Ep #4: Truth and Lies About Online Marketing with Scott Shang

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Welcome to another issue, another session of Mortgage Marketing Radio. We've got a very special guest as always, but an old friend, actually a dear friend and somebody who I consider to be, I don't use, I don't throw around the word expert very much. But in this case, I will because I haven't really seen more, anybody more than this individual really spend time investing research on unpacking and testing various lead sources, various productivity, ROI on effort for what's the best place for me to invest a buck or invest my time to build my business. So without further ado, let me bring in Mr. Scott Shang, who is a 17-year veteran of the mortgage and real estate industry, has a wonderful site that we'll talk about and dive into called FindMyWayHome.com is doing a lot of interesting things in the areas of content marketing. Online lead gen is a big believer in systems and automation. So Drumroll, please, Scott Shang, welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thanks, Jeff. Are you going to add the Drumroll in later? I know. I didn't hear that. That would have been super cool. I need to get a sound board and just get all these buttons. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what I actually, I'm comfortable with you using the expert, I'm not, you know what, you got to be really careful when you talk about people that have invested a lot of time and energy into one thing and they've seen success over it or from it. But I think in terms of using the word expert or expertise, I like the, you know, I like, was that tipping point? Yeah. Well, that was, if you invest 10,000 hours into something, you can be considered an expert at it. I've easily put more than 10,000 hours into this. So I do feel like I possess some expertise about the specific things that, you know, that I've, that I have focused on. But I mean, I also think that a lot of that comes with just coming off as being a little obsessive and crazy too, because for the first, the first 3,000 and 5,000 hours, everybody thinks you're insane, you know, there's not, you know, what are you working on? Why are you, you know, why are you working on that? Right. And sometimes it, it takes a long time, which I guess we could dive into, but it takes a really long time until you realize that, that thing that you obsessed over for all that time, there's actually something to it. Yeah. You know, something significant to it. Well, and that's, see, that's a great way to set this whole thing up though, because, I mean, one of the things I hope to gain out of today is, you know, I'm trying to provide more professionals, right, guidance and direction in an authentic way on what's the right path, right, for them. And as you know, it's different for everybody, right? Some people, as we were talking earlier before the recording, it's like, look, if you've got a huge referral based business, then online marketing may not be, you know, in terms of Legion, may not be that important for you, right? I mean, if you've been 20 years in the business and you're getting 10 referrals a month, it's like, you know, do you really need to drop significant investment on online stuff? So it really depends on where you're at, but I love why you're here is because you, you and I are right, we're on the, we're torn from the same cloth and that we want to clear out the BS. There's a lot of BSN noise in this industry. People pitching products and services, which, you know, some have value and a lot of them don't. I'm not here to make judgment. I'm here to just hopefully provide value and, you know, some, a place people can go to, to get value. So that's why you're here, man, you've passed through the, through the gauntlet. All right. Let's get into it. Sorry. I have. You've, by the way, you've done so much in this industry, I mean, you, in terms of speaking used to be on the circuit, man, what was the seminars you used to speak at all the time? There's a bunch of them. Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, I dove really, really, I got really deep into the real estate bar camp movement when, when that first started in like 2009, I think was the first one up in San Francisco and I went, went to pretty much every one of those in California, probably 30 or 40 of those. We started doing some similar things in the mortgage space with the mortgage tech summit, with Mark Madsen and, and, and we've done quite a few of those through the years. And now I, I pretty much the big one. I mean, I still get asked to speak at usually real estate events. So it, it was mostly for real estate agents and, and talking about lead generation systems and offering a different perspective in that way. But the big one that I'm doing now is the explode conference that comes around a couple of times a year and that's actually coming up next month and I'll be, I'll be speaking about that or speaking at that about actually about a niche that I developed on, on the website over the last probably five or six years that's really starting to come to fruition. Okay. So what is that niche that's coming to fruition? Boomerang buyers. So in, in 2000 and actually the first article I wrote was February 2011 and it was about what the underwriting guidelines are for buying after a bankruptcy foreclosure, Dean Lewer short sale. And so I started writing about that, also February 2011, so I guess it's been five years and today it probably, well, between about three or four blog posts, there's almost 3,000 comments. I get, I get comments and calls every single day. It gets thousands and thousands of hits every month from that, from just mostly from a lot of those, from a lot of, from those articles, but there's a, that's a very much of an emerging niche. There's a lot of lenders and loan officers that just didn't want to take the time to talk to somebody if they thought that they had a financial hardship in the past. And you know, you talked about noise going in. That's one of the beauties of, it's one of the beauties of content marketing is if you're putting good stuff out there, it really does stand out, especially when you, with all other crap that's out there that's just people throwing up, you know, just generic stuff for hiring writers or, you know, putting words on the internet is not the same thing as using content, marketing to grow your business. So I mean, there's so many different areas we could go this one. I want, I'll come back to the boomerang buyer niche in a second, but I do want to kind of ask you and, and solidify something you alluded to with people just putting words on the internet. And there's differing opinions about you obviously do your own writing on your blog, right? Right. Yeah. So yes. So in the context of either search ranking or anything like that, what is your, I'm just going to put it out there because I know there's people in various, you know, positions on this. But what is your take on automating that, meaning having somebody else is, you know, the big way, why don't most loan officers blog, whatever, I don't have the time, I don't know what to write, blah, blah, blah. So they outsource that to a service that does that. What's your take on that versus doing it yourself? Well, I've always treated writing as though I were, I write, when I'm writing in my mind, I imagine that I'm sitting across the table from a consumer. And so I'm sharing my experience, I'm, I'm, I'm showing them who I am, what my knowledge, what my experience is. I mean, every single conversation, well, there's two things, I guess, I write every article like I'm talking to a consumer and I treat every consumer like my parents. So how would I, how would I try to explain to my mom, how to not get tricked or fooled or twisted up on a one guideline or another? So for me, I think it's, I think writing is it, if you're going to do it for the right reasons, now you say right reasons, I mean, there's different strategies just putting content on the web to make yourself feel good. And for rankings, I think if you were trying to do it for SEO alone, I think that's kind of an insane play anymore, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend anybody try to start a content marketing site around mortgages today. It just SEO just doesn't have that much value if you've, you got to put a lot of consistent stuff out there for it to, for it to really build a, I mean, I think that the best way to do it is as a someplace that you send people just to assist them and to have conversation. It's a destination and absolutely and if you treat it that way, the SEO will come. Okay, so that's an awesome point there and a very important one. So just to reiterate that you don't, you feel that today for somebody to start a content marketing related site about mortgages, meaning about qualifying for a mortgage, whatever, you think that's a pretty difficult task to overcome. Is that because of the other, and if you're expecting for that to pay off in SEO rankings specifically, which is a very focused thing you're trying to achieve online coming up in SEO, is that because of the companies with huge dollars that are essentially buying up that space and pretty much near impossible for the average Joe to come up in search rankings? Not, it's mostly because of the noise. So the first thing you've got to understand, if you've got to understand who's looking for that content, so search engine optimization is implying that a consumer has a question and they're typing it into Google. So search engine optimization means that your content is optimized to show up in front of that consumer. Now that's where it gets challenging because when you're writing about, most people think that you should be writing about generic information. You know what's detaincom ratios, all of this kind of stuff. How do you qualify for a mortgage? Well that generic, non-specialized content that doesn't require any sort of personal experience, there's so much of it out there because it's generic, there's so much of it out there, you'll never be found. Search engine optimization comes from niche. It comes from writing about something that nobody else is writing about. Writing about the same thing that everybody else is writing about. This is what I always say when I'm speaking because everybody always says, well look at this website, look at that website. See the best thing that could ever come out of trying to keep up with the Joneses is you just get to be another Jones and nobody wants to be the Jones, right? You don't want to keep up with them because then you're just going to be another one of them and there's a billion of them out there. Search engine optimization is about having something unique to say in all that noise. How do you stand out in the noise? Where's the signal that there's intelligent life out there? If you got to listen a really, really hard setty has a hard time finding intelligent information on the internet. They're listening for the signals, but it's just not there. It's mostly just noise. Okay, so you're talking about being unique and writing about something that, quote, no one else is writing about. Or something that's genuinely you. Well, that's what I was just going to say. So you take the subject of boomerang buyers. It's not that no one else is writing about those. You're writing about them in your own unique way and voice, which is your point. Correct. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And while it, see, here's, there's a lot right people writing about boomerang buyers. Yes, I will give you that. There's very few probably, right? And especially on a consistent basis in ways that you're doing, like, you know, anybody listening can go to findmywayhome.com and, of course, search for boomerang buyers and you're going to see these articles and content come up. So go ahead. I interrupted you. The true, well, the, I mean, the true value of that didn't come from the article because all I literally did was bullet pointed and there's, you know, anybody who's a conversion geek will look at it and go, man, that's crap. How do you ever get anything out of that? There's a lot that I could do to make it convert better. But the value in that really came from the comment section. So all of the value of that and people call it a forum. But there's a page there that just has the guidelines and there's almost 1400 questions on there that I answered every single one. And it, and that's one of the byproducts of being a niche content marketer is you really get to know, you really get to learn what it is you're talking about. You know, this, this comes down to the mentality. You said something important. It was my perspective and, and that's true and I make it unique to me. It's not just, while the information may initially be just generalized, the conversation that takes place around that is very specific and, and it is experience based writing and, and you're, again, you're treating it like you're talking to people one on one and when people see that, it, when people see that they'll respond accordingly. I mean, in those comment streams, you know, there's, there's more than 25 different comments on there at least that say, you know, I spent the last six hours reading all of these comments or I learned more in five minutes than I've learned in the last five months with people giving me wrong information. Yeah. So you get a lot of that. Yeah. And that, that's something you can't do if you're completely, completely automating everything. If you're never really engaged to write, and that's obviously the point of social media, right, is engaging. So if you're never actually jumping in the pool with your, you know, fellow community members there, then you have, you don't have an access to the pulse, to the tone, to the issues and challenges that come up that you can use in so many different ways in your business. So one question I have that I'm sure a lot of people are thinking about is, um, okay, you got, you know, a thousand plus comments or whatever. So how did you get so many comments where these, where did these come from? Did you show up in rankings because a, the content was unique to be the engagement started to build. You got this a thousand people following you already, right? Well, I mean, the website already, already did pretty well, but this was definitely an organic move and it, and it was because I was very early to address those issues. So, and then there had been a lot of changes with the guidelines since I started writing about it. So, Fannie and Freddie and FHA, I mean, FHA hasn't really changed, Fannie's switched their stance on, on the guidelines a couple of times in that particular topic, but it was really just investing in, it was investing in that, I mean, I guess the whole reason I ever went online in the first place is because I don't think I'm a great salesperson, but I love to educate. So how I earn business is like a, how I earn business, it's a very personal thing for me is I want people to get good information and that's the whole reason why I got on the internet is because I instantly knew fourth quarter 2007, nobody trusts lenders anymore. So this is finally an opportunity to have a voice that if you can create a voice that is genuine, that it should stand out amongst, you know, because people are already skeptical. So that's why I started publishing stuff online and, and I published stuff online as though it was actually me talking to people and that's how I approached it as though I were having one-on-one conversations because you are, if somebody reads your information, you're having a one-on-one conversation with that person. So what's the impression you want to leave them with? Okay, so the, and by the way, I really appreciate your comment about, you know, you're saying, you don't think you're good at sales, so you decided to like do more on teaching, which is actually a hallmark of a great salesperson, you know, I don't know if you've heard that I think it was Dave from Dave Ramsey talk about that whole, right, come from a standpoint of a teacher and educator rather than just a salesperson and it's a whole reciprocal kind of thing which we know and which is why, you know, we see, we're seeing the shift in the traditional sales model we have, right, from interruption marketing, all that to more, you know, to your point about teaching and educating content marketing. But naturally, I'm thinking about, as I'm sure some people are wondering, okay, cool, man, you got this, sorry, you got some, doing some really cool stuff with this particular niche, what can we track for business, you know, either as a whole from this site find my way home or from the specific stuff you're doing around boomerangs, any, any color you can provide there? Yeah, absolutely, I mean, my, for many years, I took, I took a hiatus from originating for quite a few years as the site started building up and we just used, I used the site as a branch manager to feed the loan officers in my office and there was a time with another niche product that I had early on that probably 90% of our business was coming from, coming from the site on this particular niche and then that niche went away. So then I was kind of left with a commodity again and the commodity being the loans that are available for everybody through, through everyone, I've recently been going through some changes. I was working as a direct lender or the branch manager as a direct lender for the last eight years, recently I went back out into the marketplace, got my boots back into the trenches and, and the amazing thing happened instead of handing out the leads to my loan officers, I just started answering the emails and the phone calls and the leads myself from my, just from the website and I've been doing that for, it's been about three or four months now and I'm buried, I almost can't do it, there's just, I mean, I've got too, too much going on every single day, it's, it's bringing in business and that's, I mean, the site gets about 20,000 visits a month. So it generates a little bit over a hundred leads a month that don't come to me that just go through the league form and get distributed to loan officers and then we have about another hundred people a month that'll sign up, that'll just give us the email address because they want to be updated on the, with the next payment that, or the next article that comes out. So what I started doing very early on is, and I know this is something that you, this is kind of part of the magnetism that brought us together that, like minded thinking, is I'm a huge believer in this one to many concept and writing is a one to many strategy, even though you're having a personal conversation with the person reading it, you're sharing your knowledge with, with, with many, many, you know, with many people at the same time. So I've been writing two to three articles a week for almost eight years. So there's a lot of content out there. And so every week when I write new articles, I send them out to the people that have either filled out web forms or opted in. And today, that list is around 11,000 people that I'll send to them every, you know, every, when I write new articles. So there's always that, that combination, pretty good database. The biggest, yeah, no, it's getting there. It's getting there. And I learn more about it every single day, you know, as we were discussing before we got started, I'm working with a new CRM product to create, you know, more automation. But the interesting thing, when you talk about conversion, when you talk about production, I mean, those numbers sound, they sound good and they're probably pretty good. I don't know, I don't know what to compare it to. But what I know for, what I do, I do know for a fact is that I tend to, I'm just building, building, building. And the reality is, I'm probably about 30% efficient. So when I say that is, do I have great calls to action in my content? Is the website laid out perfectly? Are my key, you know, where I get the most traffic? Am I capturing that information and converting it properly? And I'd say the answer is no. I really do think I'm probably, I honestly think I'm probably under 50% capacity for what we could be pulling off of that. I mean, there is just a, there's a lot of traffic. Now that doesn't mean leads, you know, just because you have fans on Twitter don't mean that they really know who you are. If you pay somebody on Fiverr for 10,000 Twitter followers, you know what that is. You know, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's people, but it is people taking a look at you. And if you're actually providing value, that value never goes away. And I think that's probably one of the reasons that I don't have the sense of urgency to try a lot of conversion, different conversion strategies, because this is kind of good enough for now, until I figure out a better way to do it. And that's kind of the stage that I'm at right now. Well, I mean, this thing's about to get real, yeah, it's about to get real, huh? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm learning more and more about it all the time, but I, I mean, I basically, I mean, I kind of feel like I've got to blanket on the floor with all of the parts for a Ferrari. Now all I got to do is learn how to build a Ferrari, but once it's done, all the parts are there. If I follow the instructions and I do it, you're going to have a Ferrari at the end, but right now it's just, I feel like it's potential. I mean, it's, it's a good start on the potential, but there's still a lot more that we can do with it. So, can you attribute a certain percentage then of your overall, you know, production towards or from this site? It's ballpark. It doesn't exist. 100% 100% of my production is from the site, it's doing, well, for mine, yeah, I mean, I'm doing probably two to three million a month off of it, but it's also being, you know, we're also distributing it to, distributing it to the other loan officers, yeah, so it's getting to you and a bunch of others, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, in a perfect world, I would, in a perfect world, I still think it's less than 50. It should be 50, less than 50% of your of your production, because if you're not getting the referrals and you're not getting, well, you're getting their past client business, your referral business from clients and from business partners, it's, it's just a piece of the, you know, it's a small piece of the puzzle. I don't think it would ever be. It's 100% for me because I haven't originated in eight years, but I know that the day that I started originating, I had loans open, right? So, well, not the day, but within a couple of weeks, as soon as I started taking the calls, they were, they were there and they were ready. So how do these, for me, it was, it's, yeah, no, I mean, I think, no, I was just going to say it. Yeah, the, the, the, again, it's a sales process. So if you're bringing people in based on the conversations that you're putting out into the internet, it's really, that's an easy transition. So I mean, I guess if we circle back a little bit to your initial question about having ghost writers and writing the stuff out there, when people call you or when they contact you from your content on the website, they expect that they feel like they already had a conversation with you. So if you're, if you're first real conversation with them is completely inconsistent with what the content of what they were reading is, then you're not going to have, you're not going to have a connection there. But if it's your content that comes from your heart and your experience, when they call you, they, it's never about, well, I don't know if I'm going to do business with you. By the time they call, it's how do I do business with you? Because they already know you and they already read what you have to say. And they already, you've already had that introduction. The trust is already there. There, see, this is the thing with content marketing is there is a, there is an enormous trust gap that needs to be bridged. And there is so much crap on the internet that you really have to have some layer of, of genuine exgenuinness and genuine experience in, in there, there's got to be, there's got to be some soul in that song or nobody is going to sing it. Well, you know, they just have to, it has to feel like something. It goes back to what we talked about earlier, it's your voice. So if you take a, you know, quote, ghost written content versus, you know, self generated content, there's going to likely be a position taken or an angle or a slant, perhaps, or an opinion on the personally generated versus the ghost, right? Yes. And here's what what the, and now this is my experience. So it's difficult to say this is the chicken or the egg argument, probably. So do I have the kind of interaction and, and attract of the type of visitors to my site because of how I write or, or is it, or is it because of what the consumer is looking for? Because here's, here's the thing, nobody will go to Google and type in who's the best loan officer in this city. They're going to Google because their last loan officer forgot to call them back or told them that they don't qualify for some reason. Google is, is a safety net for, for mortgages. It's not, nobody's going out there actually believing all of the, if you could walk into Bank of America or Wells Fargo and get alone by just, you know, showing, putting a thumbprint because you've got a long experience with them. If you're a perfect borrower, you know, you're not, they're not necessarily, those aren't the people that I attract. I attract the people that everybody else already said no to. And, and, and I think you've got to be careful about that. You've got to be careful about that because you've got to be able to help, but that's how you get, that's how you get the traction telling something, telling somebody something that anybody can tell them is how you get lost. Again, that's, that's how you, you know, knowing the motivation and, and how they would use it is, has to be a big part. And I think that's the part that people have challenges committing to. I mean, it's, it's hard to measure because when I started in 2007, WordPress wasn't what it was today. I'd never run a blog before, I'd never done anything like this before at all. I didn't have any online presence. So I mean, it took about 18 months until I could attribute my first closing to the actual website. So it was almost two years before I really realized that this is something that's going on. But now, you know, almost eight years later, there's so much momentum, but it took years to build that momentum. But now it's, it's pretty legitimate. I mean, it's a, it's kind of a powerhouse right now, but that's just because of years. Yes. Yeah. You've done your 10,000 plus hours. So we're going to pivot a little bit then because obviously, you know, to your point about this investment of time and effort, what do you say to somebody who doesn't have that years to make it pay off if they're looking to, you know, well, I, yeah, I alluded to it in the very beginning is, is you're not doing a website for SEO. You're doing it to make it easier to share your experience with, with your clients. So whether that's your referral partners or your past clients or every single, I always tell people, if you start a blog, just don't expect to be number one on Google and start generating, you know, there are so many different disciplines and, and things to learn how to convert readers into leads. That's a whole another thing. But if you're not putting content on the website, I find that the whole reason why I started a website is because I found I have the same conversations with almost every client. So if I'm having the same conversation with every single client, why don't I just put that conversation online so that if you meet somebody, you know, let's say you meet somebody in the grocery store and you hear them talking about mortgages or whatever and, or, and you say, oh, well, you know what, I, I actually have a lot of experience with this. Do you mind if I email you this article? So, so then you can, you, it's kind of understanding how consumers like to learn, how to consume content or educate themselves in today's market. And so you're making this available to them. And this strategy is, is, is really advertising. So you're establishing yourself as an expert, you're earning their trust and then they wouldn't do business with anyone else because you're the one that gave them the answer because like you said, there's a, there's so much noise out there that it's pretty easy to be recognized as genuine if you actually put some effort into it. So I just use it as a tool. Forget about SEO, but it's one of the best broadcasting. It's one of the best ways you can get your message directly to people that you'll ever find. Yeah, and I think that's a great point and one to highlight, right? About SEO, unless you've got some really deep pockets to invest in a long period of time to see the results on that. And more importantly is using your, your blog, right? The hub and spoke model that I know you're familiar with. I've brought up here before on the podcast and, you know, knowing that the blog essentially your website is going to be that, that hub, right, where you can, it's a destination and where you can drive people to and to your point about the grocery store setting, I alluded to this, I think earlier, which is about, you know, the traditional sales model is broken. Nowadays, you know, your point about how consumers make it make decisions about what to buy. They're not only doing that when they go to Best Buy and check out a TV they want to buy and going online and doing it on the research. If they meet you in the grocery store, if they get referred to you by an agent or whatever the case is in your networking group, they're going to want to be able to go someplace online to learn more about who you are, right? Exactly. Educate themselves about, you know, what is your knowledge, expertise level? What is your positioning? How do you, do you show up as professional? I think that's the other benefit that you're talking about when it comes to having a good online presence. Absolutely. I, and I think that should first and foremost be everybody's concern is you're, you know, this is also kind of my argument with, with, with reviews, reviews aren't necessarily online reviews. First of all, I don't know how many people actually put any weight into online reviews. I know it's kind of a cool buzzword and they like it. Like you to think, yeah, everybody knows they're made up. I mean, if you dig into how the internet works, it's pretty easy to manipulate that stuff. But I think most people, it's something that's good to reinforce, but just having somebody else saying something about you is one thing, but it's, yeah, it's really giving them the opportunity because consumers want to do the research on you. So people aren't going in and they're not going in and they're saying, where's the best loan officer in, in Irvine, but they're saying, oh, this, you know, my buddy told me about Jeff Simfer. I wonder what's, I wonder what he's all about. So they go online and they look for you. What are they going to discover? And so you want those engaging, you know, pieces of content, right? That's going to, if we go back to, it's funny. I think we were trying to isolate the definition of content marketing and I'll pull that from my friends over at Content Marketing Institute, right? It's about something that's focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately to drive a profitable customer action. I would add to that, right, it solves a problem. And so what's the problem somebody has if they're looking for a mortgage? Well, they want to find somebody who's A knowledgeable, who's got experience, who's who's respectful and authentic, I guess, if you will. And then they want to understand, right? The nuances of buying, of qualifying for a loan, the ins and outs of that, because we know most, you correct me if I'm wrong. Most of the borrowers still in today's market are not your vanilla A paper borrowers, right? Yeah, not online. That's not my experience, is there a lot of the ones that, again, I don't know if that's just what the market is or that's what I've extracted from the market. That's what I've attracted because of the type of content that I write. So you definitely get what you write for, but one of the things that, as we're talking here and I'm thinking about where the greatest success comes from, from my website, you know, I think if you were going to start a blog, I think that's great, but I, what I would think would be even more valuable is some sort of publicly accessible Q&A on your site that people could ask questions or every time you get an email, I mean, I tell everybody that they say, I don't even know what to blog about. Well, check your send folder in your email, you know, I mean, your clients email you questions all the time. If you get those questions posted on your website, and then you answer those questions, there is no better display of your expertise than how you help other people answer the questions that they have. And that's ultimately what it comes down to is when I have questions, are you going to be able to help me to navigate that because everybody is a professional until it all goes sideways, right? And as we know, anybody that's been in the market long enough, most of them go sideways. So your expertise is limited to the, a lot of times limited to the challenges that you've encountered and overcome. And until you start the process, people are choosing a loan officer without testing their expertise. They're just trusting it. Yeah, when they're trusting the implied trust of that referral, if that's where it comes from as well. But, you know, we want to do as much as we can to shore up that perceived trust and of course build that as we engage with them. And that's where content marketing and that's where your website really can come in. And I like that point about check your send folder because you've got multiple blog posts in that send folder itself or an FAQ page. I kind of like the blog post thing because it's more frequent and consistent. Each one of those can be a short little snippet, you know? And it's real world, right? It's like, hey, you got a question from a borrower today on X, but there's your blog post. Yeah. And here's how, and here's how I answered it. Right. And the title is always the question. So how can I do this or what happens on this because that's what people type in a Google. So as soon as somebody else has that issue, like, you know, when can I use, can I use income from my second job, right? That's a great piece of content that somebody who goes out there and and applies with somebody an inexperienced loan officer doesn't recognize that they have a history of having second employment income. And so they try to fit it into a program that won't allow that. They get turned down, they go online and say, why can't I use my income? So and then your article pops up and hopefully you have an answer to that. Well, we have a program that only requires one year worth of income. Right. Yeah. And there's ways for you to collect that information. Obviously, you know, the cent folders won your exchanging emails, but you can actually, you know, I could see this doing this in front of a group of real estate agents as well, right? One of the biggest questions, challenges, issues that your buyers have. And it's this, seriously, if we, if you've been in the business more than a year, you've had the same questions over and over and over again. Right. Yeah. So why not leverage that and just say, you know, answer the question with the person live, right? And then say, oh, by the way, should you have more questions? Let me direct you to such and such page. Right. We're all. Yeah. I mean, the way that I approach, yeah, the way I approach it is you're, you're an expert in what you do. You, you, we manage people's, we're responsible for a sometimes people's biggest investments in their entire life, at least monetarily. There's a certain amount of expertise that you have, be in selfish with it. If the only way to get that expertise is to sit down with you face to face, you're being selfish and you're, you're keeping that information from the, from people that really could use it. So that's where content marketing really helps as you put that expertise online so that people can find you. You're a, you're a lighthouse. You're a beacon of hope in a sea of noise out on the internet. And so I take it super seriously. I guess maybe that's the, I guess maybe that's the point. When I write, I'm not thinking about how many leads this is going to generate for me. It's usually something that's, I'm angry about or passionate about or a challenge that I overcame or something that I think is really going to help people, it's, it's not always, it's not fluff, it's not for the sake of doing it. You get angry? I think this has been, this has been like a one hour answer to like your very first question about SEO is what it seems like. No, I'm actually, I'm, I'm constantly, well, what I'm angry about is ignorant. So here's, okay, so here's a really quick example and, and I know this is kind of crazy, but this is what I run into every single day. I, I got a call like two weeks ago from a gentleman who's in a boomerang buyer situation and a loan officer told him that he qualified for a specific loan product. It's down in San Diego, a loan officer told him he qualified for FHA. He never qualified for FHA due to the timing of his short sales and his bankruptcies. Now this guy's got seven sixty FICO scores, fifty percent down payment and the first thing is the loan officer was trying to approve him for an FHA, which he never, he never qualified for the FHA in the first place. He never, never met guidelines. But this loan officer decided to let him go into escrow and try it and do it without having the experience to go on and it definitely wasn't malicious. It was ignorance. They just didn't know. So when they get down to the closing table, of course they don't qualify for FHA. So he flipped him into an eight and a quarter percent interest rate on a five one arm with a seven sixty FICO with fifty percent loan to value. Well, it just so happens that the guideline that would have allowed him to buy using conventional financing with no mortgage insurance, he was eligible for that. So this guy closed his loan last week, hasn't even made a payment. I'm doing a rate in term knocking his interest rate down by more than half saving him over five hundred dollars a month on a loan that's under two hundred thousand dollars. And so he's able to refinance out of it, but he never should have done it. And the reason is, after he went through that experience, he went online and he asked the question, when should I be able to buy after this? And my content came up and he called me and he's not even going to have to make a payment on that eight and a quarter percent interest rate loan. He's going to be able to skip a couple more payments and his first payment is going to be at today's market, today's rate without mortgage insurance and he's not going to have to worry about it again. Wow. So that's, you know, those are the stories that happen every single day. So if you specialize in something, if you specialize in something, you get it out there because there's not everybody specializes in what you specialize in. And I think that's a big piece of, that's where the SEO comes from. So the SEO comes from that, are you saying something different from everybody else? That's where your SEO comes from. Everything else is just establishing yourself as an expert and being accessible. And you got to put in the work is what I'm really taking away from this is, you know, if you're going to have that online process, it's going to take some elbow grease. Yeah, everybody thinks that the internet was access to every money spending person in the universe and I'm going to get them to all spend it with me. It's way harder than face-to-face sales. Okay. I love it. So now we're going to pivot. We're going to pivot from, you know, not exclusively from online to off, but I love that you transition to that because, you know, in some regards, I would call the internet, you know, the various subsets of that SEO, whatever, you know, kind of that bright, shiny object, even even Facebook for people, right, where they get distracted by that. And there's purveyors of that, you know, message of like, hey, man, just, you know, it's all online today. And if you're not online, you're dead and, you know, this, that, and the other thing. And of course, you know, I am a believer in the combination of both, right, with what I do for loan officers and real estate agents with the seminars we help them put on. But how do you see the overall, because you have loan officers, obviously, as you said, that report to you and all this stuff and you've been doing this for many years. You've done lots of presentations. You do online clearly, exclusively, you know, and I always ask these silly questions that I like. If I only had one, which is a dumb question, one way to actually promote and build my business, well, we don't ever want to have just one. But let me ask it this way, what do you are, I talked about this on the last blog. I love this new acronym. I have ROE return on effort, right? It's about leveraged activities. What are the most leveraged activities for you and your experience for generating business be a director referral? Oh boy. Wow, that's a good question. I mean, my, for me personally, it, it really is just coming out with that new content. That's, that's a hard question for me to answer because I have access to a resource that most other people aren't going to have access to. I mean, for me, I actually do have an audience. I, I mean, I literally have, I call them conversations. If somebody goes to my website, I had a conversation with them because that was really my, when I wrote that, I was having a conversation with somebody. So I literally have 20,000 conversations a month. And, you know, a certain percentage of those I can do business with, but the rest of them, you just don't know. I mean, I get these things, people come back years and years after, you know, at least probably five times a month, I'll get an email that the very first sentence is, I've been reading your website for the last three, four or five years. And so you just never know what's, you know, what's out there. You know, as far as what activities, what activities you invest in, and if I just went on a rabbit hole, put me back on track, but, but I don't think it, I think it just has to be something. And I think before you decide what that thing is that you're going to engage in, don't listen, don't just listen to what somebody's, how somebody's telling you that there's a better mouse trap, there's a better way to trap those mice out there. Take the time to understand what the mice want to eat. Find out where they're, where they're looking for the food. Why are they looking in those places for the food? If you're going to be online, you have to have this empathy with, you have to be able to connect with the consumer. You can't sell online. The very best thing you can do online is earn somebody's trust. And that's not something to be taken lightly. Some of it has to do with what your site looks like, but more of it has to do with how you connect with the person once they find it. And I think that's the, that's the single most important part is whatever you do, you got to be genuine about it. And, and you just have to commit to it because, especially when you're talking about emerging markets, and I think that's something that I kind of specialize in. I'm sort of hardwired for delay reward. I'm not one of those guys that, that wants to do something and then get a reward out of it. I'm the guy that thinks that, you know, if I work really, really hard at this for a really long time, nobody else will put that much effort in and I'll win in the end. So I'm wired a little bit differently and I think that's why I was okay with working on this for, for seven, eight years and I still think I've only scratched the surface of what I can do with this as we were talking about this new CRM that I've got that, that takes my ability to create a customer experience to a whole new level. Right. And, and I'm really excited about converting that traffic in that audience and, and learning new ways to build, to build trust. Awesome. Did I answer that question or did I just spin off on a tangent? Well, you know, as far as I, what I heard was a great answer is the real answer is it depends, right? If you talk about, you know, hey, what's the most highly leveraged activity I could be doing to get, to build my business and get, you know, loans in production. It does depend because it depends on where you are, who you're at. And I, I'm a big follow up Chris Brogan and, and I always, you know, like his response to people, to your point about people telling you, hey, this is the way it should be done. You know, his answer is, says who, right? I mean, it depends, it depends on what, like we opened up with, if you've got a massive database of 20 years in the business of referral business, you know, you're not necessarily worried about where your next loan has come from, because as long as you're obviously, you know, keeping that wheel greased and engaged and all that. So the answer does depend on, but you, yeah, but, and if you're one of those referral people, you can absolutely start looking at some automation tools so that it's easier so you can free up more time to talk to the people that are interested by creating systems, whether it's a website or a CRM, to stay in communication with that database. If that database is sitting in Excel and doing nothing, then you need to adopt some technologies and some different communication tools so that you, it'll free your highest, invest use is talking to people, not necessarily dialing the phone or handwriting cards, even though there's huge ROI on that personal touch, but creating some sort of automation in there is absolutely necessary. You know, I think with any of this, what's so hard about doing business in this day and age is that things change so quickly and people tend to get distracted because there's so many shiny objects and you, you're one of the rare, rare people and this is why you and I are friends is you're really going out there, you're trying to teach people things that are hard to learn and that take time to learn and they need to perfect them and they're super smart strategies, but the other 99.9% of the people in our space in real estate and mortgage, they're trying to sell us easy buttons and it simply doesn't exist. There's no such thing as an easy button, the stuff is hard and you have to choose something. I think you always have to be working on the immediate, you know, you have to close loans today, but this is where I say it's harder because there's this learning curve you have to learn to reengage with consumers in today's market. You as a consumer, we as consumers, we make buying decisions totally differently today than we did 10 years ago, totally differently. Consumers are so empowered, we can say yes, no back space, close that website, we don't have to, we're not limited to the choices that are geographically convenient to us anymore. We can go online and find the cheapest price and Amazon might have it there by 3 o'clock today. It just depends on where their distribution center is, you know, it's a different, it's a different world out there and you've got to, so I think you have to, anybody concerned about this stuff and you touched on this and I know this is one of your philosophies, you have to, you have to be willing to invest time into developing these new emerging markets, new emerging contact strategies and conversion strategies and nurture strategies at the same time you're doing what you've always done. So that's kind of why I'm saying it, for me, it's twice as much work as it's ever been. You know, if you're going to go into something like this and if you're going to get into internet marketing and online marketing, that's in addition to what you already do to make a living because it's seriously going to take, it's this learning curve. There's absolutely no way around it. So there's no way to get around the learning curve. So that's just going to take patience, trial, testing, measuring, tweaking, you know, re-launching, it's a process and it's a whole new set of, it's a whole new mindset and a whole new set of skills that you need to develop and it takes time. Yes. So don't look for the easy button. If you press the button and you don't get rich, don't give up because the button was a lie, the strategy is probably, it's probably very relevant and it probably works. Yeah, and we so much want to believe in the easy button. It's very attractive and intoxicating, but I think, you know, we've all, hopefully, you know, been down that road enough times to realize if it's that easy, right? Everybody would be wildly successful. And the truth is, right? So no, I love that. Way to kind of button it up. Okay, we're almost out of time, a couple of minutes left, but I do have like two rapid fire questions to throw at you. So I'm just curious on your take on this because obviously you're, you're really tapped into what's going on technology related to consumers. All right. First question. Quick and rocket loans. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Question mark makes an impact, takes market share. What's your take on that? That's a great question. I've been having that conversation a lot lately. It's, I think that for me, I'm actually excited about it because that's more business for me. I get a lot of traffic. I get a lot of traffic from people that talk to the customer service agents at, at Quick and Loans, the, the, to say that those are loan officers and that's a mortgage company. It's really, they skim the, the cream off the top of the cream. And that's all they're going for. And they spend billions of dollars to do it, but they make a good ROI on it. It's not the market I'm in. I'm not concerned about it at all. I get, I get calls every day from people that said that the Quick and Loan Officer told them that their computer told them that they don't qualify, but they don't know anything beyond that. Well, no, I mean, and that's not, that's not a dig on anybody that works there, but they don't hire for that. No, I don't. They don't hire people with years of experience, they hire people to answer films and, and punch keys. Yeah. So, um, you know, I think the reality is, I think it's smart. I love where the technology is going, because when the technology gets cheap enough to be able to make, you know, to make a good and automated underwriting decision with 90% accuracy for 5% of your database, I mean, that's, that's pretty sexy to me. I love the fact that that's where technology is going is going to places that can, that can make it an easier process for the consumer. Now the reality is, is that going to help more or less consumers. I think it's going to help less consumers, because you're setting yourself up for, if you're going under the, the, the implication that we're going to be able to give you an approval, we, anybody who's been in the industry knows that that almost never works. Once you get the paste up, what, wait a minute, what's, what's this? What's this over time? What's this? You know, there's always something else. So when you're basically promising a pain-free mortgage experience, the first time that pain bubbles its way up, and then if you don't have an expert there to help walk you through that pain, then, then now, quick and has a reputation of, you know, not being able to help. But they, they don't really care. I mean, their business model isn't designed around referrals, it's around one and now. You know, it's how many people can I get through, get in, get done, get out. It's not the same type of experience. So love the technology. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I, I, I, I, I like it. I think the easier that people think that it is, the more they need people like me. There you go. Awesome. For a dose of reality. All right. Last one I guess just for sake of time. Facebook or Twitter, and I know there's no context around that, but it's two places, two places. I don't spend that much time on absolutely by far learning Facebook and Facebook's marketing, power editors and marketing tools, learning how to leverage their insights, putting a cookie on your website, running, you know, we're pulling the demographics on your, on your, your traffic. Facebook has, has so far and above everybody else, some of the greatest marketing and segmenting and insight tools that are out there today, and it's still inexpensive. So I, I don't see, I don't see how I can sell mortgages over Twitter, but I still think Facebook is an incredibly powerful tool. I think if you're going on there, telling people about the loans that you've closed, and I still think that's kind of annoying. I, I spend most of my time on Facebook and private groups, but as a marketer, Facebook as a marketing platformer, as a way to communicate with your potential clients, super, super fascinating, haven't cracked it yet, but it's definitely something that I'm putting a lot of effort and energy into right now. Well, that's, that's a great summary, actually. And it's mostly, just, it's mostly putting, it's mostly putting education out there. Yes, I was just going to say. It's like, hey, how do I buy after bankruptcy? Right. I'm able to target that person, target that first time home buyer, and advertising a webinar that says the top three, top three ways to buy a home with no money down in California, you know, and, and, and checking those audience insights and getting them to sign up for a webinar, that, that kind of thing. I think there's, I think there's a super powerful strategy there. Yeah, it's just another place to drive that engagement and deliver that content marketing, like you said, to be relevant. Awesome. Well, this has been great. I know you are busy and probably got a few more loans in your pipeline since we've been talking. So you need to get at those. Yeah. Once again, though, how direct people to your page, which would be a great learning experience for them. If you don't mind, I've already alluded to it during this call already, findmywayhome.com. Sure. Any other places you want to direct people or is that good? No, that's good for now. I'm, I'm working on a new, working in a new startup right now. It'll actually probably be launched by the explode conference. I think April 19th is Orange County. So I'll be out there talking about some stuff and talking about my new company, but yeah, I'm building a new mortgage company right now, kind of around everything that we've learned and, and, and kind of leveraging all the stuff that I've done to help, you know, to employ people that don't have the time to necessarily do it all themselves, but still grasp the concept and know how to operate in that kind of an environment where you've got these trust-based online leads coming in. So no, lots of stuff coming up, but findmywayhome is a good place. Okay. I'm always hanging out there right in articles, answering comments and all that other stuff. You definitely are. So you'll get some new stalkers, hopefully, as a result of this. And just to clarify too. Sure. And people can call me. Yeah. People can call me anytime. You know, send me an email, reach out if you have a question about something. I've, I've never had a secret in my entire life. I'll tell anybody everything that I do, because I know most people won't do it. So, but, but a lot of times I'll find super smart people like you and you'll come back and say, well, that was great. Check this out. And then you start that, you know, you create those relationships where you have other like-minded people and, you know, we're all on little bit different islands, but we're in the same ocean and we can help each other out. So, I really invite that. Well, thank you for that. And just a quick note for those listening. The explode conference that Scott's referring to, he's speaking at in Anaheim, California on April 19. There's a bunch of those shows happening across the country. If you want to learn more about them, go to explodys.com and by the way, explode is without the e. It's exp. L-O-D-E. This. Explodys.com. And hopefully they're coming to a city near you. We'll put it in the show notes. That is it, my friend. Scott Shang. Thank you so much for making time. This is a class in and of itself, man. So, thanks again. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Have a great one. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. So, you mortgage marketing radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing, get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. Hey, guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchased business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchased business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you. 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