EP NNA 5 – Three Big Things To Boost Your Business

The best thing about attending events, other than getting off the chair and out of the office, is meeting people and getting new ideas. There are always lessons to be learned from the people that you meet at events. It’s best to dial your list down to three big doable things that will change the way you run your business. One of those big things is to have an up and a down funnel for your business to direct people and put them on a journey with you. What they gain from the experience could turn into value, connections, and a growing database. The best way to drive traffic for your website and database is to learn how to identify your avatar and set clear goals to get things going faster.

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Three Big Things To Boost Your Business

Join us, grow your business, educate yourself and learn some new things because we’re going to share some great nuggets for you. Three big things that we’ll share with you will change a lot of people’s businesses if you take what we teach and implement them. That’s always the biggest thing. I know that only about 5% to 10% of people implement something. It drives me bonkers because I wish more people would do that. The more you get around to implementing or taking action, the more successful you’re going to be. That’s our biggest goal.

Those who are wondering who is on Note Night in America, we have real estate investors, we have note investors, we have people looking to getting the notes, we have private investors looking to fund deals, we have a variety of people who join us here. When we don’t have a holiday or I’m not traveling, we have something going on. You can catch all our previous ones for sure at WeCloseNotes.tv. We are uploading the audio to our Note Closers Show, our podcast, out there. We’ll be taking the replays from these and not sharing them on just our Vimeo page for the most part. We’ll keep those private for something we have going on later on.

Our goal is to get people to come to the webinars, listen and be here, be present, and go from there. We do have a very big goal that we’ve set for ourselves over the next five years and that’s why we’re making a few changes to help us measure those goals. A goal is only good once there is a written date and is measurable. We’ve got a goal to help educate and create 10,000 note investors over the next five years. By the time 2020 rolls around, we want to have helped over 10,000 note investors take their note business to the next level, not to space, but to infinity and beyond.

We’ve got some big things going on. One of the things that we love to do is helping our students or people that are looking at the note business so we’ve got a great special going on. I wanted to share this with you. It’s the March Madness Special that if you get signed up for our virtual workshop, our Note Buying for Dummies Workshop, the Virtual Note Buying Workshop, we’ll throw in a ticket to the largest online note conference, the Note CAMP 5.0. We have got some great stuff going at Note CAMP. I am so excited about that. Sign up for $699 for the Virtual Note Buying Workshop. We’ll throw in a ticket, which is going for $197 apiece to Note CAMP 5.0.

Sign up for you and your spouse, and we’ll give you two tickets to Note CAMP 5.0. All you got to do is go to WeCloseNotes.com, see virtual training, click on thing to sign up for it, you’ll see a popup, pay, and you get a ticket to Note CAMP 5.0 as well. It’s three days of pure content. We’ve got some great stuff to go along that will help implement some things. We focus on the fun and the flip. It’s nuts and bolts training for you. Especially this workshop around, we’re going to focus a lot in finding assets because that’s where a lot of people struggle with. We finally got the opportunity to take and put some asset manager list, finalize the combination of the twenty plus people that we’re working through the banking blitzkrieg that called the asset managers. It was over 5,000 phone calls were made over four weeks. It’s a tremendous amount of new things.

We’re excited about the asset managers list. I have not yet emailed out the list. We’re getting ready to do that. Our workshops are 100% live. They’re online. We’ve got some great speakers that are coming out: asset managers, servicing companies, special asset managers coming out to share. Once you do sign up for the virtual workshop and/or Note CAMP, the recordings are included with that as well. The cost is $699 but we’re going to throw in two tickets to Note CAMP for you as well, so that’s over $400 in bonuses with that stuff for you. If you can’t make it all three days, don’t worry about it. Make it when you can, but you’ll get the replays the following week as well, which is nice for you.

We’ll have close to 1,000, if not more than 1,000, people on it, 30 plus speakers over four days of content. The recordings are included with Note CAMP 5.0 as well. We’re not going to charge you $300 or $400 like other expos do. That’s included in the ticket price with some great stuff along with that. Why is that important? No other event is going to give you the list of registrants that come to the event. We’re going to give you the list of registrants who are in attendance so you can go out and expand your business exponentially. You can sign on to NoteCAMP.Live for Note CAMP 5.0.

We are so jacked up. We’ve got two keynote speakers and I’m honored to have both of these individuals join us. I’ve known both of these ladies for years. The first one is somebody that I’ve called a friend for awhile. Many of you probably read a few books that she’s been a part of, Think and Grow Rich, she co-wrote with Robert Kiyosaki; Outwitting the Devil, she rewrote after Napoleon Hill wrote it; Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold, which she co-authored with Greg Reid on it, amongst a variety of other books. I’m honored to have my friend, Sharon Lechter, be a keynote speaker at Note CAMP 5.0. She’s got some great stuff. She’s excited to come on and spend an hour to an hour plus with us on one of those days at Note CAMP 5.0.

Our other keynote speaker is an Emmy Award-winning expert on fear and overcoming obstacles, a good friend of Oprah. You’ve probably seen her on Oprah a few times. She used to run her own daytime show on NBC. It is the wonderful, the amazing Rhonda Britten who is known as a worldwide leader in overcoming fear. I’m so excited to have her join us as well. I spent some time with her in San Diego and she is looking forward to speaking at Note CAMP 5.0. It’s the first time we’ve had not only one but two female keynote speakers. I believe they’ve got a lot to offer. We’ve had the Patrick Precourts, the Jason Sisneroses, the Scott Duffy’s, and the Greg Reids in the past, but I’m so honored to have these two women because they have both been very inspirational, not only to myself, but to many of you that have either read their books or have been going through some things.

Note CAMP 5.0 is all about helping you light the path to success. I believe both of these two women are going to deliver some amazing nuggets for those that are in attendance. Take advantage of the reduced price. Get your tickets to this. Be able to have a front row seat with them on your computer and be able to ask them questions live. You got such a great opportunity with both of these ladies. I did a happy dance when both of these ladies RSVP’d with me in less than 24 hours. If you’re hungry, you’re going to be in the right spot here. Get signed up for Note CAMP 5.0 by going to NoteCAMP.Live to grab your VIP tickets.

Three Big Things: Whenever I go to an event, I always look for nuggets.

There’s also a special we got rocking and rolling . In March, Quest IRA has a very special. Many of you opened an account last month. Big kudos to them. They went out and closed their most successful month with new accounts. If you open up a new IRA, ESA, HSA, etc., they’re going to go ahead and donate $125 to cover your first transaction on that asset. They’re looking for people to be putting their money to work, not deposit in an account, but start putting your money to work. They’ll pay the $125 transaction fee that they charge you, they’d knock that out. It’s a great opportunity for you in your accounts. You’ve got to use the code WCN when you open that new account this month with them and let them know.

WCN is the code that will help make sure you get that $125 extra put in your account to help you cover the transaction cost. Go to QuestIRA.com or give them a phone call at 1-888-FUN-IRAS. It’s always a big event. We have them on the first Monday of every month with our newest schedule and also there’re bonuses for the month. We’re the only podcast that they’re doing that for, so we’re overjoyed to have them be such a great partner with us. Take advantage of that. Our podcast has over 69,000 downloads. We’ll be over 70,000 soon. We’re overjoyed at that. We’ll keep throwing out the episodes as long as you keep listening and downloading.

I know some of you are looking for deals. Joel Markovitz reached out to me saying that he had a couple of REOs where the buyer didn’t wire funds and didn’t show up, so two REOs for sale. One is in Montgomery, Alabama. It is vacant, value is the mid $80,000s. They’re looking for $69,000 on the Montgomery, Alabama 505 Glade Park Loop. The other one here in St Louis is a duplex, 3458 Alberta Avenue. It has a tenant in place that you have to evict. Their price is $65,000, maybe $85,000 and $65,000 or $59,000 for this one. The quote in any of those decent deals definitely for that stuff there, especially REO. I expect to make some quick money on that stuff. Reach out to Joel Markovitz at the Singer Law Group and he’ll be glad to help you with that or drop me an email and I’ll make an official email introduction. I’ll send you over the BPOs and what he provided me before you get on a call with him. A couple of deals fell out that they had to close and this is an opportunity.

Montgomery, Alabama will be a great rental. I know that Dan Zitofsky is looking at bonds and stuff in Montgomery, Alabama, so I’m going to forward the deal over to him. I want to give you the opportunity to find a couple of deals that you come in. If you’ve got a tenant in place there at the one in St Louis, great, you got a built-in renter. I don’t know rent rates or anything like that. I didn’t have time to do a lot of due diligence on these. I just know that Joel asked me if I would be glad to promote it for him. As always, we’re going to have a lot of deals and things rock and rolling here, especially over the next 90 to 120 days. You’re going to see some stuff pop up. Whenever I go to an event, I always get a ton of ideas. I always look for nuggets.

We have a question, “What does the other offer that the other doesn’t?”

Note CAMP is more like a convention. It’s not going to be nuts-and-bolts training. You’re going to get a little bit of a broad knowledge base on notes. Note CAMP is a broad knowledgebase of vendors. We’ll have some different technology things, we’ll have a few speakers, but it’s not going to be a training class. The virtual is a nuts-and-bolt class. Note CAMP is a convention, a place for you to network, a place for you to go and meet and talk and network with over hundreds and hundreds of other investors. It’s two different things. Note CAMP is focused on content, actions, marketing, and profit generating things. We’re going to have a variety of speakers. We’re going to have Dawn Rickabaugh join us for the first time on the conference. Bob Zachmeier will join us as well. Of course, Quincy Long and Walter Wofford will be joining us on some owner financing stuff. It’s different to what I completely teach with just the virtual.

When I go to events, I try to walk out with three big things or three big ideas. What can I implement? A lot of times I’ll come up with a whole lot more than three big things, three big ideas. It’s just hard to implement when you have a lot more. I’ve got a list of about twenty items long, and I’ll know we’ll get to some of them over time. To understand what I’m getting into, the event I’m talking about is called the Traffic & Conversion Summit. This is one of the events that Steph and I religiously go to. We’d been going to it for the last four or five years. Anytime that the company called DigitalMarketer puts stuff on, I try to see if my schedule is free to go because they’ve got great stuff to help me, not just with my note business, but with the way we market, tips, tools, and things that we can do. It’s a phenomenal thing. It’s not a cheap ticket, but it’s worth it because we get a variety of great ideas out of it. Now it’s been around for nine years. This is the fourth year in a row that we’ve attended. It’s been worth it every time we go.

Usually the first day we get a nugget that pays for the cost of the travel. Staying at the hotel, flying to San Diego, and going out to eat and stuff like that, that can get expensive and it’s an expensive three days for us. It’s still okay because, first and foremost, we find ourselves surrounded by 6,500 digital entrepreneurs, and their real estate investors, health and wellness, and all sorts of trash and trinkets. It’s a lot of digital entrepreneurs, a lot of digital marketing. It allows for us to get outside of our environment to be able to pick people’s brains on what they’re doing, how they’re delivering, or how we can overcome hiccups that we’re seeing, or what are they doing to solve issues. It’s nice that way.

There are over 100 vendors. It’s close to a 150 vendors this time around. There are vendors anywhere from Leadpages to Infusionsoft to ClickFunnels, a whole variety of different digital vendors there to help you out with your real estate business or whatever type of online business you have, whether it’s from ClickFunnels or other things to help you with your business make smoother transitions, or help you collect if you’re charging things are opting out of things, trying to help you fix your funnels. I love it because there’re always great sessions and they had literally five different stages that we’re going each day. There’s well over 100 sessions taking place. There was no way I could possibly make them all and there’s no way even Steph can make them all, so we split and conquered.

The beautiful thing is some of the sessions are a little bit of a repeat from what we’ve heard last year, so we’re able to pick and choose some things that fit us the best. Whether you’re brand new, you’re middle, or your head honcho, they’ve got some different tracks for you. What I love is I’ve learned a lot from how they run the event to help us better with Note CAMP on things like that. I’m honored that the lady that puts this whole event on, the big honcho that puts this on for Digital Marketer, DeAnna Rogers was my first ever assistant, so I’m always honored to see her do an amazing job year in and year out.

Three Big Things: There’s a whole variety of different digital vendors to help you out with your real estate business or whatever type of online business you have.

There are tons of ideas and tons of experts on things. You can get personal with a lot of great people out there on a daily basis. We had Daymond John from Shark Tank who gave the keynote. I was listening to him speak, talking about some of the things that he has dealt with, some of the things that he sees, talking about the new book, the Rise and Grind. It was great listening to him. We had Dave Asprey, the CEO of Bulletproof Coffee. I learned quite a bit of stuff from Dave sharing some of his knowledge and information of creating a company and building a company big up and doing what he needed to do to make Bulletproof the brand that it is. I was lucky enough to hear Mari Smith who’s an amazing Facebook expert. She’s got a Scottish background. She shared some great nuggets about where Facebook is going. That gives you a drop in the bucket of some of the people that were there.

A lot of the talk was about using Facebook Messenger bots and things like that. I’m not going to get into that because most of you aren’t even close to doing that. I took pages and pages of notes. I used Rev.com on my phone to record the audio to get it transcribed. What’s beautiful about this is that there’s so much to choose from on so many things that you need answered. When I look back at my notes and figure, “What are the three biggest things that are going to help you grow your business big, big ideas that you can implement with little time and little dedication?” A little disclosure here, every time I leave Traffic & Conversion Summit, I feel like I want to come home and blow everything up. Steph can vow I walk out of there sometimes depressed.

I was like, “There’re some cool things. We’re not doing things,” and then I look back to where we are compared to a lot of other people, we are way far ahead of a lot of the people when it comes to marketing in real estate in the note business. We’re not exactly where we want to be, but we’ve got goals and we add a little bit every year. We add another layer to that onion that helps us be who we are at WCN. These next couple slides are the three biggest things that are going be the most helpful for you.

We have a question, “What do I use to record?”

What I use to record is an app on my phone called Rev.com. It’s who we use to send videos to that they transcribe. They’ll do it for a dollar a minute. So if you got a 60-minute presentation, you pay $60 to get it transcribed. I record it, upload it, label it, and send it out to have it sent back to me. It’s usually done in 24 hours. Rev.com is well worth it. It’s very easy for notes and works out well. The first big idea came from a podcaster by the name of John Lee Dumas. John runs a podcast called Entrepreneurs on Fire, EOFire. He runs a couple podcasts with over 5 million to 7 million views and downloads. This is not about podcasting.

John shared his idea and the belief that you have to have an up and a down funnel. What does that mean? You have to have an up funnel and then a down funnel for where you want people to go. How do you attract them and how do you direct them where to go? It’s a journey. The big idea is to create a nice journey for people that come into your tribe, that come into your atmosphere, that come into your area. You don’t need a podcast to go through and understand what I’m talking about, so don’t think that but I loved what he shared with his up and down funnel.

What I’ve done is take it a little bit and tweak it down a little bit for you. I want you to think of what’s the journey for your tribe? Do you meet them at a real estate club, get their business card, and that’s about it? Do you connect with them on LinkedIn? Do you send them an email once a month and that’s about it? Do you connect with people on Facebook and that’s about it. I see a lot of people that a lot of times will go throw shit against the wall, and me being guilty of this as well, throwing crap against the wall. I got a little bit here and a little bit here and trying to piece it all together as an entrepreneur.

Today is different than it was two years ago. It’s different than it was five years ago. It’s different than when it was ten years ago as a real estate investor. It’s a whole different ballgame than when it was when I first started calling on notes, calling asset managers. That means to say the whole follow-up and the journey is completely different. If you think about a journey, think about it this way. You go to a mall, you start going to Nordstrom’s. The first thing you go to Nordstrom’s, for one thing, is you go because they usually have higher quality stuff. You know that by word of mouth. You go there, everybody’s dressed nice, the store is spotless, they got the coffee spot right there to help entice you with coffee.

Most of the workers are very nice and then they go out of their way to find something for you. I love shopping at Nordstrom’s. They rarely have anything that fits me with my arms or my legs, but that’s okay. I still enjoy going there and checking it out because they make it easy for you. You don’t even have to go to the register. You can swipe your credit card there and type it all in there, straight on a palm. After you leave, you’re getting phone calls, getting emails, but it’s in a good way. It’s not over the top. That’s a great customer journey. “Here’s a discount,” or “Come back to us,” or “Happy birthday.” It’s a great journey if you think about that.

You have to start thinking about the journey that you’re giving people. Are you’re giving them a lot of short little journeys and get out of the car or little journeys to nowhere? The reason I ask this is because we’re all guilty of that. I’ve been guilty of it in the past and my journey is still not as clean as what it should be. What I am doing to help you succeed is not as clean as it should be. I want you to think about what are you doing before you meet your perspective note investors or your clients or buyers or sellers? What are you doing during the process? What are you doing after you’ve contacted them or after you closed or done things? It’s something that we all can get better at on a regular basis, me being the first one.

I condensed the two things to eight steps to drive traffic. If you ask what do I mean by traffic, that’s people to your website, people to your database, things like that. The first and foremost thing that we all have to do is identify your avatar. If you don’t know who your avatar is, I’ll give you what my avatar is. Our avatar, which is our ideal client, is someone between 35 to 65, a college educated homeowner, makes somewhere between $75,000 and $250,000 year. They have usually CEO or OOO or something like that in their job title or they’re an entrepreneur. They are usually buying things online, especially for the house, do a lot of online shopping.

Ultimately, they usually have a family, whether they have kids or married. That’s our avatar. We see business management, we get a lot of engineers and some business degree, we see a lot. We do get dentists, we do to get doctors, but for the most part, we get those doctors and dentists after they’d gone through some wakeup in their business. They are not usually doing it at the back because they’re too busy running their organization or their practice. The more you can niche down and identify your avatar, the better off you’re going to be. It varies. Our median age is about 48, but we see stuff from 35 to 65 for the most part. The reasons to know your avatar is so that you’re not wasting time marketing to other channels that people aren’t a part of.

You want to research your target market. What are those people reading? What are they looking at? What are the things that they’re looking at online? What are they looking to do? Many times they’re looking to put their retirement or retire early. What are some of the things that are identified with that niche market that a lot of people are going through that you can understand or even dive into and learn more about them? The more about your ideal client, the better you are as a sales guy, the better you are as a marketing guy or gal. That’s going to help you more than anything else just on the front end to know those two.

Three Big Things: The more you can niche down and identify your avatar, the better off you’re going to be.

The third thing you want to do is establish your funnel’s goal. What is your goal with what you’re going to do? Is it to get them to invest with you? Is it getting them to buy from you? Is it to get them to a workshop with you? Is it just to get together and cook pies? Whatever your funnel is, it’s okay. You just have to have some clearly defined goals. This is not always easy because sometimes it is going to a Monday night webinar or jumping on a podcast. You can have multiple funnels, you just got to understand where that funnel is going to take you. A lot of times, I know I’ve been guilty of this, our funnels are going one way and they don’t always connect to where we want to go. We have to go back and fix things. What’s your funnel? People you meet at the local REIA club, what’s their ultimate goal? What’s your ultimate goal? Is it for them to be getting your database and eventually find something or buy something? Those are the things you got to think about.

You want to create the solution to your database or your funnel in the form of a lead magnet. By lead magnet, it doesn’t need to be anything fancy. It doesn’t need to be an 80-page book. It could be a report that you’re doing, a webinar, or recording a video series. Some lead magnet that’s going to solve the solution. I’ll give an example. If you’re looking for somebody who’s a homeowner looking to retire earlier, what’s the big thing they’re looking for? They’re looking for above average insurance outside of CVs or IRAs. They are looking for something that they can invest or learn while they earn. You want to create a lead magnet. We’ll help you learn while you earn.

Another one, Eric Hyde did a great a video on Facebook talking about a deal in Alabama. He could have made a few changes to it, but it was still a good video because he took the time to film it and then throw pictures of the property. It’s a performing note. He posted it in BiggerPockets. He posted it in a couple of places as well. That’s why it’s important to know what avatar you’re going after, what’s your target market, where they hang out, and so where to post the lead magnet so they fall into your funnel, and of course setting up your funnel. That means if you are going to do a webinar, go ahead and create it. If you’re going to create something, go ahead and get it done. Don’t think about it. You’ve heard me talk about doing unfinished bridges, which we all suffer with. You got to focus on one thing and get it done, then go back and start something new. Set up your funnel, an opt-in here and that’s the funnel aspect of things.

Driving traffic to your lead magnet is the next thing. Some people are like, “What if they come the other way?” No, set up your funnel and make sure your funnel is good, and then you want to drive traffic to it. Then you want it as a the Facebook post, the LinkedIn post, the email blasts, “Check out the webinar we’re doing on Monday night,” or, “Check out my free report. Click on here to get your one-page report on the three reasons why I love note investing.” Those are all great things for you to do. There’s a variety of lead magnets. You could have a Lunch and Learn in a local area. You could do override to get my free eBook on IRAs, or get a copy of my blog on this one thing I wrote with Think Realty Magazine.

There is a variety of ways to drive traffic to your lead magnet because ultimately you want people to click on that lead magnet and then monitor your funnel. Once they get clicking and they start going through your funnels on certain things, you can see things. You go to a local area whatever you opt to into watching a webinar. After the webinar, I am going to invite you to watch or listen to the podcast. After listening to that, I’m going to invite you to a workshop or I’m going to invite you to meet with me for coffee, or I’m going to invite you out to the local REIA club again. One important thing a lot of people struggle with is they never get around to having their affiliates help promote it. What do I mean by affiliates? That could be your friends, your families, fellow investors, your vendors, people that you work with. That’s why you saw us promoting Quest IRA’s event because they are an affiliate of us. They’re not only a sponsor. It’s win-win. If we can help them open up more accounts, it’s a win for us with more investors. It’s a win for them to promote us because we do a great job with marketing.

We’re glad to help with the market. That’s what I want to get to with that. There’s more involved with this than the eight things, but this is the idea. I don’t want to detract from what we’re trying to get at. These are big ideas. These are the three biggest things that can help you. Those investors that have a clearly defined process, systems, and their funnels and things like that are the ones that are more successful. Not only are they more successful, they’re raising more capital, they’re closing more deals. They have systems in place and they have set this up so they are not having to spend a lot of the time going out and having one-on-one conversations, they’re having one conversation that they’ve recorded, or built something, or wrote something. They had that one conversation either recorded or written down, so they can share that conversation with the many.

We have a very good question, “Can you apply this to reaching asset managers?”

Yes. Identify your avatar. What does an asset manager look like? They probably in their mid 40s to 60s, worked for a bank. They have Special Asset Manager, Secondary Marketing Manager, or Chief Credit Officer at their title. Your funnel goal is to get them to send you lists. What’s their problem that you have a solution for? Their problem is getting the stuff off their books, non-performing notes. You may want to record or write a simple book on why note investors are a great source for asset managers. That sounds like a good idea, I’m going to actually take my own advice here.

We’ll talk about how you buy assets when you work with banks to help take back deals off the books. The funnel could be a webinar, it could be some very simple and quick little two-minute video that you maybe record and throw online. When you’re going through LinkedIn, as you’re connecting with asset managers, you can invite them to click and watch the video, or you invite them to click on a link that you can see or they opt-in with their first name and last name, or once they connect with you, you get their first name, last name and send an email out to them. There’s a whole variety of how you can set that funnel up, but you want to drive traffic.

If you have non-performing notes on your books, we can help. You drive people to the webinar, the webinar recording, your eBook or whatever it is that you get people to click on to collect their information, and you want to monitor your funnel. If you see that you’ve got a thousand clicks on your website or your link, but you only have five people that filled it out, there’s a problem with your funnel. You need to go back and fix your landing page or your wording. You may want to reach out to a servicing company or other people that they can send that out to as well. Does that make sense? You got to walk yourself through that a little bit.

Big idea number two is something that I had been struggling with quite a bit. I know a lot of you have had this as well. It goes in line with the whole content octagon. It’s an idea of going direct. One of the best speakers of the whole event was a photographer turned Instagram expert, Jasmine Star, who’s become this well-known photographer in the last four years. First three or four years, she became well known and she didn’t even own a camera before that, using some of the things that she put in place with her marketing and her Instagram to drive some stuff. A phenomenal photographer, great speaker, not a normal presenter, but she shared some great nuggets about being an Instagram expert.

Honestly, this is one thing in our funnel, in our marketing, that is probably the slowest. When you look at the LinkedIn aspect and the Facebook growth, our Instagram growth has been slower than anything else. I had been doing it all wrong and a lot of people have been doing it all wrong. There are a few simple twists or tweaks that you could do with it. This is one of many things. She shared the idea of instead of you posting photos with a million hashtags or a few hashtags and not getting any people to respond for you, we’re probably posting the wrong type of hashtags. If you’re looking for entrepreneurs or you’re looking for home owners, you probably don’t want to put in there a #entrepreneur or #SDIRA. The problem is that many people post hashtags like-minded, what we think about versus what others are thinking about.

Three Big Things: Set up your funnel and make sure your funnel is good, and then drive traffic to it.

Let’s say you know that Chevron was going be laying people off. You saw it and you posted “Is your retirement working for you?” then #Chevron, #401(k), instead of #SDIRA because you want people who are looking to invest their money with you, so that might be the way they do it. Also if you go and find somebody who’s used those types of hashtag, you see somebody just got laid off, “#ChevronSucks or #Chevron, maybe you send a direct message, “I work with a lot of investors that have seen a lot. Have you thought about opening a self-directed IRA to invest in? Have you thought about getting real estate?” She shared with us that many of us are attracting the wrong audience with the wrong hashtags and it’s totally the truth. This goes back to knowing your avatar.

Who’s your ideal avatar? What are they dealing with? What are the hashtags that they’re using? #Family, #Retirement, #CertificateOfDisappointment, those kinds of things. The beautiful thing is you want to identify those users by those hashtags so you know who’s commenting a lot, you follow them, and feel free to send them a direct message. “What? I’m going to send a direct message to somebody I don’t know?” Yes, send them a direct message, “I liked your Instagram posts,” or stuff like that. “Sorry to hear you get laid off from Chevron. Have you thought about rolling your 401(k) over to a self-directed IRA? Have you thought about being a real estate investor?” especially if it’s somebody with #RealEstateSucks or #FixAndFlop.

I want people going and listening to the podcast. I can change that link up with my profile to have it go to a lead magnet page or a bit link. You’d have “Go watch my video on YouTube where it’s got an opt in or get my free report.” I saw that happen a lot. “Get my free pictures,” that’s what Jasmine use. “Get my free San Diego photos.” You can see people opt in that way to a landing page. That’s a phenomenal way of using your Instagram page to do a whole lot better. The thing is you can use your similar hashtags that you find on Twitter as well. It hit me square in the middle of my eyeballs. It’s all about creating one on one conversations and that’s why Twitter has been so great. Twitter’s got a lot more followers than Instagram does, but they both use hashtags.

If you think about it, using the hashtags to find people that liked to wine and things like that, that’s how Gary Vaynerchuk built his following initially. He was reaching out to people that was using Twitter when it was this big thing and connecting one on one with people by giving special discounts or falling off. It’s the same thing you can do to while you’re sitting at home, listening to me, or watching TV, watching a movie, or just killing time, you can be spending time on looking and tracking down hashtags and looking to connect with those people. The beautiful thing is Instagram allows you to follow hashtags. One of the hashtags I started following goes #TCS2018, Traffic & Conversion Summit 2018. I connected with about a hundred new people who are posting images or posting what they loved and things like that, and I wanted to connect with them.

There’s an event going on, a home and garden show, which might be a great one to look for people who are putting hashtags. #QuestIRA if you want to look at Quest IRA clients. You see people that like something and click on who liked or commented, that gives you an easy way to look at it and say “We have something in common.” I don’t mean to just go connect. Click on their profiles and see if they have something in common with you and then send a direct message. What’s the worst thing they’re going to do? Delete your direct message. Don’t come across, “Buy my shit,” “Buy my stuff,” or, “Do you want to invest with me?” That’s freaky. “Do you see a real estate investor here locally or so and so? Have you ever thought about note investing? I’d love to send you my free report.”

The thing is that starts their journey. Then the ones “I got your email,” you send an email off or a newsletter out once a week on something you’re focused on, or you’re doing your videos like Katie Mouton or Cody Cox are doing or other people are doing that are sharing, Eric Hyde, Gil Greenberg. They’re sharing with their connections and that’s building a better journey. The reason Instagram is so great is it’s so photo-oriented, and the thing you got to realize everybody, some of you have already faded off. This is surprising to me. A goldfish has a nine-second attention span. They say Americans have an eight-second attention span, so a goldfish has a longer attention span than we do. That’s why Instagram is so great because you see a lot of people lying down looking at photos. I know Steph does this. I said, “What are you looking at?” “I’m just looking at their Instagram and follow their Facebook.”

A lot of you probably aren’t using Instagram in your business to post the pictures of the properties or pictures of things. One of the things I’m doing is I’ll be uploading those two photos of those two REOs for my buddy, Joel, and then say “Maybe you are looking for REOs,” and there’s a hashtag. Let me look at #REO; 96,000 posts but that’s REO Speedwagon. There’s also foreclosure, I’m going to follow that one. I see someone posted a picture here, “Huge-multi we listed in Springfield, two units with three floors, 3,300 square feet base.” This is from Maximillian Mikunda. He’s a Connecticut Polish American with 200 followers, and he has posts of some of his photos. I’ll go and follow the guy.

Jasmine Star is great. Follow her on Instagram. She’s phenomenal. She has a personal account. She may have converted her personal account on Instagram to a business account, so that’s another opportunity you’re going to be using it to convert it to a business account. She still uses a personal account because she still likes that very touchy basis that a personal account has, so she’s doing photography for the most part. Put out your phone, take a quick shot, as we move on. Our third big thing is something that doesn’t surprise me. You’ve heard me say this before, and I’ll say it again. It was reiterated a ton through our podcasts. It was also reiterated a ton through Traffic & Conversion, and that video is the future.

Whether you like it or not, video is the future. I was glad to get up and listen to this amazing Facebook expert, Mari Smith, who was the keynote at 8:30 AM. I absolutely enjoyed listening to her because she got this cool Scottish accent. She shared a lot of numbers about what Facebook is looking and Facebook loves native video. If you’re sharing it like we are doing here, live streaming from Zoom into Facebook, Facebook loves it. If you’re sharing short videos, fifteen minutes or less and uploaded it, they’re going to love that aspect of it. Because Facebook has some stuff that they have in the works that they’re competing against some competitors. You have to keep in mind, if you what they’re trying to compete with, you ask for market share for people’s eight-second goldfish attention spans, that’s important to know.

Facebook has a new thing called Facebook Creators that they’re growing. It’s normal people like you and me out there that are creating content, sharing what’s going on in their lives. She shared a couple of things about dog-walking server, a mortgage broker, a real estate agent, some things usual. They’re creating what’s going on, calling it a day in their life. It’s almost like when our podcast started off with nine months of Facebook Live. Where are you focused on? What’s going on? What are the motivational aspect of things? I see some people like Leslie Cox, who’s an investor who’s also got a passion in the restaurant industry, doing some great Facebook Lives, creating content.

Facebook Creators is a new bunch of things that Facebook is focusing on. Facebook is competing for market share with YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix, and you throw in Hulu in there and stuff like that. Disney has got their own direct channel up. Everybody’s competing for the videos. Netflix expects to spend over $1 billion or $6 billion on native videos that are offered on Netflix. If you start seeing that Hulu only, Netflix only, YouTube Red, or YouTube Live, or Facebook Live, Facebook is going to be launching a series of stuff like that and they may be looking for creators in the next six to twelve months to be featured on there.

Three Big Things: It’s all about creating one-on-one conversations.

My biggest thing to tell you guys is start creating now. Start creating your own content. You don’t have to jump through hoops to go through like fix and flip this house or HGTV aspect of things. I’ve been through those things. Those are things that I do not want to be a part of. I like what we do and that’s where we’ll stick to. Start creating your content now. The beautiful thing is you don’t have to be experts and you don’t need the big studio to do this stuff. You can do this with a Logitech webcam and your smart phone. Tell your story. Be you. You don’t have to be Scott Carson. You don’t have to be Mari Smith. You don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg. Tell your story because that’s what’s going to draw people in to help you out. Video is so much easier now.

I combined some of the things that Mari shared with us along with another guy by the name of Joel Comm on some different video platform that you guys can use to record yourself. These are simple non-expensive links or websites you can use. These are not expensive programs I’m about to share with you. GoToWebinar was $99 a month. That’s one of the first things that I used and still can use it. GoToWebinar are great recording. Do webinar recording, you got a video, upload the video to YouTube, Vimeo, or whatever you want to. Zoom.us is what I’m using now to record this. Zoom records as a video to Cloud or they also record the audio separately that I can use in my podcasts.

When I upload that to our podcast platform, I have an audio. It literally does the stripping for me. It also allows me to share this to Facebook Live and YouTube Live. The most important thing is I use my Zoom as one of my big lead magnets. My webinar is my big lead magnet because all of you registered for my webinar, all 250 or 260 of you registered. You can live stream either through Facebook Live, YouTube Live. Zoom is not free. Zoom is probably the most expensive thing.

We have a question that says, “Are there benefits of those video sources as opposed to my iPhone, for example?”

No. The reason they’re a little bit better is it’s a software. You can either run a Zoom or a GoToWebinar. I can run a Facebook Live or YouTube Live straight off my iPhone, but it’s a little shaky. If you did a Facebook Live, it’s going to go straight to Facebook. If you’re using Zoom, it has a little better production quality, but you can use it as an easier lead magnet, “Here’s the link. Register for my webinar.” Your iPhone is fine. I still use it with a few things like I can do with Zoom if I need to go to a webinar. It just adds a little bit more. Once you like it, if people join you every week, you go to a Lunch and Learn, “I’m going to be live. Click on the link to register on my webinar,” and you did your webinar directly from your phone from a house that you’re looking at. There’s lots of great things to do with that.

Facebook Live and YouTube Live are both free and great things to use. Facebook Live is obviously going to love it. YouTube Live is going to love it. YouTube is by Google; Facebook is Zuckerberg. One of the biggest things I heard along the way is to make sure and share your videos. If you’re using video on Facebook Live, download it. You can upload it to YouTube and repurpose it. It gets linked to something or two in a minute. Google Hangouts are free. If you get too many people on for too long, it can get a little glitchy. Using Zoom is a little bit more efficient technology because you’re linked in to your computer. If the internet goes out, then your computer goes glitchy as well, but it’s not like Google Hangout. We used to use Google Hangouts for our virtual workshops and they worked for awhile until we got too big and it would crash all the time. The nice thing is if you do Google Hangout, it automatically uploads it to YouTube for you.

VLive.tv is a cool new software that we’re using recently. I used Zoom when I had Anne Marie Hollonds on from Quest IRA because it was easier going back and forth and stuff like that. I used VLive afterwards to film a one-on-one thing. VLive has some cool features to help you custom brand. Your logo is in there, or to be able to highlight questions from the audience or questions from your Facebook audience where it pops on the screen. It’s cool as it has a little bit of extra production guide, which looked a little bit sharper. You can pick up the colors, your logos, some other things you can do, but well worth it. It’s relatively cheap. It’s $243 for a year, about $20 a month. It makes you look sharp.

Live Leap has helped save me a ton of time and helped me broadcast my message across multiple platforms. I go in and set up in Live Leap. It’s a couple of $100 a year. I can pick the groups that I manage to share to. It allows to send out up to a couple of thousand text messages, “I’m about to go live.” If I want to upload an email list to it, it will make me some email. It is also linked into my Twitter account and my LinkedIn account to automatically post, “Scott Carson is live now,” and inserts the link so people who are scrolling through LinkedIn or Twitter, if I pop up, they can click on it and join immediately. If you’ve come across or seen one of those things, do me a favor in the comments on Facebook Live or watching, just do #LiveLeap, so I know, “I came across it in the middle of nothing,” and register for it. I’ve got 38 groups.

We had little Note Closers group we started across the country or video of Note Night In America, and things like that will automatically get shared immediately to it. You pick out which Facebook group or Facebook profile that you want to start it from. It automatically will highlight when it sees you do a personal Facebook video or a business Facebook video. It will grab that and share that across multiple platforms. It’s such a great little thing and well worth it. We learned that in Podfest. Repurpose.io is another website that allows for you to upload the video to YouTube. If you have a Facebook video, you can automatically pick the, “I’m going to go ahead and upload this to YouTube.” That’s one of the things that I do every day. It lets me hit re-purpose and automatically runs and uploads it straight to YouTube or Facebook. It’s a cool thing and saves a lot of time because you can automatically put the hashtags and things and won’t have to wait for the thing to update.

Lastly is this new brand new thing that we saw that I love. I’ve been toying around with it a little bit over the last couple of days. You’ve heard me talk about Canva. It is great for images. Here’s a German company that is doing a Canva for video. Wave.video is a great website where it has all this free filmed stuff that you can use it, you can adjust it for the platform. It will help you make custom videos by using their info and their graphics. It’s thousands and thousands of videos that you can use and put in your logo, you can put it in wording across the video and it makes you look a whole lot awesome than you do. It’s one of the great nuggets from the weekend. It’s a couple hundred bucks to get signed up for that but it’s worth it.

You can upload your own videos too, so that little video you did on your phone, you want to take it and upload it to Wave.video and you can start it off there. It transitions to you talking and transitions out to something else. It’s got a lot of great production quality without being expensive. We didn’t talk about buying $1,000-dollar camera. I’m using a $79 Logitech webcam or we use our iPhones. Those are the two biggest things that we use to record videos most of the time. Do I have a nice Yeti mic here? Yes I do, but sometimes Yeti doesn’t work, so I go off the Logitech mic or I will use a $20 Lavalier mic. It’s some great stuff out there for you.

You don’t need to be an expert in videoing. You have to try this. Do yourself a favor. I know most of you are not going to use this. You’re going to see this and you’re not going to do anything because you don’t do anything anyway. If you’re doing video, you’re doing some things out there. You can take your business to the next level. You can do some great things out there and you won’t be disappointed. The first thing you want to do is get a little mic. I have a Yeti mic. It’s about $150. There’s a whole variety of different microphones you can get.

Three Big Things: Tell your story because that’s what’s going to draw people in to help you out.

Build a journey. You map out your ideal journey, what you would like to see and what you would love to see happen. Identify your niche Avatar so you know specifically what their problems are. You can’t be one-all to everybody. You can’t be something to everybody. You have to niche it down. The more niche-y you get, the better off your journey is. It’s going to be more customized and the more ideas that you’ll absolutely have. Reach out to your audience. Reach out to your tribe. Use the correct hashtags that they’re using. Some people use more hashtags. That’s fine, but use the right hashtags. Don’t be afraid to start those conversations through direct messages. It’s a phenomenal thing. I’ve done some of it on Twitter, on Instagram. I don’t know why I don’t do more of it. It’s an effective tool.

The idea is to announce to many, and the many come back and be able to communicate with those people. Finally, don’t be afraid to throw it on video. Don’t be afraid to share what’s going, create and produce your own reality TV. There are easy to use tools and there are zero excuses except laziness. You’re lazy if you’re not doing any type of video. You don’t have to have anything fancy. They have all sorts of new tracks and whole new selfie sticks and other things like that for you to use, but don’t let that stop you from doing things. You’re not going to be perfect. Your hair is not going to be perfect. Your makeup is not going to be perfect. Share what’s going on in your business and you’ll be a lot better off.

Those are the three biggest things that are surprising from this weekend more than anything else. They talked about more podcasters taking place. They talked more about chat bots and things like that, but I that’s way beyond you. You need to start building that journey, start building that trust, because I guarantee that those who have a better journey, those that are able to communicate, reach out to their audience on more one-on-one conversations and share what’s going on, they’re going to have a whole lot more success a lot faster than if you’re sitting there on the sidelines. Your Apple phone is fine but if you’re going to look for a webcam, a Logitech webcam, go to BestBuy. They have anywhere from $49 to $199. You get the one in the middle. It usually works best, Logitech webcam HD 1080p is what we use.

A couple of things that we’re working on, somebody challenged me to this. It is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. We just had not gotten around to doing. We’re starting a WCN membership. This is different than our Fast Tracks in our workshops. This is something that we’re doing for people that want more help, people that want a little bit more handholding on a monthly basis. We want to focus on those that are doing stuff on a monthly basis as well. We haven’t finished building the website yet, so we’re in the beta aspect of it. We’re offering up 100 spots on the beta site at the reduced price of $97 a month. We’ll close it up after the virtual workshop for about a month and then re-open it back up as we are faced with things. We are doing some cool things with this. There’s going to be special member-only trainings.

We’ll go into some more of the new things that we learn and do those monthly trainings with people a little bit different. It’s not going to be every week, but we’ll do definitely a monthly training. It’s not going to be intro to this. It’s going to be a little more advanced. If you’re brand new and has not been to a workshop or Note CAMP, this is probably not for you. We are already giving special event discounts to events like Paper Source and the Quest Expos and things like that. Our vendors, our colleagues, and peers love what we’re doing and they are glad to help and give us special codes for our members to help save you some money on that. Bill Mencarow just sent me a discount code for our members as well. Vendor discounts, QUEST is offering a discount. Laughlin Associates and ProTitleUSA has got some different discounts out there. We’ve got more that are getting back.

We’ve been thinking about this, talked to a few people, let’s launch it and we’ve been overjoyed at the amount of people that are excited about this. Obviously, we’ll do a monthly newsletter highlighting our students, talk about what’s going on, going through how to find deals. We’ll have a private Facebook group as well. We’re toying with the idea of converting WCN crew using the Facebook page just to the members-only section, so if you’re not signed up for this, you’re going to miss out on that stuff.

If you want to get signed up for this, you can go to bitly.com/WCNMembership It’s case-sensitive. It’s $97 a month for the first 100 spots. The spots are filling up fast we’re stoked about this. Besides that, the newsletter we’ll be sending out with cool swag every month to our extended note family, some cool stuff that we’ve put together. We’ve got some books from several people that have recently published some stuff on the note business and other things. We’re giving them away and send them out to you that are all signed up here, so you’ll look forward to it each month. Some swag each month and special training, special discounts.

We’re probably doing a bimonthly training, not every week, at least twice a month on special member-only training. It’s not intro stuff. It’ll be little bit more advanced. It’s a great way for you to keep things rock and rolling. A lot of people love this Note Night in America, but after we hit those hundred spots, it’s going to bump up to $149 or $147, we’re finalizing that here. You have three days left for the intro beta before we open it up to our full database on this stuff. We have just posted it to our WCN Crew and then I thought I’d share it with you because you may not be spending time on Facebook, so lots of great stuff for you.

We have a question, “Will I provide the tapes from asset managers with those membership?”

No, we provide the tapes to our mastermind group. We’ll talk about how we’re finding those tapes though. We’ll show you how we find those because that’s one of the biggest things. I’m not going to get here and give you specific deals for $97 a month. If that’s the case, I will make sure you get a lot more than that, but we’ll go through, “Here’s how we’re finding some listings. Here are the things that we’re doing. Here’s a tool that we use in LinkedIn. Here’s a tool that we’re using.” “Brecht Palombo has got a great special offering for Distressed Pro.” Those things are going to be in there. We’ll break down deals and break down assets and go through those things.

Three Big Things: Don’t be afraid to start those conversations through direct messages.

I’m not saying you won’t get a little earlier access to things because that’s what will happen, especially if we do a Note Night in America or we’re doing a draft or going through the assets. You’d probably get the lists sooner. I will guarantee that you’ll get the list sooner than the general public where you can start looking at the stuff, but our mastermind group are always going to get first crack with the tapes that are available as early as possible. We’re going to help you out rock and rolling. Our goal is to get rock and rolling and focus on those that want to help themselves. It’s going to be more focused on things as helping those that want to help themselves on some things.

We’re still going to be doing Note Night in America that are open, but we’re transitioning and making some additions so that we can streamline our businesses as well. It’ll be month by month. When you get signed up on shows for a twelve-month timeframe on it, you can cancel at any time. If you don’t like it the first month or two months, it’s fine. You’re more than welcome to cancel. If you sign up at the beta price, you’d be guaranteed that $97 a month as long as you’re in good standing. If after six months you’re not interested in the notes aspect, there’s no penalty to cancel.

If you sent email, just make sure you drop to myself and Steph. I had been bombarded from being out of the office, so just hit resent, and resend it to me sometime sooner. Those 100 initial spots are filling up fast, so take advantage of it. Grab your beta access. We’ll have a first newsletter go out next week after Note CAMP for those first initial spots that way, and then we’ll close it for a while for us to get it tweaked up on everything. We won’t reopen it back up until Note CAMP, but it will not be at the $97 price after Note CAMP 5.0, I can promise you that.

Hopefully these were valuable tools for you and some great ideas that you can implement. You can look at some of these things. I don’t expect you to implement them all. You’d probably do a drop in the bucket. If somebody is going to put a drop in the bucket each day or each month, it gets you closer up to where you need to be. It helps you raise your success up a little bit at a time. That’s the only way we get better. You’re not going to snap your fingers and be a complete expert or closing on 1,000 note deals in one day, but you can get a little bit better so that in a year, two years, or five years, you can look back and see how far you’ve come. That’s all I’ve got for you. Go out and make something happen. Hopefully this was valuable for you. We’ll see you all at the top.

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