What’s the first step you need to do to ensure you are closer to the things you want? A simple yet effective way of planning for your goals is a must, and that is by making sure that they are SMART. In this episode, Scott Carson helps you plan your year right! SMART is an acronym of simple guidelines that helps you prepare for your future. How can you incorporate these into what you are doing and pave your way to the success you deserve? Stay tuned to know how to strategize in building out the game plan for your objectives.

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SMART Goals For 2022: Planning Your Year Right

We are glad to have each and every one of you here join us. Every Monday night, we different topics. When it comes to real estate investing, note investing, primarily, vendor servicers and marketing, it’s a great mixed bag. Sometimes. we’ll have guest speakers and vendors on here as well, but we’re glad to have each and everybody join us from all across this crazy little world.

We’ve got a lot of great stuff to cover here for you. You’re going to want to make sure you grab a piece of paper or pencil or something to take some notes on. If this is your first time, welcome. We have a variety of note and real estate investors all across the country, the people that are interested and that invest in notes. You can catch the replays by going to our YouTube channel at WeCloseNotes.tv. Make sure you hit the Subscribe button. Also, you can go to iTunes as well. Look for the Note Night in America show out there.

I’m pretty stoked. We are coming up on episode 100 of the show. It takes about two years of us doing these Note Night in Americas for the show. It’ has been over a few years of us doing things on Monday night. That’s why we call it Note Night America. Let’s dive into the main stuff because I know you guys are busy. 2021 has just flown by in a lot of cases, and I’ve found that if you don’t spend some time planning your future, your next month, your next quarter, your next year a little bit, you’ll run into trouble because we all know that failing to plan is planning to fail. If you want to accomplish something, you’ve got to put some plans down on paper or something where you can see them help guide you.

One thing that I miss the most from working from home now versus working in the office was I had my year planner. I had a year planner for the current year, and as soon as the next year came out, usually the last four months of the year, I would buy that next year’s calendar. I had a sixteen-month calendar on my wall. It allowed me to plan things out and see things in the future. We, I mean, by all of us, get so bogged down in the day-in-day-out activities of waking up, have our kids fed or the animals fed, the chores that we have going on, and drama that goes on in the day in day out stuff.

A lot of times, we forget to start looking forward. Usually, we’re starting to plan late October, early November a little bit for the next year and planning. One of the things that you’ve got to do is pay yourself first. We plan on, “What big vacations are we taking? What trips are we doing? What events, what conferences are we going to? What conference am I speaking?” That’s been all changed up in the last couple of years with COVID.

You have to start looking at things, not only what you want to accomplish business-wise, and it comes down to, “What goals am I setting for myself when it comes to business? How many deals have I closed this year? What do I have to do to exceed my goals, exceed my numbers or take things to a different level?” Some people out there are like, “I’ve got to get started doing something else. I got a notice from the boss.” Did you see where that one CEO laid off 900 people on a Zoom call? That’s 15% of the staff. That’s crazy, “If you’re on the call, guess what? You are no longer employed by us effective immediately. You’ll get an email.”

The great thing about working remotely is working remote, but also the not-so-great thing is things like that happen. I know some of you guys have dealt with that and others are like, “I’m still doing my full-time gig, but I want to do more on the note side or the real estate side.” You have to start looking at what you want to do.

When it comes to planning your goals or planning what you have to do, your first goal is you have to have what we call SMART goals. I’ve talked about this in the past. I’m doing a quick little recap of what a SMART goal is. You also got to figure out how much time you have in your day or how much time you are wasting each day that you can reallocate to something productive, put something towards your goals. We’ve all got a different time that we can move to things, yours truly included.

You also got to figure out how serious are your goals? How serious are you about your goals? On a scale of 1 to 10, is it going to be at least a 7? If you’re like, “It’s a 2 or 3 on the totem pole.” The lower-end goal is not going to be accomplished because you’re going to procrastinate to get things done. You have to look at what you have to sacrifice.

Does this mean you sacrifice some time with the family? Do you need to turn the BoobTube off? Do you need to reallocate your hobbies and say, “Can I put my hobbies on the backend because they’re not being productive? Do I need to take some time on my schedule and get trained on what I want to accomplish? Do I need to dive in and get some coaching? Do I have my friends or family’s support, or do I need to tell my friends and family, “I need to take a little time off from my bowling league or Monday night football league to focus on what I want to accomplish?”” Those are questions that you have to ask.

I’ve got a good friend who’s been around real estate for a few years. He talks about what he wants to do, but when it comes down to it, he puts it as a lower priority towards a lot of other things. We all see this. On the first of the year, we have New Year’s resolutions. You don’t have to wait for a New Year’s resolution. Your New Year can start now or tomorrow in making things happen. If you want to get to somewhere else, whether you want to lose weight, you want to pay off your debt, you want to make more money or close more deals, run a marathon, start a nonprofit, write your book or whatever it might be, you have to start planning it. You’ve got to put some SMART goals behind it.

Specific

What are SMART goals? SMART stands for an acronym, and it’s pretty simple. The S stands for you’ve got to be Specific in your goal, “I just want to lose weight.” You lost a pound, you are like, “You lost some weight.” You had a big bowel movement. Be specific in exactly what you want to accomplish. “I want to make $100,000 in the next twelve months or I want to lose 50 pounds in the next twelve months.”

Measurable

You’ve got to be Measurable. How do you measure from where you’re at now to where you want to be in twelve months? You’ve got to be able to measure it. If you’re not keeping track of things or measuring things or your journey, you’re going to backslide. I think a lot of people have this happen. They don’t even know where they’re going, so they backslide.

Realistic

You have the A, it’s got to be Achievable. If somebody came to me, “I want to make $150,000 this year,” I’m like, “Have you made $150,000 before?” “No.” “What have you made before?” “I’ve made $35,000.” We all have to grow into that next level. If you want to make $1 million in a year, you first got to grow into that to be able to achieve that. Is it an achievable goal in the first year? Probably not. Maybe if you’re making $30,000, let’s get you to $50,000 or if you’ve made $50,000 before, let’s get you to $100,000 before you go to $200,000 or $250,000. The one thing is you’ve got to take activities and make sure that your goals are achievable, and they’re also very realistic.

If you say, “I’m going to be the starting quarterback for the Texas Longhorns.” That’s not realistic too. I’d probably be more so be the starting quarterback for a Flag Football League these days versus the Longhorns, but they’ve got to be realistic. If you’re not spending any time on something, you’re not going to see some results. I’ll give you a great example. We had a guy that came to my class a few years back. He’s like, “I want to close 100 deals in the first year.” I’m like, “That’s great, but you haven’t closed your first deal yet. Let’s get you closing your first deal, moving it to 10 and then maybe to 20 in your first year.”

Timely

It’s very unlikely in your first year that you can close on 100 deals, but you don’t have to have 100 deals closed in the first year to find success. They could be different depending on what you focus on. SMART, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and that comes down to the last thing being Time. You’ve got to put a date on this, “I’m going to lose weight someday.” Someday isn’t measurable. It is sure as hell not timely.

“I’m going to lose 50 pounds in the next twelve months. I’m going to do that because I’m going to get up in the morning, walk 30 minutes in the day. I’m going to get up and ride a bike for an hour in the evenings.” I have to give a big kudos to my sister, Tracy. Tracy has lost 50 pounds in the last year because she gets up, and she and her husband ride 8 miles a night on their bikes around the neighborhood. They’ve lost over 50 pounds.

She’s done a great job with it. She’s like, “This is my one specific thing.” She’s watched a little bit what she’s eaten. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy food as Carsons all enjoy our food and our cooking, but she’s been very specific, “I’m going to do this by such and such date.” It allowed for her to keep track of, “50 pounds. That means I need to lose roughly 4.5 to 5 pounds a month. That’s roughly about 1 pound a week. I can do that. That’s 3,500 calories. It is achievable. I can do that.”

That’s when you start looking at what you want to accomplish in 2022 or the next 12 months or 6 months, the next 90 days. Put the SMART behind it. Is it a specific deal? Is it measurable? Is it achievable? Is it realistic and timely? Now, if I said I wanted to lose 100 pounds in the next 30 days, it might not be realistic. I’d have to lop my one big leg off here or both legs off to get to that point. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to do that unless I want to die. That’s not the case for me to do it.

That’s what I’m trying to get at, ladies and gentlemen. You’re wanting to accomplish something, “I want to make $5,000 a month in cashflow. What do we need to get there? What do we need to measure? That means I need to buy ten notes and a performer that would bring in $500 a month in cashflow to get that $5,000 a month.” That’s $60,000 a year. It’s a pretty good starting point.

It makes sense. You want to have some SMART goals when it comes down to things, and that’s what you have to look at and kind of, “That’s measurable. Let’s reverse-engineer those numbers of what I ought to be doing on a daily basis that I can measure, and are specific enough to allow me to hit my goals in a timely fashion.” Your goals that are specific have a significantly greater chance of being accomplished.

The five W questions must be considered when it comes to it has to be specific for you. Who is involved in this goal? Is it you? Is it you and your spouse? Is it you and your family? Is it you and a business partner? What exactly do I want to accomplish? Where is this goal to be achieved? It’s going to be me here and living in my state of Austin, buying in Cincinnati or buying in Manhattan Beach.

It’s what I always say when you start off, “Pick 3 to 5 states to start off to get a feel for some things.” When do I want to achieve this goal? “I need it to be achieved by tomorrow.” That’s not realistic. Let’s start setting specific things for you. Why do I want to meet this goal? This honestly is the most important W in the specifics. Why do you want to achieve this? When you have those rough days, those good days, the bad days or when life slaps you in the face like it does, your why is what’s going to help you get up and you make things happen.

Achievable

Your why is going to help you take things to the next level. I’m going to tell you right now, you’re going to fall off the other W, off the wagon of whatever you focus on from time-to-time. You’re going to fail, “I’m going to lose weight.” You’re going to gorge yourself on pizza. We’ve got the holidays with all this good food and candy. I get it. I understand that but your why is one of the most important things. Why do you want to achieve this goal and where do you want to go with it?

For example, here’s another one, “I want to obtain a gym membership at my local community center and work four days a week to be healthier.” Four days a week for 30 minutes to an hour on the treadmill or an elliptical. Be more specific to make things happen. Measurable goals. SMART goals must be measuring progress. There are no criteria. You will not be able to determine your progress if you are on track to reach your goal.

To make a goal measurable, ask yourself, “How many? How much? How do I know if I’ve reached my goal?” It’s got to be measurable. “What is my indicator of progress?” I’ll give you a great example. My indicator of progress is I’m making offers and they’re being countered, versus not being accepted in the note space. I’m making offers that are accepted, but then I go in my due diligence and they’re failing.

 

That’s why I always say as a new note investor, oftenties you’re going to have about a 10% close ratio. As you start getting things more improved, you are better at your due diligence and your upfront stuff, you’re going to see a higher close ratio because you’ll be spending offers on stuff that makes sense and stop making offers on stuff that don’t make sense. For example, measurable. Building on the specific goal above, “I want to obtain a gym membership at my local community center and work out four days a week to be healthier. Every week, I will aim to lose 1 pound of body fat or I need to close on ten deals this year. I know I need to make 100 offers. That means I will be making at least two offers per week on different deals.”

Now, achievable goals. A SMART goal must be achievable and attainable. This will help you figure out ways you can realize that goal and work towards it. The Achievability of the goal should be stretched to make you feel challenged. Stretch means to get outside of your comfort zone but defined well enough that you can achieve.

Ask yourself these questions, “Do I have the resources and capabilities to achieve that goal? If not, what am I missing?” Part two is, “Have others done it successfully before?” If you’re seeing that, “Do I have the resources and capabilities to achieve the goal if I want to close on ten deals this year?” Yes, each and every one of you does. You’re all smart enough. You’ve got sources. You hopefully are coachable and listen to it, “Have others done it successfully before?” “Yes, they have.”

I’ll give a big kudos to Larry Hoffman. He made an offer and it was approved, which is pretty exciting for him. Kudos to Larry there for getting his first offer submitted with some help from us. We’re excited about that deal for you. Now, realistic. Back to the R in the SMART. A SMART goal must be realistic, and that a goal can be realistically achieved given the available resources and time. If the SMART goal is likely realistic, you believe that it can be accomplished.

Ask yourself this, “Is the goal realistic and within reach? Is the goal reachable given the time and resources? Are you able to commit to achieving the goal?” Those are the three big things there. Growing up in a small town in Ingleside, Texas, it was about 5,000 people. I got along pretty much with everyone. There’s this one teacher in my high school that I did not get along with. Bless her heart, Mrs. Crawford taught Geometry and Trigonometry. I was an honor student. I had honors in Geometry, but she was the one teacher that I butted heads with.

We talk about in the beginning of the year about goals. She immediately came across, “I believe that a goal should not be achievable. It should be one of those things you can’t achieve. It’s not realistic.” I’m like, “Why the hell are we all here?” She did not like that response. Right off the bat, we butted heads. I’m like, “A realistic goal can be achievable. It can be within reach. If you can’t achieve it, why try for it then?”

Things might be a stretch like that new movie that’s coming out, the Kurt Warner story. He’s stacking groceries at FoodMaxx or something like that after playing college football at Northern Iowa University. He gets to try out in the Arena League and he ended up going on to NFL Europe. He goes to the Green Bay Packers and he ends up going to the Rams. He believed in himself. He was committed to his goals. It was a big thing. It was realistic and within reach for him. It took him a little time to get going.

You have to remember that the realistic part is important. All of you, if you want to close something, it’s realistic to each and every one of you out there. It totally is for you. The last thing is timely. A SMART goal must be time-bound, and then it has a start and a finish date. The goal is not time-constrained. There will be no sense of urgency and motivation to achieve the goal. Ask yourself, “Does my goal have a deadline? When do you want to achieve your goal?”

This is why I’m a big fan of us booking cruises or booking trips because you want to look good in those vacation photos. You want to be looking good in that itty-bitty teeny-weeny, yellow, polka dot bikini. I’m not wearing a yellow polka dot bikini, but you get what I’m talking about. You want to look good, especially if you’re out walking around.

For example, going back to what we talked about, “On August 1st, I will obtain a gym membership in my local community center. I’m going to be healthier. I will work out four days a week. Every week, I’ll aim to lose 1 pound of body fat at the end of August. I’ll realize my goal if I lose 4 pounds of fat over the course of the month.” That’s the thing, timely goals. Fifty pounds sounds big and it is a big goal but you break it down like, “I need to lose 5 pounds a month.” That’s a pound a week. You can all do that. A lot of times, you can do that by just changing your diet.

Alice says, “I want to leave my job. Too much standing for a 61-year-old lady, but I can’t live on $700 a month.” I get that. What you have to do is look at what you want to accomplish or what are you spending your time on? I get that you have a hectic schedule, but you still got to maximize the time around your job. You don’t want to say it, but maybe it’s spending more time learning stuff, maybe it’s more time doing a little bit. If you’re constrained by budget, then there are a lot of resources out there for you. Are you spending time on LinkedIn? Are you spending time sending email blasts out? What are you doing in your part-time?

That’s the little thing about note investing. You can do it if you’ve got a full-time job or if you’ve got a crazy schedule. I’ve got people that have worked 80 hours a week traveling internationally who close a ton of deals. They had to take advantage of what time they had in their hotel after hours or in the early mornings and make things happen. Some other items involved with this before we dive in a little bit on the plan side here. There’s a myth out there, and it’s false. They always say, “It takes 21 days to create a habit.” No, a habit is not created in 21 days. It is started in 21 days of three weeks of motivation. You don’t have to wait until January 2nd to take action. If you want to start doing stuff, you start doing now, tonight or tomorrow. Don’t wait another three weeks because then you’ll be like, “I’ll get into it then.” Look at what you’re doing now.

If you’re spending all day looking at cat photos and cat videos or cat things or spending hours watching TV, we’re all guilty of doing different things. You can start doing things now. I’m not saying you don’t stop what you’re doing to relax if it’s the way you rock, but you can start doing a little bit each day. Everybody can carve out 30 minutes or an hour each day because it does take you 66 days to create a habit. To create a habit that sticks, it takes 66 days of doing consistently. Twenty-one days to start it and get rock and rolling.

 

We all drift, and by drifting, we all get distracted. What happens when you drift? Will you give up or will you get back on that horse and get started all again? You’ve got to write your goals down and what you want to accomplish. Put it somewhere you can see. That was one of the things I miss the most is like I said, my calendar is up with my goals written on it and seeing stuff. It’s so easy for you to print out goals, put them on your laptop, put them by your bed, put them in the mirror in the restroom or something you’d look at on a regular basis because that will help keep you motivated to do things.

Another thing is to share them. Share them with your friends or family, “I need some help.” If you’ve been guilty of dropping the ball on writing stuff down and not take advantage of stuff, you’ve got to put them up and, “I’m giving us a try again. Please support me. Please hold me accountable to get rock and rolling.” You’ve got to start sharing them with the people that are going to help motivate you and help hold you accountable. As I said, we’re going to post them where you can see them. It would be the daily reminder.

I’ve got friends that carry index cards when they travel. The index card is in their wallet or they keep a playing card. My trainer Thomas used to keep a seven of spades in his wallet. Every time we’d go out to eat, he’ll pull spades out. People ask what the card was. It’s a reminder for him to eat healthy. You’ve got to buy into them. You’ve got to buy into what your goals are or what you want to accomplish. Otherwise, the year will just fade away and pass by us just like anything else out there.

You also have to ask, what if you don’t accomplish? What if you don’t start now, instead of, “I’m scared if something good happens.” What if something doesn’t happen? What are you going to do otherwise? Are you going to be worse off? Probably so. You’ve got to do some things to start taking action and buy into your goals. Time is an investment and all these things. Let’s start off a little bit.

Most people screw up on going to the gym and they work themselves out so much. They try to lose all 50 pounds in one night and then they can’t walk the next week. They get discouraged. It’s the same thing. Start off a little bit, making one offer, talking to one investor, talking to one bank and posting one LinkedIn ad. One little thing at a time. It goes a long way for you. Let’s work through some of your goals. What are some of your goals for 2022? It’s not, “I want to make some money.” That doesn’t work that way.

What I would say is think about resolutions. I’m not a big fan of resolutions. What you probably want to do more so than anything else is focus on three major ones and not all three in business. You want to have one that’s in business, “I want to work replacing my income from my job.” That’s the first goal I want to do. That’s when I can be financially independent that I can say, “Boss, take this job and shove it.” We all want to be around to enjoy it but I need to lose weight or I need to work out or eat healthier. I have friends that have a meatless Monday with their diet with their kids. They don’t eat any red meat or any processed meat or anything like that. They’re getting rid of processed.

Meatless Monday and then they do Veggie Sundays where everything has got to be vegetables on Sundays. Little things go a long way. Also, family. I want to spend more time. I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast and it was a year old podcast with Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman was sharing about him and his wife, how they spend the first 30 minutes to 1 hour of the day reading different books to each other.

They put their investment into their family, their couple time, at the beginning of each day. It helps to go on versus trying to squeeze it at the very end. It’s something grounded and doing it for overtime. I thought that was very interesting because that’s an important thing. We all know people that have sacrificed their families for their careers. We’ve all sacrificed our health. We are not being active like we should be. Gyms have been shutting down and other things like that.

Also, family. Someone is like, “I don’t want to be locked in a house with family or I want to spend more time with our family.” Focus on one of those things. A goal for each one is good and also, people that throw up twenty different goals, you don’t accomplish anything because you’re too busy trying to do things. Focus on one thing. You probably read the book, The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, which is a great book. Being focused on one thing that you can do to help you accomplish things.

Here are a couple of my goals, and I share this personally because it’s what I want to do. I want to put it out there. You don’t have to share your goals with me, but I call this 50-50-50. I want to lose 50 pounds by Christmas next year. That’s roughly 4.5 pounds a month. That’s 1 pound a week. I know I can do that. Basically, I have to have a 3,500 calorie deficit. It doesn’t mean starving myself. It’s a combination of eating healthy and then also working out. I’m planning to work out at least 30 to 60 minutes, four times per week, not seven times per week. I’m not overkilling it where I can’t move for a week, but 30 to 60 minutes per week.

Now, how am I going to accomplish that? We’re going to buy a stationary bike here. We have it in the house. If I’m sitting at home at night and watching the games, I can jump on the bike and ride while watching. I can also get up in the morning, and instead of sitting out back with a cup of coffee, I can go for a walk in the neighborhood for 30 minutes in the morning to get it done. Those are some things I’m going to implement. The next part of that 50, health-wise, you have to start off with this. If you’re not around healthy-wise, you can’t enjoy your fun. I want to add in 50 coaching students in 2022. It’s about one coaching student a week.

When I re-engineer the number, it means roughly twenty new students or opt-in per week. Also, part of that to help me accomplish that is to get two speaking gigs per week. By those two speaking gigs per week, for me, is being on somebody else’s podcast or doing a webinar for somebody’s audience. Those are a couple of things. Note Night America is great. We’re here. We end up averaging about somewhere around 10 to 20 new people opting into the Zoom every weekend, which is great, but I want to add that aspect. Coaching doesn’t mean one-on-one coaching. There are people that are a part of our WCN Crew. I’m adding that into what we’re doing on our marketing basis.

Our big goal is that there would be one student per week. Brand new is what we’re looking for. Another part of my business is we want to add 50 performing notes to our portfolio, and that’s $400 a month per note on average. Some are going to be a little bit less. Some are going to be more to the portfolio. We figure that’s 50 times $4,800. It’s about a quarter million in cashflow coming in off of those 50 notes.

 

You’d think I’m not going to add them all at once. Now, there are some opportunities to buy portfolios, but my goal is I want to buy one performing note per week on average, going forward by finding deals. Some of them may be more in portfolios. We see it’s all going to depend on a variety of numbers there, but that’s a big business goal here for 2022. I figure if I’m working out like that, I’m having fun and new stuff, I’ll look like myself back a few years ago when I was down to that lake there.

That’s the 50-50-50. Those are three big goals I have set for myself and the business, and go from there. I challenge you to share your goal. It doesn’t have to be crazy. Everybody has a different fate of what you want to do, but that’s the thing. Look at what you want to accomplish. A little bit each day goes a long way. As my trainer Thomas used to say, “Going and working out for an hour is great.” By showing up a little bit each day to make things happen, you’re putting money in the Bank of Alice, Tony, Larry, Linda, Stephanie, Tracy and Scott.

I want to bring this up because many of you have watched the video of what we’d done before with the six figures in twelve months, $250,000 in twelve months video. I want to tweak it up a little bit on a couple of things. For those who are active real estate investors, we are moving into something. I had this conversation with a few people. That six figures in twelve months are based on buying non-performing and re-performing. It’s a little flawed because the market’s a little bit different now. It’s still a very accurate plan for one side, but it doesn’t take into consideration what happens a lot of times when you’re buying notes that don’t get re-performing.

If you’re wanting to make six figures in 2022, you split it up because what we see from our stuff is you see a variety of performing notes and you all see stuff that you’re foreclosing on legal-wise. You have monthly cashflow coming in, but then also we have bigger checks coming in. As I’ve been talking to some of the successful students and doing email and phone calls in the last few months, I was asking them some questions on this. I know where it’s at for me, but I don’t want what has happened to us to skew our opinion. “Was it 50/50?” A lot of them are like, “It’s probably more 50/50.”

I said, “Let’s talk about that.” Let’s take that $100,000 and divide it into $50,000 in performing notes coming in to get to that point in twelve months. You’re also going to have the other half being bigger picks where it’s either a foreclosure or a deed in lieu. You’re selling an REO from it or maybe even wholesaling a deal either under contract and then flipping that note off to somebody else.

When you break down the $50,000 in performing notes, that roughly comes down to $8,000 divided by 12 months. It comes at $4,167per month times 12 months. You take $4,167 and divide it. In deals, you’re going to have approximately notes that have about a monthly payment of somewhere around $400 per month. You’re going to have a variety of these things.

If you need to close ten deals, that’s one a month. One month is bringing in around $400 on average. If you add that up, if you figure in a 10% closing ratio, it means you need to make 100 offers in 2022. That realistic range pricing point will vary on state, city and stuff that you can pick up and make two offers per week to help you get to that goal. Now, if you don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t have a clue on what to make an offer in, it means you don’t have the training in what you need to accomplish. You may need to reach out to somebody, watch a few webinars, take a class or pick up the phone and give me a phone call.

On the opposite side, on that bigger check side of things, we all like big checks. If you figure that out too, you figure that’s roughly five meals where you’re making at least $10,000 as a foreclosure sale and REO. You’re selling at the auction where you’ve got the note re-performing, and you sell it off after twelve months of seasoning. $10,000 is a good and very feasible to do or you can always say, “I’m going to wholesale a much smaller note and make my goal, as average, make about $5,000 per wholesale deal.” That’s ten deals already off of your 50.

That’s the 50/50 side of breaking down and making $100,000. We all know things change. We all know markets change and pricing. It all depends on what you’re doing to market and that’s the next question. What are you doing if this is a number that’s realistic for you? Again, maybe the number is half that. Maybe it’s $50,000. Maybe it’s a third of that. I don’t know your situation but you have to take the numbers and reverse engineer them down to where you’re at to make it work. If you’ve never made $50,000, then you need to start off $25,000, $30,000. If you’re making more than $100,000, then you need to set another goal that is going to stretch it in like $150,000 or $200,000.

This is one of the things we did for our WCN members. I said, “Reach out to me. Let’s schedule a phone call. Let’s talk through your goals and what you want to accomplish in the New Year. We will help make sure you’re on the right track and come up with a plan that makes sense for you.” I had a great conversation with a guy. He’s like, “I saw this. I heard you on a webinar. I heard you on a podcast. I want to talk to you about this.” The first thing I asked him is I said, “What are you doing right now?” He told me. I was like, “Have you had any success?” “No, I’ve not had any success.” “What are you doing daily-wise?”

He started doing what he was doing in June 2021 or July 2021. “What are you doing in June, July, that you haven’t done the last six months? What do you need to be doing? Why aren’t you doing those things?” He gave me some BS. I’m like, “No offense. If you’re not going to market for that one activity, you’re not going to market for notes.” You’re not going to market. It’s easier to market for notes because there are other things you’re doing. It’s a lot less expensive with no overhead as far as direct mail. If you’re not going to take the action to either jump on LinkedIn simply or jump on a phone call or an email to somebody, you’re not going to find success.

It all is going to come down to sourcing deals. Nobody is going to bend over backwards and give you the magical list of deals. I’ve only seen it happen. This goes back to 2008, and this guy put himself in the right position, a guy who’s an amazing investor, Dan Engle. He was one of the guys I learned from. He got a grant from the government for 7,500 second mortgages. He basically paid nothing for it. It became a million-dollar income because he knew the right place and the right time. He was able to take these up down. I don’t think we’re going to see that again. You have to figure out how you’re going to source your deals. Is the lightning going to strike? Probably not.

You have to go out and do the actions to get where you need to be. It’s pretty simple when it comes to note investing. If you want to do real estate or foreclosures or subject-tos, there are specific marketing tools that work well, but you’re sourcing deals. That’s by contacting banks. It’s either via email, phone or on LinkedIn. or emailing other investors in the note space if they’re looking to sell. You attend conferences, different events, mortgage banking associations, jump on LinkedIn and reach out to people individually. Let’s say they’re note investors.

 

There are other sources too like word of mouth and follow-up. There are some other things that go in there. People found some different things like the county records research and things, but it comes down to the simple things. That’s how you find deals. You’ll be surprised that less than 5% of those investors out there are doing anything. It’s less than 5% of people were doing any type of thing on a regular basis. In LinkedIn alone, I’ll give you a great example. There are 72 million users on LinkedIn, and less than 1% is posting something on a regular basis.

One of the things I always tell people to do if you’ve ever been a part of her coaching calls or something like that is, “Start posting on LinkedIn regularly. It’s one of the best places to do it. Share an article, a video or something on there that you find somewhere else.” I still have people and they’re like, “I didn’t get around to posting.” I’m like, “Why not?” “I’m too lazy.”

The goal you set for yourself isn’t high enough up and not strong enough that you’re not motivated to do that, so you’ve got to find something else. You’re going to look at, two, what’s your marketing calendar going to look like? If you’ve got a job, you’ve got to get around your job. You’re going to look at what your marketing calendar looks like. What are you going to talk about? When are you going to mark it? When are you going to send an email out? What are you doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, to give you an idea and consistency defining success? You show up four days a week to the gym. You’ve got to figure out what your calendar is and do things on a consistent basis.

You’ve got to give it time to grow. People don’t wait 21 days. They give up after seven days because they don’t see any type of results. You’re the ones that struggle. You might be a little sore, but you got to build that mental muscle on a regular basis and build those little habits day in and day out. It’s not sexy, but consistency and what lies the end of that twelve-month period, the end of that rainbow, that yellow brick road to your goal is what’s worth it. How you feel, how you look, what you are making, how much more confidence you have in yourself from closing deals. Those are the things you’ve got to look at to make things happen. One of the things that I highly recommend you look at is your marketing calendar.

One of the things that I do is I look out the next year. I’m looking to the future. I preach this. I say, “Email out to your database once a week. There are 52 weeks in a year.” There’s basically a holiday every month of some sort that you can say, “Happy Father’s Day, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Halloween,” or whatever it might be. That is 1/4 of your marketing done for you by simply sending an email out to your database to get a repost there. I wanted to share this simple marketing calendar. You can see how simple it can be to put something together for you.

Here’s what I did. It is very easy. All you’ve got to do is go through there. What happens? Week one, the first full week is January 2nd to the 8th. My email is going to be out, “Happy New Year.” It goes out for that. That’s the holiday marketing piece that goes out. I’m also a big fan of movie releases and pop culture. I have a column here of some of the major movie releases for the year.

The first real big movie I’m excited about is that Morbius movie. I’m excited about that. I got the Batman coming out, Dr. Strange 2, Top Gun Maverick. Also, John Wick 4 is coming up. Those two movies are coming out on my birthday weekend. I might do a double-header at the movie theater.

If you want to say, “Happy New Year, Happy Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day,” these other weeks in here are stuff that I need to fill in. If you’re part of a real estate club or Meetup, you can put that in there. I’m going to email out of my database about the subject we learned now or the subject we are learning this week. I can talk about cases. There’s a whole variety of things that you can fill in. Planning this out is not difficult. Part of the reason I put the movie releases in here, so I can come up with something funny or something interesting, “Are your borrowers sucking the lifeblood out of your business?” Now, I also put other important dates in here like my mom’s birthday and Stephanie’s birthday. That’s number one. I’ve got to worry about that.

I also have already started. I put a column in for my marketing to asset managers. What’s the thing I’m going to talk about that month? I have on here right before Valentine’s Day, “Fall in love with your portfolio again, which borrower has got a lump of coal this year, got any leftovers or New Year’s hangover. We can close before the end of Q1. Get ready for your April Fools borrowers.” There’s a whole variety of different things in there, but this is helping you and helps me see what level I need to do. What do I need to share? What do I need to do? I’ll add another column for my Note Night America. What am I going to discuss every Monday night?

What am I tentatively planning? What falls on what? I also put events in here. What am I going to plan for my classes? What events am I speaking at and hosting? Where am I traveling to? That could be your Meetup groups in there. I put this together because this is a simple spreadsheet. This costs you. It’s something so you can start planning this stuff out here. Now, you can go ahead. You’re using Keap or MailChimp or some other sort of email CRM. You’re going to go ahead and pre-write your emails.

If you got an hour or you got a day where you get a busy schedule and you got time where you’re sitting at home twiddling your fingers, pre-write an email. Write out three months of emails. “I got to send it out once a week. I’ve got a couple of hours here. Let me pre-write three weeks of emails so it goes out and it’s done.” I feel good about getting things done because I batch worked my marketing. I spent a Saturday. I wrote three months of emails. That’s twelve emails.

It’s pretty much the same template. Just changing Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, Happy Kwanzaa, Are You Naughty or Nice? It’s putting in and planning this stuff out because let’s face it, we all screw up. We all forget about things. We all are like, “I forgot to do that.” It’s part of the reason why I tell people to get you an assistant, somebody who’s helped you out with a lot of stuff. You can’t afford that. You’ve got to start somewhere. You can’t keep giving excuses of why you’re not being successful. The reason you’re not successful is because of what you had done. We are all where we’re at now because of the decisions we make on a daily basis. It’s nobody else’s fault except your own.

You can either choose to give up and go, “Woe is me,” the whole Debbie Downer or you can be like, “I’m going to change my direction. I’m going to change my story. I’m going to re-tweak it. I’m going to change what I’m doing. I’m going to pivot what I’m doing and get back on track because I’m smart enough, beautiful enough and people like me.” You can all do that. I want to share with you what the marketing calendar is here for you all and see how we break it down and go from there. One of the things that we’re doing is with the asset manager emails. I’m putting together twelve months of titles roughly for our one-on-one coaching students and our WCN Crew.

 

You’ve got to start somewhere and realize, “What do I need to do on a daily basis? If I only got 30 minutes, what can I do? Does it mean I just have to log in and get Octopus working? If I’m busy where I have to stand in place or be a clerk somewhere, do I have my phone during a dead time to be able to market online?” There are simple things that we all can do no matter what’s going on. It’s up to you. One of the things that we’re doing and we’re excited about this is we’re going to have our Money Mondays. We’re not getting rid of Note Night America. We’re just doing something more for WCN Crew members.

We’ll be doing a live coaching call with them at noon each Monday called Money Mondays, maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour. It depends on who shows up on it. For our one-on-one coaching students and our WCN crew members who are paying the $97 a month, this is a call that’s exclusive just for you guys. We’ll have weekly activity starting, “What do you need to do? What’s the one thing you’ve got to get done this week? What’s one thing you’ve got to get done each week?” That’s one of the big premises, “What’s one thing you can do for your business this week to help you grow your business?”

We have monthly quarterly goals. It may be simply, “I got to get an email out this month. I got to call ten asset managers, I’ve got to reach out to ask funds or I need to make ten offers this month to help me with it.” That’s one of the things we’ll be doing more. Our one-on-one coaches know that we hold them accountable and they get a lot of great stuff. A lot of them like the fact that, “I want to be able to touch base with me or other people on a pretty regular basis to connect with other people.”

We’ll be using our Basecamp group for that to share the goals, “What did you challenge yourself to get done this week? Did you get it done? Were you successful or did you fail?” If you failed, that’s okay. Let’s do it again this week. Let’s get you rock and rolling. Breaking down deals and case studies, “I’m working on a deal. Do we mind taking a few minutes to go through this as a group?”

It’s a great thing we’re doing. As I said, it’s part of the WCN Crew. If you’re already a WCN Crew member, this is included. There’s no additional cost to you. If you’re not part of the WCN Crew, you can go to NoteUmbrella.com and get signed up for that at $97 a month. These calls will be recorded so if you can’t make it at noon Central Time on Mondays, you can watch it.

As I said, the Basecamp group will be there for you. We’ll record these calls. They will not be public anywhere else, except in the Basecamp group for people to watch. It’s a great thing. We’re doing more to help our members close more deals in 2022. We will help coach you, walk you through that and hold your hand. I’ll be sharing, “What am I doing this week? What’s the one thing I want to get done this week? What are my big goals to get things done? I believe the most important thing that you can do is hold yourself accountable for making more offers and getting more deals done.

If you’re interested, go to NoteUmbrella.com, and get signed up for that if you’re not a part of it. There’s plenty of stuff. “We’re saving $97 a month.” I am doing something wrong, everybody. If you are not interested in that, don’t worry about it. If you are like, “I’m doing fine. I’m doing great.” We want people to be a part of this that are interested in doing some things, being accountable and taking their business to that next level.

I am toying with the idea of hosting a live in-person workshop. I have not done this in a couple of years, but I’m contemplating doing a small in-person workshop here in Austin, Texas, sometime probably in late January 2022 or February 2022. If it would be something you’d be interested in, email me at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com.

I’m not guaranteeing we’re doing it, but if somebody is interested in coming out for a three-day workshop, this would be our Virtual Workshop but in person. Drop me an email. Let me know and say, “I’d like to come to the class if you have it.” We’ll let you know. It’s not a free class. There would be a cost to it. If you’re interested, let me know. We’re toying with the idea of doing a live class every once a month. That’s all I have for this episode. I hope it was valuable to each and everybody.

 

Important Links

• WeCloseNotes.tv
• The ONE Thing
• Basecamp
• NoteUmbrella.com
• Scott@WeCloseNotes.com
• iTunes – Note Night in America