The best movies are those that offer a variety of great lessons. Scott talks about the blockbuster movie, Avengers Endgame. He talks about the life lessons he learned from the characters of the movie, and examines particular movie details and notes some specific parts that are applicable in real estate investment. He also breaks down each character and highlights some of their positive and negative characteristics that are applicable to marketing and notes investing. He emphasizes the importance of the coming together of people who have a mix of different personalities for great things to happen.

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Our topic is too good not to share with everybody. It’s Avengers Endgame. Hopefully, you’ve seen the movie because we might share a few things along the way. If you’re not prepared for it, get out and see it. It’s a great movie, first and foremost, but it’s not all about the movie. I enjoyed it more the second time around because I saw a lot of similarities in the game and note investing and some of the things that we’re focused on. I thought I’d share that. What was great about watching the movie is experiencing going back to the past. It’s where you begin is not the end. Many of you are out there trying to figure out where you’re at. Many of you are brand new and like, “What am I going to do?” Relax a little bit. Just because where you’re at is new, it doesn’t mean you’re even close to the end.

Think back to Iron Man, the first real Marvel movie that came out, where Tony was clanking out the first Iron Man suit in that cave in the middle of the desert. It’s not quite the same Iron Man as we see in the movie, which is a lot more seasoned quite a few years later. He’s got different priorities on life. He’s more polished. He’s got some more things he focuses. His priorities have changed. His focus has changed on some things and that’s for many of us. If we go through time, things are going to change. When he started off, he was that playboy. In the movie, he’s a dad and married with Pepper Potts. There are a lot of changes that take place. You have to think about that. More importantly, as you grow in the note business, to get closer to your endgame, you’ve got to up your game. We have to evolve into that person. If you’ve never made $100,000, you’ve got to grow into that person to $100,000. You have to have the activities of the person who makes $100,000. If you want to make $1 million, you’ve got to start acting like the person who makes $1 million. You’ve got to grow your mind into it. That was different, to begin with. Think about the first Iron Man. He’s sitting out there with the mother of all bombs. He called it Jericho. It took out the hillside. He had this scotch beyond cold there. He’s interested in making bombs and weapons.

Up Your Game

At the very end, he’s developing time travel. It’s a whole different ballgame. He’s not into the day-to-day operations of Stark. He’s not into making the bullets. Maybe you’re like, “I’ve got to get into the specific details of the asset.” At some point, you’re going to outsource that. You’re going to up your game to bigger and better things where you’re buying assets. You’re dealing with a fund. You’re dealing with banks instead of dealing with a joker broker or a one-off investor. You have to up your game. For many of us, life is constantly changing. We don’t just have to worry about our business. We have to worry about the day in, day out. For those that have kids, things are constantly changing. When you have a family, it changes. We all have an endgame where we want to get to at some point. Hopefully, you’ve got your endgame written down. Hopefully, you’ve got something that is giving you the direction to go to, “I’ve got to get my kids to school before I do anything,” but it doesn’t mean you can’t start planning.

I had an episode with Derreck Long from Quest Trust. We’re talking about hitting the next generational wealth. Generation X, Y, Z or whatever of them started on investing and he started doing early on to get help and get where he wants to be. He hit some of his plans. I thought it was such a great episode because so many people aren’t doing the simple things they’ve got to do. You’re not paying yourself first. If you sit and think that Thanos is going to show up and snap the fingers and suddenly you’re going to be rich, it’s a different movie. It’s Shazaam or a genie, whoever. It’s a different Disney movie. I’ll give you an example. Thanos in the movie is like, “I’m going to cut the world in half. I’m going to get rid of half of the people there.” If you want to live on half your income, it’s great. If you need to double your income, you have got to start working. You’ve got to up your game and start investing. You can’t wait around for the right time before you start doing something. The right time to start something is now. The best time to plant a tree was many years ago and now. If you didn’t start planning things several years ago, now is the beginning of your endgame.

Everybody’s Endgame Is Different

The endgame could be a variety of things. It could be a number, assets or retirement. Everybody’s endgame is a little bit different. Is it a number like, “I’ve got to have $5 million in the bank?” That’s a simple thing that a lot of financial advisors like to start off with. “You’ve got to have $5 million saved and retire in several years to do that.” It could be a number of deals. “I’m going to have so many deals that are driving income into me.” That’s a great one. I had a great conversation with Jason Bible talking about how he switched his business model from Houston House Buyers to buying, selling and flipping to buying a retainer. Quit working so hard to go out and have to constantly hunt things down to the point like, “I don’t want to hunt so much. Once I kill, I want to eat off this for infinity.” Is it a lifestyle change? Maybe it is. Maybe you need to cut back on what you’re doing to change your lifestyle. The lifestyle can be different. It could be getting healthy. It could be, “I need to cut out the crab and ribeyes.” It’s one of the things that I’ve done. I still like a good Crown Royal and I still love ribeye, but I’ve cut that out dramatically out of my diet so I’ve gotten healthier. My double and triple chins are gone. Now, I have half a chin. I’m joking a little bit, but the point is I’ve changed some lifestyle things of making sure I’m eating healthier.

Start Making Changes Now

I’m working out. Many of you guys got to be like, “I’ve got to get to the gym for twenty minutes a day,” or 30 minutes a day, whatever it might be. There are little changes you can make to help you get to that endgame faster. It’s all about the ending or the beginning. Are you waiting to end one thing before you start beginning? I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think waiting to end something before you start something is effective at all. The best time to start is now. If you want to start a podcast, don’t wait until a few months from now. Go ahead and start it now. Start putting those foundations in place. If you want to buy notes, start making some offers now. Start calling an asset manager. Start calling bankers. Start doing those things now. Start setting those priorities. Many people wait, “I’ll do it at the beginning of the year,” or “I’ll make my New Year’s resolution.” Many of your New Year’s resolutions are completely shot. They’re gone. They’re completely blown up. They’ve exploded because you didn’t do anything about it. You can sit here, beat yourself up and call yourself a failure or you can get rocking and rolling and start the beginning of those things. Start looking to hit your target. Don’t wait to blow up. Go out and start taking action and make some big difference in your life. It will help you get to your endgame faster.

Many of us don’t want to wait 40 years for an endgame. We’d rather have it happened in twenty or ten years. As I’m sitting there watching the movie, I think that Tony has made some changes. Iron Man is my favorite character. Captain America is second. Those two characters went through some very big changes in Endgame. They’re badass. Tony saved the world and the new Captain America went back in time and decided to live his life instead of being the first Avenger. You have the ability to change. Nobody else has it. You can’t go back in time, but many of you can start making changes right now. This is not just all motivational. This has something to do with what you’re focused on. I’m getting to that point. What are some changes that you can make? There are changes that take place all the time. You’ve been investing and doing business so much and things will change. There are state changes. Foreclosure laws are changing like, “It’s getting faster to foreclose in Florida than it used to be.” Georgia requires you now to have a mortgage broker’s license if you’re buying one note versus four notes unless you’re using your self-directed IRA. You also have market values down in Florida coming way back. I had to make a change a couple of years ago. I either keep trying to buy in Florida or I start moving to other markets.

 

I’ll give you an example. There is somebody out there. He’s an investor in Florida. I have not had him on my show. He’s like, “I only buy in Florida.” I’m like, “How many nonperforming notes have you bought in the last several months?” He goes, “Nothing.” I’m like, “What are you doing?” He goes, “I’m waiting.” I’m like, “Why wouldn’t you buy in Ohio, Michigan or some other place?” That’s the old way of doing business. He’s a bit of an older guy. He’s letting the market dictate to him what his changes are versus him making the changes. If you’re going to sit there and be passive and let the market dictate to you, it’s fine. You have to go with the flow unless you want to be proactive and you’re going to say, “No, I’m not going to wait around for another default market for me. I’ll start buying my backyard. I’m going to go do some things.” Some licensing changes have taken place in some states. Do you see what the Seller Finance Coalition is doing? The Seller Finance Coalition is trying to get the licensing changes for buying owner finance notes and selling those things. Pricing has been a big change. I hear this all day long and it drives me bonkers. People complain about pricing. The market has changed. Adjust accordingly, either buy in a different state or buy in bulk.

This is one of the biggest a-ha moments from the mastermind. I was like, “If you’re buying the best asset off of a list from somebody, you have to understand the bank is going to understand that it’s a pretty good asset.” Unless you’re willing to take some of the crap down at the bottom, they’re not going to knock down their price. If you take some stuff down in the bottom, they’re knocking down their price a little bit. You can still make something happen with that lower stuff. You’ve got to get creative when you’re pricing all of that. Market saturation, I still believe there are plenty of deals to go around. I’ll share why that is. When you start having more people come into the market, that low hanging fruit gets gobbled up, or you have people bidding over each other. It’s like rats on a sinking ship in that low level. You want to be a rat on top like, “I’m getting out of here.” You want to be in the crow’s nest and not down in the bottom fighting other rats for a deal.

A lot of people have had to change their asset class. People that were investing in seconds either had to go to the first shot. They go back into real estate traditionally. I saw that Dave Van Horn, for the most part stopped doing seconds and started doing more traditional real estate. Our buddy Fuquan Bilal, has done that. He’d gone from the seconds and being more on his general real estate investing side. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some people have gone from nonperforming notes and buying a lot of contract for deeds. That’s been a great source. Some people have gone from notes into the rental side. “I’m going to go and keep my properties for a little bit more.” Some people stopped buying from the banks and are going more into the owner finance. There is no wrong answer to that asset because you’re flexible. You’re changing. It’s evolving. Everybody goes through changes. You could be the fittest Thor in Thor Ragnarok or you can be The Big Lebowski Thor. It’s one of the funniest things, The Big Lebowski. I prefer trying to stay lean and mean. A lot of people will get fat on their specific things and they’re lazy enough that they don’t want to move. We’ve all been through this. We’ve all like, “We’ll get used to doing business that we get.” We used to sit in our ass, drinking beer in New Asgard versus, “I need to go out and make some things happen.”

Where are you at your business? Are you the fit Thor? Are you rocking and rolling on a new planet, or are you sitting here waiting to die? Are you going to sit here and bitch and moan? “I can’t handle it. I goofed up. I made a big mistake on a bad deal. I can’t do it anymore. I’m just going to sit here and bitch and moan. I can’t find any deal. I’m going to complain about the pricing. I’m going to complain about overpriced or trashy assets I see.” That’s the thing that drives me bonkers. When you’re working with people, it’s great having a list of stuff. If you’re looking at the same assets that everybody in a group is looking at, it’s time to move on to a different asset list. It’s time to change your marketing. It’s time to evolve and dive into something else. Be the early Elvis, not the fat ‘70s Elvis. This is what drives me bonkers. I keep seeing people trying to squeeze blood out of a rock. If your market where you were buying isn’t working, you have to evolve. You have to change. It’s the 21st century. Unfortunately, you don’t have the ability to snap your fingers and go back in time. You don’t have your own infinity note gauntlet. It doesn’t work that way. “I have the time stone. I will go back in time.” It doesn’t work that way, sorry. A great thing about movies is it’s fictional. It’s not real life. “Those were the days of note and buying in the year yonder of 2017.”

Go Forward

You have to get beyond yourself and realize there are always opportunities out in every market. You’ve just got to go out and find them. You can’t go back. You have to go forward. You can learn from your past, but you have to keep moving forward. You have to keep moving towards new targets and new audiences. I had some great conversations with two of my great note friends that used to travel on the road with me all the time. One is still in the note space and the other one is on the way out of the note space a little bit. He’s doing some stuff. Another one’s doing some origination. It was great hearing from both of these guys in a matter of 30 minutes from each other. I haven’t talked to them in a while. It was great catching up with them. They’re moving forward for where they’re focused on. They’ve changed their business. They’re not sitting there waiting for someone to bring in more beer. They both had to adjust their end and what their target is. It’s not the same thing, “I’m going to buy 1,000 assets.”

Quit Chasing The Scraps

Finance is going to change. The thing you have to keep in mind is, “What does that mean for us?” It means that you have to adjust your marketing and what your focus is. Roughly several months’ time, about half the people that come in the note space are gone. The other half is doing something. Many of us, because I’ve been guilty of this in the past, are chasing the scraps. I’m a big believer that you have to up your game to dealing with banks. When the market got tied to the nonperforming side, the next closest asset that was easy to dive into was the contract for deed side. I bought a lot of contract for deeds. We made a lot of great deals work. We’re selling a bunch of those off. That was a great opportunity. There is 26,000 contract for deeds with Harbour Portfolio. Now those deals are priced over. Harbour is gone.

There are so many joker broker tapes out there that are overpriced. If you’re not dealing directly with the seller or the true seller rep, you’re overpaying and you’re not in control of those bids. If you’re not direct, you’re overpaying or you’re wasting your time. Let me give you an example. Bank assets are going to be cleaner, better priced and less guesswork about the deal, especially because you know directly what’s going on with the deal. It’s clean collateral and less competition. I’ve got 150 assets for sale and I’ve had maybe twenty bids of some stuff. I’ve got some good nonperforming and some good performing stuff too. I’ve got to crack up on it. Some people that were on one webinar haven’t responded, but that’s okay. We’re doing some marketing to drive it.

 

What I find is note investors or real estate investors get so used to trying to put a deal together. That reminds me of Spider-Man. They’re trying to pull the two parts together. They’re just not going to fit. They might look good, but all the pulling together isn’t going to do you any good to make that deal go together. It doesn’t make sense. You’ve got to go out and find something that’s fully put-together and not piecing it together assets. The bank assets are cleaner. By cleaner, I mean they’re probably better assets. They’ve probably been vacant for a few years. They’re going to have better pricing. Better pricing means higher value assets. You probably can get better pricing directly because you’re not dealing with joker brokers. You’re also going to probably pay at a much better price because of the fact that if you do buy a bulk, they’re going to give you a bigger discount. There’s less guesswork involved because they’re going to know what’s going on with the asset. The borrower is going to know exactly directly from the source. The collateral alone is clean for the most part. It’s less competition because there are fewer people reaching out to asset managers and banks. I’m laughing at everybody fighting over the scraps. “I better check the toxic asset list.” When I see that, I’m like, “If you’ve got a toxic asset, change it.” You’ve got to evolve.

Get Into The Game

If you’ve gone and sat there and put together a list and do this over and over and I’m not picking on anybody, the time is to evolve. You can’t focus on this one list. It’s a great thing, especially what Chris and Gail have put together. They’re in a group. It’s a great thing, but if you’re constantly having a fight over picking through that list, it’s time to move on. Many people get stuck in buying from a few assets. We’ve been guilty in the past. “We’ve got five or six sources and stuff. We’re going to stick with that.” If you find yourself picking through things you’ve looked at before or tapes you’ve seen before, it’s time to get new sources. It’s time to evolve and quit chasing the scraps. How do you get banks to reach out to you? How do you get banks to recognize you? You’ve got to stand out. Doing the bare minimum to get by is not enough anymore at all for everybody out there. It’s the 21st century. The way marketing is working is you have to stand out. You can’t sit on the sidelines just buying a ticket these days. You have to get into the game to get some things done. That means doing a little bit extra but 5% more goes a long way.

I’ll give you an example. If you send an email out to your asset managers and you expect them to start calling you with deals, it’s not going to happen. Sending out an email and following up with a phone call with those that open the email, it’s an extra 5%. It’s also jumping on LinkedIn and sending an invite if you send an email to asset managers. That’s an extra 5%. It’s if you get a phone call or you reach out with phone calls, if you’re dialing for dollars. Follow up by a thank you card. Instead of just sending a regular boring email, maybe you’ve got a picture attached to it. Maybe you’ve got a picture attached to a video. It’s a video and your email that goes out to it. Maybe there’s an interesting article that affects that bank in a state. Maybe you want to include that to the asset manager. Maybe you film a two-minute video or less about you and what you’re focused on. Those little things go a long way to help you stand out from the crowd. In the movie, I’m cracking up at this. This one of my favorite parts is on Mark Ruffalo’s character, the Hulk, was able to merge the evil side Hulk smash with the brain side. Together he’s the best of both worlds, at the point where he’s getting selfies with people. It’s a great part of the movie. I find it quite humorous. He’s like, “I can smash if I want to, but I’m also the brains. I’m the beauty and the brawn.” He stood out in the crowd. People were coming, “Let me get a selfie with you.”

You can stand out from the crowd to make some things happen. It does not take a lot of stuff to do. My buddy, Charles Wilson, did a great job putting an email together to go out to his asset manager. He also took some time to film a video. It’s a 30-second video of what his company does. He’s got that as the bottom of his emails going out to asset managers. Eric Ham is sending out emails to asset managers. He’s going to be calling people to click on his website and his LinkedIn profile. That’s a great little easy thing to do. He’s also going to export those from his email and send connections to those people on LinkedIn in a bulk upload. You can do that too. This goes back to the same old villains, the same old assets. 95% of people out there are targeting the same assets. 95% of people will go up the low hanging fruit because they’re lazy. It is what it is. Laziness is because they’re busy. Maybe they don’t have time. Maybe they’re too spread out doing fix and flips, owner financing and a variety of other things, or they have a full-time job. There’s nothing wrong with a full-time job. If that job is going to get you to your endgame, it’s great. If it’s not, maybe you need to find another endgame.

I’ve pulled numbers. There are still millions of assets available. Are they running by millions? $10.3 trillion originated in 2018 in loans. The average loan amount was $148,000. There were 70 million loans from banks. We’ve got a 3% default rate on a low side from the bank side. That’s still 2.1 million new loans out there that are in default. There are six-month defaults. There are twelve-month defaults. They are going to be in default on they’re in default. There are already sellers out there. There are already banks and lenders that have this stuff on their books they’re looking to get rid of. There are more than 2,400 banks that have five more branches. They have anywhere from 5 to 5,000 branches. Few people are picking the phone dialing for dollars. I don’t see people doing it. Some people do it and they fall off. You have to realize there’s a method to your madness. Why do I say millions versus the 2.1 million? It’s because banks only make up 40% of the origination side. Another 51% are portfolio lenders, nonbank lenders and non-FDIC-insured banks that are originating loans. There are a whole lot more loans out there that are available for you. There’s somewhere between four million and five million pretty much every year.

With the way that the internet works, we have distressedpro, LinkedIn, Lane Guide, some of the things that we’ve talked about and FDIC.gov list. There are so many tools that we have discussed that disgust me because people aren’t using them. I see people chasing their tail because they keep chasing the same old villains. “We’re going to call John Keith this time. We’re going to call Grant. We’re going to call all these idiots.” They’re not all. John Keith is not an idiot. There are some people who keep chasing the same old assets, the same old villains and they wonder why they’re not getting any new results. They’re doing the same thing they were doing a couple of years ago and expecting a change. This is a market that you have to change. You have to change constantly. I wouldn’t waste my time on anybody that comes with that list. If it’s on a toxic list, I will kill that list and I would start looking for new assets.

I will jump on the county records and pull a list of anybody who’s got a sign on mortgage and I start dialing for dollars. I’d pay a VA $4 an hour to go find me phone numbers of these companies because it can be valuable. Nobody else could do some of the things that I’m talking about doing. “Do you mean I’ve got to spend $200 up front to get a list of something like that?” Why not? “I’ve got to spend $367 to be in business.” How much dough do you think the pizza place bought? Many people talk about being in business but mostly they’re idiots not doing anything. You’ve got to put a little bit of investment in your deal. If this is your first rodeo, I apologize because I’m a little direct and blunt. Quit being the solo guy or gal or, “I had to do everything myself.” That’s your problem. If you’re out there like, “I can’t pay for email because it only allows me 2,000. I’m going to go ahead and put a list in and copy-paste the list.” You’re an investor. Start investing. If you’re going to have an email you’re going to send out, you need to pay to have a decent one. You don’t need a piecemeal together. Quit looking for the least amount to do and start realizing, “Maybe I should do a little bit more. I know I can do more. We’ve got some things in place to do more.”

 

Maybe you need to connect with other like-minded note investors, people that are doing it, and then maybe you do not have to do it all yourself. Maybe you’re banding together to get more done. Maybe you watched Game of Thrones. The House Stark could not take on the White Walkers by themselves. They had to band with Dany hordes of her army of Unsullied and the Dothrakians from across the ocean. The Avengers had to band together to come in to defend against Thanos. They had to come together to get it done, and not do it one at a time. In this situation, one plus one doesn’t equal two. It equals three.

Work Together

I’ll give you a great example. Gabe Kass is a student of ours. He does a lot of seconds and a lot of firsts. They got together. They have their own businesses. They don’t live too far apart. One lives in Los Angeles. The other one lives in Huntington Beach. They get together once a week. They were doing tapes of seconds. They would divide and conquer. They would band together to go through due diligence on these assets. They would, “You bid on this. We bid together and co-bid.” They would get more stuff done versus trying to be a solopreneur. I’m a big proponent of the different note groups that are taking place out there in Orlando, Tampa, Grand Rapids, Denver or Detroit. I see people that know each other. They’re living across the street from each other, but they’re not working together. They’re all, “I’ve got to do it by myself.” You don’t. Stop what you’re doing. Reach out to somebody local. Go to your local meetup groups and start talking with people. If you’re part of a mastermind group, “Let’s band together and do some things. I’m going through coaching with somebody,” or “I’ve got a group I’m working with.” Make some offers. What you don’t want to do is be this group that gets together and nothing is ever done. If you’re one of these people that talks, “I’m so busy,” your endgame has to change.

There are people double the minimum. If you come together, you can get double the minimum and your costs are going to be reduced usually by half because you aren’t alone. You’re getting more done as long as you’re working and holding each other accountable in the long run. I always make judges. What does that mean? It means you’re contacting more banks. You’re maybe creating a fund and working together, splitting the costs. You want to close more deals. You’ve got to be very careful. I have made mistakes in the past of bringing people in that I thought were like-minded, who went into a whole different route. It is what it is. They pull their own light. You can’t have people that are similar to you. You’ve got to have a little bit of a cross mix of different personalities to have things happen. If you both are A-type personalities, nothing’s going to get done. That’s why I make the joke about, “Is this your first time in space?” in the movie. Rocket is like, “If this is your first time in space, don’t throw up in my ship.” They’re all working together to go track Thanos down in the first part of the movie. If it’s your first time in space, you’ve got to learn some of the ropes. I would start reaching out to people and say, “I can help out. I’ll do due diligence. I’ll pull numbers for those that have the time.”

If somebody reaches out to me and they’re not here locally, I don’t have the time for them, no offense. I don’t have the time because we already have our system in place, we already have people we deal with. I don’t even need that. There are other people locally, not here but everywhere and they could work together and knock some things out. I’m going to give you some reasons. I’ve been working through some things. I’m selling some assets off, evaluating where we’re at in our business, where we’re at in our endgame. A lot of people have come across and understood, “We want to do this.” I say, “I want 400 assets bringing in $250 a month.” That’s $100,000 a month. That’s $1.2 million a year in cashflow. I start thinking, “Why am I going to work so hard? Why don’t I adjust the numbers a little bit and start targeting 250 assets bringing in $400 a month to hire a nicer value asset?” Probably coming from a bank, you get the same thing. I’m like, “That makes more sense.” I have fewer assets, which means I have less servicing cost and I have more take home. It all depends on the market you’re buying in. We’re upping our game quite a bit. We have a lot of things that we’re working on here locally on our portfolio that we’re excited about. We’re moving assets that don’t hit those numbers. We’ve got a lot of assets available for sale, not for brokering.

We’re buying for our own portfolio from banks. I’m pretty excited about some things I’ve worked on. There’s some stuff that we’re working on a lot that we’re going to change. We’ll be giving a listing from banks and portfolio lenders for our own business and then moving some of those deals to our registered buyers, our registered mastermind members. If you know your top three states, I would be going to WeCloseNotes.com and registering there if you’ve not registered. Many people have. That’s all to go, rinse and repeat. It’s taking on portfolios, taking them down and finding people in that neck of the woods. That’s one of the things that we have worked so hard for. It’s putting systems in place with investors and putting businesses in place. These funds are dropping things down. We’re stoked about it. My endgame isn’t to be here in Austin long-term. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Austin. We’re moving offices. When I first moved to Austin in 2001, I graduated from Texas State. I moved not too far from where my office is. It’s about a ten-minute little drive. There’s this place. I was like, “It would be cool to have an office in that building.” I went in, they told me the price and I was like, “I can’t afford that. I don’t need a whole floor. I need an office.”

I’m excited because I’m going to realize that dream. It’s a little dream, a little goal that I put out there when I get back. If we finished our lease here, we’re moving to a new office. We’re moving on up and I’m pretty stoked about that. It’s a nicer spot. We’re blessed. We’ve got some nice spots here but we’re making some changes. Things that we’re making changes to will help us get to our endgame faster. I’m excited about this. Steph is excited about this. I know Shannon is. I’m sure Hazel is a little bit. She’s working remotely. Our endgame isn’t sitting on the beach working but getting closer to it every day. Life gets in the way. We get sidetracked with things. We don’t always do this. If you have a place that’s your place, take some time. Print out a good picture of it. Get it to a FedEx Office, Kinko’s and get it framed. Post it somewhere where you can see it every day. One of the images that lasted with me throughout Endgame is Captain America with his compass. He’s got a picture of Captain Peggy. He’s constantly looking back at that to the point where he was able to go back and spend time with her. It’s a great way to end the movie on that aspect of things.

Know Your Endgame

We all have an endgame. Some of you may not know what your endgame is and that’s okay. We do. If you do, know your numbers. If you don’t know your numbers, go back and check out Note Night in America and know your numbers. Start working your way through to get things done. $800 a month on a mortgage payment is an average payment on about $125,000 house. That’s upping your game from $50,000 to $60,000 assets to $120,000. It doesn’t mean they’re all going to modify or reinstate, but it does mean that when we do foreclose them, they’re bigger checks. It’s a great way to do some things. It doesn’t mean I don’t like lower-valued assets. I think there’s a lot of money made on those. There are a lot of opportunities still. You’ve got to find them. As values go up, more valued assets are becoming hard to find. You can either sit here and cry and moan about, “I can’t find any deals,” or you go out and adjust your game. “I don’t know if I can take that $150,000 or $500,000 asset.” You can. There are people out there who will fund if the deal makes sense.

 

If you have not registered your top three markets, I encourage you to go to WeCloseNotes.com. It’s my website. You’ll see three boxes, a box for training, for the mastermind and for the top three markets to buy notes in. Go in there and fill your information out, putting your top three states. If you only invest in one state, put one state down. Don’t put, “Michigan, Michigan, Michigan.” Do it once. If you’ve got three, it’s great. I don’t think it requires you to put all three. It only requires you to put one in. As we’re getting stuff in, we’ve got some stuff that we’ll be sending out to those lists on deals in those markets. Endgame is a great movie. I shed a little tear when I saw it for the second time. I enjoyed it more the second time around than the first time. I’m very surprised that the movie theaters were still packed at 10:30 in the morning.

Q&A

We have a question, “When you say $100,000 a month, are your servicing cost covered or does that come out of $100,000?” That $100,000 is the net of servicing cost coming in. They’ve already come out. That $400 a month or $250 month is the net of what’s coming in. “How do I get an automated endgame in my note business?” Part of your automated note business endgame is, what are you focused on? Maybe you should be buying some assets for yourself versus trying to sell stuff off. It all comes down to your marketing. Are you out networking with people? Are you taking their information and putting it into a database so that you have an email? It’s maybe a database like MailChimp or something like that that you can use so that you can send an email when you get a listing and you send an email out to those that are investing or living in those states. That’s part of it. You’re reaching out to asset managers to get lists in and you’ve got people there. It’s what it all comes down in this note game. Find deals, find money and put yourself in the middle using MailChimp or maybe a text messaging service. There are so many great tools that we use to talk about things.

We have a question, “Is there an approximate percentage that you have debtors covering servicing costs?” No, that doesn’t work with your nonperforming side. Most of those are service set up or re-servicing. That works more so on your owner finance notes. You can have the PITIS. That’s not saying you can’t change that into your servicing comments and stuff like that or you’re servicing your loan mod and trial payment plans. Take it on a case-by-case level. Since I’m buying directly from banks most of the time, I have to expect my servicing costs are going to be covered on our end versus borrower’s end. If you’re buying owner finance notes, it’s not something you can’t ask. You can’t go back in and say, “Now you’re going to pay servicing costs.” It’s going to be varied. Nonperforming is a little bit more expensive than servicing versus the performing side of things. “The lower end of a market servicing cost seems expensive.” It all depends on how much you’re buying. It can seem expensive if you’re outsourcing all of it. It can seem expensive if you don’t do a lot of due diligence and you’re going after it before closing and all that stuff. It all depends on what your market focus is.

If you want to, you can register here, even if you’re not buying bank loans. If you’re buying owner finance notes, it’s fine. Go and register there. We got some people that come to us that want us to market some of their owner finance notes available for sale. At this point, we’ve got the systems to be able to handle that. We’re pretty excited about that. Thank you for joining us. Go out and please make something happen. If you don’t know what your endgame is, take some time. Talk with somebody. Give us a phone call. Shoot me an email. I’ll shoot you the link for a counter invite and we can spend some time talking. We all have an endgame. We all have something in mind that we want to accomplish. Do yourself a favor and start working towards your endgame. Quit worrying about somebody else’s stuff and focus on your endgame. You’ll be a lot happier. You’ll feel a lot more relieved. You probably won’t be so stressed. Go out and make something happen. We’ll see you at the top.

Important Links:

• Derreck Long – Past episode
• Jason Bible – Past episode
• Distressedpro
• Lane Guide
• FDIC.gov

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