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​Russ Johns 0:02
Welcome to the pirate broadcast, where we interview interesting people doing interesting things where you can expand your connections, your community. Kindness is cool and smiles are free. And let's get this party started. Boom. What do you think of that intro? Scott?

Scott Carson 0:21
I love the intro man that is just absolute quality man. Interesting conversations with interesting people. I'm in Austin, Texas. We keep it we're here to

Russ Johns 0:31
Hear you are you know, we're gonna have an interesting conversation today. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate and applaud the fact that you're here. Anyone that joins us today. Thank you all the gratitude in the world. Leave some comments in here. Let us know where you're from. Let us know what you're doing and how you're doing. We're living in a crazy time right now. We're all in this together we're at different places, along this journey. However, stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane do what you got to do to protect your family, your friends, and be present. Let's open up the conversation and dialogue and maintain that. So, Scott Austin, Texas, I love Austin, Texas. I spent many nights in Austin, Texas down on a few streets, they're having some good drinks and good music. So, how long have you been in Austin?

Scott Carson 1:28
So this has been home since I moved here in 2001. I graduate from Texas State University. Now it was Southwest Texas State University bobcats. Rarrrrr. But it's been home basically since 2001, except for about three and four years where I was traveling the country and speaking and teaching my niche of things back in 2010 to 2014, I came back and now Austin's just in my blood here. It's just something different about the city getting off a plane you just feel the energy and the friendliness of it and I've lived in Dallas for a little while. A lot of friends in Houston grew up in Corpus Christi Texas, but Austin's just home.

Russ Johns 2:05
Yeah, yeah. I i've always appreciated Austin and like I said before the show it was either Austin or Portland and I ended up in Portland. However, it has its own brand new weird, so it's okay.

Scott Carson 2:18
That's the truth. Sister cities and weirdness for sure.

Russ Johns 2:21
Yes, exactly. So I want to talk a little bit about this, whole thing you got going on? Because it's, it's unique. And I know it probably confuses a lot of people like, are you doing real estate? Are you in mortgage? What is exactly this thing you call notes? And, and I know, considering the situation where we are right now. Your services are going to be a necessity going forward, unfortunately, I'm sure. So maybe walk us through the process of what you actually do in the service you provide. And let's talk a little bit about that. I'm gonna grab I'm going to see if I can actually get somebody on chat while you're kind of going over that a little bit.

Scott Carson 3:07
Yeah, no problem. So I have been in the real estate industry since 2000. Investor, or mortgage broker mortgage banker, but when everything hit the skids in 2008, I was very fortunate enough, I had a couple mentors that taught about the distressed mortgage industry, they made money during the savings and loan crisis, the RTC days and then when everything was hitting the fan, in 2008, they're like Scott, you really need to be in the note space. I've been doing some owner financing and origination and working with other investors in the space previously, but when all the banks going out of business and my mortgage company at that point kind of come to a standstill, I just kind of jumped from the origination side of business to starting to contact banks and see what they had in their portfolios that they were looking to sell off. So when I talk about the numbers, I'm literally buying mortgages directly from Banks and different real estate investment hedge funds.

Russ Johns 4:03
Okay!!

Scott Carson 4:03
Primarily non performing notes where somebody hasn't paid their mortgage in six months, sometimes six years. We're buying that debt at a discount and then our biggest goal Russ is to reach out to the homeowner, reach back out to the borrower, and try to come to some sort of Win Win scenarios. Try to get back on track. I don't care what your country western song is, you lay off for work, sick, divorced, dog died, grandma got run over by a reindeer. Let's try to if you want to stay you got to pay but let's figure out something that makes sense. Since we're buying a lot of this debt where it's really non performing we buy it usually at a pretty good discount and that gives us a lot of flexibility to work out with the borrowers and listen Okay, you owe 120 grand and a house is worth 100 Let's get you started paying again. If you make 6 on time payments, or 12 on time payments we'll drop the balance down to what the property's worth, then maybe adjust your interest rate or forgive you 30 grand or structure your interest. There's a whole lot of things that we can do to make it a win win for our borrowers. That's what our goal is. I make the joke that we're trying to make America great again one defaulted mortgage at a time out there. We're pretty successful about signatures on getting borrowers to start performing in some sort of fashion. There's always those that want to play hardball with us or are going to respond to their mail or they've moved out of the house. So we've got to take the legal route, do that. So that's what I've done. Basically, the last 10 years, I've kind of known across the country to the note guy. There's a very small niche inside a real estate investing in the distressed note space. We've done a really good job, not only buying over a half a billion dollars in debt on residential and commercial properties, but also a really great job spreading the word and helping other investors to tap into this niche teaching it because there's a lot of moving parts and it's a different mentality than you're fixing flippers or being a realtor or mortgage broker. That's kind of what we do is we buy debt and try to keep people in their homes if we can.

Russ Johns 6:05
That's a fascinating industry and having a little bit of experience growing up my mother was a real estate broker and then in 85, when the market tanked out, it was really tough. In fact, I was a musician and worked in construction part time and construction dried up. So I just really couldn't continue to play music for a number of years. It was really tough because there was so many people that were confused about the market and everything else. Same in 2008, when when we had that dip, and well it was probably more than a dip. I'm not sure what they call it but

Scott Carson 6:50
The great recession is what they've labeled that now for the most part.

Russ Johns 6:55
I anticipate with this pandemic and everything that's going on with this. There are gonna be a lot of people that, especially in the commercial space, restaurants are closing out and potentially, for good. I mean, there are restaurants in New York that have just said, Hey, this is our last day we're closed, we're done. I mean, the service that you offer is an incredibly valuable service. What I hear you saying is that if you could restructure a piece of debt, and this is what a lot of Wall Street investors do. They take like a business, and they restructure the debt and they bring it together and they keep it going and maintain it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The mechanism that you us though is really you buy distressed property, you work it out, and hopefully. I'm sure you have some amazing stories about people that have turned around and done some great work and won back their property in a certain way. So,

Scott Carson 8:05
Yeah. Let me clarify. Yeah, we do exactly what Wall Street does. If you've ever watched The Big Short. We're not buying bonds and stuff like that we're literally buying the mortgage. So I literally become the bank on these people's debt, whether it's commercial or residential. So I'm literally the bank, I don't own the property. I own the mortgage. In the Properties with securitize that mortgage makes it valuable. So if I want to take the property back, I would have to go the legal route foreclose or offer cash for keys, the borrower's or some sort of agreement they don't like. By halftime, borrowers have walked away from the property. So it's a matter of cash or keys or deed in lieu or if they won't respond to it, then we've got good legal route to take that property back. We deal with so many borrowers out there and we've helped a lot of people that want to stay in their house. I'll tell you this, for those that are struggling right now, they're stressed about the situation with this pandemic, that can't pay their mortgage or worried about their mortgage. Do yourself a favor, take a deep breath, nobody's gonna show up at your house this month or next month. Your banks aren't gonna start foreclosures. They do not want that bad press being the big Evil Empire bank. Landlords sure as hell shouldn't be evicted you either. We'll get to that later on. But the biggest thing I can tell you is communicate with your bank. For those out there, if you're struggling and you've been laid off. It's better to call immediately and talk about that maybe there's some payment plans. Most of the banks are going to be doing immediate forbearance agreements where they're gonna be giving you 60 to 90 days, they're just gonna take this two or three months of payments, and put it on the back of the face amount of the loan. So that's normal happens all the time. We're not going to see a big increase in foreclosures until six to 12 months from now, once we kind of get through this thing, and the banks have some options and then seeing what happens with the job market. I mean, I'm worried about the unemployment rate being at 32%. Like they talk about. The oil and gas being an effect.

Russ Johns 10:00
Oil and gas are already down. I mean, that's hasn't even crossed the news hardly at all. And you being in Texas, you understand how that impacts? Especially Houston. I mean, my son

Scott Carson 10:11
Oh, yeah.

Russ Johns 10:12
My son's in Houston and there have been a number of layoffs from his group of friends.

Scott Carson 10:19
The thing is to look at some of the things that we do a lot with, my team does, I should say, I don't do too much, my team and my servicers, it's just talking to the borrowers just getting on the phone and talking about options. You'll find that a lot of times there are solutions. If somebody wants to stay in their house, and they're working and they're trying to do what they can. We're gonna work with that person.

Russ Johns 10:40
Yeah.

Scott Carson 10:44
There's times that we've dropped interest rates to zero percent. Somebody's been trying to illegally been trying to pull him off for four years and we bought the mortgage and we dropped her interest rate to zero percent. So she'd have her mortgage paid off in seven years versus 30 years.

Right.

Because we bought it so cheap. We bought it such a big discount she owed like 120 grand or however long worth, like 60 it wasn't any fault of her own that the market value drops. So that's the thing we're gonna see price drops. We're seeing that across the country with listings on the MLS being dropped and discounted down you're gonna see more of that stuff. So we expect to be busy but it's just gonna be another six to 12 months before the dominoes fall before everything kind of filters through and stuff and each state's a little bit different to and what they do. Texas we do everything faster, fast highways, fast foreclosures and fast executions. You know what I mean? It'll be faster here versus like, Florida will take nine to 12 months or even like New York, New Jersey, which can be two years to foreclose. So wherever you're at in wherever you're watching us, just reach out to your bank and talk to them find out what kind of options are offering up and it's better to be communicated.

Russ Johns 10:57
Start the conversation.

Scott Carson 10:58
Yep, exactly.

Russ Johns 11:06
Start the conversation. So let's shift gears a little bit. I don't want to go doom and gloom too much. And I know that and what I wanted to do because I found it fascinating because I have a little bit of experience around and I was doing, One of my clients was the rich club in Houston and you're familiar with that real estate investment club. There's some things that people want to really hold on to, they can't get past the block of what do I do they get stuck. What I hear you saying is just start the conversation, open up the dialogue and say, Hey, here's my situation. Here's where I am. This is what I can do. This is what I am unable to do and just start that conversation with people.

Scott Carson 12:37
Yeah, exactly. If you've been laid off, hey, go file for unemployment, like 33 million people did yesterday in the last week. Amazon grocery stores, there's places that are hiring, it may not be ideally but it's something is better than nothing.

Russ Johns 12:52
Yeah.

Scott Carson 12:52
If you've got an extra room, maybe you need to rent out a bedroom to a friend who's maybe struggling.

Russ Johns 12:57
I was listening to a conversation the other dayon a podcast and a guy in Seattle, because a lot of the people that are working in Seattle don't live in Seattle, they they come to work for the week. So this guy took three of his bedrooms, installed a bathroom and a closet in each one of his bedrooms or a little kitchenette or something like that. And he rented each one out as an apartment, three bedrooms out his apartments. He said he's making more money than his mortgage costs.

Scott Carson 13:31
He hasn't happened in a lot of places. A lot of people will mean you had to happen a lot of college towns where we will rent the bedroom out to the student versus the house out and they can charge 100 and $200 more per bedroom versus what it would be split in three ways. It's right in the house out. I mean, we've done that and a lot of people use Airbnb to turn the houses into Airbnb or temporary weekends when they've got home games or football games. We obviously we don't have that right now. And so a lot of people are scrambling on the on the two rental side, Airbnb are really dragging out stuff like that. So that's why you got to get a little creative on things.

Russ Johns 14:07
I think your story going forward, Scott is the fact that add a little creativity to your day, add a little idea, podcasting, broadcasting. All of the TV announcers all of the broadcasters right now are doing exactly what we're doing right now. I mean, this is TV to dotO, right. I know that some of the broadcasters are hurting because of all the podcasts and all of the, the live streams and things that are taking place are taking a lot of ownership off of the main screen. Their production cost is obviously different than my production cost. And yours or mine. Yeah, talk about your podcast. Let's get into that. Let's talk about how you're doing.

Scott Carson 14:55
I'm a big believer for your role in the media business. We're all looking for eyeballs in your balls, but I think the podcasting side is one of the most friendly is niches out there. We coined a term in my field two years ago called Co Op petition.

Russ Johns 15:09
Yeah.

Scott Carson 15:10
We're all looking in competitive but we all love to cooperate, work with you to give best tips and things like that. I've learned stuff from you from watching your pirate broadcast here on LinkedIn last year. So but what I want to get at so my podcasts we've got headed for less than three years. It's called the note closers show on iTunes. But we've cranked out three to five episodes a week. It's a mixture of me teaching note investing on a nugget by nugget basis. And then we make sense interviews with people in our field investors, vendors, experts, and then we also little dash in a motivation and business mindset along with that too, as well. So we just filmed Episode 685 yesterday.

Russ Johns 15:21
Wow!

Scott Carson 15:28
About 650,000 downloads and then we've also gotten the show syndicated on 17 different am FM radio, just stations across the country too. So we get about 2 million hits to the radio stations websites as listeners as we have six shows a week across that too. So if you're looking to learn more about the note investing site, check it out the no closer show. There's a few other smaller podcasts out there, but we're kind of the 50,000 megawatt blowtorch when it comes to that niche. It is a great time.

Russ Johns 16:20
Yeah, that's the point is is that someone, a note guy from Austin can go out and reach a huge audience. Well, when we define huge audience let's considering the days of the pirate broadcast when they had a tower in Mexico blasting across the entire US.

Scott Carson 16:47
Right.

Russ Johns 16:48
That's the origination of the pirate broadcast is the idea that you don't need an FCC license to come out here and do this. You don't need you could work outside the box and do a little kind of something a little different. And you're doing exactly that. And I applaud and hats off to you.

Scott Carson 17:08
I love it.

Russ Johns 17:10
I love that. I've been doing. I taught podcast movement, I taught a class, I think, in 2014 in Dallas there. I've been in podcasting and broadcasting. I was managing radio stations in Houston for a while and been in the business for a while. And it's just fascinating. I just love the fact that you're doing these things, and setting an example of what can be done with other, a niche in notes that you're getting fit. All these downloads every month from iTunes, and it's amazing. So, hats off to you, man.

Scott Carson 17:50
Well, thanks, man. I'm fortunate we got a good team. We do a really good job with repurposing the content. Filming it, recording With a video then repurposing it on YouTube and creating a blog thrown it up on LinkedIn and putting a full transcript on our website and resharing a video across Facebook and Twitter, stuff like that. So that's the thing is, once you get your systems down, and you've got a message, the biggest thing is just showing up consistently. That's really half the battle. I think for a lot of people out there. Scheduling, the first thing we do every day you asked me what I would be doing this morning, if I was not stuck at home, I'd be like, I'd be in the office filming a podcast interview and on one podcast or doing my own podcast. For the most part, it's just a matter of staying omnipresent with your audience. We all have a tribe Seth Godin, the author of tribes and so many other ones. He talks about that all the time. We all have a tribe that need to be led in in this time and day. I think we all need to be leading more, at least sharing what's going on in our lives because we don't have that availability to kind of hang around the watercooler the coffee pot in the morning. Share what's going on. Share Victory. Share certain little things that we're having fun. Don't forget to laugh. I think we all need a good laugh now and again, because it can be very doom and gloom and everything. We're all gonna be okay. You think you're gonna recover? It may take six months may take 12 months. But you know what? We're all gonna go back and look and say, Hey, you remember that time we had that marshmallow roast out in the backyard. It's all about making memories.

Russ Johns 19:22
Yeah.

Scott Carson 19:23
Do what you can these days to try to be positive and have fun if you're struggling. Here's another thing, don't struggle alone, pick up the phone and call somebody reach out. I know a lot of people are stressed and maybe introverts. They're kind of hunkering down like a scared animal. Don't do that. Reach out to friends. Pick up the phone call somebody. I mean, if anybody wants to talk to me, then it's good to talkwithScottCarson.com and schedul 30 minutes and I'm glad to let you vent and do whatever you need to do right there.

Russ Johns 19:50
Yeah, I have bookruss.com.

Scott Carson 19:52
Okay, there you go.

Russ Johns 19:53
Boom. One of the things I want to ask you though, because you've been in this for a while you understand the game The consistency of showing up is really key. What's the one thing that has surprised you after doing so many episodes and being syndicated? I mean, because it's not necessarily a simple process to get all these things moving. It's like the flywheel. It takes a while to get it going and once it starts moving, it seems like you get to a certain threshold, and then all of a sudden, things start taking off.

Scott Carson 20:29
I agree to that. The big surprise is just that I think a lot of people give up before they ever get rock and rolling and that's the thing that surprised me more. Look if you're about passion on something, and this is gonna take some work. I didn't get to where I'm at today. Overnight, it took three years and doing hundreds of episodes but honing my craft and getting better at it.I look at the first few videos and I'm just kind of like cringe at the Facebook Lives I was doing and the camera being all kind of awkward and the lighting being horrible and Sound not being the best quality, but people still watch that stuff. So that's the biggest thing that surprised me the most is I look back and it's like, wow, three years goes by like that.

Russ Johns 21:09
It doesn't go by quickly. It does go quickly. Hey, I want to give a shout out to a couple of people. Gabriel says Good morning. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Gabriel. Gabriel is awesome. He's just got involved in the live streaming arena and setting some great examples for some people in this time. Love the new intro. Thank you, Angie. Appreciate it. She says Good morning as well. So thank you fellow pirates. Since now you're a pirate Scott, You're invested. Even Randy Martin, up from Canada up north. Hey, Randy. Good morning. How are you doing? And I know we have Sherry lolly. We have Gabriel, Michael Ray's in the house. We got Lewis. We've got AsRoffe, Laurie Knutson. I know there's a lot of people John Gallagher's in house Fred Costa. Leticia from Houston. So she's there Susan season. How about a show video for older people on how to download the app in order to order food. So they order food from home.

Scott Carson 22:28
That's at doordash on or something like that thing, right?

Russ Johns 22:32
Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. So, these are all ideas that anyone can pick up, take off with and generate. And my belief, Scott is that everyone has a gift. Everyone has a voice, everyone has a message and you just have to take the chance that you can do this. It's not for everyone. It's Not everybody wants to do what we're doing. However, it's available to everyone. There's no lacking in an opportunity here. So get creative in this this type of space right now. What I've seen, you've probably seen the same thing as zoom rooms where people are doing happy hour and just casual get togethers. So have you seen that or have you taken on that?

Scott Carson 23:28
Yeah, we actually had one last night. Seven o'clock Central. We do a usually a regular Wednesday night webinar podcast recording on some sort of topic. In with mass media and podcasts, we kind of called the marketing m&ms monetization marketing. We had like 25 people on there, and not everybody came on camera, only about eight or nine people wanted to share the camera to get on top of other people just want to be there listening.

Russ Johns 23:55
Yeah.

Scott Carson 23:56
So we were just sharing ideas and sharing what's going on. What everyone's dealing with and how people was Overcoming issues. I mean, we had professional speakers that have been their whole calendar has been canceled. And so they're doing other things by going out and interviewing people in their wife's associations. Talking with people that now they can't speak, they don't have events, but they're still getting the message out the word out. We talked with another lady, Misty Phillips, who's runs the spark Christian podcast out of Houston, Texas, they had 150 people come to their event, and she's dealing with a lot of other organizations, church groups and things that can't meet personnel and help them say, okay, was this taken online? Let's do a Zoom Room or Facebook Live to still get the message out social network. I think that's the biggest thing is it's never been easier to do a show or a podcast than when it used to be. I mean, most people still think it would be crazy amount of technology, and you'd have all these big cameras. But now like you said, If Jimmy Kimmel, or Jimmy Fallon was doing a live stream with a regular webcam, and our crappy mic and not really good lighting. There's no excuse that you can't. Yeah, I sent an email out. I'm sorry, was that Russ?

Russ Johns 25:11
On national TV.

Scott Carson 25:12
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All our newscasters are doing the news and the weather from their home for the most part, and I'm like, Oh, you need to get that you need to put some curtains up. It's too much of an echo in that room or somebody needs to send this guy's social light.

Russ Johns 25:26
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Carson 25:30
So we're just getting, it all starts with that first one. And taking that first step and embracing the suck. We're all suck at it at first, but you get better. Your 10th episode will be a lot better than your first one, your 20 has to be tremendously a lot better and then you'll be off and rock and rolling at that point.

Russ Johns 25:46
and it's amazing how my background, I'm here. I don't have a fancy setup or anything like that. I got a light a little bit of light in front of a window. It's some times of the year, it's better than others. And it's like, just doing what you can with what you have, and start getting out there. And and here's the beautiful thing about it. And Scott, you know, this is that, yes, those first few episodes may suck. And what happens though is you start to find your voice, you start to find your rhythm in what it is that you are putting out there and what it is that you're saying, and it gets easier and easier to understand what that is. Having a conversation like this with interesting people is a great way of just exposing people to the community. I know that I'll be following up with you having a connection and we'll be doing some stuff together and if I hadn't had the show, what's the chances that we would be a connection and do something together like this?

Scott Carson 27:00
Probably smaller. Hang on, I get my lawn care guys. So there's noise the backgrounds where it is. It's a live broadcast. Exactly. Yeah, that's a it's such a great network like the 20 people, 15 people you gave shout out to her all across the country, and you're on Periscope and Facebook, or Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn here and YouTube, it's so easy to build a community, everybody and most people think you need to have thousands of thousands of followers. And that's so far from the truth. If you've got 20 people that watch your show, or one person that wants you to show that you have an impact on one is greater than none, everybody and I got that from Gary Vaynerchuk years ago. I don't ever expect my videos to go viral. If I can help one person a day, in some sort of fashion, I can make fun of myself and lighten the load or share some nuggets. It's important to me it's probably important to a lot of other people out there. It's like I said, if you don't want to use video, don't use video if you want to use use audio use audio, but just show up. That's the thing is every if you don't do it, somebody else will. Alright everybody, and it might as well be you. And it's like the whole Saturday live skit. I'm smart enough. People like me. I'm good enough people like me.

Russ Johns 28:28
Dang it. Yeah, people like you.

Scott Carson 28:34
Year round,

Russ Johns 28:37
All the way to the ground. It's so funny. It's like Seth Godin said, pick yourself. Just pick yourself. You have permission. You're granted permission right now. It's done. You got it. You got it. This has been wonderful Scott. I Really appreciate the fact and it's always a blast. And it's a great way for me to start my day in. Share somebody's personality and presence and their ability and opportunity to help others in the world. And I know that there's probably a lot of things that you could do. And we could talk for another hour on marketing and media and generating content, repurposing content, things like that. So maybe I'll to have another pirate broadcast in the future. However, I do want to ask you, what's the one thing you want to leave with the audience today that some nugget of knowledge that they can go away with and say, huh, that's a good idea.

Scott Carson 29:45
So here's the thing, everybody, no matter what you're doing, the only thing that you guarantee by not trying is failure. That's the only thing that you'll guarantee by not taking action on whatever it is. It's failure. You'll never get beyond where you're at. At least try go out, give it college F or give something a try, whether it is launching and sort of doing something new, or just do something, get your get your butt in the game. nobody wins anything from sitting on the sidelines. And so that's the thing I would tell you no matter what if you're struggling, reach out, like I said, always open to talking, if people have been counseling, but even some options where they can go, but get your butt in the game, and go do something.

Russ Johns 30:26
Yeah. I appreciate that more than you know, Scott. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you and what you're doing and right now is the best time to invest in yourself to invest in the opportunity you have, man, we're just getting pummeled today. Just invest in yourself and take the time and energy to learn and skill is going to help you move forward regardless of what's going on around us. This is something that you can do and it's neat needed unnecessary. So thank you, kindnesses is cool, smiles are free, and you enjoy the day. Thanks Scott.

Scott Carson 31:16
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Historically, pirate broadcasting is a term used for any type of broadcasting without a broadcast license. With the internet, creating your own way of connecting has evolved.  

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