Getting Agent Referrals in a Post COVID World with Sean Uyehara

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, listeners, what's up, Jeff Zimper. Welcome to another episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. I am thrilled you've chosen to tune in once again. Hey, would you do me a favor? Let me know if you're liking these podcasts. There's a couple of different ways you can do that. One is, it's been a while since I asked anybody to leave a review. And if you're enjoying this, you haven't left a review yet. Hey, I'd love a review online wherever you're listening to this podcast. That just helps us stay up and current in the podcast rankings within the mortgage space. Or you can always reach out to me by emailing me podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com and just share with me what do you like, what are the other topics you'd like to hear, any special guests you'd like to have, and you know, bottom line, what's what kind of impact is this content making with you, because I hope it is. So I appreciate that. All right. So before I bring it on my special guest for this week, I wanted to set this up as I often do in terms of our podcasts. I ran into this gentleman when I was recording some content with Neil Dingroy recently in Vegas. And he's a fellow mortgage professional here in Vegas, Sean Uihara, with Loan Depot. I've been in the business, gosh, over 10 years now, I think, and doing some pretty significant volume. Well, well, over 30 million and, you know, multiple units, but you'll hear the details from him. Why I wanted to have Sean on is because if you guys have been listening to me long enough, you know, I've preached the value of leading with an educational platform. And when Sean and I cross paths, he shared with me what he's doing in a post-COVID world with classes for real estate agents, online classes, right? The digital roundtable as he calls it, I believe. And the way Sean's leveraging this with in terms of how he attracts agents, how he invites agents, what he does with him in a private face group after the fact just blew my hair back. And so I wanted to bring the conversation with him to you, my listeners, because I think it's very insightful. And I think there's a ton of ideas that you guys, if you are doing classes, you could leverage these because we've all pivoted now post-COVID to doing classes over Zoom until we can get back to face to face. And my advice is, we're going to do a blend of those. We're going to let the online drive the offline. But if you haven't yet got it started with an educational platform, leading with education to a tracked agent instead of chase agents, hey, never called call for agents again. Never chase agents, right? You're one class away, right, from changing your entire mortgage business. And if you need help with getting started with agent classes online or offline, if you need help with putting together the content, which is the biggest struggle most long officers should have. And if you need help with the strategy of getting butts in the seats and the follow-up and converting to meetings and so forth, I've got the answer for you. It's called mortgage marketing pro. We've put together this library of well over 15 classes now over several years and perfecting what's working around the country to attract real estate agents with an educational platform. And now leveraging online, leveraging Zoom. And if you want to learn more, you go to mortgagemarketing.pro, that is the sponsor of today's show. And most of our shows watch the brief video we put up there for you. We'd love to have you if you're the right fit. This is not right for everybody, but we'd love to have a conversation. So go to mortgagemarketing.pro and learn more. All right. So without further ado, let's transition into my conversation with Sean Uihara. Hey, Sean. Welcome to the show. Thanks Jeff for having me. I appreciate it. You bet, man. It's great to connect with you briefly in person in Vegas a couple of weeks ago with Neil there doing the video shoot. Like I said, man, we've got to be able to connect more often as fellow mortgage professionals here in Vegas. Yeah, absolutely. Totally, totally down for that. Like what you're doing, man, you're popping up on the socials and all that kind of stuff. Before we get into that, for anybody who's listening, just give your brief background or how long in the biz, you know, and nowadays, what's kind of like average units and volume? I got into business back in 2007 here in Vegas. I've been in Vegas the whole time in the mortgage side. And this year, we're probably on pace to do maybe about 45 million, 50 million or so. Nice. I think we'll probably end up, you know, somewhere around 140 units or so, hundreds of something like that. So yeah, right around there. That's strong, man. Good for you. What's, and I know we're in a different market right now, but I'm just curious. What's your balance right now of ReFive versus Purchase? I would say probably 70, 30 purchase business, still. Really? Yeah, I've never been a ReFive guy. I mean, I know a lot of people will probably shake their heads at that, you know, because it's working your database, but every company I've always been at, you know, we've all, it's just pounded in my head, you know, purchase, purchase, purchase. So we still get some. I mean, to be honest, I haven't even called my database this year. I just started doing that yesterday. So we'll see what we get out of it, but yeah, about 70, 30. All right. Now when you say calling your database, do you actually call or using any tech and tools to kind of like voice broadcast or what's that look like? I do the dialing myself. I use follow up boss. So I just, you know, it's all organized for me and I can just kind of click, click and dial. Nice. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, we did, yes, I called about 50 guys yesterday and I think we got like three people that sent us mortgage statements that want to do an analysis. So, you know, not too bad for about an hour, hour and a half worth of work analysis. So tell me about that. What type of analysis do you do? So basically we're just doing, kind of, well, we use mortgage coach, so we're just doing a TCA, kind of giving them an example of where they are now, and just seeing if we can save them money, you know, if they're looking to either do a written term or pull some cash out, just basically break that down while using mortgage coach and give them that, that analysis. No plug for mortgage coach. You find that to be a useful tool? Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been using it probably the last maybe three or four years at least and I mean, yes, whereby it, you know, anyone's that that's not using it, definitely need to, they need to jump on that. Yeah. I shout out to my friend Dave. It's just funny because you use the word analysis and that what's that make me think of like, huh, people who use that word usually are mortgage coach users at TCA, man. Yep. TCA. I mean, I was using mortgage coach back when there was like the CD ROMs, they mailed to you and put it on your laptop. It's come a long ways from that. It's a great product. Okay. So number one source of business, realtors, realtors. Okay. Now I know when you and I talk, you do some unique things with realtors. So we're going to kind of unpack and unfold this as we go. Let's talk about like how do you or even if you want to roll back how you first got started with realtors, how did you use this phrase the other day talking to a loan officer? How did you present yourself to the market? Because you and I both know anybody listening knows, right? There's lots of ways to approach realtors. But you, I think, you know, from what you told me, have a pretty unique process or system may not always have had that. But I'd be curious. Just take us on that little journey. In the beginning, you know, it was just all hustle, you know, any deal you had in escrow, it was just the consistent updates, a lot of, you know, eight listening agents would love the consistency from us and that kind of built our reputation. And that got me a lot of meetings when I first was in the business. And then from there, you try to figure out how can you plug yourself into the agents, you know, business, what do they need help with the most? I've gone down the rabbit hole of paying for leads and doing the CRMs and all that stuff. And, you know, I mean, I'm not a big fan of it. I don't necessarily do it today. It's really, you know, it has to be something that I can really see that's going to benefit us. But I mean, a lot of times I'll tell the agents up front, like, I'm not paying for your leads. Don't even ask me. I love that. I love that. How are you doing? Nice to meet you. I'm paying for your leads. It's funny because I know where they're going, you know, and I had I had a broker recently two weeks ago that literally told me, Hey, I want you to pay for our KV core. It's going to be about a thousand a month. And we want to test this out and see how it goes. I said, Look, how about this? You pay for your KV core. I'll give you a buyer within the 90 day period, which will more than cover what I'm going to give you. And let's just go that route. And they said, no, we're going to go find somebody else. Seriously. Oh, my gosh. So I mean, I have it on my my follow up. Trust me, day 91, I'm calling them and I'm going to see how their leads are doing. And if that lender's following up and I mean, I can almost guarantee they're going to be flopping on that thing. So were you were you always that confident in saying that? No, I mean, like I said, you know, I've gone down the path of paying the leads and feeling that that was the best way to maybe build that relationship. But you know, guys like you and a lot of other mortgage guys were talking about this stuff these days, right? You kind of expose that. And I think for me, just learning throughout the process and being in the business, you know, for a lot longer now, you kind of realize that that's not usually the best way to go. You're really only as good as that credit card. As long as you're covering that that nut for them, yeah, they'll give you a shot. But if you stop paying it more often than not, you know, they're kicking you to the curb. They're going to find somebody else. Yeah. So it's not the good. It's not the basis of a solid partnership in the beginning. Yeah. You mentioned, hey, how about I give you a buyer? So when I hear you say that, I know there's some elbows that do better with generating their own leads and so forth. So how do you do that? Probably about two years ago, I really got serious about using social media for my business business. I was probably like a lot of people, you know, you I was private, I kept a lot of stuff to myself. Didn't really use it. And like I said, my primary focus was just hustling agents and we always would do more business every year, either more units, more volume. So I didn't think that that system was broken per se. But one of my old bosses gave me the opportunity to, you know, run a branch and I said, okay, well, if I'm going to run a branch, I kind of have to lead by example. So I better start taking things a little more serious. And that's kind of what really got me really looking to Facebook ads, Instagram and just doing a lot of stuff online. And to be honest, I came across your podcast and I told you this when we met, you know, I listened to every single episode every day and that's all I did. So I learned, I started to like I said, take the business more serious and start to figure out what was I missing? You know, I'm super competitive. I played basketball my whole life. So for me, it was, okay, now it's time to work out. I got to get serious about what I'm doing. And from there, started to figure out if I can generate leads myself, now I have, I kind of hold the carts. I pick who I want to work with. Everything every other lender's doing to me is, it's not even comparable to me being able to generate leads for agents. So once I started doing that, I really started to look for the agents that would value that and not necessarily want me to just pay for, you know, their CRM and call it a day after that. You mentioned something as you were leading into that description, with the diversification for you to self-gen your own leads, I'm glad you pointed this out. But what you said was you didn't feel that that model, meaning agents as a source of business, you didn't feel that that was broken. And I like that you said that, because I'm sure you've seen this in the industry. There's some folks who, like, put out there, it's either or. It's like, you got to go consumer direct, forget realtors, right, their pain in the ass and all this kind of stuff. And my argument is, why, why can't it be both? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, part of it was I got frustrated with agents because I just felt no matter how good you do on a deal, how fast you close, what rate you gave the client, that still doesn't warrant you getting all their deals. And I just felt like, well, there's got to be a better way. And it can't just be paying for their business either. So going consumer direct was my way of saying, okay, if I can hold the cards, I can kind of dangle the character to the agent. And now, let's see if they really want to build a partnership together, or are they still looking at me as a vendor? And if that's the case, hey, you know what, I'm not your guy. And you can go find someone else, you know. So you've been serious about social media for about two years, right? Yeah. What's it done for you since you really got serious? I think we've started to build more of a brand for usself, not only actually recruiting wise, because one of the first loan officers we recruited in our branch, he DMed me on Instagram. And since then, we've hired probably five or six other people. I've had agents reach out directly, just saying, hey, I've seen your videos. I want to work with you. So I mean, it's opened up a lot of doors. And I don't necessarily keep an ROI on it. I know a lot of people look at that type of stuff, but I mean, I think you got the ROI right there. Are you just described it? Yeah. I tell you this month, we'll probably surpass all the business we did last year. So take out some of the refiies out of that. And I mean, we're probably still pretty damn close to it. And any of your social media have you done paid ads yet? Yeah, I've spent a boatload of my Facebook last year. Yeah. And a lot of it was trial and error, you know, I worked with another company that was really heavy on Facebook ads. And I hired them. I thought that was going to be the cure to everything, but it wasn't, you know, I was spending probably two to 4,000 a month just in retainer fees and add, you know, add spend. And I don't think we even closed one deal for the whole year. So it sucked. But I knew how to run ads. But again, I think it's just, you know, the algorithm changes it. And you have to kind of change how you can run your ads and stuff. So we're constantly trying to figure out how we can get better with that part of the business. So you aren't abandoning your agent marketing efforts? No. Yeah. Still, we still spend a lot of time, you know, every deal that we get in escrow, we're always reaching out to them, trying to get the, trying to get meetings with them. And then kind of like what we talked about, you know, we started our digital boot camp earlier in, you know, earlier in the year. So that was kind of another piece that again, I wanted to differentiate ourselves from everybody else and see if we can get, you know, get more bodies into the room with us. Yeah, it's a good transition because we're going to talk about your digital boot camp in just a second, but that's what really caught my attention when you and I started chatting and I saw what you're doing online. And I think the problem with a lot of loan officers is in how they approach real estate agents or the mindset about real estate agents, right? They put them in this category of bucket of either they're not loyal or they just want you to pay for their leads, whatever, whatever label you attached to them. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying that's not accurate, what I'm saying is you don't have to accept that, right? You can approach agents differently, which is why I wanted you to talk about first, first of all, your digital boot camp, explain what that is, why did you start it? So I came up with the idea of the last towards the end of part of last year when I moved over to loan depot and it was basically breaking down what we're doing on social media. So I took our Instagram, our Facebook, our LinkedIn, YouTube and I said, if I can create a platform and a class to show them exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it and the results that we're getting over an eight week period, which I've condensed to one week now. I felt, if I can get agents to meet with me every week for eight weeks, there's no way I can't get their business and I'm really showing them how to generate business themselves and I'm fixing a lot of their problems because a lot of agents want to do social media, but they don't know where to start. They don't know what to post or they've tried it and it's, you know, they feel like it doesn't work. So it's kind of just dispelling all those myths right then in their live in the class. I have a videographer on my team, so for me it was content for myself, content I could give to the agents and just kind of showing a little behind the scenes of how we're actually helping agents and it's not just, you know, where, you know, no one knows about what we're doing. So now it's kind of the premise behind it when we first got started. Yeah, and so this is you teaching basically social media related classes over Zoom. Initially, we were doing it in person. Right. Before COVID. We were doing it in person and we got good traction, you know, the first class we had about 10 agents show up and I think out of those 10 agents, we ended up closing four or five deals off of that group. So, you know, my, I envisioned that however many people I got into the class, I could probably convert almost half of them to get us business. So if I was doing this class, you know, like I said, it was every eight weeks, it would equate to, I forget what the number was, but you know, 30, 40 deals maybe in a year. Right. Just off of the class, but COVID hit, I wasn't too confident, you know, with the whole streaming thing because it just talking to a camera just was really weird to me in the beginning. Yep. So I kind of put it to the side, but as things, we got more comfortable with it, we just rolled it out again and last, I think it was like two weeks ago, we held it. We had about 80 RSVPs and about 15 show actually confirmed and actually showed up. Got it. And so right now, it was eight weeks, but now how many times are you hosting these in a week? It's like, it's like five sessions or something? Yep. Yep. Monday through Friday, we went from five to six PM. Uh-huh. Okay. Good. And so you're hosting those, you're putting together to curriculum and all that stuff, right? So do you have any guests come in or? No, it's just just myself and a lot of it too is, you know, I, I want the dialogue with the agents. I want them really expressing, you know, what they're having problems with and I give them some, some homework every day, things to challenge them. So that way the next day, I have stuff to talk about because essentially, I want them to get over whatever, you know, roadblocks that they have in their head about posting or videos. So I challenge them and we kind of dangle some carrots for them. So that way, you know, they hopefully they can get around to it. Um, and what would be, um, what would be an example of a homework assignment? So one of the things is it's, um, I asked them to do like a quick bio video. So just tell me about your why, why'd you get into the business? Why would someone choose to work with you? Um, you know, because sometimes it's thinking about what, what content to post, that's like their biggest hurdle. But hey, if you can do a quick, you know, minute video about yourself, that's an easy thing to think about, right? You're not having to memorize lines. It's more of just, right. Hey, here's why I'm in the business. Here's kind of what, you know, gets me up every day and it's, it just kind of gives them a good icebreaker and also gets them to realize that the post doesn't always necessarily have to be about real estate. Doesn't always have to be about mortgage. In fact, when you talk about, you know, who you are, you're, you're authentic side. That's probably going to get you the most, you know, uh, engagement on social. Yeah. The raw and the real. Yeah. And, and I show them, you know, some of the past videos that we've done with other agents, um, we take, I have a couple of screenshots of some of them that were just deathly terrified of the camera, you know, and kind of the results that they got and, and they've fact that they actually got leads off of them. In fact, one of them, she made a post and she got four deals off of it. Really? Yeah. It's, it's just kind of lung post one post and she did not want to post it and I told her, I need you to post this and it was literally a photo of herself and she was just talking about her family, her son and she got probably like 50, 60 comments and four deals came off of that one post. Wow. That's awesome. Does she have that agent's loyalty now, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But that's the thing. You know, it's just like to get them to realize, like I said, it doesn't have to be about real estate. And even for us on the mortgage side, you know, it doesn't have to be about down payment assistance or PMI or structuring loans at the end of the day, no one really cares about that. Right. It's white noise. People want to know that, Hey, I can trust this person. I like this person and I want to do business and, you know, that's something that we really try to hit home with all the agents, you know, it's just, just be you at the end of the day. Right on. Right on. All right. So tell me how you get agents to show up. What tools are you using to get them to attend your Zoom? So initially before COVID happened, we were doing a happy hour. So that was kind of my funnel to get agents into the class was just kind of getting them to introduce to us, seeing where, you know, how we work, our offices and we work. So, you know, everyone loves the space and I just kind of peaked their interests. So from there, it was then trying to get them into the class. But now that COVID's happened, you know, we're basically relying on Facebook ads to get agents into the seats. So most of the people that you're inviting are cold. You don't have a relationship with them. Yep. Every single one of them. All right. So break, break down for me. You don't have to go super deep, but kind of like the promotion timeline strategy. How often are you running this five session series? I just started it up. I haven't decided when we're going to go live again with another one. I'm thinking sometime in August, but typically we'll start the ads about two weeks before. And then from there, you know, we're reminding people a few days out. I'm trying to get confirmations at the same time of who's actually going to show up. So I do ask them questions prior to the class, you know, like what are some of their frustrations? What do they hope to gain? Take me, take me through that though. So you're running an ad, right? And you're using some of the interests targeting that we can use still on Facebook, like job title, realtor, for example. Yep. And I've got, I've got some realtor lists and stuff that I've had from the past. So that's in my custom audience. Custom audiences. Okay. Yep. Okay. Very smart. So what's the ad? Where do they go once they click on it? Basically just, you know, hitting them with the pain, you know, hey, are you needing help on social media? You know, you don't know what the post is branded with you in it or is just in the need with. Yeah. I do a video. I just do a video. Okay. Yeah. Quick, like 30 second video, just kind of hitting them real quick of, again, their pain points, everything that we've taken, you know, that we have data on the last few classes and what all the ads are struggling with and we just expose it and say, hey, look, here's a solution. You know, we're going to be doing a class for a full week and we're going to walk through all these things and we get guys to sign up and like I said, I've been sent them an email with some of the questions because at the end of the day, I want to know what that person wants to. Well, where are they going to sign up on the Zoom Reg page or something else? Just through Facebook. I like Messenger using that. Yep. Yeah. Messenger. Not to get overly technical, but understanding they've got to somehow, they've got to create a reservation on Zoom, right? So how's that? I don't do a Zoom link only until I've actually picked the people in the volume. You're vetting them. So yeah, I'm going to vet them out before the link goes out. Ah, so they're getting into a Messenger campaign from the ad they've clicked on and then you are going to start vetting them with some Q and A. Yep. Yep. And by the way, is this an automated Messenger campaign or is it live? I have a bot set up in Messenger now, a lot of the agents just never answered the question. So they would do maybe one or two and then they'd hop out. So then I'd have to manually go and send the email off and then follow up with them that way. I see. Got it. What are some of the questions you're asking them to vet them? Just, you know, what are the, where are current struggles? What are they hoping to get out of the class? What are, and I asked, I was asking them production, you know, what, how many deals a day close because really at the end of the day, I wanted to kind of pick some of the guys that's doing deal. Yeah. And, you know, obviously, I have ways to look them up too, but, you know, we would try to vet out and get a class of, at least it gives me an opportunity for business. Mm-hmm. So any idea, like, number of people you, and how do you, like, disqualify people? How do you let them down easily, you know? You know, it's funny. The last group that we had, like I said, we had almost 80 people and they just never replied to the email. They self-sorted themselves. Yeah. It was literally, they, they, they iced themselves out of the deal by not responding, yeah. Yeah. That's a clue. That's kind of why I didn't want the link to just go out because I didn't want a class of 50 people that were just coming and going, right? I wanted guys that were committed for the full week and that was actually a question that I asked them. I said, are you going to be able to make it five days this week? And then they asked, well, are you going to record it? I said, no, I'm not recording the class. Mm-hmm. And then, so for some of them, they, you know, bowed out at that point, which, again, I don't care. I wanted, you know, even if it was five people that were committed every day, I know at the end on Friday, they're going to get something out of it. And then from there, I'm pushing to meet with them one-on-one and really dive into how we can help them going forward. And what you're, because you're doing the vetting it up front, do you have a pretty good stick rate through all five sessions? We went, we started with about 10 or 12 this past class, I think, by Friday, we ended up like half of them still showed. Mm-hmm. What do you do with those other half? Because, you know, life happens or they get busy or whatever, but how do you handle those people? Um, we've reached back out to every single one of them this past time and tried to get it some one-on-ones and, you know, some of them, to be honest, I wouldn't want to work with them anyway. So, you know, I would say out of the six or seven that didn't show, I would say one or two is just, they're probably going to do one deal this year, you know what I mean? Well, so I want to pause on this for a second because, I mean, think about this as compared to the traditional methods of prospecting agents, goal calling, going out for coffee talks. Do you think this is more efficient? Yeah, because I can get in front of more people. Um, kind of like, if you're, I mean, just if you're a teacher class, right? If you can get in front of 20, 30 agents, um, you know, half probably won't like you and the other half, it's a matter of, you know, who's going to stick around, but yeah, and that's why I'm not too concerned about the amount of people that are there because I'm just really looking for that one person that I can try to connect with and, you know, start leveraging and get more business from them. How many core agents, you know, I mean, like VIPA players, if you will, that are consistently sending you business on some consistent basis, how many of those you got right now? Um, this year so far, I think we're at a little over 30. Wow. All right. So that's, that's kind of an annuity, you know, yeah, yeah. So long as they stay busy and you're doing a lot of, um, you know, um, qualifying to make sure you get the right agents in there, which helps minimize the bottom feeders and all the wasting time that we have with the normal case. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what most people forget about like kind of like this law or law of large numbers thing and, you know, you're not going to get 100% across the finish line, but I would say if, even if the people who only finish half the deal, um, maybe you're not pursuing them for whatever reason, they're still grateful for the information and they have a really positive brand attachment to you. Yeah. And then one of the things that we did post class was get, I then migrated everybody into my private Facebook group. So even though I'm not maybe face to face with them or, you know, they really felt like, okay, I'm going to work with Sean now. They're still going to get all my content, all the videos, everything that we're doing. From there, hey, you know, if they decide to reach out 30 days later, you know, or whatever it is, they can do that, but if, you know, it still gives me that chance of their business without me necessarily having to take time out to call them all the time, you know, and follow up. I'm going to come back to that Facebook group in a second, but one of the notes that I've got from our chat is what you do once they're done with the class for testimonials. Yep. So about halfway through the boot camp, one of my challenges again is, is have them do a video testimonial. And what I will give them in return for that is a 30 day content calendar that we've mapped out for them. So it tells them what to post, where to post it, and give them some ideas of ad copy and just things like that over 30 days. So obviously that's one of the things they all struggle with. And it gets me some video testimonial from them. And obviously we send out the PDF. That's how do you use those video testimonials? We're starting to, you know, put those together now. So we might run some ads. I haven't decided yet, but you know, it again, I think maybe going forward, you know, people that RSVP for the class, it might be something we send out just so that way, they kind of keep them excited and appreciate, yeah, we've got some other ages that have gone through here. Some of the comments that we've gotten so far. So still trying to figure that part out. I mean, at some point you might want to consider, I don't know, possibly a landing page, right? That with your, your, whatever you call your class platform and all that kind of stuff. And there you could feature those testimonials, you know, yeah, that's actually my videographer has said that he's like, you know what, if this thing starts to get some legs, maybe you know, we need a full website on its own that just houses all the testimonials, houses, everything there. So it's, it's something we've talked about. It could be a very, it doesn't have to be complex at all. A very simple one page thing, you know? Okay, so back to your private Facebook group. I know you've got a couple of different ways you leverage that. I think if I remember, you've got like an A group and a B group, but tell me how you're leveraging the private Facebook groups. So we put everyone that's enrolled into the boot camp, into one specific Facebook group. And I post the Zoom links in there and I kind of force them to use it because, you know, part of the class is getting comfortable on social, right? So if they're not using groups, I tell them that's something you should start doing because, you know, email marketing is not the same. And I have a private Facebook group for all of my past clients, you know, we've got over a hundred people in there and get whose content they see when I post. It's me. Do you find out those people are active in the past clients? Yeah, yeah. Because then the cool thing with the groups, right? You can see who actually looks at your posts. Right. So you can kind of keep track of that too. Yeah. So we get pretty good engagement in there and same thing with the agents, it's getting them accustomed to how the group could work with, you know, me obviously posting and sharing in there, but getting them to think outside the box too of how they could start creating their own groups, going forward. And you on one of the classes you recently did, I think it was the first group you did, you've got deals out of that pretty quickly. Yep. Yeah. That's awesome, man. I mean, it's really about, I mean, it's, it's, it sounds so simple to say it. And I know it's cliche. And if I look over at my whiteboard, right, it's a big letters value versus price. And that's the game with us as originators is what's our value prop? How do we differentiate against all the noise in our local market, which tends to be the same? You're leading with an educational platform and it's working. Yeah. And that was the one of the, like you said, it's cliche. It's kind of simple, but at the same time, a lot of us struggle with that. You know, I mean, I talked to an agent yesterday, they're firing their lender. They want to work with us. And I asked her, I was like, well, what's some of the problems that you had? You know, and they're just like, communication. I was like, well, that should be like a given, like, and I told the agent, I go, if, if a lender has to walk in here and tell you, hey, I've got great communication and I can close your deals, I was like, that's, why would you even work with that guy, right? It's just like, hey, I should get credit for showing up to work today. But, um, really, they dropped the ball in communication. Yeah. You know, but it's just like to me that that's a given. And if that's your, that's your pitch, right? That's your. That's P then. Yeah. I mean, you don't stand a chance. I'll take that business from you any day of the week. And also, this deals with the concept. I've talked to L.O.s out there who have the perception, well, let me ask you this, well, two parts to this, my brain's working too fast. One is the L.O. perception that agents are getting this training from somewhere else. What do you think? It is. And there's a lot of, you know, title companies that will bring in people to do social media classes, but I sat through some of those and I just feel like they're not really diving into the native region of what they're, yeah, it's the 30,000 foot view, which we can all Google, we can all read and know the basics. But show me, you know, show me the back end of someone's system that actually is making it work, right? I mean, if you're spending a ton of money and what, where are the leads coming from? What was the ad copy? What did you say? So I think there's a lot of that that's missed and that's kind of why when I did the class, you know, I wanted to show the agents, like we show them photos of our back end of our system and engagement that we've gotten to show, like, look, it's not just me telling you that video works, like, look at these last 10 videos, look at how many views we got, you know, we show them the difference from LinkedIn to Instagram to Facebook and it's, you know, to me, it's just a transparency that I feel like it's, it's missed, you know, with a lot of classes. What do you think, like, when social distancing comes back and we're allowed to get face-to-face, again, any thoughts on how this will look, you know, with Zoom versus in-person? I'm definitely going to double down and start doing them in-person again. Really? Yeah. Obviously. I just felt like I could build more rapport and get more feedback from the agents being there versus the Zoom. Zoom's more convenient, but I'm not going for convenience. I'm going for people that are going to buy into what I'm doing. And again, taking carve out an hour in their day and I get five hours with an agent in a week, even if they have a lender. There's no way they're spending five hours with their lender in a month, right? So now I bring in a whole different perspective on what we do without even having to really sell the agent. I'm going to get that meeting. Yeah. And I thought of this as well. I think it's the classic, you know, blend the online with the offline and the online Zoom version of these can drive to those in-person meetings. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll test it out. You know, we'll see what kind of engagement we get and if it's not as, you know, what we expect and yet we can always go right back to, you know, doing Zoom again. So, well, and the reality is you can really do both, like what I'm envisioning for the classes that I do is, is having when that all comes back, who knows when, is actually still do some online classes, but convert some of those to your once a month in-person class. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing. We wrap up. I know you're busy. I've been impressed with your presence on social media. You're doing cool stuff with video on your YouTube channel right now. We'll put links to all this in the show notes so people can follow you. What's your preferred social media platform? We use everything. I mean, everything that we create gets distributed everywhere. So we'll go Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Yeah. So you're doing the pillar content and then creating micro content from yep, yep, yep. Okay. Well, it's funny though, because very few loan officers are on YouTube or on it in the right way. Is there a specific objective you have with YouTube? I just feel like YouTube is so hard to figure out that you can't really pay for likes. I mean, I guess you could, or pay for followers like Instagram back in the day, but I feel like if you can build an audience on YouTube, that's pretty authentic. And it takes time and you're not going to get the within 30 days, hey, I've got another hundred followers. You might get one new subscriber, so I feel that if you're not really playing the long game, you'll give it a shot, but you're going to quit. And you know, I think that's something that for us, like we're not going anywhere. So we're going to keep trying to figure that thing out because if we can get to a thousand subscribers and you know, thousands, tens of thousands of people watching what we're doing, it'll turn into business eventually. Yeah. I've been doing a lot of studying myself and evaluating different social platforms and stuff, not only for me, but for obviously loan officers. And somebody mentioned in this to me the other day as a reminder with YouTube is keep in mind that you, I know you know this, but for the listeners, is that YouTube is a search engine. Yeah. And it's different than other platforms largely in that. So it's very much like Google in the sense that people are going to YouTube searching for stuff to help them solve a problem. Yep. So and I'm watching some of your videos here that have some of the higher views and it seems like the titles that deal with that tend to have gotten more views, you know. Yeah. And that's the thing too, you know, you can, you can tweak the titles. You can change the thumbnails. Right. So there's, it's, it's a lot more autonomous, I guess you could say because it's not going to just be, hey, let me post a photo and hopefully I get likes and comments. It's, you can actually go back and change some of the meta tags and your descriptions and all that stuff in there. So it's, it's something we're, we're working on, you know, yeah. And your Instagram presence is doing well also like that. Um, I can't believe I didn't follow you until just today. So I'm a follower now. So before we close out, I want to, I noticed here on your Instagram profile, it says you've got over 100 five star reviews on Zillow. And I just figured I'd ask you about what is your online review strategy. Are you still focused on Zillow? Is it Google? What's going on there? Give our clients three options, Facebook, Google and Zillow. And I just let them decide which, you know, where they want to share their reviews with us. Cool. So you, you know, it's funny, people in the past have brought up their concerns about driving people to Zillow for fear of them stealing future business. Yeah. Which, which your take on that. Um, I think that's just the scarcity mindset, man. Yeah. If you're worried about Zillow taking your, your business, they're going to do it regardless, you know, whether you're thinking about it or not, they're there. That's funny because I remember I interviewed Chris Smith from Curator and, you know, his comment on that was, if you think your clients aren't going to Zillow, you're just silly. They're going there. Yeah. We get organic leads all the time from Zillow. I mean, they'll call us directly and I'm not, I'm not paying for anything. I don't necessarily believe in paying for Zillow leads. Right. Um, I've gone down that path, but I think like, you know, like if people are searching and that's one of the, the most searched real estate websites, why not have a presence there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to go where people's eyeballs are, right? And that's definitely one of the destinations. Yep. Um, and that's just one of the way people kind of, um, that's the currency of trust, if you will, right? Online reviews. And Zillow's the big destination, local, Google my business, that's the other big destination pretty much. Absolutely. So, all right, man. I appreciate it. Listen, what's the best place for me to put all links to your stuff, but primary place for people to reach out and follow you? Where are they? Instagram. They can, you know, on Instagram or, I mean, if people want to text, you can certainly shoot me a text too. I mean, I'm, I'm open, you know, all about helping our industry out and, you know, guys that I just, I want to say this too, because for me, like I told you this a number of times, I've watched every single one of your pieces of content and that's kind of really what got me into doing what I'm doing now. And, you know, even being able to reach out to other loan officers, you'd be surprised how many guys will actually tell you what they're doing and help out. So, you know, I know I was one of those guys that I was always hesitant, like, why would this dude even spend his time to help me? But I can, you know, say for myself, you know, I'm more than happy to tell guys what we're doing because I think if we all can push each other to be better, it only makes our industry stronger. I appreciate you sharing, man, and you shared a lot because, you know, I didn't hold back from asking questions, right? I got pretty specific, but, but you've got an abundance mentality and the pie's big enough. So, you know, that's, that's cool, man. So once again, I appreciate you being here, I'll put all the links in the show notes and listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, hey, leave us a review or reach out to us directly on the socials and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys, what's up real quick? 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