Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep #114: The Resurgence of the Independent Mortgage Broker

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Ep #114: The Resurgence of the Independent Mortgage Broker · Mortgage Marketing Radio

0:00
In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
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the real estate agents is essential for success.
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1:17
Hey listeners, Jeff Zimper, how are you doing?
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Well, welcome.
1:38
You've arrived.
1:39
Here we are, April 2019.
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Right?
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January 4th.
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And here we are.
1:44
We've now entered Q2.
1:45
How's it going?
1:47
Have you checked in?
1:48
Are you on track?
1:49
Is your plane, is your nose pointed in the right direction?
1:53
A slight adjustment either way determines where you wind up.
1:58
So make sure you're checking in on a regular basis that your activities are pointed in the
2:03
right direction and that your activities are consistent and persistent enough so as to
2:07
produce results.
2:09
Are you busy or are you making real progress?
2:13
Again, you know one of the hallmarks of high performing people is knowing your numbers.
2:18
Knowing how many conversations lead to a loan app that lead to a closed loan, how many
2:23
meetings with realtors lead to real engagement, lead to actual referrals.
2:28
Start tracking your numbers and oftentimes the answer to how do I grow my business simply
2:32
comes back to these two simple things.
2:35
Talk to more people, get better at the people already talking with.
2:41
So that said, if you're interested in getting better and if you want sure that you arrive
2:47
at your destination in 2019, hey, this show mortgage marketing podcast is brought to you
2:54
as always by the mortgage marketing pro membership where we're helping loan originators stay relevant,
3:02
grow their referrals, make more money with less frustration and in less time.
3:08
And we do that by equipping them with leveraged activities such as teaching agent classes
3:13
and equipping them with compelling content classes, systems and processes that have been
3:18
proven to accelerate the success with which loan officers have in meeting and converting
3:24
real estate agents to productive referral partners.
3:28
So that's one aspect of that.
3:29
The other aspect of it, of course, is we do provide scripting for reducing rate shoppers
3:33
getting better conversions with realtor meetings.
3:35
We do provide modern mortgage originator training, imagine this, right, taking some self-paced
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video module course that help you get educated in how to set up a YouTube channel, how to
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set up your Instagram page, how to optimize your Facebook page, how to run Facebook ads
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and include some Facebook ad templates and the targeting options with that all under one
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umbrella in the mortgage marketing dot pro membership.
3:58
I put up a eight minute video that gives you all the details about that.
4:01
You can learn more mortgage marketing dot pro.
4:04
And of course, I want to give a quick shout out to our friends over at the industry syndicate.
4:08
What is the industry syndicate you ask?
4:10
It is real estate's first media network content shows podcasts flash briefings and more
4:18
all real estate mortgage focused.
4:20
If you're into self educating, if you're into right learning and you like to digest audio
4:25
and video forms of content, check out the industry syndicate.
4:28
They got some more good stuff for you over there.
4:31
All right, onto this week's special guest, honored to have this gentleman here.
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There was a movement of foot out there, people.
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I don't know if you've heard it, seen it, felt it, but it's happening.
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And that movement is is coming back to the growth and resurgence of the mortgage broker
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community.
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Now, I started my career, many of you don't know, at a mortgage broker shop way back in
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2003, I think it was.
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And so I have a pretty good sense of what the mortgage broker environment was, what it
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became, and more importantly, it was what it's now becoming a new in its new resurgence,
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if you will.
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And there's some really cool things happening.
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And so Anthony Casa, who is he?
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He's the founder and chairman of the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts, otherwise
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known as AMA.
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He's also the president of Garden State Home Loans, which is a mortgage broker based
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out of New Jersey that he founded in 2011 and developed into the one of the top mortgage
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brokerages in the country based on annual closed volume.
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And you're interesting to hear Anthony's story about the record month they had.
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I think it'd be pretty blown away about the amount of volume they were doing with such
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a small operation.
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But here's the thing, what's really put Anthony on the map of late is in 2017, he founded
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Brawl.
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We're going to talk about Brawl.
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What is that?
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No, it's not a bar Brawl or a fight that you get into, although in some cases it has turned
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into that, unfortunately, a little bit on social media.
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But Brawl is brokers rallying against hotel lending.
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What the heck does that mean?
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Anthony's going to tell you about that.
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And then, of course, Anthony's latest vision is AME, right?
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The Association for Independent Mortgage Executives, that champions, the independent mortgage
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professionals, and doing a lot of things that are consumer focused and helping those that
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are considering transitioning their business and to be either working for a mortgage broker
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or becoming a mortgage broker, you've got to hear more about what Anthony's doing there.
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This ecosystem called ORIVE, ARIVE, Anthony's going to tell us about that.
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It's a fully integrated broker environment.
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Imagine this.
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Those of you who've been in the broker world before, you can remember when you had all the
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fragmented different things you needed to engage with and try and stitch together different
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platforms and tools to actually put a loan on, to get pricing, to fund and all that
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stuff.
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Well, Anthony and his team have solved that with ORIVE.
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It is an LOS.
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It's a point of sale.
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It's a CRM powered by Salesforce, pricing engine, lender connectivity, digital documents
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storage, all in one place, including this great ecosystem of like-minded professionals all
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focused on being the best professionals they can be and providing the best service and
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product to the end user consumer.
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That's what it's all about.
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And lots of things happening afoot with ORIVE, with AME, with Anthony, and really amazing
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stuff there.
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So I wanted to bring Anthony on in today's session to educate you, the listener, about
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mortgage brokerage, the difference between that and retail, what's happening, what to
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be aware of, and then that this isn't a big us versus them, right, there's enough space
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in the world for everybody to get a piece of the pie.
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And so as you know, I'm the chief truth seller here at mortgage marketing radio and I wanted
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to bring the truth to you guys.
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And so Anthony, I do believe we do a good job of unpacking the truth on this episode and
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helping provide you some context as to what's happening in the mortgage broker space, what's
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happening with AME to hopefully, you know, approach this from a take the high road in
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the conversations about, you know, different options for you and your career as a mortgage
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professionals.
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So I think you're going to enjoy this episode and we provide links to everything in the
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show notes.
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I will tell you Anthony's got a couple of events coming up.
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If you're interested in attending, one of them is in Florida on the 17th of April.
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There's links in the show notes.
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It's an AME workshop.
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They had about 1,000 originators, mortgage professionals attend the one in Irvine that
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I went to.
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This one's in Florida on April 17th.
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And there's links in the show notes.
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And also there's another one coming up in October, which I highly encourage you to attend.
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And it is called Fuse, F-U-Z, F-U-S-E.
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It's the second time they're doing this.
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Two keynote speakers this year in October at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Ryan Sturhont,
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and Gary Vaynerchuk.
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Have you heard of them?
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Sure tickets now.
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They're available.
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And you can learn more by checking the show notes, fuse.amegroup.com is the website.
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And if you just want to go to AME, there's aimgroup.com.
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Remember AME is A-I-M-E.
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Go to aimgroup.com, check it all out.
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And let's get into this week's show.
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Anthony, welcome to the show.
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Hi, I'm Maria.
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Thanks for having me.
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I appreciate it.
9:07
You bet.
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So, for those that are listening, how about a brief introduction?
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Anthony Casa.
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Who are you?
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What are you all about?
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I'm passionate about the mortgage business, which just give us kind of the brief background.
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Your journey in the mortgage space and what's led you up to heading up AME now.
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So I started in the mortgage business in 2003.
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I've been in the mortgage business for now 15 years.
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Lone officer, sales manager, branch manager, started my mortgage brokerage in 2011, which
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was Garden State Home Loans, which became one of the top brokers in the country.
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I recently sold my mortgage brokerage, but I started a brawl, which was a grassroots
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call to action for mortgage brokers, which kind of was a very provocative national campaign.
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I got a ton of attention, and I guess put me on the map of brokers on a national level.
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And then we started AME just literally one year ago this month, and AME is a trade association,
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but I think it's a little bit more than that.
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It's become sort of like the mortgage broker community place, where we have a lot of
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call to actions.
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We do a lot of advocacy stuff, but more than that's sort of like we do events.
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We do social media groups.
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It's really a place where brokers feel comfortable and kind of treat it like they're company
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almost.
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It's where they go to get information, share information, when they're struggling to get
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motivated, all that good stuff.
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So that's what we're doing.
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We have a lot of exciting things that we're working on.
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I think brokers are, for the first time in a little while, really, really not only relevant
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when it comes to in the mortgage industry, but I think everybody has sort of got mortgage
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broker on the tip of their tongue these days.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So let's do this.
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Let's tackle the acronyms for those listening.
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Let's take brawl first.
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What does that stand for?
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So brawl stands for brokers rallying against wholesale lending, and the concept there
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is hotel means there are lenders that are wholesale lenders, but the reason why they're
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in the wholesale channel is they ingest loans from mortgage brokers.
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They close loans for those mortgage brokers, and the minute that they close those loans,
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their call centers are churning those loans, repurposing those loans for their own purposes.
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So right now is a prime example of what wholesale lenders do very well.
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Over the last 10 weeks, we've seen the 10-year treasury drop, 60 basis points, and right
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now we're at a very low point.
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So an opportunity like this, a company, and I won't name names today, but one of them
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is out there in Detroit, a big retail letter that we all know online.
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What they'll do is rate drop like this, call center goes into action, and every single
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customer that closed in the last six to 18 months is going to get a call to potentially
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refy, and by the time the mortgage broker has the opportunity to call that customer because
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they're obviously they don't have a call center, they don't have the technology that a company
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like that has.
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By the time they get in touch with them, it's too late they've already closed, so hotel
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lending is a wholesale lender that is in it for retail purposes, and basically the
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broker's rallying against hotel lenders was an action where we brought a lot of attention
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to the subject, and I would say that in the last two years, we've seen a very dynamic
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market shift in the wholesale channel that has led to national implications, but the
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lenders that were hotel lenders, it's a lot of them have changed their business practices.
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We worked just this week, John Gibson was on another podcast, and he was talking about
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how we worked with caliber home loans, they were a lender that when we came out we said,
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hey, these guys are a hotel lender, sat down with them, literally worked with the people
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that ran their call centers, the head of retention, the head of consumer direct, redid their
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entire policies, and over the course of six months, we came up the reconnect program so
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that every single past customer of a mortgage broker goes back to the mortgage broker,
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they're very, very serious about it, and in eight months since we rolled that program
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now, I want to say we worked with them, but they rolled it out, they've generated 45,000
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reconnect leads back to mortgage brokers in eight months, so to think about that, if
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that wasn't going back to mortgage brokers, that was staying with the retail channel,
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so the impact in the economics are massive.
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What's the motivation then for somebody like caliber to do that versus just take it direct?
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Well, it's a partnership play, to be honest with you, they make more money if they do
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it in their call center, so if they give it back to the broker, first of all there's
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no guarantee that broker is going to bring the loan back to them, so he's their broker
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by nature. The second thing is that they make way less money on a wholesale transaction
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than they would make on a consumer direct transaction, so the reason why they're doing it is
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if with the awareness that we brought to the subject, basically brokers have said, we
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don't care what your price is, we don't care what you're willing to do for us, if you're
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not willing to keep our past customers in touch with us and you're not willing to make
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a commitment not to solicit them, we won't do business with you.
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As a result of brokers taking that type of action and not doing business with wholesale
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lenders, essentially what has happened is every lender that previously used to do these
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things has come back and said, we're not going to do those things anymore, we'd rather
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have your business than no business at all, so we've seen some of the biggest wholesale
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lenders in the game have changed their business back, some of them have said they've changed
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their business back, but actually haven't changed their business back, so it's still a
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relevant thing, and to me this isn't about 2019, even though currently rates are down,
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I think this is a long-term situation because what happens is wholesale for 10 years has
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zero growth, like literally 8% flat for 10 years, over the last 18 months since we started
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brawl all of a sudden we've seen almost a double of the wholesale channel, and the reason
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why is it's not that when these lenders aren't soliciting your customers, it's understanding
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that the pipeline of customers that they stop when they do that, because every customer
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will refer you three to four more customers, so if they're soliciting all your old customers
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and doing those deals, it's not just those deals again, they're also getting the referrals.
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Growth is back on the mend in the broker channel because at its core, this is no longer
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a business back to set a broker, so I'm going to accept.
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So you think that the whole tale lenders will call them, I'll use your language there,
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they've essentially kind of woken up to, I mean the word that comes in mind for me is
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the brokers, essentially boycotting the wholesale lenders, and the savvy wholesale lenders have
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said, you know what, we're in this for the long play, and we'd rather partner with the
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brokers, give up some profit for the bigger picture, is that what I'm here?
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No, so I would not say boycotts bad work, so what I would say, I'm a billy, it's really
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my ability, all right, better, thank you.
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So the thing is this, it's like if you're in a situation where a company is not doing
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the things that they say they do, or if at the end of the day they have a business practice
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that you weren't necessarily aware of, like I'll compare it to this, and this is drastic,
16:27
but it does have plausibility is cigarette companies for years said, cigarettes don't
16:32
cause cancer, so people are saying they're smoking cigarettes, yada yada, then all of a sudden
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cigarettes do cause cancer, and it's out there.
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Once that happened, this is a piece of information that for 30 years, cigarette companies said
16:46
it didn't cause cancer, so people kept smoking because they're listening to these companies tell
16:49
them it didn't cause cancer. Once they knew, even though, you know, they still should have known,
16:54
they stopped doing it. So now you're in a situation where it's like for years, brokers thought
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that these lenders are shoulder customers, but now it's actually been identified and it's real,
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so it's one of those things where, you know, it's okay if you still want to work with those
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lenders, just understand, I tell them it's time to go, if you want to work with those lenders,
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not yourself out, because you now have your making up, it is an important business decision,
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where you know that they're going to steal your customer, and if you're okay with that,
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don't complain about it because you're the one choosing to do business with them, you either
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hold them accountable or you don't hold them accountable, so it's not boycott or about accountability.
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So two thoughts on this, ultimately, and I'm sure you'd agree with this though,
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that's been happening for years, because I can even remember working a country right back in
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the day, right? They would still be kind of doing that, calling my own customer base. So,
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ultimately, it's really up to the responsibility of the individual loan officer broker, professional,
17:45
whatever to build a fence around that customer. However, what you're saying is it's pretty hard to
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compete at that level because we don't have the resources if I'm here in New York, you can
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say that. Well, I think there's this argument, it's like a lot of retail loan officers that I
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talked to say, say a smell similar, like, oh, well, it's your job to stay in front of your customer,
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okay, a couple of things here. Number one is you're saying that because you work for a company,
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you don't stay in front of your customer and they sell the servicing because you have no
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control over who they sell the servicing to, that they're going to steal your customer. You have no
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control over that. You work for one lender, you don't have optionality, so you're stumped.
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I get that that's your situation. For mortgage brokers, don't have that situation because what's
18:28
happened is we have optionality, so a company like UWM, the emergence of them over the last,
18:32
you know, I guess really last four years since they've been the number one wholesale lender,
18:37
you know, they have a business practice and they said, listen, we're in it for the broker,
18:40
we're going to give every feedback, we're going to give every deal back, we're going to do everything
18:44
we can do to put the customer in front of the broker. That leader has now made the rest of the
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other lenders or most of the other lenders have to respond to either do the same thing or not,
18:54
but now that's a competitive advantage or disadvantage for people. So for me, yes, the broker
18:59
does need to stay in front of their customer, but the thing that I look at is when you aggregate
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brokers and loan officers and you actually go to these companies and you say, listen,
19:07
I understand that you're going to solicit our customer. If I'm one guy and I say, I don't want
19:12
you to do that, they say, we're, you know, those are all over you, they say, we're going to continue
19:17
and business waited, but when 30 to 40,000 people say, hey, listen, we're really going to do business
19:22
with these good guys that are doing loans the way that they're willing to commit to long term,
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yeah, we're not. The people do change. So like, I like the way I look at it is like, yeah,
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this is the way business has always been done, but the reality is once you actually aggregate and
19:37
take a hard position, you go from being an employee or just accepting the way things are,
19:43
to actually, you're negotiating, like, this is truly a negotiation. You need, like, what,
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the way I talk to matters, I say, you need to change your economics, okay? If that means that
19:51
your pricing is slightly worse, if that means that you have to adjust your business model and
19:55
some capacity, if that means that you have to actually invest in training the broker to stay in
20:01
front of the customer better, adjust, adopt, adapt, like, that's the way I look at it. So like,
20:07
there is a fundamental thing in the mortgage business that I think is the reason why disruption
20:11
is so scary to this business is that the way things have been done is the way they're still done
20:17
today. And if you try to challenge it, everybody says, no, no, no, you can't do that. And I think
20:22
with Brawl, we challenged it very hard. And now all of a sudden, the retail guys are saying,
20:27
hey, we don't even get our leads back. In our own company, we have a direct consumer channel,
20:32
they solicit our own customers. So it's an interesting dynamic, but this is, you know,
20:37
we are influencing change by aggregating people. Yeah, what I love about that is it proves
20:43
today that people can create change and rise up. And so the broker's got tired of that situation
20:48
happening. And you kind of created a platform and gave them a voice and then created a map,
20:53
you know, the masses that actually could influence that change with Brawl, right? Yeah, I think the
20:58
biggest thing is that they need like Bruno Broker was going to step up and call out.
21:03
Individually, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're not, nobody's going to go up against quick
21:07
and freedom, paying back on people, like you're just not going to do that. Even even to be honest,
21:11
when we start this called action, like I did it, I was still a mortgage broker, obviously,
21:17
I was in my business shot. I was in my, my, my, my brokerage. And when we put out the press release,
21:23
and I, you know, made the call to action, everything within a week, I had the legal councils for
21:29
the biggest banks in the country saying, hey, listen, dude, we are going to sue the living
21:33
daylights out of you and you're going to have nothing left. And you know, for me, at the time,
21:37
I was 32 years old, four kids, you know, a house made good money savings. So you're like,
21:44
oh man, I'm going to lose everything if these guys come after me. But the decision that you really
21:48
have to make is like, either you're going to be another person that gets intimidated and bullied
21:54
and pushed into a corner and let this whole thing that's going on continue. Or you're just going
22:00
to go all in on it. My decision was like, listen, I'm going to put my blinders on. And if they
22:04
sue me, they sue me. And if I lose everything, I lose everything. But I'm going to see this thing
22:08
through. So, you know, to me, you know, eventually brokers saw how powerful that was. And
22:15
the court is, it's almost unbreakable right now. Yeah. And you've got people rallying behind
22:19
your movement as well. And that's what's awesome. That's really what you've created. It is a movement.
22:23
You ought to come up for another acronym for like balls, you know, because
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you've got, you've got balls. We are working on it. There's a couple other acronyms.
22:37
All right. Well, that's a good backstory on brawl for those that, you know, because I've
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talked to a number of people and they weren't unaware with, you know, with that man. So thank you
22:43
for that, which now leads us to aim. Kind of bring us forward to aim. What does that acronym
22:49
and tell us really what's the purpose of aim? So aim is the association of independent mortgage
22:54
experts. And basically what led to aim was when we started brawl, the first one, we didn't expect
23:02
the support that we got. We had such a large amount of support. I mean, within 90 days of starting
23:06
brawl, we had over 10,000 mortgage brokers following us, supporting us, basically telling letters
23:14
that they need to change their business practices. So, you know, to me, it was great to have
23:20
the grassroots movement, but you need an organization. You need to be something wrapped around.
23:23
So we started aim. It's a nonprofit trade association for independent mortgage brokers
23:28
exclusively. And to me, at its core, I focus on the originator. I think the layers in the industry
23:38
is what causes disruption. And it's also what causes market shifts. So when 10 years ago,
23:46
when Dodd-Frank had been in the housing crisis, so that stuff, the reason why 80,000 loan officers
23:51
left the broker channel and went to the retail banking channel is because at that time,
23:56
the broker channel was not a good option. Landers had left the channel. They weren't treated well.
24:01
Their regulation was very scary. It wasn't a good time to be a broker. Everybody went to be a retail
24:06
banker. And at that time, that was a great platform for a refrigerator. Because there were all
24:11
these layers, most of these companies were in their infancy stages or early stages, you know,
24:15
movement mortgage guarantee rate rate. Back then, they didn't have regionals and divisionals,
24:20
and all these freaking layers were always making all this money. But over the course of 10 years,
24:24
the add a layer, add a layer, add a layer, all these people come on board. And the problem is,
24:30
at the end of the day, the person that has to sell that rate, that covers all that margin,
24:34
is the loan officer. And they're the ones dealing with the consumer. And the reason why there's
24:38
margin compression right now is because A, the market's contracted by, you know, 20%, 25%,
24:43
and there's less customers out there that's just as much competition. And all of a sudden,
24:48
these guys are like, like consumers are smart enough to know that they are ready to point,
24:52
point at higher than what the brokers are giving them. And so now we're having this big issue,
24:59
where all the nots issues are great thing. All these loan officers are coming back to the broker channel.
25:04
We had over 3,000 loan officers come to the broker channel last year, 8% growth of the number of
25:08
loan officers in the channel in 2018, which over the previous nine years before that, there was zero,
25:13
right? Last year we had 8%, this first quarter. So far, I haven't got the official number,
25:18
we're personally, this is one of our things that we do is help support the loan officers that are
25:21
transitioning to the broker channel. We've had almost 1,000 loan managers that we've helped
25:26
just this quarter. So, you know, to me, the reason why they're coming back is because
25:31
here they're in a position where they can control their margins. There's a cap on how much
25:35
they can make. There's no layers. And the association of independent mortgage experts, like to me,
25:39
the role is how do we protect loan richeners and mortgage brokers and brawls one of the things
25:45
that how do you protect them? You make sure that the people that are doing business with
25:47
Marge and other customers, how do you support them, whether it's compliance, whether it's
25:53
legislative relief, whether it's technology, whether it's advocacy, because people all consumers
25:59
need to find out how I find a mortgage broker. Those are the things that we're doing as an
26:03
organization. But more than anything, what I really wanted to accomplish is like, why does somebody
26:09
work for one of these retail bankers? And when I really peeled away at the layers, what I realized
26:13
is it's, well, you know, I have that market leader or that regional guy that kicks me in the body,
26:18
keeps me motivated, keeps me, you know, dead and after it. I have that motivation. I have the,
26:23
they have, you know, events where we all get together and we talk about S practices. So when I went
26:28
through the whole thing, it was like, oh, so all the things that the reasons why are,
26:32
have nothing to do with mortgages, have nothing to do with the day-to-day transaction piece. It was
26:36
all about kind of like helping like keep me motivated and focused. And I think that's what we're
26:41
trying to do with aim. It's like, how can, you know, not me, but how can this organization
26:45
bring people together in a organic way where there's not, you know, layers of financial repercussions
26:50
to it. But like, we're going to support each other. We're going to motivate each other last night
26:54
at nine o'clock at night. Broker had called me and said, oh, you know, I'm really down. I'm having
26:58
a tough month. It's like, you know, I got into the work district where I am. And I was like,
27:03
the last thing I want to do was hop on a call. I felt that I needed somebody to motivate me at that
27:06
point. So I called the guy and we talked for a half hour. And that's not sustainable. I can't
27:12
do that for 40,000 people, but we're trying to create, you know, other people that can kind of be
27:17
imparting out the years. Yeah. Be there for people. So it's, it's, you know, I'll use this word
27:23
ecosystem. And we'll talk about, um, arrive, obviously in a few minutes, but you're creating this,
27:28
this ecosystem, if you will, or community that's a supportive environment where, where
27:32
brokers can go for support, for education, for, um, transition strategy, perhaps. Yeah.
27:38
I'm mentoring, transitioning. Yeah. I also think for more than anything, it's like,
27:45
you know, the biggest thing is like how you behave with your consumer. I think one of the things
27:49
that I've seen is like a year ago, I would have brokers in our Facebook groups say something about,
27:55
you know, something to do with handling of a consumer. And, you know, the, the broker community
28:02
would go there and say, hey, listen, no, no, no, like, you know, better purchase the house you have,
28:05
you know, they would kick in and tell them how to do it right. And you see behavioral changes.
28:09
And it's not that there's any bad or good, it's just that you became a broker and you were
28:14
never a broker before. You don't know what the good practices are. You don't know how to best support
28:18
your customers, how to build processes and systems. You're, you were a sales person most likely.
28:22
So you were never a operations person. Yeah. So my level of peer-to-peer support, where nobody's
28:27
actually making any money off it. Like everybody's helping as a volunteer and just doing like a good
28:32
deed. That's what really drives this whole thing is like, yeah, without the expectation of
28:37
return management, we have from UWM says it's all the time. And he's, you know, I guarantee
28:40
home loans, we were one of their top brokers in the country. And I actually got to meet him in
28:44
an element. And so I, I have a great deal of, you know, respect and just admiration for the way
28:49
he runs his business. Right. So like he says that all the time, like, give without the expectation
28:53
of returning, of anything in return. And I've heard he used to say that I used to kind of roll my
28:56
eyes, but now it's something I genuinely, like, I firmly go through my life and just go do everything
29:01
about because I look at it and it's like, you know what, I'm going to help this person right now.
29:06
And I'll help them to get him out if they ask. And let's hope that one day, not that they're going
29:11
to help me, but that they're going to help somebody. So that's one less person I have to help. So like
29:16
right now, I start off, I have 40,000 people reach out to me. Well, that's probably down to 25,000
29:20
because 15,000 are now getting help from other people that are part of this network. And I think
29:25
that that's what's going to drive the ecosystem. And more than anything else, I think that's how we get
29:29
to a sustainable profession in not just mortgage brokerage, loan origination. Like to me,
29:35
the biggest thing is like the three hundred basis point to 800 basis point margin is not sustainable
29:42
technology. Well, it's Amazon, well, it's quick and whether it's better mortgage, those companies
29:47
will put a product or technology on the street that will eliminate the loan origin, or if we're
29:52
trying to operate those margins, 100 to 250 basis point margins, that can be sustainable. And I
29:59
even think it needs to be under 200 because realistically over time, you're going to have to be more
30:03
competitive. But you know, my big thing is that communication, collaboration, and nobody doing
30:10
anything for, you know, hey, I'm getting an override. That's why I'm helping. You know, I'm helping
30:14
you because it's just the right thing to do. Yeah, the days of, you know, back when we were doing
30:19
the, what the hell with those loans called the, you know, the negative equity effects,
30:24
the coffee loans and all the kind of, you know, with the three-year hard pay options. Thank you,
30:30
the three-year hard pay and on people. I remember in my office, people were just like making decisions
30:34
based on the fact that they had a three-year hard pay and they're getting the max points on that.
30:37
I'm like, I did one of those and I just, you know, it's only because the real, it was a real turn
30:42
and he knew exactly what that loan was all about. But other than that, I was just, I couldn't do
30:46
that, right? Because I had the DNA of the long term. And you know what, that's a great point.
30:51
And that's actually something like that. That was, so I got into this in 2003 at 18 years old,
30:56
okay? I've cut my teeth in that type of environment. In a call center, lending tree,
31:02
option arm, subprime, like, like, I didn't learn the business from a relationship standpoint.
31:07
I learned it from a call center standpoint. And the problem that, you know, is too young to know
31:13
at the time, but by the time, like, the housing crisis happened five years later, I got to learn
31:17
the ramifications of bad practices and creating their own stuff. So I had an awakening. I had like
31:22
a total epiphany where the first five years, it's like, yeah, you're making money. And economically,
31:27
for yourself, things are good. But if you aren't being an advisor, if you're not actually looking
31:31
up for the best interest of the customer, hey, people are going to hurt. You're not going to have
31:36
sustainable business. So there's no referrals when you screw people over. We don't look out for
31:40
people. So post housing crisis, that's why I started going to stay homeless. I said, you know,
31:44
I'm never going to work for somebody yet. I am going to like, yeah, I went into that environment,
31:49
the people I respect it at the time, because they taught me business and they told me how to make
31:53
money. I lost our respect for because I realized how that out of the leaders they were and how
31:58
unfocused they were on customers. So guards stay homeless. Our whole model was like, if we
32:03
a only do what is right for the customer, we explain everything, massive transparency. We never,
32:10
we had a thin margin model. And our whole focus was, if the customer, it doesn't matter if the
32:15
customer's right or wrong, if the customer even thinks we did something wrong, we're going to
32:19
re-fight if appraisal fee, they thought we're going to cover it or give them credit. We're going
32:22
to work well. The customer is always going to be right. We're always going to do right by them.
32:25
That's why as a company, we grew and we're successful. That's in the broker community. I definitely
32:30
think that that's what we're doing as a community right now. It's like we're so focused on consumers.
32:34
That for the first time, it's not like, hey, how much you're making on this deal. It's all about,
32:38
what was the customer experience? What's your strategy to get referrals or have them help champion
32:44
you and social media to get into their network? It's all about the long-term now. It's really
32:49
fun to see the behavior don't change. I love that. I love that. Who do you think then in terms of
32:54
somebody listening? They've been at one of the banks for a while. Who's right for possibly
33:01
considering being a broker and who's not? I think there's a couple things that go into
33:07
business. It's not just everybody should be a broker. It's a different model. I think there's
33:12
a couple things. I think number one, understanding that you can either start your own mortgage
33:16
brokerage being a business operator, which that's something different or you can go work for a
33:23
mortgage brokerage. I think what it comes down to is if you work for a bank and your entire
33:28
business is predicated on a job-boat product or a construction loans product or some type of
33:32
product that's specific to that bank, well, if you want to be a broker, because you want to
33:38
expand your network or start a new network, you can, but just understand that any of that business,
33:43
that you're focused on right now, all those customers and those realtors. If you can't do those
33:47
products as a broker, because it's not a specific product that's out there, you probably, that
33:52
business isn't going to come with you. Those referrals are specific to the products that that
33:55
bank offers, so that's real. The next thing is if you're a loan officer for a non-bank
34:03
free-taile lender, whether it's a guaranteed rate or a loan-deep or one of these companies
34:09
have a distributed network, I think what you have to evaluate is a company. I think what you have
34:15
to evaluate is what are you trying to accomplish? If you're so goal is I want to be a relationship
34:23
manager, and I want to not be in the weeds of my day to day, I need a lot of support,
34:30
I need the marketing, I need all these different things that these lenders do for you, that
34:36
creates that higher margin environment, or I need MSAs, or I need real state relationships
34:42
that are financially backed by lender, that's probably where you have to stay, because realistically,
34:48
as a broker, A brokers have a cap on margin, so that's one thing I love about our industry,
34:55
and I hate that name is trying to advocate against raising the compensation, is because I think
35:02
having a cap is a good thing, I think brokers can't make more than 275 basis points, so with that
35:08
said, it's one of those things that it's a transparency thing, we have to disclose our compensation,
35:13
we can't make more than 275 basis points, so you're in a situation as a broker, if you get the
35:18
worst deal from a mortgage broker, it's going to be at least 100 basis points better than the best
35:23
deal that you get from a mortgage banker, so I think if you're coming into and you're saying,
35:27
I'm all referral, I don't do pay to play, I'm not paying real estate, I'm not paying
35:31
me for referrals, it's all organic relationship development, relationship business,
35:35
I don't need a marketing arm, I don't need any type of crazy support outside of my transactional
35:43
support, and broker is going to be a really great model for you, because you're going to be out
35:47
of the lenders at this point, UWM is a prime example, Calvers, a great example, these lenders are
35:52
doing fulfillment at a better than retail experience, so right now, UWM is closing $7 million
35:59
month and rising in loans on average 10 days or less, so you're talking about retail, nobody's
36:06
that fast and nobody's doing that kind of item, $7 billion a month, you're talking about 80 billion
36:10
hours, that's a number one lender in the country buying, so to me, I just look at and say,
36:16
that's a good channel for you, but for the guys that I would say that I should be concerned,
36:21
if you're at a point in your career where you're coasting, you like the support, you're not
36:26
customer, you're not necessarily focused on giving your customer the best deal, retail is probably
36:31
a better model for you, but I will say one of the biggest arguments that's out there right now
36:35
really comes down to what I've been talking about on social media lately, which is EA loans,
36:39
like the model is broken, fundamentally, and it's been an eye-opening experience to understand
36:46
that the way that retail lenders do their economics, I've learned this from the people that
36:51
run the retail banks, is they essentially know that they have to be competitive on
36:55
conventional, they have to be within a quarter to three eights per cent in rate on a commercial
37:00
loan from what a broker is at, and the reason why is the doctor putting 20% down with a 740 cred
37:05
score is not going to take a rate that's a half a point to a hundred basis points higher than
37:09
what they can get on bank rate or silver from a broker. So with that said, they try to stay as
37:14
competitive as possible, and then on the government loans, they make up that margin. So basically what
37:21
they do is they say, hey, we know on average our loan officers do 20 to 30% government loans,
37:27
and we know on average those people are putting 5% and less down, and we know that those customers
37:31
aren't going to be shopping around. So they really, really break up the margin huge there. So to
37:37
me, I think that's an eye-opening thing for a lot of these retail owners, for Virginers, when they
37:41
see what a customer could get from a broker, and the fact that they could make the same or more
37:45
being a broker, but giving the customer a hundred one point lower rate, that's one of those things
37:50
where you have a moral limit. It's like, are you doing what it's truly right for the consumer?
37:57
Well, a lot of people working in the retail lending situation aren't even aware
38:01
of that though. So it's a nice thing, it's not there. I actually look at it and say like, I
38:06
always tell people come and be like, hey, why are you attacking? I'm not attacking the model.
38:12
I think you're awesome. I think your customers think you're awesome. I think if you're doing
38:16
10, 20, 30 million dollars a year in business, you've built a great business, and I have a lot of
38:21
respect for you. I know how hard it is to do what we do on average trading. So I have all the
38:26
respect and welfare because they understand the model is what's broken, and at the end of the day,
38:30
like, your realtor's refer you to the customer. The customer trusts the realtor, so they don't
38:35
shop around the go to you. When you do that loan for them, and it turns out that you have a
38:39
a veteran that is buying their first home, and they're buying a house for $250,000. Basically,
38:45
the difference in that 1% and interest rate, or that 3.4% interest rate that higher that you're
38:49
giving them versus what you could be giving them, is the equivalent of them buying that house for
38:53
20% more. So they're going to pay 20% more interest. So instead of being a $250,000
38:58
house, now it's really a $300,000 house. So just like manufacture that into your thought process,
39:05
and I've had people say, well, you know, I do well, and you know, I'm comfortable. I'm like,
39:09
I get it. I completely get it. But just understand, first of all, that model is not sustainable.
39:15
These eventually customers are going to find a better option. Right.
39:19
Anything you're, if you truly look at yourself as an advisor, like I'll give you a prime example,
39:25
customers would come to garden and stay home loans for jumbo loans. We were at a minimum at,
39:31
you know, this is from the big banks, and this is going back five years ago, four years ago. But
39:35
at that time, we were about half a percent higher in rate than a customer could get from JPMorgan
39:41
or Bank of America, one of the big banks. So they would call in, and our policy was this,
39:46
and it's not that we are like, you know, just these, these, these holy rollers are just like,
39:52
you know, good people or whatever. These work for profit business, but like, it was a half percent
39:57
lower. And our whole thing was this is like, hey, Mr. customer, I could easily offer you this,
40:02
and maybe you wouldn't shop, and maybe we would do, yeah, make money on it. But we don't want to
40:06
take the chance. Here's the five banks that we know, and this is the rates that they offer.
40:12
We're not a jumbo shop. Go there, and a lot of people tell you, no, you have to offer them
40:16
right. And yeah, but my thing was the, what my experience is, it's eventually to people do
40:21
shop, and either they revive, you get a really pay off, or they, or they way through the process,
40:26
they buy that rate, and they go with them anyway. It's just like massive transparency,
40:31
and they're saying, hey, this is what's best for the customer. And let me just refer them to
40:35
that place. That's not where I'm going to do my, my best work. Well, and that's also knowing your
40:41
lane, too. Like if you were in a jumbo shop, because I deal with that all the time, people are like,
40:45
you know, griping about how they can't compete on jumbo. And I'm like, well, then find a different
40:48
product niche, you know, like you said earlier, it's like, if your company doesn't, it doesn't have
40:54
the jumbo product, but somebody else in the market does. That's a great, by the way, that's a great,
40:59
you know, that's really being an advisor and putting your customers' interest ahead of yours.
41:03
I've interviewed other people who have said that to customers, and that comes back to you,
41:07
indirectly, in different ways. Every time, every time I could tell you every single person I've done
41:11
that for in my market, in my history, I've got our salons, it's not that I lost that person's
41:16
a referral. Like literally, the person admired so much that they still refer to me. So here's the
41:21
truth is, and no offense to any bank loan officer, but they don't offer the same service that we do.
41:27
It's true that those guys are at 45 to 60 day closings. It's not an efficient process. They don't
41:33
even try to pretend to be that. So they know why the customers are coming to them. They actually
41:39
want the process to be longer, so they have more time to try to get checking accounts and all the
41:43
other stuff. So just understand the service. It's not you're not going to lose that customer,
41:47
but to me, it's just understanding, knowing what you're good at, but from a high level, even right
41:52
now, when I have my priorities list with Amy, and I talk to the team that's at a rive, I tell them,
41:58
my number one goal for the mortgage broker channel is we have to get a competitive jumbo product
42:03
to compete with those guys, because brokers want that product. And I've talked a lot of barriers,
42:07
we're working on it, it's something that's in the works, but again, until that happens, it's,
42:13
hey, not a financial advisor, he can do 5.29, it's a forum case, he can do certain things,
42:18
but you go to him and say, hey, I need a certain retirement product that he doesn't specialize in,
42:24
he's going to send you to a specialist, like, like, understand, you can be a specialist and not
42:28
do everything, not to get jack of all trades. Absolutely, great point. All right, that's that's
42:32
actually a nice little good coaching session there. So let's do this, let's transition and talk
42:36
about a rive. Another acronym, I suppose? No, no, no. Tell us what a rive is all about, man,
42:43
but there's only one r in a rive, so it's cool. Yes, it's a r-i-d-e, so everybody's like, you
42:49
spelled a rive wrong. No, that's the cool thing to do these days. Yeah, that's like the
42:54
end thing, Uber ride. So, yeah, so, you know, this was an idea that basically, at Garden State
43:04
Homeland's, our old thing was after we closed our record month in 2016, our last 2016, we
43:10
had a record month, we closed 300 units, 308 units for $110 million of mine. We're a small
43:16
company. We're a 38-person company, so we're doing on a current loan basis. That's my,
43:21
that is literally unheard of. Yeah. And after that month, literally, I walked in the office on
43:27
the September 1st, and I walked around the office, and you know, I look at my processors, and
43:32
you would think like, we just closed our record month, people are going to do this pounding. I'm
43:36
five. Like, everybody's happy as hell. People look beat up, people look broken because it was
43:43
exhausting to close it. It was hard, and I pushed everybody to the max so we could actually have
43:48
a record month. So, people were broken up. So, what I realized is that the current broken model,
43:53
as of that time, we were one of the most efficient operations in the industry in the broker channel.
43:58
And, unless you throw bodies at it, it wasn't going to work. So, what it really came down to
44:03
is how do we connect the broker at this time? It was broker with our wholesale landers. But
44:09
that time we worked with UWM. They offered a point of sale called Blink to all their brokers,
44:15
and we took that application and we integrated with our Salesforce. And that little bit of connectivity,
44:20
that's just one little bit of connectivity, created massive efficiency. Like, I'm telling you,
44:25
it took 25% of the data entry redundancy off of our shop. So, when I saw how like a little bit
44:31
of connectivity created all this efficiency and automation, I was like, man, brokers, if they
44:37
actually had a connected experience from a regionation through closing, man, at that time,
44:43
we had a 8% market trend broker channel. I was like, just organically, they could probably double
44:47
the volume. And that's kind of where a rive came into play, it's like, hey, what we need to do is,
44:52
we need to have a third party decentralized system, where instead of the brokers logging into
44:58
every one of the landers portals and manually bringing their data into the landers portals.
45:02
And if we had a broker portal, where the broker, you know, and let's say in office,
45:07
I believe that they have a cloud experience, which our experience is all going to be sales for
45:11
striven. They have a cloud experience where all the letters are building the typing to the broker
45:15
portal. And now the data is coming back in lifetime, the rate sheets or the pricing is coming back
45:21
in lifetime, the document delivery, it's not being manually uploaded, it can be shot over in
45:27
lifetime. So that's where the concept came from. And essentially, what I did is I went
45:31
lender by lender and I told them about the concept. I went over all the areas where A, I believed
45:37
it would help brokers from efficiency, automation, business growth, CRM, staying in front of your
45:43
customers, all those things that would create. And I went lender by lender, I started with UWM because
45:47
UWM's number one lender in the country without their support. Honestly, I don't think you can do
45:51
really anything of large scale. So, you know, again, going back to the do what's right mentality,
45:56
give without the expectation of return, I explained it to UWM. And mad issue, it was like,
46:03
brokers need that. Like the first thing, brokers need that. And it's funny because the follow-up
46:07
stuff I got was a lot of people from other lenders were like, wait, why would UWM integrate with
46:13
an external platform? They have the best technology in business. Like everybody uses them because
46:17
their platform is so good. So like, everybody else is like, oh, this is great UWM, they're,
46:22
you know, they're going to give away their competitive advantage by integrating with a ride.
46:26
This is the different in the mindset. Like, to me, this is all about that mindset. It's like,
46:30
one guy is saying, I want to do what's best for my customer. Everybody else is like, oh,
46:35
this is how we, you know, this is how we beat our competitor. And it's like, it's just these
46:39
things that make my eyes pop. When I present to everybody, they should be like, this is what's
46:43
best for brokers. I present to people and they're like, oh, this is how we beat those guys. And
46:47
again, that's just the false mentality. But at the end of the day, we got eight lenders to
46:53
adopt and integrate with the platform. We had over a hundred lenders actually
46:57
being acquired or to be integrated with the platform. But one of the things you realize is
47:01
when you're building a decentralized platform with lenders and banks, this has never been done
47:06
before. There's a lot of security. There's a lot of work. It's very, very expensive to do it. Every
47:12
one of the costs to actually get a lender integrated to the platform is probably about half a million
47:16
dollars. So eight lenders, that's four million dollars right there. So it's something that has been
47:25
under, has been being worked on for almost a year. And next Monday, so on April 1st, we have
47:32
our first large scale group of brokers coming on. We're going to start bringing on
47:35
brokers on a weekly basis. But here's what I tell people. It's arrived as going to be a digital
47:40
mortgage broker platform. It's your CRM. It's your LOS. It's your products comprising an engine.
47:48
But over time, what we hope it's going to end up turning into is it's going to be a fully open
47:53
source system. So hey, listen, like we arrived not meant to sit there and be the technology of
48:00
the broker community. Like it's not going to be paying compasses. Oh, we, you know, we're it. This
48:05
is all this is all there is to it. And the problem with that is when the technology is bad or it's
48:08
outdated, you get lost like you fall behind. So my whole thing is we just want to be the
48:13
connection. Okay, we want to bring connectivity from consumer to broker to lender and then open
48:19
source and start bringing in best in class technology. So hey, listen, if, um, total expert, if
48:25
lossify, if somebody has a better piece that they can integrate to help brokers be better transaction
48:31
agents and great, we're going to be open source. Let's let's let's let's allow this to be completely
48:35
open. So the best in class technology will win. So it's really more of a marketplace than anything.
48:41
But it's been challenging. I'll be straight with you. It's, you know, it's one of those things
48:44
where gay, the lenders on board, these are huge financial instruments that they had to make. It was
48:48
a challenge. It's from a training and, you know, brokers have been using the same technology for
48:54
almost 25 years. They've all been using K-Lex. So getting the proper training, getting the support
49:00
in place to help them transition, but also support them when they get on the platform. Like that's
49:03
been a challenge. So there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes, but like to me,
49:08
everybody that is on the inside all of our data users are highly used every since the same thing.
49:13
It's like, it's not only what it is today. It's what it's going to be a year from now to
49:17
years from now. They see where the roadmap is going. And it's exciting because the way I truly do
49:22
look at arrived, what it's going to do is it takes away the last barrier for retail region to
49:28
become a broker. It really does because if you're a retailer today and you work for a company that
49:34
has connected technology, LOS, underwriting the whole thing, you've looked at a broker mile and
49:39
you're like, hey, I know I can make more money over there. I know I can get better rates as my
49:42
customers, but I got a manually exported three, two, and then imported there. And I have to manually
49:48
bring my conditions over and manually, like, they're like, dude, I'm not doing that. Like, I'll sell
49:53
the higher rates. I'll do the extra work. Like, I'm not going that well. So when people see
49:58
arrive, they're like, okay, you've just essentially created a mechanism where you can be an independent
50:04
one-man loan or a chair working from your home. And it's like the same thing as being a retail
50:08
loan or a chair working for the biggest, you know, for guarantee rate or something like that.
50:12
So back to the balls thing, man. Yeah, you definitely got them. I mean, because this is a huge
50:16
undertaking to create this unbelievable platform. I'm looking at all the elements of arrive,
50:23
like you just to recap for anybody listening. That's a Salesforce integrated CRM, right?
50:28
A point of sale experience for your borrowers, LOS software that interfaces with underrated
50:34
processors, funders closer. So you would expect with an LOS bringing, you know, these lenders all
50:38
under one roof to make it easy to look at pricing and offers and stuff. Yeah, products and pricing
50:43
engine. That's a big one. Right. That's huge. I mean, that's so huge because I can remember that
50:47
from the broker days. And then of course, community, which is a huge element of that as well,
50:51
because the working brainstorming and ultimately, like you said, man, for those that the broker
50:56
model might be something right for them. And it's not right for everybody, like we said,
51:00
now you've got like, you're empowered in your equipped to actually have perhaps your own business
51:06
or to make that shift. If you're looking for that different model and not leave all that security
51:12
of the, yeah, exactly the security of the big. The one thing I do say is like, if you think about
51:16
Airbnb, like, do you know how many landlords have been created views of Airbnb?
51:23
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think about the Airbnb is, I mean, it is where people go to this property
51:30
and find properties direct. So like to me, I look at it and say, like, five years ago,
51:36
there was no Airbnb. Okay. That didn't exist. The only way to be a landlord was to buy properties,
51:43
have a real estate, have a management company, like, that's what you did. That's a marketplace now.
51:48
And that's changed the entire economics of the way things are done. Even individuals, like, I have
51:53
a, one of our video production person, Nicole Piranha, she's in the process of listing her property
51:59
for sale. She said, what, what should I do? Should I get a real estate? Should I, you know, put on Airbnb?
52:05
And just the fact that she, as a first time person that's going to, you know,
52:09
this property that Airbnb is now like one of the, it was just one option. Now there's two options.
52:15
It just goes to how fast things can change. So I look at it arrive and I say, I get the way that
52:20
somebody is a lot of retail guys are like, well, I, you know, I don't know if it's that big of a deal.
52:24
Yes, it's going to be that big of a deal. And the reason why it's going to be such a big deal
52:28
is that you only compete with brokers right now on X amount of business. Right. The minute that all
52:33
those efficiencies are made and they no longer have to sit there and babysit the loans, do all that
52:39
manual work and all of a sudden people are rowing and scaling their businesses instead of just
52:43
trying to maintain it. It changes the economics. They're going to be able to, they're going to be in
52:47
your realtor's office. They're going to be looking for those deals. And when they're able to sit
52:51
there and tell their realtor's like, hey, listen, me and your, your other guy here that's in the office,
52:55
say you send business to out, we're a half a point lower, we're three quarters of a percent lower,
52:59
or we're giving that customer a bigger credit. Whatever it is, once that value proposition is made,
53:05
you have to understand like that's going to force you to do something else. Whether you become a
53:09
broker or you leave the business, that's going to force you to do something. So to me, it's like,
53:13
it's going to be a big game changer. And I would say five years from now, whether or again,
53:18
other people might steal the idea. I mean, again, it's been, it once it came out, everybody said
53:23
the same thing. Why has this ever been done? This is the most brilliant thing in the world.
53:28
Guess what? Arrived might be the one that brings it to market. Some other company might come along
53:33
and build a better mouse trap with connectivity. And that's fine. At the end of the day, I personally
53:38
only care about driving down the, what the consumer is getting, the interest rate and the fees,
53:44
driving down the cost to originate and mortgage and creating an empowered originator. So to me,
53:48
like if you put the originator in a position where they don't need all this infrastructure and they
53:52
can consume the best deal, well, guess what? Mortgage, a loan original professional will be around
53:57
in 50 years. Okay? These, now you're in a position where a loan original has a fixed cost model with
54:01
all the efficiencies that they need to be able to do loans at the thinnest of thin margins. So if
54:06
they're competing against an Amazon mortgage or a Zillow mortgage, it's only making, you know,
54:11
a thousand dollars on a loan. Hey, I'll do a loan for a thousand. I'll do a loan for two thousand
54:15
dollars because if you don't have to do any work past application, is you have that connectivity?
54:20
Well, now you're in this where you do 50 applications a month. So like to me, it's understanding not
54:25
what the environment is today. It's understanding that 10 years from now, when Zillow, when Amazon
54:30
are our competitors, that you're going to have to operate at a thinner margin level and you're
54:35
going to have to change the economics of the way your business model translates. It's going to be
54:38
more volume-based. And in that environment, you're going to need best in class technology. That's
54:43
exactly what we're trying to accomplish. Well, that's a whole, that's a very interesting
54:47
conversation, perhaps or another session about technology-based, you know, volume-based
54:54
business going up against those big boys. Okay, so let's do this for the time we have left. There's
54:59
a couple of events coming up for you that I want to make sure our listeners are aware of. The first
55:03
one is in Fort Lauderdale. You do these awesome workshops across the country. I was at the one at
55:08
Irvine. There was like what, 800 originators in the room. That's awesome. So the one in Florida
55:16
is coming up. When is that? 17th of April, I believe. Yes, so April 17th, we're on Fort Lauderdale,
55:23
diplomat hotel. And you know, we haven't done any events on the East Coast yet. And this will be
55:30
our first one. We're really excited about it. It's a smaller venue. We're only expecting probably
55:34
like six to seven hundred people. But we're excited. We have a huge number of brokers that are in
55:41
Florida. We have a huge number of retail owners, chairs that are in transition to brokerages in
55:45
Florida right now. So we're really excited about the event. Awesome. And then the next event you've
55:50
got coming up, which is later in the year in October, looks like you're, I don't know,
55:54
is this your big coming out party or what? You're calling this fuse. Is that the name of the event?
56:00
Yes. So, so last year was our first fuse event we did it. That's where we announced
56:03
arrived. This year we have Gary D. We have Ryan, Sarah, I'm familiar with our listings. They're both
56:10
going to be speakers at the event. It's going to be a big event. We're you know, last year we had
56:14
1,300 people come to the event. We're hoping to have over 2,500 this year. It's at the
56:19
Bellagio Hotel in October 12th. And we expect there to be a lot of technology announcements. We
56:25
expect a lot of the lenders that we work with are playing on making their big announcements. So
56:31
it's actually kind of transitioning from like a industry conference to more of like a, hey,
56:36
this is every like the all the lenders right now are sitting there saying, hey, we're we're
56:41
going to bring in our big offering for the following year. Well, it's a new product that they're
56:45
doing, whether it's a service offering that they're going to offer brokers or technology like
56:49
everybody's competing on, hey, this is where we present to the broker community. What our new value
56:55
prop is next year. And we're ready to offer it. So it's actually really exciting. It really is.
57:00
Oh, yeah. I wonder how they're approaching it. So, I want to make it clear for everybody
57:04
listening. We'll put links to all these events in the show notes because the registration for
57:08
the fused event and Vegas in October is open now. And I'm pretty confident you're going to
57:13
sell out. You know, so I would advise you to go in and get there. Get your ticket now. I'm
57:19
definitely going to be there because it's only like 20 minutes from my house. So why not?
57:24
But anytime you get a chance to see those two keynote speakers get around this incredible
57:28
community. You're building of loan officers and, you know, what's happening. This movement that's
57:32
taking place, man, that's awesome. So I would say this is that, you know, a lot of people like,
57:39
hey, listen, the way I look at it is if you're a retail owner, a chair right now and you're
57:44
curious, like you're just like, I see this model. I'm curious. But like, you know, you don't
57:50
want to put yourself in a position where, hey, if I reach out to somebody, I spend time with them,
57:53
like you feel bad saying, no, come to an event, okay? Just being a observer. You're going to get
57:58
six hours of content in the event in Florida. We're doing it two hour training on arrive.
58:03
You're going to hear from Mattish, head of CEO of UWF. You're going to hear from Phil Schumaker,
58:08
the head of home point financial. You're going to hear from me. So like, you're going to be able
58:12
to hear from all these broker channel industry leaders. You're going to hear from old,
58:17
for CR product offering from a technology standpoint and kind of get a vibe from all the brokers,
58:22
because it's very peer to peer focused. What's going on? What issues are we dealing with? How
58:27
are you tackling them? And just experience it. Your name tag is just going to say your name on it.
58:31
It's not going to say John Doe from this mortgage company, like come and observe it, because
58:36
in Irvine, at our last event, we had over 200 retail loan refrigerators come to the event.
58:40
And every single one of them, I'm telling you, every single one of them,
58:44
when I, throughout the day, as I shook hands and talked about, like, hey, what do you think?
58:49
You know, how do you feel about the event? Everybody said the same thing, like,
58:52
geez, this has been eye opening. Like, am I going to go be a broker tomorrow? No. But like,
58:56
this was a thing that was just like, hey, I just want to scratch the surface on it. It's like,
59:00
this is a real model. This is a great platform. And I'm genuinely looking to take the next step.
59:06
So I said, just come out. It's caused nothing to come and be an attendee and just experience it.
59:12
Yep. 100%. And I have to concur with that, by the way, when I was in the room in Irvine,
59:15
because I had a short-standing antobrogation, and I left the moment to countrywide and other banks
59:19
for most of my 10 years. But it was, yeah, it was eye-opening educational. And it's none of this,
59:25
you know, us versus them thing. It's this total welcoming community that we all, you know,
59:30
everybody just wants everybody to do well, right? And take the path that's going to get us there.
59:34
It's ultimately serves the customer. So I think you got a good vibe going with these events, man.
59:38
Absolutely. Thank you. Awesome. So as I said, we're going to put links in the show notes,
59:42
any other means of connection if people want to reach out to you, any suggestions,
59:45
how they should contact you? I would say the only, the only other thing is
59:49
it's so aimgroup.com. I am egroup.com. You have it on your shirt there. I appreciate you wearing it.
59:55
That's really good. You can put it right here. Get the mic out of the way, yeah?
1:00:00
Was hoping you'd wear it. Yes. So, you know, aimgroup.com is our website. If you just want to,
1:00:07
you know, kind of take a look at what's going on there. If you are a loan originator,
1:00:11
looking to become a broker, one of the things I recommend is there's a dmortgagebroker.com,
1:00:16
so the dmortgagebroker.com is a website. It's a platform that UWM rolled out, which basically
1:00:22
they created a group within their organization. They're not salespeople. They're strictly support
1:00:27
people and all they do is if you just want to call and understand compliance, licensing,
1:00:31
anything about becoming a broker, they answer your questions. 100% confidentiality. They won't
1:00:35
like your post on social media. They won't friend requests. They're very discrete.
1:00:40
But that's a way where if you might be intimidated by reaching out the aim or you might be
1:00:44
intimidated about, you know, reaching out to another mortgage broker, you can do it very
1:00:48
discreetly. And again, at the end of the day, I just, you know, our whole goal is for people
1:00:53
to know about their options. Well, it's consumers. Mortgagebrokers are real estate agents.
1:00:56
Optionality is very important. Absolutely. 100%. Listen, man, I know you are super busy and I
1:01:01
appreciate you carving out time for today. And I think that listeners, this has been eye opening
1:01:05
for them educational dig into the show links and everything. So you can further your investigation,
1:01:11
your engagement with the whole aim community that's happening. Anthony, thank you so much.
1:01:15
I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Looking forward to seeing you on the next
1:01:17
map. Yeah, for sure, man. And listeners, as always, we thank you for tuning in. If you like
1:01:21
this episode, let us know you know how to do it. Give us love out on the socials. And we'll see you
1:01:24
on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in
1:01:31
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