EP 433 – Joe Don’t Know

NCS 433 | Joe Don't Know

NCS 433 | Joe Don't Know

 

A lot of us get so caught up living one day at a time that we forget to think about the future. We keep our sights so much on the present that we fail to look forward. Scott snaps us out of this set-up and asks us about the future – what we are working towards and what our ultimate endgame is. Move out of being a Joe Don’t Know and put a plan in place. Living is not merely just surviving, so go out there and take action.

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Joe Don’t Know

We are excited to be here and share some information with you. One of the things I wanted to talk about and I’m titling this episode Joe Don’t Know. If you remember the ads of Bo, Bo knows football, Bo knows baseball. Bo Jackson was one of my favorite players. I got a signed autograph bat from Bo in the office. It’s a little bit different theory of what I’m going to be talking about now and many of us sometimes what keeps us up at night is, “What does the future hold for us? What is the future all about? What are we working towards? What’s the ultimate end game?” I want you to think about something a little differently. I want you to pull out your notebook, your notepad on your phone or pull out a piece of paper. I want you to write this number down. I want you to write my cell phone number (512) 585-3810.

Surviving Day In And Day Out

I am giving you my cell phone because I want you to do one thing. I want you to send me a text message with what your number is. What do I mean by your number? I’ll get to that, but I want to at least get the important aspect out of the way. What I’m trying to get at is all of us are going through life. A lot of times we are living day in, day out. Maybe we look forward to the weekend or towards a vacation, but we don’t think long-term on things. I’m going to give you an example. Every morning when I leave the house, I don’t have a far commute at all. I’ve only got a two turn. If the light’s green, it takes me a minute to get to my office. Two right turns, a right turn out of the place where we live, the gated community and then down the road. It’s not even a mile in my truck. I could walk to it. I should probably walk to it. I am going to get a golf cart here before too long. I’m taking a golf cart. I can take one of those unicycles and ride to work.

When I’m going to the grocery store, I will stop. There’s a Chevron right here. I’ll pull in the parking lot, the Chevron is right across my office and I get a couple of bananas. Why do I get bananas? I like bananas and I will get a couple. I get three or four of these things. Steph gets mad because I will grab four at a time or take a whole bundle and I’ll eat on these in the morning. It’s my breakfast, four bananas every day. Steph always cracks at me when I walk in with bananas. When I get here at 9:00, one immediately, one at 10:00, one at 11:00, then I eat the fourth one right before my trainer Tom shows up. He shows up at noon. I’m eating this at five and the next one. The reason is my breakfast is my boost for my workout.

What do bananas have to do with it? It’s either bananas and then I often will grab a Red Bull as well. I get it from this convenience store here. Every morning I walk in, and Manager Joe, I’ve gotten to know him pretty well. He’s been there for many years. He’s been a manager of this convenience store and gas station for many years. It’s not one of those big ones. It’s one of that walk-in and you’ve got three aisles. The cooler is basically gas. It’s grab and go. Joe’s an extremely nice guy. I enjoy visits with him. We get to visit with him around the holidays and things like that. Sometimes I’ll take him in something and surprise him.

When you get to know somebody each day, it’s interesting. It was a normal conversation. I roll in, grab my bananas, I make fun of the spotted bananas. I grab my blueberry Red Bull and visit him. He’s on the phone. He’s got it on speaker something he’s dealing with and he gets off the phone, “It’s my Medicaid,” because he’s an older guy. He’s like, “I’m getting old.” I go, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah.” He goes, “Many years ago, when we had all of our managers get together to have a meeting or convention for all the Chevron store managers, they were telling me I was going to retire now.” I said, “Does that mean you’re leaving? Congratulations. Where’s the champagne?” He’s like, “No, I’m not retiring now. I can’t afford to. I can’t afford my Medicare. What I’d been making in retirement, I won’t even pay my rent. I’m going to be old. My wife wants me to quit work and I can’t because we can’t afford it.”

NCS 433 | Joe Don't Know

Joe Don’t Know: If you believe that you’ll accomplish something, whether you’re right or wrong, you’re correct.

 

I was like, “What would you have done differently if you knew then what you would know now?” He’s like, “I would change my life. I would do something different because I’m too old to learn. I’m too old to start anything new. I’m going to be here probably another several year working for as long as they’ll have me to hopefully be able to get where I’m in my mid-70s and maybe I make it to 80.” I’m like, “That’s not funny.” He’s like, “You never know many years ago when I started here that I would be doing this until this day.” He’s a likable guy. He’s always in a good mood, smiling. I’m walking out, “Joe, cheers to retirement.” He started laughing. He goes, “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll have bananas for you.”

When I walked out, it struck me with something. How many of us are going through day-to-day life? We stop to get gas. We’d go to the grocery store, we’d go to the bank, the mall, the gym and people are constantly going through those things. They’re going through the motions. They’re doing a job. They’re just over broke. How many of us are going through life like a zombie, like a cow? It’s a slaughterhouse of being over broke. A tremendous amount of people are through that. It’s sad to see that. Whether you’re doing something else, maybe you’re an accountant, you’re putting photos together, a wine connoisseur, a waiter or whatever. I think back to my dad, bless his heart. I got my work ethic from my father and my mother and my dad worked at a local hardware store.

He owned it. He started one. I was in the fourth grade and from the time from fourth grade until I was in senior high school, my dad was at the hardware. Mom and dad worked in there. I worked on the weekends when I was available. I was the slave labor for all the entrepreneurs out there, whether it was digging ditches, laying pipe, working for an electrician or cutting grass. I got a great work ethic from my father in both professions. My mom realized something years after graduating from high school. Turning 40, 50 she realized she had to do something different because she didn’t want to work in hardware stores especially my dad was already having health issues with his eyes and headaches.

I have to give credit to my mom on becoming a nurse and working to do something different. She didn’t want to settle for what life had given them so far. She had to go out and make it. I bring this up because I think we’re on a treadmill running in place, paying bills and getting by. You’ve got to do some things that are going to change. You don’t want to be like Joe don’t know. Joe didn’t know many years he’d still be doing the same thing. He still didn’t know in many years that he wouldn’t have that American dream of retirement. The plan doesn’t work for 40 years, 40 hours a week, retiring. Like I said, to begin with, what I’d love for you to do is pull out your phone and shoot me a text.

How much do you need to be making? How much do you need to retire? I’m not looking for $1.5 million but I know about the note business is that you can basically create your retirement by putting together assets, putting together deals that we do to get a cashflow coming. You’ll be seeing us, our email system or email blast. You’re seeing that we’re having REOs. Our goal is doing a lot of the nonperforming stuff. We have the performing stuff that will increase our profitability by double. We’ve been blessed to have some great deals. I’m more interested in the $300 a month that the borrower brought $10,000 at the table. It’s great. It pays taxes. It will pay some investors and stuff but I want that $300 a month. The same investor brought $5,000 with me. I want that $275 every month.

Living, Not Just Surviving

One of the things that I love to talk to people about let’s say, “Look at what you want to accomplish and look at where you want to be. Where do you want to go when you’re 80?” You don’t want to be like our buddy Joe, the convenience store guy. Do you want to be there and realize in many years when I’m going to retire, I’m like, “I can’t retire because I don’t want to retire broke?” I’m 41 and I’m looking at what I want to accomplish in the next few years. We’ve got some things that will work well. The thing is I’ve put a plan in place that what we want to do is to take down assets, take down property, and take down notes. How’s every note going to perform for you? Somebody gets paid off, someone moves or sell and get it performing. Our biggest goal is taking what that number is to live. By living, I mean not just surviving.

That’s why I want you to text me. Tell me how far between from figuring at now to where you need to be. There’s no wrong answer here. If you’ve got $5,000 coming in a month, you can get $10,000 a month. “I’m at $5,000. I need to be at $10,000. How do I get there?” There are a lot of opportunities still out there. There are still a lot of opportunities that are available to everybody to get rock and rolling. I don’t care what it is. Maybe you need to go back to school. Maybe you want to do something else. Maybe you’ll end up finding something or you need to find stuff that can allow for you to retire or semi-retire. There’s nothing wrong with having a job and staying. People out there sit at home to do nothing. They’re dying of boredom. That’s a big thing. You’ve got to work every day of your life unless you get money. Get your money going out there and working. Don’t let us do it for you. Every dollar out there for pimping out your money, get it to bring money in. That’s whether you’re lending other people’s money or you’re using other people’s money to lend against or whatever. I don’t care what beliefs you have. If you believe that you’ll accomplish something, whether you’re right or wrong, you’re correct.

Henry Ford made that quote, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re correct or not. Whether what you believe is correct. If you think you can or can’t, you’re correct. The human mind is amazing.” Here’s the thing that you want to look at. If you have an existing note, look at what assets are dragging you down. The payments, servicing, fees, costs like that. Get it wholesaled off, make some profit and move on from that. You have to look at one of the things that we look at. Maybe we got some stuff dragging on our portfolio a little bit. “You’ve got to go back in the ring. I’ve been traveling quite a bit.” I am traveling. We’re taking a vacation. What I’m trying to get at is what is going to happen between now and the next couple of months. We should double our profitability and our portfolio in the next 60 days. Picking our portfolio and what’s coming in from hopefully cashflowing and things like that, we should double in the next 60 days. It’s a big goal.

I have the ultimate goal. Here’s what my big goal is. I’m talking with Joel Markovitz. He has a couple hundred performing notes that are paying a $200 profit. That’s your split $200 whether it’s paying $400 out, you’re getting $200 from the capital. That’s what our goal has always been. We have a thing coming up and a lot of you guys hopefully RE/MAX on your IRA. I think where the RE/MAX on our IRA contributions in 2018 until April 15th. It’s Tax Day. We can suck away a lot of money in that and that money can go to work for you in partials. Working for you buying some smaller value assets. You get to lend it out in the mezzanine type lien for somebody who’s doing a quick rehab on some things. There are a lot of ways to put your money to work and have it work for you in a popular way. The thing is if you keep waiting to do something, you keep waiting on that job to kick in and start paying your way through that up. I was watching a movie, probably I wasted at least an hour-and-a-half.

It hit home as well. It’s not about Joe the convenience store guy for many years and it was supposed to be his retirement date. Talking about it and I knew it would be different when I went from cooking. I knew it’d be different when I got to train her. I knew it’d be different when I got the assistant manager. I knew it was going to be different when I get to the regional manager or district manager. It’s not. How could it be any different? If you’re relying on somebody else to give you a paycheck, you are their indentured servitude to them. You’re waiting on somebody else to give you a paycheck versus you going out and controlling that yourself, you struck. That is a bad thing for everybody. The thing you’ve got to realize is you’ve got to be smart about it. You’ve got to be taking action out there.

NCS 433 | Joe Don't Know

Joe Don’t Know: The world is moving on whether you’re on that train or not.

 

For anybody taking action, maybe you got to get some training. Maybe you got to make some offers. If you’re into real estate investing like most of our readers and followers are, you seem to be making more offers. I got an email from a lady, “I love that you send out the email so these deals are moving. If you have anything in my backyard, I’d love to talk.” I’m like, “If I had anything in your backyard, I’m not going to sell it to you for cheap. I’m going to put it out myself.” You’ve been sitting there trying to grow your small $15,000 IRA but not doing anything.

We’ve got many great resources for you to take advantage of out there. If you are interested, pull out your phone, text the word NOTES to 72000. Start looking at where you want to be, looking at where you want to go. My buddy Dan Deppen jumped on air on a Facebook Live. Dan’s done a great job of leaving a six-figure job by planning out what he needs to do. He has fifteen to twenty assets. He got a bunch of performing stuff in his IRAs. He planned it out, was able to take advantage and do it. You all can do the same thing too. He was leaving a six-figure job. He asks himself, “Life is still working,” and based on what they make and what they live on, he can provide plus their kids in case he does ever slow down. Dan has done a great job of moving his business along to get it into action. Look at your living, not while you’re just surviving on them. I often do a webinar of about $250,000 in 2019. It was when I started off using the first Note Night in America. It’s still staying very much the same.

It’s what you need to be making not just to survive but to truly live. If you’re surviving on $5,000 rent coming in, there are some simple things you can do to reach that cashflow at that point. We’re not talking about, “I need $1 million with 10% return so I can live on every year.” I like to reverse engineer it. If you’re going to be buying distressed debt, you don’t have to wait until you’ve got $2 million saved. You can start making cash now, $10,000 cashflow. If you divide that by $250 a month cashflow and you need $10,000 a month, it is 40 deals that you need to close between now and whenever you’re retired. A lot of people though get bogged down, “I need 40 deals. I can’t do that.” All you’ve got to do is start with one deal. One deal is not that difficult to do. One deal can be done for $20,000, $30,000. There are a lot of people with money out there who can do some amazing things. If I had to lend you the money, you’ve got a great deal. There are a lot of available people out there.

A lot of people are scared like, “I don’t know where to begin.” Do you know what you’ve got to do? Start by getting educated. Start by learning what you want. Start learning how to use your marketing. A lot of people get paralyzed because they can’t get out of their own head to get outside of their own market, get out of their backyard. I understand that. I’ve been there. Maybe the best thing to do is take an afternoon, take a weekend and go somewhere. Go meet with your local real estate investment club or meet your local real estate investors. Ask them to coffee and go talk to people. “What are you doing now?” How do you know what you know? What would you do? Would you be like Joe still doing the same thing? Would you start something different?” That’s the thing that a lot of people struggle with knowing, “I don’t know the future.” I get not knowing the future. I get it. You can’t predict the future. You can’t predict how it’s going to turn out. You can’t predict how the market’s going to rebound up. You can’t predict anything. All you can do is take control of your own thing. That’s the thing I would want to harp on with you guys.

If you feel that you’re running in place, get off the treadmill. If you feel that you’re struggling on a deal, struggling with something, talk to someone. Pick up the phone and text me. I’m glad to jump on a call with any of our readers. Are there any of our Note Nation followers out there? Go to our Facebook page, follow us online. Look for Scott Carson on Facebook, find me on The Note Closers Show page on Instagram, Facebook. Follow us and shoot us a message. We want to hear our audience. We want to hear from you, “Where do I begin?” I’m glad to take those questions and phone calls. I want you to link a schedule. This episode’s entitled Joe Don’t Know for a couple of reasons. We got some people reading this. As I talked about beforehand, I encourage going back and reading this.

Walking into the convenience store, when I come in three or four times a week, I pick up bananas and a Red Bull. The guy that has worked there many years is like, “Now’s supposed to be my retirement day. I’m going to retire.” If you remember sitting back many years ago talking about where were you many years ago? In 1999, I was back starting at Texas Tech University. I was taking a year off to figure out what to do and it was back on a school for business. I knew they didn’t take some time off to figure out what I want to do. I had to grow up a little bit and I was back in school. Where am I going to be many years from now?

Many years from now, I know I’m going to be somewhere tropical the entire time for the most part. I’ll be bouncing around from island to island or move around a little bit, but we have our place for our four-legged furry kids and doing that aspect of things. As we were talking, we don’t have the kids, but that’s great. It’s totally fine. We’re completely happy. That’s the thing is what do we plan for? What do we look for? We’re constantly planning and that’s when everybody struggles. You get sucked into it day in, day out routine. Your routine becomes your own prison with no bars. It’s a prison in your head when it comes down to it. How many of us have that prison before?

We all had prisons in our head. Maybe it’s the job that we think we’re going to get a promotion. I saw a buddy of mine, a note investor. He was like, “I’ve been working at this job for several years. I’m excited. I enjoy my boss. Thank you for allowing me to do this.” You’re thanking your bosses for giving you a job. That’s great, but physically inside me, I’m crying for the guy. The guy did so much amazing things. He’s gotten sucked back into this prison of a job. It’s got benefits. It’s got 401(k). I was like, “Great.” Put that energy into your side hustle. You need to get started. You wouldn’t be sitting here going about this. You were talking some time ago about leaving. Now you got sucked back in. You have to deal with this, “I can do my stuff. I’ve got to go back to the tape at stake.” I’m like, “Please run.” I love the guy. It’s killing me because it’s not fun to see. It’s not what I want from people. It’s not what I want to see from people that we’re close with.

I want people to accomplish their goals. Anybody can accomplish anything that they set their mind to. The fact our brain is one of the most powerful tools and if you are struggling with something or you can overcome something, it’s such a great way to do some things. I was joking with Thomas, my trainer. He’s also one of the things I was talking about like, “What do you want to accomplish?” He says, “I always get ready to move to a new house here.” It’s awesome. He’s working through some things. He’s left his job working for corporate. He’s making more money but working half as hard doing his own thing. I’m like, “That’s awesome.” He’s like, “I’ve got to start planning for even some bigger things. I want to do some bigger things,” and that’s what we all want.

Steph’s got some bigger things she wants to do with animal rescue. Another thing I look at is, “If you can carve out things that are important to you, if it’s important to your retirement to start saving. It’s important to do things then you’ll find a way to do it.” If it’s not important, they’re not in pain, if you’re not in an uncomfortable zone, you’re going to sit there. It’s like sitting in bed. You get that in the morning where you’re lying in bed like, “I want to stay. Everything feels good. It’s cold outside, but I’m still warm. I’m all tucked into my cocoon.” You know you’ve got to get up. You know you’ve got to get to work. You know you’ve got to get some stuff done. It’s time to basically say, “I’ve got to break this cycle. I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to rock and roll because the world is moving on whether you’re on that train or not.”

NCS 433 | Joe Don't Know

Joe Don’t Know: It’s time to start adding things to your schedule that’s going to have an impact on what you’re doing and that final goal.

 

That’s what I want you guys to do. I don’t want you to be like Joe. I don’t want you to don’t know. Joe doesn’t know when he’s going to retire. Joe doesn’t know when he’s going to accomplish something. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have any goals set out for him. You can accomplish anything you want if you set specific goals. Feel free to. My number is (512) 585-3810. I give you my cell phone number because I want you to text me. I don’t care when you’re reading this. If it’s weeks after this gets published, that’s okay. Shoot me a text message. Tell me, “Here’s what I am making right now. Here’s where I want to get to. Here’s what I want to accomplish.” If you want to share what your ultimate goal is, “I don’t want to live in Austin. I want to move to the Bahamas or I want to move to the Caribbean. I want to move and travel nonstop.” That’s fine. Figure that out.

I have friends that have taken three and six-month cruises. My buddy Mark Yuzuik, you may know him from Total Transformation. He’s been a long time one of the best hypnotists out there in life transformation. We had a previous episode with Michael Silvers on talking about that and Michael works with him under all this stuff. Mark was on a six-month cruise for this cruise liner. They’re performing twice a week. He’s like, “I’m sick and tired of cruises. It’s going all over the place.” I’m like, “Did you get out and have some fun?” He goes, “Yeah we had some fun, but I want my own place. I want my room. It’s not bad at all to do that.”

At the same time, there was an article that came out that talked about this older gentleman who was retiring but wasn’t going to move into the assisted living facility. He was moving into the local Holiday Inn because he was going to travel across the United States. There are 1,100 Holiday Inns and for basically $30 a night he can stay there cheaper. They’ve got a happy hour for free. They’ve got a free breakfast. They’ve got an onsite gym. They’ve got a pool for the grandkids. They’ve got places all across the country to go to. “Anybody can call the police or the ambulance when I die. I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first person to die in NBC suites.” I started laughing. He was like, “I got $100 a day by doing that. I can put that money into something else.” I was like, “That’s a smart thing there.” He’s still mobile and agile. He could shuffle and shuffle out. He can see a doctor wherever he goes. That’s thinking outside the box. That guy knows how he wants to do. He’s stretching out.

Taking Action

For those of you that are at that point where the door’s right here, that light at the end of the tunnel is right in your face. You’re like, “What am I going to do?” You’ve got to start doing something different. You’ve got to start taking action. I don’t care if it’s buying the property or selling on eBay, buying notes or whatever it might be. Maybe you know something about software. Maybe you need to go to the Goodwill and buy stuff cheap there and sell it online for more. That’s completely fine. Whatever your thing is, it’s your thing. The best thing you can do is start to look at building residual income, building one, two or three things out there that you can do differently than what you’ve done before to help you hit that number.

As I said, “I got $5,000 coming in a month. I need to make $10,000. How do I get there?” With notes, I would look at it and say that’s anywhere from ten to twenty deals you need to do. It means you’re making somewhere between 100 and 200 offers. Most of us, especially in the note space here on the show, you’re behind distressed debt or notes. You’re probably going to make ten offers to get one deal accepted or get a one deal close. You have to make ten offers. You’re making more than one deal accepted through due diligence and breaking it down, you’ve got to go from there.

There are things that you can do. It’s not as difficult. I’ll give you an example. It’s not nearly as difficult. A lot of people say, “You can’t buy direct from notes.” You can buy direct from banks. You can buy from hedge funds. It’s been happening for years. It’s going to keep happening even with the upturn and the downturn. We’re selling assets. Banks are looking to move. The days of you needing $5 million to $10 million to get started in real estate are way gone for everybody. Start marketing and start talking to people. Get onto your local clubs. Start talking and dropping emails out to asset managers. On a previous episode, we talked about how to find assets and we finished up with the three-part series, Finding, Funding and Flipping nonperforming notes, how to find the assets, how to raise capital and how to flip them. There are different exit strategies available. Read those last three episodes. It’s a great starting point for you to get started out there.

What’s the next phase? You need to join us for some education. Check out our YouTube channel. You need to check out the NoteBlueprint.com, our Note Buying Blueprint. It’s our online home study. It’s a great place where people go to learn some stuff. The thing you have to realize is starting learning. You start falling. Start aligning yourself. Find an accountability partner, somebody to hold you accountable, and even help you hold your hand through some things. If you’re on the fence and you’d like to learn more, drop me a text or an email at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. Go online and connect with me. I’m glad to schedule some time with you.

We’re excited. It’s one of the best weekends of the year, the three weekends we have our Note Mastermind. It’s hanging out with our Note Family. It’s hanging with people like the Laura Blunks, the Jeff Wolfes, the Dan Deppens, the Stephanie Goodmans, the Chris Seveneys, the Gail Greenbergs, the Robby Woods’ and Patty Peds. There are a lot of great people that we love hanging out where they’ve come through our program and really enjoyed spending time with people out there. I could go on and on of all the people that have come through. The Dale Corpuses, the Mackie Johnsons, the Liza Banaags, Pam Wilson, Charles Wilson and Karen Bernsen. Many great people there are doing such great things. There are so many people that we have had the pleasure of hanging with and helping them overcome and get on their path.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean people don’t get sidetracked from time to time. We all go through that and we all have that shiny object syndrome that we need to pull out the gun and shoot the squirrels. It happens. The thing is if you know what your focus is, if you know what that number needs to be then you set some goals and you plan your day, your week, your months around those things. Sammy, the squirrel, is showing up at your door every day to keep you distracted. You won’t see those things because you’ll be focused and goal-oriented. Everybody gets distracted. I’ve gotten distracted in the past. We get excited about some things.

Distractions

NCS 433 | Joe Don't Know

Joe Don’t Know: The Banker’s Code: The Most Powerful Wealth-Building Strategies Finally Revealed

There are many different things that can distract you. Honestly, that happens a lot. People get distracted quite a bit. The thing you keep in mind is to own up to it and then get back on course. Get back on it. If you have not attended a webinar, have not gone to a real estate club meeting, if you have not shown up to things then get online. Get started. Start doing something to help you get rock and rolling. That’s one of the most important things I could tell each and every one of you out there. If you’re struggling to find something, if you want to go back to school, go to the local community college. Take some classes. If you want to do something like that, take action. You still have the availability to do that. I jump on Lynda or the Cane Academy that are online. Lynda.com for cheap or Cane Academy is for free. Start learning, start taking classes, start bettering yourself. Spend that 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM chasing your dreams and not somebody else’s.

That’s what Joe did. He was there for many years helping somebody else build his dream. They’re not building his. Building somebody else’s dream, that’s the one question I asked him. I said, “Joe, you’ve been here many years. Is your boss still doing the same thing?” He goes, “My boss lives in a much bigger house. He’s not renting it like I rent my place.” “What would you do differently now?” “I wouldn’t be here, but I’m forced to be here now.” That’s your take. Whether you think you’re right or wrong, you’re correct. Many of you out there, you are your biggest issue. You are what is holding you back. It’s not doing anything. If you want to save millions of dollars or donate millions to charity, start donating a dollar. Start talking to people. Look to save $50,000 versus $100,000. Look to start something. Take one offer. Make one deal. Do the things you need to do. Get started. It all starts with a drop in the bucket. It starts with a glass.

A lot of us look at things. “I need to fill the whole bucket. I can’t do that.” You can’t do that now but you can do a little bit and that little bit will grow. That little bit will get better at what you do. It’s the same thing with marketing. Start doing videos. Start making offers. Start posting things online. Start going to social media. Start connecting an audience. I made a joke to someone. I’ve got under 16,000 connections on LinkedIn. If you’re not connected with me on LinkedIn, please do so. How did I go from 6,000 to 16,000? It’s focusing on that a little bit a time. Taking five, ten minutes at night to connect with people while I’m sitting there watching TV, I do this every night. Steph’s like, “What are you doing on your phone?” I’m connecting with people, adding to my database and trying to connect and build my audience so that when I have assets available, I can move assets. When I have assets that I need to move, I can reach out on LinkedIn to post them here or post them to our social media accounts and get them moved.

Some people are totally blown away. I posted an asset in Jackson, Michigan. I posted in Francis, Oklahoma. I’m going to post an asset or two in different parts of the country. I’ve got people coming from all over. I’ve got people like, “I saw your deal. I want to go buy the house.” I’m like, “Make an offer.” There are people from San Diego looking to buy an asset in Oklahoma, people from Houston, Texas looking to buy stuff in Indiana. You have to get the word out even if they say no. Most of us, before we take any action, we let those demons crawl into our head. We let those demons go, “I can’t do that. I’m not smart enough to do that. People don’t like me. I can’t post. I couldn’t buy that. I couldn’t move that asset.” Why not? You can. Get off your ass and take action to do it. Get off your butt and make a posting. Get off your butt and pull a photo. Get off your butt, jump on it. Google the address. You can do so much more when you can.

I was lucky enough to be at Podfest and have a breakout session with my buddy Tom Hazzard for 30 minutes. There’s a lot of talking about how we took my show The Note Closers Show from zero to 150,000 downloads in the first several months, especially a niche show. It’s not one of your broad things like general real estate or broad audiences like Gary Vaynerchuk has. I have a very niche audience. I’m fine with that. If I get 300 views on a Facebook Live video, it’s great. If I get 1,000 downloads per episode, I’m happy. We’re rocking because we’re serving our niche. We’re serving the thousand people that read out there. “Do we want a bigger note tribe?” “We do.” That’s why we do what we do to get the word out more doing across the board. What I’m trying to get at is there are many people looking for different things.

You can jump on and post on LinkedIn. There are LinkedIn groups with 500,000 plus people. You can jump on Meetup.com and find investment clubs that you can post to their discussion board with thousands of people. I found a group in Ann Arbor which is 50 miles away from the property in Jackson and I posted it there. I have three people reach out to me to say, “I want to buy that asset. I want to drive by that asset.” I’m like, “Great, that’s awesome.” Some of you are reading this from countries away. Some of you are reading this from states away. Some of you are going to be reading this episode across 75 different countries out there. That’s why I’m trying to say this to everybody. If you aren’t happy with where you’re at, take the time. Pull out your cell phone, type in my cell phone number (512) 585-3810. Shoot me a text message. That’s my direct cell phone. Tell me where you’re at and where you want to go. “I’m not happy with where I’m at. I’m not close to retirement. I’m running this treadmill. How can I get things rock and rolling better for me? How can I learn more?” I’m glad to spend time with you.

One of the most valuable things that I’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks as people are opting into our website or different specific lists is sending out a personal text message video to them. “Thanks for opting in. I’d love to visit with you. I’m going to shoot you an email with the link.” People are like, “Scott Carson’s taking the time.” I’m a normal guy. Those are little simple actions. It takes me five, ten minutes to do to post it out there. How many of you could do that to people? How many of you could do something good like that and share, “I wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you. I saw that you opted in. I might have a deal in your neck of the woods?” Everybody could do that. It’s a matter of what we choose not to or we’d rather choose something else. I make a joke. I walked in talking to people at the front desk here at my office. It’s like March Madness is going on. It’s a big NCAA basketball term here in the United States. Sixty-eight teams battle it out to be crowned NCAA champion.

Many people are excited about the basketball games and are sitting home watching basketball and there’s nothing wrong with being a fan. If that’s what your whole goal is to go from sporting event to sporting event. I’m a big sports fan, but I want mine too enjoyable. That’s not my life though. I’m a big Cowboys fan. I’m a big San Francisco Giants fan. I’m a big Astros fan as well. I’m excited for the start of the regular season. It’s the start of Major League Baseball season. I’m excited about that, but the thing you have to realize too if you’re worried about staying home in your brackets and your fantasy leagues and that’s your big thing, I’ve got a brother-in-law that’s like that. That’s all that he focuses on. When he’s not coaching, he’s all about his fantasy leagues and I’m like, “Why don’t you learn something more valuable than if somebody caught a touchdown or ran for 1,000 yards.” “I’ve got a fantasy league.” I get that. I’m in one or two fantasy groups. I spend five, ten minutes a week. Where I’m playing, it’s something I can talk crap with my buddies about part of it.

Focus

You have to focus on something. If you’re not at a point where you need to be or where you want to be, it’s time to put away those childish toys. It’s time to start adding things to your schedule that’s going to have an impact on what you’re doing, have an impact to that final goal. With me, I’ve looked at our schedule. I’ve looked at what we do, where I travel to and making some changes to our schedules to help us impact that more. I’ve turned down some speaking engagements. I’m supposed to be in San Diego. We turned that down. I’m going to stay. I bought a ticket to an event. We’re staying home. We’re going to focus on some things. You’ve got to get rid of the squirrels. You’ve got to kill the squirrels so I can spend more time later on doing what I want to do. I need to put the investment on.

I need to plant those trees so that in five years, in ten years they’ll be providing shade and fruit to me that I can sit back and relax and do whatever I want. I’m going to be sitting out having a good Cohiba or a good Rocky Patel cigar, a good glass of bourbon or scotch sitting down with my feet up somewhere tropical I need to be or somewhere in my backyard doing what I want to when I want to because that’s the point. We all are hard workers. Everybody likes to work. I’m not saying anybody on here is not a hard worker at all, but it’s all about what you’re working towards. What’s more important than you taking time off?

I had a good buddy of mine and I’m probably going to see soon who lives to do all the other things. He lives for the weekends and he struggles during the week. He’s at that point too in his life at 41 and he’s looking at doing the same thing for the next many years because he hasn’t put anything away. All his stuff is all about going out and living out for the weekend. You have to be smarter than that. You have to be more prepared to tackle life because we’re not all going to be here. You’re not all going to have your perfect health. That’s part of the reason I try to go to the gym every day. That’s why I have my trainer come in. It’s money in my financial bank for my health so I enjoy life better. It’s money in the bank. I make a deposit every time I’m working out whether it’s with Thomas or I’m at the 24-hour riding the bike. It’s a deposit in the bank.

What I want you to look at too is your schedule. Look at what you’re doing. Look at your expenses, the things you’re doing. What are things pulling money out of your deposit or stuff that you’re putting in there that are valuable? I love one thing that Steph does. Steph was like, “Are you using this?” I’m like, “I’m not using it anymore. Let’s kill that.” That’s cycling away $100 a month or $100 a year, even the little things. Take them off. Look at your schedule because I guarantee you can all free up money. You can all free up time to go find what you need to do. It doesn’t have to be 40 hours a week. Maybe it’s five hours a week. Maybe it’s ten hours a week. Maybe it’s something that you need to do because I don’t care what it is. We’ve all got from 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM. If you worked from 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM, you’ve got from 3:00 AM to 6:00 PM for your side hustle.

Be smart about what you’re doing. Be smart about what eats up your time. Be protective of what and who you give your time to. Your time is the only thing that you’re able to control. If you’re giving away eight hours a day to a job, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. If you enjoy it and love it, by all means great. If it is paying for your way, that’s great. If that’s the route you want to go, that’s great. What happens if something changes? Like our friends that work for the government, they found out a couple of months ago they were laid off for a few months. They’ll get their money, their payback, but I see an uptick in defaults because of that aspect because they didn’t have money set aside. They didn’t put any money away.

The best thing you can do if you want to do something big, go out and download my buddy George Antone’s The Banker’s Code. It’s a great book. I’d also go download or go to your local Half Price Books and buy The Richest Man in Babylon. It’s a phenomenal book. It’s about putting money away. Learn to pay yourself first because if Joe had learned to pay himself first, he wouldn’t be sitting here now extending his retired. He wouldn’t be sitting here to stay and not celebrating being depressed about his retirement day many years later, he’d be doing a whole different tone. The thing you had to look at is figuring out what those numbers are.

That’s why I tell you those out there one more is taking the time beforehand, pull out your phone, last chance before we wrap up this episode. Shoot me a text message. (512) 585-3810. It’s my personal cell phone. Tell me where you’re at, what that number is, where you want to be. Do you want to know what that number wants to be? Figure out double what you’re at. If you had double come in what you had, would you be living a little bit differently? Would you be taking on more time? Would you have a little bit more fun? The answer to that for everybody is yes. Figure out what your gross is, what you want to double that number because you would live a lot better, a lot happier doing that. If your number is $5,000 and you could double it to $10,000 that means you get $120,000 a year. What you need to do is put that number up somewhere where you could see it every day in front of you whether it’s on your calendar or it’s on your mirror in the bathroom or by the door in front of the toilet, whatever it may be.

Put that number somewhere where you see it and start working on numbers backward. That’s one of the things that I love doing is if you need $10,000 and you’re buying assets that are bringing in $250 a month in cashflow on your side, that’s great. It’s basically $10,000 a month. Everybody that I know is capable of closing on 40 deals in the first twelve months or the next 24 months or even it takes you 36 months. We’re closing on one deal a month on average. Everybody’s capable of doing that. It’s about whether you’re going to or you won’t. Are you going to chase squirrels? Are you trying to find something to get rich quick? Are you trying to run from one thing to another like unfortunate a lot of people are doing?

“There’s this big event going on in Dallas. Gary Vaynerchuk’s coming. He’s a motivational speaker. Don’t you want to come?” I’m like, “I don’t want to go. Why?” I was going to Pitch Fest. I need to pitch on something else. I’m going to be pitched on the wholesale or pitched out fix and flipping. I know what my nugget is. I know what my goals and dreams look like. It’s going to work. If I have a plan, I need to work your plan and to work on my plan. Many of you have a plan and involve somebody else. You need to figure out what your planning needs to be for you and your family. Start working on that.

Take the opportunity. Don’t sit here and be like my buddy Joe. Joe don’t know retirement. You can look back many years from now. Are you on the path where you want to be in a few years, several years from now? You don’t, then it’s sad. You have to take the opportunity to start putting things into place whether it’s nonperforming notes, whether it’s first, seconds, partials, REOs, rentals, whatever that is. Start building that path to do it. Taking time, taking action, hit off of somebody else’s plan for you, get on your own and you’ll feel a whole lot better and a lot happier about life. You’ll be driven to accomplish big things. Go out there and make something happen. Go take action. Don’t hesitate. Feel free to shoot me a text message (512) 585-3810 and I’d be glad to visit with you.

Shoot me like where you’re at, where you want to go. I’ll be glad to help out where you’re at, where you want to go. We can schedule a phone call and go from there. Otherwise, go out, make something happen. Take some action now. Get off that treadmill that’s spinning in place and do something different if you’re unhappy with life. If you’re happy, that’s great, don’t change anything. If you are unhappy like I know most people are, it’s time to change. The only person that can handle that and can make those changes is the person looking back in the mirror. Go do something, take some action and we’ll see you at the top.

 

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