Written by Jeffrey R. Armstrong – President/Owner of Armstrong Capital
Your favorite Master Note Buyer – Straightforward, Honest, Fair…
Many (probably most) note brokers share a common dream when they get into the business – quitting their day jobs and turning the note business into a career. Some may have more modest goals of creating a solid stream of recurring revenue every month to supplement their regular income. But, whatever the goal, many note brokers also share another common trait. They haven’t achieved those goals. There are plenty of reasons why a note business may not have become as successful as possible. From my fourteen years of teaching and assisting people interested in the note business, I think that many of those reasons can fall into four categories that can create barriers to achieving success.
Fear of Failure – Fear holds us back from doing many things we want to do in life. Some fears are helpful (don’t stick your hand in the fire), but others are really just our brains trying to help us avoid things that seem momentarily unpleasant. Failure is definitely an uncomfortable experience for most people and we often try to avoid doing things that could make us uncomfortable. But, those who achieve true success in almost any endeavor (note business, dancing, bass fishing, modeling, music, or pretty much anything else) recognize that failure is a part of reaching their goals. Failures are often the result you encounter when you push yourself beyond your current limits. If you never attempt anything that has a risk of failure, then you will likely achieve very little.
The fear of failure may be the single biggest factor holding many people back from achieving their goals. It isn’t an easy barrier to overcome, or everyone would do it. But, if you want to stand out from the crowd and build the note brokering career that you dream about, you must learn to embrace failure. The key is to learn from every failure and build on that knowledge to keep moving your business toward eventual success.
Refusal to take Control – It is easy to blame outside factors for the fact that your business hasn’t taken off the way you wanted. In fact, it is probably a basic part of human nature to want to focus on outside factors that are beyond your control when things don’t go your way. But, one common trait you will find among successful note brokers is that they focus on taking control of their situations rather than being at the mercy of outside forces. When things go wrong, they look for solutions, not excuses. Sure, things happen that you can’t control (poor credit, low appraisals, lose your best offer, etc.) but successful note brokers look for ways to meet these challenges head-on and make sure they are less impacted by them in the future. Remember that you are the only one who is responsible for achieving your goals. There will always be hurdles and barriers thrown in your way. Your job is to find ways to overcome them and make them less of a factor in the future. This isn’t always easy. But, if success in the note business was easy, everyone would be getting rich brokering and buying notes.
Not Enough Motivation – Simply having a great vision of what you want to achieve isn’t going to get you anywhere. You actually have to be motivated to focus and put in the time and effort to achieve your goals. Millions of kids dream of dancing or acting on a Broadway stage or in the performing arts. They love dancing and acting, and think it would be amazing to get paid to do their favorite activity. But, to actually make it to the highest level of a professional dancer or actor, you need to focus and put in an incredible amount of time and effort perfecting your skills. Sure, there are certain physical tools that give some people a leg up, but just relying on natural physical abilities will only get you so far. Successful dancers and actors work incredibly hard on improving their skills with constant, deliberate practice to ingrain certain habits in their turns, leaps, style and acting skills. While being in the performing arts may be fun, hour-after-hour, day-after-day, month-after-month, of working on a specific skill isn’t likely to meet anyone’s definition of fun. But, these dancers and actors want to achieve success so badly that they will put in this kind of effort to reach their goals. The question is, how motivated are you to achieve your goals? Everyone wants to be rich, work on their own terms, and enjoy the lifestyle of their choice. But, only a few people are truly motivated enough to do what it takes to get there.
There is Always Tomorrow – One last barrier that keeps many people from succeeding is a lack of urgency. Everyone is busy and it is very easy to put things off until tomorrow. If everyone who ever wanted to try the note business actually did it, I can’t even imagine how many thousands of note business professionals there would be. But, the fact is that most people will talk about it, but never do anything. I’m sure we are all guilty of this at one point or another. We talk about something we want to do, whether it is building an online business, learning to snowboard, writing a book, learning a foreign language, or any other goal we would like to achieve. But, most of these goals simply fall by the wayside and never get accomplished because we never go beyond thinking about it.
The first and most fundamental step to success in the note business is actually doing something. Stop talking about it and start building it. Don’t just think about finalizing your marketing plan, actually complete it. The one thing that all successful note brokers have in common is that they took the step to turn their goals into reality. Starting is no guarantee of success, but not ever starting is an absolute guarantee that you won’t succeed. Keep on marketing, it’s going to work! TWITA! (That’s What I’m Talking About!) J