How To Get 300+ Five-Star Google Reviews

Hey, hey, hey, you have Simfer. Welcome to another episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast. I'm feeling a little punchy today afternoon here. I've been on the on the phone on the on the recorder interviewing, talking with loan officers with leaders all over the country. And we're bringing another one to you here today, bringing some heat. Conversation that's very relevant for you coming from one of my favorite peeps out there in the mortgage world. It's it's his second time visiting us on the podcast. And who am I talking about? I am talking about John Cornish with QC home loans in Davenport, Iowa, shout out, Iowa. Hey, I got to say this even though I'll upset a few people. No cyclones. And those who know, no, what I'm talking about with that. So John has this amazing process I wanted to share with you guys, which is all about five star reviews and how to level up your five star reviews on Google both for you and to share your knowledge of how to do so with real estate agents. John has, I'm looking at his Google business profile right now. I'll put a link in the show notes as well. John has 300 and four five star Google reviews on his Google business profile. That's what's called Google authority. John has also fully optimized his Google profile with other types of content photos, right? He's responding to all the reviews personally. He has regular updates on his Google business profile in the area or section called products. As a matter of fact, the one I'm looking at today as we just recorded this six hours ago, he just posted an update. It's basically like a post. And so how can this benefit you? Well, let me ask you a question. Do you want more organic outreach people finding you through Google search? Do you want more people referring to you? Do you want to be more referable? Do you want to get more referrals? Do you want to grow your business? Look in today's day and age, look, ask yourself this question. Before you buy a product, invest in a product or service, especially if it's a sizable investment, do you look at reviews wherever there, Amazon, Google, elsewhere? Well, Google is what we call the first impression. And the more quality Google reviews you have on Google, the more Google authority you have, therefore the more likelihood is you may show up in local search when people are using local search terms. Most importantly, when and if you do get reviews from others, they're going to go check you out. They're going to look you up on Google. And the question is, what do they find? Is your Google profile a graveyard, a ghost town? Do you even have a Google business profile? How do you know? Type in your name right now into Google and you'll see what comes up. That's what other people are seeing. So this conversation with John today unpacks his five star review process, how he gets reviews, how he asks for reviews, the tools and tech that he uses and how he's leveraging his knowledge to attract real estate agents through teaching the same content, Google business review to real estate agents. By the way, we just so happen to have a class for our pro members that does the same thing. If you haven't heard about it, you can go to mortgagemarketing.pro check it out. So I think you're going to love this conversation. Take notes. Most importantly, apply what you hear from John and feel free to connect with him. Links in the show notes without further ado. Let's get into this week's show. John, welcome back to the show. Hey, very excited to be here. Thank you so much. Good to have you back and you're back with the vengeance back bringing some value. We're going to talk about that in a moment. How to improve your Google five star review process and help realtors do the same. But before we do, for those that may not be familiar with you, even though this is your second appearance on the podcast, who are you? Tell us a little bit about how long in the biz and numbers. Yeah, so John Cornish, I've been in mortgage lending for I think I'm coming up on 21 years, 2022 numbers, a little bit less than 65 million for 204 units, 20 and 21, got real close to 100 million both years, north of 400 units. Anybody in the industry knows that those years were a little bit easier than they are right now, but just still plugging away and trying to win every day that I can. Yeah, got a got a family love what I do and really, really excited to be back on the podcast. Yeah, and you do love what you do and you're also great leader. That's what I hear other people say about you when you're leading from the front, which of course is kind of why you're here today. Somehow this what you're doing with five star review process came across my radar and I said, I got to have you back on the show to talk about that because I think I interface with both agents and lenders and I see often usually I see a variety of things either on the agent side, they've been too heavy onzilla for too long and so their Google reviews are light and they recognize it and or on the lender side, I see they've been using the corporate version of the review process, which doesn't necessarily show up on Google and I think they're also missing out on that. So that's one of the things we talked about in the class is that those internal referrals or regional reviews, which are a lot easier to get. They don't have near the same power. I take a fraction of those on Google and they're going to be a lot more powerful all around. So I agree on a percent. Let's start there. Why did this come to your attention, your five star review process? So honestly, it came with listen, when when I knew there was going to be a slowdown coming after in 2021, I've been through this before I lived through eight, no nine, I tried to coach my people through this. Listen, get ready. When things are this good, there's going to be a downside that follows. We're all going to have to work smarter and harder to do less business when this is all done. So I went back to the playbook and I also like doing things that I enjoy and I've also and I've always gotten enjoyment. I found a lot of value out of educating agents, right? So going out and listen to this ties in directly to the class that you offer going out and saying, I close loans on time with my hands out to give me loans. I don't really like doing that. It's not my personality. So if I can provide a value to an agent and help them increase their business, I'm creating value and I think it's a lot stickier relationship and they're going to see me more as something that's asking for loans and more as a business partner. And selfishly, if I can help the agents that I already have relationship with grow their business and I get x percentage of their business, the referral opportunities that I get are going to increase. So the last 12 months has been a big push getting back in front of an educating educating agents. And this is a topic that I'm very passionate about and I do better when I talk about things that I'm passionate about because it comes through. And I'm much more passionate about creating I'm a people pleaser by nature. So my passion comes from creating a process that people really, really love and making sure my customers are happy. The review that happens or the reviews that I get are kind of a sublet of that. So I mean, that's kind of a icing on the cake, cake, but the focus has been and the biggest percentage of my business has always been either past clients or referrals from past clients. So it's tying those two things together. So I didn't intentionally do this when I started it. We just consistently look at our process. We try to make it better for the customer. We review it every single month on ways that we can get better. And then we started getting these online reviews and seeing the value in that. And as talking to agents, I was looking for different topics. I think would help them grow their business. And so many of them don't have Google pages. They haven't pushed reviews. Anything except for the ones that are internal on the websites that their brokers offer the easy ones. And thought it was a hold that was there and thought something that I could help people learn our process. And if they implemented, I think it'll actually help them grow their business. That's kind of where the motivation came from. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there. First, let me start with what have you changed? Do you started this when you when did you say you kind of began the focus on this? The creating the process has always been my focus for doing this. So creating it, the raving fans is how I started from day one in the industry. So focusing more on the online reviews will say the last five years. And then I was following a guy Tyler out of Des Moines as a fantastic job within that kind of mimicked the process that he has. He does a wonderful job. And I don't know if I ever catch him. But learning what the new world was about and how valuable social media was and having a digital footprint of being out there. So if I'm going to get referred by an agent, they're going to give out multiple names. If I'm out there with multiple online reviews, educational videos and a good social media presence, I feel and I've experienced my opportunity of getting an at bat and executing growth goes up exponentially and also past clients. If your past clients are seeing the social media, they're seeing these things, they're seeing the online reviews. It also makes it easier to gain their business and trust over and over again. And also when they mention your name and somebody who does the research, it validates what those people are telling me. So telling them. So not only that John say he loved the process, I looked them up and I now see that he has all these on like these five star reviews. So that's when I really started about five years ago, I would say. Okay. And we'll put a link to your Google page in the show notes as well as your website, qchomeloan.com. But on Google alone at this moment, you've got 304 five star Google reviews. Needs to be more trying to get more, but it's better than it was two months ago and it's better than it was 12 months ago. So we're just continuing to grow on that. Before we break down your process for getting those reviews, let's bring the question forward, which people always are curious about is, have you noticed? Can you do a dotted line of reviews to generating business or people choosing you? Yes, I can directly with Google and online leads has increased noticeably as they have went up. It wasn't an immediate thing. So we'll say when I got to 150, it seemed like I started to get some more traction with Google. When you're playing their games and you're using their programs, it does seem like in working on overall creating an SEO where your name comes up when people search you. Probably about two, two and a half years ago, is when I started consistently hearing from people because we track every lead that comes in. Hey, where'd you hear about us? I was just looking online to buy a home and your name came up. I saw the online reviews. I saw your videos and what I realized or learned is that there was almost a trust in a relationship that was already built there, even though I didn't know those people because they've already done some research on me. That's awesome. All right, so let's unpack your process. Start from the beginning. When do you start prepping people preparing for them that you going to be asking for a review and take a week from that forward? So I don't really, and that's also tell you this is a constant evolution. I also don't think I have all the answers. So I don't mention asking for the review until the approval process when we actually check in, but I let them know from the moment that I talk to them on the app intake or their first consultations that my number one priority is that they're 100% satisfied with the process. And I explained to them that my business has grown in the biggest source of my business is referral from past clients and the only way that that happens is if they're 100% satisfied. So I set those expectations and I let them know by using certain words by saying five star. I tell them for myself and my entire team, I expect nothing short of five star service from start to finish. So I set that in their mind very, very early in the process because people outside of this industry don't know how we work, right? We've all in the industry have all gotten calls from people saying, Hey, would you mind talking to my sister? Would you mind talking to my neighbor? I would love to. You know, that's the hardest part of my job besides getting offers accepted in this competitive market is finding people and finding those customers. They don't realize that, right? They don't know how we're compensated. So I think we have to explain that to people and I think we have to kind of draw a picture for them or paint a picture of what we're expecting. So we set their mindset of what we're trying to do. We tell them what we're going to do. We execute and hopefully they're happy with it and we get the end result that we are looking for. Do you have this process documented? I do, yes. Is it a one-pager? Nope, it's multiple. It's a Google document and it's now a PowerPoint for the presentation. But that's one thing. When I started coaching with with Kai McBride who's done, you know, great things for for my career and taking me to the next level that we're talking around and he's like, so where do you have your process? He started asking questions. He's like, it's in your mind, isn't it? And I said, it is. And very hard to scale, very hard to track, very hard to hold other people accountable if I don't have it in writing. But yes, we do have it, have it every step of the process from lead intake to post closing. And when we make changes, you know, there's there's constant changes that are being made. So when do you actually ask for the review? We ask for the review at clear to close. In between clear to close, depending on how busy it is, the link actually gets sent between one in three days after closing. And I send out a post-closing video through bomb bomb to every customer that is first and foremost a customer service thing, letting them know going over three frequently asked questions and always come up. So I keep track of questions and if multiple questions come up at any point of my process, we try to proactively answer them before people even think about asking. So we dig into that first and at the very end, that's when I actually ask them for that online review and let them know that either the team already has or they will be sending a link through text message and email to fill out a very quick and easy online review on online review with both Google and Facebook. So that's when we're actually asking for them to execute. I know I've talked to people that do it earlier in the process. It's just not right for me and everything that I've always done, I've tried to do it true to the person that I am in my personality and my focus is much more on making the process great than it is getting the review. So I really want to focus and make sure it goes through well and make sure that is sincere. And I do think I might have a little bit more success or get more reviews if you ask for earlier in the process. But for me, it's just not what I feel comfortable with. It's not what I'm doing right now. Well, what's funny about that is even though you might feel like you may have some more success because that sounds like a good idea. I think it always comes back to like you just said what's more true about who you really are. You probably wouldn't convert that well because it doesn't feel natural to you. And I don't and honestly, if I had to pick whether I had a really, really happy customer that didn't leave a review or a customer that was kind of happy that felt the left review because they felt like they needed to. I'd rather have the really, really happy customer that didn't leave the review. And that happens a lot. I mean, we talk with everybody and get a verbal commitment during loan approval to check in to see how we're doing from a one to five. And anybody that is not a five, I call and have a conversation with them. It doesn't happen very often. But I want to find out why. Listen, what's happened? What can we change? And even when those things do come up few and far between, we make some tweaks. And then all of a sudden that person is a five. And the percentage of people that say there are five and fill out an online review, I'm probably only collecting 35 to 40% of people that tell us that they were a five star happy. It's just human nature, right? It's another step to do. Some people may not have the login saved or they forget to do it. You know, it's just life happens. But I'd much rather have somebody truly happy and be a long-term client that sends me business and be a raving fan that doesn't leave a review than the other way around. So my motivation, and when I give, when I put this class on, I tell them, listen, I think your motivation needs to be in creating a great process first because that's what's going to drive you to do really well. This is a byproduct of that, the actual online reviews. Even though they're extremely valuable, I think doing well is more important. Oh, yeah, 100%. So you mentioned you sent them a request with a link to both Google and Facebook for the reviews. Do you have any insights on them choosing one more than the other? And do they wind up just choosing one instead of two? They do. It's usually just one. Google is definitely the one that comes up the most. And I can request the system that I use and I've had a local marketing guy set up a follow-up system to do this and automate the requesting and sending out the text messages. We could request more but those are the ones I want. I think Google is the most powerful. The reason we use Facebook is because the people that don't have Google, a lot of times they'll have Facebook. Facebook is easy to share. A lot of people are on Facebook, but I think Google is the most powerful and that's why I only request two. I don't ask them for both. I know people that do. I know I would get more reviews if I ask for two. But again, it's just something that I'm not comfortable with and I don't want to come across as being annoying. And I hate asking for anything to be honest with you. I don't like asking agents for referrals. I want them to send them. I want to provide my value and they hope that it follows. The same thing for the online reviews. I don't necessarily feel comfortable asking, but I hope that if I do a really, really good job, they almost feel obligated to do it or they feel, you know what? I'm completely comfortable. I want people to know my experience so they can have a similar experience. Well, there's something to be said for simplicity and giving people too many choices. And in you, of course, understand the power of reviews on Google and all that goes into that. As you mentioned earlier, search and a Google authority and all those things. And if I were having to decide where I would want my reviews, they would definitely be on Google first. But you're right. Some people, interestingly enough, don't have a Gmail account, which creates a whole separate. That's why you give them the second option, right? You're exactly correct. You're not a people that use Yelp. I know people that use Zillow just on platforms that I'm not going to support Zillow for kind of obvious reasons. And Yelp seems more like a restaurant for me. Yeah, I would agree. So you mentioned you have this automated. Is there one ask or are there several asks? There is there's follows up twice. And then we're actually creating a campaign. I'm working with my team on whether we're going to do it. How we're going to do it exactly. But I think what we're going to do or what we're going to implement. I just haven't finalized it yet. The details is anybody that said that they were a five star on the phone call that didn't fill one out where it has sent out a second follow up sometime in between 45 and 60 days after closing. It's going to be very low pressure. It's going to be along the lines of, hey, listen, I know that there's many times there's things that I look at doing and I don't get to them because life gets busy. You mentioned on the phone call that you're happy five out of five. We haven't got an online review. This is just a friendly reminder that it's still out there. We still love that. And I'll probably throw something in there that says, listen, if you're not comfortable, no pressure because that's again, just my personality. But I think I can probably execute because I would imagine that there's people that had an intention of doing it that just didn't get to it because we hear that all the time where I'll get one through weeks later say, hey, John, sorry, this is so late. I just said, have been busy. You know, life happens. People are busy. They're moving. Absolutely. Okay. So there was two asks, 45 to 60 days, Google Facebook, oh, the five stars. So I wanted to ask you that earlier is when you have a conversation with people and you're asking them for the ranking, sounds like, but just to confirm the obvious, someone is making a note of that in your CRM or whatever with the ranking you, hey, how's your experience? Oh, it's would you read the five stars? Somebody's putting notes in. Yes, correct. And I get it. We do those phone calls at loan commitment and loan approval. We check in with the customers. We check in with the agents. We don't get a hold of everybody. And then again, I get a list from Olivia and my team that does those phone calls of all of them and anybody that is not a five, I call them. It's, I mean, I'd call them almost right away to check in. So when you're reviewing loan status, that's part of your review process. Yes. Okay. So that's, there's no like trigger that notifies John. Hey, man, we got a four check in, you know, no, yeah, it is a manual. It's a manual step at this time. I actually have somebody that calls and sends a text message that they don't answer to check in. And the thought behind that is if I check in during the process and somebody, we don't want to assume just because we haven't heard anything that people are happy. So if there's for some reason, somebody's not happy, I want to find out why and I want to solve the problem. And what we've seen consistently, the ones that do it again, it's not very often. A lot of times it's something that's a little bit older that doesn't like the technology or ways of communicating that is done now in our industry. So they say, hey, you guys send a lot of emails. I don't check my email very often. It's a little bit overwhelming. So, you know, what I'll have in that conversation say, listen, I can completely understand that. But we are doing a, you know, a mortgage loan and this is the best way to communicate. And I usually offer an alternative, like, listen, would it be easier if we sent you a text message before we're going to send out an important email, like loan conditions that were needed. And they say, yeah, that'd be fantastic. And then we add that step for that customer. Do I want to do that for everybody? I don't for obvious reasons because it's not scalable. But what that individual feels like is that I heard them. Their business is important to me. I empathize with them. And I move my process around a little bit to meet their individual needs. And most of them afterwards are ecstatic with us because we've made that change. We also get some, you know, complaints are the wrong words. But everything's going great. But the uploading of documents doesn't always work great. And again, we just empathize with technology. And I just make a phone call and say, hey, technology is great when it works, isn't it? And I get go with them and say, listen, if that ever happens again, you can't upload something. Just email to my team and we'll upload it for you. How does that sound? Oh, I didn't even know that's an option. You'll do that for me. Absolutely. If you have a problem uploading it, I don't want you to waste your entire time trying three, four or five times. Just email to the team. We'll get it uploaded for you. We'll take care of that step of the process. And again, we're letting you know that we care. We actually reached out. And then we're taking action on the item that they weren't impressed with or that that that isn't making this process a five star process. And again, the motivation for that is not necessarily to get that online review. It's to make sure that customers is happiest possible with our process. Absolutely. All right. Who responds to your reviews when somebody leaves you one? I do every single one of them. Really? Wow. And it's usually pretty quickly. I get I get excited when I see them. So and you can use your phone for anything. I get a little pop up and I jump in right there and thank them, you know, mention something. If there's something I can remember specifically about the transaction. But yes, I respond to every single one of them. That's cool. I'm looking at your reviews right now. They're solid, man. I see somebody just posted a picture of themselves in front of their house. And you know, that's by the way, a little tip for anybody who's not aware of it is you need to respond to every single one of your reviews. Yep. One percent. That's going to affect your quote unquote Google authority again. All right. That's good stuff. Let's transition briefly then into now you're teaching your process to real estate agents, correct? Absolutely. Yep. All right. So tell me about that. How often do you do it? How do you know? I've probably done a half dozen classes over the last month. Okay. You've probably been face to face in front of close to 60 agents. And I'll probably do one on zoom before it's done. I obviously utilize zoom, but I really enjoy being face to face. It's kind of my personality. So that's where I started with it. So that's the amount that we've done done so far. Okay. And obviously you're I know this, but you're intent for hosting this educational class for agents is what? It's to prove I mean, obviously the the idea of anything we do with agents is to increase our business and increase our real three relationships. But if if I can again going out and asking for businesses one thing, but if I can provide a value for somebody and be different and really strike, you know, strike somewhere deeper, I think the relations that they're going to be stickier. So twofold, A, you want them to feel comfortable with their customers. So you can explain to them how important it is to take care of all their customers. So we explain how we do with our process. And then I emulate how they can create it with a with as with with a real estate agent. And it's really not that much different. I mean, our businesses are very similar. We're dealing with people. There's steps in the process. You have to tell people what to expect. You have to lay out expectations. You have to let them know how you're going to communicate. So they know what to expect. You know, if they think that you're going to call them back within 30 seconds every time they call you, they're probably going to be disappointed. But if you explain to them, listen, when I'm with clients, I'm engaged with them and giving them good advice, just like I did you. So if you call back, you know, they're call back maybe within a couple hours. If something is urgent, I need you to send a text message to this number and we'll get on it quickly. So you set those expectations of how communications going to work. So you give yourself a chance of meeting those expectations and people aren't creating unrealistic expectations in their mind. But so the agency, the value there and working with the customers and they see a process that they can build and create online reviews. And if they can increase their business and I'm doing business with them selfishly, most likely the referral opportunities that I'm going to get from that agent if I help them grow by 20% is also going to increase. And I think the loyalty increases substantially. And we've got, I've got great feedback from the class. People enjoy it. They see the value. They say they're going to implement it. I've had multiple people reach out to the marketing guy locally that created the system that I use on the back end to get set up for that. I offer to do one on one stuff with people if they want to. So again, twofold, it's to gain their trust and hopefully increase the, you know, amount of referrals that we get from them, but also help them grow their business so you can provide value and become a sticky relationship with that individual where you're no longer a commodity. You're not a price. You're not an interest rate. You're a trusted business partner. Yeah, it's funny. You say that I keep reaching for this quote that somebody shared with me a couple of weeks ago and you nailed it right there. But the quote is if you want their business, you need to become part of their business. I was like, that's brilliant right there because, you know, showing up, as you said at the beginning of this call, like, oh, I'm a lender. I got my hands out. We close on time. I got great, great rates. I've been in the business 10 years. Like there's no shortage of that in any local market. That is not a unique value proposition. Okay, so what I'm curious because as you know, I do a lot of classes and that's one of the classes we teach, of course, is a Google business profile. Tell me about your your your process to, you know, articulate your process of teaching a class that leads to agent conversations. So that again, your your process of you teach a class, you get agents in the room, right, 10, 20 agents, whatever it is. And then kind of do you have a process for after them? Following up with them. Yeah. Yeah. They made it easy on me. A lot of them reached out to me and have expressed and I've had people that have reached out just about the process. And obviously when I have an agent that I don't work with, maybe a listening agent on the end, they reach out and tell us how much they enjoyed the class or how much they enjoyed our process. That's a, you know, teeing it up for me to set up a coffee, to set up a lunch. I'm very old school. I still do a lot of face-to-face appointments with agents. One thing I'm going to be changing very soon because I can only have so many lunches and I can only have so many coffees and I do want to scale this and technology we can meet with more people. I'm going to start doing one-on-one Zoom calls and one-on-one phone calls. So, you know, I can add 10 of those per week where I can only have five lunches and five coffees and occasionally I like to go to lunch with my wife or with a friend. So it's kind of falling up from from that standpoint. So we have a captive agent audience that we always keep that we send video content to that we keep track of how often we're meeting with them whether it's lunches whether it's coffee whether it's just reaching out for a phone conversation and we try to stay consistently engaged. So when somebody new comes to the class that I haven't done business with before isn't in that audience. The first thing I do is I get them engaged in that audience and when something new comes out like the loan level price adjustments that came out that we're also thrilled about, right? I'm going to get a video created and I'm going to send it out to all the agents as quickly as I can. So they're getting that information from me and I'm trying to relate it to how it impacts their business. So here's what it is, here's what you need to know and getting them engaged in that audience and then obviously you feel out what you know what type of relationship it could be and then you kind of take it take it from there and I keep them all I think a lot of us do and actually I picked this up in one of the many of these podcasts that I've listened to which is why it's so so cool to be asked to be honest. I've listened to so many and got so many so much advice from them. I rank my agents and my partners right of the value what it is and there's different things that we do for different people and you can obviously move those around as time comes and figure out you have to track it again I can't keep track of it in my head any longer that's for sure. It's a Google document that Olivia keeps track of. We look at it probably on a weekly or biweekly basis of where we're at who I haven't touched based with recently when I'm setting up my goals and my weekly execution of you know you're you're working out for work you know I'm gonna work out Monday Wednesday and Friday for my work I have similar weekly goals we have to do the the little things daily and weekly that we need to do to execute long-term and we really focus on those Xs and O's. Are you also in terms of tracking, you tracking referrals and closings yep and just to reiterate what I heard you say there in terms of the classes is you take those attendees and put them into that kind of bucket I'll call it a VIP bucket or whatever we're an attended class and they're going to now be on your forward mix of content videos and all that absolutely and that's how you kind of stay top. Yeah because with anything if we do a great class in 12 months from now six months 12 months 18 months every month it goes by that value is going to go away so if I'm not staying in front of them and providing continued value it's not going to be as effective. Right yeah it's like the last time you brought your wife flowers right it's like we need to do that we just had Mother's Day I got this years ago don't miss it don't miss it that's a start that's for sure. It was brought to mind. And then we're trying to come up and we have other classes that we're working on so I'm you know the process of doing another one I've actually had some brokers reach out to me and you know hey I would love to have a class on this you have one I was like I don't but I'm going to create one now so it's great to hear the engagement for them where I know that they actually enjoy it because they're asking me to create a class you know for something that they would like to go over. Speaking of classes all right I'm going to sit here for a second then I'm going to come back to the Google and we'll wrap up. Have you always been doing classes in your career? I don't know if I've called them classes I've always been I've always done education so back in 2009 2010 obviously which followed 0809 I remember myself and a guy by the name of Ryan Kennedy that I worked with everybody was living on the you know easy low hanging fruit the low interest rates the the harp that was out there and I was like okay this isn't going to continue forever so what are we going to do now that's going to position us for when the purchase market comes back around we started going out to sales meeting and educating agents you know on down payment assistance programs the different programs that were available I had success with that so it's things that I've always done I've always tried to lead with financial you know literacy and helping coaching my clients and agents and coming across to somebody that is educated in the field but actually a structured class I haven't always done structured classes but I've always been big on the education of agents. Interesting and obviously you feel it's paid off or else you wouldn't be doing it all these years later 100% and I and I have multiple people on my sales team that have you know taken your classes and implemented them with great success so I mean it works I mean if you're looking if you're a lender that's newer in the industry and you're looking for something that's effective it's a great place to start. Shout out to Louis. All right let me go back to your Google profile for a second because I noticed you are optimizing your profile in a few key ways but many people overlook one of those is products and I can see and photos and I can see here looking at your page you've got what out this is to me I believe it's in the product section you've got photos of like you at your office looks like you're signing handwritten thank you cards yep things like that you've got pictures of your team who's posting that for you. I got by the name of Reggie Zorg with Zorb Tech so I outsource all my social media. All right so that's a local guy you're talking about. Yeah that's actually a different local guy. They got this up through a user guy by the name of Ryan Harmson with noco social as well I actually went to college with both of these guys so Reggie runs all of my my Google and my social media. Ryan does that platform that I talked about on the back in for the online collecting those online reviews and he's working with me on my short short form videos the TikToks the real so he comes to produce those and give me content on how to do those because I don't know what's trending in TikTok in reals and I don't want to so he tells me what it is and then we figure out how we I figure out how to make it mortgage relevant if that makes any sense so taking a trend that's going to not be viral I'm not going to say it's viral I'm not to that point but it's going to get some attention and how do I make it relevant to what I'm doing. Does that mean we're going to see John lip-syncing and dancing on some videos. If you look on TikTok I said I would never do it I'm doing it so if you want to talk about getting out of your comfort zone I'm not comfortable doing it but like anything else it doesn't bug me now the first ones were a little bit uncomfortable but you have to adapt right I mean you have to change this is an ever evolving career consumers are always changing and evolving and if you're not you're going to get passed by at some point. That's awesome yeah and one thing you said a moment ago too is during member 08 I was there as well is the heart program man remember that yeah you were you were you seem like a guy twice in our conversation already 2008 harp all that down payment assistance you're already looking you're like going where the puck is about to go the whole Wayne Gretzky thing and you're like this isn't going to last forever and you said something earlier in this conversation as well that I wonder if you're of the same mindset right now meaning clearly we had a downturn we had a big pause we had interest rates go spike up but now we're seeing a little bit more settling out of maybe an acceptance of the new reality so are you also prepping now like you did in 08 for the upswing and purchase volume 100% and I've always looked at this downturn as an opportunity and I coached that to my to my team that we can't control it and I love it when it's busy but it's going to get tougher for a lot of people and you just have to you have to win and focus on growing your market share and even if you don't really notice the fruits of your labor we use the term a lot in our in our zoom call that you're going to be doing activities right now that are maybe not checks that you're going to cash right away but it will pay out at some point so 100% we've been working on and we started focusing on that before the run was even over. Hey these refides in 2021 are not going to last if you're not focusing on purchase business you're going to get left behind so we're absolutely focusing on that and looking forward to it. Yeah so what do you see or what are you doing for the for the balance of this year like what's it you pretend I'm one of your L.O.'s what are you coaching me to do now? Getting back to the basics I mean again setting up everybody has a little bit of a different sphere of influence or pillars of business so finding out what your pillars of business are figuring out what you have to do on a daily and weekly basis to execute on those and focus on those little things right so and then also find some value in the little wins right so if you're supposed to meet with five agents per week and you do it that's a win even if you didn't get a deal from it right then that could be because of things we can't control market conditions things like that you can control the effort that you can put in so we talk a lot about or I talk about mastering the things that we can control and really focusing on those because we can't control the comments that anybody's going to make that's going to make mortgage back securities volatile and interest rates bounce all over the place we can't help out what certain things a lot of things are out of our control so focus on the things that we can control and really own the small things and mastering and it's no different than if you're looking at exercise or working out you got to look at it what am I going to do today and what I'm going to do after day it's consistency and execution there's so many different places that you can get great ideas in this industry or any any industry there's so many places you can get them easily with your phone right now right but what makes the people really good are the people that execute and execute consistently and that's the biggest thing right now love that love that what I wrote down was process versus outcome yep yep that's what my coach I was having a down day once and my coach is like you know basically realigning my focus saying wait a minute time out right we're not focused on the outcome because if we focus on the process and the daily activities to your point the outcome will take care of itself yep yeah love that yeah back to you know calling customers the annual you know again it's easier to call somebody in 2020 in 2021 and say hey I'm going to save you $300 you know fill out an application but you still need to be in contact with your database right you still need to make those phone calls to your to your client base to your agents you have to stay relevant you have to provide value at all times you can't pick and choose when somebody's going to buy a home and right now there's not a lot of opportunity for anything but purchase business you have to make sure when that time is right for that customer that you're the person that they think of you want to just own that space in their mind yeah it's like a shout out to Shayla Gifford I was talking to her the other day and she shared this phrase which was you kind of alluded to this earlier which was right now everyone's working twice as hard for half the results yeah and here's the thing I love what I do so it doesn't bother me yeah if you'd love it you do you're not working hard right because it's passion yeah yeah I mean you have to transition so it was weird because in 2021 we're working hard to keep things going and making sure we're worth letting people down and then it slowed down pretty quickly for a lot of us and okay we got we got to change things we got it we got it we got a shift and we got to focus more about making the phone ring and taking time doing those business development activities versus reacting to business or executing on business the worst thing to do is do nothing 100% that does not work of the looking at your phone and hoping that it rings is a very ineffective strategy exactly yeah all right listen man I know your time is very valuable you've shared tons of nuggets once again for anybody who wants to connect with you I'll put a link in the show notes it's qc home loan dot com shout out to you john thanks for making time a second time now I appreciate it thank you so much appreciate what you're doing thanks for putting out that consistent great content for all of us you bad you bad listeners you know what to do if you like this episode share it leave a review 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 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 attracting 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 seeds partnering with affiliates real easy but that's not all you'll also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top elbows 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 to from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months and we'll provide that list uploaded to 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