The #1 Purchase Originator in the Nation

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, listeners, Jeff Simphor. Welcome back to this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast. And oh, hey, maybe it's welcome first time listener. Thank you for tuning in. And I'm excited that you've chosen to tune in on this episode. This could be one of the most important transformational conversations you hear in your entire career as a mortgage professional. And I don't say that lightly. I say that with true conviction. And that's because my conversation today is with Matt Weaver. And you may not know who Matt is. So let me give you the quick bio on Matt and then you might be compelled to pay special attention to this conversation here. Matt Weaver is based in Florida and is the number one loan officer in the nation for purchase units in 2022. And that number is 1499 purchase units. He's also the number one loan officer in Florida for the years 20, 21, 22. He's the number one loan officer across country mortgage. He has the most wins with real estate agents in a multiple offer situation data that's that procured from MMI. And he is somebody who performs at an exceptionally high level and performs with a high level of excellence at a high level. And that is two different things actually because anybody can win once in a while, right? But it's a unique individual who can win all the time. And so I think about that in the context of certain professional athletes, right? Of which we actually mention on this podcast where you think about that, whether it's the Los Angeles Lakers or whether that's Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, right? Those are examples of individuals who consistently are formed at a high level over a prolonged period of time. And that's exactly what Matt Weaver does himself and his incredible team has helped more than 22,000 families achieve their real estate goals. And this conversation starts with mindset, which I believe is where we all should start when we're evaluating where we're at in our current situation and where we want to go is it starts with mindset, right? And then we get into further tactical strategies and steps from there, if what you're going to hear Matt unpack. So we have, I think what for me is probably one of the most, as I said, compelling, engaging, thought-provoking conversations I've had in six years of doing this podcast. And I'm not saying that lightly because we've had a lot of awesome people on the show. So I'm really thrilled that we're able to bring this conversation to you. If you do want to connect with Matt, I'm going to say that at the end, we do make a brief mention of some of the high-end consulting that Matt's doing with very selected individuals. And I will say that for most, it may not be right for you, but if you do think it's right for you then, hey, you're one of those unique individuals who wants to win and win all the time. And if that's for you then you can go ahead and check that out. No expectations there. I think bottom line is this conversation alone will hopefully change some of your thoughts and strategies about where you're at and the direction you might be heading in the mortgage business. So enough said about that. Without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Matt, we've a welcome to the show. And thank you so much for the opportunity. It's my pleasure to have you, sir. I know you're an extremely busy person. So why don't we start with this? Let's get this out of the way. Who is Matt Weaver? What do you do? Well, Matt Weaver is, it tries to be a productive loan officer that tries to, of course, help the real estate agent community as much as I can and provide the highest quality of service to the customers that we serve, but I'm based out of Boca Raton, Florida. I have a wonderful team, 41, that support my personal production and been in the industry for 25 years and had the good fortune of helping just over 24,000 families by all. Wow. And you also, congratulations, by the way, that's quite a lengthy career. You also have this unique identity as being, if I'm correct, the number one originator for purchase loans in the country? Yeah, I mean, it's something that we have always monitored. We measure our success on purchase units. We don't look at volume, we look at purchase units. I mean, anything in the refinance world or in terms of volume, that's, volume is really a function of where you live and where you originate at, okay? Purchase units is, in our opinion, in my opinion, really production based, activity based. As far as refinances go, they come and go, if a client calls us for one, we're happily, we happily take advantage of that and service them and help them. So purchase units is something that we have been focused on for several years. And through the reporting that we see, we did secure the number one position for 2022 for purchase unit transactions. And so, of course, that is of great honor. We've also secured both purchase units and volume for the state of Florida and purchase units in the state of Florida for 2020 and 2021. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. It's more than pretty impressive, you know that. I'm curious, do you know for, for nation wide, do you know roughly what that number is in terms of units? Sure, we close 1499 transactions, which, again, we were proud of 2022 and the reason why we were proud of it is because we knew going into the year that we could see some interesting headwinds ahead of us. So the goal, the mantra with our team structure was number one, winning was the only option. We made it a decision to not accept external circumstances such as the economy, interest rates and whatnot to ever play a role in our business. So we started with that point and then our goal was to outpace the decline in originations. We did close a hair up in volume for the year of 2022, which was something that we were of course very proud of. And it goes, I have to tell you, Jeff, it is a direct dial back to mindset, no question about it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a perfect transition into that because you said a couple of things in there that are nuggets that want to let's unpack this now because all right, we covered the incredibly impressive units. Everyone's obviously blown away and pressed by that, but I know you and I were talking before we hit record, like I live this by this philosophy you may have heard of this. It's, it's B, do you have? Right? I don't know if you're familiar with that, because a lot of people, a lot of people operate from the opposite, which is do have B, okay, right? And so you by the mindset you just mentioned and that winning is the only option. Let's start with mindset because I know you wanted to unpack that because when you see somebody who performs at the level that you do, like you mentioned, you refer to your team as the Los Angeles Lakers. The Los Angeles Lakers, yes, yes, I'm now, now as a disclaimer, I am a 76ers fan, okay? But you know, the Los Angeles Lakers did win the most titles and that's what we aspire to do. You see, it's interesting, Jeff, I look at loan originators, no different than high performance athletes. We just happen to choose the mortgage origination business. So when you look at whether it be LeBron James or you look at Kevin Durant or whatever player you like, okay, they just took their career to the highest level. I'm looking to take what I do to the highest level and I want to be the LeBron James. I want to be the Kevin Durant in our industry and I want to continue to win rings. That's interesting. Now, I'm originally from New England, so we might have to have that Celtics Lakers, you know? Well, you know, it's going to happen tonight at 8 o'clock, it's going to go down. It's going to go down for sure. All right. Now, okay, so that's a mindset in the philosophy. Makes me curious, have you always throughout your life had that level of excellence and achievement performance? No. No. No, what I would say is that it was a building process and to process that I work on every day. I have to tell you, years ago, I would look at these high performers as that's just them. That's not me. Right? They were maybe given something different or blessed in some other different way. So I didn't necessarily feel worthy enough to hit that type of goal. I had confidence, but I didn't have absorbent confidence. And so it was with that that I started to really work on to understand that they're just normal people, okay? These superstars, whether it be a superstar in our industry or a superstar on the television screen or whatnot. It took me a long time to just really learn that it's really because of the lack of exposure that I had as a young child. I had amazing parents do not get me wrong, but I just wasn't exposed to a whole lot. I'll give you an example. Today, I have the amazing fortune of being able to take my children to a basketball game. And if my son had the opportunity to high five a player, he touched them. He knows that they're just real people. I didn't have that type of exposure. So I thought that was someone else that wasn't me. So over the years, and still to this day, I'm constantly working on confidence levels. I'm constantly working on self-improvement to get better and better every single day. There was a... No, it's funny. What you just said, a lot of people can relate to. I know I can as well. Some people would call that imposter syndrome, perhaps. We look at somebody else and they're achieving at a certain level and you think like, oh, they're special or that's not for me. So it's a process that you've gone through. Was there some moment that shifted for you in the past where you began to realize, hey, these are just humans. They're just doing things extraordinarily well. Yes. Yes. Actually, it directly ties back to going to a real estate function, real estate event that I was invited to by a dear friend, Mary Celicatia. She was with Douglas Eleman, and I believe still is it to this day. They would always have these great elaborate events in the New Jersey area. I went one year, this is going back about nine years ago. The guest speaker, the keynote speaker, was Donny Deutsch. Now Donny Deutsch, of course, for those that don't know him, an incredible marketer. He owned an incredible ad agency and so on. I think sold it for a great sum of money and well deserved. But he also had a show called The Big Idea on CNBC, and he would interview world leaders. He would interview some of the most influential people. So when Donny Deutsch came up to do his keynote speech, he's dressed in just a regular button down shirt on tuck jeans kind of comes up with the New York attitude and he says, okay, I'm going to go over the top 20 points of Uber originators. I'm sorry, Uber people, I say I originator something about originators, but and I'm going to go over these top 10 qualities of these Uber successful people. And he goes to the first point and he said, the first point is that I've been around world leaders. I've been around some of the most successful people in the world. And what I noticed is number one, they all have what's called a naive sense of entitlement. We're all looking at him like a naive sense of time of what's that? And he said, what that simply means is they say to themselves, why not me? Why not me? So they all feel naive to the fact that it should be me. And then he goes to the second point and he says, the second point is that I never met a genius. So in other words, of all these great people I've been around, none of them are geniuses. Now Howard Borber was the owner at the time, maybe still is in Doddy Herman. He's sitting up front and he actually points them out and he says, can you please, can you please stand up? Now Howard Borber and Doddy Herman, highly successful people has him stand up and he says, Howard, do you think you're really a smart guy? He's like, not really. I just wanted to own a real estate company and he says to all the agents in the room, you see who you work for? You see, I mean, he's a great guy, but he's nothing more different than you and I. And then he completed the rest of the 20 points, but it was at that moment that I said to myself, wait a bit here, okay? It just kind of clicked that why not me? And we left with the statement of why not me and I made a wristband of it and I wore it really for years, why not me? And it was really the start of really feeling that everyone is normal, okay? It's just a function of your activities, your mindset, your exposure and what you do with the exposure that you have. Well, that's good, man. I wrote that down. Why not me? Great story. Thank you. And I think that's a question that more of us should be asking ourselves, why not you, right? Why not? If there's a little here, watch for everyone who's listening. If I did it and if I'm doing it, you can do it in terms of origination, no question about it. Yeah. I love the, I mean, I don't know you that well, but I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll use the word humbleness, if you will, to a certain degree or the transparency, because if there's anything that I've learned now, six years doing this podcast, 280 plus episodes, whenever in most cases, when I interview somebody who's achieving at a high level like you is, there seems to be this, this, just, you don't see, there's not a lot of, I mean, there is definitely this confidence, but it doesn't, you know, spill into, you know, I'm somebody special and you're not, you know, I mean, you have to be confident to do what you're doing at the level you are. But I think the point we're taking is you've built that confidence over time through a succession of repeated actions and which fed your, like the whole, the book Atomic Abids. I'm not sure if you've read that. Right. Exactly. So the way, it's a daily, daily reminder and daily thing that we're working on daily. Right. I mean, I do it every single day. In fact, I have a blinkist account. I'm sure you're familiar with Blinkist. They condense books into cliff notes, so you can read a book in about 15 to 20 minutes. It's not necessarily to replace a book, but it's really to get through some material pretty quickly. And there's a, there's a challenge 10 days on how to build your confidence. I'm doing it right now. Really? That's awesome. Yeah. You're never done working on yourself, right? 100%. That's a huge part. Self development is really a critical part in the recipe, of course, of being, I think, a high level original. Yeah. Somebody years ago used this statement. They said, you know, it's basically you've got a battle going on every day between the lesser self and the heroic self. There you go. And it's about who's going to win that day. Some days it's the lesser self, but let's hope more often it's the heroic self winning. Right. I like that. Well, this is a good set up to the conversation about, right? Anybody who's listening right now, I'm sure in this market, they're probably various stages of their mental thought. They're either struggling or they're scratching their head going, what's going on? Or how do I, how do I navigate the current market? You said something earlier is you made a conscious decision, well, two things, one, winning is only option. First of all, that's a killer mindset right there. You know, it's kind of like the old thing. I'm not buying into the recession, you know, that whole thing. You also said something else is you said outpace the decline. Yes. Oh, you had to do specific things. I'm sure if we now transition into a little bit more tactics, you had to do some things tactically, perhaps, right, to backfill or outpace that decline. Am I right? Well, yes. I mean, 50% to 60% of it is the mindset. If you think about it, most originators, some of the articles that I read, they're sitting here saying, well, I'm satisfied if my originations go back to 2018 and 2019. See, right there, they already pulled out of the race. That's a mindset issue. Okay. Now, watch, if that's success to them, great, God bless them. However, if you're looking to succeed at a higher level, then we have to understand that 2020, 2021 were not anomaly years. They weren't anomaly years for this guy right here. You see, I need to grow off of that. That's the new benchmark for me, and that's a conscious decision. So if the market, in terms of real estate transactions, is down 25% to 30% in my immediate area, and I want to grow 20%, then that means I have to increase my activities by about 50%. And so we're constantly increasing the activities. I also hear that some originators are saying, well, even if I pre-approved people and they can't find a home or if they do find a home, there's multiple offers. But what value are you adding to win in a multiple offer? And you see, if you look at a structure in terms of a real estate offer, the loan originator on a finance offer plays a huge role in winning in a multiple offer. So it's those little opportunities that we're constantly working on with our real estate partners, because our real estate partners, of course, is our customer. And so that's a really important thing that I want to touch on, Jeff. If you said to me, single-handedly, what is your biggest competitive advantage that you have? I would say to you, single-ness of purpose is my advantage. And what I mean by single-ness of purpose is we have one direct customer that we focus on, and that is our real estate partner, regardless of interest rate conditions. So as an example, in 2020, when rates were at two and a half percent, and everyone out there could refinance, our customer didn't change. In 2021, our customer didn't change. If rates go to 6%, our customer is still the agent. Watch, if rates go down to 2% tomorrow, our customer is still the agent. So my advantage that I have is I know who my customer is. So once we understand who our customer is, then we can understand the pain that they have, because everyone has pain in their process, and we can understand and learn and think about how we can, of course, deliver the solution to their pain. And so it's with that that all I think about is how to be a better value to the real estate agent out there, right, to the real estate agent community. And if you think about that advantage, it's a incredible advantage, because you've got to feel bad in the sense that you're speaking to someone on a refinance on how they can take out cash to maybe put a new roof on their home. How can you possibly at the same time hop on another call and talk to a listing agent to ensure them that they should be selecting that offer over competing, because of your financing structure. Yeah. Two different animals, you see. Right. So do you want to unpack that a little bit in terms of how you do that? Well, yeah, well, absolutely. Well, first and foremost, I know who my customer is. So that's who I'm focused on. So then someone would say, well, Matt, you must have lost out on a lot of refinances. And you know what? You're right. You can't be everything to everyone, not possible. I'd mentioned earlier, as we started that we measure purchase units, okay? It's just what I have an affinity to. I have an affinity to working with real estate agents. It's not a punch line. You're going to find this interesting. When I was 11 or 12 years old, okay, now I had, again, beautiful parents, wonderful parents. They were billionaires with love and emotion, okay? As far as finance goes, they were just getting by. So we grew up in a very modest home, maybe a thousand square feet, stick frame house. We loved it. We didn't know any better. But I would always see these open house signs when I was 11 and 12 years old with these big, beautiful homes. And I would try to convince my mom if we could just go to an open house, maybe we could buy a new home. And she was always so masterful, bobbing and weaving out of the question. I just didn't know it was money related. I just figured we were just working to move. But I would collect real estate agents postcards at the time. I'd seen them on billboards. I thought they were superstars. It goes back to the lack of exposure. These are the people around thinking superstars, which in our opinion today, they're superstars to us now. So I always had an affinity to real estate agents. And so I'm saying that because I genuinely love working with them. I love winning with them. If I didn't, okay, I wouldn't work with them. If I had an affinity to, let's say, let's say I went through a divorce government and I can understand the emotion that it takes out of someone. And I had an affinity to that. I wanted to help people. And I wanted to be the best person in terms of refinancing those that are going through a divorce. And I would be the best at that. That would be my custom, perhaps the divorce attorney, would be my singleness of purpose. Okay. So if I wanted, if I had joy in refinances, which to be very direct with you, if you said all of your production can remain the same, but it has to be refinances, I have to tell you, I think I would retire today. Okay. I don't have any joy. It's not a whole lot of passion. So what I say, it's first and foremost, is originators should really think about the segment of the business that they genuinely love regardless of market conditions, because there's always a market, regardless of rate conditions, and run at that with full speed to my opinion. It's a lot of wisdom there. The Affinity of Agents, of course, as you know, and I love the point that you're making. So I'll state the obvious, which is that there's a certain percentage of originators in our industry who feel the opposite about agents, and it's a necessary evil. Well, see, so that's just it. So let me give you an analogy there. That would be like, okay, so my son, Alexander, is an avid basketball player. He's 12 years old, he plays travel, and so on, and my daughter loves cheer, and she's getting more and more competitive with cheer. So let's use Alex as an example. So the analogy there would be, I go to my son, Alexander, and I said to him, you know, why don't you ever try and pick up a tennis rack, because I happen to also love tennis. I think it's a great life sport, and he doesn't have any interest in it. Now I'm not going to waste my time forcing him to go learn tennis, because genuinely it's not in his heart apart, and six months of a year from now, he's not going to go and practice on his own. Same with originators in today's market. I know what you're being told. You're being told, rates are up, refinance markets drying out, you gotta go work with real estate. If that's not what you find passionate, you're cheating yourself. You're not going to go and practice it on your own. You're not going to pick up the racket, and you're not going to be able to compete to someone who genuinely loves the tennis sport, okay? So for me, I genuinely love the real estate agent. So if we go into the second part of why that is critical to my success, we go into thinking time. You'll get a kick out of this, Jeff. It's going to sound rather obvious, but I don't know if a whole lot of people really do it. I spend every morning for about 30 minutes to think. That's it. Just to think. Why a time alone? Why a time alone, but thinking? And so someone says to me, so what do you think about? Well, I'll write down. What can I do better to be of higher quality to the agents that I serve? And I'll write down 10 or 15 thoughts. And maybe over a week or two, I'll have 100 thoughts. And maybe we use two or three of those, okay? But I'm constantly thinking every day about my customer, okay? It's interesting. Where do you rank the actual borrower in the hierarchy? Well, I mean, look, the borrower is extremely, we call them here clients. And I mentioned that to originators out there. And I know that was the technical term, but to originators out there, they should be called clients or home buyer. No one wants to be, and I'm not trying to correct you, Jeff, but no one wants to be noted as a borrower, right? And you've made that a decision internally. I just want to share that as a point of value to, of course, the loan originators. Just like how, you know, I would never call a real estate agent said, you know, we haven't done a deal in a long time. Right. Is that even me? Is that even English, okay? We haven't done a transaction together. We haven't helped another family together. How about that? Because interestingly enough, not to digress, but in my studies, with agents changing loan officers, I do a lot of market research. And I always try to find out how they think. And more so than not, the top three reasons, within the top three reasons of why an agent leaves another loan officer, are you ready for it based on my case studies, okay? Bedside manner. Really? Okay. They're not your bro, they're not, let's go get a beer, and not, let's go do a deal. They want the ultimate professional. And if we can err on the side of ultimate professionalism, we'll never lose, okay? Yes, someone will talk bro and deal, but that's okay. We want to win more than we lose. And that's really the name of the game, okay? That's interesting, very interesting, um, man, oh, man, there's so much we could cover here. Okay. So we talked about minds that we talked about your number one customers, the real estate agent, and you spent a lot of time thinking about how to optimize the experience that your number one customer has with you. And so your business then, I must say it out loud without making assumptions for everybody, but I usually ask on the podcast, like, what is your number one source of business? I think I know your answer. This would have studied agents, right? Yes, yes, real estate agents, and you did, and you did ask, where is the client on the hierarchy? The client, of course, is super important for us. They are, of course, the client of the agent, they're the client of the agent who inherently becomes the client of ours, or the agent, right? The client, well, the client, okay, being the home buyer is the client of the agent, and the agent is our customer. So that thought process there is we're always asking ourselves if there is ever any type of issue with the home buyer, if there's ever any type of, I don't know, rate, scenario, or whatnot. Are we doing what is best for our number one customer, which is the agent, not for our profitability? You see, because remember, the mindset is the agent is our customer. So we're not giving an example. There's a great state program that is used here in the state of Florida. Now, typically state programs are, you know what, they got more red tape and more nonsense wrapped around them. I think we can agree, okay? So this particular program actually is a super beneficial for a lot of great home buyers out there. And so the catch-22 to that is the compensation is much less. For us, it's not even factored into the equation because the way we're looking at that is it's another tool for our customer to sell another home. So we are screaming that product from the mountaintops. So home buyers can get an understanding of it, turn around and buy another home through the agent that, of course, is that we have the good fortune of having a relationship with. So it's better for our customer, the profitability isn't in the equation. It's always what's best for the customer. I love it. I love it. Okay. I know you do a lot of activities with real estate agents such as events, right? I'm looking at your website here and you seem to always have an event going on. Can you unpack a little bit about your strategy there and how that plays into you serving your customer? Absolutely. So in terms of events, we don't do any type of happy hours or anything like that. For those that do that, that's great. It's not our brand standard, okay? We're always and always going to be about productivity. We're going to be about how we can help their business, how we can grow together, how we can share information that can help their business and so on. So as far as, let's say, you know, something more on the casual scene, we don't really participate in a whole lot of that. You're not going to get me wrong. We have an annual appreciation event to thank our great clients. But more so than not, it's all learning-based, training-based type lunchens, seminars and events. I might have some great guest speakers come in, some people of influence, okay? Some people that have done something or in their industry, I've had my good friend and coach and mentor, Mike Ferry, that's several of my events. And so he is a person of value that can of course give value to the agent community. So it's always coming to the table with that. I had last year, I had Tim Grover come to an event talking about mindset and this guy's intense. Right. Tim is intense, okay? Cool. You know, he was, of course, with the most competitive athletes out there, right? So he's going to be an intense guy. But that was one of our events. It was called Winning, you know, and it tied in very nicely to Tim's book that was launch Winning. Have you read Winning, Jeff? Audio book, yes. Okay. So I would have to say to the great audience that's listening, Winning from Tim Grover is a masterpiece. It's a masterpiece, in my opinion. This first book, Relentless, is an incredible book too. So I would, I would highly recommend those two books for those who have not read it. Okay. So our, our events are always about relevant information and how they can use my process to get them more sales, okay? How they can use our offerings to get them more sales. And that's what we do and that's what we teach on. Can you say your process or offering? Can you be a little bit more specific? Well, sure. Okay. So my number one value proposition to the agent community is my pre-approval process, right? So the pre-approval process, again, being our number one value proposition, it's a seven day a week, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. process, it operates 364 days a year, the only day it's closed as Christmas day. And so it's, that's our number one value proposition to our customer. And so if we think about that for a moment, right, that's a lot of accessibility. It's also a lot of accountability because we pre-underwrite everyone up front, typically four to six hours from document receipt, whether it's on Sunday, whether it's on Saturday, whether it's on Memorial Day weekend. So what our agents have grown to like and love is our level of consistency. Consistency is incredibly important to the customer that you're looking to serve. One of my favorite restaurants, Jeff, is Houston's. It's a hillstone, one of the hillstone restaurants under the hillstone brand, I should say. And I think if anyone who has gone to Houston's or understands it, they've ever been there and eaten there, what happens there is that Houston's, okay, has great food. I don't know if we would call it extraordinary food, but what is extraordinary is their level of service and their consistency, their very consistent brand. So I've been going there since I was 13 and I always wanted to emulate that level of consistency that Houston has. So we have a scripted process from beginning to end, from high I'd like to get pre-approved all the way through to funding and all the micro steps that we call them in between. Most loan originators don't have a scripted process. They weigh it, okay. And that's something that should really be considered and should consider looking at that differently because every business has a scripted process. You know, you board a plane, a flight attendant comes out and talks about the exit roads. I mean, it is a scripted process from beginning to end, okay. You go to a restaurant, the waiter or waitress does a walk up and just say, hey, you know, what are you thinking today? Tell me about your family and you don't do it. So my process, when you're calling to get pre-approved, we follow a script. But it's not, sometimes the word script is like, comes out negative, it's not. It's meant to be impactful, it's meant to be efficient for the customer, it's meant to give them anticipatory needs up front so we can hit their needs up front and to walk them through a very efficient process from beginning to end. So think about it from this perspective. Home buyer calls up a loan officer, hi, I'd like to get pre-approved. Now if a loan officer can't articulate that in about 30 to 35 seconds, maybe 45 seconds as to what their process is, what are they doing? Are they just weighing it? Is it different each time? Because then you don't know what works and what doesn't work. So now we're always adding and tweaking to our process. That's the fun part. Those are the little micro steps in the filters that we call and that we put in place. But so what I would say to a loan originator, whether you're closing two transactions among 5, 10, 15, you want to get to 75 or whatnot, what I would say is, take out a whiteboard and whiteboard out your process from beginning to end. And the customer calling up and saying, hi, I'd like to get pre-approved all the way through to funding. What does that look like to you? And you can start with that base right there. And then you can fine tune it over the years and change it over the years and remove and add to. I'll give you an example of what we added back in 2013. We were pre-approving a customer, it was a past client of mine. And she called me to get pre-approved. I think she was in the $400,000 price point back in 2013. And the most we could pre-approved for was about $350,000. So maybe a month or two later I get a text message on late Sunday night and it's the client. And she wrote, hey, man, I want to thank you for all that you've done. But I did want to let you know I just closed on my new home for $450,000. Not what you want to hear on a Sunday evening with your wife watching something on the couch you know. So a little painful. So I did write to her. So it was a $10.30 and I said, may I call you in the morning? I didn't sleep well that night, Jeff. Okay, you can imagine. So the next morning I gave her a call, I said, thank you and congratulations for that. May I ask how you purchased the home for $450,000? She said the loan originator looked at my credit report, saw that I had a car and asked me if my fiance would be willing to refinance the car out of my name. Okay. Very slick. Two hours later, I called my team in and we birth a concept called loan committee. Loan committee to this day meets twice a day and anytime my pre-underwriter who handles my pre-approvals, meaning the review, if they cannot find a disposition, they cannot find that loan to get approved, they have to present it to loan committee, which is the jury. The jury consists of four people and we go through it with a fine tooth comb. There's about 120, 150 years worth of mortgage experience on that call to ensure that at a bare minimum, the client gets counter offered with some type of solution. So that's what I mean by adding filters to your process over the years on things that backfire. Right. Wow. That's pretty cool. And what's great about that is you took that, you know, potential perceived negative and you've now turned it into a positive, to never lose a difference, right? Nope. I'm not going to get that text at 10.30 at night and again, I didn't like that feeling. That's awesome. All right. Real quick. I'm also still looking at your website with the events and stuff. It says here, book matte for a private team training. Can you tell me what is that all about? Sure. So we always make, I always make myself available to the agent community, to broker owners, to managers, if they ever want me to call or ever want me to come in physically to speak to the staff. I have an array of topics I can talk about all market, you know, all relevant, up to day current information, how to compete and win in a multiple offers, one of them had to generate more buyers in today's market, how to sell inventory. Let's say that's not moving in today's market. So there's a lot of different avenues that I go on and talk about. I handle a lot of content creation and do a lot of content creation, which then transcends to my presentations, and that comes during my thinking time every day, which then, of course, my thinking time is thinking about my customer to have all ties in, and that's where I mean by it. So it's very, it's very hard to go down to boots on the ground, and that's why I always like to start, you know, 30,000 feet in the air because it all connects to understanding who the customer is, which in turn, you know what their sales process is, you know what pain they had, and then you can talk about it in terms of how you can help them. And that's what we do. So agents can agents and their broker owners and managers can book me. They can come to, of course, one of our lunch ins that we have. I just had one today, which was, of course, a lot of fun to watch. It was winning with investors had to work with real estate investors, okay, all the different angles that is associated with investors, okay. So we're always rotating our content and changing it up, and it's always relevant to our market and how they can convert that to another home sale. Would you say that these events are a successful component to those resulting in referrals from real estate agents? Well, it's one of my ingredients that I would say that's in the soup, okay. As an example, I do my status calls every day. So I reach out to everyone who is in my process flow in terms of originated to closing, giving them status is daily. And I don't compromise on my status calls. Those are what we would call Jeff or chess passes, okay. We never want to lose the fundamentals. The greatest athletes in the world are typically great because they're so great at fundamentals, okay. It's not, we don't want to get too big or more out of the fundamentals, that's where we can lose. In order to the highest level is we have to always maintain our basic fundamentals. So as an example, status calls, when a loan gets originated, making a phone call, congratulating everyone and thanking the agents, when a loan gets a loan approval loan commitment in, I'm calling the agents, telling them that it just got an even though they're getting an automated email saying they just been making a phone call, okay. So I, I designated, you know, I'm heavily scheduled. So I designated period of time every morning to make sure that I'm doing that. So fundamentals, mixed with some creativity, mixed with going on the road and, and trying to educate agents to our process. All of that is, all of those are a little ingredients in our soup. Fantastic. All right. Keep an eye on the clock here being respectful for your time. You mentioned at the start of our call, you have a team of roughly, how many was it? Forty? Forty, I have 41 members, all of which are essentially operations, okay. I don't have five or 10 loan officers writing business under my name. I don't have what's called a super team. I don't have it. I have super humans, but I don't have a super team. So this, these are originations or what it is that I do, okay. And I know, and someone asked me the other day, why are you so guarded about that? I said, honestly, I don't talk about it too much because I don't want to make a loan officer feel bad, okay. And I say that respectfully because it's probably a lot easier to say, oh, he must have 20 loan originators running loans under his name. Yeah. It's not the truth, okay. Call the owner of the company right now and he'll tell you. So these are my activities. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to be an originator. I still love the origination seat and I wanted to build an operational infrastructure under me to support my production so I can control my own operations in a sense. And for someone who wants to be heavily in the purchase side of the business, you need to build, in my opinion, you should consider building an operational infrastructure alongside you to support your production. Right. Now, whatever company you're with, they're going to try and support you. Now, your production has to grow in order to do that. So in the first few years of that, I'm multitasking at a high level, of course, until I can continue to add the pieces. So for years, I put myself on the backseat in terms of monetary gain, all in an effort to put all the right pieces in place to allow me to build this operational hub that I have today. Right. So it's critically important. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you're building your own business, obviously. And process and procedure is critical. I assume knowing kind of getting a sense of who you are, you have a lot, all of this documented process procedure. Somebody could walk in and like, how do you do X, Y, Z, oh, well, here's our process. Yeah. I mean, everything is formulated. We are what we were disruptors. There's no question about it, you know, with what we do and we don't, I don't, I say this respectfully, but this is a mindset. And I could only hope that everyone else has this mindset, even if you're in the same state that I'm in. You see, Jeff, I believe, I, let me put it this way, in my opinion, okay, to myself. I want every loan in Florida period. And I'm going to do everything I can to get every loan in Florida. And I don't, and I say that with all respect to any Florida originator, I hope they feel the same way. Yeah. Okay. And so when we think of it from that perspective, it's no different than Jordan saying, I never lost a game. I just ran out of time. Yeah. So for me, I, I believe I deserve every loan in Florida and I'm going to go at it, earning every loan in Florida. So in, in order to do that, I'm building my operational staff. I am always working on process flow. I am disrupting the market in order to achieve my goal because I believe in my heart of heart, my process flow is the best that there is. Now I don't say that regularly because I want to, I want to genuinely extend to any loan originally listening to this. I want you to believe the same thing for you too. Yeah. Okay. That's okay. That's a wonderful thing. Which by the way, mortal enemies are critical to the process, okay. So there's nothing wrong with having a mortal enemy. Maybe I'm a few people's mortal enemies. That's okay. It's fun. Have some fun with it. Make some characters up. And you know, some, an originally I used to call me for the past two years is I have a dark board with your picture on it and throw it every single day. I see. I love that. I don't take that. I don't take any offense to that. It's awesome. Survival of the fittest, baby, and the most adaptable. All right. Before we run out of time, I want to make sure for those that this might be a fit for. I know you do some private consulting, perhaps coaching if I don't know if that's how you describe it. But do you want to talk briefly about that? I don't do any coaching. We have, we consult a few clients, you know, for that right there. It's a very specific thing because I'm always a little cautious about saying this, okay. Not everyone, okay, wants to succeed at the highest level. And that's okay. Okay. But saying that in any type of way of an insult of any kind, we all have our definitions of success. And so the clients that I took on for consulting are those that really want to go to an extraordinary level. And that's where I had some, I'm having some fun with that a little bit and just kind of sharing my process flow and sharing the business development tactics that we have, that really do transcend into business and so on. But it really is for that person who wants to be number one in their state, okay, number one in their region. It's not necessarily because again, everyone has their own philosophy on success or suicide. But I will tell you, and this is again, not to put a commercial out there, but I get loan originators, they call me all the time and they ask, are you looking to put anyone on your team? And what I have here is I do run a team structure. I don't run a typical branch where there's loan officers and they're kind of doing their own independent thing. I'm sure those loan originators can go to another branch or wherever they are and God bless them, okay. For me, we're looking for team members that would want to come on our team and work with our team because we are a true team structure. So we're always looking for that great talent. Is this just in Florida or other states as well? Oh, so it does not have to be in Florida because we are marching nationally. They can be remote. That is always an open door thing there. We can always talk about, but we're looking for the right human beings and it all starts with, of course, a winning mindset. We're looking for the person who wants to be on someone else's dartboard. Like if that's you and you're listening and that's like your M O man, you got to go to Tim's website. We'll put a link in the show notes over there for sure. And you'll know you can contact him directly to learn more about that. So listen, man, we're a little bit beyond the time, so I'm grateful for the extra time you've given me. Thank you so much. We've been a lesson in, obviously mindset was a big theme about this mindset standards, personal work ethic and habits. And the bottom line truth is it's like you can be whoever you want to be. No question. So congratulations, man, on all your success. Well, I appreciate that. Appreciate the opportunity. And thank you for all the listeners, whomever has listened, we appreciate your time. You bet, you bet. Listeners speaking of you guys and gals. Thank you for tuning in. Next episode you know what to do. Please leave us a review, share this with somebody who needs to hear this and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up? Real quick. You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that. You're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you. 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