Ep 142: Funding a Record $50-Million in a Single Month

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. I'm brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hey, what's up listeners, this is Jeff Zimper, your host for another edition of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Welcome. I am South Reel, you're here. I appreciate you and I hope as you're listening to this, you're preparing for a strong closing to 2019 and perhaps equally maybe even more importantly, preparing for entering 2020 and preparing for the shift, the tide, perhaps going out. You know, I've said before, maybe you've heard it, me say it, I borrow this from Warren Buffett, who says you never know who's swimming naked till the tide goes out. Well, we're talking about preparing for the tide going out, we're talking about how to shift when the market shifts or actually prepare and get in front of that shift so you're not caught off guard and you're not swimming naked. And we're talking about all those types of things on this episode. But before we get into that episode, I want to give a special shout out to one of our loyal listeners who left us a review on the podcast. And that is Sedebaz, I don't know how you pronounce that, but his handle, when he left us a review as SETBOZ, what an amazing resource this podcast has been absolutely amazing for me. I've been in the industry for two years, starting as a processor, then as an L.O.A., and now making the transition to originating clones. The industry knowledge and insight is second to none. Woo, thank you. Appreciate that. And if you're listening, you know what to do. Hit me up on the Facebooks and let me know that you left a review, what you're mailing address is and your t-shirt size and we'll get you off a swag box, which includes a mortgage marketing radio t-shirt. So you can wear that proudly, share it up on social, tag me, right, Instamy, IG, DM, whatever, whatever it is you want to do with it, wear it, enjoy it, wear it proudly, hopefully you do. Okay, so let's get into what this week's episode is all about. I kind of alluded to some of the things earlier, but it's a really great frank conversation who comes from somebody that I've been following and respecting for quite a while in the industry. He's been in the industry a long time. He's a little either in the industry and he's really achieved some amazing things. And who I'm talking about is Ryan Hills. Ryan Hills is a market leader with movement mortgage up in the Seattle area and recently became part of the movement mortgage family with the acquisition that movement made of Eagle home loans, Eagle home lending. And so I wanted to have Ryan on because he caught my attention the other day and actually always catches my attention because not only is he handsome and dashing, but they actually have a great channel, a great website. Ryan Christianson, who have been producing and creating videos, a video show for a decade. And we're going to put links in the show notes and all that, but it's the resource.tv. I've had Ryan on before and this is the second time because things have changed and now the time is to bring Ryan back and talk about the topics we're talking about here today. But I definitely encourage you to go follow them on the socials, hit them up, just search for the resource, the re-source, right, dot tv, Facebook, that's the website, links in the show notes, incredible videos, interviews, master classes. And it's somebody he's somebody I look to for insights, context, and all kinds of learnings within the industry. So what Ryan and I unpack is recently him and his team of about, he's got about 17 L.O.'s on his team recently achieved a milestone for monthly production. And that was 50 million in terms of originations, 50 million. There too that and he talks about this on this episode prior to that, right, what they had achieved historically in terms of a high record month was, if I remember correctly, 30 million. And he had a conversation with his coach Bill Hart and said, great, what's next? And somehow the number 50 million came out and lo and behold, here they are, they've actually achieved that they did $52 million in a single month in terms of origination production. And what you'll find is that that wasn't by, you know, having a mega producer on board and doing 10 or 15 million, right, it's because of the makeup and the culture and the players and the leadership that Ryan provides. And all pulling the rope in the same direction as a team and performing at a very high level in this marketplace. So I thought it would make sense to unpack a little bit about, you know, the process he went through to move his team forward in achieving that record level of production, some of how he might train and coach his team, build a team. And then we get into a conversation that I think is definitely in his wheelhouse, which is, you know, the case for video and social media. And do you need that as a loan officer, a real estate professional to succeed? We talk about the I buyers, which are heavy up in his area of the Pacific Northwest. We talk about how the board of realtors up there in Washington is the first to change the structure of the real estate commissions that's related to a lawsuit that was recently laid upon the National Association of Realtors. It's actually just a great multi-dimensional conversation. I think you'll definitely pull a lot of nuggets out as you listen to this. And if you like it, hey, let us know, leave us an episode. You can always reach out to me over email as well, podcast at Mortgage Marketing Radio. So with that said, let's get into this week's show, Ryan, welcome to the show. What's up, man? Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here on short notice and without much of an agenda to be honest with you. But here's the thing. What caught my attention is the incredible month that you just had as a market leader at movement mortgage. Before we get into that, how long you been in this business now? Around 15 years. 15 years, right? Okay, got it. And so let's just unpack it. You've had, is this your biggest month ever? It is. And I love that we don't have an agenda because now we have no confinement, we can just go anywhere we want. This is open mic Friday. Exactly. I love it. We can go anywhere. Yes, this is by far the biggest month that we've had before that. I kind of tell the story in the video that it was weird, man, I was nervous to have that video. I don't know if you saw it online. It was basically me at home with some bourbon and I do video every day and I got super nervous about that one. I don't know why, but you said you drink bourbon every day? Yeah. Is that what you're taking away? I tried to, but yeah, I tell the story in that video where we rallied as a group and we were trying to hit 30 million and collapsed across the finish line when we did that. We had to like pull some rabbits out of the hat to make that happen the last day. And then talking with my coach Bill Hart, he said, hey, what's next? And for some reason, I skipped the $40 million mark and I just said 50 and I kind of threw it out there before I could take it back and I was like, crap, he's going to hold me accountable to that. Quite honestly, it wasn't quite sure if we were ever going to hit that because for me, I don't have the biggest team in the world and that's not the most volume in the world. But it's a big number to us, 52 million with a small, efficient group, was by far our biggest record and now I got to figure out what's next, right? All right. Now, so let's unpack this a little bit because this is, I think, where the nuggets are going to be is 52 million, first of all, that's a hell of a number. That's amazing. Congratulations. Let's talk about your team. What's the structure and the makeup of that and just to clarify your role as a market leader, right? What does that really mean? And then what's, give me your team. So it's a market leader at movements like an area manager. I have a small area, which is South Washington kind of and we don't have big mega branches. We don't have a ton of originators. We have a really small team. So my area encompasses like my main office and Puyallup. People have never heard of it, small town. And then Tacoma, people know that and we have satellites and Lacey's and these are like satellites. These aren't full branches with, you know, five to 10 originators. Usually there's two to three originators in each one. So Lacey, Tacoma, Gick Harbor, Porto Richard, Silverdale, kind of a small relatively unknown area. So that's why I'm proud of that. Like we're not Bellevue, you know, we're not Seattle, we're not San Francisco, we're not LA, New York. It's just, you know, Cowtown, Puyallup, Washington, you know, cranking out 52 million. So how many LOs report to you? I think right now, 17, 18, maybe 19 total, 17, 19, 15 and you've got some, some leaders on that, that the team who are kind of out at the front, right? Yeah. So our top producers last month to put that in perspective. We had, I think we had two that did five million a month. We had a few that did four, we had several that did three and then, you know, two million and one million. So our leaders are doing, are doing about four to five million a month right now. Hmm. And I'm asking because I'm doing the math like quickly in my head because what, what one might think is, oh yeah, you know, you got a couple mega players on your team that are doing 10 million, 15 million, whatever, you know, that's not the case though. No, it's not the case and, you know, it's funny. There's always somebody bigger, better, stronger. So, um, got a lot of good feedback from the personal video, but I also were, we're, I was talking peers, uh, in the same town and a girl down the street that I have a tremendous respect for, a different company, be equity, I don't mind saying it. She did 13 million by herself and I was like, well, I felt good about our numbers. I heard your individual number of 13 million and then another body of mine did a 10 11 million back to back. So there's always bigger, stronger players out there. I love our team. I'm super happy. We have good people, uh, like I said, it's not the biggest number, you know, we hopefully will do 500 million this year as a group and I do think that's a big number, but it's not the biggest, you know, I'm proud that we have a really good solid team. We all help each other. Like if somebody has a tough, tough file, you know, it's very common for us to rally in that office and you'll see four or five originators going, who would try this or try it this way, try it this way. It's not this, you know, you're on your own type and mentality. We're all rallying together and, you know, we all kind of pull each other up because our group's been together for a decade, which I'm proud of too, because that's not normal for our industry, right? So I'm proud of that. We've been together for a really long time and we didn't start there. Most of our originators, I remember thinking and when we'd celebrate a million dollar a month, that was a big deal. And it's still, you know, a big deal, but now you got some of your peers doing two, three, four and five million. So it's pulling up the rest of the teammates, you know what I mean? So it's kind of cool that we've organically grown together. We don't have a ten million dollar a month type person yet. Right. You will. You will. I know that we will though, because we're going to continue to grow together. And it's a young team. I'm the old guy now, which is weird, because I used to be the young guy in the business. At 32, you're the old guy. Yeah. I look like I'm 52. Yeah. All right. So here's a question. I'm going to go deep for a moment. The transition, the road, the journey, right? The last kind of big hook number you hung your hat on was 30 million. You had to be somebody to achieve that number at 30 million. And then you make this big leap to 50 million. Give me a sense of like the feelings that came up for you when you put that out there as a commitment, like your story about Bill and he was going to hold you accountable. But who did you, like looking back, who did you have to become to go from 30 to 50 million? Like, what changes do you think you had to go through as a leader as a person, right? To get there? Yeah. That's a good question. It's a loaded question too, because one would easily say the traditional method is just adding more players, right? Mm-hmm. Well, we simply got there because we hired 10 more originators. That's actually not the case. We didn't add originators between 30 and 50. We stayed, again, really, really small and efficient. So how we got there was really to kind of, to your point, kind of going deep with the originators like, hey, man, how can I help you grow the business? And I love doing it. That's my individual-wise with originators. Like, I want to roll up my sleeves to figure out how to get, you know, get you from, you know, from here to here type thing. And so that's how we got from 30 to 50. It's with the same exact team, which is really cool. And individually, the originators grew their business and that made up that 20 million dollar gap. I think that's really cool because it's easier and probably more traditional just to go higher out. Mm-hmm. And I'm contrarian in that sense where I've always been the guy that just because I have three empty seats in an office, I'm not going to go higher to fill those seats. And that's not typical for our business. I've been the guy like, I want to find I have something special, I believe. I think it works at a high level. We have great people. I'm very particular who I add to that team. Right. Again, I think that speaks to why we've had people for a decade or more on that team. So we had to get from 30 to 50. We had to individually grow and collectively grow together. It wasn't adding, you know, originators to that. And so for me, it was just kind of doing what, you know, what I normally love to do, which is digging in and saying, you know, Miguel, Brian, Steven, you know, how can I help you grow your business? Leslie, how can I help you grow your business? All right. Let's take it back a notch here. So did you go to your team and just say, Hey, guys, guess what we're going to do? We're going to go from 30 to 50 million. No, actually, I didn't even though I've never really been a big goal guy. And as you as you grow in your career and like executives, like goals have become a thing, right? Right. I've always been a guy like, Hey, man, I'm going to control my daily, weekly and monthly activities. And if that equals 60 million, then that's going to be 60 if that equals 30 million, that's going to be 30. You know, I'm going to control, you know, the daily and weekly and monthly. And typically, if you really focus on that, you can blow whatever goal that you have out of the water. Right. You know, because you're controlling and you're giving, you know, that there's an old saying, like, give me your, your full 90 for like soccer, give me your full, your best 90 minutes. That's kind of like my takeaway for work. Like, dude, I don't even need you to work weekends, but give me your best 40 hours. Mm-hmm. And if most of us really truly committed our best 40 or the full 90 in the analogy, you're going to blow a lot of your records out of the water. And so I don't remember saying like 50, I don't remember telling the team 50 million was the goal. Mm-hmm. I don't even know if they knew that. I think when I just shared that we broke it, they were kind of surprised like, Oh, that's a big number. I don't know what you're shooting for that. Really? So what happened internally, though? I mean, I'm just curious, right, because you're operating probably at a certain level or certain mode and people are doing certain activities. But then you know, you've kind of got this number in your head. You're not necessarily saying putting up the whiteboard and the thermometer, you know, and all that. Did people do things differently, did what did things shift differently in your office in terms of like the culture, the vibe, the activity level? That kind of sort. Yeah. One thing I think that is a factor contributing to the 50 is, you know, if most people may not know our story, but we just joined movement. And when we joined movement, that's a big deal, right? We brought a lot of people over, transitions never fun, like sometimes there's attrition, sometimes people will get stressed out and there's no volume to be had for a while. Like that, we hit the ground running at movement and we found ourselves way, like our efficiency increased to increase through the roof. So, you know, what used to take two people now takes one, so our efficiency increased. And then obviously, you know, you know, I got to tip my hat to the refi boom, obviously that helped. So I got to give credit there. We got a refi opportunities, but we became way more efficient at movement with the 671 process. Our, our L.O.A.s were way more efficient, our processors were our underwriters were. So those are a couple factors that, you know, how did we get there like the X's and O's? That's the answer, not just an isoteric, you know, answer, but the actual X's and O's is we're way more efficient. We are able to restructure some of the L, L.O.A.s to where they can actually help more than just one L.O. And help two and three. So those are two big factors. I got to give credit to movement because, typically, I think those results are normal, you know, during a transition to go, hey, we showed up and then start crushing records. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm wrong. I just don't think that's typical, but I was pleasantly surprised. And, you know, being a leader through that move from eagle to movement, it was a stressful time. We could have a whole entire podcast on that. But at the end of the day, when you put people first, the only thing, the only reward you get back is when you can look back to that scenario and you have several options. You have options individually. You have options as a team. You know, you have options as a region to several options. And if you can go back and go, I know that I made the best choice for the entire group. That's all you can do. If you can say that, then you've won because I mean, that's hard to say that that was the best possible option out of all of the options that existed at that time. And I feel that way. I feel that way for the entire group that that was the best possible option for us at that time. And, you know, the results show that that we hit the ground running in our crush and records. Let's do this if you wouldn't mind for those listening. You know, many of them know that I'm a national sales coach with movement and stuff. And so they've heard me occasionally mention movement. I don't like to kind of like, you know, use this as a platform or whatnot. But I know I've come across a lot of officers out there who have various responses or certain beliefs about the process. And you refer to what allowed you to grow wasn't necessarily hiring more bodies, but you were able to be more efficient, do more with less, break that down for the specific loan officer. And I know you've had the conversations with L.O.'s where, you know, movement's touting its upfront underwriting process. What does that really mean, you know, to an individual loan officer if they are looking to grow their business? What's the real impact? Can I really, is that just a bunch of smoke and mirrors? Hey, everybody does quote upfront underwriting. Can you unpack that a little bit? Yeah. And, you know, I'm glad you said that because on our show for over a decade, we've created content. I've never mentioned the name of a company. Most people don't even know what I do. So again, this isn't, I'm not trying to like, Ailey, they wonder that. You know, movement on a pedestal, but they did. They're part of my story. They're part of our story. And it was a huge help and a huge blessing. And it's just part of the story. So that's why I'm referencing it. I'm not trying to say that they're better. Plus, I ask you. So. Yeah. But that was the 6-7-1 process. You know, yeah, sure. People do upfront underwriting. But it was a shift for us because at Eagle, great company, tons of respect, nothing bad to say about them, lots of success. And we didn't struggle to close like all in time. That wasn't a struggle of ours. We weren't as efficient, but we didn't close late. But we never really like did any upfront underwriting. And so a lot of that was, you know, we would work really hard up front to structure really clean deals so that we wouldn't be going back and forth. We wanted fewer touches with the underwriters and the processors, and we'd call them like, you know, one in Dunes and stuff like that. And so that's why we were able to, in a process that wasn't as efficient, we were able to close what we call on time every time. That was our goal. And it still is, right? And it's tough. It's crazy that just doing your job sets you apart from the rest of the industry, but it is. It's tough to close on time, especially as volume increased out of nowhere. Every lender in America is struggling to hire ops to support that because I think the stat was $286 billion worth of business nationwide was unaccounted for by the MBA. Really? Yeah. Like, so if you go back and look at the original prediction to what we're doing now, that's a gigantic gap. And we didn't have, we still don't have the ops nationwide. I mean, I just read an article that Wells Fargo is still trying to hire to, to staff up for that. So sidebar anyways, but that didn't hurt us as much, you know, movement's no different than anybody else. You know, we're, we're short handed and off, but we are more efficient. So it doesn't hurt us as bad. So for us, we switched kind of our strategy and said, oh, now we have this opportunity to submit a file and get an answer back in six hours, not days, that's, that's crazy to us. That was weird that we had that, that ability to do that. And so it took a, it took a few months to get, to get used to that. And it's not all of our originators do that. It doesn't mean you have to submit every file upfront, some, some don't, but a lot of them, especially when you're doing like a tough state bond deal or maybe you got tough income that varies. It's nice to be able to go instead of like, man, I hope this works. You know, and you're, you're running to you and LP and you're, you're hoping and praying it works. You don't have to hope and pray anymore. You can package that deal together, actually get it in an underwriters hands and have them start working on that and feel really confident. I'm passionate for their consumers. So the fact that we send consumers out, we just did another podcast yesterday talking about this. And as an industry, we send consumers out on this 30 60 day process based off of, yeah, looks good. I think that's horrible. And in our scenario that we talked about yesterday and an, an originator, uh, won't name names or brands, but they basically did that. You know, you, you get the app, you're like, yeah, you're probably good to go and they write a pre approval letter. Yeah. It wasn't a fully underwritten pre approval long story short, it costed $5,000. The way that 66 days lost the house were homeless. And it was all because, and I don't think it was ill intent by the originator, but that's kind of the, the standard of, yeah, you're, you're good to go. Here's your pre approval letter. Right. Right. We got to do better as an industry. We have to do better. I think that up front underwriting process that we have for 671 and other lenders do it as well is a part of that. Like, how do you set yourself hard to set yourself apart from the fintechs? This is one of them. Like, let's give a lot of respect to that, that consumer because if that were me and I know for that where you, you wouldn't want to be going shopping. We're really having financing ready for you, spending money on inspections and appraisals and earnest money. You're never going to get back. Yeah. But that's what we're doing, guys. So we have to do a better job collectively up front than the good old, yeah, you look good to go. Right. Let's, uh, for those that are curious what 671 means, do you want to just real quickly summarize that? Yeah. So it's a six hour underwrite. Uh, we try to process the file and processing means different things to different lenders. We want to try to have basically everything processed with conditions in seven days. And then you have like, you know, your one day closings. So, um, it's kind of cool, uh, cause all of our ops leaders in case you follow that and celebrate that. And, you know, of course, it's not 100% that we hit that, um, and I, I'll probably butcher their stat. Maybe you know, but I, I think every time I check in, it's about 78% of the time we're hitting that, which I think is a really cool stat. Yeah. The, the point is like, from the top down, it's, it's, it's the DNA of the company, which why, you know, one of the reason it, it, I was attracted to it originally. Uh, but yeah, that's, that's kind of the 671 process. And, um, again, this is a tough business and, and closing on time for the rest of the industry is still a challenge, especially for the banks and credit unions. Yeah. Um, and this is, this is something KC to his credit and, and the movement built from day one. That's something they just did this year. This was day one, 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So they're not trying to like add little widgets and parts to the huge mothership that's already moving forward. It's been built from the ground up to be structured this way. So I've heard other L.O.s kind of, you know, iterate that point that, uh, that's why it works as well as it does at scale is because the company was built in the ground up like that. Yeah. And we saw, I mean, you're, you're kind of asking more details about why we are more efficient, but we saw our underwriters. You know, almost, almost double the production coming, again, from a good platform to movement, you know, good to great, you know, they're, I don't know what the status of talking about, but I could pull it, but say they're underwriting 10 files a day. They went to, it was close to double almost 20 files, same with processors. I had a, I had hired a processor that came from another company that was, she wanted to process the, and she wasn't a processor yet. She just wouldn't give her that opportunity to say, come on over and we train her. And so I'm so proud of her because in her third month as a new processor that another person wouldn't give an opportunity to, she closed 52 transactions. So to put that in perspective for us, another good company that we came from, like crushing it was 30. And we went to 52 with like a brand new processor in three months. So another example of being more efficient, I was so proud of her. That's awesome. Man, systems matter for sure. Efficiency is matter. And the other, I guess, last point on that we'll move on is when you're confident in your process and you know you can deliver on that kind of promise, right, of like you, you had a great line, by the way, that's a great branding thing on time every time. Like I mean, if you could stand confidently in that when you're speaking to a realtor or somebody else, that's one of your value props because a lot of people speak it, but the fact that you have stats to back it up, like you said, about 80, 79, 80% of 10,000 files close within those, you know, the 671 timeline. That's huge. It is. It's we, again, we, we do a lot of videos. So we had another video just yesterday. We were talking exactly about that and it's an untanageable. You can't measure it. But the confidence that a loan officer gets from a great op system behind them closing on time every time. Again, you can't measure that. But I've seen originators in our team come from something that wasn't working successfully and say they didn't have a lot of confidence. You can kind of see that how they hold themselves, how they like talk to a realtor. They're not, they're not very, you know, you actually see it physically. You can see it change when they go from not having a system they're confident on to, yeah, man, we're 100% closing on time every time if not early. That's the third part of that, my phrase. And you'll see their business grow because they, now they're walking around town, their chest is out, they're confident in the product that they're selling, which is themselves in their company. Right. And so I, you can't measure that, but I've definitely seen that in my career when, when an originator gets that, that awesome team behind them, you're going to see their volume increase. You're going to see their sales activity increase too, because you're confident in what, in what you're selling, right? Well, you're only as good as your whole team, you know, you're like, uh, let me see what the game was watching last night, oh, the giants and the patriots, you know, to be able to hang out there in the pocket and, and have confidence in your team that they're going to give you, right, the, the ability to execute and make those plays, then you feel confident to friggin' just like make that happen and like you're, you know, so we, we attempt at a sports metaphor there, but, you know, the patriots are awesome examples of that. I went from hating them because they beat us in a Super Bowl of Hawks to having a ton of respect for Belicech and, and talk about a system, right? They can take almost anybody and put them in that system. It's coaching, it's leadership, it's system. I mean, how many different receivers have, has Brady had even just this year? Yeah. And guess what? He makes a super star out of all of them and, and then the, I mean, the, the masterful defensive strategy against the Rams last year. I mean, those guys were explosive and they made him look like a junior varsity team. That was all coaching and scheme. That's so brilliant. And so I'm still not fans, but I have a tremendous matter of respect for Belicech. There you go. That's healthy. That's healthy. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Because you know I'm from New England, originally. I don't know if you like me. Yeah, I'm giving you a, I just will not put on the jersey or support there. All right. Fair enough. All right. Let's get back into that. Oh, by the way, if anybody's so, guys, you heard the whole thing about movement. If you're listening and you are possibly in a position for considering a change, hey, reach out to one of us, right? You're not going to hit us up. Happy to tell you what's real the truth, right? No fluff. Okay. So you have a team about about 15 or 17 L.O.s, you said, if I'm correct. What do you, and you've been doing this a long time, the market is crazy, busy. It's more competitive than it's ever been. We're going to get into some of the disruption in a moment. But just what do you, you know, how do you coach your L.O.? Like what are you seeing that works repeatedly, successfully, regardless of the market? Everybody's different. So it's really interesting. I wish I could just say, like, this is exactly how I coach L.O. Some don't even want the coaching. And that's fine. And some do. And so everybody has strengths and weaknesses. My job is to figure out, you know, the yin and yang. How can I, you know, add some, some strengths to, uh, I have originators that are great at the ops, you know, they could put the best file together ever. And that is a strength. But if you can't go out and meet people, then that strength is never realized. So I have to figure out how to coach that up, that, that sell side up, because they definitely have the strong upside, they know guidelines like the back of their hand, they can structure a file better than, you know, some of the best sales people out there. And so my job is to figure out that yin and yang, like, how can I compliment them? Where do they need to be complimented? We have originators that are amazing sales people. But they, they struggle putting files together. So I got to figure out a lot of my job is, is team building. So what type of L away, because L always differ and also, and how they're used differ based off brand and strategy. So is this a sales person that really shouldn't have their hands in the file or have, you know, be in the L OS? Most people would kind of make fun of that person, like, oh, man, you don't know how to, you know, put a file in the L OS. I'm like, I don't care if that person can go out and make it right and bring in, you know, attract realtors and referral partners. That's of tremendous value. My job is then to find a compliment person that is, you know, strong and opts again, again and yang. It's a compliment, you know, his strength or weakness. And so that's, that's what I do a lot is trying to figure out, you know, what's the missing piece to that? If it's a sales person, typically it's an ops type L away and that's a tough one. We can all talk about, you know, L away strategies and finding the right fit and there's a lot of turnover, turnover there and then you can talk about scaling a team, having a second and a third and a fourth L away and there's a lot of turnover there. If you interview a lot of mega producers, so that is not an easy process. And if you're constantly going back and hiring people, it's not something you can scale. An originator can't scale their business if they can't, again, back to my analogy with a strong ops team. It starts with a strong, you know, sales support, a loan officer assistant. And so everybody's different. My job is to figure out how I can help, you know, add that missing piece. I like that. I like that. It's kind of modular for you, if you will, right? So let's play to somebody's strengths. Let's not take this rainmaker who knows how to kill it and generate business and try and force them to right fin into this, you know, square peg or whatever. Let's let them, let them sell, let them be free. Go do what they do best. I've learned that so many times in my career that people thrive, you know, like the book start with why you're like, when you put them in a position of doing things that they're good at and they're happy, they thrive. Yeah. They don't even need a whole lot of coaching and managing at that point because they're in the right, the right spot, whether that's going to be an originator that I tell them, hey, dude, don't even touch the computer, you know, most of you be like, oh, that's, that's horrible strategy. Is it? I mean, it's going to do 50 million this year. I don't know. That's a horrible strategy. Now, if I force that guy to go do something that he's not good at, right? Now we have a rub situation and things fall apart. So I try to, in overall 10,000 foot, 10,000 foot level strategy for everything, not just sales, L.O.A.'s processors, like I'm trying to figure out how to put people in places where they thrive. And if I see that they're not thriving, I'm going to try to make a tweak and maybe that is a different type of ops. Maybe it's a different type of sales, but I'm always looking at that. And once you get those people in those places, again, it's not like, there's not a whole lot of micromanaging there to do because they're happy. People are happy. What are they doing? They're selling in their jobs. Right. You know, again, part of our team, I don't have to ask the ops people that work overtime. Never, never. I don't think it wants to 15 years. I'm like, hey guys, I'm going to need you to work this weekend. Guess what? They just do, man, because they're bought in, never wants, and they, and they do, they work, they work overtime all the time because they're hustlers as well, and they're happy in their position. They're cranking. You do a good, good hiring, and but plus your culture and your leadership is really good. Yeah. What makes the difference? All right. Well, let's pivot a little bit because I want to get a little bit tactical for those in my audience and in ways who are listening, you may not know that Ryan, you and the other Ryan RC have been running a show for 10 years now, right? Yeah. 10 years. That's amazing. It's called a decade. So 10 years. So it's called the resource.tv. You guys are just really awesome with video and education, and at first of all, a lot of funny stuff, too, but your quality, I've seen your quality like in terms of production value has grown a lot, you know? But what I want to ask you about is this, right? Because it's mostly L.O.'s listening, and everybody's like tuning in for what? The nugget, like, give me the thing, you know? You had a video you posted, and we're going to put links in the show notes to your stuff, but I'm looking at one, the topic is the case for video and social. Yeah. But I'd be curious to ask you, because you're clearly a video guy, right? And perhaps a social guy as well, you know, in terms of like buying into social. Oh, sure, yeah. Okay. So I'm curious then back to kind of the general coaching question, like, what do you seeing L.O.'s do to succeed? Let's just have a brief dialogue on, I don't know how to phrase it other than, does somebody have to be doing video or be in on social? Do you think to be a successful L.O. today? They don't have to. I mean, I know you talk to a lot of top producers. You know, I had an interview recently with a girl in the East Coast that's going to do like 75 million. She doesn't touch social. So I guess that's the short answer. You don't necessarily have to. I just talked to a good friend of mine, Jordan. He calls 9 million last month in Denver. He doesn't touch social. And so he flew out and hung out with me for a day. And I was just trying to say, like, hey, obviously what you're doing is not broken. I just want to say, like, what would Jordan look like if he did add the social aspect, man, because social is huge. I mean, it's a gigantic opportunity. And it's not the end all be all and you don't have to do it. There's certainly people winning without it. But I just wonder if you're doing 100 million or if you're doing 10 million a month and you're not touching at all, what would you do if you were leveraging the power of social? I mean, because I, you know, if you asked me like, hey, 10 years ago when it was just you and RC and nobody, how did you grow the team to 52 million? I would say my best strategy if I had to pick one was video mode. I attracted most of the awesome talent that works on on our team because they saw the show. They kind of got to know me. They figured out, oh, he's not an idiot. It seems like you know, something is personable and that would be my one strategy if I had to do it all over again. I'm an leverage social to get the word out. And so we have another show. If you look it up on the rsource.tv called the respecting the psychology of social media and that kind of talks about how to leverage Facebook and Instagram and you have content on this as well. You actually just saw your post on housing wire, but how to leverage Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, because those are all different streams and you should have all different strategies. And that's that's kind of back to the point of respecting the psychology of social media when you're when you're an Instagram, you're in a different frame of mind than when you're on LinkedIn. And so your strategies should tweak there back to your original question, you know, people ask me all the time, which one should I use? All of them. You should use all of them and we struggle with it today. Like we're constantly tweaking and refining our strategies. And so now we're to repurpose again, kind of a Gary V. trick, we're repurposing our bigger content into smaller bite size chunks. And we're respecting the psychology of social media in link or in Instagram. And so that's why you see a lot of our stuff, not working harder, just working smarter. It's the same content chunked up for Instagram. And then you have like podcast forms and where we can do stuff like this where it's longer, you can get into the weeds, you can get into the X's and O's. So that's important. Yeah. Right. And then you got Twitter. So do you have to use it? No. If you're not, I think you're missing out on a gigantic opportunity nowadays. You know, I used to use to speak 10 years ago and go, really you guys are spending 10 grand on a billboard to reach 10,000 people and maybe only five of them were your target market. I could spend 10 grand on social and reach only my target market. Nobody, you know, I will not reach somebody that I don't want to reach because I can define my market. And we still do that today. So if I go and put out a show, I can hope and pray that somebody's going to watch it or I can spend $5, $20 in each one of those social streams and go out like real, real turns to watch this. Lenders, title, Aschro appraisers, you can do that today and it's crazy that we're having to talk about this because it seems like social media 101, but most people don't know that. You want to target Boeing employees. That's big here in Seattle that, you know, that are age 35 and older in Seattle. You know, you can do that, right? Like originators, why would you not put that message out? If you're a top producer, you're probably pretty confident, right? You're probably the best lender in that town, which you can make a good case because your volume shows that. So why wouldn't we want to tell more people that, right? Why wouldn't we want to tell the masses and get that amazing message out to attract even more business? Yeah, it's interesting because it's a question that I'm with you on that. I don't think there is any, you know, one answer, it's like I say about marketing, you know, hey, what works? Well, everything works at various levels. It depends on the person location, et cetera, the application of it. I think we just try a thing like once or twice and we don't see immediate results, whether it's social or video or blogging, and we just give up too much. I mean, that's an industry issue. That's an American thing. If you go back to our videos 10 years ago, they were horrible, but we stuck with it. Right. And that's the same with any strategy to your point. I would just encourage people to stick with it, refine it, tweak it. That's the important part is, you know, each week we learn something new every day on our show of what to do better for next week. And that's the mindset you have to have on any strategy, like, all right, how do we tweak this to be better, more efficient, reach more people, more views, more, more likes. And we just have, we just have that mindset, we have that mindset for the team too. So every month, we'll have a team meeting and we'll look back and celebrate our successes and go, all right, what are the things that we could have done better? Yeah. And when you start that process, it gets uncomfortable because you're kind of looking in the mirror, shipping away your flaws, but eventually you get ultra comfortable in a setting where you're okay talking about what you can do better. And sometimes it's what I can do better. And God, I mean, I mean, the companies that can do that from the top down are going to really set themselves apart. Having those fierce conversations, which is a great book behind me, having those fierce conversations about, hey, what's working? What's not working? That should be a regular strategy from CEO down or if you're running an LL running a team down, that should just be something that happens every week, if not every month. All right, let's pivot a little bit because I know you have a lot of info on this topic as well. And this is kind of a segue, if you will, from the social video discussion, what I'll use the phrase, modern mortgage marketer, if you will. And it's funny because lately I've been doing some work and writing some stuff. And this morning, I think I was dealing with this topic about winning the customer early, right? And I think I'd be curious to get your input on why, because let me just set this up, because we got two things happening. We got the person that you interviewed who does 75 mil and she doesn't touch social media. Well, the advantage she has, she's got a massive database of past clients. Not everybody's there. So if you're there, cool, that can feed you forever if you're leveraging it, right? Let's just assume she clearly is. However, not everybody's there, right? Some people don't have that huge database. They're just starting. They got 100, 200, whatever. But more importantly, it's like you want to get chosen moving forward too with new clients. And so what that brings me to is winning the customer early, we know where are the customers today. They're online. And then let's add on top of that. We have a lot of people competing now, getting into this space, Ibuyers, Zillow's now a mortgage company, et cetera. And so there are, there's more noise, there's more attempts at attention for our consumers. So my kind of dialogue with LOs is, how are you going to get chosen if you aren't online where the attention is? Yeah, I mean, you just summed it up in the best way. Like the end of story, why do you want to be on social, why do you want to be online? Because that is where the battle for the consumer is right now. And if you have no presence, you got no shock. All right, end of story, like the bait's over, close the book, we're good to go. Yeah, right. Dude, that's it. We shot a show on that too, like being first to the customer is the pursuit for everybody. That's why Fox News just kind of got into the game, because they know that they're the tip of the spear. I can't remember that show, Aaron, if you can find it, but it talks about how Fox News just got into real estate. And they know that they have thousands, if not millions of viewers, well, if they can get to the consumer and they have, say, a real estate brand or a mortgage brand, right? They can reach the consumer first. And so that's where the biggest battle right now is happening is trying to reach the consumer first in the show. I kind of pointed out, I get it and I know that's what's happening, but I also tried to help the consumer understand how absurd that is. And I use the analogy, like, hey, you're a consumer and you don't know what's realtor to work with. And so I'm going to go into the, you know, safe go field or, or, you know, where the Fox play and it's full of realtors, there's 70,000 realtors there. And if I leverage the first person I talked to, do you realize how absurd that is? There's 69,999 other realtors there. Maybe I should do some research and find the first one or find the best one, not the first one. But that's what consumers are doing when they just give up and be like, oh, so and so, I buyer, you know, company reached out to me first or Zilla Mortgage did. Okay. Like that's not the end of your homework. I hope like there's a lot of other companies and realtors and liners out there. Maybe we should do a little homework. So I get it and it's 100% right. The battle for the consumer is happening right now because they come for these companies out. They can be first. There's a really good chance that they're going to get that business. I just want to educate the consumer that that's not always the best person to work with just because they happen to reach you first. Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, unless you're at Ricky Bobby's brokerage and if you're in first year last, so. Right. Right. Right. But no, I think that is that is part of the battle. So you're up in the like the heart of like I buyer territory. Man, we got them all red, Vin Zillow, frigging Amazon. Yeah. Oh, so talk about what's the what's the feeling? What are the emotions you're seeing come from like realtors are really kind of the big focus of this lenders a little bit less. But what are you hearing and feeling up there? Oh, man, it's crazy. So Seattle has some big headwinds for realtors and lenders. So we have a ton of I buyers. We have a ton of fentech and we're the first animal asked for realtors to change the commission structure, which I do believe is coming to the rest of the nation. Yeah. I want to know more about that. Get specific when you. Yeah. So right now, most listings across the nation. We have a really has a conversation about how the buyer's agents pay because it's already built into the price, right? There's 6% in the Lister House, there's typically three for the listing agent, three for the buyer's agent. Well, NAR got sued for that. And so out of that, the NMLS, Northwest NMLS said, okay, what we're going to do is say that there's no longer you're no longer forced and never really forced. You never were forced, but they said you're no longer forced to build in a buyer's commission. So what happens now is people, mostly the red fins of the world are have the opportunity to list the house without any buyer's commission. It's just the seller. So now realtors have to fight for their commission and either have the buyer paid out of their pocket, which is going to be an interesting conversation or maybe add it as a closing cost, maybe up the purchase price to cover their commission. And so it's a crazy, interesting time in Seattle to be in the business because this is happening as we speak. And I've done a lot of research on this, obviously. And then I've been to town hall meetings. I spoke with other, you know, the Keller Williams of the world, the John Scots, Wynda Mary, I speak. And they're all kind of scrambling to try to figure out like, how are we going to adapt to this change? Some have good ideas, some don't. And we don't know how that's going to play out. So the first in the nation to go down this route, I think realtors in a self preserving hope and pray say, oh, business is usual. And I want them. I have their back. I wanted to be business is usual. I just don't think it's going to be. A lot of people, if you're a conspiracy theorist, think that Redfinn is behind the original lawsuit because obviously pushes their model forefront. I don't know if that's true or not. It does make sense if they were. But so long story short, buyers agents are now kind of having to fight for their commission. And also, they're not forced. So if you, if I'm a buyer's agent and Aaron, Aaron, who's over here is going to buy a house and he wants to go look at one, two, three, a street. If there's no commission built into that listing, it'll show up, first of all, on the listing remarks when you're like on Redfinn, it'll say, hey, zero commission for buyer's agent, which is crazy. But as a realtor, I'm not forced to show them that house, which is weird because it's like, well, that's my client. So I want them to get the house that he wants. So thanks for not forcing me to show the house, but I kind of have to because he's still my client and he wants to look at the house. So there's a lot at play and we're very early to this. And for the other neighboring states, you really need to pay attention because I do think this is coming your way. Northwest MLS is an early adopter typically. So it's not surprising that they would be first to make these changes, but I do think this is coming to the rest of the nation. I'm looking at my email because I'm trying to find the article that was sent to me about that lawsuit. If I recall correctly, was dismissed recently, the, the NAR lawsuit? I think NAR wants it to be dismissed. Yeah. We have a show with Brian Stevens, that's a podcast style interview where we actually in the comment sections, we have the actual lawsuit itself. Yeah. So, you know, I can, I can get you the, the legal verbiage if you'd like to see the changes that were made. No, I just wish I could find it because somebody had sent that off to me recently, anyways. Do your research. But yeah, it's, it's very interesting to see how this whole thing evolves crazy to think that now you're going to throw, be throwing that into the mix with the seller, not having to pay the buyer's commissions, that what I, whatever you said, the buyer's agent commission. Yeah, basically they, they, they still can list the house with 6%. That's still an opportunity. Sure. Red fins of the world are certainly not going to want to do that because their narrative is going to be, hey, it's cheaper to sell with us. We're only going to build in 3%, maybe even, maybe even less and let the buyer's agent figure it out on their own. So I think traditional realtors will try to, we'll, we'll band together hopefully and keep it at business as usual. But again, the new I buyer type platforms and the red fins of the world will certainly leverage that to try to push out traditional realtors. What's your take on, you know, the word that comes in mind is like survivability of the I buyers. And I'm thinking about the context in that, that you had this awesome interview, which for those listening right now, you need to, at some point, go to the resource.tv and watch the interview that you guys did with Kenny Claus. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I think that's, as I talk to realtors all the time and all that kind of, I think that's the approach realtor should take. But what's, what's your opinion on, you know, the market share grab the consumers willingness to go that route versus traditional? I've been trying to scream from the rooftop to, for traditional realtors to put out more content. My, my take on is, is we just need to be educated. First, as realtors, as lenders, we need to know what truly that I buyer platform looks like. So when a consumer comes to us, we can educate them versus just saying, Oh, that's dumb. Why is it, you know, oh, well, I've done research. They typically net 11% less. Okay. Well, that's some valuable information. So first out, out of the gate, do you want to net 11% less with I buyer platforms versus traditional? Most people don't like netting 11% less. Yeah. Oh, they say they're cheaper historically. They're seven and a half percent fees were traditional realtors or six percent. Good piece of information. But we don't know that if we don't do our homework and I don't think enough of us are doing our homework to understand the new competition coming in. So that's step one. Step two is doing what you and I do. Make content, educate consumers as to, Hey, there's this new thing. This is why Kenny Clouds is so brilliant. I've already done all the research. So if you want to know about the new thing, you come to me first. And by the way, they're, they're a buyer just like anybody else. And this is why I think it's so brilliant. So I'll list your house and I'll, I'll get their offer. I'll get 10 I buyer company offers and I'll present it to you, but I'll also get traditional offers that typically will net more and I'll present that to you. So now he's controlled the narrative, right? He hasn't lost business to an I buyer platform because he's basically just treating him like a traditional buyer. In fact, sure, is it low, give me your best offer? Sure, open door, give me your best offer or sure, you know, offer pad, give me your best offer. And so which is smart because you kind of pit them against each other, but then you also have your traditional, you know, person in the community saying, Hey, I'll give you X amount. Right. Some people that, you know, may get transferred across the nation and have to move in 10 days and don't really care about what they net, well, they might go with the I buyer platform. Yeah. You know, but most people, and I've been doing this a long time, want to try to maximize their asset, their house, and the net profits coming out of that and they typically aren't ready to move in two days and need 30 days to get their affairs in order. So I would think most people would stick with the traditional model. The beauty of it is we're not shunning the new, we're, we're leveraging it. It's still an option and we're giving that option to consumers. And that's why I think Kenny's approach and response to this is so smart versus just going, Oh, they're dumb, you're not going to make any money with them. Yeah. And I've seen some agents respond that way and that's a mistake. So that's a good lesson. And by the way, you as a loan officer listening as well, you can help your agent understand that that's the right approach. If you want, gather some data for them, gather a net sheet right side by side and show them what the net net's going to be, because I've done that and agents just like they love that, they eat that up. Actually, the title and escrow companies, if you Google that, what you, because that's brilliant strategy, a lot of them have done that homework for you. So you can kind of Google that and you'll see a spreadsheet and it'll say like offer pad open door, zillow, red pin, blah, blah, blah. And you know, it's kind of cool because they've already done the commissions and the fees and what an average person in that market would net versus traditional real estate. So that resource already exists. Again, if you want to work smarter, not harder, Google that and see if it exists for your hometown. And again, if not, talk to your title and escrow person because they're kind of all over this thing. Yeah. I think the last note on that is don't have your head in the sand in thinking that they aren't going to come to a neighborhood near you soon. Yeah. Yeah. For sure, because like you said, I mean, heck, five, maybe 10% of the market, if what was the number, like it's a, that's a $94 billion market or something like that for annual transactions. Yeah. That's pretty good chunk of change if you get in five to 10% of that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And we just, I mean, again, educate yourself and then put out your own content. Like, I don't want somebody else controlling the narrative, whether FinTech companies are better than, say, movement mortgage, I'm going to control that narrative. And the only way I can control that narrative is being educated and putting my own content out. And that's the same for realtors in your, in your, in your town, if, if you don't put anything out, and I by our companies are putting out content, you're not in the game. You're not even in the fight. They win because there's no, there's no counterpoint to the I by our conversation. That's why it's so important that we have to put out our content, our narrative, because if they're the only ones putting their stuff out, that's the only one a consumer is going to believe. Yeah. And, and, and once again, it comes back to what we talked about earlier is the attention's online and you want to get chosen. Why not put out a video, an article, a blog post, an infographic, you know, hey, you know, welcome to town, Zillow, I buyers, right? You know, we're glad you're here. Homeowners, let's, let's talk about the differences, right? And then totally like, you know, let them choose whatever, whatever the best option is for that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're scripting it right now. Like, that's a perfect script for how that video would go. You, man. I script on the fly. Yeah. All right. Sweet, man. I know you're busy. You got a lot of stuff going on. Closing this out. Anything you're doing as you enter in the end of this queue for, how are you prepping for 2020? I'll, I'll prep it with a question and I don't, I don't know that I have the answer yet. Maybe. So what am I doing? I'm telling our team, hey, if you did 30 million last year, 40 or 50, whatever your number is, and people listening are watching, think, get that number in your head. I think doing that same number next year is going to be twice as hard. Hmm. Why? And more importantly, what are we going to do about it? Why? I think obviously rates at some point will go back up. We have new competitors and Fintech and I buyer and I, and I, I'm concerned, especially for my town, I'm concerned that agent count may go down. So our referral partners and the opportunities to get referrals may go down with, with the new competition and with the commission changes. So for Seattle, we kind of have a three-headed monster that, that's facing us, doesn't mean we're dead, doesn't mean that our business is going to go backwards. It means that, again, we need to pivot, we need to be ahead of this. We need to play chess, not checkers and be two, three moves ahead of this and go, okay, I want to do 50, 25, 30 million next year. I know it's going to be tougher. I'm going to have a few referral partners. So what am I going to do in this last quarter of 2019 to prep for this? Because we come 2020, it's going to be too late and you're going to see a big reduction in volume. We all know. I mean, I told you earlier, I think we started out with $256 billion worth of volume unaccounted for it. That's all going away. Those are all, we'll take the gift this year. Thank you so much for the low-hanging fruit and the refies. That's going away. I know 40% of my business will go away next year because we've already refinanced them. So right out of the gate, as to why I'm saying that, I know out of the gate 40% of my business that I did this year won't be there next year. So the important question that I'm leaving you with, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to change for next year? That's a good way to close out, man. Absolutely. Thank you very much. All right, so real quick, once again, for people who want to reach out with you and connect with you, we know the website, right? The resource.tv. We're going to put links there, any other place you want to send them, like your Facebook page or anything. Yeah, follow us on Facebook. That's where most of our community lives, but the resource.tv or the resource.tv is a great way. We have a lot of speaking engagements coming up, so it'll list all of those. The next one is in Seattle, and then we have tons of them next year all over the nation. I don't even know I had to look at my calendar. Awesome. If we're in your neck of the woods, we'd love for you to come out and meet us. Fantastic, man. Listen, Ryan, can't say I appreciate you enough. You are a leader. You're leading from the front in our industry, so, man, thanks for doing all the great stuff you do. It was a pleasure to have you back for a second time on the show, man. Appreciate it. Awesome. All right, listeners, as always, you know what you need to do if you like this episode or any of them. Hey, leave us a little love, a little review out on the inner webs, and we will see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in Mortgage Marketing. You 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 you just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans, you need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you, agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus, done for you proven marketing materials and plug-and-play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts, and seats, partnering with affiliates real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers, and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And, as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere from 8 to 50 transactions in the last 12 months, and we'll provide that list upload into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagedmarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat, we'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagedmarketing.pro.