The Balancing Act of Being a Mortgage Originator

Hello, my friend. Welcome to this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast, Jeff Zimffer, your humble host. Appreciate you tuning in. Hey, real quick, have you ever scored yourself when it comes to realtor referrals? Have you ever been curious about your systems of your process, your conversion rates from a data standpoint? Recently, I launched a realtor referral scorecard, which allows you to discover how your current strategy for attracting realtor referrals stacks up. The purpose of this is to help you gain valuable insights to grow your referral network and increase your production. It's completely free. Results are customized, 100% tailored to you. And what it'll help you do is become aware of where you currently are and identify potential areas for future growth. I've had about 200 loan officers complete this quiz already. And the feedback has been fantastic. The responses have been founded insightful. Great questions really helped me get clear on opportunities and weaknesses. And so this quiz will literally take about two or three minutes and it'll give you a specific score. And overall score, a score on your realtor engagement, your personal branding and visibility, the system is systemization and processes you use, and your value delivery. And I can tell you that it's very interesting and insightful to know where you stand so that you can have a better idea of what your strengths, opportunities, and weaknesses are. So if you're at all curious, it's free. And I think if I'm an insightful, you can customize PDF report when you complete it. And you can go to realtors.scoreapp.com. I'll put a link in the show notes. Once again, it's a realtors.scoreapp.com. Find out how ready you are for more realtor referrals and take the free quiz today. Okay, we're jumping into my special guest here, bringing you back Kelly Yal. If you recall a couple of weeks ago, we released a podcast where I was on her podcast as a special guest. And that was a really cool, fun, fiery conversation. And I had promised to bring it back and have Kelly on our podcast. And whatever Kelly and I get together, what's cool is like we just like, we're just sitting down. We are just like being real, being transparent, right? And talking truth. So we spent a lot of time in this episode talking about the customer journey, your customer experience, how to prepare for the coming changes in 2025, both from an AI technological perspective, what will change, what we think might change, what we think won't change. You know, some of that is crystal ball anyways. But you know, Kelly is just a wealth of knowledge, right? Digital marketing executive with 15 years of experience. She's all about analytic driven technology, marketing plans and not being overly focused on the hype, the noise and the buzzwords and the hacks and secrets. But what is going to still be effective, no matter what happens in the coming market and technology wise. So she's helping a lot of companies with their marketing. She's very savvy when it comes to digital strategy, social media content, CRM optimization, things like that. So I think you'll find this podcast useful. Please make sure you check the show notes for links to follow Kelly on LinkedIn and other places. And so without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Kelly, yeah, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, friend. It is good to be with you again. And so I love the fact that you and I just get to, and it's a Friday. So I'm in a Friday's little saucy little spicy like I just whatever there's no rules. How's that? Okay. I'm for it. All right. So I want to open up this conversation in because I know based on the conversation you know, I have had before on your podcast, you like to point out, well, let me put it this way. You put a post up that says enough you guys can visualize this. You're listening. The post says I am in big bold letters. And then there's using two CRMs buying leads trying to post videos running social media meeting new agents and following up with my database to SOI. So to follow up my database, so I can be and all that's crossed out. And what you have on the image is what's actually only visible or intended to be focused on is I am closing loans. So hopefully get the visual example of that. But what the hell did you mean by that? I am, you know, I used to train a lot of real estate agents. And when I and I used to talk to them, I used to say, isn't it amazing how many hats you're asked to have? If you think about what a real estate agent has to be the master of, right? They have to be the master of like taking pictures and have to be understanding videography and storytelling and biore psychology and then go over to the other side where you have to be a decent writer. I mean, we have AI now, but you know what I mean? You had to really be good at organization, all these different hats you wear, right? And it used to be, it seemed that that was only for realtors. And then the last five or six years, it seems like we've taken, if you look at like most loan officers like LinkedIn pages right now, it'll say mortgage originator and content creator. And you know, we kind of shifted into this, you know, I have so many hats that I have to wear. I don't have an L.O.A. anymore. I haven't been able to afford them in the last couple of years. I know I need to be doing 10 different things. I have two different systems. I have this one with my old database and this one's through my company. And there are so many distractions. There are so many to-do lists. There's so much new technology and new things to learn. And at the end of the day, I think it's really taken our eye off the ball, which is how do these systems and these practices serve me so that I may serve my customer? Because my job is not content creation. My job technically is closing loans for people. And if we can keep our eye on that and we're refocus on it, I think that we start to have a new conversation. Yeah, so let's kind of pick at this a little bit and peel all the layers back because it's isn't that how I get to the loans, though, because there's so many ways today to originate, right? There's the fundamentals, which, you know, you know, I know what they are, and we'll probably talk a little bit about those. But don't I need to be a content creator today? Don't I need to be putting video out? Don't I need to have this personal brand if I'm going to actually close loans? A million percent, but I would argue if you don't already have a personal brand, you're in deep water right now. But yes, you have to create messaging around your brand, right? That's going to be an important thing. But that should be 10% maybe of your week. And I think there is so much distraction and so much competition when it comes to how people are doing things, you know, watching what other people do, thinking that, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, if you will. And so much of that practice can be automated. So much of those things can be easier to do. You have to do all of the relationship work. I am never going to be on another side. Then you've got to be creating relationships. And sure, content is important for that and all of that. But at the same time, the closing of loans and the focus on mortgage, I think can sometimes get a little bit lost in all of the other things that we spend our day doing. If you told me that somebody was going to spend their entire day on creating relationships, and that would be their focus, I would actually take that over the myriad tech solutions and chat GPT experts of the loan world. And I just feel like the conversation has shifted somewhat. All right. I mean, I'm writing notes and I want to come back hopefully to some of these things because you mentioned personal brand. If you don't have one, you're dead in the water. I'm going to come back to that ideally in a minute. And if I forget, feel free to remind me. But I'd like to then maybe line up how you think if you if you were to map out a productive loan officers ideal week, like what would those activities or theme days and structure look like potentially? Yeah. Well, it's funny because I used to build systems based on this philosophy, right? Because what we did was we would automate a lot of behavior on behalf of the loan officer through systems. And what I I used to talk to them a lot about time blocking, right? And our in my in my world, right? And keep in mind, not Kelly, it does not have a mortgage license, nor has she ever done a loan. So you can feel free to ignore me because in many ways, I am not an expert in doing loans, but I am an absolute expert in creating relationships. And if you think about the way that your week sits there, right? You have, but let's say you work 40 hours a week, which we all know is sort of a joke. But in this in this current environment, maybe you do work 40 hours a week. How how are you segmenting out your day to be in front of the people that you need to be in front of? And who is that audience that makes it smart? A lot of people that's going to be meeting new agents. It's going to be talking to the current agents you have in order to create a strategy for growth for both of you. And that's reinforcing the relationships with those agents who are amazing to you and figuring out how you can become even more valuable to them in 2025. So you've got sort of those three pillars where you have to set aside time and figure out what's actually going to be of value in serving them for your best agents. They may be that may be going to lunch. That may be taking a yoga class with them. It may be something that's deeply personal. For those new agents that might just be how do I get you to like me to trust me and to understand that I'm not here just to take your money. I'm here to truly partner with you so that our businesses are together. And then on the other side, obviously, they're talking to borrowers and borrowers are much the same. We have borrowers with high intent who we need to spend a good amount of time with talking about how valuable working with us is and talking to them about what their overall financial objectives are for the next 20 years. And then you have people who you know you have to nurture along the way. And if we look at I like to encourage loan officers a lot of the time to look at the world as if every single human being could do business with them because every single human being can. And that's not true of a lot of different industries. But everyone likely is going to be in some situation of wanting to buy a home or know somebody who wants to buy a home. And how we show up every day, whether that is ourselves or through systems that we create to communicate, it's smart to follow up as a human being. And so when you're thinking about what Q1 is going to look like and you're segmenting out your day, what do I need to do to drive sales? Those are going to be the top most biggest priorities. But then what are you doing to drive value to relationships should be the other part of your day? Okay. Got it. Sales. And I'm drawing an arrow to add value to relationships. What I heard in there was a lot of talking to people. You know what I mean? You know, to be fair and you know, in an increasingly AI world, I hope that sounded super chat to you when I said it. In the increasingly digital landscape, we are going to delve into a more robust conversation about this. You know, if you think about the way that relationships start, right? And I'm going to use a terrible analogy that's probably not going to be PG. But if if I'm on a dating app and I see somebody who I like and I connect with them and my first message is can't wait to sleep together. So we got a problem. Well, which app is it? That's the first one. So you may actually be messaging correctly and I said correct. But in general, think about it, right? How do we start a relationship? Even if that's your end goal. Yeah. If you go in guns blazing, then what are you doing? Right? So how do we build a relationship with a stranger? Because that actually, yes. So whether that's a new lead or whether that's a new agent, how do we start? Well, we can start by stalking to be super fair. There's plenty of information on the internet about human beings. And then we know at least the people we have in common, the kind of warmer conversations that we can have. Maybe you went to the same school. Maybe you have kids the same age. Maybe you used to live in the same area of town that they live in. But imagine how much different the conversation becomes when you do a little bit of investigative work and you don't act like a stalker. But instead you say, Hey, Jeff, you know, I'd really love to have a conversation with you. I know that you know, Brian, he actually was the best man in my wedding. So I'm sure we have some funny stories that we can tell. But my agenda today is not to sell you on why I'm the best loan officer in the world. My agenda today is to get to know you as a human being. Okay. So, but how are we doing that? How are we doing that stalking per se? Well, you know, stalking can be a variety of ways. Ideally, you know, you have a system that can kind of socially stalk and give you some data. If you don't, that's okay. Because that's what Google is for. And, you know, Facebook is preposterous with the amount of information. It will give us about a human being, right? We know where somebody just vacationed. We know what people are doing. And if it's a real estate agent, real estate agents are on Facebook, period. You know, you can play app to app all you want to. But when it comes to real estate agents, that's going to be a really good spot to start. I always suggest to loan officers that you start by connecting on maybe Instagram first, right? Follow them, connect with them, and then start becoming a cheerleader of the things that they do, not obnoxiously. Maybe sometimes you just like things. Maybe sometimes you say, gosh, this is a really great listing. I'd love to share it. Maybe you just slide into their DMs with a, hey, I noticed what you're doing. It's not easy to create so much good content, but you're doing a good job. I'm not selling yet. I'm just talking, right? I'm maybe asking you open-ended questions. You know, how, listen, you're 20 minutes away from my office. You know, how do you feel about December and January? You know, do we think it's going to be hard or you actually seeing some housing prices fall where you are? You know, what are you struggling with with getting new listings? Really try and solve a problem in the question you ask so that they know that you don't just want to get coffee with them. Actually, if you say, can we get coffee? I want to slap your hand immediately because imagine how put yourself for one second in the place of a real estate agent for the last year and a half where every single day their phone is full of messages from loan officers who want to work with them who are asking them to meet for coffee. Differentiate yourself by not swiping right and going, hey, you ready to hop in the sack? Don't do that. You know, put a little romance into it. You know, put a little work into it. The effort is really going to make a big difference because when you approach relationships differently and when you're giving before you're asking, it's a different, different conversation. So yeah, some good tips in there. Hey podcast family, are you tired of chasing down real estate agents for referrals, making cold calls and feeling like you're just not getting the results you deserve? What if in just 90 days you could double your agent referrals and finally lock in that consistent monthly income you've been striving for? My agent classes is the ultimate program designed to help you effortlessly attract, engage and convert real estate agents into top referral partners. We've done the hard work for you. 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Then settle the, you know, and this is might be in my own head because if I go back to that opening post right of where you had all those activities that here it is right here, posting videos, running social media, right, meeting new agents following up with my database. Like those would seem to be, are you, you are not saying that Ellos should not be doing those? Is that correct? I'm not saying Ellos should not be doing this, but we are just because we live in a current environment where they may be a handful of loans in the pipeline. Let's be realistic about six months from now when we're doing 20 to 25 loans in the pipeline. It's easy enough to be able to do those activities right now because you're not really that busy. Maybe you're super busy, but for the most part, people are struggling to kind of get those new leads and loans. Of course, those are going to be good activities for today. But I will argue to Jeff that a lot of people don't actually know how to do some of the things that we're talking about today. I think it's that situation where instead of like stressing out over that there are actually a lot of solutions for how to streamline those. There are a lot of coaching platforms that will teach you how to do it. So you're not really stressing out and you're actually able to focus on bringing in more production. All right. I'm going to scratch deeper here. I'm going to pull. Let's go deeper. You're saying there's a lot of Ellos who don't know how to do that, but they are doing it and they're doing it to the detriment of that activity. Or they're not getting a lot of ROI or bang for the buck I don't think people are really getting the ROI that they have been promised by the by the people who they follow, right? If you like just a normal TikTok feed, right? It's like, oh, everything's easy and you can scale this and you can sell your business model and you can, you know, this is this is shooting fish in a barrel. And the reality of even an extraordinary video content strategy, it may not get anyone to come and do business with you. In fact, if you ask most loan officers how many loans have you received from TikTok? What's the answer going to be, right? So you can concentrate on those efforts and I highly suggest that you do some, but I would very much argue that in the last few weeks of 2024, what we should be doing is thinking about and really analyzing. Hey, here's what I did in video this year. Here's how long it took me and here's here's the ROI I actually saw from it. Did that help me close more loans? Here's how much time I put into my CRM and chat GPTing, everything in the world. Did I see anything from that? Is my system providing opportunities for me or am I still having to fish every single day for new business? And if those kinds of answers are different, right? If you're not, if you're putting time and effort into things that are not fulfilling you, then my argument would be we do have to shift back to a hyper focus on doing the activities that bring ROI. Yeah, so I wrote down a clarify for a second is my system bringing me opportunities. What do you mean by that? Meaning, hey, I'm posting videos and I'm truly trying to make it happen on social media. That's a system. And you're saying, let's evaluate kind of the return on effort for those. I think you have to. I think, you know, we've been the last few years has been heavily short form content, right? And I love short form content. But if you are spending, you have like an entire content day and you're writing your chat, GPT scripts out and you're reading those and then you're editing those and you're uploading those and you spent eight hours on that. My argument would be why are you not using a platform like social coach where you can do all of that in about an hour. And so it's really more about like how do you make the best use of systems available to really dial in how your efforts, how long do your efforts take you? If you're not showing up at all, how can you dive into doing it for the first time? And then what are true ROI proven strategies that you have seen work over the last few years that you can really, really, really double down on in 25 because I feel like the amount of things that loan officers can do, that list just grows and grows. And what we really need to kind of get back to is how am I going to get loans through the door? Now, all these things factor into it for sure. But are they distractions? Or are they really proving to be beneficial to business? Yeah, I guess that goes back to tracking and measuring. I mean, I'm just I'm thinking about the social coach thing for a second. I don't know a ton about that platform, but isn't that essentially? And I don't know what your affiliation is there, but we can talk about that like a social media scheduler and planner and poster? I mean, it is. So I don't have any affiliation whatsoever with it. But you know, here's the thing, whenever I see something come up on the market, and you know me, I'm not a cheerleader of anything really. But when I see something that like makes loan officer lives easier, I'm like, wait a second, hold on a second, I use it. Now, I'm not a loan officer. I technically shouldn't be using it. But I I asked them if I could because I saw it at a thing I was at in January. I was at a momentum builder and I and I saw their platform and I was like, oh, this is really cool. Let me test it out. And I thought, wait a second. If I look halfway decent in the morning, I can turn my camera around. They've got a script. Now, they don't have a script for me, but they've got strips for loan officers. And I can fire off a 90 second video for myself. Click a button. And then later than after near the next day, I have a fully edited, you know, video that has all of my hashtags, all the things that I just push a button to send it out in the world. That to me, that's a huge game changer for most loan officers who look at video creation as sort of an enormous sort of hill to climb. Okay. So what I'm hearing there is that's an operational efficiency using their platform to go from posting to, you know, editing, you know, post production, all that kind of jazz. Right. And so that's that's a, that's a possible solution. There are some others. Okay. Cool. I got it. I mean, so so once again, just to be clear, you are not saying you shouldn't be creating content. You should be looking at how efficient are you at getting it out there? And also how how effective are you in the content that you're producing? Meaning it's got to be relevant, impactful. And that by the way, that's part of the rabbit hole Kelly that we're talking about here is, and I think this is the struggle. I know probably you and me, anybody who's tried to create content, it's not easy. It's I'm going to, it's hard like to create really good content. This is what I've really noticed. And I've been spending the last three months quick side note here, like really evaluating my podcast, my content and my strategy content strategy moving forward for 2025. Who do I want to show up as in the world? Because I don't want to have acid. And I sometimes feel like that's what I do just to get it out there. Does that make sense? It took me seven years to start a podcast. It's not because I didn't understand how to do it. In fact, I had a whole podcast studio built as a gift from my fiance two years ago that I never touched. The reason I didn't touch it is because I wasn't going to do a podcast like everyone else was. And there was this time in the mortgage industry where everyone was like, I have a podcast. And these were my customers, you know, these are loan officers I coach. And I was like, time out. Why? Who's your listener? Who's going, man, I'm going to go on an hour walk today. And I am going to listen to George from Phoenix, Arizona. Tell me why first time home buyers are going to be in a great position this year. Yeah. No one's listening to that friends. And I love you to pieces, but come on. Right. So it genuinely is important. I've had so many different loan officers tell me that they want to go viral with a short form video. And I say great, take your shirt off. And then they look at me and I'm like, well, you said you want to go viral. And I don't know that you know this, but ain't no mortgage video unless it is extremely well done. Right. Which is difficult going to go viral. And if it's going to go viral, it has to go viral for a reason, which is either because it embarrassed you or because it genuinely is so good that people can't help themselves but to share it. Now caveat to that. I do love really solid things that realtor partners can share because this loan officer has given something of true and meaningful value. That is not loan limits have gone up this year. That is not rates have dropped this teeny tiny percent. It's if you're thinking about buying a home in the new year, here are the conversations you want to have up front. And I'm the kind of person you could have these conversations with. And likely your realtor shared this with you because there's somebody who trusts me. And I'd love to have the opportunity to have a conversation. Great video. Now is that going to work across all platforms? Maybe, maybe not. But if you think about the way that you're positioning your message, you have to take yourself into the mind of your audience. Is someone on TikTok today hoping they're going to run across a local loan officer who's going to tell them that conforming loan limits are different? How is that going to really bring them into the fold? Or are you saying like, hey, not only am I a loan officer, but I have a collection of bulldogs. And here's the craziness that we go through every morning before I get to sign in my computer because I got to feed these crazy dogs. And you're showing them like a walk in through your life, right? Hey, yesterday I was really scared because somebody dropped the ball and my clients weren't going to be able to close. And so I worked together with a title company and the realtor to make sure that that didn't happen because can you imagine anything worse at the holidays than not having the home that you imagine putting a tree up in? Hmm. Wow. That's pretty good off the top of your head. Well, you know, I don't know if you know this or not, but I've been in professional mortgage marketing for about 12 years now. Get out. Smack me right in the face. Yes. And by the way, we're going to link up the ways for people to connect with you, both on LinkedIn and on your website for those who want to learn more about what you do. But clearly, the fact that you're able to pull that out of thin air means you have a solid grasp on what is the type of content that actually will get engagement and resonate because there's a right time, right place. Like, there is a right time to pepper in some mortgage or housing related content. But, you know, to your point or moment ago, it's like, that's really not going to, you know, I'm not going to really connect with you in a big way. That might build some credibility and some trust. And like, oh, Kelly knows her stuff, right? But then I'm going to move on and swipe on until something like, oh, look at that. That's funny. Like our friend Kayla, right, with the four pit bulls or whatever that she rescues. Like that brings people in and shout out once again, Kayla, but go ahead. You know, this is the problem is that she, no, let me start again. Obviously, I love her. She's a deer and wonderful friend of mine. She listens to all my podcasts and she, I will die. She'll be listening to it. She'll go, I heard you mentioned me on the podcast. So here we are doing it again, Kayla. I know, right? Twice. Very much. That's a perfect example because you're talking about somebody who embraces not only the trends that are going on, right? Because she will hop on a trend. She'll hop on a popular song. She will hop on a fun way to edit. So she's actually watching social media in general to watch where, like, what's going to be looked at? How can I jump on this latest trend? That that's not something that just everybody is doing. But what she has done in an incredibly efficient job at is this is Kayla. She's got this blonde hair. She knows what she's talking about. She lives in North Dakota and she's got four rescue dogs. Now, I know all of that because of who I knew her to be before I met her. That's how you build a brand. But if, let's say, you have a loan officer who wants to target the messaging and it can be about mortgage until the cows come home. If you think about things like, hey, I live 20 minutes away from a big military base, right? So I want to make sure that I'm talking to people about, hey, are you in the military? Are you relocating to this area? Here are some of the things you're going to see. Here's why having a VA loan is going to be so great. You can use your VA loan benefits the following way. When you're using your VA loan to move here, here's where you can live. I don't know if you know where some of these bases are, but here's some neighborhoods. Now you're talking about, here's a strategy. I'm going to talk nothing about loans and a specific kind of loan, but you've geo-targeted the area, the messaging. You've thought it through and you know that that sort of information is important to the people who you hope to have follow you. So I'm not saying don't do loan, obviously we still want to do a lot of loan videos, but how do you make it personal to who you are? And then how do you really think about the audience? That's good point and that's relevance as well. I was thinking about that. I had a conversation the other day, Tony, if you're listening, what's up, Tony? Shout out. He is in a military heavy area of the country and I asked him if he had done VA loans, first of all, and understood how to do them. He said, yeah, I've done a ton of them. And I was like, well, why aren't you leading with that, man? I mean, it's right in your, like, if I was living in San Diego, I'd be like, double tap in this VA thing. If I wanted to do VA and become known as that person. And he said, he, here's the interesting thing. He got in his head and he had never been in the military and it started to have imposter syndrome about, well, who am I, right? And I'm like, well, dude, you don't have to have been in the military to care about the military community and the service and like, having a affinity and a connection for that. Like, you can help them save so much trial and error and overcome some of those BS that's out there when it comes to VA and I'm like, bro, like, you should go back and double tap on that thing. Wouldn't that make sense? This is kind of like the exact scenario you just described. It absolutely is. Look, I think one of the strangest and hardest parts of the last couple of years for this industry is that, you know, you have to have a certain swagger and a certain amount of ego to sell, right? Confidence. Confidence. And the confidence to sell. And then somebody put us all in like a rock polisher for a couple of years, right? And we've just been tumbling around in there and hoping that when we come out, it will be nice and shiny. But when we went in, I think we were shiny to begin with and then we've just been tumbling ever since. So I think that there's this crisis of confidence that everyone has kind of experienced at one point or another in the last couple of years. I think that with so much talk about like where the industry goes, we start doubting like our own importance or whether the robots are coming to take our jobs or all the things. And we've forgotten this one simple philosophy, which is if you show up as a good human being and you want to help others, and that is the overall message, it doesn't matter who you're going to help, whether you do reverse mortgages, VA first time home buyers, it doesn't matter. You should and need to stand in yourself in that confidence and say no matter what at the end of the day, I'm here to help some people. And if I can hit this target audience with a message and I'm showing them my heart is to serve, then obviously if I'm marketing to people whose heart was to serve in the military, that's already a match. So then it's a blend of the two disciplines if you will, the discipline of fundamentals being brilliant in the basics, which is conversations with the right people. But it's also the flip side of that, which is being a modern and mortgage advisor and then having some relevance and means by which people today can connect and engage with you via these modern methods like social media online, etc. Is that accurate? I absolutely think so. And look, are there people who are killing the game who are still working in an Excel spreadsheet and have never done a video in their life? Absolutely there are. This isn't for everyone, it isn't a one-size-fits-all moment. But I think as we go into the future, we put a ton of emphasis on am I a thought leader? Are people following me? How many followers do I have? How much engagement did I get? Were people negative in their comments on my post or did it not get any action at all? And I look at content like, here's this short burst of me being full of myself because that's basically how I do it. And I'm going to talk about something that's on my heart to talk about today. And I think that is a stronger approach to short-form content than having 12 different scripts around like, you know, borrower qualifications or three hacks to buy a home. Exactly. Or you're pointing at things that I just don't think that those are the right fit for us. But we get swayed because we see these big influencers, air quotes, or people with tons of followers like doing this thing or hopping on trends. And, you know, trends can be great for the right people. But for most, yeah, it's like it's a whole new skill to learn. And in and of itself is almost a full-time job learning how to create content with your mobile phone. And I think what I'm hearing from you if I was to like put a cherry on top of this is place that attention. It's important. Learn the new skills, right? Don't be, quote, left behind, but don't do it at the expense of what we know always works, which is the fundamentals and conversations and FaceTime with people. And also, you know, you're the SME. You're the SME of loans. You don't have to, you don't have to be a content creator. You know, you don't have to actually wear all these hats. There's a lot of ease. Yeah, but tell me, I feel like if I don't, I'm going to miss out. Like that's the pressure. That's the phomo because we see other people doing it. Well, I mean, this is an industry of people who are afraid to know what happens if they don't or what happens if they do, right? It's the same thing you'll hear from like Morgan C. Sweet, well, if we make this decision, what if all the sales people get mad? Well, okay, what if, what if what if, you know, like, yes, you didn't, you have to look, I want you to have the foundations of an excellent business. And that is your brand is strong. People know who you are and what you stand for and they understand your why. You surrounded yourself with the right kind of people, the people in your sphere understand how to advocate for you. You have your systems lined up and you're always looking for opportunities for relationships and sales within that group and with within outside of that group. But there are simple ways that you can have content creation work for you. There are simplified ways that you can have systems work for you. But if you're having to do all of that yourself, ask yourself how much time that takes every week away from really creating those relationships and closing those days. Okay, I think that's a good good note to end on right there. It's not that those media strategies, content strategies aren't important or can't help you move the needle and create some deals. It's question ask yourself the question of, right, how much time is that taking? Is that affecting other activities for you generating business? Is that fair? Okay. So if we also want to connect with you, by the way, great conversation. Thank you so much for bringing all this to light. How would you like people to connect with you? We'll make sure we link it up in the show notes. Well, you know, one of the fun things about having a social media company before social media really existed is that I am tagged myself as my name on all platforms, which means I can never get married or divorce or anything again. I'm at Kelly Yale on every single platform. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Got my name. Well, I mean, look, there were 12 people on Twitter when I started, okay? Because people genuinely didn't know what social media was going to be and certainly weren't starting an agency around it. And that's what's so funny is here I am trying to talk people out of social media a little bit. I don't know. I'm not really sure. But I am at Kelly Yale on any platform. And then, you know, I have a company called Octo Strategies. And, you know, that particular post that you mentioned, the reason that I have that is because, you know, we have a group of eight C-suite individuals who help companies grow in scale, right? And whether that is companies or whether that's really excited individuals who understand the power of aligning process and marketing and tech to create these relationships, I have a company called Octo Strategies. And so I'm fortunate to get to work with some really amazing human beings who lean infractionally for people who can't afford a full-blown sort of agency, you know, relationship, but do need to have some of the fundamentals dialed in for their business. Okay. And that is octostrategies.com. We'll link that up in the show notes as well. Awesome. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Kelly. And listen, if you guys like this episode, you know what to do, please share it with somebody else. Leave us a review that does help us reach other people. Appreciate you tuning in. And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Okay. That's it for today's episode. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes, your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to co-call again, instead building real lasting relationships with top-producing agents who want to send you business. With done for your presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching, it's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.