Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / How to Win More Deals with Financial Literacy

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How to Win More Deals with Financial Literacy · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
• 0:04
  the real estate agents is essential for success.
• 0:06
  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
• 0:15
  can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
• 0:20
  Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
• 0:25
  Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
• 0:31
  And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
• 0:34
  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
• 0:52
  in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too.
• 0:56
  Don't miss out.
• 0:57
  Go check it out right now.
• 0:58
  Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
• 1:03
  Hey, listeners, Jeff Sinfer, welcome to another edition of the Mortgage Marketing
• 1:24
  Video Podcast.
• 1:25
  Thrilled as always that you've tuned in, hope this finds you doing well and preparing
• 1:29
  for the new year.
• 1:32
  There's lots to look at, lots to evaluate.
• 1:35
  And I'd love to have you guys join us in the conversation.
• 1:38
  So if you haven't yet joined the podcast Facebook group, go over to Facebook and type in Mortgage
• 1:43
  Marketing Radio, find the Facebook group and let us know when you get in there.
• 1:47
  One of the top three priorities and activities that you're working on for the new year.
• 1:50
  I'd love to know that.
• 1:52
  And then secondly, is I wanted to share with you some stats I recently pulled if you haven't
• 1:57
  heard this by now.
• 1:59
  Here are the statistics since I've been helping loan officers partner with real estate agents.
• 2:07
  Get more purchase loans without chasing and cold calling agents who don't want to talk
• 2:11
  with you.
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  Actually ran the numbers on this and there is some approximation estimation to this, but
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  since I've been doing this for multiple years now, we have collectively as a group delivered
• 2:25
  myself included over 2,412 classes from which were created over 4,823 agent conversations
• 2:35
  resulting in excess of $175 million in total funded loans since doing this over the last
• 2:42
  five years.
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  Now my question is there's a lot you could be doing the real, the better question is
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  what's going to move the needle most?
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  And I don't think there's much argument or discussion around what moves the needle most
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  is conversations, conversations with people who have either the ability to buy or the
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  ability to send you a client, buyer, referral, etc.
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  And even in today's market with all the disruption going on still at the top of the pyramid
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  when done correctly and pursued properly, realtors are a key part of that source of people
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  who can send you potential buyers and some themselves become clients.
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  But how do you do that?
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  Well, we're leading with an educational platform.
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  We are attracting agents instead of chasing and we have got a ton of success stories and
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  if you want to see more of those stories behind the numbers that I just gave you, you can
• 3:37
  go to mortgagemarketing.pro, all new page put up there with a member testimonials and
• 3:42
  comments that you can read and decide for you.
• 3:45
  If you want to take the next step and have a call with me, a conversation with me to get
• 3:49
  acquainted and see if hey, if this is the right fit for you and if you're the right fit
• 3:53
  for us, that you can go over to mortgagemarketing.pro, check that out, thank you the show notes
• 3:57
  as well.
• 3:58
  All right, this week my special guest is somebody who's fast becoming a friend and who
• 4:05
  has been a mentor and I just have a lot of respect from four for some time now.
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  And his name is Todd Ballinger and Todd has been in the mortgage space for decades.
• 4:15
  Forgive me, Todd for aging you, but let's just face it, right?
• 4:18
  The truth is the truth.
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  So he's been in the mortgage industry for decades, both as a company owner, leader,
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  originator and has really leveled up his financial literacy, shall I say.
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  And why I wanted to bring the conversation with Todd here today to this episode is because
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  I think as you've heard me say before about we need to become more physically literate,
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  right?
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  And how do we differentiate ourselves?
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  Clearly, it can't be on rates that's, you know, everybody can say that.
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  So how do you create a better customer experience?
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  How do you deliver more value?
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  A lot of times it comes back to what your customer experience process and part of that can be
• 4:59
  to what level do you make an impact in the financial trajectory of your clients beyond
• 5:05
  just closing alone?
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  And I think the conversation we have with Todd today is going to demonstrate that very
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  well.
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  Let's please listen and take note, make sure you check the show notes is because he's
• 5:14
  got some cool special offers for you that are absolutely free to participate in what
• 5:19
  he calls borrowsmartuniversity.com, borrowsmartuniversity.com, check that out, that's chock full of tons of education
• 5:28
  about mortgage literacy, liability, real estate, financial literacy, and then life literacy.
• 5:34
  And the content and the education that Todd's got in there are just a top notch in phenomenal.
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  So I encourage you to check that out.
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  He's also got a Facebook group, the National Institute of Financial Education, the NIFE.
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  That's a Facebook group.
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  I encourage you to check that out as well because that's got tons of great info in it
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  is also to help you just become more informed about what's happening in the markets, what's
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  happening, you know, financially, and then how to be more intelligent and impactful both
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  with your prospects, clients and referral partners.
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  So we get into a whole host of conversations on this discussion and I am thrilled to
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  bring our special guest, Todd Ballinger to you today.
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  So without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
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  Todd Ballinger, welcome to the show.
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  Hey, thanks for having me, Jeff.
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  It is a pleasure and it's funny during the right before we hit record, something popped
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  in my head that you are among the best kept secrets in the industry.
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  We're going to talk about that in a moment and why that is.
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  For the listeners who aren't familiar with Todd Ballinger, who are you and what do you
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  want them to know about you?
• 6:42
  Wow, good question.
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  Hey, let's see, yes, I'm a curious explorer, you know, I always think of finding things
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  that I find exciting and then finding ways to sell them oftentimes, you know, like selling
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  an ID or a concept, right now I'm working at a major university, which is a blast being
• 7:03
  a professor and working with college students, but I've always been a student and I've always
• 7:08
  enjoyed teaching and I was fascinated by money as a kid.
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  I was one of those kids that, you know, in high school and probably even middle school
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  was, you know, reading thinking, grow rich and things like that that I was exposed to.
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  And so it made sense to become a financial advisor, but I got there by way of I started
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  to be a realtor, got my realtor license, I hated working, the idea of working on the
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  weekend, wasn't going to work for me and then I got, I figured that out right away and
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  then I got my insurance and securities licenses and decided I was going to be a financial advisor
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  and thought I'd learn about money, but that just teaches you a compliance, it doesn't
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  really teach you about money, it's about a start of financial planning practice and and
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  ran that for several years until I realized that people were making more mistakes on
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  the liability side of the balance sheet than they were on the asset side, you know, because
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  the big money was spent on liabilities and mortgages and house payments.
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  It wasn't spent on savings.
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  That was what was left over and for most people there wasn't much left over.
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  So I crossed the balance sheet as I like to say and became a lender in 1992.
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  I got a job apprenticing with a gentleman in Atlanta who was in had been in the mortgage
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  industry forever and it was paper apps and typewriters and things like that, but I learned
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  in the mortgage business from him and his name was Jake and started a mortgage company
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  and just decided it was going to be based on financial literacy and I was going to take
• 8:35
  the best of what I learned as a financial advisor and try to incorporate that into lending
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  and that's sort of what kicked off, you know, what's been a 20, 30 year Odyssey.
• 8:44
  Yeah, thank you for that.
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  We're going to, I'm looking at the notes here for the conversation today, you've done
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  a lot more than just that, but I'm curious right out of the gate, what, what did you like?
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  What did you find better?
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  What did you enjoy more about being a mortgage professional as compared to a financial advisor
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  and any other, you know, comments you want to color with that question?
• 9:05
  Wow, another, another, another doozy.
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  So as a financial advisor, you're fighting to get information to do your job and that
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  information is financial information and it's given sort of in a very bit, bit and piece
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  sort of a way like if you came to me and I was a financial advisor, you might say to me,
• 9:29
  I've got 40,000 in IRA and I've got to now figure out what does that really mean because
• 9:36
  it's like saying my, I'm going to give you my finger to your doctor and you see what
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  you do with a finger and if you do a good job, I'll give you my arm, right?
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  It's a hard thing to really be functional and when I got into lending, the first thing
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  that shocked me is that people gave me all their financial information up front and I realized
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  that could be a much better financial advisor with that information, but then as I started
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  getting into it, I just was fascinated by the long tail of lending and compounding and
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  the fact that a mistake that you make as a, as a first-time home buyer would compound
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  over 70 years because if you're buying your first house at 30 and you're going to live
• 10:19
  in the house for 60 or 70 years, there's a lot of doubles, there's a lot of import there
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  that wasn't being considered and I think the fact that at that particular time, starting
• 10:31
  out being a young, you know, whipper snapper, I was looking for something that allowed
• 10:36
  me to really be competitive and there were a lot of people that were financial advisors
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  that were well established and there were a lot of lenders in our market that were really
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  well established, but I wanted to build a company and grow it and I was like, I kind of do something
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  different here. So it was sort of the combination of those two things and then realizing that I was
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  really fascinated with the fact that I got access to this money and it was easy to spot
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  opportunities for people to have a profound, you know, impact on their financial lives over time
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  and again, just starting with that little bit of financial background as an advisor.
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  So you have always been curious, I think you might have mentioned earlier a curious about money,
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  you were curious about how money works, was it, was it necessarily, hey, how to get rich? I mean,
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  were you looking at like, you know, I don't know, back then if you were eyeballing a, you know,
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  Warren Buffett, if he was on the, on the scene back then or not, but did you have like these,
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  you know, financial gurus, I'm trying to take way back who that was, Michael Milgan,
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  whatever, right? Many, many years ago. But did you have some of those people that you, you know,
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  tried to, what do you say, you know, try to emulate? Emulate and so, yeah. No, I was much,
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  I was much simpler, you know, I was a first-gen kid, first, first one in my family to
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  every other college, my dad was an electrician. So it was more that there was a sense of missing out,
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  like there was something that people understood that we didn't understand as a middle class kind of
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  a family. And I remember having a conversation, I was a, I was a competitive tennis player, I worked
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  to the country club. So as a kid being a tennis player and working at a country club, people
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  were playing tennis during the day. And I was like, how do you do that? If you have a job, right?
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  And, and, and, and they drove really nice cars. And so it was kind of like a puzzle. I was like,
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  what am I missing? You know, what do we, what it was I missing? Not about massive Warren Buffett
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  kind of wealth, but just the practical wealth that allows you not to have the time, but no money,
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  or the money, but no time. But how do you have money and time? You know, it was sort of a formula
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  that I think I was out after kind of early on as a kid. And that means you need to have passive
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  income so that work was somewhat optional for you. And how do you do that? You know, you can inherit
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  it. You can make it. You can, you know, but there were not a lot of ways. And so I was like, all right,
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  if you're going to, I'm not going to inherit it, I don't think. So how do you make that money? And
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  how do you start? And that's where I got fascinated with compounding and, uh,
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  ale Williams had a book out at the time called Common Sense that I first, I read, I think I read
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  that in high school and was like, it just showed very practical ways that $100 a month. You could
• 13:21
  become wealthy in your lifetime. And I was like, that's cool. That's not that hard. I was mowing grass
• 13:26
  and making $100 a week. I could, I could save $100 a month, you know, at 17 or 18. So it was kind
• 13:33
  of that process they got going. I remember, uh, ale Williams, I remember the book, I even owned
• 13:39
  a Common Sense fund. How's that? Nice. Well done. I put my parents in a Common Sense fund and
• 13:45
  they told me it was one of the best performing funds they were ever in. So he did an amazing,
• 13:49
  you know, you get balled out for the zillions of dollars because he had a really simple
• 13:53
  strategy to work. Yeah. The whole byterm and invest the difference for those that are not sure
• 13:59
  who we're talking about. That's time for another day. But if you're buying life insurance,
• 14:04
  by term, that's what we're recommending. Um, okay. So it's interesting when I hear people in the
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  mortgage space talk about fiscal literacy, right? And you've had a natural curiosity about money
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  and how money works. Let's say that not every mortgage originator does, right? And I'm wondering
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  like as we've seen this, this industry evolve over the past 30 years, you know, riding the balance
• 14:30
  between, like you said, you were competitive, right? The balance between sales, winning, closing
• 14:35
  deals. And is it just my imagination or are more people becoming, you know, more those mortgage
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  professionals who want to go next level up and not just be transactional, they're starting to
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  take on this fiscal literacy more. Am I, am I hallucinating or is that actually happening more
• 14:55
  often? No, I think there's won'tness in the air, right? You know, and it's, it's at a lot of
• 15:02
  different, you know, levels, but it's being pushed up. I mean, you know, financial literacy is
• 15:08
  something that, you know, 40% of all public companies said that they were looking forward to
• 15:13
  rolling out some form of financial literacy, you know, in the next year or so. So you see these types
• 15:17
  of things and you're like, all right, but, you know, again, as you're, if you're curious,
• 15:22
  like I used to ask people when they said, I want your lowest rate, I sincerely said why? And it
• 15:28
  sounds like, you know, it's a silly question, right? But I'm like, no, no, why do you want the lowest
• 15:34
  rate? And people would like, look at me like I was, you know, high, you know, this is part where
• 15:41
  we bring out the big giant, you know, do these like Elon Musk and we start smoking up.
• 15:47
  But, you know, I mean, I was like, why? And they were like, well, because I don't want the lowest
• 15:52
  rate. And they would repeat like in the question, I'm like, well, why do you want the lowest rate?
• 15:56
  And they were like, because sometimes they didn't even know, right? They just, and I say, okay,
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  sometimes they go, I want the lowest payment. I was like, cool. All right, I'm with you now. I
• 16:06
  would want the lowest payment, too. So if you had the lowest possible payment, what would that make
• 16:12
  possible? And then now they're having to say, well, well, if I had a lowest payment, I'd have more
• 16:22
  money. Yeah. Great. Okay. What would you do with that? Right? And they would, and then they,
• 16:29
  now you're like, I don't know, I'm not necessarily mean, if you had an extra hundred, two,
• 16:33
  and I was a month right now, I gave it to you. What would you do with it? And there were only
• 16:37
  two possible choices for most people. I'd spend it, or I'd save it, right? And most people would
• 16:43
  ask that question would say, I would save it. And then I would say, all right, you know what's
• 16:49
  common? They're like, okay, I know. Why would I save it? Yeah. Yeah. What would you save it for?
• 16:53
  I mean, what would that do for you? And they would say it was often college funding for my kids,
• 16:58
  or I just want to feel secure and retirement. And so what I started to realize is these sort of
• 17:05
  very robotic answers, if you ask someone several times, you could actually get to the heart of the
• 17:11
  matter. And the heart of the matter was consistent. It was about security. It was about financial
• 17:17
  well-being in their future. Some level of control that they felt finances might provide,
• 17:23
  or a brighter future for their kids. And I started thinking, wait a minute, maybe I'm confused with
• 17:28
  what I'm doing. Like I think I'm selling money, but maybe I'm making something possible. Like
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  one of the common things we talk about, you know, in our courses, there's a huge difference between
• 17:40
  house and home. And I listened to couples specifically, and the wife would use the word home,
• 17:48
  and the husband used the word house. So what did I do? I said, yeah, tell me, you keep saying home,
• 17:54
  and you keep saying house. I'm kind of curious. When you hear a house, what are you talking about?
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  And they would say, you know, I mean the house, the house, the mortgage, the HVAC system,
• 18:05
  you know, the gutter's got to be claimed. And I was like, okay, tell me, when you hear the word home,
• 18:10
  what are you thinking? They're like, well, that's my family. That's where we live. It's where we
• 18:15
  have Christmas. And we use these things interchangeably. But again, it was that curiosity that helped me
• 18:21
  to realize that, wait a minute, both of these things are critical. But if I'm managing my abilities
• 18:26
  in creating wealth, I'm focusing on the house. And if I do that, the experience in the home could be
• 18:31
  amplified. But there are two different things, two very different dynamics. And we have to address
• 18:38
  both. There were times when I would say, I'm going to share with you something about the house that
• 18:41
  you need to understand. And it's, it's the impact of the payment and what could happen by dealing
• 18:46
  X. Now, if you do that, you could own the house in 15 to 20 years, 10 years sooner than you might
• 18:53
  have thought about owning the house. And how would it feel to be in a home that's paid off,
• 18:58
  free and clear, right? What's the experience like? And so you start to, you start to understand the
• 19:04
  impact of the way that you use the words. And more importantly, the impact of what you do
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  as a lender. And that made lending more exciting to me. It made it more fun. And it was contagious in a
• 19:15
  way that sharing with realtors and, you know, if you have time, we'll talk more about financial
• 19:19
  advisors. And why went back to that well as a former financial advisor? But it's what really
• 19:24
  differentiated us in our market in terms of, of what we, what we do and what we did.
• 19:30
  Yeah, I'm listening to that dialogue. It's in a great, it's a great series of questioning.
• 19:34
  And it makes me really curious, where did you learn that? Was that a mentor that you referenced?
• 19:39
  Or was that, you know, more consultative selling coming out of being a financial advisor?
• 19:43
  But where did you kind of learn that? I'd have to go with Socrates for a hundred.
• 19:51
  You know, I was, I was, I read some weird stuff as a kid. And the socratic method of inquiry
• 19:57
  was fascinating to me. And I would ask questions. And often I'd ask the same question three times
• 20:03
  to see if I got the same answer. I never did. And that as a kid made me wonder like, you know,
• 20:08
  what do you want to be when you grow up? I don't know. Why do you ask? You know, you still figuring
• 20:12
  it out for yourself. I mean, because I'm, I'm curious. But I literally, I could just say it was,
• 20:18
  partly it was somewhat innate as a curiosity. But I really was fascinated with people like Socrates
• 20:25
  and the way they simply would ask questions. And I think that's really interesting to pause on that
• 20:30
  from because you found by and large, I'm going to guess that most people answered the questions.
• 20:39
  Yeah. Because they will spackle silence with anything to avoid the terror of not hearing something
• 20:46
  happening. I mean, literally people, people often interrupt a good question with spackling it
• 20:52
  themselves. And if you just ask a question and just sit there quietly, the void always gets filled
• 20:58
  with something. But the first filling of the void is often like an impulse or a
• 21:07
  jerk reaction. Yes, exactly. And that's why it often takes a couple of times to get really down to,
• 21:13
  you know, which because sometimes no one's ever asked them. And so they haven't thought about it.
• 21:18
  But when they do think about it, it reflects back their own belief system, which is really valuable
• 21:24
  to have someone, you know, do that. Well, and that's why I'm pausing here purposefully is
• 21:30
  because from my exposure to the average mortgage originator experience for the consumer in the
• 21:36
  country, as it isn't very to use your term, socratic, right? There are the surface level,
• 21:43
  the 10 or 30 questions. And I would say more often than not, that's it, right? And so I'm a big
• 21:50
  one. If anybody knows anything about me, I'm all a huge believer, an advocate of the customer
• 21:54
  experience and architecting that in a way that completely separates you from everyone else,
• 21:59
  because people will pay more for that, right? A higher price, better experience, better
• 22:02
  con, you know, advice, insights, information. I would say most people want that.
• 22:09
  caveat is there's always going to be that just give me the lowest rate, you know? I mean,
• 22:13
  we think of the standard example, the engineer, the Silicon Valley software dude, whatever,
• 22:18
  who knows he's got to 850 FICO and gets it and just, you know, give me the lowest possible,
• 22:22
  right? I just want to get it in. But that isn't the majority.
• 22:26
  No, it's not. And you learn in time how to work with those people too, right? You know,
• 22:32
  and say, I can give you the lowest rate could be on the wrong product. And you just stop, you know?
• 22:38
  And what do you mean the wrong product? I was like, well, I mean, again, I'm not going to,
• 22:43
  I'm not going to, I'm not going to go to Dr. Jill for, for misdiagnosing you, but I need a
• 22:47
  little bit more to know what products, the right product. And then let's get you the lowest rate
• 22:51
  in the right product, right? And then, and we had a simple dialogue. We said, you know, there's
• 22:55
  seven questions that you have to be able to answer. And whether you work with me or not,
• 23:00
  make sure you can answer those seven questions. And they're four. I'm going to give you right now.
• 23:04
  The right product, the right price, that's your rate, the right availability, how much you can
• 23:10
  borrow, and then the right amount. That's how much you should borrow, because most people combine those
• 23:15
  two and they don't understand that what's available in the amount you should actually borrow really
• 23:20
  critical when it comes to wealth. So let's make sure you understand those four first and the other
• 23:25
  three are really important. But again, would you work with me or someone else? Make sure you can
• 23:30
  answer these seven questions. And these were honestly the seven questions that I felt every client
• 23:34
  needed to understand that the time I didn't realize it by setting the table that way,
• 23:39
  it became one of our biggest recruiting tools because I have literally loan officers calling saying,
• 23:47
  I don't know what you're doing to these people, but they're asking me these questions and I don't
• 23:51
  understand what they're asking and it's frustrating me. And they would come sit down and we would
• 23:56
  talk and oftentimes they would come work for us. And that let me know that I was having an impact
• 24:00
  on the consumer because I was arming them with questions that were critical. You need to know which
• 24:05
  product is the right product and and only then can you get to the lowest rate because the lowest
• 24:10
  rate on a 15 year fixed product is different than a lowest rate on a three year arm. If you're going
• 24:15
  to be in a house for two years, if no reason to get a 15 year arm and pay off a principle, you're
• 24:20
  just going to get back into years, right? I mean, when you sell the house, I mean, so how do you get the
• 24:24
  right product? It's about managing risk. And then once you once you get the right product to manage
• 24:29
  risk, it's about the payment that makes sense for you, is amortizing your interest only. They're
• 24:34
  different types of payments. But you're arming people with these questions that start sort of in
• 24:40
  their own mind, you know, creating questions. And then when they talk to other people and they
• 24:45
  would ask these questions, they couldn't answer them. We became the de facto best choice, right?
• 24:50
  Right. Interesting. Why did you why do you table the other questions in the total of seven and
• 24:59
  how does how was that structured or set up? When did they get it? Yeah. So two reasons. There's
• 25:05
  one of my favorites in in saying is when the cup is full stop pouring, you know, usually four was
• 25:12
  enough for them to get somewhat clear that I was the right person or we were the right company for
• 25:18
  them. And also if if if we had that first conversation where they were, you know, on rates and I
• 25:23
  said, there's seven things and I give them four. I wanted them kind of going, well, wait a minute.
• 25:27
  I didn't get the other three. You know, there's something else I needed to know. So it was always
• 25:31
  kind of fun to hold a little something back. But I found most people they were topped off in
• 25:35
  pretty full with the first four questions. And then the other ones we could come back to later.
• 25:41
  Very interesting. All right. Here's a question. Any idea? This is this is not fair and off the cuff
• 25:47
  conversion ratios. Any idea? I don't know if you were a person that managed to track that, but
• 25:52
  you know, how many apps to, you know, clients did you convert with it? Because it sounds like you were
• 25:57
  very intentional with your dialogue and scripting. Yeah. And we, and we, we did that intentionally to
• 26:03
  filter, you know, we want to clients that loved us who wanted to come back and would talk about us.
• 26:07
  And there were people that you had to fire in the process of simply saying, look, I feel like
• 26:13
  there's a lot we could do from you. But I'm not sure you feel that way. So I'm going to recommend
• 26:18
  someone to you at one of our competitors. He's a good guy. He will take good care of you.
• 26:25
  And that had a very specific scripting for how we fired our customers. And some would leave.
• 26:30
  And some would say, wait a minute. You're sending me somewhere else. I'm like, yeah, I just didn't,
• 26:36
  it didn't feel like based on the fact that you really want the lowest rate. And you don't care
• 26:40
  about these other things. This is important to us because we know it's going to have an impact
• 26:44
  over time. So, you know, it was okay to fire. But still, you know, we tracked two things, two KPIs
• 26:51
  at our company, new people that you'd spoken with, and new applications. And then internally,
• 26:58
  we tracked applications to closings and stuff. And our applications at closings were in the high
• 27:03
  age, 88% in that range. So we were always going to have some fallout. But it was in that 88-92
• 27:10
  kind of ish range on an application, typically. But in the early stage, it was also pretty high.
• 27:18
  I would say in the original like first contact to close, we were in the mid 60s to high 60s
• 27:25
  was sort of where we stayed over time. Did you rehearse any of that like internally roleplaying
• 27:33
  and things like that? Or you seem to have a good grasp of language. So you may not have needed to,
• 27:37
  but I'm curious. Oh, no, at the time, yeah, absolutely. We created designations. It's funny that
• 27:43
  the designation that we do now, we had three internal designations for our loan officers.
• 27:48
  And it was internal training that we created. And it was about roleplaying and a proficiency of
• 27:54
  just being able to have simple conversations with people that they could consistently scale and
• 28:03
  duplicate and repeat. I'm a fan of having core scripts internalized at a level like I haven't
• 28:11
  done a loan. I haven't originated a loan probably since 2004, but I still have these scripts
• 28:17
  rolling off my tongue as if I was sitting in front of a client because, you know, by having those
• 28:23
  four scripts down and comfortable, I could then Miles Davis everything else, right? And not and
• 28:29
  feel comfortable doing that. But if I didn't have those kind of core anchors in place for what I
• 28:34
  was going to do when they said what's your rate or what I was going to do when they said they
• 28:38
  were shopping with three competitors, I'm glad you're talking to three competitors. And I want
• 28:43
  you to work with the best person, but you got to answer these seven questions, right? I mean,
• 28:47
  I just when I knew what was coming because I'd been doing it long enough, it wasn't like they were
• 28:52
  going to hit me with some weird reverse behind the bat super duper, you know, I mean, it happened,
• 28:58
  but it was it was rare. So as long as I was comfortable that I knew when that happened, what I was
• 29:03
  going to say, everything else from there could be completely just I could relax. It was unscripted
• 29:08
  and it could just be a you know, a dialogue conversation. Yeah. Well, that's why you practice,
• 29:12
  right? So you can perform in the moment. That's like one of my favorite quotes from Phil Jones,
• 29:18
  author of exactly what to say. Favorite quote is the worst time to think about what to say is in
• 29:23
  the moment you need to say it. Absolutely. And people don't remember what you say they remember the
• 29:29
  conviction with which you say it. So most people don't remember half of what are 20% of what you talk
• 29:37
  about, but they'll get off the phone and they'll go, man, that person was confident about what they
• 29:42
  were doing. I'm inspired by that confidence and that's someone that I want to work with. I mean,
• 29:47
  again, that's the feels that you get with a lot of this stuff. If you're like, well, I'm not sure
• 29:51
  you're humming and hauling and stuff like that, they're walking away going. I'm I'm himming and
• 29:56
  hauling because I heard himming and hauling and I'm still not sure, right? Exactly. That transference
• 30:01
  of trust. A few moments ago, you alluded to the popping back into the financial advisor space as
• 30:08
  a source of business for you. And that is one of those areas I think is massively untapped for
• 30:16
  variety of reasons, but you can you can just kind of jam or add them on that. You had a certain comfort
• 30:21
  level because you have been and you had all the destinations and you understood that that world
• 30:26
  inside those closed doors of financial advisor ship. But why did you go back after the financial
• 30:33
  advisors and what lessons would you pass on to people considering it? Yeah, I mean, for me, it was
• 30:40
  all the realtors were taken. I mean, meaning there were people standing in line and I don't know
• 30:46
  where I was exposed to this initially, but I had understood that most realtors did 90% of their
• 30:52
  business with a primary and one secondary, right? And what we realized is we were sort of in that
• 30:58
  tier-shary state and we were new kids on the block. We were getting the crowd. I used to think,
• 31:03
  man, realtors provide you the worst leads. And it was because it was everyone else had said,
• 31:09
  no, and they're like, oh, yeah, I'll give you I'll give you this turn, right? And so, but I learned
• 31:15
  a lot from trying to get those deals done. And you know, you want a few people over here and there,
• 31:19
  but we can't we eventually came back to realtors and did a really nice job building out our
• 31:25
  realtor network. But we just started calling insurance agents financial advisors accountants
• 31:30
  because no one else was calling on them. And they had they were surprised that we were talking
• 31:35
  to them because they looked at us as sort of the arch enemy. We were selling money, which created
• 31:43
  an indebtedness and a payment that they then had to help the clients manage now or in retirement.
• 31:50
  So when we came in and started talking about, no, you know, people are going to they're going to
• 31:55
  spend might live indoors, right? That's that's the goal. And the amount of money they spend to
• 32:01
  live indoors over the next 50, 60, 70 years is a function of how they manage that borrowing and
• 32:06
  those liabilities. So we can help you and your clients reduce the cost and in reducing that cost
• 32:13
  have more money to create real wealth. And you know, unless they pay cash, which you know,
• 32:19
  I wouldn't recommend because of the time value of money and the simple fact that inflation
• 32:24
  devalues debt, people like inflation sucks right now. I was like compared to what? I mean,
• 32:29
  you know, if you're buying groceries, they're cost more. But if you borrowed money at, you know,
• 32:33
  $100,000 on a house and you've got 10% inflation, a year from now, it'll cost you $90,000 in real
• 32:39
  dollars to pay that debt back. That's why the government loves inflation at some level. And these
• 32:44
  do engineer it, but your real cost of borrowing, it's just like your real interest rate is your
• 32:49
  actual interest rate minus the inflation rate. So if your cost of borrowing today is seven and
• 32:54
  inflation is eight, your actual real cost of borrowing is negative 1%. Now it feels painful at seven
• 33:00
  compared to three, but before we were at three percent, inflation was at three, your real cost
• 33:05
  of borrowing was zero. Right now, it's actually negative. Even at six and a half percent with real
• 33:11
  inflation eight and a half, that's a negative two real cost of borrowing because each year, it takes
• 33:16
  you two percent, you know, less money than you have today to pay that debt back. It's a roading
• 33:21
  the cost of debt. That's a, you know, it's a, it's a hard concept when you haven't done the math
• 33:27
  and played around with it. And we've got a really great, I've got a couple of blog posts on this
• 33:31
  and we have a Excel calculator where you can put in your current cost of borrowing and people know
• 33:36
  it. They know that their payment gets easier over time. Right? I mean, just my house payment,
• 33:43
  you know, when I took it out, felt kind of painful. And then 10 years later, it didn't feel like
• 33:46
  it was that much. Why is that? Because your income over time is slowly going up with inflation.
• 33:52
  But I get to lock my cost of buying a house and owning a house in and it stays fixed for 30 years.
• 33:59
  Everyone knows that your money won't buy in 30 years, what it bought today. Well, debt is the
• 34:06
  same thing, but in reverse, it won't cost you what it costs you to pay it off in 30 years. The best
• 34:11
  mortgage is actually an interest only mortgage that you never pay principal on. Let the inflation
• 34:17
  devalue it over time. That's why guys like, you know, honestly, what's your middle ramsy? I mean,
• 34:23
  when he says, get your mortgage and pay off as fast as you can. I'm like, why? You're paying it off
• 34:27
  with today's dollars. It's the most expensive dollars that you've got. I'd rather have that money
• 34:31
  compounding and growing, you know, investments and stuff over the next 20 or 30 years and outpacing
• 34:37
  inflation as opposed to trying to pay off the debt, you know, right now. These are not concepts
• 34:43
  that I would typically share with a consumer right off the bat because again, the cup gets full
• 34:48
  very quickly. You want to keep it simple, but these are concepts that when you start to understand
• 34:52
  them and you could talk to a financial advisor about it, again, just simple time value of money.
• 34:57
  And, you know, and people, most people make financial decisions today based on cash flow
• 35:06
  because most people live lives of cash flow because they're really kind of programmed based
• 35:11
  on their pay structure to live in 30-day cycles. And at the end of the month, if you have more money
• 35:18
  than you have month, there's something called savings. If you have more month than you have money,
• 35:24
  there's something called borrowing, like credit cards and other things. So you're really kind of
• 35:30
  managing this 30-day cycle. And once again, you just have these simple concepts that you share with
• 35:35
  the financial advisor and they're like, wow, you know, I've never talked to a lender that understands
• 35:42
  people live lives of cash flow. And that's even in retirement. Why are you saving all this money?
• 35:47
  So one day, you can use it for cash flow to live off of in retirement. So I'm going to help you
• 35:52
  kind of think about ways to do that. And now the financial advisor sees you as a person that can
• 35:59
  help with the needs that their clients have. Like, I don't want my client buying a million-dollar
• 36:03
  house and paying cash for it because I just lose a million dollars that I was managing it,
• 36:07
  which is $10,000 a year to me in revenue. If you can help me show them why that's a bad idea
• 36:14
  and provide the financing for 800,000. And I'll give you 200 out of their account for that.
• 36:20
  Then that's really cool, right? And so we just started getting to know financial advisors
• 36:26
  and building relationships with them because no one else was. It allows you to grow very quickly
• 36:31
  in the process of doing that. We worked our way back to realtors over time and built a good
• 36:36
  relationship. And that's why today, I'm like, you've already worked with a realtor side. Man,
• 36:40
  you got to start learning how to work with a financial advisor side because they touch the consumer
• 36:46
  on a, it's called KYC, know your customer. You have to meet with them often once a quarter.
• 36:52
  Rilters don't meet with their clients. Most loan officers don't meet with their clients
• 36:56
  that frequently. So they're very in touch with the life events and the things that are happening.
• 37:01
  And that was the other cool thing is their life event driven. They're not interest rate driven.
• 37:05
  They don't say let, they'll say refinance because rates are low. But if you're getting divorced,
• 37:10
  or your kids are going to college, or you're starting a family, you're building an addition,
• 37:13
  it's not let's wait for rates to go down. You know, this is what's happening. How do we do this?
• 37:18
  Let's talk about the financial implications. And we want to become part of those solutions.
• 37:23
  All right. That's, that was pretty cool stuff there. I think I followed most of it. Thank you.
• 37:28
  Thank you. I like to say I like to open new folders and people's brains as much as I can because
• 37:36
  it's just stuff that, again, most loan officers don't really think about it a, a great deal, right?
• 37:41
  And when you open a new folder, just like when you start calling them financial advisors,
• 37:45
  your business changes, right? If you've been calling on a, if you've been calling on realtor,
• 37:52
  eventually you understand how they work and you build a business to work and support that type
• 37:57
  of referral partner. What we started calling on financial advisors, man, they played a whole
• 38:01
  different game. I mean, their average client was different in terms of net wealth and capacity
• 38:08
  and questions and things like that. The way they managed their business and met with clients and
• 38:13
  did a lot of socratic type questioning about what does money mean to you and what was retirement
• 38:19
  look like? And what would you spend your time? What a security. I wasn't asking those questions,
• 38:23
  but these people were. So that was like, that's pretty cool that they're asking these questions.
• 38:27
  And they had a process of coming in and sitting down and inquiring and then presenting ideas and
• 38:32
  creating a plan. And then with the client's approval, signing that plan, executing that plan,
• 38:37
  I was like, we could do that as a lender. We could do that in a different way. So our business evolved
• 38:43
  differently because we were calling on a different base of customer and referral partner.
• 38:50
  And we learned things that we would have never learned that. And then that cross-pollinated with
• 38:54
  working with realtors because, hey, realtors are independent contractors. They didn't have
• 38:58
  401ks. So we would set up simple steps and IRAs for their realtors to help them create
• 39:03
  retirement programs and introduce them to advisors. And so it all cross-pollinated in a way that
• 39:08
  create a bigger sandbox for us to play in. But I'm a big fan of like, who you're calling on
• 39:13
  starts to define your growth and the things you're going to learn.
• 39:19
  Yeah, there's a lot in there actually. And I like how it cross-pollinates.
• 39:22
  And the word pre-eminent comes to mind because, again, it all comes back to like, who do you
• 39:27
  want to be known for? Like, how do you want people to describe what it's like to work with you?
• 39:33
  And now that we're, you know, the dust is settling and we're out of this insanity market that
• 39:38
  we're in for 2021 where you really didn't have much bandwidth to do anything except facilitate,
• 39:43
  right? Exactly. It's a tsunami of deals. But now we can. Now everybody's listening.
• 39:48
  Listening, you get a chance to reinvent. You get a chance to design. You've got this
• 39:54
  somewhat lump of clay here, if you will. And now you can kind of architect and plan and sculpt and
• 39:59
  map out, you know, we're entering the new year. What do you want your business to look like?
• 40:04
  So that's why I want to transition to your blog. Because I think it's a great resource. And
• 40:08
  you're talking about a lot of high level concepts and you're talking about working with financial
• 40:11
  advisors and you've got a ton of information on the blog, which I'm looking at. And I love the
• 40:18
  like the Socrates, you know, like kind of jazz. Like, here's this quote where I landed on this
• 40:22
  one section from Suzuki. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but the experts
• 40:28
  mind, there are few. What does that mean to you? Yeah. So when you have like, like in our example
• 40:37
  earlier of what does money really, or why does someone really want the lowest rate for a loan
• 40:44
  officer, they're overwhelmed by that, right? They don't know how to answer it. And if the answer
• 40:49
  is going to be going to a product or a rate sheet or whatever, eventually when you know that
• 40:53
  everything leads to money at some level, right? In terms of the impact of money. And if you go a
• 40:59
  step further, I would say that money leads to an ultimate goal of fulfillment. And even further
• 41:08
  that people are simple, they move away from pain and towards pleasure, everyone. It's really
• 41:14
  that simple. And so in sort of if you've been doing this long enough, you started to realize,
• 41:20
  okay, you know, what creates less pain for a consumer or what creates greater pleasure and
• 41:26
  fulfillment in their lives, you know, don't want to be the guy that gave them the lowest rate
• 41:30
  or the person that changed their outlook on their ability to be debt-free and own their home
• 41:36
  faster in a more efficient way that actually created an additional couple million dollars in
• 41:41
  retirement for them because I showed them just a couple of simple strategies consolidating their
• 41:48
  debt using that to snowball into potentially paying out the house faster or building a side
• 41:52
  fund that could pay the house all faster in the future and give them liquidity if they need it.
• 41:58
  You know, again, these are simple, you know, common sense type, you know, ideas, but that was sort
• 42:04
  of the relationship that I wanted to have with a client. And I knew at the end of the day,
• 42:08
  again, and you know this, if I say it to you, you don't believe it, you have to at some level
• 42:13
  earn it. I mean, you have to have enough conversations with people to realize, you know, and for me,
• 42:18
  I like pleasure and I avoid paying too. And so this gets extrapolated into money. Higher payment
• 42:24
  is more pain. Lower payment is more pleasure, right? So, I mean, really, you could tie it into
• 42:29
  those kind of simple things and then once you get comfortable with that and confident with it,
• 42:33
  you start to realize that no matter what I ask, we're going to end up in a probably the same spot
• 42:40
  and I'm equipped to help with that because I understand where we're going.
• 42:43
  Very interesting. Very interesting. How long would you spend on average on an initial conversation
• 42:49
  with a potential borrower and was it, was it, did you intentionally have a two-step or something
• 42:55
  like that? Yeah, like eventually for me, I had a team that did the application and the like,
• 43:02
  you know, this is way before, you know, all the tools you had and it was all paper applications.
• 43:07
  But my whole world was about that conversation and I would have it for as long as they were
• 43:14
  interested in talking. And I mean, again, that's where I'm literally, I'm watching their face to
• 43:18
  see, where's that line at? You know, when the water gets to right here and they're, you know,
• 43:23
  you can tell they're getting a little bit confused, I could stop because I had time. It wasn't like,
• 43:27
  you know, I had to build Rome in a day. I just, I need to get them to the point where they felt like
• 43:32
  this person's got my back, you know, and, and, and I want to, I want to be in a relationship
• 43:38
  with this person because there's stuff that, you know, and that was what we tried to get everyone
• 43:42
  to kind of do at our, at our mortgage company and I want to have done ever since is just, you know,
• 43:46
  having really interesting conversation with people that makes them want to work with you and just
• 43:53
  the mortgage is a transaction, you know, to, to build that relationship and you can come back from
• 43:59
  more and you're going to be there for them in the future. But if someone else to sit there for an
• 44:02
  hour and talk, I'd certainly, you know, do that. But I had a pretty simple process where I went
• 44:08
  through, we had a conversation. It was a three-part conversation that was pretty well scripted.
• 44:13
  It's one of things we teach in our class. We call it the bar smart conversation, but just understanding
• 44:17
  a little bit about how borrowing impacts wealth and that there are a lot of things that they don't
• 44:23
  typically understand about housing and we do. And we're going to help them with that and answer
• 44:27
  those questions. And then when they're ready to go in a perfect world, I'm going to hand them off to
• 44:33
  someone that's going to do the paperwork because the value's not in the paperwork of the transaction,
• 44:37
  the value to me was really in that conversation, that differentiation.
• 44:41
  Right. Right. Love it. Okay. Well, let's do this. People who've been listening by now recognize you
• 44:47
  as somebody who's quite illiterate when it comes to the financial topics and conversations. And
• 44:53
  let's do this. Let's talk a little bit about your resources, your blog. I'm over at
• 44:57
  and your website, borrowsmartuniversity.com. We'll put a link in the show notes, borrowsmartuniversity.com.
• 45:04
  Tell me about the CLA designation, the Certified Liability Advisor. What is that?
• 45:11
  So as I mentioned, to create proficiency with our company, we had several designations and
• 45:17
  this was like my flagship designation. And within the name, we repositioned what we did from
• 45:26
  being a mortgage lender to being a liability advisor. We did that to match up with a financial
• 45:32
  advisor. So a financial advisor manages assets. A mortgage lender sold loans, you know, facilitated
• 45:43
  money being borrowed. So I was like, no, I want to be more like these guys and gals. So we changed
• 45:50
  our name from mortgage lender to liability advisor. We said, look, you're a financial advisor.
• 45:55
  We're liability advisors. We do just what you do, but on the other side of the balance sheet.
• 46:00
  And that one repositioning allowed us to start thinking completely differently about what we did
• 46:07
  because the value proposition was not in the money that we loaned, like my book, borrowsmart,
• 46:12
  repasemart. Well, borrowsmart is your, that's your entry strategy into the debt. No one talks about
• 46:18
  how to pay it back. So don't you want to repasemart, too? I mean, you, you know, how do you do that?
• 46:23
  You make lump sums, you pay bonuses and you pay by weekly. What, how do you do that, right? And
• 46:29
  do you understand if you sell a house in three years, you're getting it all back and you're starting
• 46:32
  over again anyway. So people are like, I'm only going to live in this house for five years. I was
• 46:35
  like, well, then why do you care, you know, about, you know, 30 years right now. I mean, we need to
• 46:39
  think about 30 years, but really you're talking about a five year window. So these were the things
• 46:45
  around reliability advice. So advisors managed assets. We managed liabilities. And the realtor,
• 46:52
  which we call the third side of the balance sheet, right, what do they do? They sell real estate.
• 46:58
  They don't manage real estate. But the real, the house is the largest asset on 80 to 90% of all
• 47:06
  Americans. It's their largest asset and their largest debt. So certified liability advisor was
• 47:11
  us saying, let's take this training and stuff and this education we've been working on for so long.
• 47:16
  Let's put it into something that we can, can, can kind of say, you did it. You've learned
• 47:21
  enough here to call yourself a liability advisor, even call themselves a liability advisor. But
• 47:26
  we want to put together some training and education around it and came up with the CLA, which we
• 47:31
  had done for our people. And then this is what we use over the time. We've taught this to Schwab and
• 47:35
  a Mara Prize and, and, and Maryland. We've taught this internally with bankers and we've done it
• 47:41
  with loan officers for many years. But it's a fun way to, to give back and structure a lot of this,
• 47:46
  you know, 20, 30 years of learning into something that somebody can go through in about 30 hours
• 47:51
  and get a handle on. And then after that, you know, there's all kinds of other stuff. Like I said,
• 47:55
  the blog and we have, you know, private Facebook group and we do coaching sessions and all kinds
• 48:01
  of stuff like that. Well, I definitely want people to check it out because once again, whenever you
• 48:05
  talk about physical literacy, then people become curious, like, well, where? How do I do that? You know,
• 48:10
  you definitely have to get some education and it's important to get led by somebody such as yourself
• 48:15
  who's gone before them, right? And who's been in the field as an originator who's talked to all the
• 48:20
  people that you should be talking to in the way that you should be talking to them. So first and
• 48:24
  foremost, right? The blog is just a wealth of information. You've got, I'm just looking at all the
• 48:29
  posts here, investing for wealth creation financial literacy, working with advisors, housing and lending,
• 48:34
  right? Crazy. I mean, I'm just looking at the stuff going, I want to read this just because I want
• 48:39
  to be, you know, become more knowledgeable. So, um, Mara Smart University and then you do have a
• 48:44
  book. People can acquire the book. Do you want to tell them anything about that?
• 48:48
  Yeah, so I wrote a book called Bar Smart Repay Smart. It was, uh, it was like a reflection on our
• 48:54
  processes, the seven questions that we had utilized. And it was the seven main dynamics of financial
• 49:01
  planning that we applied to the house. So, you know, within financial planning, there's this
• 49:07
  core thing called safety liquidity and return. It's like the three-legged stool of financial
• 49:10
  planning. So we asked the question, well, how safe is real estate? How liquid is it? And what kind of
• 49:15
  return does it provide? So we took concepts like liquidity and diversification and we just applied
• 49:22
  it to housing as a way to get people thinking a little bit differently. So the books are really kind
• 49:28
  of a, you know, a great lint reduction. And, you know, if you come there to our site and you sign
• 49:32
  up for the blog and become a member, I usually send you a little gift for doing that that'll help
• 49:38
  you kind of get started and learn a little bit more about what we do. And again, some people like
• 49:43
  to just play around and we've also got, you know, we'll see some other research. We have a Facebook
• 49:49
  page for our nonprofit and I post there daily, just charts and things that I think people
• 49:55
  ought to know about with what's going on in the market as a whole kind of broad, big picture stuff.
• 50:00
  And, you know, we've got an interesting little community growing of people that are interested in
• 50:05
  this. Again, it's not for everybody, but I do say everyone has a financial stake in this game.
• 50:11
  If you ask yourself, why are you a lender and why is it important to you? You probably do it to
• 50:15
  make money and you probably make money, take care of your family and take care of your family.
• 50:18
  It's probably pretty fulfilling and makes you feel pretty good, right? So you see where I went with
• 50:23
  that back to Suzuki. So, you know, if you want to get better at just playing this game yourself,
• 50:29
  there's value in what we do. But if you want to then learn to extend it out as a totally new,
• 50:37
  you know, business referral network, that's got a lot of value to it.
• 50:41
  Right, right. At a minimum, right, your education, your knowledge, your ability to convey that to
• 50:47
  people is going to be competitive advantage for you. So that's why I wanted to bring you on to
• 50:52
  to highlight some of that. All right. So the links in the show knows people borrow smart university.com,
• 50:56
  go there, check it out. Before we wrap, I was curious to ask you this question. What's your,
• 51:02
  what's your hot take on 2023, man? No, what's the crystal ball, Todd? Where's it going to go,
• 51:09
  baby? What are we? What are we facing? Man, we are facing an unprecedented series of
• 51:20
  difficult, gordian knots of financial instability and volatility. Any way you look at it,
• 51:29
  it's one of those things that have quite a few people that are in the financial world for
• 51:34
  living and they've never seen anything like this. I mean, you've never had a recession with this
• 51:39
  kind of job stability and you've never, and we've printed half of all the money that exists in
• 51:45
  the last few years and where is it? Where's it gone, you know, and is it waiting to jump back into
• 51:52
  the market? Or has it really been eviscerated through this liquidity stuff that's happening? You've got
• 51:58
  nuclear, you've got Taiwan, you've got global financial stuff, you've got shift in power with China
• 52:03
  rising, but simultaneously on the precipice of their own 2008 right now with, you know,
• 52:10
  100 story buildings that were built for hundreds of millions of dollars. They've never been occupied
• 52:15
  that are being torn down because of mold and stuff because there's no one there to even live there,
• 52:20
  but all that stuff is financed by the Chinese government. I mean, it's just like a crazy, crazy
• 52:27
  maelstrom. So, you know, I think trying to figure it out is a great way to the looney bin.
• 52:36
  I've like, where's the center of the hurricane and where do I want to simply be in this process?
• 52:42
  And it's certainly going to be a one day at a time kind of an experiencing thing because it's just,
• 52:47
  there's just anything any shoe could drop at any moment that could change. We could see rates go
• 52:53
  back down just as fast if the Fed tivots, but they're unlikely to do that until inflation's under
• 52:57
  control and you wouldn't want them to. So it's just you got to take it one day at a time.
• 53:01
  What about this smart money, right? Fanny for coming out predicting five and a half-ish,
• 53:06
  right? Next year and all that. Well, you know, yeah, I mean, you've never, I mean, again,
• 53:12
  I say never there's a lot of numbers out there, but you know, traditionally think about it. Again,
• 53:16
  your inflation rate is higher than your current borrowing rate. So you still have a negative
• 53:24
  real cost of money for them to put pressure on demand. They need to get interest rates above
• 53:30
  the inflation rate. So to do that right now, that would be seven, eight percent, but inflation
• 53:37
  started to back off, especially we're starting to see Microsoft, Google, Apple freezing,
• 53:42
  they're hiring. The job destruction is finally starting and it's really weird to say the Fed is
• 53:47
  going to get what they want here, which is destruction after 20 years of engineering ridiculous,
• 53:53
  growth and liquidity and insane evaluations. I would say everything's too high and we're going
• 53:58
  to go the other way. So the normal tool that they use is interest rates. That's what they use to
• 54:05
  create demand destruction. That's what they would use to start to fix things if they really break
• 54:09
  some stuff. And that would be likely to happen next year. We could see an initial just stopping,
• 54:17
  which doesn't help us with interest rates, but it would help the market rally and create some
• 54:20
  wealth there. But then the problem is that creates more inflation again. That's one of the scary parts,
• 54:24
  right? Of stopping the interest rate raise is that the markets take off. And if they take off,
• 54:30
  the haves get more and have not to get less and you're back into a bad inflationary problem.
• 54:36
  So how do they do it? I'd say that we're more likely to start getting a lot of stimulus
• 54:41
  in the way of getting, how do you get money back to, you know, first time home buyer tax credits.
• 54:46
  Like, you know, the kind of stuff you see in some places where it's 10 or 20% down payment from
• 54:51
  the government to buy a house. I mean, you could start to see that kind of stuff, which would really
• 54:54
  target those groups that there was some of that in the Biden plan that never got actually to market.
• 55:01
  But, you know, will we let, will we lower interest rates? We could. I would, I would say to right now,
• 55:07
  it's highly likely. But there's also just as many things that would keep us from doing that,
• 55:13
  or doing it and then suddenly finding ourselves in the same position and having to then go back
• 55:18
  the other way again. But I would bet rates will be lower next year than they are today, for sure.
• 55:24
  How much lower? Hmm, I don't know. Maybe the on that. Yes, there's a lot of different
• 55:30
  other tangents. We could go off on, you kind of alluded to one with the tax credits in that,
• 55:36
  again, we would not to get political. But, you know, is some of the agenda of the current
• 55:41
  administration with this housing affordability issue, right? And to make that more affordable for
• 55:46
  the masses and drive prices down, right? Through the interest rate tool that they have,
• 55:54
  that would be an interesting angle and play. And indeed, there's a lot of, I think we're
• 56:01
  going to see a lot more creative financing coming online as we did in the past. When we got here,
• 56:05
  you know, I talked some of the day, it was doing 40-year interest only right now as their primary
• 56:10
  product. And I didn't know that was back, but they were like, that's our solution.
• 56:14
  And another country is, you know, like you said, Canada's got its own set of issues.
• 56:21
  And while it sounds absurd and, you know, right now, but the reality, as you know, well, no,
• 56:25
  I mean, most people don't hold the mortgage 30 years, let alone 7, 8, 10, you know?
• 56:30
  Absolutely. It's always been a mismatch there, but with the yield curve where it is,
• 56:34
  you know, the short end is higher than the long end in some ways because people are more nervous
• 56:40
  about what's going to happen down the road. And, you know, when I was around the 3-year, 5-year,
• 56:45
  7-year, 10-year arms were really great financial planning tools because when you help someone
• 56:50
  understand, if you're only going to be in the house for 5-7 years, a 7-year arm is going to save
• 56:55
  you a point, you know, an interest without any additional risk because it's fixed for that 7-year
• 57:00
  period. That was a really cool conversation, but you don't get to have that right now because
• 57:04
  those rates are not that competitive, but that could, again, that could change. Helox could become
• 57:09
  more exciting, you know, there's, you know, other products out there that I won't name
• 57:15
  at this point, but they're, there's just products that are out there and today and others that
• 57:19
  I think will be coming in the future that will start to give people a new conversation. They have
• 57:23
  reverses. I'm a big fan of reverses because I believe it's going to be a critical financial
• 57:28
  planning tool in the future for seniors and we're focusing a lot right now. And just again,
• 57:34
  what are the problems and how do you tie and match products and solutions to the problems because
• 57:38
  financial advisors are problem solvers. A lot of officers are problem solvers, but the central
• 57:44
  problem that we solve is is people need to borrow because they can't pay cash for a house.
• 57:50
  And then there's a bigger problem that is they have the amount of pay cash for the house and they
• 57:54
  shouldn't. How do you explain that? And then just keep moving up the food chain and solving,
• 57:59
  you know, higher and higher grades of problems for the consumer.
• 58:03
  Well, we're going to come back, revisit this conversation and see what's happening. Q1
• 58:09
  next year, 2012. I look forward to that. I look forward to that.
• 58:12
  Hey, thanks so much, Todd, for being here. Really loved it. Once again,
• 58:15
  people borrowsmartuneiversity.com. Check out everything Todd has to offer. If you enjoyed
• 58:19
  just this little snippet, imagine, right, hanging out with him for more time and more learning
• 58:23
  on his blog and his group and his community. So highly, highly endorse that. Todd, thanks
• 58:28
  so much. Appreciate it. Hey, thanks Jeff for all you do. Appreciate it, man.
• 58:31
  You bet listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode. Hey, leave us a review and we'll
• 58:35
  see you on the next one. Hey, guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage
• 58:59
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