The Note Closers Show Podcast

Portland firefighter, Neil Clasen, has been real estate investor selling off rentals for the last fifteen years. However, he wanted to look for cash flow rather than long-term deals so he sold off his business and got into notes. He said he likes helping people and the note business cash flow gives him the opportunity to make some money and also to help people who are willing to work with him. He talks about that that he closed in less than 90 days. He said your first note deal may not be a good deal, but it’s priceless on the education side. You learn more from getting your hands dirty and doing things than from any type of book or coaching. He advises making sure you know what you’re talking about because people are going to be willing to work with you no matter who you are. If you're willing to take to make the deal happen, so are they.

If you have been in the note closing industry, you know that it is a number’s game. In the last 30 days, how many individual posts have you done on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest? How many videos have you published in YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook? All the numbers that you get from these questions will immediately tell you how well are you doing with your business. Long-term success is built with daily increments that you do now instead of later. Create a daily schedule for yourself that will tell you if you have or haven’t done something, because as the numbers go up from three, to six to twelve, this directly translates to closing deals and raising Capital.

Note Camp Provides education for people about the note closing industry. It also helps a lot with planning how we can help investors for the next six months. We want to see attendees doing more marketing, not just during the event, but going forward for their own businesses. Note Camp teaches note closers to step out of their comfort zone and share their strengths and weaknesses, how they find their deals and how many can they closed in the past 12 months.

Even with social media dictating the pace of how people are messaging each other these days, people still read their emails because it is still the best way to communicate to people from a business standpoint. Your database is your number one tool for marketing if you’re a real estate investor or entrepreneur and sending out emails consistently to your database is the key to success of closing deals and winning. You don’t have to be a social media guru to pull it off, but you do have to invest time and money because in every dollar spent on email marketing on a regular basis, results to 44% ROI.

Starbucks Coffee has 8,000 branches all over the world, making it an interesting case study for marketing. Having nine people run their social media generates $22M of company revenue for 300,000 plus employees and they are using the same Instagram and Facebook app that you use to attain this huge amount of marketing. It doesn’t matter if you are a solopreneur or a startup investor, you are going to start the same way they did, by yourself. The difference is you are more agile and mobile when you build your network and use the same marketing tools they did. Combine that with focusing on what you’re good at, whether its brewing coffee or closing fix and flips, the key is to keep consistency on that focus until you reach the top.

Quest IRA has always been holding weekly classes on IRA investing that can help you go from point A to Z really fast. This April, all these crash courses will be in a one-day self-directed IRA bootcamp. Nate Hare, Quest IRA Executive VP, explains that the event will teach different creative strategies that most people don’t know are available. Even if you haven’t heard about self-directed IRAs, Nate shares that it is going to be beneficial to anyone because they will go from beginning to the end so you can learn how to maximize your retirement accounts or tax savings.

When you go to an event, the best thing you can do is learn as many tips as you can from the speakers as well as from your fellow investors that are in attendance. There’s always something you can learn whether it’s a small meet up or big event, people are there to share ideas, knowledge and experiences, and you need to become a sponge that absorbs it all as much as you can. Levering events to grow your business simply means levering on people’s time, energy and experience so you can grow your network and reach out to as many people as you can.

A lot of people love their jobs, while others not so much. Whether you do or you don’t, having income from different sources starts to add up. Whether it’s for boosting your retirement or it’s directly correlated to your current job. Finding balance between your job and your passion is always a challenge, more so if your side job is closing notes. To separate your job and passion, the best thing you can do is focus on the hours that are available for you to do your main job and your side job. Create an action plan that will help you transition from one task to another as smooth as possible.

Gene has done a great job of putting together a solid note business plan that has allowed him to focus on his notes business and step away from his full time job. From a hot shot driver, he turned into a hot shot note investor and has successfully turned his note investing his hobby into his full-time income. Gene’s focus is on vacant and non-vacant single family homes, following a business model of waiting a little longer to do a little better. He shares how he made multiple six figures for the past six years by taking it slow instead of doing the work fast like everyone else. He also looks into stuff that not many people would look at, such as double wides, and that like everything else, you need to work hard because it isn’t a get rich quick work, but it will make you rich. Learn from the expert on how you, too, can become a hot shot note investor.

It is rare to see an attorney with multiple licenses, especially if he has ones that are very difficult to be bar certified for. This is why Scott Smith, Owner of Royal Legal Solutions, is considered to have the royal touch in real estate investing. He has been a lawyer and a real estate investor for over a decade which helped develop and sharpen his strategies to protect assets from lawsuits using his experiences in litigation and keep hard assets insured for note investors. Scott shares the importance of looking at all your assets and separating the ones that could have any liability attached to it.

If you had the chance to meet your idol, but you had to play hookie at work to be able to do so, will you do it? In every business, you need to take risks because you never know if playing hookie now and would get you to be painted as a hero later. Most of the time, you will be both hero and hookie, especially if you’re going to do it to meet Tom Hopkins. Learn the story of a successful person willing to help out and give back when he is given the time.

As the market changes rapidly, investors need to adapt in order to survive, unless they want to go back to their full time jobs that they hate. Jason Lucchesi, Founder of No Flipping Excuses, is helping note investors in Indiana stay competitive, proving that people out there doing their businesses really offer no excuses to find and close deals. He shares that Indiana is a great place to buy properties at a very low price, which is great for note buyers who are just starting in the business. Jason also shares how he narrowed down the way to find flipping deals in Indiana.

For a note investors who’s on top, it’s always good to look back on the path you’ve taken ten years ago and realize that it was the road less traveled. You got off from college with a degree that got you the job, you married your college sweetheart, bought a car, and then unexpectedly things turn south. The path may be unclear but you never stopped walking because from these failures will come the success that you’ve been working for. You may feel that right now you’re only working to pay off the bills, but if you think about it, that too is serving a purpose. What’s important is that you learn to keep your focus every time you hit bumps on the road.

One of the key differences of self-storage to other commercial assets is that fair housing laws don’t apply to them because nobody’s living in them. There’s no need to go through the eviction, foreclosures and wait long for lead times to get your money back. Terri Garner and Alia Ott Carter have been in the self-storage market since 2009 and their key to success is being able to connect with people. Whenever they are given the opportunity to get their message out in front of many people, they do so because it is the best way to connect to people and grow their network.

For you to win the note closing game, you need to make the shots, but before you can make the shots you will need to practice. March madness and the note business are pretty much the same because you don’t have to be the big hedge fund or the guy who buys a thousand assets. All you need to do is to be the best at what you do. Being good at closing notes means being consistent with follow ups, sending out emails, and making the phone calls.