How to Call Agents, Get Referrals, and Close Over 250 Loans with Chris Coghill

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, listeners, what's up? It's Jeff Zimp for Thanks for tuning in to the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. If you're new here, let me know. Reach out. Give me a shout out. Jump into the private Facebook group for Mortgage Marketing Radio. Fill out the short questionnaire, tell me a little bit about yourself and come on into the private community where there's more good stuff for you, our loyal listeners. And if you're a return listener, man, my heart, I appreciate you so much. You're why I do this. It's the feedback you give me that keeps me going. So if you have a review you want to leave, I'm grateful for it. If you want to send me an email, you can send it to podcast at mortgagedmarketingradio.com. You know how to reach me. I'm available. Find me. DM me on Instagram. Just say hello. If the podcast is making a difference for you, it's why I do it. Okay, so on this episode, we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm having a candid conversation with a Mortgage Law and Officer at Movement Mortgage. And as is often with my podcast, I sometimes prep. I sometimes don't. In this case, I didn't prep because I know my special guest and have known him for some time. I understand what he does in his business. However, part of this conversation, I didn't expect it to go there because that's what I love about these conversations. It can be organic, right? So one of the things we talk about is cold calling, right? And oftentimes cold calling gets a bad name, right? It doesn't work. It's ineffective. However, I know there's some loan officers who succeed with cold calling, right? And in this case, I think you'll be intrigued to hear how my special guest, Chris Cogill, from Movement Mortgage out of the Carolinas, approaches cold calling real estate agents. Then the other thing you'll hear of interest from Chris is how he's leveraging Asian classes to accelerate his engagement awareness and conversations and referrals. That's right. referrals from real estate agents. It is, I think by far, the number one way he gets engagement with realtors, ads, values and differentiates himself, I think he told me he gets an average of two to six referrals from every agent class he hosts. And by the way, he's hosting them via Zoom right now, right? So to give you an idea, if you haven't been focusing on real estate agents, if you haven't been spending time because you're busy with the revise, I get it, but listen, what are you doing to prepare for the change that's coming, right? Are your agent relationships slipping away? How do you show up differently and add value? How do you build a fence around your agent relationships and continue to keep those relationships sticky and give agents a reason why to be loyal to you? Chris talks a lot about that, about how he's using Asian classes, how he gets bus in the seats and all that. And listen, Chris is no slouch, right? Chris this year is already surpassed 250 units and over $85 million in production. So the guy's knows what he's talking about. Here's the key point. He's only been a retail originator for about a year and a half. What? That's right, about a year and a half. So you're going to hear his whole story. I appreciate you tuning in, listening in and there's links to the show notes. We mentioned resources in the podcast. Chris has a podcast himself for realtors and builders. You can check that out and everything else in the show notes links as well. So I appreciate you tuning in without further ado. Let's get into this week's show. Chris Goghill, welcome to the show. Hey, man. How are you? I'm living the dream, man. Thanks for being willing to be here. You're incredibly busy, mortgage professional at movement, mortgage, got to love movement, we could actually do a whole session about that. But let's let's talk about you and what you've been doing in your business this past year. You just want to share with the listeners, you just surpassed a milestone. Tell me what it is, what it means. Yeah, man, we just surpassed 250 families served for the year. Right now we're on to it for about 315 or so, which is which great. And obviously we're continuing to build that, but that puts us in a kind of a different category or I guess a higher tier of what movement calls president's club, which is kind of their sales conference or their recognition of their top performing loan officers. And so change makers being serving 250 or more families or 75 million in funded volume. And so we're very proud to hit that and continue into climb and grow within an amazing organization. Yeah, fantastic. How long have you been a mortgage originator? I started in November of 2012 and as a call center loan originator and so I'm about a year and a half into retail L.O. and doing things kind of on the 100% commission and build your business and your brand. So that's kind of what makes it even more exciting is, I mean, I obviously, I had that success in kind of the call center environment, but translating that into the retail aspect of things is very exciting. So you've been retail for a year and a half? Yeah. Wow. How do you go or would you do for what was your volume or units, your family's helped in 2019? Do you remember? So 2019, it was 45 million. Wow. And your average price is what? Well, my average price in 2019 was about 190,000. Right now it's about 256, 260,000. So what would you attribute, and by the way, for people listening, it's funny, some people don't know. Like we don't prep for these, man, there's no notes or nothing, you know, we're going off the cuff here. What do you attribute that to be fair? You invited me for, you invited me for a drink on Zoom. I didn't know this was happening, so yeah, this is not, this is not planned. This is ambush, right here, ambush. That's how I do. That's how we get the best recordings. What do you attribute that rocket ship growth to, man, that's a hell of a frigging trajectory there? You know, I mean, first of all, it is, it's an amazing brand behind what we do. I mean, it obviously sell, not having to sell against a brand is a huge benefit. There's a lot of, you know, causal marketing and things like that that you can do with movement. There's a lot of different aspects to what the company does to allow for, you know, just a different type of conversation. But for me, it's just, it's about being real with people and connecting with people, right? The way I always put it is I want people to feel the way I felt when I bought my first house, which is when my neighbors think I'm crazy because I'm sitting there fist pumping the air, turning around, looking at this house after taking the trash out, being like, holy crap, I did this, you know, like I made this happen and so I want people to feel that and feel the energy and the home ownership process that I have, not just the, I don't ask a lot of transactional questions or anything like that. It's, you know, it's telling me about your dream home, telling me about the home and really trying to dig deep and get to know people more than anything, you know, and the other thing, you know, when I first started, I mean, it's just dial, dial, dial, dial, dial, I'm not scared of a no, you know, I mean, it's just picking up the phone. I want to hear no because that means it did my job. If I hear it maybe, it's still got to keep digging. So, you know, I mean, it's, it's really just understanding when have I heard a condition or when have I really heard, you know, a solid no, you know, I feel like a good job at that. But the other, the other part of it, man, that is the foot in the door strategy that you've helped us with so much where the agent marketing academies, I mean, so much of my business comes from that environment of putting people in a room, you know, and, and hearing the presentation, and you lay it out so easily, and now I, I suppose I'm just sitting here flattering yourself, but the, the, the point is, man, it, it really is super helpful for my business because it gives purpose, it gives content, so I'm not having to create it. It's not that I can't create it, but the time it's going to take me to do that is going to keep me from being able to be productive. So I can just rattle these things off, and, you know, people like the way I present it, which is really just more regurgitation of what you've already laid out, and it's, it's super effective. So why, why change it, why, why change the wheel? Yeah, well, hey, I know that, like we said, this isn't a setup, no one's looking for flattery, I appreciate your positive comments around that, and I wanted to have a conversation with you because I think it's, it's a tool like anything else, and people can use a tool, you know, in various ways, successfully or unsuccessfully, you seem to be very consistent. And for those listening, just for clarity, what Chris is referring to is, you know, this, this agent class platform internally at Movement Mortgage, which is a library of turn key done for you classes, that he just plugs and plays downloads and then teaches to real estate agents as a means to drive engagement and conversations. Is that a fair summary? That's a great summary. Yeah, it's, it's what realtors need to know, it's not a sales pitch, and that's the best part is it puts me in a room of people where I'm not sitting there, selling, hey, why use me, why use Movement Mortgage, I can strip all of that out of there, and, you know, I just tell people right out of the gate, this is not an infomercial, I know you sit through those every single day, you know, you have somebody come in here, and it's like, oh, wait, but act now, there's kind of that. And I just talk about, hey, we're going to talk about things that are little to no cost, but obviously to trade off to that is effort. And so you have to be willing, and you have to be vulnerable enough to say, I'm in this room because I want to learn, because I want to grow, and I just frankly tell people, in that room, do not come to me all polished, don't do it. Come to me with your vulnerability, come to me with your openness, tell me where you want to grow, and let me help you do it, because I've talked to a lot of realtors, I've talked to, you know, a lot of marketing gurus and everything to be able to help shed at least a little bit of light on what they're trying to do. So for your activities in terms of marketing or prospecting to agents, you're not cold calling? I call it, yeah, I call it call all day every day, for sure. I mean, I just have a list. I have a list I go through. I mean, it's just, I used to have kind of numbers that it's like, okay, I need to hit a certain amount. Obviously, now it's at a point where we've built a lot of relationships and everything that are providing self-sustaining referrals. So now it's really the growth model of continuing to touch base and dig deep on your existing relationships while also finding the time to continue to prospect. But it is time stamped in my day, it is blocked in my day, and it happens every day without hesitation. Obviously, if I get somebody on the phone, it's really not so much about how many people I can talk to anymore. It's how much time I can fill with actually talking and connecting with somebody on the phone versus what is the number of people that I talk to. So I'm curious about a couple of things here then, because I didn't know that you cold call. Considering, you know, you do such a great job with the classes as far as getting in front of real estate agents. So when I hear you say that, I'm thinking in the context of your previous life being in a call center, you probably have some pretty strong muscles for cold calling. Like you said, you're not afraid to take a no. But I'm wondering why cold call if the agent classes strategy is working so well for you? Diversification. To me, it's not about creating one avenue and riding on that. At some point, if you can't continue to deliver different content, which thank you again for delivering different content for us to spit out. But at some point, if you don't deliver something fresh, your message can become stale. And so it allows me to connect in a different way with agents that maybe won't come to a class. Maybe they have a different job or what I mean, so many different walks of life, so many different scenarios. I want to respect that and honor that and let people know you don't you don't have to come to the class. And if you don't come to the class, I'll come to you, right? And I can give you the I can give you this a pair down version over coffee. I can give you a pair down version on a one-on-one zoom. If you want to be more of a one-on-one setting, if you want to have it over a phone, people have different comfortability levels. And for me, it's about flexing to what they want and not necessarily creating my own thing and just saying take it or leave it. What is the premise of your calls, your outbound quote, cold calls when you make them? What's the the ask if you will? And what are you trying to accomplish on the call? Yeah, I mean, for me, it's a very comfortable and telling people, listen, you might have somebody you work with. And that's right, keep them. I'm not here to call you to take one piece of pie from somebody's plate and move it to mine. My job is to have you grow your business and let me have an opportunity to earn the business we grow together, right? And so it's really about uncovering questions and covering what is their motivation because every realtor, whether it's a very successful realtor, whether it's a brand new realtor, some are more open to of delivering that content to you on a first call date or, you know, a fifth call date, right? I mean, it doesn't matter. At some point, they're going to open up and tell you either, dude, I don't want any part of you or this is what I'm actually trying to work on. This is how I want to grow my business. And so it's really just about understanding and uncovering what is it that they want. You know, somebody in my career once told me, right? It's not necessarily about calling and getting the deal, right? I mean, it's not necessarily about that. Maybe they truly don't have somebody that you can work with right now. And that's okay. But is there something that we can work on together? Is there an event they're trying to plan? Is there, you know, a home buyer seminar? Whatever it might be, what is it that they're trying to build in their brand? What is their target? What's their net, right? And how can we help grow that together? And how successful do you find cold calling to be to drive relationships that lead to business? It is probably the easiest, most effective thing I can ever do. I mean, pick up. There's a lot of people. So there's a lot of people listening right now that are saying what? Cold calling is easy and effective. I know. I know, man. It's crazy. But you'd be surprised at the amount of people like it's a contact sport. And so you have to be comfortable with it. They're going to read through your BS. If they're going to sit there and say, if you haven't polished up on your products and everything like that, you haven't polished up on what questions you might get asked. You're going to flound it, right? And so one of the things, because I, you know, before this year and a half I've been in retail, I wasn't even originating. I was managing loan officers for three years. So I was out of the game, right? I mean, and listening to calls with realtors and I'd sit there with a dry erase marker. My loan officer was on the cell phone and they had it on speaker phone so I could hear. And I'm just sitting there writing down their questions and saying, oh, go here, go here, say yes. They said this. Now pick up on this and say this. And so it helps obviously taking notes on what they're saying. But so many people just call to call because they know they need to. But it's the note taking portion of things and being able to bounce back on what they're saying and give them kind of like, okay, man, if I heard you correctly, you said this, this, and this are the most important thing to you. What else? Right? The other thing is we go into solution mode too quick when we're making cold calls. We're calling and trying to think of what is the solution? That's my ask, right? It's it's really call to learn. And by learning, you know, you'll find where you can earn their business. You'll find where you can earn their relationship, where you can earn their trust by truly genuinely wanting to hear what they have to say. To me, it's hey, listen, I work with a lot of people in the area. And so I wanted to make sure that you knew I was here. And you know, had I came from big banking, you know, some of my business partners came from big banking. And so it's it I use that as a segue to say, hey, you know, like you might be comfortable with this element. And maybe you didn't even know who movement mortgage was. Even though we're the sixth largest, you know, mortgage company in the country, do you know that, right? Did you know? Like what is it that we do? Why is it that we do it? And then what is that one, two, three niche items that we do offer, right? Especially now, down payment assistance and everything has kind of floundered that, right? But there are down payment assistance programs that are out there that mortgage companies can do. It just takes the loan officer to do a little bit of research and a little bit of digging to find out what is still out there. And then it's about getting out getting that message out to the masses. Is your approach though really like typically a two-step meaning, as you said, the first the point of the call initially is just to listen and learn, identify areas where you can potentially help. And then you schedule that next conversation, which is more solution oriented. I don't have a one-call resolution and two-call resolution type thing. I'm calling to start a relationship, right? And so for me, I want to be able to call you anytime I want. I want you to plug in your phone. So when I call, you say, hey, Chris, right? I mean, that's the goal, right? And if that takes one call, some people are going to be comfortable with that. Some people won't. So if I can get that done in the first call, then that is the goal. If I can't, that's okay too. It's just I'm going to call you no matter what on a rotation, have every realtor on a rotation, where they are going to get a call, every single summer going to get a call weekly, summer going to get a call by weekly, summer going to get a call monthly. But everybody will get right to have 700 or 700 or 800 realtor on this roster, right? And I have them separated out by production. I have them separated out by their openness, right? They're, you know, just got different grades for them. So I can say, okay, what's their response? I keep meticulous notes on what they're saying. So I can call that back. You know, so it's really not about can I close it in one call or two calls? It's can I keep the conversation going? Because the more comfortable you are with them, the more comfortable and open they are, the more they're going to really trust you. You know, and then the only way to shorten a buyer's cycle or buying cycle for somebody, whether that be the realtor or the home buyer, is to get more of them. And so I just said, well, I've got I've got make a living here. So let me call as many people as possible. I'll cast a wide net. I'll see who's a, you know, biting on the line. And then I'm going to drill deep into relationships with those that are super open to it while continuing to cast a wide net for those that I still need to work on. Do you look at your numbers at all in terms of calls to conversions, etc. That kind of stuff? I used to, you know, I mean, now it's it's really, I mean, you kind of develop the craft or you develop kind of this pitch that ends up being, you know, somewhat unanimous across the board to get people to to somewhat open up to having a conversation with you. For me, it's it's just about getting people on the phone. If I can get you on the phone and I can get you talking at the end of the conversation, we're going to at least know I'm really passionate at what I do. And I really care about people in the process and and making sure that we do things. We do them ethically. We do them, you know, in a way that creates value. It eliminates just the number type of feeling to an individual while also providing, you know, great, great, great cost and, you know, a lot of programs, right? So it's understanding where where do you fit within your competitors and everything because I, you know, I'll ask them, who do you use? And then I'll never, ever, ever talk bad about another lender because they trust them. And if I break them down, then I'm all the sudden telling this realtor that they're making a bad decision in their life. And now I'm the one having to clean up their mess, right? As I, that never is going to do well. So I, it's just always man, celebrate what they're doing. And then, you know, listen, man, it takes time to do the research on the agent. What are they doing? Well, where can you call if there's a success metric, right? Top 100, whatever it is, right? Whoever the realtor is, is calling and congratulating. And people love to be congratulated. So I, I mean, I too, right? I mean, who doesn't? And so it's just a matter of reaching out and saying congrats because sometimes you call them and they're like, man, I didn't even know. I didn't even know about that. Well, yeah, you are. So you're trying to gather some information, something tangible, a connection point on an agent before you call. Like, I know what I used to do is like, look at their social media profile or find some commonality, right? That kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, man. I mean, it is the biggest form of flattery. You don't want to be creepy with it. You don't want to call somebody and be like, Hey, man, I saw you want to Dartmouth. What's up? That's not, that's not right. But I saw social media profile and somebody's son was planned dark baseball. And so anyway, it's, it's the first college that came to my mind. But, you know, there's a broker and charge here locally that went to a school close to the California high school that I went to. And so it was easy for us to eventually connect over time. I didn't let it out of the bag right up front. Sure. But I know the level of questioning to be able to create a moment of connection, right? As get them to uncover, right? I mean, where you from, right? You get them talking about that. And, and all of a sudden, you, you walked them through the door. Right. And then all of a sudden, they, they're going to feel like, Oh, man, like I, I have some sort of connection to this person. Yeah, one of the techniques I would use in doing some recon on these agents ahead of time says to not sound so creepy would be I would say, Hey, look, you know, Chris, I hope you don't mind, but in prepping for my call to you, I did a little research on you. And here's what I found. I found you, right? Whatever. Like horses, you're a Patriots fan, whatever, some poor, poor, a point of connection, right? Because first of all, they appreciate that you did some work ahead of time, right? And you can pick out that one thing to kind of bring to the surface instead of just randomly, you're just a number, you know? Right. Yeah. Because you get to ask, you'll get to ask, well, how'd you get my number? Why don't you call me? Right? I mean, that, that will come up. Yeah. Well, I pulled up the remax website and just started dialing. So, I mean, who knows, right? Or a listing they have, like, you know, you mentioned California. So I know in SoCal, when I was working in SoCal, you know, I would use to call and like when there was these incredibly impressive listings or that had an amazing pool or a backyard, I'd be like, hey, man, saw that listing. You got, wow, that's an amazing view. Congratulations. That's an awesome property. You know, just flow love, man. See, and you went, you went the great route, right? You went the route of, of, you know, let me go with these really nice looking homes. I went the route of, I've got to do what I have to do to earn the right to do what I want to do. And that means manufactured homes, right? So I went out and I sold, I pulled up Zillow, I pulled up listings on manufactured homes, double wides, right? And said, there's so few lenders that will sell that pitch that and, and, and grind their teeth on that type of property because they think it's harder. And it's not. You just need to get titled the way quickly, right? But the thing is, man, it's just, I, I went out that as one of the niches that says, man, we can do it. I know how to do it. I know what to get. So let me pitch that, right? Some people do that through renovation or some will do that through multifamily properties and things like that, right? Well, you know, I'm not going to go and, and say, I'm the reverse mortgage expert in the world. I'm not like I don't, I mean, I'll learn, I'll learn how to do it, right? I mean, I'll always say yes and, and then learn very quickly. But yeah, man, I went, I went after the, the, the, not so glamorous route. Hence, hence why my first year was 190,000 average versus this year is being 260 in terms of average volume. That's a great point, though. It's a great lesson. You know, I remember classic sales training, marketing, right? Is, is, go where the market is underserved and they clearly are in that space you just mentioned and there's other markets as well. I think that gets to the bigger point, too, is like, especially if you're calling, call calling agents, what makes you unique and different than the other 10 calls they got that day? Like, are you just, oh, I got great rates and great service? You better, I think today more than ever, we have to be known for something. Yes, we want to deliver. Yes, we want to be, Chris is the guy whose word is gold. But when you're first building your business, you've got to kind of like have something that people can latch onto. You agree? Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, what I did was I actually took out and said, okay, what are the, what are like the three or five things that are, that are niche products that movement offers or that I offer, both from, you know, either my personal philosophies and or, you know, products, right? Because you got to, you got to sell personal and you got to sell the products as well. So I took one of those big like charts that, that, you know, you can, the 3M or whatever charts that had the sticky side on the back and I threw it up on the wall and I wrote with a big dry erase mark on it. I should have used the Sharpie since it was paper, that's what I had. And so I wrote on there, you know, hot homes, $100 down, you know, manufactured housing, you know, maybe one down payment assistance program, you know, just different things that I could go out and let people know because one of the questions that I got most frequently was, well, what makes you different, right? What, what do you offer? You know, and so I tell people, listen, you know, if you have your lender, that's awesome. But at some point, you're going to have one of your clients say, I didn't connect with that person's message. I didn't trust what they had to say. I didn't, there was some key, you know, missing feature or benefit to the sales presentation that created a lack of trust or the need to feel like I need to shop around better rate or whatever it is, right? And so I was able to tell people, listen, if you have that, let's start there, right? Let's start there. You keep what you've got. And then if you've got somebody that says, you know what, I still need more and need to do digging, I'm finding your second up, right? Let me be your number two. And, and earn your way into that, right? Because not everybody's business goes to the same person, right? Sometimes it does. But there are clients that just won't gel with your message or their message. And so you've got to be able to be comfortable fitting in. I think too often loan officers call an act like they've got to get it all or it's not successful. So on an average cold calling day, how many outbound calls are you making? Are you using a phone burner or is it just manual lifting? So I plugged all of the phone numbers into my Google contact. So that way, it would sink over to my iPhone. And so then I just tell Siri, you know, call, call Heather, call Monica, call, you know, whatever it is, right? And so I'm not having to, I used to manually dial the numbers. And so it's just, I look at it and say, how to shave off seconds of my day? How do I become more efficient in my day? Right? Because, you know, they talk about the brain being incapable of multitasking and technology. And it takes the brain five minutes to fully catch up to what it's doing to become fully productive in that moment in technology. So I break that down and say, what is five minutes in the course of a year? And the course of a business year is two and a half days, right? And so if I am ineffective in technology for five minutes, which happens way more than once, if I do it twice, now, now I'm a week behind my competition that's time blocked and figured things out. So, you know, I used to, I used to hit, you know, 50 calls a day, right? And just dial dial dial, right? And it's 50. I'm going to hit 50 people a minute. And then it became less about that. I mean, my conversion of getting somebody on the phone was, was, you know, about 40% of people were eventually getting on the phone, you know, some days better than others where you walk home, you're like, all right, cool. I really knocked it out of the park. You know, I got 60% of people to pick up phone. But then it became less about that and more about how many conversations do I need to have to hit the target that I want and breaking it down. Obviously, doing that through your AMA, agent marketing academy business planning classes out there was able to say, okay, how do I break down my conversion numbers? How do I make sure that, you know, I'm fine tuning how many conversations do I need to have on average to get to an application? And so if more or less became the contacts for and not saying how many calls, how many communication, how many back and forth conversations do I need to have? Yeah, for sure. That's a great point, by the way, too, for everybody listening to the conversation's goal. That's fun. I remember I was talking to a big real estate agent, Tim Smith out in Orange County, California, Coldwell Banker. I think he's number one agent for Coldwell team, perhaps. But, you know, big time agent, you know, tens of millions of dollars. Anyway, still today, it's got a huge team, everything. Still today, he has a conversations goal, like every week. And it's not about calls, it's about how many meaningful, so you might have a conversation, five conversations a day, it might take you 20 calls to get five conversations, but that's the goal. Exactly. Yep. Yeah, so that's how many conversations. Yeah, um, what I was going to, so conversations, that is ultimately the goal. Uh, okay, cool. The other thing I wanted to bring up real quickly, just mentioned this is you obviously have a pretty well-honed, um, cold calling muscle, if you will, from your days as call center, but also you believe it's a, you know, a key part of your overall success. Um, do you revisit, probably for you, yes, daily, what I'm thinking is this, is here's what you and I both know about cold calling. The numbers are low, yes, conversion, connect rates and all that kind of stuff, but when you do get somebody on the phone, it can be pretty magical, but I think where most people fall short is they have no intention behind the call, they have very little for scripting, um, and they make it all about them, right? So, how do you stay sharp in terms of scripting or what to say? Yeah, I mean, I write it down, right? I mean, that's, that's, I, I have kind of my, my script, I don't, I don't script it, but I bullet point it out, right? And I say, by the time I get off the phone, these are the things that I want to have uncovered, but it's, it's that, uh, that weight, right? Why am I talking? You know, type of method because I, I really want to understand what it is that they're saying, and I truly want to invest in what they're saying and, and think about that so I can then respond organically to what they're, what they're saying and not so much. Well, let me just, let me, whatever you're going to say, it doesn't matter because I got to get on to my next bullet point. Mm-hmm. Like you've lost the connection, right? And so at some point I, I will tie it back if there's time, but if they take it on an, on an tangent, awesome, man, that's, that's the best possible thing that could happen because they're comfortable enough to continue the conversation, they've opened up in a way for you to uncover things that you maybe wouldn't have if you just stayed to your, to your script or to your bullet point. So it always starts with the bullet points, but it doesn't always end with, with them. You know, and I find the works really well, is if you are naturally curious about that person, about learning about them, right? And that's, that to me is like, if I have that curious kind of vibe on, I'm like, you're like, it was you, you and I have never really spoken in great depth before. And so I'm curious. And that's why this interview flows. There's no notes. There's like one thing I wrote down. And they were just like, let's just have a conversation human to human, you know? Right. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's like you said, this is not a planned thing at all. It's just, yeah. And that's, this is, you didn't, you didn't tell me there was a podcast going on. So you, you just asked me to come on Zoom with you, and so that's, this is the best example of a cold call, right? Is, is you, you didn't give me the agenda or anything like that, right? I said, yeah, sure, right? And that's me picking out the phone. Yeah. And so, so to bring that full center for everybody listening, I'm cognizant at the time here too. But really, all you heard was, I know you're doing well with agent classes. It's been at least six months since you and I kind of exchanged, you know, messaging. And then I'm like, I need to catch up because I saw you got the Change Makers Award, you know, what I mean? And I'm like, I need to catch up and find out is Chris still doing classes post COVID in, you know, via Zoom. And then you send me like your graphics, you're doing the Alexa Flash briefings class. And so you pivoted and you're doing them over Zoom, right? Yeah, I mean, and it's, it's fantastic. I, you know, I, I ended up, because in person, I can, I can only, the room is only so big, right? Or, you know, sometimes it's an office that wants to have it. Sometimes I'm doing it in a, you know, a third party location, but, you know, I was doing up to four a month of, of just a marketing academy class, it's right? And it's, and it's great. And I'm pulling, you know, sometimes there's six people in a room. Sometimes there's three people in a room, right? But on Zoom, I can do one a month or two a month and I can bring everybody in to one place, right? Regardless of affiliation, regardless of where they are, and allow that to be organic, right? And you can control. Do you have them on mute? Do you not? You can still do the gestures, right? Like, show hands, right? And you can still do all of that on Zoom and, and get that. Of course, some people don't have their cameras on, but some people have great virtual backgrounds. And, you know, you get this additional layer of insight. And then, of course, you get the people that registered, you get the people that, registered and didn't show up, you get the people that registered and do show up, and you get the people that didn't register and show up, right? And so, you get all of these different people and it allows you to have so many different conversations because you get all of this data through Zoom to say, here's who showed up and then it tells you how long they stayed, which was also awesome because in person, nobody gets up and walks out of the room, you know, at least not yet. But, you know, I think I had that happen once to me, right? And so, it may have happened. I said, I must have said something that I said something that offended somebody once. Correct. Yeah. Those comedians that know how to call out someone that's exiting our room are very sold at what they do. But yeah, man, it's been fantastic. And, you know, I mean, we're getting anywhere from two to six referrals out of every Zoom, agent marketing class that we do. And it's just wonderful. And agents give me the best feedback in terms of they look forward to it. And, you know, I mean, they really, they keep asking, when's the next one? What's the next one on, right? And they really want to engage in the content. And, and, you know, it's not just for newer agents, but you can use it. And one of the things that I used is, is for brokers in charge to use it as a recruiting tool, especially doing it in person. It is, man, what if we, what if I do this in your office, but we open it up to other agents, right? And we can bring them in. And then that gives you somebody in the room that you can talk to, right? Because what's a broken charge is goal is to hire people, right? And a lot of their payings are coming from, from hiring people. And so if I know that, right? Who's going to, who's going to pitch me? Who's going to promote me? Well, I want it to trickle down from, from the broker in charge. So if I can get to them and I understand what their goals are, and what their mission is, then I can, then I can better create and establish rapport with that person. So they end up telling every new agent that they bring on to say, you got to use Chris. He is the guy. You want something done? You want it done right? And be communicated effectively, and want it done on time you call Chris. How are you getting agents butts in Zoom seats? What's your kind of process there? Oh, man. So, you know, I, I call them. I still cold call and go over that anytime there's a meeting you're cold column. You know, I, I text every single one of them. And I now send bomb, bomb video emails to them. I post it on social media. And then I send it to brokers in charge and ask them to send it to their teams. So that way I end up getting, you know, they put it on their private Facebook groups and everything like that because at some point I've had that broker in charge in one of my classes. So they can see how it goes and know that it's not me just pitching them on movement mortgage or anything like that. It's a very small portion of what I do is talk about the company I worked for or anything. It's just about giving back to them, you know, unbiased and, you know, just really not caring so much about me in the room. It's it's asked questions. I'm just the message deliverer, right? And you can ask anything about this topic or anything else. And if it takes it off to a tangent, then obviously, I'll pitch that we've got another class on that, right? That'll be the next class I do. Most of the, most of the next classes that I do from study saying something in the room that they can tie back to, this is why we're having it. And if you raise your hand, so it's natural, it's organic, but it's it's a multi media pronged approach, right? Call text, email, especially now video email I've been doing and social media posts, right? So and then the broker in charge cascading it down. Yep, love that. You know, it's funny when I see people, you know, have lackluster results with their classes. I mean, that's the first place I decide to inspect is, yeah, what's your invite process? Because you can't just send an email blast and think that people are going to see it, you know, and I mean, to your point about the calls, it's a perfect reason excuse to make calls if you have call reluctance. Oh, man, yeah, the first when I first really started getting going as a loan officer in retail was I got into, I immediately jumped into the deep end with agent marketing academy classes and said, this is a purpose, right? Hey, man, I'm calling to invite you to something that is for you. It's not about me, right? And, and, and it really opens them up. Some people are like, no, not interested. And some people are like, yeah, that sounds great. But just because they're not interested in that one topic doesn't mean that they're not interested at all. So you can still go back to the well every single time and and grab more buckets of water. So it's just a wonderful tool to use. And, man, it has really helped us get where we are in terms of family served in terms of volume because it builds trust in the room. You become the content expert. And so when they want to build their Facebook page, they want to build their LinkedIn page, they want to, you know, circle prospect, whatever it is, you become the expert that they reach out to to say, I want to know more, right? And, and you're able to advocate for them and the conversations that end up flowing from that is educational in nature. And when you become their educator, you, you trust people on that. What do you think about loan officers though who don't see themselves as taking on that role of being coach, educator, right? Content provider. They see them. That's not my, I'm a loan officer, you know? What do you say to that? I think you're, you're missing the picture, right? Is the, what, where my take is, right? I mean, you want an organic way to connect with people, right? What is a loan, if you want to be a loan officer, man, do what I did, go sit in a call center and receive leads and be tied and capped on your pay and go in and work certain hours and do all of that because you're missing a skill set that you need, right? And those are, you know, that call center environment can be more like a hamster wheel of, you know, just getting on and running and running and running. But it's for somebody that might have a limited capability in their day, right? But it doesn't mean that, you know, there are bad people that work at a call center. I mean, that's not what I'm saying. But if you're going to be in a retail L.O. position, you know, why, why do you even want to call yourself a loan officer? Why? Why? Like, I, that's not what I want to be known for. I want to be known as a person who cares for other people, right? And, and that's my, that's, you have to understand your why. You know, I mean, that how, how are you going to get the business? Why do you want the business? And, and some people, listen, they're better at dialing for dollars. And maybe they just want to go and buy leads and do all of that. And it's not for everybody. And that's the beauty of retail is there are a bunch of different ways to do it. But I imagine if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably sitting here listening because there's a, you know, you need to do it, but you don't know how you need to do it or, or what the right approach is. And it's, it's just get going. Just get started, right? It's, it's you get in front of a room and you can be amazed at the results that you get. Hmm. Love it. Love it. All right. Listen, you've been very gracious for your time. And I want to close this out by asking a question. So as a podcast guy, I just bought a bunch of these cards, which is called the pod deck and pod decks. It's supposed to give us an interesting or unique question to ask our host, our guest at the end. So let me pick one up here right here and see what it is. This is completely off the cuff, random, right? As expected here with this show, no pre-production, whatsoever. And next time I'm going to prepare for these, but here we go. Are you ready? Are you ready? Here we go. If you had to delete all but three apps from your smartphone, which ones would you keep? Oh my god. It could be three. One to three. You want to throw that question out? You want a better one? That's like deep think or question. Oh, that's fine. Okay. All right. That's fine. All right. I need I guess Instagram because that's not a mobile friendly or that's not a computer device. It's mobile. I can use on the computer. So I've got it. I've got to keep Instagram and let's see here. I got it. I got to keep my email and my text and Instagram email text. That's kind of a crappy question, isn't it? Let's do this. You can throw out another one. You can throw out another one. Yeah. Let's throw out another one. Let's see. What would be your best? The other way I do promote the other way I do promote agent marketing Academy is actually through my podcast, which is master builder. And so it's all paired down versions and everything of different content that movement has AMA and everything like that to use it as a way to invite people. So I use that as another medium as well. You have a podcast. Who's the audience? Focus Realtors. Realtors. It's all all realtors and some home buyers and everything. And so I use it for realtors to both educate themselves on how they can build and master their own business, loan officers that are looking to learn about products and programs. And then also for realtors, I have certain episodes that are there and intended for them to turn and share that content with their home buyers. Why is having a good credit score important? What is the difference between a condor or a town home? But then there's how to circle prospect using LinkedIn. There's different things out there that I use. And then we can segue that into if you want to know more about this. Come and see me at an agent marketing academy class. Come and see me, come and call me, email me. So it's just, I want to be omnipresent as you so well put it is just people consume content in different ways. And so you have to strip down the barriers of the way you want to deliver it and just deliver it to everybody else. You're not selling yourself, you're selling someone else. So anyway, what's the name of the podcast? Master builder. Master builders, is it on iTunes, all that stuff? Yeah, every, every listening platform. Oh, cool. I'm going to put a link in the show notes. That be okay. Yeah, go for it. Absolutely. We'll get you be in the number one downloaded podcast next week. That's awesome. Very smart. There's my shameless plug. Yeah, I wish I had known about that earlier. Had I prepped, right? We would have known. Where's my drum beat for that? Yeah, there we go. So let's end it with this question. I'm glad I found this knowing that you're a musician. Here we go. Which band or artist that are alive would play at your funeral? Oh, my lord. Come on. Just go with the first one. My son's, here's the problem. My son's name is Lenin after John Lenin. But my daughter's name is Dylan after Bob Dylan. And so I, I'm torn. It's like, what kid am I going to upset? But so I guess I'll go with who's the first born kid with Lenin? So the Beatles. So the Beatles would play at your funeral. I love that. I love that. The alive, the alive, the alive group I would get is one of, it was one of two things. Either Zach Brown band or Glynkwin 82 would be the alive groups that I would call from. That is some musical diversity there, my friend. Yes. Yes. Love that. All right, Chris. Listen, I know you're busy. Thank you for making your time. I'm going to put links to your podcast in the show notes. I appreciate you so much with the share and grats and all your success in helping families around the country. Country. You're a very, very, you know, and I appreciate you having me. You bet. All right. Listeners, if you like this episode, you know what to do. Hey, this is how it goes sometimes. It's Friday when I'm recording this. Appreciate you guys tuning in. 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. 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. 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