EP 531 – Where Is The Work Ethic In The Note Investing Industry These Days?

Good people are hard to find. In the real estate investing world, that task has increasingly become harder. Host, Scott Carson, asks in this episode, “Where’s the work ethic these days?” He taps into the increasing problem of entrepreneurs and people in the real estate space signing up for things but never taking action. Investing in something takes the work ethic to really see it through. With that, Scott shares to you two important words needed to succeed in this industry: work and more. Find out about these two things that will separate you from the crowd and take you to new heights in the long run.

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Where Is The Work Ethic In The Note Investing Industry These Days?

I’m excited to be here with you on the Note Closers Show. I want to give a big shout-out to all of our audiences. Not only those that listen to the show anywhere, podcasts, wherever, but our online video audience on YouTube, Facebook and growing list of audience on our different AM/FM and radio stations across the country. Note Nation, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to our international audiences as well. We are honored to provide quality content and information to help you on your journey as a real estate and note investor. This episode is garnered towards where’s the work ethic these days.

Problem With Entrepreneurs

I’m sure many of you will agree with me on this. Good people are hard to find. I’m not talking about assistance because you can often find assistance on VAs. We’re talking about entrepreneurs who sign up for something. We see this in the real estate industry, especially when you’re an educator like me. I have a note business. We have the real estate that runs that way. Separately, we have our education business. I would throw the podcast into the education business in the side of our business as a separate entity. It’s downright depressing sometimes that as an educator, I talk with a lot of my peers on a regular basis.

I go to different masterminds and there are different marketing things. I go to help us increase our conversion ratios on emails, getting people into our funnels and getting people talk. I do value and enjoy teaching people on the note business because nobody is teaching the things that we do on a regular basis. Nobody is teaching how to from A to Z, your nuts and bolts, basic training when it comes to bonds and investing in distress debt. Here are the numbers and we throw some numbers out there. If you speak in front of an audience somewhere, a paid audience, I’m talking by paid, if you go to speak in front of a meetup group or a real estate investment club meeting or conference that’s a paid attendee, people are paying to be there. I don’t care if it’s $20 to go to the REIA club meeting on a Monday night where they’re paying a couple of $100 or $1,000 to go to a conference. Those that pay to attend are much higher responsive audience than those that are free because free has no value.

If I was like to say you get the price peeps that show up to a free event, people that aren’t going to have no investment, they’re there for the prizes, very few of them are they’re going to pull the trigger. They themselves have no investment in the event. It makes it for a bad event for somebody like me or the people that are speaking, flying across the country or showing up. They’re taking time from our weekend and being in an event or being a vendor at an event that costs us thousands of dollars. Either we want to deal with a high target audience, you use a number. If I go to a REIA club meeting and speak in front of a REIA club meeting, a REIA group or something like that, I expect to sell somewhere between 30% to 40% of the room as far as principles.

If you take 100 people, but that’s made up entirely of husbands and wives, that’s fifteen principals. 30% of that would be roughly sixteen sales, which is great. It’s not a bad hour or two hours, especially if you fly out or somewhere close. It’s a good thing. To keep in mind is out of that bunch, you’ll go to a workshop, you would love to say 20% of people that would do something. When it comes down to a lot of people signing up for stuff, they never take action. We’re all guilty of this, whether it’s signing up for software, using an app, sign up for the gym membership or sign up for dance lessons.

A lot of us never complete things that we sign up for. Especially in the real estate niche, a lot of people will sign up for stuff that they never accomplish or when they sign up for back to back events or training. They often will never complete it or give seeds or the things they learned time enough to germinate to show real results. We see that on a regular basis. Note investing is not the easiest thing. I’ll be the first one to tell you. It’s not the easiest niche to dive into. You could wholesale, you could put out bandit signs. You could send the yellow letters out. You could try to track down foreclosure lists. You could try to track down the zone, the zoning departments or the code enforcement offices and reach out for deals in your local areas.

Note investing is not a local event, not for me here in Austin, Texas. It’s an event that’s outside of Texas for the most part. That’s what I tell people all the time. If you’re looking for deals in the note business for cashflow, you need to look outside of Texas and go that route because of the faster foreclosure time frames here. Look at other states like California and Nevada areas. If you’re looking for deals in those states, you need to be looking somewhere else. The opposite goes for New York. If you’re ever looking for something in New York, you’ve got to be almost crazy because the fact that could take you a year or two years to foreclose there, especially longer than a year, 18 to 24 or sometimes 36 months. That’s one thing.

It’s not, “I’m going to buy this property and instantly turn around and sell it in 90 days for a profit.” This is not a get rich quick type of investment thing. This is not where, “I’m going to wholesale something to make $5,000.” You can wholesale notes like in real estate property, but it’s a different type of animal because you have a lot of different moving factors in this deal. You have a lot of moving numbers. You have different things you’ve got to look at in your due diligence that aren’t just, “Let’s go look at the property, full comps and see what type of repairs it needs.” You have the whole wild card to it when you’ve got borrowers involved.

Back to my main point, only about 10% of the people will take action and do anything. What does that mean? In some places, 10% of people will put what they learn to work. That’s the first thing. If they learned something, how will they put it to work in the first 24 to 48 hours? Let’s give them the first week to start implementing their plan. When I was a real estate coach back over a decade ago, I used to travel out and spend four days with people. Monday through Thursday or sometimes Tuesday through Friday and spend four days with them kicking their butt, getting them ready and getting them to start making offers or to send out things. There was always homework involved along the way for people.

What do I mean by homework? The homework involved was something that was simple as like, “Get your lists together. What are you marketing to? If you’re going to be sending out to a foreclosure list, let’s get your letters out or your marketing or postcards out the week before I arrive, especially by Thursday before I come in.” That way, phone calls start coming in when I’m there, when I can get the biggest bang for buck out of my four days with it. I’d show up a lot of times with people, although I’m not done any of the homework. The first day or two getting their marketing out. It was a waste because nobody would call by the time I was leaving on Thursday. We had to improvise and they can do things. They go door knocking or pull other lists or start dialing for dollars.

You have me there kicking your butt for four days. You better watch out. It’s intense four days. When I used to go out and do that, many times like Thursday afternoon, I’m like, “You’ve got to leave. You’ve got to go. I can’t handle you on my butt for four days to keep me going.” I’m like, “You’ve got to set these things up to be effective. You’ve got to put the work ethic. What did you do this last week?” “I took it easy.” “What did you do between 7:00 PM and midnight?” There’s plenty of time to put work into this. I’ll be the first one to say, “We all drift.” As our good friend Sharon Lechter is notorious for saying people drift out there and we all do. Everybody does. I do.

Note Investing Work Ethic: Only about 10% of the people who sign up for things will actually take action and do anything.

The Need To Take Action

The thing is to know when you are drifting so that you can correct it and come on back in and try to fix it as best you can. It’s not the easiest thing to do. The thing comes down to this too, that if you’re going to invest in something, I always tell people if they’re going to sign up for Note Buying Blueprint, please have a work ethic. Please understand that you have to go A, B, C, D before you get to Z. A lot of people want to go to Z. I’m like, “It doesn’t work that way.” You mess up because you don’t know the A, B, C, D. You don’t even know what the Z is because you’re going to think of it and try to apply what you’ve learned as a real estate investor or learn from somebody else’s class and try to apply it to the note business. That’s not the case. It doesn’t work. The thing that frustrates me more than anything else in this industry, I’m going to say this not just as an industry, but as real estate investing as a whole, is the number of people that never take action.

That drives me bonkers. That irritates the crap out of me that people that sign up for something and they’re like, “It didn’t work for me. It doesn’t work.” It didn’t work for you because you didn’t take action. If you’re reading this, it’s a prime time to start looking into your marketing. How do you find note? You market it all. I’m not joking. From the marketing I’ve done, from what I taught my workshop the first week of September, I’ve made six new sources, six new leads that have turned into four tapes. I got one. It’s something from a source that I’ve been working and going back and forth on LinkedIn.

Since September and through October, it’s two months. You send it less than two months. It is right at the two-month mark from when I originally contacted her on LinkedIn. That’s the thing that gets me, two months and people would give up on that. I gently followed up with her. I followed up with an email. I touched base with her at least five times through email, through message on LinkedIn. I connected with her. It was a follow-up message on LinkedIn because she said she was starting as a special asset manager to give her a week. I follow her back that week and then sent her an email. I followed up with another email to her and she sent me a list. I didn’t see until I walked into the office.

It’s got performing notes but also there are nonperforming notes on it and there’s color. We’ve exchanged emails back and forth about this to get a bit of idea on the discount and pricing and what they’re looking for in that back and forth aspect. That’s two months of at least six contacts. 80% of sales are made after the fifth contact. If you’re reading this, and you’ve never known me say that before, you must be new. 80% of sales are made of a fifth contact. That’s the biggest thing is that you can sit here and tell people, “It’s going to take you to make this many phone calls. It’s going to take you to make this many reach outs, as many contacts to have your marketing work effectively for you.”

What’s sad is they don’t want to do their work. They want to be given the leap. They want to be given the stuff. What’s funny is we’ve done that too. As people come into our mastermind or come in for the one-on-one coaching or Fast Track training, “Here’s a list of asset managers. Here are 5,000 asset managers for you. Here are 3,000 asset managers, mortgage bankers from the Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending Department. Here are 286 servicers for you to reach to.” They have plenty of clients that are looking to get rid of assets. Here’s a list of entities, over 9,000 entities that bought or sold notes in 2018 and one of the hottest counties in America.

Do you think you could reach out and find some sources from that? Most people don’t have the work ethic. We have to blame a lot on the phones these days. People are a little hesitant to pick up the phone and dial for dollars. People are hesitant to reach out and call somebody and leave a one-on-one message. It was one of the funniest things when we did our virtual mastermind in October. That’s what I did on a Saturday. I’ve made a bunch of phone calls to entities in front of everybody. We record it live and showed them, Saturday is not the best time to make phone call but still, make contact with people. I still was able to get ahold of people.

I was able to communicate with people that have bought and sold notes and got several lists from it. Most people think this is an easy overnight success. Those that are successful in this industry will tell you it’s not an overnight success by any means of the imagination. It may seem like it’s easy because I will show people easily how to pull information and how I had to jump on LinkedIn. How do you use LeadFuze? How do you use some of these other services? How to use Mailchimp? I’m sending a blast out. You have to realize it takes follow-up, sending some email. It’s not like send it and forget it. I was reading emails from somebody, who said they’re going in a different direction and I’m like, “You’ve barely been a student for 90 days. Why are you going in a different direction?” I asked him. He goes, “I want to go this route.”

I’m like, “Why are you going the most difficult aspect of things when you’ve never taken a class on that aspect on that niche? Why are you doing that to yourself? You’re bouncing from one thing to another, to another.” What happens is we see a repeat bounce thing. What do I mean by that? It’s not a bad email bounce. I want you to think about this because everybody bounces around. We’ve drifted from one subject to another. When I used to coach, there are people that were going and signing up for these masters in real estate investing in education. They would go from workshop to workshop.

They would bounce from one workshop to workshop. They never have time to implement anything before they went to a new workshop to try to go to another one. They would send out leads or marketing, but they would never have time to go back and work those leads that came in from that. “I can’t call it because I’ve got to go to the next workshop this weekend. I’ve got to get my master’s in real estate education investing.” I’m like, “What the heck is that?” Those classes will be there. If you’re going to be focused on something, try to do yourself a favor. Do yourself a favor, do your checkbook or your credit card if ever. Use what you’ve paid for and attend it. Take some time before sign up for something else to implement and do the things that need to be done.

Work: The Four-Letter Word Most Are Afraid Of

What I always laugh about is when people come through a training like, “I don’t think it’s for me.” You don’t think that the marketing that we talk about doing on a daily, weekly basis is going to benefit you in any way, and it does. I’m not talking about me sending a blast out daily. I’m talking about people learning how to market effectively in the 21st century. Scotty’s here to beam you. What people don’t do is they will not take the time to put things in place and realize that there are specific things that they need to do on a regular basis and go from there. Let’s throw these numbers out. Let’s say you want to have 100 asset managers in a twelve-month period.

This is the first goal that I ever set for myself is I want to have 100 asset managers I would reach out to in a year. I thought that would be a big number back over a decade ago. That’s a very easy number now. How do you get about doing it? You buy a couple of things. One, you can A, go to the Texas Savings and Mortgage Lending Department online and download the list of licensed mortgage bankers along with resources. That’s the list of mortgage companies. That’s about 3,200 company names, emails, phone numbers and dial for dollars. “You mean I have to work? There’s no app that will do that for me?” I’m like, “Unfortunately not. You can download the app and send an email blast out to them, but your most effective thing is going to be following up.”

Note Investing Work Ethic: We all drift out there but the thing is to know when you are drifting so that you can correct it and come back in.

You’re only going to have roughly about a 20% open rate. That’ll be a good one with asset managers. Usually, it’s somewhere between 9% and 15% depending on the time of year. Anytime around major holidays, like New Years, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you’ve got to be very deliberate in your email blast and when you send them out. You might as well train over a year around email blast that goes out every first Tuesday of the month provided it falls on a major holiday and follow up with those people. Those that open the email, great. Those that didn’t open the emails, send a follow-up email. It’s twenty-four emails and what do you mean by 24 emails? You write 24 emails, and the first email goes out. You’re going to get 9% to 15% of people to open that email from your list.

You send the same email out a couple of days later, the same exact email to those that didn’t open the first email. Why do you send the exact same email? They didn’t read the first time and you only will see about a 3% to 6% open rate the second time around you send it, but you send it at opposite time of the day. If you sent it in the morning on Tuesday, you send it in the afternoon on a Thursday or vice versa. That’s half of your mails. It’s one a month. The second set of twelve emails is going to go out to those that open your email and send it the following week. “Thanks for opening my email last week. I’d love to set up a phone call with you to see what you have on your books.” It’s a very simple thing. The beautiful thing to use is Mailchimp or Infusionsoft CRM tool, you can pre-write those emails and set it up to your systems so that it’s done almost on an automatic basis.

All you’ve got to do is the real four-letter word. The real four-letter word and most people are very scared of is work. What do I mean by work? That means dialing for dollars, it’s picking the phone and call or leave them a message. I used to make 50 phone calls in a day. I got into 100 phone calls in a day. On a good day, I could still knock those out. That’s the magic word. Doing the extra 5% that most people won’t do. Most people want to send an email blast out. They’re like, “I don’t have time to make phone calls. I’m too busy being something else.” That’s fine. If you don’t have time to make phone calls during the day because you are working in a job, that’s fine.

There are other ways to do it. “What do you mean, Scott Carson? What do you mean there are other ways to do it?” You can A, do a voice blast where it gets delivered to their inbox. That’s an easy thing to do if you don’t have the time to make phone calls. Do leave a voicemail. What if they don’t have their cell phone, it won’t work. What if they have a landline?” Then do this. If you see that they’re opening their email, send a follow-up email to them and say, “Thanks for reaching out. Let’s pick up a time to call next week.” You pick one afternoon or pick a couple of hours. You set up fifteen-minute time slots to talk with those people. You do it after hours or before hours. You look at what your time is and what time zone they’re in and start plotting the time. Let me take your lunch break each day to do that.

Monday through Thursday, are you doing it in the afternoons? I would do them. I would jump on LinkedIn and find those people. If they communicated and contacted you back and you saw they open, go to LinkedIn and reach out to them directly. Do yourself a favor and send a little short video, a one-minute video if you get their phone number. Record a one-minute video or two-minute video talking about what you’re looking for. Upload it to YouTube. Send an email blast out to those people that open your email. Say, “Thanks for opening my email. I wanted to follow up with you. This is me. This is what I’m looking forward to. I’d love to talk with you. Let’s see if you have anything on your books that you’re looking to get rid of.”

That’s the hardest thing. Most people will set up the systems, “I’ve got an email list. I don’t do any work. I’m doing phone calls.” Business is still based on talking to people. A lot of people want to get away with doing it virtually. This lady that sent me a list, I haven’t had to talk to her personally. I left a voicemail originally, but you’re still going to get more honey. You’ll catch more flies the more honey you put out. If you don’t put any honey out, you only do one thing and you expect it to rain. Your one email blast out and you expect, “I’m going to have millions of people send me a list the first time I send it out.”

That’s not the case at all. You have to realize that work is doing more than what everybody else is doing. Everybody else is sitting back. They might send an email blast out to the market list. They might do that stuff and great. It’s good for them. What most people won’t do is that little extra bit. Reach out to this person on LinkedIn or let me see if they’re on LinkedIn or send them a phone call or leave a voice message or send a video. These little things that we talk about will separate you from the crowd. Here’s another thing. Create a Calendly link where they can schedule time on their own. You want to have them call you during the day. You open your Calendly links because you have a job that you could step away from for 15 or 20 minutes while you’re talking to asset managers at your job or you’re taking breaks or you work from home.

That’s a smart thing to do. They set these systems up. Most people, we have shiny object syndrome, squirrel syndrome. We want to chase the shiny object syndrome. I saw this happening after Note CAMP. Our Note CAMP commercial we did back in July. People were excited about it. They started chasing things and people started calling me, “I want to chase self-storage.” “That’s great. What are you doing to attract lists? Are you reaching out to asset managers? Are you going to take a class from Scott Meyers? For Investors in Action, my friends Terri Garner and Alia Ott Carter, can you take one of them so that you’re learning to do what you’re doing? “No, I’m not going to do that.” “I’ve been a realtor for two years or I fixed and flipped a couple of homes. It’s got to be the same thing.”

It’s the biggest thing that is downright depressing. Sometimes, it feels like you’re shooting blanks at people and not seem to get it. They’re running around, which you could’ve cut off trying to find something that’s ease. People are inherently lazy. A lot to say, if it was easy, everybody would do this. I’ve always tried to say this to people and I believe I’ve always said, “This is not the easiest thing. If it was, everybody would be doing it.” It’s not the easiest thing. You’re going to have delays. You’re going to have deals get delayed in funding. You’re going to have people walk. You’re going to have tapes fall.

You’re going to assets that you may do some due diligence on that turned out to be crap. Welcome to the club. Work is a four-letter word for many people. Most people don’t have a work ethic. They don’t understand what it takes. They’ve got to put in extra hours. You have to work your full-time job. They’ve got to come home, spend some hours doing it. They’ve got to put some things aside. A lot of people have a tough time this time of year, putting football aside, whether it’s a college or pro or Monday night football. It’s putting things aside then taking that time to put the work in.

More: Get More Out Of Life

I was driving down to San Antonio for an evening thing and drove back the same night. I drove past a Cibolo. Cibolo is South part of San Marcus, North part of San Antonio, Cibolo Shirts Area. I worked down in this area when I was growing up. I should say going to college, because I went to school at Southwest Texas State University. Bobcats is now Texas State University in San Marcus. I worked at a place called the Gristmill. As I was working through, not only am I undergrad but also this is more for my Master’s. I’m going back from my Masters.

Note Investing Work Ethic: Note investing is not the easiest thing, but if done right, it can be very profitable and can change your life.

I would make to drive from Austin to San Marcus 2 to 3 nights a week for my MBA. One of the classes we took was on a way to put a plan together. This guy put this plan together for the strip Mall. It was a four-unit strip mall in a nice, desirable area off I-35. I-35 is a highway. It runs from Laredo all the way through Texas. It splits Austin right down the middle. He was talking about this great plan and I was like, “That’s a good business model. If you’ve got this, this is a great business model.” The actual professor knew that I was in real estate and he said, “Scott, do you want to take a look at this? Would you like to comment on it because you have more experience than all of us, myself included, now there’s you in the class?” I said, “Yes.”

I come in to the guy. This guy works as administrator or not an executive, but in management of malls, if I remember correctly. I mentioned to him, “If you like this, I can put you in touch with some of the people who are in my network who can help make this happen, who can really do because this is a great plan.” The only thing the guy said, he goes, “Thanks but no thanks.” I’m like, “What do you mean no thanks?” He goes, “I’m happy living my life being able to play with my kids every day and coach their little league and do those things.” I’m not saying being an active dad is a bad thing. This guy was making $45,000 to $50,000 a year and he was settling early on. This is going back if I look at this. This is when I was in my belly.

I wasn’t divorced yet. I was like 28 and this guy was maybe in his early 30s. He was like,” I want to get my MBA because then I can move up doing an executive management level in my company and I’ll be good there. I’ll be happy with that lifestyle.” I was like, “Wow.” I said, “This wouldn’t take a lot of work on your part. There are people that would be glad to come in and give you a piece of deal or stuff.” He’s like, “No, I’m not interested. I honestly don’t want to do that. I want to settle.” Those are the exact words. That’s the sad thing. If you’re in a spot, you’re happy, you’re content. Settling may not be a bad thing. I tell people that all the time. If you’re happy doing what you’re doing, kudos to you. I know many people want more of a life.

More is also a four-letter word. If you want to get more out of life, there are two letters in more and work that they share in common. It’s all about the or’s. What is or? You’re making a decision. I’m going to do some extra work or I’m going to settle. I want to get more out of life or I want to settle. Or is a word that most people don’t want to deal with. They would rather have it just be spoon-fed to them. It would be give it to them. They don’t want to spend the extra time. They don’t want to take away from their nights of playing in the bowling league. I had a buddy who couldn’t pay his bills on time, but he’s always in a bowling league and I was like, “You’re going there and spending money on bowling and other things and you can’t pay your bills, you can’t pay your rent. Something is wrong. You have to make a choice. It’s either got to be once you get a job or quit your bowling thing.”

If you’re out there and you’re reading this, I’m going to tell you, note investing is not the easiest thing. Note investing can be very profitable. Note investing can change your life if you do it right. We have helped so many people change their lives in so many great ways out there and helped change America. As I say, one stress borrower at a time because we teach you how to do the things that you need to do. We teach you the systems. We teach you what you need to put in place. We need to teach you to A, you have to market because you have a list of asset managers.

You know what goes on in the states, foreclosure time and you’re educated does not mean anything these days. You could be the most talented, educated person. You could be a brain surgeon, take all the classes and be a brain surgeon. If you’ve never picked up a scalpel and went to work, that education is worthless. That time spent is worthless. Going to classes, spent all that money. There are so many people that I’ve talked to that are like, “I’ve got a degree and it’s worthless because I wasn’t serious about what I was going to school.” I almost discovered that, especially in my junior year of school. I transferred schools. I quit playing football after taking a year off and I almost fell out of college and transferred into a new university. I will spell it out.

I didn’t take it seriously. I was like, “This is my money. I need to take things seriously.” Everybody is responsible for their own path in life. It’s not up to me. It’s not up to you or anybody else out there. You are responsible for where you’re at. I am responsible for the actions and decisions that I’ve made. I’ve left where I’m at currently and I’m responsible for things. It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. You have to start taking to being accountable to yourself that you’re not putting in the things. If I want to close more deals and don’t want to have to do it, I’ve got to work more. I have to market more. I have to send more emails out. I have to spend time at night connecting with LinkedIn asset managers. I need to do more.

Put The Work To See The Results

There’s that or. Think about it, people. Most people won’t do that little bit extra. They want to do what everybody else is doing. That drives me bonkers. That drives me crazy out there when I see people do that. They turn around and want to blame others. It was not what I thought it was going to be. What do you think it was going to be? Sitting around and eating bonbons on your ass all day. You’re going to be sitting on there with stretchy pants from the couch watching Oprah. Note business takes work. It takes work to market. It takes work to reach out to people. It takes work to do your due diligence. It takes work to hire servicing company and attorneys to handle with that stuff. It takes work. Finally, collateral files, it takes work. It takes systems.

It takes time, and you’ve got to put the work in to see the results. If we had to rely on most people these days to replace our farmers for food, all of us would starve to death. If we had to learn how to walk again as an adult, most people would just give up. There would be paraplegics sitting around in a wheelchair. It’s hard. “I don’t want to hurt. I might break a sweat. I might fall down and hurt my knee. I might scab myself. I might get a bruise. I might hit my finger with anything more. I can’t do that.” You never get anything done. Whether you can or you can’t, it’s up to you.

That’s the thing I want you to look at is look at what are you’re doing on a daily basis? That little bit extra, that 5% more. What’s that 5% more that you’re doing or are you doing something else? Think about it. Work means more. Work or not work. Chill or work. If your dreams are big, your comfort zone starts to come around. That’s the thing. People will not move outside of their comfort zone unless they’re forced to do something. By force means either death, starvation or some other stress come to most people who won’t do things. I know one investor in Houston who rolled over and gave it up and was like, “I’m lazy.”

I referred about the tale of two note investors. The guy gave up. He just gave up. He’s like, “I don’t want to do the work anymore. I don’t want to follow up. I don’t want to attend the REIA club meetings anymore. I want somebody to give me a flat hourly wage and I’ll be what they tell me to do. I don’t want to be accountable to myself. I don’t want to be accountable to my girlfriend or my fiance.” Hopefully, they’re not engaged. If that’s the case, she’s in for a world of trouble later on in life as she’s the bread earner. He’s not going to do anything. He’s not going to step up to the podium to help out. There’s an opportunity to do something different with his life.

Note Investing Work Ethic: You could be the most talented and educated person, but if you’ve never went to work, that education is worthless.

He’s going to be a lazy ass. You tell a lot of people to tell a lot about people by what they do. What do they do in their spare time? What do they do in their lives outside of the 9:00 to 5:00? They’ve got a family. They’re accomplishing the things they want to do or are they working towards their goals? If you’re not, it’s still the best country in the world to do something. It’s still a great place for you to go out and do something. All you’ve got to do is travel abroad at some point and realize how lucky we are here in the United States. Go someplace where the people aren’t as lucky as us. You look at the borders, people are dying to get into the United States from El Salvador and Europe and things like that. People who are looking from Mexico are looking to get here.

We’re such a wealthy country of so many opportunities. You go to the Khan Academy online and you learn things. You can go to Lynda.com to download training programs. There are all the hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there. It takes work. I see a lot of this happening in podcasting where 80% of people haven’t produced something new on their episodes in the last six months. It takes work. It takes you showing up and that’s what note investing is all about. You’ve got to show up. You’ve got to keep following up with these deals. I didn’t close on my first note deal. It took me over six months to close my first note deal before I even got started. I was really half-ass in it at that point. I was still doing other things. I was like, “I’ll do this.”

When I got serious about it, “There’s the or.” You have to do the things you want to do or serious. There’s an or in that. You have to realize, there’s no or in serious, but you’ll get what I’m talking about. It takes time. It takes you showing up. It takes you being dedicated. It takes you doing the mundane things on a regular basis. A lot of times, the mundane, you get subsystems so they take care of that for you. You’re going to follow up on things like that, but you can’t sit around here and send an email blast out once a month and then take a nap every day. It doesn’t work that way. There are people out there that are like, “I want to be the laziest note investor out there.”

It doesn’t work that way. Note investments are constantly mutating rubber ball. There are things you can get stuck doing and you don’t want to do, but there are other things you can have other people do. That’s why we tell people all the time, “If you’re going to buy your first couple of months. You can put your systems in place. You can go for 1, 2 or 3 notes. Don’t buy a cheap note. Don’t buy a skinny deal. Move on to the next one, to the next one.” “How do we find the next one?” “You do more.” I had somebody come to me. It was aggravating. She’s like, “I’m going to buy this note deal from this other investor.” I’m like, “Why are you buying from them?” “I went online to this platform.”

I said, “Okay and what’s your exit strategy going to be?” “I’m going to try to get it modified.” I’m like, “That investors had that deal for 6 to 12 months?” “I got a re-performing.” “You’re sure how am I not going to get re-performing? Why are you paying above $0.70, $0.75, $1 for that note when your only exercise is to foreclose? Go do some other deals. Go market somewhere else.” “I don’t want to.” “Don’t do that deal. It’s going to be a bad deal for you. You’re overpaying. The only person who’s going to get any money on this is the investor selling you the deal.” There’s always got to be a win-win. If there’s no win-win, don’t do the deal. “I need a real deal.” “How much are you marketing to these other places?” “I’m making phone calls.” “I’m not doing any of that.”

They might not have success. It shows up just like that. If they’re not willing to do those little things, “I don’t want to do those other things.” What are you doing here? Why are you showing up? There are plenty of people, note investors out there that don’t want to do a lot of work and they like performing outside. They can buy a performing note. It’s going to return cashflow to them on a regular basis. It’s totally fine. Stick to that. There are a lot of people out there that are like, “I want to make big returns.” To do big returns, to get higher returns, you’ve got to do more. You’ve got to do more work. That decision is ultimately up to you. If you want to have a work ethic, stick to it. Set goals, set some limitations.

Some KPIs

Set some things, some numbers to you or KPIs. I’ll tell you, making 50 phone calls in a day, you’ll get 12 to 14 people that you’d talk to. You’ll get 1 to 4 lists out of those 50 if you follow up with them. We’re out of the fourteen you talk to. Do you know what you do the next day? The fourteen you talk to, you replace those with fifteen more people. You can make phone calls Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. That’s 150 phone calls. At the end of that week, you’ve talked to 45 people. Add another 45 to 50 people and call the other 100 people you didn’t get to. Follow up with a second phone call to them. That’s the only way you’ll divide and conquer.

There are so many asset managers out there. It’s impossible for you to call every asset manager in the book, whether it’s on Lane Guide or distressedpro or NoteProz. There are so many ways, so many different asset managers and contacts in the lending industry right now. You can’t reach everybody. You call on somebody else who you talk to rarely because most people aren’t going to do that extra 5% more. They’re not going to do that extra aspect of dialing for dollars. They might send an email blast out once, but they’re not going to dial for dollars. They’re not going to download the Lane Guide. They’re going to try to be cheap. If you want to cheapen your success, go right ahead and cheapen it. If you want to delay your success by 6 months or 12 months or by never because you’re constantly looking for the easiest and the least amount of work to do, that’s great.

Go do it somewhere else. Don’t do it with me. I know that many of you are out there looking for doing some things, check out our Note Blueprint Training, NoteBlueprint.com. We’d love to have you. Other than that, check out WeCloseNotes.com for the latest update of classes in another year. It’s up to you to define your success, so you can either do it or don’t. That’s what more is all about. More is picking of that, “I want more to take place.” That means I’m going to do something other than what I’m doing right now.

I’m going to do something more than what I’m doing on my daily basis. Go out there, put four in your corner to get more work done and get more done. Trust me, be focused on that for 30, 60, 90 days. You look back and give yourself time to build those habits and be focused. Say no to other things. Say no to the shiny objects. Kill those squirrels. You’ll be a lot happier off the long run by being focused. Learning to say no and say yes to getting work more done in your daily basis, an hour extra a day. It doesn’t have to be a talk about, “I’m going to go from one job to another job.” That’s the last thing you want to do. Put in an hour, put in two hours extra each day and you’ll get a lot further along than those that aren’t going to do anything else there as well.

Thank you so much for reading. Go check it out. Go to WeCloseNotes.com to listen, to watch. You can also listen to the podcast on any of the channels available. I would love it if you would do me a huge favor. I don’t ask this very often, but if you head over to iTunes and leave a five-star review or head on over to LinkedIn, connect with me on there and leave me a recommendation. I would love that as well. I’ll give you a shout-out and be glad to give you a recommendation back. Thank you all for your support. Go out and have a great day and do a little bit more. We’ll see you all at the top.

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