Building a Memorable Brand

Hey, friend, what's up, Jeff Zimfer, host of Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. This is the place where we help mortgage originators move from solicitor and vendor to becoming a partner and a peer by helping them attract versus chase real estate agents and get more conversations that leads to more contracts. One of that in a moment got a question for you. You ever asked yourself what's the best CRM? Oh, boy, is that one of the most popular questions we see over there on social media and the Facebook groups? What's the best CRM and let the debates begin? And then of course you know the answer that many people throw up is the trait, the one you use. Oh, well, thanks for that deep answer. Look, that answer actually depends on a variety of different circumstances and today in just a moment. We're going to actually probably provide the best, most thorough answer to that question you've ever heard and a lot more entertainment fun insights and good stuff for you. But before we do, are you a solicitor and vendor? Do you chase agents or do you attract agents? Do you build a personal brand? Are you 15 mile famous? Do you remember that movie with Paul Rudd called I Love You Man? I don't know if you remember the opening of that while in that movie that Paul Rudd plays a real estate agent in Beverly Hills, right? And he's struggling to succeed as a real estate agent. And so the other character in the film, I can't remember his name right now, but decides to invest in Paul and take out a bunch of billboards for Paul Rudd's character in the movie. And if you remember, the billboards are like him and a thong, him doing the shootout with the wild, wild west, him playing a secret agent, and it's quite hilarious, and he's embarrassed as hell. But the point is by putting all those billboards up, his phone rang off the hook. He became well known, right? People loved the billboards, and so they decided to call him and his business grew as a result of becoming well known. And I would say that, or I would ask you, how well known are you? Are you 15 mile famous, five mile famous? If we put a picture of you up on that billboard in your local area, how many referral partners would recognize you? How many people would look up to the billboard and go, ah, I know that person because I've seen them, their top of mind, whatever, et cetera, et cetera. So if you're not well known, right, if you're a secret agent, how can I choose you? If I don't know you exist, how can I choose you? And that's what we help mortgage originators do is become 15 mile famous, leading with education, content and classes that accelerates conversations and referrals. How do I know? I'm looking at this page of success stories and testimonials that we've got put up here on this page, which I'm going to share with you with a link in a moment. You can go look at these. What's up, man? It just goes on and on and on. Here's Michelle. Farman Otto. What's up, Michelle? Just saw you at the Mastermind event in Vegas. Michelle, long time member, she says, agents love these classes. She's had at least 10 agent meetings and 10 million in fundings because of the classes. Wow. Um, Mitch, two God neighborhood loans. I did 10 ways to get more listings and got six emails from agents saying they want to work together. Guys, when I was at the Mastermind Summit recently, Shampoosian, top originator in the country said it is separation season. By the way, Shant also does events and classes as a consistent part of his business because he is about grabbing market share right now. What are you doing to become 15 mile famous? What are you doing to grab market share? What are you doing to separate yourself from the rest? How do you increase your conversations and engagement in this current market? Hopefully it's not just about products and price. You know what that does. That makes you look like a vendor. So if you want to learn more about how we help mortgage originators, double their agent referrals of just 90 days, why don't you go to this page and check out this new program I've got. I want you to go to get more agent referrals dot com link is in the show notes, but get more agent referrals dot com. It's the agent referral accelerator program where we help you double your agent referrals at 90 days. How to attract engage and convert more real estate agents to referral partners. I hope to see you there on the other side. All right. This week my special guest really enjoyed this conversation with Scott pain from shape C R M. Scott has a lot of wisdom and fun stories to share from wearing wigs at conferences to his groundbreaking CRM solution shape C R M. I had a demo of shape a while back and I had a demo pretty much every platform out there and used quite a few of them as well and I have to say I was impressed. I don't get anything for this. There's no compensation to me. I'm not getting kickbacks or referrals. I'm just bringing you to the low down on what I think is one of the most easy to use platforms to help you better optimize and run your business. As you guys know, one size does not fit all with CRMs and so we have a pretty cool conversation about some of the differences out there on different platforms what you should be looking for. But then we also have a pretty cool conversation about becoming memorable and Scott shares his journey about becoming a memorable. What he does with why he's wearing wigs at different events and so forth is fitness journey and personal growth serving his local community and then how shape CRM is revolutionizing lead management with prioritization, AI integration, easy documentation, support, etc. I encourage you to definitely check out the link in the show notes. If you want to get a little bit more information about shape CRM link in the show notes, but if you want to know what it is right now, it is set shape.com forward slash radio. Otherwise, check the link in the show notes. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Scott, welcome to the show. How are you doing, Jeff? Fantastic. Yeah. Good to see you in the flesh. In person. This is awesome. Yeah. Here we are in Vegas. This amazing studio. Yeah. You're here for the mastermind summit. That's right. And we have had a virtual right in online kind of relationship that's built over the last several months. Both are co-authors of the green book. Green book, that's right. Yeah. Right. Rethink, everything you think you know about being an ex-gen originator. So we got a lot to talk about, man. I'm hoping we can get it all in in the time that we have. So but for those who might not know who you are, what you do, take a couple of moments, whatever you want to share. Sure. Like what would you like the listeners to know about you? Wow. So I would say, so I'm a mortgage guy. That's where I got my start back in 2004. I started a company called Syntaxome Equity, which became Nation's R, which is now called Mr. Cooper. And I started there as a loan officer, fresh out of college, that's what all my friends were doing. It's going to be a coach and teacher and do all that, but then all my friends were doing this loan officer thing. It's like, I'll go try it. And all of them were doing this like subprime and driving their Jaguar straight out of college. And I got put on this team that was a, it was a team designed to essentially where we could write Fannie Mae, D.U. underwriter type of loans. And it was done strategically, really, really smart because it kind of saved the company later on because when everything went to crap and hit the fan, we at least had the ability to write loans through Fannie Mae that was already set up and ready to go. And it really kind of catapulted my career because I became a trainer for the entire company because I've been writing loans through D.U. for three years at that point in time. But regardless, I got thrown in and to a point where it was very difficult to sell these called prime type loans in a subprime company who was throwing subprime overlays on these D.U. underwriting. You know, here's the guidelines, but hey, let's add all these overlays on top. It was very difficult. And we were buying leads and trying to compete with rates that were not competitive. And so I got a crash course in selling, not only that, but also a crash course in how to manage leads because you had to manage leads very well in order to compete with the people who were buying leads against, especially lending tree type, where banks compete you in. And so I had to come up with my own kind of strategy. You know, we had a system a little bit, but I had to like come up with, I had, first it was paper. It's like an organization of paper, right, evolved it into like the spreadsheet where I was able to organize and move things around and color code and do all of that. And really that helped give me the baseline for where I'm at today, really. You know, I really had to, you know, I think when you go through hard things like that, you have to really, really learn in hard ways. Really can build a career off of those types of things, especially is in my lead management journey over time. So long story short, you know, I ended up two years as a loan originator moved into management and training program. I got the opportunity to spend time in a, in the program, the management and training program. We spent 30 days as an underwriter, 30 days as a processor, like really like dove in and understood the roles really well. But we also got 30 days and various roles. I was lucky enough to spend 30 days in marketing. And I was in charge of lead distribution to our 107 retail branches throughout the country who were getting two lending tree leads per elo per day. And I was in charge of distributing those leads out and making sure that everyone was happy and really was like just fielding phone calls from regional VPs yelling at me for not having enough leads. It's really what it was, but you know, it was a good opportunity to learn that side of the business because now I get to see what marketing had to go up against, understand how they got leads and challenges and all of that. Fast forward became a sales manager for two years. Had to hire a brand new team, had 15 loan officers, had to train them up. My strategy was I would go hire former college athletes. So I had basketball player from SMU, TCU, I had soccer player from TCU, you and all these places around Dallas would hire a competitive team with competitions awesome, really, really fun. But over time, my competitiveness of the team really started to show because I had a way to really help when it came to marketing and sales, had a way to help, especially in that role that I was in previously, help translate things better. So when we had issues with leads, the way that I approached it with marketing was way different than everyone else. People would just come in and, you know, hey, give me, you know, this is messed up. I would come in with more analytical saying this, this, this and, you know, understood that and what it turned into, all of this turned into was I became a sales liaison between sales and marketing. It was a new role that we had created where I became the quarterback, if you will, between sales and marketing. Every time they come to a meeting, it was a fist fight. Yeah, I was going to say, sure, it wasn't the referee, referee, and really what I ended up calling it and called it to the state, but it articles about my time at that was the marriage counselor. Yeah. Yeah. I had to counsel sales and marketing with, okay, you know, John and sales, like, have you run this number, you know, hey, Marianne and Mark and if you've done this, right, and so, hey, let's get along today, right, and what it really was, and guess what, when they get along, you have a good marriage getting along, flourish, right, when they're battling, it's tough. Right. There's a lot of that. And ultimately became in charge of all lead distribution and all lead analytics for 1,500 loan officers in the country around the country, and because of that, I needed a really good, I determined, I needed a really good lead management system to do it. So, in order to do that, did my due diligence found a system called VLOSFIRE, or leads for 60 of the time, or VLOSFIRE now, and started implementation of that in 2011. Implement of that, we had consumer direct that was a main focus, but we had five or six different divisions using it, including retail, which was not something that was typically done with a VLOSFIRE type system, but I found ways to make it work in the retail environment that also coupled it with consumer direct, again, hadn't been done before. And anyways, went really, really well. I got tired of working for one mortgage company. I convinced VLOSFIRE to hire me, went to go work for VLOSFIRE. I became a VLOSFIRE's enterprise account manager, traveled the US, spent time with 30 of the biggest accounts for VLOSFIRE, started speaking at conferences, and realized that these big companies out there did not have a very good, you know, a lot of the good administrators of the systems would leave, and they'd get frustrated. So I was able to start my own company in 2019 called STP Solutions, where I became the administrator, my team became the administrator of the software, or 77 different VLOSFIRE clients, and helped with re-implementation and you name it, what have you, and so it went really well. And over time, what we realized is that there was, there's so much more than just mortgage that needs leaves management, we're talking more about where lead management exists in life, in other places, but there's so many places where lead management exists, and unfortunately VLOSFIRE only does mortgage now. So we had, we were looking at ways to expand, we started looking at other systems, and I came across a system called shape, shape software, fell in love, it crushes it in mortgage and consumer direct, crushes it in retail, but also does all of the other industries extremely well as well, combined all of that together, started working with some clients on shape, and it went so well that shape bought STP Solutions last year. Wow, nice, good for you. And now I'm part of the shape team. Congratulations, man. Yeah. Did I get through that? You got through that in like four minutes. That's fantastic. That's a first, wow. Life flashed before your hour. Yes, wow. Yeah, a lot of time on planes, a lot of time in conferences, you've worked with all kinds of different companies, you know, controlling leads for that many people. This is why I think this is an institution conversation, because you've seen, a lot of people only see, you know, this whole lead management issue, the CRM discussion, they only see it from the silo of their own company. You've seen it across many companies and multiple companies. So I think this is a good conversation to have. The, you know, the primary listener of my podcast is mostly going to be the individual loan officer, right? There are some executives, branch managers, et cetera, but, you know, these are the folks that are typically, in most cases, probably using the CRM provided for them by the company. So I wanted, let's enter the conversation from there then. From what you've seen, peeling back the layers of the curtain, like, where do you think most originators underutilize, overlook, kind of drop the ball, regardless of the CRM they have, because, you know, the core functionality is there, right? There are some other platforms and companies that have enhancements. We'll talk about set shape and, like, you know, what that all looks like, but, but how would you, like, if you had a room of allows right now, it's just like, guys, the first three things you're probably overlooking your CRM are, like, where would you start? So I would say, you know, it's tough to say because, you know, some systems don't have, you know, some of the things that I would mention, but there'd be ways to make some of these things maybe work in some ways. You know, ultimately, I think the number one thing, though, that I talk about to people is that you need to be able to prioritize your day and eliminate any time that requires you to think about what to do next, right? And so what I mean by that is, like, you should have a, like, a hit list of things that when you call this person or you reach out and you've done what you need to do on this most important thing, that you don't spend any time thinking about what to do next. You literally have very next in those lists, this person, and you move immediately to that next person. And when that's done, you move to the next person. The reason, yeah, when you say prioritize your day, what does that mean? Is that by activities? So this is based on activities of people who are needed to be interacted with at this moment. It could be a brand new customer. It could be a customer who is in your pipeline or someone who is maybe taking an application but hasn't committed yet. It could be someone who hasn't seen their documents yet or what have you, maybe that's with an L.A. So that in and of itself is a bit of a management structure, like flow issue that they have to manage in their CRM of like, how do I prioritize? I've got, that's like five different examples. Well, so the best lead management and CRM systems will have that kind of set up for you in that they will have integrated with your L.A.S. to be getting those statuses back. And they will have written rules to take all of that thinking out of the picture for you, meaning that they'll be set up to where we know that what is the most important thing for the Sloan Officer to do? We know that the best use of their time out of these five things, the most important thing to do would be this thing. So order that at the top and the next thing would be these things. And based on the status of the records that then shows up and the list, now, you know, and that's why it's tough to answer the question exactly because some systems on have that and some are integrated with some of the other systems or what have you. So it's tough to answer that exactly, but I can tell you about Washape is that when it's integrated with the L.A.S. and when you're putting your records in the system, when you have, meaning that you have a customer who might be interested, so you have that top of funnel type customer that's going in, whether from a landing page or a referral partner is sent to someone, you're putting that into the system. So you have top of funnel all the way down to previous customers who might be interested for maybe a check in or now their rate or they've had a trigger or whatever. So it takes all of those things and puts it into one list of things for you to do. And by the way, we didn't talk about this yet, but it could also be a referral partner that has a sent you a lead in three weeks. Where does that fit into all of this, right? Maybe that's at the top of the list versus other things. Shape, you know, today already does that for you. You don't need to think. We know that that's the third most important thing to do in your list. And so it would present it in that way to do it for you. So that's interesting. Yeah, you know, into the day, I used to say that my goal when I would train loan officers because I would do a lot of training myself, even as an account manager, my goal was to save a loan officer two hours per day. If they would just use the priority view, I would set it up in a way where they could save themselves two hours a day. And I would ask them, like close your eyes, just think, I'm going to give you two hours extra a day. What would you do with that at work? They would sit there and I'm like, just imagine, what would you do two hours extra a day? Would you call more people? Would you, you know, would you go, the water cooler, like would you go, like, you know, taking it longer lunch? Like what would you do with extra two hours? Right? And get them all excited and think about it. Right? Let me show you how you can do that. And it was this priority view where you just work from the top down and we've already taken that thought process out of it. Now, I've even gotten into, we have built into shape, the idea of scoring, yeah. So in using AI to score. So knowing that these things convert better than these things. And so using that now in the score. So let's say you have five applications of customers who just filled out the application this week. And you need to follow up to get documents. We will have scored those five and put the highest score at the top. So now you can call that one first and get their documents without having to like go look at the five, determine and all of the stuff. Well, who's setting the score, the loan officer? The system, our system learns over time based on their performance, based on their closed loans, based on a number of things, our system learns over time. Other systems they, you know, maybe they could set up, you know, and say this is like my ICP or whatever, but our system will, you set up an ICP in the beginning and then it will use that as a start and then it learns over time. Hmm. That sounds pretty smart, pretty intuitive. Yeah, I love the concept of prioritizing your time and prioritizing your relationships as well. Yeah, because I think it's like you said, if you had two hours back in your day or another way, I look at that is I was recently having some conversations about, you know, the concept of 10X your business, right? So one of the concepts we're working on recently is like identify the top three things that move the needle most in your business, right? So we do the sexualized with LOs is like right down the top three things. Okay, great. So here's the top three. Great. Now identify the one thing that would move the needle the most, right? And then ask yourself, how much time have you spent on that in the last seven days or 10 days or whatever it is, right? And it's just a little kind of awareness thing because we get so caught up in the working, you know, to use the old cliche, working in the business instead of on the business. Sure. But I think that's what's cool about, you know, kind of what I opened up with with the question of we get bogged down in the minutia of this business and all the moving parts, etc. The right type of a technology tool should be to give you your time back. All right. Do you think most CRM's haven't delivered on that? The most of the ones I have seen have not delivered on that component of it. Yeah. Have not delivered on the giving people their time back. And by the way, this isn't like, oh, I want to throw out their serums under the back. Yeah. I'm just having an honest conversation that like I, you know, talk with a lot of LOs as you have, right? And that's just one of the constant narratives I hear is just like, you know, the learning curve is, is never ending. Correct. Right. And they never seem to, they spend more time in the damn platform or tool trying to figure stuff out than they do actually freed up to do the selling or whatever. Right. You know, I'll give you a great example of the, because there are systems like that no doubt. And there's systems that I know, for example, will like if I have a question, like how do I do this? Right. How do I add this new lead source? Because I have a new referral partner. How do I add this new lead source? Well, I don't know. I've got an email support, right? And this is going to sound familiar. I'll give you an email support and then, okay, when am I going to hear back? Oh, I don't know. Some days could be, could be 48 hours and a few hours, right? And then when the email is back, am I going to be in that spot where I can actually do something with it at that moment? Probably not. I've got to then wait until I have a chance. Right. And now we're talking three, four, five, six, maybe a week before I'm now insane. We have trained a AI bot with every support ticket that we've ever received a shape to where now you can simply just go to the AI bot and say, how do I add a new lead source and it will spit out with how do you add a new lead source right there? Hmm. Step by step, here's how you do it. Times ever, right? And if you have further questions from that point, you can then submit a ticket to support and then we'll get back to you within much record time, then some of the other places you'll find out there will get back to you as soon as possible. Regardless, we're finding that our customers love that instant access because it could be on a Saturday at 10 p.m. when they're finally get a chance to get in the system and do something, or it could be late night, one night, whatever. Okay. So one of the things was prioritization, like if we go back to the top and then maybe you don't have three, right? And in terms of like, hey, here's the big three things you're probably doing less effectively than you could in whatever CRM you have. Is there any other? Yeah. I think, you know, documenting things, right? Like documenting conversations is difficult for some. Like I have a good conversation with someone, but I don't have the time to go back and find that record and update the record in the appropriate way or update fields appropriately so that I can use those fields officially down the road. So I have a good conversation with a borrower or a referral partner who's giving me their information or whatever and talking about their story and whatever it is. I need to go update the system so that I can use it or my L away can use it or down the road if I need to reference back to it or even three years from now when I need to go back and reference what was their kid's name who was in high school and are they going to graduate? Like, I need to get that in the system somewhere. I can't store it all right here, right? And so we just find a lot of times systems make it difficult to do that. We have a mobile app in shape. I use the other kind of point here or point to mention is that at shape, we use shape. Our salespeople use shape. So I always tell people like, if you're shopping for a lead management system or CRM, ask the salesperson you're working with to show you their CRM and ask them, why is it not your system? Why are you not using your system? Right. And we use shape and I love it because we're able to design, I love it. I'm always feeding like, hey, what if it did this? We added this, whatever. But I use it, I use it on the plane, I use it on my couch, I use the mobile app everywhere I go. And so when we come out of a meeting, right, come out of a meeting or you get off the phone, I'm on mobile, I can just go to the lab, put it in, I can talk to texts, have that ready to go. We're even working on things now where if you use our phone system to do it where we could maybe transcribe the call, summarize the call, what are the next steps, maybe even tell you, like we suggest you change the status to this, we suggest you do a follow-up date of this, we suggest here's an email that we suggest you send that mentions these types of things because we talked about. And then when you come back to the record, here are the things that you could talk about this time because the status is this and this is a conversation your L away had last time that you didn't know about and here, like, and so it gives you all the stuff. Those are the things we're working on in development right now as to why you would want to do it things in the system, right? There hasn't been a lot of benefit in the past to go update these fields and what have you. If you have that, not only in the notes, that's obviously helpful, but if you're updating the fields, that's another key component because now I can use things down the road to filter on things. Let's say I want to build an email list down the road when rates go down or if rates go up or whatever the case is, I can build a list and strategically think through and maybe even help my marketing team provide me better marketing based on the data points that I've put into the system. Why do you think, I was thinking about do I want to ask this question or not, I'm just going to take a shot and ask this question of the classic or perhaps the dreaded, you get in the Facebook groups and there's this, it's one of the most heated, threaded comments I see, which is the what is the best CRM? Like, I'm sorry to put it out there, but I think it's a bit of a humorous question. I have my kind of response to that, but I know you've seen it many, many times. How do you respond or like, let's say you're in the Facebook group and you see a bunch of people post that and all this noise, like, what do you do in that group? You know, oh, the best one is the best one you're going to use, that's easy, right? You know, usually if, you know, when I have responded before, I will send them usually a direct message, type of deal and ask them more about what type of loan officer they are, right? Because it looks a little bit different. You know, I think it's a silly response to say the one you use. Yeah. And maybe before that, what, what, I mean, clearly somebody's asking that question for a reason, right? And I know it varies based on such, but anyway, that's just one of those, like, people are always like, it's the grass is greener thing, you know, oh, I'm using them like, what's the best CRM? You know what I mean? It's just like, do you, is that a self-defeating, do you think the answer to that? All right, here we go. You think the answer to that sometimes is shut up and learn the system you're using? Sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, some people don't even need, like, you know, CRM is kind of overused, just, but some people don't need a CRM, right? They just need the ability to get leads from their website and be able to call them. Well, you don't need a CRM for that. You just need a lead management component, right? Right. Or if you need to do some long-term nurturing and you have maybe a need to robust CRM. So that conversation's different. And so, you know, I think that's kind of what I've, I think maybe brought to the market a little bit, is that I've been talking a lot over the last five years about lead management. Like, I'm a lead management consultant, lead management, lead management. I've struggled with that over the years of like, do I start and just say abandoned lead management? Because no one knows kind of what lead management is and they always ask. But when I say CRM, they're like, oh, I know what CRM is, right? I don't know what lead management is. But lead management is like so important to the CRM component. If you're not here to lead management side, it doesn't work, CRM doesn't work. But I've stuck with the guns and lead management to this point, you know, now I work with shape, which is a CRM, but it has the lead management components. Right. We have customers who use just the lead management components and don't use the full blown CRM components. Right. So you can use, you know, both if you wanted to and the opposite probably to where maybe people aren't generating leads or don't have that need for that like long term lead flow etc. But they've got relationships they want to manage and yeah, and that's where we use like we have recruiting firms. So you just use the contact piece of it. We have, we have like a health, like we're a HIPAA approves, we have mental health facilities that you will use it for recruiting doctors to come work for their facility. I mean, just you name it, like cremation company, so all kinds of crazy stuff, yeah. Okay. All right. So those are some couple three ways where you can immediately optimize what you're already using. Now obviously anybody listening if they want to learn more about shape, they'll be links in the show notes. You can go to set shape.com. I personally have had a demo and I've, I mean, I've used a lot of different platforms since being in this industry since 2003. So and again, there's no plug here. There's no, I'm not, I'm not getting a weekend out in Hawaii for, you know what I mean? But it's a very impressive platform and I think for me, when I saw it, I'm always putting my loan officer hat on, I'm thinking like, how would I use this? How would this save me time? And I think you highlighted a couple of those features that allow people to do that. No. And by the way, the cool thing that I like about your platform as well is that you actually aren't enterprise only. And I think that's where the opportunity, if I'm speaking to you, the listener right now and you can control or decide which CRMU user, maybe you want your own because I know a lot of L's are doing that too. That's right. I mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah. They want to have the, they don't want to like lose all their information if they happen to change companies. Right. Yep. Yep. But that would be an interesting thing for you to look at is for your own use, you know, whatever makes sense seeing as you guys aren't enterprise only. So I think that's cool. Yeah. Single user can sign up. And also it's flexible contracts. So yeah. You want to try it out for a month and to try it out, there's no long term commitment. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the first things that, like when I heard that and I said, like, well, tell me more about that. And they said, their response was, and this is back when I was doing my due diligence of learning systems. I asked, you know, because I was stuck with my current system that I was supporting. And that was the number one thing they client would buy a hundred seats or 50 seats or even let's say five seats. And they let four people go and now I only have one person left. Well, sorry, you're on the hook for all five for the entire year. Sorry. Right. What do you do about it? Right. And that was a response. And it was so painful to have that conversation and have to support that. So anyways, the response though was it is our business to earn your business every month. And if we can't do that, then we're not going to hold you to the contract. And that just struck a chord with me of, like, okay, this is legit cool. So yeah, so try it out and you like it great. And if you don't, you can cancel. Yeah. And again, I'm not, I hope this doesn't come across as a plug. But I really love tech. I geek out. I don't know if I told you before, but I spent some time in the marketing automation space. I worked at KEEP back when they were infusion soft. Yeah. Those names ring a bell. Yeah. You at all. Silver pop. I don't know if you remember them. Anyway, so I dig this tech because I think tech has a huge, a play, a place, right? In our businesses, we need to leverage technology for going to scale and just glancing here at your marketing suite, right? You got these, what people would expect, pre-built emails, but you also have pre-built techs, videos, campaign templates, co-brand with realtors, other referral partners, send newsletters. Now that's cool because I think more LL should be sending newsletters. By the way, not the BS newsletters, which is like all about you, like value-bombs, something useful and valuable, and personalized stuff. I'm sorry, I'm just reading the website right here in front of you, so like cloud-based calling, texting, email, it's been a while since I had the demo since I forgot, but there's a lot of cool stuff. So anyway, people, if you're listening, you got to check it out link of the show notes, set shape, S-E-T-S-H-A-P-E dot com. All right, speaking of all these tools and bells and whistles, a pet peeve of mine is people trying to automate everything, like this whole craze on AI. I see these people posting, hey, I just designed this AI, I put together this AI video, which is how to create a chatbot that does pre-quals for you, literally saw something like that the other day. Wow. And I wanted to pause my judgment on that because I'm like, well, at what stage is it doing this? Is it early stage? Or it sounded like, what I'm cautious of there is like, oh, sure, so I just took myself out of the equation completely and automated this business versus the being a mortgage advisor versus being an order taker. Right. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, man. I mean, there is a use for it, no doubt. I have been experimenting as well with video, so I'm a big video guy, do a lot of video. I never was up until a couple of years ago, but as the pandemic happened and I was on Zoom calls and I was able to look into a camera and actually talk to the camera, I got to a point where I could actually like turn the camera around and record and so I started in these videos and I got to the point I read Kyle Draper's book about like, it's not about you. Stop thinking it's for you. Like, you're here to serve other people, like do the videos for other people and so all of that changed my mindset on it. And so, you know, so I've really bought into this, like, let's just do more video and create that personal connection. I have worked with consumer direct lenders in the past of like, hey, turn your camera on as well. Like, you should be using your camera to do a, you know, go over the numbers with a client and do all of that as well. They still don't want to do it. So, you know, those out in the field like continue to get advantage of doing your videos and stuff with customers or whatever, you know, your, all of the stuff you do on video is there because super direct isn't buying into that yet. But regardless, I think that, you know, the personalization side of things with video is a key component because like I've used, I use a lot of like bomb bomb for myself. Mm-hmm. I'll send out a bomb bomb video. I like that when it comes to lead management because I can track whether or not it was open, I can track, was it, how much of it was watched? I can track, it gives me tracking things that are important. Now, I'm not trying to like be big brother and see things. Right. But it helps me from a lead management perspective. So think back to that example, we have a five applications, right? Mm-hmm. I have five people to follow up with. Some of those five people, if I sent them all a video with next steps and only two of them watched the video or opened the link to watch the video with kind of go over the numbers and only one of them watched the video all the way through. Which ones of those do I think are most likely to convert or most interested? Probably the one who watched the video all the way through. Well, if I can get that tracking back to the lead record from my video that I recorded using the tool like bomb bomb, now I can then sort that five by that list there, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. So you moved that up on the priority list. But the priority list. That way, I don't have to think who do I follow up with next? I'm just following up with the person who watched the video completely and what have you. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I think video has a component that a lot of people aren't using today. Mm-hmm. Don't know really exists to use today. But it also prevents this creates this personalization component of as well that they're going to remember you. Yeah. Right. Which isn't that the goal after all? It is. I mean, yeah. To be memorable. Is that why you go around to schools and wear wigs? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There you go. There's the pivot right there. Wait a minute. What? What did he just say? Whoa. No, it's totally legal. Right. This is actually a great point because even though I'm kind of making a joke and we're going to segue into this situation, the point is to be memorable. Whether it's online, whether it's over email, whether it's face to face or in person in a conversation, you know, that's what people remember. And you, prior to you and I knowing each other, the green book, right, we both participated in that book, which we talked about, I believe, at the beginning, the intros to shout out to Kyle and Brian to green book. By the way, somebody contacted me the other day and I was like, well, how'd you hear about me? And she goes, oh, the green book. Awesome. I'm like, wow. All right. The green book. Love it. Awesome. Um, but I wasn't following you prior to the green book. Right. Right. I've been following you since 2018, but that's fine. Right. Right. You just weren't on my radar, right? For whatever reason. And then all of a sudden, you were because I read your chapter and then I started following you online. So it doesn't matter like how people get into your world, but that's a piece of content. So you got to put something out there for a means for people who engage with you. So anyway, what I found though was like all of a sudden, I'm like, dude's wearing like this wig with his headband, he's wearing these t-shirts that have abs and I'm, and it's just like, drew me in. Right. You know, so what the hell is that all about? Yeah. But so, yeah. So the wings of funny story and, you know, I've, I've tried to like pin my stories at the top of all my stuff so that people can like immediately know like what's going on because I feel like, but I don't explain it right off the bat. They're going to be like, oh, this is weird. But that said, it really does have a deep meaning to it and it goes back to when I was nine years old. And when I was nine years old, my dad made the very unfortunate decision to take his own life. And so looking back, you know, and really the last place that I saw him was at, he took us to school and he parked in the curb at the morning drop off and he was very emotional. We didn't know why me and my brother. I was in third grade. He was in first grade. Ryan, very emotional and didn't know why, but, you know, we got out, so then we're emotional too, but we didn't know why, but we got out of the car. We went into school and didn't, didn't think anything of it, what okay, whatever happened. And so in the later of the day, we found out that during the day, he had, he had taken us on life. So, so morning drop off has to me just always had this like kind of bad memory. Right. And so then I had kids and my kids, you know, went to elementary school. And again, I was in third grade when this happened. And our elementary school, our dad's club, and they, they were opening doors for kids. And I just made this flashback of like morning drop off. And I was like, oh, I don't think I could do that. Like, I, that's just going to bring back too much or whatever. But then, you know, it hit me like, you know, you never, like you never know. Like maybe there's a kid in there who might go through what I went through today. You're just going to go through what I went through today. And so maybe I need, maybe I could provide some type of like smile or laugh or something like that. So then when they walk into school, they might go sad to happy who knows, right, who knows what happened. So, when my kids were in first grade kindergarten, first grade, I started helping opening doors in that dad's club. And then kind of went all out in dad's club and took over as president of the dad's club in elementary school, like third, fourth, and fifth grade. And then usually it's done. Middle, like when you get middle school, dad's club's done, kids are in middle school, whatever. They don't want that anymore. They don't want it. They're done with dad's club. All right. And so, but I went and talked to our principal when I, when my daughter was starting sixth grade and I said, would you be okay if we allow dads to open doors for the kids in middle school? I know it hasn't been done before, but hear me out, here's what I think, here's why I think it's needed. One, here's my story. So that's why I want to do it. But two, like kids are stressed in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, like they have a lot going on. Well, there's just, you never know, like just for them, let alone family stuff. Right. And he was like, you had me at your story, like let's do it, right? Yeah. So I recruited four or five dads who we get up there at 730 in the morning before the kids get there. Like, we don't, our kids don't even ride with us who we get there before our kids get there. Like our spouses bring our kids later on, but we get up there, set up the music and we got music too. We play music. We got a boom box out there. We have even a bullhorn, which I got banned from the bullhorn because the neighbors were complaining about how loud it was. No way. And that was using it way too much because I'm so obnoxious, according to certain people. I could see that now. Yeah. I just got the visual. Yeah. And so, but so I worked the little crosswalk area and I do the dances and I, like I'll watch TikTok and learn dances, like I'm like all out trying to be like kid and call in on this. So like I have my favorite, I got to find there's video of me doing the gritty, you know, the gritty? No, sir. Oh, gritty. I was good at the gritty. That was good as some of the kids, but the gritty was good. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so, you know, it turned into, you know, really just kind of dancing, having fun, whatever to do. Well, fast forward to, I saw someone wearing a wig for something and I was like, I picture you can get one on his Amazon. Talk. One Amazon. And sure enough, you can get all these mullet wigs and stuff. And I was like, I'm going to just get a couple. So one Friday, I wore it to school and I'm like, I'm going to embarrass my two kids. And so when I saw them, they're like, roll their eyes or whatever, but they didn't say anything. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Well, I talked to them later and they're like, yeah, we get it. It's embarrassing. But my kids are so cool. They're like, we know your story. Yeah. So we're cool with it. Like, we know why you're doing it. So we're cool. And I'm like, I think she's so happy. So what I started to do then was I took the, you know, this is about the time that I was doing the college reading the college paper book about serving others and it's like, well, how can I do the wig and also serve like lead management, CRM stuff? And so that decided to record these videos of me and the wig and it was like, Hey, it's Friday. Call your leads today. It's a great way to in the week, like in the week strong, whatever. And then it turned into this kind of motivational, fun hair Friday video where every Friday, I would record myself walking to the school or walking into the, to the drop off line of me and my, whatever the new wig was of the day and became this thing and now fun hair Friday. Yeah. You and your daughter in the car as well, right? So I include now my kids. It's the other big thing I've done is included my kids in a lot of the marketing that I did. So when I was running my business, STP solutions, a lot of loan officers, right? Like I'm trying to recruit new clients, I'm trying to recruit like it's, it's very similar. I have a leads that I was calling and all kinds of stuff and management. But I've include my, my kids into it as well have the kids participate in stuff as well. Sometimes they like it, sometimes they don't, but, but yeah, I'm, you know, so it's really turn to thing. I went to a conference. That's where I knew from a branding perspective and that, you know, that they'd taken off. I went to a conference, probably a couple of weeks, you know, a month or two after I'd done my first kind of fun hair Friday videos. Multiple people said, where's the wig? Where's the wig? Where's the wig? Oh, I should have brought it. So the next conference, I brought it and everyone loved it and the next conference decided, okay, I'm going to step it up and I wore the wig and then I wore my muscle shirt which is this. See, I didn't think that was a shirt. I thought that was you. Oh, I mean, yeah. Of course, everyone thought that. Yeah. Oh, man, it's, it's, it's, I've worn it to a Vegas pool before it. It's just. Oh, it's whole way. Huge shit. Huge shit there. And then walking like, you know, through the casino floor. Right. Huge shit. Right. But I wore to a conference with the wig with my business coat and so I had the muscles through it. And again, just a huge hit. People were talking about the next day, like going, I wasn't wearing it and it's being memorable. But it's being memorable, right? Yeah. And so I think there's an opportunity for people in every community wherever they're at to find a way to be memorable and not just be the loan officer that does mortgages. Right. There's a way to whether it's a, you know, a certain color or t-shirt that you always wear or a certain, you know, a shame of those guys, that word hat guy, like, yeah, yeah. Right. Ways to brand yourself as that person. I'm just, that's, and so I've started now even using these videos and now posting them like as my personal stuff as well. So now all of my kind of personal friends in the community as well, know me as kind of the, the guy wearing the wig. So it's not just business. Now it's kind of the personal thing too. I have a whole sort of, again, I have 20, 25 different wigs, um, funnier wife concerned. No, I bought, I don't have it with me, but I, one of my latest videos I showed to school, my daughter and I had the money hat and the money chain. I remember the money chain. Yeah. Yeah, I was great. She wouldn't make the bread today. This whole made up thing. She was like, what are you talking about? Um, oh my gosh. That's so funny. Yeah. Well, I think, uh, that's a great story, by the way, thank you for sharing that. And, um, I think one way to stand out, by the way, is for those people who are like, oh, the wig isn't my thing, I think remember that what you started doing was actually serving someone else. Yeah. You started by, you know, um, doing the dad's club and opening doors and that led to that. So, you know, my takeaway from that is, is show up and serve somewhere wherever that is for you in your local community. I know another, uh, one of the folks I work with, Mike DelPred, Mike ElPredo, uh, what's up? Mike shout out to you. Think Chicago. He goes and volunteers at, um, you know, food pantries and things like that. And he shares his time at the food pantry and that, you know, connects people to him, to you in a way where like, like you said, it's like, uh, I don't necessarily care that you're in loans, you're a mortgage loan officer. I mean, I do when I need it, but outside of that, if we circle this back full circle to, like being memorable, brand, differentiation, um, you know, we can't be a company that has a brand, but we can be individuals that have a brand and become known for something. Absolutely. It looks like you've done that pretty successfully with the dad's club. Yeah. It's, you know, it's one of those things that I just, it's, I truly enjoy it. Like it's just for sure. And then you have fun. Just so much, right? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm actually, by the way, a substitute teacher as well, uh, for the school district. I don't, I've only done it a couple of times, but I'm like an emergency, you must be a great substitute teacher. Oh my gosh. So I do, uh, magic tricks, which is just this magic color and the thing that if you behave, I'll do a magic trick. I can see it now. Kids, put your books away. All right. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to learn about, yeah, sports betting or, yeah, sports betting, right? Uh, I'm going to teach you how to throw dice, right? So here we go. Right. Don't tell Mrs. Smith when she comes back on Monday. Right. Yep. That's awesome, man. Well, cool. Um, this has been a fantastic conversation. Once again, people, how can you not want to learn more about shape right now, right? After hearing this amazing story. So links are in the show notes also, uh, links to your social profiles linked in Instagram. If people want to see the wigs, yeah, that's where they should go, right? Totally. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe one day we'll get the real six pack abs. You won't have to wear a t-shirt. So I, well, I've lost like, yeah, really? I've lost 40 pounds. Yeah. Really? The other kind of big thing this year is that yeah, I've lost 40 pounds. What'd you do? Uh, so I'm on a mission to, so like, I wanted to set like a really big, hard goal for myself this year. And so one of the things that I really enjoy or have enjoyed is like just, you know, going out with my friends or going to a ball game and having a beer or whatever. And so I decided to quit drinking for a year, three hundred sixty five days. I'm on day one hundred and forty right now. I was counting right there. Who's counting? Right. Yeah, whatever. Right. Um, but, uh, so, you know, it's amazing what happens when, yeah, that kind of, that opens up clarity wise and what you can refocus your time with and working out and all of things. So yeah, that's been part of the journey as well as I'm trying to get, literally, I'm trying to get abs so that I can show it's kind of even a play into the, getting in shape. Right. Oh, perfect. And so my headbands, which I don't have, we'll get a video, we'll do something at the show with it. Yeah. But getting in shape. Have you done the clips of you working out yet? Like with the whole getting in shape thing? No one wants to see it work. Yes. Come on. Just 30 seconds. Oh, just a shot of you walking into the gym and proof that you're doing it. I do have a cool video of you at me walking into the gym. I do have that. Perfect. So we did. We follow that journey. I think that's the other thing, too, is like people like to follow a journey, right? The whole giving up drinking, 75 hard, whatever it is, you know, people like to follow that. So I listen, and by the way, I'm somebody who can relate to that as well, because that's a big part of my life. And years ago, I was a little bit overweight and kind of made some decisions to make those changes. And now it's just a lifestyle thing, right? But a lot of people, as I'm sure you know, sometimes need that inspiration or that motivation to just be like, well, damn it, freaking Scott's doing it. I'm going to do it, too. Right. Yeah. A lot of people reach out when I've shared my stuff about it. Yep. All right. People in order to do go check out shape, set shape.com and make sure you follow Scott on all the socials. Appreciate you being here, man. Such an honor. 2018. I've been listening to your show. I think we didn't talk about that. I was on a plane searching for podcasts to listen to because I was on a plane all the time. Mm hmm. First things comes up. Listen to it. I'm like, oh, this is it. Listen to it all year long. 2018. Wow. Yeah. That goes back quite a ways. Yeah. I was just looking the other day. My first episode was January 2016. Wow. That's amazing. We've been here for a minute. Um, anyway, man. Fantastic. Thanks so much. Such an honor. Yeah. I know we're going to go to the mastermind summit and continue to hang out there. But listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, hey, leave a link, leave a review in the link below. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks, yeah. Yeah.