The Mortgage Geek Returns! With Sean Cahan

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, kids, what's up, Jeff Zimper? You're a host of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thank you for tuning in. If you're here for the first time or the 15th or 150th time, I want to give you a few quick. Wow. I feel good. Hopefully you heard that. It was a James Brown shout out to you for being a listener and tuning in. And so before we cut to repeat second time visit from this month's guests, I want to remind you, I'm going to be got to be bringing this back to the surface. Hey, I put a book out. I wrote a book here. There's a headline right there. I wrote a book, right? The book's called Disruptor Die. How to Survive and Thrive the Digital Real Estate Shift. If you don't have it yet, did you know, did you know, you can get the book for free, free, free, free, free. All you got to do is pay for shipping. I mean, look, I think that's a pretty fair deal, right? You can get it on Amazon. Sure, right? That's going to cost you a few more bucks to get it on Amazon, but you can get it for free and I'm going to give you an incentive to getting it for free and just paying shipping. I'm going to give you access to a free companion course that's got a bunch of video modules in it and stuff like that. Bonus videos, free downloads, guest interviews. These are people that are special guests, interviews that will help you take action, right? On how to disrupt proof your business. The free downloads are additional resources with like building your brand, social media generating leads. And then of course, there's additional videos in there that's a deeper dive on concepts and strategies shared in each chapter of the book. I have to reach for it right here on my shelf. Hold on. Okay. I'm back. How's that for? We just keep it real and raw here. So look, in this book, we're breaking it down. Part one, part two, the five trends driving the digital real estate shift. Do you want to get educated, updated and get on the right track, right? With this whole digital disruption thing. It's happening. Whether you're on board or not, it's happening. So you can either be on board or get run over. It's up to you. Part one, we're going to talk about the rise of the digital culture, consumer control, the rise of mobile and social media and the rise of real estate disruptors. So to set the stage for like what's driving this whole digital real estate disruption. And then part two is becoming a modern real estate mortgage professional. This is where we dive into the brand called you content marketing, online reviews, how to win the customer early, reduce the friction in your process and how to ultimately disrupt proof your business. Lots of interviews, lots of case studies in here. So if you haven't yet checked it out, either go to Amazon. By the way, if you already got it, and you haven't left a review for me on Amazon, I would greatly appreciate that. And if you want access to the companion course and you did leave a review on Amazon, well, just cut and paste screenshot, whatever your your review on Amazon and send me that screenshot to podcast at mortgage marketing radio, podcast at mortgage market radio, or jump into the Facebook group for the mortgage marketing radio listeners and post your screenshot in our private group over at Facebook and mortgage marketing radio. So I want to get you some love. I want to make sure you're getting access to that complimentary companion course. And of course, if you haven't bought the book yet, hey, you can go to get disrupt or die. com, right? Get disruptor die. Let me make sure that is though, right? You are out. I've got so many of these. I forget get disruptor die.com. And I'll take you to the place where you can get the book for free, pay 10 bucks for shipping, anywhere in the US, if you're outside of the US, I'm sorry, you're going to need to go back to Amazon. Hey, also too, some law officers what they're doing is they're purchasing quantities of this book at wholesale for their realtors. And if that's of interest for you as well, then jump into the Facebook group and let me know you'd like to purchase some books at wholesale, you know, minimum 10 or more. And you get a smoke and deal on those literally less than a cup of coffee per each book. And you know, share those with your realtors and stuff as a way to add value to them. Okay. So with that said, let's talk about my special guest. It is a return visit from the one the only mortgage geek. Yes, that's right, the mortgage geek who I last interviewed in 2019 and of course, a lot of things have changed since then in so many different ways. And Sean Kayhan is the mortgage geek. And if you don't follow him on social, we're going to put links here in the show notes, you need to follow him. All right. You need to follow him on Instagram and Facebook on YouTube because this guy is blazing a trail when it comes to leveraging his unique personality. I stress his, his unique personality. There's only one mortgage geek, right? Well, actually, there's two. There's also Denise Donahueb. She's the female mortgage geek. But Sean Kayhan, right, what I'm saying is the mortgage geek might not be the right fit for you for your style, your brand, your personality, but that's okay. What I love about the mortgage geek though is you see what he does. You now have permission, cart, blunt permission to be you, to either let your freak flag fly, to let your teacher shine through, to let your compassionate, caring heart, right, show up, whatever it is, the true authentic you. That's what I want you to gather from the second conversation with Sean Kayhan, the mortgage geek. Now, if any of you are wondering, I hear this question still, I can't believe this question still exists out there. Somebody asking it the other day, somebody was being asked, hey, what's the ROI of social media? And I know this audience is a pretty savvy bunch. I'm hearing more and more every single day asking people what their sources of business are. I think the poll I did on LinkedIn the other day had something like 25% of people that was their primary source of business with social media. So let's face it, folks, it's growing and I want to help you grow it. Now, Sean Kayhan, right, the mortgage geek who's got this wonderful personality, we feature him in the book, by the way, Disruptor Die. But also, as I said, go check him out on Instagram, YouTube, et cetera, you're just going to be thoroughly entertained at a minimum. But also, I think you're going to get some great ideas and what's possible for you when it comes to content. I guarantee you, you will think differently than you ever have before once you witness the mortgage geek in action. The social media is there an ROI for him in his business? Oh, I don't know. His business has grown exponentially. I know in 2020, he did 519 loans for $243 million. By the way, that's personal production, personal production. What you may not know about Sean, he's also the president of Cornerstone, first mortgage headquartered in San Diego, California, and they are tracking to do in 2021, $3 billion that's with a B, $3 billion in funding. So Sean has time to both run a company as the president and create some incredible content. Now, he's completely transparent and honest. He'll tell you that he has a team now. He didn't start with a team. But listen to this episode because this is from somebody who's been on this journey now for upwards of five years in creating content. And you're going to get some nuggets and takeaways on the good, the bad, and the ugly of creating content, right? So I think you'll enjoy this episode as much as I did round two with Sean Kay and the mortgage geek. Let's get into this week's show. Sean, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Sean. Sean, welcome back to the show. Yeah. It's been too long. I know. I'm trying to think was it 2020? I had you on or was it 2019? I don't remember. 2019. 2019. So hell of a lot's changed since then, right? Right. Worldwide pandemic. For one thing. It is not. Okay. So a lot of people have heard about you and know of you from my podcast, the book, and stuff like that. And so what I'm curious about, I want to re-enter the conversation because I'm opening the page of my book here where I, you know, I talked about this whole concept of like surviving and thriving digital real estate shift. And one of the concepts was, you know, in terms of how to become known, one of the concepts was develop a unique style or point of view. And I think you've done a fairly good job of having a unique style and point of view hence the mortgage geek. Cool. If anybody's listened to this, we're going to put links obviously in the show notes all the stuff you tell me to put links to your YouTube channel, your Instagram. I could see it all here. Yeah. But what's happened to you since then, since we last talked like, how's your brand continue to impact your business? Oh, man, impacting it in a very good way. I would say like anything that is a lifelong, you know, that something that's going to carry for a long time, it's not a bell in the whistle, it's not a trick, it's not going to go away, always takes a long time to establish the foundation, you know. And really this year, I went all in. Last year, it proved quite a bit, which was very interesting. I was always at the very beginning going towards like real leaders and then a little bit of consumer and then all of a sudden, I started getting more connects with actual loan officers saying like, yo, this is what you're doing. And I was like, yeah, and they're like, what company do you work for? I'm like, well, I'm the owner of Cornerstone and they're like, wait, you're the owner of the mortgage bank? And I was like, yeah, I'm the owner. And I'm doing this. And they're like, well, can I come and join? And I was like, because if you're doing this, that just sets up precedent for everybody. So it actually pivoted. It was crazy. And that's why if you saw like my view count, I took it a little bit off of YouTube because all of a sudden, I started realizing when my demographics was really Instagram and Facebook because that's where of like the social presence lies in between the business to business instead of the, you know, B to C with the consumer basis. And so I really learned a lot about the three different platforms. So like, you know, your YouTube is a very consumer direct model. You got to change. You got to facilitate your video for that. So some of my videos that do really, really well on Facebook are a complete fucking flop on YouTube. And it's because to a consumer, you know, they might not know what I'm talking about, you know? Or they're like, we don't care for shit, how much you pay somebody. So it was a very interesting, you know, between one of the time we got our phone and now, I think that I've learned so much about each one of those platforms that this year, I literally was like, okay, all in, got writers, got so many different people involved. I'm even maybe possibly flying all the way to what is it, Turkas, cakes and Turkas here with another people that invited me out there to do more, you know, content. I'm like, holy shit, this is, this is kind of going that direction. So yeah. All right. I want to stay on the thread of content for a moment, then we'll obviously kind of interweave the mortgage side of things. But for instance, you mentioned what you learned about the different content for different channels. So that makes me curious, I'm looking at your YouTube channel right now. And I can see if I just grab, you know, couple of titles, obviously got some blooper ones that are, let me actually go to this link, it'll be better to more recent stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm looking at your different videos, what the finance, you got bloopers, you got PMI, are you still doing this episode thing called what the finance? Yeah. So if you saw like the newest one that did really well on YouTube was the three P's of what the finance and it's the way that I actually positioned the video on YouTube. So that one did like, I don't know, 88, 90,000 views pretty quickly, the three P's. Uh-huh. So that again is I didn't start off with an actual interval of what the finance, I started off with just talking about the actual content, then I scaled back into what the finance and then I went more deeper into it. So that actually carried on a lot larger view count for YouTube. And that video did not do very well on Facebook. Okay, so what's, how do you, are you taking the same pillar content on YouTube and repurposing that? Well, we will always put all of the, all of the videos on all of the, the different ones, but it's depending on how we actually allocate the, um, the ad spend, okay? So if I make a video like my L video, you know, uh, or like that one, it was just, oh, and by the way, that L video, I have to talk about this. This is crazy. I am having surgery. Okay. This is how far I go. I have surgery next month because of that video, because I did the splits and they didn't, uh, they didn't catch the video, the whole thing on the first one and I'm in target. People are going, look at this, dude, he's doing the split. And so the film crew made me do it again. And I literally tore in two spots, my labrum in my hip, getting all the way down. And now I have a, I have surgery holy crap. That was two months ago. Is that the one? The hall that, what is holiday cheer like with Geek the Elf? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's unbelievable. You're like a character actor, man. You're like, you know, Christian Bale, you're going to go all the way on the roll. I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Exactly. That's awesome. All right. So where, what's changed in terms of like sources of business for you, right? Let's, let's dovetail a little bit of the mortgage stuff in, well, obviously I'll keep coming back to this. But still, what's your number one source of business today? Well, my personal, my personal business, real letters, still real letters. Okay. Yeah. So last year did 519 transactions, but 243 million. So it's pretty fired up about those numbers, especially because I also grew like the Dickens last year. Yeah. So corner cornerstone where I think our target this year is, you know, just a level over 3 billion. Nice. It's pretty fun, you know? Yeah. That'll buy you some new glasses that without tape, you know what I mean? But, you do it. You do it. Yeah. Like, you did $100 million. Do you know what I think you can afford a pair of sunglasses that are like, I think you missed the point. Exactly. Go to the branding 101. Seriously. But. All right. Yeah. Real letters. Stay in front of them. Yeah. Do you use it all your content? Yeah. Use my content. How do you get it to them? Is that where your Instagram is a bigger play? That's where Facebook and Instagram are bigger play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think that what happens a lot in branding of marketing is the A of O. We, if we don't see success right away, we give up on it, okay? So anyone that's listening, just you guys, I started this in 2017 is 2021, you know what I mean? And I'm still learning. So it's like, just don't stop, right? It's if you don't, if you stop after 12 months, then just consider, you know, your brand debt. And if you don't, if you don't have enough money at the end of, you know, six months or something like that, then you just went into it thinking that you're trying to go all in. Don't go all in, right? Spread it out. The other thing is learning the different platforms from what you want. So I just went in there and on the branding side, it was like, oh my God, I'm just going to be everywhere. And I quickly realized like, okay, cool, then you can't be everywhere. Your video is not good on this platform, it might be good on this platform, your target audience might be a consumer on a Facebook, it might be a real leader. So you know, it's just kind of tweaking and finding out. And then when you do get a really, really good like CPD on one of your videos, then just, you know, take it off the other videos and dump it on that one video or dump it on that one. That we learned a lot is that if you don't in the first like two or three weeks see like a really, really good cost per view or really good interaction on that video, let it, let it die and move over. I actually learned that from Billy Jean. He was like, you're spending too much money on these videos that cost too much. When you have this one, could have dumped everything, all your resources on this one video because the public liked it, you know? So it was a, it was a mind shift. Did you do some consulting with Billy Jean? I Billy Jean's my homeboy. Was it right? Well, he lives down in the San Diego, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Got it. I've known Billy, I mean, dude, the guy's like an animal. He's incredible. But I've also known him for now, seven years. Yeah. Before he was Billy Jean that we all know. I knew him when he first started his thing. He actually rented my, one of my commercial spaces. That's how he gets. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. He's a monster. I gotta say, so obviously I'm looking at your multiple pages and stuff's popping up while I'm looking at this. And I have to say, well, first of all, my wife asked me to tell you that she thinks you're just about the funniest person she's ever seen. Maybe more funny than me, which, you know, in a mirror, she's like, okay. So yeah, no, no. And then I was, there's a client in, who's in San Diego, who's gonna need a mortgage? And I was talking with these two friends of mine, both women and they were living in Germany for 18 years. And we're talking about mortgage stuff, right? And she goes, I know they live in San Diego and I go, well, do you have a loan officer down there? And we're talking, oh, they run a branding agency. This is the funny thing. Okay. And I go, I gotta show you the mortgage coach. So I'm sorry, mortgage geek, mortgage coach. And then I start showing your videos. And we are literally like on the floor laughing in here like crazy. You know what I mean? And we just have this conversation about branding, you know what I mean? And the reality of there's a good amount of people who don't dig your brand. Don't mortgage geek, right? And we talk about that a little bit in the book, but like, how do you respond to that right now? Are you at the point where you're like, you know, whatever man, I got so many people, you don't care, that's not my audience. What do you say to people who are afraid of, perhaps being bold like you have been, right? They're afraid of like, evaluating people. On the, they're, you mean, of the consumer or the people that don't like me or what do I say to them? Any, no, what do you say to L.O.'s who are like, well, Joe, I don't want to be me because I'm going to have, because I know you're being you. This is, you're an extension of the mortgage geek just with glasses as part of who you are. But some people would like probably say stuff, but they're afraid to, you know? So not every brand has to go follow my brand, right? So if you look at what a mortgage and I mean his, his following is incredible. He doesn't disrupt anything, you know what I mean? There is, there's no disruption of any type of thought process or trying to make someone, you know, pushing the envelope. He is just so frickin' his name is meant. He is so frickin' good at just being so consistent with like a 30 second video that he has such a huge following and he'll never get anyone saying, you know, oh my gosh, that's a bad video because he just comes and says like, here's the three things about mortgage insurance. Here's the three things about 3% down. Here's this about this mortgage. Here's an FHA loan. Here's three and a half percent. So it's just a value add content, education, very simple, very clean, throws up some information. So videos are very similar. What's his name again? It's what a mortgage. What are mortars that are YouTube or what is it? It's on, go to Instagram. Oh, okay. Yeah. We're here. He's a monster. Baby. He's a monster. I see it right here, yeah, yeah. What's up with him? So he's, I've seen him in before, yeah. Yeah, he's a monster. You know, another one. So if an yellow comes to me and they don't have kind of like, we want to always take advantage of their personality, right? So if they're like, you know, personality that's kind of straightforward and wants to stay in the box, which is totally fine. You don't have to be outside of the box, right? Mine is more outside of the box. So I do push the envelope. There's 20% of the people that are like, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, all right. You got to, which is a matter of fact, was I wanted to bring up one of the funniest things. So again, the links will be in the show, not the people. You've got to watch The Mortgage Geek mean comments. That is one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen. Stuff that people are saying, man, is unbelievable. It bothers, it's crazy, but you have to put up with it. So it used to hurt my feelings. And now it doesn't hurt my feelings. I'm like, it's the truth. So another, I just got another one recently where somebody came off YouTube, okay? They didn't want to just post a comment on YouTube. They came off YouTube after watching my entire day. Yeah. They found my web page, went to my web page, went into the comments, and then lasted me. And I was like, he wanted that to be personal, you know what I mean? But if you look, that was like a tentative thing. Like, that's you have to watch the whole video. So I think that that, you know, I have to put a smile on my face that I affected somebody's life. Good or bad, so much that they literally had to go through that whole series to let me know that they didn't like me. So I was like, all right. Let's talk about the flip side. Give us a sense of the feedback or that you get from people when you do get a chance to talk to them after they've been watching your videos. Consumers, you know, I mean, what did some of the comments you've heard that, you know, are feeding you to keep doing this? Yeah. So what keeps on, you know, keeping me checking in is the consumers and we'll start with consumers and then I'll roll over into like a B2B, you know, but like the consumers, when they call me, they're like, you know, you're the mortgage geek. I feel really comfortable knowing that you're very, I learned a lot, but you're really, really funny. We feel that we're very comfortable because we feel like we know you. So they built a relationship with me through watching the videos, understanding that, you know, like, they call me, I'm not, how well this is shown. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna comment and be like, yeah, what's up? How you doing that? How can I help you? And then they're like, holy shit, this guy's real. Like, this guy's kind of weird, right? And kind of a character. So they build that. And so when you, when you trust somebody, right, enough, then even if you've never spoken to them before, that's a power of social media that they feel like they can trust you already because they feel like maybe we're alike. Maybe they like that. Maybe the humor brought us together. So when the consumer does call, I'm not like, you know, beating down, you know, who can have the best interest right there calling me going, I know you can do it. You're awesome. I feel so connected to you. Can we just move forward with my mortgage? So cut out all the bullshit, you know what I mean? Well, and let's just keep in mind, your videos aren't just entertaining. They're also educational, right? Totally. Yeah. I mean, so they get to learn, I mean, let's face it, right? The topic of mortgages can be pretty boring. So you found a way leveraging your personality to keep it interesting, but just like you said a moment ago with what's a, you know, what's a mortgage or min? So he isn't this huge, gregarious personality. So there are, the point is there are people that are going to value the straight up education, and then there's some who are going to like dig the funny, the edgy, and they're going to get edgy, because here's the thing, if you weren't educating, if you weren't actually demonstrating you know what you're talking about, then it just be like, who's this friggin' dude who's just being goofy, but I didn't learn Jack, you know? Yeah. So then they might just laugh, and now you're only going to get about 30 or 40% of the people because they might log on and think they're your funny type of deal, but you know what I mean? It's a quick video laugh. Right, right. So that's why that education piece and so, now every video doesn't have to be about education either, like my main comments, right? That's not about education. So sometimes you'll throw in kind of like, to throw somebody off the target, right? So like the what the finance is always about, you know, education, a couple of my other ones are about how I can, you know, kind of move you into the direction of success here, but then I'll just throw out a video and that just kind of is like, fuck, I'm not talking about mortgages. Here's my deal with on my daily basis, you know? Oh yeah, do you ever do the like, you know, here's a day in the life of a loan officer? And I did do that. And they put up a video cam and then they saw me and people were like, holy shit, I had no, so like, it was like nine hours, and I literally did not leave my desk. I'm on my phone typing, like doing like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. That's what kind of people were like, do that. I remember that the camera was like, right over your shoulder or something, right? Looking down at your desk. Yeah, yeah, that was pretty annoying. How much time do you spend thinking about the content you're gonna put out? All right, so I'm a little bit of a cheater now, you guys. I have, at this point, I have like a full, you know, creative team, video team. I have actually different people that do my Instagram even, you know, that specialize in carousels. If you look, I have carousels, I have stickers and all that kind of stuff. So that's actually a completely different group that specialize in this. So when I said I went all in, like, I went to like the best of the best. And I was like, okay, let's go. Let's, let's, how does it end? Here's our budget. It's gonna just go be completely, you know, off the wall. And we need to push the envelope on every single second. So I'm gonna cheat, I, I cheat now. But, but you paid your dues. I did, you know, I just, your video, man, your watch time's gotta be crazy. It just sucks you in, you know what I mean? I've watched you, you've kicked a bottle cap off of the frigging vitamin water bottle. Yeah, that's it. So Jeff, check this out. So let's go back, like, when you were talking about like the consumer, the consumers that call me are not just watching one video and calling me. So how many videos I have, like, all those different podcasts, a lot of people are like reading those articles, because if you type in Sean down in the whole entire front page of Google. And so it's not, it's not about just doing videos. So that's another thing that they allows and everything, like, get in the publication, reach out. So everyone thinks that like, you know, the more and more that, that, the more and more that you get viewed, the more and more people are gonna contact you, absolutely incorrect. I am the one that's reaching out to individuals. I wanna be on your podcast, here's why, oh my God, they're like, wow, this is a great one. My team, so I have actually like two people that are on the phone calling publications, calling, you know, different podcasts, calling different people to get onto their stuff, you know, so it's, I'm not sitting back like just kind of, oh, no, I think that I'm so successful, people know my brand, like, we are actually putting it out to everyone saying I wanna be on it. Well, what's the end goal with all that all of this? So you're just trying to grow, you know, your company and your volume or what? I want to continue showing people that this guy is the limit and to not stop. So I'm having probably the best time of my life, every single year gets better. That's why I'm just like allocating more and more to, you know, the actual like marketing side and also the bank, I will be honest, I will prop my first step away from actual mortgages. We'll probably be stepping away from the day-to-day contacting the consumer myself. I have a pretty large book of business now and I have a really good team, you know, that will still use Sean K, and if I ever need to get on the phone, you know, I will, but stepping away from actually dealing, you know, cause we're working seven days a week, especially with two kids, 16 years, seven days a week, my wife's like, can you like take two days off, you know? So that's where I will step away, but then with the other flip side is that I'll just do more marketing and more like brand recognition on Cornerstone itself. Right, okay, all right. So it all leads back to Cornerstone. Yeah, that's my, that's my baby. Do you have any LOs you've kind of taken under your wing who've come to Cornerstone and are, you know, building their own personal brand? Yeah, so it just actually started that, you'll see if you go on and start following a lot more of the LOs that are joining, you'll see that their Instagram is a lot, it's becoming a lot better, a lot more format and everything like that, because I went to the best of the best. You know, Mario, the monk? Oh, yeah, yes, I do, Mario Trauta. Okay, so we have an exclusive with him that he does, like all of our, and so he does all of our Instagram for now, all of our top LOs, and then we're even funneling it down, creating like, so he's gonna be drawing and writing for actual Cornerstone on the marketing side, like we're not in competition because I know he's still an LO, but just more than like the marketing side. So yeah, I'm allowing now, I wanna watch my LOs really see the benefits of it as well, and not have them be a loan ranger either. So I'm putting them in the same, hey, I'm paying for it as a company, and this is what you're responsible for doing, you're responsible for policy and you're responsible for this, but I'm going to give you amazing content, you don't have to come up with it, you don't have to come up with the carousel, which is your responsibility to follow, to the DM people, to stay active as well, but kind of allow them one step farther to take all the benefits of what I'm doing and actually integrate it into their business. Interesting. All right, let's look back to the B2B side, the realtor side, whatever, in terms of how your content is impacting or driving business, engagement, conversations, whatever, what do you wanna say there? I mean, hey, my, find your weaknesses, right, find your weaknesses, and outsource, so it's a strength, and then focus on your strength. So here's my weakness, always been my weakness. I am so fat at college realtors and introducing myself, everyone would be like, dude, you'd be so great. I'm not, okay? What I am really good at is building a relationship by other techniques, right? First, so my content and my mortgage geek branding allows me to break down those walls, so that I could then, because if you just meet me in a group, I'm gonna sit in that corner, and I'm gonna be like, all right, I'm ready to go down, drink my water, so that I don't drink anymore, and just kind of be like, okay, and people would be like, I thought that guy was the outgoing guy, you know, and I'm pretty much like, I'm like a, like a potato, but I'm like, you know, now, if I meet two people, and they're like, oh, this guy's great, then I'm gonna know the entire room, 30 minutes, you know? So I use that content, I force it out there, they comment, boom, now you're in my circle, I'm gonna start DMU, I'm gonna set up things, let's have a talk, let's chat, let's do those types of things, so I lead in with my content first, and allow that to see if I'm gonna get a response or anything, and then if I do get a good response, or some activity, that's what I'll actually lead in, then I will get on the phone call, and I'll set up the meeting, so to me, then they already know who I am, type of deal, so that I can just be myself in the meeting, so. When you say you're lead with your content, what does that mean? Are you engaging online on Instagram or something first, or? Yeah, like Facebook, Instagram, I'm using those as like my lead-ins, you know? Messaging people, or is it just that you are, okay? Yeah, we're messaging people. So you're finding people, realters, who've watched your content, then you're gonna start kind of a messaging thing with them? Correct, yeah, makes a lot of sense. Another thing, you know, doing some studies and all that kind of stuff, I've quickly learned that social media's not only powerful for connecting, but it's actually taking over so many people's lives today, in the fact that like when they post a picture, it is almost like the social dilemma, right? When someone post a picture on Instagram, they literally are like stalled to the entire world. They are like, oh my God, has someone liked it? And then soon, someone likes it and comments are like, okay, someone validated me, holy shit, someone validated me. So one of the biggest tricks and a lot of people come out for this, that was on my coaching program. I set up and, you know, like, hey, these are the 40 realters or whatever, the 25 real, other referral partners. And I make my team start commenting. They're never allowed to comment first. They're only allowed to start liking and commenting on their social media pages. I, somebody doubted me, it was pretty interesting. They're like, are you sure this works? And all of a sudden, like three, three weeks later, they started sending me, oh my God, Sean. And all they've never spoken to this person, never met the referral partner. All they do is all they're communicating, liking, trying to find, you know, things that they're in common with, commonality. And then, wait, is that word commonality? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then, I'm not really smart with English. It's just really good now. But, and then this person was referring them going, going, this is like my good friend. They are amazing, all this type of stuff, because they felt that they knew each other because they looked at each other's presence. They commented, they started liking them. And they were the first ones that liked every single picture. So if you start doing that, like, if people even do it with me, I feel more comfortable with them. I'm like, who is this person? Oh my God, like this person's cool, you know? And, and it is so powerful. So if anyone needs any tricks or anything like that, please ring me. Please DM me. I will set you up for success. And I don't care that you don't, if you work with me, I don't care if you hate me and like me or anything, I want to make you successful. So I'm going to show you how I do it. Yeah. 100% agree. No, it's a great strategy for sure. I wish more people recognized the ease of which you can connect with people today on social and develop a relationship to your point. It can go on beyond just superficial, as long as you're consistent and sincere. Yeah, it's all about consistency. So like, you just download the alerts. So my phone, like, is like, ting, ting, ting, ting. And I'm like, well, now I have somebody that's like, ting, you know, commenting and all that kind of stuff. It's amazing how far it goes. So in another thing on the flip side, when you do have a phone call, like never when we first started in the industry, we didn't have social media, right? So like, hold calling like an agent. I was like, I don't know this person. I don't know anything about him. I don't even know how he deals that they do. I'm just told that they possibly might do some, right? So how am I going to call, right? It's like so difficult. Now, I can find out what you like and what you're all about in five minutes. I can go to your page, flip through all of your pictures, because here's the deal. You only post the coolest shit that you like. It's not like somebody's posting like shit that they don't like, you know what I mean? So you can learn something, tape that into a mind, and then just call the actual person and be like, oh my gosh, I'm so in the scene too. What mountains do you go off of? Oh my God, this is so interesting, you know, and it's the power of hanging up the phone, not power of getting on, because now I'm teaching you how to get off the phone, because no one likes a phone call that just carries on forever. So again, now you know how to get on phone, because it's so easy to talk about it. Now I'm like teaching, actually, I was like, you know, when the conversation's over, hang up the phone and do you like this? And do you like this? Like you gotta make sure that your conversations are a little bit shorter so that they want to actually answer your phone call the next time. So you're talking about, if you've engaged on social, you've thrown some messages back and forth or whatever, you've done your intel and found out they like snowboarding and they're into cars or whatever, you know, or they're in a vinyl. Those are some great talking points obviously, but if I understand what you're saying, hey man, you don't need to go for the clothes. Like, you don't really connect, is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And learn to get off the phone too. You don't have to have like some 30 minute conversation with somebody, you know? So I want to dig deeper there for a second, like what is your advice, particularly like, you know, when you're mentoring LLOs to create relationships with realtors, let's say, as I said that I thought in my head, you know, people are like, what do you mean don't go for the clothes man? You know, you gotta like schedule a meeting and you know, all the kind of stuff. And I'm like, I'm like, you probably like, like, blow it down, man, you know what I mean? It's just like build a relationship first. How do you coach your LLOs around prospecting realtors around that, you know? So, very interesting. I do a powerful three minute and somebody else came out of the book after I started like coaching about three minutes. So it was pretty funny. Somebody came out with it and like, one of the coaching platforms is a three minute conversation. Really? Yeah, I've been, I've been coaching LLOs. So you're swiping your stuff, man? All right. It'd be kind of weird just because I've never spoken to him, but I just thought it was so awesome that someone else is backing me on it. But the three minute, the three minute conversation, it's get on because three minutes will never give you enough time to close. So if you try to close in the first three minutes, I mean, you're toast. What are you gonna do? Hey, I do a coffee, coffee meeting? Yeah, right. Thank you. Good morning. Hey, hey, Jeff, I'll coffee maybe. Cool tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Hey, guys, deals? Three minute conversation doesn't allow you to get into work. And I say, and you owe me three friend conversations before you allow yourself to talk about work. Three, the same person. So you're commenting, you're DMing, you're liking their stuff. You're getting to know each other. they will go on your page automatically when you get them on the phone and when you call them, it's got to be specific, such as like I reached out to another realtor, good friends, call them, I saw post about his son and I was like, hey, how's your son doing? You know, and he was like, wow, that is so powerful. Thank you so much. Thanks for calling. He's doing better. And I was like, this is amazing. And he was like, you know, by the way, we haven't, you know, gotten the lunch made. I was like, hey, you know what? The purpose of this phone call, I don't want to deviate and have you hang up regarding a meeting with your, you know, about work. This phone call is 100% dedicated to making sure that that your son and that your family are healthy. Let's talk later about work. His wife called me and was like, dude, that was, that was incredible. Like I could have just sealed the deal with the needy, you know what I mean? But it's amazing how much further we can go away instead of just always focusing on, on closing the deal because it's not about the deal. It's about the relationship that creates the deal. Yeah. Yeah. If you're, if you're a relational, right, loan officer versus a transactional one. But most of the people listening to this aren't the transactional. They tend to be in the call centers. And that's not who I'm talking to. Yeah. You have a sense since you've been building up this brand and all this stuff over time. Let's just take the consumer direct, right? The holy grail, which is interesting, which is why I always ask the question, which your number one source of business, it still is realtor as referrals. But you have a sense of what the balance of your consumer direct businesses like from your YouTube or whatever. Oh, it's like 80, 20%. 80, 20, 80, 80, 80, 80 and 20% consumer. Yeah, but your volume, 20%, pretty significant. Yeah. I mean, it's good. Now, men, he's a rushy non-consumer. You know, because he is a he's Instagram and also YouTube, just like pounding knowledge like that. And it just generates so many leads that it is just, it's powerful. So that's what I'm saying. It really just depends on do you want to go to consumer or do you want to go to the relationship building? I truly, truly feel unless you have like a really like a two-source team, you cannot do well at consumer direct and do well on a referral basis. This is my my belief, right? You can a little bit, but if you're all in for consumer, go all in for consumer because you're going to tailor your videos a lot differently or your content a lot different than doing like the referral type of deal. And the follow-up is different, you know, because like if you're going to consumer direct, you're not going to download it and spend your time, you know, commenting and building a relationship on social. So unless you have like a two-punnel team. I think the challenge with that is that the time it takes to develop significant return on the consumer direct side. Most LOs don't have the time for that to happen. The bandwidth of money, whatever, right? It's like I need deals today, you know, and the realtor says where you get the deals like today, you know. Yeah. No, definitely. I think that you can I think you can slow down a little bit if you do want to go in the consumer direct, then you need to actually pre-plan. So what they what they try to do is they try to take a referral base and bring it into the consumer world. And that takes just a ton of fucking money. So if your content is pure consumer, you actually doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take a lot of money either. And it can be fast-paced. It can be, but you have to dedicate 100% of your video content for the consumer such as like the three thing, hey FHA, call me later. Have you seen like Matthew at a New York? Do that guy on the consumer direct completely smears it also. I mean, it's like 138,000. So he's on podcasts and everything like, you know, directly after a consumer saying, hey, you know, call me. Do you need help with FHA alone? Call me. Do you need this? Very direct. And he gets so many likes and comments. And his the amount of deals that come in from the consumer direct is bonkers. You don't recall his name, do you? Yeah, I can find a real question too. Because you know me and I was going to do the research on that. He's one of my, we know each other. I mean, more of like a... It's Matthew Garland and it's M-G-V-V-Morgge guy. So Matthew Garland, the mortgage guy. He has 148,000 followers, no one is from. Do this guy just completely. He's like men too. So men, me, Mario, Matthew, we get on, you know, every once in a while we'll get on Instagram and chat it up. I mean, those guys so much to learn from as well. Let me ask you this question. Do you think, you know, because this consumer direct game, you know, it's not that it's new. I mean, people are aware of their like, I know I should be on social media, whatever I should be, should be doing all this. And yet still, the bulk of law officers are getting the most, most of their business from, from referral sources. I mean, you think somebody like if I don't shift, if I don't create videos, if I don't develop some kind of a brand, I mean, is that the fading winter concept thing that you know what I mean is coming and you're just slowly going to be fading away? How are you going to stand like I called the sardines? Like if you just put yourself into a can of sardines, you know, there's, you got to do something. I mean, the day and age of somebody just using like, oh, well, you know, you're a referral for my dad. They look at your social presence. I don't care. Right. Right. And look at what, what was the statistic? I thought I read, but I never verified it was like 32% of all home purchases last year were, were demographic of the millennial. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Right. 32% where that's up. If you could just focus on that, I mean, lights out, right? So, and then do you, sorry, go ahead. No, keep going. Let's let me play the play this side of the coin then. What do, I mean, do you ever see yourself walking away, dropping a mic? I don't need you, realtors, right? That whole thing. Do you think that's a short play? No. No. Like how many realies drop there? Like how many people are going to get the business, right? But they're still, you know, I was speaking of stats. I think it was 89% of people who bought a house last year, used a realtor to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And then what was it? Some other, some other stats that I read, and again, I didn't verify it. So I'm just going to throw it out there. Don't quote me. Here's the easy thing. They don't quote me. I was like, is your attorney in the room? Um, so it was like 82% of that 89% with, with their realtor's preferred lender. Yes. Yes. Something like that. I don't know if that's the actual figure, but I have all that as well from the NAR. That's where all that comes from. Yeah. It was a, it was a pretty like what I saw. I was like significant. It was a pretty large number. So, yes. Here, if you're going to go on the consumer, it does not mean that you can't parlay that into a relationship, right? It's harder to parlay a relationship based content driven into a consumer direct, okay? Because the two don't correlate now. What you can do is do a consumer direct and parlay that into a referral base because now you are dealing with the consumer and you can tie it in and say, hey, I'm bringing in these leads. Will you be my source of contact? And then you can build the relationship that way and say, hey, I'm going to send you over all these leads. I'm going to show you how well I do. And then if you start doing well, then the realtor's like, dude, I'm going to, you know, you never want to force anybody. You never want to do what's called the golden handcuffs, right? But what you say is like, you're going to give this to you. I'm going to show you what I'm all about. And when you, when you switch it over to them, and you're giving them actual clients that they're going to go get successful off, then natural human, you know, a business, right? Naturally, they're going to want to feed you now. And again, there's always an exception to every rule. So it's hard to go referral based content into consumer, okay? Because those are two different, but you can take a consumer direct and parlay it into building a relationship with the realtor's. Yeah, because what I'm hearing and seeing with that with a consumer direct content, because if it's going to be somewhat educational as well, that can, you know, that's, like I've seen this happen with actual people, where the realtor's will still consume that info because they're getting educated as well. What about FHA? What about, you know, non-honorock, whatever? Yeah. Yeah, I've been working with a couple of folks on this concept of the hybrid loan officer, which is who play who exists in both worlds, you know, who still has got the referral base, kind of like the foundation of their business because that's strong and it's a great source, but then who's also becoming a modern right originator and living that hybrid world, where they're producing content, they are going consumer direct. And that's like, for me, that's like the sweet spot, man, that's who I really want to help, you know? Nice, yeah. So I would then just parlay that over and really focus on the consumer direct, and then what I call like an off-fall product, you know what I mean? The off-fall product of getting all the consumers is, hey, I got to, somebody has to go out there and show these people because I'm not a realtor, right? And I'm going to have to help these people, then they start to get referrals. So I think that that is kind of like that hybrid that is talking about, and to get off the actual shift. So add value. Anything you're adding or doing differently? Where are we now? Mark, this year. Content, content, content, content, content. So I have Mario flying in from New York, we're redoing my entire office, we're setting up cameras and all that kind of stuff that I'm going to start actually coaching and creating content just by sitting at my desk and like, oh my god, I just thought of something like, and just education, you know what I mean? Something comes up and I'm like, oh my gosh, we got to spread the word about how this actually works. So I'm just going to tape it, it goes over the editor, they're going to splice it up into like a, you know, sort of video and boom. So just so much like educational videos are going to be going up that way. So I'm really focused, you know. The audience for those. I'm going to put them on just depending on what the actual video is. This depends on what pops in your head at that moment. So it's the whole idea that you want to capture something that pops in your head in the middle of your day. Yeah, exactly. Catch something, tape it, splice it, it might be like real or driven, referral driven, it might be a consumer direct driven, it might be an education where a lot of people don't know, it might be a new law that came out, you know, it might be something, you know, Fannie Mae's coming down with the line like, hey, yesterday, single, you know, second home and investment, what a crazy nightmare. Well, don't be too scared about it. You know what I mean? So like little things like that and just trying to send out more because I'm constantly dealing with it. So it's like, when I just tape it, edit it and then throw it out there. Hmm, interesting. I know you're still going to do the more, I mean, I know there's a certain production element to that, but are you going to do the more, like, you know, more higher produced where you're doing your, you know what I mean? Like, you've got different characters and stuff like that, you can continue there. Oh, for sure. That is my spot. I love it. So I just made a lot in order to check that out, coming to you soon. What about hold on? Hold on. Is, um, is Fannie Mae, is she coming back? You mentioned her. Fannie Mae is coming back. Fannie Mae is coming back. Fannie Mae, you're awesome. Awesome. I love, I love your play on hot ones. That was really good. That was so spicy. I was like, always said, this is crazy. My mouth is on fire. Oh my gosh. That's awesome, man. Really, really cool. I appreciate you making time, man. Hopefully, um, you know, people got some nuggets listening and I think they did. I think the, you know, one thing is obviously it's like, look, just get started. Don't try and be the mortgage geek. Just be you, whatever that is. You know, if you're, if you're the tight buttoned up dude, who's more of the, you know what I mean, the more professional, if you will, I guess, hey, there's an audience for that, right? But then there's obviously opposite spectrum. There's an audience for the mortgage geek. So you're somewhere in between, man. There's always somebody for you, right? Always somebody for you. Don't ever let go. Also, I just want to send out to a couple of people and be like, hey, can you help me with something? And I was like, and I respond really quick and they're like, holy shit. Like I cannot believe you responded so fast. Like you're going to take the time. So, um, everyone that is listening, if you ever want to ask me any questions, if you ever want to have feedback, if you ever want to know about like tax returns income, I don't, it makes no difference if you work with me or not. Let's be successful together. I'm always available for everybody DM me, go to my Facebook, give me a call, send me an email. Um, it doesn't matter, man. Let's, let's just make everyone smarter and more powerful in their, in their business. So yeah, 100%. Man, 100%. All right. Appreciate it so much. You're being here and making time from your busy day. Listeners, you know what to do tune in. We're going to put links to all his stuff in the show notes as YouTube, as Instagram, as website. So because if you don't watch and follow the mortgage geek, dammit, you need to, you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Go check out my Boston house video, Boston loans. Oh, I'm going to see your view count skyrocket now. It's going to be awesome. All right. So, um, everybody, peace out. Thanks for tuning in. Leave a review if you like this. So as always, man, um, you take care. Let's stay in touch. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up? Real quick. Uh, you've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and you just want to quickly remind you if 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. 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