“You’re one relationship, one conversation away from exponentially growing your income.” -Scott Carson
In today’s conversation, Shirley and Scott Carson talk about how important your network is, to getting what you want. They cover subjects, such as how to rise after failure, how to set yourself apart by doing something different than others, and how to grow your network while increasing your personal and business potential. And for those of you interested in starting or growing your podcast, learn more about Scotts’ Mass Media Summit Live event and get 50% off when you join! (info below)
Highlights:
02:25 The Note Guy
05:55 What To Do When You’re Not Sure Where To Begin
09:21 Start by Doing Something Different
15:12 Before You Join The Real Estate Game
23:14 Set Yourself Apart
28:00 Expand Your Network
33:18 Buy Assets
35:21 Join The Mass Media Summit Live
Resources:
Books
(NOTE: USE the Code, “Shirley” to avail a discount)
Tweets:
Scale your biz with this networking hacks. Hop on with @SfbaldwinOwens and @1scottcarson in another fun and informative conversation. #getwhatyouwant #realestate #noteclosers #networking #linkedin #setapart #dosomethingdifferent
Quotes:
08:50 “We may not be initially the expert, but that doesn't mean you can't bring experts together.” -Scott Carson
08:55 “If you're around experts, you become looked at as an expert, because we're the average of the five people that we hang out the most with.” -Scott Carson
13:03 “We all have a message; we all got a book inside of us.” -Scott Carson
13:31 “You’re one relationship, one conversation away from exponentially growing your income.” -Scott Carson
16:38 “If you really want to set yourself apart from everybody, it comes down to doing 5% more each day.” -Scott Carson
25:25 “Some people just give up before they ever take action.” -Scott Carson
35:12 “We learn more from our mistakes than our victories all the time.” -Scott Carson
Connect With 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.
For those of you who are wanting to start a podcast, or entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their business in 2020, you should check out the upcoming Mass Media Podcast Summit slated for January 24-26th. It is an online event with an amazing lineup of experts (I'm friends with a ton of the speakers) who will be bringing their expertise and awesome content for three days. Another beautiful thing is that it's an online summit, so no need to spend money on airfare or hotel costs (save your money and put it into marketing)! Also, my buddy Scott Carson (who is putting it on) has given my network a huge discount of 50% off of any ticket level. Just use the code SHIRLEY when you check out http://massmediasummit.live and it'll knock the price in half!
For those that sign up, he is even throwing in a special podcast pitch session for signup on the Thursday before the event so that you can pitch your podcast and shows to the audience!
Transcriptions
Shirley Owens: My guest today is Scott Carson. Scott is the host of the popular The Note Closers Show Podcast, and a nationally syndicated radio host. He has been an active real estate investors and entrepreneurs since 2002, focused on the niche of distress, mortgage, and no industry since 2008. He is a highly sought after speaker and podcast guests with hundreds of speaking appearances and conferences at conferences, real estate clubs, and networking events across the country. He's also been featured in many media outlets including, but not limited to Investor's Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal, and Inc.com. He sends us free time attending sporting events, concerts, and traveling to new places. And he lives in Austin, Texas. Hey Scott.
Scott Carson: What is going on, Shirley? I'm honored to be here today. Congrats on all this success you're having with Get What You Want.
Shirley Owens: Thank you. I'm honored that you would be here with me cause I know you are really highly sought after, I'm excited to have you, and I love that you love sporting events. I think, well, we met at The New Media Summit, and it was a podcast event, but I think that we talked and bonded over baseball. So that was fun to be able to do that.
Scott Carson: That's exactly what we did. I mean, we were talking about podcast, and I asked what you did, you're talking about baseball, and Arizona, and spring training, and I was like, Oh, I just came off, hitting 20 to 30 baseball parks in a year, two years ago, and just a huge baseball fan. So yeah, definitely. Let's knock it out of the park today though.
Shirley Owens: Let's do it. Okay, so I want you to tell me a little bit, we're in the first quarter of the year and there's been a lot of talk about businesses, and entrepreneurs, and I want you to tell me just a little bit about who you are in the business world, what you do, and some of the things that you're having coming up, and just talk about you for a little bit.
Scott Carson: Sure. I think that's a hard thing for a lot of people, but not too bad, I can get through it. So I've been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002, previous mortgage banker, Austin, Texas home. What I've done is, and made my name for myself in the last decade plus years now is, I'm kind of known across the country as the 'Note Guy,' what does that mean? I buy and sell distressed debt. I buy mortgages from banks and investment companies, and our goal is we buy this debt and then become the bank. And then our goal, since we buy mostly non-performing mortgages where people are behind on their mortgage payments is we try to rehab the borrower. We try to keep them their own, through loan modifications, or payment plans, or we let them walk, or we'll do a short sale. We want the borrower to work with us as best we can. Unfortunately, about half the time we still end up having to foreclose because they've either walked away or won't work with. But one of just a handful of people that have been teaching that niche of real estate investing for the last decade, I was the Educator of the Year few years back. And I think one of the biggest things is, I think in business, things are constantly changing. Trends, we've been in a great run up for the last couple of years now, there's talking about a recession around anything, you always in, we're all entrepreneurs of some, we're all pitching something whether we work for somebody, we worked for ourselves. So I've always taken the approach that with the way the media is today, and social media, and all this other stuff, that we're really all in the media business. And you have to keep that in mind when promoting yourself, and you're doing, I mean, we were just talking about beforehand, you're doing a lot of stuff with a media, and articles, and newspaper, and video, and stuff like that out there as well. So I've done a really good job of leveraging my marketing expertise and media prowess with what we do to really promote our little small niche inside the ever big world of real estate investing. So I've come with weclosenotes.com, we bought billions of dollars in debt. When I'm most proud of is the fact that we've helped a lot of our students really do some great things. We have an educational plan, but we've had so many students go out and change their lives, change lives, and borrowers out there, and really start to leave a legacy and build a movement out there. Hence why I'm known across the country as the 'Note Guy' for the most part.
Shirley Owens: I love it. I love it. So obviously we're on the Get What You Want Podcasts, I love the idea of talking about business. I'm an entrepreneur as well, and sometimes I tell people: "I don't know, just follow some other paths. I do not recommend this." Because it is hard, and it is an interesting life because we're not the people creating the path. I mean, we are the ones creating the path, we're not just following some books on how to do something, we're the writer, the creator, the follower, the student, all of it. I know there are a lot of people out there that want to start businesses and they have obstacles on getting it started. I thought, I love how you just have, well, I'm going to start this, and this is going to go great. I'm going to start this, and this is going to be great. And I know you've also had some fails in business, and so maybe talk a little bit about that. Give some tips on how we can, those people that are listening that are, who really would love to step out of the box and start something, but they have a fear, they don't know where to start.
Scott Carson: Yeah, I'm glad to do that. I'll share one of my biggest failures in the last few years. Five years ago, I was traveling the country as an entrepreneur, speaking in a lot of investment clubs. I spent like 36 weeks on the road traveling nonstop.
Shirley Owens: Wow.
Scott Carson: I was divorced so I could get away with that NO kids, living like a rock star, having a lot of fun, but it gets old, that's not a fun thing. And I wanted to do something different in it, my VP of operations who's my significant other, Stephanie, she was like: "You're going to kill yourself being this crazy man traveling all the place. You're not sleeping. You can do something more." So we were like, well let's do something different, because we've been putting on hotel workshops, and I said: "Let's put on something different. Let's talk about leaving a legacy so we can't lose. I need to put this event on called build your own light, Build your Legacy Summit, Houston, Texas. We dropped $15,000 on postcards, we reserved a hotel room, we had a great all-star lineup, we expected to have 300 people tickets there, and we sold seven tickets.
Shirley Owens: Oh, wow.
Scott Carson: And this is, I've never been more stressed out. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack because I was so stressed out. So I finally said: "Screw it. Enough is enough. We're canceling this event." So I called all the speakers and said: "Listen, I'm sorry, I'm going to cancel this event. Nobody's showing up. Enjoy the weekend." And they're like: "Oh, that's great." I said: "Let me make it up to you, let me have you on a webinar." Because I've been doing webinars just like this, like we're doing for years as a way to communicate with my tribe, or my audience, or how I built my tribe, I guess you could say through just doing webinars, starting off with four people up to 400 people want to do in time.
Shirley Owens: That's awesome.
Scott Carson: And the speakers were all like: "Oh, no problem. That's great." "Yeah, have me on a webinar." "I'm going to travel." "That'd be perfect." So I can remember writing that check to the hotel, which was not fun. $25,000 check, I got nothing out of it. Being depressed and driving from Austin to Dallas to go to another event. And Stephanie's like: "Well, why don't you just do an online event? Why don't you just do a webinar series or do something like that? You do them already. Why not?" I was like: "Oh, no, because everybody wants to show up in person."
Shirley Owens: Not anymore, right?
Scott Carson: Not anymore. And I was like: "Well, let's give it a try." So we did it, we're doing workshops, and said: "Let's do one workshop were just online." We had 75 people sign up for it. Our overhead obviously went lay out way below cause we only paid 1000 bucks until we didn't promote with Zoom like this, and everybody just raved about it. We have speakers that would have come on, if they were at a hotel, they came on remotely. They liked it because they get to stay home. The vendors liked it because they didn't have to pay $5,000 to ship stuff back and forth. So we found something that we--
Shirley Owens: Though smart.
“If you're around experts, you become looked at as an expert, because we're the average of the five people that we hang out the most with.” -Scott Carson
Scott Carson: Yeah. And we were like, okay, I think we're onto something. So we canceled all our live hotel events, all our trains, we went to online stuff, and it really worked out. I tell entrepreneurs that oftentimes, when we have a passion, something we're passionate about, a subject, a book, relationships, woo-woo, whatever it might be, or real estate.We may not be initially the expert, but that doesn't mean you can't bring experts together. And if you're around experts, you've become looked at as an expert, because we're the average of the five people that we hang out the most with. And this quote kind of popped up in my mind a lot late with Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, he was a motivational speaker and life coach for a lot of people. Used to say: "In five years, we're going to the same person except for the people that you meet, and the books that you read." So go out and buy, Get What You Want from Your Man book right now, all right.
“We may not be initially the expert, but that doesn't mean you can't bring experts together.” -Scott Carson
Shirley Owens: Yes, please.
Scott Carson: So that's always stuck with me. I said: "Okay, let's do something different." Instead of doing an online summit or an online conventions because our industry is small, we only have like two or three dimensions, let's do our own event, but we'll do it online. That way people don't have to travel, it'll be more affordable and costs, we won't have the overhead. And we did one summit and it went, it was a more of a convention versus just me, and we had 350 paid attendees.
Shirley Owens: Wow.
Scott Carson: The next time we did it, six months later, we had over a thousand.
Shirley Owens: Yeah, that's exciting.
Scott Carson: Yeah, and we'd have 30 speakers coming in, tune in for an hour. We record it, and it became so EASY to do, that's what we've done. And as we've done well and built the name there, I wanted to do something very similar in the podcasting industry, because we started this podcast three years ago, and we traveled to different events, and we didn't see anything that was online that wasn't just focused on the main coordinator, being like a pitch [inaudible] just for that coordinator or the person putting on to that. So we're putting on our own podcast and event where it's going to be for those speakers and for the audience. I'm the least important guy at our event, but we're really, really excited.
Shirley Owens: Why do you say that? But I'm sure nobody else thinks that.
Scott Carson: Nobody else thinks that, but that's what I book mine, my speaking spot at the worst possible time. I just changed it for another bigger speaker to come in to take my spot, and I'm at the worst possible time, which I don't care, cause everybody knows me, those going to be on there. I'm learning, and that's what I want to tell people here today is it's gotten so much easier with technology, and booking. I mean, I was just talking to a podcaster right before we jumped on here, and he's here in Austin, Texas, and he's an indie film, well, I would really love to do a summit, but I don't know where to begin. It must be chaotic, I'm like, well, if you can use the Zoom, and use Calendly, or some sort of meeting thing, you can book your speakers and have the deliverable side of things is a lot easier. You don't have to have a $10,000 budget with a PSAV from the hotel, you're not going to pay $96 for a gallon of crappy coffee that each hotel is charging for your guests, you can do it from your home, your audience, even the pool if you wanted.
Shirley Owens: I love it. Yeah, you and I were talking about that before is, for me, starting a podcast, I thought it was going to be easy at first and then I realized all of the stuff to do. But once you get that stuff down and you just do it, I'm a beer, like I always talk about, I'm a beer, I haven't been a doer my whole life but it's been great to learn how just do things, and once you learn how to do it, you can set up something like this so simply, and I do know that trying to get a thousand people in a room versus online is a completely different game for sure.
“You’re one relationship, one conversation away from exponentially growing your income.” -Scott Carson
Scott Carson: Yeah. I mean, there's a big event that we go to in San Diego every year, called Traffic & Conversion Summit. It's a largest North American marketing convention in the country, and they'll have 6,000, 8,000, I think they're gonna have 10,000 people this year. They're taking over the San Diego Convention Center, and the lady that puts it on is a friend of mine, Deanna Rogers, and she was actually my first ever Real Estate Assistant over a decade ago. And I've talked with her about that, there's sponsors, and booze, and it's such a huge thing, and it can be very complicated, and you gotta be very careful, you can lose your shirt or backside if you don't know what you're doing. She just does a tremendous job for that, I'm like, well, I'd rather do an event where it costs me 1,000 bucks, and I can still do tickets, and sponsorships, and make it EASIER for me without the overhead for everybody. And it may be a smaller event, but it's growing, and people really like that as long as you really, as long as you've got a good heart and you're delivering great content to people, you're getting the word out, and we all have a message. We've all got a book inside of us, one of my favorite speakers and writers is Seth Godin, and one of the books that I think everybody should read called Tribes. I mean, everybody's looking for a leader, and we all should be that voice that's leading people down that road and some sort of fashion. That's why I'm honored to be on your show in Get What You Want. Hey, just either start talking about it and start networking with people. What you want is, your one relationship, one conversation from exponentially growing your income, your influence, or helping you get what you want more than anything else.
“We all have a message; we all got a book inside of us.” -Scott Carson
Shirley Owens: I agree. I met you at a networking event. You and I have kept in touch. I feel like a lot of people live in this box and they really don't know how to just step outside and do something uncomfortable. I've always been one to step into some uncomfortable zone, but this definitely was a huge thing for me. So we've talked about this online and your podcast events, let's talk a little bit like about real estates. I feel like I can cover a bunch of different subjects with you today, so I'd love to talk about like, I have a niece who just started in real estate. In fact, she just helped us get a home, and someone going into something like that, that's pretty scary, right? You take your license and you're ready to go, you are competing against 10, 20, I don't even know. I think there's a real estate agent on three or four on every street in Arizona, anyway, it's just crazy here. So what is something that maybe you could do it online, like you say, what is something that even possibly in the podcast world, or in the online summit world, or whatever, do you have any advice you could give for someone like that? Just starting out as a real estate agent that wants to set themselves above the other hundred thousand that are in the same city.
Scott Carson: Yeah. So that's the thing, we have that here in Austin too. At the peak over a decade ago, we had 11,000 agents, and then when everything was hitting the fan in 2010, there were like half that number, and we've seen you can't overturn a rock without uncovering two agents here too, locally. So when I would tell somebody who is interested in real estate, what are they wanting to do? They want to be an agent? Or they want to be an investor? Do they want to do the fixer flop? Or the Joanna Gaines kind of thing? What do you ultimately, what's your motivation for it? Because being in real estate, you don't have to be an agent.
Shirley Owens: Yeah.
Scott Carson: I'm not a licensed agent, I'm not a licensed mortgage broker. There's a lot of places you can tap in for great content. YouTube, there's so many videos on training, and podcasts I mean, real estate is a big niche out there, but the best way for you to figure out is there's usually, my gosh, especially in Phoenix. Phoenix is one of the best real estate investing clubs in the country. There's about 15,000 members of that, used to be in less for years ago. Go to meetup.com and type in real estate, and look for investment clubs and Your Neck of the Woods, that's a free source. It doesn't cost you anything. Oftentimes these clubs will let you come once or twice. I'm going to do a different topic every month and a lot of them will have different interest groups. Some people that want to deal with landlords, or being renters, or some people that want to do quick flips. There's networking events, and I mean, all sorts of educational stuff out there if you want to be a realtor as well, but if you really want to set yourself apart from everybody, it comes down to doing 5% more each day. You don't have to do a lot extra or do 5% more each day. The best agents that I know, if they're making it valid for dollars is there, when everybody's running home, they're waiting around and doing five more phone calls.
“If you really want to set yourself apart from everybody, it comes down to doing 5% more each day.” -Scott Carson
Shirley Owens: I love that.
Scott Carson: Or they're going out and networking, or getting in, going to other networking events in the area, or they're going out and door knocking in an area that they want to target as being an expert. So they go on out and literally knocking on doors, leaving cards, delivering newsletters on the neighborhoods that they're wanting to be an expert in, they're prospecting in multitude of ways. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have patience for marketing, and you have to realize that 80% of sales are made after the FIFTH contact. So if you're emailing people, you're really only going to have about a 2% close ratio the first time you email somebody into your database. I mean, let alone you only get about a 20% open rate even though if you have a database, you've got to keep that in mind, instead of doing like one thing once a month, let me do it once a week because that'll speed up your success to five weeks versus five months. I mean, I know a lot of agents can't go five months without a closing, you know what I mean?
Shirley Owens: Yeah. So it's really just doing again, like the extra doing.
Scott Carson: Yeah. Yeah. Just get onto a little bit extra. Get up and do, I mean, the beautiful thing with our smartphones these days is that people can go live. You could stand in front of a house listing, talk about the listing, you can do a virtual walk through, a lot of people do. One of the things that I did, I had an agent that I partner with the years ago in Austin, we get a lot of California people move in here on a daily basis. So what we would do, and this still would work, is go find the oldest agents at your brokerage, okay. Go find the oldest agents at your brokerage because they're going to be the least expertise when it comes to the marketing, all right. So what we did is we found all the Betty blue hairs here in Austin, we went out with a little flip camera, you know your little flip phones that they had.
Shirley Owens: Yeah.
Scott Carson: And we did a virtual walkthrough outside, we talked about the house, we uploaded the video to YouTube, and then since we have so many people were moving here from California, we went to kick Craigslist in San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Orange County, and we posted, Hey, here's a property for sale. If you're looking to upgrade three bedrooms, four baths, 3,500 square foot for a third of what's in California, contact me now if you're looking to move to Austin, and that resulted in almost one new closing every month, because we use Craigslist, we use YouTube. Those videos stayed up and worked as 24 hour, seven day a week advertising for her. So people would see a video and then reach out to her, Hey, I'd like something similar to that. So she built a database of California, and Arizona, and Nevada, people moving to Austin from just going out and using somebody else's listing.
Shirley Owens: That's such a great idea.
Scott Carson: So these people would contact her and she would become their buyer's rep, helping them buy a house, and then she would just go to the person that she took the video, who was a seller, the seller's rep and they could, and she'd make her 3% and not have to do a lot of work besides going out, spend an afternoon and just marketing to the people in that price range and other areas.
Shirley Owens: That's awesome. I am certain that I have plenty of real estate agents, or want to be real estate agents listening to this, so that's great. And it's with anything, it's not just with real estate. I think the lives are great. That's something that I need to do more of. I have a show coming up, February 13th, we're doing a, it's actually a live show, but I'm doing it with one of the hosts of a morning show that I did here, and she's a comedian. We have a club, and we're doing this whole Valentine's kind of couple, singles, it's called The 20/20 Vision of Love Tour. And we're doing our first show at this comedy club--
Scott Carson: Is that with Daniel Williams?
Shirley Owens: Yes.
Scott Carson: Oh, my God, that's so awesome.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. So she's awesome. I don't even know what I'm doing, I've never done it before, but she's like, Oh, yeah, you're just, all you're going to be there to do is answer questions and solve people's issues. And so, but it's that same thing, she was just telling me the other night, you need to do lives, we need to get to the club, we needed to do some lives there. And I think with any business, anything that you have, hop on and do Facebook lives, Instagram lives, I'm not as good at this. So now, after the show I have to go do it cause I've been promoting it with you.
Scott Carson: Here's what, I had a friend who here in Austin in sixth street, okay. Big bar scene, live music scene. And their lowest time of performance is basically from like four, 5:00 o'clock when they open to 7 to 8:00 o'clock at night. So what she did, she found a bar called Cuba Libra, it's no longer open, but a nice bar, had nice, so she turned it into Monday's Martinis and Manicures.
Shirley Owens: Awesome.
Scott Carson: So she went out and went to her nail salon, and got the nail salon to sponsor putting manicure. So they brought out the booze, the chairs, and then she made admission, the cost of a pedicure, plus a drink at the bar, and then it was a networking meeting. And she would have like 40 or 50 spots, was limited, it was selling out every week. And then of course, the people stay around, and drink more, and she would get a cut off that or whatever they deal with this stuff. But it was a win win across the board that she had going for, I think it was almost a year, and she stopped it because she got so much business out of it, doing something like that.
Shirley Owens: That's so exciting. I love this because we're kind of covering different ideas, and I think that each idea can go with any business, and anything. So entrepreneurs out there, hopefully they're listening into this.
Scott Carson: Yeah, just take yourself apart. I mean, if you have something fun like baseball, we've told you the idea of getting back on the road a little bit more this year, and going around to different baseball parks, and doing a live podcast for The Note Closers Show at the ballpark, or outside the ballpark.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. I need to join you on that one.
Scott Carson: Definitely trusts me. Yes. Especially now that Bumgarner playing in Arizona.
Shirley Owens: You got to come to Arizona, for sure.
Scott Carson: Oh, yeah, exactly. I mean, Chase Field a great place to watch a game too. It's not a 120 degrees outside, they got the roof closed.
Shirley Owens: Well, and if we want to talk about like baseball players, I watch these guys work, and work, and work to get to where they are, right? That was my job, still is my job, and a lot of, in some fields as I coach players to be able to handle the obstacles and what they need to get through to be in that MLB place. And one of the things I hear all the time is Moxie, that's kind of our baseball word, "Moxie," that a player has to have that. And that is that hustle, hustle on the field, hustle off the field, the firm handshake, the yes or no sir. Just all the different things that it takes to set themselves apart, because there are a lot of really good players out there, right? That will never see a MLB field. And there are a lot of them that are better than the guys that are playing right now, but they had to set themselves apart. So I think in anything that we do, we have to set ourselves apart, or we're not going to be seen, we're not going to be the one that just is on top of the other 100,000 people.
Scott Carson: it's such a truth, I call it 'running on the ground ball play.' You think about so many ground balls, and you think about who, just happen recently, was it last season to Acuña, the rookie for the Braves, he didn't run, a ground ball and a [inaudible] came, and he got benched immediately.
Shirley Owens: Yeah.
Scott Carson: So many of us out there were hitting ground balls, and we just have to make that routine play, we got to run through to get there, and what's gonna happen? An overthrow, or somebody is not going to show up, and opportunities will show up like that. And some people just give up before they ever take action, that's why I always make the comment, "If we had to learn how to walk as adults, we'd all be in wheelchairs.'
“Some people just give up before they ever take action.” -Scott Carson
Shirley Owens: for sure. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. If we could have the energy and the free mindset that children have, life would be a little different, right?
Scott Carson: Exactly. Nobody tells them, no. I mean, they're strapping on cardboard wings and jumping off the rooftops out there. Sometimes, we as entrepreneurs might, well, we don't want to break a leg, but still though, sometimes we need to do some silly things like that just to get noticed to do something a little bit differently. I mean, we were doing an event one time in Las Vegas, and an event and a guy wanted a, I was working with this, this goes back a couple of years ago, this is 2013, 2014, with 800 people, like, we're in Vegas, and these people are going to be cooped up inside the Tropicana for three days. So I went out and hired two Las Vegas Showgirls with a big red bow things, the head dresses, and the fancy thing, and I got an Elvis impersonator to come in. And for 500 bucks for three hours, I had these Showgirls there for take pictures with everybody. I mean, they weren't wearing thongs, they were dressed appropriately, but still beautiful women. Elvis sang three songs to the crowd, the crowd was like, what the hell you want to expect? But the end, they all appreciate it cause now they had a souvenir. Now they had a photo with Elvis, or a photo with two really nice professional looking Vegas Showgirls versus the people out on in front of the Hollywood casino, you know what I mean?
Shirley Owens: Right. Yeah, just something, I know at New Media Summit, none of us left out of there. You're there the whole time and that is, I love it. I love, we did some dancing and had some entertainment, that was fun. But yeah, I do, I love just any little thing that you can do to set yourself up a little bit higher. So on top of all of this, if I was to ask you what one thing, so we've covered a lot of different subjects and been all over the place, but really touching on some ideas for people to really get something different, or start setting something. If you could think of one thing, one word of advice that any listener that's hearing this today could start with today, what would that be? One thing, if you are a listener, whether you're in your business already or you're wanting to start one, what would be your word of advice to something that's applicable that they could actually start physically doing today?
Scott Carson: So networking, I mean, you don't, and some people are like, well, I live remotely, I don't have a big network, or big stuff. Jump on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and just jump on there. The beautiful thing about LinkedIn is that you can find just about anybody. I mean, and fill out your full profile, put a good photo, irrelevant new photo on there, but just go on there. So if you're a, let's do something, let's pick out somebody. I'm on LinkedIn right now, let's say, give me a job title, we'll pick a weird city or something like that. Give me a job title.
Shirley Owens: Well, let's just do real estate, real estate in Indiana.
Scott Carson: We'll type in realtor in the Indianapolis. All right, so if we type in realtor in Indianapolis, that's going to pull up companies, it's running, it'll be a lot there.
Shirley Owens: This makes me want to look on mine too, because I have such a huge network.
Scott Carson: So right now, it's just 6,400 results for realtors in Indianapolis, okay. So start connecting with them, start reaching out, Hey, I'm a new realtor in Indianapolis, I'm looking to be an agent. Or you could type in, if you wanted to find clients, maybe you want to deal with real estate investors, real estate, as potential clients for a real estate investor in Indianapolis. Because -- people, investors are going to be doing the buying and selling. So now there's 2,034 results for real estate investors in Indianapolis, and you could connect with them all, you could send them a message.
Shirley Owens: And you can go even smaller. So I love it. I agree. Network is huge, it's everything. And for me, I feel like I wouldn't have anything that I have right now if it wasn't for my network. I haven't even touched into my baseball network, and I probably have a really good 50,000 person following where I can reach out, for just about anything. And I'm always there for them too, so they know that, I think it's super important. I love that. I really love that,
Scott Carson: And just provide value, I mean, it's okay to ask for things like, Oh Hey, I've got, but so many people come across like pitch, pitch, pitch right off the bat. Just add value. Hey, I'm in the local area, if you ever need comps pulled as an investor, which is a big thing. Or if you're ever looking for a good vendor, a good roofer, a good inspection company, or a good title company, that's a beautiful thing that I love about what you're doing. And others out there is like, Hey, I've got a great network. Hey, leverage my network. If you need somebody that's good, reach out to me. I may have somebody I can refer to you. And then it's a true win win, or your person that's reaching out to you as excited cause you've got a resource, but then your referral network is excited because now they're getting you're referring them business, and it's a win for both parts. And that's how a network can become strong is by people really providing content. And then after you've done that for a couple of times, then it's okay, Hey, I'm looking for something. Or Hey, here's what I'm doing this quarter or this month. Or Hey I've got a goal for the new year, aan anybody help me out? Example, like one of the things we put out, I was on a hundred podcasts, plus podcasts last year, and I put out a goal at the beginning of 2019 that I'll want him to be in a hundred, well, I ended up at 110 podcasts last year.
Shirley Owens: Wow.
Scott Carson: This year I want to be on 125, and I mentioned that and went posting somewhere, and I had people start referring me, I've had six referrals today alone, in the last 24 hours. People like, Hey, we'd love to have you in the podcast. We'll help you get closer to your goal. So don't be afraid, it's the same thing with weight loss, or people wanting to get fit. Share that with your audience, have a great goal, share it, and you'd be surprised that your network that loves you will often come to your aid, or help you accomplish it a whole lot faster than you think you might be able to get it done.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. I think I've hooked up several people in the last month and I think three of them are writing books with my publisher, and I love that. Well I love people, that's just who I am. I love people, you and I connected through one little thing and we've, I just sent your link to your event coming up that we're going to talk about too to a couple of people, and I think that, when you have a network and everyone's working together, and like you said, you're offering value, they see your value and they're sending it back at you. And I think I've interviewed, maybe three people out of my 20 people that I've interviewed for my podcast so far, even people that I know, like ,I haven't even tapped into my own personal network yet. It's all been just people referring to other people, and I love it. I love the business of networking, it's just such a great, I mean, it's everything. So thank you for that's great information. So I ask every person that I interview. If you had one regret, what would it be?
Scott Carson: Man, what would it be? Wow. One regret. I'm a big believer that were where we're at today because of all the decisions we make along the lines, nobody else's fault, but regrets. One regret today, my goodness.
Shirley Owens: Or if you could choose something that you would do differently.
Scott Carson: So maybe here's what I would say, something I could do differently. Going back, I would have probably bought more when everything was hitting the fan. I mean, 2008 was rough to a lot of people, it was rough for me as well with the downturn. I probably would have bought more assets at the time whenever I had a lot of opportunities to buy cheaper real estate at that point, and I was nervous because I had gone through a rough time, and I didn't reach out to my network to raise capital at points. I was probably a little bit probably, I hate to say this, it's sad because I probably wouldn't have gotten married right out of college.
Shirley Owens: Yeah.
Scott Carson: We have been married for seven years, college sweethearts, but probably shouldn't have gotten married right out of college and let it slide a little bit longer and go on from there. I think the sign when you're taking a nap before you get married, and she's having a stress attack and barely gets through, that's probably a sign from God that you probably shouldn't do that.
Shirley Owens: We never see those signs until afterwards.
Scott Carson: Exactly. Exactly. Well, it is what it is, I'm a stronger person for going through that. I mean, I've been, as I say, divorced for over a decade now. Steph and I aren't married, we're happy as we joke about. But congratulations, you have been married over a year?
Shirley Owens: Yeah. It's been over a year, it's great. I figured it out, it's great.
Scott Carson: That's right. We don't have to have our starter--
Shirley Owens: Not right out of college.
Scott Carson: We all have our starter weddings.
Shirley Owens: Yeah, right. Oh, my gosh. That's a whole nother show we might need to do. Yeah. But it's funny because I asked this question a lot and it seems like everyone, they can kind of find something, but really we're all who we are today, right? From what we went through, so it's almost like, I don't know but I want to do it all over again because it helped me to learn where I am today.
Scott Carson: That's the truth, that is the truth, we learn more from our mistakes and our victories all the time.
“We learn more from our mistakes than our victories all the time.” -Scott Carson
Shirley Owens: Okay, so tell me about your event that's coming up, it's in two weeks, right?
Scott Carson: Three weeks actually. Yeah, three plus weeks. It's called the Mass Media Summit, massmediasummit.live, or Mass Media Podcast Summit. It's a three day, actually kind of a three and a half day, were going to do [inaudible] on the Thursday, but it's a three day live online podcasting summit where we brought in 20 plus experts on different ways of marketing, and monetizing, and growing your podcast, or your business who get a lot, the topics we're going to cover will work for just about any business too out there. Just some really great speakers who all have a big heart and want to help other entrepreneurs and podcasters out there. We'll be doing it live via Zoom. We're going to be doing a special thing on the Thursday before, anybody who's signs up for a ticket ends up getting a 10 minute pitch spot to pitch their podcast. If you're a podcaster, we're gonna pitch your podcast to other podcasters out there, we'll give you a 10 minute spot for those that are signed up, and we've got different ticket levels from--
Shirley Owens: That's huge too, by the way, the pitch. I've done it, it's great, yeah.
Scott Carson: Yeah, and that's what we thought we'd give it instead of just a link or a quick pitch to be on a podcast, people talk about their shows, and that's the whole idea for them. Making a great networking event on the front end, people get a chance to learn all about those that are there who are going through things, and we've got a whole kind of ramp thing. Once we get done with the event, we're going to turn it into a podcast a month down the road. We're going to live stream ads, we're gonna transcribe the full event and turn into its own ebook for tips and suggestions, and things like that. So I'm pretty stumped about it. I've been toying with the idea of putting a podcasting event together for honestly six months. I was going to do at the end of the last year and didn't get around to do it. I was gonna do it in December, delayed it. Finally, Christmas Eve, I just need to go ahead and do this. So Christmas Eve, I decided we're going to do it, the website up on the 27th, we're set for the 24th, and we've got over a hundred signups right now, and we've got every scheduled, that schedule is complete. You can find out more information at massmediasummit.live. And if you use the code, here's what you're gonna like, you use the code, Shirley, we'll give you a 50% off of all the tickets.
Shirley Owens: Wow. Does that include me too?
Scott Carson: I will count you in.
Shirley Owens: That's awesome. I'm going to put this link on my page because I do think this is what you and I talked about today is like a hundredth of what's going to happen on that weekend, and can you tell me the exact dates again?
Scott Carson: Yes, it is January 24, 25, and 26, so it's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday in January of this year. Special half day on the 23rd, we can't make it all, don't worry about it. We'll record it, and we’ll keep recording session and put it up on YouTube later on, but it's literally, we're going to take the live stream, we're going to take the audio, we're going to take the written word, we're going to do a lot of social media sharing. I mean, we've got experts, some of the best experts, monetizing your lists, or using LinkedIn, or how to avoid podfade, or podcast production, or how to pivot your podcast, or using a chatbot to grow your business in Facebook, YouTube, self-publishing. Man, I'm just so honored, we just set such a great list, how to use gamification in your business and your podcast to grow your audience. We've got a Hall of Famer, Dave Jackson from the podcast Hall of Fame and the School of Podcasting and our keynote on a Saturday night there. He's always does some amazing stuff to go along there. How to use LinkedIn in your podcast, I'll be talking about that, but we've just got a rock star from branding to ending, I'm just really excited about it.
Shirley Owens: That is exciting. Okay, well that's going to be on my page attached to this conversation of ours, and it'll be on my website, which is www.getwhatyouwantguru.com, and I think going to be great. I know some of your speakers, and it just looks like an amazing event, so I can't wait to be a part of it, and thanks so much for being here. This has been a fun conversation, and I can't wait to get to be on your show.
Scott Carson: I can't wait for either. I think you're booked, aren't ya?
Shirley Owens: I am. I think two weeks from now, so I'm excited.
Scott Carson: I'm excited about that too. We're gonna talk baseball and getting what you want.
Shirley Owens: Yeah, I can't wait. All right. You're awesome, Scott. Thanks so much.
Scott Carson: You too, Shirley. Hey guys and gals out there, do Shirley a favor, if you love what she's doing, go on over to iTunes, hit the subscribe button, and leave her a rock star, five star review. She's done a great job. We know you'll love it. So give Shirley a little bit of love back.
Shirley Owens: You're the best. Thanks
Scott Carson: Thanks.
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