Which is Better? Realtors vs. Financial Advisors

Hey, what's up, my friend? Welcome to the first interview for 2025. On this episode, I'm featuring my friend Todd Ballinger. I believe it's at least his second perhaps, his third visit to the podcast. And so the appropriate time to be talking about this in the current market because we are in a transaction recession. Overall, transaction volume is down. There's a lot of shifting and moving movement going on in the industry, both on the realtor and mortgage side. And so Todd, I wanted to have a conversation with him about the difference between realtor versus financial advisor insurance professional as referral partners, plus and minuses. And most importantly, how do you add financial advisors, insurance professionals as a other pillar to your business as a source of your business? If you follow me for any time now, you obviously know that I'm bullish on realtors as referral partners for the obvious reasons of that they are focused on transactions and actively seeking opportunities for people buying and selling homes, which if your relationships are lined up correctly, thus benefits you. However, those markets can often be affected by cycles. And so it makes sense if you've ever thought about adding another pillar to your business, well, one pillar is the financial advisor side of things, which includes insurance, CPA and all that as well. And so there are a few experts that I know that I would use that term expert in the country for people who are well versed and steeped in that side of the business, such as financial advisors. So Todd's got a ton of knowledge and wealth about this. He's co-founded 10 companies. He's been in the mortgage business for decades, refers to himself as 84 years old. But more importantly, he is the founder of Barrow Smart University and founder of a program called the Certified Liability Advisor. He actually hosts a community of like-minded mortgage professionals. The links are in the show notes to all his stuff that we talk about here on the podcast. And if you're looking to get educated, if you're looking to get financially fiscally literate in a way that will help and equip you with approaching financial advisors and insurance professionals to have meaningful conversations that are going to generate opportunities for you. This is the podcast for you. And Todd is the guy to follow and get more information from. So with that said, remember that if you are still in a situation where you do need more or better realtor referrals, the best way to do that is by going one to many. Reaching realtors at scale with a value proposition that's attracting versus chasing. And that is through educational content and classes. What we do in the my agent classes community. A win of the week. I wanted to share with you one of our members or he shout out to you. He recently taught one of our classes. He had 13 people registered 11 showed up and had a top five buyer agent show up who he has tried to approach before. But never really got any engagement and post class. He was set up with all the realtors in the class. But one wanted to meet up set meetings with him, which he did with most. He's got referrals, closed transactions, and specifically from that top five buyer agent. And he is getting in front of agents at scale. Minimizing the ups and downs of this transactional cycle that we're in right now. So if you want to learn more about how we do that, you can go over to the link in the show notes, which is the my agent classes link in the show notes. Check that out and look at the other success stories testimonials we've got there. See if the program is right for you. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Todd Ballinger, welcome back to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. First interview of 2025. And I like this because I think when we're entering a new year, I don't know about you or the listener, I do a lot of evaluating like, what do I want to do? Like, how do I want to show up? Who do I want to be? What's my business going to look like? All the business planning? And I think this is a relevant conversation. We have had a lot going on. Obviously, since you and I last talk, a new president, interest rates are different. But before we get into that, for anybody who might not be familiar with who you are and what you do, what would you like to share? I'm kind of performance coach meets financial literacy financial advisor person. And I'm kind of most famous for creating the first mortgage industry designation back in 1997, which was the certified mortgage planner. And then we added some other designations to that, the one our main one, CLA. But we've been big fans of that. My sort of goal has been sort of incorporating financial literacy and financial engagement into the lending process, which is something I'm sure we'll talk about if we talk about financial advisors and working with them today. And, you know, big picture. Before I leave the industry, I want to train a thousand loan officers to become liability advisors. So that's sort of my big, uh, I call it my last hurrah. So that answers the question for people curious about CLA certified liability advisors. That correct? That's right. Yep. Why don't you break that down briefly? What does that really mean? In, in, in, in simple terms, I use an analogy of the balance sheet that I think most people loan officers spent their lives, you know, looking at 1003s and that is a balance sheet, right? You have two sides. You have assets and liabilities. When I started my career as a financial advisor and I crossed the balance sheet. That was my first book ever. It was called Crossing the Balance Sheet. And it was a book about why I left the financial planning industry become a mortgage lender. Uh, and that was actually done with a professor at the University of North Carolina back in 1993. And what we found was we could have a bigger impact on people on the liabilities side of the balance sheet. And we could the asset side because it was more expenses there. The house was 40% of the typical person's expenses. There were all these mistakes they were making there that were keeping them from getting to the asset side of the balance sheet where they could create. Well, so that's why we crossed it, but financial advisors, they own the asset side of the balance sheet. And that means any asset from, from cash, stocks, bond, securities, private, I mean, they don't say I'm going to just do this one little thing. I want to, I want to manage your assets and I want to do that for one purpose. I want to increase your wealth over time. Uh, what I realized on the lending industry side or what I'll call the left side of the balance sheet, it was a very narrow focus on like mortgage. And then that way we weren't managing liabilities. We were selling mortgage loans, right? So I was a financial advisor. I'd come to this industry in the lending side. And I said, well, I want to be, I want to be like I was over here, but I want to own left side of the balance sheet. So I want to look at credit card debt, home equity lines, any kind of borrowing. What's the thing? Because I believe ultimately people who own a home do so, not just because of the quality of life. There is a financial component to it. So we actually say there's house and home. Home is the experience that you have living in a house. And it's very emotional and it's very important. But house is a physical structure. It appreciates and depreciation. Depreciates. It has maintenance and costs. It's like that's sort of the logical side of living indoors. So home is really important. But we focus on the house. And you can show just like going to college, you'll make over $1.2 to $1.4 million more of your lifetime than someone to high school. We can see the people who own real estate versus renting end up being much wealthy or over time because of that compounding because of that wealth dynamic of appreciation and tax benefits and other things that are actually psychologically proven career advancement from the stability of owning your home versus renting. There's all these interesting things about that, which could be another topic someday. But at the end of the day, you want to live in a house. And once you live in a house, you have this experience called home. You can have an experience called home in a rental. It's still home to you, right? You make it home. But you can't, but owning the house versus say renting the house is a very different experience. So we said, look, we want to own that. That left side of balance sheet, anything associated with this thing. And that led us to the third side of the balance sheet. And that's real estate. And that sounds a little weird to say it's really a three-sided balance sheet. But real estate is something that we all have in common as well. You know, I live indoors. You live indoors. Most of us want to live indoors our entire life. And at some point, that's not going to be our parents. It's going to be a place that we pay a mortgage. And you always pay a mortgage. It's either your mortgage or your landlord's mortgage. Once you leave your parents' house, you are always going to pay a mortgage. The question then becomes which strategy creates the most wealth for me over my lifetime? And it is a 20 to 25 million dollar potential decision. A lot of people don't understand the magnitude of the compounding of living indoors. If you say starting at 21, I'm out of my parents' house. And for some people, it's 18, but let's say 21. You will live in a house until you're what? Yeah. So if it is until you die, yeah. Right? And so, and if you move into assisted living, guess what? Your mortgage payment is going to quadruple. Because now you're going to pay 10 grand amount to live indoors. So you're always in, you're just paying a commercial mortgage at that point. So you want to do that as lay in the game as possible. 72, we compound every seven years. What starts to happen is these decisions you make at 20 and 25, 30, 35 round real estate compounding, we have examples where you show that it's a 10, 20, 25 million dollar decision because of the compounding of wealth. Money doubles every seven years in a 10% say growth environment. So the last double is massive. Like if you're 72 and you've got 2 million, your next double by 79 is 4 million. And it's 79. If you have one more double, 86, that's 8 million. So these, these kind of, these decisions are really important. But the CLA, it's like understanding that not only is there a different game to play, but you could actively be impactful in a totally different way with a client. And by doing that, also you can start to create totally do referral models that you didn't know existed, you know, with all these other financial oriented people out there in the world. Okay, long answer. But yeah, we'll come back to CLA actually in a few minutes, we get more specific about that and send the value and why would somebody want to consider being a CLA, you know, benefits, all that kind of jazz. Let's pivot for a moment because, you know, back to like the start of the year, people are looking at their business plan, activities. How do I grow my business? We're in a what I've heard referred to as a transaction recession. As a matter of fact, I was watching video yesterday that said that I think it was mortgage applications for purchases are down 10% this month, which is huge. So knowing the listener, the average listener is like, you know, law and officer mortgage professional needing to originate loans to grow their business, feed their family. I spend it because being a former originator, you as well, we both can relate to this. I spend a lot of my time thinking, how do we get people to deals faster, right? With those sources. And so you and I kind of before hitting record kind of played around with this, the battle of the referral partners idea, realtor versus financial advisor. And I want to unpack that a little bit. And maybe it makes sense to set the frame first and foremost, it's not one versus the other, right? It's both. But let's talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages. Let me let me see as I kind of have owned this setup. Let me frame this and then you can kind of, you know, jump in and play from here. I think the end of last year I was creating some content around the difference between a realtor versus a financial advisor. And here's the position I got took on that is who gets paid for actively seeking out clients for you, right? Realtor versus financial advisor, like a realtor gets paid when they sell a house, right? And so they're either finding somebody to sell a house or finding somebody to buy a house. And so therefore they are actively involved on a day to day week to week, hopefully, basis where they're going to be, you know, seeking opportunities, prospects, et cetera. My proposition was that if you've got your relationships lined up correctly, then you are the beneficiary of the activity of the real estate agent who's doing that consistently throughout the year. And the parallel to that was the financial advisor, right? Checking if I'm wrong. Obviously not focused on acquiring people to buy a house, but doing other things. So there we go. That's my first positioning. I'll allow you to respond. Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah. So so right on. So the realtor's primary economic incentive is to close real estate transactions, right? Now, would you agree that they're going to get paid whether there's a mortgage or not? Yeah, absolutely. Right. And if every client walked into their office to buy a house paid cash, you could be completely disintermediate here, right? As a mortgage professional. So the realtor is out there advocating for themselves as we all are because they want to earn commissions and stuff. They use the loan officer because they have to and and it's because most consumers can't pay cash, right? So that's just one thing I would write there. The second thing is the realtor's themselves are not able to make markets. And by making a market, we're in a transaction recession because of inventory constraints in many markets. We're also there because of interest rate constraints. And I would even even say tax policy because a lot of the people that I know are stuck in their house because if they did sell it, the capital gains they'd have to pay even with the, you know, section one, you know, 61, 153, those kind of things for capital gains still leave them writing a hundred, 200,000 dollar check that that then reduces what they have to buy the next house, which is going to go from four to half percent to seven percent. So the shock of all that is such that they're really kind of handcuffed and stuck. So the realtor can advocate for customers and if that customer needs financing, then come to you as a resource, but they can't actively create a market that doesn't exist. And what one of the benefits, so this is kind of flipping to the financial advisor side is they may have a hundred, 200, 300 clients, you show them a reverse mortgage strategy that releases equity that can be used for long-term care and retirement planning and increase that customer's income and retirement. You suddenly are making a new market for yourself because they may have seven customers right now that need that particular help or an advisor whose client we're going to call the massive fluid. There's different criteria. There's sort of you starter, your Henry's high income, not rich yet, your wealthy, your family office type people. There's five or six categories of wealth in the United States that the advisors look at. But the massive fluid, which is the majority, we're seeing an AmeriPrize client come in with a hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt because they've been sort of thinking they were going to do something and then they didn't sell the house so they didn't refinance or whatever but they keep and suddenly the advisors saying look I got a client here's a situation they got a 600,000 out of our house with 200,000 on mortgage but they got a hundred thousand credit card debt right that's that you can make a market because if you educate an advisor on what that does for that client consolidating that that we just did a case yesterday the average EPR on the debt was over eight percent for the client they had a four and a half percent you know first mortgage like a nine percent second mortgage and then a hundred thousand credit card debt it was around 24 percent. You wait that out right a seven percent mortgage is a great deal when you're paying you know eight and a half nine percent on all of a sudden so that creates an opportunity to make a totally new market which is what you're saying is spot on if you're in a transaction recession you want as many possible opportunities for transactions as possible and that means you've got to go out and see people that you haven't seen before because my guess is if the realtor and I've seen different statistics I think we're down close to a third of the industry professionals that are still in the mortgage industry right now compared to we were in 2021 I mean we're down to about 84,000ish you know people and they're given up their licenses are not doing a lot of the renewals and stuff they're exiting or re-retiring a lot of people came back and they'll re-retire again so the people are still in the industry are going to be calling those realtors so it's sort of a red ocean if I'm calling if I got five people in my community calling the same coal banker agent so you got to do that but you got also be calling people that no one's calling on right now the blue ocean is is sort of this other group I love that I love the context what I wrote down then is you said realtors don't make markets so what I wrote down is the loan officer needs to make their own markets absolutely because making making a market the trend if we have the thing we call it the three major pivots in our in our our little program and the first one is moving from selling mortgages to becoming a liability advisor the second one is moving from from engaging the market to making a market and it's a it's a major mindset shift when you realize this loan officer got in our program in December he's called him 23 financial advisors so far that he's met with eight of them have referred him alone so far a refund probably if they can solve or something or typically like that console vacation property reverses debt consolidation is actually a big one I don't know all the context but I know a couple of them because he sent me some of the cases is we've been kind of we played with these case studies in our in our community but he's like this is just mind chain it's mind blowing to me because that means if I go out and talk to hundred advisors this year right while I'm I still have a realtor base that I'm working within supporting but they're doing what they can do to survive I know I'm going to get my shots at that this gives me something to actively be growing because if I can get to 100 didn't buy that same metric I should have 32 referrals coming in on an ongoing basis from a hundred advisors compared to the 23 sending me a right roughly you know a third sure all right well let's unpack that a little bit yeah talking about pillars and sources and we already established the fact it's not one versus the other it's it's both but as you well know well let let me let me let me well this is I'll just say it so a lot of loan officers don't know how to approach financial advisors this is one of the things you help them do so let's maybe give them some quick tips or like you said this person the LL called 23 financial advisors like how what did they do what did they say what should you sit for what should you not say like aren't these my the perception is they're difficult to reach they can be and so let's let's define advisors there's three groups of advisors when we think of advisors the easiest to reach is the insurance agent otherwise just by insurance would type of insurance do you mean that would be like Northwestern Northwestern Northwestern Mutual New York life things like that but people that primarily focus on that niche of life insurance annuities things like that universal life all that kind of stuff yeah exactly exactly turn life you know depending on your your company and their culture many of them are also financial advisors but this group are they're credible sales people the average insurance agent used to talk to 50 people a week to make their you know quota you know so to speak as as a producer so when you meet one a dollar relationship with them you're meeting someone that's growing their network by 200 people a month because that's the nature of that industry credibly lucrative industry if you can do it and do well at it but heavy sales so they're simple in that you know I used to sell insurance Jeff but if I said hey Jeff do you care about your family and you know if if something happened to you would you want them to be taken care of everyone answers that question the same way right the problem is I got a pay for insurance and that reduces my current lifestyle by transferring money for something I hope never happens so the insurance agents isn't is in a cash and cash flow business and a loan officer freeing up debt and consolidating debt and and helping to refinance the lower rates all those things that's all a found money strategy you become an incredibly viable partner so really simple conversation it's just I can help you and your clients you know find cash flow cash and cash flow they may not know is there by just simply saving them money and what's your biggest expense housing so that I'm that's I own that side of the balance sheet I'm gonna try to find them money I'm asking them to reduce their lifestyle I'm asking them to let me look at their financial situation to see if they're making mistakes that I can potentially help them with they would free up cash flow for them and guess what by freeing up cash flow for them it makes your job easier so we start with life insurance agents then you have CPAs enrolled agents and accounting professionals that's another group that their group as an industry are being asked to get their securities and insurance licenses that that's an industry that's in transformation they believe the opportunity of doing a third of the year of really working hard to in returns and a third of the year kind of maintain your business a third of your taking off there's a big opportunity there so you're seeing this sort of cultural shift in the CPA and accounting industry and they're fun because they have a huge base of clients and they know all their financial stuff those clients often call say what you know they find buy house or buy a vacation property and with their tax benefit I mean these are conversations that they're having and they're in a position so I've got someone you should talk to the third group is the traditional financial advisor anything of Schwab and a mayor prize and Merrill Lynch and Raymond James and Edward Jones but you also have independent registered investment advisors you have all these classes of sort of niches of financial advisor but they are the ones that are meeting with clients on a regular ongoing basis they're actually required by law and your KYC know your customer to meet based on assets and other needs on a regular basis and the calls of that the core conversations really simple you on the right side of the balance sheet the assets of the balance sheet you're a more your financial advisor I'm a liability advisor that's why we position it that way I manage the left side of the balance sheet I manage the clients largest expenses and guess what their largest asset because 84% of Americans have more wealth in their house at retirement than they have and all their qualified and non-qualified plans because typically by the time you retire you've got a six to seven or thousand dollar house with a mortgage paid off the average person retire in corned a vanguard has about 246 thousand dollars in retirement savings right so that's a lot of wealth tied up in the house it needs to be and probably will be managed at some point even if it's just by default have no choice you know I can't eat my house reverse mortgages and things are going important so you're positioning to say I understand what you do that's important because most loan officers don't understand what financial advisors do so by learning and understanding what they do and they're focused and then understanding what you do you're just really announcing a collaboration that is win both of you and that's and that's just like it's win win for the realtor if it wasn't for the lender all the people that can't pay cash couldn't buy houses for the financial advisor who's getting a 1% fee annually to manage his assets yeah now I've got additional value add and services in part of my team that I can bring into this conversation well okay so you have an opportunity to coach loan officers listening right now and let's just say it's it's a crash course so of like okay okay here's the dues and do not back to your example of this LO called 23 financial advisors there's a certain probably best practices protocol whatever how to approach and I know this because I've done things on the divorce attorney side and there's a very specific how to and I'm not to approach so I imagine there's some similarities but what would you own articulate for anybody listing about the dos and don'ts when you're considering seek to understand before you seek to be understood that's one of your classic seven habits of highly effective people but it is foundational financial advisors will meet with you just because they hope you'll become their client that's same with insurance agents right so you can get in to see them and meet with them and you don't want to come in and say look I got it you know I got to play devil's advocate here right yeah because I'm putting myself like I'm this is why I'm saying you've got to be well prepared trained scripted whatever like if I'm gonna call 23 financial advisors what's my pitch right what's to say oh they're gonna be willing to meet with you because I think as you well know and I don't mean to put you on the spot but this is just you know I got to get very tactical these financial advisors yes there's various levels of savviness right but in general they're pretty savvy and if they've been around for a long time they're they they hear this the pitch through the right veil of like you know just want to meet want to be more valuable whatever so I imagine there's a fair amount of resistance not interested whatever so how do we overcome that okay so all right so you said kind of crash course so I'm gonna take you if if so we have this thing called the fast course financial advisors success training and the first thing that we have you do and I'm gonna tell anyone that's doing this is you want to go and warm and how do you go and warm you call every customer you have today and you ask them simple question I am looking to help my clients who need financial advice and I'm curious do you have someone that you currently work with today that provides financial advice that you would recommend if they say yes I'm gonna ask for the name and then you know I can look up the number but I want to the name and who they were the okay you you know Jake Jacob Martin over it Edward Jones great do you mind if I give him a call is it okay if I let him know that that I talked to you and you you made a referral and last question I got to ask you this on scale one to 10 how do you rate Jake this is like the this is the most important part because seven is like the f word in in survey ratings right if if there is like fine so seven or below they really have no no real relationship with that person they would be happy to exchange them for someone else eight nine or 10 tells me that there's something there that Jake's doing that this person really values and they're probably a pretty good a partner so you tell me Alex Jake you know I give him a nod he's really good right Jake how is this tied balance I'm just talking to glorious swanson and we're putting together a list of financial advisors that we can work with our clients who need financial literacy after if she had someone she recommended she said yes she gave me your name I can tell you she ranked you a nine out of ten I you know there's no you tends for God right nine is pretty solid I rarely hear that from other people that I talk to would you be open to meeting with me for half hour and let me understand the type of people that you're looking to work with because I understand some advisors you know Maryland say one a million dollars in assets ever Jones will work with anybody they're just starting out you know $200 a month together I don't ever want my client to be in a situation if I refer them to you that you tell them I'm sorry this is not who I work with I want to scream my clients because I have their financial statement from the loan applications that they're doing but I want every client I work with to work with a financial advisor I think it's important at least have a relationship could we get together for half hour just talk a little bit about what you do who you're looking for and by the way we have an interview forum that we give people for that just so you know really good questions to ask but that is a very high conversion rate because you're coming and warm from an existing client they've already told you that you know they like you a lot and you're saying I'm looking for people like you right now the benefit of that on the flip side is I call a client they have no one I actually tell Jake when I'm meeting with Jake by the way when clients tell me they have no one I'm gonna say I just met with the guy the other day that we're John's names Jake you got a nine from one of my other clients would you be open to talking to Jake is that something that you know you would be interested is it's a hub mentality but what you're starting to do is you're connecting realtors and financial advisors and clients around a common need which is to create some wealth over time for when they aren't working so we call retirement but that's really the hard of it and there's all these other layers to how you go deeper and deeper but if you just call every client put them in a sorting hat up I have someone I don't and then ask on a scale of one to 10 how are they and know in your heart that if it's eight nine or 10 you want to meet them and if it's seven or below you want to replace them because if it's a six I'm gonna call them back and say look I hate to do this you told me you were working with someone at you know Raymond James you gave him a six I've been talking to clients and they all love this one guy is a nine would you want to meet with him I'd be happy to make the introduction if you don't that's fine but I'm never gonna call that sticks advisor anyway right so I'm not like I'm worried about alienating but I'm gonna make that recommendation if I can and that's where I'd start if you got a hundred clients and you end up with 30 advisors from those calls you've got a foundation to start building on and networking and then the other simplest tip I'll give you and this is this is for anything that you do you never leave a conversation without two names if you do that you have an unlimited network of potential opportunity and the simple question is Jake I really enjoyed my time with you this was fascinating let me ask you who do you trust for real estate like where would you send your mom if she was buying a house or you know wanting to say relocate and then who would you trust for tax advice right if I talk to five people and I follow this rule I'm gonna I'm gonna end up with 10 people to talk to if I talk to 10 people and I follow this rule I'm gonna have 20 to talk to and there's something magic about your territory blooming in front of you to where you're suddenly going I don't have time to get to all these people and that's a great feeling as opposed to I don't know who to call and don't have anyone to call because I don't want to use the phone book I'm calling the tax advisors I just met with Jacob there was John who was referred to me by Jeff Zempler who is one of his clients man he's a great guy clients rate him in nine guess what he told me you were the guy he'd go to for tax advice would you be willing to spend 30 minutes with me and just let me understand a little bit more about why he recommended you and what he's doing and that person's like yeah sure come on let's come you know let's let's meet right same thing and that and you just keep if you just did nothing but that there's there's an incredible opportunity right there I love that that's a very simple and brilliant strategy at the same time it's easy to execute on everyone listening I would assume has at least some clients to call right of a various number and that is a fantastic way I think to kick off the the rest of the month of January as you're listening to this maybe whenever you're listening to it make the calls but that's brilliant thank you that's what I was looking for tactical baby I think thank you for helping that refine my sure that's what I do that's what I do put the loan officer hat on you're like yeah yeah just man what can I do today you know absolutely okay let me ask you this question along the same vein of you're talking to these perspective buyers that are buying a house right we've got people at various it'll vary based on the individual but in general you know because because we I've heard of that you know cross selling the 10 or three hey who do you have a finite I love the ranking system do you have any non scientific data on when you ask that question of those buyers or clients and you find out it's a six and you're like hey I've talked to this person you know got a nine et cetera any any you know tea leaves are like insights on resistance of like hey no no no I'm good you know what I mean or anything back on the yeah we we actually teach so we call it the wealth team and the wealth team or page five of the application whatever you want to call there's of her different people using different versions of it I am going to be talking to your realtor it is possible I may need to talk to your financial advisor your CPA your homeowners insurance agent that you want me to work with on the homeowners and stuff like that so if I could real quickly all I'm and we have a one page worksheet it just says is this the six people your attorney so in other words you're packaging it as I'm gathering who are the people in your life that are going to be in this transaction or that you would typically call on if we do need to call them I just want it just feels like it's part of the loan application process you don't want it to feel like weird and like you know you're doing some I just want to know what these people are and I'm asking the same thing let me get them down okay I know I know Rick I've done ton of closings with him and I'll glory it remax she's fantastic I've worked with her before you know Jake I've never met Jake for he's at Edwards Jones I'm still going to ask him on scale one to 10 I gotta just ask how do you how do you how do you feel about them as a partner because again that is that is my sorting hat for for knowing how strongly I want to meet with him and it's part of my script but are you going to ask that as a realtor unless say the whoever's representing you know if you don't have relationship with the realtor you're going to ask them to rate the realtor as well no no this is just for the client just for the client yeah because I'm going to use that client thing if if there's six people in my list and they only give me three names because that's all they have I get to come back and fill in those other three blanks entire well I'm sitting around I'm going I got some dude I got my folder I got all these people in there I'm like let me call up this client yeah I know she didn't have anyone here is see if I can make an introduction again just the power of the goodwill that comes from working to introduce people to each other you know we have a saying your network is your leading indication of your net worth if your network is growing your net worth can't excuse my double negative it can't not grow right I mean you know I mean look at how people get paid and athletics and stuff today why is that because the television the internet and the the network of people that watch you has grown exponentially it's the same in the industry you add a hundred people you didn't know this year to your network you will not make the same money next year it just yeah I mean they're good market conditions but you're going to have new referrals and new things come up that you never match well I love the example you gave as well because you know you're spending your network and like the phrase I love is conversations leads to contracts and so you're just simply having more conversations you're a lot absolutely I'm starting over more it's a hay-drawn collider you're in it you want to be colliding with as many possibly as you can't a hay-drawn collider you know like wait a minute wait a minute we just go into science class here yeah I love physics I think of myself in like an atom bouncing around I want to bounce into as many problems as possible because then I'm going to be more valuable yeah right yeah people could not work with you they would I mean it's really simple it's funny and that parallels back let's bring this back full circle and we'll kind of wrap up here for second time but the parallels back to what we opened up with about agent versus versus financial advisor and it's both and it comes back to what you just said your personal network example that I love to give is becoming five mile famous and so what I say to people is if there's a billboard in town with your picture and logo and everything up on it and take the realtor example like financial advisor exact and every realtor drove by that billboard every day how many of them would recognize your face and it's probably very very few and so that's the biggest problem you face is we're in a transaction recession there's less deals to go around so you need to meet more people have more conversations as you said expand your network and and you know they could go into you know asymmetric indoor let's just call it non correlated referral sources if all my referrals are coming from agents I'm in a correlation wave when there's a transaction economy when rates go down when rates go up what I want is I've got that wave and I want another wave this non correlated and financial advisors are calling because my clients are getting divorced they have this situation where she wants to keep the house he does it we're trying to figure out and we take her off the topic we take him off can we do the loan how do we do that right that's an advisor referral to a to a liability advisor that says I get to refer out to a realtor for house I get to do this so these life events I'm making an addition because we're having a kid and we've decided we can't afford to move right now which is not a non common conversation with your advisor referrals these are all non correlated to the realtor who's not going to be in any of those transactions so you're building a safer less volatile business by adding non correlated referral sources because you've got more opportunities for these transactions throughout the year that nothing to do really with enters if you you just sold your business for $12 million and your whole life you wanted to beach house and you come to your advisor and you've got $12 million and advisor is going to say no go pay cash and advisor we've talked to is going to say you might be better off taking a strategic mortgage loan for 1.6 million and investing that 1.6 million because over the next 30 years you'll get that house plus two more houses for free just based on the average cost of borrowing and the average return over that 30 year period now the class like wow so I get the house for free after 15 years and I get another one free after 30 they start to learn to talk about these things in a win-win way because as an advisor that means I retain that 1.6 billion to manage which is 1% a year that's 16,000 a year at income to me to manage that money versus just typically saying just pay cash it's no big deal right so you're also teaching the back to making a market you're teaching them how to help themselves create more assets to manage over time while also doing good for the client because they just don't think about these things traditional right I love it and the latter and we talked about this you know in the very beginning just do remember that you know I don't know how many licensed realtors there are I'm sure it's shifted just like in the mortgage industry it shifted quite a bit but if you look right now in the financial you know sort of space there's about 1.8 million insurance agents 1.4 million accountants and 600,000 licensed financial advisors it's about 3.8 million professionals that are in the business of calling on clients to manage a wealth and wealth creation just from hitting a target with your eyes closed that gives me if I'm calling on a million to 2 million realtors I've got another close to 4 million people here I could be building relationships with that actually you're touching the clients on a more regular basis 100% with accounting professionals is at least annually with financial professionals is typically quarterly insurance agents it's annually you get a lot of touches in there for that particular group well let's do this people unsure curious we've educated them we've probably enticed and teased them among the value of going after financial advisors or revisiting that if you've tried in the past you've got this amazing community we want to invite people to participate in right would you mind just briefly telling people what it is and then we'll put a link in the show notes so they can check it out absolutely so you know we do we have newsletters we send out every Friday we have materials I have a book that I'm happy to share their road a lot of contents all free and then we have a community where you can join for free and just learn from us we have a community is paid as well where you can get coached and and learn this stuff more intimately so we'll share that circle community with with your listeners they can come join they can ask questions they can access resources that we have in there as well as get our newsletter and some other resources just helpful to them I mean again you'll learn stuff hanging out with us that just like today you wouldn't have Lauren had you not been on this call with Jeff and and had us in your ear for 30 40 minutes but over time I thought people just hang out and they started to get better at managing their own stuff because they start thinking about their own wealth and the fact that wait a minute I don't even have a financial advisor why don't I have a financial advisor or why haven't I decide I'm going to manage my wealth because there's a decision there that has to be made and the decisions again compound over time so come join the community use the link that Jeff's going to share and you know we'll connect you with some of the things that we're doing yeah you've got a lot of content in there learning content and this is where you can kind of you know the entry point with Todd and the other things he does and he's just a wealth of knowledge and education we'll put a link to your website as well borrow smart university dot com in there but definitely you've been around for a long time in the industry before come on man you look good for 80 something thanks man thank you I appreciate anyway everybody thank you for tuning in hope you got some value I would say take the lessons from today's episode on how to approach financial advisors add them as a pillar of your business make the call to your past clients like today right now and ask the question you used the script that Todd gave you so Todd wants again thank you man I'll say thanks yeah thank for having me then appreciate it all right listeners you know what to do if you like this episode share with somebody and or leave us a review 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 you 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 mortgage marketing dot pro or check the link in the show notes and why 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