How These Loan Officers Are Winning Online and Offline to Grow Volume

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, let's start with up, Jeff, as I'm very welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, welcome, welcome. We are so glad you are here. And thanks for tuning into this episode. I'm just having fun with my sound board over here, and if anybody's curious or needs a sound board, this is the Roadcaster Pro. It's pretty cool. If you're ever doing podcast interviews, it takes up to four external microphone inputs. You can actually Bluetooth your phone. You can put an SD card in the back. I've got two, four, six, eight different sound buttons here. You can swap out the sound effects and all, for instance, when I'm doing a Zoom, when I'm teaching a Zoom class live, I can do. All right. Hey, what's the second most visited website in the world? Enter your answers now. So this is how I keep virtual meetings so interesting or engaging, if you will. Let's face it, people have been on a ton of Zooms and to capture and keep their attention. You have to do some things that keep people's attention. Those are called pattern interrupts. Pattern interrupts can be questions. All right. Hey, does this make sense? Hey, tell me what you think. Hey, who here has experienced this? Has this happened to you? Because when people are asked a question, they immediately have to go into that mode of thinking and framing and answering the question, reflecting internally. But other pattern interrupts are, you know, you could do things on the screen and showing images that are pattern interrupts, funny images, right? You could show a brief video that's a pattern interrupt, or you could play a sound that's a pattern interrupt. I tend to use them to drive engagement, keep it loose and funny, and drive people to get them to put their answers in on a Zoom, right, with a sound like that. So I'm just riffing here today on like what I use for virtual meetings. Obviously in person meetings, you've got the power of in person to drive that response and engagement and you hold your hand up, right? And of course, you could do that on a video and a Zoom as well, which I do. So and by the way, if you are looking to level up your virtual presentation game, like if you're into doing virtual classes and stuff like that, let me know, right? Jump into our Facebook group, right? Go to Facebook.com and then do a search for mortgage marketing radio. You might, if you're not yet a member, you might need to answer a couple of questions to prove that you're actually who you say you are. But if you're listening and you're already in the podcast, a page group, there'll be a question in there. I don't know if it'll be in the feed by the time you hear this or not, but or DM me on Facebook. Go look me or DM me on Instagram, right? It's at mortgage marketing radio on Instagram and it's my name, Jeff Simphur on Facebook. Go DM me and tell me, you're looking to do or level up virtual classes. And I'm just trying to get a sense of who out there is looking to do that and because I want to help. All right, so let's transition to my special guests today, guests, yes, plural guests. We've got three amazing gentlemen on the call today from Homicide Financial. We have Louis Wicket, Dave Hendrickson and John Cornish and this is a very intriguing conversation on a variety of fronts. One is because I found it interesting that Homicide Financial is doing something unique and different in that they're allowing loan officers, right? You basically operate with their own private label, such as you're going to hear on today's call. As a matter of fact, I've got a few of these folks that I already work with in our private members group. But for instance, John Cornish, his private label is key mortgage group under, right, powered by Homicide Financial. We also have Oz Lending, right, in Dallas by Jason Osmond. That is also powered by Homicide Financial. There's a variety of other private labels that they have. We talk a little bit about that. That's cool. Then we really unpack some biz dev marketing strategies that I think you'll find very interesting. Particularly like Louis Shoutout to you, man, I appreciate you kind of putting this together and reaching out to me on Instagram. Louis is a member of my agent classes, pro marketing membership, where we provide done for you content for you to teach classes to real estate agents virtually and in person. Well, Louis reported to me that he did a first time homebuyer class virtually and closed four loans from one class. Now I didn't ask him like what is average commission, what's per loan or et cetera, but if you just take like the industry nationwide average, let's just say it's $1,500, right, four loans. I mean, do the math on that, right? That's pretty good for one class, isn't it? And Louis was also honest enough to admit that he's done that and hasn't repeated that yet. So Louis. Louis. Yeah. Louis. Obviously, we're joshling you to get you back off that and do another class, repeat it. Do one of the other 12 classes we've got available for you. But also we have a great conversation with Dave Henderson, who's a leadership over there at Homestead Financial and you'll hear some of the leadership tactics and areas of focus that he's got on to build the homestead financial brand, the private labels. And it's a pretty cool insight into for kind of an executive level mindset and conversation. And then of course, we have John Cornish, who's just kicking ass and taking names, right, doing 100 million plus in production and they're recently doubled his business because he decided to get serious about focusing on people, process and technology. And so we talk about a lot of stuff, social media, how to get to my business reviews. We talk about bomb bomb and how they're all leveraging this and using this and stay tuned to the end because we go around the horn and we do a Q4 focus, what's a Q4 focus and everybody gives their own individual focus on what they're going to be implementing on Q4. And we're going to check with you by the way to make sure you implement guys. But I love also what Louis talks about is he's doing a top 40 campaign, identifying top 40 realtors that he wants to target and add a percentage of those to his roster of referral partners. And his approach to doing that is pretty cool and unique and I think you'll like it. We also put in the links to show notes to everybody's social media profile and other things they talk about in the podcast, make sure you check the notes for that without further ado. Let's get into this week's show. Homicide financial, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having us, Jeff. Yeah, we're excited to be here. Jeff, thanks for having us, Jeff. You bet. All right, let's go around the horn because those are just listening, need to identify voice with a name. So Dave Hendrickson, why don't you start, who are you? What do you do? Dave Hendrickson, SPP of sales, home side financial, really focused on recruiting business development and then business 21 years. Here's love it. Let's go to Louis, tell us about you, what do you do? Lone officer, I've been with the company for three years now and then I manage or Des Moines office as well. Moines IO. Love it. And last but certainly not least, John Cornish. John Cornish, my technical title, which I don't get much into as regional sales manager. So I run a production team and also oversee our three IO offices directly and we are using the branding key mortgage group. Okay, got it. Right. And we're going to come back to branding and all that kind of stuff a little bit later in the conversation. But what drove this? What set this whole up? We're going to give shout out to Louis. Louis drove this meeting today, this conversation today. So high five to him. And part of the reason is, you know, and this sometimes happens, right? Sometimes people in my, you know, audience, if you will, will listen to the podcast and then we'll start exchanging messages on social media or whatever and I'll find something interesting that will be like, hey, wait a minute, that would be cool to talk about on the podcast to share with our listeners with what's going on. So that's kind of the premise of what brought us all here today. And I guess, you know what, selfishly, I'll start with you, Louis, and, you know, you started sending me messages about like how you were building your business. So let me, let me start with the question I often start with and John, I'll come to you on this as well. What's the primary source of your business right now? I would say the primary source is realtors and social media. Okay. When I got in the business, you know, those were the two things that I knew would work for me with the age group that I work with and then obviously watching John and other loan officers that are successful going after realtors. So I knew I had to hit those two buckets. All right. How did you go about getting in front of realtors? Let's start there. Honestly, cold, I called, you know, realtors, message them on Facebook. You know, I think I'd do a pretty good job of letting realtors know, you know, what I'm here for and it's to provide value. I don't ask for a lot. There's a point in the process that I do, but, you know, I, I like hyping realtors up. So if a realtor's crushing it on social media, I'm going to reach out to that agent, let them know that I love what they're doing and I want to be a part of it. So you've been, you've been originating. How long? Um, six years, six, seven years, three on my own. So not at a bank or credit union. And what are you averaging right now for units monthly or annually? I closed 11 this year, um, did 165 last year. Nice man. 111 this year already. And what do we still got three more months left? Yeah, pressure zone. I'm going to take that fantastic. Well, you, what is your main social media platform? I'm looking at your Instagram right now. You have over 2600 followers. Um, you're pretty consistent with video content. Are you generating conversations, relationships or business from your Instagram? I am. So Instagram, it is the younger group. I feel like I get the older group on Facebook. But, um, really, you know, if I have any piece of advice for people out there, it's just stay consistent with it because, you know, I've had, you know, John and I talked about this all the time. You have people that watch your content for years, in some cases. You never know when that's, you know, getting a convert. So the only thing that we know how to do. Is stay consistent with it and it'll pop at some point. And when it does pop, those people feel obligated to use you and, you know, John's felt that I know social media has changed his business a ton as well. But you just never know when, when that business is again, a convert. So you have to stay consistent with it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, but that's not the only way you generate, uh, you know, or real estate agent relationships is it? And this is the selfish part of it. Is you teach us some classes from what I read? Yep. So I, I bought your, uh, your classes, uh, you're invested. I want to say because I've already had a huge ROI on it. So, um, I did my first time home buyer class virtually, um, in April. And I had 20 people attend and I've already converted four of those people. So I'm kicking myself and I told you this. That it's crazy. I've still only done one. I need to pick it up. Yeah. There's no excuse for it because it does work. And I especially, especially in a virtual world. Yeah. You're going to get more people to attend those classes in my opinion when it's virtual. Consider this the public flogging that you've closed four deals and haven't repeated that process yet. Yeah, I know. That's worth a few shuckles to you. I'm sure. Yeah. All right. So, Mr. John Cornish, give us, uh, uh, uh, kind of a summary of where you at just so we can, you know, understand contextually units or volume, kind of year to date, if you will. Um, year to date, I'm at 293 units, uh, averaging 37 a month. Um, my business, uh, actually looked over this this morning, uh, right at 50% past client and past client referrals. Uh, 13% builder, 22% realtor, 2% online. Um, and other we're going to call 13%, which is, uh, personal friends and non realtor referral partners on insurance agent financial advisors, uh, referrals from other banks and things like that. Oh, man. Love that. Congratulations. Awesome production. Um, a lot more we can do. There's always more we could do, I guess. You mentioned, uh, if I heard you correctly, the first or primary source that of your business is past database. Yes. Okay. Naturally, I heard that. I'm immediately curious like how or what you use to farm that, manage that. I think homebot or other things. What are you using to to make that so profitable homebot? Yes. That's something I probably started using somewhere around 12 months ago. I've always been a database guru. Um, but I will tell you that the actual CRM portion is probably fallen off over the last 18 to 24 months on the last time we made a switch with employers. Wasn't exactly expected. So I wasn't as prepared for it as I should have been. But one thing that has helped out substantially with past client referrals is social media. I mean, it's a far more effective way to stay in touch with your past clients. It's an easier way for them to share it. You know, when I'm explaining it to people that I hire that are getting into business, it's like word of mouth on steroids, right? Like when you tell somebody the old fashioned word of mouth, you may talk to three or four people with one share, one click, one like one comment, you're touching an audience. And it's not uncommon for people to have, you know, 3000 friends on their personal Facebook page. It can just spread very, very quickly on social media. So that has been a big point where my business has grown. And a lot of that is from, you know, YouTube videos, online videos, really taking an educational approach. Do you have a social platform you tend to focus on? Facebook is probably the one just because I got involved with that one sooner. But I'm on Instagram as well, have a YouTube channel. So those are the main three. I did try to do my first talk video of you weeks ago, talk about getting out of your comfort zone. Louie's the young buck that's making me do all these fun new, you know, things that have grown my business. And I'm just trying to practice what I preach and I preach getting out of your comfort zone to the people that I hire. So I have to, you know, a big thing for me is I'm never going to ask a salesperson do something that I'm not willing to do myself. I lead by example, I'm in the trenches with them. They can make a more effective leader. So I'm just trying to practice what I preach. Yeah, love that. Lead from the front and I don't want to leave, I don't want to leave Dave out. We're looking for Dave's tick tock dancing video or whatever. I will tell you Jeff just being on this podcast, push me outside my comfort zone. So I appreciate it. Well, you know, the old saying is we're either green and grown or ripe and rotting. So if this is, you know, staying green, we all need that the lesson though. Yeah, so, so, and I'm trying to make sure I, you know, I cover a fair ground across the board here for everybody conversation wise, and obviously keeping it relevant for for the listeners as well. So we started with kind of unpacking production sources of business and stuff and we're going to come, come back to that. And so I guess you know what Dave here's a nutrition question is and, and quick kudos and, you know, I'm not blowing smoke or anything. But just the fact that I've looked at both your Instagram profiles and both of you guys, you know, John and Louie, you're doing, you're doing video. And I still see a lot of reluctance or hesitation around video. And let's just be honest, John, I'll come back to you first. Sorry, Dave, hold on. Videos kind of uncomfortable, right? 100% of this, except for when you do 100 of them, they don't care anymore. So I remember a funny story of how I actually got into doing videos. I've been saying I was going to do it. I was saying I was going to do it and one of those things you just kind of dreaded so you did do it. I think it actually lined up with when Louie started, Louie and I started working together and I did the 22 push up challenge, you know, the one to raise for veterans. Not just the push ups and raising awareness. I went around the businesses and actually asked for money and did the video shoots with them. And it would force me to do 22 days in a row of videos. And I remember the first couple of videos I'm making sure my hair looks nice, making sure everything's ready. I'm super nervous. Two weeks, it's like, oh, it's 12 o'clock at night. I'm working on my in my office. I got a hat on backwards in a hooded sweatshirt. It's like I got to bust out these push ups. And you just kind of get over yourself, right? You're not worrying about how cool you look. You're really worried about your audience and being genuine to what you are. And what I try to tell people what I try to tell myself is just having a conversation with somebody. And that's where I keep it where I don't get nervous. And it's not that big of a deal. And people that work with me work with me because of who I am. I'm not perfect. I'm not polished. So if I, if I stumble on something, this is what you get. And it kind of gives little personality to the business as well. It's comfortable, but I'm numb to it at this point. I can bust them out pretty quickly. And if they're perfect or not, I think having consistent content is extremely important. More important and important than having it perfected. I mean, you wait on the sidelines to release something until it's perfected and the opportunity passes by and you don't take any action. Sometimes getting that first step and just digging in is the key to it. Yeah, I mean, so many key points you just mentioned in there is, yeah, it's uncomfortable. But when you do your hunger, you care less, the more you do. You're not so focused on you. You're more focused on the message and just getting the content out there. Love that. But by the way, real quick, what's what's with the shoes, man? I'm on your Instagram here. Are you looking for what? I'm a sneaker head, mainly just Jordans. So I like, I'm a bigger Michael Jordan fan that I won was even when he was when I was a kid when he was playing just the level that he did everything, the mindset, the audacity and the dedication. And I just have a true appreciation for it. It is super cool. And I haven't addicted personality. So I kind of jumped in with two feet. So I definitely collect them. I tell my wife it's an investment. Honey, if you're listening, it is an investment. We're going to sell me of them. But it's a fun thing for me to do. Yeah. Hey, turn those into NFTs or something, right? Then I just, there you go. Oh, boy, speaking of Jordan and all that, have you listened to or read the first book Relentless by his trainer? I don't know. I've heard of it, but I have not. It's awesome. Yeah. It's a great book. I forget it. It's Tim something. Can I remember Tim Grover? Thank you. Yeah. So he's got two books out now. But Tim is he's the guy who trained Jordan, Kobe, Dwayne Wade and a handful of others. But I mean, right there alone, right? You're training those three people, you know, we're thinking too about like excellence in leadership. So I definitely highly recommend the book if you're into it. Here are some stories. Then of course, the series on ESPN, which is what was that? Oh, last dance. Louis, Louis, ding, ding, ding, ding. Thank you very much. Well done. You get the gold star, Louis. No, I can't. I can watch that over and over again. Yeah, we're going to get you on that Jeopardy podcast here. So Louis, yeah. And Louis, you're going to have to show me how to work my phone to download that book so I can listen to it when I'm doing cardio, because you know, I can't figure that out myself. Yeah, it's one of the, I like listening to books, but it's one of the best books that I listen to just to realizing if you really want to make it to the top, what it, you know, what a true face, because those guys are nuts. Yep. All right. So Dave, back to you now. What are you focused on as the leader at the company? What's kind of got your attention right now? And as we move into the new year? Yeah, I think, you know, it's probably shifted over the last 12 months. Really what, what has my focus right now is retention. I think that we saw a record year. A lot of companies learn their lesson from the meltdown. They sat on all this money and just making sure that we're in front of our people daily in that we're able to retain them because I think that's just as important as recruiting. And so right now, I just want to make sure that the leadership throughout the country is having constant communications with the law officers. So if you could, you guys are doing something a little bit unique and different there with homestead financial in that, and I might not articulate this as well as you guys, but I'll do my best. You're, you're allowing, you know, it's funny because I mean, for a long time, one of the challenges with a lot of law officers as we, as this social media thing is evolved, we need to become and build personal brands. You know, there's resistance to that internally, right? Compliance issues and no, we need to be under the corporate bank brand, all that. But you guys are doing something different in that you're allowing law officers to have their own brand, right? Yeah, so from our standpoint, you know, with all the lack of stability inside of mortgage companies, like John referenced, we moved relatively quickly, we're kind of forced to that the company was acquired by a larger outfit. And I think as you start looking at social media, your realtors, your CPAs, your financial planners, your builders, the last thing you want to do is, you know, choose a company that you bettered out and something happened, whether we're housing issues, compliance, find something happened. So what we really wanted to focus on when we got in a room is building that brand because there's two types of branding, you have to, you know, in Louis and John the world, a key mortgage group. They have to brand the L.O. community and let them know what they should be a key mortgage, but then also we have to brand the, you know, realtors, builders, all the referral partners. So from our standpoint, we said, hey, instead of branding home side, let's just be partners with you and we'll go out and we'll brand these key, key mortgage group, Q home loans, team hotburg. And it's been a great success, you know, it's a marketing DBA. So they're still signing, signing home side docs when they sit down at the table. But it's been really effective and it just gives comfort because you always go to bad and take what if what if and now that we've gotten rid of the what if we feel pretty secure. We've got great partners out on corporate and we're just going to continue to build the brands throughout the country. So you've got the key group in Iowa and who knows what it would be down in Scottsdale, Arizona. So we really want to put time, energy and money behind that. That's really the goal of this. Well, if anybody's listening and this does happen occasionally, somebody will ask me, hey, who do you know, right? They might be looking. Who, who's an ideal fit for you though from either a loan officer like we have John and Louie or a team or whatever. Who's a good fit for what you guys are looking to do? Yeah, I think, you know, Jeff, we've been pretty selective and it's really allowed us to grow our volume to last year a little bit over 1.5 billion just on our team. So, you know, somebody that's very entrepreneurial like I still at 21 years haven't learned how to get anybody out of that yet. So somebody that's entrepreneurial, but really also a partner that wants to tell us like John said earlier, we're not perfect and we understand our options and perfect or, you know, whatever we need. But we just need transparency. So somebody that's willing to sit down and have a transparent conversation and as an entrepreneur, really willing to build out an area that's who we're looking at. And I think we probably lost recruits, which we're flying with through our transparency. I think too many companies, they kind of forget. We all sell to the same place. The only thing that matters is how the loan got there and the compensation that comes back out. We should be able to sit down and really talk about the issues we have, the successes, the failures, the initiatives where we're going forward. So I think we've just tried to make it very simple and I think this industry has become way too complex because it is very simple when you scrape it all away. I think we have, and I can definitely speak for Iowa when we had like you to chime in Jeff, and I'm digging in here. Yeah, we're selective in Iowa as well. We're looking for a certain type of a culture and a certain type of an individual. I think we take a different approach than most recruiting, you know, most big recruiters you talk to, they're going to bring on anybody that's doing any type of volume where I'm going to dig further. And we expect it to be done a certain way and it's not the right fit for everybody, but it's the right way that we're doing it. We have a culture and I don't want to be, I don't want to risk the culture we have with the team that we have that I believe in so much by bringing somebody in from the outside that's not going to adapt to that. There are many players, people that look big picture, people that put the needs of the customer first. And there aren't me people, I guess is really the thing we don't, I mean, I don't really do well with people that it's just about them and they don't want to be part of a team. So I think that's part of the way that we're selective in Iowa when Louis and I are looking at who we're going to bring on board. Yeah, sure. I also realized before the call that I work with another one of your private labels, which is Oz lending out in Dallas. If you can know Jason over there. Yeah, so that's how committed home side is to this. We actually talked to Jason that he was going down this path. No, he was communicating directly with ownership at the time. And I had a conversation in an Andy Stewart and myself talked and what a great guy. But yeah, he's home side committed to this. And I love it because they have to believe in themselves in order to allow this because the things very, you can transport it very easily. So it shows you the security they kind of have and the relationships they have with the Louis and the John's and the Jason's down in Texas and the Ron Thomas out on the west coast that they believe in them that they're brand so much that they're willing to do this. And I think it's great. Yeah, for sure. Love that. And so obviously we'll put links in the show notes if people want to learn more. We go to the URL would be you guys. We talked about that. What do you want to give them? Go home side.com is, you know, the company website. I would say for John and myself. Our social media pages. My name is Louis Wicked Mortgage Lender. His is John Cornish Mortgage Lender. And, you know, I just want to say thank you to you in the podcast because I've gotten a lot of stuff on my social media that I've either passed a John or he's passed me that we've implemented in there. So. You provided a lot of content for our sales meetings as well. So we listened to you a lot. It's a lot of good ideas. And listen, not all of them are original thoughts, but not too many things I do are original thoughts. And some of the most effective things are fairly simple. It's just executing on them consistently. So a reminder every once in a while. It's like, man, I really got away from that. And you kind of kick yourself a little bit when you hear somebody that's blown it out of the water that's doing it so well. And it reminds you that even though you think you're doing something well, there's somebody out there that's doing a better job. And it's really good motivation to surround yourself even if you can't be in front of them. You surround yourself with these podcasts where you're constantly hearing input from people that are executing on a very high level. Yeah, love it. That's what I love to do is bring those conversations to the forefront. Because to your points, like we get caught in the the Meyer of the day to day. And we get in our routines and our ruts. We need somebody to grab us by that shirt collar and shake us and go, hey, Louis, you did a class and close four loans. What are you doing? Great. Yeah. I only had to put on a face to face classes for two and a half years to get four loans out of the Louis. So I mean, to give you a comparison. No, I know. I know I'm kicking myself in it. All right. We're not going to we won't continue to be Louis. I'm going to continue to beat him up about it. Jeff. Don't worry. So you guys can. The other thing I want to talk about with you, John and Louis is like scaling because oftentimes, you know, people will struggle with with that process of scaling a high volume, high unit business. So why don't we do this if you could, John, give me a breakdown of what your team looks like, like you have a front end loan partner or and where. Like where map me through where you're involved in the process and then when you're out. So I have two people that mainly focus on the front end. We call it client concierge and actually my in house loan officer that their main focus is lead intake through pre approval. I'm involved with every pre approval. I look at every deal before the pre approval goes out. I'm the one that does the consultation with the customer to give them my advice. That's the part that I really, I really enjoyed. From that point with the three of us, we then have our regular corporate supporters. I would call it the support from our division, which is a junior processor, a loan officer assistant and a processor. The actual technical terms of the employment might have changed a little bit, but they take the loan from basically what it's ready to go documents in hand disclosure sign and they get it from that point to approval and to clear to close. My main involvement is on the front end making sure that we have a quality pre approval. Making sure that the customer is, you know, pointing the right direction from an advice standpoint. I'm very big on setting very clear expectations. What their involvement is what we need out of them. So I do that expectations call. And with a perfect file, I honestly don't see it much after that. My involvement after that is if we have to restructure. Obviously, if there's any questions that the team doesn't feel comfortable answering. In restructuring does happen, but when they go smooth, there's not a whole lot of touches after that after that point. So if I heard you correctly, then on the front end, you're not actually taking the app. You're coming in at the point of free call and setting the terms and, you know, what type of loan they're going to get in and all that kind of casting that vision. Yeah, you know, you know, a lot of times the referrals will come in from a text message of phone call. So I'll make a quick phone call and I explain our process, explain who I am. Thank them for reaching out, you know, walking through it. Listen, you're going to fill out an online application. There's going to be a series of phone calls just so they know what to expect. We push everybody to the online application because why would we not utilize technology? It's much easier. It's easier to track. And then we kind of take it from there. Do you have any resistance or did you did you early on with people expecting they're going to get John Cornish like through this whole thing? And when they have a question or whatever? 100% and I still I still struggle with it to be honest with you and my the coach that I hired to help me do this. At one point, he basically tell me, hey, John, I enjoyed, you know, your business. But if you're not going to open up and listen to these things, I'm really not providing a value for you. And one thing that COVID did for me that is a blessing in disguise is it forced me to do some of these things. I was the old-fashioned guy that was still doing two face-to-face appointments with customers. Like three or four years ago, I was still signing disclosures, wet sign, and going over all of them. I was old-fashioned and actually it's kind of funny. Louis called me out on many things. But I was at a point where I was probably consistently 40 to 50 million dollars of production from 2009 and through 2018, 2019. And when I was talking to Louis about his goals, he said, well, what are your goals? And I said, well, you know, just stay in that 40 to 50 million dollar range. He's like, that's weak, dude. You should be doing 100. And I'm like, okay, that's fantastic. And he's like, I want to hire a coach together. And that's when we started talking about it. And, you know, that's again, getting me out of my comfort zone, him challenging me, which is great. And starting to listen more of the podcasts and realizing that although that's a good amount of business, you know, I should be doing more with the length of time that I've been doing this. I mean, 18 years in lending, it shouldn't be hard for me to do this type of if I'm doing it the right way. And what did you implement at that moment, at that point, when you made the decision to go from 40 to 52, now where you are here today, essentially doubling your business, right? Yep. Help on the front end. Right. So people, people, time, and I'm working less than when I was doing 40 to 50 million, which is incredible. So my quality of life, the time of my wife and kids, I'm home more. I'm not trying to do everything. And I was before. And I mean, it's kind of embarrassing where I was at two years ago to be honest with you. I mean, you know, I was talking to my coach as I came, where's your process at? You have a process, like, oh, you have a process I follow every single time. He's like, do you have it on Google Docs? I'm like, no, I'm not really, you know, familiar with Google Docs. He's like, where do you have it? And I just started laughing. He goes, it's in your head, isn't it? And I go, yeah, it's up here. He's like, how are you supposed to teach somebody that's in your head? And he's like, you know, if we're going to hire somebody, we need to have your process written down of exactly what you do. So we had to start from from square one, but it was backing out of things and realizing what's an important use of my time. And what's not an important use of my time, but I still wanted to be genuine to my referral sources and my customers because they want to do business with me. So I want to be involved. And that's a part of the job that I love. I love people. I love interacting with people. So I'm trying to figure out what can kind of all work together where I'm involved where I need to be still doing the part that I feel like I bring the biggest benefit to our team and backing away from the things that I can teach or hire people to do. Yeah. I mean, I didn't answer the question if I apologize. You know, I haven't pulled a US in a very, very long period of time. Taylor on the front, it does a fantastic job of that. I hired her out of college. So I know exactly, you know, how she was taught. I'm not requesting documents very often by every very often. I mean, ever. I'm not following up those types of things. My team does a fantastic job of doing those things that need to be done. I want to get specific for a second. I'll go to you, Louis, but the conversation we had last week in our group. We once a month put a member on the hot seat and help them work through an issue. And this is the particular issue that quite a lot of people want to work through. But the challenge he was facing is that even though he would have that conversation with borrowers, they would still wind up emailing him about questions or whatever. And my short answer was remove your email, man. You know what I mean? They shouldn't even have it. They should have your team's email. But how do you handle that? You were kind of, is that what you do to that? You know, specific of like, they don't, they can't contact you unless it's through your team. Do you want the right answer, right answer or the honest answer? I want what you would really want to do. What I would really want to do and what I should do is remove myself and not respond. But I find myself responding. And I kind of kick myself because sometimes I get involved with what I don't need to be. And I have to kind of re-teach the people that I work with. My referral partners that I do business with consistently, they kind of know how things work now and it's working out well. But there's time periods where, and I think it comes from a good place where I don't feel like my time is better than anybody else is more valuable than people on my team. So I see a question come across. I'm looking at it's like, I can answer this. Why not when I really shouldn't be doing that, right? I should be focusing my time on those income-reducing activities, growing the business, thinking from a 30,000 foot level and not getting, you know, drug down in the day to day. But I do struggle with that still. I mean, it's kind of like a recovering workaholic that needs to figure out a way to make sure that we stay out of the weeds. I'll get there, you know, how to get to this point. I just still have to I have to focus on it. Yeah, we used to have a couple key to email and I remind them, you know, and it's in the intro hay for the quickest convenience. Make sure you email the team and I explain in their why there's also an automatic reply to an email. So if somebody emails me, they immediately get an automatic reply that it tells them, you know, that I'm going to be in prescheduled, you know, phone calls the majority of the day or coaching my team. And if you need a pre-approval, do this, if you need this, do that. So it does redirect a lot of it. But I'll even still respond when there's that auto response that's that that we have set up. That's the little self-training that you're talking about. Yeah, like, oh my god, I want to respond. I get it because you want to serve. That's cool. But I think that's honest answer. Thank you. I think everyone struggles with that. Louie, what about you? What do you have set up for? I always go, here's my thing. I go back to the show. It really knows the show of the profit with Marcus Lomonas. I don't know if you remember seeing that show, but he goes in and he invests money in these failing businesses or struggling businesses. And the first place he looks at in any business before he decides if he's going to invest is he looks at people, process and technology. Those are the three things that will make or break a business. So when we're hearing some of this in your examples. So Louie and those categories, people process technology. Like, what do you, because you're doing a good amount of units and volume as well. What's your setup? So mine is the same as John's except they don't have a junior L.O. So I handle everything. I have a front end assistant that takes it from lead till doxerin. I structure and then she gets it ready for the team once it gets to the L.O.A. junior processor and processor. So the next step would be to add that junior L.O. But the same thing with John as far as process. It was all up here. So John and I, you both use Kai McBride. So he's been on your show. Yeah, I mean, he's a systems guy, right? And he's always drilling that into everybody said that you have to have a process before you can bring people in. And that's one thing and John, John and I worked on when we first started was let's get this written out. It's going to change every day. And then we can start plugging people in. And that's what's happened. And, you know, we've got to give a shout out to Tyler Osby, too. He's an Iowa guy, but he's, he's a coach in the class too. And he said something that I think both of us took was if he can't do it 100% of the time in his process, it's not in his process. And so I've changed mine in the last two years, probably 15 times. Because I realize that, hey, this isn't scalable or I can't, I can't do this until I add a person. Having that process in place has changed, changed things and then adding systems along with that. So I do home bot. I got mom, mom. So June go, I'm, I'm building out June go right now. So back to it that I think the process is always going to be changing. How are you using home bot? I mean, sorry, not home bot. You mentioned bomb bomb. How are you using bomb? So bomb bomb. I, so I was finding myself doing loan estimates at night with clients because they're both working during the day. They're going to be together until they get home, they have dinner, they put their kids down. And then they want to have the conversation with me, you know, eight or nine. So selfishly, I wanted to get out in front of it. And I knew there was technology out there to do it, bomb bomb is so easy to use. But I do a screen recorded loan estimate breakdown. I go line by line through that loan estimate. I label it. And then my assistant, Haley, she sends it out to each client. So the loan estimate piece, it's taking care of. Another reason I like that is I can always refer back to that, you know, when you start getting busy, you know, you forget some of the conversations that you have, that's always there and you can go back and watch it. So I use it for that. I use it for real term marketing, database marketing. And then I use it for the final CD as well. I love that, love that. That's another example of system process technology that will free you up with the repeated questions over and over again, right. All that kind of stuff. Clarity of communication from going back and forth. Yeah, I love that you're getting coaching on process. It's so important. It's been a game changer in the bomb on you. It is freed up my my nights. The bomb bomb is incredible. Louis had, I think it was about seven months. He kept telling me, Johnny, to do this, John, you got to do this and he literally came down to my office one day. It's like sit down like and he pulled it up and made me do one. And I was like, Oh, this is really easy game changer for me. You can control when you're doing those loan estimate videos where before it was taking up half my day just going over the loan estimates. Instead, I can come in at seven o'clock, knock him out, do him a night, whenever it is, I control that. It's quicker and the customers like him even more. I'm like, you know, ones that I've done multiple transactions with at this point. You know, I can't kind of like John, this is fantastic. I really like this better than the phone conversation. I'm glad you started doing this. So the consumer likes it as well. Love that. And if you guys are in the process, I don't know if you've ever dug in. This is going old school. But Edwards Deming was kind of like the father of total quality management, old story and history here. He went back in the 50s and 40s when Japan was struggling post-World War II and they really wanted to step up their quality because remember they weren't known as quality right back in the day. And he's because the Americans didn't want it. We're in a different place. He went over there and helped these auto manufacturers really get focused on process and quality improvement and stuff like that, which is what helped them help make them a superpower in terms of manufacturing. So I just pulled up a couple of quotes right here. One simple one is if you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, I love that wing in it. All right, for a second time, we're going to go, you ever see that show on ESPN where they go round the horn, whatever. I want to do a show like that, man, where I got everybody's tapping a horn, we do sound things or whatever. So you know, we do like, here we go. All right, so Dave, what do you focus on for Q4, man, personally or business wise? So business wise, we're just trying to grow the brand. I think that, you know, you talked about scalability a little bit ago. I think in 2013, we really couldn't get the team over 300 million and really had to take a hard look at ourselves and say, you know, what is our problem? At that point, I had to step out of the production role and allow Kerry can help you to take it over. So I would say the Q4 focus would be retention that I just said, growing the brand and making sure Kerry can run national sales for us is supporting off the brands within side of home side of that. All right, so John, how about you? Where's your focus for Q4? You know, I'm going to talk about this from two different standpoints from a personal production standpoint. It's, I think I've become a little bit complacent, to be honest with you, you know, just like I got comfortable with the 40 to 50 million. I think I've got comfortable with the business that I'm doing and I don't like that. So I'm challenging myself on the sales call that we put on for my loan offers every Monday. I kind of called myself out and reminded them, hey, I talk a lot about accountability, but that doesn't mean I'm just holding my sales people accountable. I'm holding myself accountable as well. So getting more disciplined to not do the things we talked about, like responding those emails, spending more time. So the initials I have right now, taking all the video content that I have and getting it into different formats and using bomb bomb to get it out to different audiences is one of the big ones. And just following up more, you know, I've been utilizing agent legend for some of the online leads that I'm working and I'm really trying to grow that consumer direct so more the online leads, which is growing. That's a big focus for my personal production from a management standpoint. It's the nice thing is that when I'm focusing on personal production, I can use that as an example of how to lead the team. So sharing what I'm doing, continuing, continuing to challenge them and hold them accountable and really making sure that we're having the difficult conversations when the difficult conversations need to happen. But also giving the out of boys and the out of girls when that time is right. I've made a lot of growth as a leader since teaming up with Dave and Andy and Luis helped out as well. And a lot of that was my personality. I'm a people pleaser so I'm much better to a much better job when I want to give somebody a pat on the back. And I didn't like having those difficult conversations, but the difficult conversations where you come is where you get that growth. And I really learned personally, I enjoy that. I love when people come at me. I love when people tell me I'm not doing something the right way or when my coach calls me out. Somebody stroking my ego because of the business I'm doing doesn't help me grow and I actually get a little bit embarrassed. Tell me what I'm not doing. Tell me what I need to do to do better. I want to utilize that with my sales team to make sure that we're getting the most out of each and every one of them. And I remind them on a regular basis. Listen, I'm not going to allow you to just be able to be okay with being average. If you have the ability to be great, I'm going to challenge you to get there. And I'm going to do the things together with you that we need to do to get your get your business to the next level that you want to. If you're managing different people, you have people like Louis that want to hit it out of the park. You have people that want to be more middle of the pack. But that doesn't mean you can that you can't continue to get better if you don't have aspirations of doing $100 million plus people that want to get in that 30 to $40 million range. And that's all they want to do. That's fantastic. Let's do it the right way. Let's implement the right processes. You can have the right quality of life. It can be sustainable for a long period of time and helping get there. Really with facing the same challenges that I do on a day to day basis. Yeah, this business is very much there's always something some edge we could sharpen. You know, and it can also spill over into personal like you said spending more time with the family and things like that. All right, process systems, people, whatever. What do you need to put in place for you to have a little bit of margin in your life? Before we go to you, Louis on the Q4 thing real quick. I'm always curious. You mentioned online lead to mention agent legend. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. What are you doing for online leads? Are you doing like paid ads or what? No, it's just it's it's creating my own audience. So it is just from people. It's and it's a vision I had. Three to five years. I get into this video kind of out there and you know people start looking online. Months and even years before they're planning on doing anything. I think a lot of people focus on converting leads at that time period. And a lot of the follow ups can be pushy. Let me tell you why you need to mortgage a day. Let me tell you why you need to do an application today. I'm taking a different stance. It's like, listen, I want to captivate this audience. I want to educate them on the process as much as possible. So if it's 18 months down the road, if it's six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months down the road. When they're ready and they've been watching my videos for the last, you know, six months, 12 months, 18 months, they're almost going to feel obligated because I've been the one that's already provided that value. And I haven't even had a conversation with them. So it's utilizing the tools within social media, Google SEO, the online reviews. We are doing some paid Facebook and Instagram targeting, but we're not buying. We're trying to create organic. I guess you can so call them leads, but it's we're doing it ourselves basically. Yep, yep, love that. Okay, cool. Mr Lewis wicked. We're coming to you. Close it out. Close it out strong, buddy. Q four. Yeah. So, you know, I went back and looked at, you know, last month, I kind of had a down month, just mentally. I just had my first kid. So, you know, there's just a lot going on, removing to Des Moines. Just a lot going on and I wasn't getting the at bats with clients that I wanted to. So I really just had to focus on what got me to this point. And when I started out in the business, I did a really good job of going wide with agents. I think in 2019, I met with over 140 real estate agents. Wow. Nice. We got that idea for one of your shows, by the way. It was an early on one, but it was it was we were looking to treadmill together and it goals. Oh, really awesome. But I, you know, I had to go wide to figure out what type of agents I want to work with, you know, who would be a good fit. And then I went deep with those, you know, agents. So I got relationships out of that. And I've kind of hung out into those relationships since then. And I have wide again. And I think it's important that you always have to go wide. I'm refocusing on that. I've created, you know, stuff from the core and Justin Brown, who is on your show. He's in the coaching class too, but I'm doing a top 40 campaign where, you know, I target my top 40 agents that I want to work with. And I'm going to campaign to him for eight weeks. You know, you send him something each week. I'm going to follow up the following Monday. So I'm going wide again to try to get some new relationships because I feel like I'm plateauing a little bit with the relationships that I have and thankful for those relationships. But I want to grow this thing. And I want to grow with good people. So tell me briefly about the top 40 campaign. What are you doing? Is this email? Is it social? Is it all the above? So male. Yeah, wait a minute. They deliver mail and I was still. That's what I think. Yeah, my horse and buggy, my horse and buggy. So we all get a ton of emails, right, especially in this industry. So I think it's important to get something, you know, at their office, they can get there. There's something in their mail. I've just found, you know, with some email marketing. Like a lot of it doesn't even get opened. You know, and you just, you're putting out, you're thinking of good content to send them and it doesn't even get open. Well, if I'm sending something to your office, I don't care if you throw it away. You have to open that letter and I think a lot of people have forgotten about direct mail. I'm not saying it's the end all be all, but I do think it's important to put something in front of them that you know they're going to see. At least for that first week and then the second week, you know, I'll send them an email because I'm following up with them every Monday. So I sent something out this past Monday. This was the first. So next Monday, I'm going to call 40 agents. And I might split it up between Monday, Tuesday, depending on what the day looks like. And I'm going to explain to them what I'm doing. You know, I, I think I do a good job and I know my team will take care of your clients. If you look at our Google reviews, go look at past clients, ask agents in your office. We execute at a very high level. If we get in that back. Right. I feel like if I let them know that the first week, here's what I'm doing. Okay. Yeah. And then second week, they get another thing. And I follow up with the phone call. Third week. Get another thing. Follow up with phone call. You know what? I do, but imagine like I'm following up with you this well. Imagine what I'll do with your clients. And how will I take care of? First of all, I love the idea. Love that you're using direct mail. I don't think direct mail is dead at all. I think it's like any tool. It's how you use it. You know. It's less noisy. Like you said, and it definitely gets opened and noticed. How did you identify the 40 to go after? Is there some criteria? So I asked the agents that I work with for the most part. Who do you like in your office? Who's doing a job and who does business the way you do it? That's kind of how I've grown a lot of my realtors too is. That's how I booked a lot of those meetings with who else in your office is doing a good job and is looking at this as a career and not a job. I don't want to work with an agent that only sees this far in front of their face. I want to work with an agent that is looking 10 years down the road. And, you know, they love doing a good job for their clients. So I reached out to them and then. Just people that I've worked with on transactions that I should have done a better job of attacking it at that time. Maybe listing agent cross sell or something. That's smart man. I love it. You mentioned your Google reviews. I have to give all you guys a shout out. I look at yours also, John. I mean, John's got over 200 Google reviews. Louis, you got 178 as of today. I mean, I, I, I'd never see that. Unless it's a company. Right. Jeff. Yeah, exactly. I should be embarrassed. I've been doing this for 18 years. He's been doing it for six and he's almost caught up to me. So. I think that's laid on it. He does. I mean, that's impressive. Well, we didn't know how important it was going to be. You know what I mean? And it's more important today than ever with this whole trust credibility thing. You know, so anyway. I think one thing. I just want to point out on that is. The reason that we have those reviews is because clients know it's important to us. You know, I, whenever I hear that, I'm naturally curious. Tell me about your real quick, your post-close review process. So it's not even post-closing. It's, it's from the first phone call. There you go. Like, we, we want to do a good job for you. So we can work with your friends and your family. And so you'll leave a review. Because reviews are huge in this day and age. And then client checking calls during the process. So we're going to do it on a scale one to five four or five. Great. Ask for referral. If it's less than four, which that's, that doesn't happen a lot. You know, we apologize immediately. Figure out what the problem is and fix it from that point on. So you do get a good review at the end. Yeah. And then we use the software at the end where you, you know, you let the client know it's going to come and says, hey, I'm going to put in your phone number here. It's going to send you a text. If you can leave a review, that would be awesome. That's software. Yeah. We actually had it created. Okay. It's good. Because I haven't heard of a software that'll do that. Like all these third party social review platforms as great as they are. It's very hard to automate getting a review added to Google. It's usually very direct and organic. Yeah. But you can have up to three. So places on there. So Facebook is a low. Software use. Yep. So we did create it. We reached out to a business partner that helps out with some marketing and some video footage to basically create it for us. Yeah. I mean, you're just. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say we can connect you with them. You know, if you're interested. So just reach out to John. What's that? Hammer. No, it's not hammer. Okay. It's a local marketing company. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure. And I think that's part of the secret ingredient. Like we said, people process technology that will get you more success at collecting those online reviews. Because most people don't have a process. But they're like, wow. I can't get enough. You know, online reviews. And that's probably largely why. In a lot of cases. All right. This is a lot, guys. Thanks a lot. You added a ton of value today. Really. Appreciate you, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you. That's that that that that we're on here today. It's pretty cool. I'm glad I could shine a light on some, you know, incredible people doing amazing things. You know, Dave, Louis, John, I can't say thank you enough. And we're going to put links to your social media profiles in there. And we'll just leave it blank for Dave because he's the mystery man. You know. Yeah. The Wizard of Oz, right? The man behind the curtain. Anyways, guys, appreciate you. And listeners also love that you tuned in. If you like this episode, you know what to do. Leave us a review. 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. And I just want to quickly remind you of that. You're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you. 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