How to Recession Proof Your Business As A Divorce Mortgage Specialist

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. So this niche matters even more now. Divorce is evergreen in the sense that every year there are 40% to 50% of marriages that are not going to continue someone's filing for divorce. But given the current challenges, the one difference between 2008-2009 and now, people have equity according to Harvard and CoreLogic. They've been confirming America is four times more likely to be equity-positive if not equity-rich. What does that mean? When they divorce, they can afford new loan origination. When they divorce, they can pay their lawyer out of house equity and they can afford to write size. They may not be able to afford the marital house. And that's why we've always taught in the order of due diligence when you're going through divorce and you have real property with secured debt. The first step always is mortgage. Hey, it's Jeff Zinfur, of course, you already knew that, I think, unless it's your first time here. Welcome to the mortgage marketing radio podcast. So thrilled you have chosen to give us a little bit of your time today and tune in. And I think you're going to be excited in just a moment when you hear from our special guests today. But before we get into that, a quick note from our sponsor and this episode is brought to you by me. That's right, yours truly. And look, in the market situation we're in right now, one thing that's important for your survivability and for minimizing the ups and downs and flattening out the rollercoaster ride of income is your sources of business, your team, right? And if there's anything that helps you weather the storm and get through the storm, it's who you've got around you, right? Who you've got on your team in a fox hole with you. And that's where it comes to down to referral partners. I can tell you that as people come into my community and they go to our Facebook group, right at mortgage marketing radio and they answer the questions to come in and ask them, what's their biggest challenge right now? I will tell you that at least seven or eight out of every 10, it deals with more real to referrals, right? And say what you want about real to referrals, you know, every source of business has the challenges and issues. But let's just face it, real to referrals, when you do it right, when you work with the right partners, when you have the right dynamics of the relationship, they're highly profitable low maintenance. So it's high return low effort. And today is the perfect opportunity now in this market for you to build your team of real to referral partners. The better question is how do you do it? How do you get real to referrals? There's lots of different ways, call call, door knocking, open houses, broker previews, pay for leads, all that truth is, none of that stuff works very well. And what works better and works consistently over time is when you help people solve problems. You lead with education. And so you've probably by now been hearing me tell you about my agent classes in the mortgage marketing, throw platform. And I'm just reading through a list of testimonials that I put up, which I'm going to give you the web page in a moment, you could go check that out. So you can go check this out. So here's my latest one from Kenny, did a planning your best year ever class today, 14 agents. Every agent opened up. Did the camera have the first lead from one of the agents before I even got back to the house? Here's Glenda celebrating a victory 30 qualified agent conversations, 10 new leads all from classes. Let's see here, a couple of scrolling scrolling. Here's Melissa held my first class today on social media trends for 2022. We had 12 agents in person and another six on zoom, the agents love the content. Where else can I go? Jeremy had my third agent class in two months. Every agent there wants to follow up meeting. I don't know why it took me so long to get signed up. I could go on and on. Here's Kenny again, the other class in the books. He just booked another class, two new appointments set. One Realtor pulls me aside and says, I'm your new lender, right? So guys, how do you get the attention of realtors? How do you get referrals, engagement conversations, right? You do that by building a pre-eminent brand, a pre-eminent business, and one that is superior and rises above all else. It's not that hard. One simple way to do it is tell a different story. One simple way to do it is actually show up differently and help solve problems, and that's what we help our members do, like you just heard about over at the mortgage marketing pro. membership. I've put up a brief video. If you want to go check that out and learn more to walk you through exactly what's involved, what you get and who's this for and again, who it's not for. But if you believe in agents as one of the pillars of your business and you want to leave with an educational platform, you want to attract instead of chase realtors and get referrals on demand, go to mortgagemarketing.pro to check it out. Walk you. All right, this week I'm bringing back for a third time by very special guests. And it's not often that I bring people back on the show for a third time, but I feel that it's appropriate and right to do that considering the situation we're in on the market. At the moment ago I talked about your team and building your team around you. Well, if you guys have heard me, you've heard me say that if I was to get back into origination I would focus on a niche, one or two niches, probably at most, and you've heard me mention those niches in the past. I've said reverse as a niche. I've said self-employed, right? DSCR loans, other types of niches, specialties, right, where it requires a certain amount of education or knowledge that allows me to position myself differently than the average every day, same as lane, plain vanilla, mortgage originator in the country. And one of those niches is divorce. And in this market, well, first of all, divorce is what's called an evergreen niche, which means divorce happens in any market during any interest rate environment. And interestingly enough, it's even more difficult in this market with rising interest rates. And back in 2008, as you'll hear our guests explain, it was a different situation with divorce because people didn't have equity in their homes. Now they do. And now, real estate is a centerpiece of the divorce. And they're looking for knowledgeable providers that can help guide them along the way. So who am I talking about? I am talking about Professor Leslie Murray, who is faculty and co-founder for DivorceThisHouse.com. She has two law degrees, one from Stanford, one from Harvard Law. She's also a teaching professor at Vanderbilt University. So one, listen to this episode, you're going to get incredibly educated. Two, her co-host and my guest, once again, is Wendy Whistle, co-founder of DivorceThisHouse.com. And Wendy is just an amazing woman, a bundle of energy. And if you are not impacted by her energy and insights and what she has to say, then you can unsubscribe right now. How's that? So look, the divorce niche is maybe not for everybody because you have to be about solving problems and have empathy for people and not have commission breath, right? You've got to be focused on, how do I help people navigate this? The divorce niche, when you approach it correctly and you get the right information and the right guidance can be incredibly profitable for you, not just from a standpoint of understanding how to attract and engage and partner with attorneys of all types, right? Divorce attorneys, real estate attorneys, mediators and others, financial professionals, right? But also think about building your team and bringing this value to just a few select real estate agencies partners because what happens in a divorce situation, either you re-fi the house or you sell the house, right? And typically you're going to have a little bit more higher asset value people engaging in a divorce, which means there may be multiple properties involved. So listen to this episode. And if you feel you want to learn more, take the next step. We've put a link in the show notes, but here's the website you want to go check out MMI.divorcethishouse.com. I went through this training five years ago. It's fantastic. We've had a number of our listeners go through it. It's fantastic. And they're now working with attorneys and getting business. And they're, you know, having business come to them and they're seeing now as a trusted advisor. So listen to the episode. Link is in the show notes. If you want to go check it out and learn more. And without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Wendy and Professor Murray, welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. Great to have you. So I like to do this usually when I have more than one guest is give the listeners an auditory connection to who's who. So Professor Murray, why don't you get started, kick us off. Just brief bio, who are you and what do you do? I'm Professor Kelly Murray and I'm the co-founder along with Wendy Whistle of divorcethishouse.com. And that is a resource for mortgage professionals and real estate licensees on how to work together in a very particular niche. And we've had that business going since 2008. So we're looking at, we've been doing this for quite some time. And what's interesting is right now is one of the strongest times to consider the divorce mortgage niche. Absolutely. And my co-founder, I'll briefly introduce her, is Wendy Whistle. She has an extensive background in advertising and I'll let her take it from there. Go ahead, Wendy. Yes. Well, it's my pleasure to say hello to all the listeners. I am the person that you're probably going to contact first with divorce this house to learn more about what we're doing if you're curious. I always answer all the questions. I'm easy to get a hold of. And then I'm your coach after the training because we're going to customize to what it is that you want to accomplish. And that's my job to get you started and follow your success. And she's really good at it. I'm a former favorite kindergarten teacher. So maybe that matters. It does help. Well, that is good training ground for coaching and single-own officers. All right. Now, I should have said welcome back to the show because you are both of you are in an elite group. You are one of the few that are back for a third time on the podcast. So that says a lot. Trust me. And I bring you back for good reason. As you pointed out, a moment ago, Professor Murray in that divorce is a very important conversation in regards to real estate at this moment in juncture and time with what's going on in the market and housing, et cetera. And if those listening who don't know, because since you were last on, and maybe people didn't hear the original two episodes is, I went through your training as well. That's at least five years ago, I think, while I was still living in California. And so I'm thrilled to bring this conversation to our listeners today because some listeners have heard me say in the past, if I was to start originating again today, I would become a specialist. I would focus on a niche. And the niches that I would consider would be perhaps reverse and divorce is one of those other niches as well because you, Professor Murray, would like to use the term, I believe you said, is evergreen niche, right? So can you talk about what you mean by that? Why is divorce an evergreen niche? There are two pieces to that. Number one, divorce is evergreen, meaning people are always going to get divorced. Andy Wiesel and I have been working in this niche since 2008. And as you remember, 2008 was the mortgage meltdown. So it was in the most challenging times to start this niche. And one of the challenges back then that we're not seeing now was the lack of equity in a house. The lack of equity in a house meant people could not afford to get divorced because they couldn't pay their lawyer. And so they delayed getting divorced. And even then people were still divorcing. It's just others waited fast forward to right now. There are definitely challenges in the mortgage market. There are challenges from mortgage rates to the real estate market. Those do not affect divorce in the sense in the way they affect residential real estate generally. Because divorce is a legal process where they have to divide the finances. They have to, the court is going to require them to take a look at their finances and get as much separation as possible. And that includes mortgages. So this niche matters even more now. Divorce is evergreen in the sense that every year there are 40% to 50% of marriages that are not going to continue someone's filing for divorce. But given the current challenges, the one difference between 2008, 2009 and now people have equity, according to Harvard and Core Logic. They've been confirming America is four times more likely to be equity positive if not equity rich. So does that mean when they divorce, they can afford new loan origination. When they divorce, they can pay their lawyer out of house equity and they can afford to right size. They may not be able to afford the marital house. And that's why we've always taught in the order of due diligence when you're going through a divorce and you have real property with secured debt. The first step always is mortgage. So the difference between 2007 and 2008 and I should say, and right now, right now, the equity positive makes all the difference. So this niche always matters. It matters even more right now because it's one of the few segments in the real estate market that is not reduced by the mortgage rates. Well, let's then talk about, I want to take it from the beginning. Okay, let's say somebody's decided to get a divorce, right? And I don't know if you have any data on this. You know, somebody gets online and Googles, right? You know, divorce me, whatever. There's different options other than attorney for divorce, correct? So how you go through the divorce every, but if your marriage is legally recognized by the state, the state has to dissolve your marriage. And so we've had changes in the United States Supreme Court and it used to be civilly recognized relationships that are now actually legal marriages. So everyone who has a legally recognized marriage, you have to start in court and end in court. The difference is what do you do in the middle? You have to start in court. You have to end in court, but you can resolve all of your issues outside of court. And that would be mediation. Right. Mediation is very common, especially regarding real real estate. It's very common. You don't have to bring a lawyer. So mediation is common and the least expensive option doesn't mean it's protects you. You can get divorced, but it doesn't mean you actually have all of your legal and financial and tax information before you start to make binding decisions at that mediation, but that is common in divorce regarding the house. They usually mediate it. And so what degree are these mediators educated and understand the nuances of real estate and divorce? I've taken state mediation training. So mediators are not separately licensed. You have in order to be court appointed, a court appointed mediator, you have to take the state approved class. Otherwise, anybody can be a mediator. So a husband and wife divorce and can choose any person to be their mediator. Most people look at the state list to see who has been trained officially in the state's program. So I've taken that training. I'm an Illinois lawyer, but I teach at a university in Tennessee. So I've taken the Tennessee Rule 31 mediator training. And so mediation training is 40 hours of negotiation and dispute resolution and six hours of family law. And it tells you almost nothing about the real estate and even less than that about the mortgage. So mediators are absolutely not trained in one of the most significant assets. This divorcing family needs to deal with. Because if they have an asset, they probably have a house, and that may be the most significant asset. Hopefully it has equity. It probably does have equity, but it may also have significant debt and tax consequences. And so it's a very complicated asset that isn't usually handled fully because people want to get the process over with. And frankly, there are so many other issues in divorce, but we know as real estate related professionals and legal professionals, that if you mess up your house and the finances and the legal issues surrounding it, it is a significant problem for years, if not a decade after your divorce. Hmm. Okay. So starting with where I entered that conversation, you know, we're a couple. We want to get a divorce. We look at our options. Do you have any data or insights on a lot of thoughts thrown through my head is I'm going to assume that the more quote well off, you know, affluent higher asset. Higher asset. Thank you. You got it. It's an easier way of communicating that concept. The ones with a higher assets tend to not go the mediator route and go the attorney route. They do both. They do both. You can bring attorneys to a mediation. And that may be a good thing or that may actually somewhat interfere with the negotiation portion and mediators have tools to deal with that called shuttle diplomacy. When you have a lawyer, you're still going to mediate the house because most people, you know, for example, if one spouse has to keep the house for the children, they've already decided the house issue. She's going to keep it. And most people who agreed to keep the house agreed to refinance the house. Do we know if she qualifies? Do we know what's needed to help her qualify? That's where the gaps start. There are more than that, but that's the most obvious gap. Right. And it's a common gap in every state. So even a higher asset divorce, how do I know any of this? Because I am a research nerd. I am a legal scholar. And I have researched all of these issues in over 16 states over the past decade plus. So I've looked at what people sue about after divorce after it's all gone wrong because property division's permanent. So then the rivers initiating that post divorce litigation is going to lose. Most of the time it's going to lose. So they have to be very, very upset to even file this unlikely to succeed post divorce action to try and get some financial relief or a mistake that was made usually because they didn't have enough information beforehand. Well, and another consideration in today's world, as you alluded to in Wendy and you and I talked about this the other day on a conversation is you just mentioned Professor Murray, you know, if the house spouse, as we like to say, let's assume that's the woman in this case, is going to keep the house because of the kids, et cetera. You mentioned, you know, can she even qualify? That's a bigger hurdle today with the increased interest rates, especially if they like take cash out of the house or something like that to do some separation or distribution of assets. So that's absolutely the difference. So it was always a problem even before rates increased, even before the current rate increase. And now that we have higher house valuation, in order to equalize, in order to keep the house and pay him his equity, she is cashing out probably because the house is where all the equity is. So now she's going to pay a higher interest rate and you know, how much more, you know, is that 25% more expensive this year than it was last year or more and cashing out. So she's increasing the debt on the house that it's a, it's a double whammy. It's not just a higher interest rate. She's cashing out creating more debt. The difficulty not to interrupt, but the difficulty is, is if that spouse hasn't been employed or working and now they're trying to qualify for this new loan, that becomes an extra consideration, you know, and difficult. Many people rely on support as income to refinance as part of a divorce. And we know if it took two incomes to purchase the house in the first place, one income alone isn't going to work and if it is a stay at home spouse, support alone probably is not going to work, which means the only other option is to sell the house. And that sounds like that's a bad thing for the lender, but it's not because now you have two adults for a right size residents new loan origination. And that actually gives us inventory, which is the whole purpose of the economy. We need to transact. So divorce real estate handle correctly can actually increase inventory the right way so that we get things going again, you know, instead of the stagnation of the only houses available or the Mac mansions and right, because we know there are houses available in the higher price ranges. Well, and of course, I know you know this, but for the listeners, don't forget the dotted line to if the house must be sold for the reasons we mentioned or otherwise, then that creates a referral opportunity for you to your referral partners, your real estate agents. And that's what we're going to talk about here too. So that's why divorce this house.com when he was selling I have been teaching not just real estate licensees, but also mortgage professionals separately, but how to work together, because that combination is incredibly powerful. So even in the current economic climate, the current mortgage climate, mortgage professionals should be thinking about their reverse referrals to high producing successful real estate agents. You work well with them now, you're laying the groundwork for continued relationships even when interest rates are more favorable. Absolutely. Well, let's pivot for a moment when we definitely want to hear from you. You have a lot to contribute if you want to tackle this question, but this is the one that I just thought of is oftentimes when I've discussed divorce specialty within mortgage, some people being that they're unfamiliar with it, they have some already existing preconceived notions about the term messy, I don't know if I want to get into that. Can you speak to any of that perhaps? Absolutely. Actually, and I agree with them. And if you interview lawyers and of course the divorce this house has no trouble getting in touch with lawyers and talking to them, the typical mortgage marketing does not connect with lawyers because it's very self-serving. And a lawyer has a fiduciary duty to put the client first. And plus lawyers don't ever want to make a referral that could be a client complaint. So they're very, very cautious. So how can you as a mortgage lender make yourself so valuable to the lawyer and the lawyer's client that they would want to introduce you to their client? And this is exactly what divorce this house does. We literally teach, Professor Murray, teaches her mortgage lenders exactly how to work at the beginning of the divorce with the enhanced house due diligence as part of discovery preparing the client for mediation. And the best part about this is we don't touch the mortgage process. Whatever your mortgage requirements are for refinance and new loan origination, again, the clients are not rate sensitive, neither is the lawyer. The lawyer wants the best result for their client. And when you are taught to assist the lawyer and the lawyer's client as part of discovery with something that Professor Murray named divorce mortgage guidance, the lawyer, the mediator, if their financial professionals involved, and the paralegals really appreciate the fact that the mortgage lender is in a position to streamline all the house information and the secured joint debt, and bring this all together for informed decision making. At the beginning of the divorce, I call it the horizon market because my husband and I were in advertising and there's no better market to be in. And the horizon market is when it dawns on the client, they need your services and they already know you like you and trust you. And if 20% of divorce is rational thinking and 80% is emotional, when do you think the rational thinking takes place at the beginning of the divorce? They don't even dislike their lawyer yet. They've just hired their lawyer, you know, give them time in a couple of weeks. But everybody's, you know, calm thinking, okay, I'm going to listen to my lawyer and the lawyer starts asking the client for information, it's called discovery. And you have to come up with it. And this is where the mortgage lenders are trained by divorce this house and professor Murray to know exactly what to do. It is a system. And instead of one and done and starting over and running around and trying to find another client, I call it rinse and repeat. Because this system is set up and we have divorces with 17 properties, all income producing. And so they're being refinanced from two names to single names. We had another in, that was in Knoxville, we had another divorce, 12 properties. Most of them are refinanced, some were sold. The mortgage lender is essential in the decision making process. So just imagine, you are helping keep a client calm and organized. What is that to the law firm, a huge value. And then we also teach our mortgage lenders exactly how to present themselves. You know, everyone's always saying, oh, should I create brochures, should I, should I cold call, you know, how can I prove my value? Well, again, you're not going to be talking about your mortgage process, you're going to be talking that you are a divorce mortgage specialist, RCSD designee. Professor Murray designates our mortgage lenders. You don't need to be certified, a CPA is certified public accountant, right? Our training is to designate you with her system. And you refer to her that you were trained by Professor Kelly Murray. And she has degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Law School. And Harvard Law School is the number one law school in the world. So any lawyer that you're presenting to is going to be very curious to hear exactly what Professor Murray taught you. Is that part of the dialogue that you would have within the journey? It is. We have, you have 15 minutes with a lawyer. And I'll just, that's the takeaway. So anyone contacting a lawyer, number one, you have to bring value and number two, 15 minutes or less. One of my most successful conversations in chambers with a judge, I asked for 15 minutes, I finished in seven minutes, and the judge loved it, that I was early. So what are you going to say in your 15 minutes? We teach you that or you can fumble around. And if you do it wrong, the other thing with lawyers, if you do it wrong, it's next. You cannot go back to that lawyer. So we have mortgage professionals who contact Wendy Whistle. It's on our website if you want a call, a training call or an inquiry call with her. It's on her calendar. And we've had mortgage professionals trained by others who've said, oh, I, I struck out with every lawyer in my town, how can you help me with that? And our answer is we can't. So my recommendation is don't start calling every lawyer until you know what you're going to say and you know it's going to work. So 15 minutes, you need to know what to say in the correct order to bring value. What value are you bringing? Otherwise, don't bother because you're burning bridges, that's an important takeaway. People don't realize that. So when they read inaccurate advice, go take a lawyer to lunch. I saw this recently. Go take a lawyer to lunch. No, don't do that. What? Is there going to be no or because why why not? All right, how long is this lunch going to be? The lawyer's distracted with either it's 15 minutes, you don't bring value. I don't think it's just going to be 15 minutes. But if you don't bring value, that lawyer thinks she knows everything you have to say and she will not meet with you again, and she will not refer you clients. So it is a very dangerous thing to do this wrong with a lawyer that really matters to you. We teach you who to start practicing with, even on our system, you're not perfect. You're first go, but we have a 15 minute presentation. We make you memorize it. We make you learn it. So it sounds like you and not what to Professor Murray tell me to say next. And we have you include local information to help make it matter even more to that lawyer. And it works. And the funny thing is, people title on themselves when they get their coaching with Wendy Whistle, they'll tell her what they did wrong and every time they did something wrong and it didn't work, it's because they didn't do what we told them to do in the first place. So my recommendation is, it's much easier to just do it our way. Just do try it our way because our way works. And by the way, I can personally vouch for that as I said, I've gone through the training, but I also had a number of our listeners go through the trainings over the years and they've all reached out back to me and gave positive glowing reviews on your great coaching Wendy. However, so if you guys may or may not know in my podcast, I'd like to go deeper. I'd like to like, you know, so how do they get the call? Originally, like, how do I find attorneys, real estate attorneys, whoever? And then how do I even get them being willing to a 10 minute conversation? All right. So this is the part that Wendy developed for us. And that's why we've been such a great team for so many years. Oh, and by the way, we are related. So we are a woman owned business, we are family owned business and we have a lot of fun helping a lot of people help a lot more people. And so how do you find lawyers? You don't co-call. Don't do that. Don't buy leads either. You don't buy leads. You don't email them. You build your team. And so Wendy's coaching teaches you how to build your team the right way. And I asked how many lawyers do your team members know? Even if your team members only know one lawyer, if you build your team the right way, you have access to more than 10 lawyers right out of the gate. So it's not a secret, but who is on your team and each of them has to bring value or they can drag you down. So we teach you how to build your team the right way and how to reach out to their lawyers. And so now it's not a co-call because they knew the lawyer somehow. Well, one example, I'm just going to continue to play this out for a moment. Let's say my team doesn't know any quote, divorce attorneys, right? Oh, no, you don't have, you're not limited to divorce attorneys. Yeah. I mean, real estate attorneys would be an obvious easy, you know, parallels like we're all in real estate. I'm sure you have access to real estate attorneys locally, your local board of realtors, whatever. It shouldn't be too hard to find those people, right? They want to work. So real estate lawyers want more business, unlike other specializations for lawyers, real estate lawyers. If you just think about it, how do they make money? Sometimes they're only the scrivener, sometimes they're only preparing documents or doing something very technical for a title company. They need a, they need a lot more at the top of their funnel than a divorce lawyer who gets to take a case all, you know, two years of litigation. So they're looking for referral relationships, real estate lawyers are looking for referral relationships with mortgage professionals and with real estate licensees. And we ask every class that we teach, do you already work with real estate lawyers? And most say no, and I'm shocked. And so that's a takeaway. Everyone needs better relationships with real estate lawyers. And just as you said, Jeff, a real estate lawyer is a lawyer and is a member of the local bar and is networking with divorce lawyers. We're bringing them a reason to get back in touch with divorce lawyers. They already know like who know them, like them, and trust them. And that is a fantastic segue into a lawyer meeting with our 15 minute structure, both the structure and the substance. I love it. I'm the big believer in building the team. And Wendy, I mean, that's all from Wendy and what I do is I literally coach you on exactly the script that you're going to have with your title closing attorney or the title company's recommendation to a real estate lawyer. And that real estate lawyer takes the meeting because of the relationship with the title company. Or again, you already know the real estate attorney and you can't go to the real estate attorney just as a mortgage lender. In fact, I was just talking to two mortgage lenders in Atlanta, Georgia, and they're an attorney closing state. So they know closing attorneys. And they told me that a closing attorney is working with as many mortgage lenders as possible. Why would the attorney single out one mortgage company over all the others that they're working but to introduce to divorce lawyers? But what we do is we have divorce mortgage guidance. That is your point of difference that makes a difference. And when you present your value to the real estate attorney and the attorney sees that this will be incredibly helpful to the divorce process as well as more business. That attorneys love to share tools, resources, and education with other attorneys. And when you land your first real estate attorney who takes you to your first divorce attorney referral, and you ask for one client to test divorce mortgage guidance on, you're only going to ask for one client. That surprises attorneys because everybody's, oh, when we love referrals, you know how realtors have that on all their signage, you don't ask for lots of people. You ask for one to test it on because you would want to respect the opinion of the lawyer and you welcome the opinion of the client. Did this help the client and it always does. And then you get the second client and the third client and the fourth client and lawyer number one will introduce you to lawyer number two. But that this is another important thing Wendy teaches in her coaching. Any lawyer you meet with, even a real estate lawyer, it's the same 50 minutes, don't waste their time, don't ramble, don't don't troll for transactions as Wendy says, you have to bring the value. But do not right out of the gate, and this is straight from Wendy's coaching, do not right out of the gate, ask to be introduced to other lawyers. What does the lawyer you're speaking to think, you're just using me to get to other lawyers. So you have to bring value to that lawyer, respect that lawyer as a resource, build that relationship and then they will introduce you to other lawyers. But we actually had that happen where someone we had trained, everything was going great and then instead of following our step five at the end of our 15 minute system, they went straight ahead and said, hey, why don't you introduce to other lawyers and crickets, they never heard from her again. You would be offended too if that happened. So they just got caught up in the moment of success and messed it up with the call to action. And they said, everything went so well. We have the five essential agenda items, one, two, three, four, five, everybody on real estate is good at it. Fifty minutes, right. My kindergartners were great at math because I loved math. But I want my mortgage loan originators to understand that if you just take control of the meeting and you're concise and you stick with the facts, lawyers and the documents Professor Murray gives you two documents that you can share with the lawyer. In many cases, they're not familiar with them. And I love it. Either way, if they're familiar with the documents that puts you at their level, you're coming across as a colleague and not a salesperson or a vendor. We elevate you by elevating your education with us and paying attention to the coaching and being coachable. You look like a colleague and the lawyers just like, hey, yeah, let's work together. Or if you're surprising the lawyer, most lawyers love a pleasant surprise. It's never their fault. It's the client's fault. And we teach you how to blame it on the client to save the lawyers. Technically, though, yes. So we teach you how to be tackled, but yes, that's another takeaway. Never ever say to a lawyer, hey, lawyer, you're doing it wrong. That lawyer will never work with you, even if that's a true statement because you just trust us. That is true. What other tips or advice or coaching, do you think you would give mortgage professionals considering this? In the context I'm thinking of, like, I was going to ask the question, who is this not right for? I'm hearing it's like, this can't be just a way to make another commission. You think that's going to fail? Is that correct or? Yes. So that's an easier question to answer with real estate licensees. Divorce real estate niche is not for brand new real estate licensees. It's not the only times it works and when he tells plenty of people, you shouldn't take our class because you're a brand new real estate licensee. The only time the exception there is someone who's come into real estate or come into mortgage with a separate business experience, separate worldliness and knowledge, that works. That can work, but they have to build their team as a first step. I don't know if we'll have Wendy weigh in on this. I don't know if it's the same with a mortgage professional. I don't know that we have as many brand new mortgage professionals pursuing the niche. Wendy, what do you think? Well, I've talked to so many people and the mortgage lenders who are the most successful with this want to have a long-term referral relationship. They're tired of coal calls running around, buying lunch. They always tell me, I want to have purpose. I want to stay in this business and I want to have something that is predictable and positive and profitable and that is exactly what this niche is. If you are looking to invest a little bit of time and a very fair tuition, the price is not overwhelming. Our training for mortgage professionals is six hours. It has been longer in the past. It could be longer, but you don't need that to get going. That's why we're not a certification. You don't need to be certified. You need to know, you need to understand what goes wrong in divorce mortgage, why it matters and when it matters. That's what you need to learn. I teach you that in six hours. Our training is three consecutive days, two hours each day, usually in the afternoon. Once a month, we have a Pacific class. We are the mortgage ticket early in the morning. If the afternoon doesn't work for you, you would sign up for the morning. The other piece is Wendy's coaching. Those two and you're often running and you don't have to be certified, you don't have to be an expert in those. Saying those things to a lawyer can actually work against you and that's why we've structured the system the way it is. You don't over promise a lawyer because a lawyer is going to say to you, how long was that certification? Who, who, who certified you? Now I have degrees from Stanford and Harvard Law School and I am not certifying you because I would make you go through a semester's worth of work with multiple tests and a final exam before I would certify you. I'm on the faculty of a top 20 law school and I'm not certifying you because you don't need to be certified. If you say to a lawyer, I'm designated, I took the training with Professor Murray, she's degrees from Stanford and Harvard Law School. We teach you to say that and guess what happens? You have five minutes of the lawyer paying attention, wondering what you're going to say next. Yeah. That's the opener. That's the thing right there. There's that and their resistance pauses like, okay, tell me more. They assume you learned something and that would be a correct assumption. You did. Something useful and you're not crowding the lawyer. Lawyers want to be the only expert. If you come across, I'm an expert and then what does the lawyer think? They're looking at you like, wait a minute, then what does that make me? Also expert is a loaded temporal lawyer. An expert is someone who gets on the stand and goes through a voir deer to be confirmed as providing information beyond common knowledge of a jury. Can you tell yourself an expert to a lawyer is never a good idea? Can you take a moment then and just briefly articulate the difference between your designation and other certifications that we know that are in the industry? Well, I will say this, a certification in general, regardless of who offers it, is not needed to work well with lawyers because of what we've, the first part is what we've just discussed. The lawyer is going to ask you who certified you, who is this certification over here? So I actually have the credentials to certify real estate licenses and mortgage and I don't for very specific reasons. I could make a longer class, I could charge a lot more money and make you certified and you wouldn't need it because you still only have 15 minutes with that lawyer. We help you not over promise so that you can over deliver in value, you're designated. The other thing we do is focus on, with mortgage professionals, we keep you within the scope of your license, your NMLS number, which is reflects that you are state licensed. We reframe what you are allowed to do to show the value of what you bring to a lawyer. We don't give you other things to do. We don't teach you how to encroach as when he says, crowd the lawyer. You cannot give tax advice. You cannot give legal advice. I teach you things you need to be aware of but I also teach you not to intervene at those levels and so in terms of the other offerings, I don't know and haven't compared substantively but I do know that I caution anyone on thinking the word certified or the word expert is somehow going to make the lawyer like you more. It's actually a negative from the lawyer's perspective because they're going to ask who trained you? Who is the certification program and if that person doesn't have at least the education of the lawyer, what is the lawyer, I'll just leave you to answer that for yourself. What do you think the lawyer thinks when you look at the education level of the person who purported to certify you? I have no lawyer has a law degree better than mine. They may have a degree equal to mine but they don't have a law degree better and I'm on the faculty of a top 20 law school since 2005. So I actually teach people how to be lawyers and give grades and all that. So we could certify and we have chosen not to because it's not needed that would take longer cost more money. We are giving you what you need to get started because that's what you need to do. You need to know how to get started and you need to know what to say to a lawyer. That all boils down to that 15 minutes. Right. Exactly. Excellent answer. Okay. Just a couple of minutes left here. I'm looking at my notes. See if there's a couple other questions I wanted to get out real estate. We covered a lot of great ground. Any, any, you know, what we're going to talk about for those that are listening. If you want to take the next step, you guys do have obviously a website and a course. We'll put a link to the show notes. The website address though is mmi.divorcethishouse.com, I believe I got that right. That's correct. Yep. MMI.divorcethishouse.com. Like I said, guys, I've known, you know, when the professor Murray for five plus years, a bunch of loan officers have gone through this and they've been on the podcast. Actually, one of the other episodes we did, we had one of our successful students on there talking about how great it was going. And then Wendy, I love to hear it. Maybe let's close out on this. I know you've worked closely with a lot of mortgage professionals coaching them. Any particular case study, I think of Graham or any other particular case studies that come to mind of Rick fast that you want to entice the listener with. Well, actually next week, professor Murray is flying to Phoenix, Arizona. And we have a mortgage lender who took the training, I think in June of this year. And he's working with eight divorce lawyers. And he has about 25 realtors in the class that professor Murray will be teaching. So let me just interrupt. Let me just interrupt on this. He was trained just a few months ago. He lands divorce lawyers. How valuable is he to real estate licensees? He all by himself has put together a class of 25 real estate licensees where he'll be the only lender in the front of the room there to help them land their divorce lawyers. How powerful is that 100% that's why I have you guys here because I'm always talking about how do we add value? How do we become the pre-eminent lender in our community? And now as we kicked off this call with now with the market challenges we have, where's the business? The business is coming from those that have to sell or re-fi, right? That's where it is right now. So this is why this makes so much sense. Wendy back to you. Well, Kelly, tell them about the podcast for lawyers. We have one more takeaway. And because everybody needs value right now and Jeff, your podcast has been so successful because you give content and valuable takeaways just from the podcast episode itself. And we've always believed in that as well. We are launching November 1st, 2022, a podcast called de-risking mediation. And so you can reach that podcast de-riskingmediation.com or de-risk-adr.com. That is a resource for any mortgage professional who needs a reason to get in touch with lawyer. If one of your takeaways is you should not just contact a lawyer or a mediator. You need a reason to bring value. This podcast will bring that value. So what we're doing is taking, instead of building a full length continuing legal education course, we're taking snippets of content that I teach first, CLE hours to lawyers, and giving the lawyers the information they need to avoid mistakes that can derail a mediation that end up getting litigated after mediation, which is the opposite of what you want. So we're going to focus this podcast on conversations about mediation mishaps and then actually litigated mediation mistakes. That's the new's lawyers need. Our episodes are going to be crisp because I remember I told you you need to bring value and you need to keep it short for lawyers. And so we're so excited to launch this as a resource, but it's also something for you to reach out to the lawyers and the mediators that you know and financial professionals to say to them, hey, have you checked out de-risking mediation? If you give you a substantive reason to reach out to them to be your face awareness and your brand awareness to that professional. I love that. We'll make sure we put the link to that in the show notes as well. All right. So lastly, I know there's some people listening who want to take the next step as there always is. But once again, the link will be in the show notes, but it is mmi.devours this house.com. Wow. This is a lot. I feel like every time I talk to you guys, I get educated, but also excited at the opportunity I wish I was originating again. So I could go do this. And you can have a I just want to say you can speak with Wendy before you register for the class. Absolutely. So we'll make sure that when you go to mmi.devours this house.com, we'll have her calendar there. You can take out, you can look and see what's available and have a 20 minute call with Wendy. If you have specific questions, we would prefer you do that before just signing up. So I recommend everybody. You should really take advantage of Wendy's expertise because she really, you know, if it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, she's well over 10,000 hours. And I still don't call myself an expert. You don't need to just be good at what you do and be sincere. There you go. Be sincere. And want to sincerely solve problems as well. Exactly. That's what I preach. All right, ladies, it's been a pleasure. I'm grateful for the opportunity. Thank you for bringing your message that everyone needs to hear and take action on today. Listeners, you know what to do if you like what you heard. Hey, check the link in the show notes mmi.devours this house.com. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for being here. Bye. Hey, guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. 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