EP:43 - How To Buy and Sell Bank Notes w/ Scott Carson (WeCloseNotes.com

SPEAKER_02 0:32

What is happening, ladies and gentlemen? Hey, welcome back to the show if it's your first time. Hey, welcome to the show. My guest today is my good friend Scott Carson. He's the brains behind weclosenotes.com. They buy and sell banknotes. And then they also teach people how to do just that. Well, content is Scott's game. His podcast is in the five figures of downloads. He's got it monetized with sponsors, and it's uber popular within the space he's in. Side note, it's called the We Close Notes Show podcast. So Scott and I had a chance to connect some four years ago in San Diego while I was emceeing the traffic and conversion summit. We've stayed in touch and he bought a book order of my books a few months back for his monthly mastermind. I said, hey, we need to get you on the show and talk about exactly what you do and how you do it, specifically within the bank note game, but also what happened with this whole podcasting. Let's help people better understand yet another successful strategy of launching a podcast. Because after all, the Seb Russ show is all about podcasters, for podcasters, by podcasters. Friends, please help me welcome to the show. My boy Scotty Carson. Scotty Carson, what's good, brother? I'm doing great, man. How about yourself? You know, if I was any better, my last name would be Carson.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Well, I didn't say Russ because it'll be mine.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

We've been doing a lot. I mean, like, I'm on your show and or you're doing some video event or you know, 24-hour rally on you know social media day, or I'm you know, I'm chiming in from the beach. But we've been doing a lot of uh this is what it's all about, though. Supporting each other through our content, um, through what we're doing, supporting and believing in what what what our what people within our tribe are doing. Uh, you and I met what four probably what four years ago? Four years ago, traffic and conversion, yeah, definitely. Yep. And um had the pleasure of MCing that event for a few years, and it's always good to be in San Diego in in uh in January slash February. Uh and we stayed in touch, and I've always been curious. We we we actually um up until late had not figured out a way to do business together other than supporting each other. And then um you reached out, um made a book bulk order of um of my first book, Social Media Sucks. Yes, uh, for all of your mastermind uh members on a monthly basis because you're always giving them a swag. So, you know, first of all, thank you for that. Uh, I really appreciate that. And I I you know I giggle when I think, wow, somebody just made a book order of a book I wrote to you four years ago. And I'm so glad that that's that that that's that that's that's available and relevant because I've got a bookshelf behind me of irrelevant books. I won't bring any names up, Google Plus. Um but and I won't, yeah, we can just we know who wrote that one. So anyway, um again, thanks for that. And it's good to see where uh we had an opportunity to to to finally get some sort of business established here. Uh now I got you on the show because I really want to better understand what this whole buying and selling of of bank notes is really all about. But more importantly, because of the change of format of the show, I I change I'm changing the format of the show because I can. Uh I'm changing it because it's my show. And I'm changing it because I am a podcaster who works with podcasters and creates a podcaster. So why not talk to other podcasters and feature them? So we're kicking the new reformat of the show off uh with you, Mr. Scott Carson, here uh with We Close Notes. So we'll we'll we'll finish up this episode um with talking about how strong your podcast game has truly become and you know, really where it all started. So let's back up. Where did this whole how long you've been in the real estate industry, first of all? Second of all, when did the whole buying selling of notes come about?

SPEAKER_00 4:12

So I started investing back in 2002. Um, you know, I bought a rental property, I bought a second one relatively quickly. Uh, I was working as a financial advisor, making good money. Uh, and you thought I, you know, we watched HGTV flip this house, me and my ex-wife, and decided, oh yeah, we want to, we want to do that. You know, bought a couple houses, and then of course, then about a month later, I get laid off for my job. They close the offices here. Big downturn in the Austin economy with Dell Computers laying off a bunch of people. And so we I became a deadbeat borrower because we were trying to make six mortgage payments, three first, three second mortgages on a private school teacher salary. All right. Not fun. Uh, worked up whatever I could to get my ass out of a sling, went back into banking, um in the financial industry, had a buddy started a mortgage company. He came to me and said, Hey man, I'm I'm traveling the country at all these big real estate expos and doing a lot of mortgages. You want to come? And so he was sponsored by a couple of real estate investors that were do uh talking about owner financing and creative financing back in 2004, 2005. And uh they were doing fix and flips and things like that. And I went and visited with them, it's what I wanted to do, and jumped on board with them, doing mortgages for investors all across the country and learning real estate's the right way from going to all these other workshops. And uh then 2008 hit with everything with it, the downturn again. And um, my mentor at that point, you know, Bob and another guy, and told me, like, listen, hey, here's an opportunity of a lifetime because it's like the RTC days back in the 80s. You need to quit doing everything you're doing and just buy paper and buy notes for the most part. So I took their advice, and that's what I started doing. Just started calling banks to buy their bad debt direct from them. And I was getting stuff at a discount, you know, I was buying from Wells Squargo and Capital One and some other uh pre-gussized banks, and then smaller hedge funds too, and just literally just that's what I banged out. It was like the wild, wild west. I compare it to like that scene um from War Dogs, you know, Jonah Smith says, you know, we live on crumbs and the crumbs are pretty good size. It was like that aspect. There was no market for what I was doing. I was literally carving something out of the woods because all the traditional big sellers of or buyers of debt had gone away. And it was the banks still had the stuff on their books they needed to get rid of. So I was just, you know, dollar for dollar, hundred phone calls a day, getting lists in, you know, flipping apartment loans and home houses and beer distilleries. I just, there's all sorts of crazy assets that I was buying and selling. And uh in 2010, I'd gone through a divorce and had a partner and I stopped working together. And so I just decided I'm just gonna sell everything I own in Austin and go on one of those like magical major league baseball tours. We hit all 30, you know, 30 parks over 30 weeks. And I'd planned this all out, and this investment club started calling me and said, Hey, we see what you're doing online on Facebook and some of your blogs. Would you like to come out and speak at our real estate club? And I said, Yeah, sure, what day? And they they tell me a date, and it would correspond directly with when I would be there for watching a baseball game. And so it was totally divine intervention, man. And well played, God, well played. Yeah, exactly. So for three years, I basically just drove around the country, me and my dog, just going from craziness, and then that launched us teaching workshops starting, you know, 2010, 11, and 12. And I was the note educator of the year in 2014. Um, we bought over a half a billion dollars in distress debt for our own portfolio. We've got a ton of amazing students, and mastermind members are buying a lot of these assets for their own portfolio, and then also working to really make America great again, one mortgage at a time, because we we our biggest goal is not to buy the note to buy the real estate, it's to really rehab the borrower and try to keep them in the property if we can of any sort. I mean, we still end up foreclosing about half the time, but that's what we do.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Okay, so first of all, this is not a political show, that's a disclosure.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

But um, all right, so let's back up for a second here. Let let's let's pretend that I'm a five-year-old because I act like it sometimes. Um why in the why why do banks have notes that they want to sell? And how much are these notes? And who what do you do with them once you've bought them?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

So banks have uh borrowers that won't make their mortgage payment. I mean, people go through financial hurdles all the time. Maybe we're divorced. A couple in 2008, a couple just a just a few, you know, 15 million. There's still about five million homeowners across the country where their house is upside down or they're behind. Um, one out of every 10 uh borrowers is behind their mortgage still today. So uh a bank is in the process of making loans to make money off the loans. If it starts going, you know, and they leverage your every dollar in, you know, 10, 15, 50 to one today across a variety of different platforms. And so if a borrower stops paying on their mortgage, it'll they lose a lot of money on a defaulted note and because they can't leverage that money coming in anymore. Right. So for every month that somebody's in the fault, that mortgage, the value of that note drops five or ten percent. And that's why if you're more than like seven days late in your mortgage, that's why your phone starts ringing off the hook with the the bank trying to get you back on time again because they want to create all these mortgages, package them up, and then sell them off the Wall Street and make money on like the big short, you know, if you've watched that movie. Right. Um, but that's they have these defaulted mortgages now, and they they're willing to sell them off because they'd rather get the cash in to go back out and make more loans. Sure. Fill that bad debt off. And there are big buyers out there of this stuff, but um, there's plenty of smaller regional banks and institutions that don't have those big Walter connections that are loving it when you know an investor like me will call them and buy a quarter million dollars worth of debt or a million dollars worth of debt, you know, or buy a couple assets off their books that are really hurting them because they they have a great portfolio, but they may have a couple uh problem children out there.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

So, what do you do with them with the notes once you buy them?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

So our our goal is to buy them and then try to get reach out to the homeowners and work some sort of loan modification or trial payment plan. And the thing is we buy that debt at a substantial discount, usually 50 cents in the dollar of what's owed or less. So it gives us a lot of flexibility to work with the homeowner. So if they get a like, I'll give you an example. We've got a 6% interest rate on a mortgage and we buy their debt at like 33 cents in the dollar. If we can reperforming, you know, take the back payments, put it on the on the back of the loan, you know, forgive a little bit, but have them start making payments on time, that's like an 18% yield to us almost immediately.

unknown 10:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Because we bought it at a third, you know, they get started. And then after six to 12 months, when they've been performing on time, it's now a performing note again. I can sell that to Wall Street at 85, 80, 85, 90 cents on the dollar and make a nice chunk of change in the back end, too. So that's that's that's our whole goal. We we uh we've got about 10 different exit strategies from trying to get them read green state to even offering up like cash for keys if they won't work with us, you know, or or foreclosure if we have to. Because you gotta remember that that property is still worth something. So if it's worth 100, the mortgage is 105, and we paid you know $35,000 for that mortgage, we got $65,000 in technical equity there that we control that we can take down.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

Love it. So so how does someone get started doing something like this? How do they say, you know, how much money do you need to start?

SPEAKER_00 11:25

That's a great question. Uh, get that asked all the time. Um, you don't need a lot of money. If you've got a cell phone and internet access, you can reach out to things because there's so much in private money out there. We fund 95% of our deals with other people's money, you know, other people's IRA accounts, other people's 401k, you know, that's stuff like that. Uh people that have a self-directed IRA, we use a lot of those funds to go out and fund those deals, and we'll partner up with investors, either pay them a flat return or do like an equity split where they'll fund the deal. We do all the workout and then we'll split profits on the back end with them.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Is this is this a good is this a good opportunity for people that like, you know, are looking to get some you know to some put some money out there and put some money to work?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Oh yeah. There's all we're getting there's a lot of cash out there right now, a lot of capital thrown in, and a lot of people are looking for real estate deals, but the traditional fix and flipping side or the you know, the fix and flip shows have driven all these weekend warriors to you know the banks to buy these REOs. And and most of the time when a bank takes a property back, they're selling it at full value. There's not a lot of discount there. The fact that we take on the bank's uh nightmares, you know, we we kill the Freddie Kruegers out there since it's Halloween. We kill their nightmares, and it's just we're still getting a discount. We get a lot of people that are coming into the industry now because it's really the last place to find a really great discounted deal versus paying 90, 95 cents of the dollar, which a lot of people are. That's that's just overpaying. So are these REOs? No, it's we we buy the note, it's still we we still have to foreclose to be make it an REO. All right. So an REO is once the bank's gone through all the foreclosure processes and stuff like that. I don't even waste my time with those. Um, we want to buy the debt, and then we we then become the bank and have all the same rights the bank does to work with a homeowner and we can be a little bit more flexible because we bought it at a discount. So our goal was I don't want to own property, I want to own the mortgages so that I could just get payments every month that roll in wherever I'm at, and whether I'm on vacation or here in Austin or in Spain or Italy or wherever. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Which you do a lot of traveling, you and Stephanie. We have a lot of fun, yes, sir. That's correct. Work hard, play hard. Amen to that, brother. If you can't do that, it's you're working too hard. Exactly. You want yeah, you want a lifestyle business, you gotta have lifestyle. So, so and again, back to the yeah, like the like if someone's looking to get started or listening to this right now, they're like, hey, you know what? I you know, I I want to I want to get started with something like this. Like, what's what's well, you know, how much cash do you need to get started?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Not much. I mean, we have a lot of people get started with that are working full-time jobs that don't have a lot of capital. So, like I said, if they use other people's money, if they can if they don't want to market, you know, send an email blast out to their database or their LinkedIn connections and talking about what they're focused on. The best thing I can tell you this is people need to, it's a different mindset, it's a different um niche in the real estate community, it's a very niche aspect of things. Uh, education is the best thing. And we've got hundreds and thousands of videos on YouTube and and Vimeo and all across there, just pure content on education. And so learning the ins and outs is the most important thing. I mean, if you get a little bit of money for some marketing, that's great. But when I got started, Sebastian, with this, it was in the downturn of bad time. I didn't have any of my own capital fund deals. But so if you had 50 grand or you know somebody's got 50 grand, you buy two or three you know, notes in um Alabama or Ohio or Michigan, they're gonna be really great returns on investment because you can buy those areas still cheap. So I I love God's waiting room of Florida. I have bought a lot of distressed debt in Florida over the years. It's a little bit overpriced right now because everybody is popular back, but Florida is the is still leading the nation in foreclosure time frames and number of foreclosures. So it's gonna make a uh values are gonna drop a little bit. I'll I'll step back and buy a lot there in in Florida, but I don't buy anything in Texas because it's overpriced here. We we have such fast foreclosure laws, the banks want a premium for the stuff here, so I don't waste my time here. That's why I buy a lot in in the in the Big Ten or Southeast Conference parts of the United States. Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

So so so if if if I bought three notes, would I be responsible for the whatever happens with those three notes? Do I have to do that?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

You're the bank. You're the bank. So what you have to do is then you've got to hire uh a service.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

What if I worked, but what if I worked with you? Like if I was part of your issue.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We we handle all that. We've got the vendors. I mean, this is a very vendor-driven business. I'm not the person that's making the phone call and the borrowers. I'm not the person handling the foreclosure. We've got attorneys that handle that. We've got companies. It I compare myself to being like the Jerry Jones, the general manager of a franchise, okay? So I put my you know, I put my vendor in place. I I put my realtors to work. I'm not the guy out there throwing the ball, you know. Uh so you're not calling the banks anymore. No, not no. It's all email now. It's all email based. Like I just did an email blast out yesterday to 5,000 asset managers. I had uh 1,800 of them open the email. I had six of them sending an email email response with a spreadsheet of assets that I can cherry pick from. Wow, three assets, another one had 200 that I can cherry pick from. And they sell stuff on a quarterly basis. So that's the beautiful thing. Like I said, it's all marketing based with emails and reaching out like on LinkedIn or other some other websites to find these contacts because they're internal departments of the banks. You're not just going down to the corner and make and walk in and say, I want to buy notes, they'll just tell you you're crazy. But these wonder how that works. Yeah, he they won't do that. You're if you're especially not gonna buy from like Bank of America or Chase, those big guys, they're just they want a $50 million purchase, and it it doesn't make sense for that. But your regional banks, your smaller banks often have stuff on their books, and those are the sweeter deals out there, really. So interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's the beautiful thing is I a lot of real estate investors they get into where they're putting out bandit signs or they're mailing out like a thousand postcards to the foreclosure list, and they're getting like one or two people to call them back. I I you did that for years. I that's why I can speak the language. I don't send postcards out, I send an email blast out, it's so much easier, it's it's a lot more affordable for somebody who's bootstrapped financially. I get a list in every quarter or every month from different banks, and I can cherry pick. I can buy one or I can buy the whole, you know, whole list if I wanted to, but it's uh a negotiating aspect of it. I don't have to have earnest money to put up, you know, it's all cash. The bank doesn't care where the money comes from, so they're not seasoning my my money. If I have an investor, if I get a good deal, I'll market it out to my database or online, and investors will often pop up and say, hey, I'll I want to fund that. I want to put some money to work. So it's it's uh I I get a matchmaker. I am, I am, and honestly, uh, I was in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago. They called me the chuckwallery of Ugly Paper.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

Ugly paper, hashtag ugly paper, also the new punk band. Um so so so through the process of all this, um, you you decided, you know what, content's king, right? So I've got to be able to, if I'm gonna enroll people to do the same thing that I'm doing into this process, I've got to educate them on doing so. I'm gonna do that through video content, and then along came the podcast content. Let's talk about the podcast. Where did it start and where was it conceptualized? And just walk us through it because I know you've just been kicking ass and taking names with it. Um let's start from the beginning and then bring us to present day.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

I started doing videos back in, I started doing webinars back in 2011. All right. And I was doing videos with students and stuff like that before like 2008, 2000, maybe I think back to 2005, and I think about it. So I've always been doing video because I knew it was like it was beautiful, that's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year advertising for me, right? That's the way I always looked at it. It's like planting a tree in a forest. It's not gonna be much today, but if I keep planting trees, it'll be a forest before too long. Right. Okay. And so back in when uh we've always done videos and stuff like that for for different things and webinars, but back in, I remember it actually, wow, now that I think about it, November 1st, 2016. Okay. So tomorrow will make the uh be the two-year anniversary of when I started doing Facebook Lives on a daily basis. Okay, I remember that. And so I just started doing a Facebook Live because it was the best way to stay in touch with my tribe, with my audience on Facebook and and other things. And I would just do a little video, like a day in life. What's going on in our offices today? You know, what's if you're a fly on the wall, here's what we're working on. And I was doing that daily, along with regular webinars uh every Monday night. And I had a friend of mine who's got a podcast, and his podcast production team said, Hey Scott, you know, we see what the videos you're doing, you've got a lot of content. Why don't you do a podcast? I'm like, oh no, I don't want to add all that extra work of you know transcribing and doing all that stuff, you know, having to create something new. Like, oh no, you if you're using Zoom or YouTube uh with your videos, we can just take that content and turn it into a podcast. I'm like, I don't have to do any extra work. And and they're like, yeah. So I was like, let's do it. So I did Facebook Lives for nine months straight before I ever did my first podcast episode. Okay, 150 episodes on the Facebook Lives. We would do that, and then we launched our first episode August 20th. Oh, yeah, dude. I was getting people that would want to fund deals. I was getting people that would sign up for my workshop. So I totally monetize that aspect. And you weren't there to pitch, you were there to educate. Yes. Okay. So I would get I get people that would call me up, say, hey, I've been watching all your shows for three months, or I've been binging on Scott Carson. I want to sign up for a workshop, or I got a hundred grand to put to work, can I partner with you on it? So it really helped me avoid having to have a thousand conver a thousand one-on-one conversations to having one conversation to a thousand people. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

And then you turn the so then your team took the Facebook lives and turned them into a podcast episode.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Yeah, we we just started doing uh podcast episodes. So we launched the No Close Show podcast on technically episode 150, turned it that into podcast. Now we're up to episode 375, I believe is what we recorded yesterday. Um every day. We do it basically almost every Monday through Friday. We might we we probably average about four days a week just because of my travel schedule and things. But yeah, we crank out almost if I'm here in Austin Monday through Friday, we're cranking out an episode almost every day. Cool. It's our it's the biggest thing I can tell you, Sebastian, is we've always had I've always thought that marketing was the most important part of our business. Yeah, the note business is great, but if I don't have anybody seeing the deals that I'm doing or understanding what it doesn't mean anything to me with our raising our capital aspect of things, or even people sign up for the workshop so I can sell them more assets. It always had to be marketing first, the way we look at. So when I walk in the office usually today, we're doing an episode or we're interviewing a student or a vendor. And that runs throughout the day, that runs nonstop for us. So now I get a lot of people that just see that online and especially on all the different podcast or video platforms out there, too. People call me from all across the country and all across the world too. That hey, I I I want to take a class or I want to sign up for your services or I want to, you know, buy your book or whatever it is, you know, or come in for high-end coaching with you, or I want to, you know, I got 100 grand to invest. How can we partner up? So we've totally monetized that from just providing you great content on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

So so so and there's been a significant, you guys have what 50,000 downloads of the show of the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So we had 50,000 downloads in our first six months. Um we are uh we'll over we're almost 190,000 downloads. And we're you know, we've been since August of 2017. So we're at what was it make us month 15? Um we we've averaged over 20,000 downloads the last couple months. Um we've got several sponsors because it does cost us money to go and produce it and have a vendor that does it for us. But we have some of our best vendors pay us a monthly basis to be on the show for one episode a month, and then also to help us you know defer the cost of now that it's in the in the black totally.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Yeah, let's talk about this. So you've monetized the show. You got what, five sponsors? Yep. Okay, so you have five sponsors, and then it's not just this episode of uh we close notes is brought to you by this is an actual interview with the vendor talking about them and their business. So they're essentially paying um to for an episode.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yep. Okay, they're paying for the every single month. Exactly. So they'll do once a month with them. Since we do you know 25, 30 episodes a month, I can I can easily squeeze it because they're always have something else going on, whether it's a an event they're doing or they're doing a special promotion just for our audience as well, too, to help drive business, because these are all our biggest uh vendors that we're the like the other number one and number two referral of new clients too. So that it made sense. Plus, the fact too is that we do more than just audio, we take the videos and throw them on YouTube and Vimeo, and then of course do all the the SEO stuff of uh you know taking a transcription and putting it on our website as a blog, and then using Instagram and and Facebook to post you know images of the guests and things like that, too. So we we don't just do the and I think I I see so many podcasters that they just throw something up on iTunes and they want to just try to get they're how do I grow my audience on iTunes? Well, you have to grow your audience by doing it in a whole lot of other places. Well, that's what I was exactly.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

That's what that's what I was that was my next question. Was that um, you know, you can record to your blue in the face, you can record five times a day, and you could submit everything into the iTunes store, but unless something else is pushing that, uh, you know, you've got a billboard in the middle of the force. So how how are you able to get the traction with the actual downloads? What do you what do you think you contributed what contributed the most to those downloads?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Consistency. That's totally it. Just being consistent on it. You know, you and I were talking beforehand and how a lot of people start a podcast and film four or five episodes and they don't see any drive off it because they haven't been consistent enough. You know, if you're only doing it once a month, that's not enough time because 80% of sales of anything is gonna come after the fifth contact. So our whole goal was to get that fifth contact faster. Maybe they heard it on iTunes, maybe they saw it on YouTube, maybe they saw it on Facebook or LinkedIn, because we share it everywhere and we just consistently share it. And we I said, Listen, we'll do this for a year before we you know decide that we're gonna do this longer. But we we were committed to doing it long term versus just for a month or a week. There's you can't really see any type of feedback on social media in that time frame.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

And what and what do you share on LinkedIn and everywhere else?

SPEAKER_00 25:40

You share are you sharing the video? We share the video. Um, we'll take and create and get the video completely transcribed as well and turn it into a blog. So we create an article, we you know, create a nice infographic as well. Because everybody's visual these days, so you've got to catch them with a nice infographic. So we spend a lot of time on Canva creating nice infographics, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

And then we also make it easy for our guests is that when once we film a show, we'll send out a nice infographic for the guests and all the links for them to share it as well. We'll literally do all the work. All they've got to do is copy and paste it, and that helps out tremendously. But we I I share it to Facebook groups, I share it um to different podcasting groups. Um, and I I go where my niche is as well, too, because my niche, my avatar is like 35 to 65 year olds, making 75 to 250 a year, homeowners, college educated, and they buy stuff for their house online. And so I target them a little bit on Facebook. I'll create custom audiences that'll share the Facebook Live to, you know. I think Facebook Live is huge. We've had over 100,000 views on the Facebook Live videos in the in this this year alone. Wow. Um, and that's helped us because people will catch it and then they'll go back and watch it on iTunes. But we also I send emails out to my database. Um, we we when we started getting people to opt in, we would uh when I give uh four or five episodes at release, we'll send them a direct text message with a link to those episodes straight through their cell phone so it makes it easy for them to listen to it right there.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Cool. Yeah, it looks like you're firing on all cylinders. I mean, this is exactly for those of you listening right now wondering, because it is not easy. Let me just disclose real quick, and I know Scott will back me up on this. Marketing a podcast is not an easy process, nor is it functional or or or frictionless. You've got to get creative. Um, I what I like to do a lot of times, especially for our client podcasts that we launch, is go into iMovie, take the image we're gonna use for the episode, throw in a minute of the audio and create a video, air quotes video for Instagram, for Facebook, and put our the iTunes link in their bio on Instagram and be able to share. You've got to get creative and be able to do that. But if you really want to be able to to hedge your bets on all this, you gotta make sure that you're uploading. I I I just recently switched our hosting platform from SoundCloud to uh Pippa. Um and uh Pippa, uh, I got a recommended from uh from my buddy Gary V, which he probably is is uh is an investor in, and that's totally okay. But the platform is is is awesome. I mean, automatic distribution to like eight platforms, uh Spotify and iHeartRadio and D, the whole mine, and uh still comparable price. You're paying about 20 bucks a month. For those of you who don't know what uh what I'm referring to, SoundCloud, Libsin, uh Pippa, Pippa.io uh is the website, is um or all uh podcast hosting websites. This is where when you recorded and edited your uh your audio file of the actual episode, you'll upload it, that's where it lives, and then that platform then pushes it out um to the distribution channels of iTunes, et cetera, et cetera. But um, I like Pippa because it's it's one and done. Number one. Number two, it transcribes my video. It also turns it into an iTunes, uh a YouTube video that'll add to a playlist uh so people can listen to the you know audio on YouTube. Um and I can sign my friends up and when they sign up, uh they get 25 bucks and I get 25 bucks to spend on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

So there's some great tools like repurpose.io. When we film it, we use repurpose.io to automatically upload the video to YouTube. It uploads the tags we want. I can go into one screen and then literally put in all you know the wording that I want to hit button, it uploads it to YouTube for me, so I don't have to worry about that. You know, um, we also use live leap.net so that when I uh film a video to my Facebook Live, it shares it to my business page, my other business pages as well.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

So live link.net.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Well, you guys are getting all kinds of gems here.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Live leap. Live leak, live leak, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Live net. Yeah, live leap.net. It's a I can set it up where one video on my personal Facebook page gets shares to other, what do I have, another 10 websites on Facebook, you know, 10 pages. So it automatically shares there as well. It'll also automatically share a link on LinkedIn that says, hey, Scott Carson's going live. It'll post to link uh Twitter and say, hey, Scott Carson is going live here too. So it's a really valuable, I think it's like 25 bucks a month. It's really cheap.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

I was gonna say, what is it, like a monthly subscription you're looking at here? Um and then for while I got it wherever we're actually talking about this on Pippa, um if you've been figuring out where to host your website, you don't know where to actually go and do that. I highly recommend uh using Pippa. You um you're gonna put your uh affiliate link in the show notes. I'm trying to give the link here so I can make sure that if you do sign up, uh you get um help a man out, help a bald man buy a bow tie. Yeah, really exactly. Exactly. Let's see here. Something went wrong again. Anyway, um all this information is on the show notes. Check wherever you're watching this right now, the link's gonna be on there. If I gave you the URL right now, we'd I'd be talking until next Sunday because it's not just hippa.io, that'd be too easy. So um um if you're looking for a hosting solution, uh you got to get one that distributes for you. That's the thing, you know, because you're not gonna that and that's something new. Soundcloud does zero distribution except to SoundCloud, which I found that you can't get away from those knuckleheads anyway, because now if you use their free account, you're you're you're limited. So, and I want people to find me on SoundCloud because that's where you get a lot of listens and a lot of downloads, because it's very popular in the music community, uh, you know, and audio community on there. Uh so wow, man, this is this is fantastic and really encouraging to see. I'm learning a lot here just when you think you know a little bit about um about podcasts and podcast marketing to better understand. That's the reason I'm reformatting this show to be by podcasters, for podcasters, about podcasters, even and that includes future podcasters, so that we can learn and I want to learn what I what I don't know that I don't know about the podcasting world. I think it's just gonna open up Pandora's box by being able to do that. So I'm fired up that we got a chance to to kick that off. So if if someone's listening to this right now and they're like, you know what, I'm sitting on some cash. I got I'm 35 to 60. I'm with college, I make 75 to two and a quarter, two fifty a year. I want to talk to Scott about doing this. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Go to Scott at we close notes.com and just drop me an email. Scott at we close notes.com. Or you can go to the website we close notes.com and opt in there, and there's different ways for us to reach out to you there as well. But we're all over the place. If you check out the note closers show podcast, we're on everything.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

The note closers show podcast. That's the name of Scott's podcast if you're searching for it on there. Um, there we go. The Note Closers Show Podcast. You got to get that bad boy under the notes sign right there.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yeah, I know. I got a new bookshelf coming in this weekend that'll go right there. Okay, perfect. Okay, perfect.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Um, well, awesome, man. It's always great to hang out with you, dude. I I've been I've been waiting four years to learn what the hell you do. So I learned, you know, the hell's a note.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Um well the one thing I have to say that we we knew neat immediately is we both have marketing minds, and that's that's the biggest thing. Marketing makes this world go around, it'll make your podcast go around. If you can spend time, that's why I love so much about your book. Social media sucks. Okay. That's why I send it out to everybody in our our mastermind group and aspect of things, because it's important to know how these things, all these things work. You know, you're gonna have to edit the front of the cover, get rid of Google Plus, but that's okay because Google Plus is still valuable. We were I've been marketing Google Plus because it was owned by Google, it'll still show up in search engines. I mean, yeah, yeah. You just have to spend a little time and it'll be so valuable. I I know we all people get worried about the technical side of their podcast or the download aspect of things, but it's just not the downloads and everything like that. We look at views and everything like that. Like our downloads, like I said, we're all be over 190,000, 1950 or something like that. I don't know. But it's not just that. We have more downloads and more views when you add in our Facebook views and our YouTube video views and stuff like that. It's doubled our audience by marketing on a different platform with the video versus just the audio, too. So I look at how can I can they see it? Can they hear it? They can't see where they're at.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Yeah, not yet, at least. Yeah, exactly. You gotta you gotta you gotta meet them where they're at. You can't just pick, you know, one. I mean, again, you gotta you can't pick one platform and get really good at it. But at the same time, I always like to use the analogy. If I send you a video, you feel obligated to watch the video. If I send you a link to my podcast, you go on with your day, hit play and go on with what you're doing in your office. If you capture 70% of what I said, you're good. Or you can start and stop and replay on the way to the gym, at the gym, on the way from the gym, before you go to bed when you wake up in the in uh in the can, whatever you want to do to be able to consume the content. But um, you know, consistency is key. Finding a niche to talk about is key. Um, and again, consistency. Consistency will equal the downloads. What you've done, Scott, is you've turned yourself into a media company.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

You know, I totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah. You're you're a you're a real estate company that's turned yourself into a media company, and you prove that because you have paying sponsors on a monthly basis uh that that that believe in what you're doing and believe in the opportunity to be able to be exposed to what you're doing. So all those YouTube views and the Facebook views and all that stuff is gonna be a huge conglomerate to contribute to what your actual you know rate card is gonna be. Right now, you make up the rules and you'll continue to make up the rules, and you're gonna write that rate card. But I I think eventually there's going to be a standard you know CPM rate card. There's probably one that exists that we don't know about already uh out there. Uh, but as it goes right now, we make up the rules. It's not, you know, NBC Fox dead, CBS dead, television dead, radio dead, gone, bye, see ya. Why we want frictionless experiences. We want to press start and stop when we say we want. And if we're have to hear an ad, which a lot of podcast ads are okay with me because they're relevant, I make a list because those all people are gonna be sponsoring my show. Um, but um, it's just it's easier to to to to to digest as far as content's concerned. All right, man. I'm gonna let you get back to your day, dude. But uh let's let's let's do it again. Let's uh let's let's keep in touch here. I'm gonna buy some notes, note buzz.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Sounds good, Sebastian, mate. Keep up what you're doing, man. Love what you're doing. Uh I I think the new format you're doing is gonna be great for you as well, because I'm hiding with what you're doing. But man, just keep just keep keep charging forward, my fan. Keep charging forward.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

That is it. Hey, even if you fall flat on your face, you're still moving the right direction, right? It's incape, you're incapable of not moving ahead if you don't if you fall flat in your face. This this is true. Hey, thanks a bunch, Scott. We'll see you next time, huh? That's good, Sebastian. Take care. Hey, thanks again for tuning into this episode of the Seb Rush show with my guest Scott Carson. All of his contact information you'll find in the show notes. Make sure you check him out at weclose notes.com. Great business, interesting business, and great podcast. So hopefully this episode has encouraged you to start your podcast show. You know, 2019 is right around the corner and the time is now. Need help launching your podcast? Check us out over at the podcastlaunchlab.com. I've also created a free course just for you to be able to walk through exactly what we do to launch podcast shows. You can access that free course at freepodcastlaunchclass.com. I'm Sebastian Ross signing off from our studio here in beautiful downtown Miami. We'll talk to you next time.