Ep #89: A Revealing Look Inside the Business of a $150 Million Dollar Producer

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. Mortgage Marketing Radio, brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey listeners, Jeff Zimper, Mortgage Marketing Radio. Guess what? This podcast is not brought to you by Mortgage Marketing Institute anymore. No, no, dare I say no. It's brought to you by Mortgage Marketing Pro membership. That's right. We got a brand new sponsor. That sponsor is me. The sponsor is under the umbrella of Mortgage Marketing Institute, our brand new membership called Mortgage Marketing Pro. And when I talk to you, I'll introduce you to my special guest in just a moment for this week's show, but it's just your thing. His core business, four core sources of business for him are agents and past clients, online social content, which includes reviews and building his brand, his personal brand online, which is what he studies really kind of doubling down on and focused on and then business partners like CPAs, builders, et cetera. If you're looking for ways to succeed with agents, tap into your past client database more. If you want to better understand how do you leverage the digital world, build your online brand, get better engagement, build online reviews, even scripting on how to be successful in meeting, converting agents and referral partners and buyers dealing with rate shoppers. Well, this episode, as I said, is brought to you by Mortgage Marketing Pro membership. Tons of resources over there for you to help you do all those things. Check it out at MortgageMarketing.pro for more info. Now onto my special guest, really thrilled to have him on this session. His name is Oleg Koch. He is with Guild Mortgage and he is up in the Pacific Northwest Seattle area. Very impressive individual this gentleman is consistently ranks in the over $150 million club. And I'm looking at his stats here, I believe this is from 2017, 627 loans. And I asked him, how much of that is your own personal production, 100%. He has no originating members on his team. His team has made up of assistance, processors, right, that kind of thing, but nobody actually else originating. And Oleg has been ranked just in the top of the Washington State area. It has been the number one off loan officer in the entire state of Washington. It's consistently ranked in the top three in the state year after year after year. And the man has built just an incredibly strong, powerful business based on systems and relationships. And he tells his story is how he transitioned into this business as a retail relationship based market originator from a call center and what that journey looked like. But this is a guy who's got it down. And it comes to building a business that exceeds expectations and will survive and thrive in the coming market. So we dive into some strategies for how you're going to pivot in this market. What are the tactics that Oleg's used to grow his business to be successful in growing referral partnerships and so on? So let's get into this week's show because there's a ton of nuggets and lessons in here. And I'll put links to any references there are in the show notes for Oleg and his team if you wanted to reach out to him and contact him for more information. So without further ado, let's get into my conversation with Oleg. Gotcha. Oleg, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me. A pleasure to have you, especially someone who I've just got to be as busy as you are up in the Seattle area market. Things are just crazy and we'll talk a little bit about that. But so for the listeners, I always like to give a little personal take on your career, start and trajectory because not many people wake up one day and go, Hey, I want to be a loan officer. So maybe a brief background or on how you got into this biz and what keeps you going today? Yeah. So I've always loved sales, you know, since a very, very early age, I was like selling door to door and just it was just a natural ability for me and I got hired on my first official job was at GameStop and me and three other people got hired on and they told us, Hey, you know, your position is seasonal. Therefore, you know, then the season only one stays and there are like any questions. And I was the only one who had a question from the three of us and they're like, What's your question? And I'm like, Well, what determines who stays and who doesn't? And they're like, Oh, that's simple. Whoever sells the most magazine subscription and video game reservation stays. And so anyway, about a month into it, my regional manager showed up and called me in the back room and I'm thinking I'm getting, getting let go. And he's like, he's like, How are you doing it? And I'm like doing what? He's like, You're like number one in video game subscriptions and or a magazine subscriptions and reservations in the state like your numbers are crazy and you only work part time. What are you? What are you doing? And I'm like, It's simple. I'm just pitching everybody. I don't really say anything different. I just pitch everybody. I don't pick and choose who I pitch. And that kind of started off my official sales career. And then at that point, I was working random hours since I wasn't 18 yet. They couldn't, you know, promote me past what I was currently working. And so I applied to to to a local bank as a career and I I wanted to be in banking for a long time. I just didn't know exactly what until I get in there and I started just, you know, talking to everybody trying to find out who does what and I noticed that the, you know, the people in the nice offices and the people that drove the nice cars were either branch managers or they were in some type of lending position, you know, their tumor loan officer, a residential loan officer, a commercial loan officer, you know, VP of lending. It had to do with with that. And so at that point, and here I am, I'm like 17 years old, I'm driving around, you know, just chatting with people and I realized that that's what I wanted to get into. So long story short, I applied at a company to be a junior loan officer and I was like 17 and a half and they hired me on and essentially what it was was a dialing position where you just make outbound calls all day long. And so I told them I would accept it only if they let me become a loan officer, a senior loan officer as soon as I turned 18. If I dialed for six months, just nonstop and pretty much as soon as I turned 18, I got into a lending and was officially a senior loan officer and at that time, there was no licensing or anything so it's a matter of them saying, here you go, here's business cards go out there and get some business. Wow, that's quite the story, man. You're killing it at GameStop, love it. What does it take to stick around? I'll sell the other one. That's a great question. Hey, I'm curious when you were making all those outbounds during your six month apprenticeship if you will. How many dials are you making a day, do you remember? You know, and a lot of people don't realize how many dials you can actually make if you all you do is dial. Usually there are two types of dials in there. There are the ones that didn't want to dial, so they made every reason, every excuse not to dial. So they'll always be getting water, they'll be taking a small break or they'll be chatting or they'll be reviewing their prep and they did everything not to dial. And I was the opposite. I was that guy that was like, hey, you know what, this is going to be my career. So it's not a short-term gig for me, so I just want to give as much phone time as I can. So anyway, I would just pretty much dial a non-stop for my shift, which we're in the evening. And we would dial typically from four until about eight, so it was a four-hour shift. And they would just give us a list and off we would. And I mean, I would probably, because it really depends on how many talks you get. There's people get on the phone talking for half an hour, right? So probably on average, I would say per hour, I was probably making 25 calls or so. And from those 25s, yeah, per hour. From those 25, you know, you get a lot of voicemails, but you also get the people that hang up on you. And you'd probably get two or three good conversations in there. And so our goal was to take essentially a loan app to, and the way we only got paid on the deal or on the lead is if we got a social. So we would ask these leads off to senior loan officers and they were refighting leads. This is the whole goal is to make an outbound call, convince them that they should look at their refinance options, take a full application, and then you had to get the social. If you didn't get the social, it didn't count. So that was the goal each time. We had a social and awful credit. And then we, I think we got paid like 10 bucks, a bonus per lead that we got. So if I was able, you know, I calculated, hey, if I was able to get two leads an hour, now all of a sudden, you know, I'm making way more than all my other friends that are, you know, 17 and a half and working fast food or whatnot. So on average, I was probably averaging one per hour and so I was making about $40 a day in bonuses and then your typical minimum wage, whatever it was at that time. How much of that sounds like you knew your numbers back then, right? Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you're a business person as well. It's important to know your numbers. A lot of people, I'm sure you've been through this coaching you do. A lot of people don't know their numbers, right? You don't need to have to take an app. Well, that's a critical number as a loan officer, isn't it? Yep. You know, the funny thing is though, I was never really good at math in school growing up. And I remember in fourth grade, I remember this vividly. I was sitting there with my teacher and we were going over, you know, my record card. And, you know, I got a C minus in math. And she told me she's like, you know, she's like, math is really not your strong point. You probably don't want to, you know, choose a career that has to do with numbers. And I don't know what it was, but after she said that to me, something triggered. And I always paid way more attention to numbers from that point forward. And try to take classes, you know, that, that, you know, more advanced math classes and everything else. I tried to just because I, because I was like, you know what? No, you know, I don't want to just, you know, decide at that point that I'm good at something. I'm going to give up on it. It was more of a, hey, I just chose not to pay attention to at that point. I personally don't like math. But at the same time too, I want to make sure I keep my options open. And so luckily I did. And it's funny because I was told not to stay away from numbers now. I'm like about the numbers. It's funny. Yeah. You said interesting. What I heard in there is like, you know, math was kind of there. And you know, don't really see the value of it. Ah, I see the need for math. Okay, money. I like that. I'm calculating like conversion ratios. That's a good thing. Cool. All right. Now I get where math is applicable. That's awesome. When you transitioned, take me through that. You transitioned from essentially like call center outbound stuff, right? And then you transitioned to more of a kind of a retail relationship based originator at some point. Yeah. So as soon as I turned 18, they made me get a business license. And you know, we have a business license. So they 1099 everybody at that point. Right. Back in 2005. So I get in there and I'm I'm expecting, you know, because I worked at a bank. So I'm expecting, you know, hey, I was in a call center. Now I'm going to get all these leads that the call center has been generating for me and everything else. So I get in there and I'm like, and I talked to my branch manager at the time. His name is Harold. This guy was probably the best clotheser. I've ever personally known in my life. This guy was it. When it came to scripts and just closing a client or anyone, he was just, he was amazing. And I sat in a cubicle right outside his office and I would hear him talk all day. And it definitely helped me develop my closing style, my closing skills and everything else. But anyway, I get there. And I'm like, alright, Harold, well, how's this going to work? So I sit here, is the front desk gal going to bring the clients back or this or that? And he kind of gives me a blank theory that, well, what do you mean? You mean if you have a customer who shows up? I'm like, no, I mean, like, like, are they going to bring him back kind of like they did at the bank and this and that. And he's like, bring bring the customers back. He's like, no, he's like, he's like, you're on your own, man. Like, you got to find your own deals. How would he tell me? I looked at him and I'm like, oh, that's right. I knew that. But at the same time too. And he was pretty much like, hey, here's the desk. Here's the phone. Good luck. You're on your own. And I went home that night and I was depressed. I mean, I can't even tell you how depressed I was because I told all my friends that I'm alone off from successful. I made it. I felt like I had the I arrived feeling. And so here I am. First day on the job, thinking like, how the heck am I going to get my own clients? How is it going to happen? So you go home, I'm really down. And in the beginning, you kind of you're depressed and you feel sorry for yourself. You're kind of like, why does that have to happen to me and all that. And then you get mad. You get mad at yourself going that way. And I think that's a great moment because when you're in that moment, you start thinking about ideas. And so I decided, you know, I'm like, hey, you know what? The good thing is that with my parents, I really don't have to make any money at all. Other than my car payment for the new car, I just blocked it. I thought I'm a successful loan officer, right? So anyway, my strategy was very simple. I showed up the next day. And it was like, you know, hey, now I'm sitting in the office with the senior loan officers. And the junior loan officers and senior loan officers were two separate buildings, even though they were next to each other. We just stay away from each other. I never really interacted with them. So I started talking to them. I said, hey, you know, what do you do to keep business? What would you do if you were me on the first day in the business? What would you do? And they were like, well, you're just your first day, really? And then here's what I do. One guy told me, he's like, hey, just like what you were doing. He said, you were calling through all the people in your, you know, when you're at, when you were a dialer, you were calling through a list. Have you called everybody in your phone and told them you're in lending? I said, no, because how many contacts you have? And I looked at that time, it was like a hundred and like 40. And I called every single person. I called everybody right after I was done calling everybody, telling them I'm in the mortgage business, telling them I want to be a resource to them, went back to somebody else, hey, what would you do? The other guy's like, well, I would go and work realtors at open houses. And I'm like, what's a realtor? He's like, you got to be kidding me, man. I'm like, no, no. And what's an open house? And so he's like, so here's what realtors are, here's what realtors do. And an open house is where, you know, they're showing that they're previewing the home, hoping to get an offer, and they're bored out of their mind. So they love it when loan officers work open houses with them. Like, perfect. Where do I get the list? I show up to open houses. And I show up. I'm invited. And I'm like, and I didn't know any better. And I'm like, hey, Mr. Realtor, I'm here to open house with you. I'm going to sit here and take the, you know, and pre-approved the buyers that need to be pre-approved. Let me know if you want me to say anything special. And people will give me these, like, you know, the weirdest looks. But no one said no. And I worked open houses with agents. And some people are like, hey, did it so and so send you? I'm like, yeah, they told me to come down. I just rolled with it. Like, it was just purely just rolling with it. By the way, for the record, I haven't closed one deal off an open house. So it wasn't like it worked. But I started meeting agents. I started, I really got out of my comfort zone and all that. And so anyway, I did that. I went back, another guy asked him, hey, what would you do? And so as I'm doing this, I start getting leads from my initial calls when I called everybody and told them I'm in lending. And I closed my first deal. And so as I closed my first deal, which was month two in the business. And then pretty much at that point, I talked to somebody else and they're like, okay, well, this is what you need to do. You just need to dial the same way you were dialing. Now you need to get leads for yourself. I'm like, oh, we're allowed to do that. They're like, yes. And so I started making outbound calls for refives. And so then I started meeting with agents. Before you knew it, I think month five or month six, can't remember, I closed seven loans in one month. And I was the top producer in the branch for that month. And so, and I didn't really even know, I know our numbers were ranked. I didn't know, you know, I mean, I just, I was like, and my branch manager said, hey, man, I don't know if you know, but you close more deals with anybody unit wise in this month. And so that was kind of like when I realized I'm in the career that I should be in and been loving it pretty much since. Wow, that's great, man. Thank you for all that background. I'm curious if you were to, you know, let's say, let's say, this is probably a normal part of your business anyways. I'm a new loan officer I come in, right? Here we are. You've got your vast experience now in this business of done pretty much everything under the sun sounds like to build your business. How would you advise a loan officer today differently versus, you know, those kind of, I don't know, you know, you did everything, right? We've all done, been there done that shotgun approach, whatever you want to call it. Would you be more strategic today in your approach? Sure. What would you say? Honestly, I wouldn't, I think the biggest, the biggest thing is you got to, you got to learn how to hunt. You got to learn how to process, you got to learn how to make connections, you got to learn how to go on appointments. You got to understand your conversion ratio once you get on appointments. You got to study yourself and understand how you come across and what's going to help you and what's not helping you. And it's something to wear, you know, unless somebody is right there next to you mentoring you, it's something that you almost have to go after so many phone calls, the calls get easy. After so many face to face, the calls get easy. It's almost kind of like working out in a way where you just got to, you just got to work on it daily. You just got to build, you know, build yourself up daily and you got to keep pushing yourself. And so I think that at the end of the day, you've asked me, they're like, well, you know, what about this? Does this work? Does this work? Does this work? I always tell everybody said, hey, you know, technically everything works. I mean, you just go knock on doors and pick up deals that way. As long as you didn't give up, as long as you persisted and continued everything technically, everything works now. Do I have tactics right now that, you know, that I use that, you know, I wish I would have known about in the past and everything else to essentially allow me to prospect on a whole different level on everything. Yes, I completely built that. However, at the same time too, I don't think you could overstep the, just, you know, the raw, you know, gorilla style, you know, prospecting that you have to all, we all have to go through to be really, really good in this business. Do you see loan officers today, maybe who haven't been through the quote hard times, right? I mean, you lived through the market crash myself as well. And a lot of people, like I just had a call earlier this morning about somebody who's only been in the business for a year. And I don't think they appreciate the level of effort it takes to build a, right, a true, true self-sustaining referral based business if you will. Let's just assume people aren't buying leads set that aside. That's a different type of business. Are you seeing that the, you know, people are kind of getting away from that these days mistakenly? You know, you know, the thing is is that I personally think that, you know, well, first off, the mortgage industry and the real estate industry has been extremely easy the last four years. You all don't realize like that are in it, like you don't realize that like anybody could be successful in it without really much effort the last few years. And what I mean by successful is, you know, closed deals regularly and whatnot because 9 out of 10 people want to talk about mortgage. They want to talk about real estate. Everybody's, it's the hot topic, right? Now, when you go back to, you know, 2000, what was it, 9 or 2009, 2010, 2008, especially 9 and 10 when everything just collapsed, you know, 9 out of 10 people didn't want to have anything to do with the home, right? Everybody wanted to get away from that. Right. All of a sudden, you know, the challenge was, I mean, it was, it was just extreme and I think that those times are coming. And I think that right now when we look at just the last few months where the mortgage industry has been and you see companies right now starting to shut down the western right well, I think on Monday, late off 600 people, you have all these people laying off a ton of people because they're, they're worried about the fourth quarter and the first quarter and they should be because of the projected mortgage volume and everything else, but right now more than anything. It's going to go back to that time where only the true professionals that really have a bulletproof game plan that are not sitting there thinking I'm at the wrong company. I just need to go somewhere else and it's going to solve my problems, but realize that this is the time more than ever to be super focused on whatever your strategy is. Like, doesn't matter what is super focused on a strategy, having your head down and just plowing through it, like that's going to be the days that we're going to see here in the next few months to beginning of next year. And I think that that's going to happen not only in lending, but in real estate as well. And I think that a lot of our industry or a chunk of our industry is going to leave because it's going to become way too difficult. And I think it, you know, agents are starting to feel it with listings like before. Everybody wants to be a listing agent because it took no skill as long as you can win somebody to list with you. And I hope I don't offend a bunch of agents by saying that, but it really didn't take much skill to sell a home. Right. And then in the day, it didn't. Now it takes a lot more now. So here's where the true professionals are really going to start shining. And I think the people that are extremely good at what they do, they're going to be the ones that are going to capitalize on this and be able to gain a lot more market share. Because when times get tougher, it's easier to see the people that are, you could say amateur in this business and the people that are pros. So I think that the ones that, you know, who are newer, that really study their craft, that really, you know, from the mortgage side, study underwriting guidelines, not just know them, but like study them. You got to be the expert and you got to know exactly what you're talking about. You got to, you got to out, you have to be smarter than everybody in your field on what you do. So that, therefore, when you're in front of a client, when you're in front of an agent, when you're in front of a referral partner, when you're in front of anybody, the way you talk and the way you come across is going to have them want to work with you versus say, yeah, you know, I might, you know, second opinion, you know, or I should check somewhere else out. So a lot of people don't realize that right now. Now is the time we, if you're a real estate agent to really study your stuff, to know your stuff, to really understand your presentation, how you're coming across how everything factors in whether or not they're going to work with you or not and really just focus on you. And because at the end of the day, you're selling you, you're not selling like I'm not selling guild, I barely bring field up. But you know, if you're, if you work for Keller Williams, you're not selling Keller Williams, you're selling yourself right and people are buying you people by passion. And so at the end of the day, knowledge, passion and just your overall drive and commitment is what people are going to be attracted to. And I think again, these next, you know, this fourth quarter and first quarter is going to be, you know, defining moment and a lot of companies, you know, for a lot of companies and for a lot of lenders. And I think companies that are not able to shift their mindset with their sales force to say, because there's so many people looking right now and changing that mindset to say, hey, look, you know, here's what we got to do. We got to take a coaching approach. We all have to hold each other accountable. Let's, you know, let's all, you know, make X amount of calls. Let's all do this. This is how you do this. And I think the companies that don't bring coaching in and don't have a sales force that's really, really driven and focused on a certain goal. And everybody's going to understand right now that overall conversion has gone down. So for example, let's say that your, your lead to paycheck conversion rate is 25%. So you're closing 25 deals a month for every 100 weeks that you get, right? If you have a tough market, it goes down to, let's just say, I don't know, 15%. Now all of a sudden, what you, you have two choices, if either close the 15 deals, because now conversion is down, or you got to look at it and say, well, if that's the case, then, you know, how many, how many deals do I need or how many leads do I need to close 25 and then focus on just getting more leads. Now we've got to focus on getting, you know, 130, 140 leads to close the same 25 that we want to close. And I think companies have to do that, you know, with their, you know, recruiting efforts. If you had to go, if you needed to talk to 10 loan officers to get one work for you now, all of a sudden, you might need to talk to 20 for agents that are, you know, same thing for listings. You know, now that listings are not selling as quickly or in a lot of people are pulling their listings out, now you're going to go on more listing appointments. So understanding that the market is going to change your conversion ratio, the biggest trap a lot of people fall into is they get frustrated. They get frustrated at themselves or their company and they don't realize that it's just a matter of leads. And one thing that I was always taught in coaching and I tell myself every time things get tough or something happens. And I always tell myself this, more leads solve all problems. No matter what, like anything happens in life, more leads solve it. Like at that end of the day, figure out how to get more leads, but what are your lead sources? And I feel like you have to have a minimum before that you go after consistently. And if you don't have four, I think you're going to have a wobbly business. All right. Well, that's a lot of great info in there. So what are those four lead sources? I know when you and I talked before, I think you said agents and past clients were two of your main sources. Is that right? Yeah, agents and past clients are two of my main sources. I would say ultimately past clients that I focus on more than anything. And I think, you know, especially with online lending and the way where online lending is going right now, I think the person that has a super tight database that's consistently in front of their database and using the technology that's out there to stay in front of their database. I think in the next five years, it's going to have the highest payoff. I think those are the individuals that are not in risk of essentially losing their whole business to online lending, which continues to grow and grow and grow. I think the database for me is number one agent number two, because very simply agents need the lenders to get paid. And so why not? Right. It's kind of like insurance agents. Insurance agents should be calling on loan officers, like we need an insurance agent on every transaction. I get maybe one insurance agent that calls me a year, maybe one. So anyway, then I have my different online marketing that I've been doing not buying online weeds, but just pushing myself online and establishing my brand online. And so that's something that's at an early stage of being built out when you look at all. And one of the ways I'm doing this through having a ton of reviews online that really give me the market presence online and we're pushing content out there in different videos and everything else. I think that's going to also pay off huge as the business goes online. Those that don't want to work with a lender from a different state are going to look for somebody local online and we're seeing the leads that get generated monthly from that and closings that are happening monthly. It was funny. We got a processing manager from Bank of America across the street found me online and closed their loan with me. Some people don't want to just work with their own company for privacy purposes and all that. But that's something that we are that I've been developing. And then and then the last part is business partners like builders, like CPAs, financial planners and turns agents, you know, different business people that have a fear of influence as well that are talking to clients all the time. And a lot of people miss how big of an opportunity, like, for example, EPAs, right, like every CPA has thousands of clients they do taxes for and they're having the conversation with them and, you know, they don't have, you know, most of them don't have somebody that's calling on them that's taking them out to lunch that's, you know, that's working. You know, that's developing a relationship with them. And there's a massive lead source for CPAs. And so financial planners is a new one that I've been really getting into as I've been investing, you know, more money and all that. I'm working on financial planners as well. And so I think that again, I always look at, you know, when it comes to business people. And I hope that people don't take this the wrong way. But if I'm looking at a financial advisor, somebody's brand new. They're not going to be a good business source for me, right? They're at the same stage. They want leads and they're coming up. If somebody's been a financial planner for 20 years and they have an established book of business, that's the guy that I'm going after. So I think ultimately it's being super strategic on who you meet with as well. Like it's, that's something that I never really did in the beginning of my career. I wasn't strategic on quite met with and all that. It was just kind of like meet a ton of people. And that's it. And sure that does work. But as you get busier, as you start realizing you have less and less time in the day, you just have to be way more calculated on having street meetings. Yeah, you got to be more selective. All right, couple rapid fire questions for you. Some nuggets for these folks is oftentimes I know a lot of officers here, CPAs, for example, let's take that first. Then I'll come back to online reviews. How do you approach CPAs? Where are they? Are you getting introduced through the client CPAs when you're taking an app? What does that look like? Yeah, so there's a couple of different ways. Ultimately, every client has, well, I mean, when you're looking at a tax return, do you see the CPA? I tip Google them, see what they're about to kind of present the app online, how long they've been in the business. And then what I'll do is I'll ask the client permission after closing. Right, once I earned it, if I could read it, if they would endorse me to their CPA and if I could reach out to their CPA if they can make a connection. And so then at that point, once you're on the meeting with the CPA, it's very, very simple. I have about 5,000 people in my database. I have clients all the time that need a CPA to do something. They might be working with, let's just say, turbo tax, but then all of a sudden they're getting a mortgage. And now they need a audited profit and a lost statement or they need a balance sheet put together for them and they don't know how to do it or whatnot. And so essentially the whole goal with CPAs and you need to be able to refer business to them is I have CPAs in different areas. So it's not like I want 20 in one area. It's about being strategic about it. So that way you could develop consistent referrals back and forth. And so for example, my clients that maybe are down south, right, south of Seattle, and I'll refer them to a different CPAs and the ones that are up north. Typically somebody wants, they want a CPA, you know, close to them. So that's pretty much what I do. So the whole goal is when I reach out to them, I'm interviewing them. I'm sharing, you know, what I do, what my business looks like. I love talking to business people because at the end of the day, the conversation is the same. We all have the same issue. We want more leads. We want more transactions. We want more business 95% of us, right? And so it's a business relationship. It's not going in there and just selling me is going in there and figuring out how to two people. They're successful figure out how to do more transactions together. Yeah. Well, you're adding that's that's the key. Yeah, you're adding value to them. You're to your point. You know, you've got this database of past clients and for, you know, doesn't matter if it's 5,500 or 50. You know, the point is it's like, I come across people all the time who haven't even a CPA. I'd love to refer business to over to you. We get together and talk and see if we have a mutual right basis or relationship generally it, right? Yep. Yeah. And there's certain PAs that it's like, it's difficult for me and my team to work with them. I'll avoid them. I'm strategic who I, who I, who I choose. And again, I don't want to be the guy that's, you know, and I, again, I don't, I don't defend any of my things. Like saying, I don't even want to be the guy that has like the doughnut run. Why do you stop by? Hey, you know, I'm the mortgage guy. Here's what the doughnuts. Here's my, you know, that's to say that that doesn't work because it does create, but same time I want to be the strategic partner. Yeah. I want to be the guy that they're like, this is the guy you need to talk to. That's a professional. Not the guy that delivered donuts and, and what not. So, you know, that I guess from a standpoint of, you know, not only CPAs, but insurance agents as well. It's the same type of relationship. It's the insurance agents that are very, very well set up and everything else. My insurance agent that I, that I, you know, have all my policies with sends me transactions all the time. I've done her personal deals and everything else. And so it's establishing that, hey, I'm going to help you explode your business. You're going to help me explode my business. And this is how we're going to do it. How many CPAs would you say are on your short list in terms of, you know, there's actually been some exchange of business in an average year. I have six that I work with consistently. Okay. Six. Great. And would you, would you be able to speak to roughly how many transactions that equates to for you? I would probably say close transactions, you know, actual close transactions a year from my business partners, which is a financial planners. You know, divorce attorneys is a great one that I'm just tapping it, starting to tap into. I would say it's about 50 transactions a year. 50. Wow. Yeah. I'd say that's worth it. Very good. Love it. Okay. For second time, let's pivot real quickly to another area you've got strong presence in and that is online reviews. You referred to that earlier. You've got, you're approaching 400 online reviews collectively. That's a crazy number, man. That was awesome. So what I see the goal is a thousand by when. So, you know, in the beginning, it was like 250. We really want to break 250 and I pushed my team really hard. And we broke 250 pretty fast. Now it's like the 500 mark. And so our goal is get 500 by the end of the year. Once we do that, then the goal is going to go up to 750. So it's kind of like every year, I want to I want to have 250 online reviews. Okay. So a couple of questions on that. Number one, what's your process for getting those? So every time after closing, I call the client and essentially the way the call goes is I just make sure that, you know, my team member did everything for them. Answer all their questions. If they want to make sure that they're happy with how the process went and everything else. So assuming all their questions were answered, they were happy and all that. I always pretty much my clothes is, hey, Jeff, if you felt like we did a good job taking care of you and it sounds like you did, can I ask you two things from you and then they always will be like, yeah, what are they? And I'll say if I did a good job taking care of you, take care of us by sending us your friend's family and anybody that you know is getting a mortgage. I'm going to be in the mortgage business forever and I always help people that. So refinancing purchases, anybody you hear that's thinking about refinancing or purchasing send them my way out of us, take care of them. And the second thing, Jeff, is if you could spend a minute and write me a quick online review, only if you felt like I deserved it. And I always will throw that in there because that guilt trips them because if they don't, then they're essentially saying you didn't deserve it. I always say, only if you felt like we deserved it. I'm going to send you an email right now with a link. Kind of a link to, you know, Zillow, Yelp, Google, just pick one of them and if you could spend just a minute and write me a review, it would mean the world to us. And everybody says, yes. And then I send them the link and then 50% of people do it. 50% and for the other 50 that don't, do you pursue them any further? No, we don't. Okay, just curious. Do you see a predominant destination that people go to leave their reviews, you know, Zillow versus Yelp, et cetera? Well, so we were pushing Zillow just Zillow until we got about 200 Zillow reviews and then we realized we're missing Google, we're missing Yelp, we're missing, you know, the other platforms. So now we actually just send a link to all of them and recently we've actually not been including Zillow in there because we just, we feel like we have too many Zillow's now. We'd rather get more on Yelp and more on Google and every Google, Google my business, man. That's right. That's right. And the good thing is that again, you know, one of the advantages, not only do you get leads off of it if you build it up to a certain point. But when I'm talking to a client and they're unsure and I'm like, hey, look, Jeff, I know that so and so referred you over to me and said great things about me. I know that you're trying to decide between us and Bank of America. I'm going to send you a link, we have like, we have about 405 star reviews online. See what our clients say. I mean, at that of the day, you're making a huge purchase here, probably the biggest you've made so far in your life. You really want to make sure you choose the right person, not just because of the rate and Steve, but probably it's going to deliver. And if you read the reviews, you'll see, you know, one of the most common things people will say is that they delivered, they did what they said that they were going to do. And I'll ask him, hey, have you ever heard of somebody that has had a bad experience getting alone? And people will be like, oh, yeah, my sister, you know, this, and then I'll say, look, so you could either go with us. And I guarantee you the closing day and I guarantee that, you know, the fees are going to be what they are, what we say that we are and the rates are going to be. Or you could take your chances with the other guy, which one do you want to do? And, you know, that close works about 85% of the time. But here's the deal though, it's just, it's not just a close, it's the truth. Yeah. Because I do believe my team could close way better than pretty much anybody else. I do believe we provide way more value in the guy down the street and everything that we do in our systems, we do that. An agent sends us a lead. We will fall up with that lead seven to nine times before we give up and each time we'll update the agent. You're telling me somebody else is going to do that most likely they won't. At the same time to our systems that we have in place for my backhand team from contract to close is so dialed in. We're typically, we have docs out typically a week ahead of every closing. You're telling me other people do that every time? No, so when I don't just say that as a close and a lot of people are like, well, what's the best close? Well, the close is one thing, but if you don't deliver, it doesn't mean anything. And so when I say it that way and when I deliver that close, it's because I truly believe in it. And not only do I believe in it, but we as a team work on it all the time to make sure we continue to improve, to make sure we continue to get our systems where dialed, make sure we take care of our agents better, to make sure we take care of our referral partners better. I mean, everything that we do yearly we're improving to get to give our clients. Yeah. And our clients, not meaning just the clients that close our loans, but every that refers to us, an overall better experience. And we figure out different ways to add value to them, not just close your loans fast and everything else, but how do we help your business grow? So whenever your close is, you got to be able to exceed it, right? Like whatever your value proposition is, if your value proposition is something that you hope to accomplish 20% of the time, you got to change it up because that's why people will not get the repeat business. That's where they won't grow. That's where they won't get the reviews and everything else. Because at the end of the day, you don't deliver. You have to deliver. If you talk big, you have to deliver big. Yeah. Well, like what you said, the close and the reason why people ask you, hey, what's the best close? Well, when you send that, I thought to myself, the best close is certainty and confidence that your process delivers, because that's going to show up more than any word combination you say, right? It's going to be, look at this dude, he just, man, this guy's confident. I just feel like I can trust him. That's what it's going to come down to. All right. In the remaining couple of minutes we've got, and you kind of alluded to this, this last kind of question, if you will, as a matter of fact, you said it the other day when we spoke, is that if your value proposition is closing on time, that's not a value proposition. I thought that was great, man, because that's so right. Big deal. You close on time. You better in today's market. That's like the bare minimum. Yeah. And I was talking about, you know, when we were talking about that, we were talking about, you know, meeting with business partners, meeting with real estate and all that. You know, a lot of people don't realize if you're going on meetings, and all you do is talk about just, hey, we're going to close on time, and we're a great lender, and that's it. You're just like everybody else. So, you know, when you're in front of agents, you got to ask yourself, how do I add value to that person? You got to care about it. You got to truly care about it. The people that I work with, especially the ones that I work with very closely, like I think about how to grow their businesses. I think about how to add value to them. I think about how to help them increase their conversion. And overall, we developed business partnerships. There's a ton of agents out there that will tell you, hey, he helped me grow my business to 20 million a year, 30 million a year, 50 million a year. And all I did was did exactly what he said in two years, that's where I was at. That's powerful. What's not powerful is being in front of them just like everybody else saying, hey, I have great rates. And we give good customer service and we close on time. Okay, great. So, I mean, who says I have bad rates and I don't deliver, and I don't send... You know what I mean? You got to remember that, like, at the end of the day, if that's all you got, you're going to have weak results. So, don't be upset about it. It's because you have a weak value proposition, and you're not changing their lives. If you're not changing their lives in some way, making it better, then I feel like that lender, you're going to lose that relationship very, very quickly. All right, so real quick, you mentioned cases where you've grown, help grow an agent's business, whatever the number is. You're adding value. Let's be real quick, a little more specific on that. How have you or how do you help an agent grow their business? Well, I think the first thing first, a lot of agents, they feel like their number one job is to have a great client experience and to find somebody their dream home. And I always make sure that, you know, when we start working together, you're very, very clear your job is to prospect. Like, you've got to be a prospecting machine. You're telling that to an agent? Absolutely. Absolutely. You've got to be a prospecting machine in this. How do they respond to that, man? I'm curious. Do you get some people who are like, whoa, wait a minute. How do you know that was the job? The ones that are good in this business, the ones that actually want to grow their business, I love it because it's true. It's what everybody else is afraid to tell them. So for me, I'll tell them my story. You know, hey, before I realize this guy, I need to be a really, really good loan officer. And, you know, I help people, you know, buy their dream home. Sure, that happens as a byproduct of being prospecting the right way and effectively and efficiently. At the end of the day, you can be the best at closing a deal. But if you don't have anybody's deal to close, so what, right? So it comes down to coaching them up on how to make calls, having them on a greatness tracker, which is a form that we use at the core that tracks your sales activity. I have a ton of people that send me a greatness tracker every Monday and half of them I tell them how much they sucked and what they missed on last week. And they love it. And they're holding accountable. Because not only are you holding them accountable, they know it and it's true. And most people in our business, and let's be real. If you're in sales and you're in a 100% physical commission, you're a little crazy. Like normally people don't do that, right? So most of us, we're battling ourselves daily and you know you gotta push yourself. And so when somebody says you sucked, you gotta step it up and you're in the sales business. At the end of the day, you like to hear that. No one, not everybody who just wants to be padded on their back and told that they're doing amazing. I think that happens too much these days when somebody isn't and then they're out of business, right? So ultimately coaching them on how to have consistent, prospecting weekly, and then once they get it, and usually it's about the third, fourth month, and they start really closing a lot of transactions. And they're like, wow, this really works. This is really going great. Then it's like, okay, you need a team member. And then it's like that panic of, I really need to hire a team member. And it's like, yeah, so you're telling me I have to support somebody in paying 50K a year? Yeah. Okay, well imagine this. Imagine if you had somebody working 40 hours a week for you taking care of all that stuff. It's causing you not to prospect. And you actually prospect it, wouldn't you make more money? And wouldn't you build the closed-door transactions? And wouldn't that person pay for themselves? And so helping them overcome the fact that it's not a cost and investment. And so then growing the team the right way. What are the jobs, you know, what are the different positions out there and everything else? So yeah, absolutely. You know, for the agents that want to grow, that are in the business to build a big team, I'm definitely right there helping them. Any ideas and resources? And have you done classes in the past for agents? Yeah, you know, but I'm more of a one-on-one type. Okay. But yeah, as far as, you know, what I, I mean, I coach for the core, more of their coaching. So we're coaching, you know, some of the top lenders and realtors in the country. And so sometimes I'll connect them with a coach that helps them on a certain issue that they're having. You know, that I'm not like, hey, you know what? This is what I would do, but I'm not an agent. So, you know, talk to someone. So let me connect you with them. And then they'll get on the phone with you and tell you what to do and do the cost and anything. It's a value ad, right? So the stuff that I'm coaching them on is what we do at the core. And so the job descriptions, I didn't create them. Somebody is an agent created them. And I'm like, this is what you have to do. This is what I do with my people. Here's my team. And, you know, here's what I've grown in. Trust me, I had the same fear of hiring my first assistant too. And now I have 13 of them. But I had that same fear of how am I going to support this person? Now it's not just supporting myself. It's supporting somebody else. Right. And so it's all that. Yep. It's really comes back to what you said is your value proposition, closing alone on time, having competitive rates and great service. That's not enough. That's easily duplicatable. So it's about relationship, partnership, and, you know, actually adding value in a tangible way. You know, it's interesting. Sometimes I'm talking about this, you know, you talk about coaching realtors and bringing them ideas. Some LOs think, oh, well, don't they get that already? I mean, you know, from their brokerage or whatnot? And surprisingly, there are brokerages that are better at it, right? KW and others. But generally, they're just, if they're the right agent, which I think you're alluding to, they're hungry for it. And they're open to it. Yep. And another thing too, it's funny. A lot of realtors and business people, they want that mindset aspect of it. I get so many calls that are like, hey, I'm in this place mentally. Help me get out of it. Yeah. And in a weird way, I'm like a counselor to them. But same time, you know, trying to, you know, get them to snap out of whatever, you know, mode they're in. Like one guy just closed a huge deal, made 120,000 on the one transaction, the commercial deal he was working on forever. He got that deal off of the greatness tracker by using the strategies and doing the work that we talked about him doing. And so you get this huge paycheck and all of a sudden, now he's comfortable. Now he's comfortable. He doesn't want to make calls. So he called me up and he's like, hey, man, what are you doing in these situations? And we have that talk and we got him out of it. And so I have a ton of agents that call me that it's just kind of like, hey, mentally, I'm not in a good place. And that's why I'm not prospecting. I need to get over this. Or they were prospecting for a while and something clicked and they stopped. And now I want to get back into it. And I need that reset. And so, you know, in a weird way, and it's not like I advertise that or anything, but in a weird way, I get a lot of those type of calls. Again, our business is tough. You know, at the end of the day, it's tough to build yourself up. It takes time to develop database. It takes time to establish your brand and your name and realize you're not selling. Keller Williams or Guild, you're selling yourself. It takes time. And so, and so, you know, most of the stuff that they're going through, I've already been through it. I've, you know, emotionally got over it. And I'm like, okay, this is exactly what you need to do. This is what took me, you know, six days on my own to figure out. Do this. And good. That's awesome, man. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, look, we're at the top of the hour. So I know we got to let you go and get back to making some more money. And pouring into some real estate agents. So I can't thank you enough for being here, man. This has been fantastic. Hey, thanks for having me, Jeff. I really appreciate it. You bet listeners is always thank you for tuning in. We appreciate you. If you like the episode, please remember, leave us a little love, if you will, right? Wherever you're listening to this on the inner webs. And we appreciate you look forward to seeing you on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing. 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