EP 500 – The 500th Episode with Stephanie Goodman

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

 

Any podcast reaching 500 episodes is the real deal. Scott Carson brings on Stephanie Goodman, the Vice President of Operations for WeCloseNotes.com, to discuss the 500th episode. Scott and Stephanie reminisce their wonderful experiences on the different podcasts that led to this 500th episode. Leadership and management are some of the most common topics, as well starting a note business and how to grow in the notes industry. As they enumerate the top ten most downloaded episode and give a short description of each, they also highlight the KISS Method as the most popular episode ever. This celebratory episode is definitely worth it because there are many more surprises along the way.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

The 500th Episode with Stephanie Goodman

I’m honored to have a special guest who hasn’t made a regular occurrence, but she’s always there behind the scenes, keeping me out of trouble and being my sounding board. As they always say, behind every good man is an even more powerful and amazing woman. That is the case with our special guest and we’re honored to have her. She’s been a guest on some of that very early Facebook Lives that we’ve done in different parts of the country, but she has not been here since. Without further ado, we want to give a big warm welcome to Stephanie Goodman. It’s hard to believe we’re at 500.

I can’t believe it’s at 500.

There’s been a lot of work that goes into this, but you can remember, it was at the event in Vegas that we attended. I think it was the Thrive event or there’s another event that we attended where the Shark Tankers were talking about videos in YouTube. It may have been I was in the audience for that one and you were at a different one. It was at Thrive event put on by Cole Hatter and Kevin Harrington that comes out and talks about video and all this stuff he was using on QVC and selling products and how the video was the way. This is going back to 2016 because we started the first Facebook Live on November 1st. When you think that we’ve cranked out 500, that’s a lot of stuff. August 20th is when we had our first episode go live in 2017 and it’s just been crazy when we talk about some of the numbers here. First and foremost, 380,000 downloads with our 350 podcast episodes. A total of 500 across the board. Basically a day in, day out, we average about three and a half to four episodes a week. Especially when we’re on vacation, Steph is like, “What are you doing?” I got smart this last time.

We’ve done podcasts in some interesting locales and fun places.

We’ve also had some great people that came on that were a guest host for us when we were traveling. First thing, we’ve got to give a big shout out to our sponsors. Quest Trust Company is a major sponsor, Laughlin Associates being a major sponsor, Merrill and the folks over at CreditSense has been a big sponsor. Kudos to all of them.

Thank you to all of them as well.

Thank you to all of them there. That’s why they’re on here regularly. We’ve got a few new sponsors that are coming on board here that we’re pretty excited about too. The thing I want to throw this at you. If those that don’t know your background, why don’t you share a little bit about your background and talk a little bit about how you got into real estate before you got into notes. I don’t think ever all of the people have heard that story.

The short of it was I was fortunate to have a good friend who was in an accounting position and said a friend was always about the markets, the stock market, real estate rentals and things like that. As we got to be better and better friends, he would share these tidbits, tips and points of view and things like that. I ended up taking some classes back then with a different outfit and it was super intriguing and it all made sense. It was very exciting and it was something that I wanted to get into doing aside from what my job was at the time back then. I loved my job, but real estate was something that was long-term. If I ever wanted to change jobs or move or do something different, then that was something that would be a good foundation for myself, my family and everybody else in my circle. That’s the short of it before you came. Scott actually came in 2011. He spoke to one of our local real estate groups here in Austin. I had heard mention of notes a little bit, not very much. It was always something that instructors and teachers skirted over. They didn’t spend a great deal of time on it and he did.

When he came in, he spoke to our real estate group. It was like a massive light bulb went off and I looked at my companion at the time and said, “Why didn’t we hear about this sooner?” The love for notes grew. It went from there. Notes made sense to me and it was something that I wished I had found before in the beginning because everything that we had learned how to do, you could do on the front end or the back end of the note and it was different back then. Most people didn’t know what you were talking about when you spoke about it or when you would call banks or things like that. “Why you want to talk to who? To what?” I think it’s cool because it’s still such a tiny niche, but it’s grown quite a bit so that there’s more discussion about it and there’s more attention about it across the country. There are more people that not just we’ve been able to help with our sphere and influence, but other people have gone out. A lot of you guys has helped dozens of families and different borrowers and communities. That’s a great thing for us.

Steph brushes over her experience because she’s dealt with negotiating short sales. You’ve done some wholesaling, you bought some individual notes. She’s got experience besides just being the VP of Operations on We Close Notes. One of the things that you pride yourself on earlier on was actually calling asset managers. Talk about how you made it fun. Because a lot of people are like, “I don’t want to call the bank.”

It was fun because my background was in medical for sixteen years. I spent an inordinate amount of time, as one of my duties, calling insurance companies to argue for patients to get approved for surgeries that they needed. I used to work with spine surgeons. There are a lot of insurance companies out there. They’re like, “No, unless they’re falling over, we’re not going to approve this.” You are. I had to argue with them and send in the documentation. It was more of a lateral jump. It wasn’t that big of a difference. I was nervous at first because I don’t enjoy being put on the spot. I was afraid I would forget what I needed to say. After I made 50 calls, they’re just normal people. They’re no different. After that, it was easy to do and it didn’t bother me and I had fun with it.

You had fun with it so much, you got good at it. One of our first big Masterminds in San Diego, we had 40 people at it. We were at the Country Inn Suites at Mira Mesa. We divided everybody into teams. You had a team of five. That was you, Terri, Sandy, Garner and Leah were on there. Maybe Tracy Mayes or Windy Ruffini. You girls went out and made phone calls and kicked ass. Can we agree to that?

I did, but I had done it before. I had learned how to get emails when they weren’t readily present. It was something that I figured out when I would call and I would talk to somebody or I would call and get their voicemail or whatnot, then I would call back. I learned how to get through the door. Once I can figure out one email back then, I had all of them. It wasn’t hard to do. It was just the asking and it was the following up. I would call and I would email and I would do all these things. We got a lot of contexts that way. I’m glad that you remember that. I forget a lot of these things.

That’s because you’re busy doing a variety of different things and keeping my ass out of trouble. It’s your full-time job. You’ve made phone calls, you’ve done some note selling, you’ve got some flips. You’ve always known that I’ve been doing these webinars, going back to 2011. When we started doing these Facebook Lives, did you think it was going to last?

I was a believer that video was going to be something that became a larger tool in business. I was intrigued by the fact, and Scott will say this a lot, that video is probably the last real channel that we have in freedom of speech and to say what we want to say and get across the things we want to talk about without being overly censored or cut off or whatnot. I think that’s cool because note buyers are in a niche. I thought the Facebooks were cool. They were definitely better than Periscope. I have nothing against Periscope, but it was better than Periscope. It seemed like it would have more of a lasting presence because everybody we knew was on Facebook and a lot of our older friends are on Facebook as well. I thought it would last. The jump from the Facebook Lives into the podcast was almost a natural transition, but he’d done the webinars for so long that it wasn’t anything that different. He didn’t want to have the extra work. I do remember telling him, “You’re going to do what? How much time is that going to take? Don’t you do those things on the back end? What is that going to cost?”

No, let’s be realistic. She didn’t ask that first. She was like, “What’s it going to cost? What’s it going to cost you? How much extra work are you going to do?” I was hesitant. We’re hesitant to do a podcast because we had a lot of respect for Robby and Chase doing the Note MBA Podcast and they were out kicking butt and taking names. We were proud of that. We did some stuff to help promote their shows and stuff like that and proud of where they came. We talked to Robby on a couple of things. We were both like, “We don’t want to steal their thunder.” When we were in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic with Jack Croupy for his wedding, when Robby said that he wasn’t going to do the podcast anymore. I had Tom Hazzard. We’ve got to give a big shout out to Tom Hazzard, Tracy Hazzard, Alexandra Hazzard, their whole team over at Podetize.com. They do all the production for episodes. It saves me a lot of time. We would not be without them. I would still be a YouTube or a Facebook Live show and there’s nothing wrong with that. Big kudos to those guys. Just big thanks because they were like, “You should do a show.” I’m like, “No.”

The fact that they were able to teach us and show us that literally what we’re doing anyway on Monday nights for Note Night in America would easily transition to a podcast and that we could do this on a daily basis and it has grown. A lot of times when I was looking leading up to now, I was asking around a lot of the Facebook groups I’m a part of and podcasts, “How many people out there, how many shows have hit 500 episodes?” Let alone say 300 episodes. It actually becomes before 500, 300, and it’s all down to less than 1%. It’s like one-tenth of 1% of podcasters make it to 300 episodes or greater. We’re in the 1% that stuck with it. A lot of people are always asking us like, “You crank out a lot of contents.” It’s a lot of the same things that we discuss on a daily basis when I get questions or emails from clients or students or we’re covering a topic either from Note Night in America or I’m getting feedback and I encourage feedback. I hugely encourage feedback. We want to have that stuff because it helps me.

There are days I walk in the office, I’m going to do a podcast. I’m like, “What am I going to talk about?” I’ll ask her. There will be times before I leave the house, “What should I talk about?” She’s like, “What?” One of the things that’s exciting is we’ve had so many guests here and I want to thank all of our guests. Everybody that’s been a guest. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule. We’ve had a good mix of obviously real estate investors, students of ours, vendors and then a good mixing of entrepreneurship and business leaders too have come in. We’d like to try to keep it, spice it up a little bit and keep it different because it’s not just all about notes. It’s all about the vendors, it’s all about the mindset because we all deal with things that speaking-wise or business-wise there are good days or bad days. We’ll have ups and downs. We try our best I can to try to help you find people that you can turn to that are also experiencing the same things that can help uplift you, coach you through those things. I know I might be your note coach, but I may not be a coach to help you with your life. We both have coaches that help us out with that on a regular basis.

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

We Close Notes: Videos are the last real channel we have to say what we want to say and get across the things we want to talk about without being overly censored or cut off.

 

We do. One thing I would add to that is that most people who come into the note business that I’ve seen, you guys have all had other jobs, other positions, things like that. Not all of you have been managers, leaders or CEOs. It is quite a jump. Some people have said when you go from being an employee to an employer or running your own business, even aside from learning the ins and outs of the business, you have to learn marketing. A lot of us have to learn how to get up and even speak to people, in front of people and be assertive or confident. That is a thing.

Some of the other guests come on to talk about leadership and how they’ve evolved and things that they’ve learned and the obstacles they’ve overcome because all of us have it. Leadership and management and mindset because you have good days and you have crappy days. Some of those can be very demoralizing. You have to find that place in yourself to come back from a support level to where you can keep doing what you’re doing and do it better and do it well. Not to be what is the thing where you’re not so afraid to fail because everybody does fail, but you learn something from it and then you do it better the next time. A lot of the other guests that come on, not a lot of them, but at least maybe a third of the guests, those are focused on those other pieces of having a business, growing in the note industry.

One of the things that we want to open up to you is feel free to ask questions, feel free of things that you’re struggling. We would love to hear your feedback. If you have a favorite episode that you can think of because we’re going to dive into our top ten episodes. This has evolved. I think one of the biggest things I’ve seen evolve is we’ve grown. One of the things that I wanted early on is to figure out, “Are we actually on par? Are we doing good? Are we doing bad?” The first Podfest Expo that I went to when I had been in the business for six months. We did a podcast starting in August of 2017 and this was six months later, March and February, was going to figure out how are we doing? What are we doing? We’ve got 50,000 downloads at that point, things are the rock and roll. It was wild. We’ll exceed 200,000 downloads in year two. We have a question here, “When you first started your podcast, what would you say was your most difficult part to start?” That’s a great question. Steph, do you want to throw in an answer to that or no? Are you going to take a guess at that?

He doesn’t ramble, but getting him to stay on a topic and deciding which topic for which day. I think the production of it was the hardest part. It was, “Who’s going to do this and what do you have to do? Where does it go after that? What’s the next step beyond that?” and to get it out where it’s up on iTunes and on the other platforms.

That was the biggest thing. I didn’t know where to go. That was a black hole. I thought I had to do all that individually. A lot of podcasters are struggling with that. They’re really struggling with that. You’re going to have Tom Hazzard on our podcasts live stream with podcasts, seeing we started doing the last few months. I was very fortunate that I had somebody that came in and took over that aspect of me. I think the biggest thing that most people struggle with is what to talk about. I’ve had conversations with some people and other students, other friends who want to do a podcast. The question overwhelmingly is, “What am I going to talk about?” I’m like, “Just talk. If you’re in the note industry, you’ve closed some deals.” It doesn’t have to be note deals. They can be fix and flips. It can be wholesale deals. Start sharing those resources. Start sharing those stories because everybody loves stories. That’s what a podcast is all about. It’s storytelling.

That’s why it’s totally different than what we do with Note Night in America. We try to get on and tell stories and have speakers on here that are going to share some insights and things like that. There’s a lot of content, but the whole idea is just to map out your content. I’m working with Thomas. Thomas is our trainer and he’s looking to start a podcast for what he is doing in personal training. Plotting out those first ten to fifteen episodes because the first episode I did is nowhere near what we do now. Basically what I like doing is I tell him, “Write out your first ten, fifteen, twenty episodes. When Steph got the podcast bug, you wrote out how many episodes in an evening?

I literally wrote out a list of 150 topics and the podcasts that I have is about animals.

There’s no wrong answer. It can be five minutes, it can be fifteen minutes. It can be an hour. Our average episode is somewhere between around 45 minutes because that’s what it takes to get the episode out. That’s what it takes to share the content. We’ve had shorter episodes and we’ve had longer episodes, but we found that somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour time slot for our content. That’s two, three little bits of stories and sharing all of what’s going on. If you’re thinking about starting, jot down twenty episodes. You’ll figure out how your podcast is going to work by your tenth episode. Tweak it. You’re going to change what you like, what you dislike, but the idea is the twenty episodes, get those under your belt recorded. Now you’ve got a nice amount that you can release all at once to give people the opportunity to binge to it. That was the biggest thing. Figure out what you can talk about and start recording the episodes. Start sharing that stuff and go from there.

We have another question, “I know you’re a Gary Vee guy. How did you build out the multi-facets? Taking the video, audio and blogs and getting it out to your audience?” That’s a fun one.

I love Gary Vee, but one of the things I did in November of 2016 is I stopped watching Gary Vee. I would come to the office and I would spend the first hour in the Ask Gary Vee YouTube series or Facebook series. I realized I was spending an hour time watching Gary Vee and not get anything done and the morning is too bad. That’s why we started doing all these episodes in the mornings. It would be my marketing hour in the morning. What I did as far as building up the facets is I’m a big fan of Buffer. I was on the phone with one of the head PR of Buffer about having them on the podcast or on a Note Night in America or having on a virtual summit at some point in the near future. They’re all excited about this.

One of the big things is putting the systems in place so that if you create one piece of content, whether it’s a thumbnail or a video that you can share it across the board. With Zoom, we use Zoom, we use a video, we upload it to YouTube and we upload to Vimeo. Why do I have both? You don’t want to lose your videos if YouTube shuts your account down overnight like I’ve had to happen in the past. We use both those as a backup. The same thing, when you create an image, a thumbnail for the show that makes it look better than the stroke face that I’m guilty of seeing on Facebook or YouTube, is that thumbnail becomes a very valuable thing that you can share to your blogs.

You can share to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. It’s all about the visual side of things. It’s taking some of those basic things. A lot of people like to cut up their episodes into minute chunks or two-minute chunks or ten-minute chunks. I don’t do that because I don’t want to take the time. I just like to take the video or the audio via Zoom and then I upload it to the Podetize platform that Tom and Tracy Hazzard have for us. I tell them all the episodes about and what the label is. A brief description, email links to the guests and they run with it all and edit it. They clean it up. They get rid of the uhs, the dead space. If I need to cut something out, they cut it out. They throw it up on iTunes and all the other different podcast platforms. They also take the transcription, which they do a full transcription, which you can use Rev.com for this for getting started. They log on to my WordPress, my main website, and create a full article about it.

Their VAs create a couple of infographics if I haven’t created one that is different, which I like. They have a different infographic for the episode and the podcast and it’s a different link or image that we use on YouTube and Vimeo. It’s a little bit different aspect there but just creative stuff. I have to give a big shout out to Shannon in our office. Shannon does a great job of managing the Buffer account. She’s done a great job of taking what some of our previous employees were doing and she’s taken it and put it into overdrive. Finding good people that are going to help promote your podcast. If you have a part-time assistant or part-time VA, it can be great and it can save you a lot of time. I’d highly encourage that. You could jump on Upwork.com and find a VA who’s got some social media experience to help you with that sharing.

What does that mean? It means you’re given the passwords. Shannon’s got my password to my LinkedIn account, YouTube account and my social media accounts so she can log in as she needs to. Use Buffer.com to log in and then edit it, schedule it and go from there. That’s how we built up the multi-facets stuff like that. It’s getting it and sharing it. Share it everywhere. I’ve talked to a lot of podcasters that want to do the audio side. They don’t want to do the video side. Honestly, what happens is the video is the backup. Worst case, why do I share it to Facebook? Because that’s the backup to the backup. There had been times I shared it to Facebook and I forgot to hit the record button. If I hadn’t shared it to Facebook, I would’ve not had that backup. Some people are like, “I don’t want to go live.” It helps to go live. I’m not going to go live to YouTube and keep it private on YouTube if you don’t want to go live to Facebook, but you’ve got to realize you need to have that backup of the backup just in case. I see so many people are like, “I had a great episode but then I didn’t hit the record button.” That sucks. I never wanted to do that. I only did that once, I’m never going to do that again.

Didn’t I delete one pod?

You did accidentally but I was able to go back and download it from Facebook and live stream it. You want a backup of the backup. You get crazy fingers and delete things. It’s not as hard as you think. I know it’s like we rattled through a few things on there, but if anybody’s interested in our podcast production where we share it. I’ve got a video I’ve done on this and also a written outline and I’m glad to share with anybody. All you’ve got to do is email me at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com and I’ll gladly send out that link to that video that I walked through. I actually spoke at Podfest. Chris Krimitsos asked me to speak on it. It was a 30-minute spot but I got through a lot.

You’re were excited about that.

It’s always nice to speak and be the smartest person in the room. I love that. One of the things I wanted to share with you guys is to talk about some of our top ten episodes and these are top downloads of things that surprised me a little bit. Our top ten episodes here and you guys can see 380,000 and 526 all-time downloads. We’re averaging over 1,000 downloads of basically about 1,000 subscribers. The tenth most downloaded is episode 175, Start Over, Starting from Ground Zero. This is an episode that I talked about what would happen if I had to start with business all over again? Where would I begin? What would I do? What would I focus on?

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

We Close Notes: Starting a podcast, one of the difficult parts is the production and deciding on which topic to tackle for which day.

 

That doesn’t surprise me as the top ten. I thought it might rank a little bit higher, but it is a great episode for somebody starting off from ground zero. If you’re brand new to the business that doesn’t have any real state or market experience, this is a great place to start because I go talk about building lists and leveraging LinkedIn and Meetup.com. Number nine is our buddies from Steve Olsher. I have to give Steven a big shout out. Steve’s the guy that runs the New Media Summit. He asked me to come to speak in Icon of Influence when we hit our 100,000, which I was excited about. Steve’s become a good friend of some things, especially in the podcasting place and marketing stuff. I bounce ideas off of him and vice versa.

His episode, Reinvention Radio with Steve Olsher. Steve has a podcast called Reinvention Radio and Beyond 8 Figures. He got a couple of other ones out there. He’s been around podcasts for almost ten-plus years if I remember correctly. He’s got a real estate development background in Chicago too. That’s why we hit it off as well. It’s a great show talking about how we all have to reinvent ourselves. I’ve had to reinvent myself a few times as the market has changed. That’s a great episode. That’s number nine actually as the top download.

Number eight is not a surprise. It’s Closing on Bank Assets. That was the episode that I interviewed Adam Adams from AJA Investments, Joe Bayarena and Jamie Kubiak, three of our mastermind members. Jamie and Joe are business partners and Joe was able to get a list of assets at San Antonio bank sent to him performing and nonperforming. Adam brought in the finance and they were able to take the thing down. It was a discussion of how Joe used distressedpro, how they evaluated it, how they raise capital and their exit strategies before. It was good. Number seven is the third episode, Creating Your Entity Fortress with Aaron Young. We’ve got to give a big shout out to our brother from another mother, Aaron Young. He has been a guest here on a regular time. He was one of the first sponsors. I absolutely love hanging out with him, him and Michelle. Michelle just had a minor procedure done. We wish her well and get healthy.

Not only are they great friends and people that we can bounce ideas off too. Them both being entrepreneurs and are great people that we look forward to talking to. It’s a back and forth a lot of, “What are you focused on? What are you struggling with? How can we help you overcome that thing?” That’s a big thing. It seemed Michelle blossomed in the last couple of years with her coaching and stuff. She’s been a guest. Both have been guests on the show as well. That’s a great thing. Number six is Due Diligence for Dummies Part One. This was the first of a two-part series of breaking down step-by-step due diligence. It’s no surprise that’s a top six episode. Number five is the first episode, Welcome to the Note Closers Show Podcast. It is episode 150. That was lower actually but as we’ve grown, people have gone back and listened to the first one. It’s probably our worst episode ever because it was very short, talking about the show and what we were going to focus on and it’s got all different staff with us now.

Number four is one thing that you’re going to see more of over the next few episodes and the next hundred episodes are a lot of note case studies going from start to finish. What do we buy it at? What do we see it at? What happened with the deal? What’s the return on investment? What strategy? We’ve been spending a lot of time on that because I know we wanted to get back to doing a lot of that stuff here after we hit the 500th episode. Note Case Study is episode 153. Episode 151 is Business Models for Your Note Business. This is where I spend time talking about different levels and different areas or different niches. Whether it’s nonperforming is one level you want to go to, performing notes first versus seconds, residential versus commercial.

It’s a great episode and that’s number three. I surprised that ranked so high, but when it tells you is that a lot of people are going back and listening to the first few episodes before they dive in the later ones. Number two, which was the number one episode for almost the first full year was episode 195, Launching Your Business. We just talk about what are the simple things that you’ve got to keep in mind when you’re becoming a note investor. When you have got a roll out, what entities do you need? What do you think you need to consider?

How to put your team together? The number two episode is 195, Launching Your Business. The number one episode is the KISS Method. It means the Keep It Simple Silly. It has over 3,600 for an individual episode. Almost all of our top ten average over 2,000, actually for 2,500 for the most part when you figure it across the board. That one, I don’t know why it became the number one download. I’m excited that it did. It did well for one day. It was one of those weird episodes where we had over 6,000 downloads in a day.

We thought it was a fluke. We thought something was wrong.

There are not any fake downloads. On March 6, we had our biggest download day, 6,200 downloads and half of it was that one episode for the most part. It still got no traction, but somebody liked the KISS method. It wasn’t Valentine’s Day.

No. We were joking was it a full moon? Did something happen? It’s true.

Those are the top ten episodes. We had different people that toyed in the top ten in the first year or some things like that. People have shared their episode and did a great job. Big kudos to everybody that’s shared the episode who’s been a guest on and done a great job in sharing our episode. We’ll keep cranking out episodes as long as you keep reading and keep sharing. One of the biggest lessons that I have learned is how powerful this platform is, especially the beginning of this year when I told Steph that we were going to change some things up. We were starting to see a lot of people come in for the podcast. You would talk with people, specifically a lot of people could step in for those. I don’t know if you’re interested in being in the Fast Track or Mastermind, Steph handles the onboarding process for that. You’ll love it and you’ll have a lot of great conversations with them.

I’m actually able to get in and get to know a lot of people when they come in. It’s not just answering questions about what’s coming up for what’s going to happen, but you get to know a lot about their family, their pets, their kids and what they’re doing. Why they want to get in and do notes and what jobs they’re leaving. I love that. It’s a lot of fun and you get to see how notes and how real estate will make a difference for them. You see further down the line than they do. Sometimes they know where they want to go, but they see a wall in front of them. You’re like, “No. I’ve seen that. You can get past it and this is how you do it.” That’s fun.

You find out what the why is and what their focus is.

What they’re afraid of, what they’re worried about and what they’re good at.

I like that fact because people will tell Steph stuff that they won’t tell me.

Sometimes.

Maybe they think I’m a jerk. I’m going to yell at them, but that’s not the case. A lot of people approach it from the business and they hear her and this is not just people come in. It’s everywhere you go, people end up talking to you.

I’ve had that happen a lot. Most of the time it’s fine. Sometimes it’s been very strange because I’ll meet people and I might know them for five minutes and they’re telling me things about their life. At that point I’m like, “What can I do to help? Because this is not good.” It’s a good trait and I’m grateful for it and I’m grateful for the people that do that. Does that make sense?

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

We Close Notes: A lot of people go back and listen to the first few episodes before they dive into the later ones.

 

It totally makes sense because you get a lot of people all over that and you connect a lot of people and animals. You’re passionate for your kitties and dogs and stuff like that, that’s why you’ve got the Furbabies Podcast that you’re rocking out there. That’s the thing. Sometimes people just need to listen and they need an ear that they can talk and vent and go from there. We have a question, “When you feel like you’re running out of content to talk about in your podcast, where do you get your inspiration from?” Note deals and case studies.

If somebody is having a problem or an obstacle.

When I get emails and questions from students. People will post on different Facebook groups, topics. I’ll jump on BiggerPockets and see what people are asking there. Mostly it comes from students. When I see students struggling with something, sometimes on the topics I see coming, when I see students struggling with things that they just need to get their own way. That’s a normal thing, but that’s what it comes down to. We go to a lot of movies and I get a lot of crazy thing when you walk in the movie theater, they know you almost on a first name basis. “What are you guys watching tonight?” We’re catching John Wick 3 for the fourth time, whatever.

It’s taking things that we enjoy and I’m honestly being a little corny sometimes. What are we focused on this week and how can it affect other things? Like the whole Avengers End Game when I did a Note Night in America about that. We talked about what was the end game, what’s our big focus and that came straight from me sitting through Avengers End Game. Paperstac.com. I didn’t know Note Night in America with those guys because I’m friends with them and talked to them. Actually I talked to them when I was in Orlando and I plan on doing it and just had not gotten around to it with our travel.

It is figuring out all the different things. There are so many different facets on the note business and there are so many great people like you and others that’s easy to talk to. That’s one thing as I always love. We’ve had guests on here before who were students of ours and those that weren’t students were still going out and doing amazing things. That’s one thing that we’ve always liked is if somebody’s doing something big thing or someone, we didn’t talk to in forever like Desi Arnaz. Desi did a great job on his episode. I highly encourage you to read it or how he’s leveraging video at his age to help raise capital and get note deals done in San Diego, in that neck of the woods.

He has great hats.

He wears the same white fedora the entire time. Perfectly nice, round brown head that Desi has.

One thing though, when you talked about the movies, the other part of that is as far as content goes, we don’t talk about religion, we don’t talk about politics because everybody else is not on the podcast. Pop culture, movies, music and things like that are events that are happening, they influence how we show up for business whether we know it or not or whether we admit it or whether we like it sometimes. Sometimes seeing those things, like everybody and their brother almost either sat down and watched the end of Game of Thrones or End Game in the Marvel universe or they went out weeks ago and sat in a theater packed with a bunch of other adults who were all kids in the ‘90s and watched The Lion King.

I have not done one for Lion King. Maybe I should do one where I’m holding up the notes.

My point in that is most people will have a connection on that. If you see a movie and it gets you amped up and you’re like, “I didn’t think I could persevere through this, but actually, I can.” The pop culture side of it and different things that he brings in marketing-wise, that’s part of it. It is a little piece, but it’s a fun piece. That’s cool.

In the movies, in the news, if I do politics, I make fun of bus parties like I’ve done a couple of years ago. Steph got mad, “You can’t do that with Hillary.” I’m like, “I’ve got one for Trump too.” She’s like, “Okay.”

You make fun of everybody.

That’s the whole goal of that aspect of it. The thing too that has been nice is going to events, going to the Distressed Mortgage Expo or going to the Noteworthy Investor Summit or going to the note expo that Eddie puts on or other things, the Quest Expo things. Going to those events can often be great ways for you to find topics because there are vendors there, there are other people you meet talking about their businesses. That’s a great facet to do to help you build content and talk about. Like all of the things we’ve done before is we had our Note Mastermind. We recorded seven episodes that day for the mastermind students at 20 to 40 minutes with each one.

I want to get it out because everybody’s got their own story to tell. Everybody comes from different backgrounds. That’s what sixteen years in back and spine, me in the banking finance industry, people in sales and things like that. Everybody’s got a different facet and then sometimes it’s all about hearing somebody else’s opinion and view. Maybe they’ve used something a little different than you and it takes on a whole different realm of how they’d be able to market and reach out to somebody with other content.

Hopefully it was helpful.

I guarantee it was helpful. One of the things too and we’re looking, we’ve tweaked up some things. We don’t want a mastermind event because of the podcast. We’ve gone from three Mastermind events in a year to two. When is the next one slated for, Steph?

November 15th through the 17th.

Should we call it Note-vember? Is that too corny?

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

We Close Notes: Pop culture, movies, music, and things like that influence how we show up for business, whether we admit it or not.

 

I’m still working on it. I’m trying to figure something.

November 15th, 16th and 17th, and what’s the big thing with that one?

Orlando.

It’s going to be in Orland, Florida. Where is it at?

In Disney. It will be at the Coronado Springs and Resort on Walt Disney World property, their convention center.

Convention center at Coronado. We’d done one there before a couple of years back.

We did. A lot of them have come out and said, “We want to go back to Florida and we’d like to go back to Disney. Can we do that again? That was so much fun.” We got a lot of work done, but it was also a lot of fun too. It’s not blazing hot and it’s not insanely crowded.

How many people do we have room for at that one? 50? 100 people?

Under 100.

Last time we had only 85 people there and 125 total and their family.

People got their families. That was actually something that we encourage them to do. While we were working in the daytime, people would bring down their wives or kids, whatever, because it’s over the weekend. They were able to go out and enjoy the parks or could do something in Orlando or even hanging out at the resort. Some of them did that. We’ll stop around 4:00 or 5:00 and then we’ll be able to have dinner. We divvied up into different groups and they’re still large. That was fantastic. We would go have dinner with each other, and then we’d get to see a show or something at Disney.

At the time when we did the last one, it was three weeks before the Christmas holiday. The parks were all decked out with holiday decorations and it was fun. This time holiday decorations will be up again. It will be coming in on the tail end. They have their food and wine festival every year. For those of you who follow Disney News on both coasts, Star Wars is there opening August 29th. We’ll miss the mad bum rush of that from the beginning, but it’s going to be there. I had some people like, “I’m going to Star Wars land.”

I foresee a Note Wars t-shirt being released that weekend.

I think that would be fun.

The last Noteswalker basically because that’s The Last Skywalker, whatever.

How many people came up? Random strangers would come up to me when I would wear that shirt because when I’m not here, I’ll wear t-shirts all the time. I’d go to the grocery store. “I’m sorry. Pardon me. I’m not a creeper. What’s that Note Wars thing?” “I am wearing a Note Wars shirt.” We get into a discussion about it. I think that’s happened with some of the other ones.

Jared raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars on the beach in Fort Myers.

Sipping on a cocktail.

NCS 500 | We Close Notes

We Close Notes: Most note investors are nice people, and likewise for most podcasters and most people in the podcast community.

 

Garrison Gilbert has raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars on an airplane flight home in first class and people asked about the shirt. He talked about that on the Note CAMP Commercial up there. One of the things that we’re going to see happening too is you’re going to start seeing some more guests from some of these different events that we’ve been to join us on the Note Closers Show. Obviously a lot of case studies. Especially going to dive back in a lot of the nuts and bolts. There were some requests from people, mastermind members that want us to dive back into. We’re glad to do that. We encourage you, if you have a topic, if you have somebody that you’d like for us to focus on going forward on an episode of, let us know. We’ll gladly reach out. There are two people who requested information on accounting stuff. That’s why I run on Thomas Castelli.

People asked for bookkeeping and we have reached out to Debbie Mullins a couple of times. The thing I want you guys to realize is that the Note Closers Show here is great for us. Honestly, we started it for our audience. We started listening for our note family, not only the people that are existing students but future students. We’re excited at the response, the downloads and the radio stations that we’re part of have noticed an increase on our show episodes, becoming one of the most popular shows on their network, which is exciting. We’re loving getting feedback from you guys. As always, if you’re looking for more information, easy to opt in to get on our network. You’re alerted of when a new podcast or new training happens.

All you’ve got to do is text the word NOTES to the phone number 72000. Send it in and you’ll be in our system, you’ll get access over 80 hours of training videos and some other good stuff out there for you to be able to learn the note business. PowerPoint, the basics of note investing, but the 80 hours of training is where it’s at for most people. A lot of our Note Night in America webinars and coaching calls are available there. That’s free. There’s no cost. You’d be alerted to other things popping up along the way. Our extended family and Note Nation, thank you guys so much.

Thank you guys for being patient, being across the board, all of you. I’m so proud of people that are taking things and also doing. If you guys are thinking about a podcast, I’d love to visit with you. I think there’s plenty of room out there. It’s still such a very niche-y aspect of things. Kudos to Chris Seveney and Gail Greenberg with their Good Deeds Note Investing Podcast. I know Paul Cooper’s looking to start one. I know Garrison Gilbert’s looking to start one. I know that Laura Blunk is looking to start one there too for you. Kudos to you guys for doing some good stuff. Just stick with it, 500 episodes. There have been times I’ve gone through pod fade emotionally.

What is pod fade?

Pod fade is what happens with the majority of people that start a podcast don’t ever get to twelve episodes.

Why?

Because it’s pod fade. They just stop doing it.

Why?

Because they can’t come up with ideas to talk about. Maybe they have ideas but they don’t do it. They get tired or they let it intimidate them when they realize they have great stuff out there. Steph, you’ve experienced that before though?

My biggest obstacle was I loathed video with a blazing passion of the sun. It’s better but it’s far too easy for me. I’ve got so much going on this side that I’m like, “I’ll do it next week,” or “I’ll do tomorrow.” We have podcast movement coming up. I’m like, “How has that already been five months?” Podcasters are a nice group of people and so far, it’s been interesting because there’s the Note Closers Show and then there’s the stuff that I wanted to work on. Two totally different things, but it encompasses the same people because you all are doing the same thing. Walking into note events, most note investors are nice people. Likewise for most podcasters, most people in the podcast community they’re like, “I might just want to do video,” or “I want to do audio by myself.”

I have to give a big shout out to everybody that’s had me on as a guest on their podcast. For the members of our private podcast group, for people that have either had on the podcast or I’ve been on their podcast, thank you. It’s almost 100 people had me on their podcasts. I set a goal for myself beginning this year to hit 100 interviews and we’re on the way to do that.

What number are you on?

Seventy-five. I’ve still got a few months left. I’m doing good, doing pretty well, but what has been a big thing is traffic. It’s not only being on our show but also being I’ve been on their shows or vice versa. It’s a pod swap basically, an episode swap thing. Anyway, it’s a great group of people. Just like our readers out there on the Note Nation. I wanted to say one final thank you to everybody out there, everybody who shared this. Thank you so much for being here consistently. Thank you for being our extended family and a final big thank you to Stephanie. Thank you so much for your support and for keeping me in line as best you can. I know it’s a full-time job, but I think we all noticed that if you’re around us, you do a lot of stuff. Also not necessarily what we don’t always like to do. She does a great job. We’re going to try and get her on more often.

Once again, thank you to everybody who’s been on that shared, watched, listened or read one of our episodes out there. Keep sharing and we’ll keep delivering great content as best as we can for you. As always, if you have a question, have an issue, feel free to drop us an email, Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. You can text us in as well, or go to the website and leave a message on the website. We’re glad to help you get there at anything we do on WeCloseNotes.com. Once again, on behalf of Stephanie Goodman, my significant half here who is a rock star in her own mind, she does not know it but she’s amazing. One of the great things about it is when you have people that support you in what you’re endeavor. It makes life a whole lot easier and she’s been nothing but supportive. Go out and make something happen and we’ll see you all at the top.

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About Stephanie Goodman

NCS 500 | We Close NotesStephanie Goodman is the Vice President of Operations for WeCloseNotes.com and the host of the Furbabies Podcast. She has been an active real estate and note investors since 2012.

 

 

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