Scott Carson: Finding Income Within Debt

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

---

Scott Carson joins us today. He is known across the real estate investing world. As the note guy, he is the CEO of weclosenotes.com and has been buying, selling, and investing in nonperforming notes for over a decade now and has closed over a billion with a B dollars in distress debt. Scott, thanks for jumping on today.  

Hey man. Thank you so much for having me down. I’m honored to be here. So a billion is a big number. And, uh, tell us, tell our listeners for the listeners that was Scott, the bust about that to change. So, uh, tell, tell our listeners what is now, break it down, like more five-year-olds and what do you do? Yeah, no problem.  

I’m used to doing that because everybody’s like, what’s distressing. So for the last year we look back, I have been buying, like, I like to call it naughty notes. You know, we went through a bit of a financial turmoil here in the United States, with everything, with banks going out of business and people losing their homes and.  

Stuff like that. We had the peak, we had 15 million homeowners across the country that were upside down where they owed more than their house is worth. And what I’ve been doing. I still do day, but known for the last, I guess 12 years now is I will reach out to banks and different real estate, hedge funds, and I’ll buy that debt, um, that they have on their books where people aren’t paying, I’ll buy that debt at a discount, then become the bank and then I’ll work out with the homeowners to try to keep them in the property of possible.  

Through a modification or trial payment. Yeah. Plan, you know, uh, we were able for success only about 60% of the time and keeping them in the house modification to their mortgage. Um, the other 40% were either offering up some sort of cash for keys or picking into foreclosure. They’re not going to work with us.  

So what’s the, you know, what’s the negotiations like when you go to a bank, it help our audience understand why this market exists and why banks would even want to talk to you. That’s a great question. I’m so glad you asked that. So you’re first and foremost, you’re not going to walk into like JP Morgan chase or Citibank say, I want to buy your distress debt.  

That doesn’t happen. Uh, the bigger, you know, five, 10 branch banks out there across the country, they sell their stuff off. Well, there’s someone often larger as they call them pools or tronches big, big list, like $50 million worth of, of assets at a time where we focus and have the biggest bang for the buck is reaching out to your regional banks, your smaller banks. 

 Um, you know, I have five or more branches up to a couple hundred across different States and we’re dealing with a specific department inside of the bank. That’s looking at the banks lending portfolio because for every dollar that a bank has, that’s not getting a loan. Every dollar alone is not being paid.  

They’re losing leverage. Um, being able to lend that dollar out at 10 to 15 times across the country in different loans. That’s why banks are the biggest buildings out there. They’re the richest companies in America. They don’t want you to real estate. They want the loans and the cash, and so they can leverage it off.  

So are since we’re buying nonperforming notes where a borrower hasn’t paid in six months, 12 months, 24, 36, whatever. We are looking at the, the value of the property. Cause that’s what really is the same security behind is what the value of the house is. And then we’re negotiating off of that, depending how far in the fault they are, depending on how long it takes to foreclose in a specific state like here in Texas, we do everything fast here.  

You only have fast highways, fast execution. Fast highways for the most part, you know, we can foreclose in 21 days here. So it’s more expensive, more for distress debt. Cause the banks can go through the works. Whereas like Florida might be 12 months to foreclose. I’m gonna get a bigger discount on the debt  

Uh, and buying that and kind of taking over the bank’s headaches and then becoming the bank and trying to work out with the homeowner. So, uh, I don’t know if that’s in yeah. Kindergarten level of aspect of things. I mean, we’re not going after the property initially. Um, we do end up doing that though, but we would prefer to keep the borrowers in the houses and get them re performing and have cashflow coming in.  

And the fact that we buy the debt at a discount gives us a lot of flexibility. Not it doesn’t. The borrows money, they owe money. It doesn’t discount what they owe until we get a chance to talk with them on the phone and kind of see where the, where the situation is going. Does that make sense? Yeah. So do you review each individual asset?  

Uh, do you review the assets on an individual basis when you go to a bank or do you just buy it as a pool? Greg? We do both. A lot of times. We’ll cherry pick. As we call you, pick up a one off here and there. Other times we’ll buy a portfolio, but inside, if we’re buying a portfolio, we make dang sure. To double check and do due diligence on each asset. 

Now, in some situations we’ll throw some in, they’ll throw some stuff in. That’s just, you buy them the barrel stuff that they’re looking at, their books. That’s fine. We’re not worried about that, but we’re going to make very, very clear that at least the top 50% of the assets have a very thorough due diligence, the, you know, the bottom quarter.  

And I will not worry so much because it depends on if we look at we’re going to be making our money back in the top quarter or in the middle 50 

 off the board. So it’s kind of like a numbers game. So, so you know that you’ll get some that are just straight up losses. Um, Now, what are some of the larger what’s what’s the quantity? Uh, give us a scale of what some of the larger pools you buy into. Like how many assets are you buying? Well, we will buy 200 plus assets in a portfolio from time to time.  

I’m working on a portfolio of 64 right now, you know, um, average trade though, for us, for the most part is about a quarter million to half a million, somewhere in that round. As far as what we fund off of now that may be a million and a half, 2 million in what’s owed. Uh, on the, on the debt side, the borrowers, but the normal thing, we’re, we’re, you know, 10 to 20 assets easily.  

On average, that amount gives us a pretty good distance cause we’re buying in bulk and allows for a, to be excited because they’re going a nice chunk off of their bad assets off of their books as well that they can take now that money in and go out and lend it back out and make in making, create new loans.  

They can leverage against. Yeah. So are you that the end of the road, or do you sometimes also sell them off? Yeah, we will sometimes sell off. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a portfolio of 500 notes on my books right now. We’re looking to sell a portfolio, a chunk of that off, you know, we, our goal is that we can get the borrowers to get reinstated or on some sort of payment plan in the first 90 to 120 days.  

That’s a good thing. If they’re won’t comply with us, they won’t respond to our phone calls or letters or our door knockers that go out. From our servicing company and attorneys, and we’ll start the foreclosure process and we’ll get a chunk of people that will respond once an attorney letter shows up, you know, Oh, I can’t go away not paying here, but then we have others that just don’t do anything, you know?  

And that’s, that’s unfortunate cause we really would rather prefer to keep them in the house if possible, versus versus taking it back. I don’t like rehabs. I’ve rehabbed, plenty of property. My days in, in my 20 plus years as a real estate investor. I’m not a fan of picking up paint and carpets. I’m not a fan of those fictional TV shows on TV.  

I mean, what do you mean those aren’t realistic or not realistic? Yeah. I’m sorry. Uh, they’re not realistic, unfortunately. They’re selling a lot of dreams, a lot of people out there now, it’s not saying that I wasn’t a fan at one point when I first got into what I’m doing now, uh, years ago. But, uh, what I love about the note business is I can, I can do this from anywhere.  

There’s plenty of vendors and people that can reach out and go help us with due diligence across the country. So I live in Austin, Texas. I haven’t bought anything in Austin, Texas in over a decade. That gives you an idea. Uh, so what’s, what’s the average timeframe before you make your money back on the deal.  

So that’s a great question. So it varies if we can get, um, if we can get the bar to start paying on time again, that’s a great thing. So if we buy say 50 by 50 cents on the dollar, they start paying us back. We start getting capital for getting cashflow in when in 12 to 18 months, preferably 12 months, they paid for at least six to 12 months straight.  

For the most part, we can start marketing that note. As a reperforming note. And now it’s, instead of us buying at 50, it’s now worth like 80, 85 cents on the dollar. So we can sell that note off back to either wall street, back to private investors, back to IRA investors who are looking for a good return on their investment.  

And so that’s kind of nice. We buy that on the front end, we’ll get them. Re-performing we’ll often ask the borrower to bring a little bit of extra to the game, some skin in the game. So we know that they’re serious about staying in the house and then we’ll make a big chunk on the back end. And when we sell that note off now, If they don’t perform, then we take it to foreclosure.  

Can either sell it off at the foreclosure auction, you know, offer up maybe cash or keys to the bar demon and then sell it to a local investor for the most part. So we always tell people, expect the deals to take anywhere from 12 to 18 months just in case. But oftentimes we’re closing on deals a lot faster and getting that velocity of capital moving in 12 months or less.  

What’s your ideal transaction? Is it, um, you know, turning it over from 50 cents to 80 cents or is it, you know, what, whatever the options is, is the best for Scott. I like cashflow who doesn’t like cashflow cause I’m a lazy. Alright. Uh, I would prefer that, you know, we buy it cheap enough that we can keep them on our portfolio for an extended period of time.  

You know, there’s some deals we’re buying. That are phenomenal yields to us. Cause we picked them up cheap and we’re able to work with a homeowner. And you know, I’ve got some notes on that. Hold on for seven years that are paying phenomenal each year. Um, it just depends on the situation. I would prefer cash flow to take place, but you know, there are people that I’ll get phone calls from people.  

Hey, they’re selling their house now and we’ll get a full payoff. Okay. Shop. Now I got to go take that money and go double down. Now. That’s what I would just say by now. And then. You use that money from, and then double down to buy two and then use those two to buy for. So, um, it’s, I’ll tell you this. It’s not a get rich quick scheme by any means of the imagination.  

It takes some work, but I prefer for the cash flow to take place. And then secondly, if they’re not going to work with us, then we look to try to sell the asset off and then make our money back. So how did you get the capital to get this ball rolling? Great question. Um, when I started doing this back a decade ago, I didn’t have any capital I was going through.  

I was one of those Debbie borrowers that was going through a rough time. I had a couple of and flip projects where I actually had to write big checks at the closing table to give back to my investors and, and walk away. So, um, I get, I get the majority of our capital from other private investors. You know, we use other people’s money, either their retirement accounts or cash or other things like that.  

To, to help us fund those deals. I’ll use my own capital from time to time, depending on the deal. But now when I first started off, it was all about marketing, sharing. Some of the deals that we were working on, we were initially wholesaling, so many properties, you know, getting a property under contract and making it a deal in marketing to other people. 

Astronaut or you’re in any type of job. You’re a marker  

some of the numbers and the deals that we work on for Facebook and LinkedIn, and that helped us really identify investors that were wall.  

Oh, I got you like this. This would have got you. There you are. Yeah. I was going to say, hold on, hold on one sec. I might, we might, uh, we can edit this out, so it’s not a big deal. Um, I’ve never had this happen where it starts cutting out. Um, let’s see, let’s go back one question and then if it starts happening again, then what I’ll do is we’ll reset this and just pick it up from there.  

Um, so, uh, Go back and just restart, um, where you started talking about, um, you know, Hey Scott, where’d you get the capital to get this ball rolling?  

Yeah. No, for us again. So when you first got into this industry, where did you, you know, where did you get the capital to get the ball rolling on all this? Great. The question. I didn’t have a lot of extra capital back when I got started over a decade ago, because everything going on in the industry. So I started marketing, uh, the deals that I was coming across, um, cause I’d have 30 to 60 days to close on these since I was buying direct from banks.  

And I just used the power of social media, Facebook, LinkedIn. Do an email blast out to my audience of investors that I had met with a few years. And I that’s how I started moving assets. I would move in flip and make some quick capital. But as I started getting more and more into these types of deals, people kept coming to me and say, Hey, I see the deals you’re doing, teach me what you’re doing.  

So in 2010, I started teaching kind of workshops on how we do this. And people would go through the workshop and say, Oh, I like this is awesome. But I don’t want to do that work. I’d rather just write you a check and that’s one of the great yeah. Things that we do with our workshops that lead says raising private capital and helping other people that really start diving in and taking down deals for themselves besides funding our deals that we’re taking down as well.  

So what’s your, what’s your background to even know this world exists before he got into it? That’s a good question. I don’t think nobody’s ever a note investor born. I’ll tell you that. Okay. Um, when I, I was, uh, out of college, I was a marketing management degree, went to work, uh, for, uh, in the finance industry or first a short spell at Verizon wireless in sales, but probably got into banking.  

I was a, uh, a banker at JP Morgan chase and a buddy of mine. I’m starting a mortgage company with real estate investors that were traveling all across the country, teaching creative financing, wrap around mortgage, subject to owner financing besides doing some fix and flip stuff themselves. So I was fortunate enough for four years to kind of have an apprenticeship while I was.  

Working in the mortgage committee, my buddy Boyd, we were learning all this creative investment strategies from, uh, the, the real estate investors that were teaching and traveling. And when everything hit the fan in 2008, when the mortgage industry, luckily for me, I’d already been starting to do some real estate investing on the side, fix and flip substitutes and Reynolds, but when everything hit the fan, I, I was very lucky.  

I had two people that made a lot of money during the RTC and the savings and loan scandals. Buying paper. They’re like, Scott, this is an opportunity. It’s a once in a generation opportunity. We’re going all on you. I don’t consider doing the same thing too. So that’s what I did. I dropped from the mortgage side on the origination side and the fix and flip. 

 So I just started bowing for dollar start, started calling banks. Um, you know, the banks that I was creating mortgages with or originating. So I started calling their distressed assets, sales departments, and literally that’s how we kind of fell into it and just built a business over the last. Uh, you know, the last decade, just dialing for dollars and marketing directly to investors and banks through, you know, like I said, LinkedIn and other avenues. 

 So when you started getting into this and like you said, calling up and buying distressed debt, um, what was this already deep into the recession that we’re talking? Okay. Yeah. I mean, it was 2008, 2009, 2010. That was that’s the depth of, I mean, we still have to this day, we still have about three to 5 million homeowners under water. 

 Um, that are still left over from a decade ago. They’re just drug out. They’ve not recovered, recouped. Um, some disturbing stats to think of is that one out of every 10 Americans is behind on their mortgage right now today and was at about a three and a half to 4% default ratio, even on newly originated loans.  

So. I don’t think we’re going to ever see defaulted or distressed debt go away. When you start looking at what we, what we see as far as, you know, car loans being in default all time, high credit card debt being high, man medical bills, being high student loan debt is an all time high. You know, everybody’s in the paper game.  

It just, unfortunately that most people are on the wrong side of the payment streams. They’re paying the bank versus working to be the bank. And so yeah, the peak we bought a lot, my biggest regret is I didn’t buy more during that phase because everything was so much cheaper. I mean, literally pennies on the dollars.  

It’s still a good market now. I mean, so we’re still buying stuff at, you know, 50, 40, you know, 60 sentence of America occasions. Um, but it’s, it’s, you know, if you’re in the debt game, you’re making money, whether you’re buying mortgage debt or, or commercial debt or. A car debt or anything like that.  

Everybody, everybody wants to be the bank eventually when they grow up. Yeah. What type of capital does it take to get into this type of world? That’s a really good question. We get it pretty often used to, used to be really needed, to have about 5 million. If you wanted to buy a large, you know, decent portfolio and go from there, um, with everything that’s happened the last 10 years, a lot of those big debt bars went away.  

I mean, we still have, some of them can bring into the market now, but. There are a lot of people out there that if they’ve got, you know, 50 grand in their own pocket, different things, they can go out and buy a couple of deals. I mean, one or two assets, it might not be in LA County in California or 50 grand might buy a doghouse, but 50 grand in like Columbus is a decent house or in a South Carolina or North Carolina, it’s all relevant on what the market is looking at.  

And it’s, you know, we buy a lot in those rust belt, big tins, Southeast conference parts of the United States. Um, No, I, for 50 grand, I can buy two or three. So I got a quarter million at 250,000. I can buy 10 to 12 assets and really be doing well because I’m buying cheap or buying in areas. They’re not, we’re not going to say, you know, gun, you know, they’re not going to be the premier areas.  

They’re more C and B class neighborhoods, but that’s really, you know, those are the white collar neighborhoods. Those are the salt of the earth. People that they want to own a house. They want to pay on time. That’s their big dream. They want a job. They want to be. You know, they want, they don’t want a nightmare to take place.  

They pay their bills, they work hard and that’s really kind of what this country is founded on. So we’re glad to work with those types of individuals. Yeah. Now you talk about how, um, we’re around somewhere around 3 million homeowners that are behind versus a peak of around 15 million. Um, so that’s obviously a lot better, but aside from that specific statistic, how, how are things looking in general now versus 2008?  

Oh, it’s a much better than it was 10 years ago. Um, when we got into this business, a lot of us we’re into it where it says, Oh, this is only like a three to five year market. We only think it’ll last around three to five years. Well, that’s not been the case, obviously. Um, the market’s gotten a little bit tighter as values have rebounded back, you know, uh, I’m not buying in Florida anymore.  

When I was buying stuff at 25 30 cents a dollar that market’s rebound is strong, but you also start to start looking at the future and there’s already signs in the market that we’re seeing some stress points. Um, default rates are up in different parts of the country that then were before. Um, you know what surprisingly is that Florida and Texas lead the default rates, but that’s partially due to the hurricanes that have come through here, but we’re still seeing markets like Dallas, Denver, uh, Miami, Tampa. 

 I’m trying to think of Tennessee and Nashville. Things are starting, especially the higher value houses and 300,000 or more. Those prices are starting to get compressed because the days of market are starting to really start to increase. The people are dropping values. I think we’re going to see a bigger hit on the higher priced markets.  

Then we will all meet the, the low to medium, the first time home buyer markets, you know, the $200,000 or less priced homes. Uh, I think we’re gonna see a bigger hit on, on the higher end this time around. That’s not to say we won’t see some defaults. I mean, They announced last Thursday, if I remember correctly that we have now hit preview 2008 numbers, as far as the amount of credit card debt, that’s in default right now.  

No need to look at other things. Like I mentioned, the other types of debts all time high, it’s kind of on a paper house for the most part. So if we have a downturn in the economy, if there’s a job loss or something happens, I think we’re going to see a bigger. Bigger intake. Now, what is surprising Daymond is that we are getting more phone calls from banks, reaching out to us directly than it used to be of them trying to move assets off their books.  

And some of the bigger funds are, we used to say no a year ago. And I’m like, Hey, do you want to look at what we have available? So, and do you think that’s because of a, they’re using their magic eight ball and they see something coming? I think so. I think they do see something. I think they realize the market’s kind of gone as high as it can.  

And they want to kind of get, you know, cut their losses ahead of time. Even if they’re selling stuff at 80 cents on the dollar, now that’s better for them. Cause they, you know, ridden this wave up. It’s better than getting stuck with stuff that ends up dropping below that. Like what happened to a lot of banks back a decade ago.  

So yeah, I think they see the rise in the law. I mean, you’ve got young quants and all these smart graduates on wall street. A lot smarter than me predicting. You have to look at the, if you look at it, you get more phone calls. You’ve seen things happen. Pay attention to what’s happened to the big boys.  

Cause it ends up watering, you know, trickling down to what we see and you can make some really educated decisions on where you’re wanting to invest your money or invest other people’s money as well. What type of timeframe, obviously, you know, you can’t see the future, but, um, what, what are you thinking?  

Is this something in the next year, the next three years? Oh, well for sure. In the next three years, I think it’s going to happen a little bit sooner that like in the next 12 months, You know, I think we’re going to see is definitely next 12 to 18 months, if not sooner. I mean, some markets are already seen some upticks and stuff like that, like I said, but, um, you just gotta watch it.  

You know, the little thing is that we’re buying the debt at 50 cents on the dollar. Um, we’re kind of, we’ve got some cushion in there in case the market does drop a little bit. We’re still going to be sitting. Okay. Now, does your industry require any licensing or bonding? Great question. Each state’s a little bit different.  

Now, like, um, like Georgia requires you to be a licensed mortgage broker. If you’re gonna be doing stuff there, unless you’re funding with your self directed IRA, Washington state, Oregon state, it required to be a licensed mortgage broker. Uh, Illinois wants you to be a licensed debt collector, which is basically paying a state 700 bucks each year.  

It’s when it comes down to Philadelphia. Yeah. Did you fall on me or you’re good. Um, but most States out there. Excluding a few most States out there, as long as your lights, as long as your servicer is licensed in those States, then you’re okay. I never advocate anybody being a debt collector and themselves where they’re the ones making it phone calls and collecting payments.  

You should always, always, always, always have a third party service or like Madison management use them to do the collections and the bar outreach. It’ll save you. It keeps that kind of distance as well. Cause a lot of people have big hearts and. Some of these borrowers are professional storytellers or professional country, Western singers.  

They’ll take it. They’ll ask for a foot and you’ll give them a mile. And so people are like, Oh, I don’t want evict anybody. That’s great. Let your professionals, your attorneys or your service or company. So versus just handle that and then going off on a couple of your assets, if you know what I mean? Yeah.  

That’s gotta be an awkward circumstance. So you’ve taken all this knowledge and helped a bunch of people. And like you said, not only have you helped people stay in their home, but you’ve also helped hundreds of investors become the bank. Uh, you got this 2014, no educator of the year. Um, you know, what, where where’s this educator of the year award come from?  

Is there like an industry kind of, um, you know, group? Uh, I don’t know the proper word. Yeah, no, no, you’re, you’re, it’s a big, I was awarded that from my 30 year. A conference has been around called noteworthy, uh, noteworthy it’s put on by con uh, paper source and things like that. Right. I’m a nominated a few times from Realty four Oh one is the educator of the year as well.  

And, um, I think Realty magazine has had me in the running a few years. So, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been around awards are great. I just like the fact that we’re able to help a lot of people. My biggest, um, thing I get most excited about when I’ve got a student calls me up, Hey, I’m getting ready to close on a deal, or I’ve got to deal with the bar.  

Sorry. Uh, reinstated with me. I mean, last time it’s kind of weird. I had a bar called me out of the blue. Um, for some weird reason, got my number called me up and was trying to get their payment back on track. I’m like, okay. So I talked to him, pull up some information online. He’s like, Oh yeah, you started paying on time.  

And one half of the last 90 days, he goes, well, I got sick and laid off, but I’m back to work. Can I make a quadruple payment? I’m like, yes, you’re King. Just don’t pay with me. Get on the website for the service or make the payment. And, you know, I got an email this morning, Hey, he called me to paint. I’m like, that’s awesome.  

He’s he’s like, I want to get this house paid off. I’ll have it paid off. And I figured in five years, if I make double and triple payments each month and I’m talking to the guy and if I’m like, that’s great, that’s what we want. We want to help you. We don’t want to take your house back unless we have to, but you’ve got to work with me.  

Uh, if you’re going to be late, more than 30 days, please reach out. So we don’t, you know, don’t file the, the best thing that bars can do if they’re getting to fault. On any type of credit, it’s just pick up the phone and talk to, Hey, I’m running behind. This was happening. I’m working on this and go from there. 

 But yeah, biggest, biggest rush I get is people call it that have listened to the podcast or been through a workshop and implementing what we teach and then doing a great job with it. That’s, that’s, what’s really exciting. That’s when you know, you’re really making an impact in the world today. That is cool.  

So if you had to summarize, I mean, the industry, the year end has so many moving parts, it’s really unique. If you had to summarize what’s contributed most to your success, what would that be? And most contrary to my success, that’s a really good question. What I would say is that I’m, I’m coachable. You know, I’m not, when I go to an event, I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room.  

I want to be the dumbest person in the room. I always want to learn. Um, but I think the best thing that’s helped me more than anything else. It has separate, we close notes from a lot of the others in the industry is our ability to market. We market more than anybody else with, uh, you know, webinars, the podcast, um, just sharing the success stories. 

 Uh, I’m a big believer that success is all about me. It’s all about my students and, you know, by helping other people succeed, I rise to the top and that’s, well, if I can help more people do that, that’s the way I think about things. Not everybody’s like that. A lot of the gurus are people out there, not just in the known industry, but other areas are all about me, me, me, me, and center focused.  

And I don’t think that’s, they’re doing their clients or students, any justice. It’s, it’s gotta be about helping people. It’s gotta be about giving people to take action. Um, yeah. That’s I think that’s the biggest thing is I’m a big believer that if people, somebody wants to do something, give them the tools and the knowledge to do it, and then let them go out and do it.  

And it’ll come back tenfold to you. Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I had the same conversation last night. There was, um, so my world’s SEO and we had somebody that, um, I’ve been helping out part of this mastermind group. And, and so yesterday was my first time chime in on this group. And I just, I just puked a ton of knowledge on them.  

And I said, Hey, it had just happened to be a perfect topic. When I came in, they were talking about, talking about doing influencing on LinkedIn, which I’ve been doing. Yeah. So I said, here’s, you know, guys, in addition to what you’re talking about, Let me share my screen and here’s all the stuff. And so the next day I got, gosh, probably five, six people hit me up and say, I can’t believe, you know, thank you for what you threw out there.  

I really appreciate it. And it’s real, like you said, it’s really rewarding. Um, what’s funny though, is I was telling this guy, he goes, uh, I don’t want to take all of your time, man. I know you’re busy and this and that. And I said, Hey, you know, first of all, Thank you for acknowledging the time, but, um, no, I, I really do enjoy helping other entrepreneurs.  

And you find those, you find, um, unique people like yourself that are, it’s almost like you pay it forward, know fortunate enough to have success and you want to share it. Um, but what I, what was funny is I was telling this guy and he, and he’s like, uh, he’s basically saying, you know, I’m really sorry for taking up your time.  

And, um, Sometimes, I feel like people are either afraid to approach other people that they have seen success. Or what’s interesting for me is I, I so abundant with, um, the time that I like to give the, sometimes I feel like they think I’m the creepy guy in the dark darkness. It’s just like, that’s just like this guy giving me so much time.  

Does, does he not have something else to do anyways? So funny story. So, but yeah, out of those people that can help you because more often than not, uh, they, they want to help other people. Yeah. I’ve always found that the most successful people are the most approachable and the most willing to give you great nuggets.  

That’ll save you time and like, Hey, don’t do this, do this instead. You know, they’ve, they’ve been through the learning curves. They’ve been through the goods, the ups and downs, and most people don’t want to see you go through a down spot. They’re going to share wealth. And that’s why I say you gotta be coachable.  

If somebody’s going to give the time to spend with you in 30 minutes, five minutes an hour, or whatever, it might be really take to heart. What they’re sharing with you. And look to implement it. That’s the biggest thing that I can say. I’m always trying to implement things like, I’ll give you an example yesterday.  

It was yesterday, today’s a Monday night. I learned something. I was at a podcasting conference this past weekend in Orlando pod Fest. And I learned a buddy of mine was doing, using this Instagram thing with doing a live feed and bringing people on to share. I was like, Oh, that’s a phenomenal idea to grow my Instagram account, which is our worst performing social media channel because it’s just not our age group for the most part, but I did it.  

And I was like, Oh my gosh, it didn’t really work. I gotta do this on a weekly basis now. Or do something to, to be coachable. I reached out to me like, dude, that’s awesome. I’m so glad to hear it. And he’s like, I reached out, you only had like 300 people on, in his room speaking. And I’m like this only, the second one that actually looked to implement in the first 72 hours.  

So if you learn something for going to a conference, you know, you can’t learn and implement everything, but try to implement something or two or three things in the first 72 hours, the first 24 hours that you can. And that’ll help you grow. Your audience will help you with your, uh, uh, excitement as well and help you grow.  

I mean, there’s no, and don’t be afraid to screw up. I can tell you that I screw up all the damn time. You can never, you can’t fall on your face without falling forward is the way I like to put it. Okay. Yeah. And you know, what I’ve experienced is that, that people are actually more relatable when they screw up.  

And so it’s actually, in some circumstances it can be a good thing. Amen to that, man, you learn the most by your mistakes, not by your successes, for sure. Yeah. Well, we’ve talked about all these successes. Let’s kind of take the opposite approach. Uh, I I’m assuming that you had some hard knocks and some learning experiences.  

What are some of the rougher points that you could maybe give your younger self advice or something that could help our audience? Uh, Oh man. There’s so many great things. Um, okay. I would say don’t bite off more than you can chew. You know, that’s the thing is I think a lot of people over, um, over embrace some things like I bought a big portfolio earlier on that I wasn’t ready for granted. 

 It almost broke me cause I didn’t have my systems in place. I didn’t have, uh, the people in place to help out with it. It took time. It delayed my success on that by at least a good six months. Cause I was busy working, doing that. So that’s a big thing. How have your systems in place. Don’t be afraid to, you know, to crawl then walk before you run. 

 Um, I’ve golly, anytime I got outside of my, my, my, my bread, when I try to do something different and bigger or something like that, as far as like a bigger property, it ended up eating my lunch. And so if you can find something that you’re good at your bread and butter, just stay in that wheelhouse, you know, maybe you don’t need to be buying 200 assets.  

Maybe you need to buy just 50. At a time or 20 at a time. Um, you, if you’re working part time or working, and this is a part time thing for you, Hey, roll your numbers back. No you’re buying one a month, whatever it may be, whatever your one thing is. Focus on it and just try to be focused in it, for sure. 

 Pull out the gun and kill the other things are distracting you. That’s the best thing I can tell you. Uh, a book that I love reading and I love to give away is the, uh, Oh my gosh. It’s written by Napoleon Hill. Uh, it’s uh, outwitting. The devil is a title of the book and it talks, it talks about drifting. So outwitting the devil by Napoleon Hill and Sharon Lechter basically rewrote it.  

She’s the coauthor of rich dad, poor dad. If anybody understands that book. Cool. Uh, where, how, how many, how many gadgets you got on your desk there? That, that you keep busting out noises. Oh, you just got lawn. He’s got, he’s got one little sound machine with a hundred pads on. I got like, I’ve got six of these things with different ones, but this is the one I’ve had the longest and others. 

 It’s just easier. Yeah. 10 bucks. One of the best, uh, things I’ve ever bought. I bought it in San Francisco on Columbus Avenue for like 10 bucks and it just cracks me up. Okay. Well, Scott, where do you go from here? What’s the longterm plan. Oh my gosh. I’m constantly changing. Um, we’ve, we’ve made some changes just recently to our business.  

Um, three years ago we were traveling the country. Yeah, myself and VP of operations workshops every eight weeks somewhere. And when you spend 35, 40 weeks in the road, that’s not a fun life. It was fun, you know, being divorced and single dynamic kid so I can get away with it. But, um, at some point you get to come home and focus. 

 So three years, three, three and a half years ago, I guess now we went and started doing everything online. Like we do online workshops, online boot camps now without the heavy overhead of a hotel. And, you know, we’ll get 600 to 800 people on one of those, which is great. But really kind of streamlining, um, podcasting has really changed my focus in the last 18 months.  

I’ve been really surprised that, um, the amount of traffic we get and how it really has impacted our bottom line in a positive nature. Uh, just because of the fact we we’ve put out a lot of content, almost daily episodes. And, um, we, you know, I’m, I’m very honored to be on other podcasts like yours today.  

Damon, thank you so much for having me. But we are just trying to bring it in house. We’re, we’re streamlining some of our operations streamlining, some of the things that we offer up just so we can, I can be home, more, enjoy what I’m doing and really kind of just evolve with the times. You know, we do a lot with video.  

We do a lot with like dif podcasts, stuff like that. I think you’ve got to look to doing that because video is the wave of the future. So we’re really leveraging our YouTube channels and, and, and podcasts videos that we do to really. Drive home are our audience and using some of the tools like their Facebook and some of the cool things that LinkedIn is doing as well to really help us expand our audience without having to do so much work, to be on the road.  

So what is it that you like to do on your downtime? I’m a big fan of sporting events. I like going to baseball and football games, concerts. I like traveling. We usually take a, uh, a good two to three week vacation sometimes in the end of may or June, we’re going to Europe again for the third year, second year in a row.  

Um, we do one or two cruises a year. Uh, I’m all about enjoying my time and do it experiences. Whether it’s going to the ballet here in Austin or going to a theater or going to Vegas, it’s just, you want to have fun life is we work too hard. Not to have fun. If you’re in a job that you’re disliking, you need to figure a way out of it.  

Cause it’ll kill you by hating your job. So I just try to have fun if there’s something going on, great. You know, just go out, make a memory, enjoy it. You can’t take that stuff with you. Don’t me wrong. I like making money. And at that pays the bills well for us, but it’s, it’s all about kind of going out and having  experiences and sharing that with your friends and family as well.  

How long of a flight is it for you to Vegas? It’s about a two and a half hour flight. So in Austin, it’s nice. Cause I’m center part of the country. I think I’m there in two hours. I think it’s two and a half to San Diego. So yeah, two hours of Vegas. I’m basically two, two and a half hours like Tampa or Orlando sometimes between three hours to Chicago.  

So I can pretty much get anywhere. Um, I would not be surprised if you see me somewhere in the next couple of years where I’m, I’m somewhere tropical the entire time. Yeah. But not a beat. That’s what I think I really want to it’s Puerto Rico or some other Bahamas or some other Island, and then, you know, Um, in the Caribbean, I like the heat.  

I liked the beach. I liked the energy that comes from water and with us doing so much stuff online, I think it’s possible for us to really be able to achieve those types of dreams. Yeah, that’s cool. Where you’re centrally located. The reason I ask is, is I do what I call day trips. And, um, a lot of people are surprised about that.  

So, you know, I’m not as centrally located as you are about the only place I can go. It was either Vegas or San Diego in two hours or less. But what I do is I catch a 6:00 AM flight, go spend the day, and then, you know, I want to get back home with my wife and kids. And then I catch a 6:00 PM flight back.  

Um, just go do a round trip in a day and it’s it. It does the trick, you know, gives you that little reset. No. Yeah, totally. If you, whether you’re going to an event or they’re catching the flight out the first morning, if you’re staying the night, I totally agree. We’ve done. Uh, I’ve done a lot of those over the years with different things of going on for concerts or sporting events.  

Um, it’s, it’s a total, you know, recharge button to, um, especially traveling. You want to make sure you have your systems down when you do it. And then the beautiful thing with the internet. And if you got your laptop or even your smartphone, you can do business from just about anywhere these days. Yeah, well, Scott Carson, um, I want to give you the opportunity to, uh, put a website and any contact information you want to throw out there.  

Easy, really easy. If your audience wants to learn more, just go to weclosenotes.com that’s weclosenotes is our website. Tons of great information on there. Tons of blogs or podcasts. The note closers show. Is a, it’s a number one, it’s a hot and upcoming podcast industry. Number one in our niche of note investing.  

Um, but you can check us out at weclosenotes.com. We’ve got all our, everything on there. If you’d like to get more information, um, you can always pull out your smartphone and text the word notes and NOTES to the phone number 70 20007 to triple zero, send notes to that, and then send you back a link for over 80 hours of video training and PowerPoint, kind of the note business.  

Very cool, Scott. I appreciate your time. Uh, before we go, we surprise our guests with a random question generator and we have a formal jingle. Now let’s hear it.  

Beep boop random question generator. Scott, what are your go to websites to waste time on.  

You’re gonna have to share that with me, that was frigging goal. What did I go to websites to waste time? Um, man, I would probably say Facebook comedy central, and then I spend some, I spend quite a bit of time on YouTube as well. So those are probably the three things I’m always laughing at things. So that’s why I spend time on comedy central.  

I’ll probably waste a lot of time on espn.com as well too. Alright, there you go. Scott Carson, we closed notes.com. Thank you, sir. Thanks Damon. That’s awesome, man. So I’m honored to be here. Appreciate it.