Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep #6: Blake Andrews: Give Back Homes

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Ep #6: Blake Andrews: Give Back Homes · Mortgage Marketing Radio

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• 1:17
  Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio.
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  Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth
• 1:24
  in Mortgage Marketing.
• 1:26
  Hello and welcome to another edition of Mortgage Marketing Radio.
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  I'm your host, Jeff Zimper and I am thoroughly thrilled, honored and humbled that today's
• 1:36
  guest was willing to make time from his busy schedule to share his message with us and
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  my hope in bringing our guest on here today is that you guys take this message to heart.
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  You hit your local market, you get out in the field and you become evangelists for this
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  cause for this message today because there's few things you can do better for your business
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  and for yourself personally than to attach yourself to a worthwhile cause.
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  And so that brings me to our special guest today, Blake Andrews, who is the co-founder
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  of Give Back Homes and what is Give Back Homes?
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  You're going to be excited if you haven't heard about this before, you really need to dig
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  in here.
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  Give Back Homes is changing lives both in the real estate community and across the world.
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  And they do that by for every real estate transaction being able to build a home for
• 2:31
  someone in need, both domestically and internationally and they're making a huge impact, as I said,
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  in the real estate community and to people's lives personally.
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  So without further ado, welcome to the show, Blake.
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  Thank you for being here.
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  Hey, are you?
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  I am living the dream, as I like to say, my friend.
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  Yeah, so I'd rather than kind of want to tell your story.
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  I wanted to let you tell your story and I know obviously in preparing for any of these
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  podcasts, I read up on any of the guests and I was digging into your background and how
• 3:03
  you had previously worked at Tom's shoes kind of in their social giving division.
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  And I want to go back, I guess, to that moment in time, if we can, where you're on this mission
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  trip for Tom's shoes and everybody knows, right, Tom's, right, donates a shoe, basically
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  for every shoe sold.
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  And you made a trip to Nicaragua, I believe, and something happened to you there and maybe
• 3:29
  something changed, you were impacted, but maybe let's start from there if that's okay.
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  Absolutely, I got to travel around the world putting shoes on kids' feet and I was in
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  Nicaragua and met this little girl, seven-year-old, never owned a pair of shoes in her life.
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  And I'll never forget, I put the pair of shoes on her and she just lit up.
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  It was like, you can't explain it really until you see it in real life, but it was something
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  it changed me and I saw her, she hugged me and she took off running and I saw her run to her
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  house and her house was a five by seven tarp wood dirt floor home, no windows, no doors, no floors.
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  And I had that feeling, had the most amazing feeling when I put that pair of shoes on her feet.
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  And I saw what a pair of shoes did for a child and I wanted to figure out a way to build
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  them homes and that's kind of how it all started.
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  So my thing racing.
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  Yeah, that's beautiful and so it was the fact that you saw where she was living that really
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  struck you, because I've had summer situations done stuff with habitat for humanity and things
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  like that and mission trips to Mexico and you're right, when you take a look at somebody's
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  living situation, you compare that to what we have here in the States.
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  Was that kind of the moment where you're like, it just like came over you like you couldn't
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  believe that she lived in that type of environment?
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  Yeah, it's just not just her and her mom and dad, like her and there's seven people that
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  live in those little homes sometimes and I just said I can't imagine that pair of shoes made
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  her the happiest girl in the world and to think of them owning a home and handing them a set of
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  keys one day, it's really powerful.
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  Yeah, when you think about it, what could make a larger impact to somebody?
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  Obviously, the shoes make an impact because right on their feet and they're walking around
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  every day and it's amazing to think what's such a little thing like that, the difference
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  that makes in somebody's life.
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  But then you take it all the way up to somebody's home and I've seen the pictures on your
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  website, on an Instagram, over at givebackhomes.com and the conditions that people had been
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  living in and do live in on an ongoing basis, I guess what for any good person, right?
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  What comes over you when you see that is you start asking yourself, geez, how can I help?
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  How can I make a difference here?
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  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's a, people always say it's pretty neat that you
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  saw something and wanted to make a difference and actually acted on it, you know what I mean?
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  Well, that's the big difference, right? You acted on it.
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  Yeah, and that's the thing that I tell people that are joining giveback homes that there's
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  sayers and there's doers. There's people that walk around and say, oh, I give back and I do this
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  and do that. There's actually people that really do give back and really do give up their time
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  and actually look into giving back responsibly rather than just writing a check to a non-profit
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  and have no idea where it goes. Did it really even help the reason behind the charity?
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  Yeah, so all right, so we're at that moment in time, you know, you're traveling with Tom Shoes,
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  you know, and you're impacting kids in people's lives by donating shoes and that's a wonderful
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  thing. And then you, you know, have that kind of aha moment about, you know, the home living
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  situation. So what happens from there? Take me back to how do you then turn this into, you know,
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  a cause in connecting this into real estate? My two years after that trip to Nicaragua, just
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  randomly my wife and I were looking at buying or building a home in Manhattan Beach, California,
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  and I got to know our realtor Nick Schneider and I'll never forget one day he looked at me and said,
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  man, I'm kind of new to real estate. It's a small town, you know, all the guys,
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  all the guys have been doing it for a long time, kind of get the business and referrals and I don't
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  have any of that stuff and I need to do something, you know, you worked at Tom Shoes and I've got
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  to figure out a way to give back and stand out and be different. He said, you know, all realtors and
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  brokerages give back gifts that flowers or that base to a client, but they really don't need
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  there's saying flowers or a base for their home. What can I do? And then that's when the
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  wheel started turning and then I came up with the idea of having realtors actually turn their clients
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  into humanitarians. Yeah, and he was your first member, right? He was our first member, huh?
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  That's great. I saw some of the videos of him out there on the build projects with you guys.
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  All right, so that's a great idea and obviously there's a lot of, you know, which we don't
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  have necessarily time to get into here today, but you know, a lot of, I'm sure, hard work, sweat,
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  equity, you know, maybe a little blood as well that went into making give back homes what it is today.
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  So how many members roughly do you have right now? We have over 500 members right now and we
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  actually have two brokerages fully on board. One of the brokerages is really a high-powered brokerage
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  called the agency out of Beverly Hills, right? And we're actually with Mauricio, the founder
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  at the DocuSign Convention yesterday and it's just it's really neat to see what they've done and
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  the awareness they've brought to for us across the country, right? And what is generally the
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  reaction that agents have when they first learn about give back homes?
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  It's, you know, it's you get a mixed batch, you know, some people are just like, I already give,
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  I already give, I already donate. And some people are kind of blown away when they sit back and
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  realize, hey, well, this could be great for my business. This could be great for me as a person.
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  And this could actually, me turning my clients into humanitarian could actually, you know,
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  get the respect and the trust that I want out on the streets.
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  Yeah, and so I want to dive in a little bit here because what I'm all about on this podcast is,
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  you know, what I call truth in mortgage marketing and a lot of what I try and convey to my members is,
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  you know, kind of your point about, you know, with your friend Nick, the realtor there,
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  he was looking for a way to stand out from the crowd from the noise and, you know, doing the same
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  thing everybody else does doesn't cut it. You know, there's the old saying, if you're trying to
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  keep up with the Jones, is the, you know, the worst thing that can happen is you become one of them.
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  So what I'm trying to do is, is, you know, help my members build a platform, right? So they can
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  get noticed and rise above the noise. And that's why I think, you know, the causal marketing that
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  you're involved with makes so much sense. And, you know, whether you're talking about millennials,
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  and if you're going to be targeting millennials as first time home buyers or, you know,
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  just consumers in general, I mean, the data the research is out there. One study I just looked at
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  this morning was that 90% of consumers say they would switch brands to one associated with a cause.
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  You know, given comparable price and quality. So let's maybe talk through a little bit about
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  what, why is this a smart move for people in a similar situation to your, your realtor for a
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  Nick where they're looking to rise above the noise and stand out from the competition. You know,
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  maybe you can give me some of the specifics about what you guys do that helps someone, you know,
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  achieve that. Well, you know, in business and life, I mean, you've got to differentiate yourself.
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  And, you know, and I don't know how many mortgage brokers there are, but we say there's two
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  million realtors. And if you're doing what everybody else is doing, you're not really standing out.
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  So I think that by joining something, by by people knowing you've taken the next step,
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  like where we have a, you know, is what we've built as a community of realtors and brokerages.
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  And now we have some mortgage folks involved. We wanted to all have the common goal of helping
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  build homes for families in need. Right. Yeah. So let's talk about, though, like we were talking
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  about before we hit record, you know, you said you're the home buyer is your best advocate. So
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  let's bridge together the various parties. All right. So I'm a realtor. I'm a mortgage loan
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  officer. We're working together on a transaction. Maybe bring it in from the home buyer side.
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  How are they impacted by involvement here? Well, you know, I think usually, I mean,
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  is a is a realtor, you know, they're pretty focused on their getting their commission.
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  And I think when you go and you pitch to get a new listing or whatever and you tell your client
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  or potential client that, you know, what you want to do for them, you know, if you work with me,
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  I want to help build a home for a family and your name. And I think they're just blown away.
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  They're not used to hearing that. And so I think right there, that turns them in when they end up
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  working with you and you make a donation, your name, and then we send them a client. Thank you,
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  letter. Every dinner party, every birthday party, every social function they do, they're your
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  advocate on the street helping you saying what a great experience it was working with you as a
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  give back homes member. Yeah. So, so and that's great. I mean, I'm thinking about, you know, so myself
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  as a mortgage professional, when I'm engaging, I'm able to put the realtor aside for the moment
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  because as a loan officer, I have an opportunity to participate and become a member of give back
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  homes, right? Right. Regardless of what a realtor does or not. So I can start engaging with my clients
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  and as a point of differentiation, you know, for every transaction that we close here at ABC
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  mortgage, right, we're going to what's that actual talk track? What do they actually get as a result
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  of that? You know, is what you know, no thing that we did, there was very interesting. We first
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  started, I wouldn't ask a lot of realtor and they're like, God, you know, I already give 5% to
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  here and 10% to there. And what what we did is we made it so you could give any amount at any time.
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  So we don't want people to feel like, oh gosh, like, I've got to give 5%. I'm giving 5% to my kids,
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  softball team or whatever. So it's very, we ask people to make one donation a year, make 10
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  donations, make 100, make one. But I think it takes a lot of pressure off people to feel like
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  they're giving up, I mean, they make a living by their commissions. And if they always feel like
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  they're giving it up all the time, they can probably put a put stress on them. So we've made it very,
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  very open. We asked, you know, any amount at any time. Well, you do have a membership option, right?
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  Right. It is membership based. And then that's the thing is we wanted, we didn't want to be a charity
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  because we didn't want to go out and ask for money. We wanted to provide a service. We wanted a
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  turnkey solution for someone to brand themselves as a social good realtor, right? Yeah. And then
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  this is, I'm thinking about, this is my theme. As you know, I'm running in the context of, okay,
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  if I'm a mortgage professional and I, you know, I'm wanting to associate my brand with, with
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  causal marketing, you guys provide resources to do that in the way of custom ads. Like you said,
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  let the client thank you letters, open house kits, which is really cool. You know, for, for
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  loan officers who want to team up with agents and they want to do joint open houses together,
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  you as a loan officer can come in and provide some of those resources to really make an
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  impact in that open house postcards, door hangers, right? All these different marketing related
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  tools that you can attach your brand to customize and utilize kind of, you know, in a co-branded
• 15:02
  fashion. Absolutely. Yeah. We can do other listing pages. You know, we can help set up their
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  business cards. And we asked, you know, all of our members to put, you know, they give back
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  home's logo on your emails, business cards, listing pages, everything because the, the more
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  that people see it, the more they're going to wonder what give back homes is. And eventually,
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  when they do ask you what it is and you tell them, I think you've got a new advocate.
• 15:27
  Well, yeah. I mean, you know, absolutely, right? You made the point earlier about differentiation.
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  And so you're really doing that. And especially, you know, with, you know, as you pointed out,
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  there really aren't a lot of mortgage people involved in this yet. And you know, we hope to change
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  that is you've got a chance to be kind of first in your market and lead that cause.
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  But I think it, you know, I've got to assume it's like, you know, who wouldn't respond
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  positively to that? It's like that statistic I gave earlier about 90% of consumers would switch.
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  I mean, that's where the market is moving towards today is, you know, wanting to do business
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  with people that are doing good and using a portion of proceeds, right, to make a difference.
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  And I think that just, you know, there wouldn't be hardly anybody that doesn't resonate with out there,
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  right? I mean, the other day, consumers want to give their business to brands they trust.
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  And a company, a person or a company with a social conscience, you know?
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  Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. So have you, you know, in terms of a loan officer working with a
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  real estate agent, right? Again, I'm thinking for this angle of, you know, here's the, here's the
• 16:36
  problem loan officers have, right? It's similar to that problem we talked about with realtors. There's
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  two million of them and everybody looks the same. Well, loan officers have a similar problem in
• 16:45
  the real estate community and that everybody's doing the same stuff and they're trying to write
• 16:48
  stand out and get noticed and get attention. And so this is one thing that loan officers can
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  incorporate into their daily activities, whether, as you said, they're doing email, put the
• 16:58
  logo on your email and your marketing related materials. A lot of my members do workshops and
• 17:03
  classes for real estate agents. So they're putting butts in the seats and they're teaching loan
• 17:07
  officers. I'm different, I'm sorry, teaching realtors, different strategies on marketing and branding
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  and social media and things like that. And so this would be a great opportunity for those loan
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  officers to introduce them to give back homes and offer the opportunity to partner up together
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  on something like this. 100%. You know, we've had a couple of networking events down here and it's
• 17:30
  pretty neat to see a lot of realtors that were kind of backstabbing each other in this area
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  and working together. And then, you know, we had a mortgage guy down here that actually, a mortgage
• 17:41
  girl actually from Orange County that came to the event and ended up doing two deals with two
• 17:47
  different realtors from down here. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, just that alone is a
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  marketing advantage. It's a competitive and branding advantage just associating yourself to
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  a cause like give back homes. That's why I'm such a big fan of it and wanted to have you here.
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  What else can you tell us about, you know, the benefits of membership, if you will, right? I mean,
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  there's obviously the marketing benefits of that. But maybe share a couple of stories that you know
• 18:17
  of from your agent members and what they've told you. Well, Nick, I mean, our first members,
• 18:24
  like one of the best examples because I always say it's like a gym membership, you know,
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  you get out of it what you put into it. And if you go and you tell the story and brand yourself
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  as a give back homes member, it's going to grow your business. And Nick has become one of the top.
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  I think he's got seventh ranked agent down in South Bay and you have guys that have been doing
• 18:47
  it for 25, 30 years down here. And he is known as people literally stop him on the street and
• 18:53
  goes, you're that give back guy. You know, and he's built seven homes for families. He's been to
• 18:59
  Nick Aragua. He said it's just pretty much changed his life as a person as a father, like just
• 19:07
  being part of something, you know, and always say if you always do what you do, if you do what
• 19:11
  you always did, you're going to get what you always got. And so when people are like, how may I
• 19:15
  have my business? And I don't know what I'm going to do. Well, if you keep doing the same thing,
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  you're going to get the same result. Yeah. So I want to clarify something there. You said, so
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  when did you buy your home through Nick, the realtor? We bought it. We've lived here two years now.
• 19:30
  It took a year and five months to build. So it's three and a half years ago. Okay. So three and a half
• 19:35
  years ago, this guy, Nick, your realtor comes to you. You didn't know him before. And he basically tells
• 19:41
  you he's trying to he's struggling. He's getting started in his business, right? And he's having a
• 19:46
  tough time, right? Yeah. Okay. So so he gets associated with, you know, give back homes as you
• 19:52
  beginning to launch that and all that kind of stuff. But the moral of the story is is three years
• 19:56
  later, roughly, he goes from essentially a newbie in the business with not much market share and
• 20:02
  being beat out by all the other agents who've been around forever. And now he's like the seventh
• 20:07
  ranked agent in Manhattan Beach, California, which is a very competitive market. Yes. Yeah. I mean,
• 20:13
  that's his story. And it's it's incredible to hear him say he's so passionate about it. And
• 20:18
  you know, he thinks he all the time like you did it yourself, you know, because you've got
• 20:22
  it goes back to my gym membership. You got to, you know, you got to put it in the time.
• 20:26
  And it comes back tinful. Wow. You know, it's the other thing you just popped into my mind is we know
• 20:31
  the statistics about real estate agents and how, you know, most of them unfortunately don't get
• 20:36
  referred after that transaction, you know, down the road. And the reason why variety of reasons,
• 20:43
  one, they don't follow up that database marketing, you know, top of mind, all that kind of stuff.
• 20:47
  They basically are forgotten. But I have to imagine that when you associate yourself to
• 20:53
  give back homes and you're putting all the marketing related activities into play without the
• 20:58
  thank you letter, the open houses, all that stuff, you become known as, hey, you're that that
• 21:01
  give back guy. Yep. All of a sudden, you get remembered 100%. Yeah, I mean, definitely,
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  I mean, you think about it when someone, when someone, a home buyer is used to hear in the same
• 21:12
  story and they hear something different and then you actually stay in touch with them. That's
• 21:16
  one thing that Mauricio spoke about yesterday at the docuSign convention was that staying in touch
• 21:23
  with your clients, because like I said, they're your advocates. Absolutely. So where are you
• 21:31
  building homes? I know it started in Nicaragua, but you have some other affiliations, right? Yeah,
• 21:35
  we build and 20 states in the US, cities, I guess, and three countries. So Haiti, El Salvador,
• 21:45
  in Nicaragua. And for you, there's just a real, there's an affinity to Nicaragua.
• 21:51
  Yeah, I mean, it truly, like, my story about how it all started is, is Nicaragua changed my life.
• 21:58
  I mean, it changed my life. And I always just said, I want to figure out a way to change theirs.
• 22:02
  Right. I've stuck to, I'm a man of my word. And so I've stuck to that. And I think,
• 22:09
  I always want to build there, always, always, no better what happens. How often do you go back?
• 22:14
  I go back about three to four times a year. Nice. Yeah. I'm out. You've got some great relationships
• 22:19
  down there now, huh? Yeah. You know, they're very appreciative people. So it's neat. Yeah. That's
• 22:24
  great. So, all right, I'm looking at your page here, give back homes.com. There's obviously
• 22:30
  lots of information about how to be a member and things like that on there. What, out of a transaction,
• 22:38
  I want to get real specific, how does that work? It's based on how much they want to donate out of
• 22:42
  that transaction for the real estate agent. Right. And that goes back to the any amount at any time.
• 22:46
  I mean, we know home sales, loans, all that, or different prices. Right. And so,
• 22:55
  give what you're comfortable with, you know, and make that donation and your client's name and
• 22:58
  then let us send them a letter and then let them be your advocate. Right. And the same is true.
• 23:03
  Obviously, as you said, kind of as a loan officer, right, you can decide a portion of the proceeds
• 23:08
  from every transaction can go to that. Yeah. You know, we have a lot of people who
• 23:13
  every 10 transactions, they make a donation to a family. And so they'll do that. And then we'll
• 23:18
  send 10 client thank you letters. We actually had a brokerage in Alabama build a home for a family
• 23:25
  to build a full home for a family in Nicaragua, cost $5,000. And it took 25 clients. He built a home
• 23:33
  and then we sent 25 client thank you letters to all of his clients. So you've got 25 people on
• 23:42
  the street saying, you're not going to believe what our agent did for us. Yeah. And you know,
• 23:47
  that can be part of a larger kind of branding, marketing effort, if you will, where, you know,
• 23:54
  hey, help us build a home, right, for a family in Nicaragua. And to get there, I need right,
• 24:00
  X amount of transactions, 25, whatever it is. And that can just be part of your overall messaging.
• 24:05
  And you can you can even here's I'm sure you've had people do this like afterwards after you
• 24:09
  reach that goal, you have some type of like a client appreciation party or something like that.
• 24:14
  Yeah, absolutely. Wow. That's really cool. So you're sending the letters on behalf of your
• 24:20
  members. So that's cool, right? So that means that's one less thing I have to do as a real estate
• 24:24
  professional is actually remember to send thank you letters. Yeah. And you know what, you know,
• 24:28
  for $50 a month is what it calls to join, get back homes. And we always say we do your listing
• 24:35
  pages for you. We hope you do all your stuff you need. And if you hired someone to do a listing
• 24:40
  page for you at $50 an hour, you did three or four a month. That's about four. It can be anywhere
• 24:46
  from 200 to four or $500 a month. Someone doing your listing pages for you. And for $50 a month,
• 24:51
  we help you do all that. Right. So it's kind of, you know, it's kind of a just makes sense.
• 24:58
  And good for your business. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that listing page. What is that
• 25:02
  exactly? Is that something that's hosted on your site or that they use? We actually make it for
• 25:06
  them. So what they'll do is they'll send us. So say I got a new listing. They'll send it in,
• 25:11
  send it to our designer. And he'll make a listing page for them. We'll send it to them and they
• 25:16
  approve it. And it's theirs. Just make it super simple. Like I said, it's give back home was really
• 25:23
  made to be a turnkey solution to becoming a social good realtor. Yeah. You guys are, it looks like
• 25:31
  you're packaging up some social media, tweetable, you know, tweets and posts and fact sheets and
• 25:37
  sample marketing pieces. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. We send a media kid out every month with
• 25:44
  new stuff, tweets and all that. And I mean, literally in one day, you can change the way you do
• 25:50
  business and get noticed more, you know? Yeah. And it's very professional. I should point out,
• 25:58
  you know, I've on your website, been on there before and I look at kind of the profiles that you
• 26:04
  build for your members and they're very professional. It's something that, you know, your members can
• 26:10
  take and obviously repurpose on their own sites and social media, but they can also simply direct
• 26:15
  people to their profile page on your site. Right. And that's why we say you want it on your
• 26:21
  business cards and all that stuff. So what if you get so in your business card and they see give
• 26:24
  back homes, they go to give back homes and they're like, oh my god, let me, let me type in Jeff's
• 26:29
  name and pops up and there's your profile page. So they're learning about you. That profile page
• 26:35
  can get you to business alone. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And the materials you guys provide like the,
• 26:42
  you know, the flyers and things like that. I mean, it's really sharp, you know, particularly when
• 26:46
  it comes to either a mortgage professional giving a kind of a client presentation and incorporating
• 26:52
  that in your overall kind of story, you know, and positioning and an agent, of course, in their
• 26:57
  listing presentation. It's got a lot of wild factor to it. It looks sharp. Thank you very much.
• 27:03
  Yeah, you bet. So what's next for you guys? What's on the road map, you know, for the rest of
• 27:08
  this year and beyond? This year, right now we're just really focused on getting some, you know,
• 27:16
  we actually brought in a consultant to help us. We're changing some of the messaging up
• 27:23
  and really go after brokerages. You know, we've seen success with the agency and what it's done
• 27:29
  for their culture, what it's done to help them bring in top talent and retain it. Like you said
• 27:36
  earlier, people want to work with people doing social good. And so people are noticing what the
• 27:42
  agency are doing. So we're going to change some things up just the messaging and then go after
• 27:47
  brokerages and obviously all real estate professionals. We want to grow it out. We have our next
• 27:54
  build day. And we have a bunch of build days throughout the year, but our next big build trip is
• 27:59
  in Nicaragua and December. Okay. So you're kind of preparing for that. Yeah. That's awesome.
• 28:06
  You know, the other thing, the cool thing is I can go on your website and look at your current
• 28:11
  build projects and it shows what percentage those are funded, right, which is cool because
• 28:19
  you know, it's a kind of like that goal or accept the, you know, that's the thermometer that people
• 28:23
  use sometimes in the office or whatever when they have a giving fund or something, right? It's so,
• 28:27
  so, you know, it allows you to track kind of your progress there, but, you know, kind of to what
• 28:31
  we alluded to earlier, you can choose where to send your money, right, to which particular project
• 28:37
  you want to fund. 100%, especially when you make it in your client's name is, you know, I'm shocked,
• 28:43
  the, I'm the people who give to Nicaragua and the people who give locally, like I thought it would
• 28:50
  be a lot more local because that's what people wanted. You got to do locally, you got to do local,
• 28:56
  but it's really amazing amount of people that want to give abroad because such a little amount
• 29:01
  can go such a long way. Right. Yeah. And it's really powerful. It's very powerful. Yeah. I mean,
• 29:06
  I'm looking at the site here on the build projects and obviously you've got Nicaragua, I'll
• 29:10
  sell the door, but then you're also in Haiti. And then you've got a lot of projects across the
• 29:15
  states with habitat you met for humanity, which, which actually when I was at Countrywide Home
• 29:20
  Loans back in the day, we did some stuff with, with habitat for humanity. And it's surprising. Well,
• 29:26
  I don't know, maybe it isn't for some people, but for me, it is, you live in Manhattan Beach. I
• 29:30
  live here in Orange County, so we're not too far from each other. But what I find surprising is,
• 29:36
  you don't have to drive too far in your area to find people in need, you know?
• 29:41
  No. No, it's right around the corner. Yeah. Unfortunately. And so that's why it's just great to
• 29:47
  be able to get out there and make an impact. And so aside from the business benefits you get from
• 29:51
  this, in terms of the marketing and brand affiliation and things like that, I think the biggest benefit,
• 29:57
  and you've kind of, this has been your threat all along, the biggest benefit, as you talked about
• 30:01
  with the agency, the real estate agency there, biggest benefit is what happens to you, the change
• 30:06
  that you have personally. It's just, it's hard to describe if you haven't done it before. And it's
• 30:12
  a different thing, as I'm sure you know, writing a check and just being like, you know, like you said,
• 30:16
  oh, the real, oh, I give 5% here or there. And that's great. But there's a difference between
• 30:21
  writing a check and actually getting out there and doing the work, right? Absolutely. And that's
• 30:26
  the thing is, I don't forget, I spoke at car last year at California Association of Realtors.
• 30:31
  And this guy came up to me after who owns a big brokerage. He said, God, love what you're doing.
• 30:36
  And I said, well, thank you. And he said, but you know, we started a foundation. And I'm like,
• 30:41
  okay, well, the reason why we're doing this is to stay away from that. He said, he said,
• 30:45
  yeah, we've been working on it for 16 months. And we're forcing our agents to give to the
• 30:52
  foundation so we can pay it off. And then we're hoping to give in the middle of 2016. So 16
• 30:58
  months plus say 24 months, they never gave a dollar because when you have a foundation and these
• 31:04
  brokerages, you've got to pay someone to run it. You know, you got to take percentage out of what
• 31:09
  people are donating. And then when you pick a charity to donate the money to from the foundation,
• 31:14
  it takes more off the top. So maybe 20% of all that money on the high side is going to where it's
• 31:19
  supposed to. You know, if we do that for you, that give back homes. And that's what that's
• 31:25
  what I think when people are learning the importance of giving back responsibly and the millennials
• 31:30
  and how they feel about working with someone that they know is giving back responsibly, it's all
• 31:34
  coming to light right now. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff happening in the news
• 31:39
  up around that. And so that's a great point, though, that you make and you know, probably
• 31:44
  expanding that a little bit. You guys have 100% transparency. And you talked about earlier about
• 31:48
  why you're you're a quote for profit and not a charity. If you want to just touch on that for a
• 31:54
  moment, yeah, we didn't want to go out and ask for money. We the beginning, we said we don't want
• 31:59
  to be a charity because we don't want to ask for money. And we wanted to provide a service. We
• 32:05
  wanted to actually grow our members business, make them feel good about giving back. And then we
• 32:10
  wanted to work with nonprofits that would guarantee our 100% model. You know, there's a lot of
• 32:17
  there's a lot of stuff and I'm not going to go into it, but charities that don't give back what
• 32:21
  they're supposed to. And so our whole goal was we'll only work with charities that'll give back
• 32:27
  100% and Habitat Humanity has done that for us. And then we're going to start adding more
• 32:35
  charities this year. But the 100% model and the 100% transparency is critical for us and for our
• 32:43
  members to know that they're giving back responsibly. And when they're telling a client what they're
• 32:49
  doing that there's no fluff. It's their telling is true. Yeah, you can feel confident telling your
• 32:56
  clients that for every dollar that we contribute, it all goes directly to those families in need.
• 33:03
  Right. And you get to see the family. We send pictures and updates and all that stuff. So
• 33:10
  it's, you know, the people who are building full homes, they get to pick the actual family they
• 33:14
  want to build for. And then at the end of it, we send them a picture of the home and send the
• 33:19
  picture of the home to the client they built the home for it. Yeah. Again, that's just another
• 33:25
  powerful tool to use, right? In your your total when you're telling your brand story, right,
• 33:31
  with that social cause marketing. I've seen the pictures on your website of the real estate
• 33:34
  agents where they're out there building the homes. So if you can get out there as a member and
• 33:40
  build the homes, right, that's just going to, you know, help your story that much further. If you
• 33:45
  can't, right, that's really cool, right? You can still use those photos, right? And just share those
• 33:50
  updates with the home with your your your borrower, right? When you've done a loan together as a
• 33:55
  mortgage professional, the home funds, it builds, right? What a great way to stay in touch over
• 34:00
  social media, database marketing, all that stuff, right? You share those updates. That's,
• 34:05
  I'm just thinking live in real time here. You're sharing the funding updates too as the project
• 34:09
  continues to grow in funding, right? You can share that with your sphere of influence. I mean,
• 34:14
  just there's just so many ways I think to integrate this into, you know, kind of your overall
• 34:19
  brand story. Like I said, that is, to me, it's an absolute, you know, brainer. It's a no lose.
• 34:23
  Everything you do, let's, you know, let's point out it's tax deductible as well. So you get that
• 34:28
  benefit. It's marketing expense. The $50 a month is a marketing expense and the donation is tax
• 34:34
  deductible, right? I mean, worst case scenario on this deal is it grows your business. It grows
• 34:40
  your business and it makes you a better human being and perhaps changes your heart. Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:45
  That's really what counts. Well, that's cool. And I think that's probably a good note to like
• 34:48
  wrap it up on. What where do you want to direct people who want to learn more? I just go to give
• 34:54
  backhomes.com. And if anybody, I think you could reach us from the website, if anybody would like
• 35:00
  to talk about it. And we do do brokerage deals and, you know, like big groups of mortgage brokers
• 35:06
  that come in like for the agency, we do it at $25 a member since they came in as a full brokerage.
• 35:13
  Yeah, what a great opportunity to bring that to your organization as if you're a mortgage loan
• 35:17
  officer. You could spearhead this and kind of lead the charge, you know, internally in your
• 35:23
  organization. And when I say that, part of me is like thinking, you know, some of the loan
• 35:27
  officers, you know, they don't want to do it because of the scarcity mindset. I guess that's
• 35:31
  a personal choice. But I think, you know, there's enough to go around and you can't hurt yourself by,
• 35:37
  you know, just just taking the charge and spreading this message as wide and as far as you can,
• 35:42
  you know, it's only going to do good for others and for you ultimately. So take it and run with
• 35:47
  it. And obviously on your website, it give backhomes.com. There's information on the membership
• 35:51
  level, social media connections and all there, you know, dig in, get connected, start getting
• 35:55
  associated with this. And I'm looking forward to you guys making a bigger impact on the mortgage side
• 36:01
  now that you got great momentum on the real estate side. Thanks so much, Jeff. I appreciate it.
• 36:05
  You bet. I know you're busy, guys. So I'm going to let you go. Thanks for making time. Once again,
• 36:10
  give backhomes.com is where you want to learn more. And like you have yourself a great day, man.
• 36:16
  Enjoy, Jeff. Thank you. All right. Thanks for listening to mortgage marketing radio.
• 36:20
  If you like today's episode, please make sure to subscribe on iTunes, share your comments,
• 36:25
  and we will see you on the next one. I'm your host, Jeff Zimfer. Take care.
• 36:39
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