Ep 71: How to Have Advice vs. Price Buyer Conversations and Win More Deals

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, Jeff, this is him for a welcome to another episode of mortgage marketing radio. Hey, if I told you how much I appreciate you, I appreciate you, I appreciate you tuning in, listening in, I appreciate the emails that you send me that tell me that you are enjoying the content and sending me ideas, some special guests or topics that you'd like to feature on future episodes. Hey, keep those coming, right? Love to hear your feedback. If you ever do want to reach out to me, it's very simple. Just email me. The email address is info at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. And also for you listeners that are leaving me reviews on iTunes, I appreciate you very much by doing so and your t-shirts are in the mail, they're in the mail on the way to you. How do you get your own t-shirt if you're listening and wondering? Real simple. You just leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher or on the blog at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com on the podcast page mortgage marketing radio. Tell this works. I just got my new stock of t-shirts in my mortgage marketing radio, cool plush, awesome looking t-shirts and they're high quality t-shirts and not those junky t-shirts that shrink at the first round of the laundry, they feel good, they look good, people comment on them when they're out and about saying, gosh darn it, you look sharp in that t-shirt. So people like Lynn Reefert, Shani Morris, Nico Gromorosa, just like saying that, Nico Gromorosa getting a t-shirt across country mortgage. The telecom may, Brian Creeley, Vince Goodrich, Chris Nielsen, Philip Price, all y'all got t-shirts coming to you. Thank you for leaving the review, the positive review on the interwebs and if you want to get yourself a t-shirt, that's how you do it. So leave a review, then you email me info at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com to tell me you left a review, send me your mailing address and your preferred shirt size and hoping we have them in stock, these things go out of stock like hot cakes. So again, it's just a way of thanking you for letting us know that you like the show, the more reviews, the better we can do and the more value we can bring to you. And speaking of bringing value to you, of course, this week's guest, an awesome dude, a cool cat, a guy who's, you know, just, I think, an all-around, not only an all-star producer, but a good example of what a quality mortgage professional looks and sounds like that puts clients' interests above their own. What am I talking about? I'm talking about Ed Connocky, Ed Connocky with Terry Creek Mortgage. The general Ed's closed off of 4,000 loans in his career. That's right, 4,000 loans and I think about a 28 year career. And so what Ed and I unpack in this conversation here is really how to separate yourself from the, you know, the typical path that most people come to you on, which is trying to put a mortgage in a silo or in a box of, okay, I need a 30 year fixed, I need the lowest rate. Like Ed asks, you know, hey, if you ask people in a mall, come up to him, what's, what's better? 4.6 or 5%, well, people are conditioned to choose 4.6, right? So what we, Ed and I talk about is how do we take the mortgage conversation out of this silo and be more fiscally literate? And what you'll hear Ed talk about is how he's self-educated himself through various resources to help him have a more fiscally literate conversation that here's the key thing. What we want to do is we want to teach our prospects and clients one thing, educate them on one aspect of financial planning that they didn't know before. So sometimes that'll be a mortgage related thing and sometimes it won't. So here, Ed talk about some, you know, examples of maxing out 401Ks and some of the misconceptions people have about that and actual examples of where most recently he was able to win a deal by being half a point higher than another lender. He was the fourth lender that they shopped and came to and he was able to win the transaction being a half a point higher. So if you want to learn more about that, listen to this week's episode, advise rather than sell, help clients understand the long term financial impact of a mortgage and then position you as being a key advisor and in helping clients plan and understand their financial future, their picture and their plan. So get into this week's episode, I'm glad you're here, if you like it, let us know, leave us a review and without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Ed, welcome to the show. Thanks, Chef. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. Know you're busy. Great chatting with you the other day and we have got a lot to cover. You know, it's funny, since you and I chatted the other day, I saw this headline come over my email. I don't even know this, but the headline was, how did Ed Connicky close 4,000 loans with my Boston accent? 4,000? Yeah, man. I didn't even know about that piece. You've done so many loans, you lost track. So for the listeners, real quick, I mean, I did the formal interview, but you know, give us your version of that story. Set us straight. Who you are? What do you all about? Why, why you in this business? What do you love about it? Sounds great. Yeah, I started ironically, I think it was April 1st, 1990, so I just eclipsed my 28 year mark in the mortgage business and I started with out knowing anything about mortgages. You know, as the joke is, didn't know how to spell mortgage, you know, the right way. And here I am today, 28 years later, and I love it. I mean, it's, what gets me out of bed every day now, what I did 28 years ago and what I do now is totally different. When I first started, I started with Majestic Mortgage and Tom Ward, and Joy and Majestic. Yeah, I shard out to Tom. As I always say, wouldn't be where I'm at today without Tom Ward. We talked about that the other day. And then Tom merged with Cherry Creek back in 2005 or 2006, I want to say. So I was with Tom for 15, 16 years and then have been with Cherry Creek the last 12. So same phone number, I've had the same phone number for 28 years. And you know, as this industry, we tend to jump around a lot. I found that the grass is, you know, always greener on the other side of the fence. If I just had the right tools, which I had at Majestic and now have it, Cherry Creek, just to stay here and do my thing. So where's it? You said you found that the grass is always greener on the other side? Well, yeah, let me rephrase that, right? You know, the talk is that the grass is always greener on the other side. And I found that the grass is pretty fine where I'm at, as long as I have the tools that I need. And then it's up to me to just get it done and just, I don't look forward to reinventing the wheel and, you know, having new logos, new phone numbers, new emails and all that kind of stuff, too much work. Agreed. Agreed. I, saying that I heard once that stuck with me was the grass is greener where you water it. There you go. I like it. I like it. So, so speaking of Tom, shout out to Tom. He was on the podcast before. You guys can look that up. I don't know the episode, but I'm probably going to have him back, but it was probably a year ago. So you're with Tom for a long time, 15 years roughly, and he was, you told me a mentor of his. What are some of the greatest lessons you've learned while under Tom? Well, I think it's important to talk about Tom. Tom owned three-century 21s at one time. And he was upset with the quality of service he was getting from the mortgage industry. The guy decided to start his own mortgage company, you know, back in the late 80s. And then he finally got an offer to sell the, the century 21s he had at the time and just stay focused on the mortgage part. That's when I came into the company in 1990. So the unique thing about Tom being a realtor, no one, no realtor wanted to give him any leads because they were afraid he was going to steal their leads. Yeah. So we didn't work with realtors. We worked with builders. Builders is really our unique selling proposition back then, all the value that we can help with their clients over the six month of the build process. So I never really worked closely with realtors because of that. I have over the years, but it just never was. It was more of, you know, working with builders. And that's what started it and then everything went dry and that's when we'll talk a little bit about my new life in this industry and what I'm doing now. But Tom taught me a lot. Every loan is not a good loan, you know, that you have to say no to loans. Taking loan applications is not what you should be focused on. You should be closing them and more loans is not necessarily good. Portance of profit, importance of margin, you know, to be very profitable. As I always say, I'd rather do two loans and make the same amount that you're making when you do four loans. And why? Why would I want to have double the stress, double the labor, you know, double the deadlines, double the amount of lawyers and realtors and appraisers and all that kind of stuff. So just, you know, not that we're gouging people, but you'll see as we finish up the conversation of the value we bring to the table so that we don't have to worry about cutting our margins. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So that's, I think some good lessons there, right? Which is take good business in, right? Like what you said about us. Not just about taking in apps. Is it about, is it a good, good loan, good quality loan? And a lot of that. I don't want to just do loans. It's not what I'm here for. It's a higher calling than that. So just taking in loans and throwing them against the wall, which is, you know, and sees what sticks, which is pretty much accepted in our industry. I've never been a fan of that. So it's a higher calling for you to tell us more about that. What do you mean? Why is it more than that? Well, I think that's a good time to talk about the segue. Where my business totally changed and it had a change as everything was starting to go away. So there's, that we were calling on, as we peaked out in 2005, 2006, I mean, builders were having waiting lines to open up doors. They have a lot of reason for people to buy homes. There was no need for our USPs anymore, you know, of helping, helping, you know, advise consumers, the value of home ownership in the building arena that wasn't needed anymore. So we were a dime a dozen. Now it became who wrote the biggest check to pay the builder for marketing and what I have you that was going to get the loans. And that's when I knew that just wasn't meant to be. We were in a, you know, if you ever read that book Blue Ocean strategy, I have not yet, but I know it, yes. And they just talk about, you know, fighting in that red pond versus, you know, looking out and seeing the blue ocean. And that's where we were at and I needed to make a change. And I was lucky enough to come across a gentleman by the name Rick Edelman. And if you don't know who Rick Edelman is, look him up. He could be the single greatest advocate of the mortgage industry. And it amazes me because the mortgage industry doesn't realize it. Rick is an investment advisor out of Fairfax, Virginia. His firm has been going on for 30 years now. His firm's been open. They currently have 43 offices across the country. They manage assets around $22 billion for 35,000 families. He's grown this from nothing to this huge thing. Why he's so important and why I heard about him and why he changed my mortgage career was that he wrote a white paper in 1988 that said, don't pay off your mortgage. Get a big mortgage and pay the minimum on it. Get a 30 year fix. Don't do a 15 year, don't do a 20 year, don't do a bi weekly. Get a 30 year mortgage, pay the minimum. And all that extra discretionary money you wanted to throw at the mortgage, invest that money into your 401k at work. Pay off bad debt, grow your rainy day fund. Those are more important than you paying off your mortgage. So that's when I found him, with eye opening to me, I'd been in the industry 15 years. I'd had a great career. And now I got this guy saying, hey, what you've been telling people, it's not necessarily wrong. It's just that you need to look at this holistically, don't have the mortgage conversation in a silo all by itself because a good mortgage decision may be a bad financial decision for somebody. You've got to take that mortgage decision out of a silo and you've got to have a holistic financial conversation with somebody to make sure that the mortgage they choose is going to complement their financial planning and what they're trying to accomplish holistically with their financial plan. Exactly, exactly. It's a matter of fact that we're here now in the sweet spot. Let's start unpacking this because what really brought me back connected to you was a, I think, a post on Facebook in the mortgage coach productivity group there. There was some type of specific comment or just a dialogue that you had. Do you recall what that was because I'll try and pull it up. Yeah. No, no, no. If someone had talked about the shrinking margins that we're facing in this industry, which we're all seeing, I'm seeing it. We've seen it many times in my 28 year career. We're seeing it again. You know, there's a lot of people that are making nothing to do alone. Right. So we're seeing it everywhere and everybody's doing it. Small shops and big shops are giving it away because the refinances, they, I look at refinances differently, but they think refinances are gone. So, you know, we're going to have contraction and volume. So we really got to start giving away to get people in the door to do loans with us. So we're seeing that happen and there was just the discussion about that. In my comment on it was, you know, the importance of price versus advice. I think that's a Todd Duncan saying and Tom Ward and I at Majestic, we absorb that too and embrace that I should say that, you know, you have to really decide. Are you the price person where you're going to give everybody the best price or you an advice person? And you have to pick your poison. You've got to go down that path. You can't be both. You've got to pick one or the other. So there was this discussion in Banta going around and about a week later, after that, that thread, I had a client call me. I was the fourth mortgage company that they had talked to. It is a pass client of mine's daughter and they're looking to buy their existing condo in the city of Chicago. The owners decided to sell it and they want to buy it a little bit ahead of schedule because they didn't plan to buy it this soon but now they live in it so I got to make this quick decision. And they have decided before they talked to me, they were going to put 10% down. And as I go through all the numbers, they're talking about to get a gift from their parents and I'm going, well, this doesn't add up. Why would you put 10% down if you don't have the money and you got to get a gift from your parents to do this? Why don't you put 5% down? And I was the first out of the four people they talked to. It was the first one to let them know they could buy a home with only putting 5% down on a conventional loan and they have that all-be-gift. Nobody else mentioned it because all the other ones were order takers and all they were doing is just when they came to them and said, I want to do 10% down, they would go, here you go, here's what we can do for you. So right away, they're like, wow, that's so much better than we don't have to worry about feeling bad that we're taking that much money from our parents. And guess what? The parents are taking the money out of investments and the parents don't have to take that much out of investments now and that's when it rolled and it came down to where the first company they talked to had a rate of 4.625 and I'm quoting 5.125 and they chose me because one I packaged everything with no lender fees but at a half a percent higher interest rate they liked the fact that I was finally were the ones that were educating them to show them options that no one else talked to them about because they wanted that 5% down. Now obviously they went back to the first guy and he now honored it but it was too late. Too late in that he couldn't get the deal done or meaning they just went with you. No, too late because they lost faith in them and they lost trust in them, they lost value in them because why didn't you tell us that? Why did somebody else have to tell us that? So they ultimately chose you at a half a point higher because you gave them education. Yeah, those are lessons there and it's funny people often we throw that term around and loosely sell advice versus price but that in is a textbook case study on how you do that. So we've got loan officers listening to this, just heard you right there, we've got varying levels of experience, we've got people, veterans like you, now we've got some new people as I know because I get the emails. So you've got a year or less loan officer in the business, how are you coaching them? We become more of a advisor, what's the term you use, fiscal literacy? Right, it's funny, I'm not a smart guy, smart Irishman. After a couple of beers we think we're smarter but I mean we mentioned two huge mentors to me, Tom Ward and now Rick Edelman. I find people that make it work and do what they've done, we don't have to reinvent this. I think another one over the years too that is the same one is Greg Frost in our industry where he's like, I've failed so many times, I've screwed up so many times, I'm not going to tell you what I screwed up on but I'm going to tell you what I did and did work so just do that, don't try to reinvent the wheel. And that's the case, I'm not reinventing the wheel so when Rick Edelman and I started to really understand each other back in 05 and 06 and I was sharing this with you, you know, our industry had this storm of Douglas Andrew in his book, Mist Fortune and it was revolutionary because it really made us teach about equity and home equity and understanding the power of money elsewhere versus just sitting in our house but the only problem that I disagreed a little bit with Douglas Andrew is he wanted to put that into whole life insurance products which he gave a fancy title of guaranteed life insurance contracts or something like that from a marketing perspective and then I heard Rick Edelman with an interview with Steven Marshall and it blew me away I think it was 05 or 06 and that's when I reached out to him right away because he was the first one to talk about the importance of diversification and liquidity and having your money working for you and how interest rates are cheap and taxy-doctoral and a mortgage should be looked at as a financial tool not as a debt and that got me to pick up the phone and reached out to him and he was kind enough to set an appointment with me and we spent 20 minutes to change my life but why I'm saying all this is because I've just copied what he does and all he does with all his financial advisors is educate consumers that's all they do and they do it at a basic level using analogies to help people understand a tough subject of money very simply and in fact what their goal is is to talk at a fourth grade level so everybody gets it so all I do and all I would recommend anyone to do that is just starting off or somebody that's struggling or just wants to change where they're not focused on having to worry about every realtor you know giving them business and they don't like realtor business anymore they want to just go directly to the consumer is fiscally educate people and this is bigger than the mortgage so it's a money discussion but if we can teach them the importance of putting away the most in their 401k staying on a bad debt and having a rainy day fund and managing their mortgage so that they have the discretionary money to accomplish those goals and teach this fiscal literacy people need it they don't have it today and that's where you're going to have it become not a mortgage thing anymore it's a money thing and then you're the one that's helping them facilitate this this tool the mortgage I love it I agree at 100 because as you know today it's all about positioning ourselves as a thought leader and you know to speaking of mentors Gary Vaynerchuk you probably know he is but I you know he teaches real estate agents that today you're no longer a realtor you're a media company and your back end is real estate and I think the same is true for real officers you know like I look at I couldn't agree with more I'm looking at your videos on your Facebook page uh cherry creek mortgage at at Carnegie you guys can look that up I'll put a link in the show notes but you've recently also got into video I think as a means for uh financial education right yeah it's just every time I learn something new it's my duty and obligation to share it with other and my pleasure to do it to just educate I was sharing with you I think I shared this with you when we were talking a couple weeks back about there's a survey of the states that done every two years they do a survey of states and it's ironically 50 states and the district of Columbia so it's 51 to see out of all of those states who's requiring testing of personal finance in case through 12 and the last one that I think was done in 2016 there's only 17 states so 17 out of 51 require any kind of personal finance testing case through 12 so consumers are not smart basically yeah exactly yeah they're not smart visibly and I think you and I talked about this before if we were to go around and ask consumers in a mall you know hey what's better when you're getting a mortgage five or 4.8 they're all going to answer the 4.8 because they remember how you know 4.8 is less than five when they were doing that in grade school so they know that that's right so that's what they gravitate to because that's all they know they don't know about fees or closing costs you know should they do a 15 versus a 30 they don't know that every dollar they don't put in their 401k it's getting tax so they only have 70 cents on the dollar so they're losing 30% of their money there so we've got to be the ones that have to educate them on this absolutely okay so what I'm thinking is this I'm thinking the audience is listening right now and the thought that's going through the head is all right I agree how do I have time to self-educate myself and deal with all the other stuff that's going on in my business right what are some resources how does that self-educate himself you know what would you recommend there yeah no and and that's the key and if you go back to when I first talked to Rick Adam and back in 05 or 06 I got to pull up the exact date but it was one of those years I was a really bad discolidate at the time myself and probably the problem was as I probably thought I knew more than I did and you talk about getting humbled in regards to holy cow you know I didn't know that much but then it became empowering both personally because now I know what I needed to do I know how I needed to save for myself and my family what I needed to do to create wealth and provide for them so that I was financially secure I needed to learn all that because again I was part of that seven I was not one of those 17 states that required testing on it so I didn't have the fiscal literacy I came from a big family where we survived I had seven brothers and sisters so now you always talk about we didn't know what stocks were we knew what storks were but not stocks so I didn't go up with the silver spoon in my mouth I had to learn it all so I had to learn it so it's not like Ed was really smart and again I'm not I had to learn it all so the best resource that's out there is the guy we just mentioned it's Rick Edelman the guys written ten books on personal finance all of them top of all of them top New York Times best sellers his first book is the book that you want to pick up and read it's the truth about money he literally goes through this book and just tells you everything you need to know about money start to finish you name it it's in that book if it has a dollar sign in front of it and that's what I picked up and it's on its fourth version now so make sure you get the the fourth version because obviously I think the first when he did was in the late 80s and obviously the rules of money change over time ironically that's the name of another book that he has so I just everything that I could get about Rick Edelman I digest it all because he's out there as this person that's out there consumer you know educating consumers with with fiscal literacy so become a student of of fiscal literacy a money yeah money yeah there you go student yeah be a student of money don't be a mortgage person be a money person it's so much bigger than the mortgage it's funny I mean we're we just again like Rick says we just want to make this decision of 4.8 versus 5 because it's such a you know you can't be wrong in that equation 4.8 is less than 5 that's 100% right you know that old thing if you argue with math you will lose so that's where people go to so that they're right to making their decision what they're doing though is they're ignoring all the other stuff well getting money away in your 401k so that you have more money to get a 15 year fix there's a financial mistake but they don't know this until we teach them that how do you though represent that because it's one thing to say it right then how do you you know the old saying right you know I'll believe it when I see it or if you're in Missouri it's a show me state right so if you're gonna say you know it's a mistake to do a 15 year versus re reallocate that to a 401k how do you you know how do you get people going bored with that exactly right so when somebody calls you can't say what I just said right what do you mean you know that's that's computational so you have to just say to them so you're looking at doing a 15 year fix and here's the in this even came in on that thread was the best question that any of us can ask a consumer is why that's it why you want to do a 15 year fix why you want to do 10% down like I had with that with with how I won that deal all I asked them is why well I thought we had to do that well you thought wrong you don't have to so it's just asking them why so if they come and say I want to do a 15 year fix why I don't want to have a mortgage and retirement right that's sort of the answer it's like let me ask you a more important question is do you max out the 401k that you have available to you at work today do you carry any debt month to month that's bad debt high interest credit card that personal loans you name it all that high interest non tax deductible debt stuff do you carry any of that debt month to month do you have money if you have cash so if the roof leaks or the car breaks down or an appliance goes out on you do you have cash you need to have we believe a six to twelve month fixed expense rainy day account in cash just savings checking CD or money market so do you have all these now if the person says yes hey Ed I maxed out my 401k last year 18,500 this year and I'm going to put the same amount in this year I don't have any credit card debt that carries month to month in fact I'm debt free I don't know anything and I've got 12 months set aside in my rainy day account so 12 months of fixed expenses then go for it go do your 15 you don't need me but here's the thing the number one thing that we require or we recommend our clients to do to be getting to financial security faster is max out their 401k's at work only 6% of US workers do that today so that's another survey they do every couple years and they find it is pretty steady every year if you look at it for the last 10 years that really doesn't change that only 6% of US workers will max out the maximum they can put into their 401k now that's not the maximum to meet the company match that's the maximum the IRS allows you so if you're younger than 50 that number today is 18,500 and if you're 50 or older that number is 24,500 yeah I'm following short myself there you go look at that because here's the thing every dollar you don't put into your 401k gets taxed both federal and state and on average you're going to lose 30% of it that's a little different with the tax reform that we had but it's a good rule thumb so every dollar that you've got that you're not taking and putting into your 401k and you take out his income it's only 70 cents so now you're trying to create wealth with 30% of your resources just lit up so it's very interesting as I'm listening to this I'm sure listeners as well right I think the chair you want to put yourself is on the receiving end of this is the buyer who like in your case that right we know buyers are probably multi-appling you today more than ever before as it's so much easier right so how are you going to win that business when they come in like you said from the start of our conversation when they are conditioned to you know think oh well 4.8's lower and better than five right well then how do you because this is often what I hear today we talk hey price versus advice how do you pivot that conversation though but to your point is it starts with asking questions and getting it I like what you said at the start is getting the mortgage conversation out of that silo of rate and mortgage yes yeah well it's funny because we're trying to go to speed you know with with rocket mortgage and there's somebody else that's out there that's thrown speed out there and that's great I get it I understand it but the problem with it is is it's not about speed it's about putting the people in the best financial position that they can be it well that's a key difference you see the loan officer that has to have that mindset well they need to have the knowledge see I think the biggest weakness is that why I was not good at it because I wasn't good at myself I didn't have the personal financial fiscal literacy myself so what I had to do is do the exercise to you know what I mean I had to work out I had a financially or fiscal literacy workout to get to where I'm at and I got to keep working out every day Rick Edelman does a podcast we does a radio show every weekend that's syndicated across the country and then he turns it into a podcast and it's on their website or on iTunes Monday or Tuesday it's about two hours long because it's a two hour radio show and you cut out the commercials that's a little bit less than that I listen to that every single week and I've done that for 10 plus years yeah this this will be my longest show note link podcast in history I think because so far I've got like five links in there so for you listeners this awesome this is a total resource package yeah that's it's very especially for new people younger people coming into the business that maybe you know don't have the same bench or the background they don't have that financial literacy training right and you and I talked about this before um and this was part of that thread too the push button mortgage uh you know if we are getting if margins are getting pushed and it's getting more competitive and you know people are willing to lose money sometimes the wind deals right how do we win how do we win more often and it's going to come back to that advice if you can control the conversation and capture their attention with something to educate them on teach them something you just hit me on the head we just need to teach them something they don't already know if we teach them something that they don't already know that's in their best interest that's going to improve them especially if it's going to help them out financially to get the financial security faster we're not going to win every deal but we're going to win 70 80 90 percent of those deals because there are people that will take my advice and go somewhere else it happens there's nothing you can do about that but most people don't because they want to stay with you because they understand that after the loan closes they want to call you with other questions that you're going to be able to help them with that are mortgage questions that are money questions I think I asked you that before is because we know there's a certain percentage of the market okay you got your a-50 feco engineer working at the big tech company who's making you know six figures and he's got it you know money in the he knows he's a paper right right are you saying that you're you know you you accept you're going to lose x percentage of those types of clients yeah if he's maxing out 401k doing all the right things what I can't teach him anything if he already knows it I can't help him well how about not even that where it's like you know somebody as I'm sure you get these calls somebody and they they just know they're a rock solid a I'll give you an example of much my brother's listening forgive me Brian but so you know more analytical knows knows the game so to speak and all he cares about is the lowest rate because he knows dude I got my whole I've already I just know I want a 30 year fixed I want the lowest fee lowest cost you know that's all I care about yeah as long as they're fiscally smart and I can't teach him anything I there's not much I can bring to the game so they've they're they they've rewarded themselves by knowing all that that they don't need me and they can just go find someone you know that will do it for nothing do you here's a question do you think though that the average consumer looks to the loan officer as being fiscally knowledgeable no no way and when I start asking people questions about maxing out their 401k and do they carry bad dad month the month and do they have six to 12 months and cash after the closing they're like blown away I mean no one I become sort of like their blue color financial planner that it's sort of like they've never had a financial planner before they just been trying to do it on their own and they've been able to get by but they're not making their money work for them the best like I said they want to grow their wealth but they take their 401k is they don't put it in the 401k so they take that income and right away they're losing 30% of their investing power give me a sense of if you can of you know people are conditioned to call you up and just hey Jeff or I'm sorry hey Ed this is Jeff yeah I got your referral from you know Suzy Q over at the remax real estate she said I should call you so yeah what's your interest rate you just got to take a step back so he's in the silo right someone's like what is that death you know like that what's that WWF thing where you have the cage fighting or whatever cage match yeah yeah so it's like that right away that guy's in the cage match with you and you got to get him out of the cage so you just got to take a step back and just say hey what's going on Jeff tell me a little bit about your situation do you own something now or do you rent what are you looking to buy how much you're looking to put down where's that money coming from you just kind of start to prove to say okay yeah you're you're fine everything you're saying is fine but how many people will say like with the 10% for the 5% you know I'm gonna liquidate my 401k to get that money no that's the worst thing you could do let me explain to you why so we really got to start to make sure that they know what they're doing again it's not an egotistic thing that I know more than other people with money that's not bad it's just that unfortunately I spend so much time that I do know a lot about money that I need to make sure that the people are doing it the right way if I get the loan or not I just want to make that person's not putting themselves into a worse position I financially yeah for those that want to quit yet I think it's what you we said before it's if you can educate them on one thing they didn't know before that's in their best case and I got to find it so what I got to do is I got it I had one with a guy that's like yeah it I already maxed out my 401k and I go on how old are you I'm 53 I go so you put in $24,000 he goes no I only put in 18,000 that's the max wise guy you know he didn't say it but that's how I get back and that's what I had to come back to him and say you're mistaken there's something called the ketchup clause let me just educate you on that boobaboo and you got to do it I mean it's not it's not the way that's coming off now and you can do it kind of sending you just you got to let him know and he's like are you serious I my account never told me about that that was words and I said sometimes it just gets lost or they think you know and you don't and I'm just the guy that's just making sure that you know all the things that are out there that are working for you and he's like wow I can now and and I don't remember the exact situation but just think if that was the guy that was going to go to the 15 now he can go back to a 30 cut his payment and now he's got the money he needs to do to put that extra six thousand dollars into the 401k and this goes without saying it's obvious but what is this this style of conversation due to build trust which is really what we want to achieve correct yeah it's it and that's what it's all about you know trusted advisor gets known around a lot I don't know if Todd Duncan was the first one to throw that out or who did doesn't matter but that's what we're looking for is someone that they know is looking out for their best interest and you've proven that you know and what we have to do like we said is identify where there's some area that they don't know that we can just plant the seed and educate them on and then that just shows that hey this guy's not trying to sell me anything he's trying to educate me yeah that's good stuff all right so real quickly let's transition to talk about your sources of business if I remember correctly you're pretty strong with past clients yeah past well and it's fortunate I mean all those builder loans that we did for 15 years I've been in touch with everybody you know over all the years no it's not fortunate you it's very intentional because you know as well as I do a lot of LOs have no past client database that I've been doing it 20 years yeah and it's just sad I mean I read a book long time ago and again this was a majestic book Tom Ward picked it up and then he recommended all of us called the one-to-one future and basically just talks about how market share is not important share customers important you know who cares about market share it's share a customer that's what's important and learn that from the get-go and you know just that's what I focus on is just taking care of that client and not letting them go and staying on top of them and always being there well what do you do proactively then to you know scrub the past clients to the generate business always pulling reports always making sure so my tagline is making sure that clients have the lowest mortgage payment possible okay because if I can get you the lowest mortgage payment possible then it frees up cash flow for you to hit those other areas in that holistic financial picture that you need to be putting more money towards retirement saving for the kids college paying off bad debt growing the rainy day fund well let me let me get more specific for for my intent with that question I know your busy guy how do you structure that activity into your calendar you know you time blocking past client calls or what does that look like right to tell pulling reports and on a regular basis going through five obviously is interest rates fall I've got an automated system I'll put a shout out for optimal blue here optimal blue has an amazing system that will track interest rates so when I close the and this is a great sales feature up front I always say I'm going to get you the you know the best I can get you today but don't worry about it because I have an alert system that when you close the next day I set up an alert and it rates fall 50 basis points I'll send you an email automatically we'll watch the market minute by minute day by day so we'll get you the best today but then don't worry about it we're going to get you the best throughout you being in the life of this house an optimal blue has an awesome system where you're able to set all that up takes a second to do and then it's just watching their profile and the minute that the market allows us to hit that it sends out emails so setting that up for every client is a must and then just going through you know people that have MI right now that I can either go to LPMI or get them out of MI getting people out of FHAs the conventionals so everything just any way I can save somebody $100 think about this if I can save someone a hundred dollars that's a hundred and fifty dollars before taxes because remember if you take out a hundred and fifty dollars of income instead of putting in your 401k you're going to only be left with a hundred bucks after its tax so a hundred dollars on a savings for a mortgage is a hundred and fifty that you can now put in your 401k a hundred fifty dollars compounding at eight percent over 30 years is $225,000 are you having that kind of conversation with people absolutely absolutely yeah again back to being fiscally literate right you got to understand the power of money and how money works right this is what this is the industry we're in we are we are selling money we used to say that you know when we are single you know that'd be a line you know what do you do for living I sell money how's that working for yeah yeah and people be like you know oh hey what's going on tell me more about that you know that can even be a Tom Wardline now that I think about it but you know but that's what we do we sell money yes and we sell tax deductible money think about it we sell the only debt that's still tax deductible can't do with credit cards anymore Reagan took that away took away auto loan interest deduction that's gone mortgage interest is only tax deductible in high states where we've lost high tax states where we've lost the salts in the property tax cap at 10,000 mortgage interest is more important than ever you really regret paying off your mortgage now if you paid it off and not have that right off anymore with the tax changes so we sell the only debt that's tax deductible we sell money and if you don't understand money and its holistic sense and you're just having that conversation in the silo no wonder they're shopping you and no wonder you're in a competition because we're not educating them on the much bigger picture how you handle your mortgage is going to impact all those other areas that we talked about do you have any I'm just curious you may not because you know you've been doing this so long it's just natural for you but I know some some loan officers like to use a like a script at the beginning that's a point of differentiation when you're first meeting a client that you know tries to keep it out of the silo that you know something that sounds like you know I'm not like most other loan officers and here's what I mean by that or you know anything you know I'm getting out there I don't anymore I did at the time but now it's just repetition you know I've got I was telling you before I'm at the office today and I got a TV in the background I got the masters on and these guys are so good right mm-hmm because of how much time they put in right right so why I'm really fluid with this stuff like I am I've had this conversation hundreds if not thousands of times and the first couple times you know I wish we would have taped them and gone back it would have been embarrassing if you like looking at yourself you know as a freshman at high school or something you'd laugh you know I didn't have a clue but you had a start and then you just get better and better and better over time that's true yeah just like riding the bike man you got to just you don't do it yeah I'm watching that I got the TV on the background now and they got the range they got all these pros right they're all on the range they're showing uh which is named Yannick Spenstrom or whatever's name is and he's out there he's hitting balls this guy's a pro he's a professional he's one majors but look at he's working on his game it's pretty amazing when you think about that from an algae standpoint and it kind of reminds me of that old story I think it was from Ted Williams and the Red Sox if I'm correct if that was the example where you know somebody or it could have been a golfer you may know better than me but somebody you know basically said gee I really wish I could hit like you do and he turns at him like no you don't because you're not willing to you know hang in here and swing the club until your hands are bloody exactly right exactly we all want that we all want success but we don't want to put anything in unfortunately and I say that in general I say that general bird was that way I think bird he used to like he had to hit a hundred free throws in a row before he would leave the practice he'd be the last one on the floor every single time because he wouldn't quit until he had a hundred in a row or something like that crazy let's see other one I heard the other day uh everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die there you go or do the things or to do the things that you need to do on earth to get to have it right exactly so going back to what you said so past clients past client referrals huge part of my business um one of the big things uh-huh moments came is when Rick Adam said to me you need to be a fiscal literate you need to have holistic conversations with clients so you got to get really smart and and what I'd recommend you to do Ed is I'd recommend you to actually become an investment advisor go out and get your series 65 and become an investment advisor so that you know it and then you have a personal license now so you can give fiscal advice and financial advice because you have a license to do so now do you need a license to tell somebody put all their money you know put the maximum away in their 401k or stay out of long term debt or grow a rainy day fund but if you really want to nail this you really need to start to understand it all because there's deeper questions that come around and I want to answer those I don't want to push them off on anybody else I want to be the one that's managing that so what Rick Adam and said to me is here's my advice if I were you I would stay licensed obviously as an MLS mortgage advisor but get licensed as a fin real licensed series 65 therefore you're an investment advisor therefore you can give the advice and if you do that I'll make a deal you refer clients to me since your license I can compensate you back if they put assets under management with us I'm a client full disclosure I'm a client of Rick Edelman's firm Edelman Financial so it was a natural segue to say why wouldn't I refer people to the place that I'm at what greater and I researched everybody and I'm with Rick because he's the best not because I'm getting money for it and then it just made sense when people say who should I manage my money with let me tell you about the number one advisor rated by Forbes three times as number one excuse me rated by barons financial press three times as a number one advisor and Forbes just last year named on the number three advisor in the whole country guy who's written ten bucks on personal finance and their firms managing you know 35,000 families and oh they don't have that high minimum either I mean you can place money with Rick with a little with three thousand dollars so these are these are the down to earth advisors that are helping just ordinary folks out there. So are you saying for some listening that might be an appropriate route for them to take as well? So I created my own company National Advisors Network and it's open to any one to join if you want to get your series 65 you can join National Advisors Network have your series 65 so you can give the holistic advice and then you could be under I firm National Advisors Network and you could refer to Edelman Financial and get compensated for it. And is there a website? About another source of income. Yeah right. Do you have a website for National Advisors Network? A National Advisors Network.com very basic but yeah you can check that out. No I'm asking because it's another show link you know in the notes here. Yeah we're trying to break the record on links here. Oh you got it already. No but that's very interesting for those that are of course now I know for you for percentage of business realtors versus like financial planners advisors you're working with some financial advisors yeah. So what's cool about it is Rick Edelman has offices locally in the Chicago land area two offices and then he's got two offices in Michigan so they asked me to get licensed in Michigan since I'm not far. So I work with the Edelman advisors in those two arenas. I've picked my boys in there and I've gone with Edelman Financial and not other advisors. I think it's a conflict of interest you know what I mean. I don't want to ever be caught in a situation where they're accusing me of referring one of their clients to Edelman. It would never happen. I would never breach that but it's just not worth it. So I work with those advisors and then work with my clients and just educating everybody I can. My realtor base is very small. I can name five we one or two that I get regular business from and I don't even rely on any of that business. One of the things that I think I mentioned this to you before one of the hardest things for me working with realtors is that when I talk to clients I'm not trying to get them to buy a home and get a mortgage. What amazes me but all the people I know in the mortgage industry on Facebook is how a lot of times mortgage loan officers are trying to sell me a house. This is this open house that's going on. You need to buy a home. There's 12 reasons why it's better to own versus rent all this stuff. You're trying to sell me a house. You're a mortgage person. You need to just handle the mortgage side but instinctively in our industry we think some reason we got to have people buy homes because we've created if they buy a home we're going to get a mortgage out of it and you can't do that. You can't go in with that preconceived notion. You got to go in open-minded and saying let's go through the finances here to see if buying a home is the right thing for you. Wait, you're thinking about moving in two to three years? That's the last thing you should be doing is buying a home. No way. The cost that you're going to have to pay to get out of that home to the realtor and the transfer tax, the attorney, the title fees. You'll never make it. And now we see that's a little bit biased. I'm in Illinois where we're still below the cashier or home price index. We're still 18% below the cashier or home price index in 2006. So we're not growing and getting back to where we need to be. So in Illinois if something about a home in three years they're not going to see that much appreciation but they're going to have all these costs that they had to put in to buy the home and all the cost to sell the home and all the cost to maintain it while it's in there. So home ownership is the right thing over long period of time. We usually Rick Edelman's been saying for 30 years, buy a home as long as you know you're for sure you're going to be in there five to seven years. Preferably longer so that those costs you know flatten out. There's many at times it's like no way I wouldn't recommend you buy today. You're going to you're going to take all that money put in the house and be house rich and cash or what happens if the hot water here goes out? Who's going to pay for it? Now you're going to go back into debt and it's going to be a spiral. So we have to be independent and objective looking out for their best interest. We can't just be doing rubber stamps approved, approved, approved, approved because it's pay day, pay day, pay day, pay day. You can't do that. So I had it where with realtor relationships when I really started to take on this role they would refer me someone and I'd look through and go yeah we can really get you an FHA alone. We could do duct tape and bob wire get you into this thing but you're going to be house rich and poor and cash poor and you're one appliance away from this starting to fall and plus your housing cost is going to go up from where you're at today and you haven't been able to save anything where you're at today. No that's interesting. It's a great point and I think that goes back to you know the fiscal literacy one but also more importantly you know having your clients best interests in mind above all else. So as a series 65 I have a fiduciary. I have a commitment and a vow that I have to give all interest and the best I have to give all advice and the best interest of the consumer by client first and foremost and I carry that fiduciary over to my mortgage practice and I believe that it does concern me sometimes in our industry fights that we should be looking out for the best interest of the client each and every time yeah yeah absolutely and you've got it and that best interest isn't what they can do today it's what's over the long time I heard something a long time ago that said as a professional my as a professional in a professional role my job is to tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear and think of as any professional doctor you know lawyer whatever I'm not going to tell you which you want to hear but how many times do we do that you know or it's like we want to tell them what they want to hear we can't do that we have to tell them what they need to hear because we need to make sure when they look up five or ten years they're better off with us helping them than worse off. That's great advice I agree 100% man like because that's just going to show up in you know the trust we create the communication even if they wind up you know saying or agreeing it's a you know what you're right I've talked about it with my wife or whatever and god yeah as much as we want to buy we do think we need to wait a year or whatever and they feel better with that decision than feeling pressured to get into a house that is going to pay off for you and referrals down the road. I just closed the loan last week they called me five years ago and they were living in the basement of their in-laws and it was terrible and they were commute the commute was terrible it was just they were at a bad place but they didn't have any money and they're they these jobs they were in weren't there go-to jobs they were just sort of working there to make income and they didn't say had any money saved and it was just like okay here's what we need to do you've got a goal to buy a home I love it let's put you in and I go but let's do this and I'd get a call from over six to twelve months religiously okay it's time and I'd go through and I go no it's not you haven't done this this and this finally it was time they had saved up but now they have plenty of money to put down and they still have money left over so they're not going to be how to how to rich and cash poor and he's like I just want to thank you for stopping us every time we wanted to push it because we just wanted that cam a lot now that was going to be like that would solve the problems if we just were homeowners and we've come to realize that it's the best thing that we didn't do because where we would have bought is probably 50 miles away of where we actually are buying now and it wouldn't have worked and if we would have bought and we would have been in a worse position and we would have took a you know we would have took the hit financially if we had a cell to come back up here and I'm sure they were like now you know hey and we appreciate all the advice and the help over the years but man I mean your rate's kind of high yeah not at all right they're like just tell us what to do exactly the cool thing is is don't worry about it you know get in now and if rates fall we'll refinance you down the road and if they go up you're going to be happy we did what we did when we did it so it's a no-lose situation yep it's about like I love it the fiduciary responsibility it's about serving you know being a go-give versus a go-taker all right so we're out of time but I wanted to get the the quick take the Ed's prediction the future of the mortgage loan officer and what does that look like say three to five years from now for those that are going to survive well I I always said I'm a trend setter my wife and daughters may well you're sure you're sure proves that I really think what I'm doing I'm very fortunate to have sort of fallen into this and and met Rick and had him point me in the right direction because I think he's way ahead of his time and he obviously was the one that said you you got to be more than the mortgage person you got to be the money person so I think that's it I really think is because sort of the summarize what we've talked about here because this is one of their biggest money decisions and remember I'm saying money not mortgage and that's what makes it different you got to change that in your mind but it's the one who can teach fiscal literacy to help people I have a saying on my email if you ever email me you'll see it that I don't believe the American dream is to merely own a home you know I think our industry a lot of times the real estate industry and the mortgage industry we want to make that the American dream because that's our dream right because if everybody's out getting out mortgages and take you know buying homes and take it out mortgages we're gonna get rich no the American dream is not that on a home the American dream is bigger than that it's to have financial security right I mean think about it think of all the people that are lined up outside that convenience store liquor store gas station when the mega ball gets really big they want financial security and they want it tonight at nine you know when they pull the ball yeah that they don't look at it and say hey I want 300 million dollars now I got to go out and buy 300 million dollar houses no it's not about the house it's about the money and I don't mean that in a negative way it's just that financial security brings on the best you know they they say um financial family dysfunction comes number one reason is from finances so if we can get finances and get people in great financial positions then everybody's gonna be better off so yeah the home is part of it but when I came to the realization that's just one piece of the puzzle that's not the whole puzzle that's when everything changed and you start looking out for the best interest your clients start saying okay we can do this but let's just make sure we should be doing this because there's other fish to fry out then when it comes down to money right on man I love it I love it big takeaways be fiscally literate get yourself educated so you can separate yourself by teaching the clients on the call one thing they didn't know before that's in their best interest that for me is a real big takeaway here and we're gonna put all the links to the show notes in this I think I'm counting let's see one two three about eight different show notes links that's awesome lastly for anybody who wants to connect with you what's the best way online Facebook what um yeah anyway I mean I I think today we have to do a little bit of everything I'm a LinkedIn I'm on Facebook um I have I don't really get into Twitter but I know my Facebook post link over to Twitter um you know obviously online go to edconerkey.com or edconerkey.biz it feeds the both places are the same um you can even go to my website just to see how it's different you know I'm I'm right away got a video there telling people what I'm doing you know then I am different and I'm not you know scared to say that I'm different that I really want to have them teach the stuff differently um I'd say that's probably the best go to edconerkey.com and all my contact information is there drop me an email uh reach out by phone phone numbers there whatever I answer my own phone you know I just it's just you know I think a lot of times we get so like think it's got to be so I don't know big picture in in our industry I got to have all these assistance and all these people and uh again like I said I say this to you I don't think it's about how much value you do mm-hmm it's about your margins and your profit totally yeah what you said was you know you and I forget the exact number of units or whatever and we don't have used it and you talked about units I hate to talk about this like what's your profitability you're running a business yeah right um I mean but what the hell you've done like what 4,000 loans in your lifetime so well and I just think that yeah that's a great number but if I'm not making anything on those so it just got to be a bounce you've got to provide value and it's got a like we said price versus advice you got to provide the value and in exchange is that you're going to get compensated for it but you're you're giving away more than what you're charging for that's for sure awesome well listen I appreciate your time and uh I know you're watching the masters so won't competing for you I go live feed now so I gotta I gotta it goes live on ESPN now so I gotta get uh that's awesome we appreciate you being here man and listeners uh I hope you enjoyed today's episode as always if you like it please leave us a comment a rating on iTunes or Stitcher wherever you're listening and all the links are going to be in today's show notes so I do appreciate you guys for tuning in and we will 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 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 let's just face it agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources 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