How to Identify Your Ideal Clients and Partners

Hey, what's up, this is your humble host, Jeff Zinford coming at you with another episode. This week, in just a moment, I'm going to be introducing our special guest, stay tuned. You don't want to miss that. But before I do, another update from the trenches. That's right. Another success story featuring one of our mortgage marketing pro members. This week, it's a shout out to Tiffany Saxden. What's up, Tiffany? Tiffany's actually only been a member for what? Maybe a couple of months. I can't remember roughly that. Tiffany got off to a great start and she just posted one of her latest success stories in our group. Here's what she had to say, just finished hosting a class. She has a learn with TIFF series. And what she's doing is she's creating a brand in a local market. She's attracting instead of chasing. She is leading with value. She is inducing reciprocation. She is becoming known as the preeminent lender in her area. How do I know? Well, I know because of her recent testimonials. She shared that from her most recent class, she received three loan applications within an hour of the class. And one of the agents connected Tiffany with their broker to teach the same class. She was teaching that day next month to their team of 20 agents. So I ask you, what is your process, right? It comes down to people, process and technology. You are the people. You partner with to help you reach agents you want to reach. What is your process and what is the technology you utilize? You can have success stories like Tiffany's and the others you've been hearing for the past months. I've been sharing these success stories, enable to get in front of agents at scale and generate essentially referrals on demand. What's your process? Who do you partner with? What's the technology you leverage to get agent engagement, conversations and referrals at scale? It's conversations that lead to contracts. If you're intrigued, if you want to learn more, if you want to see more of success stories like Tiffany's and others, you go to mortgagemarketing.pro, check it out, watch the video, and if it's for you, book a call to learn more, and we'll get acquainted. We'll see if we are fit for each other and if not, that's okay. Okay, this week, special guest, I'm bringing to you who somebody who I'll now call a friend. What's up, my brother Sam May. Sam May with all Western mortgage. Come to you from San Diego, the beaches of the beaches, the shores of Salana Beach, California, my old stomping grounds. Sam and I connected at a recent event and he and I just struck up a conversation. I was really intrigued and impressed with what he and his team are doing to build their volume, their business. You're going to hear all about it from Sam, but let's just put it this way. Him and his team this year are on track to close 100 million plus. Yeah, that's right. This year in 2023, you're going to hear how he does it. You're going to hear how he leverages events and classes. Whoa, whoa, what? Events and classes. Yeah, that's right. Something near and dear to my heart. As a matter of fact, he's even giving away one of his PowerPoint decks. There'll be links to it in the show notes where you can learn more. And I definitely encourage you to check the show notes links also to follow Sam on Instagram. It is at Lone Guy SD, the SD is for San Diego, of course, at Lone Guy SD, Sam May, who is doing some incredible things with partnering with agents, building his personal brand on social media, helping his loan officers to do the same and really setting a path, a trail ablaze down there in San Diego where he's at. So it's a great conversation. We're going to learn all about branding, identity targeting, your ideal avatar, and really how to build your personal brand in your local market so that people want to seek you out to work with you. So again, check the show notes for the resources that are included. And without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Sam, welcome to the show. Thanks Jeff. I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate you coming up to me at Neil Danger's for an event and saying, hey, man, we should do a podcast together because that's oftentimes how these get scheduled. So kudos to you. Hey, thanks, man. No, I believe that. I bumped into you. I've been a long time fan of mortgage marketing radio and I just kind of felt like it was for two days. I had to say hi. Yeah. And you're obviously doing some good things out there, which is what I wanted to talk about. So before we get into that for listeners who want to know who is Sam May, what does he do? All in the biz units volume. What do you want to share on that? Yeah. So I recently became a non producing branch manager at all Western mortgage and I started in the industry in 2002 and now run a team of, I think we're up to 11, 11 people on the team now. So we're a small team, but we're, we're small and mighty, you know, but yeah, I've been, I've been in the industry since 02. So you know, I've seen some, taken some, some lumps and seen some things, right? And I think that's kind of what we're, we're here to talk about is, you know, how we've been able to, to navigate the, the challenging waters that we've seen over a number of different cycles. Yeah. But yeah, in terms of production, last year we did about 70 million, about 100 units and at the time we only had, I think three loan officers, two, two loan officers, two loan officers. One that was kind of part time. And as of right now, I have six loan officers and so I would expect this year that our production to be somewhere in the 100 to 120 million, which we're not, you know, so we're not setting any, setting the world on fire, but I, I'm pretty proud of that. My team is a really good job. Yeah. And a challenging market and you're in San Diego area, right? That's right. That's right. The office is in Salonabeej, a little boutique town in, in North County, right on the, right on the sand. Yes. No, no, well. Okay, cool. Thank you for all that context and we're going to put links to your Instagram page, which is where people can follow you in the show notes. But if you want to go there or do it right now, your Instagram handle is at loan guy SD at loan guy SD, obviously for San Diego. Okay. So I think what, why I thought this conversation would be useful for the listeners is because of, you know, marketing, like you and I, we were at the Ford event. It's obviously talking about marketing and you shared some things with me that you're doing regarding marketing. So let me ask you the question. I usually try and ask everybody, which is, you know, for, for the team, for that 70 million hundred units or whatever it's going to be, what is the number one source of business for that? We are a hundred percent referral based. So we get all of our business from our referral partners, past clients too, but I'm going to admit and I would like to adopt more of what you, you and some of your other guests have shared on this show about converting past clients, but we haven't done a great job of that yet. Our focus has been 100% on new and existing referral partners. And those are predominantly real estate agents. Correct. Yes. Okay. And give me a, give me a sense of the breakdown of the people on your team, the all those experience level. Yeah. That's a good question. So we just recently added one that has about 23 years of experience. So she's been in the game for a long time. Crystal, she's, she actually goes by Crystal Pistol on IG. She's, she's the go getter. Most of my team though are actually relatively new to the industry, you know, two and three years in the game, you know, which is great because they, you know, aren't sort of salty like a lot of the people that have been in the game for a long time, right? Yeah. But they know enough that they can operate freely. So they're, they're, I don't want to say moldable because I don't think that's fair to them, but they're still eager and willing to learn. I think that's the right way to say that. Yeah. So what you're saying is they don't really have a ton of bad habits. They don't necessarily have some mindset issues that are getting in their way, you know, all that kind of stuff. Exactly. You can see those, which is actually pretty cool because, you know, the old, you can't teach dog new tricks kind of thing. Some people are so sitting their ways in their beliefs. You know, it's a lot to be said for somebody who's relatively new and open to like, you know, what's the old thing? It's not survival. That, that, that win or survive. It's those that are most adaptable to change. All right. I believe that wholeheartedly. And that's, that's everything for what we're doing right now to, to win in the current market. I mean, we, we have to adapt and adopt, um, cat. I mean, if you're not, I mean, you're dying, I mean, that's, that's the bottom line. Okay. So, uh, number one source of business is realtors. How do you, how does your team, what are the primary methods by which, uh, they get attention and engagement from real estate agents? You know, and, and this is a hot topic, right? Because, you know, Gary Vee has been preaching this for years, um, people like Neil Dingerah, who's my mentor and who actually I report to, uh, at all Western mortgage. What's up, Neil? Yeah. Yeah. That at the Neil, um, you know, I mean, that's, it's the give, give, give, right? We have to come from a place of service. And I think we all know that and we believe that, but the question is how, you know, and, and it's an old game to be asking realtors for coffee and, you know, taking them for drinks and all that kind of stuff. That's all nice. But if we really want to serve our partners, you know, how do we do that? We have to help them get new business and we have to treat their clients like gold, you know, um, and in order to do that, you know, what my team is doing currently, we hold, we actually developed over the last few years a full marketing program that we offer only to our, our top partners, um, you know, where we're, we're helping them to develop new skills, identify their target market and, and create content. I mean, video is a giant portion of our business, um, which is why I was so attracted to Neil and it up going to work for him, it's to learn how he's done what he's done, but it's helping them develop their brand, identify their target market and how they can best serve that market. And once we established that, then we move into the second phase, which is now we actually need to go out and attract and connect with those people. And then the third phase, once you've actually put out content and you're attracting, you're connecting with those people, now we actually have a foundation from which we can advertise from. And this is the biggest problem I've seen for agents and, and I'll tell you a story about how we ended up in this position. Um, but the biggest problem I see for agents is they do it in reverse, right? They're in loan officers too. We're not exempt. I've done it myself. I'm not there on stones here, um, but, you know, they start with the advertising, right? And they work their way backwards and they start trying to develop some marketing and then they see, well, how does all that fit into a brand? Well, I guess I better be that brand, you know, and then ultimately they find out who responded to those advertisements and that now is who I want to continue targeting. Right. And it's completely backwards that strategy. And I'll tell you how I found this, Jeff, and stop me if I'm boring you, but you're good. The, you know, when, when I, a couple of years ago, I was doing, I was helping my agent partners do business plans and, um, you know, incredibly daunting tasks, right? I don't think I'll ever do it again. But it's, it's helpful, right? It's helpful for me to understand their pain points and also is just trying to add value. And the one place that I kept getting stopped, because they all said, look, I want to, I want to do more marketing and want to throw events, you know, I want to do, uh, XYZ, right? And I kept getting stumped at that because I couldn't figure out who, who is it for? Who are you trying to attract? Mm-hmm. And we all have this tendency and this, this mindset of, of, I'm going to go after the entire market. You know, we're in San Diego County. Yeah. I, there's, there's everybody under the sun is here. There's like two, three million people there. Yeah. I think we're at three and, uh, it will be at five million within the next five to ten years. I mean, yeah. What you're saying is that their target market is everybody, which means it's nobody. Exactly. I mean, that's spot on right there, right there. And that's what I preach about all the time. Um, you know, so in niching down and that's really what we, we start this whole process starts with a workshop that I put on, um, we call it the avatar workshop or our foundations workshop. And it starts by helping them to identify who exactly that target market is, right? And then once we've identified them and I mean, very specifically, there's no age ranges. There's no none of that. I mean, we're talking like my avatar is, you know, a single mom of a six year old, she's a nurse at Sharp Medical Center. You know, she, she likes, um, uh, you know, she's, she's loud and sort of obnoxious, but she's, she's a very nice, warm, hard to person. She, you know what I mean? Like we're talking specific, very, very, very specific. Um, so, you know, once, once we, um, we're talking about, um, we're talking about, um, once, once we identify that person, we can really talk about what kind of problems that person faces, right? And, and we can't solve their problems until we know exactly what they are, you know, um, so, so we, we start with a list of at least 25 of these problems, right? And then we work our way through, um, what solutions we can offer that person. And not only what solutions can we provide, but why are we the best person to provide those solutions, right? And ultimately you come up with a unique value proposition from that. Yeah. And that's really the whole exercise. So now, by the time we're done with this workshop, you know, these agents have come in the door going, I sell real estate in San Diego, right? And I, my first response is no one cares. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, that's how I started. Look at, I tell them myself, like I, I opened the workshop with my name, Sam May and Emma Mortgage Blender. And I just let the room sit on that for a second. They're like, and, you know, and that's the point. Mm-hmm. What's next? I like that. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. That's a frame for how, how we, we so much hang our hat on our job, what our title, what we do, you know, or in the case of talking about, uh, loan officers approaching realtors, right? They tend to lead with product, you know? Yes. I've got these great products, right? I, I don't care. So do the three people behind you coming through the door, right? And more importantly, how do you apply those products to the clients I serve? Right. I mean, that's really what matters, but we're not there yet. You know, you can't lead with that because you haven't been introduced to anyone. Interesting. So this, um, avatar event, avatar workshop that you do with these real estate agents, what does that look like? Is it an hour, three hours? What is it? It's usually an hour and a half if, uh, we do a Q&A session after. And so oftentimes it'll spill into about two hours. Are you doing this in person? In person. In fact, you know, I've done it in front of as many as a hundred people, um, you know, yesterday, I prefer the micro events yesterday. We held a class in our office with 12 new agents that we've never worked with before, um, and yeah, it was great. Me because we can get more personal. We can really get into the nuts and bolts of how to execute on this. Okay. So I want to pause there for a second because I'm, um, I, these are questions that are important for the listener. Um, we're going to come back to the 12 versus many, right? Um, how do you get the, these are agents you haven't worked with before? How do you get them to show up? You know, it's gone to a point, Jeff, where, you know, a lot of them will come to us. Um, you know, we built a brand, um, coming from a place of service, right? But that's taken time. You know, when I first started doing these things, I mean, I, like I told you before, the first workshop I did was garbage, you know, so you might have two people or something. Yeah. If I was lucky, right? You know, um, but it's taken time because I didn't have really the, you know, I didn't really know how to execute it. I didn't, you know, really didn't know what I was doing. The content was kind of all over the place. And so you're having a rhythm to it and, you know, much like the, the stuff that you do and, and your presentations, I mean, having something that's done, I don't think people can understate how valuable that is, um, that's got proven success. So yeah, that's, that's taken me some time. But now I'm at a place where, you know, we, there is some attraction to this workshop. But it's also very easy to go to a real estate agent and just simply ask them, hey, who's your target market? Like, what's your unique value proposition? And if they can't answer that question, or they give you some generic, you know, um, soapbox kind of answer, you're like, you know, there's a class that we do. Of course, you know, a little workshop that you might be interested in, you know, and we've been able to get brokers with teams to come and attend, you know, I mean, it's a great way to just open doors. I think that's smart, uh, posing it as a question, and I'm thinking of that in the context of what we do with classes as well, because, um, I mean, that could literally be, that's such a wonderful opener because in your case, it's like, hey, who's your target market? Who's your avatar? Who's your ideal client? Whatever, seven out of 10, uh, uh, well, uh, you know, all of San Diego. I mean, that's, yeah, that's usually what I hear. I exturve all of San Diego. Yeah. And like for those listening and some of my members that are listening, like you could even ask the question, so a lot, one of the classes we do is Google business profile, right? And so it's like, hey, so, and by the way, I coach my, uh, members on, you should look them up on their Google business profile. And that's a point of conversation. It was like, if you were the agent, I'd be saying, hey, Sam, what's up? You know, small talk. Hey, Sam, you don't, you know, I always do research on ages before I meet them. And I wanted to get it kind of a consumer perspective. So I look at your digital footprint. One of the things I noticed was like, like, you do have a Google business profile. I'm just curious, like, where you rank that for importance? Hmm. Now what I didn't say was it sucks. You only have seven reviewed. You know what I mean? I didn't go specific. I just want to open up that conversation. Just like you did, which is then, oh, it's helpful to have a solution. Whether that's a checklist, a guide or an actual class to, to move them into a step to yes, you know, you must. I mean, otherwise it's, you know, just turns into a session about how bad things are. Well, it's like, you're not really solving a problem. Then you're just like identifying right? Yes, that's not nobody, nobody wants, uh, wants their dirty laundry air. Do you know what I mean? And then there's that awkward, where you're going to go. Well, so let me tell you about my products. Uh, anyway, right. So, so back to you in your advance, I think is a brilliant idea. The avatar workshop, um, you mentioned you've done it in front of the hundred. You prefer the small, smaller groups though. Tell me why. Yeah, you know, because this is a very intimate thing, right? And it's important to really the goal for me is I want the agent to leave the workshop with something with something of value that they can actually go out and use and put to work, right? I mean, that's the goal is to help them grow their business because we do that. They're, they're going to appreciate us even more. So I found that when I do it in a large group, uh, you know, they get about half the work done that really needs to be done in the workshop, you know, and they kind of think I'll come back to it or they just aren't, they're, they're more timid about raising their hand, asking questions or, you know, there's just less engagement. So when we do it in the small group setting, then I can call on specific people and we go around the table and say, Hey, you know, what, what are you coming up with your, you know, what's the demeanor of your avatar, right? We'll pause on certain aspects of the workshop and let them get involved and really work through any issues they're seeing. Um, so you have a, a handout, you give them and you're walking them through these various exercises, correct? Correct. So you know, the way we do this is, um, twofold. So when we have a presentation deck that kind of gives, we use as a guide and helps give us some visual aid, um, to drive home a few points that we're making. And then the, the second thing we do, and this is what they keep. And the reason I do this in Google Sheets is I have a copy. They have a copy, right? Because this leads into the second phase of how we want to support our partners. Um, you know, videos, everything in my book, right? I'm 100% sold on video. And so this is the segue to then go, all right, let's invite them in for a podcast shoot, something similar to what we're doing right now. Or let's do some talking head videos. You know, let's, let's do some more one to one communication videos because that's what your avatar needs, right? And we use it as, use videos as a conversion tool. Um, but we leverage that avatar worksheet to help them plan their content. Yeah, I mean, imagine Jeff, like most commonly, people don't know what they want to talk about when they go and start trying to produce video, right? But if you have a list of 25, 50 problems that your specific market is, struggling with, I mean, that's an endless, endless supply of content right there. You know, it's just providing solutions to each one of those, those problems. And I'll give you an example, right? When you're talking about, you know, people will say one of the barriers to entry for real estate right now is high interest rates, right? But that's one problem. But what is the underlying issue there? Well, it's my payments are high or that's reducing my buying power. So I can't get the house that I want, right? So, you know, that one problem can, can lead to 10 conversations or 10 videos on how to drive solutions for that problem. So it's really the backbone of how we proceed and what we do next. All right, Sam. So you're doing this avatar workshop. You're helping agents identify their, their ideal client, right? They're avatars, we said. And as you've said, you know, I've discussed is like, that's not an easy process per se. So how do you help agents identify who their avatar is? You know, there's, there's a few sort of tricks in the trade that really help them get from A to Z, right? And one of them is I have them imagine that that person is standing in front of them because it really puts a face and a tone. And you know, even imagine what this person is wearing, right? So now you can really imagine an individual. And what most people do is they either end up describing themselves, which is fine. You know, we like to, you know, we like to work with people that are like us, right? Or, you know, they'll, they'll oftentimes go pie in the sky where, well, my ideal client has got, you know, 50 million cash in the bank and they're going to write seven offers this week, you know, that's kind of the direction they take it. So my job is to kind of try to bring them back into let's focus on really who you're best at serving. So we started identifying, you know, all the different attributes of the person, their age, what they do for a living, you know, what their demeanor is. And I like to use the nurse example. And I think we talked about this briefly earlier where one of the avatars that I have is, you know, it's a single mom. She's 42 years old. She lives in Rancho Pinesquitos. She's, you know, raised into six year old. She, you know, coaches the soccer team. She's a team mom, you know, all these things, all these really minute details. So we can get granular and really understand the person that we're trying to help here. That allows us to really identify their problems, which is arguably one of the biggest steps of this whole process is if we can't identify their problems, we don't know how to help them. We don't know how to solve them. Secondly, this is like content gold. I mean, when you can identify your target markets, you know, problems and a lot of them. And this is a, you know, this isn't something I invented. This is something I took from Alex Hermosi's $100 million offers book, which I recommend for everybody. It's a great read and it's highly valuable. But, you know, once you identify those problems, now we can start to create the solutions for them. And once we create the solutions, now we have the makings of a unique value proposition. And that's really the goal is to get to that point. You know, who we serve, how we serve them, and why we're the best at doing that. Okay. So let's, let's do a brief example here. Let's take your avatar. You get very specific on the characteristics of that, right? Demographics, maybe income ranges, et cetera. So you're wanting to identify or bring problems or challenges, you know, psychographics, right, to the surface, um, share with our listeners, some of those problems then for your avatar. Yeah. So this particular person that I described is a renter and doesn't, hasn't saved enough money for down payment. And she's concerned about, um, you know, who she can trust. She's concerned about where the market is heading, right? And so as we develop a unique value proposition, as we try to solve those problems, you know, the, the UVP, and I'm probably going to butcher this because I don't have it in front of me. And this isn't truly one of my avatars, but it's one that we use as an example. So don't, don't hang me for this one. But she, she, you know, it's basically, look, I help renters, you know, in need of down payment assistance, navigate a fluid marketplace and become homeowners, you know, something to that effect, right? And so what we've done there is we've helped that person who's out there in the ether, recognize that, hey, this guy is talking to me. Like that sounds just, I'm a renter. I need down payment assistance, right? I mean, that's exactly what, you know, and I'm unsure about where the market's going. That's the feeling that we want them to be left with. You know, where else this is really valuable, Jeff, is when you are asking for referral business, right? A lot of people will say, I can't, you know, if you know anybody's in the market for a mortgage, you know, please keep me in mind, pass my information along, right? I mean, how many times have you said that or heard that or whatever, right? We all do it. But how about this? Yeah, because as soon as you say that, it's one in one ear out the other, you know, maybe you get lucky, you get a referral. But if you say, hey, if you know any single moms or if you know anybody that needs down payment assistance and is a renter in North County, San Diego, that's my specialty. I helped them navigate market conditions, right? Immediately the person that you're talking to, if they know anybody in their network, they're going to, that person's coming top of mine. Oh, yeah, Bob, Bob needs help with this, right? I mean, that's, that's how they're, that's how our minds work. We fill in those gaps. Yeah. So you have consciously chosen that avatar for you personally. Yeah, I mean, it's one that, that sort of strikes a chord with me. It's, it's actually, there's an individual, and this is one exercise we do too. It's like, look at the past clients you've served and find somebody really enjoyed working with, and so that you can try and identify that type of person again. And that is a person that we served. I helped a nurse who's a single mom, you know, go from renting to home ownership. And it was rewarding for me. And she was just beside herself excited, obviously. And so yeah, I mean, I'd like to repeat that, right? I think we got to identify some, some transactions we'd like to do again. Well, I'm looking at your Instagram page and we'll, once again, we'll put links in the show notes to it, but it is a lone guy SD. So you mentioned content and this, you know, influencing the content you post. Any examples that are coming to mind for you that speak to that avatar? Yeah, you know what's funny is, you know, being non producing, I don't really do a lot of consumer facing content. In fact, I do very little. My wife likes to joke. She says, the cobbler's son has no shoes, right? I do hundreds of videos a month, but very few for me. The one example I would actually point to is Amanda May Lee. It's at Amanda M E I L E E. She is probably the, I mean, she's just a powerful agent. Number one, young gal, she's, I want to say she's 26 years old and just absolutely crushing it, but she was one of the first ones we did this avatar workshop with. And she identified that she serves best dinks with dogs that's double income, no kids with dogs in the Asian community that are first time buyers, right? And if you look at her Instagram and you go through her feed and watch what she said and how she puts herself out there, I mean, that's all she's doing is attracting those people constantly and she's killing it. She gives 90% of her business from social media. And I mean, I would, if I had her permission, I would tell you all about her numbers. I mean, some of you guys out there could probably look it up. But girl is getting it done like she, she's a killer. Yeah, that's, that's, that's brilliant. Now, that's a very specific niche. And so, so she's playing into her strengths. She's playing into her preferences and what she likes. As I look at her feed here, she's definitely got lots of dog picks, which oh, by the way, a lot of people love dogs, right? And have dogs too. Oh, yes, she does happen to be Asian. So she's speaking rights to that specific community. She's in that, it's really smart. She's in that age bracket. She understands the issues, struggles, challenges of that demographic, which is why she can speak to it authentically. Yes. And they resonate with her. I mean, they feel like she is truly the one who's best suited to help them. I mean, it's a really great mix. I mean, she's, she's just absolutely crushed. And there's, there's probably a few other examples I could give. But I think she has done the best job of anyone that we've worked with. And it's a great example for people to look to. All right. So I'm going to try and put that link in the show notes as well. Just give me a second to write that down. So speaking of people you've worked with now, I know this one makes the listener curious. What do you mean worked with like, walk us through how you help agents implement stuff? Yeah, so that's great. And this, this has been and still is in development. Okay, so there's really two sides of the coin here. One is we have to help the agent come up with a strategy, develop new tactics and and new content to fill the bucket. And then on the other side, we have to help the client. We have to over deliver for them. So we have some methodologies there, all of which or most of which are surrounded by video and technology. Right. So on the agent side, there's a three step process for them. It starts with the foundation. Okay, the foundation is the avatar. It's developing the avatar and their UVP. And then it's also making sure that they're online presence, aligns with that avatar and aligns with their unique value proposition. We also want them to have a cohesive look and appearance online. Nobody's ever going to say, you know, his head shots were all over the place. He just kind of looked like a mess online. So I'm not going to work with them. They're not going to say that. But what they will say is, you know, I saw that guy Jeff online and I just there's something about him. I really, he seems really put together. I'm going to work with him. Right. So that's the point of getting and cleaning up that online presence. Now we have the foundation. That's what we call it, foundations, to move into content production. Now we know who we're talking to, what we're going to solve for them. And we start going into video production. Now here's where it gets interesting, Jeff, is a lot of the videos that we do aren't for social media, right? They're one-to-one communications. They're conversion tools for the agents to use from within the funnel. Right. We also do it at the top of the funnel. So yeah, there's some social media play out there. There are a number of ways that you can leverage this. But now, so now imagine you've got your foundation, you know, who you're serving. You've got your online presence style. Now you've got depth of content. You can actually be proud and have some resources for people to see when they find you online, right? Now we, and this is the third phase. Now we can throw some gas on the fire. So after three, four months, now we can actually start talking about advertising to that same group of people. Because guess what? We can really niche down, right? So we can get very specific about who it is that we're targeting, which means that acquisition cost is going to drop. Or if it's higher, you're going to have a higher conversion rate which will reduce the acquisition cost, right? So now we can get into advertising and you have depth. You have a personal brand that's been developed. You have a specific audience with a valid offer that resonates with that community. So you can be much more effective and efficient with your ad dollars. Well, that's a lot in there, man. A little bit in there. Okay, so I guess it's a lot because I know people, so here's one thing. And this, this comes out of like some of my members who teach classes is like, have you had this happen? Whether there's this gray line or area of like, well, they start to see you as like this social media coach. And hey, man, do you do video? You know what I mean? Do you have it? Yes, yes, man. And that's a tough one. And that is really hard because there are, I mean, look, this is costly. I'm not going to sit here and pretend. Well, let me back up, actually. You know where this started was with an iPhone and a spreadsheet. Okay, that's where we started all of this. So I want to encourage people like, none of this is going to happen for you overnight. Like you got to work at it and chip away. And it's okay. There's nothing wrong with going to sit down in front of an agent with an iPhone and going, hey, let's chat about who you like serving, right? And just do your level set best, right? Right. Take notes. Have a notebook. Yeah, yeah, just go for it. But, you know, now we've gotten to a point where we have a marketing team. You know, we have video editors. We have, you know, some production. And that's costly, right? And so it's put us in a position where, you know, one from compliance, we have to be compliant, right? With respon and telling all that other fun stuff. So, you know, we have to share costs with the agents. And we also have to be choosy about who we work with. You know, we can't take somebody who just got their license two days ago and spend the next, you know, nine, 12 months trying to get them off the ground. I mean, it's a really difficult conversation to have. But that's the power of the workshops. And that's the tip of the hat to you, Jeff. And you see the same thing. It's like, look, when you host a workshop, you may have three or four people in there that were licensed last week. But you're also going to have people in that workshop that are doing 10, 12, 15 deals a year, some of them a month, you know? So it gives you an opportunity to scale a little bit and to serve both tiers of agents. But it is, it is a hard conversation to tell somebody, look, you know, you're just not ready there. So if you want more on that, actually, if I can, my coach, I use David Keesey for my coach. And for anybody out there, he's amazing. You guys should consider him. But you know, he told me a story about a title rep that basically he had reached out to and he said, you know, when he was early in the business and he's like, hey, man, you know, I need to get off the ground. Like you're, you're the heavy hitter out here. What can you do to help me? The guy took him to breakfast and he said, look, I'm going to give you a couple of tools. I'm going to tell you what it is that you should do. And I'm going to tell you what you have to be doing in order for you to work with me. Right? Because I want to help you. I want to help you get from A to C. Let's call it, right? And David never forgot that. You know, he was moved by it and he appreciated the honesty. And he appreciated the guy sat down with him, gave him the time of day. And so I've sort of tried to build that into our culture and our mindset. We're not too good for everybody, right? That's not for anybody, rather. That's not, that's, that doesn't serve. The community doesn't serve our interests. So we will take the time with people. We just have to be careful with it because everybody will take it to your point. Well, let's, let's get specific for a moment. If you don't mind or you talk about sharing costs. So if I'm picturing this, you know, you do your event, your avatar workshop, whatever. And then you want to move into foundations, which is now getting into some recording videos for them. They're coming into your location. They're going to record some video, some scripted video, right? Right. That's right. Sometimes scripted, sometimes vodka style, but yeah. Yeah, definitely guided. You said that earlier. Definitely guided. They need some direction. But now you've got a cost for a video, a videographer editing, etc. And so that's the cost you're talking about where you split with them. Yes, there is. So we do, when I'll tell you this, we built a studio. I invested about $50,000 in equipment and to outfit this space. And we paid production people significant sums of money to learns that I could learn how to do this. Because let me tell you, from a respite perspective, if I'm the videographer, there's no cost. There's no cost to be shared, right? So I do a lot of the video work myself. I can't edit. So we do have an editing team. And we do have other people that are in-house that have capacity to at least rough cut and do some of the things that help alleviate the cost center. So the goal is not just for them to make it as cost-efficient, but also for me. Because we're sharing in this expense. So any way that we can do that, we're definitely focused on it. Yeah, and I will say, so for those listening, and they're like, well, I don't want to get into doing that. I host a class locally in Vegas a number of times where we're showing, and you can relate to this, I know, teaching them reels and writing their hooks and scripts. And so what I do in that case is I bring my local videographer. And first of all, I'm recording that for content, obviously. Number two, at that class, once we've shown them how to craft their initial kind of rough scripts and things like that, there is a percentage of agents who want to record their videos. And guess what? I have my videographer come up to the front of the room, and he gives his five-minute pitch on, hey, here's what I do. Here's what it looks like to work with me. Here's how much it is. He's got his mobile phone. He's got a square hooked up to his mobile phone. And at the end of the class, they all go to the back of the room. They start swiping cards on his square. And for each charge, it's them $250 for like, you know, three edits, three videos. So whatever the price is, that's not important. The point is you can integrate a local videographer and get this done if you're looking to like outsource that. I freaking love that, Jeff. Like in your spot on, man, we don't have to be everything. Like I'm not trying to be a marketing agency. I just know that this has value. And you know, the tie it back to my team, right? Everything that we do is tested first. Like we do it for ourselves, for our loan officers, see that it works, and then go and try and share that with other people. Like common misconception, I learned this from Neil Dinger actually. He really helped me understand that I don't have to be the pro, the expert, the end all be all on any topic. Right. And my let talks about this too. I just need to be a little bit better than the person I'm trying to assist, right? Yes. I mean, that's it. So I don't have to be the best videographer on the planet, but probably better than most of the people that walk through the door, all videographers excluded, of course. That's amazing. But that's not even what we're trying to do. How about you just be a facilitator of resources? Yes. Yes. Put your stuff like the hub and spoke. If you visualize the wheel and the center is the hub, that's you and all the spokes are like all the things they need in their business, which is why you're doing advanced classes, content, things like that. And like that's, that is a no lose. You can't lose, here's what I always say. You can't lose if you're always showing up to serve. And if you're just showing up to serve and you're bringing the people in the process and the tech together, man, you're gonna win because does it take work? Yeah. Does it take you learning some stuff? Sure. Gotta get out of your comfort zone. Sam has got out of his comfort zone. We know. Yes. But guess what'll happen, Sam? Is you know this as well? Guess what'll happen, listeners? Is you won't have to chase anymore. You won't have to pursue. You will now be attracting because you've created so much value. Your brand reputation will start to grow and people will seek you out instead of you seeking them. Oh, it's amazing. I mean, I get so many referrals from realtors. Realtors are referring other realtors to come and work with us. But it is, you have to come from a place of service. And we preach that all the time. People talk about it. You have to get out of the transactional mindset, you know, as soon as, you know, and detach from the outcome is what my coach likes to preach to me. That's right. Forget about the sale. It's about how can I help this person? So here's something really relevant right before this call. I was on a sales call with somebody checking out my platform. And you know, basically you and I are talking the same language right now where we just, you know, help agents navigate through different content and classes and stuff. And he said to me, well, when do you make the ask for the sale, right? That you're a lender and your job is to do loans. And I said, you tell me this is true, Sam. You know what happens more often than not? You don't have to ask at all. Like reciprocation happens because you've established so much value, they just want to give to you. Do you find this? I absolutely find that. And I agree with you that as soon as you ask, you're spending all that good will as her mosey likes to say, you know, you've built all that good will by help helping them. And then you ask and it's all gone. You've spent it, you know, so I like to just continue. And that's another thing he talks a lot about. And I totally subscribed to this is the more good will you can build, you know, and the delay, the more delayed, you can, you can make that ask the bigger and bigger and bigger the opportunity gets. I mean, it just never stops growing in snowballs. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's, that's why you can win because everybody else is out there asking, all right. Back to your process, the last thing you mentioned in your, in your processes ads, I'm assuming with that, you're talking about custom audiences, running ads to that avatar audience. Yes. And I'm going to be perfectly transparent here. This is something that we're on the journey for. And none of this, we've perfected, right? But I would say least is the advertising. It's another giant animal, it's a big lift. And we haven't perfected it, but we're on the journey and we have partners that we have demonstrated values evaluate to already and have won from all the other things that we're doing for them that are now sharing the cost with us to explore the advertising because they know we're capable of executing. So right now, I don't have sort of that silver bullet yet, but we'll find it and we won't staff until we do. You're talking about agents when you say partners? Yes, exactly. So you just have this good will. You got their partners, you know, et cetera. You're not, you're not seen as a vendor. You're seen as a part here. Exactly. And you know, we don't hide the ball either. And I think this to kind of go step back for a second and talk about asking for the business. I think it's also okay for us to say, hey, I just want you guys to know the reason that we do these classes, right? And I usually do this towards the beginning. It's because we want to work with you. We want to serve your clients, right? You can frame that in a number of different ways, but it's okay to just not hide the ball and say, look, I'm not here for out of the goodness of my heart, right? I mean, part of it's short, but yeah, I just wanted to kind of throw that out there too. I agree with you. I was thinking of that same thing. We were saying, you know, I'm okay with asking at some point. Now, granted, more often than not, the good agents, the ones with business will want to reciprocate, but it's okay. And speaking of framing, I love that you said that because that's what we do too. At the beginning, you know, we say something like, hey, the reason why we hosted a class like this today is because that we believe in order to earn your business, we need to become part of your business, right? And so today is an example, right? You can swipe it. So today's an example of how we want to become part of your business is to help you solve today's challenges, right? How to use X or whatever. So yes, brilliant. That's well said. I haven't heard it said better, frankly, Jeff. Well done. I'm doing it for a minute. I guess. All right. Yeah, that's very interesting. We're on the same path because, you know, that's always been, I'm looking at my notes here, the custom audiences. That's something that is on my radar too is because one of our classes is Facebook custom audiences. And that's the gap yet that we are in the process of probably end of this year, maybe early next year, going to start to find partners to your point, to test that out and say, okay, who wants to start running custom audiences? And it's the synergies there, right? Then, man, you get to work those leads, feed them to those realtors. And again, you're just a hero. Yeah, you know what, Jeff? Well, you might have to connect offline here. And I might not have to participate in that and follow you on that journey too. Because, I mean, I trust what you've done. And I'm a huge fanboy, don't get me wrong here, man. It's, I love your work. So I would love to join you on that path, for sure. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so let me see here. Keep an eye on the clock. We talked about your process, avatar, I love that. Oh, while we're on that, you made a very generous offer. You would like to share something with our listeners, correct? Yeah, I do. You know, it come from that surplus mindset, right? I don't care if you guys are in my market competing with me. You know, I believe in the rising tide lifts all boats truly. So yeah, I mean, if anybody out there wants to do this same type of class, meaning the avatar class that I keep talking about, I have a deck that I'm willing to share. I have the worksheet that we use in these classes that I'm willing to share. And I'll even gladly host a Zoom call to show you my presentation and how I do it. No strings attached. So if you want to do that, just DM me, just go to my Instagram, give me a follow if you will, or just straight DM me the word Zoom. Let's call it Zoom. And yeah, I'll gladly share. Is that a key word then for you, Zoom? Yeah, I don't know. I just figured a Zoom call. I'm like, yeah, what the heck? Let's go to Zoom. Yes, this DM me the word Zoom. I'm wondering if that's like set up with any automation or it's just like you see that DM come in. You're going to know it came from... Well, yes, so I actually am going to set up a mini chat for that actually. And that's why I was thinking, I better pick a word so I can automate some of this. But yes, yeah, mini chat, if you guys don't know, is a great tool to automate some of that stuff in the back end. Yeah, for sure. All right, so once again, link is in the show notes, but it is loan guy SD, key word is Zoom, and then you're going to get access to that deck and the checklist, I'm definitely doing that right now too. So yeah, and I'm sure, hey, there's some interesting things we can talk about there for partnering perhaps and adding more value to the greater community. Plus, there's an all Western office in my backyard and Vegas, man. Yeah, I mean, I imagine you probably Rob Elbows with Chris Biagee, our fearless owner and CEO, I've heard of him. I've heard of him having had the chance to meet him yet, but hopefully we'll do that soon. Awesome. No, he's a great guy, man, great guy. Well, there's one other thing Jeff, as we're probably starting to wrap soon, but I thought was worth mentioning, we talked a little bit about in funnel and using video for conversion tactics, right? We should be doing that ourselves as long as, and a lot of you guys out there are doing it, right? But there's one place in particular that we have been incredibly successful in doing two things. One is delivering educational value to the client, but two is really allowing, or sort of putting the client in a position where they're going to give good feedback to the realtor, and it's happened time and time and time again. One of the stickiest points in our entire sales process as loan officers is when we have to explain all the numbers. If you have somebody who's trying to compare, two and three different loan scenarios to them, if you guys have the ability, and you can do this with loom, with bomb bomb, with anything, if you have the ability to record a screen capture, have you walking these people through these numbers and walking them through the comparison within the two or three scenarios? They will love you for it, and it saves you a ton of time. I noticed that I was hosting our long conversations, going back and forth in line by line with clients over the phone, trying to explain these things, and now that we use, we use that software I mentioned to you earlier, but we use a software to create the scenarios, and then we do a video for 10 minutes to explain it to the client, and then a follow up call is like five minutes long to answer any questions. They love it, they absolutely love it. So if you guys aren't doing that right now, I promise you it will change the game with your time and your conversion rates will increase, I highly encourage it. It's a great way to use video. What's the name of that software as our website? Yes, a home power, it's actually, and it's a software company that I own or if co-founded rather, and it's HOMPWR, dot com home powers, it's in beta right now, we've been using it within our branch and our team. Think of it like a mortgage coach that's a lot cleaner and simpler to implement, and also on the consumer front, it gives them as little or as much information as they like. Okay, cool, so with somebody if they wanna learn more about that, you can check that out, right? Yeah, I mean, we're pre-release right now, so maybe DM me if you wanna talk about that a little bit more, but maybe bookmark the website because I think there's some things that they're really gonna love about that product once it does officially come to market, which is only a couple months away. Okay, cool. So I wanna make sure we get that URL correct. It's HOMP as in PaulWR, hompwr.com. That's it. Okay, cool, check it out. I'm looking at it right now, it's a nice clean look inside. Hey, if you're looking for a tool that helps you be more efficient and effective and creating engagement with your buyers, approval letters on demand, digital business card, what else you got on there? Improve, educate, and convert faster. Sounds good. That's the name of the game, right? Who doesn't wanna do that? All right, man, we'll look. We talked about a lot in the sharing, like the nuggets, like if all they did was take the idea of, you know, first of all, take the deck offer that you're giving them for the avatar presentation in that checklist, man. And you just had a conversation, one on one, host a Zoom with six agents and walk them through that. You're gonna be winning, you know? Absolutely. Absolutely. It doesn't take, it doesn't take, but a little bit of effort. And do it for yourself first. Go through the exercise for yourself. And I do it for myself, like once every three months, really. Just to stay sharp and, hello, do it for yourself. Yeah, and get yourself some practice. So then you go out there and when you're doing it for an agent, again, you only have to be just a little bit further along in the path and they are and you can add value. Okay, man. I'm great to connect with you and see you virtually, even though we sell you in person, just a few weeks back. Thanks for sharing the great content today. Once again, if people want to connect with Sam, they can do that on Instagram, loneguySD.com. Sam, thank you. Thank you, appreciate you, Jeff. All right, listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode and I'm confident you did. So please leave us a review, make sure you check out all the resources in the show notes 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 and you 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. 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