Ep# 35: Branding Lessons from a Top Agent Selling 120 Homes a Year

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, welcome to another episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. So glad you're here. This episode we're doing something a little unique, a little different. We're not featuring the traditional guest, we're actually featuring a real estate agent. And if you like this episode, if you like featuring top agents and talking about how we as loan officers can be more effective in attracting and converting real estate agents to referral partners, let me know. Email me info at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com, leave a comment, leave a rating review, subscribe, iTunes, Stitcher. If you're liking these, I want to know. So this week my special guest is Mike Bjorkman. Mike Bjorkman is a top producing mega agent up in the Santa Clarita area of California. And Mike is a super stud. He in his career has completed over 4,500 real estate transactions and currently manages over 350 residential properties. Guys, super stud. He's now with Home Smart and owns a couple brokerages with Home Smart but has achieved some serious awards in his career, top 1% of the nation. He sells about 10 homes a month on average right now. He and his team top 5 agents up in his area, top 10 at Remax when he was there, Platinum Club, Chairman's Club, Hall of Fame member. We really, what we're unpacking here in this episode is how Mike's using celebrity branding to position himself as the go to agent in his local area. And I think what you'll hear is some ideas, not only how you can position yourself in your local area as a mortgage loan originator and begin to build your brand, your presence, so you attract business to you, but you're also going to hear Mike firsthand some stories about how loan officers have prospected him over the years and his response to that. And his advice for you prospecting agents today, what you shouldn't be doing and what you should be doing. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode and without further ado, let's get into the show. Hey Mike, welcome to the show. Hey Jeff, thanks so much for having me, man. Hope you're having an awesome day. I certainly am. Thanks for making time. I know you're incredibly busy selling hundreds of homes a year, so I wanted to bring on today. We're talking to two audiences really, loan officers and real estate agents. You know, I came by way of you through another podcast I listened to, which was talking about, you know, how you built a celebrity brand basically up in the Santa Clarita, Valencia, California area. And you certainly have, man, I did some Google searching on you and you know, you sell, you're selling about what, 10 homes a month now, is that right? Yeah, we sell at least 10 homes a month and I own the Homesmart brokerage in Valencia and Northridge and West Lake. We have a couple hundred agents and I also own a huge property management company called California leasing and you know, I do a lot of coaching across the country with agents and several other companies that I have are not related to the real estate industry, but they've also helped me with branding and launching my name in different industries. So branding is one of my favorite things to do. Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit because you know, some people here branding and they have all kinds of different things that come up with that right. So people think it's big corporate stuff, too expensive, they don't know what it is. What's your definition in the context of real estate industry? How do you define, you know, what a brand is? I think a brand is, how do you explain it? Here's my goal in life. I don't ever want to meet somebody in my town, mention my name and have them not say, I've never heard of you. So it's my goal all day long is when I say, I might be working to go, oh, you're the real estate agent. Yeah, I am. And that's kind of branding to me and how I get to that level in many different ways is, you know, it's a path that you got to follow my separate goal also that goes along with branding is to never go to the mall and not run into 25 people that I know or have people come up to me and recognize me and you know, say, hey, you're that realtor guy, huh? So not only is the name really important team Bjorkman is the name I use, but the actual face as well. So when I go to the mall, I'm either in a hat and dark glasses or I'm in the mood to work and I'm in the mood to pick up listings while I'm in the mall. So it just depends and so branding to me is just creating a brand, you know, when you think of a brand Pepsi Chevron Burger King Mike Bjorkman, I want those all to be in the same mindset as our potential clients out there. And I know the, I know those names are really huge and they spend millions of dollars branding themselves, but I want my name to be, you know, just recognizable as any of those. Yeah. So for those realtors that are listening and loan officers as well, because I think that's the subject that I don't hear much about in the loan officer community that I tend to serve is the conversation around building your personal brand as a loan officer. And we're going to talk about in just a few moments how to build your personal brand in amongst your local real estate, realtor community for you as loan officers. But what, what does that do for you then went in the term in the context of let's say competition. I don't know if you still compete on listings or not, but how does that put you to the front of the table or make you the obvious only choice? Yeah. When I first started in the business and my brand started to become popular, we did a lot of, you know, back, this was back in the days before the internet, but we did a lot cold calling and I'd say, hi, this is Mike Bjorkman and they go, oh, yeah, I've heard you, oh, yeah, you saw homes in my neighborhood and that instills a lot of trust in somebody when they, when it's a wide known, recognized name. When I was brand new in the business, I spent a ton of money advertising the local newspapers, things like that. So people could actually, you know, they built it just a lot of trust. So when I do compete, you know, they'd say, who are you interviewing? Oh, Jane Smith. Oh, okay. I never heard of her, you know, and, and they'd be like, my gosh, your name's everywhere. She must sell a lot of houses and I say, you know, experience counts and, you know, do you want an agent that can market your home, you know, if your agent can't market themselves, how are they going to market your home? And they'd be like, yeah, that's really, that's really right, you know, and I've always used branding. I always put my listings with it because I can promote a huge brand of a name, but I also, you know, they want to know like and trust us, right? And I hate that. I hate saying that because it's so cliche, but it's real in our business. And so everything I do, I go, is this going to help them get to know me, like me, or trust me. I put listings in proof as in the numbers, you know, that kind of attitude with my face, with my logo, with everything I do. I want some aspect to know like and trust in my marketing all times. Yeah. Agree. So the type of branding you do, though, from what I've seen, isn't necessarily what a lot of other agents do. Maybe you do this early on. I don't know, which was like, you know, hey, a number one producer, you know, Centurion winner, ride all that stuff. Are you still doing, because obviously you're a mega producer, are you still tying that into your branding? Are you doing different types of stuff? Yeah. No, I've never really put numbers like number one realtor, number, I just never have done that. I've never felt comfortable bragging that way. You know, I know the clients, they, they need to know those numbers and they, when I get a big award, I'll do it. But in the last four or five years, my brands got way bigger, but I've especially been careful not to do that because I have agents that work under me. I don't want to take all the glory for the company. I'm promoting my company more than I am my, my own sales now. So it's interesting. So, so one of the things that I want all the listeners to write this down and adapt my motto, my motto is, I do things other agents can't or won't, right? So that's, that's the most important thing. So when you said I do things differently, you're right. A lot of it comes from the education, you know, if you look at the YouTube channel, we have a lot of educational stuff on there. I promote the heck out of my listings, long lines, social media, and I want them to know up. He's got another one. He's got another one. He's got another one. And, and blow their minds that way. But at the same time, I will throw in institutional branding also that's very unique and very consumer. What do you call, I guess, entertaining, you know, that there's always some sort of thing they have to figure out or they're like, oh my god, I can't believe you did that. Yeah, it's just different. You know, most people put themselves on a bus bench and say, hey, I might be working on the number one agent in Santa Clarita and the phone number and that just doesn't work for me. So I try to think outside the box and again, more cliche stuff, but it's true. You know, I try to be different at all times. Oh, look at this. I've got a video playing right now. All right. That was just went to your YouTube page and your video started rolling. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, that's another thing, you know, those videos, they have to come up and play. There's tons of people. If you look at that video, they just came up on my YouTube channel. It maybe only has a couple thousand views, but those views, a lot of those people are actually researching me because all your branding and everything that's online out there is your resume. Yeah. So I have people call me up and say, hey, come over and sell my house and I'll say, okay, and I'll pop up in my laptop and say, here, let me give you a marketing presentation. I'm like, I don't need that. I research you. I watched your videos. I watched your YouTube channel. I've stalked you on social media. I have everything I need to know about you and you're the winner here. Where do I sign? That's a nice feeling to have. Yeah. Those are the come list news, right? Yeah. And more and more, I get those. And occasionally I'll compete with some of the other top agents out here, but when it comes to the marketing, I can usually blow them out of the water because it's just, it's simple. I go, you know, Mr. Smith, here's the things I do to market as any other agent showed you that. And they just go, no. Yeah. Well, one of those things is where your buyer would come from when it makes sense to list with me now. Yeah. Okay. And they sign. But I like branding also. I want to be, you know, the celebrity in town. So I get super active in charity, all the events I want to show my face at week. We give about 20% of our income back to the community and some outside of the community obviously. But, you know, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And that's where the people get to like you and get to know you a little bit more. So when you're helping so many others and instead of bragging about your production, you're actually helping the community. People get to know that too. And they just, you know, they just can't help but to love you, you know, when I was in my early 20s, I was known as just the town cocky jerk, you know, yeah, he sells a lot of houses, but gosh, what a jerk he is. And I never was, but that was just the reputation I had gotten myself, but I mean, branding it worked, right? But, but at the same time, I said, no, you know, I need to let people know that I actually do care. And I, I, you know, I want to pay my community back. Or by helping me so much and help others. And, you know, so I got deep involved in the community events and whatnot. And that's, that's really important because having nonprofits and other businesses promote you is much better than you promoting yourself. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think the word they use today is called cause marketing, right? Do good by doing well. Absolutely. All right. So you've got agents obviously on your team and you're building these, these brokerages out. And you're, let's put the, you're in the training chair, you've got new agents coming in. They can't do everything all at once, right? So take me through how would you direct a new agent today to start to build their brand and become right top of mind in the local community? Right. The, the two most important, well, I guess there's three things. Direct mail is a huge part of my success. The second thing, I guess it would be even with number one is social media. Social media has launched me ridiculously farther than I ever thought I'd got. And then the community involvement, you know, those three things, I think the agents really need to focus on, you know, we have a whole separate class on geographical farming and whatnot, but it all comes down to branding at the same time. So it's really important to, you know, spend your money where, where it makes sense. And, you know, social media is so inexpensive to blast the holy mole out of your name. So it's a good, good way to get people to know your name right away. And so, yeah, questions about that. So let's just say I got direct mail and social media on the table, you know, some people write, they would argue, hey, direct mail is dead or whatever is too expensive. I know that's not the case. I know you do too. And we can talk about that. So let's just say, as an agent, I'm going to go with social media. Okay. One of the types of things they should be doing on social is should they just be like, you know, pitching their listings all day long, hey, new listing, you know? Yeah. So I look at social media the same way I do if I was going into a charity event, you know, people need to know, like, and trust you, right? So on social media, I work my personal Facebook myself and I'm a kind of Facebook guy. I do a little bit of Instagram, a little bit of LinkedIn, but I love Facebook because I'm a social guy. So I, I want to follow this thing. So how are they going to get to know me? You know, I blast out there to the public. My hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, my family, my dogs, my wife, all that stuff. So they get to know the guy a little bit, you know? And then I want them to like me. So I have all the other nonprofits promote me and I promote some of the stuff we do. We hold a lot of events, we sponsor events more importantly, I help drive people to those events to make them more successful for the nonprofits. And so then people are like, hey, he's done some good for the community. So now they're going to start to like me and then trust the only way for a potential client to truly trust you in the real estate business is to see that you're actually doing something. So that's when you post your listings. And of course, proper promoting your listings is off of your business page, sharing it to your personal page so they can see both aspects of you. But so the no like and trust and then my, it's called Mike's rule of four. And then the fourth thing is never never, never anything negative, you know, negative. I would consider sex, religion, politics, all that stuff is negative on social media. So, you know, nobody cares if you're sick and have the flu, you know, I call it viral diarrhea. Or, you know, it's just it, it doesn't make sense to blast anything like that. So, so that's how I do my social media is for my personal and then on the business page we do a lot of blogging, a lot of, and all the stuff we're doing now is ads, you know, we're trying to get a registration form filled out and create big lists for our CRM's. And the team Bjorkman business page is, you know, thousands of dollars a month is spent there. And literally we'll have 500 to a million views on our page per month and that's where you get the real branding is people are just like, oh my god, he's just everywhere. And you know, I don't even really do any, any, you know, bus benches and grocery stores, you know, that kind of stuff I stopped, you know, 20 years ago and I found out how much it didn't work. So that's the kind of stuff that I do on social media that really stands out in people's minds. When you started, do you, did you do door knocking? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was, I was 18 years old and I didn't know anybody and all the people that I did know knew me as the loser party or guys and nobody would trust me. So I had to go out and find clients on my own and I door knocked and did open houses all day every day. That was my thing. I mean, anything that you can consider the basics for sale by owners, expires, open houses, door knocking, cold calling. I mastered the Jesus out of those things. I mean, I just, I did it all day every day and that was my, that was my job. And eventually it worked, you know, like any hard work we'll do it eventually, it'll work. It's a numbers game. You've heard that a million times and it's true. So that's how I started by very traditional marketing or prospecting, but then when I was lucky enough to get something, I would try to copy or come up with ideas, ideas to market it much better than the other agents did to stick in their minds. So do you have any niches that you focus on in terms of your direct mail or whatnot, like, you know, expires? I don't. I have one direct mail piece that goes out every month right now and it's a, it's a farm. It's a luxury farm in my zip code that I live in. It's about a thousand residences and I typically list one a month from there and they're all over a million bucks. So I have a luxury mail farm. I don't, I don't do anything but mail to them. So I mail just listings and sold and market updates every 30 days and that's enough for me to, you know, make a heck of a lot of money and do it really super easily. So obviously from that comes the phone calls and all that stuff. Yeah, you know, people, people start, you know, consistency is the key obviously with mailing after the third or fourth mailing. I blasted. Here's how it happened. I had a bet from one of my coaching clients. He was asking me about luxury and I said, yeah, I know something about luxury and he goes, well, it doesn't, you know, he's talking because it doesn't look like you have a lot of luxury. And I said, well, I can tell you how to do it and we made a bet. And within 90 days, I had three listings over a million dollars. So and then I just said, well, if I'm going to do that, I might as well just keep it going. Right. So we just do some unique mailers and that's really it. And when we do get those, then we blast the heck out of them on social media in that zip code. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And is the mailers direct people to any, you know, destination pages on online Facebook or landing pages? Yeah. We try to, we always have a USP in a call to action and we drive into the website and on our websites, we have, we have, we use several different websites. So we're using curator website right now. We're using commission zinc website right now and then a traditional website right now. So we have, we have landing pages up the wazoo and we're always advertising them in different ways. Yeah. But for these people, I think the unique selling propositions are working really well. I'll sell your home in 90 days or it's free. That's always worked for me as long as I can remember, you know, easy exit listing agreement. We always have, we always have fall winter specials, spring specials, you know, where they'll get free home staging, free sellers, home warranty, free whatever I feel like doing that month. And we package them up to where they're, you know, a couple thousand dollars worth of value for them. Doesn't really come out of my pocket very much, but the perceived value for the potential clients is pushes them over the edge to actually give us a call and say, you know, not only do you run the show on our neighborhood, but now you're adding some more value. We come talk to us about selling. So that's working really well right now. Accurator site. Is that Santa Clarita real estate dot com? No, that's just kind of a normal generic site. Santa Clarita for sale is our curator site right now that we're using. Okay. How's that working? It's really, it's an amazing platform. I love Facebook and it's built around Facebook. But my team is fed primarily off of commission zinc right now. We have a couple thousand dollar month ad spend there and we're producing 100 to 150 leads and they're being divided up between six agents right now and they're, you know, they're selling two, three month each off that when they're working hard. Sure. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. So you've got a lot of going on in your business and you, like you said, you're essentially the rain maker now and you're not, you're branding the team and then the brokerages more so to build out that whole team. So you can go fishing, right? Yeah. I'm pretty much out of production honestly. I have a business partner that I brought on her name is Tammy. She goes with me to most of the listings and then I wash my hands of it when I leave and she takes over from there. So I'll go on a couple listing appointments a week, but for the most part, I'm in meetings running the companies or, you know, coaching agents, that kind of thing. Okay. All right. So let's transition for the loan officers listing here today. You know, as you know, a lot of loan officers get taught to hunt, hunt elephants as they're called, right? Yeah. Absolutely smart. Yeah. Right. Use your time efficiently. And I'm sure you've had your fair share of allos over your years, especially if you grew and got big, probably got some funny stories there. But in terms of the right, so we're talking branding and all that stuff. And now you've got this, this long, right, this history of the, in the business and you've obviously know what it takes to establish a brand and, you know, all that stuff. Any advice, suggestions you have for the loan officers today that are scratching their heads going, how do I get in front of the right realtors and how do I get, right, noticed? How do I get them to give me the time of day, you know, all the usual stuff? Yeah. It's, it's funny. Like when we first started talking, I told you, I actually have coached lenders in the past because they're just like, you know, I'm so open and honest with them. I'm like, I see what you're doing. Let me just be up front with you. The way you came about that, you were a total dork. You know, don't do that. Don't say stupid things like that. And so I'll talk to them and then it comes down to, you know, we'll start laughing a little bit. And, you know, and then I'll tell them why it was steeper, what, what, how I work and it's kind of funny. I've, you know, I haven't had a lot of elbows in my history. I've had maybe three or four in the last 25 years that really stood by my side. We built an unbelievable relationship, those types of things. Lenders call me all day every day. Yeah. And it's, I've had the same spiel. I forget who taught me the spiel, but it's the same thing since, you know, I was 19 years old. The lenders come to me and they start talking about how great they are and I go awesome. Here's the way I work, Joe. If you bring me one buyer or seller that closes escrow, I'll give you two back. And that's how we're going to start our relationship. And they all go away except for one or two, you know, and those, those particular lenders get a really good shot with me because I keep my word and I'll pay them back. And, you know, if they do a good job, perfect. You know, in the beginning, there was my first lender. He came to me at an open house. And, you know, I was bored and we legit sat there for hours and pre-qual people and we bonded and had a good relationship. And the other lenders are just ones that I was referred by other top agents. I said, well, if that top agent's going to use them, then I'm going to use them. And, you know, I know the L.O.'s are cringing when they hear that, like, oh, no, but that's really where we get, you know, referrals are so important to us. But there's been plenty of lenders that I've used. They've just been really cool, guys, they've worked hard and brought some sort of value to my team or myself and, you know, they weren't cheesy. I don't like giving my clients cheesy people. Yeah. Well, what's your setup right now? Do you have an in-house lender? We do have a partnership with the lender, yeah, in-house. They have about, I think, eight or nine L.O.'s of their company and we call them smart partners, you know, home smart and they come to the meetings and they participate and they give classes and they do a lot of co-marketing with some of our agents and myself included. And we just created a really good relationship and we distribute leads based on personality style and certain leads have to go to certain L.O.'s of my choice because of either co-marketing or, you know, I have my favorite FHA lender, I have my favorite VA lender, I have my favorite lender that co-markets with commission zinc with me. I have my favorite lender that can pull anything off in the world, you know, and I choose a lot of them based on personality, you know, I study personality well and I'll say, oh, this person would never like this person, so I have to give him this person and go back from them. That's true. You know, the best part is, somebody who really truly cares and they're just up front and honest with me and say, look, I need to prove to you that I am the best. How can I do that? How can we work together? How can I have a shot? You know, what kind of getting on my hands and knees, getting dirty with you can I do? And I've always appreciated that because, you know, I got to remember real estate agents go, dude, these lenders call me and they ask for business and they do nothing to earn it or to serve it. And the lenders say, no, I work so hard to be good at what I do, but the agents don't see that. All they see is you look like a homeless person coming begging for money, you know, so the agents, they have to see value before they before they will do it. They just go, why do I have to knock on 100 doors a day and give you freebies, you know, and that's the reality and that's what they all say to me, even my brand new agents come up with that on their own. They're like, why, why would I give them this business, you know, so that's, that's where it starts, man. But I'll tell you, you know, I'm sure you want to go into what specifically, do I like to see from lenders and sure let's do it, man. I mean, yeah, you go ahead and then I'll probably put an end cap on it, go ahead. I really like when agents or L.O.s bring value as far as business, like, you know, there's a lot of home search apps and all that stuff out, you know, back in the day and still to this day, there's 800 numbers. They do, they help out with marketing, flyers, things like that, you know, help, help with open houses and putting up signs and, you know, and being part of that because I have mostly women on my team and I don't allow them to do open houses. So, you know, once in a while, they'll ask the lenders to do it with them and they do it if they say yes, that's really appreciated. But I like that because it gives my agents a chance to learn about different loan programs and whatnot. You know, some of the top producing lenders out there listening are just like, oh, God I'd rather stick something hot in my eye. But you know, there's always that co-market, there's always things that help with business, you know, anybody can bring you a Nordstrom's gift card, you know, and I probably have 20 of those in a drawer somewhere that I don't know, you know, but there's, but there's, but there's real value when you add business, help, how about the, you know, bringing you business ideas, because I know you talk about co-marketing and that's obviously an obvious one. But what I usually teach loan officers about is, you know, the problem with whale agents like yourself is you're not, you're not part of the conversation, right? You're not in there, they're peripheral, not on the radar. So how do you get there? Well, you've got to, like you said, God forbid, don't call up and go, hey, I got great rates and great service. It's like, yeah, duh. I hope so, right? I mean, that's table stakes. So, you know, it's like, how do you get in front of these top producers? Well, how about building a local platform, kind of like you did with branding? Let's bring a bracket branding. Brand yourself as that loan officer who's providing value to the realtor community. You mentioned classes earlier. So I'm talking about way beyond financing 101. I'm talking about business building classes, right? Talk about the latest apps for real estate. Talk about how to, you know, get smart with social media and all that kind of jazz. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And there's a couple of LOs in my area that are really good at that. They go to all the real estate agent seminars. They go to all their seminars and they do have this handful, this arsenal, if you will, of tools for the agent. So if they get a hold of an agent that isn't quite up to par with social media, they'll help them with that. You know, there's a lot of top, top agents that have no idea what they're doing with social media. And they could really help their business or streamline their business or take a lot of headache out of their business, but yeah, business ideas, business planning. I can think of one particular guy that works in our town. He likes to meet with you and go over different things and talk about buying rental property and how to do that and what kind of, you know, interesting loan programs are for that building wealth, basically. And, you know, there's everybody's got their niche, but I absolutely love that. I help the agents with their business. That's what they need. Real estate sucks when it comes to getting new business. It's not easy. So the more help the agents can get the better, especially when they participate in a lead management. Yeah. Oh, I see. So yeah, having the lender take some of the lead flow and qualifying. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, especially if you're going to financially participate. Right. Might as well have the L.O.s, you know, on, here, let's be honest, most agents drop the ball with follow up, right? Right. If you get L.O. that doesn't do that, then they could probably nurture the relationships better than the agents and how nice is it for the L.O. to be in control of the lead flow? I mean, my God, that's everybody's dream in the industry, right? Yeah. So I literally know people that the agents kiss their butts because they're giving them so many leads or nurturing their leads for them. It's kind of a cool flip around. Do you have any examples of, you know, that exact situation where, you know, you're using some type of lead jam thing and the L.O.s are hand on the flow for you? Yeah, we have, we have our L.O.s that actually participate with our CRMs and we assign them to their, their certain, I guess they were almost like an ISA and they're the ones that call and follow up and say, Hey, you know what? I know you on Mike Bjorkman's website the other day, searching around, you know, I wanted to make sure you're comfortable with, you know, your price range. Is there any cut-up alone programs I can talk to you about to maybe increase your purchase power? You know, and they do a really good job at, you know, getting these leads and then they'll just reassign it back to us and say, Hey, Mr. Smith is hot. Call them now. They're ready to buy. I get pre-called them to 500, get them in the car, you know, and that's kind of a need experience to have too. So yeah, a couple questions there. I like that idea. Two things popped in my mind, in my mind. One, how does the lender, obviously you've got to have a trusted relationship first, right? Before you're willing to do it. Absolutely. Do you, do you think that there's some agents that wouldn't be comfortable with that or just a trust issue just handle that? Well, hopefully that relationships to a point where you have that sort of trust, but I'm sure it goes both ways in the beginning. I might have felt a little funny about it too, but when you literally have thousands of leads and your whole team is busy and they're just falling through the cracks, it's nice to have the help. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a, you know, a third party endorser and they're actually doing what people need. I mean, if I almost think it should be the law that they should go to the lender and the lender should refer the business out to the agents because I'd like to have them all pre-qualified. Yeah. I mean, I have a totally different attitude compared to most agents. I want them coming from my lender, you know, I'll co-market with my lender. You bring in the pre-qualified leads and I'll thank for them. Any advice you have for, I know, and I don't know if you've done this, but you know, some agents and this tells you a little bit about the type of agents, perhaps, you know, where they, they do the three card thing, you know, where it's like, yeah, here's something you're three lenders call, call each one of them, see which one you like. How do lenders overcome that? I've never done that. There might be some local city state laws that say you must do that, but I, I've never had a little three at a time that I really trusted or I thought their personality would fit all of them. I don't, is that even a thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it quite, that usually comes from, I hate to say it, but that's a, to me, kind of a weak agent, right, because I believe very new or something. Yeah, I mean, there's no, I want, I want my lender in control of my buyer at all times. I don't think I could really think of three of the cards that I would even get about at one time, but if they do, I would just say, you know, I don't even know what I'd say. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. You know, and say, hey, if you're going to pass out three, why don't you nudge them my way? Yeah. You know, obviously I'm going to take better care of them, but if they have to do that, they have to do that. I don't know. Well, maybe so, you got to, you know, prove yourself that you're going to be the, the best choice for them in all areas, and it's like, look, I want to earn the primary spot on your team, right? So can we kind of, you know, move away from this three card thing because I've proven myself right? I haven't failed you yet. Yeah, the whole line yards. And it's like, look, I, you know, yeah, no, sorry. I was so blindsided. I don't even know what I did. Well, that's me. I blindsided every 10 minutes, man. That's crazy. But here's what I do. Like, I have tons of leads that come in. They're pre-qualified. You know, one of our specialties is snagging, I guess you could say buyers from other agents because the agents aren't doing their job. They're not doing anything to find property. They're not doing anything to communicate. And once the, once the potential buyers come to us and they go, wow, you guys work a lot differently. Now these people are already pre-qualified with lenders. Sometimes they're online. Sometimes they're out of the area. Sometimes they're friends and relatives. And I always just say, look, I can appreciate the fact you're with Joe from, you know, so and so. Here's the deal. If you want to compete in our market, you need to be with a top trusted L.O. There's nothing better than a second opinion. You never know what could happen to your first one. You never know, you know, what happens? So you have to have two different opinions at all times. You can go with whoever you want. But I am going to insist you at least get to know my lender. So if we need Plan B, we have it. And then my lenders are good enough to flip them every single time. So I mean, that's, that's the only thing that the kind of compares to what you're talking about. Yeah, it does. I just, I refuse to deal with an online lender. I refuse to deal with a lender. I don't know. They have to have to be part of my team. That's just the way it is. So that reminds me of back in the day, working with Walter Sanford, you know, who he is. Oh, yeah. No, well, yeah, yeah. So Walter used to have this thing in his listings. He had this clause in there that required any buyer offers to be pre-approved through his lender for the, yeah, we do the same thing. We call it double app or cross-qualified. If you look in the MLS under any of my listings, it says buyer to be pre-qualified with blank mortgage. And as they're numbing number and, you know, and then they call up and sometimes they'll say, look, I get it. You're a good lender. I know your name. I know you've been in the business a long time. There's at least get my guy a copy package and, you know, half the time he gets flipped into that lender anyway. So, yeah, we have that because it just recently, we had one fall through the cracks. One of my newer team agents didn't cross-qual and we fell out of escrow three weeks into it. I couldn't. One and only time we didn't do it, it happened. So, you know, I just sat in my staff meeting. I said, look, you guys, if you're going to be on my team, you have to do this period. And my lender is appreciative because they usually are able to flip them. They, you know, even if it's not better rate in terms, they better personalities, better salesmanship and, you know, they bond better. They're just good people for people persons. How much pushback do you get from the buyer's agent on that though? Just, you know, say, hey, you're, you're crazy, man. Well, I get some, I won't lie, but I just say, look, this is, this is the way it is. You give them a copy. It's your listing. Yeah, give them a copy package to make sense. I say it's my company policy. I've already proven or I've already gotten permission from the owner to do this. The owner understands the importance of this and it's their house. So this is what's going to happen and they can call me a jerk all they want. I don't care. But there is a lot of good L.O.'s in my town and I say, look, Joe, I trust you, man. You're a great guy. I don't know if anything fell through the cracks. I don't know if you had your assistant do this, give it copy package to my lender. I promise they don't have to talk to him unless it doesn't make sense. You know, and I'll go that route. But that's, you know, there's, there's a very few times where I get major pushback. I've never had somebody say, fine, I'm going to go some a different house if that's right. Yeah. And I think that the last point on that is, you know, there's obviously the benefit that a loan officer did for that. But you as the agent, what you're really getting out of that is, is iron clad control on that listing because as you said, the worst thing in the world is have something fall out in the 11th hour. You know, that's what you're trying to prevent. And you'd be surprised how many times my lender calls me and says, dude, I wouldn't do that deal. I wouldn't do it. But I don't know if they could do it. Yeah. Right. You know, and that's where they're throwing it against the wall, hoping it sticks. And that's when I go, nope, I want a full double app now. Right. Right. So I've saved a lot of deals from going through. And the agents just have to be strong, you know, in the, in the LOs when they're working with your, with their agents, they have to be strong and it's described to them in detail why it's so important that they do this, you know, get a couple extra deals a year out of it. And that's win-win for everybody. Well, I think this all, you know, this whole conversation just stemmed out of my question about the three-card approach. And, you know, for those loan officers listening, you know, it's a conversation that if you've got a good enough relationship with the Realtor, I think you should have it, and you position it for the benefit to them more so than you, which is, you know, God forbid, Mr. Mrs. Agent, you know, how bad it sucks to have deals fall out the 11th hour. I want to help minimize that as much as possible. So how about this for an idea, right? How about we write a clause into the listing agreement that any buyer offers, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like so. So see if they go for it. Another amazing opportunity for an L.O., which is my favorite, is most of the buyer's agents, she's most of the agents out there, they don't have a good listing presentation and they don't have a good buyer's presentation. They're all over the internet, you can get them anywhere. But if that lender customizes that buyer's presentation, or maybe they do it as a team together and give a editable PowerPoint or something, in that pre-made PowerPoint is the benefits of cross-calling, or the benefits of getting a second idea, working with a local trusted lender. And they can hand that to them on a personalized thumb drive and say, here, I've gone through the time and, you know, to make you these presentations. How about we have lunch, you know, in the next couple of days, and I'll help you customize this to you and your team, and then I'll show you how to present it so you can win more out on the battlefield, you know, that type of stuff. And those are the types of things that I like when lenders do, you know, they help us with all kinds of things. Like I have a lender right now that he emails me PDFs of, you know, free reports for loans things that I can use for direct response marketing, you know, the truth about seconds. What's the difference between an equity line in a second or, you know, is FHA really that good of a deal? You know, really neat things. And they, in the email, and I'm allowed to use them, I'm allowed to brand them to myself and I'm like, geez, you know, if I went online and tried to buy those or gather those will be huge pain or just the fact that you know, the time would take for you to find those. Forget it, right? Yeah. I really appreciate that kind of stuff. You know, there's all kinds of things that the L.O.s can do for the agents that really help their business, you know, especially the CRMs and showing them how to work a CRM. I don't know why. I think you have to have some sort of analytical side to you to be an L.O. I guess that's part of the business. So naturally, lenders are really good with CRMs and being really accurate with them. And if they could sit down side by side and maybe provide a CRM to the agents and help them with it and show them what to do, I think all those types of things are value-added benefits to the agent. I think the lenders could really win with things like that too. Well, you know why most L.O. officers are more analytical, you know, the disprofile, right? Yeah, because most of them come out higher on the SC there than the DI by far in realtors of the opposite. Yeah, and that's why they suck so bad at showing to agents. They come up looking like dorks because they don't know how to be, you know, they don't know how to be a high-end. They have a personality, yeah. Yeah, and that's, but so when you find that rare one that's in the middle, it's really hard. And those are usually the top ones that are, when you're talking distas, we call them chameleons. They have enough D in them to drive. They have enough I in them to sell and they have enough S and C to get the loan done, right? And be consistent and accountable. It's a, it's a really, it's a really hard thing to find with lenders. And, you know, when I grab a couple of those, I really appreciate it. You know, we're talking about branding on this call. And I just thought of one of the, one of the old L.O.s that I used probably for 10 years. He was, it was a husband and wife team and they were amazing with branding themselves to where a lot of the times when we would pick up buyers, they branded themselves so well like a real estate agent in the community that they'd already come to me, pre-proved or pre-qualified from these people. And I remember all those little things. Not only did they really brand themselves well in the community, but they also did it with helping the agents and, and I look back now and I go, man, they had the market corner. They got to the buyers before me and then they also helped me. So it never used to bug me to work with them because they were really good, too. Yeah, they branded themselves like real estate. As a matter of fact, you know, 15 years later, they actually did get into the real estate field and did pretty well. So, you know, they, you could almost not tell the difference if you weren't paying attention if they were lender or a realtor because they advertised in the same magazines, they advertised on TV, they were still big in the community. And it was interesting to watch. Yeah, that's a great point. Thanks for bringing that up because I think, you know, what's, what I'm getting a sense of what they probably did is around this, you know, content marketing with branding, like you reference some of those shareable documents and resources online, social, right, everything about, right, what to look out for with FHA or even doing stuff like, you know, 10 tips to sell your home for top dot, there's no reason why a loan officer couldn't do all that stuff, too. Oh, I built their own database. Absolutely. They had a huge database and worked it well. Yeah. Cool. So, I know we're just about out of time. I was curious, you know, because you mentioned you coach agents and lenders as well. Who do you look to in this industry or whether it's in or out of real estate, right? Who's like a, do you have a coach or somebody that you kind of, you know, like, whether it's the fairies of the world or whoever? Right. Well, I, I know them all personally, like said Walter Sanford, I mean, every single coach out there or a trainer, I know them all. Probably the very best in the industry right now is club wealth, Michael Helix and known as club wealth coaching and he's got an amazing group of coaches and the content and the way that the industry civics are flowing through that system that is by far the best out there. I love club wealth so much. I'm a contributor to their coaching. I do their club wealth TV every Wednesday at nine o'clock Pacific time. I do, I do a lot with them. So that would be my number one, but I, I have a lot of heroes out there and I love them all and I've been to every thing and everybody and I just take little bits and pieces from each and everyone. Right. But if you wanted to nail me down, that would be for sure club wealth for now. Yes. Yes. I'm going to make sure I look at Michael. It's you and I talked about him the other day. I got to say hi to him. Cool. Well, for those listening, I want to learn more about you. Find out or check you out online. What's a couple of places you want to direct them to? Mike Bjorkman. That's the easiest way. Just Google. Google my name, BJ or KM and you know, follow my Facebook would probably be a really good indicator of what I do throughout the day. That's the best way and anybody could always call myself in. It's published on every single website. It's, you know, it's not a big deal and if you have a pen, it's six, six, one, two, one, two, eight, zero, seven, five, six, six, one, two, one, two, eight, zero, seven, five. My huge texture, I love yes or no or quick, you know, one or two answer things and, you know, I do it hundreds of times a day with my agent. So a couple more. They'll do not bother me. I love to help people. Well, that's awesome. I appreciate your generosity and this was a, this was a great call. I learned a lot. So for you listeners, get branding on yourself. You got some great insights today on how to approach top agents, how to position yourself as a value-added partner instead of just a loan officer making that squeaky noise about give me a deal. Please don't do that anymore. After listening to today's call, check out some of Mike's resources and I appreciate you being here Mike. Thank you so much. I sure appreciate you guys and have a good one. You bet listeners once again, I hope you like today's episode, leave us a review on iTunes. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so. iTunes or Stitcher and I appreciate you as well. So thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next one. This is your host Jeff Zimper. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. On more truth in Mortgage Marketing, get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. Hey guys, what's up real quick? 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