You can’t be all things to all people because it’s virtually impossible. Even if it is possible, it certainly won’t be a road leading to your personal and professional growth. At some point, you’ll exhaust yourself while striking at the wind. Today, Scott Carson shares his expertise in defining a marketing niche. He discusses how to find your ideal niche by identifying which 3 categories people fall into is your best market. And once you find them, there is a better way to fine-tune your niche and get your systems in place. Of course, hurdles and adversities are part of the entrepreneurial journey, but Scott has some good advice on how to get past them. Do not be a “secret agent” where your works, regardless of how amazing they are, are kept hidden. It won’t do your market any good, so today’s takeaway is: reach out and take action!
“Just take action. The only thing you’re guarantee by not taking action is failure.”
Highlights:
03:23 When Mortgage Gets Distressed
07:08 Riches Are in the Niches-What Niches?
09:16 The Big Difference Between a Risk and a Calculated Risk
20:03 3 Types of People- Choose Your Niche
23:54 Biggest Hurdles For Entrepreneurs and How to Get Past Them
26:48 Reactive Marketing vs. Proactive Marketing
28:00 Do Not be a “Secret Agent”
31:00 Reach Out and Take Action!
Know your market. Tune in with @arlene_gale and @1scottcarson on how to overcome the mindset of becoming all things to all people. Know the truth about marketing success and riches. #BookWritingBusiness #BusinessBuildingBooks #niche… Click To Tweet
Quotes:
07:14 “The riches are in the niches. You have to know what that niche is.” -Scott Carson
09:19 “A lot of business people take risks even though they don’t understand the difference between a risk and a calculated risk.” -Arlene Gale
23:28 “How do you sift out the people who don’t want to work with you? Make and stay connected with the people who do.” -Arlene Gale
23:54 “A lot of times entrepreneurs struggle with evolving and as a business owner, you’ve got to learn to evolve in your market place.” -Scott Carson
24:51 “You don’t want to seek advice. You want to seek counsel. There is a difference” -Scott Carson
29:52 “Keep going at it, don’t give up and just stick with what you want to accomplish and you’ll get it done.”-Scott Carson
30:22 “I approach things a little bit differently. ‘I could do it’ versus ‘not doing it,’ it solved a lot of issues.” -Scott Carson
31:50 “Just take action. The only thing you guarantee by not taking action is failure.” -Scott Carson
Meet Scott:
Scott Carson is the host of the popular The Note Closers Show Podcast and a nationally syndicated Radio Host. He has been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002, focused on the niche of distressed mortgage and note industry since 2008. He is a highly sought-after speaker and podcast guest with hundreds of speaking appearances and conferences at real estate clubs, conferences, and networking events across the country. He’s also been featured in many media outlets, including but not limited to Investors Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc.com. He spends his free time attending sporting events, concerts and traveling to new places.
Transcription:
Arlene Gale: Welcome everybody, this is going to be a fun program. Do you ever meet somebody and right away you hear them speak and they get like a dozen words out of their mouth, and you want to stand up, and you want to go, ‘Amen, Amen. Preach it, preach it.’ Well, I tried real hard not to embarrass myself that way when I met Scott Carson, who is my guest today because Scott gets it. I’m always talking about, you can’t be all things to all people, and when it comes to marketing and growing your business, you need to really fine tune your niche. So we’re going to talk to Scott today about fine tuning his niche and where he started, why he started that way. And so that’s one of the myths we’re gonna talk about is, the myth about, Oh, I can’t possibly go that narrow, I’ll never be able to build a business. So we’re going to talk about phooey, that’s not true, yes. And the other thing we’re going to talk about is making adjustments in your business because you have to be aware of how the marketplace in your target market changes because if you aren’t, you’re not going to change and therefore you’re going to not exist in the marketplace anymore.
So with that, let me bring on my expert Scott Carson. He is the host of the popular The Note Closers Show Podcast and a nationally syndicated radio host. He has been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002. He’s focused on the niche of distressed mortgages and in the note industry since 2008. He is a highly sought after speaker and podcast guests with hundreds of speaking appearances at conferences, real estate clubs, and networking events across the country. He’s also been featured in many mass media outlets including but not limited to Investor’s Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc.com. He spends his free time attending sporting events, concerts, and traveling to new places. And he’s a neighbor of mine. He lives down South of me in Austin, Texas.
So with that, welcome Scott.
Scott Carson: Hey, I am honored to be here today. Arlene. Honestly excited, love what you’re doing with the podcast, and just a joy, it’s good to catch up with you.
Arlene Gale: It is great to catch up with you too. So first, we have to define a term because I started working in a market that dealt with distressed mortgages. Now I know what it looks like and feels like when I’m distressed, but Scott, what does a mortgage look like when it’s distressed?
Scott Carson: Well, some people are distressed. I kind of feel like this, they’re feeling kind of down the dump.
Arlene Gale: You’re using my soundbite, my life soundbite.
Scott Carson: I come from a financial background, financial advisor, mortgage banker, and then when everything hit the fan in the downturn of 2008, on the origination side of being a mortgage broker and banker to jumping on their side, starting to buy this debt direct from banks, a note broker, I guess you could say. And we bought a distress mortgage as somebody who’s not paying their mortgage. And usually six to 12 months or longer in some cases that we see, and we buy that debt direct from banks and real estate funds become the bank. We buy that at a big discount, and that gives us a lot of flexibility to reach back out to the homeowners and try to negotiate some sort of win-win solution of modifying, or trial payment plan, or sometimes they walk away, sometimes we have to foreclose. But we really try to, we make our money on getting them re-performing. And I’d like to say, we like to rehab the borrower. We’re making America great again one mortgage at a time.
Arlene Gale: Okay, well that’s an admirable goal. So let me ask you, when you first started in 2008 dealing with distressed mortgages, what percentage of the real estate market was that? Can you quantify that? How small is it?
Scott Carson: There’s two things. In 2010, we had a peak 15 million homeowners that were underwater, or more on their house and went to work. Today, one in 10 homeowners, or at least a month behind on their mortgage. Even though we’ve had a great run up and the markets are bounded, I mean, we had a lot of foreclosures. A lot of people lost their homes. I don’t know the specifics of it, the specific government number, but I will tell you this real estate investing, real estate is such a large niche, large genre out there. There’s all sorts of different strategies. I’ll tell you that the note investing side is really probably the smallest niche inside that larger demographic,, you have wholesalers, you’ve got Fix and Flippers, you’ve got landlords, you’ve got Airbnb rent, you’ve got commercial realtors, mortgage brokers that kind of fall in that aspect too. But we really only thought back in that time that was maybe 5,000, maybe 10,000 true note investors like myself in the country are going out and targeting this distress debt. It just we didn’t have it, and it just, it was, it’s really become a secondary market that’s popped up in the last 15 years that most people didn’t know. I mean, we’ve always had mortgages, and people have always bought and sold mortgages. If you bought a new house, you’d probably got a letter after that your mortgage has been sold. That’s always happened on the institutional side. But we had this kind of perfect storm where the banks just didn’t know what to do with this stuff, and the normal not buyers went away so it left an opportunity. I like to say for people like me or institutions like ours, they come in and kind of live off the crumbs for the most part, and kind of dictate what happened, obviously is the market’s rebound and come strong. A lot of other real estate investors that can’t find deals, either rental properties or properties at Fix and Flippers like they do on TV, those markets are getting squeezed because so many people can jump in and make money right now on real estate because it’s bounded up. But as the inventory’s gotten low there, you’ve seen an influx of people coming into our niche because they’re looking for deals that aren’t normally where you’re going to find them, pricing’s better, we have a lot better marketing strategies for finding deals versus a one off strategy that a lot of these other investors deal with. So it’s been nice to dominate a niche because that’s really what I decided to do. It’s like, okay, let me stop doing everything else that I was doing. I just focus on one thing and get to own that, and own and control that one niche area.
Arlene Gale: So, but that’s a very scary place for a lot of business owners to go is to go after those crumbs. So what made you decide that it was okay to go after crumbs? Did that not worry you? Did you not get criticism about that?
Scott Carson: Yeah, that comes with every entrepreneur. The thing I think you’ve realized is a mentor of mine years ago told me that “the riches are in the niches.” You have to know what that niche is. Now, there are some really small niches that people get excited about in products and things like that, but nobody wants to buy. You have to know if there’s a true market there versus you just wasting money and time trying to pump something into a passion project. Fortunately for me, I knew there was plenty of opportunity there because I was making phone calls and dropping emails out to asset managers at banks and getting lists sent to me that I couldn’t buy it all. So whereas everyone else was struggling, I was getting deals well below market value. I mean, pennies on the dollar. So I knew there’s opportunities. I just need to figure out how to get demonetize and get my systems in place. Because there was really only two or three people back in the entire industry over a decade ago that was teaching distressed debt investing. So one of my favorite quotes has always been Ralph Waldo Emerson talking about how “I’m a butcher but don’t follow a path, go out and carve your own path and lead people,” lead people to solutions, stuff like that. I just said this morning, I butchered it now, but that’s my been my favorite sane. So I’ve always felt like I was kind of that path finder, that creator show people how to do it, and that’s what really led to my success. As I shared what I was going through via Facebook videos, or something little on YouTube videos that I was failing, and making phone calls, getting hung up 50 times, hold up 50 first phone call, I get somebody, or I go out and walk around a bunch of note deals in Florida, and I just led by example, and people really started to take notice of that. I was like, okay, when you would Google out, I was the only guy that popped up because I was doing marketing in the 21st century unlike, I guess you say my competition or our peers who were just still not doing, not embracing video, or not praising Facebook or LinkedIn. I was going out and actually doing that stuff that it helped me dominate my niche so that when I would travel, I would walk into a room, or a networking couple of people like, Oh, they wouldn’t know my name, but they would say, Hey, you’re that note guy because I watched you. And that’s what led to kind of be called “the note guy.”
“The riches are in the niches. You have to know what that niche is.” -Scott Carson Click To TweetArlene Gale: Yeah, there you go. Well, and so a lot of business people, they take risks, and they don’t understand the difference between a risk and a calculated risk. It sounds to me that you went and you talk to people in your target market, potential clients, you did your research. So while really going into this really this little crumb of a niche, you didn’t just go out and risk it all that you took calculated risks by knowing what you were going into.
“A lot of business people take risks even though they don't understand the difference between a risk and a calculated risk.” -Arlene Gale Click To TweetScott Carson: Yeah, I mean, I was a little bit different too. I was in a very good situation, and somebody was, we’ll crack up this, but I’d been divorced. I’d just gotten divorced for about a year. I had some real estate deals that were going South myself. So I had some distressed assets at that point too. So I just went lean, I knew that I was going to have a bit of a ramp, I need some time to get some things going. So I sold everything I owned except my truck and my dog for the most part. I mean, sold everything on my house. And then I decided, I think I call it divine intervention. I had a, no baseball fan sitting there, and they’re starting to do these baseball commercials for visa like, Hey, $7 for a hot dog, eight bucks for a beer, going to all the major league baseball parks with your son, priceless. And I was like, wow, I have always wanted to do that. I said, well, they say: “If you want to go, write it down.” So I’ve pulled up the map of all the — parks and pulled up ESPN.com, and I planned my virtual 30 week trip to see all the big Major League Baseball Parks. Wrote down the dates, I had it actually into my calendar who was playing in specific times. At the same time, I was already writing articles, or doing short videos, or running blogs. I’m like case studies, and deals that I closed, or specific things and just posting them out there. And in the matter of like three weeks before the 1st of April, I had four investment clubs reach out to me and say: “Hey, would you come speak to our club?” “Or can we use your blogs, and you come speak to us.” And I’m like: “Well, when do you want me to come speak?” And the days they wanted me to come speak with were exactly what I would be in that city for ballgame.
Arlene Gale: Wow.
Scott Carson: Philadelphia, New York, Florida, Atlanta. And I was like, okay, God’s telling me something there. So that’s when I said, okay, let’s do this. Let’s be committed here. Let’s cut our costs. Let’s get rid of all of our expenses, just walk away from, it turns that these deals back over to our investors, make them happy. And I said, look, I have nothing to lose. If worst case, I can call my mom or call my family and say, Hey, I need some gas money to come home, and couch surf for a couple months, and then go from there. So that was the plan is like, in 30 weeks turned into three and a half years on the road nonstop. And it just blossomed because nobody was doing what I was doing. I was going out and knocking on doors at banks and talking with asset managers, and it just really created this whole movement. I had students sign up for my training, and they were like: “Hey, I’ve got a condo you can rent for a month if you’re in town.” And I was like: “Let’s do it.”
Arlene Gale: Wow.
Scott Carson: It really blossomed, and I took a risk, it was a calculated risk. I didn’t have 30 grand in the bank. I think when I took off, I think I had like three, or four, or five grand in the bank, but I knew I could make money along the way. I’d flip some deals and make it happen. And that was a bit of a roller coaster ride, those first couple of six months. But after that, it’s just been an amazing ride.
Arlene Gale: Well, and I can tell you that there are a lot of people who can relate to one, or two, or three, or all of the elements that you just spoke about. And I personally, I don’t believe in luck. I don’t believe in sitting around in the living room, in your underwear playing games systems, then you get that knock on the door. I believe we make our luck. And it sounds to me like that’s one of the things that has led to your success is that you did not sit on mama’s sofa, you did get out and make things happen.
Scott Carson: Yup. Well, that’s the thing. You never know what opportunities will prevail. And there’s times that I just showed up, like I’d be in a city, and I’ll give you a great example. I was down in Miami, and I’d gone to the Marlins and watched them play, and then there was a local networking event going on the next night in town, and I went by there, and I just went and attended. I didn’t live in Miami, I just showed up for this real estate investing club, I met an attorney there and we got to talk in, and he’s still a vendor and a friend of mine to this day, we’ve done a lot of business, but it just led to introductions, I think I say lucky, but I think you do make your own luck. By just showing up, gotta show up, that’s the biggest thing. Most people don’t show up and then you just gotta be committed that you can’t be one to all. I wasn’t like, Oh, Hey, I’m the wholesaler, I’m not the note guy, I’m the Fix and Flip guy. I was like, Hey, I know my niche, here’s what I focus on. It was nice that there was an opportunity at that time, there still is to this day, but I just focused and that’s all I did, and kind of showed up and just kept working hard, and things paid off.
Arlene Gale: So that, I mean, and there’s great wisdom there, and I think can be applied to any business, and any entrepreneur, business professional, whether they’re just beginning, or whether they’ve hit some bumps along the road, and they’ve been on this journey for awhile. So we’re going to take a quick break, but that leads me to, the economy has changed and shifted since you’ve been in business more than, what, 10, 12 years as a note, so I want to talk about, how do you respond to market shifts and grow your niche so that you can survive those kinds of shifts. But then I also want to come back and talk to you a little bit about, what you see a lot of entrepreneurs struggling with the most. So hang with me, we’re gonna talk to Scott about these two loaded questions that I’m sure he’s going to have great insight and wisdom about. So we’ll be right back with Mindset Meets Mastery with Arlene Gale and Scott Carson in just a moment.
Welcome back everybody. So today we’re talking to Scott Carson about marketing niches and just building business in general. And before we took our break, we were talking about market growth, and market shifts, and the economy’s better now than it was when you started as the Note Closer dealing with specifically just distressed mortgages. So you gave us some statistics, and there are less distressed mortgages now than when you started. So what made you smart enough to know that you had to do something different? And how did you shift, and grow, and in essence even survive as the market changed around you?
Scott Carson: A great question. I think one of the biggest things is that we realized a long time ago that as an entrepreneur, we’re not really in the note business, we’re in the media business. And all of us out there, you have to embrace that fact that that’s where everything’s going. Everything’s going video, everything’s, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the greatest pizza in the world. If nobody knows that you have the greatest pizza in the world, you’re not going to sell any pies. So what changed and evolved is that we were traveling across the country speaking, hosting events, doing trainings, and I got burnt out after that three and a half years. I had a lot of fun live like a rock star. I was like, I couldn’t do this anymore. Success came from failure. We were going to put on an event in Houston, and we dropped over 25 grand in marketing postcards. We had a big ticket with a hotel for room blocks and AV, and I had a great lineup but nobody bought tickets to it. And so the week before the event, I just pulled the plug on it, canceled it, called all the speakers and told them I’d have them on webinar later on, and they were all grateful that they didn’t have to jump on a plane to talk to themselves. I was very stressed about this, and I’d always been doing webinars and kind of marketing that way on a weekly basis, and showing up every Monday night for like eight years straight to my audience being consistent, and showing up with content, and give them the tools. We are driving from Austin up to Dallas for some other event, I don’t know what it was, my VP of operations is significant and she’s like: “Well, why don’t you just do an online event?” I’m like: “Oh, no, people like the in person networking.” And I was like: “Well wait a second, we might have something here.” So we evolved and I said: “Let’s give it a try.” My whole staff was against it, my sales staff was against we do an online event, they like the in person stuff. Everybody told me I would fail.
Arlene Gale: Hmm, that’s nice (laughed).
Scott Carson: I’m like: “That’s fine, we will give it one try. We’ll do it one weekend.” So we did it. We had a hundred people show up that they stayed 90% of the time, our sales were great, but the most important thing was that our overhead was dramatically reduced, and our costs, I mean, I was able to stay home, sleep in my own bed, eat my own food, do everything from my office. And so it was a huge success, everybody loved it, and we said, okay, we’re onto something here. We’re doing something different than everybody else. This makes it EASIER for people to connect with us because they don’t have to jump on a plane and buy that ticket, or pay for hotels. If they’ve got an internet connection, they can join us live. So I canceled my whole sleight of in-person hotel events.
Arlene Gale: Wow.
Scott Carson: Most of my staff, because I didn’t need them at that point. And we just don’t–
Arlene Gale: That would teach them to be naysayers.
Scott Carson: Exactly. Well, that event, now we’ve done everything online, grown our event where we have consistently a 100 to 300 people paid attendees in our online workshops. We’ve done a big summit a couple of times, at least once a year, and that’s had anywhere from like 700 to 1100 people will attend. And that really helped us launch a whole different phase of us marketing, and being in the media side, and delivering our content and our knowledge to our, as we call it “note nation” across the versus being in specific cities. So much and so many different ways of getting people in our classes, as soon as that wouldn’t have discovered us to begin with. And we’ve had some blow back a little bit, people like, well, I still like an in person event, and I’m like: “That’s great. Hey, if we have one we’ll let you know. But otherwise, maybe you’re not our student anymore.” And that’s the thing too is I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. The way I teach is, I don’t want everybody in my stuff. Somebody is being negative? I’m like, here’s your money back. Go your separate ways. A buddy of mine who’s a mentor, Gregory, told me a long time ago that the people that we know kind of fall into three categories, you’ve got your 33% of category people that know you, love you, they support you, their fans, cheerleaders, 16 clients. You have another group on the opposite side that hate you, no matter what you do, they dislike it because of your race, your color, your big, what you wear, what you look like. They’re not going to like it because they have a dark soul for a whole, I mean, a dark hole for a soul. What you have though, and then you have this middle group of people that don’t know you or they might be on the fence. And as entrepreneurs, instead of us trying to worry about pleasing everybody, we need to worry about pleasing the 33% that love us, and then showing how we’re different and how special we are in that middle group, and learned that 66% is still a freaking phenomenal pond. And forget about that other group, the dark group of people that dislike you. Just focusing your energy on those, you can have nothing but positive energy and moving forward with a good two thirds of the audience.
Arlene Gale: Right. That is such a big deal to so many people that they focus on that small percentage who don’t know them and still don’t like them. They’re just the type of person who’s just not happy unless they’re unhappy and trying to take somebody down with them. And I run into that a lot, and I guess I get that feeling too that sometimes it’s hard, somebody so negative that they start to suck you into that. One of the things I try and remember, and I try and tell people that I do marketing with is that, when somebody looks you in the eye, or sends you a note, or an email, or a text, or in whatever form they communicate with you and they say, I don’t get you, or I don’t like you, or I would never do business with you. I kind of say: “Just kind of sit up tall, put your feet on the ground, and just own the fact that you just need to tell them THANK YOU.” And that’s when people look at me like I’ve just gone certifiably nuts. No, you say thank you because what they’ve done is they’ve saved you the time and trouble of pursuing them. They have told you they are not your target market, they are not your client. So say thank you and move on. Because like you said, you’ve got so much more numbers of people who are wanting to work with you, or at least know more about you. Just say thank you, move on.
Scott Carson: Yeah. That’s the biggest thing, and I kinda like to shake it up a little bit, I’m not afraid to be a little edgy. So my marketing piece, when the Fifty Shades of Grey series was coming out and I called it 50 shades of notes, you feel like you’re getting spanked by your borrowers, you feel like you’ve got a bug when it comes to talking to investors. And I ain’t even seen the movie or anything like that, and — I just chuckled because it was a huge open rate. And those people that came back that were upset, they were like: “Oh, you’re [inaudible], we’re gonna subscribe.” I’m like: “That’s fine. Thank you.” Thank you. My marketing works, thank you very much.
Arlene Gale: Yeah, you gotta be true to you and market in a way that gets attention, and sometimes it can be, it’s not a straight narrow path, it can take us in different directions. But what you said is great because I’ve never seen Fifty Shades of Grey. I’ve never read the books, but just because of what’s in the marketplace, I got what you said, just like other people. So that’s brilliant marketing, how do you stay current, and how do you communicate with people who, and sift out the people who don’t want to work with you. So you connect with the people who do. So I think it’s brilliant, I like it. So tell me a little bit about what you see is the biggest hurdle or blog when it comes to entrepreneurs are struggling. What is something that you see is such a big hurdle for entrepreneurs?
“How do you sift out the people who don't want to work with you? Make and stay connected with the people who do.” -Arlene Gale Click To TweetScott Carson: So a lot of times, entrepreneurs struggle, I mean, struggle with evolving. And as a business owner, you’ve got to learn to evolve your market. Our market’s changed so much in the last 10 years. I’ve had to evolve on how we find holes in our previous sources, and sources we’ve had to change, and go somewhere where other people want it. As our niche has gotten more attractive, the low hanging fruit for sources is kind of dried up and become overpriced, so we’ve had to go out and constantly develop relationships with newer banks and sources. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs get into doing businesses as usual, Oh, we’ve done it like this for years, this is how it always works, and that’s not the case. Another thing is a lot of entrepreneurs are taking, giving advice for people that aren’t in their position or never been where they’re at. So advice is kind of like an A hole, everybody’s got one,
“A lot of times entrepreneurs struggle with evolving and as a business owner, you've got to learn to evolve in your market place.” -Scott Carson Click To TweetArlene Gale: Hey, you stole that from me, or I stole it from someone else. Maybe I stole it from you.
Scott Carson: But I say, you don’t want to seek advice, you want to seek counsel. So talking to people where you’re at, or where you want to be and talk to them, they’ll often give you good advice. You can see what they’re doing and adjust appropriately. With that a lot in the real estate stuff where people are doing something, we’re doing two years ago, and the market’s changed and evolved, and it keeps dumping money into marketing that’s outdated and old when you’ve got to do something new these days. So that’s the thing, you always got to be evolving. You’ve always gotta be looking forward. I think you need to make sure you’re focused on providing good quality stuff to your existing clients because it’s always easier to keep a client than it is to go find a new one. But you’ve got to keep your stuff fresh, and change it up. Because if you start to get stagnant, unfortunately, a lot of people have that squirrel mentality, that shiny object syndrome. So you’ve got to stay fresh, and that’s all. We shake it up with our marketing and we try to keep it fresh. Different movies that are coming out like Star Wars, we decided to think called Note Wars. When the Marvel, Iron Man or Civil War, we did a whole piece on civil war between first and second mortgages and the differences of that. So we look at marketing, and it’s not, I mean, if you’d have a hard time with, there’s a lot of places online, there’s a lot of college kids that understand this stuff. You can hire a VA to do a lot of work for you if it doesn’t come natural to you, but just always be evolving, always looking to add something new to what you’re doing and keep it fresh.
“You don't want to seek advice. You want to seek counsel. There is a difference” -Scott Carson Click To TweetArlene Gale: Well, I think the keyword there is “looking.” So many entrepreneurs get, they’re looking down, they’re trying to meet the client’s needs, they’re trying to continue to bring business in, they’re on the computer, they’re not looking around them. Does that make sense? They’re not figuring out where they’re going next. They’re in survival mode instead of growth mode. They’re being reactive instead of proactive.
Scott Carson: Yeah, you see a lot of reactive versus proactive. So one thing that I did was a little bit different. I kind of went the opposite of what I’ve been doing. Last November, I just decided I’m going to go out and start networking locally. We don’t have a big presence of note investors or note deals here in Texas because we’ve had a pretty good market. Most of the stuff I buy is outside of Texas, but I just wanted to get out and start building a little bit more to local roots with things. So I started actually going out and attending BNI groups three times a week, at least, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, sometimes at lunch as well besides morning. It’s just a way to expand my network and get to know people locally. And it’s led to other opportunities that work well with what we’re doing right now.
Arlene Gale: Well, so Scott, we’re almost out of time, but before we finish, I want to do two things. The first thing I want to do is to put you on the hot seat, I’d like to ask you three questions I ask all my guests. So you ready?
Scott Carson: Yes, ma’am.
Arlene Gale: For you personally, what is a mindset that hindered you from building your business anywhere along the way?
Scott Carson: So early on I had the mindset, I was getting all these lists from banks, and I had this mindset that, I’d just gone through the divorce. I have all the money on a bad deals, these deals was like, I don’t have the capital to buy this one or this one. And I didn’t use my own words going out, and marketing, and talking to people. And how I felt in my personal life affect my business life a little bit. I should’ve gone and start marketing, start to reach out to people. And that was one thing that I look back on and that hindered me, and took a little while to get over it, which it does for a lot of people, right? But I just like, I don’t have the money, I can’t do this. It took a little while to evolve like, Hey, I can do this. I just gotta get up the word of what I’m doing and share it, and not be a secret agent. And when it comes to sharing the deals that I have, and that there’s plenty of bills to go around to.
Arlene Gale: So what was the mindset shift, or what was the mindset that, when you started feeling down because things in your personal life must define who you are in your professional life or that kind of thinking. What was something that got you out of that spiral? What was a mindset that helped you get up and keep doing it?
Scott Carson: I reached out to somebody, I reached out to a mentor of mine, I reached out to a couple of guys that I recommend, or I talked to on a pretty regular basis and mentors. There’s a guy, Mark Victor Hansen is the guy, maybe you recognize him, I listened to tapes and CDs, and I was at an event that he was speaking at, and there was a series that I listened to over, and over, and over again. And I went up to him after he finished speaking during the network time and I introduced myself to him, and told him I listened to this thing, how it was impactful to me. He pulled me aside, he goes: “Scott, I wrote that or record that when I was at my lowest point as well. And I understand what you’re feeling and keep going at it, don’t give up, and just stick with what you want to accomplish and you’ll get it done.” And that was one of the most impactful moments I can remember is just having that, Oh, I think we all look at successful people as they’ve always been successful. And the most successful people have always gone through trials and tribulations. And I just have to realize, Hey, it was just part of my journey, and not be afraid to get out, share what I’m doing. And literally within 30 days, I was off, and rock and on because I just had a little different mindset. I approach things a little bit differently that I could do it versus not doing it. And it solved a lot of issues.
“Keep going at it, don't give up and just stick with what you want to accomplish and you'll get it done.”-Scott Carson Click To TweetArlene Gale: Yeah. Because I think you’re absolutely right. As people look at successful people and think, Oh, they had it easy. Look where they are? And we forget that we don’t know the hurdles they’ve had to crawl over or under to get where they are. And the key is, I think what you’re saying is just don’t quit.
“I approach things a little bit differently. ‘I could do it’ versus ‘not doing it,’ it solved a lot of issues.” -Scott Carson Click To TweetScott Carson: Exactly. Don’t give up. If you’re dealing with an issue, pick up the phone and call somebody. Most of people in your field are also the most willing to give up their time for a few minutes to give you some ideas to avoid hurdles and things that they’ve run into. And everybody has ups and downs. I don’t care who you are, I mean, you look at some of the most funny people like Chris Farley, one of the funniest people and would also the most torn emotionally, so don’t be afraid to reach out. So if you’re struggling, stop what you’re doing and go talk to somebody, have a little bit of humble pie and be coachable. Don’t be so headstrong that you know everything, trust me, you don’t. And sometimes a 10 minute or 15 minute phone call can make all the difference in how you approach things on what you’re dealing with, and you find a way around it.
Arlene Gale: So you may have just skirted around, my final hot seat question is, if you had one nugget, if this was the ONLY or last piece of information of wisdom of Scott Carson wisdom that you could share with somebody so that they would move forward wherever they are in business, what would that be?
Scott Carson: Oh, just take action. The only thing you guarantee by not taking action is failure, that’s the only thing you guarantee. If you don’t take action, you’re going to still be where you’re at. So you might as well take action and be further along by failing or fail forward. That’s the biggest thing, just getting the game. So many people sit around and make resolutions or want to do things, and they’re scared or fearful. Just go do something. You’re going to learn so much more from it. And you have to realize that if you share that journey and share what you’re doing, there’s a lot of people out there that don’t have the wherewithal to do it and they’ll respect you for failing for it, they’ll respect you for taking that leap or that leap of faith, and believe in yourself because a lot of people who don’t believe in themselves,. Just believe in yourself, you can get it done, and success is closer than you believe. You just to go out there and get off your butt, and go take action.
“Just take action. The only thing you guarantee by not taking action is failure.” -Scott Carson Click To TweetArlene Gale: I like that. A great way to draw this podcast episode to a close. But before we leave, please tell people how they can connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing.
Scott Carson: Yeah, so it’s really easy. Just go to my website for the most part, weclosenotes.com, it’s where everything’s at, our podcast or episodes. My email is scott@weclosednotes.com. If you’re out there struggling with something, Hey, I’m always glad just spend a few minutes with ya, and talk with you, and just listen to you. Sometimes people just need to vent a little bit, you know what I mean? And then just give you an honest counsel, if I don’t know what you’re going through, I’ve got a pretty good network, and Arlene’s got an amazing network. We’re always glad to help out any way that we can for you. So don’t sit there and suffer in silence. Reach out to me. Reach out to anybody, okay.
Arlene Gale: That’s right. The key is reach out. Thank you Scott so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Such great wisdom of what the myths and mindsets are that hold us back, and insight to help us move forward to master those myths. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here today. I appreciate it so much.
Scott Carson: Anytime, I’m honored. And guys and gals, go on over to iTunes, make sure you subscribe and leave Arlene a five star review, she’s doing a great job. So it’s one of the great things that we as podcasters love to seize those reviews because sometimes we feel like we’re talking just out in a void and when we get those reviews and five stars, it just makes everything so awesome.
Arlene Gale: It absolutely does. And return the favor to Scott Carson to Note Closers Show, right? Did I get that right?
Scott Carson: Yes ma’am. That’s The Note Closers Show, yep.
Arlene Gale: Yay. So listeners, I want to leave you with this thought. “Do not let the world dictate your story. Be mindful of the stories you tell yourself about what is or is not possible in your life. You get to choose to write your own story every single day.