Ep #26: The #1 Free Real Estate App for Real Estate Agents

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Mortgage Marketing Radio Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey mortgage professionals, welcome to another episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Jeff Zimfer, your humble host. I'm so glad you're here. I've got something really exciting to share with you. It's a new app for real estate agents and lenders. It's called HuHub and what HuHub is doing is unique and different in the industry. It's connecting three parties involved in a home real estate transaction, vendors, homeowners and agents. So, if you think about this, right, in a typical transaction for real estate when it comes to buyer selling a house, there's multiple parties involved, right? Buyers and sellers, they're asking the agents and lenders, who do you recommend for a trusted service professional for a plumber, for a contractor, for a landscaper, a painter, for windows, for home cleaning services, for masonry, architects, carpet, tile, remodeling, additions, etc. In the old days, real estate agents would provide a laundry list of, quote unquote, approved service providers. Well now, with the advent of mobile technology and the web and the internet, what HuHub is doing is making that easy for agents and lenders to connect with homeowners and build their own personally trusted network of, of go to trusted home service professionals. And so, it's a phenomenal tool that adds value to the home buyer or seller that adds value to the real estate agent and it puts the lender in the middle of that relationship. So it's a very powerful app and I'm so excited that the two people I brought here today are going to walk us through that. So who are they? First and foremost, we have Brad the tour, the co-founder and CEO of HuHub out of the Washington DC metro area. And we also have my good friend Wade Vandermohlen. Wade is a successful title rep out of the Washington DC metro area. Wade, you may recall, was on the very first podcast we did at Mortgage Marketing Radio. So if you didn't hear that, go back and listen to that. The reason why it's relevant and the reason why Wade is here is because I heard about HuHub number one from Wade. Number two, Wade is a big believer in building his platform in his local area to get referrals from agents and lenders by adding value. How does he do that? Well, primarily he's great at sharing content, content in the form of he's got his own YouTube channel. He teaches agent classes. He does blog posts. He does lots of different things to stay top of mind, to rise above the noise by bringing content, valuable resources and tools to his lender and agent relationships so that he separates himself from the noise, from the competition, because he's actually making a difference, adding value and helping his clients and referral partners be more successful. And so I think you'll really appreciate Wade's perspective on this coming from a title rep very similar to you as the lender listening, how you'd like, how you should be positioning yourself with your local agents when it comes to you perhaps sharing what HuHub is all about. So that is the intro. We're going to cut over to the show and I am hoping you're going to like it as much as I did. Go to the app store, download the HuHub app. It's free. Start kicking it around, check it out and listen to today's episode for some great ideas on how you can add value to your local real estate agents. All right. So thanks for listening and we will talk to you soon. Let's now transition to the show. Brad Wade, welcome to the show. Thanks Jeff. Great to be with you today. Yeah. Good to be here. Thank you. So before we get started, I think it makes sense for listeners, you know, as I pointed out in the interview, who you guys are Brad from HuHub, Wade from Stewart title, but to make sure we connect the voice with the person. I don't know. We started off with Brad. I'll allow you to just say hello and quick story, you know, who you are and what you do. Yeah. Absolutely. And again, thanks for having us. This is Brad LaTour on the co-founder and CEO of HuHub. And we're based in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of DC and we're excited to share a little bit about what we're trying to accomplish to add value to the realtor and loan officer marketplace. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for that. So let's get into it. So we're here today, obviously, to talk about, I think the running theme I want to carry here is how are we adding value both to the real estate and the loan officer community. And so that's kind of the theme for today. And there's various ways that we're doing that and that those listeners who are mostly loan officers can do that to the real estate community. And Wade is you and I talked before we hit record. The reason I asked you to be here, you know, people's loan officers listening may, hey, why is that a tunnel guy on this podcast? It's because some of my listeners actually already know who you are because I had you on the podcast way back earlier this year. I think you were the second person I had on the podcast. So thank you for that. But what you do so uniquely as a successful title professional is you are a big believer in the way you build business and build your platform is by providing value added resources. You do that a lot through teaching classes and education. And what brought HuHub, this cool app that we're going to dive into to my attention actually was you. And I saw you did a post or a video or something on HuHub, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So if you would, do me a favor, just set that up real quickly on how, you know, because the title of business is equally as competitive to capture realtor's attention as it is for the mortgage loan officer. But what's your positioning for you and how you capture the local real estate's business and why is HuHub a part of that? Okay. Well, you know, title insurance is, you know, you can get title insurance. It tons of different companies, right? What makes it different is who you're getting it from and the people that you build your business with. So for instance, in the Northern Virginia area, it's very competitive here just like it is in California, you know, but at the end of the day, realtor's and lenders can't send us business if they don't have business to send. So, you know, I take the approach of trying to help them with their business and create a sustainable business model so they can remain relevant to the consumer, right? And where do people go to get information? They go to get information from their smartphone. They go to get information from the internet. They go to the get information from YouTube. So, you know, I help them create systems so that they can set up their channels, use apps like HuHub to remain, I mean, to create that client retention and also help them get found on the internet where people go to get information. So, you know, at the end of the day, if a title company is not helping a realtor or a lender growing their business or allowing them to get, you know, create more exposure, offline and online, then they're not, in my opinion, they're not really adding enough value because in the meantime, all these other title companies are sitting in their office right now waiting for you to send them a deal, right? Well, I take the proactive approach of saying, let me help you get more transactions. Let me get more eyes to your business. Let me get more eyes to you from people that are interested in working with you and then so that you can convert them into paying clients. And that's kind of my approach. And I think HuHub is a great opportunity for realtors and even lenders to, you know, capture people where they're looking, which is their smartphone. You drive up even to a stoplight and you look left or right where I want people doing at a stoplight. They're staring at their phone. So, you know, this is a great way to capture people. Right. Absolutely. And that's a nice transition into Brad, you know, kind of what I call the origin story of HuHub. So for those listening, how did HuHub come about? What's its purpose as a superhero app? I like those adjectives. Keep that up superhero app. That's good stuff. I was actually just going to let Wade continue to tell the, your listeners how great HuHub is. But let me give you the back. Sorry. You know, like, like a lot of great apps and technology and products, you know, we really started from the simple position of, you know, how do we have value and there's got to be a better way? And our founder is actually, he's now a 30 year full time licensed realtor here in town. And he has really kind of struggled with this for years and years and years of, you know, how do I stay relevant with my clients? And then how do I add value with the five to seven requests I'm getting every single day from past clients, neighbors, friends, anyone in his local sphere? With the simple question is, do you have a fill in the blank, whether that's a lender, a title company, a landscaper, chimney sweep, you name it? And really what we did is we allowed kind of technology to kind of catch up with his problem. So our app at the most basic level does two things. It allows the realtor to communicate with their clients and their vendor community through messaging and his way just pointed out, you know, smartphones where all that is happening. And then the second thing that allows them to effortlessly share their trusted network. So you know, we're not doing anything brand new in terms of an idea that's first shattering, what we're doing is making it more efficient. So if you were to ask 10 realtor's, how do you share your network of trusted service providers in your local market, I'm going to get 10 answers, anything from a post-it note to a text, to a word document, to a three-ring binder, an Excel file, a photocopy of a photocopy. And then we show up and we'll say, you know, how would you like just to have a digital role dex and then communicate with your clients the way they want to communicate, which is their smartphone? And just to dovetail on Wade's earlier point, our biggest back-end growth is our group messaging and what we're hearing when we go out and we just kind of canvas our realtor's, they're creating group messaging between themselves, their title company, their client and their lender, and they're not sending a single email. It's all very quick back and forth and then everything is searchable. So you never have to scroll through that email all, when did they say the appraisal's going to be done? What's the rate that I got? Everything on the app is fully searchable and right up to closing. And then my favorite quote for realtor's are, and my client is conditioning herself or himself to always think of me when they need something about real estate. And that's kind of really our goal. So we're a service provider. We don't dictate who the best is in the local market, but the great thing about your marketplace is loan officers as a category, they get it the fastest because just like a realtor is trying to stay connected to their homeowner and their sphere, loan officers are trying to stay connected to the top realtor's. So they've positioned it quite smartly to say, here's a gift for your realtor that will drive and fuel your business and they're already connected obviously when they do that. You mentioned something there, messaging, it sounds like you're talking about the people have kind of morphed the app and they're messaging you said between client, realtor and loan officer, is this like during a transaction of purchase? Absolutely, yeah. So when it's shared, it's often shared at the point where they're either getting ready to start looking or they're in and around to transaction. So we have direct messaging. The functionality is very similar, Facebook messaging or WhatsApp, I'm sure your audience is very familiar with those two platforms. So we layered in the messaging to keep the client on the hook with the service provider as well as the realtor, which is the long-term goal. Naturally, any realtor worth their salt is always going to be asked for their opinion. Our question is, if they trust you so much around a transaction and are asking you for a loan officer recommendation, a title company and all these other services, why shouldn't they continue to ask you two years down the road, five years down the road, ten years down the road? And that's our basic premise, is local realtor's know the best local service providers. We do not. We never will. And all those other services that are out there, that's just to pay to play. So those are advertising platforms. I have nothing against them. We're a referral platform and we just take a different approach. Yeah, so I want to come back to the pay to play in a moment, but I want to focus on this. What sounds to me, if I'm wrong, is an unintended or unexpected application of your app or use of your app, I should say, which is communicating during the loan transaction. Did you expect people to do that about the transaction itself? We actually did not start with messaging layered in. It was a request from the marketplace. So we pride ourselves on being good listeners. So we've only been out in the market for about 18 months and about six months ago we layered in the messaging functionality. Yeah, and that's very interesting because when you think about how somebody, and this is where I want to get right now, is like, take me to the top of the final of how the various entities involved get exposed to and get on this app. Where does it usually start and take me through that process? Yeah, so we have three distinct constituents. We have realers, homeowners and service providers. So each one of those groups can sign up independently. The most common way it happens is we're asked to come in to present to a brokerage or brokerage office. We'll share what we have and they'll either share a trusted vendor list that will upload for them to make it easier on their agents or an individual agent will sign on directly and upload or add their vendors. So a vendor really can be invited by an individual agent or by an entire office. How did they get invited? So I'm a realtor. I'm in the app. For example, I'm a loan officer and I'm in the app. How am I going to invite my insurance guy, Carpenter or whatever? Yeah, so invitations, they run two ways. So your loan officers who are listening today could go to HuHubApp.com and sign up and register and then they could invite their top 10 realtor clients and then so we do the heavy lifting, right? So if you're a loan officer who's listening today signs up at HuHubApp.com, that'll trigger a series of invitation emails and then we'll follow up on the loan officers' behalf just to make sure the agent understands the value prop, what HuHub is and then we do the same thing in reverse. So if a loan officer is invited by an agent, we'll reach out to that loan officer with one of our vendor advisor teams and just make sure that they understand how we're different. What we've learned really is that realtor and service providers are spammed to death. So we first have to break through to say, I'm not Google, Yelp, HomeAdvisor or any other ad platform trying to sell you advertising. You were invited by Tom the realtor because they think you're good. So do you want to accept Tom's invitation? Yes, no, maybe and that's pretty simply how it works. Very interesting. So in just a clarify, as you said, a loan officer who's listening right now could go to HuHubApp.com and tell us how the fees break out related to the app who pays for what? Yes, sure. Yes, so we're by design very transparent on how we make money. So it's free to the realtor, it's free to the broker, it's free to the homeowner. So all those three groups are very deliberately free because that drives the most amount of organic sharing amongst their sphere and their local community. And then each vendor pays a nominal monthly fee of 30 bucks, so basically a dollar a day. And that allows them to connect to an unlimited amount of agents, an unlimited amount of offices, and an unlimited amount of homeowners. So I emphasize that because even though we say that very plainly in our website and I'm saying it right now, we often hear back from a vendor, so it's $30 per agent or it's $30 per office, no, no, no, it's only $30 per month, no contract, we've built our value prop to be a massive ROI. So the reason why our most popular category is loan officers because the value of one deal not only pays for HuHub for months, but it's more like years. So this is a subscription model. We know we have to earn our value stripes every single day. So the best way to do that is to hold ourselves accountable with no strings attached. And if we get your loan officers more business, guess what, they're never going to leave. And that's our goal. That's our goal. So again, nothing earth shattering here, we just put value first and that's why I've been a real treat for me personally to get to know the way in the Stewart team. Because he doesn't exactly the way it should be done. Let's leave with value first, you know, I'm an outsider to the real estate market. I've kind of learned baptism by fire as they say over the last couple of years. And you know, who doesn't want referrals, right? Real estate or any business, we all want referrals. But you know, you have to extend value first in order to get referrals. So that's the central theme, right? And credibility. Yeah, absolutely. So you know, you do it with all your podcasts and, you know, you got to, you got to care, right? You got to care. And what we want to do is we're trying to help those in the local community. So we're a hyper local play, quality over quantity. And you know, again, the one thing that makes us very different is we don't determine who the best is. So we hear it all the time every single day. But if that loan officer or that landscaper does a bad job, well, you know what? You should kick them off your network. This is an extension of you, Mr. or Mrs. Realtor. So you should only recommend those who you're comfortable extending their value to because you actually know them. The moment I start to say who the best is, you know that they're paying me more money to say that. Yeah. And so I keep saying we're going to come back to pay the play and what we will. But I want to clarify something. You said, kick them off your network. So if let's say down the road for whatever reason, a particular vendor that I've recommended on my network, you know, winds up doing something that I think is right. Not worthy of me recommending. I can remove that person from my kind of, yeah, okay. Absolutely. Cool. So the other thing that you'll appreciate, Jeff, is, you know, our business model is aligned for trust and accountability. So to your example, if a service provider gets kicked off the network and it costs me $30, you know, so what, right? Someone else is going to get recommended to take their place for $30. Well, no, no. We've opened another question. It's not to interrupt you. But do you limit the number of vendor categories, meaning, you know, hey, 10, right, contractors or whatever, or is it up to the realtor? You know, we don't. We believe in kind of an open market approach and it's, you know, it's a great question because in the early days, we did and what we heard from, from most of the realtor market was, it's a little bit overreaching, like, yeah, I work, I work with four lenders consistently. If you're going to limit me to just two, then I'm not going to do it at all. Right. And they like the people to be able to make that informed choice and, you know, so that makes sense. Precisely. All right. So I want to pivot a second back to Wade because I know he doesn't like to be quiet for too long. So in terms of how you do this and, you know, you said something, Brad, you know, you like aligning with Wade because he really does it ideally in terms of introducing the app to his realtor community, value add, all that stuff. So Wade, walk us through, right, again, right, loan officers, but a lot of parallels. How are you introducing who hub to your local realtors and loan officers? Because I know they're your clients too. Of course. So when I teach my real estate marketing classes or just even even agents, I mean, the things that realtors and lenders say to me, pretty similar, pretty similar issues. And a lot of times what I normally do is I bring it back to their database and I'm like, OK, I get it. You want me to help you with your website and rank on Google at all. That's great. I can do that. But what are you doing to stay in contact with your past clients for the influence database? And a lot of times the answer that I get is, oh, you know what? I'm not doing as much as I should. You know what? I'm not really doing all these other things. So the number one reason why realtors and lenders lose business is because they don't have good client retention. You know, they're not following up with people that sent a business in the past or people that they have one relationship with. So when I meet with agents or teach classes, I introduce who hub and I talk to them about it. I say, here's a great way for you to have something on your phone and connect people through their smartphone at no cost, right? Your spirit of influence, past clients, people like you, love you, trust you. And it creates client retention, client retention, right? So whether you're a title sales rep or a lender, I mean, that's the greatest thing that we we want. I mean, if I brought in, you know, a brand new client and I never followed up with that person again, the deal closes, they might not ever send me a deal again. Well, the goal is I want them to keep sending me deals every month. And lenders want their realtors to be referring them buyers every month so that they can keep growing their business and have that steady stream of income. So for me, you know, when I'm talking to these agents, the number one thing I stress to them is it creates client retention at no cost and, you know, not to offend realtors, but, you know, a lot of times, you don't like to spend money on things sometimes. So let's say I can see an immediate return and this is a great way for them to do something that's at no cost to create creates client retention and, you know, can help keep them in front of their clients to make more money. Right. It's huge win. And what's the reaction you've seen from agents when you're presenting the app? Well, it's mixed, you know, agents, some agents get it right away, you know, some agents are like a key technology. I get it. Like this is I see how this works. Other people, you have to really walk them through it and explain it. So they're like, well, let me get this straight. I already send business to my lenders. So now I need to make them pay $30 a month when I already give them business. Then you have to explain it in that that's not exactly what it is. I mean, the lender wants not just the realtor's business, the lender wants business and access to other real estate agents. So for me, like, I'll have lenders that talk to me and they want me to introduce them to other agents. They want me to get them in front of producing agents. Well, this is a way for them to, you know, through the search feature to find agents in brokerages and other producing people connect with them on the app and build rapport, build the relationship. So yeah, the lender is going to be paying $30, but you know, walk that lender doesn't just want Susie Smith transactions. They want that lender wants an opportunity to get to the other producing agents in Susie Smith's office so that they can connect and build the relationship through an online platform. Yeah. And so I've kind of experimented with the app a little bit myself and as a matter of fact, you know, I think I Brad, you walked me through that. I typed in my zip code or city or whatever and up pops an agent. I actually know. Funny story. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Funny story there. This agent happens to be the son of the branch manager at the countrywide office that I worked at for seven years and it's like, oh, Susie's comes up and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I know that guy. He's the son of like my mentor from countrywide when I was there. That's just crazy. So, but what I'm curious about, let's, let's continue that thought thread out a bit way to whoever wants to comment on that is, okay, so I get, you know, you know, Sally Smith is realtor or connected in the who have app and you're saying, hey, this opens me up to other agents in their office because other agents would also be on the app. So how, how am I going to connect with them through the app, you know, to introduce myself or to establish credibility? How does that happen in the app? Sure. Well, it actually happens both in the app as well as we provided no cost to the brokerage office, a custom web-based list, I'm sorry, I'm a little slow, say that again. No, no, no worries. So Jeff, early on what we've learned, even though the statistics are so dramatically shifting to mobile, you know, real estate is a laggard in an adoption of technology. And then the average age of a realtor is 57. So rather than mandating 100% of the activity must happen within the ecosystem of the who have app, we've created bridges outside of the app with our vendors in mind, right? So our goal for our loan officers and all of our vendor community is we want to give them as much business as possible for selfish reasons. If we give them a ton of business, they're never going to leave, right? So in addition to the app, we provide the offices that we're working for. So you know, ABC brokerage here in Alexandria, who's got 100 agents, we prop up a custom web page for them that lists all of the vendors in their office so that the agents, those 100 agents in that office, and so you know, you're probably going to get to the question of who do we compete against. We actually are competing against legacy behavior. What I mean by that is sadly, the number one way to share vendors in an office is email all. So an email goes out, does anybody know a, right, right, highly inefficient, disruptive, one might argue spam, and then guess what? They get their answer and three weeks later, the same request goes out. So we've done is listen, let us take on the administrative task of populating that list, which is often outdated. It's in all kinds of old legacy formats, and then we give that to them again at no cost. So it does a couple of things. It helps the brokerage from the admin side because we prop it up and then it gets maintained on an ongoing basis. The agent knows exactly where to look so that they can see their colleagues recommendations of that loan officer. And then for the loan officer, let's be honest, if there's a hundred agents in that office, if 50 of them downloaded the app, well, that's potentially another 50 that we're leaving out so that the loan officer ultimately has more exposure and that's a big deal for us. So they have the web list and then they also have the activity that happens on the app. And once they start building connections, so I'm sure you're familiar with LinkedIn. So there's a lot of LinkedIn similar functionality that we've built in so that you can do outreach to your connections. And it's very simple, right? So again, nothing earth shattering, but if a loan officer is connected with 20 agents in an office, but they've really only done business with one of those, well, that is the most highly valued target list of 19 agents that they should be reaching out to, to introduce themselves and say, I've done a lot of business with your colleague. I'd love to tell you about my approach and how I work. So I can't do that for them just because it's technology doesn't mean it's magic. The example I use all the time is a constant contact mailchimp and any number of platforms are simple to use. But if you don't load up your database and you don't craft an email, they're pretty worthless. There is some onus on the vendor to do outreach and like Wade was saying, connect. Let them know a little bit about your service. And we don't do reviews and points and diamonds and elephants or anything like that. We just do simple recommendations. We think the power is in a single question. Would you recommend this service provider to a friend or family member? So when that realtor is sharing their network of service providers, we want the homeowner to look at that loan officer and then see the recommendation. I've known Jeff for 15 years. He's closed multiple deals for me personally and all my colleagues, you can't go wrong with Jeff and he's a local boy. We want it very personal, this again. Okay. Let me pause right there. So to make sure I'm clear on that, because I'm skewing on the top or upper end of your average age there, but so that roster that you guys are helping create for inside the real estate brokerage there, can the lender be on that roster? They will be. Yeah. Okay. So they will be on that. And the realtor can leave comments about the lender on that and like you say, the personal recommendation. Yeah. The recommendation. That's correct. Okay. Very cool. So the goal, the goal, the lender is to collect recommendations. Yeah. So so now, you know, we've got 19 other agents in that office. I've only worked with one. My goal is to collect recommendations from the realtor I'm working with and then because we know it's, it still happens, you know, amongst that office of 19, people are going to be asking, Hey, who do you use so and so for a lender for title? Absolutely. If that's the go to destination of record, then the proposal there is, wow, that's a great way to socialize my name internally in that closed office. Exactly. And we're, we're constantly adding value add to give our vendor community proactive tools. So, you know, one of our, our great kind of secret weapons, if you will, is our technology platform and our technology partner. So we update every two to three weeks to stay current and and make the app more efficient. Sometimes we'll take things away to simplify it, but you know, it's like a lot of people just don't really understand how apps are built and created. And if you, if you think back to building websites, you know, 10 years ago with such an arduous process, you build it, you propped it up and then you let it sit there for two years because it was such a pain, absolutely opposite. If you're not constantly updating them and adding features, you know, the, the, the one thing I always do when someone tells me about an app is I go right to the app history and the app store and say, well, they have an updated in 18 months, I guess it didn't work. It's kind of a telltale sign of how serious you are in your development. So, you know, that's, that's it. It's just another leading indicator that we move at a kind of breakneck speed is, is, is, is what we're proud of. So let's put our homeowners cap on for a second. I'm a homeowner and I've engaged with this agent to buy a house. Ideally, the agent is inviting that homeowner to download the app. Mm-hmm. It's exactly how it happens. So the most common way homeowners get on the platform is that introduction from an individual agent as they start working together and it's pretty simple. It's, if I'm your realtor, I'd say, hey, Jeff, go ahead and download this free app. It's called HuHub. This is how we're going to communicate because I, I'm sure you don't want to call me on the telephone. You want to just text with me. And then you know how you asked me if I had any recommendation of loan officers, top five guys I work with are all in there. And then, you know, we just, we just did a walk through of your house and said you want to redo your floors. You've got two guys in my HuHub that can do that. He said you need to spruce up the landscaping. I got three guys that can do that. So they're extending their team. Imagine, you know, kind of a concierge of service, if you will, that sets them apart, right? So realtors are always looking for some sort of a competitive edge. We say, hey, bring your, your service, you know, providers local army to the table because you actually know them. You trust them, they trust you, extend that trust directly, you know, to your homeowner client. Right. So that's the most common, that's the most common way. As we grow and evolve and our brand, you know, continues to strengthen, what's a kind of a cool development for us is, you know, homeowners inherently understand the value prop of local realtors know the best service providers. Right. So now they're starting to just sign up directly and search. So it's a simple search feature where they're looking for homeowners directly without necessarily going through a realtor. So that's pretty cool to see that they just buy into the overall value prop that local realtors know the best local service providers. Yeah. And that's the thing I wanted to come back to because I made a note of this paper play, pay for play. And you just kind of hit on that there in terms of online vendor networks are not, quote, trusted in all caps, referrals. Tell us a little bit about that. Why do you say that? Well, it's just a, they're based on advertising, right? So it's paid, like you and I talked about before, it's paid rankings, right? So the more you pay. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We, listen, we don't, we don't buy into the concept that if you have a problem and nobody's perfect, so problems will happen. There's no built-in trust and accountability on an advertising platform no matter what the marketing and the little byline says. So if you have a problem and, you know, the rougher didn't complete the job, I'm not so sure that calling an 800 number, you know, a thousand miles away or 10,000 miles away and talking to an eight dollar an hour employee is really going to help you that much, fix that problem. We think there's a lot more accountability in the local market where that rougher has a lot of potential future business to lose if he doesn't rectify the situation with the realtor. So we like to keep everything local, it's why we don't dictate. So, you know, it's fun, the market has been kind of conditioned that you build up a list and it's an advertising platform. We get asked all the time, what if they do a bad job, well, what do they do a bad job today? You're recommending vendors today, you're just doing it in an inefficient manner. So how would you handle that? Would you call them, would you say, listen, you know, you would hold them accountable. So we really use kind of trust as our currency and not pay me more and I'll move you up the list. What about reviews? Do you guys allow any reviews within the app? We do. By design, one in four reviews, according to Gartner or fake, and, you know, if it's a fake review, it's either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. So, you know, as a business owner, it's hard to mitigate a bad review. And oftentimes, it doesn't really tell the true story as to what happened. And we're not all perfect, right? So how do you, I'd rather push it, you know, to the local market and say, you guys figure it out. Again, we go back to that single central question that, you know, for the, you know, any survey, it's the most important question you ask, would you recommend this to a family or a friend? And that's really where we try to keep it. And it still allows that, like I said, that accountability in the local market. So we don't, like I said, we don't do stars and points and elephants or whatever the case may be. I got to ask you, where are the elephants? What, what, what network is that on? You know, I don't know, but like, you know, if you use, if you use, if you use ways, you know, if you use ways, you're collecting all these animals along the way to drive. Like, there's all kinds of, you know, schemes out there that are supposedly three elephants are better than one or the right, you know, and listen, I'm not anti-review. My feeling is I may look at a review for a new restaurant and if I drop a hundred bucks and I hate it, so what, right? You just don't go back. I think reviews are really valuable in consumer electronics, you know, it's binary. The picture is good. The picture is bad. You know, your, your palate may be totally different than mine. You may love spicy food. I might like bland food, but so what? It's, you know, it's a small amount of money. When you're talking about a homeowner, that's the single biggest investment they have. And they're inviting, you know, service providers, by and large, into their home. So, you know, why wouldn't you ask your realtor for their revenue? Here's the thing that jumps out for me in terms of reviews like Yelp and others, and I think this is, you know, centered on your value proposition about getting a referral from somebody you trust. So, the thing about Yelp, which is the point you've alluded to, is the people that are leaving comments on there, I don't know them at all, right? Right. So, they may have completely, and we've all read those reviews and we've read the reviews and like, wow, that's really stupid or, you know, you know what I mean, it's like, well, well, geez, dude, that's not what they do there. Why would you make that comment, you know? So, I think the value you're bringing is that you've got to completely brand them reviews from people that you don't know where they're coming from, you know, on that perspective, versus you've got a, you know, a very trusted source of that referral, you know, the realtor, the lender, whatever. And so, you know who these people are, you already have a relationship with them. So there's probably that higher level of endorsed or implied trust because of that relationship. Does that make sense? You nailed it 100%. And then the other thing that, you know, I call kind of the checkbox theory, just because let's say a home improvement contractor paid his $35 to the local municipality. It doesn't mean he knows how to hang crown molding straight or do drywall or, you know, mud without, you know, excessive bulges like that doesn't tell you anything, right? It's because you have license and you're insured and you're bonded. So what? It doesn't say anything about quality, service, do you care about new business? Like, let's leave that to the local professionals and it's, you know, we're just, we're huge fans of buy local because that's where that's where real commerce happens. Like, you know, in an altruistic level, I look at myself as a, you know, small business champion. We're trying to bring the best local realtors together with the best local service providers. That's where it all happens. Also, I want to jump, I want to jump in from, I'm assuming you probably have some load officers on here who are fairly new to the business, who are looking to maybe grow. You know, and they also have to, I would say, you know, I tell agents all the time when I'm meeting with them and it lenders too, you know, find out what's, you know, see how all these other people are marketing themselves and then don't necessarily do that. Like, add one or two additional things that make you different. You can't differentiate yourself. You're in trouble regardless of what business you're in. So, you know, as a new loan officer, what a great way to use this platform, one to connect with people and grow relationships and business, but also to differentiate yourself in the market. Also, if you are that loan officer who's building their business, they've only done a transaction or a handful of transactions, one agent, but they want to get more, what a great way to get recommendations from that person and then use that recommendation to just leapfrog into other agents and build, you know, set appointments and things like that. Because what happens is the realtor in the office who they're meeting with can say, hey, I know Susie Smith, so she did use you and then they, they read the review and then they can physically go up to Susie Smith and say, hey, I read the review about this guy. Is he really as good as you say and then since they trust Susie Smith, she says, yes, this is how great it was and then because of that trusted review from Susie Smith, that's going to help get more business to the new loan officer. Right. So, otherwise, what these loan officers are doing is they're setting appointments with realtors and they're like, hey, I'm really great, I'm new to the business, but you know, I'll do a good job. I swear, you know, I trust me, you know, versus they have somebody else in their office who's already setting it in the stage with them and it's super helpful. Yeah, and the fact that obviously if once you're connected to those realtors, there's the in-app messaging and there's ways to stay in touch there. By the way, the messaging, can you do group messaging or is it all individual right now? No, it's direct in group. Oh, so I can create my own group of let's say I've got five agents in an office out of 30. I can create a group messaging. You can. So you can, you can group message with any of your contact groups. So you know, the group we're seeing, the most common is broker, client, lender and title. So they're just back and forth rapid-fired, did you get the appraisal, yes, still need the pest control, inspection, great, what's the rate, are we still closing on the 28th? What else do you need for me? So it's all just, it's why we keep the platform as open as we do. I use the analogy of Slack, right? So Slack is now becoming kind of a mainstream platform that started with developers and now you know, you got book clubs using it to communicate. So I'm sure if you sat down with the founders of Slack to say, oh yeah, this is going to be great for book clubs in five years, they're like, what? Exactly. Yeah. Also, for loan officers that, you know, they're trying to, you know, they might send out a blast email to the office, you know, and finding people to a happy hour, they send out a blast email about something, you know, realtors get a lot of emails in a day, so they might not even look at it. So if you're connected to someone on HuHub and you maybe send out a, you know, you have four, five, six realtors in a group text messaging and they're like, oh, you're HuHub, oh, I'm HuHub. Next thing, you know, those people will respond to you and it's a better, more efficient way, I think to communicate it's like when I have a realtor sometimes, you know, this is previously, you know, I send them an email, they're super busy, they might not give back to me right away. But you know what, I would send them like a message on Twitter or a Facebook message and they give back to me to like 10 minutes. Right. So this is, it's a better way to talk. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point that Wade makes that, you know, the stat is 90% of text messages are read within three minutes and, you know, I've been in digital for a lot of years and, you know, email is just, it's just filled with spam and depending on how old the client base is, you know, they're 45 or younger, but forget it. Like it's text messaging and that's just about it. Like don't ever dare call me and what's email, right? So, you know, you got to make sure that you're relevant to the audience you're trying to work with. So now you be going around asking agents, do you HuHub? You know, it's super cool as we're starting to be used as a verb, which is like my favorite thing ever. So I'll be doing an agent presentation or, you know, we'll commonly, you know, like Wade, like we just love that Wade leads with value first. So we will do a lunch and learn or, and what's cool for us, Jeff, is that it's not always just about HuHub. It's, hey, you know, how do I do this on my smartphone? And how, you know, it's just a little thing. So we almost become kind of a mobile consultant. And that's great, right? In order to download the app, you first need to know what your, you know, your Apple ideas, right? So, you know, there's a process to all of it. And if we can help an agent, it kind of reduce that anxiety of going mobile, then, you know, we're adding value to the ecosystem. Yeah. And from the loan officer title, retrospective, you're definitely staying top of mind and you're getting more opportunities to engage deeper, like you said, hey, you know, maybe they need help walking through, right? The Apple idea or whatnot. But you can now get some FaceTime to go in their office, walk through the app and all that stuff. And there's just, you know, great opportunities that we're going through. Yeah. And, you know, what's cool to see? And again, loan officers are leading the way. So instead of, you know, spending money on some Chatsky once a quarter, that, you know, they probably would admit to that it's probably going to get, you know, recycled anyway. Yeah. Yeah. They're positioning it as a gift. So this is no cost to you, Mr. Realtor, I'm paying for it to help you grow your business. Like that's a pretty powerful pitch when a loan officer says, no cost to you, I'm underwriting it. It's a phenomenal cost. But here's a way to attract more business for you. It's exactly what Wade's been talking about here is, how do you differentiate yourself to attract more referrals? Yeah. And I definitely love the aspect that Wade opened up with, which is past client retention. And that's an area of weakness for most agents. And this is something unique and different and doable and, you know, gives them a reason to get active in past client reaching out and retention and really, you know, adds a lot of value that you've created for them. So that can only be helpful in the relationship. Yeah. Cool. So for those who want to learn more, tell us once again, where do they go? So they should go to HuHubApp.com, that's w-h-o-o-b-a-p-p.com. And you know, Jeff, I try to make myself personally very available. So if any of your listeners would want to reach out to me and just chat or email whatever, my personal email address is Brad at HuHubApp.com. If they download the app, I'm a homeowner on the app. So free to connect with me and we can message and, you know, if they go to HuHubApp.com, they can actually sign up right away and then start inviting agents. And then we do the heavy lifting on the backside. So the series of email invitations and the phone calls will do that on behalf of the loan officer to make sure that the agent that they've invited understands the true value and understands how to use it. It's kind of like an onboarding call, if you will. Great. And Wade, I know you've got a lot of great resources out there and from our first podcast, some people reached out to you. Do you want to direct any listeners to, you know, kind of see what you're doing, whether it's a YouTube channel or whatnot? Yeah. You know, everything that I offer and all the value that I have is on my website, dctitleguy.com. I have, I don't know, 200 blogs, 100 and some videos on there, all about real estate marketing help, real estate technology, things that help loan officers, client retention, pretty much anything you'd want to know that can help you build your business. Surprisingly enough, I actually get a ton of hits from title companies and title reps who kind of want to learn and mimic kind of what I've been doing. But and that's fine. I like to talk into those people as well. But also, if you go to my YouTube channel, it's just under my name, Wade Vanderbollen. I post videos there pretty much weekly as well that you can, you know, check out, subscribe, hit me up. You can email me as well. If you have any questions, it's wvander, v-a-n-d-e-r at steward.com, st-e-w-a-r-t. Awesome. Well, thanks very much, guys. I'm a fan of the app. That's why I wanted to share it with my listeners. I think it's got a lot of value. And I, Wade, I appreciate you as always being on the cutting edge, man, and bringing those ideas, right, to the people. Well, congrats to your success, Jeff, and leading by example. It's appreciated, and I appreciate the con words about who love, and, you know, anything you need personal help with, you know, certainly the invitation is always open, and don't be shy. Reach out. You bet you. Well, listeners, I hope you enjoyed it. Who hub? Get your app, start sharing with agents, start adding value, and make a difference by adding value. Like I said, to the real estate agents, and who hub is, I think is a great way to do that. So take the lessons learned here today, and get out there and start connecting with agents. So thanks for listening again this week, and if you like today's episode, please take a moment and leave us a review, subscribe, on iTunes or Stitcher. And once again, I appreciate you, thanks for listening, and make it a great day. 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