Ep 152: How to Become "A Digital Mayor" With Your Own Video Show

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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, listeners, what's up? This is Jeff Zimper. Welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. So glad you've tuned in. Folks, we've got another episode of Fire coming your way. But first, I want to give a shout out to any of you listening. I appreciate you tuning in. Whether you're a new listener, you've been here a long time. I do this for you. So if you're getting value out of it, one easy way for you to let me know that you appreciate the podcast and the content is, leave us a review wherever you're listening to this podcast. It helps us grow, reach more people, have a bigger impact on the industry and that is ultimately the goal. And I want to give a shout out to one of my most recent reviews, actually just dropped on December 6, 2019. So literally this review is only four days old. And it comes from Chase Scaff. What's up, Chase? Here's Chase's five-star review motivating. I was considering getting back in the mortgage industry and starting and to start originating loans again and Jeff's podcast convinced me to get started again. Every episode is filled with good information, but they also motivate me to do more with my business. Recommend to all LOs. Chase, thank you so much, man. The fact that our content played a role in helping you make the decision to get started again and to motivate you to grow and evolve your business, man, that says a lot. I appreciate that. So, Chase, you know what to do. Hit me up on the Facebook's DM, me, your t-shirt size and your mailing address and let's get you off a podcast swag box, all right? Anybody else listening who wants to do the same, you know what to do, leave a review and then hit me up. Just like Chase is going to do and you'll get a cool fun. It's funny. I was talking to somebody the other day who had one of the t-shirts on and they said, wow, this thing is super soft. Yeah. See, I believe in quality. I'm not into those cheesy, cheap t-shirts that feel like you're wearing a piece of tin foil over you. All right. So, love to hear your reviews, guys. Appreciate it. And, right, it's a passion project and doing this all for you. And also, if you're looking for more, hey, come join us in the private Facebook group. Just for podcast listeners at Mortgage Marketing Radio on Facebook, just Google that, search, Google that, go to Facebook and type it in Facebook search bar Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast group and we'll welcome you into the group. So let's get rock and then before I forget if you're looking to grow as Chase is, if you're going to be motivated, if you're looking for access to tools and resources to help you level up, become a modern originator and get maximum agent referrals in minimum time, well, we've got something for you. It might be for you. I don't know. That's for you to decide. How do you learn more? You go to Mortgage Marketing.pro. That's right. Mortgage Marketing.pro. Watch the brief video that will tell you all about what's available for you if you want to take the next step in a deeper relationship with me and with a growing community of loan officers committed to all those things I mentioned and more. Okay. So this week's episode, I am thrilled to bring you a relevant timely conversation about being a modern mortgage originator and this gentleman has been on my radar for over a year. This is how long I've been waiting to have him on the podcast. So I'm thrilled. I think you're going to be thrilled as well. If any of you are wondering, like, how do I evolve and pivot? How do I become a modern mortgage originator? You know, Gary Vaynerchuk coined the phrase, become the digital mayor. And you've heard the hype and talk about that video and being hyper local and building a local brand and interviewing local businesses and all those types of ideas. Well, folks, I've got the guy for you today. I got it. Okay. Jonathan McKinnis with hallmark, home mortgage out in South Bend, Indiana, what's known as Michigan, right, area, which is a combination between South Bend and Michigan. And what Jonathan has done an amazing job of over the last year is becoming the digital mayor. He started a show, right, it's called Michigan Living TV. There's links to everything we talk about here in the show notes. You can hop on Facebook right now and search Michigan, a living TV and what you'll see in there is he's got this incredible hyper local personal brand where Jonathan is featuring local businesses and has become a digital mayor. And the engagement that he's getting on these videos is crazy, right, off the hook. What I love about Jonathan though is it's not just a pure, you know, hey, let me do this as a way to get business, although that does organically happen as a result of building a local hyper local personal brand. Jonathan didn't because he wants to be invested in his local community, right, he's in a small town, right, is about a little over 300,000 people total population for him. So you could you could argue he's becoming a big fish in a small pond, right? But you hear Jonathan kind of unpack his process, his journey into pivoting to start to shoot video, how that all came about, kind of the frequency, how here's what's going to be mind blowing for you. When you look, click at the links we've got in the show notes or you go to look on the Facebook page right now and you look at the videos and the quality of the videos and then listen to the podcast and Jonathan, I'll tell you exactly what he uses to film these videos. You'll be as equally blown away, I think as I am if you because what you'll understand is the simplicity of actually making this happen. Yeah, with you being on video or not, hey, look, that's a process for all of us to get comfortable with. But if it's if it's right for you, right, this might be an incredibly insightful and motivating and inspiring podcast for you to listen to. Jonathan does some pretty significant volume, right, over 200 families a year that he helps in his local area. He's a producing branch manager. So he's a busy guy plus he runs a podcast, the guy's doing a lot of different things and he's what he's doing is leveraging a team and systems and he's just an all around, you know, quality, human being. He's the number one ranked mortgage lender in South Bend, number nine in Indiana by Ask a Lender. He's ranked in his local chamber 40 under 40 top 10 loan officers nationally for customer service satisfaction on social survey. That guy's got hundreds of online reviews, five star reviews and stuff like that. And I think you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I have having it with with Jonathan directly. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Hey, Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to be on. Thanks to have you on. Finally, I know it's been a long time coming. I think you and I have been throwing messages around for maybe a year or something, but you're incredibly busy. So I appreciate you making the time. All right. So people heard the formal intro, you know, before they started this podcast, but give us the personal info of intro of Jonathan McKinnis, how long you been in the biz, kind of average volume and what do you love about the biz? Yeah, been in the mortgage business for about, I would say, 13 years now. I serve over 200 families a year, that's kind of the goal. So we're going to be approaching around 211 families this year, average loan amounts in my market where I'm at. I'm in the South Bend, Indiana area, if you know where Notre Dame is, we're right by Notre Dame. Oh, yeah. So our average loan amounts right in that 160 price range. And so they're not overly huge, but we do serve quite a few families. We have to make sure we're serving a lot of people to do a good job for this year. You're going to close the volumes around 33 million or so in volume within my team. I do manage a branch of loan officers. There's about 10 of us that produce and I am a producing branch manager myself. So I love the business because I got in and not thinking that I would really thrive necessarily in a sales position, you know, because I don't see myself as there's nothing wrong with sales. I love sales. That's what I'm in. But I was really an introvert growing up and so I never really thought that I would be this person that can make waves within the industry until I changed my mindset and I started thinking more about how I can make an impact on people and impossibly influence people using the idea of my knowledge to give good advice. And so I think if we kind of flip our mentality into thinking that we're not just in sales, we're not trying to sell somebody on a mortgage product. We're trying to get people, you know, trusted advice. And I feel like that tears down some barriers in my mind and has sort of helped me move to a better level of of this industry, you know, really. Yeah. So within, by the way, thank you for the intro. And within that, does that mean at some point in the near a recent past that you made a shift to being more of an educator rather than just, you know, quote sales? Yeah, I think so being in that, well, I mean, I always follow, I mean, here's how I sort of got groomed in the business. I, I followed a really good mentor and he connected me to all of the, the kind of mortgage gurus of the time. And so, you know, the Todd Duncan scripts the high trust sales. That was like the first thing. When I first got into the business, I was dealing with high trust, kind of scripting and making sure that I kind of catered to my client very well, but it took a little while for me to kind of take off. And so we started with that. I'm actually in the core coaching training, so that's the real estate and lending coaching and so I'm a part of that program as well. And so I think I've always had a mentality of educating people, but I never thought that I was the expert. You know, so for me, the struggle was getting to a point where I feel like I can actually give good advice. And so it took a few years for that to happen, but I think that my business has always been built on that idea of being the expert and being somebody that I think represents the business in a professional manner. That was, that was a big thing for me because I remember when I was kind of getting into the Todd Duncan things, they always talk about overcoming objections and the different objections that you may face in your career at certain seasons of your career. And one of the objections that I felt was a critical hurdle for me to get over was getting into the business at a very young age. And so I'm only 35 right now. I started, you know, when I was just, you know, in my, just past my legal adrinking age, I was like 22 or so. And I, or 21 or so, when I got in, I was still in college. And so I didn't even own a home when I first got into the business and I was giving me mortgages to people. And so it was really difficult. So I had to get to a point where what can I bring that's a unique value proposition to my clients where they don't think that I'm just some guy that doesn't know anything. And so I wanted to make sure I came to work with professional clothes on that I had really good scripts that I made sure that I was as polished as possible, it comes to lending guidelines. And so I was just a sponge when I first got in and I think that really helped me a lot. Yeah. I would agree. It's funny. In the early days, I was on a similar path back in 2003 when I began, there really was no training. It was here's your business cards, hit the bricks, pal. But then I came, I saw in my manager's office, there was a set of the Todd Duncan tapes. And I was like, what's this? And yeah, so that to me as well, I always give a shout out to those to Todd Duncan for, I think bringing a certain level of professionalism much similar to that of like a financial advisor. Yes. So I think that's good to know we're both cut from the same cloth there. So it sounds like since then, though, you got the training, the coaching, the guidance to get more confidence, right? Coming from a young person, I understand what you mean. Hey, I don't even know in a home whom I had to tell these people about getting a mortgage. Right. When do you think it did something happen where it clicked and shifted for you, or was it just a consistent application of that over time? You know, there was a, there was this sort of catalyst kind of moment that took place where I realized I could do this. And so when I got in, I, I actually have some family that's in the mortgage in the real estate business, a couple real estate agents, my brother and my uncle. And I thought when I would get in, well, I would obviously get a business from them. It wasn't that easy. You know, they, they were very, you know, seasoned and grained in the industry. They knew they had their relationships built. And so it wasn't as easy as I thought. And so I was in the business for about six months. And I remember going to my branch manager and I was nearly in tears thinking that there was just no way that I'm going to make it in this business. I don't like it. I don't like rejection. I don't feel like I'm making any headway. And he encouraged me to stick with it. I was able to make ends meet because I didn't have much in expenses while I was still living at home at the time. And so I stuck it out for a little bit longer. And just it seemed like I got over that hurdle closer to that 10 to 12 month mark really where I started to see some consistent growth. And with that consistency, it became more of a residual thing where I've got relationships built. And over time, it started building those relationships. If you don't do anything that's going to jeopardize that relationship or dishonor the relationship of a referral source, then you can start having a more predictable income. I think it took still a roughly that 12 to 24 months. And I remember vividly when I first started thinking, I mean, I was just kind of in my mind praying, I just wish I could snap my fingers and it would be five years later. Because then I know that all that extra effort would have already been established. And of course, it doesn't work that way. But it was just time and effort. But I do think it was around that 10 to 12 month mark is when I started going over that hump a little bit. But a lot of it is mindset as well. So I'm sure your mindset kind of evolved as you had more successes. You leveled up your knowledge or expertise. You felt like you were actually making a difference on those daily conversations with people. Absolutely. I remember a manager saying something to me once when I was new at something and I was feeling unsure about myself and, you know, and he basically asked me, so why are you having these limitations or whatever, I said, well, because I'm new, right? And he goes, well, how long do you want to be new? I was like, yeah, it's up to me. Right. How long I want to be new? You know, they don't know that. So that reminds me when I was obviously new, you, you base your, sometimes you'll base your conversations on how many years you've been in the business. You started flipping that and kind of creating my own scripting. And I think it might have been a tight dunk in script or it could have been somebody else. But either way, they said, I don't base my, my experience necessarily on years in the business. I base my experience on transactions that I've had and how many families I served. And so as you serve more families, as you have more transactions on your belt, you can say that that's my success record as opposed to, you know, I've been in the business for 30 years. Well, I don't care if you've been in the business for 30 years. If you're only serving 10 families a year, that doesn't matter. How many families are you serving? And so you can start changing your scripting and your, in your mental stories, you tell yourself, I think, and that makes a big difference. You know, I love that. That's actually for those listening, that might be a good script to integrate into your conversations. If you ever get in that situation where you need to kind of demonstrate your knowledge or expertise, you know, well, on average, Mr. and Mrs. Prospector customer, you know, I'm helping over 200 families a year, you know, and I mean, so that's my level of expertise that I bring to this conversation. Right. And that's why I'm not all about the lowest price, right? I'm an advisor of that. I love that. Okay. Very cool, man. Thank you for sharing that. Before we go on to my next subject, which is, of course, you being yourself a media brand, you did mention Notre Dame. I'm curious if you're a fan. I am a fan of Notre Dame. Yes. All right. Well, in full disclosure, I am a fan of Iowa State. Oh. Okay. Okay. We are playing in the bowl. Man, coming up to Camping World Bowl, which I would be at in Orlando. So yeah, my, my sisters, my wife's sister's son is Brock Purdy, the quarterback for Iowa State. Very cool. Yeah, that's that hopefully should be a good, I think that Iowa State might be a little underrated. They're actually a pretty good team. So we'll see. And Notre Dame tends to crumble in the bowl games. And so this might be the game where it's a, it's a good one, hopefully. I know, man. It's, it's going to be a good show. Hopefully that, that's all that matters. So anyway, I didn't want to like let the moment pass without remembering to bring that up. That's a friendly, friendly rivalry there. Okay. So what, what really brought you on my radar amongst another variety of things, you're active in the mortgage code community, right? Yes. Orgge code user, right? And all that kind of stuff. So we're all in these, some of these similar communities on Facebook or whatnot. But what I started to notice from you, just on my own radar, came up about a year ago is you building this personal brand that is largely driven by being, you know, kind of a local media entity in your local area using video. And so I want to kind of unpack the conversation today about that. You've created this show. It's Michigan, a living TV. Is that correct? Correct. That's the name. All right. So, so how long have you been doing that show? It's actually been a good roughly year and a half going on the two year point in full disclosure, too. It actually wasn't my original idea. It was actually the idea of our marketing department within my mortgage company, Holmark and Mortgage. And they are the ones who kind of got a test group of subjects, if you will, of different loan officers that they thought would be able to run with this idea. And you know, it's one thing having an idea, it's another thing implementing an idea and struggle with most, just like mortgage coach users. I mean, there's a lot of people that have access to it, but they'll never implement it because they just never take that next step. And so it's something that was given to many of us, but very few people actually stuck with it. And so they created this brand opportunity, and I just continue to run with it and created my own channel. So as a company, we have our own kind of marketing channel, if you will, within Facebook. Okay. And they have their own YouTube and everything. But they said, hey, you can do this on a local level as well. You create your own brand and do that. And so that's what I've done. So you, who came up with Michigan a living? I came up with the name, Michigan a living TV. And Michigan, if you're not from around here, you wouldn't really know what it means because it's, to me, hyper local, you're dealing with where we're located in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, southwest Michigan, they call it Michigan because we're on that state line of Michigan and Indiana so we can kind of cross on licenses in both states when it comes to mortgages. And so for those that are local, it makes perfect sense. Right. Yeah. People see that local people, they get it, which is a great point by the way, hyper local. Why did you recognize that as an opportunity for you? What did you see in that when that came up? Well, one of the things in the mortgage space that we're in right now is you're dealing with way more competition and a lot of it is online competition. And you're dealing with out of the area competition and one of the things that I mentally said or I kind of the decisions that kind of kept me doing this was buyers needing to see the value of a local professional. And it's one thing saying I'm a local professional, it's another thing saying I'm investing in the community that I'm in. And so when we can connect with businesses, I mean, there's so many reasons, but I'll explain the first one is I just felt like being that community lender is the message that we want to get across and we're ingrained in the community. And that's one more reason why a person should see the value in working with this local lender. Mm-hmm. Okay. That was the first reason. All right. So you wanted to be known, established a local community presence invested in the community. What about, I mean, you know, let's reference Gary V for a second, right? Are you a follower of Gary's? Yes. I mean, vaguely. I mean, not always, but yes, I do know him. Well, you know, he coined the phrase several years ago about become the digital mayor, right? And of course, it looks like did that have any influence on you in terms of like, you know, that whole, how can I say this, that whole messaging, that whole kind of push from people like Gary and others that we now, our personal brand is really the only difference maker. Absolutely. And that's the message with mortgage coach brought that up to me multiple times. And that's something that has stuck with me. And it's one of those things where I think Gary V actually said that you can't, and Kai McBride had brought it up in an interview that I was on with him in Dave Savage, and he brought up the fact that you can't necessarily measure your ROI on a video that you do or on maybe a podcast in particular, how many new leads that I get from that particular podcast. But you can influence people in a more organic way, and that's how I see it. I see it as not so much where, hey, I've done so many new podcast interviews, or I've done so many new Michigan, a living TV interviews. Therefore, I've got this many more closings that I think that will, that comes maybe, but it's hard for you to measure it. It's hard for you to measure because you're just continuing to find ways to influence people. And this is just one more platform to positively influence the community. Well, thus far about a year and a half in, have you had anybody who, you know, comes to you to you to get a mortgage by way of your local brand exposure with Michigan, a living TV? Absolutely. We've done it because we do it in a way where now it's very, very careful not to push mortgages down people's throat when it comes to the video. We do want to be a genuine resource within the community. So we start there. We just have very intentional branding. So at the end of the video, you'll see our logo and then we'll be sharing it within our personal groups and some of the friends that we have within our social media community. And that has been very influential where we get messages online and people asking questions regarding the mortgage industry. And for me, it's not even that what it does when I am, when I have a very low, low threat reason to get in front of a business owner within our area, what it does is it gives me an open door in a platform to connect with businesses. And so what you're doing is you're getting out in front of a guy that owns a business that's very successful and you're interviewing them. You're saying how many give you free advertising on our social media page and we just want to show some love to our local businesses in the area. And so that's like the other, you know, we give business cards and we connect with those business owners. That's the other avenue that we're taking. So it's not just social, it's actually personal when we're meeting with those business owners. So then I would say kind of organically, you know, what's bubbling up for you is people realize, oh, you're also in the mortgage business. And by default, people are asking you questions or maybe sending you referrals or something. Absolutely. And so for me, though, that there's so many reasons why I do it. So that's the like the third or fourth reason whatever I've mentioned so far is I'm a branch manager. I'm a producing branch manager. And therefore I want to make sure that whatever activities I do, I try to share the wealth. I try to tell my loan officers, here's what you can do as well. And so what I did is I created this page where I actually help my loan officers go out and they can do their own interviews as well. So they can connect with other businesses. And I'm the one just helping produce the video and getting a tour marketing department for them. And so the other thing is it allows them to connect with business. We have one that's posting right now. We're actually doing something called the Michigan, the Michigan living pizza tour. We're going to different restaurants that are pizzerias in the area. And I have one of my loan officers that I went to this place called Luigi's Pizza. And he did the interview. I was there and I helped him. He gave his business cards. And he's the one who is the host of that interview, but it's on the Michigan living page. And so what it's doing is it's me on a social media platform connecting with people, me personally connecting with businesses, me adding value to my loan officers within my company and allowing them to connect with businesses as well. And so that's how I see it. Now when you say on the page, right? Where do all these videos live? I'm on your Facebook page. We'll put links all this in the show notes. But where else does it live? Is it just on that Michigan living Facebook page? Yes. Right now in the stage that we're in, and this is simply because I'm just going off of my marketing departments. They're kind of their goals. And right now they feel like on the local level, the most influence we're going to have is going to be through Facebook. And then of course they do want to get to Instagram, but it's a little bit tricky on Instagram because you have to different the way you do video. It's a little slice it up. Yeah, just a little bit different. So we haven't only gotten through the Instagram space, but it's right now in our infancy stages. We're just on Facebook right now. All right. So no, it's not on YouTube yet either. It's not I don't have my on YouTube now. Our company may have their own, but it's not anything that has a ton of followers. It's mainly we get more of our attraction comes from Facebook. Yeah, let's speak about that for a moment actually. Your engagement is amazing. How many, what's the population of Missyanna? Well, when it comes to Missyanna, you're probably looking at I'm gosh, we're looking at Southwest Michigan along with Northern Indiana. So you're probably close to around maybe 300,000. Wow. That's that's small. I mean, we're I used to live in Orange County, man. There was three million people just in Orange County, you know. All right. So I'm looking at your view counts here. And by the way, I'm not doing this for Van any metrics or anything like that, but it speaks for itself. Just a video you posted a week ago, December 4th, and we're recording this. It's December 10th. So six days. You've got a thousand views already on this mouthwatering pieces in South Bend, East Bank village. You got this other pizza place, 1.6 thousand view. Yeah, 1.6 views. I mean, you're averaging over one to three, even as high as 5,000 videos on views on these videos, man. Yep. I mean, that's significant. Yeah, we boost. We pay $25 to boost mainly. So you'll take a video that's already getting some good engagement. You'll just boost it rather than do the whole full ad thing. Yeah, we just boost boosted for $25. That's it. That's the marketing budget. That's what you think is driving up the views is because that's exposing it to so many more people. It's actually not. So when I look at the metrics on it, most of it is organic. And you know, Facebook will tell you if it's organic or if it's paid views. Right. And it has been so most of it's organic. Yeah. Why do you think it's getting such good traction? Because we're local businesses. And so it's just, you know, we're friend. One of the things we do is we try to make sure we're friends with a lot of people. And so, you know, for me, personally, and I'm sharing it on my other pages. And there's, you know, I've got, you know, in close to 3,000, you know, friends or followers on my personal business page. And so for me, it's just, you know, locally speaking, we're just, we're connecting on a local level with people. And most of the businesses that we interview, they have their own followers as well. And so when you tag that business, you're tagging their followers, and they're seeing that on their page as well, they allow that to land on their page. Tell me about briefly your process for reaching out to companies. And I'm wondering if now you're such a known entity that they're like, like, no, who's calling. But tell me about that. How do you reach out to business? Yeah. So we do a couple of things. Like, there's one strategy that we've used in what we've used for the pizza one is maybe a month or so ago, we'll just post a question on the page that says, hey, Michiana, something like those along those lines, what's your favorite pizzeria in the area? And so then we'll just go out of comments. So that allows us then to reach out to that pizzeria and say, hey, we have a lot of comments. They said that you'd be a great person to interview. So that's one thing. Another thing we do is we just connect with the ones that we may have already had relationships with, that we go to ourselves. And that's pretty easy. We already go. They're like that Barnaby's pizza, the one that you recently saw, that one is a place that I personally have gone to. 50 years there. Wow. Yeah. And so they're a staple. They don't need the video. They already have enough forward. We want the video because of all their followers. We want to highlight them because of all the people that are fans of theirs. And so we like to connect them. So I think you do it in multiple ways. But we do get messages on Facebook asking for the interview. Like the one we had one recently, we went to a place called Napani, Indiana, just a small town that's in the Missiana area. So I think if you started adding up other towns, we would be over 300,000. But we went to Napani. And they, it was a husband of the owner that wanted us to interview his wife. We had just opened this bakery. And that was a hit in Napani, just a small town. But we had over like 80 shares. We had multiple, multiple comments about how they do a tremendous job. And we went to another small town in North Liberty. Somebody reached out to us about doing the interview with them in those small town places. They have a lot of fans. And so it's been really cool. Who's covering the expense for this? Well, we, when it comes, this is where it gets tricky. So if you're trying to do this on your own, it gets a little bit harder. But we, we actually have our own marketing department within hallmark that, so how, how it looks when it comes to shooting the video and then turning the video in, we shoot all the videos on an iPhone. Really? Yep. We use on an iPhone. The videos look really good, by the way, for those you got to go watch the videos. Yeah. So we try to get the lighting right. Sometimes the lighting is not great. And you know, it shows at times. But we're not trying to go for like 100% this just ultra quality. We're going for content and decent enough quality. And we've had people like marketing companies reach out to me saying, hey, I can help you with your audio and we get sound better. And I said, hey, I don't need that. It's all good. But so using an iPhone, we have a tripod we got from Amazon. We have a lapel mic. We plug into the bottom of the the iPhone. And then we have just a little camera kit that has a light on it. So if I'm in an area where it's not the best lighting that I can turn a little mini light on. Right. It helps a little bit. I have a gimbal, an Osmo gimbal where I put my phone in where you can put your cell phone in, it makes it smoother when you're doing your B-roll. They call it B-roll when you do the footage that goes over the interview. And so we do all of that with myself. So nobody else, there's no crew, there's nobody else there. And then sometimes my wife goes or somebody from our office will be the one running the camera. So there's nothing crazy about that. Once I turn, once I get the video clips in, all I do is we have like kind of like a drop box, similar to drop box, a function in our company where we just put the videos in that drop box function. And then the people in our marketing department has access to that folder. They just jump in there and they start putting together the videos for you. They do the editing. That's the cost, that's company, that's company cost. So there's no cost to me besides the equipment that I bought myself. But that's not hitting your P&Ls or anything? No, it's not. I'm on a retail branch. So I don't run a P&L like some others would, but I would imagine if I was running a P&L, it might be a little bit different. So that would be that would be something that each company would probably be unique to. Well, again, man, I was not under the impression that you were doing most of this filming by yourself. Now a couple of the films you can tell, obviously you got somebody else there because of the way the camera is moving. But in general, for the interviews, you've got, it's not a wireless lapel, it's a wired lapel mic, right? Yep. So you got the dual thing kind of going into the file, right? So very basic, I mean, the setup you described, I mean, a couple hundred bucks maybe. That's it. You know, that is it. And you got the gimbal. So you're doing your own B roll, which is you just kind of, and again, everybody was listening, go and look at the videos and stuff, right? Like the pizza example, because that's the most recent one, you're scanning the pizza ovens and the counter and the, you know, all the visuals that help you take in what this place, somebody putting the pizza in the oven. That's just you standing there with your gimbal. That's it. That's all it is. The impression is that the production value is higher than that. I have to say it's a good job. Now, I don't produce them. And that's where it gets tricky. And so you could do that. I don't know if I'd have the time to produce all my own, but producing me net it. Edit it. Yeah. Right. Right. No, I 100% you should outsource editing 100%. We should not be doing that. And there's enough affordable places or people to do that, whether it's young people in your area, fiber, upwork, all that kind of stuff. I mean, I got a video editor. If somebody needs one, let me know. But very, very smart. Okay. So in terms of you interviewing people, was that a natural for you? You know, I was clunky maybe my first when I was just doing some kind of a club, man. Role playing it kind of was not that normal, but you know what? It does. It's now it's just kind of it's just a part of the interview process. It's kind of easy for me to ask the few quick questions. I mean, all the questions when it comes to the business is very similar. You know, you do your intro, you do your top three questions. How did you get started? You know, what are you known for? What are some other things and how can people connect with you? You know, that kind of stuff. So it's pretty easy flow. Interesting. And it's something you enjoy doing. Yeah, I feel like I can communicate well enough where it's clear. I don't feel like I that's a struggle. I think that maybe one of my strong suits. I'm okay with communicating. I'm okay with being in front of the my cell phone, you know, the camera. I'm okay with social media. I've embraced that. I initially, maybe a few years ago, didn't. I didn't like it. You know, I almost was at a point where you know, I'd rather not get business that way, but it's so far down the road in our society where you've got to embrace video. You got to embrace social media. And if you don't, you maybe mediocre at best. So you chose to adapt instead of play the ostrich? Yeah, I think you need to. I mean, you could probably survive in the business to an extent. If you don't do that, but you certainly would not create a brand and you certainly would not be as much of an influencer if you did it that the old school way. Well, all right. And so that goes back to what are you left with if you don't have a personal brand? You're left with price. That's right. You're commodity. You know, if you don't have any compelling value proposition for the customer to choose you over somebody else, I mean, let's face it, a lot of people are probably drawn to want to consider you for their mortgage needs mainly because you're clearly all about local. Right. And they'd rather a fair amount or a larger percentage of people would rather support the local than off to some big box company. Right. Now, I got to agree with you. I think you have to have a compelling reason to work with you besides just saying that, you know, my rates and fees are better than everyone else's because unfortunately, that's not always the case, you know. And by the way, if people listening and you're not yet ready to get started on video, the questions that you're posting in your Facebook group or page, I should say are great questions to drive interaction and engagement. Anyways, think about where you live right now. Like some of the questions Jonathan, you're posting in there is what's your favorite pizza place in Michiana, right? Another one was what restaurant serves up the best breakfast. And those are straight up great social engagement questions that will, I mean, look at this one 64 comments, you know, people love those questions and people love to give props to local places they like. Absolutely. So that's just one quick tip for you to easily get started. And then secondly, I mean, then look at I'm just again, I'm just following your Facebook page. So you're going to get a lot of additional traffic and likes and views. Right. Which is cool. Thanks. Yeah. But like I'm looking at the the student baker fountain in South Bend. Looks really cool and beautiful as well lit fountain at night and everything, all these cool colored lights. But these are conversational things that are that are yes, topical, but give you something to talk about other than just, hey, conforming rates have gone up, you know, right? And actually, you know, to maybe digress just a moment, it allows us to engage with some of our real estate agents. Now, there are real estate agents that we have had on as guests interviewees, interviewers. Right. And so they, I said, hey, connect us to a business that you want us to support. And so we've had multiple real estate agents on the videos with us. Now, it's difficult because a lot of people still have not embraced video and they're not wanting to be on there. But this gives us a reason to reach out to our business partners and add value to them as well. And say, hey, you know, we'll do it together. I'll help you out. We'll do the interview and I'll give you the questions to ask. And hopefully we can add value to your business. We actually had, I had a real estate agent that I work with have one for past clients who owns a cute little boutique, you know, shop. And we went to that shop with the real estate agent because it was that realtor's past client. So she was able to add value to her client, which is really cool. Yeah, that was another thing. How do you choose who you want to feature as an agent? And do you have to deal with people wanting to get on the show who you don't want to team up with as far as agents? You know, what's funny is that we don't have, we have not had that problem. Oh, you thought that we initially did because we actually had a lunch in like a breakfast where we was invite only to people about social media and about this page. And we thought that there was going to be this had a lot of them. Hey, can I be on there? Can I be on there? And you know, we haven't had a lot of people. I think it goes back to that old issue that Achilles heel of people of not wanting to be on video, not wanting to step out. And so in order for it to happen, we have to almost proactively ask the real estate agents, do you want to be on? And so, you know, it just hasn't been as much of an issue as we thought, but it is a value add when we take the time to make that call to that agent though. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Good stuff, man. I mean, definitely you're leading from the front in terms of like video content and things like that. That's why I wanted to have you on. Very impressive. Also, you started a you just you just want to have like this, I don't know, crazy amount of tolerance for punishment. You started a podcast as well. Yeah, I did. I went ahead and tried something out. I was speaking to a buddy of mine who I did alone for. And he started a podcast in our markets called South Bend Beat actually. So if anyone wants to know more about South Bend, he does a really good job. So it's Kyle Conner. But I connected with him and I asked him, how do you get your podcast going? And he connected me with a guy that helps him produce it in our local area. And his name's Michael Yoder. And a young just great professional. That's all he does. He helps produce podcasts within our area, but all over the country is what it sounds like. But anyway, I connected with him, had coffee with him. He told me that's the way to do it. He says, you should be on podcasts. I said, okay, I'll try it out. Let's test it out. I'm not doing anything great. I'm not doing video podcasting or anything like that right now. And I said, you know, what can I do that would add value? It's not so much always business. It's just what is going to fulfill me? And I feel like sometimes we, we, and this is something that I put out on a video once that we get so caught up in reacting all the time in life and being overly distracted in life and always at the mercy of other people's agendas that we never create. And if you never create, then I believe you live an unfulfilled life. And I think we were created to be creative. And I thought that was the thing going into kind of being in that podcast was like, you know what, I want to just, I want to create something that might be kind of cool. And so I started doing that. It's called purpose and performance where really I have business people on. I have past clients. I've had real estate agents on. I've done it on my own where I just go through a 30-minute, 40-minute podcast interview, just like we're doing now and trying to get some value, some nuggets that would help people with personal growth and find more purpose in their life. That's great, man. And so you've been doing that over roughly a year, right? Yeah, it's been about a year and a half on my fall of 2019. This is like my second season, I guess. You would call it. So I've got about maybe five more episodes to record for the 2019 season. But it's out on, you know, pod meme, you know, iTunes, Google. Yeah, we'll put links to that as well. So this leads to the question where I try to know is circulating through some people's minds, which is how do you find the time to do it all? Well, delegation is key. And so as you noted, I do not edit the mission of living videos. I do not produce or edit the podcast recordings that I do. And I have a team that helps me with production as well. Now I am the only one that's actually out producing. So it's not like I'm in the office and I've got three other guys that are loan officers going out and getting business. They're actually internal production partners that are like transaction managers, I have a transaction manager, two production partners that help me. So when the phone rings, they can answer the phone. Right. You know, they can help schedule my appointments and things of that nature. I could not do it if I was doing the same amount of volume and I didn't have a team. Right. There's no way. Okay. So it sounds like what you're doing is you are focused on the critical few, right? And delegating all the rest. Yeah, I mean, the goal for our team is always for me to meet with all the clients. So it's not like I'm not meeting with anybody. I am wanting to meet face-to-face, going over the mortgage coach presentation face-to-face with as many clients as possible, trying to have as many face-to-face appointments with real estate agents or VIPs as possible, trying to have good, you know, enriching phone calls every week. We're trying to do the tactical kind of old school things, getting in front of people, making the phone calls, sending the thank you cards. You know, I'm doing those things personally. And what they're doing is they're just kind of starting the process. So they're getting a loan application started. They're maybe getting documentation from a client. They're scheduling the appointment with me. And my transaction manager once that loan is submitted, then she's helping process. She's not a processor. We've got a processor that's dedicated to the loan, but she's the one that's helping with any fires that need to be put out. She's communicating when the appraisal comes back. She's giving me certain touch points where Jonathan, you need to make the phone call on this. So it's just they do a really good job of being very, you know, good at their job. You know, they're okay with having that, I guess, the ability to make their own decisions because they know what they're doing. They're professionals. Are you taking all your loan apps? No, I don't take all the loan apps. No, no, no. So I don't generally answer the first phone call. The phone call will be answered by Hannah. That's one of my teams. So she's kind of that director of first impressions. And she's taken the intake call. She is licensed. Sure. And so she does. She can actually quote rates if she wanted to. She can go through all the mortgage coach TCA's and she could do all that. She doesn't necessarily have to do all that because my goal is to be the one going over the product information, going over the rates. I'm the one that generally locks in the loan. And then I hand it off to Laura, my transaction manager after that's done. So yeah, your front-end lead person though, like you said, director of first impressions, is she collecting a full 1003 or just the basics, you know, needs and want. Oh, she is. Okay. She is. Yeah. So if she was not licensed, I think I would be probably having her. I used to have somebody who wasn't licensed. They were kind of taking that intake that the hopes and dreams call a kind of thing and then handing it off. But, you know, Hannah is able to do a little bit more than that and analyze a pay stub and look at W2s and bank statements and things like that. And then she can issue pre-approval letters for me as well. But the goal is to have as many appointments with me following up with that client as possible. So I always want them to know, especially my referrals, which is I want them to know that I'm still involved in these transactions. It's not like Jonathan's just the team in name, but he's never involved in anything. I'm involved in every file. Yeah, that's good, man. Nice, nice system you've got there. It's funny because I just recorded a podcast prior to this. Somebody just three years in the biz and already hired their first assistant before hitting the three-year mark, which had allowed him to grow, so basically double his business, you know, doing 82 units and it's going to probably do another multiple of that in the next year. But again, without a team, you can't grow. Right. No, you have to be willing to invest. I think that's a problem. Most people call it spending money, but I see it more as an investment. Yes, you're a business. Yeah, absolutely. Got to invest in your business. All right, so just for a second time here, we're going to have to wrap it up. But what are you planning for 2020? Marketing or biz-wise, that's different, worthy of sharing. Well, we want to serve around 250 families. That's our goal. So I think that's an attainable goal. My team is at a level where I think we don't need to necessarily add another person on. As a branch manager, I'd like to recruit a couple of one or two more people for the next year and in certain surrounding areas that we're in. As a producing loan officer, I think keeping many of the tactics that we're doing now, but keeping them and also actually following through. So I'm thinking of my word for the year and said we all come up with our word. In my word, I believe there's so many words I was thinking about, but being effective is the word that I'm thinking of. I want to be effective and all that. I don't want to just show up for the sake of showing up, but I want all the activities that I do be effective and be impactful. One of the things that we're going to do outside of just making my calls, doing my face to faces, doing the machine of living, doing the podcasting on it. I've implemented two things this last couple of years that really has helped me mastermind meetings with my real estate agent partners. So sitting down with them and having a group of between eight and 10 real tours in our local market, and then I'm like the moderator, and I'll just be able to go through maybe three questions and go around the room and try to pull out some good nuggets for everybody. And then I'll be the one that kind of is recording the event. And then I share all the information. So I'm not the one presenting. I'm just the one that's inviting, holding the venue, and being the one that takes the notes. So the masterminds are really good. Well, by the way, how frequent are those? Well, this last year, what I did is I made it a point where it wasn't going to be like, hey, every other week or every month, you guys have to commit to this. It was, I say, no commitment. So what I did is I just individually, I said, hey, we're going to do one at the beginning of the year, which we did. And then I did another one toward the latter part of the year in the fall. So I did two, but there were three separate groups. Yep, different agents in each group. Exactly. Different agents in each group. So that was really cool because you're getting in front of about 30 agents each time you do it separately, you know. Yes, right. And you have the same set of questions. So it's not like you're having to reinvent the wheel for this. And you're learning from each one to make the next one better. Absolutely. And so that's been really helpful for me. And it's been a nice value ad. The second thing is finally getting off of the, the idea of being nervous about doing client appreciation events. I've never done client appreciation events. So we're doing one in January. And we're going to do another one, most likely in the spring of the fall. But we're going to do ice skating with families where we're going to call up to 50 people or VIP clients and invite them to family ice skating day at Howard Park, which is actually on the Michigan living page. They just renovated the park. And we figure we piggyback off of the new renovations and have ice skating day. And so we're going to do that as well. Love that. Love that. Very smart. Yeah, it's funny. You bring that up. And I'm glad you did client appreciation events. I don't hear a lot of that in the mortgage space. It's pretty common in the real estate space for the savvy agents. But for some reason, why don't LOs do it? It's like, why shouldn't you do it? Yeah, it was a struggle for me. And this will be my first one that I'm really doing. And I don't know. I felt like maybe mentally, you feel like maybe the relationships better built by the realtor. And I don't know. I'm not sure why I never did. It's just maybe laziness or it's just fear, but we're doing it. So we're going to see how it goes. Yeah, no, good for you, man. When step out, be bold. Real quickly, the mastermind things, that's something that's always of interest to me. Do you find, have you ever had agents reluctant to attend or decline? Because, you know, they don't want to be there. And you know, there's some agents that have that mindset. Yes. So I preface it by saying that this is only useful if you're willing to share. And if you're not willing to share, then you may not be a good fit for the group. So the first thing that we say is you have to be willing to share and you have to be willing to be a part of the dialogue and the discussion. And I tell them, there's no secrets here. So we need to know it's a safe place. You know, I tell them, we're not talking commissions. We're not talking comp structures within your offices. We're not talking splits. We're just talking very specific topics that's going to help you improve as a person and in your business. And I have, I've had some that come and they're very quiet and they don't, they're not really a part of it as much as I was hoping. And they may just may not be a part of the next time when I have one. But for the most part, everybody knows going in. Do you have a criteria for who you're going to invite? Well, I mean, the ones that I invite, I generally speaking, have a relationship with. So I tell them that I highly respect the way that they do business. And I feel like they can add a ton of value to the other people that's within the business as well. And people look to them as a resource and I do as well. So I think number one, it's ones I've already got connections with. The other one is people that are up and coming. So I try to connect a few up and comers into the group because I feel like they see value right away. They're thinking, yeah, I'll be a part of this. I just want to learn. And so that's always another part of it that that helps as well. How long does your mastermind run? I try to keep it to no more than an hour and a half. An hour and a half. You're providing some some beverages, light snacks, whatever. Yeah, I normally just have, I tell you truth, normally they don't have this next. They're just right into it. But we'll have just cookies and water and coffee, things like that. Okay, cool. Very nice. Love that idea. More people should be doing that. Again, it's a relationship builder, you know, and who doesn't love their ego stroked? You know, so that also feeds into that whole psychology play. All right, man, listen, I know you're busy. You got a lot of stuff to do. And this has been a great crash course in becoming a digital mayor in Missyanna. I love it. I love it. Unfortunately, you know, I'm not going to be wearing the Nordadame colors come, you know, what is this? Day after Christmas, two days after Christmas? Yes. But anyway, I love the town, love the area. I used to go there years ago, one of my cousins all went to Nordadame. So there was a little bit of that affiliation there. But, you know, listen, man, how do you want people to reach out to you? I'm going to put links to everything. But what's the best place? Is it your Facebook, Missyanna page or where you want to send them? Yeah, they can come in if they want to message me on the Missyanna Living TV on Facebook. You can go to my business page, Jonathan McKinnis, Home Arch home mortgage, my personal pages out there on Facebook as well as easy connect on my Instagram as well. You can also, well, I'd say if they want if anyone needed to email me, they can certainly do that, which is Jay McKinnis at OneHallmark.com. Other than that, find my podcast, Purpose and Performance podcast on Podbean iTunes, Google Play. Yeah, we'll put it all in there as well. And thank you for being such a willing person to share within within this industry. That's definitely one thing that shows up about you is your contributor and giver and have an abundance mindset. So we appreciate that. Thank you. Appreciate it. And listeners, we appreciate you. You know that. So if you like this episode or another one, hey, let us know. Leave us a review and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before. And I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates, real easy, but that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere to from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.