Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / From TikTok to $20M: How Theoni Rapo Built a Consumer-Direct Mortgage Brand

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From TikTok to $20M: How Theoni Rapo Built a Consumer-Direct Mortgage Brand · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Are you feeling overwhelmed by content creation? Hey, you're not alone. For so many loan officers,
• 0:05
  the biggest roadblock isn't motivation. It's the mystery of what do I post? How do I make time?
• 0:11
  And why does it always feel like my polished content falls flat? Now imagine if creating impactful
• 0:17
  lead generation content didn't require a studio strategy team or even a schedule. Imagine showing
• 0:24
  up as you are, kids in the background, makeup, have done, mid salad, shop, and building a powerful
• 0:30
  brand that converts. Well, that's exactly what today's guest has done. You're listening to the
• 0:34
  mortgage marketing radio podcast where we help mortgage professionals become modern originators
• 0:39
  and close more loans without coal-calling chasing or paying for leads. My name is Jeff Zimford.
• 0:44
  I'm your host and marketing coach. Today on the show, we're diving into a crucial question.
• 0:49
  How do you create content that not only connects but converts without a full production team
• 0:55
  or getting burnt out? And to help us answer that, we're joined by Thione Rappo,
• 0:59
  AKA Not Your Daddy's Lender. She went from cringe content to closing over 18 million a year
• 1:05
  driven almost entirely by TikTok. So in this episode, you're going to learn three key things.
• 1:10
  How to use content sprints to rapidly grow your audience and sharpen your voice while your phone
• 1:15
  is your best production tool and the perfect place to capture real resident stories and how AI
• 1:20
  can become your right hand assistant in refining your message while still sounding like you. Plus,
• 1:26
  we'll uncover what she thinks about how to turn views into leads and why your personal brand needs
• 1:32
  to be ready before you go viral. So if you're ready to stop planning and start posting with purpose,
• 1:37
  then stick around for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio.
• 1:51
  Thione, Not Your Daddy's Lender. Welcome to the show.
• 1:54
  Thank you. I'm so, so excited for our chat today.
• 1:57
  So am I. It's been a long time coming and you are just showing up on my feed with incredible
• 2:01
  amount of content and sassyness. And that's why I wanted to talk to you about like, you know,
• 2:07
  because a lot of people see people do different things online with content. People of course struggle
• 2:12
  with producing content and creating a personal brand. But I want to just start to give me your
• 2:17
  origin story. So if I'm looking at I'm going to set the stage for people watching and listening
• 2:21
  right now. So on Instagram, you got and by the way, we're not talking vanity metrics. I just want to
• 2:27
  give you the context so you can know the work that she's put into this. So Instagram, 27,000
• 2:32
  followers of TikTok is the is the big daddy here, 238,000 followers, 2.8 million likes.
• 2:38
  What the hell's the back story? Give us the origin story and how you, you know, got on this bandwagon.
• 2:43
  Yeah. So I got into the entry when I was 18. So as you can imagine, social media was just like a
• 2:48
  part of what I did as just a kid. Anyway, that's like what we all used it for. Once I got to college,
• 2:55
  I realized that I actually had this job and I went to college at the same time. So I realized I
• 3:00
  would I was like kind of feeding into people almost borderline making fun of me for the fact that I
• 3:06
  was learning so much about credit and building equity and like what all this stuff meant that
• 3:11
  school wasn't teaching us. So I started posting about it on Instagram. And so content has always just
• 3:16
  been one of those things for me that I'm always thinking about it's so much easier to showcase
• 3:22
  something to one to many than one to one. And so that was how I started was like I almost got
• 3:28
  annoyed that we were all in school not learning all these things that I was learning at work. And so
• 3:34
  I started posting heavily probably I would say like 50 50 was like personal and business when I
• 3:40
  was in college. Once I graduated college, I learned that I it was so much easier for me to do that
• 3:45
  than cold call or sit with realtors that like I have nothing in common with and I was 20 years
• 3:50
  old at the time. I didn't know what a 54 year old top producing agent like liked or what they
• 3:55
  would talk about. So I saw social media as my outlet. But I knew it was a long term play because
• 4:01
  no one was in the like in that space yet, especially not on TikTok. So TikTok I used for a year before
• 4:08
  anything popped off. But it was just me like having fun and learning as I went. And I knew it would
• 4:13
  because it's a numbers game just like sales, just like calls, just like anything else were taught.
• 4:18
  But that is kind of how I started getting into it. And just like the last two years have I now
• 4:23
  organized systems and have analyzed my content to a point where I have it down to a T. But for
• 4:28
  at least three years, I was just I really was just winging it. So you got into the industry in what year?
• 4:34
  2016 2016. And you started implementing in in a real way social media. What year? 2019.
• 4:42
  Is that correct? So so today, what is your primary source of business?
• 4:46
  Definitely TikTok. TikTok in 20. So I'm just pulling up redder here. So in 2024, it looks like you
• 4:51
  did about 40 loans for roughly 15 mil. Is that sound accurate? Yeah. So here this this is like the fun
• 4:58
  part of this side of things. I used to say I love it because no one will ever know my real numbers.
• 5:04
  But that was before I was like doing the numbers. And now that I am, it's hard. So I started at a
• 5:10
  bank and I was a loan partner essentially. So there were some that would go into my name, some
• 5:14
  that wouldn't. And then I do because I started at a bank, I made myself out to be the lender that
• 5:20
  does lending in all 50 states because a lot of my content was revolving around that because I
• 5:25
  could for a long time. So now I get loans in every state, but they don't all go into my name.
• 5:30
  So I'm working on getting the licenses. Finally, the last like year and a half, I've been working
• 5:34
  on getting all of the licenses so that my production that is on these apps is actually accurate.
• 5:40
  Right. That's why I was kind of unpack this. And I don't want people to just focus on the numbers.
• 5:44
  But did you want to correct me then for 2024? Or if you factor in all those other additional loans
• 5:48
  that weren't necessarily, you know, attached to you was was the volume something different?
• 5:52
  I probably did around 18 to 20 million in 2024. All right. Total. And your number one source is
• 5:58
  TikTok. Okay. Let's unpack this. How do you get business from TikTok? Let's just say I'm a loan
• 6:05
  officer, you know, as you know, the average age of a loan officer is probably 50 something. But we
• 6:10
  have some obviously younger folks like yourself who've come in the industry. But I would say most
• 6:15
  aren't getting business from social media, let alone TikTok. Would you agree? Yeah, definitely.
• 6:21
  Okay. So let's start with what do you want to pass on to them that you might think might be
• 6:25
  you know, directional or instructional for them of was there a process you went through and you
• 6:34
  crossed the bridge and like lights go on and that, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think that when I
• 6:39
  started to make content, I tried to remove the realtor too much. And so I was so focused on
• 6:46
  building my content that it almost was like hatred towards realtors instead of like it sounds fun.
• 6:52
  It sounds funny, but like I obviously I love realtors and I do like I work with I work with a few
• 6:58
  that I found actually on TikTok that have referred me now and we work closely together. But I
• 7:02
  think that would be the biggest change is that take TikTok and social media is an end to your
• 7:08
  business. It's not the only thing. I was very lucky in the position that I was in when I started
• 7:12
  and I'll be transparent. I was a salaried employee because I was a loan partner. So I had the
• 7:18
  and the advantage to still like finesse and kind of build my platform as I was still getting paid
• 7:25
  whereas I know a lot of loan officers maybe don't have that right now. It's it's either do or die.
• 7:30
  And so I think that they think of content as oh, I need to sprint through this so that I can see
• 7:34
  the results, but it should be an end. When I started switching over to thinking about how can I be
• 7:39
  a better advisor to agents and to people who direct a consumer. That's when I started seeing
• 7:45
  stickier clients, right? Because I was at one point getting anywhere between 25 to 70 leads a
• 7:52
  week and that sounds great. But if those leads were down payment assistance or people I didn't
• 7:57
  align with or just straight rate shoppers that thought I was the cheapest lowest rate or whatever
• 8:02
  it wasn't it didn't matter. So I started switching the narrative a little bit where I would start
• 8:06
  to talk to people who were already pre-approved or maybe working with an agent or a lender that
• 8:10
  they didn't like or just somebody who wanted the service behind. And so I think that that's what
• 8:16
  a lot of people are missing out on. They want to be the Google instead of the advisor. And I think
• 8:20
  with being the advisor and the most smartest, you know, per I always say I'm the best lender I know
• 8:26
  and that's just how I show up on my content. But once I started switching that in my content,
• 8:32
  I started seeing a much bigger conversion and these leads that I was bringing in and also where I
• 8:37
  was getting my business from. That's an interesting point you make. I've actually been doing some
• 8:42
  studying lately on some of my content strategy and preparing to put some stuff out on YouTube
• 8:46
  specifically. And one of the things that I've come across is and you can swipe this if you want,
• 8:51
  but I call it the buyer readiness ladder or the mortgage readiness ladder. And to your point,
• 8:55
  yeah, who is your content attracting? And if your content is attracting all those DPA bad credit
• 9:00
  types of people, what I'm hearing from you is you shifted your content to be more aligned with the
• 9:06
  people who've already gone through the process and know that they can buy a house and now they're
• 9:10
  just looking for the right person to work with. Correct. Yes. That's correct. So maybe less leads but
• 9:16
  better quality. Correct. And I think that it's hard because we're so used to being yes, women and
• 9:21
  men in the industry. So then when you know, you remove that, you're like, well, you know, it's not
• 9:26
  that I won't help those people and I get that. But if it's between me or a different loan officer
• 9:32
  and it's a DPA, I'm not the best loan officer for that because I don't do them. And I don't,
• 9:37
  I definitely don't do them enough to actually help somebody through that process. And so there's
• 9:41
  always going to be a lender that is better equipped for those things. And I think it's giving
• 9:45
  yourself permission to like, that's okay. There's other lenders that that's all they do.
• 9:50
  But more people need the advisory that comes with being a little bit more niche as well.
• 9:55
  So is that a conscious decision? Let's say you get some DPA people and you're like, you know,
• 10:00
  some LLs will take them, they'll put them into the nurturing funnel for a year or whatever
• 10:03
  until they become ready. And you're just like, no, I don't do that, but here I can refer you to
• 10:07
  somebody. So I think the way that now I have my content, I don't get the leads at all in my funnel.
• 10:14
  Yeah. So I mean, I've made, I've made content before where I just call DPAs a scam because I
• 10:21
  personally just think they are. I, you know, I just, I just think that they are. I had, when I first
• 10:26
  got in the industry, I felt like I had to do them. So I've had a good, a good amount of experience
• 10:31
  with them. It was very interesting, though, because it was right in 2019, when I started getting my
• 10:34
  own friends and leads and things like that, then 2020 and 2021 happened. And none of those people
• 10:39
  could refinance their rate because of the DPA. So I kind of just have a bad taste in my mouth for
• 10:44
  the DPAs because of that. So you used to post them content about that about why DPAs are bad,
• 10:49
  so to speak? Yeah. I mean, I straight up call them a scam on my TikTok. So you kind of have to
• 10:54
  by the way, that's another lesson in content. As you, I'm sure, well, no, it's like you got to take
• 10:59
  a stand, right? You've got to become known for something. And sometimes just having that, that
• 11:03
  polarizing opinion is what attracts people to you. Yeah. I mean, I actually have a community
• 11:08
  called not your daddies creator community. And one of the presentations I'm working on now are hooks
• 11:14
  and getting really good at your hook. And so usually what you just said, my hooks are very polarizing
• 11:19
  because that is I first take a stand in whether or not you want to agree or disagree, you usually
• 11:24
  listen for the whole video. And so I've made another one on how, you know, the American dream is
• 11:29
  dying and that people aren't owed like everybody deserves a home, but not everybody deserves a
• 11:33
  mortgage. And those have been my hooks that have been popping off recently. Well, that's an interesting
• 11:37
  one. Not everybody deserves a mortgage. And that's because, I mean, obviously, I have to qualify,
• 11:42
  right? Number one, what's your position on that I'm curious? Well, I think that what I'm seeing is
• 11:47
  so many people get angry at the economy and the way of the world. And I just think it's like
• 11:52
  a victim mindset. And it's nobody talks about the victim mindset when it comes to mortgages.
• 11:56
  Because again, we all want it to feel achievable. And we want to deliver good news all the time,
• 12:01
  of course. But then there are also some people that, you know, right now are like barely qualifying,
• 12:05
  maxing out their debt to income ratio, you know, you've been working them for six months and they're
• 12:09
  like buying other cars or they're doing other things with their credit cards. And so I'm like, maybe
• 12:13
  you just maybe like it's not the smart move. Like you deserve a home. You deserve some
• 12:19
  word. You deserve shelter. Yeah. Right. Exactly. You deserve the shelter. But I don't know. And so
• 12:24
  when you kind, I've been delivering that kind of news because again, I really think of myself as
• 12:28
  an advisor first. And so I have probably more access to people's finances than their financial
• 12:33
  advisor does, right? They can't pull credit. They can't see what's on there. They just have to trust
• 12:37
  that what they're saying is actually accurate. So I kind of have been having a lot of those conversations
• 12:43
  recently where I tell people, I don't know if taking out a mortgage makes sense for you because
• 12:49
  it's you're already tight and now you're getting tighter if I if I actually help you follow through
• 12:54
  with this. It's a responsibility, right? And I'm not sure you're at that stage where you might be
• 12:59
  ready for that responsibility. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, everybody wants to buy a house at like
• 13:04
  520 credit with $10. And I'm like, that's that's mature. Yeah. Well, it's it's just shows a lack
• 13:12
  of understanding for how things actually work. You know, to what degree have they self educated
• 13:17
  themselves about how how things actually work? So I think that's an interesting position. Yeah,
• 13:21
  like it. I want to go back for a second to when you said earlier about how some of your content
• 13:26
  early on was kind of beating down the agents. Can you explain a little bit more what you mean
• 13:31
  about that? And then what was the actual shift? Yeah. So I used to make content about how it made
• 13:36
  no sense to go to realtors first. And I still kind of believe this. I'm not like totally not.
• 13:42
  But I think we're the only country in the world that that's usually how it works because I used to
• 13:47
  have people in from Canada comment and be like, what do you mean? Like here you go to your lender
• 13:51
  first and they refer the agent. And so everywhere else, it seems like instead of the lenders chasing
• 13:57
  the realtors, it's the realtors that are chasing the lenders because people just go to the lender
• 14:02
  first to get their finances in order. And so that's kind of like would make a lot of content on that
• 14:07
  because I tried to go direct to consumer and still am going direct to consumer. But when I started
• 14:13
  shifting that to just talking about the strategies behind why an agent is important and why a lender
• 14:20
  is important and kind of like how you work together instead of just being like come to me first and
• 14:24
  I'll tell you everything you need. I just like, no gate, I just didn't gatekeep any of that
• 14:28
  information. So when I started posting about that, I would see that more realtors that were
• 14:34
  aligned with how I work also ended up in my DMs. But a smart play. And I think it speaks to,
• 14:39
  you know, this thing that we've been wishing or hoping was different for a long, long time,
• 14:43
  which is that I want them to come to me first. Well, I mean, I haven't seen that happen. And I've
• 14:49
  in this in this since 2003. And who knows if it's ever going to have malicious face it people,
• 14:55
  they want the house first. That's the first top of the funnel thing they go through. Let me let's
• 15:00
  search. Let's get in Zilla. Let's do this. Let's go to open out like all that stuff. And then eventually,
• 15:04
  yeah, honey, we're ready. Let's get serious. And then we look at our financing, right?
• 15:09
  Correct. Right. Exactly. And that's fine too. I think that I just, I was just young and like
• 15:16
  angry because I had also been told that to be successful in this industry, you have to go on coffee
• 15:21
  dates and you have to spend lunches and I'm not saying those things don't work. But when I did them,
• 15:26
  I just didn't find anything in common with a lot of the top producers in my area. I just didn't
• 15:30
  really, I didn't vibe. Okay. No, fair enough. Okay. So how many agents do you work with roughly
• 15:37
  right now? Probably like eight to 12 consistently. Consistently. Right. Right. Right. Right. I was
• 15:44
  going to clarify because it's an open need to clarify that a little bit more because you can have 20
• 15:47
  or 30 agents, but they're not sending you any business, right? Are you actively prospecting agents
• 15:53
  in any way or are they just being attracted to your content? Just attraction. Yeah. That's pretty much
• 15:58
  it. Are you getting agents outside of your market as well? Definitely. So it's kind of hard. I actually
• 16:03
  probably do more outside of my market. I just live on the beaches of Delaware, but I don't do
• 16:08
  as much on the beaches of Delaware than when I did when I was with a bank. At that point,
• 16:14
  it was more like second homes like I just did around here. But once I started getting on TikTok,
• 16:18
  I basically do everywhere. So my top three biggest states are probably Cali, Texas, Florida,
• 16:26
  and then Maryland. And you have agent partners that you work within those states outside of your
• 16:31
  state. Yeah. And how do you find that it goes? I want to I want to address the the perception
• 16:39
  that, you know, I think there's value to building your base in your backyard first.
• 16:46
  But I also want to address this little this little issue of like can you grow your business
• 16:50
  referral business Asian referral business? Look at your 3000 miles away from Maryland,
• 16:55
  California. Like how does that work? I mean, I think it's just staying on top of them. I don't know.
• 16:59
  I don't know of an era, maybe because I entered just all digitally first. I don't know how to
• 17:06
  really work when you're constantly meeting people in person. Now I'm a mom too. I don't even have
• 17:11
  the time. So I think it's just staying in front of them and checking in like my check ins are
• 17:16
  constant. And a lot of times I work with people and real estate agents that are also on social. So
• 17:21
  our check ins are because they're posting about their daily lives. And now I have something to
• 17:26
  slide into their DMs about and I'm talking to them about it. And every single week I have
• 17:30
  Mondays or my pipeline updates. So I call them sometimes I don't even have to call them because
• 17:34
  I'm already in their DMs. So I'm just kind of piggybacking. It feels so fun to do it that way that
• 17:40
  I don't really have to like fit the time to do, you know, to stay ahead of them because I feel
• 17:46
  like I'm already in front of them on social media. It's like my online business card.
• 17:50
  Well, I really wanted to just expand on that for a moment because I know there's some people
• 17:54
  listening right now that are that are thinking. How can I expand outside of my my back yard,
• 18:00
  my footprint? And this is why we're seeing more L.O.'s get licensed in different states because
• 18:04
  in today's world you can grow your case and point proof of that. The difference is,
• 18:10
  though, you've got this personal brand, this place online where they can because if you didn't
• 18:13
  have your presence on TikTok or wherever else, like none of these California texts, they wouldn't
• 18:17
  know you exist, right? No. So you'd have to be reaching out to them, which again goes back to
• 18:22
  the point of why you should have a personal brand, why you should be putting content out there
• 18:25
  is because you can do exactly what the only did. Exactly. Yeah. And I also think that it's a
• 18:31
  it's a nice reminder that people just want to work with confident people and when you're not
• 18:35
  confident, like when I'm confident in calling listing agents in California and saying, you know,
• 18:40
  I have this and this and this, very few ask like, oh, where's your office? Are you local? Like there
• 18:46
  are a couple, of course, there are people who care about that. But once you give them the assurance
• 18:49
  that you're confident, you know what you're doing, you've done this before, you've worked in these
• 18:52
  areas before, then like that's all they really need. And I know that that's a hesitation for a lot
• 18:57
  of lenders that I have talked to is, you know, how do you how do you say that you know, like what
• 19:01
  you're talking about in those areas? And I'm like, I think the realtor can focus on being the expert
• 19:05
  of like the local and then I can focus on being the expert in the advisor when it comes to your finances.
• 19:10
  Yeah. I mean, let's just face it on our side. It's it's math. You know what I mean? Does it work out?
• 19:13
  Does the appraisal come in, right? Yeah. All right. Well, that's that's good. And I just wanted
• 19:18
  once again, for everybody listening, this is again, why if you're like, oh, you know, personal
• 19:23
  bread like content and you know, get over it because this is how you're going to expand and grow
• 19:27
  your business outside of. And by the way, I remember I interviewed, um, I don't know if it was
• 19:31
  Jennifer, Jennifer Beast in a long time ago, you know, her, she's, uh, I heard that name.
• 19:36
  Yeah. So she's the number one VA lender in the country. She's got a massive YouTube channel.
• 19:39
  She gets over 150 applications per month from YouTube. Uh, several years I interviewed her.
• 19:46
  But one of the points I think it was her that said this was, um, the advantage of diversifying
• 19:51
  your sources of business because if one state below falls off the map, look California fires,
• 19:57
  like let's just say you were your, your market was LA. Well, you know, what are you going to do
• 20:02
  in the fires in LA or your market was Florida or this or that? Like that's the cool thing about
• 20:07
  diversifying across multiple states is you're not subject to all those local economic, right?
• 20:11
  shifts. Right. Exactly. Okay. So let's unpack your content now. Um,
• 20:17
  all right. I gotta ask, not your daddy's lender. Like, well, why? Where'd that come from?
• 20:21
  So a couple of years ago, I was talking to Ginger Bell, if you know who that is.
• 20:27
  Yep. So me and her were talking about something. I was with Annie Mac, a different company at the time.
• 20:33
  We were talking about something and she was like, man, your team really does things like
• 20:36
  kind of crazy, like in a different way. And I was like, yeah. And she goes kind of like,
• 20:40
  you know, it's not your grandfather's way of thinking of this problem. Or she said something
• 20:43
  like that. And I was like, not your grandfather's. And then I just kind of changed that word a
• 20:47
  little bit. And I was like, I guess we kind of are like, not your daddy's. And so I filtered that
• 20:52
  down to, you know, people love that word. And it's, it's so funny and so uncomfortable for some
• 20:57
  like grown men to, to say it even sometimes like in my DMs, they'll be like, because I use it as
• 21:02
  key points to get PDFs or different, you know, resources. Right. But I think it's so true that
• 21:09
  I personally feel like I'm not the lender that your dad told you to go to. And I thought that was
• 21:15
  my avatar for a long time. And it was like the 26 year old corporate girl when, you know, I just
• 21:20
  thought that she had everything that I could do to help until they came with their dad. And their
• 21:25
  dad was like, wait, I'm giving you all the money for your gift or the down payment or whatever.
• 21:30
  And then they would leave me last minute. So then I became even more invested in that brand
• 21:34
  because I was like, I'm really not your daddy's lender. Oh, I see what you mean. They left you
• 21:40
  last minute after they got all the information and they went somebody daddy preferred. Correct.
• 21:44
  Mmm. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So who is your avatar right now, your ideal client profile?
• 21:52
  So I have a little bit of a different stance on avatars. I think after that, I decided it wasn't
• 21:56
  a person. It was a pain point. And that pain point is kind of what I said in the beginning.
• 22:02
  Somebody who's already pre-approved, they, you know, they are ready to go in terms of like
• 22:07
  buying a house, but they're not getting the advisory that they need. They don't feel like they're
• 22:10
  getting the service that they need. So you can be a 26 year old corporate girlie to do that. Or
• 22:15
  you could be a 40 year old selling your, you know, your second home to buy another second home or
• 22:20
  whatever the case is. And so when I showed up talking to the pain point, I envision these people
• 22:24
  scrolling anxiously on their couch at night. And I'm trying to meet them exactly where they are
• 22:30
  at that point. Do you know what the kind of the age range is for your target client?
• 22:36
  Does it tend to be younger? Probably, yeah, like 30 to 40, probably. Maybe even younger,
• 22:42
  I feel like, yeah, probably like 25 to 40. Mostly first-timers. Mostly first-timers, but recently,
• 22:48
  I found a lot of like buying a house to buy the, or selling their house to buy another. So a lot
• 22:53
  of move up, move down buyers too. But yeah, I guess I would probably say like now it's a mix,
• 22:58
  probably 50, 50, a first-time home buyers and move up buyers. Okay. All right. Let's switch into
• 23:03
  the actual leads you mentioned a moment ago. 25 to 70 leads per week. How do you quantify or
• 23:09
  qualify? What is a lead? Is there some type of an opt-in process you have? What does that look like?
• 23:13
  Yeah. So my husband owns a real estate marketing company. And so two years ago, he created a landing
• 23:19
  page for me because I was getting so many emails or I was just getting so many applications. But then
• 23:24
  these people wouldn't qualify or they were just looking to see if they could get approved for anything.
• 23:28
  But their timeline was for a while. And so now I have a landing page that asks them,
• 23:35
  I dialed it back to like eight or nine questions. But it used to be like 18 questions and people
• 23:40
  would actually fill it out, which is crazy. And now by the time that they get into my system,
• 23:46
  if their credit score is below 620, there's a different button that they fill out. And that goes
• 23:50
  into our nurture. But I'll talk to anybody who's credit score is 620 and above. And then they
• 23:54
  schedule a call with me. After the call, then I send them the link to actually fill out an
• 23:58
  application. Because then I know a little bit about timeline or if they are good lead.
• 24:02
  So for the call booking, it's just automated through calendar or something. It's through the system
• 24:07
  that he created. But yeah, it shoots them a text to let them know. And then it drips them every day
• 24:12
  until they do book a calendar time. Got it. Okay. So using automation there, which scales great,
• 24:16
  they pick a time on your calendar that you've been available. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I'm looking,
• 24:21
  we'll link this up with the show notes. By the way, so you can kind of follow the trail there.
• 24:24
  I'm looking at the link off of your TikTok and it clearly gives you a bunch of different options.
• 24:29
  What is not your daddy's community? Is that for loan officers, you said?
• 24:32
  Loan officers and real tours. Yep. And so what you're teaching them there about content,
• 24:36
  social media, all that. Yeah. Just kind of like take. So I have a creator division at
• 24:40
  Summer House mortgage group. We just joined cross country mortgage. And I just launched it in November.
• 24:46
  And so every week I do a call with the creator loan officers that are on the team.
• 24:50
  I just started it right. So there's only three of us now. But eventually my idea is
• 24:54
  if I'm already doing the work to like teach people how to get on social, how to do all this,
• 24:58
  then I might as well pull back the curtain. And those weekly calls are just open to
• 25:02
  anybody else who wants to join. All right. Very cool.
• 25:07
  Okay. Let me get into some of the content. And here I am looking at your TikTok page.
• 25:12
  And I'm looking at some of your your pinned posts. Did you pin those for a specific reason?
• 25:16
  Yes. So here I'm going to open up with you. Sure. I can tell you what they are everyone.
• 25:21
  That first one I believe has what for 2.4? 4.9 million on the first one.
• 25:27
  Yep. So that one is about a living a living trust. And I didn't even know about a living trust
• 25:34
  until probably like a year and a half or so ago. Once I like learned about it, I was like why am I
• 25:39
  not telling more people about this? This is so important. And then it was funny because then I had
• 25:42
  probate issues on some of my loans. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. So that one I think is
• 25:47
  just very important for anybody and everybody to know. I partnered with a company called Get Dynasty
• 25:52
  that gives them out for a dollar. So you can create one for a dollar, which is pretty cool and
• 25:58
  very. A living trust. Yeah. Really a dollar. Yep. Get Dynasty is the it's actually linked in my
• 26:04
  bio. So instead of me doing like a brand partnership collab with them, they could just like cut the
• 26:10
  cost if I have that link. And I'd rather that because that's not really I'm not trying to be an
• 26:14
  influencer with collab deals and brand deals. I just want the information to go out to as many
• 26:19
  people as I can. So I think that that one's important. And obviously by the views, I think people
• 26:24
  understand it or are starting to understand it. Everybody knows what a will is, but not everybody
• 26:30
  knows what a living trust is. So that one's purposeful to just get that information out there.
• 26:35
  The next one, the Biden stepping down is just a good I think like. So that one I posted two,
• 26:42
  three days after I came home from the hospital with my daughter. She's in my lap in that video.
• 26:47
  I hadn't showered in a couple days. Like that news had just broken out. And I was post-partum,
• 26:53
  tired as crap, hadn't showered. And I was like, I need to tell people like what this means for
• 26:58
  rates. And especially around the time that the feds had said that they were going to cut in September.
• 27:02
  And so there was like all these different things floating around. So I just showed up and I posted
• 27:07
  that video. And so I have it pinned because I want other loan officers and other agents or whoever
• 27:12
  to know that I was like, I looked like crap. It was like my messaging. And the fact that I gave
• 27:18
  assurance to people who were clearly googling and searching for these terms of what that meant
• 27:22
  if they were looking to buy a house during that time in one of my like most vulnerable states.
• 27:27
  Like I was I just had a baby. So I have that pinned because obviously it resonated with a lot of
• 27:32
  people and they understood what happens when things like that happen in politics to the rates.
• 27:38
  But also at the same time it showed that like you don't have to be prim and proper and the app
• 27:42
  actually works in your favor if you don't. 100% yeah love that. And congratulations by the way
• 27:47
  on the courage to just post. It was a fun time. And then the next one is my reviewing the loan
• 27:55
  estimate. And I still probably get like anywhere between 20 to 30 leads. I'd say a month
• 28:00
  on people who want me to review their loan estimate sheet. So I have that pinned up there. So if
• 28:04
  they come to my profile from another video and they're under contract they know that I have that
• 28:09
  ability to review. Really? So do they also schedule a time with you to review that? No. So that one
• 28:13
  usually obviously because they're under contract. So they get a text message to ask them what time
• 28:17
  works best for them today and tomorrow or tomorrow. So they respond with a couple of times and then
• 28:22
  I squeeze those in after I review them if I can help them. Sorry. Go ahead. Did you hear my audio?
• 28:27
  No. Okay. I was playing your video. Oh, I didn't hear it. That's just a special brilliant idea
• 28:33
  right there. That is a swipeable because you know we've seen people use those occasionally but
• 28:38
  I'm going to go back to your actual main feed here. So that's an idea. And by the way this is why
• 28:41
  you want to go check your profile out on TikTok because this is a clinic or a case study in
• 28:51
  topics of what to post. Now not everything right like your big sister advice. I'm buying a home like
• 28:56
  of course if you're a guy you're not going to do that right but you could do your big brother advice
• 29:00
  but more importantly just the two ideas we talked about right now about living trust because we
• 29:04
  have a lot of financial knowledge that a lot of people don't and we can parlay that. Secondly the
• 29:08
  low estimate thing is just like wow banger like every you know most people don't even friggin understand
• 29:13
  what a low estimate means. And then there's just a couple other here that jumped out at me waving
• 29:18
  your hands. I actually just remembered this too on that slide in one I talked about being on my
• 29:22
  refinance list to get alerts if the rates drop and so I actually do get people who sign up
• 29:28
  still for my refinance list. I was wondering I was like why did I else had that pin like there was
• 29:32
  a third reason. So that one has my refinance list sign up too. Love it and I can see a couple others
• 29:37
  real quick here. You have a strike rate. Everyone who owns a house should let me just go back to
• 29:42
  the headline. Everyone who owns a house or wants to buy needs a strike rate right now brilliant. And
• 29:48
  then the next one I love this is a really good positioning. Rates don't care that you're waiting for
• 29:52
  them to go down to buy smart smart. So let's talk about that. How do you come up with your content
• 29:58
  ideas? Is there a structure? Are you weighing it and shooting from the hip and let's just grab the
• 30:01
  phone and go or what does that look like? Yeah so as you can probably imagine we as loan officers have
• 30:06
  a lot of conversations in the day and we usually get like wound up when we are very passionate about
• 30:11
  something that happens whether it's good or bad on the phone call. I take all of that and I just
• 30:16
  create the content. Like I don't wait for my next content day. I don't like try to schedule it.
• 30:20
  I just I get off the phone with somebody and I'm like why don't more people know that?
• 30:23
  Like what do you mean you don't know what an escrow is? Like you don't know what an appraisal gap?
• 30:27
  You haven't figured out how that works. And it comes from of course they don't know because there's
• 30:31
  not enough information. So then you become that person that has the piece of information on the internet.
• 30:36
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• 31:08
  grew at least 25% and that was during a pretty down market and have only grown every single month
• 31:15
  that I've kept doing it. Community is great. Jump to the Friday calls. It's awesome. Have fun with
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• 31:31
  in the show notes. Now back to our show. So let's talk about your content strategy. How do you go
• 31:36
  from idea to post to like walk us to because you know that's the biggest challenge for a lot of
• 31:40
  people? What do I post? How do I get it out there? My production process, all that. How do you do it?
• 31:45
  Yeah so I'm very there's a word and it'll come to me at one point. I think like I just I go with
• 31:51
  the moment. So when I when I talk to people all the time I mean we're constantly on our phone. So
• 31:55
  we all have conversations. People can feel when you make a certain type of content and they know
• 31:59
  if it's dundering a content like content day that's been planned or if it's true where you just
• 32:05
  got off the phone with somebody and you cannot believe that they didn't know the IRS tax payments
• 32:10
  is you know something we add to our debt or that you know something like that. And so I take the
• 32:16
  momentum that I get and I gain from the calls that I'm on and then I just go and create the content.
• 32:21
  So a lot of my TikTok content as you can see is me just showing up wherever I am. Sometimes I'm in
• 32:26
  the car. Sometimes I'm I'm a mom of two. So sometimes it's in the bathroom getting ready. Sometimes
• 32:31
  it's me cutting a salad. Sometimes it's eating ice cream after I get the kids down and wherever I
• 32:36
  am that's just where I post the content because people can feel that. So I just allow my daily talks
• 32:43
  to be part of my content. Now I do have a notes section in my phone that if for some reason I cannot
• 32:50
  make a piece of content at the time I will write it down and then I just go back to it that same day
• 32:55
  if not the next day because I want that same feeling to be in my content when I create it.
• 33:00
  Yeah that's very smart and I don't have to say that I'm not good at that. I'm not good at the
• 33:05
  in the moment grab the phone and record even though the few times that I've done it it's probably
• 33:10
  gotten more views than the kind of polished and prepared stuff not to say you can't get
• 33:15
  views with the other kind of you know structured stuff. But the point being is what you're trying to
• 33:19
  I think I highlight is people really love the authenticness right the connection like this is
• 33:23
  just really this is the only in the moment like like you said it wasn't overpublished.
• 33:27
  Correct. But how many what is your content posting schedule look like how frequent?
• 33:33
  So I'll do these things called content sprints and that's when I'm trying to really bring in
• 33:38
  the leads and also like to get in the flow of it myself so that'll be on TikTok. If you want to
• 33:43
  grow on TikTok what you should be doing is content sprints it's two videos a day for two weeks.
• 33:47
  It sounds like a lot but when you do that your account will grow and you just get better at being
• 33:53
  a communicator you get better at seeing yourself hearing yourself you get better at telling stories
• 33:58
  and it's a two-week sprint and then you have what I call like bingeable content where you can go
• 34:03
  back and study on your own content and see like what worked and what didn't. Instagram I always
• 34:08
  have a story up and I'll probably post one to two reels a week. Okay and are you posting different
• 34:16
  content as your reels or repurposing the same video from TikTok to Instagram? Yeah I think of
• 34:22
  Instagram and TikTok a little bit differently so I don't really repurpose a whole lot. TikTok likes
• 34:27
  to see you kind of like looking like you do every day they don't like the prim and proper they don't
• 34:33
  like you know they just they as close to a FaceTime call as it can be on TikTok is what they like so
• 34:39
  when I've tried a repurpose it just doesn't perform very well on TikTok you have to earn every single
• 34:44
  view so just because I have 200 some thousand followers doesn't mean that that many people are
• 34:48
  always gonna be seeing it it's a little bit different than Instagram on Instagram they do like
• 34:53
  you to be a little bit more like professional looking and prim and proper and I think a little bit
• 34:57
  less every year but it still is kind of the baseline there so I see TikTok as my lead generations
• 35:03
  where I get most of my leads and then I see Instagram as my nurture it's where I nurture the community
• 35:08
  that I have which is why I have so fewer than TikTok but the people who follow me on Instagram are
• 35:14
  much stickier because they know more about my life I do not post about my kids or really my life
• 35:19
  on TikTok as much but I will on Instagram and then okay that's cool all right so then most
• 35:26
  of your content then is you'll do the sprints and things like that but you're not necessarily
• 35:30
  having a batch film day right no yeah we used to as a as a branch we might get back into it we
• 35:37
  kind of took a little relapse after I had my daughter and then I couldn't really get back into it
• 35:43
  but it was a great way to get the team together they were fun but that shouldn't be your only
• 35:47
  source of content so even though we would do that as well the like talking head style it wouldn't
• 35:52
  be the only thing that we post because if you only have talking head style no one's gonna resonate
• 35:58
  with that you kind of look like a bot you look like not a real person because there's no kind of
• 36:03
  like day in the life oh this is like her in her average day everything's like polished and
• 36:08
  appropriate all that right do you use any AI tools in regards to content scripting idea generation
• 36:17
  let's take that before we get into editing but just be out of that the only thing I probably will
• 36:22
  use is a chat UBT knows my voice when it comes to how I speak on my TikTok videos so if there's
• 36:29
  ever a topic like I'm actually working on one right now about inspectors and it was an inspector
• 36:33
  who I talked about who I talked to and he said something like of course inspection reports are
• 36:38
  gonna have something on them but people get spooked so easily but if we give you a report that has
• 36:43
  nothing on them then you know you would feel like you just got ripped off because you just paid for
• 36:48
  an inspection report nothing showed it and all the things and I was like how do I turn that into
• 36:52
  you know relevant to what I teach and what I know and so I fed that to chat UBT and I've done a
• 36:58
  lot of work where I've taken transcriptions of my videos and then fed it to chat UBT so it knows
• 37:03
  my style it knows how I talk and then I've like asked it when I get stuck on how to deliver
• 37:08
  and when I ask it how to deliver it's how do you how can I make this a FaceTime call to my best friend
• 37:13
  who has no idea about anything related to real estate and so that's been really cool I use it all
• 37:19
  the time for pretty much everything so it's really cool that it knows when to plug in other pieces of
• 37:25
  my life as well which has been nice so the more I use it the more I feel like it just knows me it's
• 37:29
  my like little assistant do you ever I'm curious I've been experimenting with this myself lately
• 37:35
  is I will take videos from other creators not necessarily in the industry either from outside
• 37:42
  and there's a you know kind of a framework you can prompt GBT for taking this idea which which
• 37:48
  you know got a lot of engagement and repurposing that have you ever experimented with that no that's
• 37:53
  interesting yeah it's pretty cool I feel like I feel like it would probably spit out some pretty
• 37:58
  interesting things because there's I mean there's a framework for any video to perform if you
• 38:01
  want it to perform right exactly all right don't want to go off the rails there that be a separate
• 38:06
  podcast I do okay real quick then the difference in terms of posting your you're doing mostly shorts
• 38:11
  right my videos are probably like on average two to four minutes long okay all right well they're
• 38:18
  pretty long yeah sure a quick tip on let me just go to your reels here on Instagram what I've
• 38:26
  always been curious about this and it looks like this is just a straight up in the moment question
• 38:30
  you know this whole premise that your thumbnails for your short videos should have a headline on it
• 38:36
  right or kind of selling the short you know what I mean you have any take on that because I'm
• 38:41
  looking at some do some don't so is this just you're just like no I'm just posting then it's working
• 38:47
  you mean the pin post no any post like some of your posts have like you know the caption on the
• 38:52
  video frame I'm not your daddy's lender or what is another one here closing closing costs
• 38:56
  explained you know on Instagram I probably could be better about doing it on TikTok I'm very
• 39:03
  religious about it because I have so much content that I like to think when somebody finds me they
• 39:09
  binge my content and so I try to make it as easy as possible for them to it's almost like a Netflix
• 39:14
  series you want to know what that's going to be about yes so I would I would imagine if you're
• 39:18
  doing my method on TikTok on Instagram you should be doing that but it's a little different my
• 39:23
  my content is not the same as it is on both platforms right and I could just say so the way the
• 39:28
  Netflix thing 100% like I'm here on my desktop and I'm scrolling your TikTok and it allows me to look
• 39:33
  at the titles which is basically like browsing Netflix oh does this look good right so that's a
• 39:37
  key point by the way for a lot of people I need to get better better at that as well is like yeah
• 39:41
  you gotta you gotta understand where's the consumer coming in if there's no like captions square
• 39:45
  headline thing on your video frame for that you know scroll probably a scroll right by it
• 39:51
  yeah exactly what is it so it's a cool face let me click for three seconds right right exactly
• 39:57
  that's all good stuff oh so you don't just to hammer this home you're not you're not putting
• 40:02
  content creation in a calendar right no yeah well okay so a lot of people's minds are just like wait
• 40:09
  what how do you do that and how do you close loans are like how do you do it all I have an amazing
• 40:12
  team I will shout out to my team who we've built this thing the last three years and it's been a lot
• 40:18
  of leads and no conversion and then some conversion little leads so it's really cool to get to a point
• 40:24
  where now I it's almost like a faucet that you can turn on how much comes in and how much doesn't
• 40:29
  I know I'm very thankful for that but that's also something that I've been building for a long time
• 40:33
  and finally I like the last year have been seeing some true results and fruits of my labor
• 40:38
  after tweaking so much so you know just as easy as it probably looks because I'm so established
• 40:43
  now just know that I started somewhere too with the cringy videos and watching my videos have also
• 40:48
  been cringy when I first started so everybody starts somewhere but just like anything that you do any
• 40:53
  plan of action takes a little bit of time and so I'm just thankful that finally you know three
• 40:57
  four years later of creating I'm seeing some serious results in my business yeah I want to tap
• 41:03
  on that real quick for a second so to set that frame for people because I think that's what
• 41:08
  they're not prepared for or they want to try it like I'm going to try social media I'm going to
• 41:13
  try posting seven videos and see what happens yeah what would you how would you coach them on
• 41:19
  what to expect for timeline so I always say that if you can't integrate social media into your
• 41:25
  day-to-day life at least like getting good with stories or you know picking something then it's
• 41:30
  never going to work for you because of the energy that's behind it if your energy behind it is a
• 41:35
  it's a to-do list item well it's just like laundry right like nobody gets excited about laundry so
• 41:40
  no one's going to get excited about the video that you post if it's just a to-do thing on your
• 41:46
  you know on your list and so I think that I hear that a lot too and I think it's just a choice like
• 41:51
  some people choose to call real estate agents nobody chooses to call real estate agents for one
• 41:56
  week and then never again so I don't know why we're doing the same thing with social media you're
• 42:01
  either going to choose to do it and you're in it for the long haul or you choose not to and then
• 42:05
  you find something else to do wow there's there's my highlight clip right there okay let me close out
• 42:13
  on this I've been having conversations with people about this premise where there seems to be an
• 42:19
  emphasis and focus on quote unquote going viral and the conversations I've been having with some
• 42:24
  people are where there seems to be a focus on views versus conversion and I'm wondering like
• 42:30
  how would you respond to I know I didn't give you much specifics around that but I know you're
• 42:34
  wise enough in this to know where I'm going and what is what is your hot take on that yeah um
• 42:40
  I love this question so much because I for a long time when people ask me like why I started
• 42:44
  creating content no one will tell you the truth but I just wanted to go viral like I just wanted
• 42:48
  to be as famous as I could be and that sounds awful now because obviously that has changed but when
• 42:54
  I first started that was the push that got me through creating so much after no results no results no
• 42:59
  results so like just to say that if that's your push is going viral right now that's great but if
• 43:04
  you go viral right now I always ask people is your is your page set up for that because mine wasn't
• 43:10
  I posted a whole year and I went viral and I didn't have a link in bio I didn't have a contact
• 43:16
  I converted nothing I got like 250 emails of people being like help me can you help me here I have
• 43:22
  this situation and I couldn't do anything with that so everybody wants to go viral but nobody
• 43:27
  understands that there's like systems behind these things are our landing pages you need there's
• 43:31
  calendar setups like your page has to have enough content that when or if something goes viral
• 43:36
  they can go to your page and they see that you are an expert in what you're saying and what you're
• 43:40
  doing so that is the part that people don't think about because they think if I go viral like it's
• 43:45
  easy for the only to say all these things because she goes viral all the time she gets all these
• 43:49
  leads but I also have systems in place that allow me to convert so going viral shouldn't be the
• 43:56
  thing you really focus on even though it's probably the thing that gets you through creating because
• 44:00
  you're like oh maybe it's this one because you don't know which one it's going to be right you
• 44:02
  don't you have no idea which one takes off but then also at the same time if you are just creating
• 44:08
  content you'll start to build an audience that is so aligned with your messaging and what you're
• 44:13
  what you're creating and you've probably seen this a room of a thousand people is a lot of people
• 44:18
  so a thousand followers you're talking to those people and on Instagram it's a little different
• 44:22
  because it really is that many people that you're talking to and that many people that see your
• 44:26
  content take talks different like I said you earn every single view so you're talking to new people
• 44:31
  so if you're starting out and you're thinking oh I need to go viral maybe start with your
• 44:35
  Instagram community first because that's a lot of people that most most people have that many
• 44:39
  followers so it's always about going deep it's not going wide but if you're trying to go wide
• 44:44
  make sure your accounts are primed to be able to convert and actually benefit from all of the
• 44:50
  content you're putting out there love that great lesson great lesson well on that note let's just
• 44:55
  put a cap on that and just say the only thank you so much for taking time for your busy day
• 44:58
  a lot of wisdom here thanks for sharing it with our community thank you so much for having me
• 45:04
  we're going to put the links to your TikTok and your Instagram in the show notes but if you want
• 45:08
  to go there right now it's the only the lender on both TikTok and Instagram but check the link
• 45:15
  in the show notes and by the way if you DM her and just let her know share one takeaway you got
• 45:19
  from this episode let her know that you heard it here and you know what impact she made for you today
• 45:23
  so yeah I love that my DMs are always open awesome everybody thanks for tuning in you know
• 45:28
  to do if you like this episode hey share it with somebody or leave us a review that we'll see
• 45:31
  on the next one bye for now okay that's it for today's episode before we wrap up I just wanted to
• 45:36
  remind you about my agent classes you're proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90
• 45:41
  days imagine never having to co-call again instead building real lasting relationships with top
• 45:47
  producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations marketing automation
• 45:53
  weekly coaching it's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun so if you're
• 45:58
  ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income visit mortgage marketing
• 46:02
  dot pro or check the link in the show notes and why you're there don't forget to check out the
• 46:06
  success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results thanks for listening
• 46:11
  and I'll see you on the next episode