Ep #50: Rick Elmendorf on Closing 560 Loans

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, welcome to episode 50 of mortgage marketing radio. I am so thrilled you're here, episode 50. Can you believe it? 50 episodes. And with me for any time now, I appreciate you and I thank you for tuning in. And this is among the best episodes that we've featured and of course, they're all good but I'm biased, right? So I'd like to know what you think. Hey, if you like the episodes, make sure you leave us a positive rating on iTunes. That's how we reach more people and do more good in the world. If you've got a question for me, right, you can go to the blog and contact me there, mortgage marketing institute.com where you can simply send me an email info at mortgage marketing institute. So episode 50 wanted to make it a great one and I promise you it is. If you've ever wanted to see here, you know, a blueprint for being a modern mortgage professional and succeeding in today's world, obviously some of our other guests definitely have a hand in providing that roadmap for you. And our special guest, Rick Elmendorf today with caliber home loans is on equal par with any other of the mega superstar guests we've brought on. So who is Rick? What is he all about? Obviously, I'll let him share that with you, but the quick bio on Rick. Number one, VA and military lending specialist in Metro, D.C. Top 1% of mortgage originators in America ranked number 29 on the Scotsman's Guide, 2016 numbers. What did it look like? Are you ready for this? 560 loans, $211 million. And one of the great things I love about Rick is not only is he incredibly intelligent and professional. He's also a go-giver. He shares. He gives. He believes in giving back and teaching others, right? So that they too can learn. As a matter of fact, I know he's a big starwars fan, so I got to give a shout out to one of his favorite quotes, which is always pass on what you have learned, mm-hmm. Who does that? That's Yoda's quote. That's my impression of Yoda. So I hope you like it. But anyway, today on this week's episode with Rick, we unpack a lot of stuff, right? It means to be a VA specialist. If you've ever thought about that niche, how to become one? What do you need to prepare for? What to do and what not to do? Does it matter that you're picking a niche or not? What are some of the affiliations you can associate with? What types of communication do you need to have set up? What structure and process in place if you're working with the military? Because there are certain expectations around that when you're working with VA, right? How to get educated and be intelligent and separate yourself as literally. An expert in that business. We also unpack a lot from Rick's brand new book, just released on Amazon. There's a link in the show now. It's for you to go get the book. It's only $30 in the Kindle store and it is literally a seminar in how to succeed as a loan officer. Here's the title of the book, the loan officer revolution leading the charge for creating realtor partnerships that actually work. And I bought this book and it is a page turner. It's written well. It's compelling. It's the thing I like about it most is it's not fluff. It's got real world tangible strategies, tactics, systems, things you can borrow. Rick just shares. He opens up the box of tools and tricks and things that have been proven to work for him as a makeup producer, conversations, how to engage with agents, how to set up the relationship so it's right from the beginning. And this podcast episode, gosh, we just really dove in deep here in terms of strategies and tactics, understanding how to be more successful in attracting real estate agents, how to convert the right agents, making sure that you've got the proper alignment there. We talk about using the disk profile, I'll give you a link to it in the show notes for how to hire and build your team. We talk about Salesforce, marketing automation, building a team, what's Rick's loan onboarding process. And does he get involved? When does he remove himself from the situation so he can scale and grow his business? I mean, man, this is just get ready to take notes, right? You're going to have to go back and listen to this one a second time. And of course, this is episode 50. So if you are at all interested in teaching agent classes, you've heard me talk about that a number of times with some podcasts, guests, most recently episode number 48 Vince Kingston. If you haven't heard that one, go back and check that one out. And if you want to learn more about done for you agent lunch and learn classes, check out and get powerful presentations.com because we're just about to close that down this month of July for the rest of the summer. So anyway, back to my special guest, Rick Almondorf, just an incredible interview, one that I'm very proud to bring to you. And if you like it, let us know, right? If you're new here, subscribe. This is episode number 50, more good stuff to come. If you want to leave a positive comment, do show on iTunes, leave us a rating. If you want to email me, got a question, comment, email me info at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Hey, Rick, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me, Jeff. It is my pleasure and my honor considering all the great things that you're doing out there when in terms of a loan officer. You're one of those guys, by the way, I just have to tell you that I love, there's certain times I get to bring people on where you're a great example, if you will, of what's possible and of a professional standard in the industry. So I thank you for holding that lamp high. Well, that's my pleasure, thanks for having me on. All right, so for those listeners, quick summary, what's the brief bio on Rick, how long you've been in the biz and maybe some quick production stats, if you will, you know, it's whatever you want to give? Sure. Well, I've been in the business, I'm going to be dating myself now. I mean, goodness gracious, 1994, going back quite a few years now. Got into the business, listening to a, listening to the radio, I was listening to, I was a real state of prazer before coming in a prazer, technically, I was a full time golfer. So I got into college and then after college, all of my buddies were all people that I knew my brother and all of his buddies were real state of prazer. So I started doing real state of prazer, did that for a few years and turned around a briefcase of a bunch of, you know, loans to take pictures for and do a prazer for them. Like, who the heck is this guy doing all, and he's making a ton more money than I was. And I guess in the beginning for all of us is like, oh, it's going to be a great money being a loan officer of it. For me, you see money, right? Yeah, right. Easy money. Hey, maybe in the fast and easy days. Just chain how much money do you make? I don't worry about that. Right. You make $10,000. You manager. Oh, goodness. Nobody does that. But yeah, so I got in, took an interview for a mortgage company, a mortgage broker up in Cainesville, Maryland, and I drove for 18 months from Clifton, Virginia, living with my parents, driving up to Cainesville, Maryland for 18 months in a row, and then kind of work my way closer in and 25 years later. Here I am. Wow. Yeah. So that's the background there. Funny enough, early in my career, I was just probably like everybody else, and, you know, I was, you know, I was kind of just learning, learning by fire, and how you learn this business, right? Just get caught on fire, make a lot of mistakes, and just learn from them. But, you know, I became a real study of the industry, and read a lot, and back then we were doing these coffee lounge. Remember this as a, yeah, man, cost of funds index. Yeah, right. Right. A cost of your house index, you know, loss of house index. Right. Right. Yeah. Especially the guys that threw the three-year-hard pre-phase on there with the 4% margin. Yeah. I'm not even going there. I praise the Lord for, you know, my team, I have a really great team. I've got, there's nine of us here, including myself. And last year, my team was able to accomplish some pretty outstanding things. We did just over 211 million in volume, over 560 loans, so we've got a really, really nice year. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. And the story is awesome. Very relevant. Thank you. It's always interesting to hear how somebody became an LLO. Yeah. And many times, you know, it's funny. It's that same situation where it's like, hey, man, they're like, they're making a lot of money. I should give that a whack, you know? Right. And that was the similar journey for me. But you mentioned your team, and this has been kind of top of mind for me lately, 560 loans. Wow. As soon as somebody hears that, right, many questions come up for people depending on where they're at in their career. One of the questions is, how the heck do you do that? How do you manage that, right, that because as you know, many people are like, man, I'm having a tough time managing my five or eight deals, you know, in the pipeline. So when you say you've got a team, give me a quick breakdown on who's originating on your team, who's, you know, production ops, that kind of thing. Yeah. Sure. So I have a slew of assistance, and each of the assistants have different things that they do for me. So I have, we'll call them two junior loan officers. They basically help me do more origination duties. And then I have free production assistants who kind of handle alone once it's alone. And then I have some, some, an admin that I have a business development person that handles kind of new leads, filters leads, handles like stuff like Zillow or maybe, you know, looking back in the past client database, which is a real big piece of originating nowadays. Ask me about that because it's a strong opinion on purchasing refinance business even in this market. But yeah, having somebody that's really focused on that. So that's how we're structured. So the junior L.O.'s, I got three free back in assistants and admin and a lead guy. Okay. So map out for me kind of your loan process, if you will, because I, you know, on my calls I work with L.O.'s, and oftentimes we're trying to structure the ideal loan process and the classic kind of metaphor example in the past has been, you know, the doctor patient thing, right? You're coming to the office, you meet with the nurse, et cetera, and, you know, so what is your process look like? I'll give you a perfect example. It just happened this morning, you know, at a past client, give me a call and said, you know, I'm coming up on year three and a half of my arm. We have a good arm rate, but I really want to lock this in for another seven years. We're going to be here longer than expected. So I do the initial call, initial contact. The initial contact is anywhere from six to eight minutes and sometimes it's longer depending on if it's, you know, the situation has a little hair on it. But we'll set it up in the database. So I'll create an opportunity record and Salesforce, which we use. And then once I kind of have a general direction, I will then assign it to one of my junior L.O.'s or depending on that, it might go directly to an assistant that would do, does a worksheet. Now, in this particular case, I was just kind of typing it up as if we went along, but either myself or one of my assistants will pop the worksheet out to the client, and then I tasked my assistant, my junior, to actually call him on the phone and she called him, not 30 minutes later, got the green light. And that's what she did. So then once the green light is given, the driver says, yes, she sends a actually getting things rolling email. That's kind of my way of when the process starts for the backend and when the process stops for me, is that getting things rolling email and that getting things rolling email is like, hey, thanks. We're getting things rolling. Here's what we're doing. By the way, here's the attached estimate. So it's clear as day, what they're doing, what they've agreed upon. And then at that point, then my backend, guys, one of my assistants will take it depending on the account that it's attached to, or whoever's assigned it based on their capacity. We'll take it, do a walk-in call, structure the loan, get whatever we need or don't need. And these digital mortgage days, and maybe we don't need a whole lot, hopefully. But gather what we need, get it in for processing. It goes into processing underwriting. And then once it comes back out of underwriting, I'll have that person either clear all the conditions or have one of my other backend people clear all the conditions. And then they do all the stuff that we have a big part of my system was like, I identified years ago, what are the things that can blow up a loan, right? So I kind of made systematic things like once a loan is in process, what are the basically four things I have to do on every loan? As long as you get to these milestones, we're okay. But if you choke and you miss one of these things, the loan could blow up. First one's easy, it's the loan approval. So we check the loan approval, we check the appraisal, and we do a 10-day prior to closing review. And then we do a what's called a final CD review with a client. These are phone calls. And there are also ways that on purchases, we can call the real estate agent, especially at loan approval. It's a happy call, right? We'd be appraisals in, happy call, 10-day, hey, happy call, I'm calling you, we're 10 days out. And then the final CD, everything's been signed, everything's good to go. Because we'll see it closing in three days, that five days, whenever we do that final review. Yeah, so that's kind of our system. That's great. Who locks the, are you quoting the rate and who locks the loan? Yep, yep, the loan officer, everyone on my team is licensed, loan officer, and sometimes I may direct and the client on my may agree, hey, let's hold off, it's Friday, it's much Friday, nobody locks on Friday, we're up 20, we didn't get a really price, so we're going to wait and see how this thing goes out, comes up on Monday, we look at all the different services out there that kind of advise us to lock or not lock, NBS Highway is a really good one, I'm very happy that we use that, and that's how we kind of manage it. Typically, I or one of the general laws are locking it. And then do you punch back into that process at any time, or are there specific things that your team knows that this is when and only when to bring Rick in, for instance, appraisal come short or something? So my very first hire in this business, and I wrote about this, I just finished a book by the way, and I have actually have a part of the book on that, is like my almost big mistake, and I talk about when Rick is going to get back involved, but it's like the first person I hired in this business, which I actually couldn't even afford by the way, but I hired him anyway, and I paid for him, was this guy named Troy, no, I wasn't Troy, this was my new hire, it was Doug, back in the day, Doug was basically to handle everything once alone became alone, you handle all my issues, you handle all my problems, if I have to get involved, then involve me, but you know that my time is best used, doing my highest and best use, which is going to get more loans, right? So we kind of have that built in, and part of my book also, I wrote years ago, I was encouraged by a coach to write what's called a descriptive account, and I actually include that in the book too, for somebody to, anybody wants to plagiarize off of me, it's fine, but it's literally, it's like, I don't even know how long it is, it's like probably eight to ten written pages, it's literally taking the buyer through my entire process, from like how I want them referred to me, who refers it, how the process is, and injecting Rick in the process by the way, is actually kind of interesting, it doesn't have to be me doing it or me calling, it just has to be a team thing, for example, my team may say, hey Rick's in the office, you need to speak to him, they'll always say no, unless they really say yes, right? Because if somebody calls me, I only want it to be for one of two reasons, Rick, thank you, or Rick, I referral for you, those are the calls I really want to answer, other than that, it's probably a problem call, and I really would not want to think of those as phone calls. And what is the language, and by the way, your book, and we're going to come back to that a little later in conversation, but for those who want to know right now, it'll be in the show notes as well, a link to it on Amazon, the loan officer revolution, leading the charge for creating real-to-partnerships that actually work, that's going to be a lot of what we talk about for sure, and I love that that descriptive account is in there, I'm defiant a borrow that creatively. What's a lot of people I talk to, you know, are like, well how do I set the, how do I disengage myself elegantly from that transaction without making them feel like I'm kicking them to, you know, the curb, and they're not getting Rick, you know what I mean? Yeah, part of that, I will tell you this, most borrowers don't mind, and I will say the majority of borrowers don't mind. They understand the team concept, don't they? Yeah, they do. Yeah. It's our hardheadedness as loan officers that don't want to give up. We think we're so special. We think we need to micromanage everything in the process, and I'll tell you this, and there's been no bigger control freak than me. Before I hired Doug, and I was able to learn to let go, people tell me now I was like, my wife always jokes, and he's like, yeah, you don't do anything, Rick, all you do is sit at home and play video games, which I love, which I love to do side note. Oh, really? Yeah, okay. Okay. What's your go-to game? Come on. Well, for business purposes too, by the way, and I'll get into that too, if you really want me to, but legal legends, and I'll also play that competitively, and then I've called Diddy franchise as well. Look at. Huh? Yeah, look at. Yeah, actually sponsored cod champs two years ago, and was up in LA for it, and had a lot of really interesting people, so there's a lot of money in esports. People would not, it's not just 13-year-olds sit behind a console playing video games. The demographic is quite astounding. Well, they're intelligent. I know. Maybe, and let's, I'm making a note here on my sheet, so hopefully we'll have time to come back to this, because I've got a teenage kid, and maybe you can give me some perspective on that. Anyway. Yeah, go back to that. Yeah, but disengaging eloquently, I think it's just a decision that the loan officer can make. When I say, hey, Fred, I'm going to be putting you into process. My team is going to take care of you. We're going to be in touch in these four points in the process, guaranteed, and you're always going to be around, and I will always be available for you as well, and you and I will be in touch. When I say you and I will be in touch, my team is always keeping me in touch. Hey, Rick's in the office, you can just speak to him. Do you have any questions? Is there anything you want me to get Rick involved? It's always that type of communication. So they're asking that question often on the call then? Oftentimes, sometimes they forget, but the idea is that the borrower doesn't ever feel like Rick just left them. That's not the case. And here's the most important thing. What's the last thing that people remember? They remember the last person they spoke to in the transaction, right? So I instituted a system quite a while back, whereas I have a report that's run every Friday, and on Friday, I get a list of every single party to the transaction of every loan that closed the week before. So this Friday, I will get a list of everybody that closed last Monday through Friday. I will then reach out personally, first by email, and then I will then choose to call maybe the parties that I want to personally reach out to, like, pick them up the phone. But the email always gets a response. I mean, I will tell you, like, half of the people respond, hey, your people was great. I can email you guys if you want to see a copy of the email that I send out, but basically it's, hey, it's Rick. I just wanted to see how I'm checking in to see, I don't actually, I don't like that word checking in. I don't say checking in. I hate checking in. I hate checking in. I hate following up. Nobody likes to be followed. But I say something along those lines. I can get you the exact verbiage if you want. But basically says that I'm really curious as to to your standpoint, how did we do? I really want to know to help improve and all that kind of good stuff. And that goes out so generic, but it goes to the borrower and it goes to the buyer and the listing agent, all parties that were part of that referral process. Is that an individual email you're sitting down and, you know, cutting and pasting and sending, or is that automated from a software? Well, it's automated to the point where I actually manually send it every, but I send it to a list that goes to all of those people. I do it out of Salesforce. So it is automated. Yeah. Once it's okay. And do you in terms of leveraging online reviews, capturing testimonials, what do you do there? I'm just trying to follow this funnel the whole way out. Sure. Yeah. The online reviews are actually kind of cool and we're making some really positive changes to that too. Yes. I am a fan. Okay. I'll say I'm a fan of Zillow. I am. Not so hyped up on their search, but whatever there is what is. I love Zillow reviews because when people pop in, it's going to come up. So I'm been really kind of focused on trying to get Zillow reviews because I think it's the most closest to my industry where people are searching than any other review, even like Google reviews and stuff like that. I think people that are searching for loan officers or for real estate, if they see me highly rated on Zillow, that's going to be really, really good. So we've been really pushing to get, you know, the clients that we work with and that doesn't happen on every, every one, but we're trying to get it. We have, I think, we have well over 100 reviews on Zillow right now. So we're trying to, really trying to get those as up, I'm actually just trying to log on to see how many I have. I have 113 currently, we're trying to get, we want to get everybody that doesn't learn with us to do a review and yeah, so how do you get them to do the review? Well, just probably every company does their own review like they send it after closing. We kind of use that as a judge of, hey, that guy gave us a really good review because it's the simple one. Like, you know, they just click, click, click send right back to the company. Well, we get this and, oh, that guy gave us a really nice review or if I had a conversation with the guy, hey, you did a great job, Rick, or maybe they responded to my email that I do after the closing. That's kind of my cue along with my, my, the file managers that actually did the backend piece, you know, after the getting things rolling, that person handled it. It's their job to then contact the client. Hey, we really enjoyed working with you. I see you had a, you gave us a great review or you responded to Rick or we really enjoyed working with you. Would you do us a favor and give us a review on Zillow and we get them. And then you send them a link to the page. That's right. Yep. Okay. Cool. Awesome. All right. Very good stuff. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, and we tie comp to it. You tie comp to it. Now tie and comp to it. So we're now as just meeting with my wife earlier, it's like, you know what we're going to do is we're going to make these, these payouts quarterly and say, all right, we're looking for the Zillow reviews and we're going to, we're going to say, all right, if you had this one of your reviews, you get this amount of dollars per five star review. Oh, wow. That's great. Very motivated to get those then. Yeah, right. And in one last question, I guess on your team and your process, how do you hire four of those roles? Do you use any like, you know, disk assessments or anything? For example, yeah, we do use disk. We use that. I think the Tony Robbins disk assessment, I have kind of a weird disk. So it's like, I have most of you think of sales who they have, what is a D I or whatever, but I'm actually not even an I, I mean, no, if I'm probably more adaptive, I than anything, but I have a DS and we do use the disk and but I guess what I say, what I am is that you typically want people that aren't what you are as a loan officer to support you depending on what role they are. And if you want people like juniors, you want to make sure that they are, have that profile of a sales person. So you're not, I have a guy that works for me. He's a super great, highly organized dude, but that dude is not going to be a sales guy. He's going to be, he is really, really good and smart, but he belongs, helping manage at the back end of my process. This particular guy that we just hired, his name is Travis, actually son of a past corner of mine. So good place to hire people from right, by the way, smart young kids from parents that you've done loans for, not bad. He does a lot of admin for me and he also is getting into file management right now. Okay. What about you say, you know, like your junior LOs, what do you typically see for their profiles? Because oftentimes the question I get is, well, you know, I don't want to bring somebody in who's like a high D, because you're just going to like learn the biz and then leave me. Yeah. You want pretty much, I think a S is really important, that's what I am as well. So having that high I, high S is really, really key. That's the, it's the outgoing, you know, easy to connect with people. I don't need the high D. But also is consistent, yeah, caring, the high D is just a, can be a very, a nightmare. You're just class. Yeah. You will clash. I think the support in the junior LLO, it's going to be more of a high I, high S. Right. Well, I'm going to put a link to the Tony Robbins disc profile in the show notes for anybody listening. You can take it, we use it a lot in coaching and stuff and make sure we got the right people on the bus. Yep. Yep. Cool stuff. All right. So let's transition and then to, you know, your focus for business, you know, how you get business. Now, I know you are clearly, you know, a VA specialist. And by the way, another link will put is your website, Rick Elmendorf.com, but that'll be in there. And it's a very well done website, by the way, very professional. But you, what percentage of your business is VA? It's almost 50%. I was just doing the numbers last week and we closed just shy of $90 million in VA business last year of the 211. So a couple of thoughts on that one, you know, when I see somebody who's a VA, you know, one, first thing is, is I'm curious, right? Why? Right? Is there some affinity to veterans? Yeah. Number one, let's just start with that. Yeah. I mean, I have, my, my father was, is retired air force. And you know, I, you think, well, is there an affinity there? Yeah, of course, my dad, I didn't really love the military just because my dad was in the military. My dad had a good career in the military. He used to, my dad was crazy. Still is crazy. He's 90. He'll be turning 90 this, this next August 27th, so which I'm going down that to see him. But I mean, the guy literally just, he is like driven dude and he flew an F-94 that a straight wing flight fighter that wasn't supposed to go through the speed of sound well. He made it go through the speed of sound straight down full throttle. So that's how a guy, my dad is retired and yeah, I know, right? Retired in 1970. I was born in Bangkok, Thailand. So that kind of a sense of the military. My brother is more, who are older than me, 10 years older, you know, they traveled around with them in different locations. I was, he was stationed here at the Pentagon, then got out quickly, and then just, we stayed here in Northern Virginia my whole life. But he got me involved in a financial planning organization that he worked for. That was a primary to the U.S. military and I made some really good connections there and just honestly just fell in love with that type of clientele, you know, highly organized. You know, not that I was, I really, I was really in my career, I wasn't really in tune to like, oh, that guy's a shopper or that guy's not a shopper or this agent or this type of clientele is going to be shopping. You know, I never thought of it that way. It's like, I just really love working with military folks. I mean, I learned their lingo, I learned why they do, why are they moving in and out of the area. I learned why they come into DC, you know, what the career goals are, what kind of happens to them after the military, what are their options. And then some of the challenges that face them and their families and how important it is for them to make sure they have a good connection in the financial space to help them. So in part of that, I got licensed in a lot of different states as well to really help a lot of the military people that move, you know, to different states and whatnot. You and I talked about this before the recording, but you know, loan officers are often looking for that special tier, that niche, 203K, you know, FHA, whatever, obviously VA is one of those. If somebody's evaluating becoming a quote, VA specialist, what advice would you give them, you know, that you've learned what's important to know about that niche before diving in? Well, there is never a niche before that if you screw up a vet or an activity, you are host. I mean, but if you do a really good job, you're set. And that's the network amongst military is so tight. You can get a bad name quicker than you wouldn't believe in the military, but you can also get a really good name. So that's why I would say the first thing to just be wary of, I mean, you really have to have your ducks in a row and be professional. And yes, or no, sir, I mean, they're, they're used to a different, honestly, they're trained that way, and they're just used to a different demeanor. It's not, hey, buddy, hey, pal, I had to correct one of my assistants, prior back, she called them, she called this guy Chuck, Chuckie. I'm like, I mean, what are you doing? This guy's like a, he's a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. I call him Chuckie. I mean, he had the idea, this guy is sort of whatever. So I think the professionals of that. And then also you just really need to know your stuff. There's nothing like, uh, let me think, there's no, there's no room for, for error when you're dealing with the military guys. I mean, there's just, there's no room for error. There's a certain high standard of, of, of performance, and expect you to be on your game. And yeah, I get what you're saying. Um, know your stuff, study the loans, study the veteran loan. There's a lot of things about it. Study what the VA will actually do versus what your company may or may not allow because there's things that the company may not allow or overlays, so to speak that other companies have that aren't really VA guidelines that aren't really part of VA. And the bad advice that people are getting that, you know, I'm USA, just the other day, I was telling one of my clients, oh, you got to, you got to refinance your VA loan in Florida so you can free up all your eligibility to buy another one up here and say, no, you don't. No, you don't. You know, things like that. So how did you get educated on VA? I studied, I studied, and I studied, I read, I mean, I literally read the VA handbook. It just, a lot of those things, you just have to just, and it comes by experience too because there's, you can't ever be prepared for every situation. Um, and if you don't know something, it's okay to say, I don't know and figure it out. Um, you know, developing good relationship with an even an underwriter in your, in your company is how I was able to kind of learn as well along the road, but a lot of it's just study knowing what works and what doesn't work. How useful is it? Like, you know, you see these other organizations that are affiliated with helping the loan officers become right VA certified or, you know, other areas, I can't think of them right now, homes for heroes and military boot, boot camp, mortgage boot camp. Any thoughts or comments around, you know, affiliating yourself with an organization to help, you know, either brand you and educate you and things like that. Okay, so that, that has its positives and negatives, but let's just be realistic. It's all a marketing ploy, right? Well, any designation you get, it's, it's mostly for marketing. And, you know, I've, now, I will tell you this. Now there's some certifications you can get on the mortgage side like a, I think it's called military friendly and then there's a certified military lending specialist, I believe it's called, but those come with more rigorous training. It's nice to have the designations and it's nice to have all those things which I have, but it's more of a marketing thing than anything. Yeah, but that's a great point because, you know, that's a relevant thing to consider because it's like, okay, I'm an expert in VA, unless you bring that to the surface and, you know, use some branding around that, right? People aren't going to know that until you get on the phone. Like I see, I clicked on your website, you are, you use that term, military friendly, you've got an award, right? MS 17, an award for that. And then I click over to your site, which is red team lending. Yeah. VA loans with, so, so what's red team lending all about? Well, we were trying to do with red team lending as basically an arm of the Elmordorf team. So in order to kind of further my, let's say, my niche in the VA lending space, we wanted to have a place where we could send people that are going to be VA loans and also market it and brand it. So they come there. It's all about VA. It's everything about VA. Yeah, it's done very well by the way. And that's what I'm getting to the point about branding is like, I mean, you know, somebody who's in the military and it's funny, I teach a branding class for realtors and I talk a lot about branding. And there is a real estate company that's all veterans, nothing but veterans. It's, I forget what it's called, but you know, one of their mission statements is, we are a team of veterans, right, bonded together. And they serve the military and family, which to your point earlier, they've got unique needs in the military family, right? Moving around a lot, one spouse is gone more often than the other. And so, and that's a bond, like you said, it's a tight community. So I think that's very smart for you to just create this total positioning thing around a VA. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, very awesome. Okay. So, so how would somebody then, if they're thinking about a niche, I asked you this question before, I had a loan officer actually asked me, well, you know, I'm thinking about specializing in X. Maybe it's first time home buyers, doesn't have to be VA. It could be any quote niche, right? Am I going to lose out on other business? What if I just advertise myself as being, you know, I'm a first time home buyer specialist? Does that mean I'm not going to get that other business? What would you say to that? Yeah, I think no, of course not. I mean, yes, we advertise ourselves as VA loans, but, you know, you don't just do those VA loans. And it's funny, like one road always leads to another, right? So here's one thing I would look at, when you specialize in something, that's kind of a method for people to contact you, right? It's maybe it's a realtor. If you specialize in first time home buyers with these down payment assistance programs, I think that, and even like VA, you could argue is that that would be considered like kind of a specialty product that a realtor who currently has another relationship would not feel bad about you doing that loan. Well, well, it's a VA loan there for I said it correct, you know, or if it's a VHG loan, I sent it to, you know, to Chris or whatnot. So I don't think ever you would lose out on other business, just by virtue of being a specialist, I think just having that specialty will lead to other business as well. I mean, we've we've not gone out and said, hey, don't send me anything, I do VA loans and I don't think anybody in their right mind is a realtor or a financial planner anything would say, oh, well, Rick only does VA loans. I don't think anybody would think that. It's really our perception. It's like you said earlier about us wanting to control the client, you know, kind of process and being willing to let that go. It's our perception that if I become a specialist, I'm going to lose out on other business. But I like your point as well. Just put a tagline, you know, it's like, you know, we have VA military specialists and oh, by the way, I do all other loans as well. Don't forget. Well, I think it's like you and I were mentioning earlier, it's like you got to become known for something, right? And I like the old the old line is who makes more generalists or specialists. And you know, specialists for sure, but that doesn't mean they don't take on that additional business. It's just that hopefully gets you to rise above the noise in your market. Absolutely. Okay, so your book, let's let's go back to the book, the loan officer revolution, which is available on Amazon Kindle. There's a link in the show notes for those that are listening, leading the charge for creating a realtor partnerships that actually work. Are you implying Rick, that realtor relationships don't work? How did you guess? Yeah, you know, I spent a little time in the beginning of the book kind of explaining my thoughts on this and I spoke recently in Vegas with my good friend, Timberhey. I actually offended a couple of realtors who actually came to be afterward. And I tweaked, well, I tweaked my my Burbage in the book because there's a little bit more harsh, I guess. And I kind of want to ask myself is like, well, what are you upset about? The truth or are you upset? But the reality is I think that the issue that exists right now, and I hate this whole thing, how the whole market has gone to this, this whole pay to pay him and mentality. And it's not just from the loan officer's side. And by the way, I am not ever opposed for, and it's not all about pay to play, by the way, it's about, I don't mind investing money in the business of a real estate agent. I don't mind investing, having paying money to a real estate agent to advertise alongside of them. But the issue really revolves around what is the partnership there. I mean, is it really about deepening relationships that to where we can really leverage each other? And if you know, Darren Hardy is, but I saw Darren speak a while back. And if you're like me, you probably have a Brazilian project, and I haven't had hundreds of things I was thinking about doing about, I'm thinking to myself, gosh, I'm really close. I went out and talked to him afterwards. And there's nobody there. I'm like, anybody know what I'm going to talk to this guy? Well, I'll go tell him I'm like, Darren, I'm like, I'm mumbling to him. I'm bum-bombling. I don't even know what I was saying. And I was like, Darren, I got so many things I feel like I'm like right on the edge of like doing something great. But how do I get to like focus on what I'm supposed to be doing? And how do I make relationships work and do these things? I've got because I was in the midst of trying to write this book, too, that I did in a sitting actually. And he told me something very, very profound. He said, Rick, he said, you know, the decision to make the do or don't do something kind of revolves around these things. One, does it align with your core values? Two, do you enjoy doing it? Would you enjoy doing it? Would you enjoy going and helping this real estate agent? Would you enjoy investing in money in this? Would you enjoy being a loan officer for these military people? Would you enjoy doing first time home buyer classes? Okay, would you enjoy it? And then the last thing is would it provide leverage to your business? And and I think about that now in every relationship that I get into, I ask myself the question, forget if the real estate agent could add and leverage, have provide leverage for my business. But will I actually provide leverage to theirs? And I think that that's where that's where the issue and the partnership breakdown goes is that we consistently as loan officers have been in the wrong part of the sales funnel. We've been sitting at the bottom sitting there with our hand out to the real estate agent going, you real estate, do all the work, spend all your money time in after the generate context to talk to you. You go ahead and do all the qualifications, figure out who to talk to, who to not, who to put in your car. And then when you put someone in your car and you're ready to write off or go ahead and give me a call. And I'll be here with my hand out. And I'll go ahead and do your pre-approval error. And boy, I'll be fast. I'll be good. I'll get the closing on time. I'll get great. That's where we sit right now. And I think that's the issue. The two main problems that exist in the relationship are that A, the loan officer does not belong at the bottom of the sales funnel. Not by virtue of saying we don't deserve to be down there. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in a good partner relationship, our job should be helped helping the client, the real estate agent, our partner convert leads. The reality, Jeff, is that realtors don't have as much time as we do. For every client, they probably invest, I think that they show homes for eight hours a day to one client, family sometimes, right? We can handle 5, 10, 15 times the amount of people that they can. And we need to be looked at also. It's like, why aren't we coming alongside helping with the conversion, helping the masses of people to help convert for that real estate agent. And being that third party endorsement, a very wise man said, let another man praise the a not-but-own mouth of stranger and not-but-own lips, right? Let us be that third party endorsement. Let us be that partner for the real estate agent, but we're not being used like that. So that's how that's kind of the revolution part of it that I want to talk about. So I love that. That's a great setup. And I totally agree with that. The question becomes how do you set that up from the beginning? How do you how do you ensure that the synergy, right? The the foundation of that relationship is set up properly from the beginning? You literally discuss the problem. And I go through this in the book of how I actually go through not only the choosing of the real estate agent to engaging with them. And when I engage with them and I have an initial meeting, I talk about the problem. And the problem is that sales funnel. It's like you as a real estate agent and I get them to think to acknowledge how many contacts are you generating per month? You know, the average is about 25 to 30 per real estate agent. How many of those are you actually keeping in putting in your car and how many closings are you having? And then by the way, how many closings are falling out? They say 12% of all ratified contracts are falling out, right? For the finance or whatever. So where is your breakdown? Where do you see the partnership in what's happening? Do you not see that of the 25 people that you're currently getting per month to talk to? And if you're converting two of them, which is the standard than the national average, as the statistics find in AR, what are happening to the other 23? Oh, well, they're going into my drip campaign where they're going into this or they're going into that. But the reality is, is that of those 23, the bigger issue is that 50% of those are actually going to buy something in the next six to 12 months. And 48% of that 50% have a home to sell. But the reality is that they've guys, they have been, they have qualified. They have made a judgment upfront as to whether or not those people are ready or not, because the realtor is not prepared to handle the borrower that is in their education phase of buying. The realtor is not prepared to nurture that lead to the point of when they are ready to buy six to 12 months later. Is that what you're saying? They just don't have the capacity to bandwidth. So even like the latest software CRMs and all that, most realtor don't have that set up properly anyway. Well, and it also is just an email. And I will tell you that I've, I've coached a lot of agents recently and it's scary to see who doesn't even really have, and that's not, this isn't a knock. I mean, some people are very organized with their spreadsheets or whatever. They don't have a CRM. They don't have a follow-up database. And even if you do, it's just an email. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. That is such a great point and such a great conversation. It's funny you bring that up because years ago I got this list of 50 questions that every loan officer should be asking real estate agents from my buddy Walter Sanford who was a top realtor up in LA area selling a home a day every day for almost 15 years straight. And so he became a coach as well and I worked with him in doing a lot of stuff. But anyway, he gave me this list of questions and the 50 questions, right? And on, and it's like you know the deal, most L.O.s don't ever dive deep, right? They're just, yeah. What's up? What don't you like about your current lender? Great, you know, you know, that kind of thing. How come am I going to any business? Well, he didn't really interview him. And one of the questions you had on there, I loved, which is relevant to what you said, which is that LLL asks this question, what's your number one lowest cost source of leads in your business right now? And I love that question and you may think of it because it opens up this whole conversation about understanding their business model. How are they getting business? Where's it coming from? Where's the holes? And to your point, how can we help with that? How can we help use the term incubate, right? Those leads. So how do you do that? I'm assuming you've got that set up with some of your agent partners where you're going to take, you know, those 23 that aren't going to buy for six or 12 months, are you working them somehow? Yeah, we are. So we use sales first as a CRM. By the way, do you use the jungle version or just the straight up sales force? So I actually, I was looked in the jungle. Jungle is actually really good company. I recommend for people that don't have a team to go actually use jungle. Even if you have a team, it's really, really good. I was crazy and I said, I don't want jungle. I'm going to go ahead and do my own, right? And you know, Heinz, I'd be in 2020. I wish I would have done it. I'm too far and too invested in it now. But I spent the probably way too much money and did my own salesperson kind of built it the way I wanted to. I have this thing in my mind like I'm going to make this a huge difference in the world, I guess, but whatever. Anyway, so I made my own. So we use that to incubate people and to do. And I'll tell you one of the biggest things and that every loan officer I guarantee you has this, they probably got a way to give numbers, mortgage numbers to a buyer. And I have my own, marketed it. It's called my mortgage analyzer. And it's a basically, it's a fancy, dupped up spreadsheet that kind of lets the buyer play loan officer and does a whole bunch of cool things. So basically, it's a souped up Excel spreadsheet. We use that as lead gen. We use that as a way that we can see when we send it to a client or we offer it to somebody that they will actually then we can track, hey, that guy opened it or that guy did this or we're following up. Did you use my or worksheet? If you get somebody numbers, that is the number one trigger. I would say almost more than a home, finding somebody that you can get comfortable about a mortgage payment and start now looking at things like, oh, I didn't realize that a $25 hundred mortgage payment actually equals about $2,100 rent and understanding the tax implications and the tax benefits of buying a home versus, you know, renting. Right. Right. So make it real for them, given the bottom line numbers and what it really looks like to buy a house. But back to the question about how you incubate those leads, how you, you know, create that handoff, handing you the baton. The realtor's like, yeah, I'm all in, Rick, I agree. So how can you help me manage my leads? Yep. So there's two ways we do it. We do it with sales force. So we incubate, we incubate them that way. By like drip campaigns. What do you do? Oh, no, this is this is boots to the ground. I mean, I believe in doing emails and stuff too, but I also believe in people that old-fashioned CRM called the phones. Yeah, the old-fashioned CRM called the phone. And we also use a product called Homebuyer's Marketing. It's called Next Gen HPM, which is a, it's a, it's a, it's a search for, it's a, it's a, it's a home search for the loan officer. Yeah. But one difference is that the, that the real estate agents have, and they all, obviously, realtors have the MLS, but buyers don't really have the MLS. But I will tell you, 99 out of 100 real estate agents, maybe even more higher percentage than that are still just emailing listings to their clients. They set them up on a search and they email them listings and do out the click here. I've done it because I've worked with realtors that do that for me, right? They just email it. But where are people spending their time? People are going on their mobile phones. Right. And they are looking online. They're downloading Zillow or Red Den or whoever it is. Truly, right? And they're using mobile devices, but the agent is offering the mobile device. So the clients are using somebody else's thing and they're not, you've been using the emails. That's the thing that you said that, man, I'm going through that right now. Yeah. So we've tied in what next gen does. It actually traps the buyer, the real estate agent and the loan officer in one area, this one collaborative environment that helps not only the real estate agent see everything that's going on on the front and back end, like they can literally track like a lot of the metrics that are going on from search and they're even getting in to even deeper like a lot of these companies are using like IBM Watson technology that can like kind of sniff social media on the different people that they're working with and kind of a big brother scary stuff, right? You know, like they typed in real estate. They're more like, oh, they must be looking for a house or they share the house. Oh, they're they're a higher score now, you know, but the way to like kind of see and sniff like, oh, who's hot and who's not and get and that's how we incubate them for the agent. That's a big way we can meet them as well. Yeah, I've seen that platform before. It's really cool. Yeah, it's changed a lot over the years. It's it's much different than used to be because I've used it for a lot of years. Is that also referred to as the home scouting? It is. It's home scouting, I will tell you, home scouting was lacking quite a bit and I'm not afraid to say this and anybody from HBM hears this, you'll they'll they'll first be admit. There was a lot of lacking in that program, but it's grown so much over the years. Next gen HBM is the next version of that. It's it's the real deal. Right. Okay. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. So that is such an awesome point. All right. So back to the discussion with realtors. I want to understand when you first meet a realtor or now you're training your juniors or whoever, you know, on that first meeting, what do you want to accomplish on that first meeting? Do you guys have a script? You follow? Like I mentioned, we've got questions. How do you know if the relationship's right or not? I guess. Yeah. So well, there's there's a couple of things. I mean, I will tell you that before you even have an initial meeting, you really need to have like a barometer of what agents that you really want to follow up with and it goes both ways, by the way, I have a I have a rule and I put this in my book chapter three called the agent barometer and I I look at this way. First and foremost, I want to avoid any exhausting relationships. And that goes both ways, right? It's like you just don't click together. You just want to avoid the exhausting relationships. And secondly, one avoid agents that want to play loan officer. And by the way, loan officers, we really shouldn't be playing real estate agent, right? So that's a big that's a big I've had that be a challenge in the past for me. You know, seek excellence regardless of experience. I think people shy away and they want to look at the agents that are doing all this volume. But I did business with 65 different real estate agents last year. And a lot of them are onesie twosies. So I don't care if they're doing a lot of business. I care if they're excellent people that they care that they care about my business. That's the fourth thing. Do you care about my business? Do I care about I care about yours? Do you care about mine? And then I really the funny thing I put this is kind of a caveat. If I ever hear an agent say thank you to me or to my teammate, that's like a green like wow, okay, that means they're respectful of our time. These are like, they're now on my list. And in the initial meeting, when we choose, when we're able to choose, my team has a, we kind of do a work through like, how do you find these people using this as a guideline? It's pretty simple. Anybody that's done business can do this. There's four things that I look at. Sorry if I'm going over with the answer. Here are the four things we do. First thing you do is you review any recent experience you've had with that agent. Check with the team, processers, whatever. You're looking for agents that you and your team liked, treated as well during the transaction, right? Secondly, what I do on the back end after loan closings, calling all parties to the transaction, including the buyer, ask how it was. I always tell them ask, hey, how is it work? How is it to work with Susie? You know, because she wasn't riff, you know, maybe I picked her up. He was a past client. I never worked with her before. How is it to work with her? And you get an idea that making a note as, you know, would I want to work with this person? I also like to kind of stalk them a little bit on social media. That's the third thing. It's amazing what you'll find from like current loan officer relationships to organizations they care about, you know, based on what you know or maybe find out about that agent, you know, ask yourself, then does this person provide leverage to my business? And it goes maybe just goes beyond the deals they would send to. And then lastly, and most importantly, the most important thing can you as a loan officer help them? And can I, do I bring anything to the table? Because if you don't bring something to the table, then really, there's no reason why you should work with them. But if you feel truly that you can bring something to the table, maybe you're your interest to the same. Oh, this is a military. I'm in the military. Gosh, this is great. You're right by that. That sort of thing. Can you help them factory? Should back end of the decision? What are some ways you would, you would, you know, identify how an LO can help an agent. We talked about incubating leads and that's a great idea. But do you, you know, you also look at ways you can help them grow their business, whether it's, you know, teaching engine classes, we've talked about that or, you know, just bringing them information that might be helpful. Yeah. So I'm of the mind that, you know, everybody's out there with like, here's a product you can use or this is this you can use. I think the relationship and how you engage with an agent needs to be a lot more strategic than that. You know, I've even gone as far as like, people that I like, I part of my book is actually how to coach a real estate agent, you know, because we as loan officers, even if you're not like the most top professional business people, you think that, well, maybe I just can't do this. Maybe, okay, Rick, maybe you could coach or Jeff, you could coach somebody, but I don't know if I could. Well, that's, I don't think is the case. It's not about you being proficient at the coach. I give a guideline of like how to actually go down. It's about growing together and figuring things out about their business and what would accelerate their business together. And when you do that, your stock just goes through the roof. It's amazing what I've been able to do with agents that even starting off, not knowing really how to coach someone and then building this system that I have now of how to coach by just kind of going through it. And you kind of learn, learn by design. And if you're any bit of a successful loan officer, if you've done any sort of business, you've been successful doing some things, right? So what is that? How can you take what you've made you successful in your business and apply it in the real estate world with that agent and work together? I think that's where the dynamic comes in and of a loan officer really being able to help a real estate agent as well. Yeah, it's funny. I often find that agents need help with marketing ideas, how to navigate the digital platforms. We as LOs, we need to be educated on those as well. So just a matter of you getting up to speed and then sharing that info, that content, however you do that could be videos, could be class, whatever. I love the thing about coaching realtors. Do you have a good? Yeah. And the problem piece of it, that problem script that I do, the whole incubation thing is the number one problem that we can really solve for both of our businesses too. Because I think until it's painted in that sort of light, they see in every relative that's good, knows that they leave business on the table. And it's the people they had groovy relationships or great talks with six months ago and good intentions by the way side, right? But you know, Barry Habib mentioned on a call. He's like, has used a real estate agent ever called a buyer just to find out that they bought with somebody else. You know, it's happened to everybody, not just on the loan side, but on the real estate side. And that having that extra person, I said this, it's harder to cheat on two than it is one. And if the agent and us get together with that buyer, it man, they'll tell me stuff. They won't tell the agent and they'll tell the agent. Maybe the stuff, well, maybe they tell us everything. They don't tell them. I don't know. But but regardless, they tell this stuff that they don't tell the agent. And it's a beautiful opportunity for us to be that third party endorsement. That is the number one thing. Do you categorize your agents into various buckets of like ABC players in terms of referral volume? I don't. I don't do that. I see the reason people do that. I've never done that. My reports and sales for us are very dynamic. So I kind of know how many leads and loans I've gotten from this particular agent, not only company, but also down to the specific agent. Ever been the last 120 days. I know of agents that gave me business in the last 20 120 days that have now they're on a report that they haven't given me any business in the last 120 days, right? So I don't really classify them. I think it's more of like what type of a person are they are they not one one list I do have are people that I refer business out to. I have that. I have a whole campaign drill. There are there are a list of agents that I give business to. Okay. And that's not based necessarily on how much business they're giving you or is it? Oh, no, that's not. In fact, there's people that yeah, quality quality person, quality person. Oh, no, that's interesting because you know, you mentioned you 65 agents you work with last year or last 12 months. You've had a number of ones. He Tuesday deals. You know, people tell you to kind of, you know, double down, you know, focus on the producers. Yeah. He got burned. He got burned. I've gotten burned there, man. Two years ago actually I had a mega agent that was 25% of my entire business literally just wake up one morning with a with a bad air day and say, Rick, we're done. So it wasn't because of anything you did. No, really. I think actually maybe, I think I wanted to help them with their business, but they're they just she just didn't want any anything to do with that. They wanted that whole loan off to the bottom of the funnel. You do what I say or I'm going to beat you with a stick or something. You know, that's that sort of relationship. And unfortunately, that that relationship does exist out there still. But, you know, that's not something I'm really, but you're always recruiting, right? You're always adding more people agents. It's your bus. I'm trying to add really good people. Yeah, we're always we're always adding really good people. Absolutely. Well, let me ask the question this way before we wrap up. How many? Because I'm always asking the yellows this one. It's like, okay, so I need more business. I need more purchase business. So one of the first questions is, well, great. How many agents do you have on your bus? And usually it's woefully short, right? Four, five, seven, maybe seven. And then the question is, of the agents you've got on your bus, right? Let's take a look at, right? The volume of referrals you're getting. So where am I getting that with this question? Oh, yeah. How many agents would you say I'm going to use the term A players, even though you don't categorize them like that, but on a monthly basis, how many agents are you getting deals from approximately? Probably opportunities. Yeah. At bats, I would say probably anywhere from 15 to 20. 15 to 20. Consistent. Consistent. Consistent. Yeah. Somebody sending you, hey, got something I want somebody to qualify, check them out, right? Yeah. And you figure you probably need a good maybe a hundred, a hundred agents on the bus to make that happen. Wow. So for those of you listening, officers, what are you hearing, right? Lots of agents. Lots of agents. How do you manage them? How do you stay kind of top of mind and all that? So, um, so we do events actually, events are huge. We do events for clients and we actually just did events for an agent. I'm a big proponent of events. And in fact, movie events to be exact. Probably the best advice I can get from an event is to invite all your realtors into a showing of Star Wars. Oh, so hold on. You talking about rent out the theater? Oh, yeah, rent out the theater. That's not a right deal. That's not a respite deal. No. Why would it be a respite deal? Well, you're buying a movie ticket in hopes of getting a referral. No, we do that for clients, actually, but what we did was for the agent. I didn't know. I'm dealing with the, you know, I'm playing devil's advocate for those people. No, it's okay. We did it. We actually did it for a real estate agent. And we actually split the the theater 50-50 and we did it for her clients. That was great. And I actually invited some of my clients who didn't have real estate agents since I come up with that as well. So I was able to bring some of my clients to meet her. I invited a couple of financial planners to the event to meet her. And it worked out really, really well. She got an appointment from that title from that. She actually got a deal from it as well. Really, really worked out well. We did like a small with a hundred seat theater. We shoot, we showed trying to think of the movie we showed anywhere where it was now. Which Star Wars movie was it? Come on. No, no, it wasn't. That one wasn't a Star Wars movie. The Star Wars movie I've done every year has been for my past clients. But there are, no, there's come, there's actually a team in caliber that makes the whole world. They all they do is real estate agents. They invite real estate agents to like, you know, happy hours or they'll do a lunch and learn. Like they'll eat. They'll do what's called a business building monthly. And they will have them all into a room and they'll get anywhere from 40 to 50 real estate agents in a room at a given time. So I think the whole what you probably even touched on from what I got was like, you know, training real estate agents and like getting, you know, teaching them and getting, you know, stuff like that. The events piece of it is huge. And I did a thing called a crash course mortgage. Every agent is always bringing on new people, right? People that are green and they need to be learned kind of the mortgage side of things. How much how great is it to spend an hour to an hour and a half with somebody that's green that doesn't have solidified relationships with. And then to show the team lead how great you were to their new agent coming in and teach them all about mortgage. So yeah, crash course mortgage, you know, whatever you want to call it. But it's basically the ABCs of mortgage, you know, teaching them how to what the loan application looks like, what numbers look like. I show them my spreadsheet, how do people qualify the different loan programs that are out there with the watch watch watch out for just so they're in the know. That's awesome. Great ideas. Okay. So for the listeners that are looking at getting your book, which as I said, we're going to put it in the show notes, but is available on Amazon Kindle, the loan officer revolution. What do you hope they get out of the book or take away from that? Goodness gracious. That's a great question. My heart when I wrote the book was really just kind of to reach out. It was a book directed towards loan officers to how they can help not only it's yet about creating real estate partnerships, but there's also a lot in the book about how to like get your business in order. So that was kind of the whole idea. How do I get into the real into the loan officer's mind really just help them with their business? You know, I'm not looking to and when I bought this and like I told my wife, I don't really care about this. Not about money or selling books or doing that. I'm we're praise the Lord. I'm doing really fine financially. It's just you'll read the book. This all started about just an email that with my staff sent and then 20,000 words later here, I have a book about how why I'm doing what I'm doing. So that's what I'm hoping. I mean, I just want the loan officer to do a better job, change their mind about realtors and work more as a partner and just hopefully our industries can like just come together a little bit better than it is now. And of course, as one of the greatest coaches of all time, Yoda has said always pass on what you have learned. That's right. That's in my book, man. That's where I just took it from. So I am downloading this book today, Kindle. It's a no-brainer for three bucks. I mean, if you, you know, Rick, I mean, what you just shared here today is an education in how to be a better, more productive professional loan officer. So on behalf of myself and the listeners, we can't thank you enough, man. My heart goes out as a big, you know, bowing. Thank you so much. We appreciate your time. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. I'll also put links to your website in there, right? Red team lending, all that other stuff. So people can check out what you're doing and get the book, of course. But man, thank you. And I know you and I will stay in touch. But, you know, just want to say thanks again, man. Appreciate very much. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on. You bet. So for listeners, hope you enjoyed this one today. This was just wow, you know, an education. And so take what you've learned from here. Check out the show notes. If you like this episode, let us know. Give us a like on iTunes wherever you're listening and make sure you subscribe. So once again, I appreciate you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to 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 purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. 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