How Loan Officers Are Generating Hundreds of FREE Leads Online

Hey, what's up listeners, Jeff Zimper your host for this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. You know, this is the place where we help mortgage originators move from solicitor and vendor to partner and peer, getting engagement, conversations, building trust and accelerating referrals with real estate agents, leading with education, building your personal brand, both online and off. So you can get off the income roller coaster and have a consistent steady stream of high quality referrals coming to you every single month, like clockwork, without chasing begging, co-paying for leads, showing up for networking events, happy hours, or any of those other silly activities, no, you attract instead of chase, you lead with education. And before we get into this week's special guest, of course, I've got for you a couple of new success stories from our members over at my agent classes. And I'm just going to go through a couple of real quick and it's a matter of fact, sometimes I don't even remember if I shared someone with you in the past or not. But I thought I'd give a quick shout out to one of our newer members, Selena, who got off to a great start. She has a Google My Business class coming up on Wednesday, November 29th at the time I'm recording this. It's tomorrow. But last I checked with her. She had 18 agents who made a reservation for her upcoming class. So imagine getting in front of 18 agents, not pitching your products in pricing exclusively, but actually helping them solve problems, right? Educating them on how they can have a better presence on Google, get more reviews, get found in local search. Oh, and by the way, you don't need to be the subject matter expert. You're just the messenger. Our system is a train the trainer platform, which helps you simply be like the nightly news reporters who are sharing the nightly news. Video tutorials, scripts to follow, downloads, handouts, social media images to help you promote and get your classes out there online, automated marketing email text messages, personally branded landing pages to manage the entire reservation follow up process and convert the currency of attention to conversations. Why would you want to do that? Well, because you know that conversations leads to contracts and that's what it's all about. If you want to learn more, you want to schedule a call with me, I'll show you the back end platform. I'll show you the classes library. We'll have a conversation to see if this is the right fit for you. It is not right for everybody, but you can learn more over at mortgagemarketing.throw. Go check it out. Grab a time on the calendar for you and me and let's see if it's a fit. Okay, so this week I'm bringing you a special guest conversation that I've really, really enjoyed and I think you're going to enjoy it as well. And who am I talking about? I am talking about Greg Sure. Greg is the managing director at NFM Lending. And what I liked about Greg is I saw he was posting on LinkedIn and he was sharing some very, I would say straight up, straightforward kind of candid conversation, opinions and posts about how we should be pivoting in the current market, how we should be responding to the NAR lawsuit, how we should be showing up in quote, adding value, if you will, and how do we differentiate ourselves? And also, how do we get business in today's world as a modern mortgage advisor, right? Or what I'm calling a next gen loan officer. What's cool about Greg and NFM Lending, first of all, he's got 26 years experience in the business. I helped lead a team of over 1200 mortgage professionals and his experience is top of the charts. And also, as you'll hear in our conversation, I think he's got his finger on the pulse of the current market, meaning the modern market, not what worked five years ago. But what's working today and directionally looking forward, what's going to work moving forward? So we talk a lot about a few different key topics on this. We talked about like how we should show up, as I said, right, how you should be putting yourself out there as a mortgage professional. What kind of presence, what type of content should you be putting out there? And I think Greg's in a unique position to speak about this because he also was, you know, kind of one of the lead people in creating what it was originally called the influencer division at NFM Lending, but is now being called the creator collective. And what this is, it's a platform, it is a opportunity. It is a welcome invite open arms for you mortgage professionals who want to be modern, who want to build a personal brand, create content, video content, and otherwise so that you can build your personal brand and attract clients directly to you on the various social platforms that are out there. So NFM Lending have this, you know, kind of foresight and advanced thinking to be able to recognize this as not just a growing trend, but one of the main ways that business will be done moving forward, both now and in the future. And so what does this mean, this creator collective? Well, what they do is they produce content that empowers and educates potential home buyers putting you the mortgage professional front and center to that. How do I know this is true? How do I know it works? How did you know it works? Well, you're going to hear the stories on this episode. But imagine if you could just through consistently following a proven path, yes, putting yourself quote, out there, meaning out there, out where, out where people live today and hang out social media, right? And putting some content out there that through consistency and over time, you can actually build a following an audience, which by the way is the number one, one of the top skills to build in any market is an audience, right? Today, that's what that's about is building an audience of people who are aware of you, who know you like you trust you, right? But now you can do this through these different social digital platforms. So Greg has assembled this team of mortgage professionals who you're going to hear their success stories. As I said, you're going to hear examples, you'll get links to their profiles in the show announcement. So you can go see what they're doing for content, what they're posting, what, you know, is it a video? Is it an image post and you're going to get a look at how these originators have pivoted and embrace this kind of modern, you know, platform of digital marketing and are generating leads? Imagine if you could generate hundreds of leads a day because of content that you've consistently posted over time. Like, if you're struggling with right now, like where to find your next deal. If you're curious about, you know, how to be able to grow your business without it costing a fortune and, you know, paying for leads and all the things that go into that, obviously this consumer direct channel is a viable channel. I think the challenges is most haven't really figured out or cracked the code on how to actually make it work. And I think you tell me, listen to this episode, but I think Greg and his team, the creator collective at NFM lending have a good handle on how it works. But don't judge, you know, don't take my word for it. You listen to this episode and you listen into the success stories that are there. And if you like this episode, please leave us a review, let us know, share it with somebody that you think might find a valuable. And if you're interested in connecting with Greg, you know, his links are going to be in the show notes to connect with him directly. So I hope you enjoyed this episode without further ado. Let's get into this weeks show Greg, welcome to the show Jeff. It is my pleasure. I've been wanting to do this for a while. So thanks for the invite. I'm thrilled to have you here. You somehow crossed my feed on LinkedIn, which is what brought you here today. And we're going to talk about your position and statement around the NAR lawsuit in a moment. But before we do, those who aren't familiar with you, what do you want to share about who you are? What do you do? Well, I'm the managing director at NFM lending. We are top 15 lender when you consider the players that are just retail that don't have other arms of their business. So what that means is we eat what we kill and we have one focus, closing the loans that come in the door. I've been in NFM two stints, 1998 to 2002. So I've been in the business 26 years, 27 years. I was there for four years and then I went open up my own company, grew it to 120 people and came back to NFM with 106 of my employees 14 and a half years ago. And so I'm 52, I'll be 53 and just a couple of days. And I'm at a kind of point in my career where I'm just trying to add value as much as I can to the industry. I used to kind of hold things close to the vest and want to have everything be proprietary. But I retired that mindset and feel like I've got a lot of wind beneath my wings and motivation to want to lift others up in the industry and give my opinions and share my wisdom and my connections and keep people positive and plucking away because I really am very bullish on this industry. I know the best is yet to come. And a lot of it is rooted in social media and branding and a lot of the things that you're very passionate about educating people around. So that's kind of a, you know, like if you said, what do you do at NFM? I help with marketing, I help with innovation, I help with recruiting, I help several other people sort of set the roadmap for the company. Okay. Thank you for that. Sure. I'm curious, what happened? Was there some type of an event or situation where you shifted the playing close to the vest to wanting to show up and open the kimono, so to speak? I think that when I, when I launched the influencer division in January of 2021 and I saw so many people gravitating towards this idea and ear to the wall wanting to hear about our success and the more I shared, the more inspired I felt people being. And so that was kind of the moment. Like, you know, not only are we on to something interesting, but there's a ground swell of folks in the industry that are really intrigued, that want to know more about it. And so, you know, I made another post and made another post and hired another couple of influencers and got another 10,000 leads or whatever we got. We can go over the stats and everything here in a moment. But that really inspired me and then I started to get asked to speak on some panels and I've been spoken at the MBA several times in the Digmo conference and several other conferences, the mastermind in Vegas last year on a panel with Dave Savage. So it's just sort of taken on a life of its own and given me this platform to want to inject a lot of positivity into the market and I love it. I love that I have the opportunity to do it and anything I can do to help share what I know and to keep people feeling upbeat and positive, I want to do. It doesn't mean that I don't have my moments and that I, you know, sometimes I have better days than others because I absolutely do. But we've endured well over two years now of headwinds and I know that it's changing and I feel that it's changing and my outlook is much rosier than many people's outlooks. I've been saying on my LinkedIn feed now for several months, we're at the, we're in the eighth inning, we're in the top of the ninth inning and I know this is going to turn and it's going to turn so much faster than people think. And so the forecasters who say, oh, it's going to be a year, it's going to be 18 months until we, you know, until things are great again and rates go down to any kind of number that motivates sellers. I disagree. I think you're seeing in the jobs data, you're seeing in all the other data points that we know of car payment delinquencies, record debt, you know, we've crossed over the billion dollar threshold for the first time with consumer debt, savings rates near and all time low. Now we have CPI numbers coming in worse than expected. It's all lining up to be in our favor and we're going to have some substantial winded our back here very soon and that's what I want to, that's the kind of air that I want to breathe into the community. Well, that's definitely a refreshing message considering the headwinds we've been up against for sure and maybe a little bit contrarian and so we'll probably talk a little bit about that as well. It's interesting. You say that. I was watching a video the other day, Scott Galloway who's a professor of economics at NYU and he was commenting on how he thinks that inflation is going to come down almost as fast as it went up and that's some of the economic kind of forward looking, you know, numbers he's looking at. I don't know if you feel similar about that. I don't know that it's going to be that precipitous. Yeah. I don't see it going up all the way. You know, the bond going down to 275. I think it's going to take really bad data to get there, but could rate settle, I've predicted rates are going to be five and three quarters to six and a quarter by the end of March. Okay. So while we're there, let me hang out and kind of geek out on this for a second. I interviewed a couple of weeks ago, Logan Montesham, if I'm from housing wire and I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's the housing analyst over there, housing wire. What happens then? What's your answer to because you see a lot out there, social media, when rates do come back down to that number, let's say in that range, who just mentioned, do we see a mad rush of sellers? Do we see a huge spike in inventory? Like what's the impact you think to housing with that? I think you see more people willing to sell, to move down, to move up, to let go of that 4% rate when you get into the fives, you see more people wanting to consolidate, I think you'll see. Oh, then does that impact prices then, prices downward pressure? I don't think so. I mean, I think it's going to slow down the increases, which is needed. Right. I don't think we're going to be looking at 10 to 15% annually as we have been the last couple of years. I think it's not good. Yeah, it's not good. You get down to a normal level though, and now people are making decisions, and it's not just based on, I'll do everything I can to hang on to 4.125. I think we saw when rates were in the mid-high sixes, you know, when they bounced down before going up this latest time, that spurred a lot of activity. Our applications were way up, more applications were up. So I mean, that's in the sixes, and if people are like, well, what's going to be the catalyst? You just look at the spread between the 30 year fixed and the 10 year, but no, there's been a lot made of that, you know, that historically, it's 170 right now. It's above 300. So there's 130 basis points or more of excess where, once that's corrected, once the fed comes out and says, you know what, we're done raising. We may even cut that, that number is going to come in. That's going to come back in and that alone gets you into the high sixes, if not lower. What was the post though, you had the other day, Powell strikes again, Powell says not confident. Has that enough to bring inflation? Yeah. You know, and I go back to that too. It's like people want to turn, I'm not an economist, right? I've just been in the mortgage business 26 years and I've seen all the rhetoric and I've got a pretty good sense for when things are going to turn a certain way. This is the guy that runs the Federal Reserve, like he's in charge of making decisions. This same guy was pounding the table that inflation was transitory. And it was that position that put us in this position when people say to me, oh, that's not what Powell, you know, Powell's made it clear. I'm like, come on, man, like he's data dependent. All these guys are. Right. No pivot as quickly as he has to. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't have access. I'm assuming right to any other data that we don't. Because of all the indicators they look at, that's impacting. That's right. And I look at Mike Fratt and Tony, chief economist from the NBA, who I love, admire, and I've got a friendship with him. I lean on him at NFM TV, I think he's wonderful. He's been way wrong for a couple of years. He didn't think inflation would be this stubborn. He did not think it would be transitory. He called it something more sustainable. He was right there. But even he had predicted that by this past December, we would be in the mid-fogs. And that's an, that's an economist. He was paid to be that guy. Yeah. He's got the high end education, right? Whatever. I don't know where he went. But let's just assume it's some great, you know, education that got all that knowledge. That just goes to show you that people are wrong most of the time, you know, even getting into stock market predictions and all that stuff, right? Correct. Yeah. That's right. All right. So that's, you know, thank you, by the way, for sharing that because obviously we're all kind of hoping for that, right? And it'll happen based on the schedule it's going to happen on. We don't control how fast that happens. But I think the message, what I love, let's circle back to you and LinkedIn. What's got me engaged in your content and seems to be other people as well is that, you know, you are posting some, some coaching, if you will, there, I'll use that, all right? Some, some directional, some framing on like what you should be doing in today's market. And I think the most recent ones I saw from earlier this week or today was, let me just ask you, you obviously oversee a lot of originators, what are you coaching originators around today? What should they be doing? That's a great question. Thanks for asking it. Owning your business. When I say that, you know, becoming a commodity, branding yourself, watching what other people are doing, developing relationships through social media, liking, engaging, all the things that I know that you are leading the charge on. And that's what really, that's what made me gravitate towards you when I, when I started listening to your podcast is, man, we're, we are speaking the same language like using, you know, and even if you don't want to be one of those people that's going to be online, it's okay if you don't want to be the face, but learn the tricks of the trade because it's the greatest door opener to get in front of real estate groups you'll ever get. And right now, it's blue ocean. Like right now, it's a blank canvas. We're in the very beginning of this. So even if you don't want to be in front of the camera, that's okay. Learn the tricks, align yourself with the company that is passionate about social media that has leaders and teach these real estate agents how to, how to do it, how to brand themselves. So everything that I'm talking about is all about, is all about branding. It's all about potentially influencing and getting to borrowers much earlier on in the funnel, which is a perfect segue to the Narloth suit, if when the injunctive relief comes out, and if the judge determines that, listen, we're just going to do away with the thing, you know, it's buyers are now responsible for the agent's fees. I mean, aside note from that, I believe that something will get worked out. Fanny Freddy will get rolled into the loan. There'll be some, some accommodation. It's just the mandate of every administration is way too steeped in this idea of helping out first time home buyers and minorities and things like that, even though this administration has swung and missed in a huge way. That's a side note here, just to be a little polarizing. But I really, I believe that you've got to, you have to embrace social media and branding. And that's a big, what does that exactly mean? I'm saying to people, get ahead of the funnel, get to the consumer, sooner than you used to do. And we used to dream as loan officers, oh my goodness, we're ever going to have a moment in time where we can flip the script on real estate agents. And now we got the control instead of them and said, me kissing their ass, showing up with donuts, when are they going to come to me? This is the moment, people, like this is it. Like NFM's influencer division is comprised of 12 mortgage influencers, all licensed. They all have self-generated business, but they're also making great videos. And in two years, they've driven in 65,000 leads, all free, all organic from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Reels, a little bit of YouTube. We've generated between, you know, from that business, a little over 1100 loans for just under 400 million and 24 months, just from that, you take the NAR lawsuit, right? And now you've moved borrowers up the funnel even more, because now you're in a situation where these first time home buyers, if that happens, where do I turn? I'm already cash strapped. Who's the expert, who's going to, right now in this moment, right now, who is going to work on being the expert lender in the space that's going to be a great resource for these first time home buyers to figure out what the landscape looks like, how they, how these changes affect them, where do they go, who do they turn to? Who's going to be patient? That's the other thing about what we've learned with the influencer division is people, yes, you're getting to people earlier on the funnel, but be prepared, not everybody's ready to close today. Right. So you've got to be at a place that's got a really good nurturing campaign and believes in what I'm saying and believes in what you're saying, Jeff, and that means identifying upfront where these folks are and what they need. If it's three months, if it's six months, if it's nine months, if it's a year, it's going to be all over the board. So if somebody indicates to you where a year out from buying, don't throw them in the dumpster, like you might have done before, find a way to stay in front of those people in a meaningful way. And so I think that the nor lawsuit is going to further expedite this top of the funnel thing that's going on that we've discovered through the influencer division. And we're just a small little piece of the pie, the other thing to consider. I know you want to get a word in edge wide. You can't tell me you weren't feeling great. So I'm trying to take over the floor. I think it's been well documented, but worth repeating that we have the first generation of home buyers upon us that are digital natives. I know you've spoken about this. What does that mean? It means it's the first group of homeowners that have this in their hand all the time. This is how they transact. You can't do anything about it. They don't care who their mom got alone for in 1987. They're going to make their own decisions based on what they see and who they follow. Why is that important? Well, Generation Z represented 2% of all applications two years ago, 9% last year, it'll be 16% this year. They're 68.6 million Gen Zs in the United States right now. Do you know how many of them want to purchase a home in the next 36 months? 46% of them. That's 31 million people. Their behavior is tethered to this thing. And the biggest obstacle or one of the biggest obstacles to that is affordability. For sure, yeah. This is where the trusted advisor mortgage professional can come in and educate them around. Because as you will well know, people have these different perceptions like the, you know, the old adage that I still find outrageous is that, you know, the higher percentage of people who still think they need to put 20% down, right? The phyco misconceptions like various things out there, this, this comes back to education and like you're talking about with your influencer division is getting into the market and reaching that, that underserved audience, is that fair statement? For sure, learning about them, what makes you tick, what they want, what they need to hear, how to drip on them. Well, let me put that in a second if I could because people are listening and I, I want to unpack this as well, you know, the influencer division. I think I originally got exposure to that from, is it's got Benson? I believe he's, he works for, he works for us here at NFM. He's got over a million followers. He is, he's a pioneer in the space and was one of the first, yes, put himself out there. So explain then a little more detail on this influencer division. Did you see people like Scott doing this? Then you're like, hey, wait a minute. There's something here or did you already recognize that and say, let me create a platform or a company that actually supports and, and enables originators to become modern like that. Um, it's not, it's not real sexy, but I'm going to tell you how it is. I can make up a great story, but the matter is, you know, I, I, I consider myself to be a relationship builder. If I had a strength, it's that I love people and I love going deep with people and having great friends. I just love that. And so there's a guy, um, his name is David Stallings. He worked at home star out of Georgia, which just went under and he's at canopy home loans now. And I recruited David for years, like seven, eight years and I never got him. It just never was the right time, but we, we continued to go deeper and build a great relationship. And I consider him one of my very good friends, even though we work at different lenders and we've never worked with each other about three years ago. We were having a conversation, think tanking and he's like, there's a guy, you got to look at this thing called TikTok. There's a guy in your backyard who's giving me leads. This guy's a lead machine. His name is Scott Bentley. I, I'll be honest, I hadn't heard of TikTok, but I didn't know how to spell it, but I went on, I took a look at him and, and I had a moment and it was definitely a, a, a big moment, a centennial moment for me in, you know, in terms of my career. I saw a video that got five million views. He was wearing his company hat, his company sweatshirt. I saw thousands of people DMing him and, and right then and there, I was like, oh my goodness, that's the future. What that guy's doing is the future I, I reached out to him, got him on the phone, made an assumption statement, assumption statement, I said, I'm sure your lender is all over you building a castle, you are the future. Tell me that's what's going on. He said, actually, my lender has no idea what I'm doing. They ignore me. They just recognized the top 10 marketers at my company and I wasn't even on the list. He said to me, they were recognizing people with good, open house fires. Oh, man. I said, look, man, wow, I love what you're doing. There are more people trying to do what you do, come to NFM, let's build something together. You can co-own it with me and let's build out the first ever influencer division in Mortgage. He came and right away, I got affirmation. Some of his videos drive in two to three hundred leads a day. Can you imagine? Yeah. It's a short form video. He's going on there. He's making a video about some lesson that's been learned or about a first time home buyer that never thought they'd get into a home. He's telling stories and people respond to that. So take that. We made a bunch of mistakes for the first six to eight months. He came in April of 2020 and from then to the end of the year, I'm sorry, I get all the dates confused. He came, it's so hard to remember exactly when he came. He's been here two and a half years. We officially made the announcement in January of 2022. In January in 2021, we spent about six to eight months making a lot of mistakes. For instance, in the beginning, we would take a consumer who clicked on one of his videos and wanted more information. We would take them right to an application and we were flooded with applications. What's the problem with that? We created a complete bottleneck, right? We didn't verify anything. So then we started to verify it, but then we were like, you know what? We need workflows. The people that say that they're, they self-grade their credit as poor or below 580. We got to take them down this path. The people that are 580 to 640, we need to take them down there and really dig into that. The 680s and above, we're going to take those right to a loan officer. Then we built a call center behind it. So long answer, really long answer, like the longest answer ever. It started with somebody that I built a relationship with who I recruited, but never got. And he gave me a tip that led to what is now the Influencer Division. So I give David Stallings the credit for turning me on to Scott Betley, other one. Shout out to David Stallings, yeah. David Stallings, who's a really smart guy too. He's great. I'm clicking around here on Scott's Instagram page, and he's big on TikTok as well. That's funny because I reached out to Scott some time ago about being on the podcast and he was too busy, so you can have him on anytime. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking at your flow here, and I'm so getting technical for a second on this page where you're now allowing people to self-qualify with their estimated credit rating. I'm curious for a second, and you don't have to reveal specifically, but obviously you have some type of technology on the back end with some automation, right? To put people in different workflows based on different. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can you talk about, is that like a known CRM you're running, or is that so? Yeah, I know. We use Shore Fire. We've recently pivoted to shape, which is a little bit heavier on the front end lead management part. The problem with Shore Fire is they don't have lead management up front. So we've had to Jerry Rig that, and so we recently pivoted to shape where we believe that they are the future when it comes to workflows and having the kind of technology that we need to get in front of these folks fast. So that's what we use for that part. All right. So here's a question you've probably gotten in some fashion before. Having watched Scott's content for some time, you know, he has a personality, right? He's engaging. He's funny. You know, he's got these little skits and stuff that he does. Do you think everybody can actually do that, that style? No. Yeah. Yeah. So let's do this. Let's speak to the people who, when they look at that stuff, something like Scott, we'll put a link in the show notes to his Instagram, that mortgage guy underscore. But sometimes when we bring these quote unquote influencers to the surface and we're talking about them, people go look at their content and they immediately see him, you know, doing whatever, right? And they go, ah, I can't do that. That's not. It's not for everybody that you need to understand your first of all, who are you? What's your personality? How do you want to show up? You want to show up as light and funny and entertaining or do you want to show up as a mortgage expert who can get any loan done or is constantly giving you knowledge? There's short form videos, which is Scott's niche. There's longer term videos. They have another young lady here under the handle of a nutter home loan. She is incredible. I've never seen a more dedicated community. Her name is Jordan Nutter, N-U-T-T-E-R. And she's longer form. She does skits. And so she has like a dual persona, Jordan does. So she'll, and what she does is she recounts the most ridiculous incidents that have happened where let's say she's on the phone and the bar was calling her like, well, why can't I close today? And Jordan's like, well, we just, we're getting the closing docs ready and we notice that you've got seven inquiries from other mortgage companies in the last three days. What's going on? Or, you know, I told you not to purchase any more things and you bought a car, and then she's got the other person on the other phone, which is her playing this dual persona. Well, I didn't think it would be a big deal. My boss said that I'd look good in a Tesla. And so she goes back and forth, and that resonates with her and her personality. There's another woman I encourage people to follow that I'm a tremendous fan of. She's on YouTube. So she's the educational front. Her name is Jennifer Beaston, B-E-S-T-O-N. She's a, I consider her dear friend now. She's a guaranteed rate, a competitor of ours. But so it's kind of, it's awesome. She's got a completely different style, like those three people. And so really the question that you should be asking that people want to know is, can anybody do this? Not to anybody do what's got Betley's doing, the answer to, can anybody do this? It is unequivocal, yes. Unequivocal. I don't care if you're 30, 50, 80, it doesn't matter. You can definitely do it. And I know, how do I know this? Because we've got several people in our team that have pivoted and reinvented themselves. We have a 52-year-old man. His handle is by not rent guy, by not rent guy, okay? So he's the traditional great branch manager, leader. He's a $50 to $100 million guy, has been forever. So what was going on? We were doing, he was like, you know what, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring. I'm going to develop a TikTok account and just start doing videos. And one of the rules, folks, prepare to fail. Prepare for your first 100 videos to be terrible, horribly received, zero traction. Be ready to feel like you lost. That's what it takes to get through the other side. How do I know this? Because I'm working with these influencers every day. We've had, you know, I've spent thousands of hours talking to them about what it takes to be great in this space, thousands of hours. So he started doing that. And in the first 10 months of this journey, this 52-year-old guy, he's not a fashion model, by the way. Very ordinary looking guy. I'm close to him. He wouldn't mind me saying that. I think he knows it. He closed 10 transactions in 2022 as a result of this maiden voyage of his. Not only that, this goes back to what I said about, even if you're not going to be in front of the camera, you can help educate other realtors. Do you realize that real estate agents, I'm going to get as close to them. I'm going to get as close to this camera as I can. They are starving for this. They're not hungry. They're starving for help and direction. Help and direction. Show me how to do this. How do I get a piece of this evaporating market share? What I mean by that is they see their competitor down the street, take it borrowers from them, because they know how to do this thing. So you all of a sudden have something you could bring of value to real estate agents. How long have we been trying to do that beyond my rates greatly close on time, right? So my point is what happened is even though buy not rent guy was not lighting the world on fire and he only closed 10 loans in his first year of doing this. Everywhere he goes now, basically, lender related. He's got agents coming up to him going, you're the buy not rent guy, I'd love to work with you. How did you learn how to do what you do? So he's got meeting after meeting after meeting and suddenly he's in control of his business. Yeah. So I love that. I know I'm speaking to your soul, brother. I was just going to say, man, I'm in the, I'm in the, the pews in the church and I know can I get a witness? I get it. Hey, man, pass the plate around right now. No, 100%. I've been preaching that for a long time and that's why I'm so thrilled. Number one that you bring the energy to this because hopefully it's breaking through. It's not like people haven't heard this. It's just you need to finally do something, right, get off the dime and find your voice. So to speak, right? I'm going to share my, if you'll, I'm going to share my screen off, I'll put up our, our influencers so people can take a screenshot real quick and begin to follow some of these people. For sure. This is always dangerous because I have no idea what, what's open on my computer. We're fortunately, unfortunately, we're in pretty good territory right now. We've rebranded since this, but the, but take a picture of this. Here's by not rent guy, you know, I mentioned he wasn't, uh, that's a model. You know, this is Scott Betley, that mortgage guy, he's got a million followers. Here's Jordan Nutter, a Nutter Home loan. She's amazing. Chad Johnson is on Facebook. He's got his own style. He's a very well known guy. This guy had a breakthrough when he started doing calculator videos and that's the other point about, about this thing, like you asked me, uh, I'm going to get off this page here in a minute, but you asked me, like, can anybody do this, uh, really, anybody can do this and, and the thing about it is, and the reason you have to be prepared to fail is because it takes a minute to get your lane, like Jordan Nutter, who's got that long form dual persona thing going on. She tried everything and she didn't do great for the first six ideas. Then she tried another idea. Let me do a dual persona, and I'm going to be a storyteller. I'm going to read, I'm going to make what I do, recounting funny tales, ironic tales. And then boom, she went from 50,000 followers to over 300,000, and she's closed a lot of loans, by the way. I mean, she's closed this year, 120 units, uh, for something like $44 million in the worst market, any of us have seen in ages, if not ever. And what, what percentage sourced from her content, you know, all of it. She doesn't, she doesn't knock on doors. She makes videos, she teaches people how to be, how to brand. So when you ask me, you know, bringing your question full circle, 30 minutes later, what am I coaching? Yes. What am I passionate about? This, this is very important because there is, there is no question. Now, wait a minute, just on the, uh, another home loan thing there, you said she's teaching people. So she, it might to extrapolate from that, she's teaching realtors. This content. Absolutely. I just want to make sure that didn't fly. I caught that. I don't know. She, she, she said that she's been asked to speak in various things and her, her profile now is growing and she gets in front of real estate agents all the time and shows them how to do it. And by the way, that's a, I want to, I want to double click on that. Um, my kids make fun of me using that, but it works. Uh, and that is this is the, the benefits of producing the content is multi, right? But let's just take two, which is one consumer direct building your own database and kind of personal brand there, but, uh, I love that you highlighted this because most people don't think about this is, you said this a few minutes ago is your own personal brand amongst your realtor population locally, other referral partners as well to the point of, Hey, you're that, you know, uh, guy, you're that gal, right? That I see your content. And then what happens is, and I've interviewed another, uh, other people who share the same thing is they start connecting and reaching out with you or when the call comes, it's just right? No resistance because you've already built that awareness and brand of who you are in advance of that ask. You have something realtor's one, not all of them. Yeah. No, but, but here's the thing they're all getting ding right now. They're all losing market share to the, to the, to the, to their colleagues, many in their own firms who they see stepping out. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So then where do you suggest somebody starts who they're like, all right, get it. I'm sold, you know, shit, I haven't done this and, you know, I've been putting it off. Like, what do I do? Download an app and just start making videos. You know, well, I think, I think the easiest, the easiest thing to focus on is an area where you feel like you're an expert, so if you, if you are a down payment, assistant expert focus on that. If you specialize in FHA borrowers and low down payments, do that. If you are passionate about veterans and you know all about these, these amazing loans that are definitely under marketed and under utilized, focus on that. Here high balance, if you're junk, whatever it is, right? Start somewhere with any of those. Start there. Yeah. Yeah. Start, start, start from your soul on out. Yeah. Like what is it? Like you hear when I talk how passionate I am about this stuff, right? That's where you need to get yourself in that mindset. You can adjust down the road, but that's the easy place to start, right? The worst thing you want to do is, oh, where do I find the app and what the hell am I going to say? The other thing is don't give a shit what you look like. Like, this is not a thing for the pretty man. That actually dilutes the impact. This is about, and I, you know, I'm kind of like talking on both sides of my mouth, because if you look at my LinkedIn, you'll see a lot of the stuff that I do is polished. I'm in front of a, I'm going to, I'm, I'm, I'm on a set. It's, it's very well edited. I mean, it looks very professional, but I'm not an influencer in the sense of what these guys are doing. They're not on TikTok doing those videos, right? But, but for, for these other verticals, you want it to look as, as genuine and as less kind of put on as you can, because that's really going to hit home and that's really what people are hungry for. So, you know, my advice is, pick a vertical, like go look on, go, go, go, go mortgage you to TikTok, Instagram, whatever the five, four or five are, start to see, you know, who you, who you can identify with. Yes. Who, whose message is resonating in style, then pick that platform, figure out how to post on it and start making two videos a day, five days a week and speak from the soul. Don't care what you look like, don't make it all pretty and great. Just share stories to do whatever you're passionate about and start to do that and then you're going to, and then you'll start to find your way and be prepared to fail many, many times and be very discouraged, but push through that wall and it's going to lead to some tremendous fruits. I love that. Don't. It's a hundred percent spot on. I love that you said be prepared to fail because you will, right? Have the courage to press, publish. And I think, you know, the other big thing you said is I characterize it as find your voice, right? Find your lane, whatever. That thing. And by the way, that might change. That's why I love you. Give the ideas of where you can just start, whatever it is, VA, it's DPA, it's, you know, overcoming the myths about, like I always tell people, take the five questions you get most often. Like there's five videos right there, you know, do I need 20 percent down? Do I need 800 FICO, you know, FHA versus whatever. And then follow other people looking behind me for this book, there we go, pregnant pause and audio. Worst thing to do. It's still like an artist. I don't know if you know this book, but that's not, yeah, it's like, it's, it's okay to steal air quotes, right? Because look at, there's nothing new under the sun, right? So follow other people. Jennifer Beaston is one of the people who inspired me a couple of years ago. She does amazing videos and she was leaning in real heavy with VA at that time and she's crushing it. You know, so there's plenty, I think that's the other thing too. In today's world, there are enough examples. You've named people. We're going to put links in the show notes to the people that you've named and et cetera. But there's enough examples out there where you don't need to reinvent the wheel anymore, right? No question about it. No. Well, all these guys are stealing from each other. I mean, look at the West Coast offense in the NFL, like Bill Walsh, was the guy that came up with the West Coast offense before you know, he had a bunch of disciples running around and that's kind of like the staple offense of the NFL, like it's a copycat league. Find someone that you like what they're doing, do what they're doing. I've seen people take Scott Betley's videos and actually word for beta, word for word, say exactly what he said. And that's how they got off the ground. That's okay to do. Yeah. There are no red lights here. You just go. It's all green. Now, I'll just bring this back full circle. We're running a lot of time here is what I think is interesting and inspiring about you leading this up at NFM is you are one of the few companies that I'm aware of that actually welcomes originators in with open arms and say, hey, you want to build a brand? You want to be a media brand? You want to be fun in baby. We got it for you. A lot of companies aren't doing that. You want me to comment on that? Yes. How did you know I'd have an opinion on that? I know, right? Shocking. There are too many companies out there that view the company as the brand, videos of them breaking ground on a new building, accomplishments of the owners, boards that they get put on. No, they got it all wrong. The brand is you. The brand is the loan officer. All we're here to do is be a facilitator, period. And so I want to puke every time I see, and I could name the people, I'm not going to do it just because I don't, I don't, I don't roll like that. But if you're at a company where you don't feel like you're the brand and you're not able to be free, you need to take a look at where you are because the business is changing. It's changed. It's changing under your feet and the companies that aren't going out of their way to create the scaffolding for you to win. You're not going to be there that long anyway, whether you like it or not. So you might as well consider making a move on your own and control your destiny and get aboard the momentum that exists right now. And the opportunity, I talk about blue ocean canvas, I use those cheesy things, but we're very early on. Like this is going to look a lot different in three years when everybody gets it. Yeah. You don't, you don't have a forever window. No. No. Like you said, blue ocean or you got a land grab shot right now to get, to get to the front of the line. But yeah, it's going to continue to get more crowded. It is. And then this isn't a billboard for NFM. We're not the only ones that have social media influencers. We have the most. We've been going at the longest where the only influencer division and mortgage that I know of. I mean, this is, this is not conjecture. These are just, well, that's a side that just is what it is. You take it seriously, you embrace it by actually having a division, you know, it's not a dot like, oh, yeah, sure, go ahead and make your own videos, but run them through compliance. You know, no, no, no, we don't run, you know, we have rules, I mean, we audit like anybody else does. We'll do, you know, we'll fly by, do fly buys and drive buys. But it's very simple, you know, no rates, no terms, no conditions, no promises. Be creative, tell stories that are true and have fun. And, and nobody's spent, you know, because, you know, nobody wants, because the brand is so important to the originator too, like they don't want to put that at risk, they don't want to put that in jeopardy. All right. I mean, we have the same goals, right? That's a regenerate loans, man. And just it's just a new way to get there. One of the, one of the pillars. So I've got to share this and hopefully it doesn't come across as self-serving. But I was talking with somebody the other day who is a member of mine in, you know, as you probably have gathered from listening to a couple of my podcasts, we equipped loan officers to go out and teach classes in the local market to realtors, right? Teaching them on these topics. And I had a conversation with a particular company and they kind of ran it up the, up the flagpole internally and the basic feedback was, oh, that all sounds well and good. However, I think we should focus more on quote, fundamentals like making phone calls and sending postcards. And it's like, wow, you know what? That's pathetic. I know. It's really, really sad to think that, like, how is this not a fundamental activity? Mark marketing. Listen, Mark, and I told you at the beginning of this, and as I talked more about the influencer division and what we were doing, I was asked to speak in front of groups. One of the things that I was asked to do was talk to a group of contemporaries through the Stratmar group. So they have these leadership calls. And this particular topic was marketing and direct consumer and social media. And they had me come on and speak. And these people, like, they were like, they were, we're tick, what, tick, and I'm not joking. Like I'm not exaggerating. This was still. And months ago. Wow. They're like, well, how do you, what do you, what do you put on there? Like, what is, what is tick, tick, tick, what, like we, we focus on great marketing flyers. I'm like, oh, gosh, I mean, on one hand, I'm like, get a grip. On the other hand, I'm like, this is my competition. This is amazing. I love this. And we're going to that for a little longer, will you? And that really happened. That's a true, that's a true story. You know, the issue, Jeff, is you have to really have a, you have to be a visionary. And I'm not calling myself a visionary. I think NFM is a visionary. Like I'm just a passenger in the car, right? And maybe I'm steering, I'm at the steering wheel, maybe I'm putting the fuel in whatever analogy you want. You have to, you have to believe, right? And you can't fake that belief because the, it's all in the actions. Like there are companies out there that say, oh, yeah, be, you know, brand yourself, be on social media. We trust you. But then you're having to run every video through their compliance department. Do they really trust you? Nah, they really don't. How much does that slow you down? Like you know that it trend only lasts so long. You got to get on that. If they don't understand that and are not building accommodations around that, they're full of shit. Yeah. They don't understand. The other thing is, lastly, is, as we've talked about with the funnel and how early on you aren't it, especially in this environment, most companies just are worried about what can I close today? How am I going to stop the bleeding? Is this long going to make me money in the traditional 60 days? So it takes a whole mindset shift and investment attitude to look at this and go, all right, let's spend time building this right now, right? I don't know. Let's lose even more money and bet on the future. I think a lot of mortgage companies are hanging on by the seat of their pants. They can't focus on that. And so what does that do for an offend? It just gives us more of an edge. We're just creating, we're just creating more runway. Like the gap between us and the nearest plane behind us is widening every day. Interesting. Well, I know if I was originating, I would definitely like, and I'm considering a move, right? You've got the broker side, right? But then you've got some other options there. But I would be looking at what companies are going to best support me to be the future originator, the modern, right? And so you guys have a pretty cool, that's like a mild endorsement, I appreciate it. What is? I mean, you have a lot of royalties to a lot of people and where you and I are building a relationship. So this is like a, I've not bought smoke. I'm just, I'm being totally serious about it, you know? This is like the point in the days where like the, you know, you're like on match.com and you're looking at the person and you're like, well, I think they look good. And then you have the whole, you have a whole anxiety around seeing them. Are they really what they, to they look like I thought they'd look and then then you have the date and you're like, whoa, this is going pretty well. And then it's time to say good night and you're looking at them like, wow, I wish then I wasn't ending. So this has been a great first date. You mentioned the broker thing. Yes. You know, I have an opinion about that too. I think we're, I think we're very late in that game. Like anybody that's thinking of going broker and I'm not just saying this because I'm a lender. Like if you asked me 18 months ago, I would have said get to a broker because you're going to get that competitive pricing and the rate compression and you need to have those answers and the optionality that, and this is just the normal progression of what I've seen in 26 years. Like the pendulum just keeps swinging back and forth and back and forth and for a while the broker was up here. That's going to start to go like this. And as rate compression diminishes, rate compression diminishes and depression. I think I said depression. But the rates are very depressing right now. Really? Yep. Yeah. So it's an appropriate Freudian slip. There's going to be less competition for rates. It's going to be more about the value and you're going to want to be at a lender. So even the, even the guys out there saying brokers are better, you got a secret for you. They're actually lenders now. They have warehouse lines. Right. You know, they hide behind the brokers better thing, but they have massive warehouse lines and they're for all intents and purposes of lender. Yeah. Well, that's an individual choice, obviously, or whatever's right for it. Well, no, no, it's all good. Like if you're, if you, and that's not the topic here, we could talk about a million things. But if you are a single originator just looking to make the most amount of money you can make, you don't have aspirations of building a team or anything like that, then I would say take a really strong look at that. I think that that makes sense. If you want to have a various accoutrements and a lot of bells and whistles and that's important to you and how you sell and you want to have team members that help you support your business so you can get out and sell, that doesn't, that's not what that is. So there, there's a, it's like, it's like the influencer thing, right? Like there's a place for everyone. So yeah, exactly. Opened that idea. 100%. All right. We are officially out of time. But for those who do want to connect with you, it's linked in you want to drive them too, right? Absolutely. If you're linked in profile, let's Greg share appreciate if you put it up, you know, follow me. I'll follow you. Let's lift each other up. Let's be positive. Yeah. Let's go crush it. And can people learn more about your influencer division as well by going to NFM Lending's website? Uh, I'm trying to see. You know, I would say contact me. That's the best thing about the influencer division. Got it. Okay. Cool. Well, like I said, there's going to be links to some of those influencers in the show that follow them. Yeah. Follow them. Contact me. Yeah. Exactly. Cool. Well, listen, really, really appreciate your time. Love the conversation. Thank you for the first date. Maybe. Do I get a second date? How did you know Rob's going with that? Now you're starting to read my mind. That's a good sign right there. Well, this could be. This could be love. How about I'll call you. How's that? I'll call you. You'll call me. That's the worst. I'm going to be waiting around for days looking at my phone. Well, you know, you can't be overly eager, right? Like, remember. Oh, no. Right. You got to wait that three day minimum period. You got to play the game. I understand. Right. Swingers. Swingers. Like, you can't be too overly eager. That's great. I do remember it. Well, look, I just want to say what you're doing is great. I'm really glad that we connected with each other. I like your podcast. I like what you're putting out there. I mean, you, you are going in the right direction. You're inspiring. You're motivating. Encouraging people. Like, I love what you're doing. And I'm a raving fan now. And I'm going to continue to follow you in earnest and encourage others to do so. So thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. My pleasure, sir. Same goes to you. I love the authenticity and the, you know, the courage to have a position with your content on LinkedIn. So that's why you all listening need to go follow Greg so you can see the position he takes because it's really engaging. Thank you. Yeah. So listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, leave us a review. Share it with somebody that you think might find it valuable and appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey, guys. What's up? Real quick, you've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before. 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