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How HomeBot Can Help You Grow Your Business and Get More Agent Referrals · Mortgage Marketing Radio

0:00
In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
0:04
the real estate agents is essential for success.
0:06
However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
0:11
With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it
0:15
can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
0:20
Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
0:25
Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
0:31
And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
0:34
with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
0:39
To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
0:45
of the case study today.
0:47
You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
0:52
in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
0:56
Don't miss out.
0:57
Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
1:03
Hey, people, what's up, Jeff Zimfer.
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Welcome back to this episode of mortgage marketing radio.
1:15
So glad you tuned in.
1:18
Yes.
1:19
That's my live virtual studio audience, live virtual studio audience.
1:25
What am I saying?
1:26
Anyway, what I want to tell you about, if you haven't heard, yes, I'm talking about
1:30
it again.
1:31
That is my brand new book Disruptor Die, How to Survive and Thrive the Digital Real Estate
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Shift.
1:37
Listen, just the other day I had a loan officer who came back in order to second round
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of these books for real estate agents.
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He started with 20.
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Those went so well and the feedback was so positive that he came back and ordered 50
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books at wholesale.
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You want to drive conversations with real estate agents.
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You want to help them navigate the digital shift, help them read what other agents, top
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performers, coaches from around the country are doing.
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When it comes to not only real estate, but mortgage, hey, this book is for you.
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Disruptor die, right?
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If you haven't got it yet, go check it out for free.
2:09
Yes, you can get the book for free and just pay for shipping.
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You can go to getdisruptordie.com.
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That's where you can buy the book and I'll give it to you for free.
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You just pay for the shipping.
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If you are interested in bulk quantity of books at wholesale, these books are available.
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Should you be interested in giving some to your real estate agents?
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It's all about conversations.
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It's all about driving conversations with real estate agents.
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How are you doing that?
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Hopefully you're doing it in a unique and different way.
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That isn't cold calling, which is how is your weekend and you have a deal for me.
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I'd like to share something of value with you.
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Do you ever consider, wonder, need help with navigating the digital real estate shift?
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You've got to give for them to help them do that.
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You can use this for when you're targeting top producers and you want to send something
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before you do call, before you're meeting.
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You're working in in-house lender relationship.
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You have a relationship at a brokerage.
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Do you want to help a broker with recruiting and retention?
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The book can be used in so many different ways.
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If you order a minimum of 50 copies, I will host a free class for you.
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There I say a free class.
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That's right.
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A free class on the same topic, Disruptor Die, that you could invite your agents to use
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the books to gift to them and I will host the class over a Zoom or webinar platform,
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which will walk them through the core concepts of the book about how to survive and thrive
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the digital real estate shift.
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You get all the credit for it.
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You get to build your realtor database, add value, and everybody wins.
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If you're more interested in that, send me an email, podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com
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with the subject line, wholesale books.
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Podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com, wholesale books is the subject line.
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That's that.
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Let's get into my special guest this week who I'm thrilled and honored to finally be
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having a conversation with.
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Let me set it up this way.
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We recently surpassed 200 episodes, 450,000 downloads of the podcast and I want to just
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say thank you very much to you, my listeners.
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I'm grateful for you for continuing to tune in and by the way, if you get a chance, leave
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a podcast review.
4:20
I just noticed I haven't had any reviews in the last 30 days and I really need some reviews.
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But anyway, so here's the thing, right?
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My point in sharing with you those numbers and stats is I get quite a few LOs who ask
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me, hey, what's the top thing to move the needle with real estate agents?
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What digital marketing platform works?
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What are the top three tools that you're saying top producers use?
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Those are the kind of questions I get a lot and here's what I do.
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I ask, I go around the horn and I ask people all around the country, hey, what are the top
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three tools or platforms you're using to have success with past clients, with realtors,
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with the digital shift?
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But more often than not, right?
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One of the platforms that continually is ranked among the top from these producing loan
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officers is Homebot.
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Now, I don't know if you have Homebot, I don't know if you've heard about Homebot, haven't
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like done anything with it yet, I don't know where you're at.
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Here's what I do know.
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I do know that Homebot like any other tool is a tool and when used properly can perform
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certain tasks for you, such as mining past database refinances, building offence around
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your past database of clients, helping to protect you from your past database being pillaged
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from other people, companies trying to get after your client who you just closed and
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they're now getting the messages from them or whatever, but now it's time to refit.
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Look at all of our databases are at risk, how strong of offence are you building around
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them?
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Is part one of the value Homebot provides?
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Part two, I'm talking to more and more loan officers who are succeeding in leveraging
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Homebot to drive conversations with producing agents and you're going to hear some of those
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ideas on today's podcast episode with my special guests and Homebot has just also just
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continued to evolve and they've come out with this incredible contextualized video, whether
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it's one to many or specific video libraries that are milestone based that you want to build
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out into the Homebot experience.
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I'm seeing loan officers team up with agents and use Homebot to, here's the thing guys,
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here's the killer thing right now, what if you could approach your agents and say, hey,
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you struggling with listings, I know, so is everybody.
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What if I could show you a way that we could get more listings for you?
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Would you be interested in a conversation?
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How many agents are going to say no to that?
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And then what you can do is have a conversation about how Homebot is able to capture more
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potential seller leads and convert and nurture those two listings over time.
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I'm not going to link that into the details now about how you do that.
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You're going to hear it on the podcast episode, but I'm just thrilled to have two people,
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Bernie Graham, the CEO of Homebot, and Austin Lar, who's a successful originator with fairway
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in Indianapolis.
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And you're going to hear the stats on his production and how he's averaging Homebot.
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And Ernie's going to talk about some cool things that invest practices with Homebot, but
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also some new features that have recently been added that I think are relevant for you
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to hear.
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Now, here's what's good.
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If you don't have Homebot yet, hey, listen, I wanted to do something special.
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So I asked Homebot, could we do something special if anybody wants to sign up?
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They said, yes.
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So if you're going to sign up for Homebot, you can go to Homebot.ai and use the promo
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code, mortgage radio 200, okay?
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Mortgage radio 200.
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What that does is wave the sign up fee.
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So there's zero sign up fee for you, the podcast listener.
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If you're using the code mortgage 200 over at Homebot.ai, check it out, give it a run.
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I know if I was producing today, this would be one of my absolute go to platforms and
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tools I would be using, and I'd be leveraging it not just for past clients, but to have
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those conversations with real estate agents, and you're going to hear about how to do that
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on this episode.
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So without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
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Ernie and Austin, welcome to the show.
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Thanks Jeff.
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Yeah.
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Thanks Jeff.
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Yeah, let's do this.
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Let's quickly identify who's who.
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So the listeners know what voice to put with whom Ernie wanted to go first, tell the
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listeners who you are.
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What do you do?
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Thank you everyone.
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I'm Ernie Graham, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Homebot.
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Awesome.
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Austin, how about yourself?
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Yeah, Austin Lar.
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I'm the area manager for Fairway Independent Mortgage here in Indiana.
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Okay.
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Awesome.
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Hey, just real quick, Austin, how long have you been in the business?
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11 years.
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11 years.
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I'm on this thread that a lot of people are used to me asking, what is your number one
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source of business and like units volume?
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So the Austin Lar team last year did 1300 units and about 284 million shout out to my
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team.
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They're awesome.
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And our number one source of business is probably, we're about 75% purchase 25% refires
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and most of our refires are past clients.
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Thanks to Homebot.
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Yeah.
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Awesome.
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Fantastic.
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And how about the purchase side?
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Is that mostly focused on realtors?
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You know, it's a lot of builder stuff too.
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So maybe a little more 50, 50 builder and even our own past clients, referrals.
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Do a little bit of lead gin ourselves trying to get to that consumer first.
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Yeah.
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Awesome.
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Hey, appreciate you sharing that.
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That's wonderful context.
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And yeah, congrats to you and the team.
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That's a massive year, 1300 units.
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Okay.
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So we're here to talk about Homebot, which I love talking about because, you know,
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there's a lot of loan officers who come to me and ask me, hey, man, what's the best
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this?
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What about that?
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How do you do?
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You know, what would you recommend?
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And I have to say that, you know, I have a short list of activities or platforms or
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tools that, you know, I usually go to or usually recommend.
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And Homebot is always on that short list.
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And for those, you know, I can't, if there's somebody listening who's not familiar,
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this is for you, Ernie, for who's not familiar with what Homebot is or what it does.
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I don't think there's anybody better to tee that up, Ernie.
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But how would you kind of break that down for people?
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Is it, am I, is the spotlight on me from a 60-second pitch right now, Jay?
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Yeah.
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That's, that's your chance, man.
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Short on this is that Homebot's a financial dashboard for homeowners and renters.
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And so, customers like you, like Austin, give it away for free to all of your past clients,
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all your prospects, and it is a dashboard that does two things.
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It tracks home value, it tracks loans, it tracks home equity.
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And then the other thing that it does is that it gives these personalized insights that
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it helps your client, your prospects, make great decisions to build wealth, like when
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to buy, when to sell, when to rent, when to remodel, when to refi.
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You can imagine that refi module has been exploding here over the last, over the last year.
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But that's really the net of it.
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It's an empowerment tool for consumers.
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And if you're an L.O. and you care, and you think that empowering your clients and prospects
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is good for business, you should use Homebot.
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Yeah, I don't have to say like in my own podcast group and in other organizations that
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I work with, the response rate on the success, the level of engagement to open rate, I mean,
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the level that Homebot with past clients drives conversations, it's just always just like
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off the charts, man.
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I don't know if there's a better platform out there that will drive past client engagement.
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I haven't seen it.
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I appreciate that.
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And it's, it has, it's just been an amazing ride for five years.
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I credit it to a couple of things.
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We're maniacal about the North Star being consumer empowerment that we want to create
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a beautiful user experience that the consumer feels empowered, empowered, empowered.
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And in a lot of ways, when I, you know, when we think about the business that we're in
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in terms of helping lenders do better business by empowering their clients, we feel like
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almost like an arms dealer because the truth is is that when you've got these huge companies
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out there, you know, the, the quickens and the zillows and the bank rates and these guys
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that have pretty much unlimited resources to dazzle the consumer, you know, you got
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it, you can't go to a thermonuclear war as a LO with a slingshot.
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And so we'd like to think that we're, you know, we're, we're, we're giving the industry
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something to fight back with in a, you know, in a way that has intrinsic value for the
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consumer.
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Yeah.
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No, no, it's, it's funny.
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When you, what you say there, it makes me think of how, you know, I'll hear a lot of
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L.O.'s get aggravated speaking of some of those companies, how, you know, so and so company
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is like, you know, mining my database or pilfering my debt, you know what I mean?
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It's like they get these offers of solicitation and then L.O.'s get upset because another company
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has come in and, you know, captured that business or captured that attention, which, which
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I think is one of the great things about homebought is we have to do that.
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I mean, nobody said just because you close that loan that, you know, it's over and they're
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never going to shop you ever again.
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Okay.
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You know, so the question is, well, how are you keeping that relationship sticky and, and,
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and tied to you?
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And I think that's where homebought comes in.
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It came on.
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It came on.
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I mean, and that's the thing now too, is that everybody's got CRM.
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You've got these big guys every minute of every day.
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I mean, we're all consumers, right?
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Yeah.
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Everyone we look at our phone, we're getting targeted for something.
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Right.
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So there's no reason to expect that our clients aren't being targeted as well.
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Yeah.
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So Austin, tell me a little bit then, how do you get your clients once you've closed
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a transaction with them?
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How do you introduce and segway them over to homebought?
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Yeah.
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That's a great question.
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So, you know, and it's not just our past clients, by the way, that we're putting in here.
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Literally, anybody, I was at my local, local watering hole, you know, yesterday and someone's
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like, you know, I think about selling my house.
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Hey, give me your email.
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Give me your, give me your phone number and I'm going to send you this report, right?
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And, and so it's definitely not just our past buyers, but we are putting all our past
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buyers in after closing.
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We actually introduce homebought at time of CD.
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So when you're calling the buyer and going over that CD and that final number, you're calling
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it a gift.
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We're going to be providing value to you.
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We're going to be sending you our report every month.
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This report is going to, is going to track the equity in your house.
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It's going to tell you what the value is.
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It's going to tell you what your current mortgage balance is that you can go in an update.
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And it's going to take that number and show you what you can do with that equity.
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There's anything we can ever do for you down the road.
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Please call us back.
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You're going to be getting that every 30 days.
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Hmm.
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I love that the way you introduce that.
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So you're putting leads in there as well?
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We do put leads in there from time to time that are, that are, that are, that can even
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be buyer section, right?
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Mostly it's the home buyer.
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It's the home owner section, but we do put some buyers in there from time to time as
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well.
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What I really, really like to do is I also like to put our readers in there.
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And so, so for those people that don't know, like homebought, you can actually have a co-branded
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version of homebought.
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It's extremely inexpensive.
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And, and so you can have access to your, to your realtor's database.
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And when I say that, you're not being, you're not, you're not taking it over.
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You actually don't get to see their info if that's an issue for your realtor.
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However, you are seeing that one of that realtor's leads came and wanted a, a CMA or, or wanted
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to go search houses or whatever.
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And so you're, it's just a trigger for you to reach back out to that realtor.
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But anyway, I put in all my realtor's because I want them to get their own report and
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I want them to be curious about what this is that we're doing and how can they be a part
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of it.
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Now, I'm glad you, you brought that up because I had intended on going there as well.
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In addition to, I want to cover some of the new features that you guys have recently rolled
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out like the video and things like that.
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But let's hang out here for a while because it is an area that I have found L.O.'s struggle
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with in various levels in, in getting agents on board and getting agents to upload their
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database, whatever.
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So I'd love to hear Austin how you introduce it to realtor's data agents.
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You know, we've all, we're all in presentations, we're all in coffee, lunches, whatever.
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Just ask for their address.
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Hey, do you want to see this thing that we're doing for our buyers?
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You know, you're going to really like it.
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It's not that, it's not the average what your home value is.
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It's actually going through and figuring out what the balance is on the mortgage and taking
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the equity and showing them how they can reify, how they can rent, what they can do to turn
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that equity into investment, all of those things, right?
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And so you're just getting the address right there.
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I'm signing them up from my phone as we're sitting there.
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And then it's great because I'm the tracking tools.
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I can see how many times I open it.
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I can see when they look at it again, right?
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And some forget about that lunch and three months down the road, then they start opening
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it again.
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They're like, oh, I forgot about Austin and what he said, right?
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And it's a reason to reach back out to him.
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Hey, I saw that, I saw that you're loving home by, is this something you want to sign
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up for and put your 600 pass clients in there, too?
17:59
Jeff, it's a super slick move because I call it the mansplain move, you skip the mansplaining.
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The realtors got a very limited attention span to begin with.
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And it's one of those things was like, hey, I got something that'll keep you from getting
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zillowed.
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What's your address?
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And let them see it for themselves, let them teach themselves.
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I love what you're doing to Austin where because he gets click stream, he's actually
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now able to see how obsessed that realtor gets with this tool that he just gave you.
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Yeah, so just to clarify, in case anybody doesn't know, you can see the activity that people
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are engaging with on that financial digest, right?
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The clicks, the views and all that kind of stuff.
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And all the different things you have that are action oriented, right?
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The calls to action.
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You're getting all those analytics, right?
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Yeah, sorry, yeah, you were absolutely.
18:53
You know, in fact, one thing I do talk to my loan officers about too is making sure
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that they're working, quote, unquote, that activity feed.
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So every day you can go in and look, now you're going to get alerts through emails as well.
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But we opened up our activity feed once a day.
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We looked to see who's the most active.
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What's great is you can put notes in homebots so you know, you know, when you did reach
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out to somebody, when you didn't reach out to somebody.
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And we just have someone kind of dial in, just check it in on you.
19:20
How you been?
19:21
You know, Austin, I were talking about it.
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It looks like you could actually save a bunch on a re-fi.
19:25
Hey, you can, it looks like maybe your search and houses can we help with a new pre-approved
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whatever it is.
19:30
So, so I'm telling my loan officers, don't wait for the people to reach out to you,
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which you get alerted, right, that they reached out to you.
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But we'll be working that activity feed.
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Yeah, let's go back to the realtor side of things, because I know people would love
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to dig deeper on this.
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So I think conceptually we get the, you know, the call to the agent.
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I love the whole, you know, don't get zillog thing, keep it simple and sweet.
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They get it.
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They're on the digest a couple weeks, whatever.
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Help us make the transition from that to actually having agents upload their database.
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Like how does that thing happen in the real world?
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I'd be for you, Austin.
20:08
And I'm sorry, a researcher that you actually froze briefly on me.
20:13
I apologize.
20:14
Did I keep putting that trick on people I freeze midway?
20:17
I am, I am so sorry, yep.
20:19
No, no, no, no, okay.
20:21
So take me from a, you've got an agent who's got the, the, the home bot digest for their
20:26
own property.
20:27
Yep.
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Now, how do we move them from that to great, let's upload your 500 pass clients?
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Yeah.
20:33
So again, we're looking at the activity feed.
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We're seeing that that person's opened it.
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We're seeing they're opening it every single time.
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So it's just a phone call, hey, you know, did you, you put me more thought into, uh, into
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what we talked about at home bot?
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Remember, it's very inexpensive.
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It is very, very inexpensive, uh, and then you do the math for them.
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Uh, hey, if you close, if you get one listing out of this, if you close one more deal,
20:54
you paid for it for like eight or nine years, right?
20:57
Right.
20:58
That's how inexpensive it is to co-brand with that realtor.
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And so they're more than happy to go upload their 500 pass clients, their hundred pass
21:05
clients, whatever it is.
21:07
So you haven't, you know, listen, anybody who doesn't know, I'm the chief truth teller,
21:11
guys.
21:12
You haven't run into any friction with, with getting agents to actually execute, execute
21:16
on that.
21:17
Hey, you know, listen, it's not for everybody.
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There's probably five or six agents out there floating around that I've had the conversation
21:22
with that maybe have something through their current, uh, company, right?
21:28
Um, so it's not a hundred percent, but I would say the majority of people that I put
21:31
in end up signing up for it, especially when you tell them the price.
21:34
I know.
21:35
Have you, have you played with the freemium model yet with agents at a little bit?
21:40
Yeah.
21:41
Yeah.
21:42
Yeah.
21:43
Yeah.
21:44
Yeah.
21:45
Yeah.
21:46
Yeah.
21:47
By the way, great point, Ernie.
21:48
So the freemium model works as you can.
21:49
That's what I've seen people do is the agents either use it for their own property or they'll
21:50
go up, they have up to what?
21:51
How many 25?
21:52
Yep.
21:53
Yeah.
21:54
So so agents can for free upload 25 of their past contacts, I believe, right?
21:58
That's correct.
21:59
Yeah.
22:00
So that gets them started.
22:01
No, and I got guys just so you know why I'm hanging out here is because, you know, I'm
22:04
just what I try and do is, is solve problems for people that I'm hearing and look, I know
22:09
this varies like mileage will vary based on loan officer.
22:14
You don't have to tell me, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, I'll do respect to those
22:17
listening.
22:18
Some people get stuff done, some people don't.
22:20
Some people come up with reasons why it won't work or excuses because there are plenty
22:25
of loan officers who have succeeded in getting agents to upload their database.
22:30
And then frankly, there are some who haven't.
22:33
And I think what I've seen for those who haven't succeeded in getting agents to actually upload
22:37
their database, I've seen the biggest mistake is the approach from the get go.
22:43
They're very hands off, they're very lazy, fair, they're very like, Hey, I sent you that
22:47
thing, right?
22:48
Go ahead.
22:49
You should upload your past database.
22:51
And of course, they don't, right?
22:53
Because they don't understand the context of why.
22:55
So I don't know, Ernie, if you're hearing this, you want to unpack anything else here?
22:57
Best practices, that kind of stuff.
22:59
Yeah.
23:00
Yeah.
23:01
Yeah.
23:02
There's some.
23:03
That I, I, I don't see enough LOs right now taking advantage of.
23:08
Okay.
23:09
Here's the angle.
23:10
The angle is you walk into a room or a virtual room of agents and use freemium to carpet
23:15
bomb the room, right?
23:18
You know, you could spend all your time trying to find the five people in the room who are
23:22
actually going to be motivated to upload stuff.
23:25
But carpet bomb the room, you give out home bot to 20 or 30 or 50 agents.
23:31
And then home bot tells you which ones actually loaded one or two clients.
23:34
So it doesn't cost them anything.
23:35
So in a lot of ways, the freemium can act as sort of a signal detector.
23:39
So it actually, the people that you see adding one or two or three or five, those are the
23:44
ones that you absolutely focus on because they already have that predispositions.
23:48
They say, Hey, I want to use the tool versus, you know, spend a lot of time on agents that
23:53
you're just never going to get to load clients.
23:55
So that's part, that's part A.
23:56
Part B is 10 clients, like package it down.
24:02
Instead of your whole database, you can just get them to load 10 past clients.
24:08
And I'm telling you that that is a magic number.
24:11
And here's why it's magic.
24:13
It's magic because with home bot 50% engagement rate, you know, five of those 10 are going
24:19
to be engaging every month or in their home bot.
24:22
And one of those 10 is actually going to reach out and say something or ask something
24:25
of that agent.
24:27
So I'd say parsing it down to the achievable.
24:30
So once you get signal with somebody, then say, Look, I'm not asking you to put 500 in.
24:35
I'm not even asking you to put 25 in just put 10 as what'll happen is it's, you know,
24:40
an agent you put 10 in and they start to see success, that's the, that's the biggest
24:46
motivator for them to keep, keep on, keep on, keep on.
24:49
Right.
24:50
Right.
24:51
So if I'm, if I want to go, you know, I've got 400 agents or whatever in my database,
24:58
is there marketing materials that I could send out on, on home bot website to, or a link
25:04
or anything like that where they can, they can sign up for the premium version?
25:08
Yes.
25:09
We have an entire package of videos, how to blog articles, even material that you can
25:18
brand along those lines, 100% just hit your, I cast for success first and they'll, they'll
25:24
send everything to you.
25:25
Yeah.
25:26
It's about a way.
25:27
We're going to put links in the show notes to the home bot website and I'll put, make
25:30
sure I put the link to the real estate agent specific page that, that home bot has because
25:35
I've, I'm on that page right now and there's, I mean, you guys make it so easy for agents
25:40
and to share this with agents, you've got PowerPoint decks, you've got like, you know, explainer
25:44
videos, you've got like, overviews and, you know, template scripts of what L.O.s could
25:49
say or share an email scripts and it's just like, I mean, it's like 80% done for you.
25:54
I mean, I'm just pointing this out for those who don't know it Austin, but that to me is
25:58
what I love because a lot of vendors don't like provide that, you know?
26:03
And there's a power shift going on right now, Jeff, and this is something I'm curious
26:07
Austin too, if you're starting to see this.
26:10
The power shift is, L.O.s have always had beautiful databases that's just kind of a compulsory
26:17
part of being in the business, right?
26:18
You got to be in your L.O.S. you, you have all those homeowners in there.
26:22
The shift that's happening right now is of course the inventory crisis.
26:27
And, and what home bot can do is to find the people ready to sell in your database.
26:36
And this is something agents actually have historically never been good at is actually having
26:41
a great database of their past home owners, their past buyers. They don't put the addresses in.
26:47
They have all of these leads, but they rarely have addresses with us.
26:51
And where I'm going with this is inventory is the gold now.
26:54
Listings are gold. It's such a rare supply.
26:57
So to the extent Austin that you can get listing, you know, signal out of your past client database,
27:05
now you're dealing with gold, right?
27:08
You've got something to, to, you know, hand out to your realtor partners.
27:13
But then downstream of that, again, it goes back to those realtors.
27:17
You give a, you get a realtor to put 10 in and they get one listing out of that 10,
27:22
or one listing out of that 20.
27:24
I mean, the stat is that even if they're paying for home bot, that basically one listing
27:29
pays for 20 years with a home bot.
27:31
Yeah, so, so yeah, I mean, I just say that's where we're putting a lot of energy into
27:36
right now because of course, 65% of all buyers are existing homeowners and lenders sit on that
27:45
beautiful database of homeowners. So you're really, the power shift has commenced.
27:50
Amen to that. And if I could add on that, you know, Ernie, I put this class together for a lot
27:56
of my clients and all those that I coach, speaking of the inventory issue, the class is 10 ways
28:02
to get more listings in a low inventory market, right? Very timely class. And in home bot is one of
28:07
the things I feature in there for the reason you just explained. And in particular, I'm looking
28:12
at the slide right now that I've seen a number of agents use home bot to generate leads, right?
28:18
They're running a CMA lead, for example, or what's your home worth type of an opt-in thing.
28:22
And then what's really cool is you guys have this whole process, well, maybe I'll just like,
28:27
so instant offer. This is what I'm looking at. You familiar with what I'm referring to there?
28:31
I did. So, so unpack that for how an agent might use that.
28:35
Well, instant offers are really threatening to the real estate, to the traditional real estate
28:39
industry. This is the open doors now at Zillow. So this is where these big portals now are buying
28:45
properties directly from your clients. Right. So yes, you're the agents getting cut out, cut out
28:51
of listing, which also now listings, of course, lead to the to the buy side too. So very, very
28:57
threatening. And so the point here that what we've done with home bot is that instead of the agent
29:05
pretending like it doesn't exist, the agent can now shoot a video, turn a module on inside of
29:13
home bot. So when they're when their client is interested in eye buying or instant offers,
29:20
they stay the central point of being the advisory on that because there's a story and there's
29:25
advice that that really needs to, you know, to be in context with, you know, instant offers. So it
29:32
keeps the agent there. And the story is pretty simple. If the agent gets that phone call from one
29:37
of their clients, it's thinking about taking an instant offer. The agent could basically say,
29:42
oh, yeah, that instant offer, you know, you're getting less money, but you're taking less risk.
29:46
Let me show you a little bit more risk, a little bit more inconvenience, but a lot more money.
29:50
So let me just show you those two scenarios so that you can make the most educated decision there.
29:56
So instead of hiding under rock, it really puts the agent, you know, in a place to to charge that
30:02
so that they again, the worst thing that can happen is that realtor gets cut out of the conversation.
30:08
Yes, if they're not even part of the consideration, for sure. And I love the fact that like even
30:13
with just generating or using a, hey, what's your home worth offer, whether it's on an agent's website,
30:19
whether it's a Facebook ad or something in your digest, I'm looking at the screenshot of it here,
30:24
when people are like wanting to get an estimated value of their home, they can tune the value,
30:29
which is cool, right? Because then they can like say, well, I don't think it's worth that or whatever.
30:33
And of course, you're going to get the notifications that they're tuning the value, right?
30:37
That's brilliant. But also there's that button instant offer like of what would my house be worth?
30:42
Like today, boom, right? Just to create that very cool engagement and to your point is the agent can
30:48
create a video, whatever. Anyway, roll this back to all the loan officer is, you know, I'm a believer,
30:53
it sounds like everybody here is way beyond like doing loans and performing on the transaction,
30:59
which is of course table stakes today. What beyond that am I going to do for my realtor to help
31:04
them with their business? That's how I'm going to continue to build that relationship, earn referrals,
31:08
you know, all that kind of stuff. So that's why I think Homebot and I think a lot of people listening
31:12
have found Homebot to be a great solution for that. So all right, let's talk about then what's
31:19
coming new. I watched this video about a week ago or so. There's a lot happening with you guys
31:24
and video and scaling your expertise through video. I'm looking at this thing called power-ups.
31:30
I don't even know what that is, but what do you want to tell us about like what you're now you've
31:34
rolled out or what's coming? So it has been a dream of mine for almost four years now.
31:42
And so basically Homebot, you know, you guys have seen it. It's beautiful. The consumer loves
31:49
clicking on. It's a modern experience. But the thing that's always been missing from it for me
31:55
has been multi-dimensional brand. And here's what I mean by that. The L.O.'s brand is not just their
32:02
face and some contact information. Your brand is your humanity. Your brand is your
32:07
is your biometrics the way you look. Do you look trustworthy to me? It's how you explain things.
32:13
Do you sound trustworthy to me? It's a lot of different stuff that goes into what your brand is and
32:19
for us to, you know, obviously we're promoting the L.O.'s brand to their own clients for that
32:24
engagement. But we I've always wanted to take it to the next level, which was to allow the L.O.
32:31
to record an infinite number of videos. Let's just start with a dozen. And that those videos are
32:38
carefully placed at all different places across the Homebot experience for their clients.
32:43
So in that way, you're actually advising 25 hours in a 24-hour day conceivably. Because,
32:49
you know, that's the power of video. And of course, you know, we, you know, we've been, you know,
32:55
students of this industry for a while and we say that, hey, look, oh, you know, most of the top
32:59
producers are using video very aggressively because they get that their brand is not just
33:05
their the lowest rate or they're the hardest working or you know what I'm saying.
33:10
Or they have the coolest office or close in six minutes. Yeah.
33:14
So really what the what the power up is is that every Homebot, every pro user of Homebot can
33:20
basically drop, you know, all any and all video evergreen custom video that of them right into their
33:28
Homebot experience that goes out to all of their clients, right place, right time. And here's
33:34
one little other little trick to it. When they're co-sponsoring realtors, it syndicates down to the
33:41
realtors Homebot as well. So in other words, that video now gets exposed to the real estate agent's
33:50
clients, which is great because remember, this is this is a subject matter around finance
33:57
and you know, financial education and that sort of thing, what better person than your partner
34:01
to speak to that, you know, in digest. Does that make sense? Yeah. Austin, have you had a chance to
34:07
use any of the new features yet? Yeah, we did. And in fact, our goal was to kind of put one
34:14
of video out every other week and especially around refi time. And we'll continue to do that,
34:21
even though refis are starting to change maybe more into cash out. We'll continue that video
34:28
barrage on people and the response is amazing. Like Ernie said, if you want to see your face,
34:32
right, they care about, they care about connecting with Austin. And we actually take it another
34:38
step further. It's great to blast the videos out to, you know, 4,000 people or whoever's in your
34:43
in your sphere. But if we see, if we've tried to get a hold of somebody, we can't get a hold of
34:49
them and they've been looking at that, you know, they've requested a CMA or whatever it is, right,
34:54
they're super active. We're going to make them a one-on-one video. We use bomb bomb. And it's
34:58
basically us sharing our screen and just walking them through what that digest actually means.
35:04
And the response that you get on doing something when you're calling them by their name,
35:09
and even though they didn't answer their phone or their text, but you not send them a video,
35:14
it's watched every single time and you can see how far they're watching it, 95 to 100% of the video,
35:20
that to us has been a huge tool. Yeah, very cool, very cool, very personalized,
35:27
which is what people are looking for these days. Regarding the videos, Ernie, the power-ups,
35:33
or whatnot, I'm looking at the different examples of videos here, like homeowner intro,
35:38
intro to refinancing, trading up to a new home buyer intro pre-qual. These, how do these go
35:47
out? In what cadence? Does the yellow kind of control how those are rolled out? What happens?
35:53
There's a couple of different ways that video works with homeowner today. The first way is,
35:59
as Austin was describing, there's a sort of a blast. You can actually do a video, do a one-to-many,
36:09
and so the homebody experience gets coupled with whatever your message is, and that can be
36:15
very effective. The other way is where you have a library of videos, let's say it does the videos,
36:21
and they are simply embedded into the homebot digest that every one of your clients always look.
36:27
So it's really a self-serve. Let's say that that was just used REFI. They clicked on the REFI
36:33
module. They're going through that and looking at the numbers playing with the sliders, and then boom,
36:38
Austin's video pops up right in the REFI section, where he gets to speak to maybe
36:46
something that's going on with the REFI market. This is meant to be alive. This isn't meant to be
36:51
evergreen. Some of this could be evergreen, but this is also meant to be very dynamic. So if all
36:57
of a sudden rates went up another half point, he might record another video to speak more clearly
37:02
to what the dynamics of the market right there. So that's more of the self-serve where the consumer
37:07
is choosing to, you know, based on their engagement with homebot. Well, what I love about that is
37:13
it's contextual video at the right time. Yeah. So if they're in that REFI module or if they're in
37:20
that, you know, buying a new home or first time buyer module, and you've got that relevant video
37:25
based on the context in that moment of what they're, that's super engaging. You know, it's funny,
37:30
when I talk to a lot of top producers like Austin, you're almost like a victim of your success.
37:36
When you had a small database, you could always give face time to people, right? When you have
37:41
a huge database, geez, even if you, you know, the way that you spend your human time, who's going
37:50
to be ready to receive you right live? This is a great way to basically take your personality and
37:55
your expertise right time, right place, right message. There you go. So Austin could be many different
38:02
places at once. Yes, I like it. I like it. So the Austin, the agents that you've got on homebot,
38:16
would you say that that has either a, have you leveraged, let me say it this way, have you leveraged
38:21
homebot to get conversations with agents you think you might not otherwise have succeeded
38:27
having conversations with. Yeah, that's a really good question. I actually tell a funny story
38:32
when I'm telling people about homebot and my other L.O.S. is I got, you know, you've become really
38:38
good friends with some of your realtors where it's more even like a friendship than it is, you know,
38:42
that business relationship. And I had guys that got mad at me that I didn't show them to this
38:47
sooner, right? Like they're like, dude, what are you doing man? Like we've been in the first,
38:52
like uploading our first, right? So I actually use that story to kind of tell out to other
38:56
realtors, like, hey, and they're big hitters in town. So people know who they are. And I asked
39:01
him if I could use their name and they said, that's fine. And so I actually use that as my intro
39:05
story to get more realtors that maybe didn't, you know, want to work with us or didn't already work
39:11
with us to begin with. So you're like, hey, I don't want you to be angry with me later. That's right.
39:17
That's exactly right. Yep. That's pretty brilliant actually because I was thinking as I'm listening
39:23
to you, I'm thinking like, how could an L.O. use Homebot to, you know, as we're making calls or
39:27
whatever, use Homebot to have a conversation with somebody on their hit list, you know, who might
39:32
be a producer or whatnot could be an approach right there. Right. Make the video too. Make the video
39:38
for realtors, right? Show them what, how you're, how you're leveraging video and how they can leverage
39:45
video to their, you know, past clients. So you're saying make a video with maybe doing kind of a
39:50
screen share of the Homebot Digest, for example. Exactly. We're screen sharing all the time. In fact,
39:56
just this morning, I sent out to all of my loan officers a screen share of me sharing in Homebot
40:01
and how I can sort it by equity, right? Because I'm getting everybody's, well, refires are kind of
40:05
drying up, they're drying up. I was like, guys, that just means we need to turn into cash out, refires
40:09
in and Homebot allows you to sort by who's got the most equity, right? Yeah. And a thousand other
40:15
ways to sort, but I just made a screen share video to show the guys, hey, this is what, this is
40:21
who you need to be contacting, right? Make your goal five of these a day and make a video for each
40:26
one of them. Hmm. Brilliant idea. Anything we're missing, earning in terms of high points, you know,
40:32
where, where LOS should be aware of what you could do in Homebot? You know, it's funny. It's like,
40:37
you kind of cut me off guard there, Jeff, because it's like, I'm like so intensely listening to
40:41
what Austin's doing. And I'm just going to say it is for us, this is just the, this is the
40:49
gold for us as a company is to listen to, you know, Austin tell what he just did. It sounds so simple,
40:56
but hopefully your listeners like really dial into what he just said, like these little things
41:01
just have so much nuance and they sound so simple that they can be so powerful. So I was just
41:06
thinking about, well, how can we build something like that easier for him to do to do what he just did?
41:12
I think that with realtors right now, again, this isn't anything new. With realtors, you know,
41:20
it's hard to get through attention. There's a million shiny metal objects in their universe of
41:24
technology. But one thing right now that I would, you know, if I were in L.O. that I would just be
41:31
banging the drum is, it's a listing machine because realtors are suffering. It is suffering
41:37
the inventory crisis. And like really positioning this as a, hey, you know, listings is the gold,
41:45
you want to mine for gold, put your clients in this thing, and that's how. Because one thing I've
41:51
noticed is that, you know, L.O.s are really, really thoughtful about this story, right, of empowerment
42:00
and financial literacy and multi-generational wealth and caring about their clients one year,
42:08
two year, five year, ten year. That doesn't really translate to most realtors. I mean, I don't
42:13
want to be insulted. I was a realtor. And here's the, it's so transaction oriented. And for so many
42:19
reasons, you know, they, it's, it's really hard for them to carry those relationships for ten years.
42:24
What are you going to talk about for ten years? You're not going to buy or sell their home, right?
42:27
Banana bread recipes. Yeah, they're just not very good subject matter. But when the, when you,
42:35
so as a lender, when you partner with them, you're now giving them all of this amazing content
42:41
subject matter to really push that nurture over years and years and years. Here's the problem
42:46
right now. Agents don't care. Why? They don't have any listings. So I would say right now,
42:53
the timeliness of this is to narrow that message to, hey, you need listings? I got something
42:58
to get your listings. And the way you do that is both with the past clients, you know, with the
43:04
financial digest, but also using home bot as like a top of funnel, lead gen capture slash nurture
43:09
thing, right? 100%. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. That's, it's like somebody once said, it's like,
43:15
you know, solve problems, right? Show up in self problems for people. And that's the biggest
43:19
problem agents have to your point with, but, but now you can actually do, because you know,
43:23
the classic thing with LOS is like, well, how do I actually do? Oh, oh, help my realtors be successful.
43:28
How do I actually do that? Well, this is one way you actually can help solve a pain point. And you
43:34
and I both know that many, I won't use the word most, but many realtors are, are woefully lacking
43:43
when it comes to appropriately capturing leads, but even bigger than that is like nurturing them,
43:50
you know, so I think home bot's a great tool for that. Fantastic. All right, Austin,
43:56
any other nuggets you want to share? You got a brand new L.O. in front of you. They're like,
43:59
home bot, what do I do? How do I, how do I, anything else you want to tell them? Yeah, listen,
44:05
we've said it a couple of times, but, but leads are currency, right? And, and when you can get
44:10
this currency that you can hand back out to realtors, I swear for every deal we hand out,
44:15
three come back to us, right? If you're a brand new loan officer, get a hundred people in there.
44:20
You know 100 people and you know 100 people that own houses. This is, this is such a good,
44:25
and you know, it's running a lot of the new loan offices. They don't want to go after their
44:29
sphere of influence. They don't want to be pushy. But this is a way to be not be pushy and just
44:33
slightly remind people what you do every 30 days, right? So we're getting every single person we know
44:38
and getting them into home bot. And like I said, we have about 4,600 and I wish we would have been
44:42
doing this forever by 11 years because we'd have way more in there, right? And at some point,
44:48
we've had to almost turn one of our junior loan officers just to our home bot loan officer to keep
44:53
up with it all. It's, it's currency guys. It's currency sign up. And I'm not getting paid by the
44:59
way to say that. So I truly truly believe in it. Well, well, I'm getting paid. And you know,
45:08
and I think that I think the other consideration here is to know that it's not good enough to just
45:14
say buyers. They're either homeowners or renters and two thirds of them are homeowners. So I think
45:21
that's really important to understand, you know, that those homeowners sit in that database and
45:27
they're ready. And so if you're purchase focused, your purchase leads are sitting in your database
45:32
because those folks are going to those folks are going to convert over. So with that contact,
45:36
and I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble saying this because I can't remember
45:40
our product team rules out so many new features. But I am going to share something right now that
45:44
I am beyond excited about maybe us that you can tell me or Jeff, if this has been announced
45:49
yet by us, but you're quietly rolling out home bot for insurance agents. I think I heard of that.
45:57
Yep. And and it's it's so powerful because everything that we've just talked about with
46:04
real estate agents where they don't keep good databases is hard to get them below their data and
46:08
everything. You don't have that problem with insurance agents. They got a whole other set of
46:13
problems of retention right now that their their industry is getting disrupted, especially that
46:18
and you know, obviously the independent insurance agent. But everything we just talked about
46:22
as it relates to how do you get access to another to a bigger sphere or increase your sphere.
46:28
I think those insurance agents are just right. They sell homeowners insurance. All of those homeowners
46:34
in their database, they use home bot they're exposed to your brand. So you're saying a new niche
46:40
of referral partner for LL? Yes, 100%. I know a lot of folks have already doing it, but it's been
46:46
kind of soft. Yeah. We've been at the last eight months kind of drilling in deep with a bunch
46:51
of insurance agents and piloting and you know, seeing where this thing works or doesn't work and
46:57
where it breaks. And I think we've found a really sweet spot. And by the way, the insurance agent
47:04
cannot get home bot today without the LL. So it's really the same story. Everything that we just
47:10
talked about whether it's freemium or even co-sponsorship, same price, same everything. But for
47:15
insurance agents, and Austin, I would just say that you should be carpet bomb in the insurance
47:20
agent. Well, it's funny you said that because we had several of our LLs start that maybe about
47:26
90 days ago. And that's a whole different conversation because there's five, you know,
47:32
insurance agents that come into your office a day, right? I mean, so that's a completely different
47:37
conversation. They have just as many people in their in their database than a realtor does maybe
47:43
a way, way, I mean, again, the insurance agents homeowners are written on napkins and five old
47:50
iPhones playing in the basement. And their databases are all over the place. The the insurance agent
47:56
is one click from every single client. Well, because they recognize the value of their database
48:02
for sure for residuals and all that. 100%. Yeah, that's cool. That's that's another great niche.
48:07
All right, we'll look for more good stuff to come on that insurance niche. So you heard to hear
48:11
folks folks, perhaps an exclusive on a mortgage market radio. All right, listen, I know you guys
48:17
are busy. You've shared a lot. I am incredibly grateful for it. All right, guys, so listen,
48:23
we've got a partnership going with home bot mortgage marketing radio. And if you're interested
48:27
in taking the next step with home bot, if you don't have it yet, you want to check it out,
48:31
we're going to put links to all this in the show notes, but you want to go to homebot.ai,
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homebot.ai. That's their website. And if you're going to get started, use the code mortgage
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radio 200. That'll save you 200 bucks off off the sign up fee. So there is no sign up before you
48:45
whatsoever. As a podcast listener, it's mortgage radio 200. You go to homebot.ai. You know, check
48:52
the show notes for those links. If you need them, but other than that, hope you've heard enough here
48:56
today to be convinced if you're not using home bot yet to get on it because of the impact it can
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have. And if you are using it, then take some of the ideas you've heard from Austin and Ernie
49:06
today and apply them in your business. Gentlemen, I can't take you enough for being here.
49:10
Appreciate the time. Thank you for having me. Great stuff. Thank you, Joe.
49:14
You bet. And listeners, you know what to do if you enjoyed this episode. Hey, go to homebot.ai,
49:19
mortgage radio 200s of code. And leave us a review if you are so inclined. We appreciate you
49:23
tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
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