How to 10X Your Loan Volume Without Hiring Staff with Floify

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. This week, my special guest, love bringing these folks back. As a matter of fact, the last time I had them on the podcast was back in the day as they say was July 2018, when I originally had Dave Sims, the CEO of Flowify, which is an industry leading mortgage automation and point of sale solution. On a recent episode, we talked with folks at experience.com and we talked about the importance of your consumer experience, like what is your CX, your customer experience, and how that can be a point of differentiation for you. But the other side that we didn't really get to talk about, and this is why I think the conversation with Flowify is great is we also have on this episode, a special guest, James Pulsifer, who is a regional manager at Fiddle Letty Mortgage, which is a division of Bay equity home loans. And I always like to why I'm having this conversation is because I believe part of my role here in having visibility to lots of different things in the mortgage industry. Oftentimes I hear L.O.'s tell me about different tools and platforms they use to help grow their business, help to have process efficiencies to free up their time. And so that's why I'm having this conversation with you here today is because once again, I've talked to a number of people who are getting amazing results leveraging this platform called Flowify. Some of you probably have it, some of you don't, you need to go check it out. If you're looking for a point of sale from start to finish, loan mortgage application, software platform, that does some amazing things from you that didn't even include like e-signatures and hybrid closings, hybrid e-closings and all in soup to nuts that is in one simple mobile first platform that makes it easy for you to grow and scale your business. As a matter of fact, you're going to hear from James and how he talks about how he added 400 units to his production only adding one team member, only needing to hire one person because Flowify simplified and streamlined the process that would have without that required him to hire at least three other people. So I'm going to let the conversation unfold and you decide if there's something more for you to go check out. There's no skin in the game in this for me, other than just bringing it to your attention and if you want to go check it out at Flowify.com, that's F-L-O-I-F-Y.com. Link in the show notes as well, without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Dave Sims, welcome to the show. Thanks, thanks for having me. James, Pulsifer, welcome to the show as well. Hey, good afternoon, guys. All right, so now you guys know who's who with the voices. Dave Sims, why don't you tell the listeners who you are, what do you do? I am Dave Sims, I am the CEO of Flowify, Flowify Streamlines, the mortgage process, we're known in the industry as a pointed sale. Nice. James, how about yourself, what do you do? So I'm James Pulsifer and I'm a regional VP for Bay Equity, we're based out of San Francisco but I'm based in Colorado and also do mortgage loan origination personally and supervise a production team here in Colorado. Thank you. Now, I'm going to spend a moment, James, just for context, if you don't mind, I hear you are a pretty solid producer, the rumors are, do you want to provide any context for us on that? Yeah, so personal production for my team last year was 926 units for about 250 some million and some change, so I've done personal origination for about 27 years, so good track record in the business and I produce those units myself as an originator and then I have a team that helps me as well as tools like Flowify with fulfillment of those units, so that's a little bit about what we do. I mean, Dave, you said James was kind of a slacker before he got out of college, I don't know where you're getting that from. Oh my goodness. Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh, when I first met James, and I don't know, it might have been six years ago, James was maybe coming up on 100 million, maybe the first year I met him, he did 100 million or maybe it was the next year, two, three hundred units, team of James plus maybe five folks on his team, his direct team, not his region. That's what I remember back then. Yeah, so we've certainly seen some phenomenal growth, and I mean, last year was Banner for everybody with the COVID change in the market dynamic for sure, and so we've been fortunate to capitalize on that, but it's been a phenomenal ride and a lot of growth along the way for sure. Yeah, for sure, so quickly then James, tell us then how you're leveraging Flowify from an originator standpoint, like if you imagine who's listening to this podcast, it's let's just say, you know, the laptop carrying, you know, or the virtual remote that's been for all of 2020, right, producing loan officers on screen, how are you best leveraging Flowify? What does it really do for you? Yeah, absolutely. And I will say that tools like this are what helped us sort of outgrow the constraints that the pandemic gave us because having the right tools really put us in a position to go uninterrupted and have scalable growth when COVID started instead of saying, okay, now that I can't yell to the office next door to my assistant or my team, I can still function and in fact, on a higher level. And so what Flowify does for us is it's the consumer face of the mortgage transaction from start to finish, and that's the dynamic of the product. It's the first thing that somebody sees when they call and say, hey, James, my real estate agent told me to call you, they get a link into that system that allows them to complete the loan application. And then from there, everything that they do from cradle to grave happens in that system all the way from signing disclosures and credit authorization and e-consent. And so it's a really great point of sale for us because it's one of very few systems in the industry where there is a single bar or point of contact. And so it goes without saying that the better you can create that buyer experience, the more positive feedback you're going to get, that ease of process just goes to people wanting to use you that word of mouth promoting itself. And this does that. And other systems and other processes we see are really peace in part. They'll have one place where you can provide your documents in another place where you apply for the loan and then you've got an e-consent in a separate system and even for technologically savvy consumers, that can really become overwhelming, especially with all the cyber fraud that's out there right now. You know, when you separate systems like that, people are calling you saying, I've gotten this, but I'm not sure of the system. And is it real or is it, you know, a spam of some sort or a fishing email. And so this really eliminates that. And they get in one system. They get comfortable with it. They understand how it operates. And they know that that's sort of their life of the loan from start to finish. If we need anything, it's there. If they need to sign anything, it's there. And it takes a lot of the anxiety out of the process for the consumer because they know that they're in the know about their transaction, you know, from start to finish. It's just a really great way to help the dynamic of communication consumer experience. I can see clearly why now, Dave, you asked James to be here on this call. I, he says it's so much better than I was like, we're, we're done. Where do you go from there? I mean, but to be clear, I can't program anything. So we need James and we need James. No, seriously, that had to be one of the best representations I've ever heard on. You know, when I've done these calls, when we have a setup of, hey, we're talking about a product, a platform, a software. And then I always like to invite, you know, a mortgage professional who's actually using it in the field. And I got to say, that deserves a James Brown. Here we go. Yeah. All right. That's a shout out. All right. So Dave, let me, and thank you again, James for that. It was great. Dave, and you know, you mentioned you referred to yourself as like point of sale. Explain to me like, are we talking about like point of sale? I'm driving, you know, my client there who wants to basically fill out an app. And I'm just giving him, you know, my mobile experience of flow of five, what does that look like? Yeah. Really, it has come that the terminology emerged maybe four, maybe five years ago. And it really just means like James was saying, it is the one place where the borrower goes, cradle to grave, does all their things, whatever the thing may be, like signing like initial disclosures, closing disclosures, eConsent, credit authorization, uploading documents, you know, retrieving bank statements from the bank automatically. Yeah, but just to clarify, all this can be done right from your mobile phone? Correct. From the phone, it's fine. It's all good. Laptop, desktop computer as well. And do you have stats? Do you see like our most people using the mobile phone as they're navigating along? Maybe a little bit in the beginning. And I think as they get a little bit like a zibar, where it gets a little bit deeper in the process, I think they're going to transition to that top desktop, but there's plenty of mobile phone usage tongues. Wow. That's, that's, well, it's funny because when I'm thinking as I hear you guys describe what you both are, the term, you know, consumer experience comes to mind because I had just down a session with the folks over at experience.com and we were just all hot on talking about, you know, the consumer experience. And I, from what I heard the way James describes it, and I'm obviously on your website looking at some of the features and functionality, I'm sitting here thinking like, I mean, how could you not have something like this here today? If you're looking to be a quote modern originator, be savvy, right, but also deliver an amazing consumer experience, I mean, are you, what's the opposite of this out there? I mean, fee sheets and PDFs, are we still seeing that? You know, if, if I can, if I can take that one, I, I have a really unique perspective because on a corporate level, I help to, you know, coach and do some business development and recruiting of one of those nationwide and it's phenomenal to me how many people that we see, even that are very productive, who have very manual processes, you know, they live in a world of physical files and sticky notes and, you know, you can imagine how inefficient that is just on any level, but then put the, the COVID restrictions on top of that and it just really amplified some of those inefficiencies. And so I think that that this new workflow, this new reality, we're in really separated the people who are integrating tech the right way versus people who are really presenting that manual process. And I think for those of us who have been originating for a long time, the concept is that part of your value proposition is holding on necessarily to, you know, some older habits, which are manual and process because they feel nurturing to the consumer and it's important I think to know that, that you can provide that reinforcement and that concierge level of service to the consumer and integrate technology. In fact, technology can help you with that and it's not a one or the other proposition, but it floors me to see how many fairly successful loan officers are still not leveraging tech like they should. And is there still a gap in terms of, you know, learning, adapting? Do you guys see that James or Dave as you go out there and you know, try and talk about being a modern originator, you know? I think that, no is the short answer because no matter what level you are in the industry, you're using tech because even if you're not using it from a consumer facing standpoint, you're using it to, you know, to deliver loans and get your stuff in system of record and disclose loans, it just, to me, if you're not using something that then faces the consumer the same way, you're completing half the circle, so you're doing twice as much work. So for me, the consumer facing systems like flowify are going to, going to almost simplify that process because they're created in the mind of a consumer who doesn't know mortgage so that they're easy to navigate. In the systems we use on the backside, presume that mortgage knowledge, they almost take more technical acumen to act to navigate those than what it would really on the front side. So I think it's just a matter of, you know, changing habit, which is hard for anybody to do and just embracing that change and rolling it out that really stops people. I remember, if I can interject, I remember when I first met James about six years ago, back then we had a, we have a mutual friend and with this mutual friend saying, James, like, I've got like, you know, more business coming in, you know, I think I'm just going to hire more. And James was like, no, no, no, like James had the vision back then. He was like, no, no, no, the future is automation and, you know, bring in the right tools. Don't just make hiring your go to, and I think over the last five, six years, James eventually has approved that because, I mean, if his loan volume is 250 million now, that's insane compared to even what he was doing a few years ago. And I'm betting that James's staff has not grown exponentially during that time. Yeah, we added 400 units between 2019 and 2020 in production. And we added one in staff, and that was in October. So what was that role that you added? What's that? The role that we added was just an additional coordinator position that sort of split roles on the initial file intake, you know, the people who talk to the consumer about their documents, they're getting into the system and everything like that. So we decided we wanted to maintain excess capacity, but we made the change by leveraging technology and finding different ways to be efficient and automate versus, you know, loan count by body count, which I think a lot of people make the mistake of doing. And it goes without saying that, you know, it's harder to hire people and bring them in and train them, and it's also more costly. So if you can leverage the technology, there's a faster uptake and a greater profitability than if you're just adding minions to the process that, you know, try to keep up with it. Are you saying that flowify can do the work of an employee? Easily. I would, if absent flowify would have to have probably three or four more full time people on my team. Well, 100%. All right. That makes a good case. Hey, I'm curious, James. This isn't like, you know, normally I dig a real deep on the loan officer, but while I've got you here, what is your number one source of business? I'm in relationships. Again, you know, I'm, I've been doing this 27 years. I was joking. I said it when I was nine, but having done it for a long time and having a good database of people, my biggest resource, you know, 60 plus percent as people I've dealt with before in their spirit of influence and then, you know, real estate related clientele. But my business is entirely relationship driven. I'm one of a few people you'll talk to in this industry who, you know, isn't really on social media and, you know, doesn't do third party, you know, lead buying, anything like that. There's nothing wrong with that, especially for people who are new, we're starting in the business, but my business is entirely relationship driven. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you make that distinction because, you know, I'm not to do a small plug here, but I wrote about that in the book, just wrapped her die. And it was the whole purpose behind that was everybody is pounding the whole digital side of things. But I'm like, wait a minute. If you've been around like James for 20 years, whether you're an agent or a loan officer, you have the advantage of having that database and relationships. So, you know, you can continue to go to that. You know, now there might be ways of different of engaging or communicating and moving that in a more traditional way to moving it online, if you will. But still, you're not in the same boat of like, how do I generate business? Well, you got, right, a 5,000 client in your past client database or whatever, I mean, that's how you're going to do it, you know, plus all the realtor relationships. So, I'm glad you can, you can provide that context because I don't believe it's all or all or none. As a matter of fact, we are, I'm coining this phrase, me and the boys, called the hybrid loan officer, you know, so where you live in both worlds, traditional and the modern. So I'm looking at some of the different features and functions you guys, and just, I didn't set this up at the beginning. But here's why I'm having this conversation. I think Dave gets this because Dave, as a matter of fact, we talked about this before we hit record. The last time we had this conversation was two and a half, almost three years ago in 2018, July, 2018, I'm looking at our podcast, it was episode 80, you're going to be like episode 215 or something like that. So we've both come along with, yeah, no doubt. And has your, any like big things or big ways your product has evolved like since then, since our original, you know, back in 2018, I remember when COVID was just hitting just last March, we were working on a hybrid e-closing solution. And the timing was perfect, right, because it made it possible to spend, instead of spending like 45 minutes or more at the closing office, you could spend five minutes. Because everything on the, you know, on the day of closing all these documents become available for signing, for electronic signing. And so they just cut down, especially in the early days when everyone did note this COVID thing was. Right. And there was a lot of fear going on. And so they really wanted to minimize the time spent there, even if it was in their car at the curb. And it really, I think that was a big change and the timing was just right. Yeah. Now that's, so that's just a big thing since now that's like the new norm is digital closing and all that, right? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting. We have a lot of customers using our hybrid e-closing and we still don't, among our largest enterprise customers, there's still not a huge push for that 100% don't step foot at the title office just yet. Just to be clear, I'm not one of those people. I'm pushing. Do it. Okay. All right. Cool. Excellent. I'm excited. You know, because not all states have adopted that, but we see a not too distant future where it all happens with an integrated e-note delivery, you know, on the secondary side, that allows us the efficiency of selling loans into agency the same day they closed. That's a huge pickup in efficiency. And having the consumer be able to do a single stop experience for closing versus physically showing up somewhere, again, I think people are resistant to that because they're thinking that their value to the consumer is in that handshake part of the transaction, but you can add that value with the automation, whether it's a phone call, it's a shorter meeting, it's a video conference, there's a lot of ways to integrate that and I think that the people who don't get around that are going to get left behind because it's, it's the future of mortgage banking, I think. And to be clear, James was our first user of hybrid e-close and it was James. It was James who called us up and said, hey guys, we really got to do this. Yeah, I always say that, like you get your best enhancements or involvement from your customers, your best customers. So what you're really talking about there, what James is referring to and I think what you guys deliver at Shopify is process efficiency on all the fronts, right? From point of sale, it's funny, I used to hear there was this guy back in the day who used to say, well in terms of like, you know, in mortgage and real estate, people present themselves as like the best things, it's like spread and you know, we do all these great things and we have an incredible efficient system and then the reality is something different. But he said this one thing, he goes, does your external perception match your internal reality? And I was like, oh, that's good, man. And as I look at what you guys do and the, you know, from beginning to end process and flow, that's what came up for me. It seems like you've covered those bases so that it's a smooth efficient process from, you know, from start to finish. Yeah, I think so and it's just been, it's just been like, James has been a huge part of this, just taking us down the path of going deeper and deeper and deeper. Like in the very, very beginning of Shopify in 2013, we didn't have a loan application, you know, we, it was a document management solution, right? And so we, you know, we added that loan application, you know, a couple years on and it's just been a continuous process and it's not just there for the borrowers, there for the realtor, the referral partner and, you know, the processors and the, the file intake folks and we're, we're expanding just beyond, you know, who you might think it might be a user of Shopify. What is, what is Copilot? What is that feature? Copilot just makes it possible for someone on the LOS team to assist a borrower in real time through a screen sharing mechanism to help them get through that loan application. So if they get a little stuck on, what do I put here for the employment section? They can turn on Copilot and make it, it's essentially a screen share through the browser. And so that way it's a lot easier to help the borrower get through that section. Yeah, very cool indeed. Do you have any other projects, enhancements that are, you know, on the drawing board or are you not like in that mode right now? No, it is, it is an everyday, every month type of push, but I mean, some things that we've come out recently are big hits is reporting in analytics. It's great to be able to see like what are the pull through rates for a different L.O. Teams. All right. James, Dave, I think this has been a good conversation on, you know, if, if anybody listening doesn't have a platform or technology like Flowify to be able to streamline the point of sale through the whole process to end close, then I'm encouraging people to take a look at this because you already heard how James was able to add how many units was crazy. What did he say? 400 units. Yeah, 400 units adding one person for head count. That's amazing. So if that's not endorsement enough, I don't know what else is. So once again, James, appreciate your time very much for being here. You bet. Thanks, guys. Yep. Dave, before we close out, I know we've got some people who want to learn more. Where should they go to learn more about Flowify? That's easy. Flowify. F-L-O-I-F-I.com. Lots of good stuff there and yeah, thanks for having me on and James, always good to chat with you. Thanks, guys. Yep. Hey, listeners. Go check out Flowify. We'll put links in the show notes as well. Appreciate you tuning into this one and 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. 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