Ep #1: Wade Vander Molen the DC Title Guy

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Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hello, everyone. And thanks for being here today. Today, my special guest and very excited to bring to you. It's something that a little bit different that we're normally doing. As you know, normally I'm interviewing a top-reaching loan officer and chair of some strategies. But today, I'm talking with Wade Van der Molen, also known as the DC Title Guy. Now, quick little bio about Wade and then we'll bring him on. And I just love the story here. And I think you guys, him sharing his strategy, he's been using to capture realtors and loan officers is going to relate really specifically to obviously what I've preached is all about content marketing. So Wade is very experienced in the title business since 2005. Currently, he's a director of sales and marketing for Stewart Title in the Northern Virginia and Washington, DC area. But what's interesting is we'll get Wade to talk about his transition from actually spending the bulk of his career in Phoenix, then starting over basically in 2012 in a brand new area with no contacts, no relationships whatsoever, and how he leveraged content marketing, if you will, and building his online platform to really grow his realtor and lender relationships. So let's get into it, Wade, are you there? I am here. Yes. Thank you so much for making time. I know you're an extremely busy person. We were just talking before I hit record about all the loans and or I should say, you know, the closings you got you have on the pipeline, and so I appreciate you making time today. I wanted to start if you could, maybe just just about a minute or two, if you wanted to add on or build anything to kind of that bio that I talked about, you know, particularly how you started in Phoenix and then landed, what brought you out to, you know, DC Virginia area in 2012? That's kind of an interesting story. So real quick, I was, I graduated college in 2000 in Iowa, moved to Phoenix, I had a best friend out there, and he just kind of said, hey, come out. It's really a great place to live, like, you know, whatever, so I moved, and I have a degree in social work. So I did social work for four years, and eventually I decided I didn't want to do that anymore. And my friend at the time said, hey, come be a loan officer with me because it's easy money. And in 2004, 2005, I think, you know, everyone or anybody could be a loan officer at that point. And so I did, I was for about nine months and I actually did pretty well and, you know, the mortgage business. I mean, as to what they were doing there and how to, you know, re-credit and go through all this stuff. So when I transitioned out of that, I decided I didn't want to be a loan officer. I asked the title company that I was sending my, my, my ReFY business to Refinance Business too. If they had any marketing positions available, if I kept seeing these really nice, stressed people come in their office and given us lunch and I thought that looked like a pretty good job. So they said there was, and so that's how I got into the title business in 2005. And built up a pretty successful business there for seven years in the Phoenix metropolitan area for lawyers title, which is part of FNF. And let's see here, March of 2010, I went to Las Vegas with a bunch of friends and I ran into or met a girl that later became my wife. And kind of a funny story, how that happened at the Palms Cathedral. And because when you're in Las Vegas, you don't really look to meet somebody that's going to turn into, you know, a spouse, but it happened to me. And so we did long distance for about almost a year and a half, the DC. And that got expensive and we decided to inspire some. And as our relationship grew, we decided, you know what, we really wanted to be together and take the relationship further and, and as good of a salesman as I am, I was not able to convince her to come to the Phoenix area. So I resigned at lawyers title and I moved to the Washington, DC northern Virginia area in June of 2012. That's how I got here. Yeah. Carved it over. Yeah. Love rules out overall. Yep. Got me. All right. Well, hey, thank you for sharing that. That's a very interesting story. Yeah. Meeting your spouse in Vegas. I wonder what the odds are on that, if Vegas is bad, yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you built up this great business in Phoenix area and, you know, all the way up until 2012 roughly. And then you, you know, boom, land in this, you know, brand new area, no virtually nobody. You're essentially starting over in the title business, right? Right. So, so were you doing, you know, what did you just carry forward some of what you were doing in Phoenix? Or what was kind of that when you, you landed there and you're like, okay, I don't know anybody. And just by the way, as you know, you work with agents and law officers, you know, a lot of people face this issue. Like, I don't really have a lot of context. How do I get my name out there? That kind of stuff. What was it for you? Were you already doing this kind of stuff in Arizona, which we'll talk about or just, you know, had some. I was not doing a lot of the stuff that I'm doing now in Arizona. I was maybe getting a little bit because you got to remember, like in 2000, I didn't get a Facebook page until I was 2009, I think. So, you know, just, and I remember my title company at the time, they tried to block Facebook as a website that we could even go to during the day because they thought we were just, you know, messing around. And we, as salespeople had to go to our upper management to say, no, we're like making contacts. This is how we're talking to agents and this is how we're building our business and this is how we're creating more exposure and this is how we're doing this and doing that. So I started to learn that a little bit and as I got, you know, more evolved in learning the business and how to help agents. Our title company offered a lot of marketing tools, a ridiculous amount of marketing tools. I mean, the rules in Arizona are a little different than California. I know you guys have that rule up there, but you can't really do much of anything, but we could in Arizona. And but then once I started to develop my relationship with my wife and decided that I was going to move, I realized that not every title company offers all these great marketing tools and that if I wanted to remain relevant to my target audience, that I needed to be, I needed to develop something that was my own, like my own USP, right? My own unique selling proposition that I could create, that I could bring to my target audience that would have them say, this is who he is, he's different than his competitors and I want to work with them. So what I did was I had some knowledge a little bit about WordPress through some people that I knew in Phoenix, not a lot, not a lot though, but I wanted to build a website. So I said, I'm going to use this as kind of my hub for my business and kind of go from there. So I had a website built on WordPress and I kind of got the website given back to me. I moved to DC and I didn't really know how to use it. I didn't know how to set up anything and I didn't have a YouTube channel and all of a sudden I just really dove my head into Google and YouTube and just looked up as much information and read articles and started following people online and just learning as much as I could and then implementing it back. And I found out very quickly, even though DC and Northern Virginia are very high price points compared to Arizona and there's a lot of money here. The agents here weren't quite as savvy and the title companies completely were not up to speed as they were in Arizona or even probably in California. So I then used that as to my advantage to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could and get out ahead of my competition, which I did. Wow. Okay. So you used a word there, which I wanted to touch on for a medical value proposition. So how did you settle on your value proposition being to teach basically database marketing, social media, all this various things. We'll go about all your web properties before we're done with this column terms of your website. You got a YouTube page, Facebook, all that kind of stuff, you're active. But how did you settle on, okay, I'm in a new area, and my value proposition is going to be to teach and help your clients with marketing. How did you arrive at that point? Well, before I moved here, I kept looking up and reading all about this stuff, you know, why realtors should make their website the center of their business, why they should be driving traffic to their website, why if you create effective content that someone would someone would look for when they had a real estate need online, that they could find you. And if they found you, and then they found you valuable on your website, there's more than likely they're going to reach out to you. And if they reach out to you, there's a good chance you can make them as a client. And all these agents out here are, you know, dumping their pocketbook to Trulia Zillow, you know, you know, Redfin or whatever, you know, all these other places where they're just, you know, they're putting their money. And I'm like, why if I could teach you a model where you could drive all this organic traffic and you could drive all of your database traffic to a central spot where you could, you know, where they could go to get all this information about you and you could keep them close to you so that when you, when they need to buy or sell down the road or refer down the road, you're always top of mind. I go, why do agents lose business? They're not top of mind. They're easily forgettable because they market to the consumer the same way. So if I could teach you to market to the consumer a different way and show you this other strategy, you're not learning anywhere else, would you then switch your title relationship? So once I could sit down and not only talk to them about it, but then physically show them how to do it, that was kind of the aha moment for me where once I, once I gained the knowledge, I had all the leverage because they didn't have, they didn't have it. And the more I learned and the more that I did and the more that I taught it back to them, the more they looked at me as a resource for their business that they didn't have to pay just then business. So it was right. That was that's kind of how I got started. So the more I, it's kind of falling into the rabbit hole, the more I learned, the more I liked it, the more I wanted to know more. And the more that I saw that it paid off for me, I wanted to do it more and more and more. It became addictive. Well, yeah. So there's a couple of things happening there simultaneously. One is I think it sounds like you had the awareness that, you know, you wanted to stand out amongst the other people that are clamoring for that role, it's our attention. Right. And then I get along with that, the question becomes, okay, so you have this big, you know, call it a aha moment or whatever that you're going to, you know, provide value by educating and teaching realtors how to more intelligently invest their time and money in marketing. Then how did you get that attention, you know, and get that awareness in your new market in DC? So, okay, that's a good question. So as I, I made, I made a YouTube channel as well and I invested in a camera and a tripod and all this other stuff, not high end stuff that's like, you know, breaking the bank or anything. But I made a goal of at least creating one blog in one video every week, right? So the one post and one video every week. At least at least one a week, I got to get, you know, and I try to hold myself to that now. I don't always do it. But for the most part, I get something out every week. And I just decided that that had to become a routine in part of my business model, just like somebody in the title business or even loan officer business might say, you know, I'm going to go drive around to these offices and just see who's in there, you know, that's part of my milk. Well, I realize that that is not a smart way to use your time. So I decided to get rid of that model and implement, I'm going to create content, content, content, and I'm going to post it through social media channels, through email drips, through other ways to drive people back to this spot. And then what I would do is I would follow up phone call a lot of these people who then who I'd met through, you know, marketing appointments or through networking groups or, you know, they were crosshails on transactions, who I would market back to and say, hey, you know what, I got a, I got a website, you know, you can go here to get all this information or if I got a referral from someone I, and I was someone who I hadn't met with yet, and I still do this today, I'll send them an email and say, hey, you know what, I never going to meet on Tuesday, but between now and when we meet, if you want more information about how I can help you go here. And I always try to get as many people back to that central spot because I know that if I can get them there, there's a good chance that they're spending any amount of time there that I'm going to convert them into a client and my selling cycle, if you want to call it a selling cycle, it will be dramatically shorter. And it's super important because if not, you know, in the title side, lenders and realtors look at title people as a title person, the title rep, the title rep that comes by. So, you know, it's a stigma that needs to be, that if you want to stand out and you want to really succeed and be looked at as somebody who's a resource, you can't have them look at you that way. So that's how I try to differentiate myself. Yeah, it's what, you know, I talk about if like, you know, positioning or building your local platform, right, so you're building that top of my awareness, like you said, and you can't do it via the traditional models. It's, you know, clone marketing, everybody's looking and acting and doing the same stuff. So you got to, you know, rise above that noise and so you obviously have the awareness to, you know, identify strategies that would resonate with that local audience, realtors and loan officers. And it's funny, the stuff, the challenges you share, like you just gave that example of, you know, loan officers and realtors, they see a title rep coming in and I go, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I've played it all. Oh my god, right. And it's loan officers, as you know, they get the same reaction from realtors, you know? Right. So it's like, I'll pretend you're busy, pick up the phone, you know, whatever it is. And see the difference is you're allowed in the office because in a lot of cases, there isn't an in-house lender and a lot of these, you know, which is very cool. So very, so I, obviously, then, so what's, how did it work so far? I mean, obviously you've been doing business out there for, what, roughly two and a half three years. Three and a half, yeah, three and a half, just over the, yeah, three and a half years, three and a half years. Okay. Yep. So what I first got here, you know, like I said, I didn't have any contacts at all. So I had my local office, they had like a database list of their clients. And then I was able to go online and like find different real estate offices and loan officer and mortgage offices in the area that you, and somehow sometimes they have like their rosters there and you can like, you know, so I had a girl to front desk, you know, I've just started kicking her off a different real estate offices and mortgage offices. And I'd be like, listen, can you get me their, just create an Excel spreadsheet for me? And then I was pumping everything into like wide agent, which is a really good CRM that I use. And I was just kept loading up my database of all these people. And I kept sending out direct, you know, just email blast of, you know, events we're doing, you know, marketing things that I could help them with. You know, hey, I could help pull a data list for loan officers for looking for ReFi candidates, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I started getting like people responding back and being like, well, my God, I've never heard of a title company offering this before. So you get together and let's meet. And then as I started meeting with people, I started befriending them and then they started introducing me to other people. And then as things started to evolve, I then, and I started to gain my knowledge based on YouTube and social media and WordPress and all the SEO stuff that I kind of learned. I just developed real estate marketing classes about each topic. And then I would approach brokers to see if I could get in there to teach these classes to them. And most of the time, I was successful because these brokers, no offense to them, but they were, they were older somewhat and they didn't have a clue about these things that I was talking about. So they were happy to have me in there to help the retention of their agent so that, you know, if they're, if they're, if they're knowledge on this stuff and they're implementing this stuff and it's working for them and they're making money, there's a less chance they're going to leave that brokerage. So they would gladly have me in there to train. And in the northern Virginia area, the average age of a realtor here is 55. So, you know, to talk to them about video marketing or how to expand your reach through social media or even how to use, you know, any sort of social media effectively is in high demand. You know, the WordPress SEO stuff is very selective. You get, you get a crowd, but it's only certain people, but it's the right people. And so yeah, anyway, teaching this stuff has been, has been a great way, you know, having a platform to speak in front of people and have them look at you as, you know, oh, I can code a way, but he's going to answer my question, you know, all I have to do is send them business. And then that's kind of how I positioned it that way. Yeah. So it's interesting you brought up real estate classes, you know, that's definitely something that I encourage other law officers to do and teach and self-promotional plug here wrote a book about it. But what would you say for you and how does that compare, you know, the classes versus the other kind of outbound efforts you have in terms of, you know, building your presence and converting to climate? The classes definitely have been probably the biggest thing, you know, because things everybody needs the e, but I'm not trying to work with everyone. And I would advocate loan officers definitely should not be trying to work with everyone. Just because somebody has a buyer that they could send you, doesn't mean that that's a good person for you to be building a long-term relationship with. But yeah, so building classes around who your target audience is and getting rid of the people who your target audience is not. So once you identify the type of person that you want to work with who is a good fit for you, you know, who kind of falls into this box of, here's all the cool things that I can do to help you with your business. And if they buy into that model, they're going to be a great client for you. So teaching these classes on a consistent basis has been helpful because I can teach them any time I want at my office's steward title for free, which I'll be a head instructor so that's good. And now that I've taught them for quite a while and I keep trying to add new ones, you know, brokers, especially this time of year, you know, they definitely want to, you know, I usually get people reaching out to me. I taught a class today actually on how to set up a professional YouTube channel. Brokers reach out during this time of the year because they want to start setting up classes in either late December or, you know, in January and February for their office because, you know, everybody's trying to get brokers motivated, you know, to have a good 2016 and what's the new thing you're going to implement into your business? How are you going to do it? Do you have your business playing together blah, blah, blah? So yeah, it's been really helpful to infiltrate offices, even offices that have joint venture relationships, which is kind of big out here. I teach in a lot of offices that have joint venture relationships and they still have me in there. It's really been helpful. It's kind of fun, though, when the other title person is pretty pissed off, but, you know what, at the end of the day, the broker's got to do what the broker has to do to increase the business that's come, that they're off their, their realtors are doing and to help the retention. They don't want them to leave. Yeah. Exactly. Well, that's like the Trojan Horse strategy, you know, I mean, you got the joint ventures going on and you're just entitled under relationship in there. Yeah. They're bringing it outside, you know, competitive company, essentially, in to teach them this stuff. What's your, like when you put on an average seminar, let's just say you've got, I don't know, 20, 10 people there, whatever it is, do you have a sense of kind of your metrics on that meaning? Okay. So I'm going to do a class. I know out of that, I'm going to convert to three, whatever people and what is kind of a process around that for you? Well, typically, if I'm holding it at my office in Stuart's title, like I can invite you know, offices, I know, you know, who the players are who's coming, who's not. So I can kind of manage from that. There's actually a girl in my office who has access to the local MRIS, though I can run a report on anybody who comes to a class and then I can find out how many transactions they've done in the last six months or 12 months, I mean, buy side to list, whatever. So I can qualify people pretty quickly to see what they're doing or not doing. Typically, based on the type of class that I'm teaching, I mean, I try to set up my classes so that they attract certain level of agents. The only one that I have that isn't is I have one called, I just got my real estate license now what? Which of course is for newer agents, which I like those two because they're not, they usually don't have any relationships at that point, so you can, you can get them. But you know, if I'm in an office, I mean, it can be hit or miss because since I'm in the office, it's like anybody who's in the office can literally just walk into the class and sit there. But yeah, usually I try to run some sort of, I get all their cards, but usually if I'm teaching a class, I try to qualify the people up front, even during the class, like I'll say something like, you know, a raise your hand if you have a website and then, you know, everyone raises their hand. And then I'm like, raise your hand if it's a website that you own and control. They're like, you know, perfect, then only, that I see, right, yeah, then I see like a couple people, right, then I say, all right, keep your hand raised if you have a website that you own and control and you've updated it or added something to it in the last two weeks. You know, if I'm teaching a social media class, who has an Instagram account, who actively uses it? Who has a YouTube channel? When was the last time you posted a video, okay, like, I try, I asked those questions to see like, okay, is anybody here actually doing the stuff that I'm going to be talking to them about or are they not? Because if they're not, then I'm like, oh crap, I got to go really slow and this might not be worth my time or, or, you know, you never know, maybe it is worth my time because they really want to learn it and if I can help them, they'll send me all their business and whatever. But I try to find out and see where people are at, you know, with all this stuff, you know, as I get started. Sure. So then, and that's a great question, by the way, but it's interesting, I could see that scenario where it's like, yeah, you got two hands up and then it's like, you know, your stuff. Yeah. So, is that kind of like, then the qualifier meaning, I guess I want to better understand, like you said, you know, who knows, it could be with your time or not, but I guess what I'm trying to get at is, you know, so post presentation, how much of that are you going to use as a qualifier for following up and going to those one-on-ones or you're just going to, is it going to be based on production, reports or a combination thereof? Probably a combination. If they're, let's just say I do that, I go through the whole thing and some persons like, hey, I don't have my own website, but I'm thinking about it. Like, I'm really going to expand my business and they start asking me these questions and they're saying these things to me, you know, and I run a report and I see they've been in the business two years and then like, you know, this past year that it's seven transactions definitely following up with that person because they're probably going to do 12 transactions the next year and they probably need a little more help with XYZ and I don't know what they're using for a CRM so I can help them with that because maybe they're not even using one. Right, I could like, get them, I could kind of, you know, help them along the path. But you know, you get some people who, regardless of what you tell them, you could go to a certain brokerage where, you know, they get handed a CRM, they get handed a website and no matter what you tell them, they think that you're full of it and what they know is better than you. Then that's fine. I don't really care. They can go ahead and think all they want. Also, if they have a transaction, it's going to be great, but I'm probably not going to follow up with them as hard because I know they're not going to be, they're not looking to buy into what I'm doing and that's fine and that don't need to work with everyone that way. But yeah, but I definitely do, I definitely follow up with everyone in terms of, I look at their production. I also, when I have a class especially when I have it at my office in Stuart title, I'll say something like at the end, hey, is everybody, you know, or halfway through the class, I'll say, hey, is everybody thinking this is good information and, you know, I kind of raised my hand and then like people kind of like say, yeah, yeah, or, hey, is anybody else getting this from their current title company? And they'll be like, oh, no, or I'll say at the end, hey, raise your hand with your business card. If you think that I've earned your next transaction and I'll follow up with you. And if they do, how does that go? Yeah, it goes. It goes. So when I'm following up with them, they have no, I mean, I'm like, the reason I'm following up with you is because you told me to and you raise your hand. And you gave me your first. Yeah, yeah. And so I believe, you know, that, and it sounds like you do as well. I hate to say I'm kind of cliché or cheesy, but the fortune is in the follow-up. And that's really, you know, there's no reason I'm doing a seminar unless you're going to do a follow-up, right? And so that's where the rubber meets the road. Are you fine? I mean, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. No, I think it's because if somebody doesn't want you to follow up with them, wouldn't you want to know it right away so that you could just be like, okay, thanks. Thanks. All right. I'm glad you came to the class. But if you don't want me to follow up with you, I won't. And you could just, you know, there's nothing wrong with someone telling you know because at least then, you know, right, or then you could say, okay, maybe, or you could find out maybe as a reason why you said, no, but if not, then you could just move on and focus on the people that are saying, yes. And especially if they're doing production, then you definitely do all that you can to schedule an employment with them. You know, it's partly a number, you know, it's partly the numbers game. I mean, you've got to deal with a bunch of people. You've got to ask for the business. You've got to find out if you're offering something that's unique they haven't seen before. You know, you've got to find out if their transactions are going well with you. Like, you know, you've got to follow up with all this stuff. And eventually they get to the point where when they write a contract, like, they just send it directly to the processor, they don't even send it to you anymore. And you're like, great, that's exactly what I want because now I can go out and get another client and I can go out and get another client. Like, I don't need to babysit this person anymore. Yeah, so what do you do on going then, you know, to stay, how do you stay top of mine? You talked earlier about your driver's people to your various online destinations. You're asking them to opt in with email to subscribe to your channel, all the above. And then they're going to have to be able to do that. Yeah, I mean, if they subscribe to my blog and channel, that's obviously huge. That's great. I have everybody in my CRM, which is of course categorized by like my clients, my prospects, my mortgage clients, mortgage prospects, then it even then's broken down by these are my ABC people, you know, like the people that use me and refer me versus the people that just use me, but haven't referred me, you know, whatever. So I have all their stuff. So every week I send out something via through my CRM. It's usually called something like through a title, marketing news you can use. I usually have like a legal, a legal question in there, a real estate marketing question in there. It's a Q&A, like I answer it. I'll have events that we're doing. I get everything out in front of them, but a lot of times the marketing stuff that I have, I'll link it back to my website in a video that I did so that they can click on it and get back to my website and video and get them on there. And so I do something like that, usually every single week. And then obviously if I have people in there, you know, they sent me a deal, but it's been a couple months and I haven't seen anything or even heard from them or they haven't responded. Like, you know, I'll go through my call list and I'll start just making calls to all these people. Hey, how's it going? I'm talking a while or anything else I can do to help in your business like, you know, whatever. I just, I just, but I call them, reach out to them. And how many agents do you have just the approximate numbers right now, you know, in your short list that send you business on a regular basis? I think on my A clients, I have 44. By overall, in my actual client client list, I have 121 people right now, but I mean, these are people that said they send me business, some of them not every month, but they send me business. And in my A clients, like my people that are kind of like, they're on it, like for at least 44, 43. Okay. So 44, 43, and I'm trying to equate this to like, you know, law officers listening. So essentially, if you don't mind, maybe just share some, some rough numbers in terms of like monthly, like openings you're doing or whatever closings, you know, that kind of stuff. So a loan off circuit relates. Um, well, in the, in the Virginia DC, the Arizona market, there's more transactions that happen in here because the price, I'm just saying this out loud because the price points are completely different. Like, you could work at Walgreens and buy a house in Arizona, like, you know, teachers here can't buy houses. Like, I mean, the price point here is about $400,000 is the average house here, which is great. In California, I know there's pretty high price points to obviously. I would say I'm probably anywhere between 40 to 60 transactions opened every month. That's purchased a ref purchase and refi. I would say of that, my business is 80% purchase and 20% refi, no offense, sorry, loan officers. I don't, I don't have, maybe like, I only have maybe like 10 or 12 loan officers I really work with. And then the rest, I mean, real, you guys know, right, repurchase, purchase businesses were at that. So I, I, realtors are my, are my mainstay. And then, you know, this year, I'm going to finish just probably just over a million dollars and close title revenue, a third, third full year, which that's, yeah, go ahead, sorry. Which do your title is happy, but I got to give you a contrast, my, my seventh year at lawyers title, you know, I did 1.15 million. So this year, my third year here, I'll do just over a million. Yeah, so, and I know that in terms of the number still allows, right, it's not the same thing as saying, you know, it's not the originations or whatnot, because I'm looking at actual openings or files opened with you. You're talking about fees, obviously, right, title fees. Yeah, files, like I said, I mean, we're in 1940 and 60 a month, right, which is, that's, I mean, that's a lot. I mean, that's quite a bit of, that's quite a bit in terms of you coming in and, yeah, and the thing is, it's, here's the good part that I think I really want to convey is that it isn't, I don't open 50 or 60 open orders a month because I'm working 70 hours a week and making 100 phone calls a day and throwing, you know, teaching 12 classes a month, I don't do that. Like, I used to do that, I used to do that. So the content marketing, all the things that I've done to build the online presence, where my clients can go to 24 hours a day to get answers to their questions, you know, watch my latest blogger video or whatever, like, has led me to basically, well, I hope my clients are listening to this, working probably 30 hours a week, you know, and focusing on other things in my business, like, you know, that are coming down the pipe that I'm going to be implementing soon, you know, and still bringing in the same amount of business. So it kind of has built to the point where I'm always bringing in new people. I got somebody actually today who told me they're getting ready to ratify the house that's a brand new client, I'm always bringing in new people and expanding it. But I've set it up with a system that I don't have to work to 70 hours and make all the calls and do all the grant work that I had to do for the first year or so when I first got here with no contacts, it got to the point where it's more automated, but the online, if I didn't have the website, YouTube, video, and the reach that I have through those mediums, I would probably still be doing that. So it's interesting when you went in, and that's it, it's congratulations to you all your success. You put in the hard work, obviously, at the front end, and now you're enjoying, you know, the foods of the labor, and I think you've proven that the model works. You've done it, obviously, you know, in Phoenix, and then you did it by starting all over again. Is there anything, by the way, you know, I always like to ask this question, but I think your story kind of illustrates that you did start all over again, but you know, when you look out there, well, actually, let me ask you this question instead first, and we talked about this before, is, you know, do you have any concerns about other people copying you? No, you know what, it's funny, I don't really know, that really doesn't bother me. I've had that question asked of me from other title people around the country, and I said to them, if you can copy this model in your market area, do it, go, it works, like I'm telling you it works, because there's a reason why you reached out to me, because you found me online through some way, you typed something into Google or YouTube, and I came up, you then found why content valuable enough to click through it enough times where you reached out to me, right? So if you're talking to me, that means that what I did worked. So why don't, yeah, feel free to copy it, I mean, just like, it doesn't really matter what business you're in, like every single thing that's been successful and business has been copied, right? Apple made the iPhone and Samsung made their phone. Like, you know, everybody has something and then they copy it, there's even a girl in my market area, she's tried to copy it a little bit, like it's, you know, but the thing is in my current area, I'm not too worried about it because I've gotten, I've gotten such a huge head start that it wouldn't affect what I'm doing if somebody tried to copy it at all. I've seen some of my competitors in my local market try to offer similar classes that I teach. The problem is, is that they don't teach it, they bring in an outside instructor to teach it. So which is fine, except what happens when that outside instructor goes out of town again and they go back to wherever they came from and those realtors have questions. Those people can't answer it. So it works when it does it. So I just keep lowering my head and keep doing what I'm doing and it works. But if somebody wanted to copy the model in a different market area, I would say go for it. If you keep doing it and you're consistently learning, posting content and teaching it back to these agents, it will, it will re-benefit for you. Yeah, and the other thing too with that is, I know you believe this as well, a couple of things. One is, in most markets, there's enough to go around and secondly, probably even bigger than that is, look, there's a certain amount of people that are going to be gravitate towards Wade and who he is and his personality and style. And guess what, there's enough other people out there, I mean, you said, I think you said you got about 42 on your A-list, there's enough other people of the agent or whatever population for, you know, that would be attracted to someone else's style, personality, et cetera. And the way they're teaching and sharing content, as you pointed out, right, it's like people don't get fast food from just one place, right? There's like a few different choices of where to get fast food, why? Because it appeals to people differently, you know, it's the same thing, providing content and education, people are buying into you and your relationship, not just the content itself. You're exactly right. I always tell agents and I tell even lenders that you never have a lack of business problem, you have a lack of client problem, you get more clients, you'll have more business. So if you have 43 A-client and all of a sudden you didn't bring in as many transactions last month as you thought you should be, well, the issue isn't because, you know, the issue is you don't have enough people, you got to go out and get, go add three four, you had four or five more producing agents, you'd have more business coming in every month. So you're a loan officer and you have, and I know loan officers like this, you know, hey, man, you know what, I got like four or five really good referring loan up realtors. Oh yeah, what if one of them got hit by a bus tomorrow? What if one of them, like, what if, all right, God forbid, what if one of them, like, left the business? What if one of them, like, joined a team and that team already had a loan officer that they work with and you're cut out of it now? Like, you can rely on that, like, you need, like, I mean, for me, like, on the title side, our margins are different. The way I get caught up in it is different than loan officers. So for me, like, if I want to make $200,000 a year, I got to work with 121 people, you know, who's sitting me business, like loan officers can be like, I work with seven people and I make $200,000 a year. It's like, what? How much money would you make if you had 14? Right. You know, like, go out there and get, you know, just my point is I would go out there and just be generate, create these systems and you'll start getting people gravitating to you that say, hey, I want to work with you versus you begging them to work with you and give you that next shot up at next deal. Right? Yeah. You look the script. Exactly. Exactly. I call it reverse prospecting, right? Getting people to try. Right. Right. And you, what you're doing hits the nail on the head of the challenge that I see a lot of originators struggle with is you're talking about a system and a process and most people don't have that process for attracting, converting, and nurturing those relationships. It's simply from the hip, head, or myth, oh shoot, I need, you know, a couple of loans next month. I better get back out in the field. And that's a whole bunch of prayer and that never comes through. You need a system and a process and I think what I'm hearing from you is just evidence that, you know, having a education, a like I like to read, borrowed it from Seth Goden, I think, educate and inform instead of interrupting style. You're doing that in your local marketplace. It's obviously paid big dividends for you, but doing that in a systematic way where you're combining online and offline, which obviously it's interesting. A lot of people are focused online and you know, I talk about how there's a lot of noise online. You got to balance that with where there is less noise, which is offline. So you're getting that offline impact as well through your classes and so forth. But you're doing it. I think the big takeaway is you're doing it in a systematic way that, you know, builds your presence, builds your awareness and builds that kind of, that stickiness, that continuity of engagement, you know, with those people that are following you, especially. Yeah, I mean, first off, no one likes to be sold to. So, you know, if you're sitting there in front of a group of agents in a presentation and all you say is, hey, I'm Wade with XYZ, Morgan's company and we're the best and we get loans closed and our rates are great and you should give us your next client or, hey, I'm Wade, it's your title and we're the best and your title is awesome. Like, they're going to be like, who cares? Like, who cares about you? You know, but if you can say, hey, I'm Wade, it's your title and the reason why I'm talking to you is because my main role here is to help you. Right? And I don't really even talk about title insurance. I don't talk about, you know, how we're the best in the business. Like, you know, I wouldn't be working for them but I don't believe in what they do. But I would talk about, you know, because people want to know what's in it for them. Hey, I'm great. I'm glad you're up here talking about how can you help me? Why should I send you a client? Well, you should send me a client because I'm going to help your client. I'm going to help you. I'm going to teach you this. I'm going to offer you this. Like, and then once they see what's in it for them, then they find you valuable. They'll say, oh, okay, like, yeah, okay. That guy seems pretty cool. I'll give him my next deal. I'll set up an appointment with him because he can offer me something that's substantial to my business. Not about, it's not all about, because as soon as you start talking about yourself and your own company and your own business and you, you, you, you, you. So they're going to shut you out. You're done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. So, so, you know, I think that message has been out there for quite a while and any, we're actually getting towards the end of our time, but I'd be curious if you have any input on why more people, long-office title, whatever, you know, are not taking to that message and maybe they are as, you know, slowly here, but, you know, it's funny, when people have been banging that drum for years, so about, you know, add value to, you know, your real professional partners' business, that's the way to do it. It seems like we got to keep telling people that over and over again. Well, I think part of it is, is loan officers and title people don't know how, like they don't know how to add that value. They hear it, right? They're like, okay, I hear it. Like, so what does that mean? But what does that mean? Right? That's almost a pretty good blog topic. Like what does that mean? You know, like they don't, they don't, they don't understand like what that actually, what that conversion looks like into an actual application that helps them. On the title side, I can totally see it because there's not a lot of training when it comes even doing what I do, like on the title sales, it isn't like they run you through like this amazing title sales process, they don't do that really. And you're kind of like out there to like spend for yourself and, you know, the people that run your company are like, I don't know, just go out there and talk to realtors and ask them for business. I don't know. So, you know, and load off, load officers, I mean, you know, they're, they're taught, they have to get licensed, obviously, and they, you know, they're out there, they know the business. It's like realtors, too. I know a lot of really good real estate agents who have no business. I know a lot of bad real estate agents who have amazing processes who kill it, right? So, it's, it's not necessarily like how good of a loan officer you are. I mean, I guess it can't be if you screw up a deal, then I'm going to send you business anymore. But I mean, I tell loan officers and realtors or title people, I'm sorry, you know, learn one or two things, learn them really, really well. Whatever that is, whatever you think your target audience needs to learn, and then just teach it back to them and then call them and offer them to take them to coffee, take them to lunch, come meet them in their office, you know, teach a class, even if it's a class on FHA financing or VA financing or why they should do this or, you know, think of something that gets you in front of people that you have an opportunity to build a relationship, build a rapport, scene is valuable and then ask for the business. I mean, most of the time, the reason why title people don't succeed is like they're scared to death to ask someone for a deal, like they'll come around their office and bug them and hey, what are you doing? Oh my gosh, hi, here's a couple, here's a mug, you know, whatever, but like they don't have the balls to actually say to them, listen, I know you have a relationship with XYZ title, but I'd love 30 minutes of your time to talk about how I can help you grow your business, expand your reach and get more eyes to your business, right? And if I could do that, would you consider sending me your next transaction? I'd love to work with you, you know, they don't have the balls to say that. Yeah, and that's, you know, I can understand, you know, why, and I think, you know, part of that may have that reluctance or fear sometimes because comes from, and I know when, you know, when I was out there, it's like, I always felt like unless I had something unique or different to offer that person, you know, I don't know, it just felt like it was harder to ask that question, but now when you know that you, you know, are there to offer value in exchange for that, eventually, right, not saying you show up with your hand down and say, hey, I can help your business give me a loan, no, the value exchange has to come first, then, you know, that transaction happens. Yeah. Part of the loan officers is just showing up, like, I know loan officers that they just, like, you know, I'm busy, I'm not answering my phone. Like, you know, in this day and age, if you're not, if I sent you a text message and you didn't respond in five minutes, I'd be like, what the heck, why isn't he responding? Right? Like, that's like a weird way to think, but like, that's how people think now. So if you're, you know, if you're a loan officer and you have, like, the whole thing of, like, listen, like, I'm always available, like, if you call me on Saturday, I'll answer. You text me on Sunday at noon, I'll answer, I'll be at church, I'll walk up the door and say, you know, like, whatever, but like, you know, if you say you're always available, I mean, realtor's are like, why, I need that, like, I really need that. I had a line, a loan officer once here, he was looking to grow his business and I said, listen, I'll give you a quick tip and if you do this, you'll have more loans. He's like, okay, what is it, you know, all ears? I go get as many realtor's as you can on your Facebook page, okay? Friend him. I go every Friday post on your Facebook page that you are on call all weekend. If they call you, text you, email you and they need a loan approval letter, they have a mortgage question, they have a rate question, they have a whatever question that you will be available to answer their questions during the weekend. And if their regular loan officer doesn't pick up to call you and that you would love to handle their next loan, I go just put some word of blur. This loan officer did it every day for several months, he's now, like, massive producing loan officer. I'm not saying that's how he became a massive producer loan officer, but I followed up with him and I asked him about it. He said he got so many calls up that. Yeah, because most are unavailable and they're trying to, you know, work that four hour work week that everybody believes is possible. Exactly. Well, they want an answer, they want it right now. And if they're a media, they're loan officer who they usually call or who talk to who doesn't pick up and they need something right away and they know that the person is like on call, they'll call. Right. Exactly. That's good stuff. All right. I'm going to talk about the hour, I guess, two more questions. One is, is this book that you've read recently, you know, it doesn't even have to be business if something else influenced you, but or in the topic of business here, but any, any books that you've read recently that in a different field, you know, it's funny, you're not a big reader. No, I am. I don't, I read books, but I also read a lot of stuff online just because like moist and just happened to always be online. But I read, this is kind of boring, but I read the Yoast SEO book, Yoast SEO is a plug in for WordPress. Yeah. They have a new book. I read that just because I wanted to get as much knowledge as I can. But I also follow certain people online that I think are valuable. This is a little plug for Amy, but I don't know if you know Amy Schmidt hour. She is a YouTube channel on a website. The website is for Amy Schmidt hour. The website is called savvysexysocial.com. It's not formulated. I swear. But I mean, she, when I first met Amy, she was, when I say met her, I met her through Twitter and then I got to her website, but she had about I think 1100 YouTube subscribers and now she has 37,000 and she posts consisting content, video, blog, all about business, marketing, how to's, why you should, like, it's pretty cool. Like I follow her a lot and try to read that stuff. And I also follow Tom Ferry. I like Tom Ferry stuff quite a bit. So I watch his videos and interact with that because I think that you can always pick up new things regardless of what it is. I mean, no matter how much you know, there's always more stuff out there and there's somebody out there who knows more than you. And you just got to continue to evolve and learn because I talked to realtors and lenders and they're like, well, wait, how did you learn this stuff? This must have taken you a long time or you must have it a college degree. I'm like, no, you know what I did? I just took away behaviors that were with time wasting for me and I just started following these people online and looking up stuff on the internet. I just took the time out of my day to like just learn it from my internet. Right. Little chunks at the time. Yeah. Awesome. Little chunks at the time. That was savvy60social.com. Yeah. .com. Okay. Cool. I just want to make sure everybody got the URL. That's cool thing. And then the last thing is any one or two things that you're doing planning to do differently in 2016, whether you're testing something out or just, you know, taking some learnings from this past year and applying them. Um, well, the first thing I'm going to do is I want to dive a little bit deeper into the video stuff. A lot of my video stuff is like talking head videos like me in front of a camera. It's pretty basic. Right. I still do, I'll still do that because I like, I like it's easy, it's fun. But like I'm going to start trying to divide, dive into more of the editing side. I got a couple videos lined up I'm going to do on the professional side here in the next few weeks. I got a video guy set up. Um, one of them is going to be kind of a funny one. It's going to be, uh, me, it's going to be like direct, the direct TV one where it's like, hey, I'm Peyton Manning with direct TV and he's like, hey, this is a high pitch. So it's going to be like, hi, I'm Wade, just your title. Then I want to cut it and have like, I'm going to put on like a different outfit and come in and be like, hi, I'm Dakeles and Donuts Wade, the steward title and I have a nesting. That's great. Yeah. So I'm going to have like a little like minute and a half or a minute long video of that. And I'm going to do another green screen, uh, website introduction videos. I'm big on website introduction videos because I think that when someone finally lands on your website and they don't know who you are, but they got to you, got to use some way that have an professional video of them meeting you, seeing you, hearing you, listening to you and having you kind of explain how you help. Why they're there, right? Here's why you're on my website. I help agents with marketing, blah, blah, blah and then kind of pushing them through your website. Hey, if you click on the blog tab, you're going to find this and you click on this button. You know, if you're looking to grow your business, that's an appointment fill out the form below. You know, but I think a website introduction video is pretty powerful. And so those are pretty inexpensive to put together. So I'm going to put together a new one of those as well, but yeah, I think diving further into the video side because I think that's like, you know, not only the present, but the future of kind of how marketing can really, really differentiate you in the field. Yeah. Usually obviously you're building that personal relationship without particularly being there. Yeah. It's funny when you get those phone calls from people that call you and they find you off YouTube or something and they act like they know you already. So like, hey, wait, it's Mark over at like, hey, who's like, I haven't followed you online for a while. Like, okay. All right. Like, are you going to? Yeah. Yeah. You know, because my point is by the time they get to you, they've watched you and heard you and about enough that they kind of feel like they know you. So it helps a lot. It helps. Well, it just speaks to the power of video and you know, it's challenging for me to see a lot of people, agents and all the likes reluctant to use video because they don't like the way they look on camera or whatever or they got their own collection of just excuses and they are excuses, by the way, because you have a phone in your hand or right at your email, less than six inches away from you right now, you've got a video right there on your phone. So, you know, if you want to hear, so let's do this. Let's give out your web property so people can go take a look at, you know, who you are, what you do. The website is dctitleguy.com or dctitleguy.com and then what else you want to give out? My YouTube channel is just way, it's youtube.com, Backslash, Wade, Vanderbolen, all one word, so my last name is V-A-N-D-E-R-M-O-L-E-N. Let's all together. So I got about 100 videos on there. They're all divided up into playlists like technology videos for realtors, real estate marketing videos, you know, title news, you know, Trid stuff. I got SEO content, WordPress videos stuff on there. This all types of stuff that I think is helpful to the people that I market to and want to gain business from, but yeah, go check it out. You can follow me on Twitter at dctitleguy. Yeah, I definitely recommend it. If you're looking for ideas on content, right, what to share, you know, Wade's a great, great guy to follow for that lots of great, consistent content. And as a matter of fact, as you know, all your links are available on your blog as well, which is the best practice at dctitleguy.com. So, hey, I really appreciate you making time. I know you got more stuff to get on too. So thanks for carving out some time and we will talk to you soon. Cool, man. I really, I really appreciate you having me. Thanks. All right. We'll talk to you later, Wade. Thanks. All right. Bye. 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