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Marketing Lessons in Becoming #1 in Market Share and Closing $4 Billion in Loan Volume · Mortgage Marketing Radio

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In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
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the real estate agents is essential for success.
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However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
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With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it
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can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
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Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
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Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
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And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
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with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
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To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
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of the case study today.
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You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
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in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
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Don't miss out.
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Go check it out right now.
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Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
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So, guest, a quick reminder, you've heard me by now talking about all the success stories
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from our mortgage marketing pro members and the hits just keep coming.
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Recently, I had a conversation with one of our superstar members, Chris Cogill out
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of Charlotte, North Carolina and Chris, I recently recorded a case study with Chris and
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we're putting together and that's going to be available for you to go check out and download.
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So stay tuned for that.
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Check out the next episode coming up where you're going to be able to get access to that
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case study in Big Deeper into Chris and how Chris leveraged agent classes being a mortgage
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marketing pro member and how he funded 36 million in loans and served 133 families, 100
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percent, which of that funding, right, the 36 million and 133 loans came exclusively
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from referrals from real estate agents.
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Chris doesn't do anything else, doesn't call call, doesn't pay for leads, he doesn't visit
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we get open houses, he doesn't chase agents, teaching agent classes as Chris is only method
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of acquiring agent relationships and referrals and he's got it down to a science.
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He teaches 50 to 60 agent classes per year, primarily on topics that help agents build
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their business.
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Those are the topic we equip our mortgage broke members with, by the way.
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And in addition to that, Chris has put together a marketing services agreement as a result
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of him teaching classes that has 800 agents in it and it's the primary source of his business.
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He's always adding agents to his databases, as a matter of fact, there are a total of
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5,000 agents in his database that he's markets to for various purposes.
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So the question is, what does your database look like?
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We all need a database here today, like your future business is in your database, right,
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both on the consumer side but also on the referral partner side.
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Well, do you have a means and a mechanism for attracting and capturing and converting
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real estate agents, not only to referral partners to building your database, right, because
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not everybody's going to say, yes, right away, are you building your future business?
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Well, that's one of the things that Chris has leveraged being a mortgage marketing
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pro member.
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And that's one of the things that will help you do too.
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Should you be interested in learning more about becoming a mortgage marketing pro member
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and everything that's included with that, you can go to mortgagemarketing.pro, check
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out the success stories, grab a call with me on the calendar, and let's see if this is
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a fit for you.
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It may not be, but it just might be the only way to find out is a good mortgage marketing
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pro and grab a call, and by the way, not all will qualify either.
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There are certain levels of production and experience required, but you can learn more
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about that on the call.
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Okay.
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So my special guest for this week's episode is Quinton Harris.
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He is VP of Bank of England mortgage in Florida, and in 2011, he challenged his team
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to go on a journey with him to change the industry's traditional lending model.
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The challenge succeeded, and together they become the number one branch in the organizations
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for six years in a row, while gaining the number one market share position in Northeast
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Florida, closing over four billion in transactions.
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Quinton is a smart marketer understands personal branding, and this conversation is going
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to be chock full of marketing lessons in how to take the number one market share position
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close over four billion in loan volume by leveraging a personal brand, leveraging marketing
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and content, and you'll hear more about Quinton's podcast.
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He's the host of What's Your One More.
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He's the co-founder of the market distillery, which helps real estate agents become better
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marketers, and he's really just stepped up his content personal branding game, and you'll
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hear the results that he's been able to achieve by pouring his efforts and attention into
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that.
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We're going to put links in the show notes, so make sure you check that out.
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We got links to his podcast.
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We got links to the web, the market distillery, his Instagram, where you can go follow him and
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learn more, so I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation if you're looking
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for ways to how do you leverage a brand and marketing to build the preeminent position
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in your local market to attract people to want to work with you.
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So without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
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Quinton, welcome to the show.
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Hey, thanks for having me on here.
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Great to be appreciated.
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You bet, man, my pleasure, and thank you to reaching out.
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I always appreciate getting to meet new people with different perspectives, and this is
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kind of the cool thing about the world we're in right now, all right, is...
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with the ability for us to connect or social media and just like have these really cool
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conversations.
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So I know that's what we're going to have today before we get into it, those that haven't
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heard of Quinton Harris.
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Who is he?
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What do you do, man?
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Well, man, I work currently for the, excuse me, for the Bank of England mortgage here
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in Jacksonville, Florida.
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I've been here for about, really in Jacksonville for close to 20 years, been with the bank
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for 14 years, and I'm honored to get a chance to work with them, lead an amazing team,
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and I'm surrounded by so many good people here that have helped us get to this level.
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It's a real fun place to come to work every day, and I just really enjoy it, and I've
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kind of had the honor of kind of passing over the reins a little bit to one of my predecessors
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here, and man, he's doing a great job, which has allowed me to kind of step out into another
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journey with podcasting, and man, I'm really excited about that as well, and it's interesting
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people go, man, how do you run two businesses at the same time, and I always tell them that
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when you're having fun doing it, you're not really running two businesses.
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You're just kind of, you're out there playing the game, and it's a great one to play right
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now.
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Yeah, that's true. It's like when you love what you do, right? You know, the old saying
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I never work at day in your life. I know that's one of those things. We still have days
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that are hard, right? But when you kind of have that bigger purpose, you've got more energy
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as fueled.
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You can 100%.
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But hey, let's not show our way from your track record in the mortgage space for a moment.
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You know, I'm just reading here off your bio, led the number one branch at Bank of New England
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for over nine years.
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Right.
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It manages a team of 50 L.O.'s, got it four billion in purchase and re-fi. I mean, you're
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kicking some tail out there, yeah?
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Yeah, man. We've had a, I appreciate you saying that. It's, I would say that again, man,
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all the glory of that goes to the team I'm surrounded by. Just a great group. I had
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the luxury of having a really long retention with quite a few people. I think when you
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could build that foundation that helps that growth, that success, and that continuity.
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And so when we stepped on the scene in 2009 here, I bought Bank of England mortgage here
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in Jacksonville and it was kind of funny because people like Bank of England, what the heck
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are they doing here?
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And we see questions about like exchange rates for pounds and, you know, just funny cracks
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here and there. And our competitors, man, they really had fun with it. But what they
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didn't know is they were just putting the light on us even further. And the more attention
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they drew to us, the better it was. And so we kind of, we just ran with it. We're like,
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yeah, we're not the one across the pond. We're the one here in the US. And we've had a lot
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of fun. We're actually out of England, Arkansas, which is where the name Bank of England
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comes from, founded in 1898. You know, every bank was a bank of a city they were incorporated
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in during that time. We just have kept the name. The nostalgia had never changed it. And
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when we came over here, our market really penetration rate just grew. And the more people
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we brought on, the more opportunities we got. And by 2015, we were a player in the market.
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And by 2018, we were in the top five and by 2019, we were number one in the, in the market
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with capture rate in our local area in five counties surroundings. And so what does
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that mean capture rate? Are we talking about purchase business or what? Yeah, absolutely
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great question. 100% purchase business. I mean, even during the 2020, 2021, it was
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crazy when you look at the metrics for our organization. I remember people going,
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why are you guys not doing more refus? I'm like, I can't keep up with the purchases.
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I mean, we were, we were at 90% purchased during 2020, 2021. And we were doing close
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to 750 million out of this branch. We just couldn't keep up. So there's a lot of volume
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going on through here from a, from just a pure purchase standpoint.
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So I want to unpack that for a minute, you know, new bank, new area name, you know, bank
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of England, Florida, what, what the hell? Like, did you get people to even, you know,
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because you know, this is a leader and manager. It's always about recruiting retention.
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Right. That's the game. So I want to unpack that if that's okay for a moment or two is
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absolutely because I know there's a lot of shifting going on in the marketplace. As you
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know, right now, there's a lot of people looking and there's leaders that are potentially
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listening to this going, how do I attract and build my team? So can you kind of walk me through
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like how did you deal with that challenge of building a new brand and new name and attracting
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people in your market? Yeah, great question. So for us, it was something different. I always
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believe that when everyone's going right, look left, go left. I mean, you can always come back.
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They've paved the way for you. Get there pretty quickly. But in our industry, there is a
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knack to say, listen, Jeff, I'm going to recruit your guys because you've already done everything.
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And then those guys or girls, they make their way, men and women make their way over your team.
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And then they're one foot out the door to the next best offer. And so the thing was, I was
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tired of the revolving door. I've been in the industry for like a set for 20 plus years.
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The revolving door is just extensive. You can't build a house on a foundation that's not
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completely solid. And so what I did was I wrote a proposal to our company to go hire
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college graduates and MBA programs. In 2009, the market was not hiring in any really industry.
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So when we stepped out to a couple of local universities, we said, we're coming to the table with
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X amount of jobs. We'd love to meet the following candidates. And it was amazing the outreach we
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got at these universities went to. They were like, here, we want to help you. They, I mean,
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they set up the interviews for us. They set up the students they thought met our criteria.
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And we hired right out of college and we changed a pray program. We went against the industry
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standards pay program where you just pay basis points. And you know, at that time, I think it was
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like even like a 50 50 split in 2009. And people were doing stuff like that. We went against
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all the grain. We paid a salary plus and override. And we allowed the college students to come in
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and learn with the expectations of learning first originating second. And we wanted to get them
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very comfortable. We went to understand we were hiring a new generation of originators. We were
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bringing a new blood in the industry. There was a major gap between people that were 35 plus
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and then 50 in our industry. And then there was nothing underneath that. And we wanted to bring
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a new line of people in that could really take over the business as time went on and as people
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got out of the business. And so in doing such, you know, it was a great opportunity for us to teach
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show our industry knowledge to our new team members. And then also really bring them in under our
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wings and create a culture that we want, not what the industry had provided. And I think that
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was really important because oftentimes you get people go, well, at my old company, we did this.
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You know, back in 2000, whatever we did this and none of that's relevant in any market at any time.
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And so what we want to do is bring in a group that was ready to be eager. You know, they didn't know
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what a door being shut in your face really meant. No really wasn't this thing that was dangerous to
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them. I was like, okay, whatever. Let's keep going. You know, an underwriter asked for a condition.
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They're like, great, I'll go get it. They didn't fight. You know, and so it's just all of a sudden,
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it was just breath of fresh air. And we were all buzzing off that breath of fresh air and just
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ready to roll. And it created this basically lightning in a bottle. And yeah, I've lost some
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people over the years because we've had some great people come through this organization. They've
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been recruited. You know, someone's always vulnerable for the taking. But for the most part,
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our retention rate is unheard of in this industry. You know, I've got people in this branch right
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now over a handful that have been here for 12 years. I've got a couple that have been here for 14.
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You know, I've got very many that have been here for eight. So we're very, very blessed to have
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the culture and the environment we have. And again, all that success goes to that group that
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helped build that foundation and grow from there. So you were able to compete to capture real
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to business for purchase referrals. I'll assume. Correct. And builders. And so we have two large
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builder relationships where we would be considered the primary lender of choice. And for us,
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that was a new field we got into in 2012 because obviously the builder market, we had this false
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notion that every builder owned their mortgage company. Or they already had a relationship set
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up with a nationwide lender that there was no chance. And and that was something that we kind of
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put a limiting belief on ourselves. And then once we got around that, we recognized we had something
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to offer that maybe the other companies did. And that gave us an opportunity to start off like maybe
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is a third lender work your way up to a second lender. Next thing, you know, you're you're you're
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been to be the primary lender. Interesting. So you so that I love that concept. You know, as I've
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heard people talk about that before, what what are the was there any potential downside to that plan?
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Yeah, I mean, you don't you don't make money right out the gate. The downside is you better be
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patient and you better have a game plan set up for, you know, at least six to eight months of that's
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not going to be a profitable run. You're probably, you know, I run a I run a PNL branch and you're
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going to go backwards on that. There's there's there's really not a lucrative eight month run there.
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Now if you have the patients and you can see, you know, what's coming down the road and you can see
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the success, it's it's a short term. I guess you could say a short term sacrifice for a very
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long term game. Sure. Yeah. Well, that's actually probably somewhat lacking as well. I don't want to
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make any gross generalizations, right? But in this industry in general, everyone seems to be focused on
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a short term, you know, and 100%. Yeah, I think I think, you know, a lot of managers like the
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definition of like training is like, hey, sit by me right here. And you're going to learn as
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it's convenient for me to teach you, right? So I'm in the middle of whatever I'm doing. And you're
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going to start in the middle and imagine how hard that is for a new recruit to digest what you're
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talking about our new team member to understand. And so what we wanted to do was we said, hey, listen,
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as you're coming out of college, number one, my interviews have to be different because you have no
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mortgage lending experience. So the questions I have to ask you have to be relatable to what you're
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doing so that I can get a true idea of what, you know, I'm getting into here. And the second
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thing is when I bring them in, I have to find this nice, basically conversion from a college
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world to our world. And how do I do that? And building that classroom environment, you know,
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we have Bank of England University that we built, we were forced to build it online, obviously,
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with what all happened. We still have an in-class room setup. But we treat it like a university
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with homework assignments test. It's not just a cram session for one week and be like, you got it,
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you're good, because we all know how that works. So this was, this was something that we really
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said, we're going to make it work and invest significant time and resources into this.
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And the result is, you know, what we have today, which is a pretty credible team and an incredible
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environment. Wow, that's really cool. Kudos for like, you know, thinking outside of the box
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and differently about that. Really cool. I definitely, I wouldn't be lying if I wasn't told
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that a lot of people called me an idiot during that time and that I was going to go broke. And
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for about a month, when do I start to question my sanity? And they were, they were right about me,
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not making money during that time. Well, that says a lot about who you are and you know,
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kind of how you think and see things more as the, you know, on the opportunity side of things,
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which probably is a good transition into this next phase of your career, which is, you know,
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now you've got this brand. What's your one more podcast? So tell me about the shift you're
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making here and becoming a digital creator and what's behind all that. So one of the the premises
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was we started trying to think as an organization like, how do we outreach to our customers other
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than a newsletter and a CRM? I mean, how do we stay in contact with them? And again,
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when everyone else is going right, go left and we try to figure out that there's really not,
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there's really not a mortgage company that's staying in contact with their customers via podcasts,
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but giving them items of value through that podcast, not just like, hey, what's up? This is what we're
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doing over here at the bank, you know, verbalizing a newsletter, actual valuable content. And so we
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started brainstorming on sessions and we really didn't have an idea of what the podcast was going to
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be called, but we had an idea of some forecasting and economic things of value. We could offer consumers
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about their house that they couldn't get anywhere else. And so that was that was kind of the premise
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start. And then my kids came up with the concept of, you know, what's your one more and the idea
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behind that was that, you know, Dad, what you're, you know, when you're talking to people, what's
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there one more goal? What's there one more financial thing they want to accomplish? What's there
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one more person they want to meet? And then the possibility started to come in endless with that
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concept. And so doing this for quite some time, we've met some really cool people in the industry
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and have met a lot of friends that, you know, bring a lot to the table and over the course of
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this last five months of recording and publishing, we brought some of those guests on and it's been
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really cool. From the likes of John Gordon, Damon West, Patrick Young, Barry Haby, Rob Christmas,
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the list goes on. We've had some great people step in there and do us some solids being on the show.
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It's been real awesome. And, you know, it's an opportunity for financial growth and leadership as
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well, leadership growth and leadership lessons. So we released twice a week. We're on every platform.
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And it's been, it's been cool. We just got our first metrics in yesterday, which I was, you know,
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blown away with our marketing company, well, they came in, but, you know, we ended up in the top 10
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percent globally ranked and then we ended up in the top 100 in our category on Apple, which for
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a five-month-old podcast, that's from what I understand. That's a pretty cool, that's a pretty
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cool feat. Yeah, congrats. Thanks, man. Is this still connected to the bank in any way?
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Yeah, so the bank is actually the title sponsor. Our board director's decided to approve it and
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became a title sponsor. The studio is named the bank. Oh, it's a banking bank, man. Yeah.
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Bank of England is the studio sponsor. They've got ad reads. We've got commercials that have already
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generated close to about 10 applications per month nationwide from the podcast, which is pretty
18:16
cool. But the ideology is that the bank thought, well, man, if we can get this content out there,
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you know, we've got a database of, you know, over 300,000 people that we can send this to monthly
18:27
with valuable information. And again, you know, great stuff on leadership and growth as well,
18:32
promoting the bank. And it's nice when you get some big names in there and you can do brand
18:35
association with that. So all right. So so bank of England is licensed nationwide. Yep.
18:41
As a bank, you know, federal FDIC licensed nationwide. Okay. So and and and have they
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did they pull the U2 Apple thing? We're just they're automatically sending this podcast,
18:52
everybody in their database, you know? Yeah. I mean, quite honestly, you know, sometimes we send,
18:57
you know, because we're at least twice weeks, that's eight a month. So we don't want to bombard
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our database with that. And so we've got a really cool project that's coming out may first where
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we're going to start financially rewarding our listeners. And we're going to start giving away
19:12
a portion of the sponsorship back to the listeners. And so we've got details on that on our website
19:18
at 1mpodcast.com under the giveaway section. All you have to do is register your email,
19:23
opt in and then put your social handle on there for Instagram. And we just verify that you're
19:27
following us. And we've got a database system that will pull the name. And then we're actually
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going to zoom that person into the podcast and give that money away on the air to him.
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Wow. That's a smart idea. I like that. I'm like, that's why.
19:38
And no problem. And so the goal is as I get more sponsors and I've got a couple more in the
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hook. I'm going to get to where I pay your mortgage payment, which is in line with some of what we're
19:46
doing. See, that's how it all connects together. Because I was thinking about, you know,
19:52
the old thing of a with realtors, for example, if you keep posting your just listed sold all the time,
19:57
if people aren't in market, they tune out. So I was wondering about like, yeah, how do you keep
20:02
this database of bank clients interested and engaged? And you're welcome to unpack that in terms
20:09
of like your content strategy. You know, so go ahead. So, man, so myself and one of my co-hosts,
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I got two co-hosts. I've got one of my co-hosts is deemed number one originator by CoreLogic and
20:20
all of Northeast Florida for like five years running the gentleman's a complete machine. As a matter
20:25
of fact, I've never seen a person that's this dedicated to his craft and is a pretty amazing
20:32
person in general. And then my other co-host is a gentleman that helped co-founded company with me
20:38
called the market distillery. Where we basically just take everything from the market's bunch of
20:41
noise to still it and actually give you what's going on there. But what we found was in the
20:45
Northeast Florida, you can't go online and get specific metrics with what's going on here. You
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can't get details about housing, meeting, home prices. They're they're accurate and dialed in by
20:55
zip code as well as other things that are going on. And so what we did was we produced an index called
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a relocation index. Now, we've been tracking this for close to about six years now. If people
21:04
basically net migrating into Florida, specifically Jacksonville, and we created an index and paired up
21:10
with the University of Florida to publish that index. The Orange and College of Business at the
21:14
University of Florida is actually publishing our data right now. We've paired with them. And my
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co-host is a doctoral student there. So known him for years. He actually works with the bank.
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He's been with us for eight years here at the bank. His name's Alex Stewart. So our content comes
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from a lot of the headlines. It's really easy for us to talk about what's going on. I mean,
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between the Federal Reserve and our government, they're giving us plenty to talk about on that show.
21:36
And so what we try to do is take that information and break it down to the general audience and apply
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it towards real estate finances and really take out the political aspect of it because there's so
21:46
much of that in there. And let's go with the facts and make sure that our consumers are well
21:51
educated. And they're jumping up and down on the news, telling us about home prices, this,
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and they're going to fall on that. And we can debunk that with stats that show that's not true
21:59
right now. It's a lot more comfort back in the market instead of fear. But we're supporting that
22:04
with facts. We're not trying to create a narrative. And so we also do forecast on interest rates.
22:09
We do forecast and what the Federal Reserve is going to do. We do forecast on our inflationary
22:13
measures. And so these forecasts are what you can get. You can't find them anywhere unless you
22:18
subscribe to the market of stillery. And then all of a sudden, it's really cool when we see
22:21
things happening now that we predicted in November that would happen. You know, November,
22:25
we're doing episodes and we're saying expect to see this over the course of the next six months.
22:29
And then it happens, you know, in a short time period, it's cool to kind of come back on and talk
22:32
a little bit about that as well. And this show is being in what format does the bank send out show
22:42
episode updates? You said there's a newsletter or whatever, but what does that look like?
22:47
So I mean, the bank will drop episodes. They're into all of our socials. So we have a marketing
22:51
company. We get eight digital assets per show. So we get all the rules, the clips. We do a couple
22:55
blogs, YouTube notes, show notes, all the good stuff. And then the ones that the bank kind of
23:00
really gravitate towards and goes, man, our customers can use this. They'll pump that author.
23:05
All right. So they have kind of like a selection process. Yeah. Absolutely. And their marketing team
23:08
at the banks real good. I mean, our marketing director is very much in touch with me. She does a
23:13
great job of reaching out and saying, I love this episode. Can you tell me some more things that
23:17
kind of relate to this? And when you have future episodes like this, we tip my hat. And so they do
23:21
a great job of interacting with us on that at all different angles. Even our recruiting department
23:27
is taking episodes that we're doing and shooting them out saying, hey, listen, you know, here's some
23:30
value that I just want to share with you. I'm not sure if your company's talking about this,
23:33
but here's some information. And I know you mentioned applications a few moments ago. But
23:39
there was some kind of a dotted line back to business generation, right? Yeah. Absolutely. I mean,
23:44
the reality is as we get this information out there, I would love for any real estate agent. And
23:48
the other thing is this, we're actually giving advice to loan officers on the show,
23:52
regardless of the work for the bank or not. I mean, we're sharing particular things and trends that
23:56
we see that if you're a loan officer, it might be a great idea to start doing now waiting for the
24:01
next three months. I mean, we always are talking about that. But, you know, obviously, we'd love to
24:05
get business from that. And we do have commercials on there and we do have ad reads that come back to
24:09
a bank of England. And so that is a goal. That is an ideology of that to stay in touch with our
24:13
current database. Because right now, I mean, think about it, you know, the, we see a trend right now
24:18
happening where the power 10 banks are really clawing back and taking a little bit of control of
24:23
of the banking industry, if you may. I mean, there's a lot with what happened currently. You have a
24:26
lot of the bigger banks that are coming in and saying, hey, we'll take your money, you know, we'll
24:30
also take other opportunities that come with that. And in doing such, they're squeezing out the
24:35
regional banks opportunities that were once there. Well, when they get that customer, we all know
24:39
what they're going to do. They're going to cross sell the hell out of that customer. So we have to
24:42
find a way to stay in front, you know, and I would be foolish to think that there's many regional
24:47
banks, midsize banks like us that can service 100% of everything they're doing. We just can't do it
24:51
based on our deposit ratios. So those bigger banks are going to get their hands into some of your
24:55
customers. And if for whatever reason, you're not finding a way to stay in touch and providing value,
24:59
they may slip through the cracks and up going to one of those bigger banks.
25:03
Have you yet had because you're kind of leading from the front, right? As a digital creator,
25:07
have you had any loan officers, you know, your employees come to you and say, hey, I want to do
25:13
something like this? Oh, absolutely. And we welcome it on the show. I mean, we say, hey, come on
25:17
in the studio. Let's get you on the air. Let's see how it sounds, how it looks. Are you ready for
25:20
this? What do you want to talk about? See the thing that we found when studying podcasts for us,
25:25
especially in the financial mortgage real estate economics, where everyone will call it lane,
25:29
is man, it's not necessarily crowded, but how do you make it interesting? Like how do you make
25:34
it appealing? You get the same loan officer on there talking about the same stuff over and over again.
25:39
Man, people don't tune you out. They're going to stop. I mean, you can only talk about product and
25:41
rate so many times. And what you can provide so many times, we've got to have something better than
25:46
that, right? And something that's more longevity in that. That's why our lane's so wide. We didn't
25:50
want to, you know, we didn't want to be boxed into what we could do on this show. The other reason
25:54
we separated from the bank is we didn't want to be regulated what we could say and what we couldn't
25:58
say. That's another challenge, you know, by the FDIC, FDIC will come in and say, well, you can't say
26:02
this and you can't do that. And, you know, the regulators will put their paws and something like this
26:07
and then all of a sudden it's for nothing. So that's why we created a separate entity and the bank
26:10
happens to be a smart one. Yeah. And so that's why I'm clicking through some of your content here,
26:16
you're diversifying the content to your point away from just specific. Correct. Yeah, I hear our theme
26:23
song playing in the background. Sorry about that. Yeah, man. No worries. No worries. I love it.
26:27
May my producer actually wrote that song, which is pretty cool. Yeah. My producers are super
26:32
talented man, Charlie Walker wrote that song and he's got a great, he's got a great hook at the
26:37
end there, the each episode. Yeah. So I'm going to share all the stuff in the show notes to your
26:45
YouTube channel and the podcast and all that kind of stuff. So if people of course subscribe,
26:48
check it out. But that's why yeah. So I'm doing this like live real time audit big into your channel
26:53
and all that, you know, seeing that you're posting shorts, you got and this is curious for me too,
26:58
as I continue to evolve my podcast strategy, you know, you're doing the full interview plus some
27:02
clips, right? That's cool. Yeah. Doing that on the YouTube channel and then obviously on IG, Facebook,
27:08
Twitter, LinkedIn, you know, all those major platforms we've got content that goes on there every day,
27:14
sometimes twice a day. It's interesting to you because you know, I think one of the hardest parts
27:19
of podcasting is that it's a lonely echo chamber. I mean, it's the best way to describe it. You
27:24
throw out this amazing episode, you put your heart and soul in and you're just sitting by and you
27:28
hit submit and then you're so fired up for it to submit and it's like crickets and then you might
27:33
get something to text message comes across, man, a lot that was great and you're like, oh man,
27:36
please put that in the comments like that's where it needs to be. But you know, the thing with
27:40
podcasts is just it's consistency and content. And then you got to keep doing it over and over again.
27:45
I actually had someone reach out to me last night on YouTube on one of our episodes and was like,
27:49
hey, you know, for a guy like me that doesn't know much about what you're talking about. If you want
27:52
to attract more people like me, keep repeating the following things over and over and over again
27:57
so that we get a better grasp on it. And I think feedback like that's critical,
28:00
critical, excuse me, because it allows us just to understand what our audience is looking for.
28:03
What was that example of a repeat what? Yeah, he said was you could continue to repeat the correlations
28:07
between the treasuries and the fed funds rate and inflation and mortgage rates. He's like, if you
28:13
could continue to expand on that, he's like, I would greatly appreciate understanding more about that.
28:17
So that was just for that individual to better understand that whole relationship.
28:21
Yeah, I think it was and he said, you know, there's a lot of people there don't understand the
28:23
relationship because you know, the news has this program fed funds rate goes up mortgage rates go up,
28:27
right? And those don't necessarily correlate. And so this programming that's out there and that's
28:32
usually done because the person writing the content or reporting on it doesn't understand what they
28:35
reported on because they got a report on so many different things. They're just kind of throwing it
28:39
out there and going. So helping people to understand the fear mongering versus the facts, you know,
28:44
I think sometimes we find ourselves saying things over and over on the show and we're like, man,
28:47
how many times are we going to talk about this? But that was a great affirmation last night,
28:50
just to kind of see what this person said and was like, man, I'm digging a keeper peeing this
28:54
stuff because it helps tremendously. Is that like a DM or something to you? No, on YouTube,
28:58
you know, how they comment on the channel. They commented on the channel, left it on there.
29:01
And then I get, you know, then you get the people from overseas. I'm sure you get it to you end
29:05
up and man, they're just, they're just, you know, they're, they're just not happy with what we're
29:09
doing over here. And they let you know it on there. And I think that's the other thing is that when
29:11
you're doing podcasts and putting yourself out there, you better have some thick skin and have fun
29:15
with it. That's the other thing. You know, don't let that stuff get to you. Don't let it burden you,
29:18
don't let it bury down. Just have fun with it and, you know, and move on. And, you know, if someone's
29:22
on there wanting to get into like a Twitter battle, just, just, you know, walk away from it. It's
29:25
what it is. You know, I've always found that it's easy to go. Hey, listen, man, this is a 45-second
29:29
clip from a 45-minute podcast. Here's the full episode. We address what you're saying. Give it a
29:34
listen. If you don't like what you hear, let me know. But I'd love your feedback. I usually find
29:37
they like it and they never respond back. Wow. And that makes me curious of what resistance
29:44
individually personally yourself, right? Did you have to work through when you made this decision
29:50
of like, okay, I'm going to put myself out there as a digital creator? Yeah, that was, that's a great
29:55
one because, man, I never really lived in the digital space prior to this. I've always been very
29:58
behind the scenes for numerous reasons. My children now are 16 and 15. And I always, I always wanted to
30:05
be like involved in every aspect of their life, coaching, school, friends, whatever. And so I'd
30:10
seen that time for the digital space. And, you know, when we sat down and talked about this, I kind of
30:15
explained after talking with a marketing team that I hired, what it would take for this to work.
30:19
And I wanted to get the buy-in from all of them, being my two children and my wife. And they all
30:24
agreed that if we were going to do it, let's do it right. And so that, that was one thing. Put
30:29
yourself out there. I never forget my wife saying, you know, just be prepared. You know, we all
30:33
have enemies and they're going to come out. And when you put that out there, just be prepared for
30:37
for some things and mud to be slaying. And it did. It happened within the first two weeks of us
30:41
dropping it. It didn't take long from a competitor, multiple competitors. It didn't take long from
30:46
people that, you know, that have had a past with me to kind of say their peace. And I always find
30:52
that liquid courage probably adds to that a little bit. When people, we see a post at like 1130
30:57
at night or something, you're like, oh, I know where this is coming from. But the reality is,
31:01
again, it's more attention to us, you know, going back to when we started the bank when people
31:04
wanted to kind of make fun, poke the name. The more attention you give me, I'll take it. And,
31:08
you know, and I'll use it as a reason to get better and continue to build the brand. And that's
31:13
what we've done. But you're glad you did it, aren't you? Yeah, I'm absolutely glad to zero regrets.
31:18
You know, I was, have you ever heard of the card game, the end? So one of my guests on my show
31:24
told me about this Patrick Young, who is a former Gator player, played in the NBA and then recently
31:29
suffered accident, made him paralyzed from the waist down and we were talking and he said when
31:34
this happened, he and his wife had not been married yet. They were engaged there in the hospital
31:39
in Nebraska. And they're playing this game and he's like, when he got to get this game because it
31:43
forces conversation and gets you away from these things and forces conversation. And so I'm playing
31:48
this game with my son the other night. And, you know, it's kind of not slightly dropped and they
31:53
have different versions, you know, for friends, for family, kids, whatever you get the point. So he's
31:57
like, dead. What's this box? I was like, I don't know. I was like, Patrick told me about it. I was
32:01
like, I don't even know what it is. I just picked it up and he starts opening and looking through it.
32:05
The rules on the game is you draw 12 cars. Each car has a question. If you don't want to answer
32:09
the question, you got to stare intently at that person for 30 seconds, which is harder than it
32:14
sounds. And so I'm playing this with a 15 year old and one of the questions I asked him was,
32:18
you know, what have I done recently to make you proud of me? And he said, the podcast.
32:25
Oh, nice. I thought that was so cool. Like that was the rewarding moment. That was it right there.
32:30
And he, he definitely, he elaborated on that. But when I got that feeling, I was like, okay,
32:35
I know I'm doing the right thing. That's interesting. Yeah. Thank you for introducing me to that
32:40
because we do something similar in our family. We have a couple of car decks that sit around on,
32:43
you know, mine are 21 and 18. And so, you know, you get the usual kind of resistance. So
32:49
wow, I got to break the cars out again, you know, whatever. But that's cool. I got this whole new
32:56
solution here. I'm looking at an Amazon right now. They'll dig it. One of my buddies that I
33:01
recommended it to his daughters in college brought her boyfriend home for the first time for them
33:05
to meet through the deck on the table. He's like, let's get to know him. And he said it was like
33:09
the best three hours. Oh, that's fantastic. I love it. And you know what I mean, man, that's so true.
33:15
You know, quick sidebar on this cool topic. But like that's that's what it's all about, right? It's
33:20
having those meaningful interactions and questions. And for anybody who is in, you know,
33:25
the same shoes we are when they become teenagers, right? And the conversation, if, you know,
33:30
they don't necessarily want to engage as much or whatever. And so we have to kind of like work at
33:34
that. Absolutely. It's a dynamic. And you know, you don't want to over pursue it because then they
33:39
resist it, right? And you're out. It takes a while to bring them back. So it's tough. It's a tough
33:43
dynamic. And especially when you're used to being so involved in their world and being a part of
33:46
their conversations, it's you cherish those moments when you get them. For sure. Well, look,
33:51
I'll put a link in the show notes to that as well. It's called the hand. Yeah, the end.
33:57
And it's a great, great, different, different style of car game. They're all over Amazon as well.
34:02
So you can check that out. Absolutely. Before we run out of time, I want to ask you if you could,
34:07
I'm looking at the market distillery, which will link to that market, the market distillery.com
34:12
insights and analysis simplified. Tell me about that. Man, this is a project we are so excited about.
34:18
It's because as what it allowed us to do is back in 2000, I think like 16, we started forecasting
34:24
the market because we were like, man, are we growing too big, too fast? Like, what's going on here?
34:28
I had just bought this commercial building here. It's about 10,000 square feet at Jack's beach.
34:33
And I'm like, man, am I are we growing to am I committing too much too quickly here? You know,
34:37
being in the industry, you always worry about that. And so we're like, we got to get better grips
34:41
on metrics in the market. And we found out that you just, it's hard to find this stuff.
34:45
And matter of fact, we found out there wasn't really anything besides your local real estate
34:49
association or MLS, but even then the data is limited. So Alex and I and the other founding partners
34:56
that you see on that website started putting together some data analytics and pulling from
34:59
different sources. And then what we found was that the more we were able to pull, the more we
35:04
were able to compile, the more we were able to digest, we started becoming the local economist of
35:09
choice. We started becoming the experts in this area. And when we did that, people started
35:13
gravitating towards us and go, I, it wasn't like, hey, I like working with bank of England because
35:18
of this person and our southern became, I need bank of me because man, they got data. I can't
35:23
get my hands on. And now I can share that with my customer. And now I can be the local economist
35:27
of choice as a real estate agent. Now I can speak more intelligently than the news. And now I can
35:32
control my market's destination better than the news can at this point and more accurately.
35:36
And I think there's a huge difference in that than what other people are doing. And then when we
35:41
got that partnership with the University of Florida, it just, it, it solidified and validated what we've
35:46
been doing. Touch on that briefly if you can, the partnership with the University of Florida.
35:51
So University of Florida has a college of business called the Orange and College of Business,
35:56
Dr. Steve Tuffs, who's one of the founding partners and Alex Stewart, Dr. Steve Tuffs is a
36:00
doctoral professor there and Alex graduates in August with his doctoral. And so I've gone down
36:06
there and been a guest speaker or lecture a couple of times, each quarter actually a couple of times.
36:11
And we started meeting people there and through Steve, it was an easy connection. And the
36:15
Orange and College of Business was looking for a way to create a relocation index because in the
36:20
academia world, real estate is always in the form of commercial real estate, not necessarily residential.
36:25
It's actually a large gap between the two. And we had a tremendous amount of data through the bank.
36:30
We had a tremendous amount of data that we had compiled that we could create that relocation
36:36
index. And Alex and I actually put together an algorithm that can actually forecast the market
36:41
home prices through the next three years here in Jacksonville. And so they were very interested in
36:45
that. We started showing them how we got the model and the data integrity and then all the
36:48
seven Orange and College of Business started producing our data. And we've partnered with them.
36:53
And so now as you see on the website, that's powered by the University of Florida and Bank of England.
36:57
Yeah. And I also see that there are, if I click on the speaking tab, you guys are
37:06
you're doing these events. You're in the community. What is this whole economic update premium and
37:11
all that? So we have a free membership that you can sign up for on the website. And with that,
37:16
you'll kind of get a 30,000 view if you may have of Jacksonville and Northeast Florida with about
37:21
12 minute video breaking down each month, the local market. But we have a premium access that's
37:25
much more in depth daily updates, a community, lots of training and a lot more educational stuff
37:33
on the backside, if you may. And then Alex and I go around town and we speak as not uncommon in
37:38
a lot of real estate offices will ask us to come in and talk. But they'll go, Hey, listen, we already
37:41
got a lending partner. We recognize you guys with Bank of England. We can't have you here talk about
37:45
Bank of England. And so for Alex and I, the trade off for the company is, well, if we have no problem
37:49
coming in there, I mean, we will absolutely not even mention Bank of England. But you know, there's
37:53
a speaking engagement fee for us to come do that. And so we've also speak at numerous conferences
37:59
as well. And so they'll ask us to come in and give either our forecast for the year,
38:02
the remaining of the year, depending what time they bring us in there. We're doing one here in May,
38:05
a large one for about 300 people that we're going to do the rest of the year and give our future
38:09
forecast for 2024. So do you have real estate brokerages asking you to come in and present?
38:14
All the time. All the time. I mean, it's not uncommon for he and I to be out three, four,
38:19
five, six times a week doing, excuse me, a month doing this. And of course, it's, I mean,
38:24
we all, I guess I'm trying to figure out how do I say this? Yes, they may have an in-house lender,
38:28
but you know, you and I both know the attraction strategy, lead with education. Yes. And so I'm sure,
38:34
again, dotted line business as a result of this, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like we'll go into a place
38:39
that says, hey, listen, we far from owning the mortgage company. We have a relationship by the end
38:46
by the end of our presentation. We're usually getting questions from the audience like, hey,
38:50
what's your day job? Like, what do you guys do? So yeah, we were in a mastermind group where they
38:56
don't allow vendors in and they had us take over the whole mastermind group, which was awesome.
39:00
It was about 16 just top agents, hard to get in the room at one time. And by the time we got done,
39:07
two of the agents go, hey, what do you guys do? What's your daily job? And we knew about 10 of them
39:11
in there, maybe even more than that, but it was hush hush. We weren't allowed to say anything,
39:14
and then I look at the person leading it and he goes, you've earned the right to say it. Go ahead and
39:18
say, that's all that was kind of cool because no vendors allowed. And here we are doing a vendor
39:22
presentation at the very end. It was pretty, uh, pre-rewarding for us.
39:25
Well, yeah, and that just speaks to my audience notes if they've been listening to me long enough,
39:29
right? The leading with education, the impact that that has in the, you know, the trust goes up,
39:34
the confidence goes up, resistance goes down, right? People are just drawn and attracted because
39:38
you've added so much value. Yeah, you know, I think we're both talking about that trust confidence
39:42
curve and how it works, you know, and that's a, that is a huge, huge thing. And in our industry,
39:48
I really do feel like over the years, advising is a lost art versus selling or order taking,
39:54
whatever, you know, we want to refer to it as, but the advising portion, you know, we always
39:58
teach our guys, yes, we would love to do the loan or the consumer. But if it's not the best loan,
40:03
and we don't have the best product, or matter of fact, if this isn't what they need to be doing,
40:08
let's tell them like let's, don't be afraid to lose the deal. Because, you know, I think what
40:13
happens is a lot of people get that commission breath and man, they're already thinking that,
40:16
like commissions based on that loan amount and what they're going to do with that versus maybe
40:19
the best deal for the consumer. And you know, oftentimes when people sit down with real estate agents,
40:24
this is one of the things that just we talk about loan officers that do this all the time. Some of
40:27
the sits with the agents says, hey, can we have coffee in the agents? I go, why do you have coffee?
40:30
Because I want to help you grow your business, which I laugh because we know what's happening.
40:35
They're going to sit down how coffee and they're going to go, well, you know, I'm hoping maybe
40:38
you could send me some business, you know, I close them early, they're real fast. Oh great,
40:43
you're good at all the shit. You should be good at okay, fantastic. And it's almost like
40:47
that help me help you help me proposition. And that's a lot of what's going on still to date.
40:52
And I think if you could sit down with someone and say, hey, listen, we really want to help you
40:56
grow your business. Here's some things that we're going to do. Take the mortgage out of it. We're
41:00
going to show you things about your market. You can't get anywhere else. We're going to show you
41:03
seasonality trends. And we're going to show you when you need to actually grind out there and
41:08
make haywire the sun shines. And then how you go out and work your database almost all
41:12
of times and things that you can do inside your database. That's really going to boost that.
41:15
And here's some messages you can send. Oh, by the way, do you have a database? Let's start there.
41:19
And really kind of go through that stuff with them and show them some things that's a lot
41:24
different than let me help you grow your business. I love that you said that. Yeah, because you're
41:29
right. Everybody kind of plays that out there. But then it's like, well, what do you actually do?
41:33
Right. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Let me have a great business with no follow-up.
41:37
Yeah. No, that's very smart. You guys have put together one heck of a package in a plan for that.
41:41
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It's very professional too. And I'm like, you got
41:45
how you got to URL the market distillery. I don't know. Well, hats off to Alex on that. He's
41:52
pretty forward thinking. And when we were thinking of a company name, he pulled that one out of thin
41:56
air. And I think we're all like, man, distillery thinking like, you know, brewery or something.
41:59
Well, yeah, man, sounds great. Let's do it. Right. I was looking to see the shots of you guys
42:04
drinking, you know, unpacking the market. That's right. That's right. Maybe that's the next
42:08
next update on there. All right. So listen, for those who want to connect with you, what we're
42:14
going to put all the links that I talked about in here, but what be the primary place you want
42:17
people to connect with you? Yeah, they can connect with me at oneinpodcast.com. That's our website.
42:22
It's got all the links to everything on there for our socials. Our social handles are what's
42:26
your one more with the number one at all platforms. And then obviously on my personal LinkedIn,
42:31
Quentin P. Harris, on my personal LinkedIn, he connected that way as well. But you know,
42:36
get a chance to check out the podcast. Let's know what you think. The contest starts may first
42:41
our giveaways up on the website. Isn't that just for people you can know that's for anybody?
42:46
It's anybody, man. We want anyone on there. I mean, obviously, you know, we're talking to agents
42:51
when they're always looking for a value ad to give their customer. Here's going to be a free
42:54
$500 and we're giving away. And I firmly believe within five months, that's going to be a mortgage
42:58
payment that we're going to be giving away for someone very soon. That's very excited about that.
43:04
The bank has a slight advantage there with that program. Who say that again?
43:07
The bank has an advantage with being able to roll that program out.
43:10
Yeah, I think yeah, they've got a pretty good advantage. I'm glad they saw the the fortitude in
43:14
that when they decided to be the sponsor when I asked them to do it. But you know, we're looking
43:18
for a co-sponsor on that as well. So it's going to be two people giving away that and we'll take
43:22
the big check. We've got offices everywhere in the United States and we will make sure we connect
43:26
with that customer with that big check with two sponsors names on them. So we're looking for that
43:30
second one. And I think we're close to getting it, but you never know. So I'll put it out there.
43:34
That's awesome. Yeah. And by the way, just to put a kind of a cherry on top of this Sunday,
43:38
we all just enjoyed here today is think about the ideas you've heard and the strategy and the
43:43
positioning and what version of this can you do in your own local level? Because I mean,
43:48
anybody can do this. It's, you know, you're doing it obviously now at a higher level, but you can
43:53
start from somewhere. If all you're going to do is be the quentin and just be like, you know what?
43:57
I'm going to be a digital creator and I'm just putting content out there that's relevant for my
44:00
audience and I'm going to help my agents literally grow their business. Not just talk about it.
44:05
I would you assume or would you agree? People are going to be winning just on that alone.
44:08
Oh, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. I heard someone say this comment a long time ago, like even if
44:13
you're marketing is terrible. I heard, I heard this person say, my terrible marketing is better
44:19
than your no marketing. Yeah. There you go. Exactly. I'm like, man, that's, that's hard to swallow,
44:23
but damn, it's right. You know, if you're not doing anything, then you can't complain about it.
44:27
It's good, good, good one to add on that. All right. I love the conversation. Thank you so
44:31
much for the time. I appreciate being on the show. You bet, man, listeners, you know what to do.
44:36
If you like the episode, I'll leave a review, share it, check out the links in the show notes,
44:40
and we will see you on the next one. I for now. Hey, guys, what's up real quick?
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