EP 539 – Fix The Flow

NCS 539 | Fixing Your Deal Flow

NCS 539 | Fixing Your Deal Flow

 

In this episode of the Note Closers Show, Scott Carson talks about how to fix your deal flow. Have you ever thought about dropping what you’re doing and going all out to become a successful investor? Scott believes this is highly achievable within 12 to 24 months if you only get up and get that faucet flowing. From the marketing flow to deal flow, get to know the different flows in the note investing scene and how to leverage these to your advantage.

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Fix The Flow

I want to talk about something that I call fixing the flow. I spent a couple of days in Orlando with some of our mastermind students, going through a couple of days of hanging out and working on each other’s business. One of the things that came to mind is that people want to make income. They want to make money, whether it’s buying nonperforming notes and turning them into performing notes, buying performing notes and keeping them performing for cashflow, buy nonperforming, foreclosing out the borrowers or taking the property back of some sort and either keeping it as a rental, owner financing, Airbnb-ing it or selling it off as an REO for larger checks.

The thing that always concerns me is when we talk to so many students and to so many people out there, people call me all the time or email me, “Scott, I’m looking for deals. How do I turn the deal flow on? How do I find more deals?” The opposite is, “I want more deals. How do I turn on more sources?” The first thing that you have to realize is you’ve got to put some numbers into perspective here. That’s what we did. I had a couple of people that are realtors and I was talking with them and they were like, “I’m a realtor. It’s okay, but I hate being a realtor. I want to be an investor. I want to do things differently.” I’m like, “How long do you want it to take to get where you need to be?” Let’s take it the other way. What do the numbers need to be for you to hit your goals on where you can say, “I don’t want to be a realtor anymore,” unless you want to do something for yourself or just use it for yourself first. For example, relying on that sweat equity that a lot of realtors are doing. Going out, finding your houses or having to find people that are selling or buying houses out there.

Let’s talk about the flow that comes out of the faucet. People were saying, “If I want to make $5,000 a month, then we’re replacing what I got coming in at $60,000 a year.” That falls in line a lot with making $250,000 in a year aspect of things. Let’s just do simple math. If you want to make $5,000 in cashflow and the average mortgage note that you’re buying is $500 a month in cashflow on that stuff, how many deals is that? If you need to make $5,000 and you’ve got $500 a month coming in, that’s only ten deals. If you’re using other people’s money, we can say, “Let’s double that number to twenty deals.” Twenty deals are very feasible in your first twelve months. It might end up in an alliteration the entire time. That flow is possible, but what is scary is when people don’t believe in themselves. They don’t believe in the aspect of things and they think that’s unachievable. Even though several of the people we were talking with, they’ve already bought four deals on a limited part-time basis.

One, they bought with their own funds. Two, they partnered with other people on their own funds. They were the funding behind it. They went and they bought four deals. I’m like, “What’s that bringing in to you?” “They’re going to be bringing us $1,000 a month in cash.” I’m like, “That’s phenomenal. What are you doing for marketing?” They’re like, “We were only looking at two sources.” I’m like, “That’s okay. Two sources is not bad. How many offers have you made?” “I haven’t made any offers in a while.” I’m like, “Why is that? Are you reaching out to new sources?” They’re like, “No, because we’ve gotten sources from these two. The only problem is we haven’t gotten any in a while.” They’re like, “I have not gotten any from the source.” It’s like, “What are you doing? Let’s go back in. Let’s pull up your marketing.” Sure enough, we log into the marketing and zero workflow is going out. That’s the other flow.

NCS 539 | Fixing Your Deal Flow

Fixing Your Deal Flow: What is scary is when people don’t believe in themselves.

 

Work is a four-letter word for most people. I’m like, “What happened to the list of asset managers that you have on here? What happened to your list of private sellers that may want smaller funds that we dealt with?” “I removed them because I didn’t want to send emails. I didn’t want to pay $60 per month for MailChimp.” Literally, my heart broke. I felt like I got kicked in in the huevos. I was like, “What? Are you sending emails out in your regular job?” Those that are mortgage brokers or those that are doing other things. They’re like, “Yes, we send emails out to them.” I said, “Why don’t you send it out if you want to accomplish long-term?” That’s what was the hardest thing. It’s like, “I’m comfortable with what I’m doing.” I’m like, “You just told me that you want to be not a realtor in 24 months or 36 months or twelve months even. I just sat there and told you that the numbers that you want to achieve can be achieved in 12 to 24 months. You’ve got to start working. You’ve got to turn that faucet.” I know. Sometimes when you come to a faucet, it’s tough to get it turned to turn on that flow.

You’ve got to sit there and grab it with the hand. Sometimes you got to get a wrench and leverage it to break it open so that that water starts to trickle out and starts to come out. Literally, that’s what marketing is. That’s what the flow is. You can’t get water out without putting some effort in. For most people, the deal flow is off. Most of the people, that’s cranked closed and you don’t know what to do. I see this happening time and time again from people out there that want to accomplish something, but they’re not willing to put the crank and not to tighten up and muscle it up a little bit to turn that faucet on. Yes, that’s the hardest part of marketing in anything. I don’t care if you’re marketing tiddlywinks, wholesale deals, notes, apartments or whatever you’re trying to do. If you want to turn that flow on, you’ve got to put a little bit of grunt work into it and do it. She’s like, “I’m pretty good. I don’t need 1,000 sources.” I’m like, “I know you don’t need 1,000 sources.”

I reached out to another mastermind member. “You’ve closed on 75 deals in your two years. How many unique sources has that come from?” He goes, “Twenty different sources.” Fifty of them have come from one source, but the other 25 are over nineteen or twenty sources. What’s more important to keep in mind is that 50, that sources dried up. We see that a lot of markets out there. A lot of people are used to buying assets in one area. They don’t have to do any work because they’re getting enough listing from the sources out there. Do you know what you have to do? You got to roll your sleeves up, get spit on your hands and go to work. It’s marketing. You may want to do that before you go typing.

That’s the thing. $60 a month, $720 a year was standing between she and her goal. She didn’t have a proof of concept. This is another thing that aggravates me is when people say, “I want to do it myself because I want a proof of concept.” You don’t have to have that. This has been taking place for decades. What you want to do is prove that you can do it. Everybody can do it. It’s a matter of are you going to take the time to do it? Are you going to stop playing video games for three hours? Are you going to stop playing World of Warcraft or Sonic the Hedgehog or whatever the one that’s out there that has turned off?

NCS 539 | Fixing Your Deal Flow

Fixing Your Deal Flow: You got to roll your sleeves up, spit on your hands, and go to work marketing.

 

People are putting off their workflow and they would rather put that into something else, something that’s not going to generate any type of return, any type of income. If you’re doing something else and it’s generating income, by all means. You’re selling stuff on eBay or Etsy or whatever, great. I can understand that. You’ve got cashflow that lets the other flow coming in. You want to have multiple streams of income from multiple sources so that if one does dry up, you’re not sitting there, “There’s nothing coming out of the spigot,” and that can happen in real estate as markets change. A lot of people got caught years ago getting fat and happy on doing limited work because there are plenty of REOs, there are plenty of distressed foreclosures out there that could mail out and do something simple.

Everybody can do a postcard. You print, slap it on and send it all out. If you can do a yellow letter, it’s pretty simple, you write and send it out. The more advanced of your marketing, the more it’s advanced technologically, the easier it gets. In a lot of cases, the cheaper it gets. They’re like, “What do you mean cheaper?” Would you rather pay $60 a month to send an email blast out to 3,000 or would you rather go out and knock on doors or put out 100 bandit signs or mail out 1,000 postcards, 1,000 yellow letters? $60 to send out to 3,000 banks once a month, maybe twice a month for two hours of your time a month to have lists that come in, the flow is there. You just have to turn it on.

You have to get beyond the eight-inch hurdles between your ears and a lot of people struggle with it. I know that. I see that all the time. People overthink like, “I feel guilty. I haven’t sent an email out in the last 90 days.” I get people all the time who call me. “I’m looking for more deals,” and the first thing they say is, “Why I would send an email?” I’m like, “That’s the first thing. That’s literally the basis of everybody’s marketing. You’ve got to have an email list and you have to market the email list. I know we talk about using text message opt-ins. Text NOTES to 72000, that’s a mobile opt-in. That’s getting them opt-in so I can mark it out to them.

I’m building a list by sponsoring events. I’m building a list by doing webinars on Monday night when people opt-in to. I’m posting to Facebook, YouTube videos and sharing to all the platforms out there to get people to opt-in to a variety of things so they learn how to buy notes. Honestly, turning the deal flow on just takes a little bit of time. Once you stop, yes, that deal can turn off automatically because you stop marketing. You have to keep doing it and there are basic things that you can do to get the flow rolling. It is not complicated. It’s not difficult. It’s setting precedents and making it a priority in your schedule to get it done. The hardest time to turn that flow on is when you want me to first crank it on. Yes, it’s difficult writing an email, building lists, creating a template, but it’s more difficult in your mind than it is actually doing it.

NCS 539 | Fixing Your Deal Flow

Fixing Your Deal Flow: The easier it gets, the cheaper it gets.

 

There are so many easy ways to set templates. There are people you to get even hire or $4 an hour to log in and create a template for you. There are email services that provide cool templates. You just got to plug and play your logo and then upload the list and send it out. They’re like, “What do I say?” One of the great things that we’re doing is we’re putting together twelve months of emails for people to send out to their database, to their asset managers. Yes, it’s basic topics. Yes, it’s some basic information, but it leaves you the opportunity to switch things up and to change it up a little bit. I’ve already pre-written six months of emails to my bank asset managers. It’s just a matter of scheduling the emails that go out and that’s already done. I’ve already got my flow set to a monthly basis to get lists. I’ve always got my flow set in where it’s automatically taken care of. Am I going to go and tweak it? Yes. Do I increase it? I turn it down a little bit, depending on what’s coming through the spigot. I fixed my flow because I adjusted but I’m constantly keeping it open because I’m sitting there where I’m constantly doing things that are going out.

If you stop doing activities, you stopped holding that spigot open, it’s going to turn off because nobody’s there to monitor it. Nobody’s there to either get the deals or they’ll go somewhere else because you’re not there. That was one of the biggest things that hurt the most. It’s seeing somebody who did a great job of setting something up and not use it after once or twice. They just stopped using it. I’m like, “Where are you getting comments? Were you getting people to opt into your list?” I’m like, “Yes.” I’m just like, Why did you stop?” “Because I couldn’t think of anything. After 90 days and not doing anything, I didn’t want to pay the $60 per month for it and I deleted it.” It hurts. You can start up again. You don’t have to wait until the beginning of the year, which many people out there reading is going to wait until the beginning of the year to start something and that’s the worst.

Start taking action. Start working towards your goal. If you want to have lots of success in January 2020, it means you need to start now. It means that you need to start before the first. Otherwise, you’ve got that 60 days to get things rock and rolling to build a habit. Come February, you’ve probably given up on your goals. March, you’re given up on your goals because you haven’t seen that type of success because you’re starting over. Do you know why it’s getting harder? It’s because everybody else wants to run to the gym and jump on the treadmill. Now, you don’t have the light, open treadmill you want. You don’t have your favorite spot. You got to wait on others because you waited.

The best time to do anything is now. If the deal flow slows down from some of the bigger sources, you have the Condors, Grants, Direct Sources. Some of those companies I had stuff on a regular basis. Condor hardly has anything. Grant’s out of business. You also have Direct Sources that didn’t have that much left because they built this primary business on dealing with Harbor portfolio. What does that mean? It means you got to go out to other sources. It means you’ve got to find the sources. You need to up your game by creating a fund, which is still going to take a lot of marketing to do or you change your marketing, start going and dialing for dollars, calling banks and asset managers.

You reach out on LinkedIn. You turn the flow on. You’d got to learn to market. If you’re trying to do the same old and think that this is going to be different from the last and you keep doing the same things, you are highly mistaken. If you want the cashflow, you’ve got to increase the workflow. I know many of you are working reading this at the job or after doing something else, increase your workflow. You don’t have to drop 60, 80 hours into the note business or whatever your focus. Add five, ten, or an hour a day, Monday through Thursday or an hour or two on the weekend on the market. Simple marketing to keep the flow up is the most critical point you can do. Send an email blast out once a week to your contacts and then once every two weeks or once a month, a minimum, to your banks.

Set those up. Pre-write them, get it done. Here’s the challenge. We’re going to do a contest. If you were going online and pre-writing your emails and you could do at least six months of pre-writes with scheduled in your MailChimp or your InfusionSoft, contact me. I have a special surprise for you. For those of you that are going to take action and do that, we’re going to pre-write at least six emails to go out to your asset managers. That means six months of emails to the asset manager, or we can talk about six weeks of content to your warm database. Six emails, pre-written and then you’ll get rocking and rolling. I’m going to have a special giveaway for you. I think you’re going to like it. Take the opportunity to go out and do it. Make it happen. Contact me, Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. We’ll schedule a phone call, jump online. If you can do it, I got something big for that you’ll enjoy. If you want to turn the flow on, you’ve got a market, you’ve got to take things to a different level than we did. It doesn’t mean I’ll have to be a lot. It can be a little bit extra and a little bit goes a long way. We’re talking an hour a day for five days out of the week. It’s such a small amount of time out there to go do it. Go out, please take some action and we’ll see you off the top.

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