On this episode, Scott outlines what the focus and the direction of the Note Closers Show podcast is, along with introducing the people behind the scenes. He also gives thanks to those who have helped to mentor, mold and support him along the way to where he is at today. Special thanks goes out to Stephanie Goodman Johnson, Greg Reid, George Antone, Aaron Young, Joel Markovitz, Kimberly Banks Fawcett, Karen Hand Peterson, Chase Thompson, Jay Tenenbaum, Wayne Snell, Natalie Patton, H Quincy Long, Nathan Long, Marc Gold, Val Sotir, Bob Leonetti, Jayme Kahla and a host of other amazing individuals.

Listen to the podcast here

Welcome to the Note Closers Show Podcast

Welcome to The Note Closers Show podcast. We’re excited today. It’s a great day, it’s someone we’ve been working on for the last few months. I have amazing marketing minions here behind me. For those of you that are joining us here on iTunes, this actually is the first episode that is actually going out on iTunes. For those of you who are downloading and listening to us, thank you so much. We hope that you’ll leave a nice review on iTunes once this is live and get rock and rolling. We hope to help assist you on your note investment journey.

One of the great things that we love doing at We Close Notes is we love, love, love helping note investors take those next steps. Over the last ten months since last October I believe is when we started, doing daily Facebook Live videos. If you’re listening to this live, you can catch the previous 149 episodes on our YouTube or Vimeo channels by looking just for Vimeo.com/WeCloseNotes or go to our Home page at WeCloseNotes.com and catch the previous episode. This marks the first episode of our live podcast that we’ve been toying around with doing for the last ten months. A couple of things: If you’re a note investor or a real estate investor or wanna be investor and you’re tuning in to get some information, get some education that helps you make a decision or helps you over-trigger a potential real estate deal or a note deal, we hope that you found a home to join us on an almost daily basis here as we do these podcasts.

I’m Scott Carson. I’m the CEO of We Close Notes. I’ve been a very, very active real estate investor since 2002 since I bought my first piece of property a year out of college, then made the evolution to note investor somewhere in the middle of 2007, 2008. We’re here to help provide you a ton of great information, a ton of education. Some of the things that we’re going to be doing here on the podcast, we’re going to be bringing in not only investors that are closing deals, but we also plan on bringing in our vendors, the people that we work with on a regular basis. They’re not only helping our students close thousands of deals but also helping us close thousands deals. These are actual people that we use.

One of the thing I’m a very big advocate is actually sharing the people that we use. Not pimping out our database to the highest bidder. There’s plenty of other educators, plenty of other people out there, the guru aspect, that like to bring their vendor on and pitch their services because they’re ultimately getting paid. Do we have some affiliate sponsors for the podcast in what we do at WeCloseNotes.com? Of course, we do. We only bring those people on if we’re actually using them as a vendor and for their services, or it’s something that we think is valuable for everybody out there online or in the net world.

We want to welcome you to the Note family. If you’re listening to this on iTunes, you will often hear us during the episodes refer to questions that we take. “How do I ask a question?” We do live streaming on Facebook. We totally encourage those that are out there to watch us as we film these live but also ask questions and be involved. Our open plan and what we’ve been doing for the last ten months is we do get a lot of great ideas from those listeners out there. We want to be able to help offer up answers to the questions that you have; whether it’s regarding due diligence or capital raising or how do I find deals or what’s the due diligence on a note deal, what do I have to do, does this deal make sense? From time to time, we will be bringing on live callers. We will be bringing on investors that are brand new or also investors that are very seasoned who have closed hundreds of deals over the last couple of years.

We’re really, really excited about it. Our biggest goal here is to help educate, help you guys pull the trigger and feel much more comfortable about the note business. I think a lot of people, especially a lot of real estate investors, these days are looking for alternative deal flow. If you’re a fix and flipper or you’ve been dealing with the foreclosures out there, you don’t have to be a wizard to realize a lot of deal flow for foreclosures or people buying at the foreclosure auctions or mailing up postcards in the foreclosure list. That deal flow has dried up. That river of foreclosures has gone down to a trickle. Why is that? Obviously, there are less foreclosures out there.

Another big reason for that is more and more banks and more and more sellers of those distressed foreclosures or distressed assets are selling the paper, selling the non-performing mortgages off to larger banks, or to large real estate hedge funds or REITs or to funds like us at We Close Notes. We can pick those up and have a variety of different exit strategies.

Periodically, we’ll not only be talking about what’s going on in the markets, we’ll be talking about what’s going on in foreclosure laws. We’ll be bringing on attorneys to talk about different things from non-performing notes to owner finance to owner finance coalition to legislation. We have a whole huge list of amazing educators, amazing individuals and professionals out there who are glad to lend us their ear or lend us their time for roughly about an hour out of their busy schedule. Just to be able to provide quality information that you can take to bank to become a bank.

Before I dive in to a little bit about myself, I’ve got some amazing people behind me who do a great job here in the offices of We Close Notes here in Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas is my home. It’s been my home since I graduated college from 2001 from a university just south of here called Southwest Texas State University. I’m a big advocate of Southwest Texas State, even though the name has changed to Texas State University. I graduated with a business degree and dove directly into the workforce. I bounced around for a little bit, did some jobs. I really loved the finance industry. Ultimately, I end up becoming a banker and financial advisor with Chase Mortgage. I left after a little while to join a buddy of mine who started a mortgage company and started diving in to doing a lot mortgages and running a very successful mortgage company who was doing loans in over twenty states across the country.

The great thing about making that transition from banker in W2 and to a self-employed person basically is there’s a lot of freedom but it also takes a lot of dedication to do this. One of the things that we’ll focus on throughout the podcast are the things that you can do to make your day successful, whether you’ve got 40 hours or more to do this or you’ve got five to ten hours that we’d have to squeeze in around your busy work life schedule. We’ll talk a little bit about not only timing and work life but also give you a lot of tools and tricks. I even recommend a few books and have a few authors along the way as well.

I really, really love the financial industry. I really enjoy the mortgage company. The sponsoring broker for the mortgage company was an educator at the time, still teaching owner financing, creative financing. A big shout-out to those two individuals: Bob Leonetti and Jayme Kahla. Amazing people, learned so much information about real estate investing the right way; creative finance and also learn the note business about creating other finance notes, as I said selling those off but also the theories behind distressed notes.

I was able to take what I learned basically during my three, four-year apprenticeship and apply it to my business and apply it to learning how to do real estate the right way and start to help other real estate entrepreneurs launch their business. When everything changed in 2009, I’ve been working with them since 2004, I walked away from the mortgage company and really started doing my own thing as a note investor. In 2010, we launched a company called Inverse Investments, still up running along with our other company, Inverse Asset Fund and that’s basically my main trading platform where we’d buy thousands of assets over the last few years. We closed a hundreds of deals every twelve months. What I’m most proud of is the amount of deals that our students and fellow note investors close out there that are coming through, not only our workshops and classes but also our podcast and live webinars we do on a weekly basis.

Enough about me, you’ll get to know more about me, you’ll hear enough about me and totally be sick of me over the time. I want to introduce a couple of people that really helped make this thing go that you’ll be hearing from them throughout. The cast of characters behind me do an amazing job and are making their own name in the industry because of what they do and do it well. First, we have our wonderful, bat beater, duck thrower, portfolio manager, Jennifer Searcy. I should know that by now. You’ve been here over a year now but you have different profiles online. You’ve been with us for a while now. Why don’t you tell everybody out there that’s watching or listening your role? What’s your biggest thing that you’re doing here? When I’m in my hole in my office, what do you most of the time?

It’s a big combination of everything. Really, as far as the bids and dealing with the hedge funds and counters, collateral, contracts.

Jen basically is the person that if people are submitting bids in to us on different tapes or different assets that we make available, she’s the one collecting the bids. You are the head cat herder, let’s just say that. Jennifer handles a lot of the deal flow. When we get tapes in, she’s the one who communicates using with hedge funds and our contacts at the different funds, one we’re making offers, one we’re accepting offers, and doing a good job of us countering back and forth, not only in our behalf but also working with the students to make sure their patterns are big and due diligence are done. You’ve got a little bit of a real estate background. Before you were here, before you got in this crazy world of notes, what were you doing? What’s your history in real estate?

I had about twelve years in multi-family. That was the main idea, managing multi-family portfolios. Then I went into cost litigation, Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure with Jackson Associates, Bank of America. I did that for a while and then came over to the dark side.

What she means by the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, basically when banks are foreclosing on the borrower, oftentimes the borrowers are using the property as like ATMs. Can we agree with that?

Yes.

They’ve got tenants in place there. They’re not that very good landlords, but they’ve got tenants paying rent but they’re not paying their mortgage. You are basically reaching out with unfortunately tenants that really have no place to go, working to try to even keep them in the property with new leases, getting right collected, making sure that everything was taken care of on that transition period.

We either try to reinstate a lease contract or we did Cash for Keys so that we could get the property back. We would provide them with that. A lot of the homes are inhabitable. We had co-violations like crazy so we were doing some county inspections. Other times it was putting them up in hotels and then in the meantime still giving them the Cash for Keys to move out based on what the client wanted to do. If they wanted to stay then we had to work with the county and basically with whichever bank they had the mortgage through to get the home habitable. They have a lot of asset services that we reached to you as far as getting vendors and job contractors and all that good stuff.

Seeing how that works well with the note industry. It’s a great transaction. You’ll be hearing from Jennifer throughout, probably a few choice words from time to time, whether it’s trades you’re working on. Jen is doing a great job. If you’re making bids with We Close Notes that’s who you’ll be submitting bids in as we offer different trades throughout our episodes in the podcast. The next lady is our amazing director of marketing, Nicole Harmon. Nicole, tell everybody out there your role of what you’re doing here and some of the great things you’re doing at WCA and for the podcast as well.

I’m the Marketing Director. I handle a lot of the Facebook posts and a lot of anything creative or anything picture-wise you see on Scott’s posts besides his personal photos. I handle a lot of the campaigns I do for Note Camp and the workshops and everything like that. It all comes from me. If you watched The Note Closer’s Show on Facebook Live, you’d hear my voice because I usually ask the questions or I just ended up talking somehow. If you see me look down, everyone’s on checking our live feed on Facebook. I handle a little of that and then sometimes I mix in with Jennifer and Greg’s job on Facebook stalking and then IRA leads or just internet sleuthing.

I like that, internet sleuthing versus stalking or potential borrower research. Nicole does a really good job with the videos, marketing and stuff like that. If you see any of our infographics, 90% of the time it’s usually her. It’s all Buffer, it’s all Canva and the great stuff that we use, the tools. We’ll go through more of that. She does a lot of that stuff for us with the different events we have going on in marketing. Nicole, talk about where were you before you came here? You obviously have a different background than Jen and the next person we’re talking about here too.

After high school, I moved to Waco for advertising. Then I graduated there, came here and worked for a lot of different things, churches, non-profits, t-shirt shops, just a whole lot of hodgepodge. I have many different hats that I have worn. I fell in to the note business. I really don’t have any real estate background other than watching HGTV and seeing some of their houses that we do due diligence on and saying, “That’s a really cute house.”

No real estate experience but a lot of marketing experience.

A lot of marketing experience. I went to art school. I just graduated a year ago from art school. That was a lot of fun.

Glad to have you. The next person you see here has been actually with us the longest, probably for a year and three months, is the one and only Mr. Greg Arcisa. Greg actually started interning with us doing due diligence. Before that, talk a little about your background because you’ve got a lot of real estate experience being a young cat.

My grandfather was in real estate and started really in rentals. Then my dad started doing fix and flips. I ran around with him quite a bit from teenage to adult; getting materials, meeting with the contractors, all that fun stuff that goes into fix and flipping. I actually really do enjoy that part of it but my dad got tired doing that. He met Scott at a workshop trying to branch out into the note industry, he was like, “You should look into this with me and we can start something from the ground up.” I was against it at first, to be honest, I was like, “No, I like the fix and flip.” Dad was like, “I don’t.” We did that. I needed an internship and Scott’s office here in Austin is an hour from where I was going to school at. I came up twice a week and would do due diligence and just check taxes or values, all the due diligence that goes into the portfolio. Then I went full-time when I graduated in December of last year.

What school were you going to?

I went to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. It’s about an hour between here and where I go.

Greg, you and your dad bought quite a few notes together. How many deals have you noted?

He’s done some joint venture outside of that, but we’re about twelve between us.

Do you know how many joint ventures your dad had done?

I don’t know how many he’s done outside.

I put you guys closer to probably 20, 30 deals, I think.

Yeah, closer to twenty.

That’s awesome. That’s a good thing. Greg actually spends a lot of time here.

Life revolves around notes.

Don’t make it sound so bad.

I think it’s actually fun. There’s a lot of traveling that goes into it. It’s just a fun environment.

Greg, you’re 24. You just turned 24 recently. I look back, what I was doing at 24, if I had known what I know now, then life would be different obviously. I love what I do now. It’s a great time. It’s always nice when you kick start your success 10, 15, 20, 40 years earlier than some people. Greg, before he was interning, he did come to a Mastermind and hung out and met a lot of people. A couple of things that we believe in The Notes Closers Show podcast is we believe in a term called coopetition. What do we mean by that word? It’s a combination of the word competition and cooperation. I’m a big believer that if you’re a real estate investor out there who’s fed up with the cutthroats that comes with the wholesaling or trying to find deals, a real competitive market. A lot of real estate investors can be very downright nasty sometimes. They’re very, very aggressive and not in a good way sometimes.

In the note world, we often find it’s the opposite. Most people are extremely giving you their time, their success, resources. They’re often willing to take time with you, especially if you’re a Carsonite. Use the #Carsonite. One thing we’ll be doing on a regular basis is throwing up episode hashtags to see what people are watching or they’re listening to. If you’re watching out there, feel free to use the #Carsonite. It would be great if you’re sharing the video on Facebook Live as well. For those who are listening, once again we believe in the thing called coopetition. There are plenty of deal flows around if you’re investing primarily in first lien positions. There’s plenty of funding, plenty of raising capital, there’s $7 trillion in private capital up there. There’s a ton of money sitting out there in self-directed IRAs.

We have to give a big shout-out to all of our sponsors for the podcast, the people over at Quest IRA. They do an amazing job and we’re very proud to have them as one of our main partners and sponsors through this podcast. Quincy Long, Nathan Long, the Long brothers just do an amazing job and have an amazing work environment over there. They’re great, nice people but also they do a great job. There are a lot of people that are nice but they suck at service. It’s not the case with our friends over Quest IRA. We’ll be having them on a regular basis, probably once every couple of weeks to at least talk about what’s going on in the self-directed IRA industry, raising capital. We have different events. Big shout-out to our fans, our partners with a lot of our students, a lot of investors out there, opening self-directed IRA. A big, big shout-out to Quest IRA.

One of the great things too that we’ll be focused on and is a deal breakdown, we’ll be doing a regular segment on different deals that we have bought ourselves or students have bought. One of the great things you’ll be hearing from us are closing deals. Not just talk, not just huff and fluff or hype of people closing deals that don’t have to serve to somebody who’s controlling that deal. There are 27,000 lending institutions out there, plenty of deal flow for everybody involved. You don’t have to go directly just from one source because that person or institutions tells you, “You can’t buy from banks. Banks won’t deal with you.” That’s not the case.

One of the great things that we do is we’re buying notes, first liens and also contract for REITs on a regular basis. We’ll dive into the difference of those. We closed on 23 actually a week ago, we closed on 41, 42 a month before and a couple weeks before that. We’re closing our stuff on a regular basis here. That’s the biggest thing, we’re going to open the kimono for you. We encourage questions. We encourage you guys to reach out, drop us an email at WeCloseNotes.com. We encourage you to leave comments. Each of these episodes will also be posted to YouTube and Vimeo. Leave comments, feel free to share those. If you’d like for us to cover a specific topic, feel free to let us know what topic you like for us to cover, whether racing capital or vendors or accounting or something. That helps make our job a whole lot easier. We’re pretty good with coming up with contents on a regular basis but we always like to hit the hot buttons out there.

Another thing we’ll be talking about on a regular basis is what’s going on on the news. Definitely, there’s only sorts of different things, we’ll be talking about as articles pop up. We may differ from what we have planned depending on what’s going on just to share. Some big fund closed on 26,000 notes or a law passed that day is changing. Another thing that you’ll see from time to time is us talking about different events that we’re attending, different conferences, different classes. We’ll even have some of the educators on there as they have different events. The idea is just to help you get to know those individuals on an individual basis, not, “Who’s the guy? Who’s the speaker?” but what really makes that person tick? Why do they do what they do as an educator or investor or vendor? What are things that they like? One of the biggest things I think you can learn the most from is not a personal success but their mistakes they made along the way.

God knows I have made plenty of mistakes. I make mistakes on a regular basis. We will share our mistakes. We will share how we’re goofing up things. “That didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? These are the reasons that didn’t work. What can we do to make ourselves better?” My biggest goal is to help shed a light on the path that you’re walking now. A lot of people are getting on the industry, they don’t know where to turn, they’re overwhelmed with the education or people talking who aren’t really giving counsel, they’re giving their advice. They haven’t closed a deal in years or they don’t do it but they are the authoritative experts. We will not be having those people on. We want to fill in the gaps, connect the dots. We want to stay and help you color in the lines so that your note pictures really come out well.

My note journey since I started note investing in 2007, 2008 has had its ups and down. I look back at all the crazy deals over the thousands of deals that I’ve done myself and helped others do. There are some interesting stories. You’ll hear some interesting stories about borrowers or deal flow or wins and losses, because I think that’s what you guys are looking for out there. It’s not all about the good. You’ve got to share the bad and the ugly sometimes so that you can really help shed that true light on people’s paths up there. That’s what we plan on doing here on The Note Closers Show podcast.

One of the great things we do, I have to give a big shout-out to all of our students that are out closing things, that are out sharing their success stories. We’ve got some amazing people who are doing amazing things out there. We’re not only changing their lives, but changing people’s lives around them; either a partner or people they’re helping along the way or really the borrowers on these note deals where they’re going out getting them re-perform and really helping people out. We expect to have quite a few interesting stories along the way from people.

We’ll actually probably have a few guest hosts from time to time as my travel schedule falls into it or as we take some time off. Don’t be surprised if you see one of these three cats bringing in some more good people. I want them to be on the first episode. There’s a person that’s not here yet who’s missing, who’s been a big, big part of our growth over the last couple of years. You’ll see her on in the next couple episodes, our VP of Operations, Stephanie Goodman. She keeps the lights on for us and make sure the bill gets paid, the power stays on and all that good stuff, runs around behind me, the moving chaos that’s Scott Carson is.

Chaos coordinator.

I like that. #chaoscoordinator. If you’ve got a good chaos coordinator, make sure you say thank you to them. Stephanie has been a very, very big influence in helping getting things lined up and change from where they were when I started teaching almost eight, nine years ago. She’s been around for the last five. She started off as a student and came on as an assistant and really has helped organizing things. She handles a lot of the events and behind the scenes action now. Although, she has done quite a few deals, so she’ll be sharing some of her experiences. She may be hosting the show if I’m not around. She’ll be on here as well.

We also want to hear your stories. If you’re a brand new note investor who’s getting started and you’ve had a breakthrough and it can be a simple breakthrough, it doesn’t have to be you closed on a hundred deals. Our buddies, Joe and Jamie, who called in banks and the first bid they get they’re taking out 33 assets. That’s great. If you’re using a technique or a vendor on our show here, we want to hear from you. “I used them and they saved me $80 to help me find a lien or they helped me raise capital or we used them and we close the deal with them.” We want to hear the success stories. It doesn’t have to be hundred deals, thousands of deals. You’re closing your first note deal, I think you’re going to learn more from that than any other deal you do. We always love to encourage those that are closing deals.

It’s not the number of deals, it’s the knowledge that you get and to be able to increase that.

Yeah and being able to go out and duplicate it. If you’re going to do just one deal, you’re doing 20, 30 different things at once, you’re not going to be successful if you focus on one thing. Ultimately, if you’re closing your first deal, you’re making a transition from working full time for somebody else to chasing your dreams, we want to hear from you and we want to hear your story. We want to share your story.  

We also have some amazing friends throughout the country. They’re doing some great stuff. We’ll probably be hearing from them on a regular basis too and their stories. As I said one more time, #excited to have this rock and rolling out there. There are a lot of people that have over the years helped us do some amazing things. My mentors, I could not start our first podcast show without giving some shout outs to them. I mentioned Bob Leonetti and Jayme Kahla, who I learned and done business from and done amazing things.

A personal mentor of mine, Greg Reid, who’s an amazing author, motivational speaker, producer, entrepreneur, known as The Millionaire Mentor. He’s the author of probably, one of the best known books he’s known for is Think and Grow Rich, Three Feet From Gold. Greg, over the last year, has been somebody that I have bounced ideas off of and talked to during ups and downs. I hope to have him on here before too long. Greg has opened up an amazing amount of doors for me over the last seven years and I’ve got to give a big shout-out to him. Thank you, Greg.  

We also have to give a big shout-out to some other people that do some amazing stuff. I have to give a big shout-out to our Note Mastermind members. Some people have been coming for years with what we’re doing. We celebrate our sixteenth Mastermind events just a couple of weeks ago in Cape Coral, Florida. We have two amazing women who have been coming: one didn’t make it this time. She had been then Queen Mastermind member, I guess you could say, or the reigning attendee, Kimberly Banks Fawcett; a big shout-out to Kimberly Banks Fawcett at Dallas, always interesting bouncing ideas off of her. I talked with her, a big shout-out to her. One of my many adoptive mothers across the country.

Then also I give a big shout-out to Karen Peterson. It was her eleventh Mastermind. Karen does an amazing job. Her husband, Philip, close deals and also still works full-time with a security business that they own and operate and they also got two amazing kids. Kimberly also has an amazing husband, Joe, who’s a teacher, they’re full-time investors though. They got two very rapidly growing boys as well. A big shout-out to those ladies who have done a great job along the way. I’ll also give a big shout-out to a guy that’s also been very helpful over the last few years. Helped us take our business from one level to another lever, our buddy, Chase Thompson. Chase has been an amazing marketing mind. We’re excited to see him growing and going do some things. Chase, you’ve got an amazing family. I’m very proud of the things that he’s helped us with over the last few years. You can go and check those people out.

I’m going to give a big shout-out also to a couple of guys that are doing some amazing things, my good buddy, Jay Tenenbaum. Now out of Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s closed a couple hundred assets. He’s been around for a little while, going on almost four years now. My buddy Wayne Snell out in Dallas is also doing some stuff, closed on over 300 plus deal a few months ago. Then Wayne’s business partner, Natalie Patton who does a lot of stuff. Natalie and Wayne went and closed on as many deals. Natalie Patton is a #chaoscoordinator for Wayne. These are some names you’ll hear us talking about. Those guys are some great students of ours, not only students but great friends that are doing some amazing things out there and have amazing stories to tell. We’ll have them all on throughout.

I also have to give another shout-out to some other individual people who had been very influential over the last few years, my good buddy, Aaron Young of Laughlin Associates out in Reno. He also hosts a podcast called The Unshackled Owner on Voice America once a week. Aaron is like a brother from another mother. Laughlin Associates is also one of our sponsors for the podcast. We’re glad to have them and honored to have them as a sponsor. We do a lot with Laughlin Associates. One of the biggest things you probably hear me say or Aaron say is that you want to set your business up properly. It’s like building a house, build a foundation. Laughlin does an amazing job not only helping entrepreneurs but thousands and thousands of business owners set up their companies and actually maintain the paperwork along the way, making sure you’re compliant for all the little things that can happen. Let’s face it, it’s not if you’re going to be sued, it’s when you’re going to be sued at some point. They do a great job making sure your company’s complying.

Aaron is just a great guy. I’ve known him for years. I actually met him through Greg Reid, so a big shout-out to Greg for making the introduction. We do a lot with Laughlin Associates. We travel a lot. Aaron has an amazing wife, Michelle, she’s awesome, she’s a very, very rapidly budding life coach doing some amazing stuff. Those are some great people you’ll hear from us talk on a regular basis. They have an amazing family, amazing kids. Helping Aaron out and just start to do their own great things that you’ll hear probably them on a regular basis too.  

Our good buddy and one of my best friends, the connector, as we call him, Joel Markovitz. Joel is a great friend who started off as a vendor. Over the last five years, I can’t tell you how many times I have randomly driven through airports trying to find the hotel with Joel in the car at different cities across the country. Scott’s driving and Joel’s in the car, we’re driving through the airport three times. Joel does a great job. Joel is a very interesting but also educational in the industry over the last few years; very well-known throughout the industry, we like to call him as the connector because he’s so well networked throughout the industry and does a great job and just has a big heart.

A big shout-out to his wife, Donna, who’s amazing, his two kids, Evan, who worked as an intern for us here recently, and Samantha who’s done great some stuff. Then of course, Daniel Singer, his partner. Daniel Singer is obviously the head of the Law Office of Daniel Singer. They’re a special service team company that does a lot of workouts for investors across the country. I’ve known Joel for five, six years now and he’s one of the guys I talk to in a regular basis. Joel is so well-known, I don’t think you will ever find anybody in the note industry say a negative thing about Joel because he’s just got a big heart and a big serving heart. A very big shout-out to Joel, who’s always great to bounce ideas and go from there.

There’s been a variety of other people that I’m sure I’m missing out on that we’ll get to over the years, lots of people. If I did not mention your name, please don’t be taken aback. I love you. There’s plenty of episodes to get you involved on. One person I do want to mention that we’ll have on is my buddy, George Antone. George has such a big heart for what he does with financing and teaching people about financing and raising capital now. You may recognize George from the book, The Banker’s Code or The Banker’s Code Revisited. A great book, should be one of everybody’s top ten books that are really actually a great book to give your kids to read as well. I’ve known George five years as well. One of the great things with George, we both have a similar energy. Actually, we have a lot of students that crossover. George has a big heart and what’s great is we’ll talk as often as we probably should, but it’s always good to get him on the phone. We like to share ideas back and forth. We actually try to hold each other accountable.

One of the things we have held each other accountable is to evolve our businesses and get off the day-in, day-out grind of teaching and traveling every weekend and starting to get better healthy lives. You’ll hear me talking about that throughout. It’s one of the things that I struggle with to get better and healthier. A big shout-out to George. George is an amazing guy; one of the guys that I love spending time whether it’s five minutes or an hour somewhere. Just hanging out with a guy and bouncing ideas. He’s probably one of the smartest guys with money out there.    

One of the things also, as I travel and speak across the country, usually it’s almost twice a month on different areas. You’ll hear us talk about where I’ll be at. If you have an idea, one of the biggest things is to take it from your mind, not only just to write it down but also share it. One of the things that we have planned is going back to my roots. I originally started as a real estate investor in 2002. I failed on it, and some rentals, and I want to be the next flip this house guy, totally bombed. It took two years before I met my buddies and got back into finance. I started a mortgage company.

When I went full-time in 2007, I was closing some deals. There are peaks and valleys. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are into that. Let’s face it, 2007, 2008 and 2009 were very chaotic years in the industry. In 2010, actually first part of 2010, I decided I was going to take and literally have that Visa commercial. What I mean by Visa commercial, that whole commercial about buying an RV for $10,000, buying tickets to all three Major League Baseball parks $25,000, $5 average hotdog price. Time with your friends is priceless. I thought I’ve had a priceless moment. I literally take time off, not really time off from the note business but focused on nothing but the note business.

In 2010, I started traveling. I spent roughly three plus years nonstop on the road, basically nonstop driving from city to city or flying from city to city. I sold everything. I have a big, big goal and faith in myself to get out on my own and start sharing things. That’s really what helped launched my career as the note guy, I guess you could say, teaching people and sharing stories and making those relationships with local investors and investment clubs, bankers and other real estate entrepreneurs to help them transition to the dark side of the force.

I’ve been getting some ideas about this because we cut down our travel a ton for the last couple of years. Still do quite a bit of traveling for fun now, which has been nice. I think our goal is have a reunion tour, a 26 week reunion tour where we’re bouncing around. Not 26 nonstop because that would be crazy. Get out and spend a little more time on the road. I will take my motivation from Metallica to put together 26, 27 spots over the next six to twelve months in different investment clubs. We’ll put that together and just share what’s going on. If you’re local, bring it on. We’ll probably throw that out there.

Hopefully you’re watching in iTunes, if you are in iTunes, love for you to write a five-star review. That will help us tremendously. Also, feel free to share this with anybody who you think might draw value from it. One of the great things that I think we do better than most people besides marketing is that we do really give a lot of great information and we help people close deals. That is ultimately what our goal with anything that we do is to close more deals, not only just for us but for the people that we have along the way. We really believe in true win-win scenarios, win-win situations that everybody should walk away from the table happy because if they don’t somebody got screwed. Maybe not as big a win sometimes if you’re a good negotiator. Win-win makes it want to do more business. That’s our ultimate goal, is to constantly get more business. I would rather take a little less of a deal to do 20 more deals with an individual or a company versus trying to get all the profits on one and may not close anything.

I think we’re coming to a good spot for the first episode. We want to try to keep these about an hour long for everybody. We don’t want to be less than 30 minutes. We want to keep this over 30, 45 to an hour plus that gives you plenty of opportunity to listen everything while either you’re driving or you’re working at the gym or just listening to a podcast when you should be working. Feel free to share, feel free to email us with any topics. You can go to our Facebook page or you could email me directly at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. I always check my emails. I’m not always the fastest responder but you can always send us a message there at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com and we’ll be in touch with you. I have to give a big shout-out to our podcast producer, Tom Hazard and friends over there who’s doing an amazing job. Once again everybody, thank you so much for joining us. We hope it’s been productive. We’ll see you on the next episode of The Note Closers Show podcast.  

 

Important Links

• We Close Notes YouTube channel
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• Think and Grow Rich
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• The Unshackled Owner
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