Ep. 125: How To Cross-Sell Listing Agents and Grow Your Referrals

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 Coghill is a must-read. This 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, or Number One Source for Truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey, everybody. It's Jeff Zimper. Welcome to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thank you for tuning in. So welcome. Welcome. Welcome to June. It is officially the halfway point of 2019. Question I have for you, like I have for most loan officers that I work with, and that is where are you? Are you on track? Are you where you had planned to be expected to be? Are you ahead? Are you behind? Are you right where you should be? Have you checked it and looked? Now's the time to evaluate. Now's the time to see, hey, we're flying this plane. We've got a destination, right? If I'm a pilot and I'm flying from LA to New York, I got to check in along the way. I got to look at my instruments, my flight plan, am I on track to reach that destination six months from now? This would be a good point to check in and look at your numbers. Look at your closed year-to-date fundings. Look at your average conversion ratios on loan apps to actual funded loans. Start asking yourself questions. Start to notice where things need to be shorted up. Where do you need to put your attention in focus? For most, I will say it simply comes down to the basics of sales activities. If you've been listening to me long enough, you've heard me say, right? If you want to grow your business, it's simple. Two things. That for you. Talk to more people or get better at the people you're already talking with. When I say get better, what I mean is get better at getting them to choose you. Whether that's referral partners, whether that's consumers, and how do you get better? You get better by studying, by getting a mentor, getting a coach. You get better by learning, by getting yourself around other people that raise up your game. If you're going to play tennis, for example, use this old cliche example. If you want to get good at tennis, do you play tennis with somebody who's just as good as you? No. You play tennis with somebody who's better than you. Why? Because they demand more of you, because you need to tap into that area of yourself that maybe you haven't been forced to tap into before. That's why it makes sense to get around the right people who can not only show you the how, tap into your why, give you some of that support, that accountability, and sometimes just call you out on your stuff when you need to be. Sometimes it helps for people to kind of show us the ropes. Give us a shortcut, cut, lay out the roadmap for us, help us see our blind spots. That's what a lot of us have. How can we address all of this at the halfway point of 2019, depending on where you're at? I'd love for you to finish strong. I'm not sure where you're at. I'd love to hear from you. You can email me anytime, podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com. Where are you? What's your number one challenge right now? What's going well? I'd love to hear feedback from you. If you're looking for a place to raise up your game, to get around people who will hold you accountable, where you will get ideas and strategies in a roadmap and a plan to execute every single week in your local market, with the primary focus on building a relationship based business that's purchased, focused with the first pillar of your business being realtor referrals and by and large by casting a wide net first and then following a proven system and plan to narrow that focus down to the key, the few key strategic realtors that you truly do want to go deep with. How do you do that? You've got to get in front of a lot of agents. You've got to put the law of large numbers in your favor. We do that at the mortgage marketing pro membership by equipping you to get in front of maximum agents in minimum time and convert a healthy percentage of those agents to profitable referral partners, how by teaching agent classes, by getting butts in the seats, delivering an awesome value added presentation that educates realtors that aligns them with you, making you become there go to lender because you are adding more value than anybody else. By the way, that's not just closing alone on time. That's part of it, but today you need to do more. One help, want to learn how to grow your personal brand, want to learn how to get started with Instagram, YouTube, Facebook ads, video marketing, Facebook live, all that more is available inside our mortgage marketing pro membership. You can go look at a brief video I put up, check it out at mortgagemarketing.pro for more details there. It might be right for you. I don't know that's for you to decide. Okay, on to this week's show, my special guest. I really thrilled at the opportunity I had to sit down with my special guest at the recent mastermind summit that took place in Vegas about a week ago. My man, Akshay Patel, also known as AK Patel. AK has been, what I loved is that AK actually told me that when he started his mortgage career which is just a mere two, two and a half years ago, he's only 24 years old, speaking of looking for mentors and guidance and somebody extending a hand up to help you up, hand out to help you up. He graciously told me that this podcast was one of the podcasts that helped him navigate his journey to his current status right now. So I'm grateful for that. AK, if you're listening and he and I had a chance to sit down for about an hour at the mastermind summit in Vegas and really just got to know each other really well, I got to know his story and just an incredible young man to have such clarity and confidence at such a young age. It really says a lot about him as an individual, probably his parents as well. But year to date, AK and his team, right, he's got a business partner that he works with. So they're at 40 million for the year. I think that's 67 units that he's done year to date at the six month mark. And so that being only two years as a full-time originator is pretty darn impressive. And what's interesting though is you'll hear AK has got very specific strategies, dialogues, talk tracks and so forth for how to really get significant traction and engagement from local real estate agents, what to say when you call them up. I love some of the scripting and stuff that we go through on this podcast to help you get appointments with buyers agents, cross-cell listing agents, create community and camaraderie and have fun with real estate agents, only work with the ones that are fun, you know what I mean? He talks about his star program that he's got for agents, basically his target list of 15 agents has kind of a star diagram of agents that he really wants to go deeper than work with. So the whole process he's got around that, the big takeaway I see with AK here is that he's got standards in terms of who he's willing to work with. And he doesn't sacrifice those standards. There's a certain standard of a type of professional he wants to work with and if they don't fit that mold, A, he doesn't work with them or B, he moves them out and makes room for somebody who does. So I think it really did the conversation we have for such a young person, a quote millennial, where a lot of the hype and buzz is around everything online and all that kind of stuff. So here how he has his building, right, a quote traditional, I hate you then a word traditional because look, what works works. I don't care if it was invented a hundred years ago or 10 minutes ago, if it works, then do it. And by the way, not everything works for all people or works equally well all the time. So I'm always saying you've got to get clear on what works for you. Here's what I know does work consistently. See here's what here's the interesting thing, right? Principles don't change tactics do. One principle that doesn't change in this business is relationships. That will not change. The question is, what are the tactics you used to build that relationship? I wanted to have AK on here today to talk about his tactics for building a strong solid referral based realtor focused referral business, but also we're going to delve into some of the stuff he's doing online as well on social media. So I think you'll enjoy this opposite episode as much as I did chatting with AK about it. And before we go, I got to give you a quick two quick shout outs. If you guys are new listeners to the podcast, I appreciate you. And if you're a long time listener, thank you for being here. I do this for you. It is a labor of love. I wanted to give a what I'm starting to do now is actually just read podcast reviews. So that for those of you who haven't yet left a review, I sure would appreciate you doing so because that helps me know that we're doing a good job and that helps us reach more people. So here's a quick review for you from Katie Shive. What's up, Katie? If you're listening, Katie says hands down the best podcast out there for mortgage professionals. Oh, thank you. As someone who manages marketing for two loan officers, I have come to rely on this podcast. The interviews are always interesting, relevant and packed with gold. Thanks, Jeff, for creating an awesome tool for our industry. Thank you, Katie. Really appreciate you taking a moment to let us know how much impact this podcast is making to you. And one last thing before I go for those of you who do want to check out more about the mortgage marketing pro membership. Once again, you can do that at mortgagemarketing.pro. Got to give a shout out to my friend Ben Barrett at first bank. Ben did a class at 48 agents to 10, one class, two brokers asked him to present the class for their office. He immediately got a loan application and a top 10 local agent attended his class. So he's getting a lot of traction fast. And you can learn more about how people are getting great results over at the mortgage marketing.pro membership with that said, let's get into this week's show. Hey, Kay, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Matt. I really appreciate it. Cool connecting with you. Yes. Really cool connecting with you and just to kind of set it up for the listeners. You and I met in person finally at the recent mastermind summit in Vegas, which was awesome, event awesome to connect with you in person, which leads us here today because you've been, we've been following each other on Instagram and other socials for a while and you do really cool things. But here's the cool, here's, here's why you and I are talking today is because you and I sat down for probably an hour, right? At that table. Yeah. We're having a good conversation. Yeah, man. We talked about like lots of different things, but there were some really some key nuggets that I pulled out of our time together that I thought would be relevant to share with our listeners. So before we get into that, give them just a quick, you know, who's a K, how long in the biz and what's your year today so far? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'll show you a bit, tell them, and next level lenders where you can find me on Instagram. I'm in San Diego, downtown San Diego, I have my own branch over there. Started off in the PRMG and now with easy fundings, home loans, with, you know, Tano Coppadani over here in Rancho Gamuga, I've been in the biz for about, well, I've been originating for about two years, been in the biz for about five years now started off as a intern mortgage intern getting coffee and stuff like that for everyone and went marketing and then processing and did that whole stick and learn kind of everything and then ended up getting a junior LL license and then started just flying after I graduated from college. Year to date, we're just a little under 40 mil, so that's, that's good. That's good for right now. I want to get to about 150 a year. That's the goal. Yeah. Okay. So what jumps out up, you know, to me first about that is, so it's June, when people are listening to this, it's June and so we're at the six months mark, we're 50% of the way into 2019. We've been originating on your own roughly two years, right? Yeah. Okay. And you're already at 40 million for this year already. Correct. So that's a, that's a friggin' like stopper right there. That's like a, hold on, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, dudes, two years in, 40 mil. I mean, you know, there's people that have been doing this. By the way, how many units is that roughly just to give people a sense? You're an SD, so. It's not too many. It's like 67. 67. Yeah, so it's not too bad. We had a, we got a lot, so I ended up getting in with a few people in Beverly Hills and got a lot of those million price point loans, did a few of the, been doing a lot with fund loans, where we've been doing more of like the stated income type loans and stuff like that. So we've been getting a lot of the 1.6, 2 million, that kind of stuff. And then I have a business partner as well, so that counts in his production. But we do everything kind of like in the branch under my name. Yeah. So I don't want to take all the credit for that. You know, I would say for my personal, but we're probably half, half and half. So personally, I'm probably at right around 20. Okay. All right. Cool. But so how are you able to, you're in San Diego. How are you able to break into Beverly Hills? Through a lot of events. I go to a lot of events like you know, so we met at Mastermind, right? Yeah. I let a, I met a lot of my agents in success summit and top fairy sales edge. A lot of the top fairy events, you know, I go to a lot of those all the time. Yeah. So, I mean, I got in with Douglas Elliman. Oh, yeah, sure. Great question. Yeah. And a few of those guys moved over to the Beverly Hills office and I was friends with them and, you know, played golf with them and kind of did that whole thing. And then they, they ended up kind of sending over deals my way and we were able to extract some people from all that and get referrals and go from there. So I love, I love the idea. Are you attending the top fairy events? I'm going to, I think I kind of know the answer, but I'm going to ask it for the listeners, right? What's your purpose for attending the top fairy events? There's multiple purposes. So for me, it's, it's to show my agents that we always need to sharpen our swords, right? So one thing that I do for success summit and I do it every year and I started it last year. It's not a tradition unless you do it two years ago. And it's, we get a big house and I grab like nine to 12 agents and we, we stay there. We go to, I get somebody to come down last year. I had Austin Zayback, which is, I think he, he works with Cody Spurber and he has his own company, the legacy marketing and he does that whole thing. And I had him come down and, and he kind of hung out with us for a week as well. He runs the Zayback Group in Arizona and he's just a phenomenal guy. He, you know, he does really well in the industry. He does really well in, is an entrepreneur in general. And we had him do like just discussions with us. How do you build your Instagram? How do you, how do you market yourself correctly? How to be a current, how to be a better agent, all that kind of stuff. And so I did kind of like masterminds every night after the success summit. So, you know, that involved us drinking and we had like a pool. So we're just kind of chilling in the jacuzzi or in the pool and stuff like that right after a mastermind ends up fine, you know, and a lot of people just either go to the hotel bar and hang out there for hours or they just go to the room and they don't do anything. And for us to go like everyone take good notes, we're going to go over the notes, we're going to have some drinks, we're going to do a little mastermind go over. What was the key points that you guys took from it and kind of turn it into this big extra event that you, that you actually absorb everything that you took from that event. So that's something I do every year. We get all their tickets because I'm in Tom Ferry coaching so I get it for a discount. So I get all their tickets and then I get the house and we go over there and we send it and we have a good time. We learn a lot and we come back and everyone's just pumped last year about a videographer with me. So we had a lot of good content come from that. Yep. So all that. And so the agents you're bringing to the Tom Ferry summit are these all existing relationships? I bring it. I bring my key, my key people, which is like about three, four people, three, four guys that send me like a hundred percent loyalty with and then I bring in about the other half or new people for a team. And so how do you find, do you know them at some level before that invite goes out? Right. Yeah. It's usually people that know me from Instagram because I had, so I did a video ad for the Tom Ferry summit after from the videographer that the video that you did because I was like, I'm going to keep on doing this. So then I did the video ad and I get agents that hit me up and go like, hey, I want to be a part of that. How do I, you know, be a part of it? Like well, you're welcome to come by the house, but I mean, why, why do we want, why, what are you going to bring to the, what are you going to bring to the house, what are you going to bring to the mastermind? Because I want to make sure that I have people that are, that are actually discussing, they're not just there, I mean, nothing and just kind of, you know, just being a waste of space for a lot of better. Make sure it's the right, right person. Yeah. Yeah, you want someone that's going to actually contribute to everything that we're doing, right? Someone that's actually going to be there, actually talk in the mastermind, give good points, take good notes in the mastermind and be a good time to be around. Yeah. Exactly. Right. I mean, I'm, I'm a guy that's going to be like very off put and working with someone that has a boring personality. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the big lesson, obviously, and working with people who share similar values and traits and all that. Yeah. Okay. So that I'm just pausing here for a minute because that's a pretty smart, cool strategy. I used to remember back in the day years ago, people were doing that. Like they would rent a bus and go somewhere with agents, you know, golf, golf outing, wine tasting, whatever. So it's similar to that concept, but the fact that you're actually combining education and, of course, you go to that summit and it's a friggin' rock show. You feel great and that you're masterminding after that. I'm assuming what comes out of that is, I mean, dude, there's no selling, right? It's just, dude, it was awesome, great to see you hang with you and then the next thing you know, they're calling you with leads and stuff. Yeah. I mean, it paid for itself. I mean, and that event altogether with success summit tickets and with the house, which was $1,500 a night, it was, it was not cheap to get an Airbnb that's for 12 people. Right. It was like, I think the bill came out to be like $7,500, right? But when you dial it back and I got four deals out of it, it's like in the first two deals paid for that. And then everything else was gravy and there are deals that I probably wouldn't have gotten. If I didn't do something like that, do it would be a little different. And plus the content in itself, I feel is worth it, you know, having the videographer there, they felt, they felt good because they were getting followed around with the camera and stuff and they're like, oh, I feel, you know, like this is different, I don't usually do stuff like this. Yeah. And they're all dressing nicer and stuff because they want to be on camera and look good. Mm-hmm. So you're basically, you know, living and breathing, you know, what you preach and how you're showing up in social media, it's not fake, it's phony, you're doing that every single day. Yeah. I do that. We have a videographer that we have on staff that follows us around and we do video content all the time. I mean, you've seen it. You've seen a lot of that video content because it's important. I mean, you do it yourself. I know that you do a lot of the video content and stuff like that and you started doing more and more. Yeah. I thought you'd start to do it more and more like, like probably the end of last year, you started pushing it more and you're doing that. Like, I think there was a one time you're doing like a 30 day challenge or videos or something. It was 30 days or 60 or something. Thank God. It was only 12 days, but 12 days. But yeah, so I mean, like that in itself, there's something to learn from that. There's a lot of people that don't, that don't want to put themselves out of their comfort zone. But when you do, you really kind of, you grow, whether all days, 30 days, 60 days, you're going to grow in that time span. Yeah. That's interesting. So it makes me think of, I know some of the things I'm doing here locally with agents is like and we're going to get into your mastermind concept. But to your point is we need to help agents get out of their comfort zone. You and I were talking just before record and I was trying to, you know, meeting with this small group of agents and putting up a video challenge, right? Yeah. And yet, you know, still the resistance is there. You know what I mean? Where it's just like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, do you face that? And then how do you help realtors get through that resistance of video? I bring it into my office and then I put a video in front of them and I don't tell them. Exactly what I do. What do you mean? They just constantly down and you're filming? Well, yeah, I have, I have a, so I have the videographer there, right? So we ease on staff. So he's in the room. He's sitting on the couch and then he'll come by and you'll kind of grab like little bites, you know, and like take little videos of that. And then we'll make a video of us meeting and then we'll do, then I'll just tell them, hey, like, just play off of me. Let's just have a conversation. Accelerator video is not there. Accelerator is not there. Accelerator is not there at all. Let's just have a conversation. And then we're going to pivot and then we're going to have you do a few videos for yourself so that you can sell yourself to your clients. Maybe we can do one for listings, maybe you do one for buyers, maybe we can do one for educational tips for everyone, you know? And so that's that's kind of what I do with them. And then a few of the agents when they're, when they're feeling like comfortable, they already been on camera, then I'll go like, let's do a walk and talk video. That's way better. We live in downtown and we're working downtown. Let's go, let's go downtown. Let's go grab the guy in front of us. Let's go walk. Let's talk. Let's have a good time. Let's go grab a copy of beer or something. Yeah. And have a good conversation. But a lot of the times, and I mean, I'm not in any way endorsing alcohol. I do love it. But it's liquid courage, you know, I mean, you have a little bit of beer, a little bit of whiskey in here. Some of that people are going to be more, they're going to, they're going to talk, they're going to loosen up. Yeah, they're going to be loose. They're going to, they're going to talk a little bit more freely and they're going to talk to you and they're going to be themselves, they're not going to be as nervous, you know? Yeah. That reminds me. You can do a video version of this. You might have heard me talk about this in the past. The headshot happy hour. All the edges need an updated headshot. So host a happy hour. You got your videographer set up over here with the damn green screen. Boom. Have a couple of drinks. Do your little agent profile video. That's funny. You said that we actually were thinking about doing some like that. There's a place called the Pendry here in downtown. And it's got this scenic area, beautiful, great bar and the background of it is just perfect. So my, my, my business partner, Josh, I was like, hey, what do we just do a happy hour up there? Give them two free drinks or whatever. And then if they want to buy after that and get drunk and like we do that themselves, we're not going to pay for it. But we have them. We give them a headshot and then we just give them that one thing and then we can offer them up to do a video with us at our office after and kind of like, kind of like sell a meeting almost like sell an appointment to do a video because when we're doing the video with them, we offer them to do a video. It's more than just like, hey, we want to help you out and get you, get you a video to put on your Instagram. We also lock in an appointment to sit down with them and talk to them because outside of that, you go, you want to grab a copy for 15 minutes. I want to tell you how I can help you grow your business as a mortgage lending partner for you. And then people are like, I already got my mortgage under partners like when you come at them as a social media person, sometimes we don't even tell them we're lenders, where is, hey, you want to come by our office to the video. You can see what they, and then they figure out where lenders by looking at our Instagram and stuff like that. And then we get a chance to talk and it ends up creating somewhat of a more fluid relationship. They might not send the steals immediately, but we're in their, we're in their, their sites. Yeah. We're in the closet. I think that the takeaway there is, and this all transitioned into something else. I heard you say, the takeaway there is that you're not leading with your hand out. Yeah. You're not leading with the ask with the intent. You're leading. There was somebody had the quote at the mastermind summit, I forget what it is instead of your hand out or whatever, but you're leading with giving first, right? And so that's induces reciprocation right out of the gate. Now, this makes me think about something I heard you say, which is, tell me a little bit about, there's this idea I heard about you prospecting real estate agents, looking at my notes here, when you're calling agents and you get the, hey, you know, we've already got a lender. I'm all cool. I'm all set. You say something very interesting. Do you know what I'm talking about here? Yeah. Yeah. I told that, that's cool. I don't, I don't, I don't want to impede on their business. I'm not trying to be your first. I'm okay with being a backup. I'm okay with being your backup backup. But honestly, I want, I want you to know me because you are going to see me on the end of a transaction. For sure. And I'm doing my, my clients do diligence because I want, I want their offers when they come in on your listings, because you're a rock star, that my pre-approval is there and you know who I am and you trust me. And so you're going to be more fluid with my clients and maybe that'll win their offer. Yeah. I thought that was pretty brilliant, man. What's your take rate on, on that offer? Almost like I would say like 80% for the most part, it throws them off. Yeah, yeah. For sure. A lot of time. I don't ask for a lot of time. And it's, and it's almost like a, it's almost like a cocky confidence, you know, like you're saying that I know for a fact that my pre-approval is going to end up on your desk very soon. And your rock star, because you know you're going to get a lot of listings and a lot of my buyers are going to want your listings. I really love that. I mean, you could play that, you know, play it further out too where like my head is thinking, you know, I know that you're going to see what pre-approval come on on the other side of a listing that you're working on. And I want you to feel 100% confident that when you see my name on that pre-approval, you know you've got a rock solid deal. That's the way to do that is let's grab 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever. So we can, you know, if you even say this, I want to get to, I want to meet other like minded professionals, top producers in the market, it makes sense that we network with each other. Yeah. Exactly. And it makes them feel good. It makes them feel good about you and everyone's kind of open for 15 minutes. I'll even, if they're saying no, they're like, all right, well, how about a 15 minute Zoom call? Uh-huh. Just so you can see my face, you can really face it in, because the phone call's not going to do much. All right. So while we're on this thread right here, do you do any other things like cross-selling listing agents during transactions, stuff like that by cross-selling listing agents? What do you mean? So I mean, you are handling the buyer transaction and you're using that transaction to sell the listing agent. Yeah. So a lot of the times when it's sometimes my agents and I'm, and it's, it's almost like the same thing when you're, when you're doing a dual representation, right? On the seller side of it, when you're in real estate, that you want to, you have a buyer and then you, or you have a listing and then you have to do your due diligence to your listing. But then you also grab the buyer and you have to be your due diligence them. But it's more geared towards the listing, right? All right. So my thoughts are like, all right, well, when I'm working with a buyer's agent, I kind of get there, feel with it. I ask them first out of respect, hey, are you okay with me pursuing this agent's business during this transaction? That means I'm going to give them a lot of updates. They're going to know a lot about the transaction and I don't want to impede on your negotiations because some people and, you know, like some people that I know that I've worked with, they're just don't talk to listing agent at all. I want to be the one to talk to them. And so like it's, it's like, I'm not going to lose a buyer's agent because I'm trying to get one or other person's business. You know, I can get that person's business after. And so a lot of the times I suppose it ends up being actually because they want me to be on their side. They don't want to feel like I'm on the listing agent side or anything like that, you know, and I get that. And so after the transaction or at the beginning of the transaction, when I first call them, they always make an initial, everyone should make an initial phone call when you send in the offer to introduce yourself, make them feel comfortable. And then you talk to the listing agent, you tell them, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Listing agent, my name is actually Patel, I'm working with so and so a buyer with this agent. I wanted to make sure that you knew how qualified my buyers were, how awesome they were and how much we're going to be able, how quickly we're going to be able to close for you guys. And I wanted to make sure that I know all the details of the transaction. So we're good to go. Also, I want to just really quick, keep a little nugget in your ear. If I can do this in X amount of time and ensure that you get X amount of updates, will you be open to meeting me for coffee after just a quick and easy, like, ask for and I mean, that's probably like a 50, 50 shot. A lot of them are like, oh, you know, that's, that's cute, but some of them are open to it. I haven't heard that before. Nice one, but yeah, but some of them, some of them are like, you know what, I'm open to it. And they're sometimes they're blowing smoke up your skirt and sometimes they're not. Hey, well, you know, if you got a 50% worth, you know, every time you laid a dollar down in Vegas, right? And 50% of the time you got a dollar back or two bucks back, right? That's a pretty good ROI. All right. Well, that gets you in front of listing agents, right? Yeah. And I actually do like working with listing agents because there's more content to be made that way. And so that's, it's good because I mean, when you have, you have the ability to kind of go like, hey, I'm gonna get this video done for you. I'm gonna have my videographer do draw jobs of your listing and take the pictures and everything for you and just put me on this cross-qualifying lender. All right. So you hit on something there. Okay. Let's not let that fly by. Yeah. Put me on as cross-qualable as as lender. Let's first of all, explain for those people who didn't catch that or need a little explaining what that is and how you actually get that done and what percentage of listing agents are willing to do that. Yeah. So I think 100% of listing agents are willing to put someone on there as a cross-qualifying lender made all, all offers that come in must cross-qualify with my lender. And the way that you sell it is, hey, I don't want you to waste any of your time. Just like a little extra added thing. I do this with bizbos as in treat them as like listing agents when I when I first started that called bizbos up and I let them know like, hey, you're not represented by a listing agent. You're not represented by anyone. You're not really protected here. Yeah. But I know the last thing that you want to do is waste your time. That's probably waste your time or your money. So how about I go on you tell everyone that comes in that that sends in an offer that they have to cross-qualify with me to make sure that they're good to go so that you don't put in any bad offers or anything like that on your property so that you don't have to get into escrow and then end up it falling out and then now your bizbos looks even less attractive. And then, you know, and it's like, and they're like, what's the catch? It's like, there's no catch. I don't, I'm not, I don't cost anything. The only thing that I do is help you out. Yeah. I mean, in the hopes that maybe you want to work me on your next purchase or if someone comes in without a lender and then just kind of walk off the streets, well, then I can get first kick at it. How did that go when you were doing that? I got probably like 20% of bizbos. Let me do it because a lot of them just put down the phone before I even had a chance to talk to them because they've been getting called by 276 Realtors all day, you know? Yeah. So it kind of ruins it. But, but on the listing agent side of the cross-qual, I think like 100% of them will take it and the reason why it's important is because you just trying to sell them on I don't want to waste your time and you're able to sell me to your list, your seller. But that way I've gotten a lot of buyers from that because the seller, I try to make sure that I have them explain in the listing presentation why I'm going to be a part of the transaction. Even if I'm not there, they're lender. You're having the listing agent explain that to who? The seller. The seller, really. It's like a value out in your listing presentation, right? Yeah. It's a value out. Hey, by the way, every offer that comes in, we're going to make sure or triple check it with my lender and make sure that they're good to go. If they have a pre-approval, great. But to me, it's just white noise, unless it gets a check mark by my lender. Yeah, unless that realtor knows and trusts that lender which in some communities may happen. I love this concept. I want to hang out here for a second because it's interesting when I was selling my house back in Orange County, I actually asked the listing agent who's the top agent in that county sold like 60, 70 homes or something. Right. It's a rock star. I asked him if he would be open to doing that. And basically, his answer was basically no, to be honest with you. For a cross-qualify lender? Yeah. Basically, when he got an offer in, I said, do we want to have this offer pre-approved cross-qualled by your lender? I know this comes up sometimes, but his answer to that was he doesn't feel that that's appropriate or necessary because the agent on the other side, he knows very well and trusts and has actually worked with that lending institution before. So he was like, I get what you're asking, Jeff, but I think in this situation, not necessary. Yeah, no, I just haven't put on MLS. Sometimes there's ways like, I mean, I've been on it before, where I even tell the agent, where I even tell my buyer's agent, I'm like, dude, I know that guy, I know who works with, and that guy knows what he's doing. Yeah, okay, good, perfect. Now, let's roll back, though, because I've talked about this concept a lot. As a matter of fact, I got to credit my old homey Walter Sanford from Long Beach, California. I don't know if you know that name at all. No, I don't know. Back in the day, one of the old school coaches, he used to sell a house a day every day for almost 10 years. He did that up in Long Beach. Rockstar. Anyway, I used to have him come and do a lot of my seminars for agents, right? Back in the day. And he started teaching these strategies, so picture this, imagine like somebody like Tom Ferry, maybe not as big, sorry, Walter, if you're listening, but it's got a pretty big name. You have to fly in to give a seminar to 100 agents, and he's saying, you need to write Jeff in and do a cross call and I, boom, right? Just blow up. Yeah. Now, when I've talked about this idea to loan officers that are listening right now, yes, you know who I'm talking about. I get a variety of responses, I get, ooh, push back, ooh, I don't know if my agents would go for that. Oh, wow. But I mean, what's the, what's the harm in asking, though? There's no harm in asking. If you ask, you might get it, you might not, but it's not like I hurt you to ask them and say, like, hey, do you mind putting me on as a cross-qualifying lender on your, but you just don't, you don't go like, can I be a cross-qual on your, on your listing? Please? Like that's, that's just being like, why, why do you want to do that? But hey, you come at it as a value add to them presentation, and it, exactly. It's all about presentation, how you sell it, like selling, a cross-qual is a product that we sell, just like a conventional loan is a product, an FHA is a product, VAs is a product, it's a product that's a service that we offer to agents. And so, and so it's like, how do you sell it to them? Right. What's the value to them? And that's why I like the way you positioned it, and this is where I think a lot of L.O.'s and like, you and I went to the mastermind training, we heard some, some brilliant scripting and dialogue in there from, from, from people. And I think it's kind of a law start, right, where so many L.O.'s are falling into the rate, quote, jockey situation, 30 year fixed, five, whatever, and it's like, no, dude, there needs to be a full on customer experience, referral partner experience. Yeah. You know, so let's, let's keep playing this out here. You're approaching a realtor with this cross-qual pitch. How do you, just a brief version, how do you pitch that to them? What's the value to them? The value to them. So I, this is how I would go about it. Mm-hmm. Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Listing, I, I know that you're going to be getting this new listing. Awesome. Great job on it. By the way, I have a few different products that can help you out with, with, uh, getting you a video on the house and pictures and all that kind of stuff. One thing that I do always ask a lot of my listing agents and the reason why I ask it is because I like to save you guys time because time means that you guys get to go out there, get more prospects and maybe bring you some more loans. So selfishly and selfish, selflessly, you're going to help out your client and you're going to help me out at the same time. I want to do a cross-qual on your property so that whenever you guys get anyone that comes in, I will know for her fact, look at it and make sure that that one's not going to fall out. Because a lot of people miss very small details that can blow up at the end like a large deposit on a bank account that could, if they can't source it, well, then guess what, the underwriter is not going to fund it. Yeah. And something, something as simple as a gap in employment on an FHA that they didn't account for and are they working enough after to be able to actually get that loan? Are they accounting for that? Do they know what they're doing? Sometimes, yeah, they do know what they're doing and I know the other lender and I want you to have to look at his loan. I'll be able to say like, hey, I know that guy, he's awesome, go ahead. But I know that when I was first starting and I was going against a cross-qualifying lender, it wasn't ever in a place of hostility, it was at a place of like, hey, I'm just trying to help them out. So you've had that done to you in the reverse? Yeah, but it's always, it's never on up, the wrong way of going about it is because you want to steal the loan. That's just a dick move. Excuse me. No. So it's right up. It's honestly like, you can't don't steal someone's loan if they worked hard for it to get that loan just by going like, by undercutting them, you know, like people will go, oh, you know, he's giving you a 4% rate, I can give you 3.8. Yeah. Like, look, I built the report with the client, I did all this stuff, the reason I'm cross-qualifying with you is because you're listing agent hasport. Right. I was like, you're going to really, you know, you're going to really shank me just because my client wants that house. You know, the only time it's, it's, it's okay to take the loan is when they don't have a lender. Yeah. Or you can see it. Or if the lender doesn't know what they're doing. Or if their lender is like an online lender and, you know, we don't really care for online lenders. Or if their lender is Zillow Mortgage. Right. Yeah. Let's bury them. Well, and they're probably doing a half-ass job anyways. So Zillow will never be a sponsor, I guess. But anyways, I know. That's how I sell. I sell it as a value add, I sell it as a way for me to kind of like, I always, I always use the word selfishly, selflessly being selfish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I want to get something back for me, but I also want to help you out in the same time. Well, and the thing I want to, again, I don't want to be the, you know, the dead horse. But again, I, you know, because I've brought this up on so many occasions with loan officers, what this is indicative of who you are, AK, as a mortgage loan professional is, first of all, you have a lot of confidence in yourself and your ability and your skills. And secondly, you convey that to your realtor partners. So that immediately, probably, you probably don't work with a lot of weenie head agents. I'm assuming. No, no, no, I've fired a lot of agents in my first year and, you know, people were kind of like, why would you fire into giving you deals and stuff like that? Well, the thing is, is like, you can't grow unless if you have these like agents that are holding you down, taking a lot of your time. It's like, it's like, okay, if you can, if you can spot a rock star and you know that they're worth your time, all day long, some of my best agents are brand new agents that I get in there, they have the confidence that are ready to go, they just need the tools to be able to go out there and actually get it and send it and bring, bring stuff back home. But there are agents that I've worked with that I've done door knocking with for four hours, just to build the report, right, that open houses with multiple times. I mean, I skin my knees on all these, all these people. All right. Time out. Time out. What are you doing? Door knocking? What are you talking about, man? Dude, that's how I started my business. I started my business by door knocking for refinances. That's how you told me that. That was crazy. Yeah. So I got a first couple of my loans. I was just door knocking for refinances in my neighborhood. So I love this because we're, we're, this is going exactly where I wanted it to. All right. So the cross cross call thing, people listening, test it out, try it. Get your script, get your value prop down and start testing it out with strong agents, that weak ass agents, agents who want like, like back to Walter Sanford. When he taught me that, I kind of had the same kind of reluctance. And here's what he said to me. He goes, Jeff, one of the number one things agents want, good agents is they want iron fisted client control. That's what they want. And so they want the certainty that that transaction is going to close. So if you can help deliver that certainty, if it's the right agent, they're all in on that. Yeah. All right. Cool. Instagram, getting deals from social media, blowing up, living large, boop, boop, boop, door knocking. Door knocking. Door knocking. Is that stuff work? It does. Okay. So that's, that's how I started all my, all my first, my first ones. I mean, I'll be sarcastic, right? Yeah. I was 22. But I was 22. I mean, like people don't, people don't go out there and do the basic stuff. Those one, one thing that I tell my agent all the time, they're like, hey, man, I want, I want to know how to get these Facebook leads and we're going to get these Instagram leads because I don't want to go out there and do open houses anymore. I don't want to be door knocking anymore. I don't want to look. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, why, why are you in a real estate agent? Right. Right. If you're not door knocking, you're not doing open houses, you're not doing any of that, any of that stuff, not prospecting, not down for dollars, don't be a salesperson because you have to go in prospect. That's, that's where bread and butter and I was just telling you, it was, I just hired a new assistant. She's awesome. And she's, she's getting training right now. I'm actually here in Redshift with the manga. I'm not in San Diego, but I was just telling her I was like, honestly, the reason why I have used, because I've been getting like, just been to into my files, I haven't been able to go out and doorknoc, I haven't been able to go out and dial like for five hours and just hit refinances all day. Like while she's been working on my files, I, you know, grab four new refinances in the last two days just by calling people, it's just easy, you know, and people don't think that it works. They're like, oh, who's going to, if you go consumer direct, you're never going to get anything. You have to go to real estate and be like, no, you can, if you, you can always get deals as a mortgage lender because we have refinances and we have reversed mortgages and they pay out way more than refinances do and there's a bunch of them out there. And the best way to get them are to talk to these Trans-America, Prime-America guys because they're going to hit you up. They want you to work with them and all that kind of stuff, but all of their clientele are 65 plus because they're doing life insurance and all that kind of stuff. Right. Right. As long as it, as long as it's a good deal, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for do you share your responsibility 100% okay? So door knocking, is that something you still do or I'm not around to it as much, but I mean, so when I first started, a lot of the reasoning behind door knocking was going out with new agents, having them feel more comfortable going out and door knocking because they have someone there with them, they're not bored. The same thing with open houses, you know, I was just like, that's how I kind of sold myself an open house is to, hey, do you want me to be there just in case you get bored or no one comes through, I would love to, you know, just get to know you a little bit, you know, and like some people were just like, yeah, I mean, I last, last we didn't have anyone come in. And then when they have another dud, then I go like, hey, what if we kind of fix the criteria a little bit on your open houses and try to find something that's hot to the market or someone that's on your team or something like that. But on the door knocking aspect, you get three hours of undivided attention with this agent. You know, and you get to, and you get to show them that you're ready to pound the pavement with them literally. And instead of being the guy that's behind the desk that answers the phone and, you know, springs up when they, when you say the word loan or pre-approval, you know, talk about building loyalty too. Yeah. All day long. That's when you get out there sweating in the summer, getting bit by dogs with me, man. I'm going to always pray for him to get a deal. And I'm dark. I retain heat. Dude, I sweat, I sweat like crazy. I'm Indian. I'm hairy. I guess I got sweaty. It's not good. Like, and I even tell him like, like, can we go a little bit earlier in the morning when there's a little bit of a crisp cooler? Thank God I'm in San Diego, though, I would not even touch door knocking and where I'm at right now in Riverside County, dude. There's no way. Well, I don't want to hang out here because I just want to make kind of a closing point here. I think I've been frustrated because, and I'm sure you've seen this, there's a lot of people, depending on who you follow out there, it's like, you know, you can't do business this way. Like, the people talk about how door knocking is dead. For instance, somebody shared a story recently about an agent who knocked on their door and the other person in the house, you know, opened up the door and let's face it, the story was shared in that there was a bad script and the door got slammed in this agent's face. And the message was, you moron realtors still doing business that this way, are you completely out of touch? And my immediate answer was, gee, that person sounds pretty rude to be slamming the door in somebody's face like that. Number one, number two, this is my big tagline about marketing is what works in marketing? Everything works some of the time, but not everything works equally well for everybody or in every area. So you got to get clear on what works for you and your area, you're probably not going to go door knocking in downtown San Francisco. No, no city, yeah. Yeah, I mean, in those areas, you're better off doing something like a, like a Facebook ad and just kind of being in everyone's phone and getting those like little, I forget what they're called. They're like these little like, these little tags that you put in your, your pocket and whenever you enter a room, your virtual business card goes on everyone's phones that are in the area. So like, it like blasts out into like, so like people are in Starbucks, they turn the thing on and bam, like everyone gets like a little message on their phone. And it says, auction Patel, next level lender is in the area, have you been thinking about buying a house? I haven't heard of it. And then it has your picture on it and you could just be sitting there, you know, if you want to talk lending, come on over to me, man. Yeah. The brown guy in the corner. That was awesome. I love it. Like that would be better suited for a place to San Francisco or like those little hubs that you can do in Facebook where you do like a, like it's a mile radius or you can even do like a neighborhood. And I was telling them like, door knocking is very good if you do it smart, right? If you do, if you do knock and you also do, you also do mailers with Facebook ads in the neighborhood that you're door knocking in, that's complete coverage. You're blanking in that neighborhood and they're going to be, they're only thinking about you because your Facebook, when they open their phone, you're in their mailbox when they check their mail and you're at their door when they're at home. And so it's like you, you kind of hit them in all different areas and then guess what you're doing like Instagram ads to your, and they're, you're an Instagram, they can't get away from you. It's shocking. Carpet bombing. Exactly. Exactly. Just guerrilla warfare. Dude, that's so you just go in there and you, and you completely blow their mind with how much you're around and they, they might be annoyed by you, but it works. You know, like a lot of times I start with, you know, I was really annoyed with how much you were contacted me, but at the end of the day, no one else really works for my business and you made me feel a little special. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like who wants it the most, you know? Yeah. They feel like little schoolgirls that are getting chased around by all the popular kids that they have. All right. So what is your primary source of business right now? My primary source of business right now is realtors, realtors for us. How many realtors roughly do you, do you break them into different tiers or how do you structure realtor relationships? I don't core model it. I built out my own model. It's called the start 15. So I have 15 agents that I, that I focus on primarily to build them up to all get them up to my, my, I want to get to 300. So my thing is like, okay, well, how do I get 300 units? Well, if I can get all my agents up to like 25, 30, 30 deals, then I'm going to, I'm going to reach that goal, you know, if I can get them there and then the way that I kind of think about it is like, all right, if I can get them even higher and I account for like 50% of the clients go to someone else because they just come in or a bank takes them or they shop me or something like that, right? If I can get my agents to be rock star agents, close three to four loans or three to four deals a month, each and every one of them. And I focus in and I just go narrow and I go, you know, deep instead of going wide, then there's a lot more loyalty, there's more fun here. Yeah, yeah. I still do all this stuff where I'm just kind of, I know everybody here, like I'm still doing the phone calls to new agents and my agents even asked me this, why are you calling other agents? I thought you only wanted 15. I said, that's a very good question. I told you that my thing is I want to make sure that they know who I am and I'm not like digging around here. I really want them to know who I am because when our client puts an offer on their house, we get that accepted, which means I get another escrow, which means you get another paycheck as well. So I was like, so, so let me do my dials. We call them, don't have any, I'm not cheating on you, you know, other than with 14 other people, but that's what I'm only cheating with 14 other people. That's it. I'm not cheating with anyone else. And yeah, we get sprinkles of people like sending us bills from those guys. But that's like, that's like extra business. We don't have to do anything for that business. We're not, we're not invested in that agent. So if they send us a deal, then we're like, yeah, cool, whatever, we'll take the loan. How do you identify your initial star 15? Is that, does that have been flow based on engagement? It's, we dial it down to production per the first year we've worked with them. We do quarterly meetings with them. Let me back it up first. How do you even identify who you want to add to that list? So we kind of go through, we have a way to look up our agent's numbers, production, production. Yeah, production. What's your minimum, by the way, sorry to keep interrupting what I want to make sure I can bam, bam. So the way that we went down was you have, if you're a brand new agent in the first six months, you have to have at least two deals done. And that, in my mind, that gives you three months to get ready. And that means that you're actually working and then you probably have some in the pipe as well. You got them in the hopper. And that's when they're right for the picking. They're like, no one's really going after them just yet. They're still, we only do two deals this year, but they've done it in a six month time span. You know, and then the other way is if you've been in the industry for a year, I want to see that you've done six. If you've been it for two years, I want to see that you've done 12 in one year. And if you've been in it for three plus, you have to be doing 15 plus. And so that's kind of how we go about it and how we think about how we want to bring the agents on. And in that way, we, because we invest a lot of time with them, we send out a business plan to them before we do our meeting. And then we have them fill it out 17 pages long. We built it ourselves. It goes deep dive into it. And then once you, once they fill it out, they bring it to the, they bring it to the table. If they did not fill it out, they'd not do it. We end the appointment right there. We go like, hey, we expected you to do this. You didn't do it. That's so we're not going to be a good fit. We already don't have enough accountability. And then the other is, all right, let's pause right there. So we got listeners wondering how many agents, you know, because the thought in people's heads is you get agents to fill out a 14 page business plan before they meet with you. Yeah. Because we tell them, like, we're going to offer you more than just what lenders offer you. We're trying to build a partnership. And we only want to work with 15 agents. So what that means is, yeah, we take up backup offers, you know, because one of those agents is going to end up either, you know, having some, some family issue or an issue of what that, the other, and we have to keep on moving on. We have to, you know, we're going to lose agents here and there. It just happens. Tell the world works. So we want to be able to go deep with someone where we're going to go, you know, videos. We're going to do, we're going to help you with your Instagram growth. We're going to help you with Facebook ads. We're going to help you with, if you want to build leads, we're going to do open houses with you. We're going to do all that stuff. We're going to mastermind with you. And that way of working it has worked out with the agents that we've done already, because it builds a loyalty and they, it's almost like they feel like they need us to be successful. Because they, they put in line with their, their growth. Yep. And like what's the one common denominator? It's like that we work with them. Yeah. It's, it's called the pain of disconnect. Right. So I could go go to loan somewhere else, sure, but what I can't get, and, you know, because most people aren't doing what you're doing, lenders, what I can't get is that additional value. Right. And so a lot of people don't want to do the value stuff, you know, they don't want to give in the value. And so when I was talking to my business partner about this, I was like, you know, it's, it's, it's high risk, high reward, because I think off, we're first off, we're going to start off pretty slow, because we're, we're going to be, you know, building rapport with these agents. We're firing a lot of the ones that don't do anything, and we're going to be scheduling appointments and leaving gaps open when people don't show up with the 17 page filled out business plan, and we have to shoot them away. Then we just wasted an appointment slot. Mm-hmm. It really says, though, what, what's clear to me is that you have, you have a standard of who you're willing to work with. Yeah. I think that everyone should. I think that there's like, like, I think first year, yeah, go out and try everything, you know, have fun. It's like the first year of college, you know, I mean, a while, go try every day, go throw up all that. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Now it's time to, now it's time to dial in a little bit. Second year, you really start defining who you are and who you want to be, and what your standards are. Third year. All right. I'm only going to go after, you know, eight, nine, and tens. I don't want to deal with anything else. You know, fourth year, maybe you find the girl that you want to be looking for, and in this case, 15 of them, and you, and you just go with that one, and you start, you start riding that wave, and that's, and that's how you end up just developing a greater rapport, and then so a lot of people go like, well, what about, and even my coach had pushed back on this on the 15, the 15 realtor deal, because, well, you need a lot more, and I was like, well, we are still meeting with agents. We just started investing in time, and, and I think that that's where there's a, there's a loss of disparity there, because a lot of people are giving the same amount of attention to 40 different agents when you can give, you know, if you give half that attention, or you give 200% of that attention to 15 agents, you know, and then you have, you know, just sprinkled in a little bit, you make, you take a phone call, you answer, like every now and again, for other people. Answering question, and, but for the most part, our Instagram is educational base, so they, they see us all the time, so people will send us deals on, or we'll get leads that way, but when we get lead, it's like, we're not, we're not just trying to send them out to new agents that we don't work with, you know, we give them to the people that, that we work with. It's kind of your, the inner circle concept, so you got your star 15, and like you said, just by, you know, being in the market and doing what you're doing, you're going to attract business, but those people may or may not get inside your inner circle, your star 15, but that's okay, the two or three deals, they flip you a year, we're not going to say no. Right, because I mean, like when we looked at it, and I was looking at in San Diego specifically, there's a lot of people that work with one lender, right? There's like a lot of the bigger agents that work with one lender, and I asked them on the phone, and I was like, hey, I know you work with this guy, and I'm not trying to see your business, I honestly just want to know, you know, why, and how did he get to that point? And I called the lender himself, and I got like, hey dude, like I really, I really, I'm very attracted to your model and how you built your business, I'm new to the game, I really want to know how I can grow my game. And so, I mean, it's humbling in the fact that you don't have to, you're not, you're not the best, you're never going to be the best, there's always going to be someone better, but you can always learn and try to get there, you know? So I always try to call different lenders and meet up with them all the time, and meet up with the top guys in San Diego, if they'll take, take a minute with me so I can talk to them, just like in, in mastermind dude, like I was hanging out with as many lenders as possible to as picking their brain, I was picking your brain, I was picking, you know, like Ben Anderson's brain, I was talking to Dave Savage, which I'm actually like, hang out and talk to him tomorrow, but I mean, like all these people that know what they're doing, it's like, if you can pull like little nuggets and know what works for you and all that kind of stuff that helps you build, but I mean, with agents, with our agents, it's like, well, if we can, if we can be associated with all those guys and all of them are doing, let's call it 20 million, 25 million, right? Which is not bad for an agent, that's not bad at all, if you do $25 million production, for the most part, you're, you're doing really well, you're, you're okay, you're making over half a million dollars and you're, you know, you're, you're live in life, you're loving it. And so that in that regard, if everyone looks at those and it was the common denominator and then it's, you know, this guy, you wonder why? Right, right. What would you say we got a few minutes left here? What's the toughest part or what has been the toughest part as you've ramped up and grown your business? Oh, the scaling factor. So I've, so we were doing all this stuff and we started like crazy crushing the videos, started getting all these agents that wanted to do the business plan and, and get them going, and we started getting fired a lot of like deals. And we didn't have the manpower to handle it. You know, and so in that regard, I was letting a lot slip through the cracks and it made me look bad. You know, and that's, that's on, that's on me, but that's also why we ended up hiring someone and we know that we have to keep on doing that. We're going to grow. And so we were always kind of a little bit greedy in the beginning. And me personally, I didn't really have that growth mentality of like, I need to have someone that's going to help me. I just figured I can do it best, so I'm going to do it myself. Right. And then, and then it took me, like I said, it took me away from prospecting because I'm sitting there in a file, deal with a fire, talking on phones, and also, by the way, I have to make my meeting today. You know, right. And, and it's like, and I can't focus on all of those things. So when I have someone that's boots on the ground, they're working, they're able to handle my production, they're talking to all the ops teams, they're really making sure everything's taken care of. I think that that's where the real growth is going to start happening, which is why I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to get to 100 million this year, hopefully. I know it. I really think I can. And, and I mean, it's in six months, so I'm going to have to bust my ass, but I mean, I don't have to do anything other than prospect now. I have a bad ass production officer that's that's helping out with just, you know, she was an underwriter. She was a senior loan processor. We did she did a she did loan management for 15 LOs and one branch. So she knows what she's doing. Yeah. We ended up snagging her, paid a little bit extra, but we, you know, we were trying, we we've had five assistants, and she's the fifth one. We fired all four of them within two weeks because we, we just couldn't do it. They're all green to the industry or they're somewhat brand new, and we couldn't have time to train and we wasted time with them and all that kind of stuff. So we ended up learning and how did you find your system? Curious. My business partner actually used to work with her. Okay. So we put out we put out a little feelers network influence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We put out a little feelers and LinkedIn and Facebook and stuff like that and she ended up, you know, coming to us and it was perfect. Cool. So all right. As we close it out here, what are you looking to do differently? And it doesn't have to be the edge could be no nothing because everything, you know, is working in your cool. But are you diversifying into other ways to generate business than you've currently been doing? Yes. I'm trying to dive into LinkedIn a little bit more. I'm trying to understand that. I had funnels. So I've been playing with funnels a lot. I have a coach that teaches me funnels. And, you know, I mean, that's like, you can sell them, but my entire mentality is that if I can build one out and I can give it to an agent and I can generate them leads and then I sell it to them as every single lead that comes in here, you have to give me the loan. So you like talking about Facebook ads and stuff? Yeah. Facebook ads, Google AdWords, that kind of stuff. I mean, I'm Indian. I'm good at technology. I can figure it out. That's my, that's like, that's my niche. I'm like, I, so I go in there and I try to learn all this stuff. And, and so, I mean, the more I can learn on that, the more I can teach my agents, the more leads I can bring in for everybody, and the more it's going to be organic and it's not going to be this fluffed up leads that come in. I mean, people are going to say, I got 250 leads for my agents last month. It's like, great, but how many of them close? Like one. That dude, that's less than one percent. That's less than a half and percent. And in that regard, it's like you're, you're doing nothing else. And this is how I think about it. I, maybe I'm pessimistic, but the way that I think about that is if I get 250 leads to my agent and they were just sitting there calling on and it was on chance of half a percent of them closing, I'd be like, dude, just sitting in your database. If you sit in your database, you'll get one deal close and it's not going to be as many phone calls and it's not going to take you that long and you're not going to be stressed out and you're not going to hung up on as many times and you're not going to waste as much time. I mean, that, that, that just blows my mind. 250 phone calls, we do three minutes of call. That's a lot of time. Yeah. You know, that's over 10 out. That's, that's like 12 hours of calling. Yeah, but that's the nature of a lot of the online leads, right? It's the one, one to, I mean, half to 3% and 3% is rich are like, you know, ready to close now, but that's on the very, very kind of like minuscule type ads that get built. They were just like, just one off ads that come in and it's supposed to be just generating people clicking on it. Right, which doesn't want you to go. Right. If you go funnel and you go long form, right, then you're going to get less leads, but they're going to be more quality and it's and the saying has always been and always will be quality over quality. Right. Right. Exactly. It's a good point 100% and that's a whole nother conversation too regarding Facebook leads and quality over quantity and people thinking it's a frigging slot machine. I'll just pull it magic happens. Yeah. So you got to know the game. You're in on that. Okay. Cool. Man. Well, listen, this has been awesome. I got a jump because we got another call to go to, but I really, really appreciate you. There was a lot of nuggets shared in this. I took like a page of notes and I know the listeners are going to love the very specific not only strategy, but tactics like executable tactics and kind of dialogues and stuff. So I'm really thrilled that we had this chat. Yeah. One thing I wanted to mention. Yes. A lot of a lot of why I think that we kind of went over this. I think we were trying to talk about it, but we didn't get a chance to. A lot of why I was okay when I only being two years in actual originating is because in three years in the back end, I was learning from a mentor. My guy, Adryl Sparzo was up here in G and I learned from him. And then I also hired a coach and, you know, oddly enough, is a Tom Perry coach. And his name is Aaron Chua. And he's an absolute monster. And so like all these guys, I having mentorship and paying for that and investing in yourself is I think the most important key that I think I put in my life that would that help me excel because I mean, if you pay for a coaching, he has maybe $1,200 a month, but $1,200 a month to generate $10,000 or $12,000, that's a great ROI. Things that you wouldn't do, things that keep you accountable. I mean, that's why people get trainers at gyms. I have a trainer at my gym because there's no way I'm going to work myself out as hard as that guy's going to work me out. He has me throwing up every Thursday. I'm going to call him and tell him to double down on you. I know right after Vegas, I need it. Right? No, that's awesome. You're right. Everybody does need a coach. We all need a coach. And oftentimes because we can't see ourselves in our blind spots. We all have blind spots. That's awesome. So listen, for people who want to reach out to you, where should they follow you? Give us your Instagram, all that jazz. Yeah. At next level lender. And then our, we actually do like little lending coaching tips at next level tips. And then you can, you can have my number eight five eight two zero seven eight four three six. You want to text me, call me, chat with me. I'm always open to having a good conversation with good people. And obviously you can DM me, slide in my DMs if you want to. Follow me for sure. I would definitely agree. Follow you because you are doing a lot of good things that we can model as loan officers, both on your training, you know, Instagram feed, but also just to kind of observe what you're doing out and about there. I love the fact though that man, you know what I mean, I mean, listen, I hate to keep going. Oh, the fact that you're young or whatever, but look at you've, you've got kind of this old soul to you a little bit. I don't know if you've been told that before. Yeah, I've been, but you're all right. All right. All right. That's cool because you do, man, where it's like a lot of people, a lot of people in your, I'm sure you see it every day, they're like, ah, we're all phone call. Let me just do it all online. You know what I mean? It's like, that's a big bright shiny headline that sounds good, but in the reality, it's a different story. I mean, it comes from comes from having a mentor, man, it's important to have someone that teaches you how to do it because we don't know what we don't know. And so we just look at what we do know, and what we do know and being a millennial is we know our phones. And we know that they're, we know about Zillow and Redfin. And so they just go like, oh, man, well, if I can just do everything on Instagram, that's the thing. There's people with deep dive on Instagram and they'll get like no leads at all because they have 200 followers. I don't know why I'm not getting business yet. I post every day that I post a house on my Instagram every day. Well, first off, people don't want to see a house on Instagram. They go on Zillow look houses. It's like, they want to see about you, they want to know about you. They want to know about your lifestyle. They want to see that you're a cool guy to hang out with because people are going to work with you as you. I mean, they have so many options. Why would they choose you outside of, I mean, for real estate agents, it's not even if you're a buyer's agent, there's no cost to you. This is a matter of who you are, who they want to spend their time with. 100%. Sweet. All right. Listen, again, appreciate you. All the lemon mentioned will be in the show notes. And listeners, there's always thanks for tuning in. And you know what to do if you like this episode or others, leave us a little love on the socials on the webs where you listen to this podcast. Appreciate you and we'll see you on the next one. 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 purchased 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, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates, real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere to from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.