Ep #7: Shashank Shekhar: Top 200 Originator

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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 edition of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Jeff Zimper, your host, and today I keep saying I am so excited about the guests that we have on each of these podcasts and I keep getting more and more excited every week because they just keep getting better, so we keep raising that bar. Today, my special guest is Shashank Shakhar and if you haven't heard of him, you need to because he has done some amazing things in his business and a quick summary about Shashank is, I mean, it's a long one, so I'm going to kind of make it short here because he'll tell us his story. But Shashank has been in the business for 10, 14 years now and he has done some amazing things. Is he an author of First Time Home Buying 101 and Real Estate Unleashed, which you can find on Amazon? This guy is a media magnet, a superstar, he's been featured on Yahoo News, ABC, CBS, NBC Fox. He's interviewed by Emmy Award-winning director Nick Nanton for his TV show America's Premier Experts. You can find him on the top 40 under 40 most influential mortgage professionals. He is ranked by Scotsman's Guide in 215 on the top 200 originators list. He's on the hot 100 list for 2015 for Mortgage Professional America and I can't say enough about what he is done and accomplished in his career, so let's just bring him on. Shashank, you're there. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Jeff. And thank you for that introduction that was indeed a long one. Yeah, well, you've got a long bio and you've done a lot of stuff. So let's get right into it. You and I, as you know, we have a mutual friend in Tim Davis and Tim talks a lot about personal branding, mastery and stuff. But if you wouldn't mind, I think what we want to try and share, you and I agreed to this before we hit record is for those, there's originators at various levels that listen to this podcast. There's the folks that are kind of new, maybe a couple of three years in the business and then there are maybe 10 years and there might be a few folks that are 20 years plus. But I think, as you know, what I'm all about is truth and marketing, I think what we can convey to people today is how to start from where you are and utilize different forms of media and different mediums to do that, which we'll talk about, but utilize different forms of media to grow your business to establish your platform, to position yourself as a subject matter expert. So if you wouldn't mind, maybe just take a minute or two and kind of outline where you started and how you've got, you know, to where you are today on the top 200 list, 40 under 40, all that stuff. Sure. I actually started in the US mortgage business in 2008. So I know that in the intro, you mentioned that I've been in the industry 14 plus years. I've been on the lending business or I would say in the lending industry for that long, but I was working for GE, General Electric in India actually and their lending division. Then I moved to the US in 2007 and the company I moved for, they closed their shop in 2008 and they were doing some mortgage stuff. I was the head of business for them, but I was just a year old in the country and I didn't know a soul. In fact, I actually knew only three people in the entire country in 2008. And those three people were my ex co-workers from this company that I was working for. They closed their shop in 2008. It was a VC funded company. We just couldn't meet their revenue goals that we were expected to because of the downturn in the industry. And because I didn't know anything else, I thought, oh, let's get into the mortgage business even though it was 2008. And what I quickly realized is that knowing about the business, because I knew all the guidelines, because I was managing a large team, et cetera, et cetera, and running a business is two completely different things. And the biggest difference I found out was the fact that you need to know where you would get your clients from. And that's something that hit me pretty quickly because when it was here, 2008, where a few people were doing mortgage, I had no circle of influence to go to. And by no, I mean no, not even a soul. And I did not know how to acquire clients. So the first 12 to 24 months was quite a struggle. I remember in the first, I think 12 to 14 months, I did seven loans. I was doing averaging probably alone every two months. And yeah, and about 12 to 14 months around that time, I realized that I need to either dramatically change something with what I'm doing or I need to quit and go back to corporate America and find a regular job. But from there, we're from knowing three people and doing several loans in 12 months to closing $116 million last year in production, it's been quite a ride. So that's in short, is the story or you call it drags to riches or whatever you will, but that's the true authentic story that we're talking about. The story with the record button. Yes, thank you for that. And congratulations on a great year last year, $116 million. So there's a lot of stuff that happened in between what you just described, right? So how then you had this realization that, okay, I need to figure out how to get clients. You started to do that sporadically. But when did it really click for you? The lights that went on or something that happened where you found a way, obviously, to accelerate the process for acquiring clients. How did you begin to do that and maybe what remains today of what we'll put you on that road? So my biggest realization came from, and it's not always that light that goes on and it happens like I'd or something. But I was, because of the lack of circle of influence that I had, I started trying to go to real-time networking events. And because I knew that these guys have clients ready, and if they like me, they will refer to me clients. But again, one of the other realization that came pretty quickly was the fact that one, they had a lot of choices, people who have been in the industry much longer than I have been. And two, it almost felt like begging in the sense that I really have no credibility, or expertise, or experience. And I'm trying to go to them and say, hey, can you refer me business? I had really no value add to make to their business or the reason to ask for business. And after doing that for a few times, there were a couple of things. One, I knew that this is not going to work. Two, I realized that I'm not good at it. I'm not really a good networker where I can talk smooth, and talk to these guys, and get them to refer me business. And I have an MBA with a major in marketing. And that's when I kind of went back to the basics of what marketing 101 is, which is, you need to differentiate your product if you want to excel in the business you're in. And I was reading Jeffrey Gitmer at that time. I think it's this book sales bible of the sales bible, it says that if you want to be considered as an expert, you need to either speak or write or preferably do both. And that's what I wanted to do. I decided then that I need to create a brand or an expert status where I do not have to go to people. I do not have to go to realtors. I do not have to go to potential clients, but they come to me. And I knew that's the only way I'm going to build a business, which will be long-lasting, which will fit to the personality type, which is I am. And that's when I started working on it. It started slowly, so I'll probably give you a couple of things that I started on. One of the things that I started in 2009 was to write my own blogs, lendingexpertblock.com, which is a website that I created, and I started writing my own blogs. And back then, Joff, I don't have an exact count, but I think probably there were less than 10 originators in the country. Active originators were blogging back then. And an English is my third language. So it's not exactly my expertise. But I started writing something which is most people know about it. Those blogs were nothing out of ordinary, but it was still something I was putting on a web platform. Because I realized in 2009 that the social media, blogging, videos, these are going to be next generation marketing tools. And not too many people were doing it back then. It took me six months of writing a blog post every single week before I got the first call from someone who said, hey, I found your blog post online and I'm calling a response to that. Most people in the industry or in any industry will probably quit doing something if they're doing it every single week for six months and they see no results. But I got the first call from that. And slowly people started finding it as it started getting ranked on Google. People were finding for stuff and then found me. And then down the road, in fact, some of my initial media exposure came from my blogs because I remember someone was doing the news for Yahoo News. And they said, hey, we found your blog post online, would you be open for an interview? And then he referred me to another Yahoo News editor and so on, so forth. So that opened up a lot of opportunity and around the same time I started writing my first book as well, the first time I'm online 101. And so suddenly it's very, very slowly and gradually, of course, it was nothing overnight. But within 12 to 24 months, now people started calling me and I could, there were realtors who were willing to refer me launched because they knew that I was an author, I've published a book. And that was one side of it. Because I remember I told you, Jeffrey Gitmer said that you need to speak or write. And then I was like, okay, now how do I get into speaking? Because nobody knows me in the industry, especially on the real stateside. So nobody will come to listen to me even if I put up a show. So I reached out to a speaker who was very well known in the San Francisco Bay area where I am. And I asked her, would you be willing to speak if I paid you? And she said, yeah, of course, if you want me, as if you're paying me, I'll speak anywhere you want me to. But I told her the only condition is that I need to share the stage with you, meaning I'll be talking either before or after you. And again, she was fine because she's like, I don't really care who speaks before or after me as long as you pay me to speak. And my strategy behind all this was that I wanted people to listen to me. I wanted to kind of force people to listen to me. Because they wouldn't have come to listen to me, but they definitely wanted to listen to this other famous speaker. And my hope was that once they listened to me two or three times, they kind of realized that I know what I'm talking about and it will be a good idea to work with me. And thankfully, that's what happened as I was able to get anything between 40 to 70 real estate agents for this three series of speaking assignment that I had the speaker for. But I was speaking after or before her. And then these realtor's realized that Shashank knows his stuff, what he's talking about. And I was able to set up a lot of follow-up meetings after that with the realtor's where, again, I wasn't really asking for business because they had kind of seen that, well, this guy talks at a platform as a published book already. So this wasn't really begging for business. This was more a meeting of equals. In fact, in a sense, it was meeting of unequals because they saw me at a higher pedestal than this at themselves. So this is what really kickstarted. They're speaking and writing, getting into that. So for first two years, this is what I worked on the most, probably every single week and got it kickstarted. Yeah, thank you. So do you mind if I ask who that speaker was that you brought it? Carol Rodoni, she was the past president of a land panel realtors, which at that time probably was the largest real estate company in Bay Area and also a commercial real estate. And she, in fact, went on to this is another fascinating story. She went on to go out for that book real estate only with me. So that was very, very interesting because even she was very impressed after speaking with me for those events. And she reached out later saying that I have never written a book in my life and I see that you have written one. And I would like to partner up with you to write a book on real estate, which I think we published in 2010 or 11. And it was hugely successful among real estate agents because she speaks at so many platforms. We were not just able to sell a lot of copies, but more importantly, it got my brand recognition really, really prominent among all other agents. Yeah, so there's so much good stuff in there. I mean, one is the obvious fact that you decided to align yourself with an already well-known respected name in the local real estate community, you know, in that real estate broker owner. So that's great, right? Attachment of your brand to that. Secondly is you're talking about positioning. You've totally repositioned, as you said, right? Your brand who you are. You had no authority, no affiliation with agents in your local area, so you had to quickly get there and a great point by the get-em-er thing, right? It's like you got to speak or write or both. And that jump starts your success. How did you then with the book and ongoing? Let's take it from there. So you brought in, you know, this realtor president. And she did a three series event with you. Two quick questions on that. One, what were the topics on and then two, how have you carried on this speaking thing since then? So Carol mostly talks about what's going on in the real estate industry now and what are her predictions? That seems to be a general speaking topics that she would speak on. And she has a huge database of real estate agents. So she reached out to them. In fact, she just sends out her emails and newsletters saying that I'm speaking at a platform and then they attend it. And I knew a few people, so I was able to reach out. In fact, I sponsored some real estate marketing events. So we have breakfast meetings of different real estate boards. And I sponsored some not to pitch my product, but to pitch that event I was holding. And so I paid a little bit for that as well and got them to attend it. So that's how I was able to get people in the room that 40 to 70 agents that we talked about. And my topics at that time was mostly around different financing. In fact, in 2008, 2009, FHA loans were unheard of in the San Francisco Bay Area. The reason was that their loan limit size before 2008 was about $271,000. And in the Bay Area, as probably some listeners would know, the average, the median price around that time was $700,000. So FHA was completely irrelevant to the lenders here. But during the crisis, the FHA loan amount was raised to $729,000. And I quickly realized that this is going to be a huge loan option, a big loan option for any first-time home buyers. And I read up a lot on FHA. In fact, I remember I drove six yards to Orange County, which in Southern California, because there was somebody presenting doing a four-hour course on FHA. And I wanted to learn all about it. So I drove six yards both ways. So 12 yards really in a day's time to just attend that event and learn all about FHA. And I was talking about FHA loans at these events. And these realtors have pretty much none of them heard about FHA in a big way because no one was doing it. And I was telling them how good it could be for first-time buyers with a low down payment and everything it had. In fact, and because of that, I got invited to speak at real-state boards and other real-state marketing events talking about a FHA because they thought, I'm an expert on that topic. I had people from Bank of America and Wells Fargo and other big banks attending these events because they didn't know anything about a FHA financing at that time. And I knew all about that. So this tied with my first-time home buyer expertise because I wrote a book on first-time home buying 101. Now I was pitching for FHA loans. And this kind of had that, if you'll see that this shows that, and I started pitching myself as a first-time home buyer expert because I told them, hey, look, I wrote a book on this topic. And two, I'm talking about loan options that work for them. And most of the realtors, even though they were not willing to send probably all their transactions to me, they still started talking about the fact that Shashank is a first-time home buyer expert. If you have any client who is a first-time home buyer, you should be sending to Shashank. And that started happening quite often. So you can see that it was kind of thought through that you don't just do random stuff saying that, OK, today I'll start blogging. Tomorrow I'll start writing a book. Third day I'll start speaking. It was kind of thought through that my branding strategy in the first two, three years was solely to establish me as a first-time home buyer expert because that's in which I was focusing on. I did not want to sound like, hey, I do everything. Send me anything that you have. And so it's not just the fact that, as I picked my media and I picked the fact that I'm speaking, but I made sure that I am presenting one image to any real estate agent or only online reader who's looking at it and thinking that, wow, this guy knows everything about first-time home buyers. Is that still your specialty today? Happens to be is on purchase transactions probably 80% of my clients are still first-time home buyers. And that's I've carried on that branding or that image of all this six, seven years. Yeah, that's great. So have you parted ways then with Carol in terms of her now guest speaking at your events? Are you the primary speaker and you're still speaking, correct? I am speaking. I don't need to have the deflation with Carol anymore, which is in itself is a good thing. And since then, we have four big real estate boards around where I am. Santa Clara County real estate is the largest real estate board in the country. And I think they have five to six thousand of real churches part of its membership. And now it's more a question of when I want to speak. And if I do want to speak, I reach out to any of the education directors at those, any of those boards. And there'll be more than glad to have me come at one of their events or schedule an event just for me to speak. And there are realtors who know about me, so they don't have, usually have a problem filling up the room. Also, because my topics have always been relevant and something which most people don't talk about. Like I started talking about YouTube marketing in 2011-12 when nobody was talking about it. I started talking about Facebook marketing in the very first couple of years when it started becoming popular. So I tried to pick topics last year. I was talking about trade when it was getting launched and not talk to many people knew how trade will ban out and what will happen. And I was telling most realtors that it's not the end of the world, like most people are trying to make it sound. So I picked my topics wisely and then so that it's something which attracts people to come and listen to. And yeah, it has been very, very popular. I don't do my own events anymore. I did probably the last one. I did post a couple of years back, but I still regularly speak at real-state boards. So when you say you don't do your own events, that's because you don't need to, I'm assuming, because you've built up such a following and probably aren't on the hunt for realtors anymore. They are sending you business on a regular basis because you've put all this work in. That is correct. And if you would talk to a lot of loan officers, most of them do not like doing business with realtors. It's because of a couple of things. One, probably only one thing, which is the realtors think that they are higher in the food chain than loan officers. And that they control the clients. And so they dictate how the communication goes, et cetera, et cetera. I really, really like working with real-state agents because I control the transaction and they don't. Because they know that they are working with someone who is definitely trying to think, much bigger brand. Yes. They are probably in awe of me, as I'm not trying to brag here or something, but all these years of building that brand has really, really paid off. And I set the tone in the very first meeting that we have. And the fact that they already know that I'm an author, I'm an media, I'm one of the top loan officers in the country, definitely helps. Even in the very early days, we talked about that story when I was only doing probably a loan a month or something like that. Even then, when I approached them, I already had spoken in front of them, and they already knew that I had published a book. So it was always intentional from day one that that's how I'll work with real-state agents. And that really, really helps because they know that they're working with somebody who knows what he's doing. Also, it's very important. I know this is a marketing podcast, and we're talking about different marketing ideas. But it's very, very important to know that marketing just gets you people in the door. What happens after that is equally important, if not more. And so we have made, we probably make changes every week or every month into our processes and systems to make sure that once the client calls us or emails us or comes to CS, then from then, whatever happens to the rest of their lives in terms of transaction or interaction with us, it's something that they are wowed by. I wouldn't say that this is the best in the industry, but we try to do stuff which makes them feel amazing at the end of it. And that's why you will see that. Of course, you will see me all over the media, but you will also see that any review platform that you see, whether it's Facebook or Zillow or Yelp or Google, it's pretty much an all five star review that we have on all these platforms. And we are very, very conscious of that. If anything goes wrong with any clients, as even now after doing 116 million, I still feel very concerned if something doesn't go right. And understand that we are brokers, which mean that we don't control half of the transaction. It's a lender we are sending the loan to, they can sometimes delay something, they can mess up things. So we don't even control a lot of what we are delivering to our client, we still make sure that they have that five star experience at the end of the day. So it's a very, very important lesson for anyone listening to this, is that while marketing is a great idea, and I'm a huge, huge fan of marketing to get those clients into the door, make sure that your processes and systems and your team supports that customer service and customer delight, philosophy and theory that you might have. Because if you don't do that, then you're probably wasting your time at the top of the funnel, if you're not able to address those clients once they come into your door or give you a call. Yeah, that's a great point. I heard it once characterized as the external perception has to match the internal reality. So if you are pitching yourself as the place for the smooth transaction, no delays, all that stuff that you just described, then you better make sure you've got it set up internally to make that happen. So you do have that great end-to-end user experience. So it's interesting you bring up a point that being a broker, you don't control the entire transaction, obviously. How do, there's two questions in here. One is, what, being a broker still, are you impacted by delays? And if so, how do you adjust to those, right, when you're trying to meet that time to close deadline? So I picked my investors wisely. That's something which is very important, that when you're a broker that, even if you're approved with several lenders, you need to know which investors will honor the commitment that you have to your borrowers. And if you work with a select few investors, they will be willing to make exceptions for you. A lot of people just look at the best price lender and send the loans to them. And we don't do that, even though as in price competitiveness, it's something that we focus a lot on. But we still try to have, say, 70, 80% of our loans send to top four or five investors, all lenders. And we are sending to lenders who have good turn times who have good pricing and who I have personal relationship with so that I can ask for exceptions when it comes to. Also understand that the reason to stay broker and not to work, say, as a branch or work with a bank was again intentional on my part because I wanted to control the entire branding experience. If you work for someone else, then I wouldn't say it's true for every company. I'm sure there are lots of companies which are very, very flexible. But then there are certain companies that would only let you do a certain thing. They may not allow you to blog on your own. They may have social media restrictions that you might have. And I would have struggled with that because I was trying to do something which was completely independent of maybe any other player that could have influenced me. That was the reason to stay on the broker channel. It's of course, it's not easy all the time. There are challenges with it, especially the fact that you don't control a lot of things during the transaction. But if you keep to your core investors and you work with them, like for example, with quick and longs, I get a top producer of what every year because I do probably $25, $30 million with them if not more. It's because that I trust their processes, they trust their systems and I have people in place who would make an exception if I have to close on time. And that's what we do. And that's what in fact most people should do is that if they are on the broker channel, they should make sure that they are sending 80% of their business to top 3, 4 investors. Great points. So you mentioned you're not doing the speaking yourself anymore. Obviously you've built up a brand and a database and the following and you've got the blog. What are you doing personally still? It's directly tied to origination in your business. So most of the business is still comes because of me because if you see the branding and it's still right a blog, probably not once every week now, but still pretty frequently. There are months where I'll still write four to six blog posts and there are months where I may still write only one. But I have not taken my eye off that. I have a radio show in a local radio station for last three, four years now on a weekly show. That does very, very well. That's my own show. That's something I run on my own. I still do speaking when I'm requested to at different events. Again, I'm not pushing for it personally, but I'm still doing it. And we are working on a lot of things right now. We are working on a weekly video show, something like Gary Vaynerchuk. If you have seen here's a Gary Vee show that he does on a weekly basis. But we are trying to do that starting next month, which will basically be taking questions on Twitter and Facebook and from people who are thinking of buying or refinancing and doing a weekly show of it, trying to answer those questions and then have all those archived in a place where it's easy for people to access. We're thinking of doing that. I'm still working on my next book, which should be out later this year, not early next year. So the tons of marketing stuff, that's something which I never stopped doing because I have reached here by marketing myself and that's something I'm never going to stop because my goals for every year keep going higher than what it was for the last year. And if I stop doing that, then I will probably stay where I am or maybe even go down from where I am if I stop doing that. What do you find of the social media platforms that are out there? You mentioned Twitter and that's a great idea, by the way, with the weekly show to take those questions. Is there a particular social media platform that you find better for engaging and does it differ if it's real terms versus consumers? It does. I find LinkedIn very, very useful for reaching out to real estate agents. So what I do on LinkedIn is that I don't just share an update on my personal page but I also share the same update if I'm writing a blog or if I have any industry news even if it's links to other media or something. I'll take the same news or same blog and then I'll post it to about 15 different real estate groups that I'm part of. So these are groups. So most real estate boards have their own LinkedIn groups. So for example, Santa Clara County has its own LinkedIn group. Silicon Valley has its own LinkedIn group. And there are tons of these groups that are there. So I'll take the same thing and then I'll post it on all these different LinkedIn groups that I'm part of. And then I'll have comment and then people will engage on that saying in favor against what I basically my goal is to one get the word out that hey, I'm posting these things which are useful to you and two get them to engage on that post. And I've found a lot of real estate agents reaching out to me because of that outreach that I've done on LinkedIn. Same with Facebook, I have probably about 600 real estate agents as my friends, maybe even more. And my goal is not always to, of course, to pitch business, but it's something that makes me on top of their mind. There are tons of time when I find out that my buyer has made an offer on a property and I call the listing agent and listing it will be like, oh, I know you have seen you on Facebook. We are friends. We have been friends for a long time. It's just the fact that they find me familiar, even if they have not done business with me. And that helps a lot if you have 10 people who have made an offer and there's this loan officer or a mortgage broker that you know from any place. And you know that as in everything that he posts on Facebook or most of the stuff that he does there is useful. And same thing on Facebook, there are other real estate groups that I'm part of, so if there is anything useful, I'll post it on their platform as well. Never selling myself. I would never put something which says who our rates are the best, give us a call or something like that. That's something I have never done in my life on any platform. Because again, I'm trying to establish expertise. I'm trying to establish value add to their business. And the same thing with my clients. Most of my clients are my personal Facebook friends. So when they see any award that I've received, any new blog post that I've put, even my children pictures say to say it just increase the lightness factor for them because they might have a kid who is doing something similar in the CEO of Poshashank's kid studs. That's something similar. So all this is to make sure that you stay on top of their mind, make sure you're adding value in one form or the other. And then it increases the, say, the lightness factor or familiarity which when you, even if you end up doing business with them two years down the road, they'll probably remember who you are. Yes, great point. Does it matter fact, speaking of Facebook, I'm on your Facebook page right now. And I can see already we have something in common. Looks like your daughter is entered an American Open Taekwondo Championship. That is great. And my son is going for his black belt this Saturday. See. So how many years has your daughter been in Taekwondo? Four years. So, so see you see right there, Joff. If you were a listing agent on that transaction where my buyer was making an offer and I would call you this. Yeah, I know you, Shishankan. Wasn't your daughter participating in that tournament? My son was there too or my son is doing something similar. And we talk about that for five minutes. So, so we talk in sales about all the time is that try to find something which is common with the other person. And that's what happens when you have Facebook profile where you have say 600 to a thousand real estate agents as your friend. And that's intentional by the way. It's not something. Again, most of the things that I try to do had some purpose behind it. Since most of the time it's not random. Even though it might seem random. Because those are the real estate agents in the local community. Chances are that. And that's what that's what happens is that a lot of times even in this super competitive market where on every house there is anything between 10 to 90 offers. A lot of time my clients win the offer with lesser down payments than other people is because the listing agent knows me from somewhere. Either he attended one of the seminars that I talked to or he saw me on Facebook. Or I know another real estate agent from his office that I can refer to and I can call and tell him, hey, you work for a land panel, that's great. I don't know you know it, but Carol Rodoni was the past president of that company actually wrote a book with me. And I can send you a copy whether we get to work together or not. So any of that, even if it's a reference to another agent or another manager in his or her office, all of this is done to make sure that our clients are a better chance of getting that offer accepted, even sometimes when their offer is not the most favorable one for the sellers. So you're telling me that in agents, you've got the level of relationship with some agents where they're going to fight to get the deal, even at less down and they're going to be able to win that deal because they can convey the certainty of the loan transaction because of you. And that's what happens, right? Most of the time, we know the number one reason a transaction falls through after getting into contract is because the loan doesn't get through. That's a fact. So the sellers and the listing agent, as in all, of course, other than the fact that they want the highest dollar for their house, their biggest concern is that will this go through if we accept the offer or will we have to bring this house back on the market? So if you know that you're working with a loan officer that you know him personally by some form or the other, and you're able to make sure that the fact that this person is going to take this transaction through, they'll probably take $5,000 lower in the offer price and be 100% sure that this will go through then take the $5,000 higher and only have 70% confidence that it will go through. Wow, that says a lot. I mean, what's that value of that worth, you know, for you establishing that positioning? It really makes me think of that question. What do you say to loan officers who complain about agents not being loyal? It's the same thing, right? As an agent, it's in any relationship, whether it's personal or professional. If you're not adding value to the relationship, then they will go somewhere else. It happens with our kids. It happens with our spouses. It happens at a professional level which is, I wouldn't say they will go somewhere else, but the relationship does not remain as strong as it would. That's why I rarely have at least my core realtors work somewhere else unless I say no on a transaction because of whatever lack of investors or for any reason. They keep coming back because they know that if this deal goes to Shishank, he will make sure that this closes and this closes on time. The other thing about that is that, and the other thing about that listing agent or being in a competitive market because I know a lot of people in the industry right now are going through the same thing where it's a seller's market and a lot of markets and you're trying to compete. One thing that I tell the listing agent all the time, which is, look, if you have my pre-approval in your hand, I'll give you one fact. In my seven years of being in the industry, it has never happened once that a client that I pre-approved got declined in underwriting. Never happened once, which is a truth because we do our due diligence at the time of pre-approval just like an underwriter would do almost going to that extent. That tells them that it's a hundred percent guaranteed chance that if I'm holding Shishank's pre-approval in my hand that this will go through. You need to have confidence in your abilities. If you do not, then you first need to go and read the guidelines and make sure that you gain that confidence in yourself. But if you make claims like that and authentic claims, by the way, I'm not trying to make a point here that you should falsely claim to something like this. All of this combines to give an impact to the listing agent and then to the sellers that this guy knows his stuff and he will make sure this transaction goes through. Awesome. I love that. I was just thinking about your comment earlier about everything you've done, you've done with a purpose in mind. Back from the early days of you recognizing that you had no relationships, how were you going to be able to establish and position yourself to appear different than every other loan officer in your local market? You've obviously done that very well very successfully. As we wrap it up here, it's funny. Whenever I have a conversation with someone like yourself and the people who understand that premise of stop winging it, shooting from the hip, and stop just throwing stuff against the wall, pull back, analyze, design, do stuff with purpose, understand that if you do the kind of things you're talking about, which is positioning and effectively and properly through the most powerful mediums, speaking, writing, and now obviously online, there's a lot of loan officers who know that, right? But what do you see as the wall that keeps them from the wider loan officers? And we've all been around this space for years. Why do we still have the people that are out there doing the same old same old, right? I can go those in seven days and rate sheets and the why do you think prevents people from crossing over doing this stuff that you've done? Like a van Bition. Really? Like a van Bition? They just don't want it that bad? Yeah. I wanted it really, really bad. I knew that I did not want to get back to corporate America even when I was doing MBA back in India. I always used to tell my friends I'm doing it because I want to start my own company. And when I got that opportunity to do that in 2008, I did not want it to go to waste. And one size started even doing remotely well. For me, it was all about all these guys who get interviewed as being the top producer and I want to be that guy who gets interviewed for the top producer. Right now, I'm in the probably in the top 40, top 15, in the country. My thing is why I can't be the number one loan officer in the country. It seems far faster because the guy who was number one last year did probably 600 million, I did 115, and one sixth of one fifth of what he did. But all these things is not really to make more money because if you achieve that, money will come on its own. But it's about why I can't be the best in the industry even with all the limitations I started with. I always wanted it really bad. And most of the people you would interview, the job who was very, very successful, is that I see two common threads among a lot of successful people wanting it really bad. Because if you don't have that need, then there is no reason for you to get out of your comfort zone. If you're fine with doing two through loans a month, which you do now, and you feed your family okay, and you live a decent life, then there is no reason for you to think more. And the two, the second commentator I see is that always improving oneself, always improving oneself in everything that you do, and that's why I said, all parts of our funnel, from the time we get people to the door, which is how do we improve our marketing? How do we improve our systems? What do we do after we have closed a loan? Every single step of the loan process, I keep improving every month, every week, every year. Because I'm always looking at it and see what we can do better. And so the fact that most loan officers, even though the fact they know it, they don't do it, is because they don't want it enough. And if they wanted it really, really bad, they would do it. I read somewhere this analogy, and I'll probably be wrapping up with this, is that somebody said, okay, how many loans do you think, and this was for a different industry, but I'm customizing it for our industry. So how many loans do you think that you can do this here? And let's say that number is 40. And you say, okay, but can you do 100? And they said, no way. There's no way on earth I can do 100 to see. And they said, okay, what if somebody kidnapped your wife, or your son, or your daughter, and said that the only way we will release him or her, is that if you did 100 loans this year, would you then do 100 loans this year? Instead, of course, I would do 100 loans that year, if this takes are so high. So it's all about, what do you think, how high their stakes are? And most people, their stakes are not high enough. Most people are happy with what they have. Most people are even willing to change the industry, if something goes wrong, which is what, 65% of the industry did in 2008, and I can guarantee, they will do it again, if there was a repeat of 2008. For me, that was never an option, that will never be an option, and that's why I keep grinding every day that I get. So that leaves us kind of with one last question then, is what's your why? So I did a company video sometime back, and I talked about the fact that I wanted to do something in the industry, which really put customers first. We talked about that a lot, but we know that most major banks will probably not do it. I'm not criticizing individual loan officers, but more at the organizational level. And the fact that a lot of us in the industry just do it because of us. For me, the fact was that, if I can reach out to the people who want the most education, which is first-time home buyers, because people are refinancing, have already gone through it. People who are buying their second third home have already gone through it, and they kind of know what to do. But first-time home buyers, to me, always struck as the class of people who knew nothing. It was a great thing that they wanted to do, but they were never sure how to get started. They were anxious, they were uncertain. And I thought, if I can put an educational platform for them, which does not exist anywhere, then I would actually be helping them while helping myself. And that's why you would see that all the YouTube videos, all the books, all the blogs, radio, seminar, webinar, I have really social media. There's really nothing on an offline that I have not done to educate them. And that's my why, that I, in fact, want to be one day nationally, the preferred brand for first-time home buyers, and help them in a way that I personally think that nobody else does at this time. That's an awesome why. And I think it's showing up in what you've been doing, what you are doing. And I look forward to watching your growth as you continue to add more value. It really shows up in who you are, and who you communicate. I have to say, I'll put all the links to your blog, your book, everything in the show notes here. In terms of a destination for people to find out more about you, where would you like to send them over to your blog? Yeah, lendingexpertblog.com. Okay, great. Well, listen, I know you're extremely busy. You've got more lives to change. I appreciate you taking time to change a few lives today for those listening, and I hope we can stay in touch, Ashak. That'll be awesome job. It was my pleasure. All right. And everybody for listening, thank you very much for tuning in to another edition of Mortgage Marketing Radio. 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? You've heard about the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership before, and I just want to quickly remind you if 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. 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