Ep. 131 - How to Close 212 Loans with Agent Teams and Client Events

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. For a number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey, everybody, Jeff. Zimphur, welcome to do another edition of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Can I tell you how much I appreciate you? Have you ever heard that song by Van Morrison? Have I told you lately that I love you? Well, I definitely appreciate you for tuning in. Listen, this is a labor of love, right? It's not easy to produce a podcast consistently and heads up for those of you that might have been just coming around recently. I've been doing this since January of 2016 and I couldn't or couldn't do this without your feedback, your input and letting me know that this makes a difference. That's really what it's all about is making a difference in your life, your career, your business, helping pave the way, help, help shave off some of the lessons, give you nuggets, right? My new slogan might be more ideas per minute than any other mortgage podcast out there. That definitely speaks true of the podcast episode. I just recorded today for you, which you're listening to right now. But before we get there, I got to give a shout out, as always, for somebody leaving a review. If you haven't left a review yet on the inner webs, wherever you're listening to this podcast, I'd appreciate it if you do. I'll reward you with some podcast swag. Get a free t-shirt from me. Here's the latest shout out from Fresh Guy, who says great content. Jeff always delivers high quality guests and content for anyone in the mortgage industry. Highly recommend. Fresh Guy goes on to say, I'm a pro member now as well and his site content is very thorough and helpful for my business. Fresh Guy, what up, what up? You got t-shirts swag coming your way. Here's how you do this, folks. As you leave a review, hit me up. Just message me on Facebook or email me podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com. Let me know you left a review. Give me your address and your preferred t-shirt size. We'll send you a little swag as a thank you because I do appreciate you and that lets me know that you're listening and you care. The other thing, too, is Fresh Guy happens to mention that he's now a pro member and listen. If you guys have been listening for some time, I'm just going to cut to the chase. What are you waiting for? If you've heard me enough by now, you believe that I'm a big advocate of building your business both online and offline, locally, belly to belly, face to face with real estate agents and other referral partners, but also leveraging online and becoming a modern mortgage originator. What I find is most law officers are looking at how to bridge that gap. They're looking for how to quickly and easily get in front of maximum realtors in a minimum time and generate consistent dependable referrals. Well, we help you do that in the mortgage marketing pro membership as well as give you tools training and resources to help you get started with video, Facebook ads, Instagram, YouTube, whatever it is you want. Hey, want to learn more? Fresh Guy checked it out. He's now a pro member. You can go to mortgage marketing.pro, check out the free video we put up for you there and explain everything if it's right for you. We'd love to have you in. Alright, let's get into this week's episode. My very special guest is Ryan Smith, a producing branch manager out of Madison, Wisconsin, and Ryan, by the way, shout out to you, man, appreciate you. You're a long time listener to the podcast as well and also shout out for your team, Danielle. I believe Danielle is the one who turned you on to the podcast. And so shout out to Danielle, I guess, especially because she introduced you to the podcast. So thank you, Danielle, for bringing Ryan and I together. And Ryan's a stud. Ryan's a rock star. Listen, in 2018, Ryan closed 212 units for 42 million. The year prior 2017 closed 168 units. So folks were seeing some growth. And this is where I got the idea of more ideas per minute than any other mortgage podcast out there. That's because I drill Ryan, right? I press him. I push him. He showed up with his game face on ready to go and prepare to talk about his main source of business. And we talk about a lot of different things here, right? But we really unpack one of the key areas of business for him is, yes, real estate agents. I have them unpack how he prospects real estate agencies going after teams, specifically, how he differentiates his value proposition, things like that. But also we unpack how he's leveraging client appreciation events. This is oftentimes, you don't hear a lot of loan officers doing this, right? Some you do, but not a lot, right? It's a big play in the real estate space. But listen, you need to start doing client appreciation events. Team up with other folks in your office if you need to to generate enough attendees. Team up with a realtor and combine your past databases, right? Whatever the case is. But Ryan, there's three events in particular that we talk about. We talk about his toys for tacos, which is an amazing idea. We talk about his summer picnic, there's a movie event, movie events he does also. And this is just a great crash course on what's working for generating your business today. What's working now? What's going to work long term? We unpack the Zillow conversation and all that kind of stuff. So this is a great crash course in how to be a, both a modern originator, but be an originator who still leverages the foundation of this business, which is relationship to get referrals to build your sphere of influence and build a very profitable, highly successful business. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode as much as I did interviewing Ryan. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Ryan Smith, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate the opportunity. You bet you so the listeners heard the formal intro before we got started, but I always like to allow you to tell your own personal version of the story. Tell us a little bit about Ryan Smith, what you're all about, and why do you still enjoy the mortgage business? Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Like I said, I am about 20 years in, coming up on 20 years into the mortgage industry. And you know, I've been with Guild for just about seven months now, so I work at Guild Mortgage. My father got two kids, two teenagers, loved golf, loved to boat, loved live music. And what I love about the mortgage business is it's ever changing every day is a new day. Look, for real, you know, every day is new, and I love that aspect of our industry, along with obviously helping people in the homes. It's a pleasure to be able to do that. Fantastic. How many years have you been originating? 20? Coming up on 20. Yeah. Wow. That'll be my 20th year. That's the battle scars, right? Yeah, been through a couple wars for sure. No doubt. Give us a sense of 2018 units and or volume. Yeah. So 2018 was my best year, personally, it was 212 units and just over 42 million in volume. Got it. And you are in, is it Madison? Wisconsin? Yep. Madison, Wisconsin. Got it. Okay, great. Congratulations to you, by the way. That's, that's huge. So it was your best year ever in comparison. What was 2017 then in terms of units, you know, roughly? Yeah, I think 2017 was 168 for unit, which was like 36 or 37 million. Okay. So what do you attribute the difference in the growth there from 168 to 212? Well, I've been in coaching. So I'm a core guy. I've been in coaching for a long time and I felt, I feel like last year was kind of a culmination of a lot of the work that's been put in. I feel like my team was optimized. We were really clicking last year. That's a big thing, you know, when you're building a team to get to the point where everybody's truly on the same page and working in step with each other and last year, it just, it just all clicked. So along with, you know, a healthy market around here, yeah, it all kind of built up a lot of the coaching that I've done had all built up to last year and we caught momentum at the end of 17 and it just took off from there. Okay. I'm looking at your website here, but it's probably easier for you to tell me who do you have on your team that supports you? Yeah, the rules are. Yeah. So you've heard the terms loan partners, right? So I have a loan processor. I have a front end LP at Guild, they call them Eloise and then I have a team captain as well as a marketing coordinator who helps us with, you know, videos and online marketing, digital marketing, and also helps me with presentations and lunch and learns and happy hours and things of that nature. Who on your team is dedicated solely to you? Carol, Noel and Rebecca and that's a three person team in the loan production piece. Right. Right. I'm asking just to clarify, right? Because sometimes they're shared resources, like you mentioned, you're digital marketing support person. I imagine he or she supports other people just aside from you. Yeah, that's correct. Danielle is our digital marketing person and she supports my whole branch. We have four total originators, so she's pretty busy with all that. All right. So you have a dedicated loan processor and L.O.A. loan officer assistant who's dedicated to just you? Yes. Okay. All right. Cool. No, thank you. And again, I'm just articulating that for you listeners right now who are often asking those questions. How do I grow? How do I get to the next level without having a dedicated person, you know? How long have you had a dedicated processor and L.O.A.? That's a good question. I think probably three or four years. You know, a lot of shared resources building up to that. You know, six years ago, I didn't have anyone on my team and you just put building blocks in place. But I would say probably three or four years to have a fully dedicated team for myself. And do you recall what production level you are at units wise, for example, when you made the decision that you needed, you're undeticated people? I do. Yeah. I had taken a step back and done a little bit more management. And so I was my production was way down. I was doing about three loans a month. I got in the core. And for those of you who know the core, that strategy doesn't work well for the people that run it. And so they told me, you know, you got to get out of management, you got to get back into production. So it was kind of a rebuilding at that point. That was in 2011. So, you know, I started the process of building a team and it's hard to build a team when you're doing three loans a month, you know, it's hard to justify it, it's hard to take that leap. So sometime in 12, I think we hired our first person and just build from there. Of course, when you build a team, you know, there are, you go through some people occasionally and you got to get, you got to get, you know, in step with who you really want. And that was a process in it of itself, building the right team. So that took some time as well. All right. So you decided to get out of management. At this point, you're doing, you're producing self-producing about three loans a month and through the coaching, through the core, et cetera, you realize to in order to really grow, you've got to get a team. So is this your own money, you're investing to bring on these dedicated people? That's another great question. I run a branch. So I'm a branch manager and I have a P and L. So it wasn't coming out of my pocket in the sense that I was, you know, taking it out of my commissions, but it's coming out of my profit center. So it's a little bit different when you're a branch manager and you have a P and L. It wasn't personal money, but it was obviously being taken out of the P and L. Okay. Let me ask you a question this way then. At what point in terms of units production wise per month, would you suggest the loan officer seriously consider investing a percentage of their commissions towards a dedicated person? Yeah. The million dollar question. A lot of people about this, you know, because that's always the question. The people who are doing three to four loans a month, you know, think they've got to get to five or six before they hire somebody and the reality is they're never going to get to five or six or most of them won't get there in my experience without hiring someone. So I'm an all-in type of guy and looking back on it, I wish I had jumped a little sooner. I would say if anybody has some experience and they're bringing in leads and doing deals that they should jump in and hire somebody. Every time I've hired somebody, you know, my business has improved because of it, it will happen if you follow the system. So I don't know. I think that if you think you might want one and you see your passionate enough about getting there, I would go ahead and do it and take the plunge. Well, it's an interesting discussion in terms of like the ability to grow like you said. And it's a trap. I'm sure you see it firsthand as well, but it's this cycle, this vicious loop that LLs get caught in where, okay, now of originating four or five, six, eight loans a month, whatever that, it's in that sweet spot there, I think four to eight, where things get a little bit hairy and hectic. And yet they're having a hard time justifying that additional cost, you know what I mean? Yeah, and I just think it's, I think what happens in my experiences, you're going to go four, then you're going to do eight, then you're going to do two, then you're going to do seven, and then you're going to go up and down because when you get success prospecting, you bring the leads in, you work the leads and you close loans and then the month that you close them, you weren't prospecting. So, I think you ride the roller coaster and I just think if you get to the point where you're actually bringing in leads, you know, you got to get to a point where you actually believe that you're going to be successful and you could see it happening. I think that the first tire is essential to keep you in prospecting mode and keep you out of working loans, you know? Yeah. So, your first tire is like perhaps a L.O.A. or dedicated proctor? Yeah, I think the first tire somebody answered in the phone and helping you with, you know, helping with a lead track or helping intake loan applications, helping your schedule, keeping you in green time as they say and keeping you going forward and always, always prospecting as well as keeping you organized, you know, that's the other thing. Sales people, most of the people I know aren't naturally super organized, so keeping the calendar organized, keeping appointments, you know, you know, confirmed and collecting documentation and, you know, doing all the things that most sales people, especially in this industry, don't like doing or aren't naturally good at. Any secrets to finding the right person? Man, I'm really blessed. I have an amazing team. I really do. My L.O.A. we joke about it all the time. She was running a restaurant before I hired her and that I was most interested in that because I used to work in food service, so I knew that she could multitask and deal with people and, you know, deal with people who aren't always going to be happy with what's going on and, you know, be able to handle a lot of situations. So I believe in this profiling, you know, I think you've got to find the right person and the right personality for the job. Other than that, I guess the advice I would say is try to interview as many people as possible and, you know, don't just jump on the first resume that you see, but you want to find somebody that is going to be good naturally at what you're asking them to do. Yeah, agree. And I'm glad you brought up the disc because I was curious about that. I'm a big believer. I use it a lot in some of the coaching that we do. And for those who are listening, want to learn more about the disc, I'm actually going to provide a link in the show notes to one of the places I used to go for the disc was Tony Robbins as a free disc. Yep. That's what I used to. Yep. Yep. Okay. So I'll put a link for you guys in the show notes. The cool thing is like you take your own disc, right? You get to learn about yourself, who you are, have your spouse take it or somebody else in your life, right? Because it helps with communication. Yeah. But then also we take it on the team. Yeah. Well, we use it for hiring, but we also use it inside the team. Once a year, we kind of redo it, look at it, you know, I have to remind myself to pull that out sometimes and figure out maybe if I'm having a communication issue on the team, why and maybe I need to reread their disc and just kind of, you know, re-center myself on what is the best way that person needs to be communicated to? So. Absolutely. Good stuff. All right. Cool. So you mentioned, you know, as long as you look regarding hire somebody, bringing in leads. So that's a nice transition into bringing in leads. Common question, I ask. What's your main source of business? Realtor business, large majority of my business is working with real estate teams. I like to work with the teams. I would say second to that, it would be business people, you know, I mean, I mean, I mean, a B&I group. I'd still go and do that, work a lot with, you know, some insurance agents, accountants, attorneys, but mostly large majority would be realtors and, you know, past clients in my database. Sure. All right. So I want to touch on though, you clearly specified teams, just make a note here, past clients. Yeah. You are proactively pursuing teams versus individual agents. I started to a couple of years ago. Yeah. I just started to realize that, you know, while I have a team and different people do different things to help our clients with the level of service we want to provide, I started to realize that people who run teams understand that and they understand when they refer to different referral because they're referring the same type of service that they are trying to provide to that client. And what I find is that the client who generally wants or needs that and understands that is going to appreciate that on my end as well. So, you know, they feel well taken care of by the realtor because maybe they have a transaction coordinator or, you know, some sort of assistant helping them get set up and taking care of them. And then they refer to a lender who has the same process. But I've just found over the years that it seems, it's like we speak the same language. Yeah. Roughly how many teams do you work with right now? I would say considered legitimate teams, probably five or six. A couple of them are, you know, large teams in our community. And they make up roughly, again, you don't have to be exact because I didn't prep you for any of these questions. But as I told you before, you never know where this is going to go. That's all good. Roughly what percentage of your business, your purchase business does those five to six teams make up? That's a good question. I should get that official data, but my initial feeling on that would probably be over 50 percent. Okay. Got it. Got it. Very deep. But I really think there's value in this conversation right here. What's the seasoning or maturity level or, you know, time that you've been working with those five to six teams? Are any of them newer or most of them have been established for some time with you? I would say most of them are teams that I've built over time. One specifically I'm thinking about one of my top, you know, business partners or referral partners. I did his first deal. So he was a listing agent. I did his first deal. We went to coffee and he just said, you know, I want to build a team and I think it's five years later, he's got a massive team and really just was one of those agents that you know, took it and ran with it. So it was very organic beginning, I guess, to somebody that literally, you know, did their first deal. But I would say a couple of the other ones, two, three, four years, you know, you're always trying to cultivate that. The interesting part is just like in mortgage, realtors leave teams, right? So agents get big and they want to start their own team and so that's a whole another challenge for us is, you know, maintaining those relationships when they leave the team that we're in lockstep with, you know. Yeah, because they go to somebody else who's already got a mortgage lender set up and that kind of thing. Yeah. Or they're starting their own team, right? And they want to go off on their own and so now they're going to build a team and, you know, sometimes I have success with that. Honestly, sometimes they get influenced in a different direction and, you know, go back to the prospecting thing. You always got to be prospecting because you never know what can happen to the business partners you have. Well, there's a couple of lessons I want to highlight from why I asked you those questions. Number one, that agent who's now this big team was a new agent. You did his first deal now five years later, you're still working with him. So that goes to the question that people often ask, should I pursue new agents as a loan officer? Yeah. That one worked out pretty good. I love new agents. I love meeting with new agents. We try to bring them into our office and meet with them as a team and, you know, we obviously are starting that meeting on more of a base level of how can we help you, you know, maybe some education, you know, give you the basics of mortgages and loan programs if they want it. Yeah. A lot of the new agents come in and just start smiling because they love the fact that while they don't know what they're doing, they're going to have someone that takes care of them. So I love working with new people. Yeah. I mean, first of all, they're green, they're eager, right? They don't have any of the bad habits, perhaps yet. But is there any way, I don't know about you, but sometimes I know I like to think that and this might just, I hope this doesn't sound like egotistical, but, you know, sniffing out a good realtor versus a not good realtor. Do you have like a radar for that or a process, you know? I wouldn't say that I have a process, but I think through some question and answer, you can figure that out. Even, I mean, not, not just in real estate, but any salesperson, you know, do you have what's your process? What's your business plan? What's your plan? Yeah. What are you going to do? Do you have a plan? Yeah. And, you know, before Zillow, and, you know, I know you've had some recent episodes about Zillow and different lead sources before those lead sources, you know, you meet with a new agent and you ask them that question and they usually was something along the lines of my sphere, you know, and they didn't really have a plan and now a realtor can become a realtor and start doing a lot of business right away if they can buy leads and create that lead source right out of the gate if they want to. So it's interesting. I've seen some agents go from new to six, seven, eight, nine, ten million in the first 18 months and prior to online lead sources, that was not possible or if it was a very small majority or minority. Yeah. Let me ask you this question. When you meet with the agent under the prospects of, let's say, potential partnership, right? We'll set us on how they came to it. Let's just say the understanding is we're going to talk about a potential partnership. How long do you wait, you know, to see momentum from that agent or do you have, you know, how do you handle that process? And what I'm dealing with is the classic question of met with the agent, crickets, nothing, you know what I mean? How do you address that? I think that that's a constant struggle for everyone, you know, you have to have a plan. I've struggled with this over the years, but you have to have a game plan, right? We all go to coffee, we go to lunch, we go have meetings, what do you do after that? So that's where the core has been great. You know, I have a follow-up plan. I try to regularly communicate with them. Again, it's just, I look at it like it's just relationship building. You know, I met with them, great, we got along, you know, now what? So we have a little marketing program that we plug people into just to stay in touch with them, to let them know that we can cover them on the weekends, to let them know a little bit more about the process, to invite them to our events, you know, and we kind of plug them into our marketing strategy. But yeah, it's a constant struggle because you do get to the end of the year and you realize you met with a lot of people, how many of them are you actually still in communication with? Because you really can only have so many relationships, right? So I'm a go deep type of guy, I'm not great at the wide net strategy, tried both and, you know, I've just found that I'm a lot better when I can go deep with somebody and get to know them and, you know, earn that trust legitimately and build a solid relationship. Okay, what's your process then for marketing two agents? How do you get those meetings and stuff? First and foremost, I communicate directly with all the listing agents on every deal. I make a phone call to them as soon as the contract comes in, introduce myself, introduce our process, I ask them if there's anything I need to know about the home that would be of use and I ask them how they want to be communicated to and let them know that I'm going to do my weekly updates status call to them. Usually they say something along the lines of, wow, you know, nobody does that. And then, you know, you still hear that opening, right? Yeah. Right? So you look for the opening, right? And then, you know, depending on how they react, I usually try to start setting the table that I want to meet them. And every week when I'm calling them, I'm updating them, but I'm marketing to them. I want to meet them and get to know them as well. So that would be first and foremost, that's how I meet most of my new agencies off of transactions where we do a good job, we kind of earn that meeting. Do you ever get the pushback, hey, I'm a listing agent, appreciate it, but all the time. Yeah. How do you handle that? Yeah. I usually say, well, you know, people selling homes are usually buying homes, right? And, you know, let me see if I can help you market your home first of all. And if anything, I would love to meet good people. So that's great. We'll probably run across each other at some point down the line. And it would be great if we at least had met and talked for 10 minutes. You know, really that's kind of, I just try to convert it that way. Sometimes it works. Sometimes they're pretty opposed to it, but, you know, Madison is probably 500,000 people if you take all the surrounding areas and it's a pretty small town when it comes down to our industry. So, yeah, I usually just say, hey, we're going to see each other again. I'd love to meet with you for a few minutes and, and you got friendly, hugely in Madison. Everybody's friendly up here in Wisconsin. It certainly are. It's different than New York City, man. That's pretty true. Yeah. Okay, so let's transition them. Thank you for sharing all that. I want to transition into what I thought was a really cool thing that I see you. I saw you doing. I forget where I saw you post this, but your past client strategies. This is one of those key three pillars of business you mentioned, right? It's past clients and it's one of those things everybody knows, but not everybody does. So there's a couple of things I wrote down. I'm trying to decide where to, let me just do this. You consistently do client appreciation events at various times throughout the year, right? Yeah. Okay. What I'm looking at is you do movie events. You do an annual toys for tacos. All right. Let's talk about that. Okay. Some are picnic as well. We'll come back to that. But what's up because everybody kind of knows what the movie event is. I've talked about it before. Yeah. Posted it. But anyway, so tell me what toys for tacos is. Yeah. So I poached this idea sitting at a core summit. Greg Gayle actually down in Arizona was talking about it. I believe he said something in passing that he didn't event. And I just kind of poached it and started doing it. And what it is is we have a local organization in our county, the road home. It's called the road home and they help homeless families. And so we put in a rent event around it around Christmas time saying, hey, bring, bring an unwrapped toy or a donation and we'll buy tacos and we hired an authentic taco truck comes to the office. We do it right here in the office. So we're bringing people in here and we, you know, have fun with it. I wear a Santa Claus costume and people bring toys. Is this like Christmas tacos? Is this in December? We do it in, it's in the first, I believe the first week of December is generally when we do it. Really organic. It's not super, you know, scientific. We decorate the office and, you know, do some fun things. But legitimately a taco truck right out our front door, people pull up, they just grab toys and then grab some great tacos. Usually people start hanging out. It's kind of grown. So now it takes over the whole day. We've got people in and out of the office. It turns into kind of an open house. Yeah. Same, you know, in the end of the day we take, you know, several pickup trucks or a trailer to load a toys over the charity and, you know, it's awesome. It's a great event. Well, it's a, it's unique. They are clients engaged in it. It's a unique thing. I mean, who would think toys for tacos, right? That immediately gets your attention. And who doesn't love a taco, you know, even in December. Yeah. That's funny, man. I like that. Great idea. So how long have you been doing that one? I think we're entering our sixth year. This will be the sixth one. Yeah. And so you get a parade of, is it one day you do it or is it over the course of several? Just one day. One day. All right. So you get a parade of people coming in. Like lots of people coming by, dropping. A lot of people. Yeah. I mean, the business community supports it as well. I mean, a lot of our realtor partners, business partners come. Yeah. But we also have a lot of clients that come and, you know, they'll bring toys. Some of them go, you know, crazy and bring a lot of toys and some of them just bring money and put it in the donation bin. And it's really become a big thing and people look forward to it. A few times the news came out and put it on the news. Yeah. It's been fun. It's, you know, a couple of us wear costumes and have fun with it. It's a great time. Yeah. Yeah. You said you're Santa, man. You're Santa all day eating tacos, right? Exactly. That's awesome. All right. There's another one you do. A summer picnic. Have you already done that this year? Yeah. We did it a couple weeks ago. Three weeks ago, I think. All right. So tell us about that. Where do you do that at? Yeah. We took a park, you know, just a park centrally located in Madison. And again, we rent a pavilion. It's got, you know, it's a city park. So it's got all the places for kids to play. We grill out and have a organic picnic meaning, you know, it's food in Nesco's and, you know, not really a catered event, but the food, you know, we throw out a salad and whatnot. Then we have, we had a client who ran a ice cream truck. So we hired them to come and set up the ice cream truck. And so it's, it's a cookout with an ice cream truck and yard games and face painting that you're the girls in the office added face painting for kids, the huge hit. The best part about that one is just seeing the families, you know, seeing people come out, hang out. We set up yard games. It's a great time to sit and chat with people. That's what we said. The realtors get to spend more time with clients than we do. And that's that's one event, you know, we don't get to drive around in the car with them and show them homes. We're usually meet with them once or twice. Yeah. And, you know, this is a good way for us to stay really connected to them. So these are all your past clients. Are you inviting all your realtors or how do you select? We invite business partners and a lot of the realtors we've worked with, we've done business with them. So they're clients. Okay. So it's like you would also, you would also go to the realtors, you've worked mutual clients and say, hey, invite your clients to this also. Yeah. Now, we haven't, I mean, that would not be opposed to that. We haven't really taken that angle. It's mainly our client base and we market it solely on our own merit. Okay. So it's like doing email, what else are you doing to promote it? A lot of video. We do email, video messages, try to also have fun with that one too. So, you know, try to make the video funny and get them intrigued to come out and have some fun. Yeah. And I've seen you on video, by the way. You're good on video and guild helps you guys, apparently, with video, huh? Yeah. They have a good platform. Guild has a great marketing program, marketing department. They put out good looking content. I mentioned Danielle earlier, she's, she's our in office marketing coordinator. She edits all the videos. We have built a little studio in the basement and, you know, she has to make sure she's following all the rules and get everything approved. But we bought some video software and, you know, twice a week I go down in the studio for a couple minutes and shoot a video and. Yeah. Well, listen, for those listening who don't have that resource, look at that, don't let that be a roadblock for you because there's plenty of people right in your backyard who can edit video. You know, you could set it to five or obviously people know that. I just, you know, hit up young people, you know, and I mean, whether it's your safety kids, that's circle of influence, go to the local college, whatever you don't own. I don't want to hear the BS excuses about, hey, I don't have that. Yeah. You don't, you don't need that. I mean, and our setup is is a green sheet and a few lights. I mean, it's not when I say studio, you know, we're, we're adding pieces to it. But it, for years before that, it was, it was, I mean, at one time it was cell phone, you know, someone standing with a cell phone in front of me. So I would say the messages just do it because I think there are a lot of studies. I'm not a marketing major, but there are a lot of studies about the more organic, the video or more raw, the video, more people watch it and like it. So, right. Right. Something to be said to that too. Exactly. All right. So those are all good ideas and those obviously I'm going to assume, you know, it's probably a dotted line for business, but you can track that's an organic way to generate business referrals for you. Right? And so, you know, we have had a, a, that's been a challenge for us is figuring out how we're going to fully track business that comes in from video marketing. Sometimes you know they called off of it because they tell you they saw your video about refinancing. You know, I did a refinance video last week, sent it to my clients, 19 people emailed me back in an hour. Obviously I can track that. But I've done, I've done other videos where, you know, all of a sudden someone you haven't talked to in six years or haven't had a lot of communication, we'll call you. And you know, I don't can't directly attribute it to the video or to the thing they saw online, but usually that's what I chalk it up to because I stayed in front of them in a relevant way. You know. Yeah. Right time right place. I want to quickly ask you about the video email, 19 people called you. Are you using, what do you use to send that out of that Bob bomb or something? I use bomb bomb. Yeah. I used to use cold video when I came to guild. They like bomb bomb. So, both great companies. Yeah. Just wanted to clarify for those listeners, they're like, how does he send that video? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very easy. It integrates right into your email. It's amazing how easy it is. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. 19 people called me. Fantastic. Something I wrote down letter from the heart. That was just a reminder for me. You know what that is. Tell us what that is. Yeah. That's a, that's a core teaching, right? I think I don't know if it came from, but even before the core, obviously, but it's an organic letter that you send out to your clients. Your realtor is your business partners. And I do it once a quarter. And my stance on it is, is I'm just trying to relate to them as a person and a friend, not necessarily always marketing myself. I do want to stay connected to them in a personal way. So, I write letters about my family. I write letters about experiences I've had or lessons I've learned or books I've read. And send it out. You know, it's a little outside of my comfort zone. Be honest with you. And so, I have the team here pushing me to write the letter and put in deadlines around it. So, I do it. But, yeah, I do it. I share it with my wife. She helps me edit it, you know, because it's usually something personal about our family or about something we're doing. And it's amazing how many people relate to that. You know, everybody, I get emails and calls about whatever I wrote about. And those are my favorite because they're usually really, really genuine reach outs. I'm trying to understand, getting a little more, what I'm thinking of, and this might not be accurate is, you know, you get those, like, annual letters from people at Christmas time. Here's what our family's been doing. Is it similar to that? It's not really. No. I mean, some people might do that. The last letter I wrote was about my son 16 years old. He's driving now and it's amazing to me how fast that went, first of all, and second of all, how much I don't get to drive in the car with him anymore. So, I used to take him everywhere and that's where we would talk. And I just tied it into, hey, you know, just a little message of something on my mind. And, you know, if this, if you can relate to this, you know, in some way, you know, and I usually try to tie it into, you know, keep the message consistent. They're not long letters. I've sent some out about music. You and I chatted a minute ago about music. I'll send out, you know, cool musical experience I had, or, you know, and I'll get people reach out to me and say, you know, I love that band too or something like that. Miracle morning, I wrote about that when I read that book. I had people reaching out, you know, asking about more, you know, I still have people tell me that they read that book and changed things in their life because I sent the letter. I don't want to take credit for that, but, you know, those are, those are cool, uh, ways to stay in touch with people that is different than me, you know, marketing to them with a, a note about refinancing or something. Hmm. I love that, man. That's, that's awesome. That's, that's, that's good. It reminds me the question of what can you do that fill in the blank, Zillow can't do, Amazon mortgage can't do, you know what I mean? They can't do any of that kind of stuff. They can tell you if you're out of toilet paper, but, you know, um, which kind of leads me to, uh, let me see here. We got to wrap it up in just a few minutes, but, um, again, I'm looking at my notes. So I wrote down from, from the last conversation we had is if I'm correct, maybe this was you saying this, that agents are tired of your calls on, you know, Mondays, right? Like, hey, what's up? You got any leads from the weekend for me, right? Which I know the core obviously teaches calling on Monday or Tuesday, right? Mm-hmm. So I'm just curious if you approached those calls differently or what? Yeah, I've tried to change my strategy, you know, I was never good at the, uh, I don't think I still am good at the, the generic Monday call, um, you know, did you work or play this weekend? Um, you know, do you have any clients I can help you with? I'm trying to get better at that, but again, I was saying earlier, I like to go deep. So I'm looking for ways to stay in touch with people legitimately and, you know, honestly to stay in relationship with them. I'm also trying to find the people that I feel like we have genuine connection and interest and become friends. And so my phone calls are more along those lines, you know, and, and then when I'm calling newer agents, I am legitimately asking them, is there anything you need help with right now? Is there anything that I can do to help you? Um, we're using, uh, you know, we're using different strategies in, in, you know, trying to help them market their homes. So list reports is something that I use. I'm sure, um, you've probably talked about that before, but, you know, the nice thing about that is it's a, it's a way for me to communicate with agents. That's something that's free to them that they can use to market a home. So I'm calling and talking about those things, um, I use home bot, uh, my clients and the nice thing about that is I get a lot of people that reach out to me and want to know is the value in home bot accurate. So I can call the agent and ask them to do a CMA. Mm hmm. Again, hopefully adding value to the agent to let them know the client might be interested in selling. But yeah, I'm, I'm trying to find connection versus more generic calls. Mm hmm. So if you're doing differently or testing out, we're moving in the second half of 2019 or looking forward to 2020, anything you're doing, you want to talk about there? Um, I would say that we're really focusing on my team, the speed and efficiency, um, you know, as, as the world of the market just changes and becomes, um, faster and more technologically advanced, we've got to stay ahead of that. So, you know, we're doing, uh, 17 day guarantees, underwriting, pre-approvals, you know, a lot of people are doing this, but we're trying to put our buyers in the best position possible to make the strongest offer and what we're finding is agents love that. So my team specifically right now is focusing on efficiency, speed, over communicating, um, you know, all of the things that we should always be doing. But at the same time, we're a relationship business. We're trying to also take advantage of day one certainty and, um, you know, all of the, the pieces of technology that are available to us to actually make a mortgage, uh, efficient and quick. Yeah. Um, you know, you got to have the right people in place to be able to do that before I had a team, I would have never been able to tap into that, but we're trying to really, really focus on that because that's the future, you know, I'm reading and hearing that, you know, 10 day clothes is coming within 10 years, right? So if that happens, how am I going to stay relevant? If I want to be the relationship guy, well, I've got to be the relationship guy that can do the 10 day clothes or whatever it ends up being, um, you know, loan commitments don't need to be 30 days. Now they're 20 days or less, right? And you have to be set up to do that. So everyone on the team has to be ready to be able to perform with that. So we're doing weekend coverage. I'm trying to to let realtors know that that we're available on the weekend to my team rotates someone's on call every weekend and we send out a video and a, you know, social media posts saying, Hey, Ryan's on call this weekend or Rebecca's on call this weekend. And if you need anything and what we'll have is agents who we don't work with, we'll need a pre approval Saturday afternoon and they will reach out to the person because they got my email. So little things like that, just trying to, trying to be different and unique and not the same as, you know, who our competitors are, which are not, are not doing any of those things. Yeah. It's interesting. I think that's the, you know, the big questions comes back to, uh, like I said, you know, what can you do that Zillow can't do, for example, because we know they're in the mortgage business now and are going to continue to be and I know you caught any of this, but in men, connect happened in Las Vegas this past week. And one of the little snippets I saw shared was the Rich Barton, the CEO of Zillow, um, basically said, you know, he firmly believes that the consumer should get, uh, the real estate transaction in one place, both find the home, close the home and get the mortgage all in one place, um, comma, he doesn't, he, he is not trying to displace or get rid of real estate agents. He's, you know, he basically said real estate agents aren't going anywhere. And this is like a whole different other, another debate we don't have time for. Um, I think what I'm taking away, why I'm saying all this is this is, is that because will they get a percentage of the market? Yes. Right? I mean, look, uh, quick and, right? Does a ton of business have they displaced all the other mortgage professionals in the country? No. Right? Neither will Zillow mortgage. Because there will always be people looking for the value, right? And, and, and people will always look for that value. There will be that percentage that look for nothing but price and efficiency and speed. And we all want efficiency and speed, but we want, we want value and expertise at the same time. Yeah. So I think that our agents, I think the key there is the agent. The agent wants, the agent wants certainty. And at least in, in Wisconsin and in Madison, when, when our agents here, quick and pre-approval, they're, they're doing their best to let their client know they should really consider someone local and someone that they can go sit down with. Um, and we have their support, I feel in our community. And I think that will continue. But you're right. People want a relationship. They want advice. You know, you're borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, you, you need to know that you're not just clicking a button and borrowing that. You should get some advice. We don't invest our own money. You know, you should, you should, you know, I don't think you should do your own taxes. I think you should pay a professional to do those things. And I don't think that's ever going away. I think it's going to condense things and it's going to make things harder to stay relevant and stay, stay in that position. You know, it's always going to be there, my opinion. Yeah. And you know, it's funny about that. And you look at the so real, real G and the partnership with Amazon and CEO of movement. Casey Crawford came out and I thought made a nice highlight about that is that. So, so what's happening there? What's happening there is, first of all, all they're trying to do is give some credits, right? To buy Amazon stuff or whatever. If you choose a real G realtor. But with that still keeping the realtor front and center to the transaction. Yeah. So that tells me that's how somebody like you, those that are listening for the noise that's, you know, you know how this is. There are always people that saying loan officers, whoever are like saying, pursuing agents suck. They're bad. They're terrible. Right. All the noise we hear about why agents are terrible. Well, yeah, there's some bad agents out there, right? Like the podcast you just listened to before with Michael Helixen, why are you working with a bad agents that, you know? Yeah. You're going to be at the center of the transaction. There's bad sharpeners. There's bad everything. You know, you every industry has good and bad. Right. And you're right. You should seek out. You know, that's why we work very hard at our reputation, our online presence. It's very important to us because you should seek out. When you go to a restaurant, what do you do now? You read Yelp. You find out the reviews. Should I go there? They serve good food as their service good. You know, that's what the consumer's doing now. They're revealing that. People tell me all the time that they were referred by their agent, but they read about me online. Yeah. That's like great. I welcome that. Please do, you know? Well, let's, let's, I want to highlight that real quick because I, I had overlooked. I wanted to bring that up real quickly because that's a, that's a salient point for what we just said. We know people are going online researching. They're googling long keywords like, you know, mortgage in, in Madison, Wisconsin. Even if they use mortgage broker and met, you know what I mean? You want to come up with those, those, those keyword terms. But you said something critical, which is even if a realtor's referring you, they're still going to hop on Google and do a bunch of research. And they're finding the Ryan Smith team at build mortgage here with 85 five star Google reviews. Man, that, that's awesome. That's credibility right there. I appreciate it. That's something that we've worked really hard on. And, and they're all, they're all organic, you know, they're people using our names and talking about their experience. And I just had two people call me yesterday and say they, you know, frustrated with where they're at. And they read my reviews and want to talk about, you know, getting the same level service that everyone wrote about. So I don't think that anybody these days calls. Well, I shouldn't say that. I don't think that that many people call without at least looking you up. Yeah. And figure out who you are. Oh, 100%. 100%. Sure, it's real quick. How do you get those people to post online reviews? Is there a process or a system? Yeah. So after alone closes, right around the time the first payment is, is do, we do a courtesy call to them to make sure they know where their payments going. And they've gotten their paperwork and they're set up. We asked them how we performed for them. You know, we, we, we set an expectation in the beginning of what our goal is. And I, I plant the seed that at the end of this, I'd, I'd like to ask you to provide an honest review online. And so I asked them legitimately, how, how did we do? And good, better and different. I asked them to fill out a review online and share with the public. And most people say, yes, not everybody goes on and does it. But usually if they say they will, then we track that and we, we check to see if they've done it. And then I'll make one more call if they haven't done it a month later to say, hey, would you please mind providing us a survey. And usually, you know, we'll get decent percentage. We'll go out there. We started that a few years ago. And we lost some of them when I transitioned to guild, but, you know, it's, it's a great way to provide honest feedback. And I am truly looking for honest feedback. If somebody says something wasn't right, that's fine. I want to know about it because it's going to help us improve. And they also love hearing that. Are you using a software for that? Are you just like sending them a link or what? I have a link. I just email it to them and say, okay, if I just send it to your email right now. And yours is, is it Google only? Are you giving them choices? I asked for Google. And that was strategic several years ago because I feel like people Google for a mortgage versus going to Zillow or something. I have some Zillow reviews, but not many. And I don't, I don't, I think our people are generally googling that. So yes, I only go, I only ask for Google. We do get Facebook reviews and stuff, but Google is what I'm seeking. Yeah, 100%. Smart strategy, man. Cool. Awesome. All right. Well, look, this is, we've got a lot of nuggets shared in here, man. So for you listeners, give a shout out to Ryan Smith on the socials on the web, whatever. If you like this episode, leave us a review. Ryan Smith, I can't say enough, man, for you making time to be here. Appreciate it. Appreciate your time, Jeff. I'm a big fan of the show and keep doing what you're doing. Appreciate what you do for our community. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. And listeners, as you know, I appreciate you. If you'd like to leave us a little love, do that, you know where to do that. Subscribe if you haven't yet. And we will 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. 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