Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep 149: How to Stay Relevant in the Digital Era

Transcript

Ep 149: How to Stay Relevant in the Digital Era · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
• 0:04
  real estate agents is essential for success.
• 0:06
  However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
• 0:11
  With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents,
• 0:15
  it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
• 0:20
  Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
• 0:25
  Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
• 0:31
  And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
• 0:35
  with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
• 0:39
  To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
• 0:45
  of the case study today.
• 0:47
  You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
• 0:52
  in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
• 0:56
  Don't miss out.
• 0:57
  Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
• 1:17
  Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio.
• 1:19
  Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in
• 1:24
  Mortgage Marketing.
• 1:25
  Hey, listeners.
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  What's up?
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  This is Jeff.
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  This is for your host once again for another episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio.
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  So glad you're here.
• 1:34
  Glad you tuned in.
• 1:35
  Oh, you are, too.
• 1:36
  I'm pretty confident you're going to be glad you tuned in for this one.
• 1:39
  And listen, if you're lucky in any of the episodes, would you do me a favor?
• 1:43
  Take a moment and join 175 other people and leave us a review.
• 1:48
  Why?
• 1:49
  Well, number one, it tells me that what we're doing makes a difference for you that you're
• 1:52
  getting value from the podcast sessions.
• 1:55
  Number two, it does help us reach more people and that's ultimately, ultimately, our goals
• 1:59
  to reach more people have a bigger impact in the industry.
• 2:03
  So wherever you're listening to this podcast, listening app, if you want to go to our Facebook
• 2:08
  page and join our private Facebook community for the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast, go
• 2:12
  ahead and tune in there.
• 2:15
  And you can be like Zach W623, great stuff.
• 2:19
  He says, love learning new methods and systems for being a better lender in my area.
• 2:24
  Well, thank you to Zach W623 who left us that podcast review.
• 2:28
  He's getting himself a swag box.
• 2:30
  So long as he messages me on Facebook, right, instant messenger, leaves me his mailing
• 2:36
  address and t-shirt size, he's going to get a swag box or the t-shirts and stickers and
• 2:40
  other cool stuff we're putting in there.
• 2:41
  It's a thank you for you taking five minutes out of your life and let us know that the
• 2:45
  podcast is making a difference for you.
• 2:47
  This helps both of us.
• 2:49
  So hopefully you think that's a fair exchange of your time for some fan swag.
• 2:54
  There you go.
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  That's that.
• 2:57
  And as always, you can check out more if you're interested in becoming a pro member being
• 3:01
  a modern mortgage originator.
• 3:02
  If you want to learn how to get more agent referrals in less time, if you want to learn
• 3:05
  how to build your personal brand, leverage online, social media, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook,
• 3:10
  Facebook ads, join our growing community of modern mortgage marketing professionals over
• 3:15
  at the mortgagemarketing.pro website.
• 3:18
  Check that out.
• 3:19
  It might be for you.
• 3:20
  All right.
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  So on to this week's episode, my special guest.
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  This is a long time coming.
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  He's grown to be a friend of mine over like the last year and a half or so.
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  We actually originally connected, I think, in person at the Gary V. agent 2021 event in
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  Miami of January in 2019.
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  And he's doing some amazing things.
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  And I know he's got his heart in the right place as I do for mortgage originators in this
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  space, the mortgage space.
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  And who am I talking about?
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  I'm talking about Mr. Phil Tredwell.
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  He's a VP of development, a regional manager.
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  He's a national speaker, a podcaster in his own right.
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  He hosts the mortgage marketing expert podcast, which we're going to put links to that in
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  the show notes.
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  He is the VP over at Mason McDuffie mortgage helping mortgage originators throughout
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  the central region, coaching and developing them and helping them level up their skills,
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  become modern originators.
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  Also he is the co-founder of something called the industry syndicate, which I am a proud
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  member of.
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  And it's the industry's first media network for podcasts, Alexa flash briefings and live
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  social media shows.
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  What I love about what they've just recently launched is they have this cool mobile app
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  both for Android and iPhone that if you're looking for more good content like you're getting
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  on here, let's face it.
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  There's other voices out there that you can go check out.
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  And the industry syndicate is the easiest way for you to do that.
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  They've got real estate shows, mortgage shows, title, appraisal, right.
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  And lots of good things coming down the pipe from them as well.
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  So you can go check them out at industrysyndicate.com or check the show notes for more info on that.
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  But Phil and I just have kind of a great conversation about what's happening in the industry.
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  How to deal with either yourself, right, little self awareness over those around you.
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  It might be a romantic about the past.
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  We have a conversation about some interesting data about where what factors go into influencing
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  somebody's decision on choosing a lender.
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  And we cite a couple of different studies and references that you might find useful and
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  valuable in there.
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  We'll put those links in the show notes as well for you to download those studies by Fannie
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  May and some others.
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  But I think you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I did in helping you level up your
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  skills as a modern mortgage professional.
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  So with that said, let's get into this week's show.
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  Phil Treadwell, welcome to the show.
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  Man, I appreciate being here.
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  This is awesome.
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  Long time coming.
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  Yeah.
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  It's a long time coming.
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  We have known each other for what?
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  A good year and a half or so now we met at a couple masterminds back, I think.
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  Yeah, man.
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  And I think we were out.
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  We hung out at the age in 2021.
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  What about that?
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  We called.
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  Right?
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  I can't remember what he calls it anymore.
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  Agent 2020.
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  Yeah.
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  Gary V's event.
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  Florida.
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  That was a really good time.
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  I can connect with you.
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  Yeah.
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  It was fun.
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  All right.
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  So you are a fellow podcaster in the mortgage industry.
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  We're obviously going to put links to your show and all that kind of stuff, a mortgage
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  marketing expert.
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  And I think you do a great job at the podcast.
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  And I love to come together in the spirit of collaboration.
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  You know, that we're all ultimately serving the end goal, which is, which is, I think you
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  have a passion and a heart for loan officers as do I because I've been one.
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  You are still active in the trenches.
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  I'm a trainer in the industry.
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  You obviously train your leader.
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  So with that said, how's this for a setup?
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  How long have you been in the biz?
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  What do you do and what do you love about it?
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  Man, that's a great segue.
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  So 15 years in the industry, all in origination started out as an L.O.
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  Been a branch manager, regional manager, do not currently produce.
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  But I do coach loan officers recruit higher and develop production in multiple states
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  in the central part of the country.
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  I do have a heart for the industry and moving the industry forward.
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  Because I think that there's a lot of people that are still pretty romantic about the
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  way the industry used to be.
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  And as history repeats itself, we're in a different climate than we have been historically.
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  And that's what I love about the industry is that while it is cyclical and while a history
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  does repeat itself, we have an opportunity to put our best foot forward.
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  When you look at the way millennials are entering home ownership, the types of things that
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  they have an appetite for as far as efficiency in the process, communication through technology,
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  social media, they still want a mortgage advisor.
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  They still want someone to help them because they remember the crash.
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  They were either at home or just out of the house when all that happened in O608, all
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  those types of things.
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  And so I'm most excited about the fact that over the next 24 months, we don't know what's
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  going to happen.
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  We know what the industry is going to look like.
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  And so I'm more excited about helping originators and mortgage professionals build their brand
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  and create attention and create a platform to service both the consumer and referral partner
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  and really kind of shaking off these old reputations or old adages that a lot of mortgage
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  professionals get stereotyped with.
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  When you say people are romantic about how things used to be or the way things used to
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  be done, what do you see as the areas that they stick their feet in the ground the most
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  where they don't want to buzz, they don't want to change?
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  I think it comes to technology is obviously the most obvious answer.
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  I've seen a lot of leaders that say, hey, we experienced this type of mortgage environment,
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  whether it's increasing rate environment or margin compression or a decreasing rate
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  environment in 1999 or in 2009, and they want to apply that same business philosophy
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  in 2019.
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  And all three of those markets are very different.
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  And historically, you might have been able to take the same type of strategy and apply
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  it in the same type of cycle.
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  And I don't think that's applicable anymore.
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  I also think that where they stick their feet in the ground is not having to learn something
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  new.
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  If someone's been in the business for 20 or 25 or 30 years and they're in the twilight
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  of their career, they don't necessarily have an appetite to invest into the technology,
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  take the time to learn something new.
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  There's both fiscal issues with that and time constraints to where if they spend the
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  next two to three to five years building a completely different platform, they may or
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  may not be able to profit from that platform.
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  And I'm not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing.
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  We're all in this business to make money.
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  I'm not saying, you know, through a good money after bad or whatever euphemism you might
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  want to use.
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  But I think there's a lot of people that just want to act like it's business as usual,
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  that nothing has changed and that we're servicing the same type of borrowers today as we
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  were 10 years ago.
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  And that's just not the case.
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  All right.
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  So what is different about today than the past?
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  Well, I mean, just the way we do a mortgage, just the way you originate alone, you know,
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  10 years ago, I look back.
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  That was one of my top years in production.
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  I was doing, you know, two dozen units a month.
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  And I was still doing paper files with a copy file that we FedExd overnight to an underwriter.
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  And I was, you know, faxing for appraisal title and insurance.
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  And it wasn't that, you know, there wasn't some technology there.
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  We were doing, excuse me, online applications and we were doing things like that.
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  But we were still doing a lot of in-person meetings.
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  We were doing a lot of phone calls the way we were prospecting realtors was we're still,
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  you know, taking them to coffee, saying, hey, look how good our service really is.
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  And people hadn't adopted social media, both in their communication and marketing strategies.
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  So just in that short year time period, you're talking about the process of the way we
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  originate alone, the way we, you know, originate it, process it, underwrite it and fund it.
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  All of those things are different.
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  The way we communicate with our customers, the way we reach out and develop relationships
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  with referral partners.
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  And the way we market and brand ourselves, well, I mean, that's 80% of the industry right
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  there that's completely different in just 10 short years.
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  And if you look at the prior 30 years, a lot on to that, I would make the argument
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  that more changed in the last 10 than it did in the 25 or 30 prior to that.
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  And that was, you know, the timeframe of the advent of automated underwriting and,
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  you know, a lot of the digital, you know, documents and things that we utilize on a daily basis today.
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  All right.
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  Okay. So you, you're role currently at Mason McDuffie is VP of development,
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  the regional manager, you coach and develop them, right?
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  Help them develop marketing plans and stuff like that, right?
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  I do. Anything for marketing to branding, you know, recruiting and hiring,
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  loan officers and branches, covers a pretty wide breadth of things,
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  but typically on the origination and a sales side of things, marketing, developing
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  the brand out and helping originators do the same.
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  So then what types of things or activities are you coaching your originators
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  to adopt or evolve to start doing?
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  Right. So really two main things.
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  One, personal branding is extremely important, probably more than ever.
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  And what I mean by personal branding is reputation management is part of that.
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  And the other is just going higher up in the funnel, you know,
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  historically, my entire business has been in developing relationships with realtors
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  and having them refer business and in turn,
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  partnering with them and helping them create and convert more leads.
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  Since then, it's different.
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  The consumer is now, I think the National Association of Realtors,
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  they put out their generation trends report every April.
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  This last April, it showed that 98 or 99% of people across all generations
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  were online at some point in the transaction looking at homes, which isn't surprising to anyone.
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  The statistic that is surprising is about two thirds of all people across all generations
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  started their search online before they ever talked to a mortgage professional
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  before they ever talked to a realtor.
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  So if you combine that with a study that philosophy,
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  their marketing company owned by Elie Mae, they did a white page of 5,000 first time home buyers
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  that said, where did you find your in lender?
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  And one out of 10 said they found the lender that they closed with from their realtor
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  as a realtor referral.
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  So you're saying that two thirds of people are online before they ever talked
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  to a mortgage or real estate professional.
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  And then as a mortgage professional, I have a one in ten chance of actually capturing
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  the deal and being the in lender when they close.
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  Even if both of those numbers are skewed, it still creates a trend
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  where people are starting online and they're consuming content about the process
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  before they talk to the person that has historically referred us that lead.
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  So what that means for originators is you have to be out there putting out content,
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  you need to be branding yourself as an advisor, as an expert,
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  and also just creating awareness.
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  And a lot of that is not putting out anything,
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  mortgage and real estate related at all.
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  It's what you and I both coach and what you talk about with guests all the time is,
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  documenting who you are, sharing personal stories and information,
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  stuff that's relatable to people, stuff that's relevant to what's going on on their lives.
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  And as you capture that attention, you're able to stay top of mind and cultivate your
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  sphere of influence so that when they do enter the market, when they have a life event where they're
• 14:32
  buying or refinancing or moving up or selling home, you're able to be there and help them through
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  that process.
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  Interesting, very interesting.
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  Yeah, speaking of data, this is a top of mind for me right now because I just pulled it down
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  the other day. Fannie Mae does a bunch of different studies.
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  And this one, I'm looking at right here, is their 2019 National Housing Survey.
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  And they do a study, actually, I discovered almost every single month.
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  But here's what's interesting about this.
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  I'm sure we can jam on this for quite a while.
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  So there was about a thousand people in this particular study and they called these people
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  after they bought the home and stuff.
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  And so what they were looking to identify is the between two categories.
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  First time home buyers, 18 to 34, repeat home buyers, age 35 plus.
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  And they asked, what was the most influential source of information on choice of lender?
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  All right, it's a very relevant for those listening to this right now.
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  And for the first time home buyers, it was broken up into three different categories.
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  And I can put a link into this to the show notes so you guys can download it.
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  But the first thing most influential for the first time home buyers is friends and family.
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  So there's social networks, fear of influence, that kind of stuff.
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  So this goes to your point about being online.
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  And having somebody be able to talk you up, recommend you, things like that.
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  Second choice is real estate agent.
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  Third, most preferred web source for these first time home buyers.
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  Zilla.
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  Now, let me give you the second category and then we'll start to unpack all this.
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  The repeat home buyers, these people 35 or plus,
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  the most influential source of information on the choice of lender for people 35 plus
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  is real estate agent.
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  Second, personal experiences, not sure what that means, past, you know,
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  same lender they use in the past perhaps or something like that.
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  Third is the most preferred web source for these people 35 and over, Google.
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  And I'm like, huh, interesting.
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  And I love to talk about this stuff.
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  And if you know anything about me, right, my kind of, my kind of tagline is truth and
• 16:30
  mortgage marketing because a lot of people throw stuff around out there about this and that
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  and what's real and what's not. And I'm still an advocate for the loan officer
• 16:39
  partnering with real estate agents.
• 16:41
  Absolutely.
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  You know, and I think this study goes to prove that.
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  You know, so I don't know if you got any immediate feedback based on that.
• 16:48
  I do. I have a lot of feedback.
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  So two things. One, millennials are always a topic of conversation, right?
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  And so that study, 18 to 34, that encapsulates all of the millennial generation.
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  I think the ages 35 to 37 and younger are millennials.
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  Right now, they're 48% of all new mortgages.
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  So you have almost half of the mortgage market now.
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  They don't cover that high of a percentage of actual home purchases, but we're talking about
• 17:16
  new mortgages. That generation, as we said, went through the crash.
• 17:20
  They remember if they understand it firsthand.
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  But to because of social media, they're the most community minded generation in history.
• 17:28
  And that study proves that concept because the biggest influence on them was friends and family,
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  their sphere of influence, social circle.
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  That's why we talk about having a presence online is important.
• 17:38
  And to a point that you just mentioned, if you're not putting anything out there,
• 17:42
  even if someone wants to recommend you, what do they have to show?
• 17:45
  Right? Because right now, no one wants to just give a phone number.
• 17:48
  The other thing that's interesting, one of the reasons that I started my podcast,
• 17:52
  was to create a platform or to be out there whenever I reached out to someone for
• 17:57
  recruiting purposes, I gave them something to see.
• 18:00
  Originally, that was me doing blogging so that when they googled my name, there was something
• 18:05
  out there for them to find. That transitioned to social media because no one really googles
• 18:10
  anyone anymore as much as they go look them up on social media.
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  I think the other part of this is when we talk about going higher up in the funnel,
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  I want to create that attention, not just for consumers, but also for referral partners.
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  Because if you friend someone on social media and you go interact with them in a Facebook
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  group or on their business pages at real estate professionals, it is a very uninvasive way
• 18:35
  for them to get to know you and you to get to know them so that when you do have face-to-face
• 18:39
  interaction or you do get them on the phone, you're now no longer a perfect stranger.
• 18:43
  You can talk about the fact that they took their family to the lake and taught their cousin how to
• 18:49
  wakeboard or whatever. You have something to talk to them about. The other thing is if you're going
• 18:55
  top of funnel and capturing the consumer first, you're now able to add something more valuable
• 19:01
  to a referral partner than you ever could, which is an actual pre-approved lead.
• 19:05
  You'll see these things out there about, here's how to get in front of more real tours,
• 19:08
  here's how to get more referral partners. I can get in front of any real turn, any market if I
• 19:12
  have a pre-approved buyer because that's what they're in the market to do. All of these things
• 19:17
  go together, so I love that you say that. This isn't just about doing social media for social media
• 19:23
  sake. It's not just about trying to capture millennials for that sake. All of these things work
• 19:28
  together as part of a bigger marketing and business plan, and again, it needs to be data-driven,
• 19:34
  not just because some talking head on a webinar said you needed to do XYZ.
• 19:39
  Love that. Good feedback on that. Let's open up this can of worms for a moment.
• 19:43
  The Zillow can of worms, because I know there's some people you and I know equally who would argue
• 19:50
  that, and as you know, I interview people all the time, and I ask them very specifically,
• 19:54
  like sources of business. I take a look at their Zillow presence, their online reviews.
• 19:58
  What's your take on L.O.'s having reviews on Zillow or not?
• 20:05
  Having reviews on Zillow, as far as that goes, I don't personally have a problem with.
• 20:11
  What I do have a problem with is buying leads from Zillow or partnering with realtors
• 20:17
  in offsetting their cost and paying for some of their leads with Zillow, because we're feeding
• 20:21
  the beef that's coming for us. There's a lot of talk about Amazon entering mortgage and
• 20:26
  quick and partnering with State Farm, and all these different things, all the FinTech companies
• 20:30
  and consumer direct. I feel like, and this is my personal opinion when it comes to Zillow,
• 20:36
  I'm more concerned with them that I am almost anyone else on the mortgage side,
• 20:41
  because when they purchased Morgan's Lenders of America about a year and a half ago,
• 20:46
  they could have purchased any company they wanted. They found a company that's in the Midwest
• 20:51
  that had a base of business. I knew some of the people that have worked there. I've recruited
• 20:57
  some of their folks. They picked a pretty solid mortgage banking company, and they've just
• 21:01
  kind of weighed it. People will say all the time, well, I don't even notice Zillow, I'm not
• 21:06
  competing with them, I'm not having to deal with them. That's what they want you to think. They
• 21:10
  don't want you to know that they're there lurking in the shadows, getting ready to rock your whole
• 21:16
  world. I think that that's what people need to understand is that they've been extremely
• 21:22
  methodical with how they've done this, and that should be extremely disconcerting to folks that
• 21:28
  they didn't just create a call center or go buy this huge company. They bought a small company
• 21:33
  that had a pretty good foundation, and they've waited, and they've tested, and they're creating
• 21:39
  a plan. That's the fact that we've not heard much from them is probably more concerning to me
• 21:46
  than almost anything else. Yeah, well, let's face it, it takes time from the acquisition of
• 21:53
  a company to actually pivot and convert that to what you want it to be. So yeah, make no
• 21:58
  doubt about it. They are planning, and you've seen the interviews with Rich Barton CEO of Zillow
• 22:03
  as a new guys can look these up online. I mean, he is looking for the one stop shop where the
• 22:08
  consumer comes to Zillow and gets everything on one roof. And they have the industry's attention.
• 22:15
  They do. Whether you believe their, you know, zestaments, whether you like Zillow or don't like them,
• 22:23
  they are the main player in the game. Like they have all of the consumer attention and real
• 22:28
  estate and mortgage. We're talking about them all the time. And they can do whatever they want.
• 22:35
  And what we have to do, which goes back to the personal branding side of things, is if you even
• 22:40
  think about other verticals like Nike or, you know, Southwest Airlines or any of huge brands
• 22:48
  out there, the biggest challenge they have in marketing is personification. How do we take this
• 22:52
  huge brand and make it relatable to a human? How do you make it where it's relevant to an individual
• 22:59
  person? And that's why a lot of, you know, the celebrity endorsements have happened for years,
• 23:03
  but we're in a different thing where celebrity endorsements or famous people saying use that
• 23:09
  products, they don't mean as much as they used to, right? And so that's where the individual
• 23:14
  loan officers, the individual realtors and mortgage professionals can win is you can relate to
• 23:21
  them. You can be relevant and you can partner with companies and platforms to offer the same
• 23:27
  thing as that these big brands can, but you can do something they can't, which is sit down face to
• 23:32
  face. And that's really why we talk about personal branding being so important is make it relevant
• 23:38
  to your community and your local market. Yeah, 100%. So staying on the Zillow Thread for a second,
• 23:46
  I agree with you that if I was an originating loan officer today, would I want to be paying Zillow
• 23:51
  for leads? Probably not, no. I know I've interviewed some other top producing loan officers,
• 23:58
  as a matter of fact, with most recent podcast I did with Lizzie Irvine. She's doing over 800 loans
• 24:03
  this year. You know, I asked her the question about the whole Zillow thing and she had an interesting
• 24:09
  mindset about that. She's like, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to be a partner,
• 24:14
  be a partner, right? Whatever that means to you and to that partner. And I think it all comes down
• 24:21
  to like ROI, like we throw that term around. However, I think be conscious, be aware. I don't
• 24:26
  want to do a deep dive on, you know, coping for Zillow leads. I think that's a personal choice for
• 24:31
  everybody. I do think it is a, it is unwinding and unraveling in terms of its
• 24:38
  use, you know, effectiveness, if you will. I would rather probably reallocate that money
• 24:44
  to maybe doing some a targeted Facebook ad campaigns or other things like that.
• 24:49
  Yeah. Well, agreed. And when you talk about ROI or, you know, the effectiveness of those
• 24:58
  there's other places where, you know, Gary Vee talks about underpriced attention. There's lots
• 25:02
  of other places that you can take those same thousand or five thousand or however many dollars
• 25:07
  that you're paying for Zillow leads and put them other places where they are more effective
• 25:11
  where you get a higher ROI. So I agree with you. If someone wants to pay for Zillow leads or partner
• 25:17
  with a realtor on that, that that's absolutely a personal choice. The two objections I have with
• 25:22
  it personally is I'm feeding someone who's made it public that they want to take away what I do
• 25:28
  for a living. Number one, and number two, I don't think that the effectiveness of those dollars
• 25:35
  is what you have to do. I think that there's other places that you can partner and add value to
• 25:42
  realtor short of writing a check. I agree. I think more and more elbows are starting to cut the
• 25:47
  cord there for any who are listening. I would encourage you to have a different conversation.
• 25:53
  Especially if like realtors tend to look at loan officers just like a check, right? A place to
• 25:57
  make money. That's not a real partnership. We're talking about real partnerships where you're
• 26:01
  getting like the lion's share of their business. You know what I mean? You're not just one of
• 26:04
  three vendors in a row. My whole thing with the Zillow thing is this is I don't agree that you
• 26:11
  should not be putting reviews on Zillow. If you think you're beating Zillow at its game by doing
• 26:20
  that, my take on that is you're losing because to our point earlier is that the eyeballs are going
• 26:25
  to Zillow. This study just proves the fact that for first time home buyers they're looking to Zillow.
• 26:30
  And if you are found on Zillow, that's a credibility thing for you. And if you think it's like you
• 26:37
  can't even win if you're not there and oh you think like oh my god, you know what,
• 26:41
  a screw Zillow, I'm not going to put reviews on there. It's like well you're screwing yourself.
• 26:45
  Right. You know, yeah, I don't send them any money but the whole point of our conversation is
• 26:50
  today you're a personal brand. Today the largest way people find you and trust you is
• 26:56
  your credibility online, right? What are other people saying about you and the way they figure
• 27:01
  that out today is reviews. Both Zillow, both Google, right? All the places they go. So on Facebook,
• 27:07
  you can do reviews. You need as much cred and social proof as you can get today.
• 27:12
  I have a thousand percent agree and that goes back to that reputation management piece. And
• 27:17
  for the people that are community minded and they want referrals from friends and family members,
• 27:22
  make it easy for your friends and family members to refer you so that whenever they get a name,
• 27:28
  if there's nothing out there about you, they think one of two things. Either you're not doing
• 27:33
  that much business or you don't care or you're new added or something. So if you have reviews on
• 27:39
  Zillow, which we know there's attention and Zillow period, if you have reviews on your website,
• 27:43
  if you have them on social media, you're making it easy and you're making a stick your referral.
• 27:49
  Because at the end of the day, you know, Barry Habib is obviously a good friend of mine, a good
• 27:53
  friend of yours. He says the way to make more money isn't to create more leads. It's to convert
• 27:57
  more of the leads that you already have. If you're in the business, you know how to create business.
• 28:01
  So we need to be thinking about these soft skills that help you convert more of the
• 28:07
  business that you're getting. That's super important. And so that's why I love it. Do you say that?
• 28:11
  I love that you just brought up soft skills because I was pulling up a little survey here by JD Power.
• 28:16
  2019 US mortgage satisfaction survey revealing that technology boosts
• 28:23
  satisfaction. Yes, by the process, right? Let's remove the friction, but consumers want
• 28:28
  personal interaction. According to this, the data says that only 3% of consumers rely exclusively
• 28:34
  on digital self-service channels. So they want the combination high tech to handle all the
• 28:41
  usual BS, stop loading the paperwork, the process, but I want that person that professional to deal with.
• 28:46
  Yep, 1000%. That's why I say in the beginning, when you look at human behavior of the groups that
• 28:52
  are driving the mortgage and real estate market right now, they want an efficient process. They
• 28:57
  want technology communication, but they still want a mortgage advisor to help them go through
• 29:02
  something that they have firsthand knowledge that a previous generation didn't do very well.
• 29:08
  So they just want that. And I think another thing that's important in this part of the discussion
• 29:13
  is information is a commodity. You can get anything about anything known out there that you want through
• 29:20
  YouTube video, through a blog, through whatever else. And they need someone to help them discern what
• 29:24
  of that is valuable and relevant to them. Amen to that. Yep, that is the biggest value we provide
• 29:30
  today is not the gatekeepers of information, not that we have some holy grail that they can't get
• 29:35
  elsewhere. It's helping us understand all the 100 or 200 elements that go into purchasing a home.
• 29:41
  Agreed. Crazy. All right, so how are you just real quickly? What assignments? What activities?
• 29:49
  How are you holding your people accountable to become a modern originator? What are you
• 29:53
  like saying? Dude, guys, you go to market, do this. Is it video? What is it? Yeah, it's different
• 29:58
  for everyone. There's obviously three types of content, audio, which you and I like to play
• 30:03
  in a lot video and then written. Those are the three types of content. What I tell people to do
• 30:09
  is find a medium that you enjoy consuming the content and that you're pretty good at creating
• 30:15
  the content for two reasons. If you enjoy doing it, you'll consistently do it over time.
• 30:20
  And also, you'll attract people to you that are like you and those are who you want to do business
• 30:25
  with anyway. So if some people have a natural gift for video and enjoy doing that, do it. Now,
• 30:32
  there's something to be said for challenging yourself and getting out of your comfort zone
• 30:36
  to do things that are important that maybe you just don't naturally like to do. But what I found
• 30:41
  is if someone doesn't enjoy doing it, they won't do it consistently and it's not going to give
• 30:45
  their business any lift. So let's focus on where you have some natural talent and ability and
• 30:50
  sharpen the skills around that to make you extremely effective. So as I sit down with my
• 30:55
  loan officers and as people that I talk to in coach, we determine what that is. Number one,
• 31:00
  then we determine the audience that they're trying to reach, right? Because whenever you're marketing,
• 31:04
  you have to know who your audience is. Number one, number two, what message is it that you're trying
• 31:09
  to give that audience? And then the third piece of that is determining what is the best delivery
• 31:14
  medium for that message, okay? So that may determine what social media platform you use, that
• 31:19
  may determine the type of community tactics that you have. So again, we have to know what the
• 31:23
  audience is. We have to know the type of content that that individual loan officer wants to create.
• 31:29
  And then we put together a marketing plan where they have daily, weekly, monthly activities.
• 31:34
  And the old typical coaching model was, you know, what's the income that you want to make? And
• 31:39
  let's take your comp plan and get into volume and into units and inductivities all the way down.
• 31:44
  And we combine that with a marketing plan to where it's a numbers game. If they're consistent and
• 31:49
  persistent over time, that will yield to the units and volume and income that they want. And some
• 31:54
  people, that's a checklist. Some people that is time blocking on their calendar. For me, I take
• 32:00
  time blocking in a different direction because my calendar isn't the same from week to week,
• 32:05
  I figure out what is the amount of time I want to block off on a calendar for a given thing.
• 32:10
  And I turn that into a checklist or into a kind of a check box, if you will. So for example,
• 32:15
  if I wanted to do two, three hour blocks per week on a certain task, well, that's six total
• 32:22
  hours for the week. So I'll create a checklist with 12 half hour circles. And every time I get a
• 32:27
  half an hour, I'll spend a half an hour doing it and mark what off. And then by the end of the
• 32:31
  week, I'm still able to contribute the amount of time I wanted to it, but it allows it to be flexible
• 32:37
  of different days or at night or when I'm traveling or things of that nature. So as that relates to an
• 32:42
  individual loan officer, we have to remember that each one of them is different. Every one of them
• 32:46
  has different strengths and weaknesses. And there's no one size fits all. There's conceptual
• 32:51
  things that are going to be applicable to everyone, but how that's implemented in their business
• 32:55
  is very different. So once we know the audience are trying to reach the type of content they want to
• 33:00
  create, what their income and volume goals are, we put those together and determine whether that's
• 33:05
  a checklist model, whether that's a time blocking model, or what is the way we can best keep them
• 33:10
  accountable? And we implement that plan and make tweaks as we go. It never obviously works out
• 33:16
  perfectly the first time. And they let me know how they want me to keep them accountable. Sometimes
• 33:23
  that's every week, hey, send me a list of all of those things that you said you were going to do,
• 33:27
  and accountability that you did them. And sometimes that's just every by weekly coaching call,
• 33:34
  sometimes that's results driven. But that's some tactical things that we do to make sure that we're
• 33:40
  driving the results that we need to get the right result. So are you hiring? Absolutely.
• 33:48
  We're looking for good, good loan officers and managers that are ambitious to understand what
• 33:55
  it is they're trying to do in this market for sure. Yeah, love it, love it, obviously, we'll put a link
• 33:59
  to Mason McDuffy in the show notes here. Let's pivot real quickly just for the final few minutes we
• 34:04
  have. Because as I said at the start, you are the host of the mortgage marketing expert, another great
• 34:08
  podcast in this space. We'll send a link to that. But what I really want to do is focus on kind of
• 34:14
  that bigger umbrella, if you will, the industry syndicate, which I am a proud member of. So tell
• 34:21
  us what the industry syndicate is about. Industry syndicate is a collaborative and a network of
• 34:28
  podcasts, Alexa flash briefings, social media shows that are for the mortgage and real estate
• 34:35
  industry. So the industry as a whole is the broad category of real estate that encompasses a lot
• 34:40
  of different things. And really what happened is people like just like they come to you, come to
• 34:45
  me and several other hosts and say, where do I find other shows like yours? I mean, we only have
• 34:49
  so much bandwidth. We can only put out so many episodes a week or a month. And we wanted to put a
• 34:55
  collective and collaborative together of people that were putting out good content about where the
• 35:00
  industry was going. And we knew that they were going to help mortgage professionals and real estate
• 35:06
  professionals build their business that they were like minded. So we put this syndicate together
• 35:12
  is kind of one place where people could go and find great shows, could find great content to help
• 35:17
  them build their business. And so that's parlayed into a lot of a lot of other opportunities where
• 35:21
  we now have a mobile app where people can download and interact with not only with show hosts but
• 35:27
  other people in the community that can find all the shows and things that we offer. And in 2020,
• 35:32
  we're going to have a lot of really cool announcements about some original content,
• 35:36
  some original shows that we're putting out there as well as some cool things that we're doing
• 35:39
  with our current members' shows. And I love your show. I'm a huge fan. Obviously we have very
• 35:44
  similar shows. We have completely different styles, which is so cool. And one of the things you and I
• 35:49
  understand what it comes to collaboration is there's no competition. There's no mutual exclusivity.
• 35:56
  If someone's listening to good mortgage content, they want to find other good mortgage content.
• 36:00
  So I love collaborating with other podcasters and other shows out there because that's creating
• 36:05
  awareness for the industry, which is again, you know, my passion and mission for doing all this.
• 36:11
  Yeah, right on. So collectively now between the podcast flash briefings and video shows,
• 36:15
  what do you guys have like 20 plus? Yeah, 20, 25 to 30 show hosts. And then some hosts have
• 36:23
  multiple shows across different channels. At the end of this year, we're getting ready to bring on
• 36:28
  I think five more, both in the mortgage and real estate categories. We've also got a couple of
• 36:34
  exclusive shows or industry syndicate produced shows that we're bringing on where we're taking
• 36:39
  a couple of really good content creators and helping them, you know, build a show around them.
• 36:43
  And are we right now the best estimate I have is about 250,000 a month, impressions, downloads,
• 36:50
  views. So we've got a really good audience and can wanting to continue to grow that.
• 36:55
  Yeah, that's awesome. So if people who want to find other relevant shows, right, this isn't
• 37:01
  just podcasts or some flash briefings and stuff in there as well. But it's industry syndicate.com.
• 37:06
  We'll put a link in the show notes as a matter of fact. So they just in the app store, they could just
• 37:09
  search for industry syndicate. Yes, yeah, just go to the Google Play or the Apple App Store and search
• 37:15
  industry syndicate and our app will be there to download. You just sign up. It's pretty easy,
• 37:20
  just an email address in your name and you can contribute to the community. You can interact
• 37:25
  with show host, post content, see all the shows. It's a cool little cool app. Awesome. Awesome.
• 37:31
  And how about if people want to either obviously subscribe to your show or reach out to you
• 37:34
  directly, why don't you give them how to do that? Sure. My easiest way is to go to mmepodcast.com
• 37:41
  that'll have links to Alexa flash briefing, our show, all the different platforms that we're on.
• 37:48
  My website is filledtrendwell.com. You can email me there. It's got my contact info as well.
• 37:53
  Always super happy to chat with folks and collaborating in a way that I can. That's fantastic, man.
• 37:59
  Well, look, unfortunately, we don't have as much time as I think we wanted for today and perhaps
• 38:03
  we can do another round to do a deeper dive on some of these very specific topics. But I appreciate
• 38:08
  you being here and bringing value to the community, man. Well, I'm super excited. Like a summer
• 38:12
  huge fan of the show. I'm super excited that you allowed me on the podcast. And I'm also excited
• 38:18
  because you're going to be a guest on my podcast this time next week. And we'll go a little bit deeper
• 38:23
  dive in that as well. And continue this conversation because it's always a good one.
• 38:28
  For sure, man. Appreciate it. And as listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode or
• 38:31
  any of the others. Hey, leave us a little love, a little review wherever you're listening to this.
• 38:36
  And we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
• 38:38
  Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing.
• 38:44
  Get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com.
• 38:50
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