KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Unlocking Passive Income: Nathan Turner's Journey into Note Investing

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

SummaryDiscover the secrets to passive income with note investing expert Nathan Turner, known as "The Canadian Note Guy." This episode chronicles his journey from fix-and-flip real estate to becoming a leader in the mortgage note investment space. Learn how investing in debt secured by real estate can provide steady cash flow and significant returns without the hassles of tenants and property management, allowing you to design a life of financial freedom.Bullet Point TakeawaysFrom Flipping to Notes: Hear about Nathan's pivotal journey from being a hands-on fix-and-flip investor to his "lightbulb moment" of realizing the power of mortgage note investing. He'll explain why he chose to pivot from managing physical properties to investing in the debt secured by them.The Anatomy of Note Investing: Understand what a mortgage note is and the difference between performing (lower risk, steady income) and non-performing (higher risk, bigger discounts) notes. Learn how purchasing notes below market value can create a secure, collateral-backed investment with high-yield potential.Passive Income, Without the Headaches: Discover the primary advantage of note investing: generating predictable cash flow from interest and principal payments without the stress of managing tenants, handling maintenance, or dealing with evictions. This "hands-off" approach is ideal for investors seeking true passive income.Navigating the Note Market: Gain insights into the current note market, including the scarcity of non-performing notes, what to look for when vetting a note, and the importance of continuous education and networking before diving into this specialized asset class.Creating a Life by Design: Nathan shares his personal philosophy on wealth creation, emphasizing that note investing is not just about making money but about building a stable investment portfolio that provides the financial freedom to design a life on your own terms.Topics:Nathan Turner Note InvestingPassive Income Note InvestingMortgage Note InvestingReal Estate Debt InvestingCanadian Note GuyCall-to-ActionReady to unlock a new stream of passive income? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and learn the secrets of note investing from Nathan Turner!

It just didn't make any sense to me to grow for the sake of growing. It really took me a minute to get my head around, what do I actually want? Do I want to grow or do I want to grow for a certain purpose or what are we looking for? In the end, for me, it's not just growing for the sake of growing. For me, I've got a specific purpose. So I'm looking at a five-year retirement plan or a financial freedom plan, if you will. I used to chase the ROI all the time, return on investment. And over the course of time, that has evolved into what I call

return on life. Welcome, everyone. This is Randy Dick here on the Return on Life podcast. You know this. It's not about the R-O-I, yet we chase the R-O-I all the time. It is about what we get out of life, and that's really the return on life, the ROL. And today I've got a great guest that we're going to talk about return on investment, of course, but you can't have return on life without some investment and some return on that. And today's guest, Nathan, Turner. Nathan is a great dude out of Alberta. In fact, we've got so much in common. We've both skied some of the same ski hills. And one of them is Castle Mountain, if you know Castle Mountain. If you're a skier, a real skier, a real snowboarder, you're going to know that mountain. And so we

talked a little bit about that. But Nathan is known as the Canadian note guy. The Canadian note guy. And we're not talking about love letters. We're not talking about special notes to grammar. we're talking about making some money with some notes. And so we're going to dive deep into that. And we're going to have some fun with that. Nathan's been in the space for quite some time. And in fact, he was telling me earlier on that he kind of fell into it. So you just never know where opportunity is going to come.

And so welcome to the show, Nathan. Yeah, pleasure to be here. And, you know, part of me thinks everybody should know about Castle Mountain. Part of me thinks, just stay away. Stay away. It's such a great mountain. and there's never any lines. So I'm sure the business owners would love more traffic.

So I guess we'll give them a plug. Yeah, you bet you. You know, when you go to council, you've got to make sure that you've eaten your weaies in the morning and that you've got some strong legs because... Strong legs. You're going to be in some either waist deep powder or some massive bumps and some steep. So you've got to be prepared for that.

So fantastic cornices and just some really fun terrain, steep and fast. Great hill. Great hill. Yes. Hey, well, tell us a little bit about how you stumbled into this thing called notes. And first off, share with what a note is for our listeners that, you know, don't know anything but the note to grandma and the girlfriend. Sure. So I think if you break it down to its simplest thing, it's basically it's an IOU.

So it's anything written down that says, I promised to pay this much for this long with this interest rate, whatever terms you set. that's a note. So you've got this now piece of paper. I remember watching a movie with my wife and it was said in like the 1800s or something in England and they were talking about somebody had bought somebody else's debts and I'm like, that's what I do. So it's been around forever. It really, and then I've researched a little bit more. It's been around since biblical times. So it's been around forever where you've got somebody's written down a set of terms and then that can be transferred off to somebody else. That's the simplest explanation.

That's cool. So I remember IOUs back in elementary school and middle school. So how do you get an IOU in a note? How do you make sure that that sticks and there's some, I guess, security behind it? Because the IOU notes that I was writing was just, hey, trust me, I'm good for the money. I'm good for it. There's there's my grade three signature. You're good. Yeah, no, it's, so anything that I buy is attached to real estate. So I buy residential mortgages. There's a few different names for different kinds of contract, contract for deed, lease option contracts,

anything that's written set of terms attached to real estate. So that's always kind of my backup plan. That's the collateral. That's the in case of we've got that property. to back it up. Okay. And so folks, right now we're just diving deep into what notes are and this and that, but we're also going to get into something that's really about the return of life, which is the passive income from these notes. And so Nathan is creating a path for many people, including himself, very passive income. So the return on life piece is going to come in. We actually dive into some other things outside of this too. So just stay tuned. And there's something really special at the end that you need to wait and watch the entire episode. Just trust me on this one. So Nathan, how did you get involved

in notes? And was it purely out of chance, fluke, you saw an opportunity, or how did that all come about? You know, it's kind of a little bit of all the above, but that'll kind of come clear. So here's the story. I was doing real estate. So like most people, they get into notes to come from a real estate background. I was doing fix and flip out in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan while I was living in Montreal. So flying across the country, fixing up the property and then selling it, that was kind of my first foray into real estate. I got stuck as the market turned, I think 2008, I got stuck with one property that I couldn't resell. So I did what you do with real estate. I started to rent it out. I figured out pretty quickly that I

really liked the monthly income that came with that, but I really didn't like anything else. It's a pain. And I, you know, I went from, oh, yeah, this is what you do. I went from, well, this is what you do to why does anybody do this? This is crazy. So it was a ton of work. And I thought, I don't know. I don't know if this real estate thing is for me. So I held on to that for a little bit. Eventually sold the house once that market. it started to correct a little bit. But in the meantime, I kind of had the real estate bug and kind of recognized the opportunities that were there.

So a friend of mine, also from Calgary, he had moved down to California. He had networked into a group of investors that had bought a portfolio of properties, about 60 of them, mostly centered in the Midwest, the United States, so Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. And they had bought this portfolio in April of 2007, So like top top of the market,

the idea was they were going to flip it out to another group of investors. Of course, that deal went sideways. By the fall of 2008, they were in a panic and they didn't know what to do with it. So that's where I came into the picture. These investors said, you know, we don't know anything about these houses.

We don't know anything about real estate. You guys do go. And they gave us a power of attorney and just carte blanche to go just, you know, do what you can, try to help correct. whatever it is that we've got out there. So in the course of trying to decide what we're going to do, we didn't have any operating budget.

We just had a bunch of really distressed housing, to put it mildly. These houses were in rough shape, but we didn't have any money to fix them. So we invented this system. We thought we were so smart, where we were going to do seller financing. And what that means is we own the house

and the person who wants to buy the house, we would say you can own this house for less than rent. That was kind of our tagline. So if market rent was $500, $500, I'll sell this house to you for $400 a month. You're going to be in charge of taking care of the house. You'll be in charge of doing any kind of upkeep to it. And you're going to pay me in the meantime for the right to live there and do that. And making kind of like a rent to own where you're going to continue to make payments. Part of that is going to go towards principal. Part of it's going to go towards interest. So as if it was a mortgage payment, but kind of a stepping stone to a mortgage, if you will.

So that was kind of how we got started into that. That was kind of my first foray. And then I started meeting other people that were doing something similar to what I was doing. I was introduced to going to a conference down in Louisiana where I walk in the room and 200 people were there all talking about what I was doing. And I was totally blown away that that existed. and there was a world for this. So that was kind of how I got started. That was the beginning of it.

And just kind of went from there. Now, these houses are this block of houses you bought on a discount, obviously. Right. So the houses that we started with, I didn't pay anything for them. Like I say, our job was just to try to get the most out of them that we could. Okay. And because of they were in a distressed condition, it was actually, more advantageous for us to sell them on terms rather than just try to sell them outright.

Was it easy to find those buyers? You know, it was. I had a, I had a vinyl cutting machine at the time. And so I cut out letters to spell out, own this house for own a home for less than rent with my phone number. And I'd use that. When I had a rental car, I would just put it on the window as I was driving around, checking out these different houses to see what they were like. and every time, every time I was down there, I would get phone calls and people would ask,

how do I do that? How do I own this home? So it was really easy. Okay. Let me understand. So you've got a friend that's got this block of homes through mortgages at the peak of the market out of California. Many of these homes were in the Midwest. Right. You were asked to take care of the problem. Can you fix this problem? Right. of distressed homes and were the owners now out of the homes or did you have to evict the owner? They were all vacant. They're all vacant. So the owner said, we're out of here.

You have the keys. You take it. And so you went, you flew down to the Midwest from Alberta or from Montreal. At the time, I was in Montreal. So I would either fly and rent a car and drive around. Okay. And you just boots in the ground. Let's go and get this thing done.

That's it. The way you went. And you're getting your new purchaser, your new buyer slash future owner. Yeah. Through just guerrilla marketing. Right. Just marketing on your vehicle where you're throwing up ads. What were you doing at the time?

I mean, Craig's List, like it was very much grassroots. It was Craigslist. it was just talking to, I did talk to a few realtors, but most success was just Craig's List and phone number on a car. Gorilla marketing. Okay. And so these people were either, they either left their other home. Yeah. They could make payments on.

And they were just relocating in the same town, the same area in a different house. They're just moving the furniture from one house they couldn't make payments on anymore to becoming a rent or a tenant. Or they were previously. obviously a renter. So the ones that were looking to buy the houses from me, they were, typically they had rented their whole lives and this, they saw as an opportunity to own a home. Beautiful. Which is what we're what we're pitching. And so that that's kind of how we started. It was great. Wow. Well. Okay. And then how does the note fit in? This is the note. So you, you made a note with the new tenant slash future buyer, so to speak. Right. Yeah. Walk us through that.

walk our listeners through how you did that. Yeah, you know, and it's really interesting. I've heard of some people in Canada starting to teach this and talk about how to do this, but in the States, it's really common. So I own the home free and clear, or you can own it with a mortgage out there, but typically it's free and clear. Now, I want to sell that house to somebody, but I would like to just have it in installments. So the same as if it was a bank.

I would say to the potential homeowner, I need a down payment of X amount. Typically, we would do, I think, 10%. Whatever the sale price was, I want 10% down payment. You're going to now make a monthly payment of X amount. And we figured that out by using our financial calculator to see, you know, what the interest rate is and over how much time. And that will then dictate what the monthly payment is. And oftentimes we would back into that. say, so what can you afford as a monthly payment? And then we would back into it and say,

okay, so at that, then we would do an interest rate of whatever it was, eight, nine percent, typically. Okay. And over anywhere from 10 to 20 years. And that's typically how we did that. Interesting. Interesting. That's a beautiful rate, especially back then. Yes. Now the rates bumped up at that point a bit, but still that was an incredible rate. How does this fit into the the return on life game, which is about passive income without any extra work. We like to have what I call wake up money. I wake up and I look at my bank account and there's more money in the bank. Absolutely. Absolutely. So return a life concept. That's the beautiful thing. So once somebody's in the house and they're making those payments, they are either you can structure

different ways. So they are actually the owner of the home or they're a prospective owner. They will become the owner over a certain number of payments or a certain number of time. Once that's in place, there's very little management needed, which is fantastic. So that thing where I was the landlord and I really liked the income that came in every month, that's what I get with the note. And I don't have any of the other headaches that go along with owning that property. So the one living in the house, they do all that stuff. They fix the roof.

They fix the toilet. You know, they pay the taxes. None of that's my responsibility. That's the homeowner's deal. Okay. Let's not talk over that too quickly because this is really, really important. Yeah. If anybody out there listening has had tenants and you know tenants, they treat your, there's good tenants.

I'm not going to say that there are. But there's some tenants that are not so great with your property and they literally destroy it. And they don't care because it. It's not theirs. But in this case, these are actually people that are now fuel link owners. And the ownership card kicks in in their DNA. And they go, oh, my goodness, I have to take care of this place. And then every responsibility of managing it, maintaining it, whatever, is on this new future owner.

They're still not the owner, though, correct? You can set it up different ways. You can do it as a, if you do it as a note in a mortgage, they become the owner right away. You can do it as a contract for deed, it's called, where once they have finished paying off the loan, at that point, the deed is transferred. So, and there's, you know, pluses and minuses to either approach,

but there's methods. There's different things you can do. There's options and choices. Okay, so you've got 10 or 20-year mortgages. Let's just make it 10 for an easy number. So it's, let's say it's 500 bucks a month that they're paying. Yeah. And they continue to pay that for 10 years with deed that will be in their name at the end of 10 years.

Right. Is there any way to speed up that process or to, you know, a pull a quicker close in any way? Yeah, absolutely. There's a couple of ways. So one thing that I like to encourage people to do, and I've done several times, is assuming that they would be able to qualify for a bank loan. And maybe they can't today, maybe they can six months from now or a year from now once they've cleaned up credit or whatever they need to do. But then I'll encourage them to go back to a conventional bank and get financing from them typically at a lower rate than what I'm offering. And then they can pay me off early. And that, boost my ROI by quite a bit at that point. Do you set the price on day one or do you set the price at the moment that they want to close? And is it then appraised and then the values created or how does that work? That's a good question. So we set the price at the time of sale. So right when they're at the

beginning of the contract. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, these are, this is a combination of, and I've done tons of investing, help lots of investors along the way, hundreds of thousands of them. And we've worked vendor takeback mortgages. We've talked about rent to own our RTOs. And this is kind of a combination of all that put together. Right. In this case, you're owning the house outright. Ideally, it'd be free and clear of a mortgage, correct?

Ideally, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's go back one second, actually. So I mentioned refinance, the borrower can refinance and pay me off. The other option I have is that I can then resell that loan to another investor, sometimes back to a bank, in fact. But I can sell that loan to somebody else. And that's another way that I can exit out of that.

So typically what I do today is I'm not necessarily originating these loans. I'm buying a loan that somebody else has already originated. They've decided they want to cash out for a myriad of reasons. And then I'm the one that cashes them out. and I take over those payments. Okay. Let's walk through that because this is another really cool concept. And many of our viewers or listeners are not familiar with this concept.

So there's a homeowner that's got a mortgage, could be with a bank. It could be private lending, correct? Right. And then you approach them and take over the mortgage. And now you're the mortgage holder, the bank of Nathan, so to speak. Exactly.

Yeah. So it's not even a conversation with the homeowner. Most of the time, they don't know that this is happening in the background. So as lender to lender working at a deal where either the bank or the private lender, they want a chunk of cash for whatever reason, and then they're going to sell it over to me. So for the homeowner, the one living in the house, the only thing that changes is where they send their payment. So instead of sending to, you know, whoever the private lender was before, now they're sending it over to me. And these are mostly private mortgages, correct?

The ones I buy today are. I've bought a lot from banks in the past. Typically, those ones are the what we call non-performing, where the person in the home is not making payments. In today's economy, luckily, thankfully, the economy is doing well. So there's not as many of these non-performers out there. So that's been a bit of a shift just in the last year, year and a half where now I'm, I'm typically buying performing mortgages. People are making regular payments.

And those tend to be private lenders. Okay. Hey, folks, we're going to get into some of the more personal deeper stuff here, but we still want to stay on this because there's some really good stuff here for you to learn about how to invest differently. So Nathan, share with us how you connect with these potential mortgage. Well, they're not potential. or the mortgage holders, how do you connect with them and decide, is this a good one or a not so good one?

How do you make those decisions and how do you connect with them? And is that open to just anybody and everybody or do you have to have either special license or some connections network? Tell us how that works. It's very much a networking game, very much just a connections thing. So I go to different conferences. Actually, two years ago, I took over a conference so that I run that now. And it's just shameful blood. Go forth. Come on.

Shameful. So it's called diversified mortgage expo. Yes. And we hold it in Nashville every year. Next year it'll be in May. And we're super excited. Can't wait.

Beautiful. But it's just, it's a place where anybody who's either interested in note investing or has been around the block a hundred times, they come together and just a place to get together, network, talk. It's no sales.

It's just education and information, and we get together and have a great time and share connections and hopefully make some deals. Yeah. Well, when you're networking and making connections here, you're actually opening yourself up for pitches and being pitched and sending pictures. Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, there's people with things to sell there, but nobody's selling from stage.

You'll never hear run to the back of the room. That doesn't happen. Awesome. And so what kind of passive potential influence? can you receive from the notes that you're buying today? So there are a lot of different approaches to note investing. The way that I approach it, and we sometimes have friendly debates between note investors, I like first lien mortgages, first lien position.

So whether that's a contract for deed or a mortgage or a deed of trust, anything first position. That's what I like to buy. I buy anything that is, you know, property values and mortgage balances under $200,000 typically. Okay. I look for kind of, you know, a myriad of different things that I'm putting together. Does $200,000 homes exist anymore? Oh, my difference. They certainly do, yes.

It depends on the market, but absolutely. My areas tend to be kind of the eastern. half the United States. So like Michigan down to Texas, pretty much anything in between there. That's typically where I concentrate. Okay. But anyway, so all of that to say, you know, depending on your approach and what you're looking at, all things being equal and, you know, depending on what you're looking at

and how you want to approach, it's not out of the question at all. Where if you're going to be buying notes for your own portfolio, I mean, 10, 11, 12 percent, that's certainly within reach. If you're going to be looking at non-performing, returns are much higher, but it's far more unpredictable as far as timing and amount of return. But those are certainly available as well. Secondly, mortgages are a different approach,

different things you can do. So 10 to 12% on first mortgages. Right. Yeah. First position. That's pretty exceptional. So are you borrowing, yourself to buy these as well? Do you use that concept where you're buying,

you're leveraging it to leverage as well? Yes. So banks won't lend to buy other mortgages for some reason. It's kind of odd. But so that means that it's a cash business. So cash doesn't necessarily have to come from my pocket. So I go out and I talk to other people that are interested in doing this, but don't want to do it themselves.

They don't have the time or bandwidth. So I put together a fund. People can invest into that fund. I pay out an 8% annual return. And then that's how that works. So they get to participate, get a great return, but not have to do anything. Love it, love it. That's the most passive you can get in this business.

Yes, no work. No work. Yeah, right. In the real estate space, which, you know, real estate is a really safe vehicle. if it's well understood, well managed. Yeah. There's really no better vehicle. Is there any opportunity for appreciation in your model?

Yeah, that's a great question. That's the trade-off, actually. So when you go and buy a house and have it as a rental property, you get the appreciation of the property. In our case, it's actually a depreciating asset. Because I'll buy that mortgage. It'll continue to pay off until it's paid off, and there's nothing at the end.

So that's the trade-off. far less work, but it's a depreciating asset. So it's more of an annuity than anything else. And so if somebody wanted to connect with you and learn more about this and understand, okay, that's great. So I'm going to bring my bag of money and I bring it to Nathan. And Nathan then goes and deploys it. is there fees, is there management fee, is there closing fees? And how quickly can I get my money back out if I want my money back out?

Is there? Sure. Yeah, good question. So mine is a 506C fund based in the U.S. So that being said, it's open to accredited investors. So that's people that either make $200,000 a year or have a net worth of over a million dollars. Unfortunately, it's only open to those folks, anybody who makes less than that or has a smaller net worth. According to the rules, I'm not allowed to admit you on that.

We do a minimum $50,000 investment. Like I say, it's an 8% annual return with quarterly distributions. And anything over and above that, that's what I keep. So that's, I guess, the fees on that, but you get that 8% return. Okay, so there's no fees if it's a straight 8%. Correct. Yep, away you go. That's really cool. The majority of your investors, are they U.S. citizens or do you have Canadians as well?

The majority right now are U.S. I have had Canadians in the past. Currently, I don't think I do, but it is certainly open to Canadians as well. Okay. Yet you live in Canada. I do, yes. Yeah. Have you thought about relocating into some of these areas? that are, you know, bigger note opportunities?

Yeah, you know, my wife and I looked at it years ago and figured out that moving to the OS is pretty complicated. It's not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. Getting that visa is, it's time consuming and it's expensive. So in the end, I was looking at, you know, kind of the operations of it. Really everything I do is remind. out. So even if I was in the U.S., I guess I could attend a few more meetings a little more easily, but other than that, everything that I do is over the computer and over the phone anyway.

Okay. So let's go a little bit away from this business model and talk about return on life and how you receive return on life. And maybe start out with this. What does return on life mean to Nathan? What comes to your mind when you hear this ROL, this concept of ROL? Yeah, you know, we were talking a little bit before we started here. And I really resonate with this because when we were looking at setting up with the fund and everything that we're doing, I really felt a lot of pressure to grow for the sake of growth. And I thought, why? It just didn't make any sense to me to grow for the sake of growing. And so it really took me a minute to get my head around. What do I actually want? Do I want to grow or do I want to grow for a certain purpose or what are we looking for? In the end, for me, it's not just growing for the sake of growing. For me, I've got a specific purpose. So I'm looking at a five-year retirement plan or a financial freedom plan, if you will,

where at the end of the five years, everything is self-funded. I've got my own portfolio of notes that's paying me every month. and I'm off. My kids are out of the house at that point. I can go snowboarding whenever I want, wherever I want. And my wife and I have plans to travel and do some missionary work and things like that. And so we're really excited to just do that. That's really the end goal.

So for me, that's what return on life is not growing just for the sake of growing. And I mean, if you're driven and if that fills a need for you, I guess that's fine. but for me, that's not good enough. I wanted life to be more enjoyable. You know, I often talk about this. There's change agents. We are change agents in the world. Sure.

There's change agents within us or ingredients within us. And I love what you're sharing here. How did that come about? Did that come about just through a crucible moment? Did that come out just because of the way you're raised and born. And I often say this, you know, there's nurture in nature. And so much of who we are is shaped so early on our lives. In fact, in some cases, I think a conception in our mother's womb. But this is a really noble idea, thought, and process. When did that all come together for you?

you know i think part of it was was having kids and uh you know i i don't want to give the wrong impression here but uh my dad was he worked really hard and he did some tremendous things in his career and uh and helped a ton of people he was a teacher and did just some amazing things and helped so many people um but for me at home looking back you know growing up i had a wonderful childhood and just so much good uh one Once I started having my own kids, I thought, I want to be around a little more than my dad was. And so that was kind of where that kicked off is just once I started working at home, I thought, I don't really care what I do from here on out as long as I can do it from home.

And it's been fantastic. I go out, you know, when the kids were little, I would go and have lunch with them. And I'm, you know, down at 5 o'clock so I can, I'm, there's no commute. My commute was at the time, it was going up the stairs, you know, over the sock. It was terrible. and I had to go and, you know, brave those 10 steps up the stairs and that was it. But then I'm available and I'm there and I was able to spend so much time, you know, dress up with my girls and princess outfits and all those fun things.

It was fantastic. That's awesome. I know about you, but I've got a concept that teachers just didn't work that hard, but I guess they're involved in a lot of after school activities too. And that as well. Yeah. Now as they get older, that's part of it as well. Sports or arts or whatever they're doing.

I love being able to be available, even during the day where we had, you know, last year, my son got into an outdoor education program. So part of what that meant is they had five different overnight camps during the year. I got to go on three of those. The other two, they were full. They didn't need me. But I got to go on three of those. And it was fantastic. I could be out there for three days with my son and his class and just having a wonderful time.

and, you know, connecting with nature myself, I love that. And so that was, that's just extremely rewarding. That is cool. What is your greatest gift, Nathan? What do you think your greatest gift is? Or maybe, well, and gifts can be curses, too. The greatest gift slash curse would be, I hate to say it, but it's kindness. And I say that because on the other half,

side of that, there have been times where I've had one of these non-performing notes. And people have taken advantage of me. And I know that. But I would rather err on the side of kindness. And that's, to me, that's worth it. Nathan, that comes through so loud and clear. Here on our screens, I see it, I hear it, I feel it, I understand it. So good on you. That is, that was really, really cool. Bulletproof. I often ask, Is this bulletproof? Are you bulletproof? Is your life bulletproof? And when you hear that like your notes, the way you're doing your business, is that bulletproof? Does that come into your own world

where you feel like, you know, I've really created something that's got maybe bulletproof is too strong, but security, comfort, knowing that you are providing for your family, your children's future. Is that what you're creating today? Yeah, you know, with the notes, themselves, it's one of the most secure things I've come across. We're backed by the real estate. We buy with equity so that in case of, in case we need to go through a foreclosure process and take back the property, there's still plenty of equity there. So there's just layers and layers of protection in there. Is it completely bulletproof? No, you know, it happens. And I've had that where I have taken back a property where we get inside the house and it's just trashed,

where the people were whatever. Most often where there were trashes, it's been empty for two years already. And whatever, people came in and vandalized and took the copper and whatever else since it was in there. So that can happen. So it's not completely bulletproof, but it's about the safest thing that I've come across. Yeah. And I guess you'd probably say, you know, if people aren't. making their payments, they're not really thinking like owners anymore. And that's when they start

not caring for the house. Yeah. And it's really interesting. Gosh, more than 90% of the time, if the person in the house has stopped making payments, if we can have a conversation, almost always we can work out some kind of resolution. It's extremely rare that we actually have to foreclose on somebody. If I'm foreclosing, almost every time it's on a vacant property. They've already deserted it for one reason or another. Isn't that interesting? You're saying when there's problems,

if there's communication, clear communication, and I hear you, I see you, I get you, you can essentially write the ship, so to speak, and keep things intact. What a lesson that we all need in life. communication is an art. Not only just making the contact when you need to make the contact, but then being able to walk and speak and hear and understand people through a process.

What a wonderful share that is. I want to thank you for that, Nathan, because a lot of us miss that. And when there's problems in our business, when there's problems in our personal life, it's usually that we're not communicating clearly. Yeah, and so, so often, if we can just talk and people are people. And generally speaking, and you know, maybe I'm over generalizing, but generally speaking, nobody wants to be a bad guy. Nobody wants to be a jerk. If you can just talk, you can almost always figure something out. Right. So you've been doing this for well over a decade.

But let's just reverse the clock. Let's go back. 10 years, if you could take time back, what would you tell yourself? What would you do differently? Maybe you would do anything differently, but what would you do differently? If you could, you know, spin the clock back 10 years. Oh boy. 10 years, 2014-ish. I would have bought more notes. Okay, okay. Back then, especially, the pricing was fantastic. One of those things where, you know, when the economy's doing well, I do well. When the economy is doing poorly, I actually do better.

So in 2014, we were still limping out of the financial crisis and pricing for some of these non-performing notes was still incredibly good. And if I could have, I would have bought more. Okay. Let's do this then. Let's go back two years. If you go back two years because the world changed about two years ago. Right. Well, a year and a half, two years ago, it just depends where you're not where you were.

If you could go back 12, 24 months, what would you do differently? Or if anything, maybe it wants. I don't know. I do things differently, but you might not. When I look back on, you know, kind of events and things in my life, it's easy for the present me. to see things differently that happened, you know, anytime in the past. But when I think back, I think, you know, the decisions and the actions that I was taking at that time, I think was the best I could do with the knowledge and experience that I had then. So it's hard for me to say, you know,

and could I give myself some advice, probably, but then would I've learned the lesson that brought to me to where I am today. So I think as long as I continue to do the best I can, with the knowledge and experience that I have, that's about the best I can ask for. Right. And, you know, I see you as being curious, open-minded, big thinker, a little bit of a risk-taker. Hey, you're bored at Castle. You've got to be a bit of a risk-tinker castle. Yeah. And these are qualities that are hard to find in people. people aren't curiously open. You're like, you know, so, like daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.

What about this? What about that? And yet life, we kind of lose that curiosity as we grow older, but we got to keep that curiosity to find new things and ideas. And being a bit of a risk here, like, gosh, not just a province away, but actually a country away and you're doing business in another country. Like these are all really, really big things for most people. here you are you do this.

Is this your best and biggest idea? Do you have other things cooking in the back of that mind of your that's curious, open-minded and a bit of a risk taker? Well, I've got a couple other projects, but I don't know if I want to talk about them too publicly. But yeah, there's, I think one of my strengths really is just there's the difference between being open to opportunity and the shining object syndrome, where you're just chasing everything that looks cool.

But if you're open to opportunity and just kind of have your ears and eyes open to it, you can spot it and then have the self-discipline to say, yes, that's a good idea. Can I do it right now? Or is that something I should be pursuing six months or a year from now when I've got whatever I need to be doing settled? Right. Just kind of, but always being open and being ready to accept those other opportunities. Cool.

You know, a lot of people talk about superpowers. I don't believe in superpowers. I believe in prima powers. Okay. Powers, I think, are meant for Marvel movies and comics. But primal, it's primal within us. It's born within us, powers. And I think you've just shared that you've got a prima power of being curious.

a bit of a risk taker, but being a very good decision maker and not being distracted by other shiny objects. Yeah. You think that's a prima power for you? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to put that. I like that. But yeah, just being open. And then, you know, again, knowing when's the right time to take action. So if you hear about a really great opportunity, is that something that you should be pursuing right now? And if it is, go. If it's not, and if it's not the right time, again, having that self-discipline to say, I am going to revisit this. And if you need to put it on a calendar, do that.

But come back and whatever that timing is, six months or a year or three years from now, whatever it is. But when it's time to take action, to actually take action, so many times it just, it's disappointing to me that's to see somebody have such an incredible opportunity. And there's really no reason why they shouldn't be pursuing it. and they just don't for I don't know what reason. But just if there's something there, do it. Get on it. Take action. Just do it.

Absolutely. Do you have a vision board, Nathan? I do. I don't have my wallet on me. I've got a mini, shoot, I wish I had my wallet on me. So in my wallet, I have like a little mini card that is my mini vision board that I carry around with me all the time. Awesome.

Awesome. And you probably look at it daily almost. Every day, yeah. Every day. That's really important. A vision board is really important. I do something a little bit different. I write my why and my goals.

Get this on money. Oh, cool. At the beginning of the year, I get the biggest denomination I can get, which is a $100 bill in Canada. Right. I would gladly get $1,000, a $10,000 bill and write that on with a Sharpie. but I love it that you're carrying your vision board with you all the time and I carry this $100 bill with me all the time.

Yeah. So if you're a certain, you doubt or the BS that goes on in our minds, you pull it out probably go, no, this is why I'm doing this. This is my vision board. And I do the same thing with that $100 bill. And it's at the top, it's written, today I decide to be wealthy. And then it's got little icons of different things. what that means to me. And some of that is, you know, I think there might be only one thing on there

that I want to buy. Everything else is like, you know, paying for somebody's groceries behind me or, you know, whatever it is, different acts of service that I can do because I'm wealthy. And then having that mindset of it, wealthy is not just about money. Like you say, it's ROI versus ROL. It's not just about money. It's about paying it forward and serving. You know, I was just on a coaching webinar before I jumped on this podcast. And I was talking about cause marketing. So there's people that spend all their money on marketing where you can take that money instead of spending it on traditional ways and spend it on a cause of some sort,

whatever that passion is of yours. And then, you know, do it all in that cause. and the value of that is far superior, not only the people and that cause, but you're going to actually see more benefit personally than doing traditional marketing because people now get you and they want to be in your circle because you get them. I love that. Really, really powerful. Hey, well, this is awesome.

I'm going to close out with a couple of speed questions, a speed round. Are you ready? Okay, sure. Okay, here we go. What's your favorite ski hill? Oh, currently, Nekiska. Nkiska. I was going to be a castle.

The castle has got a special place in my heart. I went there so often as a youth. Yeah, Castle, or Nikiska is good too. Nikiska is really good too. Fine dining, takeout, Uber eats, or home-cooked meal. Home-cooked every time. Love it, love it. What is your go-to to let your hair down out?

No, I can make a hair joke, but I won't. What do you do for fun? What do you just do for fun? Let it all hang out. Oh, I love snowboarding. So wintertime is snowboarding during the summer, just being outside, hiking, whatever, going for a run in the morning, just outside. Awesome, awesome.

Do you have a favorite band? I have a favorite singer. I really like a guy named Martin Sexton. Don't know Martin Sexton. He's out. He's out of, I think he's originally from like, I don't know, New Jersey maybe, but folk singer, folk slash, he's very eclectic, but fantastic singer, he's great. Okay.

Shout out to Martin. There you go. Do you prefer text, email, phone, or in person? If I can, in person, definitely. I should put Zoom in there too, but in person is always the best. audible or book? Oh, I'm actually, oh, that's a tough one. I do both.

Audible when I'm running in the morning and then books more to relax during the day or in the evening. Okay, very cool. And last question before we give our listeners some really cool opportunity. If you were a scratch and sniff sticker, a scratch and sniff sticker and I came over I rubbed your shoulder. What would I smell? Pine trees. Pine trees. I thought it would be something to do with the mountain adventures that you go on. Pine trees. I love that. I love that. That is such a great smell.

Oh, I love that. I can smell it now. Okay. So I'm going to put you on the spot here, Nathan. This is the last piece. You've got that great event happening in Nashville every year in May of this year coming up. Yeah. Is there something that we could. give our listeners. So if our listeners reach out to you directly or to me directly and say, what should they say? Would they get a discount? Can we do that? Oh, yeah, let's do that. If they say Castle Mountain. Castle Mountain. We'll give them, how much should we give them?

20% off. How's that? 20% off the tickets. Okay. There you do, folks. If you want to learn about notes and really go diving deep, networking with, you know, the hundreds and hundreds that show up or maybe thousands. I don't know. Is it thousands, Nathan? I know. Last year, we had 225. It'll be somewhere between two and three hundred people. Awesome, awesome. So if you want to learn about notes and how to have passive income and network with the right people, reach out to Nathan or I. Of course, it's going to easy to find us now and just message us Castle Mountain and you've got a 20% discount on your ticket to the event and we'll put the ticket details and the event details in the webinar as well. So Nathan, thank you for being such a great guest.

Hey, thank you. My pleasure. You bet. Awesome. Been a great guest. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you.