Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Mortgage Business Dried Up? How John Farrell Expanded Out-of-State, and Closed $100M

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Mortgage Business Dried Up? How John Farrell Expanded Out-of-State, and Closed $100M · Mortgage Marketing Radio

0:00
Hey there, it's Jeff Zimper, host of the Mortgage Marketing Radio Podcast, and I am coming
0:04
back from my recent trip to Europe. If you follow me on social media, you may have seen
0:10
me posting some of the trip that I recently made celebrating my wife and I's 25th wedding
0:15
anniversary. It's a big milestone. It was a big trip. My first time across the Atlantic
0:20
over to Europe, and it was absolutely incredible. We started in Paris, and then we made our
0:25
way down to Axe and Provence. We made our way down to the French Riviera, Monaco,
0:30
Nice, and Sandra Pay. And then after that, we continued on to Italy and spent several days in
0:40
Venice and then finished up in Lake Colmo. And I have to say, it was restorative, relaxing,
0:46
refreshing, and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. And I'd be curious to know if you guys listening.
0:53
If you've been to Europe, I'd love to hear your feedback. So feel free to jump in,
0:56
over and connect with me on Instagram, say hi. Let me know you did go to Europe, Italy, France,
1:00
whatever. What was your favorite part? I'd love to swap notes on that. And I'm going to have
1:05
an upcoming episode where I do a story on my visit to the Marano Glass Factory in Venice, where we
1:10
had to take a boat over. Here's a quick little side note is just the week prior to us being there.
1:15
Tom Brady was in there spending a lot of money buying some pretty cool Marano Glass. If you don't
1:20
know the Marano Glass story, check it out, look it up online. It's amazing, it's world famous,
1:24
it's hand-blown, works of art, glass. And yeah, we did pick up a couple of items. And so I will be
1:31
sharing that story on an upcoming episode. But today, before we get into my special guest,
1:37
what you're going to hear from in a moment, and I want you to make sure you stick around,
1:41
because today we're going to be talking with John Farrell, who last year did over a hundred
1:45
million dollars in 2024, a difficult market. And so we're going to unpack how John did that,
1:50
his book of business, sources of business, and so forth. So before we get into that, though,
1:55
I do want to share with you something I haven't done in a while, but I'm bringing back wins of
1:59
the week. That's right. You want to know what's working today's market. Well, I can tell you what's
2:02
working is what always works. And that is the fundamentals. And a success story I wanted to bring
2:07
with you from one of our members in the My Asian Classes community, who is executing well on the
2:12
fundamentals. Look, there are lots of bright shining objects you can chase. There are lots of
2:16
things you could do to quote unquote, be successful, succeed and get engagement, get referrals.
2:21
One of the things, one of the playbooks we know that works is getting in front of your one of the
2:25
primary sources of referrals at scale. And that's real estate agents. And so shout out to Channing
2:30
Moore. So Channing taught our class, which was leveraging seller concessions, which by the way,
2:35
I don't know if you saw that stat that was roughly a 30-ish 40% of properties, I believe, around the
2:40
country had some form of a seller concession on it. So it's a hot topic and agents need help
2:46
with seller concessions. Your clients need help with seller concessions. How about you leverage
2:50
your knowledge in a way that puts you in front of these people at scale. So attract agents to want
2:55
to work with a subject matter expert like you helped facilitate deals, help make deals happen by
3:00
leveraging your expertise in seller concessions. Now what Channing decided to do was take our
3:06
done-for-you-turn key class where we do everything for you, the PowerPoint, speaker notes,
3:10
the train-the-trainer videos, the emails, the tech marketing messages, you name it soup,
3:14
did not we do it. And Channing said to date, it has been the best class that has generated the
3:20
most referrals for him. And all of the referrals he received were from productive,
3:25
underlying productive agents that he had been wanting to work with for some time. And what did he
3:30
do? He followed our proven system in plan. We're sending out the invites for contacting people on
3:34
social media for making warm calls to real estate agents and you put butts in seats and he got
3:39
referrals on demand. Now, I don't know if that's for you, but if it's something you'd like to learn
3:44
more about, we may or may not be a fit for you, but here's the way you learn more. You schedule a
3:48
call with me. That's right, me personally. You go to the link in the show notes that talks about
3:52
my agent classes or you right now go over to mortgage marketing.pro, then you grab a time on my
3:56
calendar. So we can unpack a little bit more about what we do here at my agent classes, show you the
4:01
classes, show you how we automate everything. So it's done for you, share our community and just
4:05
share with you some of the success stories and results that is happening every single week in
4:09
the country for loan officers. Once again, go to mortgage marketing.pro or check out the link
4:14
in the show notes. Okay, so back to my special guest in just a moment. You're going to hear my
4:19
conversation with John Farrell out of Newport Beach, California, Orange County, California,
4:24
where I originally cut my teeth in 2003 as a mortgage professional. In this episode, you're going
4:29
to learn three things. Number one, how John leverages his book of business and strategic financial
4:34
advisor partnerships for consistent referrals. Number two, why expanding beyond your zip code might
4:40
be your next best move. And number three, how being curious, not just competent can transform your
4:47
business relationships. And there's something really interesting will unpack how one viral Instagram
4:52
reel led to nine million views. And what that means for mortgage pros like you looking to grow
4:58
through social media. So if you're ready to stop chasing leads and start attracting them by
5:02
being more of you, stick around, listen to this episode of mortgage marketing radio.
5:19
John, welcome to the show. What's up Jeff. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks for
5:24
Yeah, I covered out a time of your busy, busy schedule to be here. You're in my old stomping
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grounds, Orange County, Newport Beach area. I now live in Vegas, but spent like 30 some odd years
5:34
in Southern California. It is a very competitive market for mortgage professionals. Would you agree?
5:40
Extremely, extremely competitive. I think this was the mecca of mortgage in the early 2000s.
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If I'm not mistaken, I think every big mortgage company was in Orange County. So every,
5:51
everyone in their mother was in mortgage. So how do you stand out in a sea of noise?
5:59
Just by being myself and hopefully people are attracted to it and there's going to be some people
6:04
that don't really like John. And so that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, in Orange County,
6:11
right, we've got it's last I checked roughly three million people live there. Thousands of
6:16
transactions per month. Obviously, we're in a bit of a different, I mean, Orange County's different.
6:22
I call it a transaction recession. What are you seeing out there, by the way, for your market?
6:26
I'm seeing houses go quick that are priced right and other homes where they're shooting for the
6:32
stars are sitting and then price reductions. And you know, Jeff, you know, too, like those price
6:38
reductions play into the mindset, the consumer and the media more than ever. So educating our clients
6:45
on why they're seeing price reductions and you know, and educating them on it doesn't mean the market
6:52
is actually moving down. But yeah, no, it's been like, you know, we just we had clients actually not
7:00
here in Orange County, but up in the Pasadena area right by the fire zone. There were 36 offers
7:06
on this particular house. So why? You know, it's the houses that are priced right or really, really
7:14
desirable or extremely competitive. They're moving. Yeah. So you mentioned Pasadena. For those
7:21
listening, they might not be aware. So you're a new port beach area, lovely area. And then Pasadena
7:26
is probably about a two hour drive, right? With traffic. Maybe. Depending on a good day,
7:32
on a good traffic day, three hours. Yeah, I would say like minimum two hours, unless you're leaving
7:38
it in the morning. Right. Exactly. So it makes me curious then, how you is that a one off or do you
7:49
step far outside of your general backyard to get business? A lot of our business comes from my
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book of business, being in the business since, you know, early 2000 or maybe in 1999.
8:03
So we actually we were licensed in all 50 states. In December, we closed 15 units. Seven of those
8:11
units were outside of California. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So how does one? So this is an interesting
8:18
conversation, right? Because go go back to that transaction recession kind of headline. I mean,
8:23
there is kind of overall volume is down. And I'm seeing some loan officers that have been around
8:28
a while like yourself and others start to expand their footprint, whether it's within their
8:32
existing state or outside. Was that some kind of conscious decision you made or like what was
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behind that whole expansion thing? I mean, if there was a decision that it was made, it was,
8:45
and I'm losing track of dates, but the inventory levels at one point here in Orange County,
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I think it was like 1700 active listings. And I looked at it and I'm like, okay, well,
8:57
this isn't going to work. You know, there's we're in the mecca of the mortgage business.
9:02
There's just a lot of loan officers here. It's extremely competitive. So I reached out to some
9:08
agents and other states that we had worked on transactions previously and just said, hello,
9:15
you don't remember me, but so that helped a little bit. And then obviously, you know, we have a lot
9:21
of clients here in Newport or in Orange County who have kids that are going to college and they
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want to buy their kids a smaller home versus rent or live in that, you know, in different states.
9:33
In different states, yeah. So and then a lot of investor, we have a lot of clients buying
9:38
multi-units in Indiana, Ohio. Yeah, exactly. All right. What is your number one source of business?
9:53
I would say my book of business would be number one and then realtors and
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and we've got two or three really strong financial advisors that send us
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clients consistently. So my book of business, you mean like past clients all that? That's clients, yeah.
10:14
Okay, great. So you're pretty proactive then with farming that?
10:19
I can be better. I mean, if I mean 100% be better at it, you know, I would love to say that I'm
10:26
the best at doing that, but there's there's a lot of room for improvement. But yeah, we,
10:32
you know, we we have different processes that we've integrated into our system the last
10:40
since COVID that have been keeping us top to mind, but I could definitely be better.
10:48
Is Homebot one of those? I know I got the shirt on. We're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Homebot. Homebot is
10:52
one of those. Homebot's one of one of the generic ways I would say it's not really a personalized
10:58
way, even though I've done some videos on there, but we've got it. I use I switched from June go
11:04
my CRM from June go to Bonzo and Bonzo has been actually really helpful in creating campaigns,
11:13
post closing campaigns, or hey, I haven't talked to you in a long time campaigns to past clients,
11:19
so that's been helping out too. We're just picking up the phone is like a good a good thing to
11:24
or sending a quick text. Well, and I want to go back to something you alluded to a moment ago of
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like, you know, could get better all the time because what people don't know is before we hit record,
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you know, is that you did in 2024, $108 million. And one of the things you said to me is,
11:42
you know, the inner critic was the voice you used, right? Which was like that whole voice of like
11:48
shit man, you can get better. What about this? What about like that knowing little thing, right?
11:53
And I just want to point it out to everybody listening and acknowledge you for the, I guess the
11:58
humbleness, right? And the willingness, because you know, when you get so high, like if you think
12:04
you're all that, that's when you start to fall, right? When that that, what do you call that word?
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The pride takes over. Yeah, that's when it starts to undermine.
12:15
Yeah, I was sharing with you, Jeff, like I'll be quick on the story, but when I was younger,
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I think my parents really, I love my parents, they didn't give me much, but my first job was picking
12:26
up cigarette butts at a 7-Eleven in Kirkland, Washington. I was making like $2.75. That's a job?
12:34
No, that was a job. And everyone was smoking back then. So you could imagine the part of the
12:39
7-Eleven destroyed. And I'd carry a five gallon bucket, pick up cigarettes. By the time I thought
12:44
it was done, there was another 100 cigarettes on that ground. But I hated that job so much, but
12:51
then there was this Italian restaurant. I think it was Tony Moroni's or something in Kirkland, but
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I saw these waiters and waitresses and they're all dressed up nice. And I'm like, man, they're making
13:02
a lot of money. So I went to the restaurant and I'm like, hey, I really want to be a waiter here,
13:07
no, like do you have experience? And I'm like, no, I'm only like 15 years old. I'm like, well,
13:12
no, you can't do that. You can be a dishwasher though. So I was a dishwasher. The amount of
13:19
just like trash, I got noodles and everything else. These waiters and waitresses disrespected me so
13:27
much. And I was just trying to hustle back there and I would get out of there and I'd be all
13:31
marinara sauceed out. So the reason I share that with you is because when I finally made it to a
13:38
waiter, the new dishwasher I respected so much and I would treat them like they were a human being.
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I wasn't throwing stuff on them and all that. I think that kind of carried through into
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my later years. So like, 100 million to me, it doesn't really mean much. I'm still the dishwasher,
13:56
you know? Then what about this business? What keeps you engaged, passionate, right? Kind of
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getting after it? Well, you know, I mean, after all these years, you're not jaded.
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What's firing me up? And to do what you're doing? I mean, I have three kids, two in college and
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a preschooler. So life, baby, there you go. Yeah, that's definitely our motivator. I don't know,
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I just love people. You know, I love working with people and I shared with you the word that stuck
14:32
with me this year. I'm good friends with Jeremy Forse and he gave me advice on like,
14:36
he'd choose one word every year. Like, I know, I think last year his word was impact. This year
14:42
for me, it was curious, be curious. So curiosity has really helped me.
14:47
Does that help you think with meeting people, whether they're potential clients for
14:54
for all partners? I think so because it's not you're not coming off. Like if you go to a broker
14:59
preview, right? I don't know if broker previews exist everywhere, but where the realtors are showing
15:04
that they're new listing, you know, you used to walk in and you're like, I mean, I was guilty
15:10
of this too. Hey, we got 30 year fixed rates at 2.375% and they're like, Yippee Kaya, you know,
15:18
get out of my house. So I think just having curiosity and being curious in the top of your
15:27
brain gets you to come off differently and it's not all about making a sale or what can this person
15:36
do for me, but it's getting to know them and finding out what problems they have and, you know,
15:43
eventually being a solution provider to them. So, and you know, sometimes it doesn't work. I mean,
15:48
sometimes they tell me to get out of the house and that's totally cool, but for the people that
15:54
Joe with it works. Give me a sense if you could and I know this has changed over time, but obviously,
15:59
a loan office or listening right now is probably a lot of people are in the place of, you know,
16:04
they want to grow their business, right? They want to add units. And I don't know if you,
16:09
you know, you said Mission Jeremy. For sure, you're probably in certain, certain groups and
16:13
coaching and you have conversations with people, but let's just say today, I'm an LL, I've been
16:18
in the business three years, right? And I need to grow. Like, what would you advise or what would
16:23
John do today? I would have more conversations. Okay. Make more phone calls from them. I go out. Whatever
16:33
you like to do, like I, uh, uh, the pictures of them, I used to love riding motorcycles. I don't
16:38
need more of my wife to push to that, but, uh, whatever, whatever, you know, if you like playing
16:44
pickleball, get involved with pickleball because whatever you love doing, you're going to meet people
16:49
that have similar interest and you'll enjoy, uh, having conversations with them and, you know,
16:55
I love working out now. So I'm at the gym. Well, everyone at the gym knows I'm in mortgage, not
16:59
that I'm pitching mortgage to them, but they know that I do that. And from that, I've had, you
17:05
know, people come out from the gym and they're like, Hey, John, we're buying a house or we want
17:08
to buy a house. We don't know what to do. So my, I think my advice would be whatever you enjoy doing,
17:14
like get out in that community and, and just start asking questions, talking to people.
17:21
Okay. Um, give me, uh, do you have anything that's more, um, scheduled, such as give us a glimpse
17:28
into how you structure your activities, your, your biz jet, biz, Jen, biz development generation
17:35
activities. What does that look like? Well, if I, if I'm being totally honest, my day is still
17:41
ADD, like it's chaos. So, uh, so, but I do, I do make sure that I set aside at least in a
17:49
hour and a half a day of reaching out to past clients or referral partners, um, and, and, you know,
17:56
generating sales and business and leads. Um, I think that's important. It's, you know,
18:03
it's hard to do day and day out, but I would definitely have conversations with, you know,
18:09
if you're getting back to your question, if you're brand new in the business, um, you've gotta be,
18:14
you've gotta be out there, uh, or if you've closed, you know, your three years in the business,
18:19
you've got closed transactions, reach out to those agents, whether on the listing side of the
18:24
buy side, say, Hey, Mr. Mrs. So-and-so, you know, I close that deal for you a while back. I want,
18:30
you know, I wanted to, you know, connect with you and, um, yeah, follow up with your book of business,
18:37
because your book of business is going to be your biggest true leaders. If you're doing a,
18:40
you know, if you're going above and beyond with them, they're going to be the easiest ones to get
18:46
new business from. Hey, are you tired of cold calling realtors and feeling like you're getting
18:50
nowhere with my agent classes? You don't have to chase agents anymore. We hand you a done-for-you
18:56
system of ready-to-teach presentations, plug-and-play marketing, and even 200 producing agents to invite,
19:02
so you can double your agent referrals in 90 days or less. Plus, you'll get weekly coaching and a
19:07
community of loan officers sharing exactly what's working right now. Here's a quick win from one of
19:12
our members. Been part of my agent classes for a little over a year and totally changed my business.
19:19
I agree with at least 25 percent, and that was during a pretty down market, and have only grown
19:26
every single month that I've kept doing it. Community is great. Jump to the Friday calls. It's
19:31
awesome. Have fun with it. Teach as many classes as you can. Just do more. Do better.
19:36
Are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on demand?
19:40
Book a call at mortgagemarketing.pro or hit the link in the show notes. Now back to our show.
19:46
Tell me, let's transition a little bit if you don't mind. I want to, you kind of really stress,
19:50
you've got two or three financial advisors that are significant referral partners for you.
19:55
Makes me curious, what type of firms, because are they at? You know, in a minute, are they like
20:00
boutique firms? Are they the big? They're not at Merrill Lynch. Not at Merrill Lynch.
20:06
Not at the other one. The big insurance guys. I can't remember right now.
20:10
Big insurance. Northwestern. Northwestern. Northwestern. No.
20:14
So they're at boutique. Seth Davis is one of my biggest ones. He's actually out of Denver,
20:21
and I met him on a transaction in LA for a big celebrity at the time who doesn't use him anymore,
20:28
because he's made so much money. But we had a really good conversation during that transaction,
20:34
and then he's been referring us business ever since. The thing that he likes and that my other
20:42
financial advisor likes is that not that we use mortgage coach, they don't like, oh, I use you
20:49
because of mortgage coach, but we use mortgage coach when talking to their clients because a lot of
20:54
clients will want to put more down. So we're looking at, well, maybe if you put less down, but keep
20:58
the money invested with R&B capital is one of them. Here's how your network would look versus
21:07
putting larger amount down. So we're just having those conversations versus just like, here's your
21:11
rate, here's the payment. You're being an advisor. Yeah. And we're also it's we're having conversations
21:22
with clients that don't have advisors, and if they don't, and and they meet the requirements of
21:29
these particular fAs, we're connecting with them. You know, you're doing the thing. Go ahead,
21:36
sorry. Oh, no, I was just going to say like, these particular network clients, like they're
21:42
yeah, they're big. But I would highly recommend getting if you're new to get to know some other
21:52
financial advisors that have been in the business maybe three to five years because they're going to
21:57
take on a smaller network client. And you can you guys can grow together and then you know, you
22:03
guys could give them social media and talk about how to grow your network and like, you know,
22:08
everyone wants to grow their net worth and they want to make more. So
22:14
I don't know, financial advisors though are a great source resource press. Are you
22:19
are you actively, you know, there's there's I'm sure a lot of people listening are familiar with
22:23
this script perhaps, which is, you know, on the 1003, right, you're asking them, do they have a
22:28
financial advisor, right, et cetera, looking to get that connection. Do you do that repeatedly
22:34
not as much, not as good as Ryan Grant can do it, but we're doing it right. Yeah, and we're
22:40
we're we're doing yeah, it's definitely coming up. Because that's being curious, right?
22:48
Right. Yeah, like yeah. So we're you know, where I really like to do that better is on a lot of
22:58
our clients have trust and a lot of clients don't have trust and they don't really know
23:02
enough about trust. Connecting with the trust attorney is if you can, I think that's a really
23:10
viable source. I haven't had this success of collecting with a trust attorney that's
23:16
been reciprocal in sending us business, even though I've sent them business.
23:21
But I don't there's so many there's so many avenues you can go down with getting new referral
23:28
sources. Yeah, it comes down to the activities. It makes me curious, have you ever done like
23:33
events, classes, lunch and learns that type of stuff either early on or on going?
23:39
I don't like lunch and learns. I don't know why. Yeah, but I will tell you we hosted a or I hosted
23:47
at there's 15 agents that came to my house and I had this trust attorney, this trust attorney,
23:54
that trust attorney at the house and that was really beneficial. But the cool thing with doing
23:58
it at my house was everyone was kind of casual. It wasn't like a network mixer where you're
24:04
everyone's uptight and all that. I was like a very cool setting and that I do like doing and in
24:10
fact that I need that I have on my goal to do four of them this year because it just provides
24:16
a different setting than a lunch and learn. What would you say and I know this is all off the cuff.
24:20
So I apologize if you feel like you're being put on the spot for everybody listening with this
24:24
was not rehearsed or planned. But any idea of roughly what your balances of purchase to RIFI is?
24:34
It's I'm in October of last year. We obviously probably did 50%
24:43
RIFI purchase but I'm predominantly right now in 98% purchase, 2% RIFI.
24:54
Yeah and I mean if that says anything to what I could do a better job at is probably reaching out to
25:00
my book of clients that need to do debt consolidation and that would lead to more business and help
25:08
them out. But majority of our clients are jumbo too. So when you're talking to clients that
25:13
have 50,000 in credit card debt and they've got a million to note at 2.875 or 8. Doing a blended
25:20
rate analysis is not going to be very beneficial. So we're going to allow certain
25:25
mortgages right now too. Interesting. Okay let's transition a bit to social media now because I know
25:35
you're pretty active on social, your Instagram we'll link it up in the show notes but it's John
25:40
E. Ferrell if I'm correct. Yeah. You're pretty active with posting some of your reels have just
25:47
taken off. I'm curious like what would you want to share about your journey on social so far
25:54
and any commentary in terms of getting business there you know for example. Yeah well Neil from
26:02
forward I don't know if you know Neil Dean rest. Sure. And part of his mastermind he's really
26:07
helped me out because I don't know back in the day I would when I get on social media I'd probably
26:14
hit record 10 times and delete delete delete delete. I wouldn't show my tattoos there's a lot of
26:22
insecurities. You wouldn't be you. It wouldn't be me. Yeah in fact you can look at some of the videos
26:28
or I look at the videos oh my god it's not me. I made a commitment a year and a half ago I think
26:36
maybe two years ago to stay consistent on it and it's it has been a game changer. I haven't
26:44
figured out how I know it's really helped me with warm introductions or warm yeah introductions to
26:52
agents that you know I might not have known and I have gotten some clients out of it.
27:03
All I can share with you is you got to stay consistent and be yourself and you know what the
27:09
whole social media thing is at least in the mortgage arena it is changing like they don't want
27:15
to the consumer the viewers they don't want to see that bunch of edited stuff that's really
27:21
fancy. Yeah they like the authentic stuff now in fact I've been like posting more probably more stuff
27:29
like I just had a colonoscopy last Friday and I posted the like me doing the the pre drink stuff
27:35
and drinking it and then right getting right out of the operation and I was high as a kite like
27:41
flying and I wasn't making any sense but I can't get the amount of DMs I got from that was crazy
27:49
so it's just you know it's a human connection with people so I you really have to you don't have
27:55
to do it but you should be doing it these days and if you're not just that's awesome hit record and
28:03
you know like just what you might think is stupid there's people out there that don't know that
28:10
stuff and so you can impact one person and you know the reach on social media is great. Yeah so how
28:16
much then it goes because if you know when people go to check out your Instagram you've got some
28:20
some reals that are banging I know you know that you got one that's nine million views yeah 20
28:26
highest-ranked jobs and and so you know I've done a fair amount of studying and I could recognize
28:31
why you're getting nine million views on that it's a pretty wide right audience target there yeah
28:37
anything you want to share about your content strategy other than be real be yourself don't be
28:41
overly polished but what about the actual you know topics and things like that are you trying to be
28:46
you mixing up mortgage specific versus more broad what do you want to say on that yeah I think
28:52
there's been an awareness at least the people that I I'm connected to on social that when you're
28:58
do you're just doing mortgage you're you're you're really going to be only hitting a small
29:04
a meeting you know there's only so many people looking out that are looking to buy at home
29:10
right right what I what I've really seen is income people love income people like they love seeing
29:18
anything income related out there that one in particular you're talking about is income related
29:24
um and it also we purposely messed up on some of the numerical order of it my editor your
29:33
illness and get people to comment yeah well my editor I noticed it and I'm like hey the numerical
29:37
order is not right on this and I'm like hold on wait don't fix it because people will lose their
29:42
crap and people lost their crap so there's a lot I like there's a lot of hate on it people are
29:49
pretty evil actually but yeah I just don't care about that stuff anymore but you know it's like
29:55
does that real do anything for me no I mean it's yeah it's I get you know I think it's coming close
30:02
to 10 million it's cool that have one that went that big but it advice do something that you like
30:10
if you like health post about health and then throw mortgage in there or if you like cooking
30:15
like who doesn't like cooking like you could talk about mortgage while you're cooking pasta or
30:20
whatever um whatever your you know figure out what your pillars are four pillars and and throw
30:26
all that stuff in that'll really help your reach in your growth on social media pillars as in what
30:33
family finance fitness that kind of stuff yeah so yeah mine's family because I have three kids
30:39
I work out I mean I work out I'm it I'm kind of sick at the gym so I work out
30:45
eight days a week seven days a week eight I'm joking and baby I'm there I'm in the gym every
30:51
day it's something for me it's the it really helps me out with stress I hear yeah and then you
30:58
throw obviously mortgage and then the other thing I really like is I love to say I'm perfect
31:06
but I'm far from it and I've got you know a lot of what's the word I'm gonna use I like self-help
31:16
stuff okay yeah so development yeah yeah personal development so I'm I'll throw some stuff in
31:23
there that you know that's been helping me out with the inner critic that you and I were talking
31:28
about um stuff like that so I'm I'm kind of the those are the the four things that I use and I'm
31:33
kind of slowly I'm getting more comfortable on on doing some more vulnerable vulnerable stuff
31:42
on social media which I think is helping because again if you're posting just mortgage you're you're
31:46
not gonna grow much well speaking of vulnerable you did post some videos about your recent child
31:53
birth oh yeah that's pretty vulnerable yeah that was uh that was homework that Neil gave me at the
31:59
mastermind and yeah I was yeah I think I had a I had a couple drinks and then I went back to
32:06
our room or I went back to my room I was supposed to do this thing I was sitting there crying for
32:10
a long time and then watching the video and then posted it and I'm like oh my god what did I post
32:16
that but you know what I actually I liked it and um it connected me with a lot of people I'll say
32:27
very interesting okay um what do you focus on this year here we are entering April almost
32:33
2025 what what do you what's got your attention this year uh hitting 200 million
32:43
doubling volume uh definitely yeah yeah no uh yeah obviously I mean 200 million I
32:51
that is in my mind um but then also by the way how many transactions would that be
32:56
sorry to interrupt you well my average loan amount is 983,261 so those the numbers I know that
33:05
because it's on my affirmations in the morning uh oh nice I know I'm focused on that I'm also
33:10
focused on uh I've got one assistant Lily who's the best in the business um we'd love to bring on
33:18
another she's not she's my teammate she's not my she's my system she's my teammate uh we'd
33:24
love to bring on someone else because she's actually starting to originate too she's Spanish so
33:29
she's been getting really real involved with the um Hispanic community so we'd love to
33:36
a goal is to bring on another assistant and then um yeah just working you know constantly
33:45
refined processes and social media are you taking the loan apps yourself over the phone you got
33:51
an online app what does that look like do I answer that one truthfully yes of course man yeah no we do
34:00
it I don't I don't take them on over the phone we do everything so online you might have like
34:07
a pre-call whatever right just call okay I'm gonna send you my my link yeah we have a pre-call
34:13
the one game changer thing for me has been after we've done the pre-approval Jeff
34:18
we're we're setting up a team's call we use teams where I am which is like Microsoft zoom pretty much
34:24
uh and we're doing a strategy call and we're making sure that we're we're walking them through
34:30
mortgage coach or um well mortgage coach and then kind of what's going on with the rate environment
34:37
and then we're also we've sent out this questionnaire on you know it's very short on
34:44
how could we make the call more impactful what they want to learn and that's been that's been a
34:49
game changer for us as far as connecting with the clients and and really delivering a lot more
34:54
value so those strategy calls are important versus just sending that pre-approval letter out and
34:59
saying hey good luck yeah better for conversions are you running into um you got a lot of fence
35:06
sitters and are waiting for rates to drop or whatever uh yeah we have some and I yeah I'm doing my
35:12
best to educate them it's interesting it's top of mind you know you mentioned mortgage coach and
35:18
I use both that and be it mbs highway and uh you know each of them have their own version of tools
35:23
to demonstrate a cost of waiting you know with the equity appreciation and all that fun stuff
35:28
even if the rates to come down a point um I just curious if you did anything like that for
35:32
people listening and to your point about the strategy call I think that is a huge differentiator every
35:38
top producer hundred million almost every okay I know nothing's 100 percent but uh I don't know
35:45
of a highly effective I'll underline that word mortgage professional today that's not using some type
35:51
of a visual scenario uh conversation to move people forward in the process yeah they we we use
35:59
I I use mbs highway too there's so many tools on there we it's always better to show
36:06
versus tell the clients if you're telling them it's kind of in one ear out the other
36:12
but showing in them and they're in walking them through this and educating them and showing
36:16
them data and information it it really takes maybe what might be you know an uncertain buyer
36:25
in a crazy market not that they're going to be 100 percent certain but you're bringing a lot more
36:29
certainty to that you know their decision making and whether or not they're going to get into the
36:34
market so um we're using all those tools mbs highway uh mortgage coach my but can I give one plug
36:42
yeah please go ahead okay so my buddy Sam made Sam made in originally Sam baby you know Sam
36:49
hell yeah Sam and I talked last week we're talking again on Wednesday I know what you're going go
36:52
ahead plug it Sam I love you dude Sam has created an app called home power uh for those of you
37:02
maybe who have not used mortgage coach yet or any of those home power is kind of sorry Dave Savage
37:10
another version of mortgage coach uh Sam created this home power app that is insane
37:17
um but it will help you and it makes it very easy for you to walk your clients through
37:25
options of uh you know looking at different purchase prices or loan products or FHA versus
37:33
conventional um you for any originators that are not doing a strategy call if there's one thing
37:40
you can take away from this start doing a strategy call whether it's on zoom or teams if they're
37:45
clients or face to face I mean if you can do face to face that's even better but uh the tools
37:53
and the resources we have at our hands to go out and really earn market share are I it's so much
38:00
better than when I first got in the business so much better yeah hell yeah I mean I had mortgage
38:07
coach when it was a CD that I had to buy and loaded on the laptop yeah it wasn't good sorry Dave
38:14
2003 that's when I entered 2003 country wide home loans orange county mission via the fast and easy oh
38:21
yeah yeah mortgage coach is awesome it's for sure they're both awesome Sam's product looks great as well
38:28
um okay cool so we've talked about your number kind of top sources of business which is uh your
38:35
book of biz realtors and then these kind of two mega financial advisors you have that's awesome
38:41
we talked about the activities which is surprise surprise fundamentals baby block and tackle
38:46
like have conversations you stress to have conversations daily weekly like there's no wait a minute
38:53
wait a minute John where's the magic wand the magic pixie dust that people want the easy button
38:58
there isn't any good nine there at the magic buttons anywhere it's find your interest and go out
39:06
and have conversations with similar people and you know uh work with people who you like
39:17
you might be chasing an agent or a referral partner that is not a cool person and you want to work
39:23
with them because they do big numbers don't what about all right let me let's try this what about
39:29
early on in your career when you're building do you got to eat a lot of shit right uh just to be
39:33
like okay i got a deal uh yeah i'm not going to say the agents name on here because
39:41
i chased an agent forever and this guy stomped me to the ground beat me down it was the worst
39:47
thing ever i looked back it was a good learning lesson i spent a lot of money
39:52
bringing food to this person's open houses and all that when i barely had any money but i
39:58
thought okay this is going to get me the business and i never got a deal out of that guy ever
40:06
not nothing it's not him it just we shouldn't like it wasn't the right thing
40:14
the lesson there are those is true colors like you know how somebody treats you
40:18
it's kind of exemplary of how somebody's going to treat you yeah good pattern different no matter
40:24
what the situation yeah pay uh pay to play it doesn't work for me so if you're
40:32
clients saying i mean we'll have not clients real it or say hey listen i need to pay for
40:37
zillie sorry i'm not your guy hey i have an event coming up um i want you to contribute to it well
40:43
how many deals have we done well we haven't done any but if you contribute to it no i'm not your guy
40:48
so good that's just how we standards yeah just there's someone out there that's getting the
40:56
business don't buy your business don't buy your and know your worth like like know your worth
41:04
like if you're doing a great job and you're busing your ass and you're helping facilitate that
41:08
transaction um at a service level that is exemplary there's the word twice uh then you deserve
41:15
to write hold yourself to a higher standard and who you work with and not put up with crap
41:20
100% and you're going to get those agents more business because you're follow-up system and
41:25
you're plugging them consistently and they've got friends that are buying um that's worth a lot
41:31
more than bringing standards platter to a broker preview yeah for sure all right well listen
41:38
i know you're busy you got you got to double your volume this year so i got to let you go but um
41:42
give us a shout out what is your Instagram account uh john e ferrell f-a-r-r-e-l if you have
41:52
if anyone out there wants to chat you can always reach out to me uh you can google my name you'll
41:58
see it online um i love helping people out especially newbies in the business so you can always
42:04
reach out well there's definitely some nuggets we got from this conversation john i appreciate
42:08
you're making the time and uh look forward to connecting with you soon then thanks jack
42:12
appreciate you and listeners you know what to do if you like this episode hey leave us a review
42:16
check out john's instagram link in the show notes if if you got like one idea at least or more
42:19
from this conversation dm them let them know on instagram appreciate you guys tuning in see
42:24
on the next one okay that's it for today's episode before we wrap up i just wanted to remind you
42:28
about my agent classes you're proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days
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imagine never having to co-call again instead building real lasting relationships with top-producing
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agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations marketing automation weekly
42:45
coaching it's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun so if you're ready to take
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control of your agent referrals and grow your income visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the
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link in the show notes and while you're there don't forget to check out the success stories from
42:59
other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results thanks for listening and i'll see you
43:04
on the next episode