Ep #11: Elizabeth Rose: Millennial Marketing and REALTOR Classes

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hi, Jeff Zimfer, your host of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thanks for tuning in once again. And I'm so excited to bring my special guest Elizabeth Rose to the podcast this week. Elizabeth has done an amazing job with over 18 years actually in the Mortgage Business. She's a past speaker, article contributor coach for organizations I'm sure you're familiar with people like Mortgage Marketing Guide, loan toolbox, Scotsman's Guide. She is a certified continuing ed teacher for the Texas Real Estate Commission and she teaches continuing ed classes to real estate agents, financial planners and more. And she's also really doing some great things when it comes to building her platform using social media, blogging, video marking and so forth. So I wanted to just invite Elizabeth to kind of share the journey she's been on for the last 18 years and how she's really gotten to this place finally where her platform is paying off in a big way in that her business is, you know, really largely referral based and she doesn't compete so much on price anymore and has business coming to her on a pretty consistent basis from the different activities that I mentioned she's involved with. So a great opportunity to listen to somebody who's been out there doing it for 18 years knows what she's talking about. So I think you'll enjoy today's podcast with my very special guest Elizabeth Rose. So let's get into it. Elizabeth Rose, are you there? I'm here, Jeff. How are you today? You know, my saying is I'm living the dream because if I say it long enough, I'm going to believe it. Hey, I'm right there with you. Well, thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be here today. Yeah. So obviously you and I talked the other day before recording the session today and I think we've got a lot of great nuggets to share with our fellow loan officers here today and I definitely want to get right into that, especially in the areas of like adjusting to the millennial home buyer, how you're leveraging social media blogging and other things like that to really become, you know, what I call kind of a modern marketing loan officer if you will. We're going to dive into some good stuff, talk about Yelp online reviews and of course a lot about capturing realtors. But before we do, you know, for those that may not be familiar with who you are, you've been around for, you know, what would probably feel like forever in this industry, right? 18 years essentially as an originator and a variety of capacities. You've done a lot of speaking and writing and teaching as well as, of course, you know, being a productive and profitable loan officer. But if you could give us the quick bio on Elizabeth Rose, who are you? How'd you get into it and, you know, the current update? Okay. Well, in some way, that do feel a little bit like a dinosaur from the standpoint of my tenure. But I'm still mentally in my mind, I'm somewhere in my 30s, so I refuse to get old. But I did get started originally in banking and finance right out of college in the early 80s. So that, that dates me right there and, and then made the move over into the mortgage world in 96 and it was for me somewhat of a perfect marriage because of my banking background, which anybody who's ever worked in banking probably can attest to the fact that somehow it just gets in your blood and you don't know how to get it out. And back then, banking didn't pay very much. In fact, if you saw what my annual salary was, it's probably equivalent to a typical L.O.'s monthly income. So anyway, I bridged that gap or that transition into the mortgage world because I had this affinity for real estate, but I didn't want to work around the clock as an agent. So it just seemed like a perfect fit and I jumped right in and like most loan officers even today, my training was, here's a rate sheet, go sell. And you know, I, while I had already had a couple of mortgages under my belt, you know, my own residences, I still didn't really, I didn't understand the difference between an FHA and a conventional and I didn't understand anything about interest rates and you could, you know, get a higher rate and maybe get a, well, back then you probably didn't get a credit. The L.O. kept most of it, but I didn't understand any of those nuances. So I started just like everybody else, but it was unlike a lot of people, a very thought out conscious decision to get into, to this world. You didn't just stumble into it, like a lot of folks. Exactly. I actually chose this and, you know, I've had moments in my career where I've just kind of stopped doing my track and thought, what in the world were you thinking? Right, right, exactly. Wow, very cool, thank you. So bring us kind of to like current day in terms of, you know, where you're at with your business in terms of like, you know, just maybe average units monthly or annually and then where does most of your business come from? Is it referral past clients, real estate agents, what's that look like? Well, most of my business does come from realtors and I've been trying over the last number of years to shift that somewhat. I mean, I have a great database and I do get a lot of referrals from clients and of course past clients coming back, but still the bulk of my businesses from real estate agents. And I've been trying to shift that balance where it's more heavily weighted in my own sphere and my own collection or gathering of leads and referrals and not be so dependent on realtors. I would rather them be dependent on me, so I've been really focused on shifting that balance. So what do you mean when you say you'd rather the realtors be dependent upon you than the opposite of that? Well, first of all, I've never been really, I've never been the type of L.O. that walks around with my hand out saying, hey, what have you got for me today? But at the same time, my business has been referred to me by real estate agents and built some really great relationships. I just don't like being dependent on them. So you don't want to be overly dependent upon one channel for your business? Correct. Because for whatever reason it goes away, it falls off, they retire, then you've got to replace that. Absolutely. And then the other part of it too is, it has something to do with maybe the way realtors look at mortgage people in general, and so I've wanted to sort of change that stereotype for that perception in their mind and help them see, this is actually a partnership. This isn't you doing me a favor because you gave me a lead and now I owe you my life. So that's a great topic right there, I want to unpack that a little bit. How do you, how have you been changing that perception and what I call essentially changing the game, flipping the funnel? Well, I think a lot of it comes with the way you handle that lead or that referral as soon as you get it and it's just truly taking control and then the conversation back to the agent of, okay, I've spoken with this person, here's some things that I've instructed them, you know, we need to do, and just taking charge and showing them that this business isn't just fill out the application and that's all we do, that there's a lot of knowledge and expertise that goes into, certainly these days, into almost every transaction, there's no slam dunks anymore. So you're really, what you've got to do is demonstrate your value throughout that transaction? Absolutely, and I think if you have to do it from the very beginning of the transaction when you get that referral and then you have to consistently do it throughout and the other thing too that I think makes a huge difference in that is I've said for a long time, I would much rather make out the own phone calls than from a phone to ring, meaning I want to stay one step ahead of the agent, so I want to be proactive, I want to be calling them before they even think of the questions that they want to ask me next. Right, right, exactly, that's very good point, so being proactive and so you're obviously demonstrating, and everybody talks about, you know, what do you have to compete on with real estate agents, great rates, great service, you know, and everybody says, well, you know, great service is expected, right, it doesn't take, it's the minimum bar for entry if you will. Absolutely. But even with that said, though, it's wonderful to throw those platitudes around, everybody can have great service, but how many people actually do it? So what you're pointing out there is, you know, being proactive in making those calls to give them a loan file updates, status, whatever the case is, right, very proactively long before they're ever thinking about it, and you know this very well, is they're always thinking about what's going on with that loan. Absolutely, and I set this stage in the very beginning with both the listing agent and the buyer's agent, and I'll let them know they're going to hear from me every Tuesday with a status update, but if there's something that happens in between those Tuesdays, I'm going to be picking up the phone and calling them and letting them know. And so that way, it sets an expectation with them, and they know when they're going to hear from me, they know the milestones, so to speak. And then the other thing, too, is I always tell them, especially if it's a new relationship and they don't know me yet, but I'll tell them, I'm going to communicate with you quickly, whether it's good news or bad news, I'm going to tell it to you fast. So if something's going south, I'm not going to sit on it for a week, twiddling my thumbs, trying to figure out how in the world I'm going to save the deal for fixing problem, I'm going to tell you. So if there is bad news, deliver it quickly. Absolutely. And I think they appreciate that. Oh, they do. They're absolutely. You don't want to land mine after 11th hour. You mentioned something there about setting expectations. So do you have kind of an official onboarding process? Is that documented in an email in a, in a, some type of a handout? What does that look like? Like, take me through that. How do you really demonstrate that you are going to, you know, rock this realtor's world with their client referral? Well, I do a couple of things. I have the initial phone call setting the stage. And if they don't know me, if we don't have a relationship, I'm introducing myself. And I do this both with the buyer agent and the listing agent. Okay, great. And over the phone, I'll let them know when they're going to hear from me. And then even if I spoke to them in person and not left, you know, I didn't have to leave a voice message, I then follow it up with an email. And so I have a series of email templates that I created. And so I just pushed that out and I edited it to be a little bit more customized to that particular client and that situation. But I push that out to them. And then, you know, it's just, you just have to prove it. You just have to do what you say you're going to do walk the talk. Yeah. Um, so what do you find that that does when you're setting those expectations? I mean, I'm, I'm thinking, obviously, there's a few things that it does right off the bat in terms of the perception with the realtor, but it also does some things for you personally as a loan officer. But what do you find that that does when you're, you, I love that you said, taking control of the transaction, because you are, right? And a lot of love, yeah. So I'll just stop talking and let you answer the question. Well, I think, I think first we need to remember that without us, the transaction's not going to happen because they need the money and we're bringing the money. So we are in a position of, we should be taking control. We have a substantial amount of power and we just need to own it. And I don't, I don't mean be, um, be assertive in such a way that it's, a turn off, yeah, turn off and it's, it's distasteful, but, you know, be respectful, but still remember, you know, kind of own your power and, and, and be proud of what you do and feel confident in what you're doing and, and what you're bringing to the table. Right. That's, and then, um, and, and that's for what it does for me. Honestly, it has totally changed my life. It's changed my world. Um, I don't, I don't find myself having to deal with fires. I, my stress level is, uh, and maybe part of this is, is being in the business for as long as I've been and being of a certain age where you start realizing, hey, nobody's life is at stake here and the building's not burning down. But even still, you know, even though I, I am probably a lot calmer now than I was when I was 20 or in my 30s, uh, it really does bring a lot more peace to my day and to every transaction. Right. Well, in part of that, I think is because you, um, have a certain path, you know, it's, it's, I remember hearing this metaphor once, um, about, you know, similar to being a pilot when you're going through purchasing a home, the transaction. And so you're the captain and then your passengers are actually the home buyer and, uh, the realtor and one word argue, hey, maybe they're the co-pilot. And the, and the answer is no, they're not, um, because you're the one that's in control of the transaction now. Um, and when it comes to the financing, because hey, they've got the purchase contract. They've signed all that, you know, working out whatever the last minute contingencies there are on that. But now you're the person responsible for getting that sucker to close and you kind of set it up when you're taking control. Like you talk about, you know, you kind of set that metaphor of like, look, I'm the pilot. And I love the fact that this, this just trainer actually even said he goes, we may run into some turbulence along the way, but just know that, you know, uh, I am the pilot. I'll get us safely to our destination, uh, you know, so setting up that whole framework. And so that, you know, kind of to your point is that gives you this, this confident certainty, not only showing up with how you would talk to and engage with realtors, but like you just said, um, certainty that you've got a process that you're going to follow. So any of those turbulence issues are going to be, you know, minimized and smooth out because you actually have a process. You're not winging it. Absolutely. And I love that you bring up that analogy because I read that many, many years ago and I thought it was so fitting because we all know that, you know, it's not always smooth sailing. And there is turbulence. And if you just set the stage in the beginning of, hey, you know what, I'm asking you for all this documentation, but once we get into what's my processor gets that or once we get into writing, we might need some more things and don't be alarmed. It's not unusual. Right. Right. Or when we get a conditional approval, that's not a bad thing. That's normal. You don't get a final approval, typically on the first half. Yeah. And so that's all about setting the expectations. So great stuff there. And I've seen people actually kind of type up, you know, a one page document, if you'll like a PDF that sets those expectations about, you know, what you just laid out, things that are required, but also, you know, as we go through this process, you know, these things may happen or whatever. Just so, hey, there's no surprises. I told you this up front. Right. And, but you know, what is still amazing, you can tell people things and put it in writing and somehow they didn't know that. Oh, yeah. But at least then you can come back and say, well, it was in such and such document. It was in this email. And you can politely do that and sort of calm people down without being too ugly about it. Exactly. Oh, that's such a great point. Because here's the thing, if you don't have a process and it's not the expectations aren't set up for the for the, you know, the good and then the potential turbulence, if that's not set up in advance, then you do have a more stressful situation because you didn't forewarn them. And you can't come back and as you just pointed out, elegantly say, I understand this is a, you know, frustrating, Mr. and Mrs. Byer, or Realtor, but however, if you remember back to our initial conversation, I did say that, right? These are the potential things that could happen during. So it just makes it easier for you to actually deal with that. Absolutely. And it also allows me in that phone call or that conversation when they're falling apart with frustration and maybe even outright anger, rage and anger, to be able to just sit there calmly and go, OK, I hear you, I understand. I know you're frustrated. Yeah. We talked about this. Right. So in that way, you don't, you don't, your blood pressure is not through the roof because you know, you know, you did what you needed to do and they knew. And so you just, it's a lot easier to rain them back in. Absolutely. So the key point here is offset expectations clearly, both the good and the potential bad. I have it in writing, you know, send that talk because you can refer back to that and to kind of smooth out that process. So good stuff. Let's, let's transition a little bit. You are one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on the podcast is because even though you quote, unquote, age yourself, right? You're, you're still a modern mortgage originator because you're doing a lot of relevant stuff in today's world, such as blogging and social media. You know, you've done speaking before and some training through like mortgage marketing guide and people like that. And so I wanted to briefly talk about something you and I touched on when we originally connected, which was adjusting to the millennial home buyer, knowing that millennials are growing segment of the first, first time home buyer population. But so if anybody wants to check out your blog, it's Elizabeth Rose blogs.com. And I want to just kind of, you know, revisit that chat you and I had the other day, which is, you know, obviously you made a choice to get started with blogging. It's been a long road for you there as well. Lots of learnings and stuff. But you were talking to me about the other day about how you're finally starting to see payoff from, you know, the blogging and the content sharing that you're doing out there. What, I guess originally, why did you recognize that you needed to have a better presence online and share relevant content? Well, that's a good question. And honestly, I'm not sure that I recognized it initially. I think I jumped in because it seemed fun. So speak, working at mortgage market guide, I had the opportunity to be involved in a lot of the content creation. And I was very diled into the daily market update and talking about the mortgage bond market and how it affected interest rates and pricing and was actually doing a lot of training throughout the US on that. And I loved talking about it. And so about that same time, Facebook, you know, what was the one before Facebook? Oh, I can't remember. It was one before Facebook. Yeah, there was a shoot. I can't think of the name of it now, but my space. Oh, yeah. Yes. So, you know, my space had been around. But then Facebook came out and Facebook was starting to take a foothold and people were actually getting involved on it. And I got in, got in there. And, but it was a play toy. It was a, right. It's a sandbox. You're basically experimenting. Exactly. And, but then it started evolving. And as it did, I was throwing more and more interested. And quite frankly, the mortgage industry was going through, you know, the early, early days of the meltdown. And, you know, mortgages were few and far between people weren't doing anything. And I was actually exploring, trying to figure out, what do I do next? What's the next generation of me? And I was thinking, you know, I was really wanting to build on my, my training background and do more speaking and training, what I learned in the process was that companies just were not going to spend money on that. So, I guess it was sort of like my fix was to just start writing. And so I started writing. And as I told you in our earlier conversation, one day I kind of woke up and realized that nobody was reading what I was writing. It was all about me. I was writing about what I wanted to write about. And what I wanted to talk about and what, you know, got my juices flowing. Nobody else was interested in that. And so then I, you know, took a couple of steps back, trying to figure out, well, I want to have an audience. I want to get the message out, but what is the message and who is the audience? So then I then I actually started flying tuning it. And my hope was, because I was following a lot of social media people, you know, and of course everybody was brand new at it. But I was following these new experts and trying to watch what they were doing and see how they were building their tribes and so forth. And I was like, I want to do that. I want to do that. Because even then I was of the mindset of, I want to get to the consumer before the agent does. And I realized, you know, okay, my problem is I don't have a shiny object. They have a house and a set of keys to that house. It's their shiny object. I can't compete with that. So what do I do? How do I get in front of them and bring value in the early stages? And as it's evolved, you know, I've been very fortunate that as we were going through this time period, I have two millennial children. And so I was paying attention to what they were doing and the questions they were asking and and they bought both of them bought their first home at the age of 21. Wow, really? Yeah. Yeah, they were drinking the Kool-Aid. They knew where to get alone from, right? Yeah, they did. They did. And so, you know, they were good little models for me, so to speak. You know, I can watch what they were doing, where their interests were, how they looked at things that were so differently than the way I looked at them in my 20s. And so, you know, I realized, okay, they're information seekers, they're knowledge seekers, even in areas that are not their world. You know, so they're wanting to get a mortgage and they're diving in with both feet, trying to understand everything. And so, I thought, okay, that's what I need to do. That's how I need to communicate, and that's the information I need to communicate. I need to break it down. Right. Yeah. I mean, one, especially at 21, right? They're very young, so they're still figuring out their way. Even for the older millennials, it's the first time they're doing this and they may have some friends and family that have done it, but you're to your point about their information seekers. So, and this is, this is their world, right? The place that they go online, they're in that space of, hey, I'm going to buy a home sometime in the next could be six months, a year, whatever. But do you find that they do their research, like, for, like, long and advanced, and they consume a lot of info? I do. And one of the things that I've noticed, and I've really noticed it in the last six or nine months, is people calling me and saying, I want to buy a home next year. And I, I need to find out what I need to do now. And what I need to do to get ready. And, and it's a totally different conversation than what we're accustomed to, because, you know, you go back 10 years and people were picking up the phone saying, hey, I wrote a contract. Just put it off. And then they find out their credit score is, you know, 450. Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Uh, yeah. So in that, you know, if they're like a year out, right? That says a lot of things. One, the thing that jumps out for me right away is as mortgage loan officers, most of us aren't prepared to nurture the relationship for that long. And we don't have the means to do that in most cases. Most loan officers, and you can comment on this, are weak in the area of, of lead nurture database marketing, uh, dripping content over, over the time. And that's why, right? As I said earlier, your blog and what you've done for content marketing there, I think, right, really resonates with that millennial market. Yeah, I, I will say that I think mortgage originators do a far better job than most real estate agents in their, um, database management, you know, having email campaigns or dripping on people and what have you. I do think that we are wired a little bit differently than they are and we do a better job there. But I don't know that many of us, and I'm still not where I want to be in this area, but I don't think that most of us really have something in place to keep us tied to somebody for 12 months. That's a long time. Yeah. So, you know, you've got it, you, if you find that you start getting those type of phone calls and have those kind of conversations, then you need to get real busy and figure out what you're going to do to remember to stay in front of that person and remember to be with them that 12 months until they're ready to make a decision because you do want them to come back to you. You don't want to invest time and do it over and over and over again to just lose people to someone else. Sure. All right. So, let's talk about how you manage your social media, your blogging and things like that for content sharing. You share a couple of tools with me that you, you use to help automate that and get more done in less time, if you will. So, how do you, how do you essentially automate? I don't know if that's the word for you, but go ahead. Yeah. I think that probably is, that's the word I would use. Okay. And it does make it sound a little bit sterile, but I use, I used to use exclusively Hootsuite and whether, which is a great tool, absolutely great tool. You know, you can, you can schedule stuff, you know, a year out if you want to. And so I was using that across all my platforms and then I stumbled across a platform called Meet Edgar. I think it was last summer. And it really intrigued me because it talked about how you could build a library. And then Edgar would just go grab stuff out of your library. And I thought, man, that is so great because I do have a lot of evergreen content. Now, granted also have stuff that, you know, has a 30 day window or shelf life. And then some stuff, it's, it's only good for today. Right. But so I start, I looked into that and, you know, the disadvantage of Meet Edgar is that does not cover all the various platforms, but it does cover the three primary ones, which is Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So what I did is, in Meet Edgar, what's really cool is you basically start with a blank template of a calendar, just the weekday, so Sunday through Saturday. And you can go on there and you can make a calendar appointment, so to speak, calendar like you do in your outlook and say, on Monday at 8 o'clock, I'm going to send to these three platforms, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, something from my file cabinet, if you will. It's a blog post. And then at noon, I'm going to send something promotional. And at 6 o'clock, I'm going to send something that's, you know, real estate oriented. And then you go build those file cabinets and you can build, you know, you can label on whatever you want to and put whatever content you want in. But as you add content, it stays in there. And so then when that, that slot comes up on the calendar, Edgar reaches into the file cabinet and grabs the next piece and pushes it out. So it really does save a lot of time with having to schedule and reschedule and go find stuff. And even if it's stuff you've used before in the past, even if it's your own material, you still have to redo it. So it saves a lot of time with that. Now I still have to use Hootsuite because I'm on Google Plus and so I'm pushing out to that. You're the one. I'm the one. You're the one left on Google Plus. You know, it's like I haven't left. But I can't say that I've done anything with it. But you know, here's the cool thing about it is that it really does help stuff float to the top and that organic searches on Google. Yeah. No, I'm kind of joking. I don't see any interaction on Google Plus. Well, and I think that's really the point, right? It's so, so you know, go where your audience is, right? And so unfortunately, Google, Google Plus has its challenges. And in terms of engagement on Google Plus, it doesn't really compare to the other. Right. It certainly doesn't. Yeah. You know what? You just inspired me. I made notes. I'm going to actually do a full-blown blog post on the various social automation tools and the differences. So like Hootsuite, Mead Edgar, there's another one called Coast Schedule. There's Buffer. There's a ton of them. But I'm just going to focus on kind of the core ones because people need to know and understand that. And then of course, there's the full automation version of that where people are posting content on your behalf. So that's a whole other area that people need to consider. So let me ask you this then. What's been happening for you lately? Because you've been putting content out for quite a while. People looking at this whole blogging thing and it's like, you know, the excuses you hear I don't have time. I don't know what to write. You've clearly dealt with the time issue by being able to automate some of this and blocking out time. So then it posts for you later. But let's just talk about the payoff here just for the sake of time. What have you seen bubbling up for you finally, you know, with some consistent posting now? Well, I've seen a lot of things happen. In the last year and a half or maybe even two years, I've had a lot of my content, primarily my blog posts. I've had other parties out there share my stuff repeatedly. And most of them are publications of their own. So they're sharing my content. I'd never will forget like the first time I got like a little Twitter notification that this organization had shared my content. And I I was literally blown away. It was like I've won the lottery. I was like, oh my god, it finally happened. Something happened. People like me. Yeah, they like me. And since then, you know, I have several groups that regularly share my content. And granted, it's going all over the place. I mean, I've got a group from Minnesota that shares my stuff. I've got a group out of Florida that shares my stuff. And I don't do mortgages in those states. But that's okay. You know, it's really just about getting the word out. And you know, I guess I want to get it out here locally. And I want business here locally. But still at the end of the day, if you really do love what you do and you really do want to share your information, then you want to share it with everybody. Well, and it goes back to our point earlier though about millennials, for example. And so how do people buy today, right? Where do they go first? They look online. And so they're going to type in very specific search terms. Where are you in Texas? What part of Texas? I'm in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Yeah. So people are typing in things like, you know, mortgages in Dallas Fort Worth, perhaps, or other mortgage related terms. And you know, the whole goal there is right for you to get found. Number one, but number two, if you're getting referred from agents, financial planners, whatever, those people are still going to go online and check you out. So the fact that you've got this history now of content that you've been publishing immediately positions you as an authority and as someone who's professional and, right, you begin to build that trust and credibility factor, which is established mostly today. You know, if you don't already know the person online initially. Absolutely. Yeah. And the study show that, and I hate to like grab this down to studies, but millennials millennials are doing a tremendous amount of research online. And there has been several studies that show that they place more value and more trust in a third party testimonial or review that's online than they do with anything marketing related that you might do. Sure. Well, because the perception is there. Yeah. It's more authentic. It's from someone other than you. Right. Of course, you're going to be your biggest fan. Absolutely. And they'll go looking for you. They'll go looking to find out not only do you have a website? Are you online? What kind of material do you have? But what is everybody else saying about you? And you know what? If you're the greatest L.O. in America and nobody saying anything about you, then nobody knows you're the greatest L.O. in America. Yeah. Exactly. So you've found some benefits then with, you know, online reviews, social testimonials, that kind of stuff like Yelp. Absolutely. And I was, you know, tickled when that started coming to path two. I started working on that last, well, probably about two years ago and initially started, or maybe longer than that, started on Google Plus. And then I changed organizations and my Google Plus page got shut down all those reviews and I was heartbroken. So I had to start all over again and learned to do it a little differently to make sure that it stays with me forever. And so been building them again for the past two years. And this year, I'm starting to see payoff. I've already received, and this doesn't sound like a lot, but when it starts, it starts. And you know, you're just happy that it started. I've already gotten, I think, six or seven inbound inquiries from Yelp, Zillow, and Homes.com. Now, I have a lot of reviews on, I have a lot of reviews on Facebook. I have them on Google Plus, but it's been Zillow Homes and Yelp that I've gotten the people. You have a presence on Zillow? Not much of one, but I do. Oh, that's great. That's all. And I need to spend some time there. I just have it. Yeah. Well, exactly. You'll get there. Hey, but that's great. It shows that obviously, there's the payoff there. Okay. And we can do obviously, I mean, we could spend an entire hour talking about those various channels themselves. But for the sake of time, I do want to make sure we cover one more topic because I think you're doing some really cool stuff in the area of realtors. And as you know, capturing realtors is a constant point of frustration for a lot of loan officers. So, you and I talked the other day, one of the channels or things or tools you use to be able to get yourself in front of agents and to convert some of them to referral partners is teaching classes. So I want to make just get your quick opinion on what's the value and when I say classes, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean CE. You and I talked a little bit about that. CE may not be the way to go for a variety of reasons. But for you, what's been the benefit, you know, and that you've gotten out of teaching classes in terms of you being more successful with agents? Well, it's been tremendous. And I've done both LCE classes as well as just lunch and learns. And I think that anytime you can get in front of an agent and you're not asking them for their business, you're not telling them you want to earn their business, you're not talking anything about that. And all you're doing is sharing information and you're teaching them something. You're giving them something of value and you have an hour or two hours in front of them face time. And they are seated right there in that little chair and they're not going anywhere. And they are glued to everything that you're doing and saying. It's just a perfect, perfect opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge, your skills, your willingness to help your personality. You know, it's a lot easier for your personality to come through when you're with somebody for an hour or two hours and they actually have a chance to get to know you and to decide if they like you. And we all know that people do business with people they like. We tend to run away from people we can't stand. If somebody's a jerk, you're not going to do business with them. But this gives you an opportunity to do that. Whereas picking up the phone and calling them and saying, hey, can we have coffee or kind of take you to lunch or can I come meet you in your office? First of all, they're probably not going to take that phone call. And if you leave a voice message, they're going to delete it. It's just too hard to get those kind of appointments. But when they're coming to hear something about a topic, now you have them as an audience for an extended period of time. And it's just it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, I think that's a great summary of all the different benefits of that. Particularly what I like that you said is, you know, when you have that attention span for an hour or whatever the case is, you can do so many different things that you can't do in the usual situation, which is, you know, when loan office is trying to do the traditional stuff, you talked about call calling, whatever, hey, give me a chance or hey, I got great rates, you know. I see there's no real other reaction a realtor can have other than to say the same BS excuses they usually give, which is I already have a lender, all my buyers are cash. They're just trying to get rid of you because they're either a busy in the moment, b, right? You're coming at them the way every other loan officer has ever come at them. So they're immediately putting their walls up and just saying, dude, you got nothing for me. It's the same old story I heard before. So the only way to break that pattern is to flip the funnel, change the game, right? And the way you do that, like you just said is, hey, man, have an hour or two in front of them, delivering some extreme value, then they're going to be that much more receptive to that, you know, invite to work together. Absolutely. And it gives you the perfect layup to be able to call them the next day and ask for their feedback, possibly set an appointment to meet with them to get to know them more, but it gives you a great excuse to call. And they're going to be respectful to the phone call because you just shared all this information with them. Yeah. And you've got actually, it's a warm call now, right? It's not a call call. Absolutely. There's a bit of rapport there. So before we close out that topic too, in terms of topics that you found resonated with the agents, any specific ones that jump out for you? You know what? It's funny. I have stayed away from, I don't talk about mortgage products because quite honestly, do they really care about what you can do with the FHA or VA? They may care about, you know, one time close, but those are still kind of hard to find. I've talked a lot about the market, the housing market and the mortgage market and where it's headed, doing some sharing with them, how it really works and how you can take today's data and sort of look down the road a little bit to see where we're headed. So you can maybe prevent some of those, I don't know, difficult, unexpected, you know, rates changing, skies falling, the market fell apart. So I've talked a lot about that and then I've done a lot of stuff, you know, whether you're blogging, tweeting, posting on Facebook or speaking to realtors, you've got to talk about what they're interested in. You've got to step into their world and stop focusing on our world. And I think as a mortgage originator, sometimes we get so wrapped up in our world, we forget that nobody else is. And so, you know, what I have found is that in doing these lunch and learns and so forth is, you know, go talk about it. If you're strong with something in social media, go talk about that. If you have, you know, a great databaseing platform and you've been able to build email campaigns and get lots of referrals, go talk about that. Go talk about something that actually they can plug into their business and maybe make a difference because that's when you're going to get their interest and their engagement. Yeah. So you've just got to take whatever you have, you know, that's your strong suit and go talk about it. Absolutely. And if you're wondering, you know, hey, I don't have a strong suit like that, well, you know, get the proper training education, spend the time to develop that strong suit because it's going to pay dividends. Absolutely. And you know, I think there's a lot of resources out there too that are available to us. And it's just a matter of, you know, taking some time and diving in and learning it. And the other thing too, that I would encourage people to do. And I think it's possibly a little bit different than most people of my generation would do in this field. I think people that are sort of in my age group, you know, the older group of mortgage originators, I think we've probably for the most part have a tendency to do things the way we've always done things and expect to get the same results. And we only look at maybe our peer group or maybe some other mortgage people around us, you know, in that outer circle to get ideas. And I say, look other places, look to see what other other industries are doing and how they're marketing, how they're approaching their client, how they're talking to their client. You can get so much so much from that, you know, look at social media people and how they're interacting and engaging and how they're communicating. There's there's tons of stuff out there. And I think you just have to get outside your box, so to speak, you know, think a little bit differently and join the new digital world. Absolutely. Get engaged to both online and offline. That's the real key message here and share relevant content that, you know, people are interested in more so than what you're interested in. And that content, the relevancy changes based on the audience. For instance, if it's a millennial, yeah, first time home buyer, they're going to want to know about mortgage programs and what they, it's a matter of fact, you know, it's funny. I just talked to my brother the other day and he's spot, I don't know, one or two homes in his life. Yeah, well, let me just put it this way. He was unaware, as you know, like most people are, what the time frame is on coming back into the market after a bankruptcy foreclosure short sale, whatever, completely unaware of it, right? Was thought it was the traditional, hey, you got to wait the seven years, 20% down, all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, no, it's not the situation at all, right? So that's just, you know, the point about educating and millennials, they're going to want to know that kind of info, realtors. Yes, that is somewhat relevant to them. But what to your point, Elizabeth is, you know, step into their world. What are they struggling with? What are the issues and challenges that you can help them overcome? Usually it's in the areas of business related issues. Absolutely, you know, and I think you can, you know, if you're a good marketing person, maybe you can help them come up with some different ways to market their properties. Now, it depends on what market you're in. Right now, in Dallas, Fort Worth, nobody needs help marketing properties, because they don't last 24 hours. But, you know, if you're in a market that's maybe more normal, help them with, you know, how they market their properties, help them with their open houses. And I'm not talking about just showing up to hang out with them, but help them, you know, with the marketing materials are getting a word out or, or thinking of other ways they can do an open house and be different from everybody else. Right. And just the fact that you're trying to help, I remember my real-to-friend Walter Sanford years ago told me, just the fact that you're trying to help, even if they don't use the ideas, the fact that you tried to help sets you apart from probably 80-90% of the other loan officers. Absolutely. Cool. Well, this has been awesome. I've learned a lot. How do, where do you want to direct people to find out more about you? Check out your blog, that kind of stuff. Well, they're more and welcome to go to my blog. It's Elizabeth Rose blogs and it's with the S on the end. So, ElizabethRoseBlogs.com, they can find me on Twitter, one, and that's the numeral one, one Elizabeth Rose, and on Facebook. So, I'm everywhere. I was, somebody asked me recently about giving my phone number out, and if I was okay with giving my phone number to someone, and I was like, well, yeah, and it's all over the internet, so you're not too hard to find. You're not too hard to find. You're better be okay with it. Yeah, and speaking of that, great job on Twitter. You've got over 3,000 followers, over 1,100 likes, almost 1,000 people following you, 13,000 tweets. So, you are rocking it on the social media world, congrats. Well, I will tell you, thank you. I will tell you that I, of all of them, Twitter is my favorite. And I think it's the one that intimidates people the most, but I love it. What real quick, what do you love most about it real quick? Bite size. I definitely have, I feel like I have more control over my new speed, because I choose who I follow, and like you just mentioned, I only follow like not even 1,000 people, but I'm very selective with who I follow. So, what I'm doing is I'm filtering what I see. And then, I don't know, it's quick and easy. It's like sending a text message. And I don't think there's near the drama on there, but there is on Facebook. But once again, I think that probably has to do with, you have 140 characters, and then being very selective with who you follow. Yeah, and of course you can share images, which then essentially, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, you're doing some good stuff sharing infographics and all that. And I will just a circle back to something that you said about the, the L.O. out there who maybe thinking, yeah, I know I probably need to do all that stuff, but I have no idea what to say. I think in the mortgage world, it's a different day every day. And there's so much, I mean, if you just pay attention to what's going on in your day, you'll find things that you can say. And Twitter is also a great place to curate content. Yes, good point. So, great, great. So, clarify what you mean when you say curate content. You can just, you can scroll through your newsfeed real quickly. And once again, it does depend on who you follow, but you can find great articles with regards to real estate, mortgage, anything about the financial market, anything that's newsworthy. Some of it is evergreen and some of it is like right now happening. So, if nothing else, start by just taking somebody else's stuff and retweeting it. At least it gives you exposure. Exactly. So, identify in terms of if you're going to curate content, who are those sources that you could curate and easily repurpose their content in the various categories. Mortgage-related information, for realtors, that's relevant there as well because, as you said, Elizabeth Twitter is kind of a newsfeed, if you will. So, more newsy type information there. But also, you can share relevant kind of ancillary information. And as far as the general mortgage market goes as well. The other thing you can do too, we're going longer than I plan, but the other thing you can do is you can have two different Twitter feeds. I don't your thought on this is, but you can have one that's completely consumer focused and then one that's completely real estate agent focused. Absolutely. You can do that on Facebook as well. So, you can tone your message to whatever your audience is and you can split your audiences up. Yeah, because obviously there would be some kind of different messaging there. But that's a class for another day. So, we get some people asking about that. We'll do that again. I don't feel... All right, well, I know you're busy. You've got things to do. People to see loans to close and blogs to write and all that stuff. So, once again, for those who want to check out your blog and what you're doing there, it's ElizabethRoseBlogs.com with an S on there. And I just can't thank you enough for taking time and sharing some great ideas and value with our audience. I appreciate it. Well, thank you. I really appreciate you reaching out and inviting me to participate. This has been fun. It's our pleasure and I know we'll stay in touch. And once again, this is Jeff Zimfer, your host at Mortgage Marketing Radio brought to you by Mortgage Marketing Institute. If you liked today's episode or any of the others, please leave a comment, give us a rating on iTunes, subscribe, and as always, I appreciate you and looking for to bring in you more truth in Mortgage Marketing. Thanks. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up? Real quick. You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. 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