Ep #74: Becoming a Divorce Mortgage Specialist

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, Jeff Zimper, welcome to another episode of mortgage marketing radio. So glad you're here. Hope you're digging the episodes. Would love to get a shout out from you. If you ever want to reach me, you know you can. If you've got one of those sweet swag and mortgage marketing radio t-shirts, hey, share it up. Take a picture of yourself on Instagram. We're going to talk about Instagram in a coming episode. So why not start using it? Take a little selfie on Instagram, tag me, mortgage marketing institute on Instagram and share the love. Okay. Good into this week's episode, man oh man, this is just a home run and it's a long time coming and bringing this topic to you, the audience members. And so let me actually open it up with this is that I know there's a lot of you listening that have probably thought about specializing or pursuing the divorce niche. And a few weeks ago, I received the good fortune of being invited to attend a class that was hosted by what I will call the premier training and education organization in the country for preparing and training real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, attorneys, judges, financial planners, an amazing organization behind the organization called DivorceThisHouse.com is a professor graduate of both Stanford University and Harvard Law School, and she's a faculty professor at Vanderbilt University. herself and Aunt Wendy, as you'll feel, Kyra, her affectionately referred to on this episode, have created, as I said, what I think is the premier destination. If you're at all considering specializing in the divorce niche, I know there's some other options out there in the marketplace. This would be the one. Why? Well, you'll hear a little bit about it on this podcast, but I would say the reason why, if there was only one, but there's more than one. But the reason why is because when attorneys evaluate you and they look at what knowledge or expertise you have to be able to help them with their case files that are divorce-related, if you have an association to a respected law professor, that creates a eyebrow raising eye-opening kind of, wow, very impressive reaction from the attorneys. What you need to understand is professor Murray, her name is Kelly Murray, the graduate of Stanford, graduate of Harvard Law School, the Vanderbilt University Law professor teaches thousands of attorneys across the country every year, highly respected, highly regarded. And so how important is that in terms of who you decide to receive your education from when it comes to specializing in the divorce niche, and who you receive your training on how to actually approach divorce attorneys and get noticed and get attention? So what I love about the divorce of this house is they have a designation actually versus a certification, which actually is more respected by the attorney in a lot of cases. But here's the thing I want you to take away from this podcast. If you're at all considering pursuing that niche, don't do it half-hazardly, get the proper training and education you need. And I'm proud to be affiliated with them at DivorceThisHouse.com because of the level of professionalism. They have because of where they're coming from and wanting to change the face of divorce in this country. And what you'll hear on this episode is I've got three special guests. Wendy with Sal, she's also known as Aunt Wendy, she's the co-founder of DivorceThisHouse.com. We have Wendy Thompson, who I've known for over 10 years, what's up Wendy? And she is a lender out of Tennessee, Memphis, and then Rita Driver, she's a realtor out of Memphis, Tennessee, with 26 years of experience. And what they're going to hear is their story about how and why they decided to get involved in this divorce niche. What are some of the roadblocks to be aware of? How to approach attorneys, not to approach attorneys, why it's important to get properly educated and trained and to just like any other specialty, you need training to be a special list. And there's money where specialties exist. So, the divorce niche is one that's growing, it's one that's always talk about within the lending industry, but many are approaching in a wrong way and a very unsuccessful way. Unfortunately, doing some brand damage to themselves. So check out DivorceThisHouse.com, but more importantly, in this podcast, we talk about upcoming webinar we have that is going to do a deeper dive for you loan officers listening. You want to learn more about how to actually receive your divorce specialist designation. You want to learn how to actually present yourself to attorneys, how to find attorneys, how to bring realtors into the loop, how to team up with realtors and have a unified front approach to attorneys in your local market, how to add this niche to your business, so you're not so dependent upon the single source of business, like real estate agents, for example. So if that's all, you know, anything for you, the webinar is going to be taught and hosted by a professor, Kelly Murray herself, right? And so if you ever want to education, a free education and divorce niche, approaching divorce attorneys, plus we're going to talk about the new tax changes in Alimony Taxation and the TCGA changes with the new Tax Cup Jobs Act for the new tax plan put into place by the current president, right? All some relevant info that you might want to know in your professional business. Here's how you register for that webinar. The link is in the show notes, but this is the webinar address. It's www.webinar.divorcemortgagespecialist.com. It's in the show notes, as I said, the webinar is coming up on Thursday, May 24th. So get registered for that. It's going to be at 11 a.m. Pacific, and we'll walk you through a lot of the next steps in this process for how you get the designation. What is the training roadmap? How can you team up with your local real estate agents and host a class to get your real estate agents designated with this specialty as well and start adding this source of business a very profitable source of business to your overall mortgage career? So with that said, enjoy this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Let's get into the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. I've got a unique group here today. I've actually got three powerful women on the call. So I'm very excited to introduce my special guest, and here's how we're going to do this. Everybody knows who's who with the voice. Let me start off by allowing you each to introduce yourselves, who you are, and what you do. I'm Andy Wissell. I'll go with you first. Okay. Thank you. Well, I'm Wendy Wissell, and I'm co-founder of DivorceThisHouse.com. And we train divorce lawyers, judges, family judges, mediators, paralegals. And we're also training real estate professionals, particularly realtors and now lenders on how to work with the divorce attorneys early in the divorce process. And we're very proud of what we're doing because we're changing divorce across the country. Fantastic. Thank you. And Wendy Thompson, tell us about you. Hey, I am Wendy Thompson. I am a mortgage loan originator in Memphis, and I actually have a team that actually assists me. And I've been in the business about 17 years, and Jeffrey, you'll know that I don't know how long I've been a client of yours, but I firmly believe in educating realtors. So I definitely recommend it for anyone. Yeah. I think you called me out last time we talked, and you said, we've known each other for like 10 years. I'm like, has it been that long? It has. Jack, it has. For sure. So great to connect again. Small world, this lending industry. Okay. So last but not least, Rita Driver, tell us about yourself. Well, thank you so much for having me here. It's an honor and a privilege. And with the other two powerful women. I am Rita Driver from Memphis, Tennessee. I've been a realtor for 26 years. I'm in my 26 year, so I'm a little older than the rest of you here. And I have been working with divorcing couples and family attorneys here in the Memphis area for probably seven or eight years and figured out that Wendy was sell has the greatest and best opportunity for a realtor to educate themselves to truly be on the side of the divorcing clients when it deals with their home. And part of that is so huge, in my opinion, that they have brought together attorneys, realtors, and lenders for all of us to work together because it's all about the client. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for those introductions. Okay, so in the formal intro, you know, basically you guys heard about how we all came together and for those of you that might have fast-forwarded through that. So I have recently become associated with divorce this house.com because of the good things they're doing in the industry to not only change the face of divorce in this country and help people going through that very difficult process, but also to your point, Rita, I think they've from what I've personally seen done the best job out there in terms of bringing the right parties together and creating a platform that allows all of us to come at it from the right mindset, benefit the client ultimately, but of course, you know, I mean, it's a strong benefit for our business as well because all of us are looking for, you know, a unique value proposition in the marketplace and I know the people on this call and the people that listen to my podcast are service-oriented first and we all know that that leads to growing our business. So with that said, I wanted to ask Wendy, let me take you first, Wendy Thompson because, you know, most of the people listening to this are going to be loan officers. Why did you decide to pursue, you know, the divorce niche in your lending business? Well, for one, I think it is always going to occur, unfortunately, whether their interest rates are high, interest rates are low. So I think what it actually does for us is it will allow you to specialize in an area that is not going to be dependent upon right and it's always going to be needed. And with that, you know, probably yourself and other people that are listening, we have all had clients that have been through a divorce and then they come to you after the fact. And so I felt like it was really important to be able to offer advice and solutions in advance as opposed to after the fact. And so it was really a combination of being able to add a different area of my business that would be, you know, I guess for like a bit of term recession proof. And then as well as really being able to help people before they went through a divorce as opposed to trying to figure out a solution afterwards. And what has been the change in your business since doing that in terms of your sources of business? Let's say I'm curious to see. And if I'm correct, before we hit record, I was talking with Rita in terms of, you know, the timeframe for you in this space. So I may be asking the question a little unfairly, I've been prepared for it. But what, either what percentage of business are you, you know, now getting from this niche or do you foresee this being as a, you know, overall piece of your business? Well, I only took the class, I think, in either late February or the beginning of March. I have had, I'm actually have a client currently that was going to a divorce and actually I'm helping both the husband as well as the wife or ex-wife to be purchased the home and he's refinancing. I have, in all fairness, I have not marketed it like I should, but just think getting in the way, but I expect this to be a, definitely a pillar of business that I will be going after for sure. And did you pursue this niche because, you know, you and I both know this, right? You know, I'm tired of working with the Realsers or whatever, no offense Rita. But, you know, was, was that part of the mix? Did you want to like, you know what I mean? I know there's more to it behind that. So come on, let's let it loose. Well, yes, yes. And I don't know, well, and that it really is and I just feel like that most long originators if you are not currently trying to be self-destainable without realtors, then you're making a big mistake. Again, no offense to realtors. I think that it's always going to be a, you know, a percentage of your business, but I think that we all, we, we need to be actually going out and being able to create our own business, whether that be from an online source or from our past client or, you know, fear or having a niche like divorce financing. I had a few years back, I had been interested in this and just never really pursued it. So Rita and myself have been partners forever. My son is really 14 and October and we've been friends and partners since what's free to throw over 15 years, I think. So when Rita was very passionate about it, she's like, hey, I really want you to do this with me. I said, Rita, funny. You know, you asked me, this is something I'm very interested in passionate about as well. So it was one, you know, to have that certification and to be able to do that with Rita, I'm alongside with Rita and also just for myself to better serve the clients that I have, that I would normally help and then to be able to go out and get additional business on my own too. Again, I, you know, I definitely, definitely feel like that going forward, loan originators are really going to have to be creative and to be able to stand out with something as an expo that the online providers may or may not actually have or just, you know, stop working at Pizza Hut last week and decide they want to be a loan originator. So, no, I mean, I think that's the real case. That's real. That's real. That's real. It's a real case story there. Yeah. So, yeah. So that's really the reason. That's a good answer. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. And so I'm following a very logical process here. First I wanted to, for you listeners, I wanted to address the question of why as a loan officer you should consider this as a possible niche for you. And by the way, this isn't right for everybody. I guess I should say that as well. And before I let you go on this segment, Wendy Thompson, would you want to point out, you know, when I say that, you probably are aware of a few things I might mean by that. But do you have any commentary about, you know, hey, it's not right for everybody? Um, well, again, I feel like it's just like with anything else. I mean, it is definitely an area of expertise and you really have to know what you're doing because you could give, you know, bad advice. So I guess that where you're kind of going with that, that you have to kind of understand underwriting guidelines and situations and make sure that you're giving good advice to the client or to their attorney. What I mean by that more so is there are people that are relationship based and transaction based. And I know who you are, you know, we all love to do transactions, but it's a relationship that right supersedes that. And so what I want to make clear is that, you know, to your point about the pizza hut person who's now, you know, working in a call center, whatever, you know, this is really about, I believe you've got to approach this with the same fiduciary responsibility that a financial planner has, you know, when you're dealing with this subject because you're talking about people's lives. Oh, absolutely, absolutely for sure. And like I said, I think probably for your audience, Jeff, most of us are professionals. So I think that probably the people that listen to your podcast would all be a good candidate to actually do this course as well as, you know, offer to teach other courses that you actually have as well. So I'd, you know, I would say, you know, I'm a CPA by trade, so this really fits well into my experience and just really, I like being technical. And I think it just makes me that much more valuable to be able to go and actually speak competently and professionally to attorneys. And like I said, it's really a great opportunity for someone to get this designation because of their ability to potentially, like I mentioned, I've got someone that's currently going through a divorce, the wife is purchasing another home, the husband is maintaining the home. And so I'm able to do two transactions in one. You could even have a situation where you're representing both of them on purchasing another and they're actually selling the home. But yeah, but I like to say, I think more of your audience base, you know, I listen to your podcast and I know a lot of my friends listen to your podcast. And so I think that most of your audience, this is definitely something that they should, you know, at least look into doing. Well, I appreciate you acknowledging my audience listeners right now as professional. So I would have to agree with you. So thank you for that. Listeners. Yeah, Wendy's putting the love on you. Thank you. Okay. So Rita, you know, the same similar question for you because I'm sure some, and I may be wrong on this. These are some assumptions I'm making, right? I just put myself in the shoes of all the different roles involved on this call and don't worry Aunt Wendy. We're going to get to you soon. But Rita, Rita, why would a realtor want to consider this niche and is, you know, same question, right? Is it right for everybody? I can only attest to my personal level of passion for this certification, this particular education for realtor. It is a passion for me because I have as a 26 year veteran in our real estate industry. I've been along Wendy's line, Wendy Thompson's lines as a lender. I have been the realtor. I've had clients come to me after the fact of a divorce and realized that when I'm getting ready to list the house, whoever stayed in the house has been abused financially by the one that left the house generally as a rule. That creates a lot of problems for them to either a clear the title or b clear the loan. It creates a marketing challenge for me because the last 10 years, we've been in a down market. So it's created even further depression of distressed property. My greatest reasons behind me receiving the education that I am great before every day is because I can hopefully stop the damage that is created post divorce. If I can get in front of the divorce attorneys and in front of the divorce judges who are granting these divorces and get in front of the lenders to let them know, hey, we need to sell this house. We do not need to allow a spouse who has no job to stay in the house and make somebody else responsible that's not in the house to make the notes, they've lost their job. Now we've got two people with terrible credit and we've got a house that's upside down. We've got children who are being evicted and they don't understand that we're sitting in a position unfortunately at that point as the realtor that we look like the really bad guy who's standing out with the sheriff's department putting their little bed and their little toys out on the sidewalk. I don't want in that position. If I can stop it, I want to stop it and the only way to stop it is to collaboratively work together as a unit which is attorneys, realtors and lenders to give them the better options so that when they're signing that final divorce decree, that MDA, that Mural Discollusion Agreement, before they agree to those final terms and a judge stamped it done, they know they're educated of what the ramifications are of their actions in the future. Just immediate relief today. Right. Well said. Well said. Thank you. Okay. So we're bringing around full circle to Aunt Wendy. That's how we affectionate her. Yes. I know. I'm calling on you today. Okay. So how do you tell me tell me the mission behind divorces house first? All right. Well, the mission is consumer protection for divorcing homeowners. And what we want to do is we want to we take no sides for completely neutral. It's all about education and having the professionals in place, real estate professionals working with legal professionals so that we help the house spouse and the out spouse make the decision early in the divorce process. So we're changing the divorce timeline. And we want to protect this credit score of both individuals. And we want to preserve homeownership eligibility through working early in the divorce process, helping the lawyers with trained professionals that they will rely on as resources and not as competitors and not as transaction driven people, but rather a team. Those lawyers will respond best to a team who has tools and training. Okay. Love that. Well, well said. So then kind of put the pieces together for those listening that, okay, we've heard the reasons why a lender, a realtor would want to add this to their overall mix of business. Then how does that happen in, you know, take, take us through. I'm a lender. I'm listening. It doesn't make sense to me. I got a couple of realtors that I think would want to partner up on this. How do we come together and all get along? How do we, you know, approach the attorneys because I've been told stories before and you know this as well. It's like, hey, these attorneys are tough to approach and get an audience with. And I know from taking your class, there's some things that you do not want to say and do not want to show up, right, with a certain type of a presentation. So can you unpack that a little bit? Because, well, our class teaches you what to do and what not to do. And why it's important because when you learn what lawyers are doing wrong, and of course every lender and every realtor that has been in the business for at least a few years and has come across a divorced property or a divorced client, you see these mistakes and you think to yourself, why did you do this? I mean, even as a stager, I was a solicited stature and I had staged about 300 homes and I could not understand why these divorced properties were being sold so soon after the divorce was final. You know, when they could have sold it earlier in the process and been business partners because whoever the house bouts is was taking all the hit on the cost. And so, Professor Murray is our faculty and I'm going to brag about her because lawyers respect education in every capacity. And so, when Professor Murray trains our realtors and lawyers and lenders and other professionals that we're training now, they're getting a top notch education from a woman who is well educated herself because she graduated from Stanford, Phi Beta Kappa, and then she went to law school with Barack Obama and our newest Supreme Court judge, Neil Gorsuch. So she went to Harvard Law School. And when you get our education, she doesn't dumb it down, but don't you think Wendy and Rita, you understand exactly what she's teaching you and how you fit in. And it's all done through actual cases, so it's a lot like a reality program. And we show you how you fit in, but most importantly, we teach you to speak away a lawyer needs to hear it. Most of the time, lawyers tell us and we've trained thousands of lawyers. So the lawyers tell us that they're bombarded with literature and it's unsolicited by them. So they're getting flyers and brochures and all kinds of things and then emails. Never want to call a lawyer to pitch your niche, they don't want to be pitched. They want you to fill in need for them. And so what we've identified is what the lawyer actually needs from a lender. And Wendy Thompson, wouldn't you say that that was one of the main things that you learned from us? Oh, absolutely, for sure, Wendy. And then Rita, we taught Rita, driver, and everyone in her class exactly how the real tour can reach out to the lawyers coming from a position of need, not greed, because lawyers are constantly bombarded with realtors hoping to get a client who needs to buy a house and possibly sell the house. And with real tours in the right position, we call it a horizon market. It's the best market you can be in with a lawyer because when a lawyer has a client and it dawns on the client by doing their due diligence early before mediation and recognizing that keeping the house is not in their best interest, it will dawn on them that they need to sell the property. And we've positioned the real tour along with the lender helping complete a case file. You don't know really what goes in the case file to take our class, but suddenly you are helping put information in the hands of the very person who may need your services. And then working with you will make the decision to go forward or to refinance just exactly what Wendy Johnson just said. She has a divorcing couple and she's working with both of them because she's a neutral party, helping them move forward and actually be able to heal post-divorce with both of them preserving their financial future. Can you share, you know, without giving the keys to the store away, what it is, what of those, how do you help a lender realtor because I know part of the concept is the lender and realtor should go in as a team to the meeting with an attorney, right? Yes, ideally. Yeah, ideally. And we give you a five-point lawyer presentation agenda. So when you take our training, you're going to learn everything that goes wrong in divorce real estate and how you are the solution to the problems and how you help the clients but you also help the lawyer and the lawyer has employees within the law firm that you're also going to be interacting with and supplying information through. And with this five-point agenda, we give you your elevator speech. And with this elevator speech, it is the hook that will introduce you in the way a lawyer needs to learn about you and your services. And so it's a different point of view. When a lender is talking about refinance, we don't want you leading with refinance. And Jeff, you were in the class and you remember, Kelly Murray was very particular about how you introduce your services and you're not hiding anything. It's just that you're going to lead with the need and not with the greed. And within the five-point, oh. That's fantastic. That's what I was actually alluding to earlier when I asked Wendy that question about this isn't right for everybody because if you lead with greed, that's just going to show up. What did you say? Somebody else? The way they described it the other day, somebody used the term commission breath? Oh, yes. That's the CEO of the National Association of Divorce Professionals says that they've that everyone who joins their association and we've now affiliated with them. And so we're helping them grow and they're all about every one of their members getting more education because think about it. Lawyers are education snows. And so when you take our training as opposed to other training from non-lawyers and you throw out Professor Murray's curriculum detail to the lawyer that you're presenting to or the mediator or the paralegal, it doesn't matter. The first word out of their mouth is wow. And the second word is tell me more, now you get a sentence from them in a question because they actually want to hear what Kelly taught you because she is so highly regarded. She is the leading scholar in the country on divorce real estate reform. And so we're trying to make divorce real estate better and having people trained and working as a team, if you look at the legal community, they purposely named themselves that legal community. But the legal community looks at the divorce real estate industry as an industry of competitors. So with divorce this house and the National Association of Divorce Professionals, we're creating a community of real estate professionals who are now elevated because they've elevated their education and their position so that they will be accepted by the Bar Association and we even show you the different types of lawyers that you want to introduce yourself to and how to get to them. We never want you making a call call or a cold email or introduction. You can get a warm or a hot introduction and that's another part of our class. And then you're going to know exactly what to do and we do all of your marketing material for you. And there isn't a lot of it because lawyers want you to meet them one-on-one face-to-face. And Rita Driver is a perfect example of that. She has wonderful relationships and she can tell you about them with individual lawyers and one of her biggest fans is her real estate attorney. And I got the privilege of meeting him and he is so behind what we're doing from a position of real estate, but he's also a lawyer and so when he talks to lawyers and judges about Rita's services, he did serve more credibility. Well, can you talk a little bit about the, because there's, I think, when I came to your class, I was unaware, if you will, of how uninformed attorneys are in this space around real estate because they've got enough of their own stuff to worry about and it's funny I was watching one of the videos on your website the other day and one of the comments was from an attorney was that, you know, hey, we're not trained in real estate, right? Particularly if you're not a real estate lawyer attorney or divorce attorney, why would you be, right? So, what are some of the things they're unaware of that we, you know, as lenders or realtors can add value, right, and create that aha moment? Right. Well, this is pretty shocking, but since we've trained thousands of lawyers, I can speak from experience. Lawyers have to take continuing legal education every year and in order to keep their law license active, but they never have to take a test and they don't have to pay attention in class because they're reading a people magazine. And so, and they're not required to take, and this is what drives me crazy, lawyers are not required to take CLE in their genre, so if you are a divorce attorney, for example, you can practically take, if they offer it for continuing legal education, you could take underwater basket weed. Now, of course, there's no such class, I'm being suspicious, but it's ridiculous. You can take criminal law, you can do anything you want in these classes. And when they go to law school, I know Vanderbilt Law School has already invited Professor Murray to actually create a class on divorce real estate because it is not a of focus in law school. And so lawyers learn a lot about a lot, and then they pass the bar association, and they use something called a custom, and you can ask Rita about this, because I'm sure she's quite familiar with it. The custom is appraisal minus mortgage, equity, and you're done, so it becomes, the house becomes a monopoly game, and I'm not going to tell you what we teach the lenders, but what we want to do, and this is where the lending industry has a very respected lawyer counting their praises, because in our due diligence that we train judges, lawyers, mediators, and paralegals on, we tell them that if their client only does one thing to go beyond, you know, the appraisal, it should be pre-divorced mortgage consultation. And I won't expound on that, but imagine having a lawyer like Professor Murray promoting the need for mortgage consultation early in every single divorce before mediation, because mediation can bind you. You make a mistake in mediation, and the judge can't undo it in many states. And we go state by state. So if we're training people in, you were in California with us, Jess, and we were talking California divorce law, not to turn people into many lawyers, but if you understand what lawyers need from you, and you understand what they are not aware of, and where you, again, there's a problem, and you're the solution, you can speak with conviction, when Wendy Thompson speaks to a lawyer, they're going to listen to her, because she understands fully her role in this, and Rita driver, that's why judges rely on her, because she knows what she's doing, and she realizes that they need to believe her, and so that's why Rita is constantly improving her education and learning, because lawyers are people too. And when they realize that you're actually helping them, and you're not charging them by the hour, you're creating a better result, because even the laziest lawyers out there want a decent result so that they can get their clients, pleased with the result, and referring them to another client. So a couple of great points in there, and I think the biggest takeaway for me is if you're going to be attempting to work in this market of divorce attorneys, it's very important that you know what to say, and how to approach them, because they will just, you know, see you out the door, if you even get to the door. They'll be polite about it, but they won't work with you. Again, if you don't show them that you understand their need from you, and how you fill it, you've got to be a good communicator, and that's why we started writing, the script for everyone, and creating the marketing material, because left to our own devices, a lot of us will get lazy, and we'll think, I'll just mail this to someone. You land one lawyer, and that lawyer, you do a good job for one lawyer, they're going to give you probably two or three more lawyers. Absolutely. They'll run and you. May I jump in here, Jeff? Yeah. I want to expand a little bit on what Aunt Wendy just had to say, because she's counting my praises, and I appreciate that. There's really no praise to you to a realtor that is a true bonafide, not saint of heart realtor. If a realtor is looking to a divorce attorney or a divorced judge to be their bread and butter, simply because they state that they're a realtor, and they've been one for 20 minutes, it's probably not the best realtor fit in that divorce case. The way I laid mine out, and Aunt Wendy has said it so eloquently, is my closing attorney is also a practicing civil attorney who is also a mediator. I started with him, that's exactly how I started. I already had a positive relationship with him, because he knows that when I bring him a file to close, I've not fooled any funny business. I've given him every piece of the transaction that I possibly can, and I have helped him to set up his file down to giving them, they are in, they're going through a divorce or this one has filed for a divorce, everybody has to be here. This is the wife. This is a girlfriend, so don't take her signature. I do everything in my power to protect my closing attorney, so he already knew that. I do the same thing to protect my lender. I actually got involved with him after taking Kelly Marie's class and meeting Aunt Wendy and Kelly, because I saw the need for him to be able to improve his business relations with his clients who were divorcing, no matter who listed the house or who refinanced one spouse or the other. It was a need that had to be filled. My experiences have carried me now from starting with just him to he is putting me in divorce to crease. I get those calls from one spouse or the other, you and I were discussing earlier prior to recording, and it's a shock to them, but it's gotten to a point also where I have to go to court and stand in front of a judge and be nonjudgmental of either spouse, be very transparent with both spouses and both attorneys. When you get into a courtroom, now you're in front of two potential buyers, a potential seller and two additional attorneys who are representing each party. There's how I grew my business because I had that credibility, but you better be ready as a realtor to stand in front of that judge and tell it like it is and be able to back it up with your solid foundational truth. Absolutely. Again, what I was saying earlier, it's the ought to be the right person who's willing to make that level of investment and commitment to being a professional in all of that means. It's funny what just dawned on me is for those listening that right now, lenders and you're thinking about, geez, how would I at least get a realtor interested in this potentially. We've got some solutions for you on that before we wrap the call, but also have them listen to this podcast because it's a great way to introduce them to the overall concept of that and just be kind of the start of that conversation. Would you think that's a good idea, Aunt Wendy? Yes. And send them to our website, divorcethishouse.com, people are on it all the time. You'd be amazed when you ask a realtor if they have thought about working in the divorce niche. They're going to have a strong reaction positive or negative. And those folks that get in touch with me, lenders and realtors will say, oh my gosh, I just found you, I was googling divorce, you know, real estate on the internet and saying, goodness, you're out there. This looks perfect for me because everybody has a different reason. You know, they personally have gone through a divorce. We have a lot of realtors to take our trainings whose child is going through a divorce. And we have those statistics, which is fascinating is that Jeff, you were learning about the grade divorces and the silver divorces, you know, that's our fastest growing divorce market and they have equity. They can refinance. They can get a right size residence, but they need help. And the lawyers, once the lawyer realizes the help that you can provide as an RCSD and that stands for real estate, collaboration, specialist divorce, then they start helping you and referring you and Rita driver is a perfect example of that. And then Rita invited Wendy to come on board and get the training and see we want either the realtors will bring us the lenders or the lenders bring us the realtors and we're going to be bringing the lender class online probably next month, maybe that hopefully the end of this month, but next month for sure. And then we already have the realtor class online, but we also do live classes and that was like the one that you attended Jeff. Exactly. And of course, the one I attended part of the that is you and I discussed before is I see this as a great opportunity, which is of course, you know, proof and proof is in the putting right here with Wendy Thompson and Rita together here for you loan officers listening is this is of course a great opportunity to team up with a few select agents and invite them to participate, you know, you know, in becoming a divorce specialist, but along with that, you know, what you could do as a lender if you're listening is once you complete the lender class, you can then host your own realtor class and, you know, bring at Wendy and Professor Murray to your city and be a great way for you to ignite and grow your realtor relationships there as well. So let's transition, I guess in the few remaining minutes we have to talk a little bit about next steps for those listening at Wendy, because I know what we want to do is there's only so much time to cover on the podcast and there's probably going to be some questions and people want to take a deeper dive. So we've got a webinar that we're going to do for those that want to, you know, learn more about this and how do I possibly, you know, take the online class or host a class for realtors and when are you coming live to my city, all those different questions and then of course, right, what does it mean to be to become to receive that designation as a loan officer? So we have a webinar. I'm going to put a link in the show notes, but the address for it, if you are listening and you want to register, it's webinar.devoursmortgagespecialist.com, I'll say it again, webinar.devoursmortgagespecialist.com and the link will be in the show notes. So if you're listening, you can just get a link right there. It's a webinar. It's going to be Thursday, May 24th, 11 Pacific, where's that 11, that's 2 o'clock Eastern, so it's going to be about 45 minutes and we're going to be going through, right, some of these elements that we just don't have time in this format to dive deep into, everything you'll need to know to make an informed decision about taking the next step and receiving your designation in this specialty, this niche. And Wendy, any other things you want to add to that piece or anything else? Well, just adding that we're going to be talking about the TCJA, the tax cuts and job acts, the changes that will be affected with the divorce, and Professor Murray is going to be actually doing the webinar, so you'll get a taste of what it's like to have Professor Murray live on webinar, and then we're hoping that we'll have other people training for us in other states for the live classes that we're starting with this to see interest. Absolutely. And I can tell you personally having gone through the class, it is definitely top notch, I learned a lot of things in there, it's not light and fluffy, it's not a brush-over, you're going to learn a lot of stuff that you didn't know about the mortgage process and some really eye-opening things, and then of course, along with that is, for me, as I sit there, I'm scratching my head going, man, I wish I was still originating because to Wendy Thompson's point earlier, we're all looking for that kind of slight edge and how do we not be so dependent upon one niche that's historically being real estate agents, still a great niche, still very profitable, and if I could, I'm going to press you just a little bit at Wendy to share one or two success stories from some of your other loan offers of students across the country who are far along in their journey on this in terms of what it's made a difference in their business. Well, I have one loan officer who took the training January 2017, and I would send an email saying, hey, do you need any coaching, how's it going over there, and I would just get a thumbs up from his phone, so I let him be, and I got a call from him last November, it was around Thanksgiving, and he said, hey, Wendy, I want to thank you, and I said, for what? Nothing. And he goes, what? I've done 20, he goes, I had 70 transactions with just two divorce attorneys in Denver. And so he is a great success story. Now he was lucky. Divorce attorneys are like any other professional. There are those that have very large practices that are busy and have high asset divorces, and he was lucky to land two of those who have an ongoing 50 client a month business. So they have ongoing divorces of about 50 clients a month. Some are larger, Tampa, I've had someone in Tampa who's almost reached that number. And we will teach you to work with divorce attorneys, but also financial professionals. So that's another niche. And Professor Murray is going to be training them in a more official capacity, third quarter, fourth quarter of this year, and then going into next year. And we'll show you how to do that. And Jeff got to learn about how when we're doing live classes, we'll invite a financial professional lunch and learn. So instead of breaking for lunch and everybody just chitchatting, we invite you to invite your financial professionals to come for lunch. And Professor Murray teaches them in about 20 minutes what's missing from the marital balance sheet. And people in the class who invite a financial professional, if they're working with divorce attorneys, you will get an introduction to the divorce attorney that week. Wow. That's awesome. Fantastic. Well, look, once again, the link will be in the show notes to the webinar webinar. divorce mortgage specialist.com, encourage you to be there, make, make, make plans to be there right now for Thursday, May 24th, register. I'm trying to come up with a, what do I call you? Power trio here. We got Wendy and Wendy. You guys need to name like superheroes or something. Fantastic. I appreciate you guys making time from your busy day. And you know, thank you so much for sharing and I know this is coming all from the heart from you guys. And that's why I just appreciate you all being here so much. Well, you appreciate it. Any opportunity? Awesome. And listeners, as always, if you like this episode, please let us know, leave a review. Feel free to reach out to me over email, contact me on the blog. And we'll look forward to hopefully seeing you on that webinar in the show note links, show notes. Check it out. Thursday, May 24th, 11 Pacific. Until the next one. Okay. Great day. Bye. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing, get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. 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