Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / The #1 Purchase Originator in the Nation

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The #1 Purchase Originator in the Nation · 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
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0:34
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0:39
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1:03
Hey, listeners, Jeff Simphor.
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Welcome back to this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast.
1:15
And oh, hey, maybe it's welcome first time listener.
1:19
Thank you for tuning in.
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And I'm excited that you've chosen to tune in on this episode.
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This could be one of the most important transformational conversations you hear in your entire career
1:30
as a mortgage professional.
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And I don't say that lightly.
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I say that with true conviction.
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And that's because my conversation today is with Matt Weaver.
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And you may not know who Matt is.
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So let me give you the quick bio on Matt and then you might be compelled to pay special attention
1:47
to this conversation here.
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Matt Weaver is based in Florida and is the number one loan officer in the nation for
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purchase units in 2022.
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And that number is 1499 purchase units.
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He's also the number one loan officer in Florida for the years 20, 21, 22.
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He's the number one loan officer across country mortgage.
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He has the most wins with real estate agents in a multiple offer situation data that's
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that procured from MMI.
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And he is somebody who performs at an exceptionally high level and performs with a high level of
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excellence at a high level.
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And that is two different things actually because anybody can win once in a while, right?
2:30
But it's a unique individual who can win all the time.
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And so I think about that in the context of certain professional athletes, right?
2:41
Of which we actually mention on this podcast where you think about that, whether it's the
2:44
Los Angeles Lakers or whether that's Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, right?
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Those are examples of individuals who consistently are formed at a high level over a prolonged
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period of time.
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And that's exactly what Matt Weaver does himself and his incredible team has helped more
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than 22,000 families achieve their real estate goals.
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And this conversation starts with mindset, which I believe is where we all should start
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when we're evaluating where we're at in our current situation and where we want to go
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is it starts with mindset, right?
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And then we get into further tactical strategies and steps from there, if what you're going
3:22
to hear Matt unpack.
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So we have, I think what for me is probably one of the most, as I said, compelling, engaging,
3:29
thought-provoking conversations I've had in six years of doing this podcast.
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And I'm not saying that lightly because we've had a lot of awesome people on the show.
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So I'm really thrilled that we're able to bring this conversation to you.
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If you do want to connect with Matt, I'm going to say that at the end, we do make a brief
3:45
mention of some of the high-end consulting that Matt's doing with very selected individuals.
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And I will say that for most, it may not be right for you, but if you do think it's right
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for you then, hey, you're one of those unique individuals who wants to win and win all
4:00
the time.
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And if that's for you then you can go ahead and check that out.
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No expectations there.
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I think bottom line is this conversation alone will hopefully change some of your thoughts
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and strategies about where you're at and the direction you might be heading in the
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mortgage business.
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So enough said about that.
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Without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
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Matt, we've a welcome to the show.
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And thank you so much for the opportunity.
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It's my pleasure to have you, sir.
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I know you're an extremely busy person.
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So why don't we start with this?
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Let's get this out of the way.
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Who is Matt Weaver?
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What do you do?
4:39
Well, Matt Weaver is, it tries to be a productive loan officer that tries to, of course, help
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the real estate agent community as much as I can and provide the highest quality of service
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to the customers that we serve, but I'm based out of Boca Raton, Florida.
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I have a wonderful team, 41, that support my personal production and been in the industry
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for 25 years and had the good fortune of helping just over 24,000 families by all.
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Wow.
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And you also, congratulations, by the way, that's quite a lengthy career.
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You also have this unique identity as being, if I'm correct, the number one originator
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for purchase loans in the country?
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Yeah, I mean, it's something that we have always monitored.
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We measure our success on purchase units.
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We don't look at volume, we look at purchase units.
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I mean, anything in the refinance world or in terms of volume, that's, volume is really
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a function of where you live and where you originate at, okay?
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Purchase units is, in our opinion, in my opinion, really production based, activity based.
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As far as refinances go, they come and go, if a client calls us for one, we're happily,
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we happily take advantage of that and service them and help them.
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So purchase units is something that we have been focused on for several years.
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And through the reporting that we see, we did secure the number one position for 2022
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for purchase unit transactions.
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And so, of course, that is of great honor.
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We've also secured both purchase units and volume for the state of Florida and purchase
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units in the state of Florida for 2020 and 2021.
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Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
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It's more than pretty impressive, you know that.
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I'm curious, do you know for, for nation wide, do you know roughly what that number is
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in terms of units?
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Sure, we close 1499 transactions, which, again, we were proud of 2022 and the reason why
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we were proud of it is because we knew going into the year that we could see some interesting
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headwinds ahead of us.
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So the goal, the mantra with our team structure was number one, winning was the only option.
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We made it a decision to not accept external circumstances such as the economy, interest rates
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and whatnot to ever play a role in our business.
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So we started with that point and then our goal was to outpace the decline in originations.
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We did close a hair up in volume for the year of 2022, which was something that we were
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of course very proud of.
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And it goes, I have to tell you, Jeff, it is a direct dial back to mindset, no question
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about it.
7:24
Yeah.
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Yeah, that's a perfect transition into that because you said a couple of things in there
7:28
that are nuggets that want to let's unpack this now because all right, we covered the incredibly
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impressive units.
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Everyone's obviously blown away and pressed by that, but I know you and I were talking
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before we hit record, like I live this by this philosophy you may have heard of this.
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It's, it's B, do you have?
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Right?
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I don't know if you're familiar with that, because a lot of people, a lot of people operate
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from the opposite, which is do have B, okay, right?
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And so you by the mindset you just mentioned and that winning is the only option.
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Let's start with mindset because I know you wanted to unpack that because when you see
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somebody who performs at the level that you do, like you mentioned, you refer to your
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team as the Los Angeles Lakers.
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The Los Angeles Lakers, yes, yes, I'm now, now as a disclaimer, I am a 76ers fan, okay?
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But you know, the Los Angeles Lakers did win the most titles and that's what we aspire
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to do.
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You see, it's interesting, Jeff, I look at loan originators, no different than high performance
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athletes.
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We just happen to choose the mortgage origination business.
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So when you look at whether it be LeBron James or you look at Kevin Durant or whatever
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player you like, okay, they just took their career to the highest level.
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I'm looking to take what I do to the highest level and I want to be the LeBron James.
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I want to be the Kevin Durant in our industry and I want to continue to win rings.
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That's interesting.
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Now, I'm originally from New England, so we might have to have that Celtics Lakers, you
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know?
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Well, you know, it's going to happen tonight at 8 o'clock, it's going to go down.
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It's going to go down for sure.
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All right.
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Now, okay, so that's a mindset in the philosophy.
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Makes me curious, have you always throughout your life had that level of excellence and
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achievement performance?
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No.
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No.
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No, what I would say is that it was a building process and to process that I work on
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every day.
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I have to tell you, years ago, I would look at these high performers as that's just
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them.
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That's not me.
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Right?
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They were maybe given something different or blessed in some other different way.
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So I didn't necessarily feel worthy enough to hit that type of goal.
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I had confidence, but I didn't have absorbent confidence.
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And so it was with that that I started to really work on to understand that they're just
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normal people, okay?
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These superstars, whether it be a superstar in our industry or a superstar on the television
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screen or whatnot.
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It took me a long time to just really learn that it's really because of the lack of exposure
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that I had as a young child.
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I had amazing parents do not get me wrong, but I just wasn't exposed to a whole lot.
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I'll give you an example.
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Today, I have the amazing fortune of being able to take my children to a basketball game.
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And if my son had the opportunity to high five a player, he touched them.
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He knows that they're just real people.
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I didn't have that type of exposure.
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So I thought that was someone else that wasn't me.
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So over the years, and still to this day, I'm constantly working on confidence levels.
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I'm constantly working on self-improvement to get better and better every single day.
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There was a...
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No, it's funny.
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What you just said, a lot of people can relate to.
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I know I can as well.
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Some people would call that imposter syndrome, perhaps.
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We look at somebody else and they're achieving at a certain level and you think like, oh,
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they're special or that's not for me.
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So it's a process that you've gone through.
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Was there some moment that shifted for you in the past where you began to realize, hey,
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these are just humans.
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They're just doing things extraordinarily well.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Actually, it directly ties back to going to a real estate function, real estate event that
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I was invited to by a dear friend, Mary Celicatia.
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She was with Douglas Eleman, and I believe still is it to this day.
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They would always have these great elaborate events in the New Jersey area.
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I went one year, this is going back about nine years ago.
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The guest speaker, the keynote speaker, was Donny Deutsch.
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Now Donny Deutsch, of course, for those that don't know him, an incredible marketer.
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He owned an incredible ad agency and so on.
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I think sold it for a great sum of money and well deserved.
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But he also had a show called The Big Idea on CNBC, and he would interview world leaders.
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He would interview some of the most influential people.
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So when Donny Deutsch came up to do his keynote speech, he's dressed in just a regular button
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down shirt on tuck jeans kind of comes up with the New York attitude and he says, okay,
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I'm going to go over the top 20 points of Uber originators.
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I'm sorry, Uber people, I say I originator something about originators, but and I'm going
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to go over these top 10 qualities of these Uber successful people.
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And he goes to the first point and he said, the first point is that I've been around
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world leaders.
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I've been around some of the most successful people in the world.
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And what I noticed is number one, they all have what's called a naive sense of entitlement.
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We're all looking at him like a naive sense of time of what's that?
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And he said, what that simply means is they say to themselves, why not me?
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Why not me?
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So they all feel naive to the fact that it should be me.
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And then he goes to the second point and he says, the second point is that I never met
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a genius.
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So in other words, of all these great people I've been around, none of them are geniuses.
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Now Howard Borber was the owner at the time, maybe still is in Doddy Herman.
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He's sitting up front and he actually points them out and he says, can you please, can
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you please stand up?
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Now Howard Borber and Doddy Herman, highly successful people has him stand up and he says,
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Howard, do you think you're really a smart guy?
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He's like, not really.
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I just wanted to own a real estate company and he says to all the agents in the room, you
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see who you work for?
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You see, I mean, he's a great guy, but he's nothing more different than you and I.
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And then he completed the rest of the 20 points, but it was at that moment that I said
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to myself, wait a bit here, okay?
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It just kind of clicked that why not me?
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And we left with the statement of why not me and I made a wristband of it and I wore it
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really for years, why not me?
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And it was really the start of really feeling that everyone is normal, okay?
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It's just a function of your activities, your mindset, your exposure and what you do with
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the exposure that you have.
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Well, that's good, man.
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I wrote that down.
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Why not me?
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Great story.
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Thank you.
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And I think that's a question that more of us should be asking ourselves, why not you,
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right?
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Why not?
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If there's a little here, watch for everyone who's listening.
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If I did it and if I'm doing it, you can do it in terms of origination, no question
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about it.
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Yeah.
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I love the, I mean, I don't know you that well, but I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll use the word
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humbleness, if you will, to a certain degree or the transparency, because if there's anything
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that I've learned now, six years doing this podcast, 280 plus episodes, whenever in most
14:57
cases, when I interview somebody who's achieving at a high level like you is, there seems to
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be this, this, just, you don't see, there's not a lot of, I mean, there is definitely
15:07
this confidence, but it doesn't, you know, spill into, you know, I'm somebody special
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and you're not, you know, I mean, you have to be confident to do what you're doing at
15:19
the level you are.
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But I think the point we're taking is you've built that confidence over time through
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a succession of repeated actions and which fed your, like the whole, the book Atomic
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Abids.
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I'm not sure if you've read that.
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Right.
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Exactly.
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So the way, it's a daily, daily reminder and daily thing that we're working on daily.
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Right.
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I mean, I do it every single day.
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In fact, I have a blinkist account.
15:41
I'm sure you're familiar with Blinkist.
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They condense books into cliff notes, so you can read a book in about 15 to 20 minutes.
15:48
It's not necessarily to replace a book, but it's really to get through some material pretty
15:52
quickly.
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And there's a, there's a challenge 10 days on how to build your confidence.
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I'm doing it right now.
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Really?
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That's awesome.
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Yeah.
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You're never done working on yourself, right?
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100%.
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That's a huge part.
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Self development is really a critical part in the recipe, of course, of being, I think,
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a high level original.
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Yeah.
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Somebody years ago used this statement.
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They said, you know, it's basically you've got a battle going on every day between the
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lesser self and the heroic self.
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There you go.
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And it's about who's going to win that day.
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Some days it's the lesser self, but let's hope more often it's the heroic self winning.
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Right.
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I like that.
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Well, this is a good set up to the conversation about, right?
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Anybody who's listening right now, I'm sure in this market, they're probably various
16:37
stages of their mental thought.
16:39
They're either struggling or they're scratching their head going, what's going on?
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Or how do I, how do I navigate the current market?
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You said something earlier is you made a conscious decision, well, two things, one, winning
16:50
is only option.
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First of all, that's a killer mindset right there.
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You know, it's kind of like the old thing.
16:56
I'm not buying into the recession, you know, that whole thing.
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You also said something else is you said outpace the decline.
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Yes.
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Oh, you had to do specific things.
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I'm sure if we now transition into a little bit more tactics, you had to do some things
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tactically, perhaps, right, to backfill or outpace that decline.
17:15
Am I right?
17:16
Well, yes.
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I mean, 50% to 60% of it is the mindset.
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If you think about it, most originators, some of the articles that I read, they're sitting
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here saying, well, I'm satisfied if my originations go back to 2018 and 2019.
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See, right there, they already pulled out of the race.
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That's a mindset issue.
17:37
Okay.
17:38
Now, watch, if that's success to them, great, God bless them.
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However, if you're looking to succeed at a higher level, then we have to understand
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that 2020, 2021 were not anomaly years.
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They weren't anomaly years for this guy right here.
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You see, I need to grow off of that.
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That's the new benchmark for me, and that's a conscious decision.
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So if the market, in terms of real estate transactions, is down 25% to 30% in my immediate area, and
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I want to grow 20%, then that means I have to increase my activities by about 50%.
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And so we're constantly increasing the activities.
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I also hear that some originators are saying, well, even if I pre-approved people and they
18:24
can't find a home or if they do find a home, there's multiple offers.
18:27
But what value are you adding to win in a multiple offer?
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And you see, if you look at a structure in terms of a real estate offer, the loan originator
18:36
on a finance offer plays a huge role in winning in a multiple offer.
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So it's those little opportunities that we're constantly working on with our real estate
18:45
partners, because our real estate partners, of course, is our customer.
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And so that's a really important thing that I want to touch on, Jeff.
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If you said to me, single-handedly, what is your biggest competitive advantage that you have?
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I would say to you, single-ness of purpose is my advantage.
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And what I mean by single-ness of purpose is we have one direct customer that we focus on,
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and that is our real estate partner, regardless of interest rate conditions.
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So as an example, in 2020, when rates were at two and a half percent, and everyone
19:21
out there could refinance, our customer didn't change.
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In 2021, our customer didn't change.
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If rates go to 6%, our customer is still the agent.
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Watch, if rates go down to 2% tomorrow, our customer is still the agent.
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So my advantage that I have is I know who my customer is.
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So once we understand who our customer is, then we can understand the pain that they have,
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because everyone has pain in their process, and we can understand and learn and think
19:51
about how we can, of course, deliver the solution to their pain.
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And so it's with that that all I think about is how to be a better value to the real estate
20:02
agent out there, right, to the real estate agent community.
20:05
And if you think about that advantage, it's a incredible advantage, because you've got
20:09
to feel bad in the sense that you're speaking to someone on a refinance on how they can take
20:13
out cash to maybe put a new roof on their home.
20:17
How can you possibly at the same time hop on another call and talk to a listing agent
20:21
to ensure them that they should be selecting that offer over competing, because of your
20:26
financing structure.
20:27
Yeah.
20:28
Two different animals, you see.
20:31
Right.
20:32
So do you want to unpack that a little bit in terms of how you do that?
20:35
Well, yeah, well, absolutely.
20:36
Well, first and foremost, I know who my customer is.
20:38
So that's who I'm focused on.
20:39
So then someone would say, well, Matt, you must have lost out on a lot of refinances.
20:43
And you know what?
20:44
You're right.
20:45
You can't be everything to everyone, not possible.
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I'd mentioned earlier, as we started that we measure purchase units, okay?
20:53
It's just what I have an affinity to.
20:56
I have an affinity to working with real estate agents.
20:58
It's not a punch line.
20:59
You're going to find this interesting.
21:00
When I was 11 or 12 years old, okay, now I had, again, beautiful parents, wonderful parents.
21:06
They were billionaires with love and emotion, okay?
21:10
As far as finance goes, they were just getting by.
21:12
So we grew up in a very modest home, maybe a thousand square feet, stick frame house.
21:18
We loved it.
21:19
We didn't know any better.
21:20
But I would always see these open house signs when I was 11 and 12 years old with these
21:24
big, beautiful homes.
21:25
And I would try to convince my mom if we could just go to an open house, maybe we could buy
21:28
a new home.
21:29
And she was always so masterful, bobbing and weaving out of the question.
21:33
I just didn't know it was money related.
21:34
I just figured we were just working to move.
21:37
But I would collect real estate agents postcards at the time.
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I'd seen them on billboards.
21:40
I thought they were superstars.
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It goes back to the lack of exposure.
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These are the people around thinking superstars, which in our opinion today, they're superstars
21:47
to us now.
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So I always had an affinity to real estate agents.
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And so I'm saying that because I genuinely love working with them.
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I love winning with them.
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If I didn't, okay, I wouldn't work with them.
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If I had an affinity to, let's say, let's say I went through a divorce government and
22:05
I can understand the emotion that it takes out of someone.
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And I had an affinity to that.
22:09
I wanted to help people.
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And I wanted to be the best person in terms of refinancing those that are going through
22:14
a divorce.
22:15
And I would be the best at that.
22:17
That would be my custom, perhaps the divorce attorney, would be my singleness of purpose.
22:22
Okay.
22:23
So if I wanted, if I had joy in refinances, which to be very direct with you, if you said
22:28
all of your production can remain the same, but it has to be refinances, I have to tell
22:33
you, I think I would retire today.
22:35
Okay.
22:36
I don't have any joy.
22:37
It's not a whole lot of passion.
22:39
So what I say, it's first and foremost, is originators should really think about the
22:44
segment of the business that they genuinely love regardless of market conditions, because
22:51
there's always a market, regardless of rate conditions, and run at that with full speed
22:56
to my opinion.
22:59
It's a lot of wisdom there.
23:02
The Affinity of Agents, of course, as you know, and I love the point that you're making.
23:07
So I'll state the obvious, which is that there's a certain percentage of originators in
23:12
our industry who feel the opposite about agents, and it's a necessary evil.
23:17
Well, see, so that's just it.
23:20
So let me give you an analogy there.
23:22
That would be like, okay, so my son, Alexander, is an avid basketball player.
23:27
He's 12 years old, he plays travel, and so on, and my daughter loves cheer, and she's
23:32
getting more and more competitive with cheer.
23:34
So let's use Alex as an example.
23:36
So the analogy there would be, I go to my son, Alexander, and I said to him, you know,
23:41
why don't you ever try and pick up a tennis rack, because I happen to also love tennis.
23:44
I think it's a great life sport, and he doesn't have any interest in it.
23:47
Now I'm not going to waste my time forcing him to go learn tennis, because genuinely it's
23:53
not in his heart apart, and six months of a year from now, he's not going to go and
23:57
practice on his own.
23:59
Same with originators in today's market.
24:01
I know what you're being told.
24:02
You're being told, rates are up, refinance markets drying out, you gotta go work with
24:06
real estate.
24:08
If that's not what you find passionate, you're cheating yourself.
24:11
You're not going to go and practice it on your own.
24:14
You're not going to pick up the racket, and you're not going to be able to compete to
24:17
someone who genuinely loves the tennis sport, okay?
24:21
So for me, I genuinely love the real estate agent.
24:25
So if we go into the second part of why that is critical to my success, we go into thinking
24:31
time.
24:32
You'll get a kick out of this, Jeff.
24:35
It's going to sound rather obvious, but I don't know if a whole lot of people really
24:38
do it.
24:39
I spend every morning for about 30 minutes to think.
24:44
That's it.
24:46
Just to think.
24:47
Why a time alone?
24:48
Why a time alone, but thinking?
24:50
And so someone says to me, so what do you think about?
24:52
Well, I'll write down.
24:54
What can I do better to be of higher quality to the agents that I serve?
24:59
And I'll write down 10 or 15 thoughts.
25:01
And maybe over a week or two, I'll have 100 thoughts.
25:04
And maybe we use two or three of those, okay?
25:08
But I'm constantly thinking every day about my customer, okay?
25:14
It's interesting.
25:15
Where do you rank the actual borrower in the hierarchy?
25:18
Well, I mean, look, the borrower is extremely, we call them here clients.
25:25
And I mentioned that to originators out there.
25:27
And I know that was the technical term, but to originators out there, they should be called
25:31
clients or home buyer.
25:34
No one wants to be, and I'm not trying to correct you, Jeff, but no one wants to be noted
25:37
as a borrower, right?
25:39
And you've made that a decision internally.
25:41
I just want to share that as a point of value to, of course, the loan originators.
25:46
Just like how, you know, I would never call a real estate agent said, you know, we haven't
25:50
done a deal in a long time.
25:53
Right.
25:54
Is that even me?
25:55
Is that even English, okay?
25:58
We haven't done a transaction together.
26:00
We haven't helped another family together.
26:02
How about that?
26:04
Because interestingly enough, not to digress, but in my studies, with agents changing loan
26:10
officers, I do a lot of market research.
26:13
And I always try to find out how they think.
26:17
And more so than not, the top three reasons, within the top three reasons of why an agent
26:23
leaves another loan officer, are you ready for it based on my case studies, okay?
26:28
Bedside manner.
26:29
Really?
26:30
Okay.
26:31
They're not your bro, they're not, let's go get a beer, and not, let's go do a deal.
26:37
They want the ultimate professional.
26:40
And if we can err on the side of ultimate professionalism, we'll never lose, okay?
26:44
Yes, someone will talk bro and deal, but that's okay.
26:48
We want to win more than we lose.
26:50
And that's really the name of the game, okay?
26:53
That's interesting, very interesting, um, man, oh, man, there's so much we could cover
26:59
here.
27:00
Okay.
27:01
So we talked about minds that we talked about your number one customers, the real estate
27:03
agent, and you spent a lot of time thinking about how to optimize the experience that your
27:10
number one customer has with you.
27:13
And so your business then, I must say it out loud without making assumptions for everybody,
27:19
but I usually ask on the podcast, like, what is your number one source of business?
27:22
I think I know your answer.
27:24
This would have studied agents, right?
27:26
Yes, yes, real estate agents, and you did, and you did ask, where is the client on the
27:32
hierarchy?
27:33
The client, of course, is super important for us.
27:37
They are, of course, the client of the agent, they're the client of the agent who inherently
27:43
becomes the client of ours, or the agent, right?
27:47
The client, well, the client, okay, being the home buyer is the client of the agent, and
27:53
the agent is our customer.
27:54
So that thought process there is we're always asking ourselves if there is ever any type
28:02
of issue with the home buyer, if there's ever any type of, I don't know, rate, scenario,
28:07
or whatnot.
28:09
Are we doing what is best for our number one customer, which is the agent, not for our
28:15
profitability?
28:16
You see, because remember, the mindset is the agent is our customer.
28:22
So we're not giving an example.
28:23
There's a great state program that is used here in the state of Florida.
28:27
Now, typically state programs are, you know what, they got more red tape and more nonsense
28:32
wrapped around them.
28:33
I think we can agree, okay?
28:35
So this particular program actually is a super beneficial for a lot of great home buyers
28:41
out there.
28:42
And so the catch-22 to that is the compensation is much less.
28:47
For us, it's not even factored into the equation because the way we're looking at that is it's
28:52
another tool for our customer to sell another home.
28:56
So we are screaming that product from the mountaintops.
29:01
So home buyers can get an understanding of it, turn around and buy another home through
29:06
the agent that, of course, is that we have the good fortune of having a relationship with.
29:11
So it's better for our customer, the profitability isn't in the equation.
29:16
It's always what's best for the customer.
29:18
I love it.
29:19
I love it.
29:20
Okay.
29:21
I know you do a lot of activities with real estate agents such as events, right?
29:24
I'm looking at your website here and you seem to always have an event going on.
29:29
Can you unpack a little bit about your strategy there and how that plays into you serving your
29:33
customer?
29:34
Absolutely.
29:36
So in terms of events, we don't do any type of happy hours or anything like that.
29:41
For those that do that, that's great.
29:43
It's not our brand standard, okay?
29:45
We're always and always going to be about productivity.
29:48
We're going to be about how we can help their business, how we can grow together, how we
29:53
can share information that can help their business and so on.
29:57
So as far as, let's say, you know, something more on the casual scene, we don't really
30:02
participate in a whole lot of that.
30:04
You're not going to get me wrong.
30:05
We have an annual appreciation event to thank our great clients.
30:10
But more so than not, it's all learning-based, training-based type lunchens, seminars and
30:16
events.
30:17
I might have some great guest speakers come in, some people of influence, okay?
30:22
Some people that have done something or in their industry, I've had my good friend and
30:28
coach and mentor, Mike Ferry, that's several of my events.
30:33
And so he is a person of value that can of course give value to the agent community.
30:39
So it's always coming to the table with that.
30:41
I had last year, I had Tim Grover come to an event talking about mindset and this guy's
30:47
intense.
30:48
Right.
30:49
Tim is intense, okay?
30:50
Cool.
30:52
You know, he was, of course, with the most competitive athletes out there, right?
30:56
So he's going to be an intense guy.
30:59
But that was one of our events.
31:00
It was called Winning, you know, and it tied in very nicely to Tim's book that was launch
31:05
Winning.
31:06
Have you read Winning, Jeff?
31:08
Audio book, yes.
31:09
Okay.
31:10
So I would have to say to the great audience that's listening, Winning from Tim Grover is
31:15
a masterpiece.
31:16
It's a masterpiece, in my opinion.
31:19
This first book, Relentless, is an incredible book too.
31:23
So I would, I would highly recommend those two books for those who have not read it.
31:28
Okay.
31:29
So our, our events are always about relevant information and how they can use my process
31:37
to get them more sales, okay?
31:40
How they can use our offerings to get them more sales.
31:43
And that's what we do and that's what we teach on.
31:46
Can you say your process or offering?
31:48
Can you be a little bit more specific?
31:49
Well, sure.
31:50
Okay.
31:51
So my number one value proposition to the agent community is my pre-approval process, right?
31:56
So the pre-approval process, again, being our number one value proposition, it's a seven
32:00
day a week, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. process, it operates 364 days a year, the only day it's closed
32:06
as Christmas day.
32:07
And so it's, that's our number one value proposition to our customer.
32:11
And so if we think about that for a moment, right, that's a lot of accessibility.
32:15
It's also a lot of accountability because we pre-underwrite everyone up front, typically
32:20
four to six hours from document receipt, whether it's on Sunday, whether it's on Saturday,
32:24
whether it's on Memorial Day weekend.
32:26
So what our agents have grown to like and love is our level of consistency.
32:33
Consistency is incredibly important to the customer that you're looking to serve.
32:39
One of my favorite restaurants, Jeff, is Houston's.
32:44
It's a hillstone, one of the hillstone restaurants under the hillstone brand, I should say.
32:50
And I think if anyone who has gone to Houston's or understands it, they've ever been there
32:55
and eaten there, what happens there is that Houston's, okay, has great food.
33:01
I don't know if we would call it extraordinary food, but what is extraordinary is their level
33:08
of service and their consistency, their very consistent brand.
33:13
So I've been going there since I was 13 and I always wanted to emulate that level of
33:18
consistency that Houston has.
33:21
So we have a scripted process from beginning to end, from high I'd like to get pre-approved
33:31
all the way through to funding and all the micro steps that we call them in between.
33:38
Most loan originators don't have a scripted process.
33:43
They weigh it, okay.
33:46
And that's something that should really be considered and should consider looking at
33:51
that differently because every business has a scripted process.
33:55
You know, you board a plane, a flight attendant comes out and talks about the exit roads.
34:00
I mean, it is a scripted process from beginning to end, okay.
34:05
You go to a restaurant, the waiter or waitress does a walk up and just say, hey, you know,
34:10
what are you thinking today?
34:11
Tell me about your family and you don't do it.
34:15
So my process, when you're calling to get pre-approved, we follow a script.
34:22
But it's not, sometimes the word script is like, comes out negative, it's not.
34:27
It's meant to be impactful, it's meant to be efficient for the customer, it's meant
34:31
to give them anticipatory needs up front so we can hit their needs up front and to walk
34:37
them through a very efficient process from beginning to end.
34:40
So think about it from this perspective.
34:42
Home buyer calls up a loan officer, hi, I'd like to get pre-approved.
34:46
Now if a loan officer can't articulate that in about 30 to 35 seconds, maybe 45 seconds
34:52
as to what their process is, what are they doing?
34:55
Are they just weighing it?
34:57
Is it different each time?
34:59
Because then you don't know what works and what doesn't work.
35:03
So now we're always adding and tweaking to our process.
35:06
That's the fun part.
35:07
Those are the little micro steps in the filters that we call and that we put in place.
35:12
But so what I would say to a loan originator, whether you're closing two transactions
35:15
among 5, 10, 15, you want to get to 75 or whatnot, what I would say is, take out a whiteboard
35:22
and whiteboard out your process from beginning to end.
35:25
And the customer calling up and saying, hi, I'd like to get pre-approved all the way
35:29
through to funding.
35:30
What does that look like to you?
35:33
And you can start with that base right there.
35:35
And then you can fine tune it over the years and change it over the years and remove and
35:40
add to.
35:41
I'll give you an example of what we added back in 2013.
35:46
We were pre-approving a customer, it was a past client of mine.
35:51
And she called me to get pre-approved.
35:52
I think she was in the $400,000 price point back in 2013.
35:57
And the most we could pre-approved for was about $350,000.
36:01
So maybe a month or two later I get a text message on late Sunday night and it's the client.
36:07
And she wrote, hey, man, I want to thank you for all that you've done.
36:10
But I did want to let you know I just closed on my new home for $450,000.
36:16
Not what you want to hear on a Sunday evening with your wife watching something on the couch
36:21
you know.
36:22
So a little painful.
36:23
So I did write to her.
36:24
So it was a $10.30 and I said, may I call you in the morning?
36:27
I didn't sleep well that night, Jeff.
36:28
Okay, you can imagine.
36:30
So the next morning I gave her a call, I said, thank you and congratulations for that.
36:34
May I ask how you purchased the home for $450,000?
36:38
She said the loan originator looked at my credit report, saw that I had a car and asked
36:43
me if my fiance would be willing to refinance the car out of my name.
36:47
Okay.
36:48
Very slick.
36:50
Two hours later, I called my team in and we birth a concept called loan committee.
36:57
Loan committee to this day meets twice a day and anytime my pre-underwriter who handles
37:03
my pre-approvals, meaning the review, if they cannot find a disposition, they cannot find
37:09
that loan to get approved, they have to present it to loan committee, which is the jury.
37:14
The jury consists of four people and we go through it with a fine tooth comb.
37:18
There's about 120, 150 years worth of mortgage experience on that call to ensure that at
37:23
a bare minimum, the client gets counter offered with some type of solution.
37:30
So that's what I mean by adding filters to your process over the years on things that
37:34
backfire.
37:35
Right.
37:36
Wow.
37:37
That's pretty cool.
37:38
And what's great about that is you took that, you know, potential perceived negative and
37:40
you've now turned it into a positive, to never lose a difference, right?
37:45
Nope.
37:46
I'm not going to get that text at 10.30 at night and again, I didn't like that feeling.
37:49
That's awesome.
37:50
All right.
37:51
Real quick.
37:52
I'm also still looking at your website with the events and stuff.
37:55
It says here, book matte for a private team training.
37:57
Can you tell me what is that all about?
37:59
Sure.
38:00
So we always make, I always make myself available to the agent community, to broker
38:05
owners, to managers, if they ever want me to call or ever want me to come in physically
38:09
to speak to the staff.
38:12
I have an array of topics I can talk about all market, you know, all relevant, up to
38:16
day current information, how to compete and win in a multiple offers, one of them had
38:20
to generate more buyers in today's market, how to sell inventory.
38:24
Let's say that's not moving in today's market.
38:26
So there's a lot of different avenues that I go on and talk about.
38:30
I handle a lot of content creation and do a lot of content creation, which then transcends
38:37
to my presentations, and that comes during my thinking time every day, which then, of
38:43
course, my thinking time is thinking about my customer to have all ties in, and that's
38:48
where I mean by it.
38:49
So it's very, it's very hard to go down to boots on the ground, and that's why I always
38:55
like to start, you know, 30,000 feet in the air because it all connects to understanding
38:59
who the customer is, which in turn, you know what their sales process is, you know
39:04
what pain they had, and then you can talk about it in terms of how you can help them.
39:10
And that's what we do.
39:11
So agents can agents and their broker owners and managers can book me.
39:15
They can come to, of course, one of our lunch ins that we have.
39:19
I just had one today, which was, of course, a lot of fun to watch.
39:23
It was winning with investors had to work with real estate investors, okay, all the different
39:27
angles that is associated with investors, okay.
39:31
So we're always rotating our content and changing it up, and it's always relevant to our market
39:36
and how they can convert that to another home sale.
39:41
Would you say that these events are a successful component to those resulting in referrals
39:48
from real estate agents?
39:50
Well, it's one of my ingredients that I would say that's in the soup, okay.
39:56
As an example, I do my status calls every day.
39:59
So I reach out to everyone who is in my process flow in terms of originated to closing,
40:06
giving them status is daily.
40:07
And I don't compromise on my status calls.
40:10
Those are what we would call Jeff or chess passes, okay.
40:14
We never want to lose the fundamentals.
40:15
The greatest athletes in the world are typically great because they're so great at fundamentals,
40:19
okay.
40:20
It's not, we don't want to get too big or more out of the fundamentals, that's where we
40:26
can lose.
40:29
In order to the highest level is we have to always maintain our basic fundamentals.
40:38
So as an example, status calls, when a loan gets originated, making a phone call, congratulating
40:45
everyone and thanking the agents, when a loan gets a loan approval loan commitment in,
40:49
I'm calling the agents, telling them that it just got an even though they're getting
40:52
an automated email saying they just been making a phone call, okay.
40:57
So I, I designated, you know, I'm heavily scheduled.
41:00
So I designated period of time every morning to make sure that I'm doing that.
41:04
So fundamentals, mixed with some creativity, mixed with going on the road and, and trying
41:10
to educate agents to our process.
41:13
All of that is, all of those are a little ingredients in our soup.
41:17
Fantastic.
41:18
All right.
41:19
Keep an eye on the clock here being respectful for your time.
41:21
You mentioned at the start of our call, you have a team of roughly, how many was it?
41:26
Forty?
41:27
Forty, I have 41 members, all of which are essentially operations, okay.
41:33
I don't have five or 10 loan officers writing business under my name.
41:39
I don't have what's called a super team.
41:41
I don't have it.
41:42
I have super humans, but I don't have a super team.
41:46
So this, these are originations or what it is that I do, okay.
41:51
And I know, and someone asked me the other day, why are you so guarded about that?
41:57
I said, honestly, I don't talk about it too much because I don't want to make a loan
42:00
officer feel bad, okay.
42:03
And I say that respectfully because it's probably a lot easier to say, oh, he must have
42:06
20 loan originators running loans under his name.
42:09
Yeah.
42:10
It's not the truth, okay.
42:12
Call the owner of the company right now and he'll tell you.
42:16
So these are my activities.
42:18
So what I wanted to do is I wanted to be an originator.
42:22
I still love the origination seat and I wanted to build an operational infrastructure
42:27
under me to support my production so I can control my own operations in a sense.
42:33
And for someone who wants to be heavily in the purchase side of the business, you need
42:38
to build, in my opinion, you should consider building an operational infrastructure alongside
42:44
you to support your production.
42:46
Right.
42:47
Now, whatever company you're with, they're going to try and support you.
42:49
Now, your production has to grow in order to do that.
42:51
So in the first few years of that, I'm multitasking at a high level, of course, until I can continue
42:57
to add the pieces.
42:59
So for years, I put myself on the backseat in terms of monetary gain, all in an effort
43:05
to put all the right pieces in place to allow me to build this operational hub that I have
43:11
today.
43:12
Right.
43:13
So it's critically important.
43:15
Yeah, for sure.
43:16
I mean, you're building your own business, obviously.
43:19
And process and procedure is critical.
43:21
I assume knowing kind of getting a sense of who you are, you have a lot, all of this documented
43:25
process procedure.
43:26
Somebody could walk in and like, how do you do X, Y, Z, oh, well, here's our process.
43:31
Yeah.
43:32
I mean, everything is formulated.
43:34
We are what we were disruptors.
43:37
There's no question about it, you know, with what we do and we don't, I don't, I say
43:41
this respectfully, but this is a mindset.
43:44
And I could only hope that everyone else has this mindset, even if you're in the same
43:49
state that I'm in.
43:50
You see, Jeff, I believe, I, let me put it this way, in my opinion, okay, to myself.
43:57
I want every loan in Florida period.
44:00
And I'm going to do everything I can to get every loan in Florida.
44:03
And I don't, and I say that with all respect to any Florida originator, I hope they feel
44:07
the same way.
44:08
Yeah.
44:09
Okay.
44:10
And so when we think of it from that perspective, it's no different than Jordan saying,
44:14
I never lost a game.
44:15
I just ran out of time.
44:17
Yeah.
44:18
So for me, I, I believe I deserve every loan in Florida and I'm going to go at it, earning
44:24
every loan in Florida.
44:26
So in, in order to do that, I'm building my operational staff.
44:31
I am always working on process flow.
44:33
I am disrupting the market in order to achieve my goal because I believe in my heart of heart,
44:41
my process flow is the best that there is.
44:43
Now I don't say that regularly because I want to, I want to genuinely extend to any loan
44:48
originally listening to this.
44:49
I want you to believe the same thing for you too.
44:52
Yeah.
44:53
Okay.
44:54
That's okay.
44:55
That's a wonderful thing.
44:56
Which by the way, mortal enemies are critical to the process, okay.
45:01
So there's nothing wrong with having a mortal enemy.
45:02
Maybe I'm a few people's mortal enemies.
45:04
That's okay.
45:05
It's fun.
45:06
Have some fun with it.
45:07
Make some characters up.
45:08
And you know, some, an originally I used to call me for the past two years is I have
45:12
a dark board with your picture on it and throw it every single day.
45:16
I see.
45:17
I love that.
45:18
I don't take that.
45:19
I don't take any offense to that.
45:20
It's awesome.
45:21
Survival of the fittest, baby, and the most adaptable.
45:23
All right.
45:24
Before we run out of time, I want to make sure for those that this might be a fit for.
45:28
I know you do some private consulting, perhaps coaching if I don't know if that's how you
45:33
describe it.
45:34
But do you want to talk briefly about that?
45:37
I don't do any coaching.
45:38
We have, we consult a few clients, you know, for that right there.
45:46
It's a very specific thing because I'm always a little cautious about saying this, okay.
45:53
Not everyone, okay, wants to succeed at the highest level.
46:00
And that's okay.
46:01
Okay.
46:02
But saying that in any type of way of an insult of any kind, we all have our definitions
46:07
of success.
46:08
And so the clients that I took on for consulting are those that really want to go to an
46:15
extraordinary level.
46:18
And that's where I had some, I'm having some fun with that a little bit and just kind
46:23
of sharing my process flow and sharing the business development tactics that we have,
46:29
that really do transcend into business and so on.
46:31
But it really is for that person who wants to be number one in their state, okay, number
46:36
one in their region.
46:37
It's not necessarily because again, everyone has their own philosophy on success or
46:43
suicide.
46:44
But I will tell you, and this is again, not to put a commercial out there, but I get
46:52
loan originators, they call me all the time and they ask, are you looking to put anyone
46:56
on your team?
46:59
And what I have here is I do run a team structure.
47:04
I don't run a typical branch where there's loan officers and they're kind of doing their
47:08
own independent thing.
47:11
I'm sure those loan originators can go to another branch or wherever they are and God
47:14
bless them, okay.
47:16
For me, we're looking for team members that would want to come on our team and work with
47:23
our team because we are a true team structure.
47:27
So we're always looking for that great talent.
47:29
Is this just in Florida or other states as well?
47:32
Oh, so it does not have to be in Florida because we are marching nationally.
47:38
They can be remote.
47:40
That is always an open door thing there.
47:43
We can always talk about, but we're looking for the right human beings and it all starts
47:49
with, of course, a winning mindset.
47:51
We're looking for the person who wants to be on someone else's dartboard.
47:59
Like if that's you and you're listening and that's like your M O man, you got to go to
48:03
Tim's website.
48:04
We'll put a link in the show notes over there for sure.
48:08
And you'll know you can contact him directly to learn more about that.
48:13
So listen, man, we're a little bit beyond the time, so I'm grateful for the extra time
48:17
you've given me.
48:18
Thank you so much.
48:19
We've been a lesson in, obviously mindset was a big theme about this mindset standards,
48:24
personal work ethic and habits.
48:27
And the bottom line truth is it's like you can be whoever you want to be.
48:31
No question.
48:32
So congratulations, man, on all your success.
48:37
Well, I appreciate that.
48:38
Appreciate the opportunity.
48:39
And thank you for all the listeners, whomever has listened, we appreciate your time.
48:43
You bet, you bet.
48:44
Listeners speaking of you guys and gals.
48:46
Thank you for tuning in.
48:47
Next episode you know what to do.
48:48
Please leave us a review, share this with somebody who needs to hear this and we'll see
48:53
you on the next one.
48:54
Bye for now.
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