Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep #65: A Revealing Look Inside the Business of a $2.5 Billion Dollar Originator

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Ep #65: A Revealing Look Inside the Business of a $2.5 Billion Dollar Originator · 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.
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However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
0:11
With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it
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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.
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And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
0:34
with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
0:39
To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
0:45
of the case study today.
0:47
You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
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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.
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Mortgage Marketing Radio Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute,
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your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing.
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Here, listeners, Jeff Smith here, welcome to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio.
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How are you doing?
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Is 2018 kicking off the way you intended it to be this year?
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I hope so.
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Not listen to this episode, lots of learning lessons in here.
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Who's my guest?
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Well, my guest is none other than superstar, originator, rock star, Joe Calpebiano from Chicago,
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Illinois.
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Now, if you haven't heard of Joe, where you've been living under a rock?
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Come on, Joe's been in the mortgage business since 2001 and since 2004, he was closing
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over $100 million in loans every year since 2004.
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How do you start in the business and four years later be a $100 million producer?
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Well, listen and you'll find out.
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Joe's total fundings in his career of so far is over $2.5 billion and obviously consistently
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ranked among the top loan officers in the country.
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I mean, number four in the country in 2011 for purchase business as well as consistently
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the top one for production for purchase business in the state of Illinois.
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I mean, Scott Simmons guide named him number four, originator, MPa magazine, hot 100 list,
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number four in the country on mortgage executive magazine.
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You know, the list goes on and on and on and how many accolades Joe has got.
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But I think why I wanted to bring you Joe today is because a couple of reasons.
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This will be a little bit of a longer lead up to this actual show.
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So bear with me here.
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But look, so Joe's doing some mega production, right?
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Lots of units helping lots of families.
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Now, oftentimes people hear this a couple of things come up.
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First of all, the assumption is, oh, well, Joe's got a team of five loan officers out
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there generating the business for him.
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And not true.
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Joe's generating all the business.
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He's a rainmaker.
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Does he have a team?
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Yes, he does.
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You'll hear more about that on the podcast.
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Does he have individual loan officers that are out there in the field actually originating?
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No.
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He does have support staff that are actually handling the business that he generates and
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then turns over to his team for his onboarding, his loan process, etc.
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And you'll hear about that.
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We'll unpack that on the call.
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That's number one.
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Number two, as you listen to this episode, just know that there are some lessons you can
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extract for yourself.
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And then there are some that might not be appropriate for where you are in the business.
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For example, Joe is not someone who meets his clients face to face.
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You cannot do the volume that Joe does and scale to that many units face to face.
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You simply can't, right?
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So what I want you to be aware of is that might not be the right model for you.
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Look, if you're in a place where you don't want to do $100 million a year, you don't
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want to do 1,000 loans a year, right?
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And your business plan and model is not as aggressive, if you will, right?
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So if your goal is to, instead of do two loans a month, do five or do ten, right?
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Or whatever the case is, even 20, right?
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And you're at a place where you need to build your brand, you need to build more trust,
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you need to improve your customer experience.
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Well, meeting face to face with your clients is one way to do that and to do that in a very
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controlled way.
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Because in a competitive rate environment, right, et cetera in technology coming in, right?
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One of the things that separates you differently from the rest of your competitors out there
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or from technology push button mortgage is your customer experience, the level of education
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and transparency that you provide, right?
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So just keep that in mind, right?
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I don't want you to hear this podcast from Joe and to be like, oh, well, Joe C doesn't
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meet with any of the clients.
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Therefore, I'm not going to do that.
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Not the right answer there, okay?
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Do what's right for you and your business, but just take the lessons that you hear in
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terms of Joe and his process and how he approaches, right, structuring, you know, files and working
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with realtors, et cetera.
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Those are the takeaways I want you to pull from this because, as I said, right?
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In today's world, right, you've got to build that trust and there's no better way to build
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that trust than face to face.
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So if that's a model that you want to subscribe to, meeting with your clients face to face,
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I highly endorse that, particularly if you're in that growth mode, right?
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That's going to help accelerate a lot of things for you, your conversion rate, right?
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Your referral rate and things like that.
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So just know that going in.
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Okay.
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So enough said about that.
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Hey, by the way, if you're liking these episodes and you want to share the love, I appreciate
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Hope you enjoy the podcast.
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Let's get into this week's show.
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Joe, welcome to the show.
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Hey, thanks Jeff.
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Great to be here.
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No, it's great to have you.
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I know you're incredibly busy.
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You've got a lot going on in your life and I'm just honored that you've been willing
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to take time to share your experience, you know, as a wildly successful loan officer.
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So give us the quick skinny on who Joe is, what he's all about, man, you know, give me
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the rundown.
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Yeah.
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The mortgage business in 2001 started as an assistant, learned the business pretty
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quickly.
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I was very fortunate to kind of find a career path that I enjoyed and that I was fairly
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good at business kind of grew organically and, you know, been in the top 10 of the country
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for a while now and just been very fortunate to have a successful career in the mortgage
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industry.
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Awesome.
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So I want to start with, you know, whenever I have a guest on like you and as you know,
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I've had your buddy, Shampanozian on.
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So, you know, we get what I call mega producers, right?
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And if I'm looking at your stats, over two and a half billion in funded loans since 2001.
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Yeah.
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Done a lot of loan.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's a big number.
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And so oftentimes people hear that and they're like a couple of different reactions.
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They're like, oh, my God.
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How does he do that?
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Number one.
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And then the second reaction is, you know, he's probably got a team of 20 loan officers
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under him.
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So first order of business, I want to deal with that.
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Let's set aside how to do that for a moment.
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We'll come back to that.
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But give us a breakdown of what your team structure looks like.
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So I, as kind of SVP, I talked to all the clients.
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I quote, rates, but then beneath me, I've got a rock star team that I've built over the
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years finding the right pieces takes time and a lot of work and effort and energy.
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And you really, your team is only as good as the effort you put into building them.
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So spent a lot of time developing a strong team.
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I've got a few mortgage consultants, my mortgage consultants.
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Know everything about the loan business, just like I do.
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They know guidelines, they know rates, they know programs.
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They are the ones who interact with the clients as much as I do.
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They handle getting front end paperwork, they handle getting paste-ups and bank statements
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and tax returns and qualifying income and things like that.
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Once clients get us documents, that's where kind of the machine takes over.
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And we've got a couple, we call them loan coordinators, but in a traditional sense from
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all of the processor, they handle the submission of the loan to the underwriter, the first
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round of conditions that they can handle.
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Anything relating to client documents goes back to the mortgage consultants.
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Spread in there, I do a lot of condo business.
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So I isolated having a specific person dedicated to the condo process, chasing down condo questionnaires,
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certificates, insurance, things like that.
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Things that were specific to my transactions, I think that was a big differentiator from
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me to some other people who also did a lot of condos.
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But staff would get burned out chasing down things like the condo docs.
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And then there's support staff sprinkled in there to help people do the more mundane
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tasks of chasing down a verification of deposit or following up on titles from attorney's
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and things like that.
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So that's kind of the key minutes in its whole, I've got about nine people who work for
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me in total.
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Okay.
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And so back to those, the people that are the front-ends talking to the customers, would
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you call them loan consultants?
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Yeah, the mortgage consultant, mortgage consultants.
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What percentage of the business that's being generated for you overall under the umbrella
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of Joe, right?
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How much are they out in the field generating versus you?
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Zero.
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That's not their job.
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The expectation is I'm the rainmaker.
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That's my sole job is my job is to make the phone ring develop business and take kind
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of the front-end side of the application.
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They are in a traditional business world.
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They're kind of an inside sales rep.
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So inbound phone calls, they may handle.
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But for the most part, they're supporting me and giving me the ability to be out.
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So the phone's always getting answered.
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If somebody calls me, it may roll to one of the mortgage consultants.
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And they're certainly capable of quoting rates and doing all those different things.
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But I source 100% of the business that comes through our doors.
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So is the, give me an average day in the life.
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You're out in the field, shaking hands, kissing babies, right?
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Meeting, greeting, realtor partners, et cetera, to generate, to make it rain.
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But the directive is the conversation you have with your referral partners that, hey,
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when you've got a referral, you call this number.
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Does that, depending on the situation if you're on the clock or off, does that roll automatically
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to your team?
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How do you set that up?
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Yeah, so I'm very seldom off the clock.
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To realtor partners and referral sources, the conversation is, hey, call me here's
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my cell phone.
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I'm available 24-7.
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So any of the front-end conversation with clients is all me.
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It's getting to know the client, understanding what their goals and objectives are.
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Give them some brief overview on the mortgage process.
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But also mentioning that once we get started, Nikki or Chris or Rob from my team will also
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be involved in the process.
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So making sure that they understand it's not all me.
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That's how I can be in 10 places at the same time that I have an incredible team.
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I want them to be comfortable with them, but I am the first phone call always out forward
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my phone if I'm not available, but in general, it's only my phone number that goes out.
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It's not, hey, call so-and-so, call Nikki for a rate quote.
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It's called Joe, called Joe, and that continues to build my brand, right?
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That helps reinforce that I'm in 10 places at the same time.
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So you kind of want to act as if and act as if you're omnipotent to a certain point.
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And what does the daily flow look like for income and calls that you're getting on average?
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It varies.
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Mondays are brutal.
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My assistant doesn't really schedule any appointments for me on Mondays because in general,
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the cycle starts on Saturday, Sunday, people are out looking at houses.
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So Monday is flooded with people who've written contracts and one understand where rates
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are and things like that.
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So Mondays are, you know, just kind of putting out fires with your finger in the nail and
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trying to stay up with water is really what a Monday looks like.
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You know, the rest of the week, I'm not a guy who blocks time.
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I'm not a guy who schedules, like, you know, a pay between 9 and 11, I make outgoing
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phone calls.
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I'm more of a ad hoc kind of fly my night guy where I just go with the flow of the day.
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Mondays are incredibly heavy with phone calls.
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Some days are not, but I keep myself busy and I'm either taking in business or I'm reaching
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out for a new business.
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Very interesting to hear that somebody doing the level of production you're doing, not
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time blocking.
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That tells me.
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I know it's certainly an interesting time.
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You know, I hear a lot of guys talking about time blocking.
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It's just it never fit for me and it seems to have worked out pretty well.
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And so I get that.
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I think there are some unique situations where people can, you know, like you do that.
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But I'd say they're the rare because too often people then get bogged down in the stuff
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that doesn't make it rain, which you don't do, do you?
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No, I mean, my time is very efficiently spent, right?
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I don't, if I'm on social media, it's purpose driven.
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I'm not looking up, you know, who was outware last night.
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My social media focus is highly focused.
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If I'm on email, I have a purpose for being on my email at that time.
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If I'm in our loan softwares, I'm everything I do is very strategic.
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But if something else pops up that is a revenue generating event, I think that's important
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piece to understand is if I am in the middle of writing a Nobel prize-winning idea down
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and my phone rings and it's a realtor or a new client, everything else ceases immediately.
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And the focus is on revenue generating events because that's the highest and that's used
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my time.
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It's not penning some novel to a writer, but if I have downtime and can help strategically
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position us to close more loans, I certainly don't waste that time in any stretch.
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But revenue generating events are the number one focus of my day, 100% of the time to
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the point where if a client called right now, I would probably drop this conversation
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and move on to that, just kidding, but you know, I can't stress enough how that interaction
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is critically important to loan officers and they need to understand that their sole purpose
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is generating revenue.
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That's what you are, that's what a loan officer is.
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And that's the single highest best use of your time.
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So that's a great point.
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I think I want to highlight that for a second because there's one of two directions
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people can go and I talk to L.O.s a lot about time blocking and the question comes up,
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you know, well, what if a realtor call comes in and you can go one of two ways in that
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you either, you know, structure your day where you do have time blocks and you let your
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referral partners know, hey, and obviously you can use your voice mail to say during these
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hours, et cetera.
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And that's one way to go.
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But the other way is your way, which is, you know, no, a call comes in, everything stops
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for business.
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The question I have around that though is, because I know this is the loan officer's
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head is, well, how often does your time get wasted, right?
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If it's one of those calls that you think is going to be a productive call, but it's
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one of those questions that could have been dealt with later.
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How do you respond to that?
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Sure.
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You know, I'm efficient on the phone.
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I'm efficient on emails.
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A lot of people don't answer the entire question or don't hear what the other person is saying.
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So if you're efficient with your time, I mean, I can drive, I can go through a loan
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application in five minutes.
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If it's a client, I know is comfortable with that, you know, there's so many different
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clients out there and clients and people types, right?
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The traders that I deal with who want to know what the rate is, what the payment is, what
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do they need to do, and they don't need to understand every single detail of the loan
17:03
process compared to the first time home buyer needs additional time.
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So, you know, understanding who you're talking to and how quickly you can navigate and hit
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on all the key points without them feeling rushed is an art form that you've developed
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over time.
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And I think that's something that has been, I've honed my skills on being as efficient as
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possible.
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I don't have very many 30 minute phone conversations.
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I don't have very many 30 minute meetings, you know, my average time in the phone with
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a client is maybe 10 minutes, even for a first time home buyer, because I'm driving the
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conversation.
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And I'm asking very direct questions.
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I'm not beating around the bush and asking, you know, I don't have that crazy personal
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relationship with a client that a lot of people try to do.
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I'm Josie.
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I'm here to help you get a mortgage and I don't care if it's a three bedroom or one bedroom.
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I care about what your goals and objectives are related to the financial piece.
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There's very little emotion.
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And that's what the realtors are there for is to talk about the size of the unit and
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the color of the walls and things like that.
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That's not me.
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My job is, you know, what's the mortgage payment for 300,000 with 5% down 10% down and there's
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any benefit to putting 50% down and really driving that conversation and constantly putting
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it back on the point of, do you have additional questions?
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So there's very little dead ear when I'm talking to somebody on the phone.
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So I'm trying to get an idea of them, what that conversation looks and sounds like because
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you know, there's some people, I'm trying to get a sense of how much of a kind of financial
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consultation you're called is, you know, you've heard people do like, you know, total,
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you know, total cost analysis and things like that and look at three different loan scenarios
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and make sure the loan fits into the overall financial picture.
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Are you delving into any of that stuff or is it really more focused on the loan for the
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home right now?
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You know, that thing.
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So it's always hard to answer, you know, that from a general sense, right?
19:03
It's very different clients and different experiences throughout the time.
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I do a lot of stuff through email before I get to the phone call stage.
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I'll go, I would say 20% of the clients, I may not talk to on the phone because my
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email presentations and my email strategies are much more focused on extrapolating out
19:24
those questions and I explain to a client, it's always good, you know, when you're dealing
19:28
with financial things to have things in writing.
19:30
I can't tell you how many times a client has heard something different than what I said
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or vice versa, you know, that the phone tag conversation or you're talking to the husband
19:41
and the translates to the wife differently, having things in email, I try to push people
19:45
towards the email side of things so then I can respond thoroughly and efficiently.
19:49
So when I'm on the phone, less of the conversation is about anything other than rates and where
19:55
they are and very specific questions, I try to push most of it onto an email format and
20:02
you know, provide helpful links to clients to do real research.
20:05
So if they want to go and dive into a deep hole on amortization schedules and understanding,
20:14
you know, whatever tickles or fancy I guess, they're lack of a better word, they can do
20:19
it at third time and not while I'm sitting on the phone with them.
20:22
And during your process, you know, new customer onboarding client process there, do you have
20:27
various educational, you know, pieces or links that you drive them to, right, to, I mean,
20:34
obviously they get on the phone with you, they get a referral from an agent, they're
20:37
already positioned as obviously an expert, right?
20:38
But what additional things do you do to help, you know, around that?
20:43
So most of the time those clients are first time home buyers, so they may be looking for
20:48
grant programs or things like that and I know a lot of loan officers want to control where
20:53
they look and where they find their information.
20:56
I try to give them the source material, right?
20:59
If they want to know something about a grant program, I direct them to like the Illinois
21:04
grant program page.
21:06
I don't hide behind that even though it mentions 15 other lenders on there, I don't mind them
21:12
going to the actual sources to find that material.
21:15
So I try to be very rudimentary in the information I give because I don't hide anything, right?
21:22
There's no game, you know, I always quote the best rate I have available.
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I don't play around with things like that.
21:28
I'm very consistent whether it's the little old lady or the high-powered attorney, they
21:33
get treated the same and get provided the same information.
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So, you know, there's access to the Fannie Maeke eyes online now.
21:41
So I walk people through things like that, I don't couch the conversation on anything
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other than the baseline facts.
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And I think that's something that's important to understand, you know, for a company like
21:53
Be Mortgage, you know, we're raw guidelines.
21:56
So a lot of people work in a lot of places where there's guardrails up and they don't
22:01
drive into the Fannie Maeke website because Fannie Maeke can go to a 50 DTI but their company
22:06
has a 45 max DTI.
22:10
You know, I work for a company that the guardrails are down, it's raw guidelines.
22:15
So Fannie says we can do a 50, we can do a 50, if Fannie says we can do a manual underwrite,
22:19
we can do a manual underwrite.
22:21
So I think a lot of people don't give the real source material, which is the Fannie or
22:25
Freddie or FHA guides because they have overlays and that becomes a more difficult conversation
22:29
of, well, this says I can do this and, you know, the answer is for me, yeah, absolutely,
22:35
I can do that.
22:37
Yeah, that's probably a unique situation for you then without the overlays.
22:40
And additionally, you know, most borrowers, you know, that's, that's, they probably don't
22:47
understand a lot of that where they get so deep in the weeds, right, that just kind
22:51
of mucks up the conversations.
22:53
Yeah, there, you know, people are used to following what they're told verbally.
23:00
And that's unfortunate, you know, because there's a lot of things that become available
23:04
for clients that they didn't know.
23:07
People won't explain LPI, LPMI to them compared to PMI or vice versa.
23:12
And I try to give them the, the information I don't want to spend an hour on the phone
23:17
explaining things.
23:19
I try to drive them to rock eyed lines in the purest form so they can do some research
23:24
on their own and get as comfortable as they want.
23:27
And then usually they'll have questions forming, but it's something that I can usually
23:30
answer via email very quickly.
23:32
So you're back to your, you know, kind of onboarding process with your clients, you're
23:36
taking the initial call, you're doing the high level consultation stuff and you're introducing
23:40
that they're going to interact with other members of your team.
23:43
When do you kind of jump back in at any point during that process?
23:48
In a perfect world, I'm just kind of there at the end as shake hands and kiss babies.
23:53
You know, the process in general, I spend a fair amount of time on the front end with
23:57
the client, both through phone or email, never for the most part face to face.
24:02
I probably can count on one hand the number of clients I've met with in the last year.
24:07
Spend a lot of time on the front end, introduce them to the single mortgage consultant that
24:12
they'll be working with.
24:14
Once the loans approved, even the mortgage consultants telling them that they're approved,
24:18
I probably give the final figures to the clients a fair amount of time.
24:21
So congratulate your clear-to-close, here's the closing estimate.
24:26
But other than that, you know, very limited conversations with me directly, except if a problem
24:33
arises, you know, again, it goes back to my team being a machine and a machine only works
24:38
as if the things that go into it are, you know, have rounded edges and this is where
24:43
I picked it somewhere else.
24:44
So I extrapolate out the problems.
24:48
If something arises, then information wasn't accurate that the client gave, and now he's
24:53
texturing something different or whatever, I died into solving problems and might spend
24:59
a little more time with the client if a problem arises, certainly in an increasing or increasing
25:05
interest rate environment, anything related to rates or payment changes, I jump in and
25:10
handle that, anything relating to market movements where there's slowdowns, I try to be proactive
25:17
and reach out to clients about that.
25:19
But from the loan process standpoint, I really have such a rockstar team that I'm not involved
25:27
other than the front-end conversation and maybe giving some final figures.
25:31
Sure.
25:32
How about loan status updates?
25:33
Does your team handle that?
25:35
Team handles it.
25:37
We update realtors, attorneys, certainly on the buy side when loans approved, appraisals
25:44
back, clear to close, those are really the things.
25:48
We always try to be proactive, very seldom do we have extensions needed or anything of that
25:55
nature.
25:56
We're usually very proactive.
25:58
I manage my pipeline based on mortgage contingency dates, more so than closing dates.
26:03
We treat the mortgage contingency data as a closing.
26:06
A lot of people, especially the big bank, look at mortgage contingency dates or suggestions
26:14
on our side, that's basically the closing date as far as I'm concerned.
26:17
That loan needs to be 100% done by the mortgage contingency date.
26:22
I stress that to realtors, I stress that to clients, I stress it to attorneys, that
26:27
is the critical date, especially in a hyper competitive mortgage market that we're
26:32
now in certain markets.
26:34
The Denver's and California's and Illinois's and Boston's, those markets, man, if you
26:40
miss a mortgage contingency date, the seller is talking to the realtor about relisting
26:44
the property.
26:46
That is a very nerve-wracking experience for a client and just creates a flood of phone
26:51
calls that blows up somebody's day.
26:53
If you blow a mortgage contingency, that's a call from the buyer, that's a call from the
26:57
buyer's agent, call from the buyer's attorney.
27:00
Half the time, it's from the seller's attorney or the seller's realtor as well.
27:03
Those are five calls that I wasn't planning on having that date, and somebody like me
27:11
who's very strategic with my time and we talked about time management a little bit, that
27:16
blows my whole day off if I have too many of those during a week or during a month.
27:20
I don't have time for that.
27:22
I put a lot of pressure on my team and the people around that when I ask a client, my team,
27:27
and they ask for a client an updated pay stub, I put deadlines in there.
27:32
They're saying, hey, John, I need a pay stub by Tuesday or we're not going to meet the
27:37
mortgage contingency date on Friday and putting a lot of the pressure back on the people
27:43
who are providing you that information.
27:45
That's a good strategy.
27:47
I like that.
27:48
I put it back on them.
27:49
The other ones that want to buy the house, right, so let's get it together.
27:51
Nobody's ever said to you.
27:53
Nobody's ever said you and Amoris can deal that you communicated too much.
27:58
That doesn't come out of somebody's mouth.
27:59
A realtor never says, gosh, I really wish you wouldn't have told me all those things
28:04
about how the deal went.
28:06
They like the information and the more you're proactive with that level of communication
28:10
and putting deadlines so everybody's clear.
28:13
Here's your contingency date.
28:14
Here's your closing date in order to do that.
28:16
We need to do things by three days before that and five days before that.
28:22
Communicating the same stresses that we have internally as loan officers and companies,
28:28
making sure that everyone's aware of the process will accomplish a goal much smoother.
28:33
Okay.
28:34
So curious, how do you handle the past database for generating business from that?
28:39
Do you do like annual reviews or whatever?
28:41
What's that look like?
28:42
Yeah.
28:43
I do a pretty good job of staying on top of clients, interest rates.
28:47
I have a knack for remembering deals and remembering clients.
28:52
One strategy that I was very successful at is, and it's unfortunate it usually starts
28:58
this way, but a client will call me and say, hey, I heard rates dropped and I'll say you're
29:04
absolutely right.
29:05
I pull up their file and look and I say, yeah, I can probably save you a half a point
29:09
next Y and Z.
29:10
But then what I do is once I get that deal started or locked in or whatnot, I go through
29:16
and look at a closed loan report from that time.
29:19
So if they closed in May of 2017 and had a 30 or fix and that was able to refinance and
29:26
chances are, they're not the only loan that happened between April and June of 2017 that
29:32
I can refinance.
29:33
So I start digging in very strategically for loans that close during that time frame.
29:38
So you know, certainly that you've got to have a fair amount of loans to do that, right?
29:42
If I'm closing 30, 40, 50 loans a month, that's that's a lot of loans in that if, you
29:47
know, if different listeners are closing two, three, you know, you've got to have some
29:51
different strategies.
29:52
But I really focus on loans that close during that time frame and then will strategically
29:56
take some time to look and delve into each one of those.
30:00
And now there's so many tools, you know, making sure your bounces, values off, silo.
30:04
I think too many times people today say, oh, yeah, John Smith, that four and rates are at
30:08
four.
30:09
But then you realize that the property values up 10% and you can drop PMI or, you know,
30:16
these were clients that maybe we're talking about taking out a home equity line.
30:20
So having different conversations that aren't all about your X rate and I can lower you
30:25
to Y rate, looking at different opportunities or maybe they can take cash out and keep
30:30
the same interest rate.
30:32
That's a very favorable thing to people as well.
30:35
So.
30:36
Yeah, at the same rate, you know, they were comfortable with the money and people who
30:41
buy homes, you know, in general, you have a fair amount of outlay, you know, people
30:46
bought furniture or any, and they get zero percent credit cards.
30:50
But that comes doing a year if you can offer them the ability to, if you saw a quarter point
30:55
in rate drop and you, or they had a appreciation event, you can sometimes find other things
31:03
than just lowering the interest rate.
31:05
Yeah, well, I know, so best practice we're kind of talking about this here is people
31:09
go through different life changes and so it's that you would agree, I think it makes
31:14
sense for you to be proactive in touching your past database, you know, just to check
31:19
up and go, hey, you know, is anything happened, right, since we last out or on the horizon
31:23
in the next six to 12 months, that could impact your financial situation, right, could be
31:27
birth of a baby college graduation job change, whatever.
31:30
Right.
31:31
Yeah, let's just go say that, you know, social media, again, when I'm on social media,
31:35
it's looking at key clients or key realtors or, you know, what life events are going
31:39
on for key strategic partners that I can be a part of.
31:44
Hmm.
31:45
So I'm curious, because of the volume you do in the size of your database, maybe in
31:51
kind of a technical guy, do you use a particular CRM database management tool?
31:56
So yeah, at the mortgage, we use a total expert, kind of rebranded and tweaked it a little
32:03
bit, but yeah, total experts, awesome, super powerful.
32:07
Yeah, I had Joel on the podcast last year.
32:09
Yeah, I mean, I'm very happy with that platform.
32:14
I think it's a great tool that other companies I've worked at haven't implemented.
32:21
You know, I never really had a tool like that in kind of my previous life, so to speak.
32:25
So excited to have a pretty powerful thing, I think, you know, the SMS texting platform
32:32
is great.
32:33
There's a lot of tools that I haven't seen in a lot of other things.
32:37
So.
32:38
Are you using it all for the co-marketing with realtors?
32:41
Yeah, yeah, I am not as much as maybe I will in the future, but, you know, I've done
32:49
a few of it.
32:50
I started to get my toes relatively new to me.
32:51
So, you know, most of the stuff I use it for is client-based reaching out, but I will
32:59
get into kind of that third party stuff.
33:01
Okay.
33:02
All right.
33:03
Well, that's really good data in terms of like how you run your business.
33:05
I appreciate that.
33:06
So for the last few minutes we have, I want to transition a little bit into psychology.
33:10
And what I mean by that is, you know, if it's taking us back, whether it's, you know,
33:15
let's say back to Lakeshore funding, right?
33:17
Take me back there.
33:19
I want to better understand if, you know, your psychology was, you know, you were going
33:24
to be a superstar mega producer, or was this all a surprise to you?
33:30
No, it's, I always asked it bigger than I was in my career.
33:37
So, you know, at Lakeshore funding, which was a wild time and a great time, we had all
33:43
the assistance sit back in this small little area called the pit, myself, my buddy Jim
33:48
Fuller, and some other guy set back in this pit.
33:52
And it was all the assistance sharing information, so it was a really great environment to learn
33:56
from.
33:57
But, you know, so I'm chasing down a certificate of insurance or I'm chasing down a title,
34:02
and every time I talk to you in a turning, I would ask them who they worked with.
34:06
And I didn't know that they were the biggest attorneys in the city of Chicago, or they're
34:10
the most well-known high-powered news data attorney in Chicago.
34:14
I still asked them for business.
34:16
And more often than not, they would say, I worked with a few people, but send me some
34:19
cards.
34:20
So I was constantly asking for more than maybe a traditional assistant would, and it works,
34:28
you know, I think that's something that a lot of people don't understand is if you don't
34:32
ask for the business, you have a zero percent chance of getting the business.
34:36
Even if asking for a yield, the 5% result, it's still infinitely more than zero.
34:42
So ask everybody, ask, you know, ask for as much as you want, and I did that from day
34:48
one.
34:49
I was a confident sales guy, so yeah, I was always banging on the door.
34:54
I didn't care who they were, because I was naive enough to not know who they were.
34:59
It was a pretty powerful situation to be in, being confident in the information piece
35:07
of it.
35:08
I knew mortgages, even though I was an assistant, I spent a lot of time reading guidelines.
35:13
We had this, like I said, of really good information sharing system back there.
35:17
So I was always comfortable asking for business, and you knew the first deal you'd get was
35:22
hard, but I would spend more time on that hard deal than anybody else that was busy
35:26
and then business grows from there.
35:29
Okay, so two ways we can look through this next question.
35:33
I wanted to get a sense of, you know, either what you would tell yourself today, looking
35:38
back to that young Joe C, back at Lakeshore Funding, of what, you know, you would say to
35:44
that young Joe today, kind of combined with, you know, how you would advise somebody to
35:50
be a successful loan officer today.
35:52
Yeah, so I wish I spent a little more time on ROI from agents or, you know, people you
35:59
talked about, time wasting and some of that stuff.
36:02
So quantifying who you're getting your business from and understanding that and what you did
36:06
to make that result successful, whether it was co-hosting a happy hour, whatever I did
36:14
to create some of the relationships that have been long-standing relationships, beyond
36:19
the fact of, you know, treating people like you want to be treated and kind of the basics
36:22
of life.
36:23
But understanding where I invested time and effort and where it worked and where it
36:27
didn't, I wish I would have tracked that a little bit better.
36:30
That's don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun over the time, if you have doing events
36:35
and things that maybe didn't yield mortgage results, but yielded life events.
36:41
But I wish I would have focused on that, so I would give myself that advice.
36:45
So just to clarify there for a second.
36:47
Yeah, I think what you're saying, and this is a great point, I'm glad you mentioned that,
36:50
for listeners, is you've got to analyze the ROI of your relationships.
36:56
You see this, I'm sure Joe, I hear it, where it's like, you know, how many realtors are
36:59
on your bus?
37:00
So, you know, about 12 or whatever.
37:02
Great, how many of them are sending you a business?
37:03
Well, you know, only about half and then that's like, you know, once in a while.
37:08
So yeah, we need to be very strategic, I think is what you're saying with who we're pouring
37:12
into and investing our time with and if it isn't, you know, meeting kind of our standards
37:15
for that, we need to re-evaluate.
37:17
Yeah, and it might have taken two years, right?
37:19
I might have had four of them, I might have done one thing that yielded a ton of results.
37:25
So I wish I analyzed that a little bit more than I probably did.
37:30
But if it all worked out over time, as long as you don't waste too much of your time
37:35
doing tasks, it don't yield anything.
37:37
I was fortunate that a lot of the things I did were very fruitful.
37:40
I just wish I could say, you know, these are the three things that I did that yielded
37:45
and I don't, I never really track that until, you know, more recently in my career.
37:51
And so the payoff to tracking the activities that produce the highest ROI, you do it again.
37:57
Yeah, right?
37:58
Obviously, I'm back to the business.
37:59
You know, it's like, yeah.
38:00
All right.
38:01
So I know you're working with a bunch of seasoned loan officers, right?
38:04
But I don't know if you're bringing, you know, newer people on the team.
38:07
I mean, right, the average L.O. is about 57 years old.
38:10
So are you looking at newbies coming in and trading them up?
38:15
Or what are you doing?
38:16
No, right now our focus is on experienced loan officers who really want to grow their business.
38:22
My focus in this industry, when you have a company that you lower the guard rails, that
38:28
only works if you have experienced trustworthy people who just haven't been given all the
38:33
tools that I was fortunate to have over my career.
38:37
And giving them the opportunity to get one more deal done a year is what ultimately yields
38:43
more results, right?
38:44
I have some of the realtors that I work with who have a ton of non-warnable condos.
38:49
But they're not really non-warnable condos.
38:51
It's the lender they were working with calls the non-warnable condos.
38:54
But the fact is, is these loans will get sold to Fannie and Freddie.
38:57
So given a seasoned loan officer, the ability to close that deal ultimately cracks the ice
39:03
with that realtor.
39:04
And then you get 50 more deals from that agent.
39:06
So we're looking for the people who understand the mortgage business.
39:12
I don't need 50 million dollar producers, but I need people who understand guidelines.
39:16
I need people who understand getting business are focused on selling.
39:21
And people that I can provide more support for and things like that.
39:25
So really helping them go from a 20 million dollar regenerator to a 50 million dollar
39:30
regenerator.
39:31
Okay.
39:32
And so let's talk about that briefly.
39:33
Tell me about the mortgage.
39:34
Is this a nationwide play?
39:36
Yeah.
39:37
So B mortgage is a division of bridge view bank.
39:40
So it is a bank platform.
39:42
So you eliminate the licensing piece of it, your license and all 50 states from day one.
39:49
There's a great opportunity.
39:51
We rolled out a construction lending program.
39:53
We have access to commercial loans.
39:54
So not only just your traditional bank broker model of down loans to Fannie and Freddie
40:00
and Chase and Wells and things like that.
40:02
But having ancillary tools that the way I look at my business is, you know, ex percent
40:08
is refinances, ex percent is purchased and you're kind of a victim of the market when
40:12
it comes to refinances with rates pushing up to the four and a half percent range.
40:16
You know, you're losing a lot of refinance opportunities.
40:19
So to be able to replace that with maybe a couple commercial deals a month or maybe
40:23
a new construction ground up single family that, you know, you weren't able to do or that
40:29
I used to have to refer out at previous companies gives me the ability to not only grow
40:34
and what might be a down market for mortgage people.
40:39
It gives you the ability to grow along with your clients.
40:42
You know, there's nothing more frustrating than working at a place.
40:45
You do the person's first $200,000 one bedroom condo than they buy a three bedroom condo
40:49
than they buy the count home, but now they're building a $2 million home and you have
40:54
to refer them out.
40:55
Well, the minute you do that, that client is going to look everywhere for everything going
41:00
forward.
41:01
When they go to refinance, they're going to talk to one more person because you've already
41:05
established some doubt that you can do everything.
41:07
You had to refer them out to begin with.
41:09
So being able to follow clients their whole career and their whole life cycle of the mortgage
41:14
world is critically important.
41:16
You hate doing the small tough loans and then referring out the bigger, easy ones.
41:22
So being at a platform that allows me to do that or when they buy their second home
41:25
and things like that, being able to follow that client everywhere is a very powerful tool
41:29
and it continues to expand your database by a spider web.
41:34
You know, it's a growth trajectory that I'm excited to be a part of.
41:39
So that's kind of the core principle of B is being able to follow that client through
41:45
their whole mortgage life and needs.
41:48
And the website for that is bmorgage.com, right?
41:51
B e mortgage.
41:52
Yep.
41:53
All right.
41:54
I'll put links to that in the show notes.
41:55
Hey, one last question before I let you go.
41:57
Just curious about this.
42:00
Are you a reader listener?
42:01
How do you sharpen the axe?
42:04
I'm definitely a reader.
42:06
Although I will tell you I'm starting to get more into podcasts and things like that.
42:11
I'm a digital reader.
42:14
Kindle.
42:15
Very focused on.
42:16
Yeah.
42:17
And no, I just mean, you know, I'm on a computer all day and I'm like, pull up more articles
42:24
than I used to, but certainly the podcast, I don't drive anymore.
42:29
You know, I left my car's been in my garage for a year and a half.
42:31
So, you know, I'm in the back of an Uber a lot.
42:36
So starting to get into some podcasts has become a much more valuable tool that I really
42:42
didn't explore before, but I'm really enjoying it.
42:44
Awesome.
42:45
You know, it's funny.
42:46
You mentioned about reading.
42:47
So, I for a long time, you know, quote, was a reader, but I've recently really stepped
42:51
up my listening, like with Audible, and so like, you know, books on tape and all that
42:55
jazz.
42:56
I found I could consume that info a lot faster than sitting down and reading.
43:00
Yeah.
43:01
I get it.
43:02
I think it's right.
43:03
So, I'm right there with you.
43:05
I think it's an evolution that's powerful, but, you know, everybody learns the different
43:10
things.
43:11
I don't want to listen to guidelines, you know, that would be a terrible, audible book,
43:16
you know, especially while driving a fan-y-made guy.
43:18
Yeah, exactly.
43:19
I pull up, you know, the fan-y-made guys will read that type of data, but business strategies
43:24
and things like that.
43:25
I think that the audio ways is a much more enjoyable means of absorbing that information.
43:33
Well, I think it just, you know, goes to show that somebody, even at your level of success,
43:37
right, you're still always looking for that slight edge and, you know, learning from
43:40
others.
43:41
Oh, no doubt about it.
43:42
Yeah.
43:43
Well, listen, I know you're incredibly busy, this, the meters run in here, so I got to let
43:46
you go.
43:47
Yeah.
43:48
Cool.
43:49
I want to thank you for being here and for listeners.
43:50
Thank you, as well, for tuning in.
43:52
Joe, I'm going to put the link to the website.
43:54
Is that the best place for people to go learn more?
43:56
Should it be be mortgage?
43:57
Anything else you want to?
43:58
Yeah.
43:59
Yeah.
44:00
You can always reach out to me at, uh, joeatbeelhoan.com, joetbeelown.com.
44:05
I'm here.
44:06
Big question.
44:07
Small scenarios.
44:08
Whatever.
44:09
Nice.
44:11
Awesome.
44:12
So listeners, thanks again, and, uh, we will see you on the next one, bye for now.
44:17
Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio.
44:20
One more truth in mortgage marketing, get more free training and resources at MortgageMarketingInstitute.com.
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