How this Loan Officer Went from $0 to $75 Million in Just Three Years with Shaun Herrero

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, hey, hey, listeners, what is up? What is up? Welcome back to another episode of Mortgage Market and Radio. So here we are. We are going back OG style, traditional style. This isn't a live repurpose. This is me grab in a Zoom call, doing a one-on-one virtual podcast interview, back to what I love to do. One of the challenges of doing a live interview is you've got a lot of different other moving parts going on, right, distractions. You've got the live going on in and of itself. You've got managing the screens, bringing content in and out, managing a live audience that might be attending. So it's a lot going on. So I wanted to kind of go back and forth a little bit and bring some more of just the straight up, you know, classic style podcast interviews. And of course, there's still the video version of this over on the YouTube channel, which you can go search YouTube, mortgage marketing life, and you can go watch it there if you want. But most of you are probably listening on the audio version of this and I appreciate you tuning in. So before we get into this week's special episode, what I love about the conversation we've had is it relates to something that has a passion project of mine. And that is leading with education, leading with an educational platform. If you've heard my story, if you've listened to enough of these interviews, you've heard probably about 90% of the interviewees, the top producing originators. In some shape or fashion feature educational classes as part of their platform for real estate agents. Here's what you're all saying, yeah, but what about COVID? Yeah, I know. And here's what we've done. We've pivoted in a post-COVID world and moved those to an online format. And it's amazing to see the results and the acceptance rate that is happening for both loan officers, but also for agents as well who are raising their hand and saying, yes, I still want to get access to good information. I still want training and, you know, they're more comfortable joining a Zoom now than they have ever before. So how is this relevant to you today's session? Well, in a moment, you're going to hear my interview with my special guest. And one of the things that he does is a virtual, what he calls a relatable, realtor class, where he is bringing content, sharing content because prior to COVID, he was doing that in person. And what you'll hear is my special guest, Sean Herrero, with guaranteed rate, started off his career after being a wholesale representative for many, many years. Only in 2017 did he pivot and become a retail originator. He got off to a fast track, fast track, as a matter of fact, in 2017 or it was 2018, I believe, he wound up doing 150 units, 75 million, and his pace is just cranking. So listen, that is a fast clip to get up to that type of volume in units. And one of the primary ways that he built his business pre-COVID and post-COVID is an educational platform. Why? Because agents are hungry. Why? Because if we don't differentiate ourselves and show up differently, we're going to look like and sound like every other loan officer in town. And say it with me, same is lame. That's right, same is lame. So you need a way to differentiate and get attention. First and foremost, our number one goal is to become known and get attention. An educational platform has never failed in doing that since the dawn of man with more good origination. Now, if you haven't yet heard, we have the educational platform for you, the turnkey down for you classes, the zoom friendly, zoom post-COVID pivoted platform for you to be able to have an educational platform like Sean does and attract agents to you every single month, share value, share content, convert those conversations to one-on-one zoom calls, relationships, and referrals. If you want to learn more about it, you go to mortgagemarketing.pro. There's a short video we put up there. You can check it out, learn more there. That's all I'll tell you about that. You'll be happy to have you. It's not for everybody, but if you're ready and willing to make a serious commitment and investing in your future purchase business now, get ahead of the game, then that could be for you mortgagemarketing.pro. All right. So, back to my special guest, Sean Herrero, you heard me talk about him. We're going to go through a lot of really great concepts today, how he leverages video, how he leverages bomb bomb, how he leverages online reviews, how he leverages mortgage coach, and just his entire customer experience process kind of dissected and architected and how he manages to quickly scale to such volume, maintain that, and yet still has a very simple business practice. I think you're going to get a lot of learning from this as I have, and we'll put links to everything in the show notes, Sean's Instagram page, his YouTube channel, and things like that. So, without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Sean Herrero, welcome to the show. I know, and thanks for having me, Jeff. You bet, man. Thank you for being here. Thanks for reaching out and being persistent as well. I'm really thrilled to have you. Why don't you, for the listeners and or viewers, give them a quick background, who you are, how long you've been in the business, and then average production? Yeah. Sean Herrero, been in mortgage lending since about 2001, started off in wholesale. That evolved into more of like a business development role, for retail mortgage banks, and then said forget all that, started originating on my own January of 2017. It's 75 million last year, and I think tracking for, tracking for a hundred so far, so far so I can do this little easier this year with everything that's going on, but. For sure. Mark, it's lifting all boats, right? Yeah, sure. Give us a send, I know you're in California, but give me a sense of units roughly when you did that 75 or whatever you want to give it. Yeah, average loan about about a half million, so about 150 units. 150 units. So, that is a pretty quick clip, starting from essentially ground zero, moving wholesale biz dev, retail originator, right, to hit that kind of units. That's pretty fast. Well, it's funny, because I kind of, I've always had big goals, and yeah, it's been fun. It's been a lot of fun. It was really what happened, really what drove me here was it's kind of coaching, mentoring, other originators, and the numbers weren't happening, right? I don't think they're putting out the effort, I'll put my money where my mouth is, and I'll just go originate on my own. My first year, I think it's about 30 or 35 million, I don't memorize my numbers like a lot of people do, but roughly 30, 35 million my first year, and it's been fun. It's been like the best decision I've ever made. That's awesome, man. Congratulations. I know you're working hard for that too, because you're in the Bay Area, very, very competitive market. Yeah, there's a handful of us out here. Yeah, there certainly are, and a few demanding realtors, I imagine, we're in the midst of the 2020 ReFive boom post-COVID, so I assume you're heavy on the ReFive right now. Yeah, I am. I mean, I'm not as heavy as others would be, because I'm just, I'm still kind of the new guy, so my book of business is smaller. It's only three years old, but I'm getting a lot more referrals and everything, so yeah, it's definitely been heavier on ReFives, and really, we were shut down for the first couple of months in the normal purchase season, and it just started to become purchase season now. I mean, the purchases are definitely picking up, but yeah, it's been a big ReFive year so far. Are you guys, I know it's changing every day, but are you guys, are the realtors allowed to do open houses again? Or is that rolled back? It's like private showing, so you can't, yeah, so you have to be pre-approved, or else, you know, a lot of the sellers say, if you're not, you're not just walking in my house to walk around my house, have to be pre-approved, has to be a private showing or a scheduled showing, you can't just go in on a Saturday and tour a bunch of houses unfortunately. How good is that, though, for us, like must be pre-approved. I love it. It's so much better. I made a video about that, actually, where I didn't understand how the new normal for buyers was to go home shopping when you don't know if you can afford it or not. You made kind of a sketch video where it went to the mall with a credit card that didn't work. I just got declined and was like, oh, I guess I should have made sure it worked before I came out. So, it's nice to have a block now that makes me kind of take that step first. Fantastic. So, in a normal market, what's your mix on purchase versus ReFive? I mean, it's been definitely been a lot heavier on purchase. I'd say probably more 70 percent purchase, just because my best friends in the mortgage business, my moms in the mortgage business, so the whole start with your friends and family thing didn't really work. For me, when I did start, it had to be all realtor referral right out of the gate. Cool. Love that. Thanks for kind of the housekeeping on that. So, that's a perfect transition into looking back like you were starting from ground zero. Your focus was Realtors, how did you present yourself to the market? Yeah, that's a good question. So, for me, I had a wholesale background, and so I'm used to talking to a lot of people at once. So, what I tried to do is schedule office meetings, and not just go to the one-on-one kind of coffee thing like everyone else tries to do. I like getting in front of a group of people, to give people that work well and then once that fall out. So, I tried to do as many office meetings as I could out of the gate, and really what it was was, I know I need to bring more value, because all these people already have lenders for the most part, so what do I do to create more value in their business, and that's kind of how I approached it. And how did you bring more value to some examples of that? I think, well, so number one, just coming from the wholesale side, I was the guy behind the scene solving everyone's problems. So, I know how to manufacture and underwrite a file. And I'm very grateful that I had that background, because I think that's most, a lot of people are good at selling and saying, yeah, give me the deal. And then it goes sideways, because they don't really understand the full in and out of it. So, I think there was, there was a lot of confidence there that they neither deals wouldn't go sideways. And a lot of it's marketing. I really love marketing. It's a lot of fun. I started with video earlier than most, and I would do presentations on video, on social media, on things like that, when, you know, what is 2017, it was kind of just kicking off for the most part. And it was just, you know, well time to get in front of people when we knew this was going to be the normal thing of using video and social media, but a lot of people just didn't know how to do it. So, you were presenting how to basically video, et cetera, in these offices? But, yeah, yeah, exactly, like marketing strategies, like classes, lunch and learns type stuff. Effectively, yeah, exactly. Like if companies had, you know, standard sales meetings, and they would have guest speakers, I'd come and do those, otherwise, and a lot of times, you know, the excuse will make for why we can't get into an office is, oh, it's a closed office, a lot of us get them out, right? So, I'm going to get, I want to get in front of a group of people, whether it's at a restaurant or in their office, but that has to be where I start, otherwise, I won't be able to ramp up as fast as I need to. Yeah, that's very interesting. And I followed a similar path. You may, you're probably not aware of this, but I think it's probably about eight years ago, because I've been in this business since 2003, similar though, I came out of an industry actually completely unrelated, and I'm starting from ground zero, but eventually did the same thing, which has realized law of large numbers with realtors, classes, events, you know, top of the funnel, sift, sort, sift, sort, and out the bottom comes those referral partners, right? Yeah. The same model, right? Yes. It still works today. It's fun. And it's just, you continue to shift, it's, you have to be nimble, it's a lot of fun. Have you pivoted that or how have you, right, since COVID, we can't go do meetings? Yeah. So I went, I started doing a lot more, so when COVID, so inherently a problem solver. So when COVID hit and real estate on the, what was it? The 16th was fine, and on the 17th real estate was closed, there was panic, right? And I try to help people through panic. So I started doing once a week workshops, and I have a pretty diverse area that I cover so I work in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, you know, uh, carbon, like a very broad area. So they're a lot bigger footprint. Yeah. And what's great about that is I put these calls together to say, look, we're all in this together. We're trying to figure out what to do. This isn't a, come listen to Sean talk. We all have to help each other. So I, I was doing those calls, and that kind of evolved into, um, a little program I called relatable realtor, where I was doing webinars or, you know, something similar to this with realtor. I thought we're doing things that were unique or innovative that other people could learn from. Um, and then, you know, marketing wise, the, the budget for lunch and learns all those things, it just had to go to online advertising. So I shifted into doing Facebook ads a lot more than I was in the past and, uh, yeah. So it's just, you take the situation and you don't complain about it, you, you adapt, you evolve and you keep going. So the relatable, relatable realtor was like an ongoing zoom kind of, would you bring special guests on there like agents or other people? Yeah. So what I did is, uh, they're, they're one of my friends is an agent in San Francisco and he is an incredible marketer, uh, it just an incredible, it does an incredible job. So I did a call with him, just talking about what he's doing with Facebook ads, you know, he likes funnels and all that. Yeah. And just because a lot of people don't understand how that works. And that's where, you know, what I was telling people is, if your business came from an open house, your buyer's agent and your business comes from sitting in an open house, what are you going to do now? You know, the open house is going to be a video and it's going to be a lead generation list, most likely. And that's ultimately, what were you looking for in the open house? You wanted their name and their contact info. Yeah. Well, you can get the same thing online. You can show the house online. You just have to get comfortable with it like it's not an option anymore. Just became the absolute necessity. Right. Right. Absolutely. That's what it goes. The real relatable realtor. Yeah. I am. I am. I am. So, um, and that name came from, I don't believe in sales. So I think the more authentic we are, the better, the sooner we'll attract the people that we want to work with and that want to work with us. So relatable realtor was, be more than a realtor, be relatable and just be authentic. You know, be yourself, um, and that's going to attract the right people. So that's where that came from. Um, I am doing them. I, I, I fell off for a second just, uh, as soon as school ended and I, you know, just we're constantly, uh, learning, right? It's like, okay, now the situation, okay, now schools out, now what does it look like? So I have, you have some young ones? What's that? You have some young ones at home? Yeah. So I'm a pretty big spread. I have a 17 year old, a 12 year old, and a two year old. Wow. So at a little surprise ending that's been an absolute. Well, the good news is the 17 year old, you're getting the training for when the other ones come up, right? Yeah. I mean, he's like, like another dad in the house, he's, they're both older, older boys are so helpful. So it's been, it's awesome. But it's just a lot of people in the house and, you know, juggling people from here to there. So I got a little out of my rhythm for doing those, but I'm, I'm back on it now. We all did, man. Um, and this is a, this whole thing with a relatable realtor, the class is leading with that educational platform. It's like right up my alley. I'm curious. I assume, but I'd love you to articulate it for those that are listening. How do you convert those to agent conversations and referrals? So, so I try to use that to make sure that people get a really good sense of who I am and my confidence. And if they listen to the calls and they like the calls, but I'm just a goofball or whatever like, they're, I'm not their guide, totally fine. I do, I'd use the calls, I'll do like event bright to find new people. And then just you follow up afterwards, hey, how was the call? What do you think? What's going on? I'm more about them. Kind of gives me like a warmer entrance than just, you know, calling for you. The follow ups, nothing to rip, but the follow ups in mass, like you'll send out a mass email to all the RSVPs, you'll do them one on one, one on one, one's a choosy. A little above. So I try to do weekly or biweekly updates that, and I use bomb bomb a lot. So everyone who subscribes to the calls, I will add them to my bomb bomb lists. So they're going to be biweekly biweekly updates. And then I'll reach out to them as well. So when there's new people coming in, hey, thanks so much, it's great to meet you. You know, what do you think of the call? What other things would you like to get? What are you struggling with? Like, I always want to come from a place of like solving problems. So with COVID, with everything that's going on, what's been hard for you? And how can I help? Right. Love it. What do you average for agents who attend those? Um, anyway, 15 to 20 on average, yeah, perfect. And you get some repeats or is there like a third of new people coming in? There's a lot of repeats. I have a pretty, like my core group of realtors that I work with a lot, a large majority of them will attend. And I featured, I featured agents that I work with because that's what's fun. You find why you really get this, this specific thing. Other agents are great at this, but this is what I find. And so I'll, I'll feature them. Um, but yeah, it's, it's pretty consistent and then I'll have people pop in and out. And it's just like a normal event, um, you know, 50 people sign up, 50% show up. Sure. Well, it's free event. It's low bar to commit all that. Yeah. And it's an online thing. So it's really easy to blow that off. Right. Um, uh, let's see here. The attendee is 15 to 20, it's once a month. Is that correct? Uh, yeah, I was doing it every two weeks. I moved it to once a month. Once a month. Yeah, because we found our rhythm. At first, it was just pure problem solving. Right. How do we keep making money? How do you guys keep selling houses in a world that you can't sell houses? Yes. And, and so I was doing it by week. We know it's once a month. Uh, I can relate. But I remember when COVID first hit and we did this class called, uh, your next 90 days, how to pivot your business, right, to prepare for after coronavirus, I think I did 10 of those in one week. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And that's how it started. It was just a day. I was at my office. The day we, we were like, Hey, you can't go to the office tomorrow on March 16th. And I did a call and this was a, I had real tours and buyers, anybody. I just put a thing out. The market was going crazy. If you're scared, if you're concerned, if you want to know what's going on, like this is purely a Q&A, no, no schedule, but I'll show you what's happening and why I don't think you should be worried and what I think it's going to look like on the other side. That was day one. Hmm. I love it. So I love that you're using Bob, Bob and as well, really kind of personalized the touch there. So you're building, you have a realtor database and that's who you're inviting. You mentioned new people as well, event bright. What do you mean by that? So I'll run Facebook ads for those relatable, realtor calls and get more people to sign up. So when they click through, it goes to event bright. They register for the, for the session. And then if they attend, I will add them to my bomb bomb lists. And I like to spam people. No, of course not. Yeah. Are you using a particular CRM in conjunction with that? Not really. I mean, I actually use bomb bomb almost as its own CRM for that purpose. I use, we have our CRM, what's it called? Total expert. I think a lot of that. But yeah, we use total expert at guarantee rate. And that's great. And so everything kind of funnels into that. But from a marketing perspective, it's really a lot from bomb bomb. You're pretty proficient with bomb bomb. Do you also use it for like during the loan process, milestones, are you doing one-off or is it like template it or using prompt? I don't use prompt. Yeah, prompt. I don't like, I don't like scripts. I like it. Yeah. So I don't, I don't use prompt. I do use it for every single transaction. And I haven't gone to the canned emails. So everyone is, you know, starts off with either the buyers of the realtors or whoever. But what I try to do is at the big milestones of the mortgage process is make sure everyone knows what's going on. So buyer, listing agent, buyer's agent, escrow officer, and just make sure they know exactly where we're at in the transaction. So they don't have to ask questions, never going to go out. Is that the same video repeated? No, I record it every time, and I probably should start making it more canned, but I just, it feels unauthentic. How long does it take you to do an average milestone video? It takes me about two minutes to record it. Two minutes to record it. You've got it down pretty well. Yeah, I mean, it's a 30 second video, two minutes to record. You're using the phone, you're using the phone, the app, yeah, okay. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people in my audience who know bomb bomb, a lot of people have it, a lot of people who don't, and I've heard, I'm sure you've heard over the years, you know, some pushbacks, some complex issues about whatever, you know what I mean? I'm just, I'd love to hear what you're saying, because you're just another example of who has proven, look, you can, learning something new is going to be hard, but you can get good at it. Right. Well, and I was fortunate. So some of the other people that you've had as guests, like Barry Habib kind of took me under his wing, 2010, and he was already doing his video updates. And I was really nervous about video. I didn't want to do it. I don't like how I look. I don't like how I sound. And it looked great. Man. Come on. He's like, you got to do it. He's like, you got to do it. And I remember I did a keynote presentation. This was all a written like loan agent base, right? That was who I was serving at the time. Yes. And I did a keynote and I did a voiceover on it. And I was like, I was really nervous and proud of myself. I sent it to him. He's all just one liner. Great. Get your face on there. And I was like, oh, man. And then you go numb. You just start doing it. And now, and that's what's so great about COVID, like if we look for silver linings, everyone is using Zoom now. So the excuse of, I don't like how I look or how I sound. I don't want to do video. Sorry, not an option anymore. And they're over it now, which I love. That's been great. Yeah, there's a lot of people still working through that, unfortunately, but yeah, you raised a good point, which is this is what I told Realtors in that class. I mentioned to you is with COVID, that's all you had. This is all you had left was the phone or your laptop. And if you haven't adjusted, adapted to use these modern communicates, if not now, when, you know? Because it's all BS now. It's all your excuses are gone. Right. And that's what I love is it's always, there's a reason why I'm not doing these things. It's like, no, no, no, reason is excuse. That's the same thing. And that's what was, again, I try to always look for the silver linings and everything. And with this, there were so many loan agents, Realtors, who knew they needed to use video, who knew there was value in it, but we're just so scared to take that step. And I'm just gonna stick with what I know because it works. And then March 17th, it didn't work anymore. And yeah, and it was great. And that's what, and it was like, you know, you being on the same boat, being kind of ahead of that curve, you became the resource. You know, it's like, now I don't have a choice, I just wanted all these workshops for us in the past. How do we keep this going? Exactly. What, to what degree would you attribute your success with Realtors, you know, your pipeline from the relatable Realtor classes that you do? Not a lot because I just, it was always a concept I had. And I would always say, be more than a Realtor, be relatable. And then it just kind of started ticking on. So I wouldn't say it's a large percentage yet, but I also haven't been consistent with it enough yet. It is a COVID-19 project. Well, I mean, how else do you currently meet Realtors today? Well, that's it, like that it's that. And then I mean, you get, when you get a contract, you have the listing aging, you have the buyer's aging. I am getting a lot more buyers correctly that, and then I get to find and get introduced to a Realtor. So that's helpful as well. But, and I'm not, I'm not the guy that's trying to work with 100 Realtors. I'm a quality over quantity. I just, I can't give people the value and the attention I think they deserve if I'm working, trying to work with everyone. Agreed, agreed. So how many core Realtors do you work with, you know, your A players? I'd probably say 10. 10? Yeah, maybe 10. And there's just, we just, we keep it really consistent and we're true partnership. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, love that. Thanks for the background on that. I've popped over to your YouTube channel because for a guy who started out, quote, shy on video, you're doing some pretty impressive things on YouTube, man. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. Gotta do it. Do you have a, a all-in go-to social platform? Is it YouTube? Is it something else or? I like Instagram and I like YouTube. I like Instagram for branding. And I like YouTube for education. So what I'm trying to do with YouTube is create an educational platform. The large majority of my clients, I would, I would say very close to 100% of my buyers are first-time loan buyers. And we get the same questions over and over. And I just thought, well, if my clients are asking me these questions, there's probably lots of people have the same question, but they haven't asked yet. So I try to use YouTube to build a library of information, which I think just builds credibility. Back to Instagram for a second. What's your Instagram handle? It is Adventure Lender. All right, so everybody listening. I'm gonna bring up right here. Here it is. I can't believe I don't follow you yet. There we go. There we go, cool. All right. Yeah, and obviously in your demographic first-time home buyers, they are of course on Instagram in a large way, but also back to YouTube. We'll come back to Instagram if it's relevant, but back to YouTube. But I think that's an area that's overlooked by a lot of L.O.'s. I mean, what have you learned about YouTube since doing it? Like, you could pass on to people considering it. I like YouTube because it is. So this is something that I learn kind of creatures of habit as we are as lenders. We don't like online lenders. We don't like Quicken. I don't like Bankrate. I don't like this. I don't like that. And there was a, we would get angry, right? Like, oh, I can't believe my buyer is going online. And it's like, we have to become online lenders. That's where I'm starting. So it's not, it doesn't do me any good to be upset about how things, what things are. I just need to be there. And so I need to be on YouTube, YouTube's owned by Google. Hopefully if somebody Googles, how does an FHA loan work? My video somehow populates it. It's free attention. And I just think it's a necessity for everyone to be online. You have to have a bunch of reviews. If you don't have reviews, if you don't have content online, then people aren't going to find you. Right on. So I'm sharing your page right now for those that are listening. You're going to miss out on this. But if you want to see it, you go to my YouTube channel, Mortgage Marketing Live on YouTube. And you can actually see this. Or of course, just look up Sean's channel, which is Sean Herrero, basically your name. Just get on YouTube and search his name. I'll put links in the show notes too. So as I was scrolling this thing, a couple of things jumped out at me. Obviously, I'm looking at your more recent videos. Of course, view counts is one thing that I take a notice of. And I look at this, and I like this one right here. This is from three months ago. So what was that when COVID first started, housing market? Yeah, you can tell by the from the mustache, we did a hey, if we're going to be stuck at home, let's all grow mustache. It was like, I kind of do a lot of videos. I don't know if this is going to work. And we didn't know we'd come this long either. But here's what's interesting. The title of this video is this 2008 all over again. And you've got 2,000 plus views on that in the last three months. Were you intentional about that? Were you getting a lot of questions? Why that video? Exactly. So when I hear something over and over and over again, I'm going to make a video about it. So everyone's like, oh, the market's going to crash. Real estate's going to fall apart. This is 2008 all over again. And I just wanted people to understand the difference. I worked at Countrywide in 2008. That was one of the top wholesalers at Countrywide. So when the ship went down, it's kind of like, I don't have options to go somewhere else. Being number one at the worst company, probably isn't a good thing. So, but it gives me a great perspective of what I saw then versus what's going on now. And that's what that video talks about. And there was some funny comments on there. I love the trolls on YouTube are great. It's just how I'm wrong about this and that. But I mean, so that's what I try to do. If I hear a lot of questions, and enough people are asking this, I should probably make a video about it. Well, here's another example. What is a no-cost refinance, 1.6,000 views? And that one was, you know, clients are calling. I heard rates went down. I want a no-cost refi. I want a no-fee refi. Michael Kid, there's no such thing. Well, the other lender said there is. I'm like, no, you're just getting a higher interest rate. And that rate comes with a credit that's covering your closing costs. They're just not giving you full disclosure. And so in that video, I showed people how I try to be funny. I try to just be myself in all these videos, but see that terrible mustache. Well, there's mortgage coach presentations kind of into that. Like this guy that asked me if I live in a van was my favorite one. Oh really? It stopped for a quick. I did one. I was talking about how great housing was. And I'm like, he's from a guy that's in a van. I love it, the internet trolls. Yeah, so I just, you know, I want people to be really well educated. And if you do want to know costs alone, yeah, if you're going to move out of your house in a couple of years, 100% you know costs. But if this is a long-term play, that's one of the most expensive mortgages you can get. And speaking of mortgage coach, what's your belt? Do you have a belt level? I think whatever the top one is. Black belt? You got a black belt? I think of the master. I forget. Dave showed me where I find it. And I forget, but there's only, forget. There's one one like of their modules I don't have. But I'm at the, I'm like top of the class with mortgage coach. You're a grand master. Yes, that's what it is. Yeah. That's awesome, man. How many TCA's is that roughly, do you know? I have no idea. It's got to be a few thousand, right? Yeah, for sure. I don't pay attention to the, I just keep calling. Like I was talking to my teammate the other day. She's like, you know, where are you at? You're to date for your goal. I was like, I don't know. And she was like, what do you mean you don't know? And I'm like, it doesn't matter. We just have, if I'm at my goal, we're not going to stop. We're just going to keep going. So I just, it's the numbers aren't as important as just. It's such a great tool to use, to educate people and illustrate how things work. So I just, I just keep charging ahead. Amen to that. You know, you reminds me of other people I've talked to in terms of goal setting. And everybody has their own approach to this. But it's something that I've heard before. Somebody that I had on who basically said the same thing, which is he focuses on the activities instead of the result. And as long as he's doing the activities, the result takes care of itself. Right, right, exactly. And that's what, so I'm a big fan of Avanchanard from Patagonia. Let my people go surfing is my favorite business book. I just big rock climber for a long time. You know, to watch Yvonne be a dirt bag rock climber, leaving out of his car and build this business is incredible. But he's so dedicated to what he believes in and his people. And so Patagonia's philosophy is make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm or something like that. And I just always love that. So mine, I wanted to kind of take something from that. And I came up with provide the best, shoot, I forgot it, provide the best solutions, make a difference in the life of others. And I'm like, if I just do that, everything else will happen on its own. I don't need to order anything else. Just be the best solution. Make a difference in their life. And everything else will fall into place. Love that. So this one is your probably your biggest one, right? In terms of views? I don't know what happened on that one. That's crazy. That's an anomaly, man. Yeah, and it doesn't, the video doesn't, I don't know. I mean, this was right in the March 20th, right? We went on leave on the 17th. It might have been just well time when everything was going sideways. I don't know how that has that many views. So for those that can't see it, this video we're talking about, published on March 20th of this year, 2020, the video title is March 20th mortgage rate update would evolve a little week, 38,000 views. Wow. Which is interesting is the comments, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm saying that there wasn't a lot of engagement with it. I don't know what happened on that. Like then there's out of 30, you know, almost 39,000 views, there's five, no thumbs down, so that's good. But there's only five thumbs up. I don't know, I saw that and I never really dove into it. Do you use TubeBuddy, you know what that is? I don't use it. I know what it is, but I don't use it. It might be interesting to check out. Yeah. If you're getting, if you really want to kind of like level up, you know what I mean, in terms of like keywords and stuff like that. Yeah, I've played with it. I just didn't have the time to keep playing with the keywords, but that's kind of what I was thinking of. So when I'm making these videos, what are people searching for right now? Mortgage rate for sure was happening back then, right? And I got a lot of, I got a lot of leads out of these videos back in the first week of COVID. You did, that's what I was going to ask you. So it did generate some leads. Yeah, and the hard part was they were coming from all over the country. And so now I'm getting licensed in multiple states. I just got Virginia. I'm working in Colorado or in Nevada. So it's like, I got to keep going. That is an excellent point. I want to pause on for a second, which I know a lot of people aren't necessarily thinking of and it's funny you say country wide, because when I started in 2003, that's where I started. Was John Bianchi your regional? No, I don't even remember. Somebody else. Donabletso was mine. Yeah, yeah, I remember blood. So yeah, I love her. She was wonderful. Anyway, the point is this is what I'm trying to say is back then, like 2003 and when I started, there was no concept of like doing loans out of state. It's pretty much, I served my backyard and that's it. And I do think that still should be your primary focus because it is real local focused. However, what we're seeing, and I'm seeing more now with you and other people I'm talking to is they're getting licensed in other states. Why? Because now we can reach across states by having these online platforms and things like that. So we can grow our business outside of our local market. Well, and I think it's a necessity because your local market is leaving. I'm getting with companies now saying that remote is our new normal and you're not coming back to an office. Okay, and this is what I'm seeing San Francisco, Silicon Valley, housing's ridiculously expensive. I have to live here to avoid commute. Twitter just said I never have to come back to the office. And I've been stuck in this condo with no balcony for four months. I'm moving a lot of my clients for moving like the Sacramento area because they get a lot of house for their money. It's closer to Tahoe and then you have people leaving the state. So your clients are going other places and if you're not licensed there, it's hard to have them continue to be your client. Mm-hmm. So it's a long project. I mean, I don't know if I'm gonna get licensed in every state, but strategically looking at where a lot of my people are moving to, that's where I start. Well, let's, I mean, you can pull, there used to be this joke that you could pull U-Haul reports, whatever, it shows how many people are leaving California, you know? Right, right. What states they lead the U-Haul in? Yep. And so those are, let's face it, those are the Southwestern states. Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Texas, Colorado. Yep. Idaho, Oregon, Washington. My brother lived in Santa Cruz. He's in Portland now, my stepdad's in Portland. I have a realtor who just bought a place in Ben. His developer just bought a place in Ben. So I'm gonna surround myself with those states and then just from a VA, I love helping veterans. That's why I did Virginia just cause there's a lot of Navy out there, so. Mm-hmm, very cool. Um, yeah, and by the way, the last point on that is these people are now reachable both organically free, like your YouTube channel and paid, right? With ads and targeting and things like that that you can do. So, I mean, the days of, you know, it used to be crazy to think of a $100 million producer, you know, but I think I'm not gonna say, I was gonna say that's more achievable now than I think it was before. So I agree, and that's what's so interesting is that's in my mind, in 2017 it was, I'm gonna do 100 million. And that number was just like the number we all talked about for some reason, that was a magical number. And it is much more attainable than I think a lot of people think. And maybe, right, maybe just more attainable now. The other thing is learning from our losses. So I had one client, right at the beginning of COVID, I think he came from Zillow, we started doing the rate game and then he applied. And then he went to another guaranteed rate lender that he found on Zillow, and that guy was in Florida. That specific buyer didn't care about local, didn't care about anything. It was just, this is purely a transaction and nothing more. And I could throw a temper tantrum about losing. And I don't really look at it as a loss. We weren't gonna, it just wasn't gonna happen. But I can learn from that and go, okay, so what is someone's value? What do they think is the value of a mortgage lender? I don't get to determine that. They get to kind of figure that out. Everyone's gonna find something different in that. So is that to say that you oftentimes, I'm curious because you use mortgage coach so much, do you find that that has, that resonates with people at different levels based on the person? Yeah, so that's a really good point. So with mortgage coach, I use it for every single client every single time. And if I get a new lead, so if somebody says, hey, Sean, I wanna refinance. Send me your mortgage statement. I'll build out a side-by-side comparison for you to review. Full disclosure, full transparency, you will have everything you need. Well, I've coached a lot of my competition and I've lost a lot of deals by using mortgage coach that early on. And I got to a point where I did get into that. This is a mad, you know, and it was the wrong approach. I decided I'm gonna do the right thing. And if they go somewhere else, I helped them make a better decision. And you never know why people go other places. It's just, it's not necessarily, I think rates are for the most part of commodity. So maybe it's not the rate, maybe they, maybe the mortgage coach was too much information for them. Maybe it overcomplicated things. But if I think it's the right thing, I'm gonna keep doing it. Hanging out in the local discussion for a minute versus local doesn't matter. I don't have any data on this yet, but you know how realtors often will endorse the loan officer because they're local, you know. Somebody right here, somebody in the backyard. I think appraisal, that may have a bigger impact on that than, you know, the lender. But I don't know, we're just spitballing here. I'm wondering to your point about the consumer that example you gave to what degree they're gonna care less in the future about where their lender is located. I think it's kind of a combination. So I had a client consultation yesterday, somebody from Google, they both work at Google, they want to buy in Silicon Valley, local was important to them and they were referred to your point, they were referred to me by their lender. They were already pre-approved at Wells Fargo, but they wanted to support small and they wanted to support local. So yeah, that was what we did there. And I think, again, it's, I think to some people, it's really important to some people's not important at all. Yeah, I think that's the key point there, because we can wax philosophically on this. And I think to your point, like if you're doing it in your area with very technically savvy people, people are used to doing a lot online, that's gonna be more comfortable for them. In other places of like Iowa, whatever, like you said, it depends, do they value local, you know what I mean? And what is the market like? And I have to look like cash offers. Well, you have to close in two weeks. I don't care which jumbo, FHA, whatever, two weeks is often times what we have. That's a lot of times where local matters, right? But if you have like these Ben 45-day escros feel like a vacation. And they did actually on one of the two that I'm working on now, the listing agent was concerned that the lender was not local and was to your point again, worried about the appraisal. Not really worried about anything else. And I was like, well, odds are we're not gonna need an appraisal. We got to waver sure enough, but you just have to overcome that. You know, I responded right away and showed them, sit using those things, using to be like, I'm on it. You're gonna get more communication than you would from your local guy anyways. So I don't want that to be a deterrent from my client getting the property. It's cliche and it's overused, but it really comes back to your customer experience and building that trust. And what is that like from the outset, from the first conversation and that point on, that's what's gonna determine really, I think if they go with you or not. No, 100% and that's another thing I did. Because again, I've been in this industry for a long time, but I am somewhat the new guy on the origination side. And as I was building what I felt my client experience should be, and then you know, you hit these spurts where I was losing deals. They didn't care about any of that. And like Wells Fargo was buying all jumbo loans for a long period of time. And you know, Silicon Valley, that's first time buyers buying homes for $2 million. You know, I got, that's kind of when I hit my mad grumpy phase. And it was like, well, if they don't care about the client experience, I'm not gonna do all of this. And then it was just like, that's the worst thing you could ever say. Because all we are is our client experience. Mmm, I love that. That's a meme right there, man. Instagram, that sucker. That's, you know what I mean? It's what do we, so we want referrals. We, if you get a bad review, you're finished. So your customer experience is the only thing that matters. Absolutely, so real quick before we end out here, I want to segue, seeing as you've mentioned reviews twice. Tell me about your process, because I see you have them on Zillow, I see them other places. Do you have a go-to spot? And then how do you get them? So Yelp seems, so the first thing I did is I Googled my name to see where I showed up the most. And Yelp was my first. So I always ask for a Yelp Google and Zillow review. I don't really bother with Facebook. I don't think anyone cares about my Facebook business page. So those are my three that I focus on. And I always ask for all three. Yelp, of course, you know, I can't stand because they block so many. But those are the three I ask for. So Google and Zillow, I would say, would be the two biggest. And I agree with you on Yelp and besides that, I think the consumer behavior, you know, in terms of where they're trending towards mortgage or real estate-related views is getting less on Yelp than it was. All right, but you send people, you give them a choice or actually ask, now what do you do? Do you link over there? Is that what you do in an email? Yeah, basically. So I always tell everyone, I won't have a great experience because I am going to ask you to, you know, the internet is my resume now. So I'm going to ask you to give me a review. And at the end, I'll send an email with a hyperlink to all three and just say, I would love all three. But if I can only have one, I'll take whatever one you want to do. You know, I'll take what I can get. Thank you so much. And I don't ask for a five star review. I just say, give me a review. It's a realtor on Instagram the other day, did a post saying, please go to Zillow and give me a five star review. Friends, family, whoever, but they haven't worked with you. That's not, that's disingenuous. That's not authentic. That's not what I want to be. The reviews I have are real client experiences. And if they didn't have a good experience, they would have written it. Yeah, for sure. And do you tend to track those like, you know, like how many do you get and all that? I try to, yeah, I try to have a checklist, you know, because they'll follow with people, hey, I know you're busy, but you know, me a lot to me. I try, I don't want to overdo it. But I try to follow up a couple times to get as many as I can. All right. I got a question for you. I've had this debate a number of times with people about the long-term impacts or whatever of sending people to Zillow to leave reviews. And I mean, have you heard of that whole? No. Like some people are like, you're sending people to your competition. It's the internet. People are going to find what they want to find. You know, and I don't, that's a lack of confidence. You know, if you're worried that some random lender on Zillow is going to beat you, one, you are doing something wrong that you're scared, right? Maybe you're charging too much or something. Or two, I don't know, that's a weird one to me. I've never heard of that. I agree. It's a little bit tough to deal with. But I love the point you made is that that might come from a scarcity mindset. And if you're not coming, because what are you saying? They're going to go to Zillow. It's post-transaction. You've already closed them. You already have the relationship. What are you going to do? Never market to them again? And the argument is like, oh, Zillow's going to take your customer to what? When they buy in seven years, I mean, come on. But I just like, I had a client. And again, I look at a, come from a place of everything is my fault. Good, bad, different, it's my fault. I had a client follow it up with her to refinance. She's like, we just refinanced. I didn't even think to come back to you. That's my fault not hers, you know? Ah, so all right, that opens up this ugly can about quick and then, you know what I mean? Now, you're with G-Rate, I know. But I'm sure you see the healthy debates about people sending brokering business to quick inn and you're finding your demise. You got any opinions on that? So what I understand about that is you broker to quick inn and then ultimately, you're going to do that deal once and then quick inn just so it's them like crazy. Is that how it works? That's the argument, yeah. Okay, so people are going to find quick inn if they want to, quick inn spends plenty of money to make sure people find them. Quick inn in my world, it's really easy to overcome them because what here's what's real, I love psychology. Here's what's interesting about quick inn. Push button, get mortgage. Everything's convenience, they make it sound simple or not simple, they make it sound easy. It never advertised being the lowest rate. They never advertised being the cheapest, but somehow we put ease as being cheaper. When in all examples, ease is more expensive. And so if people, you know, if somebody goes to quick inn, I usually win because I beat him on rate and fees. And those are the type of people who are usually going to quick inn, that's what they're most interested in. So I just haven't really had an issue with that. Interesting, all right, good debate though. All right, before we close out here, what are you doing post COVID, the rest of this year or looking into 2021, anything you plan on initiating or adding to your business? Yeah, so I'm gonna go, I try to keep things very simple, Facebook, I'm gonna go heavier on Facebook ads, doing something with ad works, which is Google, lead generation basically, Google ads. So please do stuff. Yeah, I have to. I just think that's kind of an necessity and the budget, like we were talking about earlier, the budget that I had for events and all the socializing I love to do, don't really get to do it much. So it's those two things, doing the realtor workshops like we're doing now, that's kind of it, those are my three things. And then what I do, perhaps client-wise for the database, is I do mortgage reviews using mortgage coach, to either tell people they already have the best mortgage or we can do better. So those are my four things. What type of ads have you been running on Facebook? I've been doing VA ads. The big problem in the Bay Area is, veterans don't get the attention they deserve. So that's one thing I'm trying to overcome. So I do a lot of VA ads, a lot of first time buyer ads. Those are my people, you know, I don't have a- Like in a first time home buyer ad, what would it say? It depends. So if it's like a workshop, if I'm going to do a home buyer workshop on Zoom as a webinar, I did one where as a picture for my sister's wedding was my son when he was really small and her daughter, and they're both, she's in a white dress, he's in a tux from the wedding, but they're looking at each other, and it's put a little caption like, honey, I think we should take the next step. And then I use that as like a first time home buyer type, you know, it's a little cute kids, it catches their attention, and then it's, you know, I did one during COVID, like this could be the best time to buy in history. Are you designing these yourself, or you have an agency or? I do, I love, I kind of, I was a, after I ate when everything fell apart, I was shooting photos for the modeling agencies since I'm in San Francisco. Roughly one or less. I got a part C side. So I try to design it myself, but that just takes time. But they're really simple, because it's really, people are scrolling through so fast. You have like a couple, a half a second to catch their attention. And then it links out to Eventbrite, they register, I got their contact info now. If they show up to the webinar or not, you know, hopefully they do, but then I'll put them into my bomb bomb drip campaigns. Okay, really quick. I want to unpack that a little bit, because I've been looking at that exact thing, virtual or online home buyer seminars. You're running ads for that? Yes. And you're doing some targeting? Very, very small targeting. It's very limited what we're allowed to target. So I'm curious what you're doing, yeah. Yeah, so 18 to 65 plus, I can't be counting, or I'm sorry, I can't be zip code specific, but I am counting specific. So the radius, you're doing 15 mile radius or just doing a county? Or I'll do straight county, yeah. County, okay, got it. Depends on the ad, but I tend to do county. Some interests, like maybe Zillow, mortgage calculator, whatever. Yeah, and then what I'll do is if you have for interest, I use a lot of life events. So just married, new kid, the things that kind of trigger, it's time to buy a house, right? So I'll use those as my targets. The life events is mainly what I use now, since everything else kind of went away. So how have the Zoom first time home buyer things been going? They're okay, they could definitely eat better. You definitely get a lot of interest. I use the lead generation sheet in Facebook now, they've done a much better job with that. Then it used to be, so I'll use that. The people that I actually show up, it's just like a real home buyer seminar. They, the amount of interest is far less than that. Tire kickers. Yeah, and, but when they do come in, it's a, it's a pretty solid close ratio. I had one, this was a live one. This was like a very humbling experience where I think when we do these events, we all have this vision of being on stage in front of tons of people. And I had one I was doing at the realtor, and she's like, there's only two people, you know, I'm like, oh, let's cancel it. It's on a Saturday. We'll spend time with their family. They're really adamant about doing it. And I was just like, this is ridiculous. Like, I don't want to go do anything. I helped both of them, and then one of their friends. All right. Who am I to say that my time is far more valuable than theirs? Like, I'm the one that said I'd be there, and now I'm the one trying to back out. And so that was, that was a good learning experience for me. Interesting. Well, let's keep the dialogue going regarding the virtual home buyer events, because I think that's just another example in this post-COVID world. That's how people are going to want to engage, plus you can expand your footprint, and it's all about building the funnel, along with you have some automation and stuff behind that. You know what I mean? Right. Put them in a CRM and all that kind of stuff. Okay, cool. So if anybody wants to connect with you personally online, you mentioned Instagram once again. Give your handle. Instagram is Adventure Lender, and then Sean Herrero, if you Google me, all those things come up. So however anybody wants to, if anyone has questions about anything, I'm happy to help anyway, I can. Awesome. We really appreciate you making time to be here, man. I think this is going to be great conversation. No, thanks for having me. This has been great. You bet. And let's just do what you do. If you like this episode, hey, do us a favor, leave us a review. You know where to find us. And I appreciate you. 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, if 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, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners. Plus, done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seats, partnering with affiliates, real easy. But that's not all. You'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top L.O.'s authors, speakers, and coaches to learn the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for limited time, for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market that have closed anywhere from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months. And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so, book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.