffy from Madison Management. She was the number sixth most downloaded episode. We just spent time on that episode talking about servicing and boarding. We talked about Madison Management and some of the great features that they offer up. That’s a great episode. It would be in the top ten I would say if you read it, especially as a note investor because servicing works are such a big aspect of our business. It’s definitely no surprise that it’s the number six in the most downloaded episodes of 2018. I know many of those that are reading, whether it’s existing students or investors or people who are buying notes, if you have anything at Madison Management, you know that you are going to be happy. Shante does an amazing job over there with boarding and working with the different asset managers that you may have on your portfolio. Kudos to Shante and of course to Kevin Cordell over there who owns and runs Madison Management as well.

#5. Episode 307

The number five episode, this was a nice surprise because I had a lot of fun with this one. The thing to keep in mind with this one is a fun thing. It’s episode 307, the Ten Notes Commandments. It cracked me up to put this one together but I enjoyed it. The ten rules in stone that you need to focus on in your note business. I highly encourage you to read that one. It’s in favor of many people out there. We’ve gotten several reviews on that one episode alone and on Stitcher as well.

#4. Episode 343

The number four is one of our latest ones that we’ve had on the show. Somebody who’s come on and very active in the space, but not so much the residential side. Somebody I’ve known for a long time who also took it upon himself. To mark this episode is with Sal Buscemi. It’s episode 343, Commercial Note Investing with Sal Buscemi. Sal has been a good friend for years. I’ve known him for over a decade now. He focuses a lot on the commercial notes. He offered a couple of great bonuses on it. You will be able to download his commercial pitch deck for you to use as a guide when you’re pitching to investors and commercial projects. He gave a couple of other bonuses away as well too. Go out and read it. You will enjoy it. Sal’s got a lot of great stuff to share out there.

#3. Episode 320

I was surprised by this one and this ranked number three. I find it interesting that this would show up as number three. It’s episode 320, The Extra 5%. I was surprised at how far that one came as an episode. What was funny about it is how you could do a little bit more each day, you have three minutes an hour and you figure that comes out to about 72 minutes a day. That episode sprung from me speaking at the Dallas REI Meetup group hosted by Propelio with Daniel Chad Moore and Ryan Harper. From my five minutes on stage, we turned into an episode and I was surprised that people ran with it. It did a great job. It was a fun episode.

#2. Episode 272

The second most downloaded is not a surprise knowing what this individual did and what this individual did with our show. It’s funny because this guy was one of our co-guest hosts while I was traveling. It wasn’t one of the episodes that he did specifically with another fellow podcaster or fellow guest host or one of our Mastermind members out there. This guy took his specific individual interview about his note business and he put it as a link to that show at the bottom of his email signature. With every email he sent out to investors or marketed to his database, this show showed up to his database. I love it and he did a lot more marketing and expanding our database as well as expanding his. A big shout out to our buddy out of the Gardena Police Department, Eric Hyde. It’s episode 272, Policing Your Business As A Note Investor with Eric Hyde. It came in as the second most downloaded episode for 2018. Thanks, Eric for all that you do. Once again, if you’ve been on one of our shows that we’ve had a lot of guests on taking our show and using to mark yourself. Dan Deppen has done this as well and raised some capital. I know Eric Hyde raised probably a $500,000 for sharing this show and people reading and giving him a phone call. Kudos to Eric. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for helping to market your episode as well as out there. Thanks so much for what you do and kudos to what you’ve got going on in 2019 and all your success in 2018 as well.

#1. Episode 211

If number two is Eric Hyde, what’s the number one show? This one came as a surprise, heads, and tails above. It’s funny because we did zero to promote this episode and occasionally, we’ve had some episodes in some days where we go from having 1,000 downloads to 3,000 and 6,000 downloads. It’s very surprising. This stood out. It was one of the episodes that got binge listened to like crazy. Without further ado, the number one downloaded and listened to episode of the Note Closers Show in 2018 is episode 211, The KISS Method. It’s the Keep It Simple Stupid or Keep It Simple Silly or Keep It Simple Scott method. It got well-over 3,000 downloads individually on its own. We see so many picked us up. We had a bunch of people binge listen to the episode along with others out there. This is one of the episodes that did really well. It’s one of the earlier ones that we did. That would have been episode number 61. We filmed it in 2017 but it got listened to a lot in 2018, which is no surprise. That was our number one most downloaded episode of 2018, which I’m a big believer. Keep it simple. Give it the extra 5% and rock on. Surround yourself with good people.

Those are the top ten episodes of 2018 that people downloaded and binge listened to off of iTunes and Stitcher and all other podcast platforms. That’s not including the video downloads. It’s a little harder to track that across YouTube but we’ve had a tremendous number of downloads. We’re over 225,000 across other platforms and downloads on our podcast which is great. We’ve got some big goals for 2019. For other things that we want to focus on, we’re going to be continuing to do these four to five times a week and continue to crank out a lot of content. We’re excited because one of the big goals that we set in stone for ourselves when we first got started and it reiterated itself. When we were looking at podcasting numbers out there across the board for people was that very few shows make it outside of ten episodes. We did that in the first two weeks, but very few shows hit that 300-episode mark when it comes to actual podcasts. Three-tenths of 1% hit it to that level of 300 episodes and we’re not that far away.

One of the things that we want to do is to hit 300 episodes for the podcast. We had 150 episodes before we get rock and rolling with the podcast. We are at 340 or 350 or something like that which means we’ve got about another 150 to do before we hit that specific mark on iTunes. That’s one thing we’re looking for. We’re going to continue to deliver content follow up by speakers and vendors. What I was surprised about 2018 is what the podcasts have brought to us. It brought to us, students. It brought to us funding. It brought to us some opportunities in different platforms and being able to speak at other places and things like that. For those who are sharing this episode, thank you so much.

We continue to believe that this is going to be one of our main focal points for the next couple of years especially with the way the market’s changing. Anytime you can stay and continue to communicate with your tribe and everybody’s got a tribe. It’s just not me. You all have tribes out there in the good words of Seth Godin. There’s no excuse for you. The NFL season is over. You have the playoffs. If your team can make the playoff, I guarantee you, you’re not going to be enjoying the playoffs that much, but that’s not going to stop us from continuing to approach 2019 with extra gusto and deliver some great stuff. We’ve got some great guests lined up. We’ve been working on that through some messaging and social media posts with some of my friends and families out there. We’re bringing some great content to the podcast show for you.

Sponsors

To anybody out there, is there anything that stood out on the podcast that you enjoyed? One of the great things that we did at the last Note Mastermind at the first part of December 2018 was everybody round up their end of January goals, their end of March goals and then their end of June goals. Their one-month, three-months and six-month goals. One of the things I have to first give a big shout out is our sponsors and those who have helped us grow this show. First and foremost, I want to thank Elijah Whites and Kristie Whites from Serving Social who had been a regular contributor with our Marketing Mondays on the third Mondays of the month. We’ll continue to have those in 2019 as well. I’m excited because I believe they’re in the process of starting their own podcast too.

NCS 396 | 2018 In Review

2018 In Review: When things don’t go right, you just stick to it. Be committed and allow the results to come eventually.

 

I have to give a big shout out to one of our newest sponsors, Merrill Chandler and CreditSense. We want to thank them for being on there. They’ve got another class coming up here on the third or fourth weekend of January 2019 and we’ll have them on Wednesday. Merrill has been a big friend for years. I’m excited to have as a sponsor to the show. Aaron Young and Meghan Cole at Laughlin Associates, thank you for being a sponsor of the show as well. We do a lot with Laughlin Associates. We are a regular contributor but it’s always nice to have them reciprocate back as well as to be a sponsor and be a regular contributor to the show too.

2019: Simple And Committed

Our longest running sponsor, Quest Trust Company, Nathan Long and Quincy Long and Nate Hare. All of their IRA specialists: Ingrid, Anne Marie, Beatriz, Haley, Katie and Ashley Villa as well. It’s a great group of people over there. A big kudos to the whole Quest Trust team. Thanks for our sponsors and thank you for our vendors. Thank you for those who are listening to the show on a regular basis. We do work our butts off to try to provide some great content for you. Somebody posted this, “What’s your one word in a podcast form? What’s your big word for 2019?” What’s the word that’s going to identify with you for 2019? My word for 2019 is simple. Many people believe this. I’m just like you. There are days that are ups and days that are down. I try to overcome my down days by focusing on positives. When things don’t go right, you just stick to it. My big word for you for 2019 is committed because too many times I see people not committed to the game.

If you’re not committed to what you want to accomplish in 2019, you’re not going to find the success yet. You may drift. First and foremost, we all drift. There are things that I get sidetracked with. I have drifted in 2018 like anybody else has but the idea is you have to be committed to a couple of things. One or two things that you’ve got to be committed to and focus on that. Being consistent in what you’re doing. Be consistent in your marketing, in your email blast, and in your offerings. Kudos to Laura Blunk for closing on a couple more deals. Chris Seveney from the Good Deeds Notes Investing podcast, kudos to Chris and Gail. Chris closed down two deals on the last day of the year.

The thing that you have to realize more than anything else is times are changing. Things are getting faster left and right. I look at my schedule for the year and I look through my twelve-month calendar and seeing the things that we have going on. I’m extremely excited. I have an international speaking gig. I’m speaking in the Bahamas. I’ll be in Vegas. We’re going to be also in Tampa for the New Media Summit. I’m excited for some of the different things that are going on with our Note Meetup groups across the country. I’m excited to go on to San Diego at the end of February 2019 for the Traffic & Conversion Summit for the sixth or seventh time. I’m excited to be speaking at Podfest Expo in Orlando. I’m excited about our Mastermind in April. Steph and I joke about our schedule getting filled up and things like that, but I will be traveling less and less as best as I can. If I still travel, then I’ll be taking it for fun.

Goals

Our travel is scheduled a little bit more successfully this 2019. What I mean by that is if we are traveling at the Traffic & Conversion Summit in San Diego, we will host a meetup meeting one night while we’re out there. We will host a live podcast event while we’re out there. Those are some of the things that I mean in us truly trying to be a little more consistent in when we travel. Consistent in maximizing our schedule. It may take a little bit more of us juggling a few plates during those events, but it will be a great way for us to connect with you our audience and our extended Note family all across the country as 2019 moves on. We’re starting a Tampa Meetup group on February 20th, 2019. We will be doing that on a Wednesday night somewhere in Tampa with everybody out there before I go out to the New Media Summit where I’m an icon and speaking again.

What are some of your biggest goals? If you’ve got a big goal that you look forward to accomplishing this year. I’m not talking about twenty big goals. If you have twenty goals, I honestly don’t think you’re going to find success. You’ve got to have maybe one, two or maybe three goals at the max. You can’t list off twenty big things because you’re never going to have time to accomplish all of them. I think you’ll set yourself up for failure at that point. You need to have one, two or three major goals. The three big goals that you want to accomplish in 2019 and going from there. One would be a personal and one would be in business, finance or whatever it may be.

Our health has always been important to me so I will continue to be working out with my trainer, Thomas. One of the biggest things for us is we’re tweaking our focus up a little bit. We’re tweaking our focus on how we raise capital on a couple of things. We’re going to do it a little more so direct marketing to some investors here with our book using podcast leverage and using some of what we’re using here on a regular basis to raise capital. That’s one of the things that we’ll be doing. That’s going to be one of our major goals. I believe that we can raise somewhere between $10 million to $15 million in private capital at a very low interest rate. That’s one of our biggest goals for 2019. We want to have over 2,000 students for 2019 as well. It’s a big thing for us to do that. We’d love to max out our Fast Track sales. We’ve got seven or eight of those scheduled for roughly six people, but we’d love to put 50 people through our Fast Track Training. We are right at 41 or 42. We’d like to hit the 50 to 60 mark for 2019. Those are a couple of things that we’re focused on.

Someone says, “Solidify sources of distressed property in South New Jersey market, two, complete the first rehab, a seller financing project and three, get away with wife and family on a cruise for one or two weeks.” The cruise, do you have that scheduled? The biggest thing is I want you to accomplish your goals. If you want to take a two-week cruise, then you should go ahead and book it. Book it for June or July or August 2019. Go ahead and book it. I love owner financing. It’s a great exit strategy if you can’t sell the property traditionally. You’re going to get the biggest bang for your buck by selling the property traditionally. I don’t like selling houses on owner financing unless it’s in a rougher market especially in New Jersey when you get a longer foreclosure timeframe. If it’s in New Jersey, I would be selling it traditionally. I would not be owner financing then. One that you’ve got to realize too is it’s great if you’re up that neck of the woods, but the whole country is your market. There are a lot of great markets out there. I would be looking more for distressed especially in the note business. If you’re looking for notes sources outside of New Jersey, Jersey is still a longer foreclosure process. Those are great things to start off with. I’d love for you to focus those down a little bit because the more you get focused on specific numbers, those are going to help you more than anything else. Specificity will help you stay committed.

NCS 396 | 2018 In Review

2018 In Review: When change happens, you have to pivot.

 

One of our audience members says, “One of my goals will be to attend the Quest Expo and meet some of the WCN Crew in person.” The Quest Expo in 2019 will be taking place in Houston, Texas and it’s August 23rd through the 25th. We’re going to be a part of it again. It’s going to be a fun thing. It was great last year. They’ve expanded it to three days now, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We’re excited to be a big part of that. We will be having our Mastermind meet two days before that event. I’d love to hear if you are like, “I want to hit 60 note deals or I want to hit 50 note deals.” One of the big things with us buying assets, “I want to double the amount of performing notes that we have on the portfolio.” We’re focused on a lot of performing paper. We’re not the kings of nonperforming but we want to focus on getting things re-performing or buy a little bit more so with performing paper.

We’ve used our IRA sometime in the past and we will be using a lot of it this 2019 for long-term goals on some things. That’s part of raising the capital to be funding a lot of the stuff that we can take down and get reperforming quickly and have it on our portfolio. It’s good to see everybody out there. We want to be committed. We think that our training is some of the best in the industry. My Note Buying Blueprint is phenomenal. If you’re reading this and you haven’t signed up for a Note Buying Blueprint, do so. You cannot go wrong with it. It’s a phenomenal training thing. Here it says a January 23rd, 2019 that is on a Wednesday night, the Tampa Note and a self-directed IRA meeting. I’m looking forward to seeing that and rock it out there.

We’re proud of Eric Hyde and Chris Seveney. They’re just a few of the people who are doing specific note Meetup groups and it doesn’t have to be on the education side. Just getting together, meeting, talking about the note business, sharing resources and meet with local investors. Cody Cox has done this. He didn’t want it to turn into an educational thing. He is just looking to connect a network with other people and a lot of people are going to do that as well. We’re proud of those that are out there doing that on a regular basis. We believe 2019 is going to be a lot of changes taking place in the industry and we may have to pivot. It would be varied if you’re going to go towards performing paper or nonperforming and a lot of people have been looking at owner financing.

Owner financing is part of buying distressed owner finance notes. I don’t like using owner financing as the next strategy for my properties unless it’s the only strategy I have. If it’s a property that needs work or it’s a property in a rougher area. If you can sell that property traditionally cash or traditional financing to somebody else, that’s going to be your biggest bang for your buck. That’s going to help you with the velocity of capital on a regular basis. We started seeing interest climb up and the market falls again. We’re going to see some people. These are some distressed assets out there. Markets out there that are dropping price reductions. People overbuying assets, people that would have paid a $500,000 a few months ago, those assets are now $450,000 or $400,000 in different parts of the country. Don’t be surprised if we start seeing more distressed assets at the market because I know they’re out there. What we see with people overpaying in markets like Dallas and other parts of the country along with nonprime subprime loans, it’s just a matter of time. It’s almost another perfect storm for us debt investors to go out and buy some stuff and add it to our portfolio. As I like to say, making America great one mortgage at a time.

I want to thank everyone who’s read the blog and who’s left a review. I appreciate it if you would do. If you have not left a review on iTunes, take a few minutes and go do that for us. It helps us out tremendously. Thank you so much for those who have done that already. If you’ve shared the show, thank you so much. If you’d love the episodes, feel free to go ahead and hit that share button. That helps us out and helps us grow our audience as well as helping you expand and educate your audience as well out there. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, rely on us, lean on us to help you with educating your folks, your investors or your tribe out there for what note investing is.

We are the premier podcast in note investing out there. It’s not that there are not others that are good out there. When you’ve got 360-plus episodes, we keep rocking. As long as we keep rocking, you can believe that door will be knocking. Please share the show. As always, feel free to like and follow us on Facebook, Instagram under The Note Closers Show. Feel free to check out the website WeCloseNotes.com, our main website there along with catching all of the past episodes on our blog tab. Thank you so much for being a part of 2018 for us. Thank you for tuning in. If this is the first time you’ve joined the podcast, you just got the top ten episodes for you to listen to. Go out, make something happen. Be safe. We’ll see you all at the top.

 

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