Building Scale Into Your Mortgage Business

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. And this is the time now to be calling those agents and just basically, here's another sample script, top of my head, what's up PJ, long time no talk, blah, blah, blah, blah, hey, man, I'm just curious, right? Mark has shifted. You feeling it? Yeah, I'm just curious. Like, what has changed for you in planning for the rest of the year? Start doing what are you going to stop doing? And I'm asking PJ because I'd like to find out how I can help that's incredible. That's all you did, man, to the next 10 agents. You're going to get seven appointments. Hey, listeners, Jeff, and for your host of the Morgan's Market Radio podcast, so glad you're tuning in today, man, we've got a great show for you. And that's going to begin in just a moment, but I thought I'd give you a quick update from our world of mortgage professionals that are you in a situation where refires have obviously dropped off and you're looking to step up your purchase business, but you're struggling with how do I attract attention from? How do I get engagement from real estate agents? And you don't want to do it in the way that everyone else seems to do, right? The same as lame marketing. You want to actually provide value and differentiate yourself and build a preeminent brand in your local business. Well, look, you know by now that I believe one of the premier, most effective, efficient ways to do that is by leading with education, building an educational platform in your local area that attracts agents to you instead of you chasing agents. Therefore, you get to be in control. It's reverse prospecting. You get to shift and sort and decide who you work with, who you don't. And most importantly, when you follow a system, you build predictability and reliability into your processes because it is a process for identifying prospecting and converting real estate agents to referral partners. Therefore, I'd like to remind you of a special opportunity you have to learn more about my agent classes and the mortgage marketing pro membership. I'm going to read you a brief little text from a couple of our members that went back and forth this week. One of our members was asking, this is Nick asking how often is everyone doing their classes? And this is one of the 15 different answers that we got back. But Chris expanded on the answer and essentially said that he's following the system, right? Whether you're doing an in-person or virtual, right? Use the feedback forms, promote the classes, follow the process, right? And promote your next class in the existing class that you're at and you will consistently have a full room of real estate agents. For example, Chris got 30 realtor signed up for his Instagram class and 40 realtor signed up for his Google business class after teaching two sessions on database marketing. If you're wondering, where does he get all those classes from? He gets them from the my agent classes platform as a mortgage marketing pro member. Furthermore, Chris went on to say that he's been doing this now one to two a month for about a year and that he pulls around a million dollars from each class. Let me say it again, he pulls around a million dollars in originations from each class. Do the math on that. What your commission rate is on that. You tell me if that activity, if there's a higher ROI and ROE return on effort, if there's a higher, more effective, better use of that for generating purchase money referrals, let me know what it is. Do you want to learn more about my agent classes and how you can participate? Go to mortgagemarketing.pro, watch the brief video I put up there and you decide if it's for you or not. Okay. With that said, let's get into this week's show. PJ, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, brother. Appreciate it. And I really appreciate you reaching out because as you're now we're talking before, some of the best podcast episodes happen completely organically like this, which I think you just pinged me on Instagram, you're like, what's up and then you're going, hey, man, whatever you said, I was asking you, hey, what are your numbers and all that kind of jazz and here we are. For those of you who don't know who PJ is, quick backgrounder, how long you've been in the biz and then the unit's volume last year and year today. Yeah, absolutely. So, been around the business my entire life, I was playing PlayStation 1 in my father's office in Center City, Philly under a desk. So I've been around the loan estimates and pre-CDs my entire time on earth, but I've been full time in the business, feeling the plane and pressure personally for three years. So when COVID happened, my father fills with this smaller company based out of New Jersey Correspondent Lender. And if the opportunity to go with a larger national company and he said, hey, if we're going to do this thing, big great opportunity for you to get into business because a lot of my interest is in scale, operations, infrastructure, things in addition to just, you know, basic loans. So it was a cool opportunity to just come up with this branch and really get into the trenches. That was April of 2020. At the time, he was always the top producing loan officer, always the 50 to 60 million himself for the processor and a loan officer assistant. So we always crushed it, but in 18 months, we were able to double that. So we went from 20 units a month to 40 units a month. We went from 50 million a year to last year, we closed 115 million with Cardinal. March was our biggest month together. We closed 55 units and there's only the two of us, just over 16 million in South Carolina. And then an opportunity presented itself with American Pacific Mortgage. We transitioned, just finished out our first 90 days and have done about 20 million and two and a half months since we've been with APM. Wow. Congratulations, man. What do you think? I mentioned a couple words, scale and growth and stuff that seemed like something got lit. There was something lit while you were still at Cardinal, like that, that growth. What was it? There's a couple of things there. I think honestly, it was recognition, like it sounds like maybe a little self-serving, but it's just a massive company with a lot of different, like they have wholesale, they have consumer direct, they have retail branches. So we were having a conversation like, hey, what do we need to do to get put on the map number one? What do we need to do to stand out from the back and what do those numbers look like? That was number one. And the number two was just being in the trenches every day, which anybody that's in this business knows. There's a certain grind that comes with being in mortgages. How do we do that to where we can yield good results and good rewards? How do we just get above the grind and actually put up numbers that maybe mean something, I guess? So those were just some break points then. Well, so make sure I want to stand the dots here. So you said it was your dad who's been in the business in Philly? Yeah, so he started, he spent 10 years in the North and then came down to Charleston in 2011 and now he's spent 11 years in South. Got it. Okay. So like the jump in volume, part of that was just like standards, like dude, we're not doing enough and let's erase the bar. I think the jump in volume was he always operated within his own capacity, like he's the type of guy that never opens up like cell, but can remember 20 bars off the top of his head. And there's everybody's cash to close as supposed to be and knows exactly when he's supposed to respond to realtors. That reached a certain ceiling and I said, Dad, we got to open up Microsoft. We got to start incorporating some different strategies here. So I think really it was just duplicating the groundwork that he already laid out, you got 20 years and being able to help expand that. So what I'm hearing, right? Tell me if this is someone accurate is I'm hearing. So he's to use the term old school, right? Real safe. The fun I'm all right. Let's say you respect, right? But then he's got, you know, you, right, younger coming in and used to use the word scale and you're probably seeing systems tools. I like to do it this way, people process technology and you're probably looking at like, okay, Dad, what you could do is like we could do use this tech, this process, maybe bring on a purse, right? Am I on the right track? 100%. And how did you get him to agree was there resistance? You know, honestly, no. So like that's probably one of the greatest blessings of things I'm grateful for working together because a lot of times, you know, we're here together 12, sometimes 14 hours a day and people wonder the father, some dynamic family working with family. But we're so committed to doing a good job and our goals are very much alignment that he's just been hands off since we started and is either says, hey, it's a good idea or hey, it's not. And if it's not a good idea, we talk through why it's not a good idea. Sure. So what any particular tools or systems or anything like that that stand out that you did introduce? Yeah. So I would say that's evolved a lot from my first month of working with him when it was as simple as a spreadsheet. Like that's really where it started. It was just, hey, we got to get names on paper. We got to get names into the computer because it was seriously. Maybe. Yes, CRM, like maybe some drip campaign. Let's get crazy and follow up when it's somebody's birthday. Like anything other than how many missed calls do I have? And let me call them back. That's where it started. So that's really evolved from where we started. So we destroyed the spreadsheet. We started there and evolved that to where we got it as automated as it could. But when we left Cardinal Kimmelborg with APM, I said there has to be a better way than spreadsheets because of how much manual time at work. So it's technology has been really cool for us as we use Trello. So I just basically built an automated pipeline in Trello for under contract and not under contract. So our Eloise and processors can just fly in there. And that's been like lightning compared to what we used to do in Google Cheats and Excel. Yeah. Wow. So big times over there using Trello. Yeah. We use Trello for everything. Everybody's in the loop and updated and milestones and all that kind of jobs. Yep. So Trello mirrors in Compass, which is our LOS and you can use it mobile. So if I'm on the road with my wife Saturday afternoon and somebody says, hey, how does Mr. Johnson look? I can pull up Trello and go to prospects and say, okay, he's been pre approved for a blank. Here's where he wants his payment to be. Shoot him and text right from Trello. And why was it Trello? Why was it Trello? Did you already have experience with that because I mentioned CRM. There's other tools, but any reason why Trello? I was just trying to find something that didn't require so much manual data entry. And we actually during the transition, like we were almost at a stalemate for two weeks because we were so used to be using the Google Sheets model and we had all this volume and deals the transition over it, but I didn't want to start because once you start, it's really hard to stop. Once I start putting in everything into a spreadsheet, it's just constantly going. So we actually sat at a standstill for two weeks with this massive back wall, we're growing, searching and Googling and looking for all these different platforms that are out there. And then one of our contacts who runs a really successful team in Florida shared this training that a guy in Oregon did using Trello for his, you know, small branch. And I watched the video four or five times and overnight stayed up all night and just built our version of what he recorded himself doing and then just took off and never looked back. That's amazing. I love to hear that. You just dug in and learned what you needed to learn and now this is a hard question for you to answer, but I'm really curious and I tend to do these types of things. But I'm trying to equate an ROI or an ROE, right, return on effort because Trello is not very expensive, first of all, right? No, it's a joke. I mean, it's like $7 per user, so maybe like $120 bucks for the branch. Exactly. And that's for like multiple people. But can you assign, I know there's like, oh, my God, the efficiencies, and again, it's not a fair question. I know you know where I'm going. But I'm like, like, are you 20% more efficient or like, is this enabled you to your processes or that it's just less stress? Like, how would you articulate that? It's really tough to put a number to it. As I said, I know the bad question, but no, no, it's a great question. Like, I guess the way I would rephrase that to answer it in a better way would just be how much is Trello impacted our business versus Google Sheets, and I would say night and day, because there's less, especially when you have multiple people working sometimes on the same file, there's less opportunity for somebody to duplicate the same task because everything's so visible in the card. You know, like, if somebody just puts a note hat called this guy, I don't need to call him again because I confused the X in the spreadsheet for the green highlighted cell. Or like, there's just more transparency, there's more visibility. And it's a living breathing document unlike Excel, unless it competes in all that I get it, but still. But still, even Google Sheets, I mean, there's a lot of manual work required to get it quote unquote, sexy. If that's the word you want to use. Well, and I think it all comes back to the word you, but I'm hanging on here. Scale is, you know, again, people process technology, but this is one example of technology that has allowed you to scale and handle more volume. Yep. 100%. And quality of life. So we went, like, we went through a couple of different rough boxes, but I love the word scale because that's been our goal since we started. So like 20 units to 30 units, 30 units to 40 units, 40 units to 50 units, 50 units back to 20. Like when we transition, because we said, we're, there's no way we're going to do this. And now we're back, gearing, you know, over 30. So are you originating? Correct. Yep. You are. Okay. So you and your dad are the primary originators? Yeah. We're the only two originators. It's just the two of us. And then we have three L.O.A.'s, three processors in an admin. Nice. Okay. So next question then is what is the primary source of your business? 100% relationships and referrals, which is, you know, probably pretty standard across the board. Primarily, national home builders is where we probably differentiate ourselves from a lot of other branches. Phil, my father, about seven or eight years ago, made it a mission to really focus and roll up his sleeves in the trouble bucket. If that's what you want to call it, you know, financing backlog where deals are very questionable, where they've been, you know, under contract on a lot for five, six, seven months and outside lender after outside lender is trying to get it done. He prided himself on being able to get those deals closed. So seven years later, we have, you know, direct relationships with national home builders where we're sitting in the sales meetings, we're sitting in the lending meetings with their in-house banks, but it's all local, right? You're not doing deals out of your state. Nope. All local. South Carolina coast. So from Merdle Beach down to Buford and then with our hub in Charleston is our market. Well, you, you, one of your, our DMs back and forth on Instagram, I'm reading it right here. The focus is self-employed, five, eight, eight, six, twenty, FICO, reloads, et cetera, right? Yep. So I said on the fly in a presentation a couple of weeks ago, when most lenders shut the laptop, is when we open it and that really is a way to, I mean, it's the truth. Like most times, if I'm another one officer and I see something in the file and I'm like, wow, this is an issue, that's where we get excited. Like please send me a DTI that's at 65 or 70 because we know there's a way to get it to 56 or to 50 and run approved. Okay. So all right. What's challenging on that? How do you do that, man? I mean, is it just like paying off certain debts or whatever? Yeah. So I would say a lot of times it's communication to the client because we could communicate the same message, but somebody can absorb it and act on it in a much different fashion. Yeah. So I mean, there's been situations all day long where somebody needs a co-bar and it doesn't matter what you do on the file, they need somebody else to go on, but it's the way you present that to the client that determines if they're going to call grandma who's getting social security and put her on the deal. If I ask and I make her uncomfortable and she's, she went to grandma's to get cookies and soup because she was so traumatized from the lender she talked to. But when we talk to her grandma had an app in 10 minutes and the deal's approved. So how do you do that differently, man? So recently we've been trying to, and this goes on the scale bucket, but try to really think about what we do differently because a lot of times it's just the same words that definitely, like we close fast, we have low rates, like it's all the same stuff. So we try to brand ourselves on the three Cs where team Chris ends up, team say number one is we care. And I think that's really how you connect with the clients and get them to sometimes have this tough conversation just really care, like if you slow it down and just try to talk to them and let them know, hey, this might not work, but this is really what you need to do if you want to make it happen. You know what I mean? I don't know. There's probably more than that, but beyond the numbers, I don't see it gains your tone. And that's the important thing to do if you're actually caring is you're going to change your tone. You're going to bring it down a little. Yeah. So first one is we care. Number one. See. Number one is we care. Number two is we communicate, which is probably where we see the greatest inconsistency in the business is sporadic communication. You respond to the first text in two minutes and then you don't call the listing agent back for a week or, you know, you send out an email flurry and then nobody hears from you from our mom. Right. Or you hit your quota and you hit five million and then you disappeared for a quarter. Like, so we really try to provide ourselves on communication. That means communication to all parties involved. You know, that's title, attorneys, listing agents, buyers agent. If you reach out to us, we'll respond instantly. And then that's the client. And that's if there's an issue, if there's not an issue, we just want to be at the forefront of transparency, which is also one of APM's core values as a company, transparency. And then the last is we close because, you know, in this market, how many deals can you afford to lose? Yeah. Wow. That's good, man. I like that. That's impactful. Appreciate it. And then even more is like, you actually take a moment to clarify or define what that means. Because like you said, it's, it's the old cliche. It's not what you say, but how you say it. Yep. 100%. Care, communicating, close. Love that, man. If you worked on, I'm curious what you did prior to this because you've been in originating essentially teamed up with you to add through over three years. What were you doing before? Before I came aboard, I was doing commercial property management. So it was a mixed-use redevelopment project. They were taking a massive industrial building and just slicing it up into, you know, little office spaces with industrial space for subcontractors. And then I got my degree in commercial real estate. So I was in the commercial real estate bucket before I got into residential to long time very short. It's a different animal. Yes. No, but you have a, you have a really good, I don't know if it's innate or just being around it. You've got a really great, that's the word, like, people skills. With this kind of self-awareness, you know what I mean? I appreciate that. So yeah, just hats off to you there, man. Thanks, Mother. Okay, so I have MMI open, you know MMI? Yeah, for sure. Right? And I always am curious when I can do this. I'm looking at your agent relationships because when I asked about the number one source of business, right, you talked about the builder relationships and all that. But what looks like you've, if you could articulate like the percentage of deals from builders versus agents or are these agents at builders? Yes. I'll say it's probably 40%. I mean, there's still a lot of pre-owned business, so I'd say it's probably 40% builders and 60% pre-owned, just existing real estate, right? Sure. Okay. Cool. Yep. And so this is very interesting to me when I unpack MMI because what I'm really curious about is percentage of capture. It looks like you're crushing it with Carolina one. You know, it's interesting too about MMI on the flip side of recruiting. I would say not at all. So there's like a discrepancy between, I mean, there's some really good statistics and information and it definitely paints a great trend. Yeah. But like when you say that to me, I'm like, who do we work with at Carolina one? I don't even know. All right. You don't think your capture rate is that good? No. Like, but that's if we didn't have the statistics, I would say no. Now, like, we work with the number one agent at Jeff Cook Real Estate, he's a huge broker chair. You know, we do a lot with Keller Williams. Like, I would say some different things that might not even show up on there, but that's what comes in my mind initially. Interesting. Well, I'm saying that only because it shows that you got 34 deals out of that one brokerage. Hmm. Well, I need to circle back with Carolina one when we get off this call and I might write that down. This is awesome. And it actually just logged me out. So I got to log back in here, but, um, okay. So thank you for sharing. Yeah. Yeah. No, man. Yeah. So people love about this, this podcast is, it's just like, it's just real. It's in the moment. I want to put in your name though here again. I got to type it back in CRES, spell it for me, too, don't mind. CRES, C-E, N-Z-O, all right, and South Carolina. Here we go. Uh, so when you, when you started working with your dad, did he have a bunch of agent relationships established? Yes. And we're still uncovering those because there's zero social media. Like we said, zero systems, zero social media. So if he didn't personally reach out to you or you didn't personally reach out to him, and he had a home run deal on the other side, if you're listening to the buyer's agent, you heard the name and you never saw it again. So we still today is we're trying to expand the brand and do more social and get out to events like, oh, wow, you're Phil Kersenzo. You saved that deal six years ago that nobody said could get done, right? Right. And that really is probably our greatest value. And it falls under the we care is, I'm extremely and eternally, you can use the word in both ways grateful because he did the right thing for so long in his business with so many people dead in it. So reputation. Yeah. And then I get, and I'm very grateful because I step into that with the same name. So I'm Phil Jr. Yeah. So yeah. So eventually he wants to hand over the business to you, I assume? Yeah. And that's we're constantly talking about what the next 90 days and what the next nine years look like, but that's that's the long term goal. How do you while we're on the topic of realtors, let's say, let's say non builder realtors, how do you create brand awareness? That's a great question. I would say probably two ways inside and outside the transaction, brand awareness and the transactions is doing what you say you're going to do and doing a good job. Close on time, make sure the client's happy, respond when somebody reaches out to you and they'll say, wow, that was a good experience, which falls under the brand. Outside of the transaction is all the fun, frilly carrots that probably people spend more time on than the actual transaction, which is, hey, can we find the sky on social to this guy of a website? What's his like on Zillow? Mm-hmm. And the marketing material look like. Yeah. Who's doing that on your team? Are you doing that? Are you kind of prospecting, right? Patients? Yep. Yeah. So I'm doing all of the marketing and then really taking the lead on sales. His primary role is issues arise. We got a qualifying issue. It's been under contract. Something popped up. How do we get it fixed? How do we get it closed? Mm-hmm. Really just all things in the trouble bucket and then big branch picture, relationship with corporate, branch strategy is more so on our fills bucket and then meetings with our builders. And then I'm more so new apps to under contract. How do we take this file from? He just did an app to, he just went under contract and that's out of the experience. So what are some of the tactics you use to get in front of agents? Is it social media following engaging? Is it classes? Is it video stuff? What are you doing? Yeah. So getting in front of agents, I guess in person is evolved a little bit. We had the COVID and that was like 18 months of which everyone experienced, right? So for a long time, getting in front of agents wasn't even an option. So now post COVID and post APM, it's just been lunch and learns. I've probably been the most successful way to get together. Hey, what are some questions you have on the lending side? What are some things you've run across? You know, on your side of the field, let's get together and talk about it over lunch. We had some really successful lunch and learns. And then, gradually, just really responded to people and just stand on top of communication. Well, I imagine you get, let me ask you this way, do you do anything proactively on the listing side, listing agents on transactions? No, and there's a ton of opportunity there. We don't, and I would love to. Busy. You're busy enough. Yeah. I'll let you get that one haul pass today. Yeah. But I will write it down and lose sleep over for the next six nights about the opportunity we do have to reach out the listing agents. Thank you very much. Jeff. Appreciate that. Well, look, let me give you one idea. And this is for everybody listening, too. I was talking about this this morning on our little small group coaching call. And that is, you know, in your market, I'm sure like most others, we're seeing cancellations and price reductions, right? So of course, what's back in Vogue is the seller buy down, right? And so I've had a number of my mortgage people that are in my community reach out, be a phone call, be a posting on social media about seller buy downs, right? And one example this morning was this gal, she posted an image or something like that about, you know, seller buy down and how it can, as I said, the key takeaway from this everybody listening is, if you're talking to an agent by the way, this would be, so let me give you the real tactic. So my coaching tip to my people was, hey, why don't you call the listing agents you did transactions with and just call small talk, hey, hey, what's up? This is Jeff. How are you doing? Yeah, we closed that deal on Smith Street. Hey, just curious. I'm checking in and you could even look up and see if they have any listings if you have access to that. I just need to be like, hey, I'm curious. How's it going with you? Are you seeing any price reductions or cancellations or like is buyer or affordability and issue? Yeah, certainly is. I'm seeing this and this. And then here's the key phrase. Would you be open to a program that can help reduce cancellations, eliminate price reductions and get more people qualified to purchase homes, like the deal nine and a half out of ten agents are going to say yes to that. Yep. And what's interesting is that sometimes we don't realize, first of all, there's a lot of agents who've come into the business in the last five years. Another buy down has not been talked about for five years. Has it hasn't been a need? Yeah. And now it's a need again, but it's a great tool. Any for you to establish now, it's funny back to that story. Guess what? This lender posted that on her Facebook and agent was following her that she did not even know what's following her, but she knew who the agent was, right? And then he reaches out to her and says, hey, I saw your post about the seller buy down. Can I talk to you about that? Fast forward. She gets the deal and that agent is like, my lender didn't even bring that up. Let's talk. That's awesome. And they're under contract. Yeah. And that's just being proactive. I mean, that just shows somebody who wants to put their best foot forward and cares about what they're doing and wants to provide all of the best options possible is going to attract people that want to win. Well, look, I mean, this is why I like to go down this road is because, you know, everybody was so distracted by the refives, right? And now you pay the price of that whole thing and they're like, well, what do I say? Most of the law officers aren't thinking, you know, what to say other than a handout, right? I say, don't say that. Don't say that. Whatever you're saying, whatever you're thinking. But yeah, it's like it's about solving, you know, solve problems and what are the problems ages are facing is they're facing exactly what we just said, price reductions, cancellations by affordability. Three biggest thing now than ever, they couldn't leverage their lender, you, right, to help overcome that. If you're not showing holding with pitching that idea, you're missing that. Yeah. And I don't know if that was and this could be my opportunity to talk about how great the book was, but I don't know if it was in the book or reflecting on the book, but how important strategic relationships are, like just during this time in general, I mean, in just business in general, you're working on important things with a lot of emotions and a lot of these involved, the partnerships really going to make an impact. But if it wasn't in the book, this is an opportunity to talk about how great the book was. So loved and I'll practice for the audience. I'm going to huge reader over the last four years, I mean, prior to 300 books. Wow. Don't have a massive library. One day I have this vision in my mind with his and hers of my wife and we just got this long row of books up in the wall in the home office. Right now it's more of like an unorganized pile of books in a guest bedroom, but we're going to get there. But anyway, disrupted, I probably did the best job of presenting industry facts and just factual information in general in a way that was digestible, like I was constantly highlighting and writing down on like, wow, this is a really good job of presenting information. We're also doing it in a narrative fashion. I'm enjoying reading this and I'm not like falling asleep on it and it's like, yeah, right. Like a statistics class. Yes. Yes. It's not algebra. And I'm not like texting my mom in high school and you can pick me up. It was good. Thank you. I appreciate that, man. That's a disruptor died, by the way, for those that are listening, you can get your free copy over at getdestruptordie.com or Amazon, I don't know where the link is, but go click it. There's my. Yes. There we go. No, you said something a moment ago about relationships and I'm going to steal a quote from my friends over at mortgage coach, software, Dave Savage, and I actually just had Todd Duncan on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. This is a quote directly from him. We talked about this says right here, from the interviews that they did, 93% of real estate agents right now have told us they would like to meet with the lender and figure out the next 18 months of their career. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. So, well, and there's so much to take away from that industry and non-industry. That's just the entrepreneurial connection of real estate as an agent, as a loan officer and how important vision and intentionality is to what you're doing. 100%. And this is the time now to be calling those agents and just basically here's another sample script, top of my head, what's up PJ, long time no talk, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, man, I'm just curious, right? Market shifted. You feeling it? Yeah. I'm just curious. Like, what has changed for you in planning for the rest of the year? Like, start doing what are you going to stop doing? And I'm asking PJ because I'd like to find out how I can help. That's incredible. That's all you did, man, to the next 10 agents. You're going to get seven appointments, and it's the curiosity, just asking and then actually carrying. Well, how can I help? Yes. That's awesome, man. I love that. Show up and solve problems. Okay. Good stuff. Let me jump back into, let's see, we talked about realtor sources of business. What about tech social, social media and things like that? Are you using social at all? Let me go back to your personal and we'll put a link in the show notes. It's a PJ C Rez 3, and we'll put it in the show notes. Anything happening around social for you regarding business? A few things there, so we have two social pages, right? I have my personal page and then I have a branch page. The first thing was just creating a digital skeleton for the branch so that we had something that was part one, part two is making it look pretty and getting it uniform. So I don't even know if this has an impact or not, but we got like a local social team and I said, I want, I love when I go on an Instagram page and all of the posts look like a well-decorated decor bedroom. I like everything to be in Unison, so whether that impacts the experience or not, that was our first goal. Like, can we get some uniformity and get some consistency in the post? Right. And then, personally, I have gotten a few transactions of social media just from posting clients, testimonials, posting some industry updates. I've probably, I mean, I said in the world on fire, but I've probably generated four to five deals over the last two years that closed without attacking social media, but just posting leisurely as an individual that, hey, I'm in the mortgage business and I'm a loan officer and I run a small team and I've closed four or five deals just from a DM. So, if anything, you help, hey, my mom's trying to do this, hey, I'm relocating. So, I mean, it's definitely been worth posting on social. Yeah. I mean, if I look at your, we're talking about your personal page right now, you're pretty much just living your life on social. Yeah. I don't see a ton of business stuff on there. Yup. Which I'm not, not passing judgment either way. I'm just noticing what's on there. Yeah. It's my wife and I, she's nine months pregnant and I'm a loan officer. And that's like, and now if you want to help me, provide me. Provide for my family, feel free to sign the DMs and I'll get you a quote. But like, it's not, I'm not attacking mortgage content. Yup. Yup. Yup. But I want to be a good person and do good business. Well, that's, that's clear that you are. I'm going to try and Google you right now and see what comes up for Google Business Profile. Have you missed, looked into that at all? I have not. I'm giving you a little clinic here, my friend. Wow, it's looking good. You got 68 reviews on Google, Google Business Profile. I'll take it. Is somebody managing that for you internally in the company? So we have a local web team. We incorporated that about a year ago, the Google, my business. Okay. Right. They're doing good. I mean, for, you know, 68 reviews, it's just like, most I see are like, you know, a tenth of that. Awesome. You know? So great job there. Sure. I mean, there's a few other extra things you could be doing, but seriously, that's like great job. Just like checking the boxes, doing a lot of it here as I go around. No, anything we could take, coach, we'll take it back to the practice field. Exactly. Yeah, what about with video, what are you doing or plan to do with video? So just, that's definitely been our greatest opportunity for improvement in this video. I just created a YouTube channel 48 hours ago and have our little social team creating some graphics and content and I'm actually going to say this because I don't want to be held accountable. Anyway, watch this. I'm going to start posting every Monday, a mortgage Monday post with Team Kersenzo and I'm going to start with a 10 part series on choosing a mortgage lender and all of the different things that can come about that. Things different lenders can do differently. So that's going to be my goal starting Monday. Oh, boy. The pressure's on now. Yeah. Now I got to do it. I actually want to put it out there so I can have the internal and external accountability to do this. Is the channel under your name, PJ Cresenzo? I just created it under the name. Now this is pure creative. So the name could change by the time the name actually comes out, but it was going to be mindset matters with Team Kersenzo for a mortgage playlist and also some all things mindset. Ah, I see. So you're going to blend it. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously into mindset. Yes, sir. I love it. Yeah. I don't know if you can see behind me, but I was trying to position the camera when the call started. I see mindset as everything behind me, but I don't know if it worked out. I see the bottom half of it, but you're absolutely right. It is. And I saw that there was a list of favorite books in your favorite book is Mansurge for Meaning. Was that it? Yep. I love that. I love that book. That is a, I just bought two copies of that to try and give them to my teenage boys. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough, like I have a really good friend of mine. I tried to give the book to and we had a way different experience because it's a tough read, but if you could take the message from that and like this guy lived through actual hell. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but live through actual hell. And not only became a better man, but pulled such a powerful lesson that adversity provides purpose. If you allow it, I mean, it's just no matter where you're at, what your day is like, whether you're walking into a puddle or there's a tsunami falling on your head, every Victor Franco and you're like, okay, it could be worse. Exactly. So I remember reading that book many, many years ago and made a big impact on me as well. Because it's all about meaning and what you attached to things. And it's so funny. Here's a quick sidebar. I attended this seminar years ago called the Forum Landmark Education, the Forum. I don't know if you've heard of that. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard a landmark. Okay. So the very first day of the seminar is a two, two day weekend or the guy gets, guy gets up there and keep in mind, like I have this whole background at Tony Robbins and all this stuff. So I'm kind of like. That's awesome. Yeah. I saw his book was on yourself there. It's like I made your Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. And so the guy opens up the seminar and there's like picture of 100 people, whatever in the room wasn't huge. And anyway, he just opens it up very intentionally speaking, slow, like this. Basically he says, no intro, nothing, he's like, life has no meaning. Yeah. All right. Thanks, bro. How much do we pay for this? Once it's over. Everybody just saw his reactions, like the neck jerk back like, what? What do you talk? And then he said it again, right, with these long, dramatic pauses and everybody's getting uncomfortable. They're like, what the fuck? What is going on? I'm getting a little riled up like, yes, it does for you. Life has meeting, right? Anybody read this guy's bio? Who got him on the stage? Exactly. And then he goes, except that which we give it. Oh, that's good. Layed out. I'm like, oh, it's bored me, man. And your delivery of that was priceless. I mean, that was a really good set off and drop down. Oh, and that was like me. Gift. And you know, like these books, these little things, maybe this podcast once in a while, things you listen to, you're like, all of a sudden it's a mindset shift. You know, so that's what I'm trying to, you're about to have a baby soon. First born, first son. Like any day. I can see you. You're going to be starting to read from unlimited power out of that book or whatever. Let's go. I love it. Or I love your quote here from Atomic Habits, which I have three of them up there. I just got to say this again for listeners. Rome wasn't built in the day, but they were laying bricks every hour. Like, that's another great one. Yeah, you could almost spend an entire episode on every single one of those nuggets. Mindset is everything from being built. I mean, it's just it's so powerful. People can absorb that and apply it. Nice collections. For those of you again, I'll put a link in the show notes to your Instagram. So you're going to get a bunch of followers. But yeah, look at all these David Goggins. I just listened to that audiobook. That's just mind blowing. I tried taking cold showers after I read that book. I was like, I'm only taking cold showers. And there's like after four days. And I'm like, all right, Goggins, your beast. Yes, that is something to work up to and train, which I did that. So here in Vegas, believe it or not, it gets cold in the winter. Okay. And my pool gets down to the 30s. Wow. So that's like, I was like starting at 50 when it was 50. And then it's just like, I had to bow out, man. And did you make that a habit? Where it was? The longest I've ever did was five minutes at, I think it was 49 or 50 degrees. Roughly. It's hard. Okay. That's pretty impressive. It's dope. Yeah. But I want to get one of those plunge pools, plunge. Yeah. They're like, they're not cheap, but. Yeah. If it takes you to the next level, it's an investment on yourself. No better place to put it. Yeah. All right. So you're going to step up with the video and all that kind of jazz. No. Do you do like annual reviews and things like that? Working with you personally or professionally? No, with your clients. Do you call up and do like annual mortgage reviews? No, not yet. Not yet. I will. You know, it's just we need a reason to call our clients with something of value. So Joe. Yeah. Yeah, good. I was just saying there's so much opportunity with your existing database. Like we're constantly hunting for new. Yeah. But. So we've closed 800 loans in the last two plus years. And. I don't want to say zero freebie business because we've helped ask clients. But there's been zero effort to tap into that database. And say, hey, can we help your brother or sister or how are you doing in life? Well, that's where a tool could come in like something like a homebot or something else. Like that. Did homebot at all? Yes. We had to set up a little bit when we were at Cardinal, but we never. You never put the fertilizer on it. Like we never watered it and gave it love. So I would like to make that. Well, no, no, no disrespect to my friends over at homebot. But there's another one out there. I had the first time I've ever said this live. It's called my home IQ. Okay. Q dot com. All right. And it is considered a competitor to homebot, but they do some things quite differently as well. In terms of alerts and things like that and using AI to trigger alerts on what your consumer's behavior is doing online and things like that. But also from what seems to be, and I'll have them on the podcast soon. But what seems to be is it's also a much more favorable shared platform between agents and you. And again, I love you guys at homebot, but hey, right competitors. It's it's the fact of life. Iron sharpens iron. This will make you better homebot. They are a housing wire tech 100 winner for 2021. So check them out. Yeah, right now. Thank you. I'll put it in the show now. It's my home IQ dot com. There you go. All right. So, um, lastly, three years in the biz. You came up under your, you know, your father's wing, which gave you some access and visibility to it. But what advice would you give to those that are in a similar stage, first three to five years of their origination career? Like if you could look back and tell you, you know, coach yourself, starting out, what would you tell yourself? I would say, man, there's so many things there because the last three years just reflecting on it. There's so many emotions tied to it because it's such an all in business. So I would say number one, work life balance because if I could go back and tell myself, hey, you're about to start this journey. Just pay sure because it'll come in seasons. And you'll have big week off, slow week, show big months, show slow months. So just pay yourself and don't be so hard on yourself. I think it's what I tell myself about starting today is just constantly try to pursue balance. You want to be all in, you want to do great. You want to be successful and you want to help as many people as you can, but just make sure you're blocking time for yourself and your family. To be really intentional about what you're trying to accomplish. Is it just throw as many units on the board as you can for 30 days? Is it you're trying to build your brand? And then the third thing that I'll break up for that is really work with people you want to work with. I first started anybody that had their real estate license. I was like, I will do whatever you want to do. I'm here to serve you. And then you ask people to take advantage of that. So work with people who respect your time and who are in it to be a great professional what they're doing and just build quality relationships because there's value on both sides of that. You can still serve the client and respect the people you're working with. Love that. Love that. Fantastic. Thank you very much. I enjoyed this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me, brother. That was awesome. You bet. And so listeners, we're going to put a link to his Instagram and more that new YouTube channel while I'll be watching in the show. And everyone, please check out his book because it was incredible. And he did not ask me to say that, but it was really good. That is right. We'll link to that as well. Right. Disrupt or die. Listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, we appreciate you tuning in. Leave us a review if you like it. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up? 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