How to Grow Your Agent Referrals With a Private Facebook Group

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. All right, all right, all right, welcome everybody tuning in out there on the Interwebs. How are you doing? I see Mike Barrios is watching the commercial shout out to Mike Barrios, how are you doing? How are you holding up during all of this? How is everyone holding up? Are you adjusting? Are you pivoting? Are you adapting appropriately as we need to be? I'd like to know what you're hearing out there in your local market because I'm talking to you agents and loan officers all over the country. And depending on where you are in the country, there's different levels of constraints put upon you as a real estate or mortgage professional in Maryland, for example, right, they've in Colorado. They've pretty much gone very, very strict on what real estate agents can and can't do. No virtual tours, right, I mean, shutting down the affiliate related services and so forth, making it very, very difficult to conduct a business as usual. So that presents a challenge for all of us and I'd like to know how are you pivoting and adapting and innovating to overcome in today's world. Put your comments in below, Janelle Davis, what's up, Janelle, by the way, congratulations to you. The audience really wants to give you a rousing round of applause for what you've been doing lately with your virtual classes and stuff live. I saw your comments the other day about your ability to kind of engage and make an impact with your real estate agents and pouring into them. Mike Barros, you're eating a lot. Eating a lot. Oh, don't tell me that's true, I know, right, we're all on the COVID diet, which is like the seafood diet, which is seafood and eat it, right? So I hope you're making time to work out too. So listen, I'm waiting to bring on my special guest here. It looks like he is going to be joining any moment now. So this is called buying time. Once again, live, I've had a crazy day. I've taught five virtual classes in the last two days. So we have him yesterday before noon, two of them today, before 10 a.m. Hashtag live Carlos Ramos, what is up, my man? Good to see you. You already won a book, right? Didn't you win a book last time doing this whole thing? I think that was you, but thanks for participating, man. The books will be coming out soon and just as a reminder for people, that's a good segue commercial. Listen, if you want to get on the pre-advanced list for the book, put this up to the screen right there, disrupt or die, how to survive and thrive the digital real estate shift. That was all set to go and go live, self-published on Amazon was supposed to be out in the streets in your hands already. But guess what? It's on hold. Why? Go with 19. Because things have changed in the world, right? And I need to pivot and innovate and adapt. And so there are things coming out of this whole coronavirus thing that are going to change some of the elements of this book, create and force some edits that are coming out of this. So yes, Carlos, thank you for responding. You were the person who got the free additional book. That's awesome for you. But for those who don't have the book, you can go to getdisruptordie.com and get on the pre-advanced list for the book. Just a second, I'm going to bring our special guest in. We're going to do a countdown, Greg. Get ready to go live. You can see it. Three, two, one. There he is. I love it. I love it. How are you doing, man? Good. Good. How are you doing? You know, we're hanging in there. Is that the hand gel I see going over there? A little hand sanitizer going? Yeah. I know. I got my survival kit in my car just in case. So, you know, if I go ahead out of here, so I clean my glasses off a little bit here. So go ahead. Sorry about that. I was literally recently returned from the grocery store and, yeah, I was doubling down on the hand sanitizer, for sure. You know, it's funny. It struck me very out there. I don't know if you've been out lately. Yeah. I come to the office every day, but it's just me and two other guys here. We just go home right after. So just back and forth. That's all we've been doing. It struck me as I was the odd person out as I was recently at the grocery store in the last hour. And I'm walking around and I'm noticing I'm one of the few people who don't have a mask on. Yeah. Right? I'm like, wait a minute. You like that too? Yeah. I'm guilty too. So, but I came home last night. Sorry to interrupt you. But I came home. And my wife was, she handed me six masks to wear if we ever go out and she homemade them. So, you know, they got flowers on them and stuff. So I'm like, babe, no, I'll probably, you know, I'll probably get sick before I wear this. So, you know, I'm going to have to get something else, I guess. I know. I'm putting a line in the sand as well. I'm like, no. That's it. I'm better stronger than that. I'm better on stuff. Okay. So cool. Let's jump into this. I appreciate you making time. I know it's been crazy busy. Why don't for the listeners, whether it's live or on the replay, just do a quick intro, quick background into how long you've been in the biz and then average production units volume for you individually? Sure. So basically, you've been in a business about 18 years and you know, started, I guess, around 2001, 2002, around that time. You know, basically went to the crash. So like everybody who's been in a business a long time and now we're dealing with this and production wise, our team did about 400 plus, I did about 208 last year. So congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. And I know you are licensed in how many states? It's 12 states. 12 states. Is there one state that's dominant for you or what that look like? Yeah. It's pretty much. There's two states. There's Florida and Tennessee. So I'm, I actually live in Tennessee full time and I come down to Florida in my office where I'm at now. So it's basically, you know, it's mainly those two states. Okay. All right. So listen, last time you and I talked, which is actually quite a while ago, but I did take notes on that. So there you go. I'm going to be referencing my notes. A couple of things jumped out about, you know, can you and not only your volume and units, first of all, but secondly, the first thing that stood out for me was it's, if I'm correct, you were leveraging Facebook, private Facebook groups of agents in a pretty big way. Yes. Right? Yeah. I think, you know, I kind of discovered that about three years ago was, I mean, Facebook groups has been there all the time, but we really saw the power into it when we can add people into it, provide value on a daily basis, try to, you know, help them out with, with stuff that they can use and increase their business. And then, you know, I throw some funny stuff in there to make me look human and some life stories and stuff like that. But especially now, what's going on with the virus and everything else, it's really helped us be in front of people and kind of let them know, hey, guidelines are changing and trying to set that expectation. You know, 10 years ago, there was none of that. It was all that word of mouth and phone call and phone call and phone call. And it's still that way to some extent, obviously, but it's really helped me stay in front of them, you know, pretty much 24 seven. So. Yeah. And as you think that's interesting, how many, how many, how long have you had Facebook groups kind of set out as part of your business? I would probably say about, what are you going to do? Almost about three and a half years, three and a half or years. So that's pretty forward thinking, man, because very few people have had those set up until I'd say the last year or so, they really caught on. So to speak, how have you found that serve you in the current environment? Fantastic. Because, you know, I'm trying to get the word out, you know, I get, you always try to, you know, just try to help people and by doing that, it's just constantly give more and more information. So, so the more you can do that, it really helps that helps you kind of be the figure that people are, you know, are drawn to, people go to, with questions. And I mean, my phone constantly gets texts with just questions. Hey, Greg, you know, what's the, what's this? What, I mean, from realtors all over the place, you know, and some realtors, I've never even done business with or even chatter with. So it's really helped me establish, be the person, the actually go to person on, on, on a lot of stuff. So, um, so how active are you in the groups or how do you structure content and all that kind of stuff? I'll probably post something twice a day there now. Sometimes I do a little bit more, obviously it's been a little bit more now at all the news. But, you know, content is, you know, right now, what's going on, you know, and so forth. And, you know, like today, I posted something about stocks, you know, and I know very little about stocks, I just want to put that out there. But, you know, we just started chatting about that and, you know, some good buys and so forth. Yesterday, you know, it was about the market report and what's going on. So, this time frame, as we're in, hopefully it's going to be over sooner than later, it's all been about that. It's all been about, hey, how can we help you and, you know, kind of navigate through this new world that we've been in for about three, three weeks, you know, and it's been amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And, okay, so the groups is one conversation we'll come back to in a second, but how have you personally made adjustments to your communication process and all that? Well, great question. We basically, and I'm pretty fortunate this way, too, because quite a few years ago, I started doing screen shares, you know, sitting down with clients, even locally, because people can't get out of work or they get out of work weight and stuff. So, on the lunch break, or if they have like, you know, 20 minutes, you know, I'll send them a link, we'll share our screen and go through mortgage options. So, you know, we've really been kind of ahead of that already before this hit. So, and a lot of people prefer that now, because people are so busy, they're doing things, kids are going to soccer practice and just running around and now, lately, I've been even just sending like a video to them, you know, finding a video, breaking down all the costs, breaking down all the mortgage options, the short-term long-term effects of everything. And then I said, you know, I tell them, I say listen, watch your video, then call me back and then let's go over it. Now, that sees me working really well, especially during this time. So, are you using Zoom for those meetings? Yeah, Zoom, yeah, I use Zoom. I also use, like, Ring Central, I've been using that for a while since we got it on a phone system. It's pretty easy. Right. Yeah, it's very interesting. I've been doing a lot of virtual classes with real estate agents and, you know, bringing up this whole virtual tour thing and what's your take on? What do you think the impact of this situation is going to have on one consumer expectations? Let's just start with there. What do you think the expectations are going to come out in terms of using tech coming out of this? Yeah, I think that, you know, I think we were going that way already, you know, people, I mean, especially the younger generation, you know, they don't want to talk to everybody. They just want, hey, just shoot me a text and, you know, send me the information, then I'll call you and vice versa. Right. So, I think there's a lot of stuff that was done before that first conversation. And it's the same thing with people looking at homes, you know, people are going online, they're doing all the research at Denny call realtor, you know, 20 years ago, they walk into real estate office, raise their hands, say I'm looking by a house and that's when it started. Right. You know, I think just just kind of expedited a lot of things. I think a lot of people who didn't want to change had to change. And so, you know, for good and for bad, you know, but I always tell people too that, you know, social media isn't to replace the one on one. That's, that's never going to be, but it gets you to the one on one, you know. So I really think that it's really spent things up. I mean, as good as before, before this whole thing hit, were you meeting clients or agents face to face? Yes. I was and, but a lot of it was done, you know, through screen share too. I mean, even, you know, with realtor, so I would pop on a screen share show them my kind of what we're doing. I show them behind the scenes. So, you know, they feel comfortable with the clients. I'll also show them our regeneration systems and stuff like that for them so they can see how that worked and how we can generate business for them. So it's, you know, it's definitely something where it's really helped us before all this happened. Yeah. Justin, for those that are watching right now, let's just take a pause for a second. I want to say hello to everybody, Mike and Carlos and Janelle. If you've got questions for Greg about how he's pivoted, I mean, this is the guy who's been in the business 18 years, 200 plus units himself personally, plus you manage, how big is your team? We have about nine people on our team right now. Right. So collectively, I think you said roughly 400 units in 2019. Yeah. You have 400 units that's basically done between three loan officers, including myself. Right. We have a couple own partners. We have a processers and so forth. That's huge. So how are they all adjusting to the current status? Well, you know, it's, it's funny because, you know, I was telling my wife about this about a month ago, we're just chatting. You know, you come to an age at one point where you always think you're the youngest guy in the room. And now, not even now, right? Yeah. We get to the point now. Like, well, we'll leave somebody's house, you know, before this happened, the virus happened. And then we'll be hanging out and she asked me, so, you know, how old do you think that person is? I'd be like, oh, they got to be, I don't know, they got to be X-55, like, no, great. They're like, 10 years younger than you, you know? So to answer your question, going through that first recession period, you know, that has given an experience, you know, I'm not, you know, when it hit before, it was different. It was all mortgage and real estate driven. But now having that experience and, and, and walking people through and say, hey, it's going to be okay. This has happened, you know, quicker than I did before, but I think we've come out of it quicker. So as well. You are pretty much subscribing to, I think, the same data and belief that a lot of us are that are informed is that the underpinnings of the housing market were solid before this and they're going to be solid coming out of this. Yes. I truly believe that the one concern that I do have, as you know, you know, guidelines, you got credit scores going this, you got DTIs going down like this. So you know, being in a business that, you know, it changes quick, right? I mean, to happen real quick. But to, to go the other way, it takes a longer time. So that's my main concern is that you're going to leave a lot of people out who are qualified. I mean, I had one guy who was telling somebody a ton of real estate agent a couple days ago. His scores were, you know, 625, but his DTI was 19 and this, you know, everything was perfect. But now I have to work on a score and get it up, you know. So. So that's my only concern. If they can unravel that and just go back to what it was, but I know, I know that takes time. How concerned are you about like the servicing issue and all that? Very, very concerned about it, you know, it seems like they don't have a plan for it. So as we all, we're all dealing with it, right? You know, I mean, you're, you're looking at pricing and you're looking at this and, you know, and, and there's so much uncertainty right now and, you know, we got more numbers coming out. I guess this week or next week, it's going to get, it's going to get uglier as far as those numbers. The Q2 is going to stop because I'm telling people. Yeah, it's going to be brutal. It's going to be brutal. But, you know, you just have to fight through it, get your systems down tight, do the things that you couldn't get to before if you have time, check it when people educate yourself. So it's a good time. They really kind of refocus and you're ready. So how would you score yourself in terms of presence on social media? I would say pretty high because, you know, before, I would say before, four or five years ago, not really. I just throw stuff out there and this and that. We kind of a method to do it, you know, there's a way to build that audience, whether it's with funny stuff or with stuff that's engaging. And then you drop some business every now and then. So don't do all business and business and business and it's going to turn people off. So, you know, we kind of learn the method to it and, you know, it changes all the time too, obviously. But, you know, I'm talking about organic stuff. I'm not talking about paying for stuff. I'm talking about stuff that we can just keep on gathering friends, you know, you know, a big thing that I learned too is that you're going to have to have at least 1500 friends at one point. And then that, the next goal is to get up to 4,000 friends, but it's important to do certain things, you know, every day and have a pattern to it. Is there a primary platform you tend to focus on? Just Facebook. You know, I've been doing Instagram. I mean, I do a little bit Instagram. I do a little bit LinkedIn. I just do it because, you know, it's there. But I just don't have time. Yeah, I just don't have, I don't have the time to do it as much as I do with Facebook. So. What are you hearing from your agents? And I'm talking agents all over the country. I'm just curious, what are the emotions that are you dealing with? Are you like fear and this and that or where they at? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of all over the board. You know, you have those rotors who haven't been through before and they're kind of like intonial. And then you have some agents who really are stressed out and, you know, lost four or five deals within the last couple of weeks and that were good deals. And all of a sudden it's gone and they don't know, you know, I don't know what's going on. So I tell people all the time I said, just first some of my mortgage career that I'm a psychologist. I'm part medical. I'm part. I'm part mortgage guy and parts stock guy and part, you know, you know, talking about the markets. And it seems like everything just came out once, but, but they're, I mean, I think they're starting to learn and this is where the good part of social media is too because if you have the constant information, some of it could be wrong or get that, but where they could be engaged with you, I think is huge, you know, because then that way before, you know, 10, 20 years ago, you don't have that, you know, so. Okay. And you're back to your Facebook group for a second. Now, do you have different groups based on where you're in the states you're in? No. It's just one group. Yeah, it's just one group and it's basically, you know, you know, I was thinking about doing that, but I was like, you know, that's going to wait too much time. So, yeah. Let's throw it together. And now we have ages connecting with each other from different states now. You know, if they got a referral, hey, I got somebody here, they'll post it in the group and then 10 people raise their hands, hey, I can help them in Texas and some guy in Tennessee's. So, you know, that's kind of the vision I had too is everybody helping each other in it. And so in terms of the content, are you the only one posting content in there? Is it active? Are there agents posting as well? Yeah. Exactly. Agents are starting to do it a lot more now. I do it. You know, I'm the main person to do it, but there's other people constantly posting there too as well. It's good. And that's what I want. I want some interaction. And I want people to help each other, even if they're using different mortars, guys, not. Okay. You know, you can't get every deal. But at the same time, it's helping each other and that's kind of what the goal of the group was. But it's your group. You own it. What's the name of it? It's agent acceleration. Mm-hmm. And there's quite a lot of members. Right? How many is that? We got about two. I just checked it. Just over 1200 now. 1200. Are most of them agents? Oh, yeah. Pretty much all of them are agents. There are some people who are one officers that are friends of mine and so forth. Pretty much 99% are agents. Would you say that that helps influence your ability to get business from those people? That's tremendously. Absolutely. I mean, I just think, you know, people want to get to know you before they actually reach out to you. You know, and that's, that's, it's really helped me do that. I mean, a lot of times people will send me private Facebook messages and say, hey, listen, I've been watching you. And this and that. I got a deal over here. I would love to send to you. Can you take them? Absolutely. That's all from that. And that's all from being on Facebook in general. So how do you get agents into the group? You know, just invite them. You know, so once we're friends, we invite them and so forth. You know, there was, there was a time we could just add them into it. But for some reason, Facebook changed that now. So, so then we have to invite them. So I guess the people got angry with that. But now, you know, we just invite them if they come. Great. If they don't, they don't. But there's a lot of people who constantly try to get in. Yeah. Maybe a real city agent, you know, they have to be somebody who's, who's actively in the business. I don't, you know, we want people engaged who are active. We're going through, we're going through. And so we can help each other. Yeah. I'd be curious to know for the people that are watching right now. And welcome, by the way, Dave Walsh, mid Christie. Who else has a Facebook group, a private Facebook group? I know I've been preaching it for a while. I've got a couple of myself. I don't have quite the level you do with 1200. But I haven't been at it. It's three plus years like you have either. So what type of content you put in there? Are you doing any videos? Are you doing anything like checklist, like stuff they can use in their own business? Exactly. It's kind of all over the board. You know, yes. So I'll do a video about the market. What's going on now? I'll do a video about a situation that happened with the loan. Hey, watch out for this guys. You know, this can pop up, especially now, right? And then also put stuff in there for them. So they can print off. They can take for them for marketing. You know, top 10 things that I try to get a listing or something like that. So it's constantly, I'm constantly just trying to mix it up, change it up. It's kind of fun too. I kind of enjoy that. So it's been fun to constantly just provide information for them to help them out. It's like you're the digital mayor of your own online community. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. I remember the first time when it's social meeting when I got exposed. I was like, oh my goodness. You know, and I did it all wrong. You know, I did it. Like I said, I did it instead of meeting 101 or trying to get to that point and everything else. But a man, I was blown away the first time I saw it. So yeah, for sure. Well, it can be a really powerful tool. All right. Let me ask you a couple of other questions from our notes from a while back when we talked is. Some things I've just got written down. You'll have to probably unpack this a little bit. But I'm seeing something about 20 times gifting chocolate. Yeah. The moving day about that. So kind of we set up a system. You know, I think it was probably a couple of years ago. We did it kind of, but it wasn't like a system. So we were truly believe I can a gift and program. So I'll start from scratch. Somebody comes in. We pre-approved them. We hand them a packet. They come in the office. We hand them like a little bag that they can take with them. So that's number one. What's the little back chocolates or what is it? No, the bag could be like a water bottle. It could be some coosies. It could be some other. Some pens, pens, whatever. Yeah. It's branded stuff. And it's got, you know, it comes like in a little cooler back so they could throw like a little six back in there. Cool. Yeah. And so we hand it. We always want to give them something. Now they don't come in the office of the pre-approved point. They'll come in for the mortgage presentation. Or if they don't come back as it's a screen share, we'll mail that out to them. Okay. So we have a pre-approved packet that we send out. That goes by mail. And then when they come in the office, a gift bag. So it's two things we hand to them. Once we get them into underwriting. And it comes out underwriting approval. I mail them boxed chocolates. Okay. So we get them boxed chocolates, branded to us. Congratulations on all of them. Now, we stopped there for a second. Because we were talking about what do we do and how do we make this more fine tune and everything else. And my one partner says, you know, why do you like little boxed chocolates? I'm like, I don't know. You know, okay, chocolates, I guess. I like chocolates, but the response has been unbelievable. Absolutely. There's been people blown away by it. They're taking pictures, putting on Facebook. Oh, yeah. This is awesome. Yeah. Over a boxed chocolate. It's about boxed chocolates. So this is a small thing. The boxed chocolates is a six or eight piece, you know. It's not huge. Yeah. It's not huge. But, you know, it's something that we want to give to them. Because we know, you know, at that point, they're going to be a little stressed out. They got conditions. And we set expectations on every way through. But they still can be a little stressed. So we figured, hey, what's what takes the edge off and so forth. So that's that part. And then so we go to closing. We order pizza for everybody on, on their actual like moving day. So they're going to be moving. We order pizza for everybody drinks and everything else for, for moving. And then about a week and a half later, we send a cutting board out to them. That's branded to them and everything else. But five touches or so throughout the whole process. I learned that we're in bits and pieces of that from people in the business years ago. And we finally just put a system in place. And that's really help us retain clients. So. And then post closed. Do you have any kind of, you know, nurture or thing over time? Yeah. Just, I mean, basically, we have follow calls every, you know, I think it's like every two months or so. It comes up on my database. We follow up with them. We do birthday phone calls for everybody. And even if they didn't close with us or not, if they're in our system, we do a birthday call. We do. And then we separate our top clients, let's say a top 150, 200 clients. We send them a box of chocolates. It's a different type of box of chocolates for their birthday. So, you know, so we always try, you know, always try doing it. We're all hunters, right? When it comes to, you know, in this business, in the big thing I had the word was, Hey, you got to slow down. You got to really get the system down because that's going to pay dividends huge down the line and ask. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So this falls under the umbrella of what I think you call your white glove service. Yeah. White glove service. So a part of it used to be a lot of part of that too is what we do for our clients is that we, you know, we offer to get some insurance quotes. You don't have to use them. We just provide them. Here we go. So we take that off their hands if they want. Most people do want us to do that. Yeah. We offer to get quotes for moving if they need that. So we call them moving companies, get a whole list for them, hand it to them. If they need help with utilities, we call on that. They're going to change over. Sometimes it's privacy issues. So we can reset up the appointment for them. Right. Change in locks. We got a locksmith that we can call and help change locks. So we really want to take as much as we can off the plate of them and really, you know, really separate ourselves from everybody else. Yeah. I'm thinking the word concierge comes to mind. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, you see the hotels all the time. You see they really take care of the clients or you go to a good restaurant. You know, you go into a good restaurant because of how they take care of their clients. And it's never really been in a mortgage business. It's always been kind of help to skelter. You know, you see these certain teams. They're one percenters. And that's that's kind of what we wanted to, you know, you try to be is that type of, you know, service for them. So. Well, it's funny because I'm making a you wrote you know what I have from our last conversation was you said mortgages are boring. You know, and I agree. Right. They are ready. They are right. I know it's payments. It's dead. It's it's like, you know, people are excited. You're like, yeah, let's go freaking go in massive debt. Yeah. I know. Let's just talk about mortgage payments. That's real exciting. People want to talk about the house and they want to, you know, what they're going to do with their kids and everything else, you know. So we try, you know, this is a good way. And that's that's a part of it that I really enjoy setting up systems like that executing. Well, I think you look, you're smart. You get this. You've been around long enough. There's still the people who are the rate and fee quote jockies and they're forever going to be stuck in that box. You know, so how can I think you know, you're all about and I think more and more people are finally coming smart to it's like creating experience. Yeah. You know, so that's why you're doing all the fine white glove stuff. Well, that's the thing too. I mean, and this is our side of business, right? And this is always frustrated me is that we don't look ourselves as a business. We look at ourselves as just reaction, right? Right. We call somebody does this, you know, rates of change. Oh, my gosh. And they go, and it's just instead of establishing a system, you know, I get the girls all the time asking me. So, you know, what's something happens? Hey, so what should I say? We're going to do what we do every single day and just execute every single day and just do that over time. We might tweak something here and there. But if we do what we do, nobody else is doing a lot of that. So it's going to be okay. Did you have that mindset kind of early on or did you make a shift at some point? Did they shift that after the crash before? Yeah. I think everybody did, right? Yeah. So it was like, you know, when I first got into business, everything was about rate. Yeah, I didn't know any better. But I knew I could talk to people and I could help people and try helping them the best way I could. And so forth. But when that crash hit, you know, everybody took a beating on that and then coming back, I took about nine months off too. I just went through it. Then in 2011, I took about nine months off and I was just so frustrated, right? You go out and you talk to somebody and you come back and office and things will be changed from the guidelines. And it was just very, very frustrated. Right. So I think it was, might have been 2010 or so. I took about nine months off and did some other stuff. But I knew this was my call, but I had to find a different way to do it because I was not going to go back to do it. Hey, here's the lowest rate. I just wasn't going to work, you know? Right. So I was sort of watching and studying people and became, you know, I started getting coaching and wanting to, it's just kind of building on top of each other. Sure. In the 10 years later, it just seems like everything seems to be falling at the place. So too many people look at this as a sales job. Yeah. You know, like, hey, man, I'm on the, I'm selling cars. I'm selling whatever insurance or whatever. And it's like, no, the really smart people who have longevity. And I saw this like early on when I got into back 2003. Yeah. The guys and gals who treat it like a practice, like a doctor and attorney. Those are the guys and gals who survive and thrive. Absolutely. Yeah. No, you're exactly right. And there, you know, sometimes we, you know, I just had a conversation with a good realtor friend of mine. He's a real good friend of ours. And, but he still doesn't get that, hey, listen, this is a business man. You know, if you walk into a restaurant, you know, like you're not going directly to the cook. You're not going directly to the manager a lot of times. You know, other people have to take certain pieces of it. And, and, and really do a great job. And your job is number one is to bring in the business and make sure that the, that the trains are running on time, you know, and make sure everybody's doing their job, you know. And so when you, when you deal with sometimes with some real estate partners, or even talking to mortgage people, a lot of times they just don't get that. They're just thinking, hey, they're one man band is how it's always going to be. And it's not easy putting the team together. It's a man of belief. I could tell you a story upon story. Yes. It's a show. It's got scars. I've done everything differently. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I'm much better than now that I was say five years ago, seven years ago. So. All right. Let's say you are, you've got somebody who hasn't been two through the 2008 crash situation. And I know this isn't the same, but the point is, well, how would you advise somebody to prepare like now, right? And over the next 90 days, six months, what do people need to do? I would say number one, and this is something I was horrible with at the beginning, is fine tune and get a CRM and have a system down so you can stay in front of your database because that's going to be a goal when things go up and down. Your database, if, you know, your people are going to know that you're still there and you're in front of them and you're providing information, and all of a sudden they have a family friend who needs to buy something and all of a sudden. So you need to, you really need to establish that. Right. And we're all, salespeople, we're all bad at that, right? We have to really focus and do it and have it really systematized. So that'd be the number one thing. If you have a little bit extra time and you haven't been through before, don't freak out. You know, this is a timely, you can really lay a solid foundation right now. And so when this thing starts ticking back up again, and you know, we're still busy, but I'm just saying, you know, it was busier three, four weeks ago. Now we're just dealing with a lot of stuff happening, right? But I would say lay that foundation. You know, get the CRM, then have a system of place. Somebody calls in who does what when? You know, what's the next step? What's the next step? What's the next step? And get that down so nobody gets lost in the shuffle. Yeah. And I know you're a big believer in investing in your education. You and I believe you got connected through Barry Habib and MBS Highway. So you're a big advocate of that, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's where I get a lot of my knowledge from. And you know, listen to Barry. I've been listening to him for years. It's, you know, he makes things in such a layman's terms. I mean, and I told him this, I guess a few months ago, I said, man, you know, I talk my 17-year-old daughter. And I was like, you know, I'm not sending her college. I'm sending it to you. I'm like, three or four months. And she's got no more than people getting a four-year degree. And that's, you know, and I was pretty honest in that, because I mean, I learned a ton from him. So yeah, you got to constantly educate yourself. You got to understand the market. And there's a lot of things I still don't understand fully. But I understand a lot more than I now that I did 10 years ago. You got to understand what you're talking about. You're going to understand what this happens. How does it affect this? You know, how does it affect this? You know, and that's going to separate you. And, you know, I say sales, but it's more educating when you're talking to people. It's not, hey, sales trying to make a deal see you later. But, you know, it's more educating and being that resource that people come to you and say, hey, Greg, what do you think? You know, I get a lot of new agents who haven't been in a business you know, less than a year or two years. And they're leaning on people like us. You know, and hey, tell me what, you know, what should I do? Should I do this? Should I spend this in marketing? And so you want to be that person. But you got to be, you know, got to know what you're talking about. So. All right, so let me, let me play devil's advocate for a second. Because I agree with you on the education piece. I might, we may close out on that. But what do you say to, you know, realtors get a bad rap. You know what I mean? I mean, a lot of people like to friggin make realtors to scapegoat and, you know, bitch about them. What do you say? Um, I say they're human beings like us, you know, we make mistakes on the mortgage side, right? I mean, we do, I've just had one the other day. The guy says, now you should be fine in a set and the guy knew the credit scores have gone up. You know, what is investor? And then all of a sudden he turns around and says he can't. I mean, so things are going to happen with that. I would say, you know, from a mortgage side, don't be upset with realtors if they don't get all of it. But there's a lot of things that we don't get from them. You know, they get, they get marketed to more than anybody else in the country, you know, from insurance agents, from us, from, you know, go down the list. You know, you got, you got a, you know, a home inspector. So I mean, you know, those people constantly coming at them. And so, you know, until you've been through that, you know, I would say just have a little bit more compassion and understanding with it. And it gets fluctuating on both sides. You know, when somebody doesn't understand something in this step, but you got to slow it down and go through with them. So, yeah, and, you know, look, it comes back to you, right? You get to pick and choose who you want to work with. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and that's it. I'm sorry, go ahead. What percentage of your businesses from agents? Oh, man, I would say probably about 80% of my business. Engines. All right. And do you have any desires to try and go more quilt consumer direct? Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty expensive because now you're going a lot. I think consumer direct could be, it's kind of, to me, it's kind of bored a little bit now, right? Because you got social media. Right. So, I get people coming at me, you know, we had somebody that closed about two weeks ago. Once again, see me on Facebook for two years and they finally reached out. Hey, I'm having trouble with my lender. Can you help me out? And we did. And we took him to the closings, you know, at that point. So, is that consumer direct compared to the old way of, hey, which is bombarding with postcards, let's spend all this money. Let's do all this stuff. And hopefully you get a one percent return or half percent return. You know, to me, I think social media is kind of, you know, it's kind of bored the lines a little bit, you know, because you could do it off of free and help people. And then it just naturally comes to you at that point. Yeah. 100%. I agree. I see a lot of people touting that as like the easy button. Back to the point about people like to bag out realtors for all the alleged issues. A lot of them are made up, a lot of them are your own choice. Yeah. But yeah, here's the thing. Here's what I know after four years of interviewing people like you. Not one of them has gone all in on, quote, consumer direct ads, spend whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's pretty, it's pretty expensive to do that. You know, kind of what we've done. And once again, it's just something that we're trying to give back to agents is creating leads for agents and then helping them send on those leads to those agents. And that's really helped us, you know, kind of turn the tide a little bit. Because, you know, I hate being the guy who was asking for business and not giving anything in return. Yeah, we're, you know, we're friends and we can go grab lunch together and do all that stuff. But, you know, it's a hand them back business that can help them. That's pretty unique. It's starting to be more and more prevalent now. But when I, when we first started doing it, it was, it was kind of different, you know. Do you feel any pressure from your agents? Are they pressuring you for that? Some do, you know, but, you know, it's what, here's the thing. It's, it's with us, too. It's the follow up, right? Sometimes we'll talk to somebody, okay, here's, you know, here's Bob Smith. He's a realtor. He's going to be giving you a call and then Bob doesn't call, you know, and then Bob doesn't call. So, you know, it really depends on once again, you have to pick and choose, you know, who, who's really going to take advantage of this? Who's, who's this going to really help? Right. So just like anything else, like you said earlier, you got to pick the people you work with and try helping. You know, I think, too, you got to like decide what kind of business you want to have. Yeah. Right? Because, you know, one, one, you know, one model of like consumer direct paid ads, all that, that's a different model that needs different infrastructure than a referral based business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and, and the biggest bang for your buck is, is to have, have that referral business come in and, and so forth. So, but the same time, think of ways how you can help these people, too. Don't just take, take, take. Well, and that goes back to like your idea with the Facebook groups. You've got what 1200 or whatever agents in this group, you know, adding value in it. It's kind of like you, you've built a referral machine there inside your Facebook group. It really is. It's just, you know, it's not something I'm, you know, I'm not raising my hand. Hey, something, I don't know any of that. You're serving. Yeah, I'm serving some, I'm having fun with it. They're having fun with it. They're going through a tough time. I'm going, you know, I'm trying to help them vice versa. Right. I'm just kind of a group where people constantly dip in for a little bit. Take a look at it, you know, interact a little bit and then go about their daily lives. But it's, it's something that we can constantly dip into. So. Yeah, I want to close out. I guess on this note, I know you're busy. So thank you for your time. But we touched on the education piece. And again, back to, I'm, I'm definitely encouraging people to follow Barry in his videos. You know, it's funny. It's the number of allows I've talked to in the last three weeks. We're like, yeah, I used to have MBS highway, but I'd never really used it. But man, they're back on that. Yeah. I know. It's funny. It's funny. You wait for that morning email, right? Like, oh, what's going on? What's happening? You know, it's like, yeah, it's, it's something education is huge. You got to, you got to constantly educate yourself, especially in this business. Well, especially like more than ever now, right? I mean, let's, let's, here's, here's my pitch. We can close out on this, I guess. But what I'm, I'm both agents and lenders. I've been saying, you've had it pretty easy for the last six, eight years. Right. Rates have been low. Demands have been high. I mean, rising tides have been lifting all boats. But ban COVID-19 hit and it's like, yeah, you better have your game on. That's right. That's right. You know, in, in this business or any small business, I guess, you're constantly learning something. You have to constantly get better and better at it. So that's the one thing I would say, you know, people are going through this the first time, learn as much as you can, implement as much as you can. If it's a little bit, if it slows down or dipsphere right now, it's a good time to really start re-engaging with your agents. Get your, get your CRM going. Keep on learning as much as you can because there's going to be a lot of people getting out of it, you know, going through this. So this is, you know, always looked at silver lining. This could help you if you do the right things now. So, you know, that, that is the last great point. Let's close out on that because that's an excellent point. I've also heard from some agents that their lender has gone dark. Yeah, because they don't know what to do. Yeah, they don't know what to say. They don't know what to do. They don't know the advice to give. They never been through this before. So, like I said, MBS is a great tool and education source. I highly recommend anybody in the mortgage business to jump on that. For sure. The talking points, the scripts, the understanding, the knowledge alone. You got, you got to get on that. And I'd say the last word on that is back to the point about other, other lenders going dark on agents. This is your time to what I call invest in the dip. And so what I mean is invest in relationships in the dip. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because, you know, when this comes back, you know, this is going to be, you know, kind of a, you know, I guess I got a couple months of where it might be, you know, somewhat hesitation. Oh yeah. But I think once it starts kicking in again, because it was a pent up demand before this happened. You know, so it wasn't, you know, you know, it wasn't like it was dead or, you know, for a while then all of a sudden we're officially in a recession. It was something like, hey, we're good. We're expected by the end of the year to have a little correction. But this kind of drove over the cliff. And so this is a great opportunity. Like you said, invest in the relationships, invest in your systems. Get it down now because most people aren't going to be doing that. Yeah, for sure. All right, listen, I know you're busy. Hey, if anybody wants to connect with you, where's the best place for us to send them? Probably Facebook. I mean, just just my name, Greg Peckman. And if you pull that up, you just connect with me and just let me know how I can help. All right. Hey, Greg. I very much appreciate you being here. You know what? As a thank you. When this book finally goes live again, I'm going to send you a free copy of it. Awesome. We're going to talk about how to survive and thrive. The digital real estate shift makes a great gift for Asians too. I pause on publishing it because of this COVID-19 thing. Yeah, it makes it a paradise. Quite a big point. I'm like, I think there'll be some things to add to the book. Um, as a result of this. So about five more chapters, right? Exactly. Well, anyway, thank you. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. You bet. Everybody watching. We appreciate you tuning in next week, usually. Same time, same channel. But obviously we moved it out a day. tuning into mortgage marketing live, go out there, invest in the dip, invest in your relationship. Right, thanks for being here, man. See you on the next one. Thank you. Bye. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing, get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com. 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. 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