Ep #14: David Krushinsky: Crushing it With Client and Agent 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 Cogill 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. Your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey, loyal listeners, welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio, Jeff Zemfer, your humble host. So once again, we've got another great guest lined up for this week's episode, Mr. David Krasinski out of Peoria, Arizona, really great or phoenix area, if you will. And David's got a very interesting insights to share with us. Specifically, number one, a great story about how he got into the mortgage loan origination business by being on the opposite end of botched loan real estate transactions. And more importantly, perhaps is I think you'll learn a lot as David reveals the two areas from which he obtains the bulk of his business and those are client appreciation events, which he does twice a year, and ongoing launch and learns that he hosts for real estate agents. We're really deep dive into how David manages client appreciation events, what's involved, where he does them, all the moving parts that go into that. And the real estate agent lunch and learns, we dive into the topics, how he gets butts in the seats, how he teams up with his affiliate title, escrow co-sponsors to help defer costs and make sure that he has a successful event. And of course, most importantly, how he is very highly targeted, he calls it sniper targeting, where it's very strategic in who he invites to these real estate agent lunch and learns, so that he makes sure that he's using his time in the highest leverage possible way. So by the way, if you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe to mortgage marketing radio, where we're bringing you truth in mortgage marketing. Don't want to miss another episode, click subscribe, like us on iTunes, leave us a review, and so without further ado, let's transition over to this episode of mortgage marketing radio. So David, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here, man. Thanks a lot, Jeff. I appreciate it. Glad to be here. Yeah, you bet. So I wanted to get right into it today, because I know you're very busy. You are in the Phoenix, Arizona market. How's the weather today? Well, today is July 7th, so it's about 115, I would imagine, by the time the record temperatures hit, so it's pretty warm here, buddy. Yeah, I just actually spent the 4th of July weekend at Lake Mojave out there in Arizona, so I can appreciate the heat, although I was on the water still. It was about a buck 12 out there. Nice. Yeah, it's a great lake. Yeah, it is. We had a lot of fun, wave runners, boats, all that fun stuff. So okay, so let's do this. Let's start with the listeners who may not be familiar with you, David. If you wouldn't mind, just kind of giving a brief intro backgrounder, and what I'm really intrigued about was kind of how you got into the mortgage business. I know there's a personal story there, so maybe take a couple of minutes and share that if you wouldn't mind. Sure. So I got in the business in 2002, and one of the ways that I found the mortgage business was I had a house that I was selling. My wife was pregnant at the time. Basically, the real estate agents that we were working with were representing us on the cell side and the buy side, and so we sold the house we lived in, we moved all of our stuff in my dad's garage, and we were waiting for a day or two for the new house to close. Meanwhile, my wife was getting ready to give birth to my daughter and my within a few days. So the people that were buying the house from, you know, they wouldn't get out of the house. So they wouldn't leave. So, you know, like we're like stressing out, I have all my stuff in boxes and my daughter's getting ready to be born. And it was because of the down payment assistance programs and some other things that were going on with the time that delayed the closing, and so the sellers didn't have a place to go. And so that was my first encounter with a boss real estate transaction, I guess. And my second encounter was when I was buying my next home. And the loan officer just really didn't tell us about anything that we needed to do to be successful for the transaction. So having those two experiences really helped me to realize that there was a need for customer service and a need for walking people through the home buying process. And I ran into a guy that I was selling windows too at the time. And he was actually doing mortgages and making a really good living. And he was kind of the guy that brought me into the business. And I worked under him for about eight years and learned a lot from him from, you know, from that. And from that's kind of where my career took off. Wow. Yeah. So you can relate to some of the pain points from personal experience. So you mentioned something you worked under this other person for eight years. And essentially he mentored you, right? Yeah. Correct. What would you say were some of the biggest, if you look back on that, you know, takeaways from that mentorship that you're perhaps still using today that help you be successful? Well, I think some of the things that, you know, that I learned from him was just to have, you know, have really good character. To obviously, you know, do what you're saying you're going to do. He wasn't like, he was a big producer, but he wasn't one of these guys that you see in mortgage originally or magazine or whatever. But he had a lot of, you know, clients that were past referrals. And you know, he just taught me to be fair with people. You know, we always priced our loans similar to the way that we have to do now. But we always priced our loans the way that, you know, we were giving the client the same deal every time. And so it was fair to them. And they, you know, we weren't trying to overcharge borrowers just because we knew we could get away with it. And so, you know, when L.O. comp came around, like I had already been practicing my business that way. So it was there was no adjustment for me. But I just learned a lot about integrity and honesty and the way that, you know, you want to treat other people how you want to be treated. Yeah, absolutely. And especially back then, you know, before the resolve of this regulation in the industry, it was a little bit kind of crazy and all over the place to your point about, you know, the way we have to charge for loans now versus you were trying to do the right thing by people because you had the longer term view in the business, I think. For sure. Yeah. Very good. So, all right. So let's transition then to current day. Tell us real quickly about your current setup, such as, right, your team, what it looks like, production units, kind of stuff that anybody listening wants to know. So I'm a producing branch manager. I'm in Peoria, Arizona. So our amounts are, you know, less than they are in most of the rest of the United States. It seems like. But my average loan amounts around, I would say 200,000. Manual production is right around 29 million. We do about 145 units a year. What my team looks like is I have my wife is like, kind of manages our contract to close portion of it. She's the smartest person on the team, which is wonderful because she's much smarter than me. She's a CPA by trade. And so she's the one that looks out for all the, that, you know, like as a salesperson, you want to say yes to everybody, but she's the one that's, you know, the more realistic person says, yeah, we can't do this. So she gives me out of trouble. And then I have a guide that I brought on as a dealer. I hired him to kind of beta test this dealer program that the court teaches. And he's been with me for right around three years now. And so I brought him on. He's a licensed loan officer. He generally takes applications and does a lot of follow up for me. You know, he's really good with starting new relationships where, like he's a, he's a, you know, he's a single guy. He's like 27 years old. So I'm an older guy. He's the, he's the young guy that will walk up to any girl in the bar and ask. So, you know, that helps with getting me out of my comfort zone and meeting more real estate agents because I, I look in. Right. And then, so, so let's pause there for a second. So tell me what do you have him doing? You know, who's he calling? You mentioned earlier before we were recording the past database, but it sounds like he's also contacting agents for some reasons. So tell us a little bit about that. Sure. Um, so, you know, initially when I hired him, I thought, who am I going to have this guy make phone calls to? Because, uh, you know, if I'm a loan officer in the business, I'm not comfortable making phone calls to just any real estate agent with if I have nothing to say, right? So what I did is I just basically got a list of my past clients, which we had in our database. And, um, I told them, hey, call every single one of these people and tell them that we're having a party. You know, we're, we're going to have a client appreciation party and we want to make sure that we have their address and their phone number on file. And, um, and just, you know, a random phone call that you're on my team and we want to invite them and we want to make sure that they get the invitation. And then before you hang up, just say, hey, do you have any questions that I can have David answer about your current mortgage? And so, um, what that did is two things. It obviously made us contact our best past client database and get some revised. And then also, you know, get our database up the speed and have the correct information in there. And so, um, that's kind of how I started him was to make warm phone calls so that way he wasn't so nervous. And then what we would do is every time somebody said, yeah, I was thinking about doing a re-fi, I would have him put the coffee sheet together. And so I'm actively training with hands-on information. And then I would have him send it to me. I would check it and then I would forward it out to the client. And, um, so that's how we started. But then obviously, after we went through our whole database, then we had to figure out what the next step was and that was the next step was to start contacting our existing real state database and then by writing in the classes and things like that, because those are easier phone calls to make than just random call call to agents. And so we just kept progressing. You know, we just kept raising the bar and making it more uncomfortable, more uncomfortable until, you know, we were calling brand new agents out of the blue. And inviting them to your classes. Correct. Yeah. All right. So let's, I want to go back to the client appreciation party for a second. Reason being is I think, you know, a lot of loan officers have heard about those, but I think most still haven't done them for a variety of reasons. So you invited, obviously, past clients, but also some realtors to this client appreciation party, right? I did. Yeah. And how often do you do these? We generally do two client appreciation parties every year. Okay. And the first one that we do is in October. We just pick out a restaurant like a, we do it at a Mexican food restaurant that has outdoor seating that holds, you know, about 100 people. And we invite everybody to that. We have dinner and we, you know, we do, we have an open bar for a certain period of time so they can have some drinks, but we obviously limited to make sure everyone's safe. And then we do that. And then we do a spring training baseball game every year, which is super cool because, you know, Arizona, weather's really, really nice in spring. And so a lot of people come out and we get a chance to talk to our clients and take them to a baseball game and it's pretty inexpensive. You know, it's like $10 a ticket. So we usually have 50 to 75 people show up and talk about diamond backs. No, we actually were right by pure sports complex. So it's the pot raise and spring training. Mariners. Yep. Okay. Got it. Great. Thank you for that. How many do you get out for that for the game? For the baseball game, we normally get at least 50, you know, anywhere from 50 to 75, generally. And we let them and bring their kids and everything because the tickets are super cheap. So that's great. I'm curious on the restaurant thing when you're doing the hosting the open bar at the Mexican restaurant and all that stuff in October every year, do you involve other affiliates like title escrow or anything like that or strictly, hey, it's skyline. It's, it's you guys. No, we do. Yeah, can you still hear me? Yep. Go ahead. Yeah, we normally involve our title partners and, you know, allow them to be part of it if they want to and we'll let them bring gift cards and giveaways and stuff like that to our clients. And so that way they can they can see them and they can be part of that. And then if we have past clients that have real estate agents that we worked with or that we work with, we also invite them and let them know, hey, you know, the challenges are going to be here. If you want to come, it'd be great time for you to reconnect with them. Absolutely. So how would you rate, rate that both the baseball function and the, you know, the dinner past the client appreciation dinner at the restaurant? How would you rate that in terms of overall impact to your business for, you know, generating an uptick in business every time you do that? And I don't know how do we rate this right down a scale of one to 10 or whatever a percentage basis, but in general, what would you say the impact from that is? I would say it has a huge impact just because you get the opportunity to stay in front of your your past client database and have face-to-face meetings with them and reconnect with them and they, you know, we, we always get a bunch of referrals right after we do those things from past clients. So it's probably, I would say a nine or 10. Wow. That's great. That is awesome. So for those listening, you know, if you haven't done your client appreciation parties, I mean, two great, very easy, applicable ideas there. You know, I've heard of other people doing stuff like, you know, these little, especially at Halloween is kind of fun because you can tie in the theme of Halloween and costumes and all that stuff if you want to, little trick-or-treating parties in your neighborhoods, bowling, whatever. Have you guys, any other things you've done besides baseball? Is that pretty much what you do consistently? That's what we pretty much do consistently just because, you know, we kind of, we struggled the first year with it, then we got better, then we got better, and then we got better, and so we have it down pretty well. And, you know, our clients know they expect it, it's consistent, and it just, you know, every year it gets bigger and bigger. So, cool. Very good. Awesome. All right. So let's get into kind of like current day, help us understand what your top lead generation strategies are. So meaning, you know, where does most of your business come from, on a monthly basis, let's say, are you able to kind of articulate that? Sure. I would say over 50% of our businesses from real estate agents, and then past clients is probably second, you know, with revised and referring, you know, other clients to us, I would say that's probably maybe, you know, 35% roughly, and then 15% is probably from internet, social media type stuff, financial planners, or things like that. Well, we'll come back to the internet, social media type stuff in a moment, but obviously the bulkier businesses from real estate agents, and you had mentioned classes a few minutes ago. So what are the strategies you have in place to stay in front, in top of mind, with agents, but also to put new agents in the hopper to build those referral relationships? Yeah. I started actually teaching CE classes in 2008, I became a licensed instructor because I thought that was kind of like the Holy Grail, and you know, I was going to go out there and meet, you know, 30 agents, and I was going to, you know, get all of them. And, you know, that turned out to not work out the way that I thought it did, but it was great because what it allowed me to do was be uncomfortable. Again, you know, and that's the way I've always found that I increase my businesses to constantly be uncomfortable, whether it's, you know, meeting people, or, you know, I don't know about you, Jeff, but I'm not like, I'm kind of like anti-social a little bit. So I'm not the greatest, you know, gregarious person, but when I find myself that I push myself out of my comfort zone, that's when I'm, you know, earning money. And so what I like to do is, I actually like to do that. And, but I found that with the CE classes, it was just consuming so much time because it's three hours. I was getting in front of people, but I wasn't converting any of those people because I would teach a class, and then I would never follow up with them. So, so what we started doing was we started doing shorter classes, like lunch and learn style classes, about things that people were relevant to their business now, and how, how we could help them get more business and make it more about them. And then we would find a way during the class to have a reason to follow up with them. So I was already setting up those next appointments before I even ended the class. Like I would say, hey, so, you know, we're going to reach out to you and see if you implemented this tactic in your business over the next week or so. And, you know, we would purposely plant those follow up phone calls, so that way they would be expecting them and not be turned off when I called them. Ah, interesting. And so how did that process go from there? Obviously, you're trying to convert to an appointment with those calls, right? Absolutely. And that's really what the classes are designed around. They're designed around. Like, for example, what we would do is, and what we've been doing more recently is we would take one of the core CDs that they give us. And we would burn the CDs and then send it to our agents. And we would invite into the class and say, here's a topic we're going to teach you about. In the last class we did, we did how to build a real estate team. And so rather than me teach the class, I brought in a top producing real estate agent that had a team already. And, you know, he does like 15 million a month. So he's a super producer. So he was, he's got a really big ego. And he wanted to, you know, share about his success. And so we invited him to be the instructor for our class. And we invited, you know, all the agents and like 50 agents showed up. And then, you know, we told him, hey, we're going to follow up with you and see what tactics that, you know, Jason Mitchell taught you about today. Have you implemented in your business? Right. Or, you know, where you are retiring somebody or whatever. And so that's how we, you know, try and stay consistent with because then I'm able to keep following up with them every, you know, 30 days or whatever it is. And until they say, hey, I'm good. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Don't call me. Okay. So a couple of things there. One, Jason Mitchell is this top mega producing agent. Did you have a relationship with him prior to hosting this lunch and learn? No, I really didn't. I took him out to a golf tournament, defeating soap. And then we have every year. And he works with our title company guy, which we brought him as an affiliate to our class. And he sponsored it. So the title, title affiliate, how a co-sponsored. So they helped you get him there. Right. Okay. Great. And do you just, is he sending you any business today? Jason. No. No. Okay. And then by the way, that's, that's cool. I mean, first of all, look at that, right? This is what I talk about a lot, which is right, leveraging your affiliate relationships, title, escrow. You're, you've demonstrated it right here. They can bring you and get you in front of people in places that you couldn't otherwise get. So you're not getting business from Jason, but Jason was a key part of, you know, getting 50 agents, butts in the seats. And that's just, I know you do these lunch and learns kind of ongoing. But I want to go back to the follow up calls for a second. When you're making these calls, hey, did you implement this tactic that Jason talked about, you know, yes, no, whatever, how do you, whatever the answer is? Is the answer, does the answer to determine whether or not you go for that lunch and learn, or is it ultimately you want to sit with them to help them implement that or other ideas? Well, the answer never really dictates like it's kind of like this, you know, this show, we don't know how it's going to turn out, but we just start talking and we have, you know, great conversation. Yeah, exactly. I never have like a prescripted answer. Whatever they say, I'm always looking for some way that I can help them to take it to the next level if they if they want to. You know, we pull all their numbers to see any transactions they've done and the ones that, you know, haven't done any transactions, you know, we're not really interested in meeting with those agents. We're interested in meeting with the agents to have big numbers or have a big like in that class, if they wanted to build a big team, we would say, hey, look, we're a big team. We have, you know, five people on our team. So we can help you like whether it be with the hiring process or how to, how to, you know, find resumes and look for what you're trying to hire and, you know, all those things. And so any situation that they have questions on, you know, generally, we're able to answer them and be a resource for them. And that's what we try and do. All right. So that's great. You're doing your homework. You're researching the agents and their production levels. Are you still calling those low producers just because you told them you would? Of course. Yeah. You know, we want to make sure that if we, if we were up there saying, we're going to do something that we follow through with it. So we just don't try and be hyper focused on them like the other agents. Yeah. So, so I want to really drill it down for the listener, right? Because they're sitting here going, okay, that's cool. That makes sense. I've followed up on this one tactic. How do I then get in front of that agent next? And, you know, and that's why I go back to the, it seems like you're on that same path is, you know, we're here to help you as a team implement ideas that are going to help you be more successful. Mr. Mrs. Agent, is that essentially kind of the general talk track? And it's like, would you like to meet and talk about ways we can, you know, potentially help you do that? Or what is, you know, how do you guys get to that point of let's meet? Yeah. Essentially, we're looking to find, you know, what their pain point is. Or like some, sometimes with the agents, what we'll do is, if they have big numbers and we want to get them on our radar, you know, we'll, we'll go by like some silly gifts or whatever and drop it off for them. And it's like, you know, before the Super Bowl, I bought footballs and I, you know, wrote, we want to be on your team, you know, took the footballs and dropped them off their offices. And then the next weekend was Valentine's weekend. And so I brought a box of chocolates and I was like, hey, hopefully your lender's not like a box of chocolates and you never know what you're like that, you know, that's good. So, you know, things like that, we do, we go out of the way and like, really like, like, like when I say hyper focus, like we hyper focus until we get a meeting and just keep following up with them. And then, and, you know, if we do that with 10 agents, like five of them will meet with us. And, you know, we might not, nothing might ever come from those meetings, but, you know, generally more so than not, we get one agent out of 10. And, you know, they sent, they at least give us a shot. Yeah. Who's, uh, who's making those calls? Your dealer or you or? Um, I'm generally making the phone, those phone calls because, uh, you know, that's when we go into script mode and, and I'll tell them, hey, the reason that you want to work with me and the reason that you want to sit down with me is because, uh, you know, we work a database and, and I'm different than every other lender that says that they're going to deliver clients to you, you know, I, I will because, and I'll show you, you know, my database, and I'll show you how we do it. And I'll, you know, tell them that sitting down with me will result in business for them. And, you know, and generally that's enough to get an appointment with them. Um, so it's generally me that's making those phone calls because, you know, they're, they're big time agents and, and they don't want to just have some dealer call, generally they want to feel like they're being treated like royalty. Sure. So how do you work through, because I'm sure you face it like every other loan officer, you know, the initial resistance, whether it's, hey, I've already got a lender or, um, like you said, you're hyper focused. So I guess maybe that's the question first. How do you respond or handle those initial people who try and, you know, give you that objection, which, which may be a legit answer, right? I'm sure they're already working with a lender. So how do you, how do you work around that? Is it just a process of over time you're wearing it down by adding value and being unique and different or do you as a specific scripted answer you have to that? Um, no, it's actually, that's a great question. So generally, um, you know, like I said, we're doing, we're delivering the gifts. Um, and, and I'm calling them just to make sure that they got the gift, you know, like I'm, I'm just like I, like I just call you and say, hey, Jeff, you know, this is David Krzyszewski. I just want to follow up and make sure that you receive the gift that I left for you at your office last Friday. And, um, if, if you're like, no, I didn't get it. I would say, okay, well, that's cool. Or if you said, yeah, I got it. Thank you, you know, like I, I can go both ways. And I would say, well, the reason I wanted to send you a gift, Jeff, because I know you're a top producing real estate agent. You know, we looked at your numbers and we know you do a lot of business. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to set up a 15-minute appointment with you to sit down with you and show you how we might be able to add business to what you're currently doing. Um, you know, who do you work with for your lender? And I just kind of like keep it, you know, keep it real. I mean, because that's what we're trying to do is trying to add to your life or the agent's life. Right. And, um, you know, generally like I found that 50% of the people are open to meeting with you. And ones that say, hey, I already have two lenders or I have three lenders, then I just take them off my list. And I just find another one. Okay. All right, it's a sift in sorts because the efforts get it's going to take to to overcome that hurdle. You're probably better off redirecting those efforts to somebody who's more open to saying yes. Correct. Yeah, who doesn't have another, you know, two, three lenders, whatever they're already married or sleeping with a lender. Yeah. Very cool, very cool. So then when you talk about value add, all right, we get to the place where you've got the follow up, you know, you made the call, got the gift. Yeah, sure. Let's let's let's sit down and talk, David, about, you know, how you can add more value to me. What, what does that meeting look like? What do you present to them that position you as being able to add value? Well, that's that's where we talk about the things that we do that are a little bit unique. The database mining through our past clients and we, you know, we have a thousand past clients that we work with and generally, you know, we get one to two clients every month that don't have a real estate agent and we like to refer those people to the insider network with us and send us business that we like to work with. And so it's not like I'm going to be able to send you a bunch of clients, but I would guarantee it's probably more than your current lender sends you. And if that's not true, then obviously, you know, I don't, you know, I don't expect you to send me business, but generally most lenders don't send their real estate agents business. And so, you know, right there, we're able to have a little bit of a unique selling proposition. And then also, you know, through the use of social media are our internet presence that we have, we, you know, if you Google Phoenix Home Loans, we're on page one or Phoenix Mortgage or whatever. So, you know, we do get a lot of people that are kind of lucky, Lou. And we can, you know, for those deals out to agents and like my guide Tyler, the dialer guy, he's a millennial. So, he's got a lot of people that he knows that are first time home buyers that are entering the market that don't have allegiance to real estate agents. And so, we are actually able to refer one to two clients a month to an agent that we work with. So, when we tell him that it's true, it's not just, you know, some smoke and mirror thing that we're telling them. Right. Interesting. And so, you know, I'm curious because I've heard this as well. This is a great track we're on and I'm trying to run you through this stuff I hear from loan officers a lot. And so, you're successful. You've got the meeting. You've positioned yourself as unique and different, you know, through obviously what you just shared. Do you ever have the situation, though, of, you know, the agent where it's like, you feel like you've got a good synergy. You feel like you're going to start getting some referrals from them. And then nothing crickets. Yeah, of course. We work off lists is what the core teaches us. And so, what we generally do is we, you know, we'll add them to our top 40 agent list if it really seems like it's going to be a good fit. And then I'll just continue to call them like every Monday or every other Monday, you know, depending on what my work loads like. Sometimes I'm not as diligent as I should be, but I'll just call them and follow up with them and just say, hey, Jeff, did you hear about what happened with the Brexit, you know, that the EU rates are low, or call them and say, hey, we're having this class coming up. And, you know, how was your weekend, you know, type of thing? And so, really, it's just about like if you have it, if you feel like you have a good connection with them, they're going to forget about you unless you make that part of your follow up is, you know, part of your daily weekly monthly routine. But yeah, we do have that. And in some agents, sometimes it just isn't a good fit. And eventually, you know, we never hear back from them. We just keep moving on and moving on and prospecting for new agents. Do you have agents on any type of, you know, newsletter email, video thing, anything like that? You know, I would say that I'm probably rank D in that area. I appreciate your honesty. Yeah. I would say that I definitely could use a lot of improvement in that. Okay. Cool. Just curious. Hey, back to the classes. How often do you do these lunch and learns? So our goal is to do one a month. We're probably successful to do that one a month, maybe 80% of the time. You know, I think anything more than that gets kind of watered down. But, you know, we want to provide good value, get the class with 30 people. And that's how we kind of narrow down our, our list of people that we're, we're trying to go after, if you will. Are you, are you targeting new and you're also inviting your existing agents? Yeah. We like, we work with our affiliates because our title company has a whole bunch of real state agents. We don't know. And so we, you know, we have, we generally have a title company that helps us sponsor events. And then they invite their database. We invite our database. And then, you know, we work with each other and synergy to try and help each other complement each other and say, hey, you know, this is why you want to work with XYZ title company or whatever the case is. And where do you get generally the content or topics to present monthly? So it depends on what's going on in the industry. Sometimes like when, you know, Trid came out, we were teaching some Trid stuff. But a lot of it comes from just the, you know, the core. And they sent, they sent me that, you know, I'm on a CD program, where they send out the CDs, you know, and so I just used that material. And rather that I just try and find the, the material that's relevant to real estate agents. And then I just try and teach based on that because since I'm doing that with my own business, you know, on a day-to-day basis, it just comes natural. So the CD is an audio interview, or it's on a particular topic. And then you're converting that to a PowerPoint day. Yeah, generally I just don't teach off PowerPoint. I just teach off, you know, just words. And I generally start the class by asking people what they want to get out of the class. So, you know, let's say that you're a student and you're there. And to learn, I would say, Jeff, you know, what is it that you would like to get out of today's class? Maybe not you specifically, but I would ask everybody to, you know, provide some feedback. And then we would make sure we touch on all those points that the people want to learn about. And then we would go over any other topics that I had that I had on my own agenda as well, to, you know, but what we normally do to try and make them successful is we start the class, like we'll say the start times 1130. But we won't actually start teaching until around 1145 or 12, because we found that if you start right at 1130, people are going to be late, and then you're going to have to start back over and cover them in material that they missed. And so we serve food right away. And we kind of let people kind of get to know each other and talk to each other and feel comfortable. And then, you know, once it feels like everybody's there, and everyone's ready, we'll generally start between 1150 and 12 o'clock. And then how long do you usually speak or teach? Usually for one hour. One hour, okay. And sometimes you, sometimes you bring in special guests? Correct, yeah. We generally try and bring in a special guest as much as possible, because that kind of breaks them a notany of just me. I'm kind of monotonous. I'm not a great speaker or energetic or anything, but we try and bring in guest speakers. So that way it just makes it more exciting. And, you know, if people know them, they'll get invitations from them as well. And it just makes it a better class, in my opinion. It sounds like mostly your title company is, and correct me if I'm wrong, responsible for most of the butts and the seats that show up. I would say that we're probably 25% and they're probably 75% yeah. That's great. Good title relationship there. Obviously you're sending them all your business, right? Yeah, awesome. So in terms of the lunch and learns, where would you rank that for you getting new agent relationships in the hopper and converting them to referral partners? You know, I would rank it right up there in the top with one of the things that I've done over my career. I think that, you know, it's the sniper approach to getting good business partners versus just going out there and trying to just, you know, blast out information through emails or, or, you know, go to open houses where you have agents that don't do any business and you're falling up with people. I mean, it's this sniper approach. Right, very targeted, right? Because you're doing the research on who you're inviting and all that stuff. And so you're only, ideally, getting in front of people who have business to send you. Right. Yep, very cool. All right, before we run out of time here because I know you have another call to get on. I promised I was going to talk briefly on online social media stuff. And of course, that's a big broad topic. So just maybe anything you want to touch on that's working. You mentioned Google, you guys come up and search there. Anything you want to touch on there that's working for you online, you know, focused. You know, I haven't been doing this as much, but I would say video marketing is huge. If you can help agents do their video marketing and provide a platform for them to to train them and teach them, you know, we've done several classes on video marketing that we've had 30 agents in there. And the great thing about that is you can follow up with them and help them with, you know, making customer testimonials or community videos, you know, whatever it is that they're into. I think that's a huge home run for guys like us that are trying to find, you know, big, big time real estate agents. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if you would ever actually shoot agents for them, you know, like a quick one minute agent intro, you put up the tripod, the iPhone, whatever boom and then send them that video they could use it. Oh yeah, we do that all the time. Oh, click. We'll meet our agents like I have one top agent that we were meeting once a month and we were doing videos in her community. And you know, we would go out there and we would take, we would just do it off an iPhone and with a tripod and we do, you know, a quick video where we would be in it and then we would put it on her site for and, you know, edit it and stuff like that. But it was great. It just allowed me to have a base-to-face meeting with her and just build that relationship even deeper. So a neighborhood video with you in it. So is that if I'm picturing this? It's a somebody else is holding the iPhone. They're pointing at the two of you and you're talking about a neighborhood or area topic. Yeah, we just use a tripod and so I just have a little device in my finger. Oh, okay. Yep. On my the remote and it just starts it and we just say, hey, this is Lindsay and David and we're in, you know, Cordobello and talk about the neighborhood and talk about the characteristics of it. That's very cool. And that's on her website? Not yours? Yeah. It's on hers. Very cool. And that is that is a great idea. It's something that's very simple. And as you well know, I'm sure one of the reasons why agents and loan officers are reluctant. It's like, oh, I don't like how I look on video or they're afraid to do it alone. So you kind of hand holding them and doing that. I mean, that talk about building a relationship and really some reciprocation there. Now you guys are essentially attached at the hip, right? You know, for a long time until and if she downloads, takes that video off her website. Exactly. That's awesome. No, that's great. Man, you could have a whole library of those on their site and blog and those are also great to share via social media. Anything else real quick online wise? You're doing social media, for example. Everybody wants to know, how do I do it on social media? Yeah. You know, I wish I had some good advice on that, but I really don't. I started using internet in 2007 and had a guy blogging for me and stuff and you know, built a decent presence, but I really don't do anything very well. Well, it sounds like you're coming up in search pretty well. How do you guys get high rankings in search? It's just been, you know, years and years of having him do like, I just had him work on my stuff for years and I had a like I had a top agent in 2007 after the crash that he was just selling a ton of houses and I was like, dude, where are you getting all these leads from? And he was like, oh, just the internet. And so I was like, I contact my buddy, doing SEO. And I was like, you got to start doing SEO for me so I can start referring business back to these agents and get more agents. And so he started working on it and it was working really well. I was doing some active rain and blogging and WordPress blogging. And I know a bunch of guys in that arena. And so, you know, we formed a little group and they were writing blog posts that we tweaked and made our own. And so I've done that a lot. But, you know, really, I was only doing that just so I could refer deals back to the agents. Oh, I see. Right. Got it. Got it. Okay. Cool. Very nice. Well, clearly we know that the bulk of your business isn't coming from online in the first place. And it sounds like you are aware that while online can be great, right? The challenge with that is it's constantly changing in terms of how you're going to rank and get positioning. So you're kind of in terms of the search rankings. You're outsourcing that to somebody who's been doing it for a long time and that you trust. And you seem like you're really focused on, you know, the activities that are going to generate the biggest return for you, the return on effort as I like to call, which seems to be very agent focused and client appreciation is the two areas where you get most of your business. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. That's great. Awesome. Cool. Well, let's we got to close it out here. But I always like to ask this one question. You know, is there any online tool app software, you know, whether it's business or personal that you just are in love with and can't live without? You know, in my marketplace, I would say we have a product that's called MTAGO. And it's basically just, it allows us to go in and find the realtor rankings and what the production levels are for the last 12 months. And so for me, you know, as a real estate agent, driven loan officer, that's like the, I wish I had it 14 years ago because every agent that I would have met with I would have, you know, put in there to see what they were doing for production and known how to spend my hours. Right. But for me, that's been the biggest tool that's been helpful for me, just knowing which people to focus my energy and effort on. Yeah. Obviously, as you alluded to earlier, you're doing you're doing that research as you refer to it as sniper strategy before you even attempt to market to those people because you want to make sure they're producing, right? Right. Right. Yep. And by the way, the MTA report, you know, you can get that from your local title rap bias. Is that where you get it from or you can get it independently? No, we get it. We have like an app on our phone. So if I, before I sit down with anybody, like I can pull up their numbers on my phone and just find out production is interesting. Yeah, I know in some areas of the country that information is harder to come by. But yeah, I've known, I know that the title reps can usually pull those kind of stats, but and you can also find that via MLS, I believe, if you have access. But yeah, great stuff. So cool. Well, David, for anybody who wants to connect with you online, what's the best place for them to go to connect with you? All of my information is on my website and that's dkhomeloans.com. And you know, anybody that has any questions from your show, I'm happy to help them and give them my, you know, the struggles I've had and the failures I've had and, you know, trying to build my business over the last 14 years. So I'm definitely happy to, if anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm more happy to share anything with them. Awesome. Well, we appreciate you sharing today. I think there was a lot of value for the listeners. And I would say the biggest thing for anybody listening to this is take at least one idea and put it into action. If it's, if it's hosting agent lunch and learns, do that. If it's hosting a client appreciation party, do that bottom line. There's definitely some nuggets for you to start applying today. And I want to thank you for listening. If you like the podcast, please let us know, subscribe on iTunes and leave us a review because that helps us just reach more loan officers and make a bigger difference. So once again, it's Jeff Zimp for your host, Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thank you for listening and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing. Get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. 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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