The politically correct way to say it is overcoming business obstacles. For a more accurate description, listen to the first 2 minutes of this week's show. Although it’s been a rough few days, Robby and Chase are excited about certain aspects of the business.

While they were supposed to do an interview today with the VP of National Sales for Valuation Vision and were ready to go this morning, the salesperson ended up rescheduling. She had an all-hands sales meeting.

During this sales meeting, she found out that they'll no longer be servicing clients that need under 100 orders a month. Seeing that most of the great Note MBA community falls under that threshold, it seemed no longer helpful to have her on the show. because of some of her business conflicts which

This was the tip of the iceberg, on what had been many terrible, no good, very bad days. Though true to form, it didn't take for Robby and Chase to spins this into a lesson for others in the business.

They go on to discuss speed bumps in the road and how to deal with them.

While there have been some downsides the past week, Robby's spec home has already received over a dozen leads within 24 hours of the home being up for sale.

Systems and virtual assistants have been the name of the game so far and they go into detail about both topics to conclude the show.

“Finding the little wins is important.”

If you have any questions, comments, or potential deals to send our way, email us at [email protected].

• How do you continue to implement systems when all of the water keeps pouring in
• The importance of morning & evening routines
• The role routine and discipline can play when things aren't going as planned
• A new strategy the guys are going to use with their VA
• A listener question about where to go to set up a business entity
• And much more!

• Tim Ferris interview with Jock Willink

• Subscribe via iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher Radio.
• Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
• Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning.

Cheers,

Chase & Robby

On this week’s episode, Robby and Chase discuss mastermind takeaways from Scott Carson’s recent Mastermind group weekend, creating and documenting systems to help scale your business, and they also answer a few questions sent in from the listeners.

Robby starts off by going over his key takeaways from the Mastermind group he recently met with. These include:

• You are the sum of the people that you spend the most time with
• Robby learned that he’s not a manager and it’s a skill set he needs to put more time toward
• A surprise book that he thinks will be one of the top 5 action oriented pieces of content that he will have read this year.

The book led Robby to reaffirm a reoccurring thought he had from a few months ago about scaling his business.

Between the spec home he is building, the apartment building that he is fixing/stabilizing, a fix and flip deal, the note portfolio, the NoteMBA podcast, and his desire to search for other larger commercial deals. He realized there was just so much going on and in order for him to get back to what he is best at which is interacting with investors, sourcing deals and ensuring they have enough capital to do the deals. He would need to bring on and hire help to focus on the areas and necessary processes of running the business.

They let new investors know that these things that they are learning now are things the new investors can implement in their business from the get go so they don’t spend more time creating and teaching others their systems in the future.

From here they transition to talking about the current buying season for them and whether it’s a result of exiting so many deals and realigning their focus or because there’s an abundance of deals coming across their desk. Some interesting points are brought up about interfacing with new and past JV investors such as the 7 touch points.

The last part of the show answers some excellent listener questions including:

• What necessary pre-purchase resources should you have?
• What systems do you need to create or put in place for your JV investors?
• What is the difference between Hard and Soft collateral?
• Is there a specific ROI calculator note investors should be using?

There are some great final parting shots on attitudes and mindsets as well so don’t miss out!

If you have any questions, comments, or potential deals to send our way, email us at [email protected].

• A recent book that's having a massive impact on Robby's business
• The difference between hard and soft collateral
• What vendors you should have in place prior to your first deal
• What a mastermind can do for your business
• And much more!

• The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris
• The E-Myth Real Estate Investor by Michael Gerber
• Scott Carson
• ProTitle USA

• Subscribe via iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher Radio.
• Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
• Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning.

Cheers,

Chase & Robby

On this episode, Robby and Chase talk about the progress they've made on this year's goals. They debate the virtue of changing a goal you're not meeting, how to think about missed goals as opportunities, and how their mutual accountability is keeping them on track. 

Get full show notes and more information here: The Mid-Year Goals Episode

This week, Robby and Chase discuss settling various deals and the biggest takeaways they walked away with. They also dive into the importance of developing systems for your business, as well as outsourcing, delegating, and what you can expect on the next episode about goal setting. 

Get full show notes and more information here: http://www.notemba.com/settling-deals-power-of-delegating-developing-systems

Robby shares his recent experience with handling a failed rent increase by his property manager and talks about the importance of standing your ground when someone makes mistakes that financially impact you.

He also talks about a recent joint venture deal with an interesting twist. The property had a buyer’s contingency on selling a primary residence which caused them to repeatedly push back closing date. Robby then shares his biggest takeaways from that experience and how he will handle similar situations in the future.

Get full show notes and more information here: https://bitly.com/

This week, we’re featuring a great interview with Chris Smith, a USA Today best-selling author and co-founder of Curaytor, a social media, digital marketing and sales coaching company. Chris is an incredible wealth of knowledge when it comes to marketing real estate businesses, and he joins the show to share his insights on the topic.

Get full show notes and more information here: http://bit.ly/29xtotE

Fresh off the July 4th holiday weekend, Robby and Chase tackle a few topics Ohio Fast Track Passes, including updates on the multi-family deal in Chicago, lessons learned from recent deals, and some great interviews for upcoming episodes.

To start things off, Robby talks about how he finally got a solid property manager lined up for the apartment complex in Chicago. He’s starting to renovate units and evict tenants through cash for keys and other methods, when he ponders whether there is a document tenants can sign so you don’t have to go through eviction through the court system?

With an eviction, you get the judgment and possession order from the court and the sheriff enforces it. Robby would like to potentially sidestep this by getting the tenant to sign a possession order themselves that you could take to the sheriff to enforce without having to go through the court. Is this something that they could create or has been created? Sounds like a great opportunity to learn something new.

However, once again, Robby’s biggest challenge is separating the business and the personal aspect. He is frustrated because these tenants have no care in the world that he is trying to make this complex better and they think it’s ok to want to go on living in it for free. It goes hand in hand with last week’s topic where a borrower has come on hard times, but over the last 4 or 5 or 6 years, they have saved 0 dollars and 0 cents when they have been making 0 mortgage or rent payments. Unless you were truly unemployed during that time, this speaks to a bigger issue about the general population not having the financial education or financial IQ that they need to successfully get through their later years in life.

This leads Robby to explain the number 1 biggest takeaway he had from his personal Gary, Indiana deal is that as soon as you make contact with a borrower and they want to talk numbers - Don’t let your attorney handle it directly! It’s not their money and they can’t negotiate from a position of knowing the back end numbers so it makes more sense to get the borrower’s contact info and discuss it with them directly. The 2nd takeaway and first rule of negotiation is that you always let the other party make the first offer and Robby’s self-reflection reveals the fact that he should have gotten the borrower on the Gary, Indiana deal to give their offer first so he could see what they thought was a reasonable payment plan to maintain their home.

Chase then brings up something he heard on NPR about a study gauging a nationwide sentiment of Wall Street where the age group of 18 to 24 and 45 and 64 had very little trust in Wall Street compared to a little more trust from other demographics. One lady was quoted saying “the good stuff doesn’t really affect me, but the bad stuff could affect the entire nation." Basically saying, I don’t get to participate in the good, but when things go south, everyone has to participate in that.  It’s interesting to contemplate when talking about our Nation’s financial education & savings to hear quotes like this from the general public.

Finally, Chase brings up the Fast Track foreclosure bill in Ohio that they mentioned a couple episodes ago. As of last week, Ohio lawmakers have passed a law specifically targeting abandoned “zombie” properties to hasten up the foreclosure process. Quoting Robert Klein , “Ohio has now put itself ahead of the national curve in fighting community blight. Outdated foreclosure laws are one of the primary causes of blight in communities across the country and Ohio is one of the few states that is doing anything about it.” A new law will now supposedly go into effect in 90 days, but Chase & Robby are very bullish on it going into effect that quickly. Once complete, though, this should speed up the foreclosure process to as little as 6 months on vacant and abandoned properties. They are hopeful for the potential good this will do for their businesses & discuss potential future ramifications. Supposedly, a few people in Congress are going to keep their eyes on this as well to see how it pans out to determine whether it should be implemented across the country.

That’s it for this week and be sure to keep a watch out for the next few new episodes as there are some very interesting guests coming down the line! You’ll have to wait to find out who, though!

If you have any questions for us or comments send them our way at [email protected].

• A Potential Consent To Judgment For Renters
• How The Nation Feels About Wall Street
• Why Financial Education Matters For Our Borrowers
• An Update On The Gary, Indiana Deal
• Ohio Has Officially Past Legislation For Fast Track
• The Two Big Takeaways From Dealing With Attorneys And Borrowers

• Subscribe via iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher Radio.
• Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
• Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning.

Cheers,

Chase & Robby

On this week’s episode, Robby and Chase discuss a couple case studies coming down the pipe that they’re creating, a note deal in Gary, Indiana where Robby has to make a difficult decision, and the importance of continuing education & specifically, financial education.

They get started out by discussing the fix & flip deal in Winter Park, Fl that will be coming to a close soon and all of the great video content that will be coming for a full case study they are planning to create. Robby mentions there were a lot of great opportunities on it and goes over the rough numbers as well as the negotiations with the buyer that led to a happy conclusion for him.

The 2nd part of the conversation segues into learning opportunities, education and a deal in Gary, Indiana. The asset acquired on this deal was a non-performing note they purchased where the value is right around $50,000. Robby bought it in May of 2014 for a little under $8,000. However, there have been delays with the foreclosure, a bankruptcy got stalled, and pretty much anything that could’ve come up to stall the deal, did come up.

Robby reminds listeners that one area that can get you into trouble on these low-value assets are the servicing fees. Robby has been paying about $95 per month under FCI’s full collection program for about 24 months now.

The actual educational and difficult decision on this deal comes into play just a couple days before the actual auction which is on Friday. Robby received an email from the attorney who relays the message that the borrower asked if there’s anything she can work on via FCI to stay in the home as she is 75 and has some health issues. Robby goes over the numbers and the specific situation with this borrower which leads him to make a difficult business decision that can happen in this business. It’s an interesting challenge of this business where you have to deal with the human element and potentially have to move someone out of the home that they’ve lived in for a long time.

Many times, it’s a great situation where you’re actually able to help out a homeowner stay in their home. On the flip side, if a borrower doesn’t respond to your repeated attempts to contact them until the very last moment and are not willing or able to pay restructured payments when you know they have ample income to pay then it becomes just too little too late and it turns into the black and white of doing business.

This leads Robby and Chase to touch on the lack of and declining public education system in the U.S. to where these situations occur. If more people were provided a decent personal financial education or were willing to self-educate themselves then these situations could potentially be avoided. You need to be willing to sacrifice a day shopping or playing golf on a Saturday or Sunday to self-educate so you can get where you want to be in life. Robby brings up the great quote that you need to “spend time doing things that other people won’t do now so that you can live a life that other people won’t be able to in the future.”

Robby then recalls a recent phone call he had with Eddie Speed. He reached out to Eddie about seller financing education because Eddie has more working experience in this industry than Chase & Robby combined. If you want to succeed then you need to be constantly self-educating and “sharpening the knife.” Robby and Chase may spend well into the 5 figures each year for educational classes and life coaching, but they are able to make that money back in spades. They also understand that there is always room for improvement even though they’ve built up a sizable rental portfolio. It’s about seeking out an opportunity to improve your situation based on what your goals are.

Finally, they discuss a lot of the big things they have coming up such as the deals they’ll be exiting soon that will provide some great content and deal chatter come episode 83, 84 and 85. There’s going to be an event sometime around episode 100 which is fast approaching and in the works, but not solidified quite yet so keep an ear out for that!

Robby’s final parting shot is about Ryan Holiday’s book, Ego is the Enemy, that provided a well-timed reminder on taking a dose of humble sauce.

Be sure to check out the Insider Newsletter on the NoteMBA website that has a ton of value and is being sent out almost every week. It includes insider articles from around the industry that will help you navigate the industry to where you can understand where it’s at now and where it’s going.

Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week!

If you have any questions for us or comments send them our way at [email protected].

• Why You Should Be Sharpening The Ax
• A Talk On Continuing Education
• A Borrower Want Help After Two Years Of Being Unresponsive
• An Update On A Fix & Flip With No Roof
• Doing More Seller Finance Deals
• Servicing And Low-Value Assets

• Subscribe via iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher Radio.
• Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
• Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning.

Cheers,

Chase & Robby

It's critical to never lose sight on the importance of due diligence. Chase and Robby are coming to you this week with a bit of a different show as Robby takes a spur of the moment due diligence field trip out to Cleveland, Ohio. Since Robby is recording out of his rental car, the audio is a little shaky, but you’ll get a first hand peak at Robby doing some live due diligence!

They got a new tape and instead of analyzing it at home, Robby decided to take a quick trip up there to do the due diligence on these 5 assets in person. They stress the need to focus on your strengths within your business whether it be due diligence, analyzing deals, or marketing and raising money as you’ll be much more effective in the long run this way.

It just so happens to be a great time now for this because Robby reminded himself just yesterday about the importance of due diligence as he was working on a deal and negotiating the pricing of an asset they were about to purchase when it took an interesting turn.

Robby did an email search to look over all of their correspondence so he could make a final decision on how to exit the deal and get the missing puzzle pieces in order. While doing this rundown, he came across a spreadsheet he knows he had seen, but had not taken a closer look yet. The spreadsheet had multiple unnamed tabs where Robby found some servicing notes from a prior transfer upon closer review.

Turns out, it was some notes discussing the original borrower, who was now deceased, and some contact with his son who had been provided a purchase price to pick up the asset. When he read through all of the line items, he found out the son of the deceased borrower had been present during an appraisal that was completed by the prior seller. The notes indicated the son’s reasoning for not wanting to buy and remodel the property was because he felt that if the county came in and inspected the property then it would most likely be condemned and knocked down! Another line item noted the appraiser had to put on a mold mask just to go through and look at the property.

This just goes to show you how easy it is to miss things. You’ll get in spots where the seller wants to move the asset, but you need to make sure you take the time to do your proper due diligence. Robby & Chase could have easily ended up in a position where they dumped 15 to 20 thousand dollars into this deal and then gotten to a point where they would have to determine how much more good money they would have to dump into a potentially bad deal to save themselves because they weren’t paying close enough attention.

Fast forward now to Robby’s reasoning for going to really look at the Cleveland assets, talking to the neighbors, asking about rental prices, and looking for local realtors or property manager’s offices close by.

He reminds everyone that you don’t need to buy in your backyard. Pick 4 or 5 markets and put together a ground game strategy to develop those areas. Develop relationships with attorneys, brokers, realtors, etc. so you can eventually lean on them more for help and potential discounted fees once you’ve worked with them enough. Robby was able to get a 5% reduction in attorney fees by just sending an email and asking if they would. His spur of the moment trip is now essentially paid for by using one attorney group and consistently working with them to where he saved enough in discounted fees to pay for this trip and others.

Yea, it may be expensive to check out the assets in person, but it doesn’t mean you can’t find one of these deals where you’re going to make 5, 10, 20, or 30 thousand dollars on a single deal - Only because you were willing to spend the extra $400 or $500 in one day to go out and take a look at the assets. Plus, being able to tell your investors about a brewery you ate at for lunch down the road, or about the university that’s near by, or that hey, it’s not the greatest neighborhood, but rents are really great and the building is in great shape, will only strengthen your position. Being able to market your deals to investors on such a personal level like this can only further your prosperity!

Also, from a personal ethics standpoint, it is imperative you do your due diligence when utilizing investors capital to fund your deals. Not only will this build long term trust, but the good will and referrals you will receive from being well organized and professional is paramount to your success! You need to manage your investor’s money as if it were yours; don’t be the guy who orders the surf ’n turf on someone else’s bill when you would only order a small salad if you were paying!

Don't forget to check out the virtual default conference Note C.A.M.P.

If you have any questions for us or comments send them our way at [email protected].

• Sometimes You Just Need To Jump On A Plane
• Going All In On Your Strengths
• Narrowly Avoiding A Terrible Deal Thanks To Additional Due Diligence
• You Don't Need To Invest In Your Own Backyard
• Personal Ethics And Due Diligence

• Subscribe via iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher Radio.
• Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
• Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning.

Cheers,

Chase & Robby

In this week’s episode, Robby and Chase segue beautifully through a number of topics ranging from dealing with Ohio fast tracks foreclosures and Chicago foreclosure nightmares to contemplating what they can apply to their own businesses from billion dollar companies such as Netflix & Zappos, who have created & maintained amazing company cultures centered around freedom, excellence & paying your great employees what they’re worth.

Things get started discussing some assets up in Chicago and Ohio that have been going through the foreclosure process for a while now and have been tied up in a court nightmare in Cook County.

However, Chase brings to light that there is a Fast Tracks Foreclosure bill that is running through Ohio legislation right now that will potentially speed up the process to as little as 6 months so there is light at the end of the tunnel. The State Government seems to finally be concerned about these blighted properties and their effect on increasing crime rates and decreasing property values. Robby and Chase contemplate why they haven’t taken a more common sense approach sooner with these vacant & abandoned properties the bill is targeting. There’s a community crisis on a national proportion with these blighted properties and this bill is about the preservation of national real estate on a more macro level.

Also called into concern is the CFPB’s (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) $15.3 million dollars spent on internet ads and general advertising, which is coincidentally managed predominantly by the same advertising firm that runs President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s Ad campaigns.

One of NoteMBA’s past guests, the great Dave Van Horn, recently published an article on BiggerPockets relating to some of the challenges presented by these last two topics. It’s titled, “7 Common Challenges to Real Estate Note Investors” and goes over compliance issues, collateral issues, allonges & employing legal counsel among other things. There’s some great insight to bolster your understanding of the industry which will give you firepower when talking to your potential JV investors.

After that, they dive into the Netflix Culture Manifesto and how this is a must read for anyone that is thinking of adding individuals to their business. Netflix’s & Zappos’ take on employee compensation, unlimited vacation time, and not tracking hours is a pretty great revelation for someone looking to grow and scale their business.

Finally, Robby and Chase discuss Ryan Holiday’s new book, Ego is the Enemy, their summer conference schedules, the pitfalls and benefits of AirBnB investing, and Chase’s recent 2 hour webinar on blogging for business that is accompanied by a 22 page eBook (Feel free to email Chase for more info on this at chase @ notemba.com).

Ultimately, Chase and Robby agree that you need to continue to learn how to sharpen the knife and make it simple in order to grow your business successfully!

If you have any questions for us or comments send them our way at [email protected].

• Wait, How Much Is The CFPB Spending On Advertising
• The Manifesto Netflix Uses To Build Company Organization
• Ohio Fast Tracks Foreclosures Process
• Why AirBnB Might Be An Additional Exit Strategy

• Subscribe via iTunes.
• Listen on Stitcher Radio.
• Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
• Or click here to get sent to the top of the page where the on-site player is.

Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning.

Cheers,

Chase & Robby