Closing 418 Loans With a Team of Only Four

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, listeners, what's up? It's Jeff Zimfer. So welcome to another episode of mortgage marketing radio. So glad that you tuned in here. All right. My first, I believe, interview of the new year where I'm bringing back the guests featuring our top producers and I'm really excited about the guests we've got on this one. Before I get to that, I just want to give you a quick reminder. If you haven't yet jumped into our private Facebook group for podcast listeners, go ahead and do that now or when you get back in front of a computer on your mobile phone. I don't pull over on the freeway. Don't do it while you're driving. But you want to go to the Facebook and you want to type in mortgage marketing radio, right? That's the podcast group. It's private, just for loan officers. And I've got some big plans in there for you guys to bring you more resources, access to tools and tech that can help you with your goals for your business. So go to over to Facebook and check that out. All right. So for this interview, really thrilled to have Amanda Ray. She is out of Reno, Nevada, and she's only been a loan officer since 2014. Let me give you some numbers on her. For the numbers we were tracking and talking about in 2018. So just four years after essentially becoming a loan officer, right? She did 226 loans, 219, 312 loans, 220, 418 loans, 104 million dollars. Yes, 104 million dollars. And with roughly three people on her team, what I believe are two front-end-pert people, like loan partners and one back-end person. And that doesn't include the corporate processing that's provided to her. But this is like many of the interviews that I try and do. And by the way, for those of you who've given me feedback around the deep questions that you like me to ask the getting real specific on team structure and processes and lead sources. Essentially, how does somebody at this level and scale manage that type of flow? This is great because we really break down some really cool numbers from Amanda. For instance, every week she has a goal, her and her team, that they must generate 22 leads and seven contracts. And she knows her numbers. She knows what her app-to-funding ratio is. She knows what her lead to app-funding ratio is. And so she's very clear and specific on her metrics and knows what they are. And if you're not a person who's running your business based on that, look at it's all math. If you're looking to go to the next level, if you're looking to do X amount of loans to earn a certain level of income, it's all math. So when's the last time you checked your math? When's the last time you checked how consistent you are with the lead flow you need to generate? I mean, simply work it backwards. We all know that, right? You want to make X amount of money? Great, with your average loan amount, how many loans do you need to close per year, per month, per week, and then how many conversations do you need to have and where, how are you at converting those conversations? And of course, there's a multitude of conversations around that, right? The source, quality of lead source, etc., etc., right? But this conversation with Amanda, I think breaks that down and goes into a lot of it. What's very impressive about Amanda is that the efficiency that she works with her team. Yes, she's putting in a lot of hours, right? But, you know, she's got a team that she's built that are all committed to that. And so I think you really enjoy the direction we go with this interview and get a lot of ahas and learnings out of it for those of you that are in this place of like, you know, maybe you want to grow a team, maybe you're looking to hire somebody, you want to obviously add value, add volume. Maybe you want to just get some more efficiencies or some bandwidth in your business. I think this will be very beneficial to you. And so she reveals some of the strategies she uses to generate those 22 leads per week, seven contracts per week. That's pretty, that's pretty strong. That's good stuff. And real quick, as a reminder, one of the things she talks about getting back to pre-covert that we're doing, for example, one way she generates realtor relationships. By the way, she has about 65. You'll hear 65 um, uh, realtors that earn her sphere that center business over the course of a year, 15 or 20, who send her business more consistently. One of the ways she builds agent relationships is with classes. And what you'll hear her talk about is that she is pivoting this year to get started on the zoom classes. So if you're looking for a better way to reach out to real estate agents, scale your reach, never have to call agents again, never chase agents, but be able to attract agents at scale to build your referral base. You may have heard by now. We have a little system called the mortgagemarketing.pro membership, in which we provide you a turnkey, ready to go, zoom, friendly, social media, equipped platform for you to teach agent classes, and reach agents at scale, get relationships, conversations, and referrals. If you want to check that out, mortgagemarketing.pro. Okay, so without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Amanda Ria, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. You get the bravery award. I know I told you I was nervous. Don't be nervous. We're all about having fun here. Besides that, you're like the fifth guild person I've had on the show. Guilds doing it. You know, our slogan is Guild is everywhere, an all over your podcast apparently. Apparently, we're going to continue to add to it. So, why don't for those listening just give us the quick background or where do you operate out of and then, you know, how long you've been in the biz, and then 2020 numbers. Yeah, so I am in Reno, Nevada, my favorite place in the world. I've been in the mortgage business since 2012, and I've been a loan officer since 2014. We had a really killerly year as I'm sure everyone did in 2020, but my team closed 418 loans for 104 million. So I've never broken that 100 million mark. I was like, you know, it's all right. You're out of applause for you. That's amazing. We're tired. We're tired. I know, right? I know. That's why I appreciate you doing this. So 104 loans. Okay, so you're up in Reno, which is arguably kind of a small community, right? Yeah, you could say that. We're growing. Everyone wants to leave California so they're coming to Reno. That's true. I'm down in Vegas. I don't know if you knew that. Oh, I didn't know that. My sister's at Guilden Vegas. Is that right? Well, we'll have to get her on the show too. Yeah, I moved here about three years ago from California. So I'm one of those. Okay, but I was an early adopter. Yeah, you're the type of person that says to keep Californians out in Nevada even though you can't prove California. Don't tell anybody. Right. Another drive in our prices up, which is good if you're an owner, but if you're trying to buy, you know, that's a whole different thing. All right, so let's break this down. 104 loans. What's your number one? 104 million. Sorry, 104 million. God. What? That was a massive 104 million, 418 loans. What is your number one source of business? Well, there's a lot of past clients, a ton of past clients, three financing, but other than that, realtors and builders. Okay. This is what I like to do. I like to kind of break down right the specifics of where all those source their business from. So when you say past clients, naturally, one thing I'm curious about there is like, did you proactively or do you have any systems in place to farm those past clients or was it just a largely result of the market for refus? So two different things to that. So we do farm, like if we need to, if we need business, if there's some weeks, like, you know, we have a goal, we need to bring in seven deals every single week. That's my goal. My team's, they call it a secret goal is 10 deals a week. Okay. So if we go seven there, goal 10, if we don't have enough deals, we will farm, like we'll go and pull up reports of deals we've closed of our past clients, you know, in this year with rates being really low, so we could call based on their interest rate. One thing that we're super lucky on with guild though is that we service a bunch of our loans. So our servicing department is actually looking at the servicing portfolio. They're analyzing how much equity people have, what their rate is and they send us lists. They send us a list. They said these people can refide, get them. So then we call them, but it's a lot of inbound calls too, because everyone knows rates are low right now. Sure. That's great on the servicing side. Back to the seven deals a week as your own goal. What qualifies as a deal? A purchase contract that we get or a refinance client that lets us lock in their interest rate and is ready to sign the soldiers. Okay. Got it. How do you, so before I go on, tell us about your team setup, like how many people you got and what are their roles? Yeah, we've been running really lean. We need more people on our team. So for a good bulk of the year, there was me and two other people. Wow. We have a third person on our team right now. Like it's in my setup right now, I have two people doing all the pre-approvals. So new clients call in, they pre-approve them, they get their documents. When people want to refinance, they're the ones working up the initial numbers and presenting those to the clients. And then I have another person on, we call it our back end. So from the time the contract comes in or the refinance comes in, she's working with our processing and writing to close them. So essentially you have two front end loan partners, you don't call them whatever you want, loan officer assistance, that kind of stuff. So whenever I hear that, when I know of somebody doing a large volume like you, and as you just described, you've got two people on the front essentially taking, are these people licensed by the way? One is licensed, one is getting licensed. He's only better than a team for four months. Any background in the mortgage industry for that person? No, I never hire anyone with mortgage background. Really? How come? Bad habits? I think so. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I didn't have any like mortgages. I didn't know anything about mortgages when my bought took me on. So I kind of more look for a personality versus mortgage bills. Yeah, that's a good fit. So as you've described at these two people on your front end are essentially doing, if I heard you correctly, pre-approvals, pre-quals, that kind of stuff, taking apps, right? Correct. So where are you in the mix of this for them to be, you know, for these leads to becoming your deals per week? Like when do I get involved with the client? Yeah. Uh-huh. I get involved with the client once they, like, it's kind of like a screening process for my front end people. So they'll take the lead. If they're good, qualified lead, they book them to meet with me. So either here at the office, you know, through Zoom, we do a pre-approval meeting. Okay. If they're not qualified, then they're working with them on credit and things like that until they are qualified. So I'll meet every single client at every single time, but once they're qualified. This is pretty smart. So you'll do a pre-approval meeting. You've already got all the info on them, credit pulled and all that, right? Yes. App taken. So before they get to you, you know that they're, that it's a deal that's likely going to close. Yes. Wow. That's pretty cool. That's called using your time efficiently. Yeah. I mean, I definitely had to jump in on some of the other pre-approvals this year too. Like, we had a lot of leads, of course, but so essentially, so people are working with the Amanda Ria team, right? And it's right. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah. I did. Right. Yes. We're working with the Amanda Ria team. Amanda Ria team. Nobody told me that before. They should have prepped me better. Team, what do you everyone says, Ria? I barely don't even know. It's easier than my last name, Zimfer. Come on. Okay. And how was there a point like you weren't always the Amanda Ria team, right? You had to transition into that, right? Oftentimes I hear loan officers run into some resistance working with realtors, for example, about how, you know, they're not going to get you. They're going to get your team. Yeah. Did you hear that? Oh, of course. So that's what's so funny. Because, you know, when I started in the business and I had no business, you know, walking around to realtors, you're only going to get me. It's going to be so great. You get me every single time on the alone talking to clients and then the next day. So it's so great. I have a team. We're going to want to serve you even better. Yeah. That's great. So you had to check my team too. I'm like, people are not going to work with us if they don't like you because you're the first person I talk to. So not only do you have to build relationships with the clients of the teammate, you have to build relationships with our business partners. So the other client's not going to talk to me every time. So how does the real to referral work? Does it go straight to somebody on your front end? No, I mean, we already got leads all different ways like realtors will text it to me. I'll send it out to the team. People call in to like our team line and then somebody answers it. They might email me and then I'll like email them back and do an intro with the team. Thanks so much for reaching out. I'm super excited to work with you. I'm copying my teammates, Jeremiah and Jessica, so that they could reach out and schedule a time for us to meet. In that team line, that's like a round robin kind of phone ring system. Yeah, it rings to me and then if I don't answer, then it rolls over to my two front end people and just whoever can answer at the fastest. Is there any parameters you have around that regarding hours, you know what I mean, after a certain time of day, APM, whatever? No. No, like the phone rings at eight o'clock at night. Do you typically answer it? Does it roll or you know what I mean? I'm trying to understand. Do you? This is the line of my desk. So no, it doesn't like it's not forwarded to my cell phone. Your mobile. Okay. Okay. Yeah, our agents know that if they need to reach me after hours to call me on my cell phone. And how many agents like a player agents, you know what I mean, that refer business to consistently? How many roughly do you work with? Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on like what you'd call an A agent, but like how many people actually refer to us, maybe not that we're closing a bunch of deals with every year, at least 60 by realtors. So let me clarify because you're right, there's there's a lot of variances there. What I mean by it for myself personally by an A player realtor, I'm not talking about their production. What I mean is are they sending you deals, you know, almost every single month, or at least trying to get you, you know what I'm saying? Well, I don't know that exact number, but I would say I mean, at least 15 to 20. 15 to 20. Okay. But 65 in your whole total kind of wheelhouse. Yeah, that are actually sending us leads regularly over the course of a year. Some who are often than others, etc. Yeah, and some might be one deal a year. Right, right. And you'll, you don't try and weed them out per se, right? No, I've heard so many things that I'm supposed to when I just don't. No, it's so funny. I mean, that's why I kind of has it because it's like there's different ways to run this business. And you know, I've had other people at your level say, look at if they're low maintenance, you know what I mean? And they're going to flip me two deals a year and it's a piece of cake. Why would I ever want to kick that away? Yeah, no, I don't. They just keep coming back and I'm grateful for them. Yeah, for sure. I mean, hey, take 10 of those, right? That's 10 extra deals a year. So yeah, we could lose those deals. We got all right. Nice. Nice. All right. So two people front and man, I'm just like, I love that. So are you doing a ton of Zoom pre-approvals then? Yeah, I had never done a Zoom in my life. But before COVID, and now we're doing a lot of it. And I love it so much because you know, obviously I've had out of town clients before and I never got to meet with them. Right. Just did everything over the phone and phone calls are so much less productive in person or a Zoom. So yeah, we're doing a lot of Zoom now. And it's great. All right. So just to get back to where we left off, we've got the leads coming in to go to your front end team. They're doing the pre-qual pre-approval on them. And then if they're solid, they're going to set them up on your calendar for a consult, right? And are your people scheduling this themselves like a through a calendar or a joint calendar? Something like that? Is that a joint calendar? Yeah, that's cool because that takes you out of the loop as well. What happens? Let's just assume everything goes well, green light. Okay, you're good to go. From the point of your awesome Mr. Mrs. Barrower, then you hand it back to your team, right? I do. But I tell the clients that if they have questions along the way, they can you sure either reach out to me or my team. And so some of the clients will reach out to me directly for questions they have. And like, I'll answer a lot of them myself. Just because I do like to be really involved with the barbers. Yeah, okay. Anything else you think that's relevant for those that are listening? Because there's a lot of people, you know, are in that space that maybe you were a couple three years ago where you needed to add people. That's one of the biggest requests I get from people. It's like, hey, how do I grow my team? How do I scale? You know what I mean? Any key things you want to remind people of there? Just about like the type of people to hire. Yeah, like what are some lessons you learned in hiring? I've been learning so many lessons recently. So I started off really easy for me in hiring because my first hire was my sister who's in Vegas now. My second hire was my brother. Oh wow. So I actually like literally just had a conference call with our managers about this yesterday because I've been struggling to hire people. Because at first, like, I know them. I know my brother and sister. I know how they're going to work. I know they're work ethic. And I feel like I've made a lot of bad choices lately. I have some rock stars on my team right now, but anytime we've tried to bring somebody on this year, we've had a lot of struggles. So I've been trying to nail down and figure out who's the right person. Like so, but it's like every time I make a mistake, then I try and hire the opposite. So I hired one lady and her attitude was a 10. Like I still love this person, but I didn't think she was made smart enough in my form harsh to say. So then I started looking for only smart people. And then you know, I hired somebody who thought was smart and like he just didn't like the job. So yeah, I don't know. Like, oh, go ahead. Do you use any profiling stuff like disc or anything like that? My problem is I like everybody immediately. So like everybody's a win for me, but I'm hiring. I'm about to make an offer to two people. So like these people are a little bit, I've always hired really young people. So they're a little bit more mature. They both have a finance background. So when one lady is doing personal loans right now, which is my background. So she doesn't know about mortgages, but she understands how to deal with clients. Like she's worked at applications and all of her clients are via phone, which is a phone job. So I felt like she would be a good fit. And then the other person I'm hiring has degree in finance. But she did her current job. She does finance, which she'd wants to deal with people. So we thought that that would be a great fit for her. So that's our point to figure out somebody who maybe doesn't have mortgage skills, but has similar like transferable skills. Yeah, making applications. And are you hiring support people? Allos? What? Support people. Yeah, so we're hiring more people on the pre-approval side. But my very first hire was somebody to do like more backend stuff. I candle like the loan paperwork once they've been pre-approved. Are you also managing a branch? No. No, okay, just check it. Because that would be crazy. No. In terms of so it's perhaps calling database in realtors, you know, 15 or 20 kind of a player realtors like we talked about, what do you do? Especially and how has it changed during COVID, right? To stay top of mind with those realtors and keep the level live, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, because they are getting hit up. But so we don't get to see them in person as much before. We do a weekly video to our database of realtors. So try and bring them some kind of helpful information. My most successful videos were around COVID. Like when things were changing in the market, those were my most watched videos and I told them what was going on. But I'll do weekly video. It's either like what's going on with market, what's going on with interest rates, different loan programs, but then you know, also add to that how they can use that to get more clients and basically make more money. So here's the program. Here's how you sell it. Here's why it's important to you. I'm going to stay in touch with them that way. I like that. Is that a bomb on video? It's a bomb on video. Okay. And are you recording that just once a week off the cuff versus batch recording? Once a week off the cuff. Okay. Cool. Got it. All right. So you do the weekly video that goes out to your and I imagine your database of realtors is larger than that 65? Yeah, but not a lot larger. Like we're not just sending it to people that I don't know. I'm pretty much sending it to the agents that I do know. Okay. All right. Weekly video. That's cool. Anything else with agents? It's in calls. So within our database, we can track how often we call our agents. Like we use Salesforce. So there's different like dashboards. If we want a top agent, we haven't called him on so long. They'll show up on a list. So working through that list to make sure that they at least get phone call, text, something. Oh, you'll get an alert that says you haven't talked to Bill Smith in three months. Yeah. Really? That's pretty cool. Do you have a goal then of like weekly conversations with agents? Yeah. So I've never been super, super strong at making a lot of calls. Like I mean, I killed. We got coached by the core forever where make 48 calls on Monday. I did do that. But I try and have more like really quality long conversations, more impactful conversations. I mean, I don't even kind of embarrass to say my go on here, but it's 10 a week. I mean, I'll talk to more agents, of course, because we have a bunch of deals going and stuff like that and pre-approvals, but like really quality conversations. No, I mean, that goes a long way. I'm a, you know, what I've been doing with everybody in the new year is, you know, have the go deep versus wide conversation, right? Which is about how do I be a better partner this year instead of being spread too thin across too many people? So I'm in the same camp as you are. Okay, so the weekly calls, agents, the weekly video, anything else? Prior to COVID, were you doing events or classes or anything like that? Oh, yeah. We were doing happy hours. We were doing lunch and learns. So that's probably one thing that I definitely want to add this year as a virtual lunch and learn. I guess I kept hoping that COVID would end, you know, as everybody else in the world. And then we just be able to start lunch and learns is clearly not happening. So I need to get, I'll do virtual lunch and learns this year. Yeah, well, now that you're a Zoom master, no problem. I know. I know I have the paid versions. I can have people on there. That's awesome. Okay, are you using any like, you know, tools, tech tools, software, home bot, mortgage coach or anything like that? We have mortgage coach. I haven't implemented it yet, but we do home bot. Yeah, we have home bot, but Guild had implemented Salesforce, which has been huge for our business this last couple years. So we're really trying to utilize all the tools that are in there, like the different lists and things like that. But home bot is great. Hope absolutely love it. It generates so many links for our team and our clients love home bot. It blows my mind that every single time I meet with a client, you know, for refinance, one of the questions we ask them is how much is your house worth? And every single, every single person will that report that you send me every month, sends us worth this? I'm like, okay, so you people are opening it. Yeah. It's not one of my neighbors, how's Salesforce? Not one of my realtors. Tell me it's, will you the report use that and you says this? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's getting massive open rates, click through rates, all that. I'm sure you have revised because of it. Absolutely. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Have you done the thing where you're sponsoring agents on home bot yet? Yeah. We have some agents that are signed up. And they all love it, getting the agents to put their people in home bot has been a little bit trickier. Yeah. Different. I think I would love if you have any tips of how I kid, how do you need somebody on your team to specialize in that? You know, because it's pretty much, they need to upload their database to home bot. I know, and they don't have a database. Well, yeah. Can't fix broken, right? That's where some virtual assistant services or something like that might come in handy with, well, where is it? Is it in Excel? Well, let's get that formatted and set up. I know it's a bit of a problem, but good for you for doing it. When you, I want to go back to like, we finished 2020, 418 loans, just to remind everybody, sorry, yes, 418 loans, 104 millions Friday, little punchy. When you set your goals, by the way, I'm assuming some, let me ask instead, are you a goal planner, a business planning person? Guild makes us set goals. Well, I guess not maybe not Guild, but our branch manager, Shayla is all about goals. So yeah, we have the goal setting. My goals are always way lower than my team's goals. We have a goal this year. So this was a goal that my brother, when he was on my team, he came up with this goal years ago, and it's 252 loans because that's one for every business day of the year. So I love that. So that's been my goal every single year. I can tell you my team would kill me if we did 252 loans because that's why they have their secret goal. Yeah, I mean, you blew that out of the water. Their goal is to book Amanda client appointments Friday at 7 o'clock at night, and just like kill me. Are they incentivized in terms of, you know, appointments booked and stuff like that? They're not, but they get bonus on every single closing we do. Every single person of the team is bonus on every single closing that we do. So in a way, they are. The more, right? Yeah, the more at that, they give you, they know. Yeah, and they know our goals for how many leads we want a week. They know how many appointments I want book to week. They know how many deals we need to get a week to keep it going, and we talk about those goals every single Monday. And they know how many of the leads they're supposed to convert. So we're watching it every single week. Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that. You have a conversion percentage goal. Absolutely. Yeah, like the fact we're reporting it every single Monday, like, hey, we need 22 leads. Did we get 22 leads? We need seven contracts. Did we get seven contracts? Of those 22 leads, we need to convert like at least 35% of them, meaning they've sent us their documents. And of the leads, we need to take applications on at least 75% of them. So we're like, and so that's why if we, you know, we reported on a Monday and we're not there that following week, like for the week before that that week, that Monday, we're following it every single week, every single day. Okay, we didn't hit it last week. It's Tuesday. Are we closed Wednesday? How many do we have Thursday? How many do we have to make sure that there's not two weeks in a row where we are cutting those goals? All right. So this goes back to that number we talked about earlier, which is it's 22 leads that leads to the quote seven deals, which is actually seven contracts. Okay, I got it. And so the leads sourcing, besides the realtors and past client database, are there any other things you haven't played that are generating those 22 leads? Not a lot. I don't know if you said builders, but we do have a couple builders that we work with. So that's part of it. We do try and get current client referrals and our current client referrals have been going up. So we're getting more referrals from our past clients and our current clients. And that's it. I haven't done the Facebook thing. Well, I'm not on TikTok yet. Uh-huh. Are you on Instagram? I don't even have a personal Instagram. I know. I do research ahead of time, and I'm like, I cannot find you anywhere except for your business profiles. No, I'm not on Facebook. We're on Yelp. We actually get some calls from Yelp. You do. And as a matter of fact, you have 176 reviews. I believe on your guild page, your branch page. Yeah, guild has a way of getting reviews on our page. And then we ask our clients to review us on Yelp, just because I've noticed that on Yelp, when people search mortgage broker or mortgage person and Reno, Yelp helps our name come up really high. If we have high ratings on there, we ask our clients to rate us on Yelp. And the process for getting those reviews is there's a software that Guild sends out at the close. Guild does. Yeah. So after closing, an automated thing comes out from Guild with a survey. Yep. If they score as high on the survey, then Guild asks for review. If they score as low on the survey, the survey doesn't ask for review. Sounds like it might be social survey. Maybe. Yeah. That's a third party testimony. I think goodness, they're not asking it for like the people that ran as low. Well, I just know that that's one of their functionality. Yeah. And that is actually helpful. Okay. I love that. 22 lead seven contracts. Do you? Do you? I think you said that you have a metric around like app to funding ratio. Right? Like how many apps? Yeah. The lead to funding. I guess our goal technically is 22%. Okay. Lead to funding 22%. Wow. You really manage your business by the numbers. I like that. I think that's smart because that really tells you if you want to grow or if you want to make a certain amount of income, it's all on the math, you know? Yeah. Absolutely. Hmm. I like that. All right. That means you can control, right? You can control the number of leads. If you don't get enough, you just have to work harder and call more of your data. Okay. So that's where you're saying like do we proactively reach out? Well, yeah. If we don't hit our lead goal that week, we're absolutely calling him. If it's Friday at three o'clock and we don't have enough leads, like, you know, I'm yelling at the team nicely, but we're not leaving until we have 22 leads. So then it's like get on the phone and start calling agents. We're ordering pizza or whatever. We have to all keep our jobs. So we have to have 22 leads. Like we can't continue to work here unless we have that many leads. Wow. That's awesome. Do you do in it during a purchase transaction? Do you do any proactive cross-selling of listing agents? What was should I say? Yes. No. No. No, no. I have. In the past I have, I think the refinance market has, you know, allowed a lot of the things that we used to do. It's a lot of us to be a little bit lazier loan officers. Yes. So this last year or not as much, just because we haven't needed it. But yeah, I mean, I picked up a couple of my very best agents ever from the listing side. Just from doing the Tuesday updates and really trying to wow them. So I've definitely foreshared on it in the past and gotten business that way. But like lately I haven't done it as well as I should have. Tell me about your Tuesday updates. Are those phone calls? Absolutely. So because I've never like made my 40 calls on Monday, I've always really, I've always done my Tuesday updates. From the time I started the business till today, like I rarely ever miss those because that's my prospecting time. I didn't call anyone on Monday. So I feel guilty. So I've got to call and do really good updates to the agents on Tuesday. And for me, it gives me a reason to call them. And to be able to then like, okay, I'm updating you. But let's talk about other stuff. Let's have that deep conversation at the same time. And are you updating all parties in the trends, you know, listing by side client as well? I don't do the client. My partner Sarah does that. My teammate. She's the one that does the backend stuff. So she calls the clients. I call the buyer's agent and the listing agent. Okay. Got it. And that is all done on the same day on Tuesdays. Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Tuesday and Wednesday morning. How long does it take you roughly to cover the bases? I mean, you're doing a lot of loans. So depending on how many people answer, I mean, about two hours ish. A lot of our loans right now are reficed. So I don't have to call on those ones. But it's about two, two and a half hours. Now, and I asked that question specifically because, you know, I'm definitely a big promoter of doing live updates with a phone call. Many people rely on automated emails and that kind of stuff. And to me, you lose the relationship building aspect of it as you've discovered. But the pushback I get is exactly what you just said. Two hours. I don't have two hours to do that. Yeah, out of 40 to prospect. I mean, if you think of it as prospecting time, which I do, like, I can't not do it because that's two hours of prospecting. And maybe the rest of the week gets away from me and I don't do prospecting as much as I should at the other time. Exactly. Like, we could kill two hours of one stone prospect and do your Tuesday updates. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, how many clients do you have in a purchase transaction? Well, you've got three, right? You got listing side by side in the clients. So that's your opportunity. You know, I mean, technically, you could call the listing agent a prospect, I guess, but they're really kind of a client, you know, in that situation. To me, that's why I say, yeah, we're currently working together. So that's a client. Yeah. No, they may not be sending you business or they might not be a relationship, but it's your chance to, to wow them, you know. Yeah, but even if you don't get business from them, like how awesome of it is that when this listing agent gets you an offer with your name on it. Yeah. Well, my gosh, Amanda, she calls me every single Tuesday and low working with her. Like, I've never sent her business, but I might accept your clients offer because they're working with Amanda and I know she's going to call me and I know she's going to do a good job during the transaction. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you about back to setting goals for this year. You did 418 loans in 2020. What did you set out to be your goal for this year for units or volume? 252. Okay. So what I'm getting at is this is a, you did an amazing number this year, and 252 is the new minimum. So for me, yeah, for me, like, I mean, this was the same last year at the end of 2019. I was super afraid that all the refives were going to go away. Of course, they didn't, but then I was like, okay, we need 252 loans to function as a team and I'll make good income. Like, that's just what's going to keep the wheels churning and keep our business really high and keep our numbers really high. Okay. So if all the refives went away, we still need to do 252 loans. So that's why that's my personal goal, because I don't know what's going to happen with the rates. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And anything above that is just gravy. Yeah. Totally. I mean, I'm sure, like, if we have the opportunity to do 400 again, we'll do it. You're not going to turn it down. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll take them. But, but what was the internal challenge, though, to go from, if you roll this back to the end of 2019 and you set out into 2020 to do 252, all of a sudden, you're scaling up and doing 418. That must have been a lot of pressure on your infrastructure, right? Well, okay. So if I'm looking, I'm going to glance over and look at my numbers because I have them all the while. But in 2018, we did two 26. Okay. In 2019, we did 312. And then 2020, we did 418. So it's been about 100 loans a year for the last two years. Yeah. And that's what I'm getting at is that the likelihood is, and we didn't add any people to the team. We just worked late. We just worked really late. You must have a really awesome team. They're amazing. They're the best. Seriously. I mean, I'll just joke with them, though. And I'm like, you guys just need to work faster, work faster and harder. I'll yell that out the office start. How many hours on average is everybody putting in? Yeah, we, it's, yeah, this last year, we've been in the office till like seven or seven thirty every night. My team has been here with me till seven or seven thirty every single day. Wow. That's awesome. They're very dedicated. They all believe in what we do. What does that mean? They believe in what you do. Like, they believe that, like, we're doing good work here at Guild. It's not a job. Like, we're helping people, we're making people's lives better. Whether it is a refinance and they're saving and it's helping their family, whether they're buying a new house, like, we just believe that we're making an impact on people's lives. And we want to make, you know, the best and the biggest impact that we can. Do you have just one processor or two? Yeah. So the person that I say is my back and person, she works in addition to our processors, but we have like two main processors that we work with at Guild. I don't consider it as like on my team because they're like operations, but that we work with, like, in addition to the teammates. Yeah, they're processing all your loans, though. Are those two dedicated to you? Yes. Okay. Got it. Are they in your local office? They're not. No. No. Well, one of them is in Arizona and then one of them is here in Reno, but it works from home. Okay. Interesting. Very interesting setup. Yeah. So back to the numbers. I mean, let's see here. I mean, you've been adding, you know, units every single year. The assumption I would make seeing that trend is, you're going to do it again this year. 500. No pressure. 500. That sounds like a good number. That would be a better number. Nice round number. Anything you're doing differently as we head into this year, whether you're at, you know, let me put it this way. There's three areas I look at. People process technology. Right. So you're doing anything in those three areas as we're heading into this year. There is. So I think I mentioned this, but I'm in the process of hiring two people right now. One person is leaving my team. He's becoming a loan officer actually in 45 days. He's a rock star. So I'm trying to replace him, but I'm also not just adding one person to replace them. I'm adding two. So he's done like all of my leads for me and now they're well technically, I guess, be three of him after I hire the two new people. So three people. But the reason I want more than just one is because I think that there's so much stuff that we can do that we're not doing. You know, which gives me a lot of hope because we did 400 loans. Yeah. But there's stuff we didn't do. Like, for instance, we didn't do anniversary calls to all of our clients. We can do that. We can be calling our database even more to get more refinances. We could be doing client birthdays. We could be doing realtor birthdays even more. Yep. You know, go looking at Homebot and Homebot tells you how much activity you have like from clients. We could look at the Homebot and see who are the most active people. Call them and see if there's anything that they need to go over. So there's so many different things that we can do. And like now with Salesforce and like how we're able to track our leads better. I mean, we can go back through a year of leads and convert people that we didn't. So those are some of the things that I'm thinking about just that there's so many more touches that we can have on our database this year compared to what we did last year. Yeah, it's all about optimization. You know, I mean, we have an app called Guild to Go. We've never even used it. And like we could learn to use that with more people. So there's there is so many programs we could learn. Speaking of that, I didn't ask that earlier, but with people applying, are they using some type of online tool? A lot of more people are. I really don't push my team. I push my team to not get online applications. And this is kind of changing, but what I've noticed in the past is a client calls in. We have them on the phone. They're like, okay, go to our website to apply. And then we're hounding them for a week. Like, why don't you do their application? It's like, we had them on the phone. Why don't we just take 10 minutes to get their app right there? And then and then not have to spend so much time hounding them. So we really don't push our people to apply online. But I have gotten more online apps than I've ever gotten in my entire life where people are starting on the website. They don't call us and then go to the website. They start on the website and then we call them. But it's not something that we're promoting, but I have noticed that where people are replying on there. Got it. You do any kind of post-closing gifts, anything like that for clients? Yeah, so this year we we always did. Our signature gift was a bottle of wine with a hammer tied to it. And it says, take a break from your hard work and get hammered. You know, home and then love it. They loved it. But we had to go to to signings to give those to people. And we have like more rural areas that we're working with. And it was like kind of tough to get to all those signings. So people like they slept through the cracks and then with COVID, as her officers don't want you in there. Yeah. Once we don't even know when people are signing. So we stopped doing this. We completely stopped. And then like it finally clicked to me Amazon. Like it's so easy and free. So I brought my mom in this year. She's not working a lot. She got her hours cut from COVID and like she's been our giftor. So we're a list every month of everyone who closed and she'll go on Amazon and we've gotten the greatest feedback. Is it still the hammer and wine thing or something else? No, because it's so hard to shift alcohol. But we started doing like engraved cutting words, people love those. I never thought that they were that exciting before I've seen them, but people love them. That's what our best feedback. Yeah. Well, they use them a lot and they see your name, you know, every time it's it. And then on the refizable sundown, like some kind of candy or snacks or cookies or nuts, but just the gifting, I get so many thank yous and it's been really cool. And I guess closing it out like, you know, I'm on your Facebook page here and like we had mentioned earlier, this can't be true. This can't be true. Like the last post was October 2019. Come on. I know. So my teammate, Jeremiah, he's like to ask me earlier today. He's like, do you see what's on post on Facebook? I was like, no. I mean, it's it's very telling because, you know, social media gets a lot of attention, right? As like, oh, you should be there. You need to be there. You're missing out. And look at, I think it has its place, but you're another example of a top producer who's crushing it without having a super strong presence on social. Yeah. Somebody had just kind of told me like, you should prospect in the way that's fun for you. Yeah. That is not fun for me. That's the key. Listen, everybody listening right there. So I mean, I just said the key thing there. You should prospect in a way that's fun for you. What are the activities that you enjoy that generates business? And if it ain't social media, if it isn't like, oh, my God, I hate video. I don't want to be on video. There's a hundred other different things you could do. You know, so. Yeah. There's more lack of ideas or things to try. That is foe show. All right. This has been very, very educational, helpful and insightful. I'm just blown away that you're doing that kind of volume with a couple of three people. Only cow. Yeah. That's crazy. I'm lucky. They're hard workers. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, look, I know you're busy. It is Friday afternoon. And we probably want to, you know, kind of wrap up the day or you probably need to check your numbers and see, hey, do you have 20 appointments today? I told you, my team will literally book me a six o'clock appointment on a Friday night. I'm keeping you from your leads. You got to go get them. All right. Listen, Amanda, I really, really appreciate it. And listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode. Let us know. Leave us a review, tune in for the next one. Amanda, if anybody wants to reach out and say hi, where do they do that? What's the best place to connect with you? Well, not through a Facebook messenger. Right. I want to, you know, for like six months, but you know, it's called me text me. My work number is seven, seven, five, three, four, five, three, one, five, five is probably the best spot. All right. Awesome. We appreciate you being here, Amanda. Thank you very much. Oh, yeah. All right. 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