Embracing Digital Strategies with Jason Henneberry

Hey, what's up, Jeff Zimper host of Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. I want to thank you, you, we're tuning in today. We've got a really cool interview lined up for you. Before we get to that, I wanted to bring to you the latest success from the streets from one of our relatively newer members of the Myogen Classes platform, and that is Mr. Jordan Sanchez. Jordan, what is up? How you doing, man? I wanted to give Jordan a shout out because he hasn't been a member for that long in our platform of Myogen Classes where we help you move from solicitor and vendor to partner in peer. We help you attract and engage agents instead of chase and pursue. We help you increase trust, scale your conversations, and grow your referrals on demand, leading with an educational platform, plug and play where you simply log into our platform, grab the topic that you want to teach, follow our proven process to promote and get butts in the seats, follow our post-class process to convert those attendees to conversations and referrals. Hey, if you want to learn more, you can go to MortgageMarketing.pro, Jason's quick success story. He's out of the Texas area and Austin to be specific, and Jason and I were just actually messaging about 30 minutes ago on Facebook Messenger. What he said to me was that he has an upcoming class, one of our most popular classes, teaching chat GPT for real estate, and this is us actually revealing some advanced strategies and tactics for leveraging chat GPT, not just to save time and efficiency, but to actually use it in the way that people are really getting significant results with chat GPT, not just the, oh, write something for me, give me a listing description, but something much more advanced, and that's what we help agents walk through during our class. So Jordan has his upcoming class this week, as a matter of fact, two days from the time I'm recording this, and right now he is sitting at 30 reservations, 30 agents who have raised their hand, said, yes, I would like to come learn more about chat GPT. Now, by the way, before you get all hung up on well, I'm not the expert. I haven't used chat GPT much, listen, I've been there, a lot of our members have been there, Jordan has been there, and first of all, why aren't you using chat GPT? But secondly, right, you don't have to be the expert. You can simply think of yourself as the nightly news reporter who's reporting the news, reading the cue cards, that's the plug and play presentation template that we give you with the trainer video and everything so that we equip you to be able to facilitate and be the messenger and provide information. That's how this whole program works, and it works like gangbusters. So once again, shout out to you Jordan for getting 30 reservations for his upcoming class. And again, when you ever hear this kind of story, my question is to you, right? How are you generating agent conversations and engagement? How are you building your platform of awareness in your local market? There's lots of different ways to do it, but I am fully convinced now having been in this industry since 2003, doing it myself and helping hundreds of originators across the country do the same thing. There is no better way for you to quickly and easily get in front of real estate agents. Scale your conversations, grow your referrals by leading with educational value that makes a difference in their business. So you want to learn more, want to ask me some questions, want to see what the list of classes is, want to get a look inside the platform, or get marketing.pro, book the call right now. Okay, this week, my special guest coming to you from the North up in Canada, from British Columbia to be specific, my special guest is Jason Hanna Berry. Jason is an innovator, a disruptor, and he's a generally an enthusiast for finding a better way to do things. He is the co-founder and director of technology and strategic initiatives with Tango Financial. Tango is Western Canada's largest mortgage brokerage supporting 450 plus mortgage agents. We call them mortgage brokers in the US. They call them mortgage agents up there in Canada, and he does that supporting over 35 brands with annual originations exceeding $4.2 billion. So I think you're going to find this conversation interesting in looking at some of the similarities and then some of the differences. When it comes to the mortgage industry in Canada, some of the activities, the initiatives that we're all trying to do are the same, obviously the financial markets, how interest rates are set, and the different types of mortgage programs that are available are different. And guess what? When you hear this, you may start to see what you do in a different light, in a different context, because sometimes we just see we can't see the force through the trees because we're so close up close to our own business, our own industry, and maybe by listening to this, you will discover that the US might have some advantages when it comes to being a mortgage originator and the opportunities for you to grow and make money and have different products and solutions to provide people. So I think you're going to get a lot of good stuff out of that from that portion of our conversation. We're going to break down some of the strategic tactics that Jason himself and his various mortgage brokers, mortgage agents use very similarly in Canada to build trust, to create educational, social media content, to get engagement and conversations with real estate agents. And you're going to hear some cool parallels. So my advice to you would be listen with an open mind and start to look at this through the frame of like, hey, what ideas could you borrow and use in your own business and apply those for yourself? And so I think you're going to enjoy this episode as much as I did. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show Jason. Welcome to the show. Jeff, thanks for having me, man. It is a pleasure to connect with you and I have to say I think this is the first podcast I've had with a Canadian mortgage professional. So congratulations. Well, I am honored. Thank you for having me. This is my first podcast and I'm attending with an American podcasters. All right. This is our first, mutual first. That's right. So we're doing our own piece of cord here. You know what I mean? And that's good. That's good. Building bridges. Not walls. All right. So usually I start off with people want to get a sense of, you know, who Jason is, how long in the biz. Maybe what do you want to share around production or whatever, but go ahead and give us that buy off. You don't mind? Yeah, for sure. I grew up as a mortgage broker loan officer. We don't use the term loan officer in Canada, but, you know, producing mortgage agent started off 20 some odd years ago, found that I, you know, just like anybody else got really busy in my own practice and didn't have time for family. So I started building teams and infrastructure and all that kind of stuff. And one thing led to another, we eventually, you know, grew our brokerage. It's called tango. So the company that we have today and I'm not alone in the company have a partner, but we have 400 mortgage agents or mortgage brokers inside our company. And what we do there is we provide, you know, marketing infrastructure, payroll compliance infrastructure, that kind of thing. We allow people to kind of get out and build their own brand. So we have almost 50 mortgage agent teams or sub brokerages under our umbrella. And we just provide all the back office infrastructure for that group. So that's been, that's been really good for us. And through that, we, we've developed a bunch of marketing and, you know, other services and platform stuff to support their businesses. Are you actively originating today? Myself, no, but I still have a book of business, but I have, you know, an underwriting team that supports all that. So I don't, I don't have a lot of direct client interactions. I spend most of my time thinking about how to support our agents. Yeah. And help them grow their business. Right? Yeah. You got it, man. Cool. All right. So this is, and sometimes when in these conversations, this is more of like a curiosity thing for me. If you could articulate for me the difference in, if you can, right? So, so I hate to put you on a spot if I am, but like, how the rates are set differently in the US versus Canada, can you say that is a really good question. I don't have a lot of insight into how rates are set in the United States. Yeah. Whoever's setting them up here is crazy. I don't know if you're feeling that way right now. Right. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, they were 8% here and they've recently kind of come down a little bit. But controlled by like the big bank up there or whatever. Yeah. We have with the bank of Canada who sets, you know, monetary policy and the overnight lending rate. And right now we're at a place where it's flat lining. So there's an indication that we may have hit the top of the curve. But, you know, that we're, we have to wait a couple more quarters to know for sure if we're at the end of quarters. Really? Yeah. They meet every six weeks. And so this just last week or so they met and they agreed not to raise rates again. Yes. So that is the first time in a while that they haven't raised rates. And so we'll see if they do that again in six weeks and then six weeks after that. Then we'll know. Do you have 30 or fixed loans? We don't. The longest term on a contract is 10 years. Generally people take five year fixed or variable rates. And there's some crazy stat like most mortgages in Canada will get rewritten or refinanced or broken at the three year mark, even if someone's in a longer term. So we, yeah, Canadian homeowners and investors, they shoulder the interest rate risk, which is fundamentally different than you guys. I think it takes a lot longer in the states for the impact of rising rates to take effect. But here we're feeling it real time. So on that 10 year, what is the average rate on that right now? It's high. It's high. I don't know that anybody would be taking that right now. Yeah, you're pushing that that 8% range in variable. You're in the sevens and then on a five year fixed, you're in that that 6% range. Six six and a half. Interesting. Okay. Well, that's also interesting from a standpoint of refinances, where you have this guaranteed re-five market every three to five years, right? So we have, except for the fact that over the last few years, the regulation has tightened up a little bit. And so it's harder to move people from institution to institution. And so we're capturing on the whole, we're capturing a smaller percentage of the re-five market. But there is a stat in Canada. So 20, 25, 57% of all mortgages in Canada are up for renewal in 2025 and into 20, 26. And so if you take that and you couple that with the fact that people just have natural breakage of their mortgage, and then maybe if rates drop a point between now and then and the transit that are like the purchase transaction market comes back, I think we're going to see the busiest, like we're going to be way busier than, you know, a couple of years ago in 2025 and 2026, I think there's going to be, I can convergence of all those events. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So thank you for playing along. I've got a couple more questions on just setting the stage for those who aren't familiar with Canada. That's okay. 100%. Yeah. Tell me about then the difference is compensation wise, right? Commission structure, bonus versus salary, things like that. What can you share with us around that? So I think from my knowledge, we make a little bit less money than Americans do, American loan officers on the transaction. So our average compensation on a five year fixed term is going to be somewhere around 125 basis points, you know, so 10, 12,000 bucks per million funded. I think the same ballpark is in the same ballpark. Okay. It's very structure or composition varies a little bit based on company. But for like what we call a retail loan officer, like a bank versus a broker, which is an independent. It's going to be a little bit higher, perhaps on the broker side. But yeah, that's, that's, you know, in terms of large retail lenders, that's in the ballpark. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. So they are compensated or rewarded for performance. 100%. Yeah. So we have the same thing. We have that retail versus wholesale. So we have what we call sort of our mortgage sales force, which is our bank branded internal sales forces, which is actually how I started in the business back in 2003. But then I became an independent broker a couple of years after that. Yeah. So we just call people who are not part of like independent commission mortgage brokers. So that's, that's the difference there. So in the, in the retail bank, we're probably making those, those reps are probably making 50 to 65 basis points. And independently, you're in that one one 25 range. Right. Okay. Do you have a sense of the total, I know Canada's obviously very big like the US and, you know, there's different population concentrations between West Coast East Coast, but you're up in the Vancouver area if I'm correct, right? That's right. Yeah. I'm on Vancouver Island, which is, you know, we're about 30 miles west. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The killer whales as you take the ferry ride. Hi, everybody rides a killer whale to go across the water here. For sure. Yeah. I've taken that ferry over by the way. I forget the name of it right now, but yeah, it's from, from, from, from Anacortis up. Yeah. That's cool. Well, that would be the, the coho ferry if you, if you came up from the States, yeah, drive my car on there and then, you know, they took me over all that stuff. Really a beautiful area. Um, so do you have a sense of roughly population of, um, mortgage originators, brokers, right? Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our total, uh, like industry participants is somewhere around 15,000 mortgages across the entire country. Yeah. Maybe you're pushing 20,000, maybe a bit more when you include, uh, the, the, the whole, the story of the retail, yeah, officers as well. So yeah, it's, uh, significantly small. Like how many do you have in the States? That's great question. And, and that I guess depends on what you consider, right? Because we have our call centers with like, quick in and things like that, um, but the figures that I've seen, if you lump everybody in, um, I'll be, people are going to hear this and go, that's not right, Jeff, but, uh, probably a couple hundred thousand. Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean, we have what 10% the population, yeah, the US. So we're probably tracking that happen too. I was anybody like, I'm out this, this market sucks. Oh, yeah. A lot. Um, we were, I just pulled some reports. So we have a little bit of data because we have, you know, quite a number of agents and we were pulling some year over your reports and we actually, uh, did it, this is just like three days ago. And, uh, we did a double take because we, the number of agents that we've paid, uh, you know, on deals last year at versus, we've grown by agent count because we're in a, we're in an expansion mode right now for tango, uh, but then that didn't align with. We were like, well, wait a second, but we've grown, but we've paid less people. Right. And so we were kind of like, what's wrong with the reporting, but we dug into it and we realized that there's just, there's a lot of people that aren't that we're producing last year that just are not producing this year. Um, and so yeah, it's, there's definitely, uh, maybe people who have parked their license or, uh, have exited the business. There's a percentage. I, I'd be hard pressed to tell you exactly what it's kind of so. Yeah. No, no, that's okay. I mean, that's a natural cycle we've seen it before. Right. Come and go. Um, okay. So one last thing on that note, and this is just my, I thought I remember from somebody a stat years ago that that large bank, um, in terms of percentage of market share they have. Isn't there a bank that has like a huge percentage of market share? We've got four or five major banks here, and they've got a sizable percentage of market share. I think mortgage, independent mortgage brokers have, uh, roughly around, you know, I've, you said it a second ago, people are going to hear this and tell me I'm out to lunch, but it's like 35 to 40, okay, percent market share on the, on the mortgage, independent mortgage broker channel. Yeah. So the banks as a whole have like 60 percent market share. Right. Right. Yeah. It's good kind of setting the stage and background for those who are curious how the Canadian market works, a lot of similarities, obviously the glaring differences, the difference of no 30 year fixed and kind of the shorter term breakages on those loans, but that's cool. Um, all right. Now let's talk about this. A question I usually ask people when they come on the show, if they're producing or have been producing, but you're obviously overseeing, but let's just take this in terms of, yeah, in the context, I guess, of the people, you know, the 400 LOs that you support as well. I say L, LOs, by the way, for sure, 100 percent, yeah, a lot easier for me to adapt than all of you doing audience. Yeah. Uh, what do you see as the primary, what was it for you or what do you see currently kind of like as the primary source of business for most people? Yeah, that is, that's a really good question. I'd say right now in this market, the primary source of business is going to be your, your RIFI renewal, uh, restructuring that's happening because of rate changes and, you know, maybe, uh, homeowners, investors getting caught on their heels a little bit with the rise and cost of credit. The purchase transaction market is down big time. Sure. So we've got some of the bigger markets like Toronto, Vancouver, I wouldn't say they're stalling out, but they're, you know, the transactions are definitely slowing still activity in some of the smaller markets, uh, you know, where the price point is more palatable. I think it's, there's still a lot of transactions happening, uh, but the main markets have really slowed significantly. So the bulk of the business right now is, is coming from a sort of a restructuring, uh, adjustment to rising rates. I'd say is, you know, a lot of private, uh, financing, a lot of alternate financing, not your main discounted rates, uh, that you would get through the, through the banks. Uh, so a lot of creativity that's going into, you know, figuring out how to place deals for people right now. Um, what, uh, when you are originating and what do you see with your, you know, more successful people, the, uh, primary activities they do to generate opportunities. Uh, that's a really good question. So I think, I think a lot, I think that the world is obviously changed, uh, in terms of how people are, uh, developing business, I think in the last two years, we're seeing a lot more, uh, brokers and agents move, move into the digital age, uh, a lot of, a lot of people posting on socials and trying to figure out that environment more than ever before. I think, you know, uh, cold calling strategies, um, taking people out to coffee, lunch, like, you know, people have shorter attention spans these days. So I think the brokers that are really being successful right now are figuring out how to, uh, break through the noise, uh, social media and also convert a lot of that attention into conversation. You and I were talking about this earlier, like it's the conversations that you have that lead to the conversions. So even, so we used to, like if you, the way I grew up in the mortgage industry or probably you did as well as like, you know, you would, you would call call a bunch of realtors or potential referral partners. You would head down to the local networking events, board of trade, B&I meetings, whatever it was, you would try to meet people face to face and you would, you'd create a conversation, you'd have a connection and maybe you would agree to, like, meet for coffee or lunch or something like that. And you'd do that over the course of a few months and eventually that might lead to a referral. It was a bit of slow process, but it worked. If you were moderately good at doing that, then you could build a business that way. I think those days are behind us, like nobody picks up their phone anymore, um, and social media is a new networking event. And with now, so that's daunting for a lot of people, at least in my world, like we have a platform, much like you do where we teach people how to, um, how to move their marketing into the digital age, probably a lot of very similar strategies that you're, you're helping people with. But um, I think people, people see it and it's a very daunting environment. And they think, oh, I got to, I got to go build a massive audience or I've got to have all these followers and I think a lot of those metrics or vanity metrics were teaching people how you can use these strategies to dominate your local market, find the exact partners that you want to have conversations with. And these platforms, it's so much easier than picking up the phone and doing a hundred goal calls or had, you know, a drive and halfway across town to an event you didn't want to go to anyway, you can do this in your pajamas now and you can have conversations with people all day long and you can, and you can build connections. And, uh, I think the brokers that are figuring that out are having a lot of fun right now. I know it because a lot of them are in my world and we're, there's some people that are absolutely crushing their marketing right now. And then there's a lot of people that haven't quite figured that opportunity out yet. That's who we're trying to help. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, I said earlier today on a previous conversation, you know, anybody quote unquote over 40, right, is struggling, I think, and by the way, that's self admittedly for me. I was going to say that's, that's both of us here. Yeah. So, you know, it's just kind of like, where's my phone over here? So I grabbed this mobile phone and like, you know, doing this and recording like, this is a new skill, right, holding up the phone and hoarding your face, talking. There's a growth process there that some get through at various stages, but I would say to your point, this is what the hammer that I'm trying not only for myself, but that we all need to get through it. Like this is the new, as you said, networking. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It is, it is the new networking. And it's, and if you do it, it's, it's, it's working really, really well. And, uh, it's funny because you and I were chatting earlier, some of the strategies that you're helping people with is same that we're helping people with. We're not just showing, uh, the people in our, in our sphere, how to do it. We're showing them how, how to do it and also how to teach other people how to do it. Right. So by extension, they become, you know, that marketing coach for their centers of influence because everybody's struggling with this, uh, the realtor's financial planners. Oh, yeah. The same thing that we struggle with, you listening right now of what I just mentioned. Yeah. The agents are struggling. Everybody else. I'll piggyback on that point for a second is like, if we can be the conduit for helping those people, um, uh, cross that chasm through content, education, whatever, then that's going to endear them to us, build some trust, resistance goes down. And therefore those conversations that lead to contracts, they happen a lot more quickly. They happen. Yeah. You just nailed it. You got to walk the talk. So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's tough. You got to pull out your phone. You got to do the, um, you know, talking into the camera and you get the cool thing is at first, maybe your content sucks, but nobody sees you anyway. So it doesn't matter. So you're just going to the gym. You're doing the reps. You're getting better at it. And then by the time you're a little bit better at it, people start to see you, but you do that and you attract people. I've got this three step process that I talked about and I didn't create it, but it's like attract, connect, convert, and that's, you know, so job number one is you got to attract people in your world and you do that by posting all the time. And then those people are going to, they're going to like or comment or they're going to follow you. And when the moment that happens, you try to build a connection with them. And so what we're teaching people to do is, you know, someone comments on your posts, someone, someone follows you back, you, you immediately move to chat and you say, Hey, man, thanks. Like Jeff, thanks for the follow. Really appreciate it. And then we try to move those conversations and they've got the connection part. And then there's a whole bunch of different methodologies to move in those conversations into actual conversions. Yeah. And what we call a conversion is just, just basically getting to that coffee meeting. It's a Zoom meeting now, but try to, try to escalate that, that conversation into a, let's have a, let's, let's meet and, uh, could be a Zoom, could be coffee, whatever, and let's see where we can help each other. And what's really cool is a lot of the partners out there, the realtors of financial planners that you're connecting with, they have the same struggles. And so it's really easy right now where at this window of time where you can just say, Hey, how's business? And, uh, you can have conversations around, Hey, I've got some stuff that I'm doing that's working for me. You want me to show you what I'm up to. And almost 100% of the time, they're like, yeah, I'd love to see it. I've been watching your content and I'd love to see how you're doing that because it's a bit of a, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a bit opaque for a lot of people. But the moment you start showing them, then all of a sudden, you can be that helpful person for them, which I think way, what you were talking about a second ago. Oh, 100%. Um, yeah. A lot of things there. I have this pyramid. If you can picture a pyramid and I love, and this is, this is the, you know, I'm kind of processed. Let's just take real estate agents. For example, uh, the, the, you know, realtor partner process or the, or the loan office are outreach process, right? And on the bottom of that pyramid is solicitor, right, because they're co-calling and chasing and all that. And then the next level is, uh, vendor, right, and a vendor's based on products and pricing. And most, most never get past vendor, uh, because they're leading all the time with products and pricing. And therefore, you know, you're, you're, you're like continuing to shove that frame on everybody. I'm like, I'm a great LL. I got great rates. It's just like, yeah. So does everybody else? So that's not unique. So everybody, oh, no loyalty all this. Well, you know, if you're just a vendor, I don't know about you, Jason, you probably don't have a lot of loyalty to a vendor, right? It's, uh, so what you just described there is, uh, I think the number one mistake that people are making with their content right now is they're trying to, they're trying to, uh, sell or differentiate themselves based on, uh, product features or why they, why someone should choose them over the competition, which is like people don't buy, uh, we know this. This is nothing new, but people don't buy on logic. They buy on emotion. And so you want to, you want to target the pain points and you want to speak to, so if you're trying to attract homeowners or real estate investors, what are the pain points? Do they care about the difference between fixed or variable or a five year term or a 30 year term? Probably not. They, what they care about is, am I going to be able to make my mortgage payments? Am I going to be able to stand my home? So let's talk to them about those things. And if you can show them how to not only keep their house, but make their mortgage payments. And if you can also show them how to do that without affecting their lifestyle so that they don't have to experience the pain of sacrifice right now, then, you know, now you stand a chance of being able to break through the noise. Now you have different conversations. And so, uh, this, this isn't available in the States, but my coaching platform is called strategy hub. That's where we coach workers how to do some of these things. And we're constantly the focus there is we're, we're, we're focused on mortgage strategies or financial strategies, you know, cash flow strategies, tax strategies, wealth building strategies, real estate acquisition strategies, none of it is product related. It's all like, what do people want? Where are they? Where are they hurting? And how do we solve those pain points and help them get where, where they want to be? And that's, and it's that content that I think gets people's attention. Yeah. A very good point. Um, let me, let me say these three things, then I want to come back to what you just said there in terms of financial strategies, looking at a slide I have from a presentation I gave a while back. But, um, the title of it is there's three skills to thrive in any market. Number one is audience building. Number two is deal creation. Number three is deal conversion, right? No matter what's going on in the, if you master those three things, you know, yeah, there's your track connect convert just expressed it differently. Yeah. And we're all reading the same stuff. Exactly. Well, you said something interesting about the content and, you know, the financial strategies and education, I interviewed somebody yesterday and, um, he, uh, put the frame on the market that we're in right now is a conversion market, meaning the conversations we have need to be, and don't take this in a sales way of like, I got to close hard and all that. But what you brought up is put it this way in the current market with this uncertainty that there is, uh, you have your own economy and economic situation. We have ours, um, and with this uncertainty with higher rates, what I always fall back on is people seek context, right? Context during the chaos so I can feel more confident about making the right decision for me. And so those conversations, a lot of sees here, those conversations you have need to be focused on converting people on a variety of different things like to trust you, to choose you to, you know, education to your point about the financial education. That's what I'm seeing more and more people do today as financial advisors is be more education driven. Here's another one. I'm full of, you know, these little platitudes here today. But, um, here's one you can use, like, and this is real real estate and mortgage true. Um, most real estate mortgage professionals know what's happening, um, some understand few can explain. Cool. I like that. Yeah, I swiped it. I don't know from who but, you know, so, uh, still like an artist is the book. Uh, so anyway, the point is it's like you better be darn good today at explaining what's happening. If you want that trust in conversion, yeah, yeah, the, the education's key. And then what's really cool, uh, to take that a step further is you, if you're talking about all these different things, you're going to attract people will come to see you as that expert, that subject matter expert, but you might attract them, um, to, or get them to engage with you for some reason. But ultimately, they may end up working with you at some other level. So you might be teaching them one concept. And I think the other part of this whole, like, educate that people have to get comfortable with or the loan officers in our world need to get comfortable with is sometimes they feel like because I'm talking about it, I need to do that for that for the people. Like, and so I think we just need to be talking about a whole bunch of different topics and try to be as helpful as possible. And then when people come into our world, really take a moment to sit down and listen to them and be empathetic to their situation and then find the right solution. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the thing that attracted you to them. Um, but yeah, I, I don't know if that made sense or not, but that's, uh, no. It does. I think it's just about getting engagement, um, you know, like I'm sure you have stories. I can think of stories too where, you know, people are watching you and they're following you. Um, and they have, and they may not know that you even know, like I have people that I work with have told me stories, whether it's realtors or consumers, uh, where out of the blue, they'll just connect DM and be like, Hey man, been watching your stuff really like it. Loved to love to meet, you know, or we've been watching your stuff in my husband and I need help with this, you know, but if you're not out there, let's bring this back full circle to like these modern tools, the mobile phone, I'm holding up and the social platforms which allow you to build an audience for deal creation, like if you're not even doing that, sorry, they're going to go to the big bank who's got the ads and the TV and the freaking signage and all that stuff, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, there's, okay. So there's a really cool strategy. I'm going to take us way back to the eighties, okay, and then bring it into real time. This is something that we can do now that was not possible 20 years ago. So like back in when in the day when remax had the whole above the crowd TV ads, when we were, you know, I would watch like my guy were on TV or whatever, but, um, so what they did there was one of the best advertising campaigns ever in our space because it looked like they were speaking to consumers, but what they were actually doing because it was always like come to remax, we have the best agents, whatever it was, right? And, but what they were actually doing is it was a massive recruiting campaign for real estate agents. And so it served, it served two prongs, right? It built confidence with consumers and it built their network of real estate agents. Now that kind of an approach back then required massive budgets, deep pockets because the only way to get to everybody was through TV ads and radio, but today we can do the same exact thing with social media for free. So we can get on the airwaves, we can talk every day about, um, strategies, financial strategies to attract consumers, but there are things that you can do on these social platforms to make sure that potential referral partners, your financial planners, your lawyers, your real estate agents that they see your content and they actually engage back with you. And so you can dominate your local market by speaking to consumers and attracting the real estate agents. And then what we teach our, our loan officers to do is talk about financial strategies that cause real estate transactions. And so, like up here, we have something called an RESP. It's basically a, a kids education fund that you can contribute to and you get matching dollars from the government in, and what we, we've got one of our strategies, which is our, our ESP versus rental. And so what we do is we take that education, government education, contribution plan and we show people that, hey, look, instead of putting your money in that for the next 15 years, what if you just took that same amount of money and, and used it to fund, you know, an equity takeout like a down payment on a rental property, you'd be three times further ahead and your, your kid could, you know, refinance and go to school and get the tenant to pay off their student loan and it was still on the asset by the time they're done college. And so we talk about that. And then that causes real estate agents to reach out to our loan officers and say, that's a really cool strategy. Like, I want to show my clients that because we're teaching real estate agents how to educate their clients, how to, why they should consider transacting real estate right now when, which is a really, you know, it's a tough market. And so what we're doing is we're hijacking this terrible term, but like we're hijacking our partners databases in their audience. And so we're speaking to consumers, but we're attracting partners and then those, and then we teach those partners how to take our consumer content and share it downstream with their clients. It's working like, it's, it's just amazing. It's working really, really well actually. So I don't know if that's helpful for your audience, but maybe, maybe there's something in there for people. 100% of that's helpful. I mean, that's all about positioning, right? Like, and I love the Remax example, because that is such a great illustration of attracting two audiences, right, with the same content, essentially. And that's again, why you need to be putting content out there. Yeah. And it's free. It costs nothing to do. Right. The only, the only cost is your time, right, and doing the reps, because let's face it, we all start off sucking at ground zero. And then you're just going to hopefully, if you keep at it, it's like, I say to people, like, you know, you don't try being fit, right? You just be fit. You live the lifestyle of being fit. And the same is true with like today's modern world. If you are a commissioned based salesperson, well, you know, this is one of those things you've got to get good at, just like back in the day, you had to be good at making cold calls and report building and matching and mirroring and all that stuff, right? Yeah. You need to be good at putting an audience, man, and attracting people to you. You know, it's funny that you mentioned that like, when I think back to when I started building business development 20 years ago, I did one file, one mortgage transaction in the first six months. And it's a, it's a bit of a slog, you know, and so it could, those reps that you were talking about, you would get out there, you'd make the calls, you'd go have the coffee dates, you'd have the lunches, you'd do second round meetings, you'd go see to offices, you would do all that kind of stuff. And it would take six months, 12 months, sometimes years to build that solid referral base. So for some reason today's world, like we pick up the phone and we do that video and we do one or two, and then we're like, well, that didn't work. And then we quit. And it's like, no, you need to do it every day, day in, day out, consistently six months a year and and have processes around it so that you can, you can get the results. But if you do those things consistently, you will get results. Yeah. I mean, you get six back abs with one set of setups, you know, maybe when you're 20 years old, not anymore, not for me. If you, if you got five minute abs, all right, you're good to go, but four minute abs came out. I don't know if you guys heard. I was going to make that joke. Oh my gosh, got to do the reps. Hey, I'm curious, is divorce a niche up there for mortgage brokers? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Canadian's stay married. Just as short. You get divorced too. Yeah. All right. That's, I'm just taking like different nuances or divorces and niche for sure, other, other niches. What about, what do you call it, renovation loans? Like, you know, I want to do some improvements on my home or something like that. Yeah. It's huge. We, you know, in the last few years, that's been a big, that's been a big source of business for people appear for sure. Yeah. What do those terms look like? How long is that loan? I mean, again, it depends, I think a lot of times, like right now in this market, if someone say, redid their mortgage two, three years ago, then the goal is probably not to redo the mortgage because they're probably sitting at one and a half, two and a half percent on their rate. So, so you'll, you'll probably do private financing, you know, in a second position to access equity so that you're not breaking. What does that mean? Private financing. Private finance. So we have like, there's a bunch of layers to our lending environment here. So you've got your, your financial institutions, your, your banks, and then, uh, and then the next level up from that would be what we call monoline lenders. They don't have any other, they're just purely a mortgage lender and they're basically securitizing bank money and then relending it out. And then, uh, next level up from that would be what we call alternate financing. And so, uh, our space is pretty regulated up here. So there's, there's very strict guidelines for qualification and debt servicing and things like that. So bank and monoline level, you're kind of restricted. There's only so much you can borrow, but then the moment you have a unique situation like yourself employed or you've got, uh, you know, side hustles, multiple source of income or you need to stretch your boring capacity or your own multiple properties, you quickly move into the alternate space and the alternate space might be like bank rates plus plus one plus two and way more flexible criteria. And then beyond that, you get into the private like mortgage investment corp, private financing where you might pay like anywhere from, you know, eight, nine, double digits, 10, 12 percent. And that's for, you know, very creative situations, uh, emergency funding or second loans behind, uh, you know, discounted first mortgages and stuff like that. So what, what we might call down here hard money lenders, hard money lenders, so that's a big, that is a big segment of our market right now, man. I bet. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, hey, when you need it, right? Yeah. Um, you'd be surprised how many, you know, AAA fully qualified borrowers, like doctors and dentists that end up end up going to need in the hard money because of our regulatory environments is difficult to qualify up here. So we have something called the stress test. So if you're, let's say mortgage rates on a five year fix today are six and a half percent, let's just say, if you want to qualify for home, you're qualifying at eight and a half percent. There's a, there's always a two point stress on it to allow for a buffer. So yeah, you can't, you don't actually get to use the contract rate for your, to maximize your boring power. Ouch. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, so the average person here is qualifying at eight, nine percent all day long. Yeah. And so yeah, you take today's higher rates and no, you're not going to qualify at seven. It's going to be nine. Yeah. When it first came into effect, it was, everybody was kind of up in arms about it, but in retrospect is a good idea. You know, when rates were two percent and they were qualifying, everybody at four or five, now that rates have moved up, I think that saved a lot of people. But when you're at the top end of the curve, qualifying at eight, nine points, that's, that's tough. That, that, so it's very difficult to get people qualified. So the alternate space and the private space, the hard money space, that's vibrant right now for us. So let's just say I've been in my loan for five years and I've been at that fixed rate for five years. When I originally got it, I was qualified at the start rate plus two, the stress test, right? Yeah. But then now that loan is ending, not because I want to end it, but just because the term is done, but now it's the qualification process all over again. So if you're just, if you're just renewing with your lender and you're not accessing any additional funds, probably, and you've made all your payments on time, so no real material change, you're, you're going to be offered, you know, a renewal rate with the lender. But the moment you want to make a change, the moment you want to add funds on the, on the renewal, the moment you maybe weren't fully up to speed on your payments or, you know, you've got delinquencies or anything like that, you're going to be pushed into re-qualifying. And if you don't qualify at that same institutional level, then you're, you're going to have no choice but to go to the next, next tier up to see if you can get those funds. Yeah. Very interesting. So then the more affluent borrowers, are they going with that investment option for, for loans or? Yeah. There's a lot of, so it's what I said. So it used to, there really is no stigma around it anymore because like I said, fully qualified, high income earners, you know, really what you would expect to be a AAA borrower, they're often going to alternate or private, hard money financing as solutions. You know, even myself, like I'm in the process right now of possibly changing my main home, my wife and I are looking for a place. And because the market's a little bit slower, we have to, you know, the time, trying to time the buy and the sell is really tough. And you know, we've got three kids. And so on paper, we qualify, but managing, you know, we want to buy that for that next place. And you don't want to be homeless and you want to then take the time to sell and a cheap top dollar. So bridging that gap, you know, you have to go, you have to go to that alternate or private financing. So there's lots of really good qualified borrowers that are using these types of loans to make the deal happen and then restructuring after the fact or whatever. You may have answered this earlier. So I apologize, but let's say I'm in that five year term for that loan, right? And then we're in a rate drop market. Can I get out of that and just refine to the lower rate? Yeah, you can. So if you're in a variable rate product or an adjustable rate product, then it's a three month interest penalty. But if you're in a fixed term, we have a, our penalty is called the interest rate differential. And so let's say you're, you're sitting at 6% and you've got a year left on your term and you want to break it and you're going to get a new mortgage at 4%. You kind of the way that it's not exactly this, but you kind of pay that 2% differential as a penalty. And so the lender always wins that work to do the loan. You can, you can amortize it in and the new lender, if there's enough equity, you can increase the mortgage balance to cover it at the lower rate. So, you know, they're, yeah, so it just depends on where you are in your term, how many years you've got left and what the differential is and that drives your penalty. So it's hard to tell you exactly how that works, but that's fundamentally the formula. Have you been privy to this NAR lawsuit, the National Association of Realtors? I haven't followed it a bit, but it's not impacting us at all on the worries of your career. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. You have a national association like that up there for real estate agents? Yeah, we've got, we've got CREA, which is a Canadian Real Estate Association. Yeah, it's similar, but still, Realtors are regulated at a, what we call a provincial level or would be a state level across Canada. And there has been, there has been some talk of, you know, some class action type stuff in Ontario. And nothing, nothing like you're seeing with the NAR. Yeah. And then is this the structure similar where, you know, you've got a listing agent and there's a commission and some goes to the buyer, some goes to the seller. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's not quite a 50, 50 split, but, but, you know, it's, it leans in favor of the listing agents slightly up here. And some provinces are better than others, but Ontario in particular has a vary. It's like seven. Ah, man, someone's going to call me out on this. It's wrong. But I want to say it's like five, maybe it's five to seven percent of the, of the value of the property as the real estate fees, you know, and it's flat across the board. Whereas in other provinces, it's kind of a graduated grid. So, yeah. So those are set by the provinces. Those aren't negotiated. Ah, I think, I think homeowners can negotiate them. But at the end of the day, they're, they're, they're widely set by the industry. And I think, I think a lot of the real, the industry participants hold firm to those standards. Interesting. Very interesting. Okay. All right, well, this has been very, very educational. Let's kind of circle back and put a cap on this when it comes to marketing and, you know, let me ask you this way. So, so 20, 20, you have, you know, essentially you're supporting 400 mortgage brokers, right? People out there originating loans. Are there any specific actions or strategies or focus, you know, to finish out this year, strong and build momentum for the new year that you would be coaching them around? Yeah. You know, when, when you're really, really busy, the complaint that you hear from people like the last couple of years has been, I don't have time to get to everything. And a lot of burnout, you know, coming out of those, those busy periods. So one of the opportunities that everybody has right now is to just take stock, look at your systems, look at your processes, clean things up, get ready for the next wave. I try to show people that, you know, it might be slow right now. But if we just, if we look at the stats, if we talked about those renewal, refi stats that are coming, 2025 is going to be a banner year, get ready for that. What are the things that you can do? So, you know, if you're in different markets throughout the United States, there might be different reasons that your local market could, could be, you know, busier or less busy over the next six months, 12 months, whatever that is in your area. You know, look forward to it. And then what can you do today to get organized and ready for it? But then the other part of it is just, you know, breaking, getting attention, that whole attention conversion conversation. There are some really, there's some low hanging fruit out there. And if you're not, you know, I think it's no longer a question of whether you should have an online or a social media presence anymore. So you're not doing these things, you're just, you're just leaving money on the table. And so take the opportunity to get, get comfy with it, you know, get in the groove, do your reps. Yeah. That's a great point. I mean, now's the time to build those skillsets, right? Where you didn't quote unquote have time before. Yeah. It's, you know, these, these, or these markets like this, you know, the, the term survival of the fittest comes to mind. But I like to do the different spin on that, which is it's not about survival of the fittest. It's the most adaptable who survive, which is true quote from easy, by the way. That's right. Yeah. And so ability is the ability to learn new skills, right? And adapt new skills based on the environment that you're in. And so that would be, I would just lay around top what you said. Yeah. And then if you have, if you have a goal, if you have a vision for what that looks like for you, like, you know, in a perfect world, I'm, I have this, this much audience or this many referral partners or this much volume or units or whatever it is, give yourself a break too. Like it takes time, you know, 20 years ago, we understood it took time to build a business. For whatever reason, people are really impatient these days. And stop chasing the shiny object. Just apply yourself. It's not complicated and just really, really focus on, like you said earlier, do the reps and give yourself that window of time to see the results and keep applying yourself. Even though you might not get the results today, there's a tipping point where those results start to, like, you know, they start to show up. Give yourself enough of a window to like realize that. Yeah. Momentum takes time. It does. Yeah. You know, and I think of the like the 10,000 hours concept that it takes 10,000 hours to get, quote unquote, good at something. Like we could do a whole conversation on that because that's not actually 100% accurate. But I geek out on that kind of stuff, sorry, but I like the, I like the modern version of that, which is if you do something for 100 hours, you're better than 95% of the rest of the planet. That that thing. That's not a fact. 100 hours feels like a whole heck of a lot easier to me. Right. Right. And so it's like, you know, people talk about habits and practice. But it's really about, you know, I've been kind of geeking out on the book, Atomic Habits. And the truth of the matters when you dig into like the concept and the foundation of that book, it really isn't about habits because that habits by in and of by themselves don't really produce change. What produces change is what they call the basis of his book was actually the study of a deliberate practice. But James Clear has admitted that if he titled the book deliberate practice, it would not have sold, right? No, yeah. Atomic deliberate practice. Right. Right. So everybody's like, Oh, habits, I get that deliberate practice. I don't know what the hell that is. And that's when you're obviously intentionally deliberately practicing something to get better at that, right? Which is partly volume, but partly iterating too. Part. Yeah. So I did the, you've heard of the 75 hard program. Yeah. So I did that this summer. I didn't finish it. I just felt this closure. I bailed on day 53. But in those first 53 days, I noticed, yeah, I ended up going to a networking event and we ate like all kinds of rich food and I was like, I realized about 12 hours into the event. And I'm kind of not on my diet. We're in, we're in conference season right now here in Canada. So I'm going to get back to it. But in that 53 days, I made a massive change in my life. But what I noticed though, it's been about, it's been about six weeks since I came off the program. So it's kind of doing it over the summer. And then sort of mid September, I came off it. And a lot of the habits that I created just in those first 53 days were that deliberate practice, you know, drinking a certain amount like the gallon of water every day or whatever and the exercise and reading a book, those habits have stuck with me. So even though I'm not technically doing the program, I'm still doing a lot of things in that program. And that was only like not even two months of applied deliberate practice. Cool. And so it can really make a difference, yeah. Yeah. And it pays dividends. All right, man. Listen, we got top of the hour. This has been a great conversation for those who want to connect with you more and reach out. Where do you want to direct them? Yeah. So I've got a website, you know, my link tree is JasonHanaberry.com. So that's JasonHanaberry's H-E-D-L-N-E-B-E-W-R-Y.com. And then same, that's my Instagram handle, too. That's probably the easiest place. Okay. We'll link it up in the show notes to make it easy for people to follow you and connect. And I would definitely encourage people to do so. They can find all the information about the things you do there to help mortgage originators. So hey, man. And an awesome conversation. I really, really appreciate it. I appreciate it. You have me on the show, man. It's been good to get to know you. Same here. So listeners, you know what to do. If you'd like this episode, hey, leave a review, share it with somebody. Go follow Jason on the links, and I will see you all in the next one. All right. Well, thanks for tuning into today's episode. Hey, you got a question for you. Are you struggling to get engagement and referrals from real estate agents and feeling like you're constantly fighting for business in a crowded market? What if I told you there's a way to attract agents to a provide unique value that helps them grow their business and generate referrals on demand, helping you become the dominant loan officer in your local market. Look, I was an originator for over 10 years. I understand the frustration of feeling like you're just another player in a sea of competitors. And you're struggling to stand out and get noticed by the agents that you want to attract and engage with. What if I told you this way to flip the script and position yourself as the go to lending your market attracting agents, not chasing, not paying for leads, not co-calling, but actually generating referrals on demand. And the best part, you don't have to ever make a co-caller chase leads again. You don't have to work with weenie head agents if you don't want to. This is what we help the originators do at the my agent classes membership. What do you get? You get exclusive access to our private community of like-minded law officers where you can network, share best practices, get ongoing support to grow your business, and you get a turnkey platform that helps you build your personal brand that moves you from solicitor and vendor to partner in peer. You attract agents, you increase conversations, and you increase your referrals. All without chasing, without begging, playing the game, paying for leads, you just by doing what you love to do, which is help other people solve problems. So how do you learn more? Go to mortgage marketing.pro. What could call with me? Now I'll take you through the library of done for you agent classes that you can use to just plug and play and follow our proven system of train the trainer. You don't have to be the subject matter expert. Think of yourself like that nightly news reporter is just sharing the news. You also get access to our marketing automation platform that will attract, engage, and convert agents to referral partners for you, scripts, checklists, downloads, automated email, SMS text messages, done for you landing pages, and more. You also get our market maker content, which is the social media images to help you promote your class online. And again, every Friday at our mortgage marketing mastermind call, you get access to top L.O. speakers, coaches, connect and collaborate with what's working right now in today's market to help you grow your business. So you don't have to struggle and try and figure it out all on your own. Don't miss the opportunity to learn more about what's helping so many originers succeed and become the go to lender in your local market. Click a call with me now. Mortgage Marketing Duff Bro. We'll see you on the other side.