Latest / The Ground Game / Housing’s New Normal: Part 2

Transcript

Housing’s New Normal: Part 2 · The Ground Game

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the ground game for mortgage professionals built for the fight.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hosted by Brian Lovell and Mark Mylam.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I heard a couple of years ago in an another podcast, and I'll just give credit where credit is due.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was Carl White who said that there are three types of loan originators in the market.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm going to loop in lenders to that too.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh the fleers, right?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the ones that are just they're getting out, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're going to go find a new career.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's where some murders and acquisitions come in place.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Did you say murders or mergers?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mergers.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe maybe the same.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it depends on which side of that you're on.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good way to say I think I've been through a couple of those.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they did feel kind of murderous.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so that's that's your fleers, right?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got your freezers.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the freezers are the ones that are they're holding on to what they have as tightly as they can, right?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes me think it's been four years now.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if we go back to 2020, 2021, most of us in this business made more money in that period than we've ever made doing this before.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe we got a little bit of a nest egg.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we got a little bit of a savings built up.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're just thinking, hey, if I can weather this storm for however long it's going to weather, this will be okay.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I'm not going to adapt.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to shift.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do anything to pivot or make this better.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ride it out to the other side.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to ride it out to the other side.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third segment here is the fighters, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the ones that are out there gaining market share at a pretty rapid clip.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the things that I see is as as I look at as I'm studying like different levels of loan originators and I'm talking about production.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right now the fighters are eating the freezer's lunch.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when I look at that loan officer, let's just say they're an eight to ten million dollar a year producer, which is good production.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's you're earning a probably a pretty good living at that level of production.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're losing market share to loan originators like you, who are doing a hundred plus million, you know, or even fifty million.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um what's your thought on that?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why do you think that that is and and what should we be doing to pivot for that?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I do think it comes back to I love this word.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: It comes back to discipline.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and discipline is one of those words that I I embrace uh with such um adoration.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love disciplines.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you don't go away and think about getting better at brushing your teeth.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: You brush your teeth every day.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: You don't go away and think about getting better at playing the piano.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: You sit down and you practice the piano every day.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: This this business, never more so than now, is a discipline and it requires regular, sustained effort.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And please don't be guided by your results.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: If your results are feeding you negative information, I'm in one of those spells right now.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, as we're recording this, it's the tail end of July.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's never really a big boom time in our industry.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's that summer swoon.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm feeling that in my pre-approvals right now.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if I listen to the voice in my head, yeah, I'm gonna go into paralysis.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go into moping.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Someone get me a bourbon.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like working right now because I'm not getting the endorphin.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where discipline comes in.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I don't feel like brushing my teeth, but I'm gonna get up and do it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like doing all the things that I know are necessary to propel my business forward, but I'm gonna do it anyway because I am going to be a disciplined originator in this.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna be swept away by um a certain feelings that that you have.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's one piece of advice I could give to any originator out there is be careful of the voices in your head.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the voices in your head are are going to feed you the most recent data that comes in and it's you feel like the tail of the dog.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, more than any time, boy, that's really hard to have consistency.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the top producers out there, the the really good ones, the sharp ones that have been around for a while and seen a couple of seasons, are they they stay on their processes, they stay on their disciplines and they take from those who might have a great month and then pull back a little bit.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden they're hitting a wall and they feel down, and so now they're they don't have any energy to sustain them.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: They never maybe put in great processed processes to begin with.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so they wind up losing market share.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a little bit of a market share game when things get slow.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: You you wind up, it isn't necessarily all about how many transactions I have closing.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's how many new agents are starting to include me in their rotation, how many new financial planners are starting to include me in their rotation.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think if you go back to like 2008, nine, and 10, you know, you saw a lot of loan originators gain huge market share.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at lenders in the IMB space too, some of the largest ones that we see today, yeah, like even in the top 10, got in the top 10 during eight, nine, and 10.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like they made huge moves in their growth.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that proves this isn't a season that should slow you down.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's success to be had here.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's wins to be had.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love that point about discipline because that's what it really comes down to is like, hey, I can't listen to the noises in my head.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can't control what's going on in the market.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Only you can control what happens for you.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think sometimes we get so paralyzed by it's just one bad economic report after another.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one bad segment or one bad day or whatever it is.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it cripples to the point, cripples us to the point where like, I can't even get out of bed.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is all I can think about.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, doers are going to get up and be doers.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a all kinds of conversations in there that if you're not thinking about where the market is, which most seasoned originators are, you're not thinking about what the margin what the market is, you could be missing out on a great opportunity.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things I love about having an on the street LO running a mortgage company.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's what you do.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so seeing that need, you and the leadership team went out and created this bridge loan.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I did some research on it here recently.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: In the last 12 months, we've closed$65 million in production that we got directly from the bridge loan.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: From the bridge loan volume.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking the bridge loan volume out of that equation.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was just that product led to the LO getting a deal that they probably wouldn't normally have got.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: $65 million in production.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's anything we're sneezing at.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every bit.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then like the most recent adaptation to that was um the ability to withdraw or to take three months P ITI payments on the trailing residence so that you don't have to worry about that period of time that you're covering two mortgages.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the cool thing about the bridge loan that we that we have is it's a zero payment product, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And agencies respect the zero payment.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um that in and of itself is great.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, you are still talking to a client about the fact you're gonna have your departure residence payment for a period of time, you're gonna have your new home payment, or you're doubling up on your mortgage payment at least for a period of time.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously we want to make sure that we're in a we're looking at that departure residence.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: We know it's gonna sell relatively quickly, it's priced appropriately, all that goes into the metric.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: But we also want to give them a little bit of budget, if they have it, uh, in the equity in their home to cover that monthly payment for a few months just to relieve the pressure for them.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is trying to understand who your client is.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Your client is capable financially, but they also don't want to get themselves into a bad position.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're there to provide them some sort of support mechanism, uh, you know, so they can make that transition.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So um I want to kind of get back to the spirit of this real quick.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The conversation we were having is like with the market that we're in, we're kind of feeling like this is the new, this is the new normal, right?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what can loan originators do in the market to make sure like they stay in the market or stay in the game.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I what I want people to hear here is that like if if you've been a freezer, like it's time to unfreeze because this isn't changing.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point you're gonna run out of that nest egg or that savings that you had.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for me, I I go back to I, you know, my joke, it's not a joke, but and I got into the business in April 2007.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some people are gonna hear that and go, this guy is a joke, and and that's fine.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I went through that period of time being new in this business, and around every corner there was always something that felt like a kick in the teeth.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are we ever gonna get through this?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: I struggled financially the whole nine yards to the point that there were mornings like it was difficult to get up and get going.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was crippling.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And for whatever reason, for me, just one day it literally was like a flip of a switch.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, from from today on, I can't worry about what the market is doing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can only worry about what Brian Lovell is doing in the market.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the decision I made that day was that every single day, I was gonna do something that was a revenue generating activity.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I say that to also say, like, I didn't say all day.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just every day I'm gonna make a commitment, whether it's an hour, whether it's two hours, I'm gonna do something that this activity that I'm doing is something that could eventually generate revenue for me down the road.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that changed it all for me.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's a great I don't know if this comes from the Christian faith or I can't remember quite where I heard it, but I want to say that I heard it in church one day.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a great saying that says, be in the world, but not of the world.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to, this is the world we have to operate in.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is that, this is the market that we have to operate in.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be so of the world, though, of the market that you are constantly getting dragged around by it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this is a a daily fight for me to to stay in the right mindset about where I am.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I am in this market, but I don't want to be a product just of this market and how this market might make you feel from time to time.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh Mark, as we kind of wrap this one up, like if if you had an advice for a loan officer watching this right now, Monday's a new day.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can you do those mail order bourbon things where they send them to you like weekly?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like the bourbon of the month club or something.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's advice number one.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it's develop processes that lead to um tangible results.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what what does that look like?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for loans in process, you definitely have to have a regular means of of being proactive, communication with all parties, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that that's sort of your low-hanging fruit.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: For your prospects out there, let's say you just hang up, you pre-approve someone, you just send them their pre-approval letter, maybe you sent them their loan quote, their estimate, their financing worksheet, whatever it is that you like to use.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's your follow-up around that client?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are you solely relying on your CRM?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a CRM?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: How does your CRM follow up with them?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is it via email?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: How many people read their emails every day?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing to touch base with that client to make sure they didn't have any questions that that you positioned yourself?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: How did you even talk to the client?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Was that did you point them to a URL and have them fill out an online application?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have a phone conversation?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Did you offer a video chat?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: How connected did you decide to get to those people?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Or it's a competitive market out there.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Any way that you can implement processes to make yourself stand out is important.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I could give one advice, one piece of advice to any originator out there, it's make sure you have really robust processes and you adhere to them every single time.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So one more question.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I told you that was all I had, but I thought of one more thing.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um, should a loan originator be investing in their business right now from a marketing standpoint, or should they just be kind of holding tight?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think like any investment, it probably depends upon the investment uh and the dollar amount.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm always looking for things that I can do that are great processes that might be a time or um an intellect investment that doesn't necessarily just have me throwing money at a problem.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I have great caution about just throwing money at something that's not working.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it maybe not working because I don't have a good process around it?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, um I just implemented through Claude a pipeline update for all my pre-approvals every Friday.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: So odds are the agent's gonna go out that weekend with the the client, or if they're gonna go out, they're probably going out on the weekend, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's when people have time to do that.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's Friday.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: How what am I sending to that agent and that client that says, hey, here's what we discussed, here's where you guys are.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm I will be intermittently.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would never say I'm always gonna be available, but I'll be intermittently available if you need me to run numbers over the weekend, or if we need to do a conference call together.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here, let's talk through scenarios, that meeting them where they are, right?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of discipline or that kind of process.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that right there is an investment.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: May not be a financial investment, but it's an investment of your time to develop a process that I think will pay off, pay extreme dividends as far as investing in technologies.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I think there's some great ones out there, but I would be very judicious and I would ask people who are using them um their experience using them before just committing dollars.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um along the same questi line of questioning, are you personally, uh being an on-the-street originator, are you doubling down on the things that have already been working or are you looking at new areas?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh definitely new areas.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely new areas.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I continue to do the things that I've always been doing.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and sometimes it feels like, holy smokes, how much more can I do?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think almost every uh originator who is weathered through this, who's had some level of success, has to eventually look in the mirror and go, how much more can I do?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm already doing this.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I feel like I'm already maxed out, like I cannot add one more thing to my plate.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it's really valuable to have someone in your position that can go give a uh an objective overview of what you're doing and go, you should shed this.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not yielding you any results.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And here's something you can add.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I am definitely still adding new stuff and and trying new things to see what resonates with people.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And my best feedback really comes from typically the real estate agents, that that pipeline thing I just told you about, which I've never done before in my career.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Something new.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the the response that I get via email from those agents is pretty incredible.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, wow, I really love this.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is this something new you're doing?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, hey, I did just talk with them the other day, and we are going out this week.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all of that feedback that I never would have gotten before.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the great thing is it's a leverage technology through essentially a POS system that we developed here, you know, within our company.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And although it probably took you a little bit of time to build it out, you're probably executing it.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't know, but my guess is every Friday it takes you minutes.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would say maximum, it takes me about 45 minutes to get it out.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's 45 minutes to continue to reinforce with the referral partner that, hey, I'm your guy.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm your guy that's thinking about what you're doing.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm keeping you updated on all the conversations I had with these folks this past week or these past few weeks.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here for you.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, keep me in mind.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, so just one of the takeaways I want to make sure everybody heard from something you just shared is that you're essentially auditing your time to some degree.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And let me say you're auditing activities.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what you're trying to do is do I need to double down on the things that are currently working for me?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And should I be looking at new avenues to bring in business?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the only way that you can know the answers to that is if you're actually tracking it to some degree, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, like a lot of times when I sit down with a loan originator and we're talking about where their business is at, it's difficult for me to um counsel them, so to speak, or coach them in the right way if they don't have any record of what they're actually doing.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So what, hey, how do we know that this is working or not if you don't so like as I'll give you an example, like, oh, well, I go out and do broker opens every Tuesday.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, are you doing one or four?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's working and that number was two, maybe the answer now is four.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what I mean by like, hey, if you're tracking your business, right, it's much easier to track what your results are too.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you actually know, am I spending time on things that are fruitful?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if I am, let's double down.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm not, let me take some time away from that and invest it into some other areas of my business.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: No different than, you know, trying to lose weight, right?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you're if you're counting your calories and you're being honest with yourself and you're keeping a journal or keeping a ledger, odds are you're gonna have great success.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not counting, there's a muffin in there that you missed.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a handful of MMs, there's a late night snack, there's a you know, what a cheat day, whatever it is, odds are you're missing it and you're not seeing the results that you want to see.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to be willing to sort of understand the value of tracking all these things.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll and I'll get back to and we'll close with this.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Understand the value of time.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest mistakes that I see people in any profession make is not appreciating the preciousness of time as a commodity, right?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's the one commodity we cannot make more of.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And for instance, in starting to use Claude to help me generate my uh financing presentations now to consumers.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So for my entire career, I've been sending Excel spreadsheets to consumers.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do that anymore.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: I now put that Excel spreadsheet into Claude, and Claude builds an online presentation that renders like a web page, and I send the link to the webpage and it gives them a lot of interactive tools.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: A lot, uh, you know, if they don't have Excel on their computer at home, they couldn't open my thing before.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now they can, now they can work in this uh on their mobile device or whatever.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when I started, it was taking 20 minutes per presentation.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to have a real hard conversation with Claude about I can't, I can't take 20 minutes.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: This has to be 90 seconds or less for you to build this.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got it down now to 56 seconds.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I know that because time is that important to me.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I have to be able to get this out quickly because I got to get on to the next thing.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can't sit here and lose precious time just creating a financing presentation.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, the the the story behind that was fantastic, but the other thing you did with that was you made yourself a differentiator in the market.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing something different to present options to borrowers that nobody else is really doing.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So cool.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, we we appreciate you joining us for another episode of the Ground Game Podcast.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want you to know on behalf of Mark and myself, man, we're here to support you in your business in any way that we can.