Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / The AI Mistake Killing Loan Officers in 2026

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The AI Mistake Killing Loan Officers in 2026 · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Hello, all you beautiful people.
• 0:01
  Welcome back to Mortgage Marketing Radio.
• 0:04
  I am Mike Ferozzi,
• 0:05
  your host.
• 0:07
  This is a podcast takeover.
• 0:08
  And let's just cut the crap and talk about what we need to
• 0:12
  talk about real quick.
• 0:13
  I'm taking over for Jeff as he recovers from cancer treatment.
• 0:17
  He said,
• 0:17
  hey, man, want to do an episode for me?
• 0:19
  And you don't say no to Jeff Zimpher.
• 0:22
  It's one of the
• 0:23
  rules of life.
• 0:24
  And I got to get out in front of the elephant in the room right now.
• 0:28
  I am Mike,
• 0:29
  founder and CEO of Red Button Media.
• 0:31
  We build custom content systems for executives, founders,
• 0:34
  and sales leaders in the mortgage and real estate market.
• 0:37
  The sign on the wall behind me says hit
• 0:39
  the red button because that's our website, hittheredbutton.com.
• 0:43
  And I am aware that depending
• 0:45
  on how this is cropped in in the final edit, if you're watching this on the YouTube or wherever
• 0:50
  else, I get that the sign looks like it says hit the butt.
• 0:54
  So let's just get all the high school,
• 0:57
  All the high school snickering and laughter out now.
• 1:00
  Okay.
• 1:00
  I get it.
• 1:01
  I've heard it.
• 1:02
  We're over it.
• 1:03
  And my guest who has joined me with literally five minutes of notice today is my friend
• 1:08
  and soon to be yours.
• 1:09
  Some of the best hair in mortgage marketing, James Duncan.
• 1:12
  Thank you for joining me.
• 1:13
  Absolutely.
• 1:14
  You know, when Mike Faraci texts you and says, got time for a last minute podcast recording
• 1:22
  session, you answer the call.
• 1:24
  You don't hesitate.
• 1:25
  Thank you.
• 1:26
  I appreciate that.
• 1:27
  You move your schedule, you set aside your priorities, and you show up.
• 1:30
  So I've been in mortgage for a little over 20 years,
• 1:33
  doing custom content for mortgage professionals full-time
• 1:38
  through my agency for three years, just getting people more visible,
• 1:42
  learning what resonates with the folks that they want to be connecting with,
• 1:46
  whether it's recruits, referral sources, borrowers,
• 1:49
  a little consumer direct action.
• 1:50
  That's the specialty with me.
• 1:53
  James, you've been in it for a little longer than 20 years?
• 1:58
  But you've actually led marketing teams for some large IMBs in this industry.
• 2:04
  So we're coming at it from kind of different angles, but it's all about visibility and just getting to make sure in 2026 that more people know who the heck you are.
• 2:17
  And that is becoming more and more complicated every single day.
• 2:22
  Now, when I talked to Jeff about doing this episode, I did tell him that we would talk about the merits of video and not necessarily video on platform, but the use of offline video.
• 2:33
  We are going to get into that a little bit when it comes to kind of building those relationships stronger and staying in front of people.
• 2:40
  But with the 100,874 AI tools that have been built specifically for the mortgage industry over the last three and a half weeks, it gets really hard to keep up, man.
• 2:53
  And everybody's saying, oh, you should ditch ChatGPT and switch to Claude.
• 2:58
  And, oh, you should be using this thing and you should be using that thing.
• 3:02
  And you got to be on this platform and you got to be over there and you got to be doing written content.
• 3:05
  You got to be doing video and toss your flyers in the trash because nobody reads them.
• 3:09
  and you should be using AI assistance.
• 3:12
  And let's bring some clarity to the noise here.
• 3:15
  This is about being more effective human beings.
• 3:20
  And what you're doing now with your new venture,
• 3:23
  Kalem Advisors, you're advising a few different
• 3:27
  high-powered mortgage executives and companies
• 3:29
  in a few different ways.
• 3:30
  How are you seeing mortgage professionals
• 3:34
  actively right now in 2026?
• 3:36
  How are you seeing them cut through the noise
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  better than their competition?
• 3:39
  In the specific frame of leveraging video to do that, the ones who are having the biggest impact are the ones that are not trying to put the full on spit and polish and heavily refined and heavily produced video content.
• 3:52
  It's the ones that are using your motto.
• 3:55
  They're picking up their phone and they're hitting that red button and they're just recording and offering their thoughts.
• 4:01
  And sometimes they're handing that raw video over to somebody proficient at video editing, splicing it together so it doesn't sound like one big rambling take.
• 4:09
  I mean, they're taking out the best of the best in the clips and they're using it.
• 4:13
  But what's unique is that these leaders, I like the term impact leader more than thought leader.
• 4:20
  I like that.
• 4:20
  The way that they are stepping into that impact leader role, and there's several CEOs and mortgage executives that are coming to mind, several of whom are your clients.
• 4:31
  Right.
• 4:31
  And they're leveraging the power of video to tell a more compelling story, way more compelling than text alone, way more compelling than a recruiting landing page or any kind of blog.
• 4:45
  it affords them the opportunity to to not have an ai filter on their message where the because
• 4:51
  you can use like or an interpretation filter for that matter or an interpretation because you get
• 4:57
  like you get that with written content people don't understand like just think about your own
• 5:01
  reading habits if somebody texts you on a day that you wake up on the right side of the bed
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  versus the day that you wake up on the wrong side of the bed you're going to read that text message
• 5:08
  a little bit differently and doing it through video-based communications allows you to take
• 5:13
  control of how your message is delivered.
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  Inflections, tone, feel, all of it.
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  Facial
• 5:18
  expressions.
• 5:19
  Right.
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  Gestures.
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  I mean, the whole bit.
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  And there's smart ways to leverage AI for
• 5:25
  the content creation and coming up.
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  Let's get more into that because there's a lot of AI talk.
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  There's a lot of all the stuff, right?
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  And let's get out of the frame of video.
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  For people who
• 5:37
  aren't doing it, you think video, you cringe.
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  It's a large lift.
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  There's production that has to
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  happen there.
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  And there's editing that you don't want to have to worry about either doing or
• 5:47
  outsourcing.
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  It's a big pain in the butt.
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  That's how I pay the bills, by taking on that big pain
• 5:52
  in the butt for the people who don't want to do it, right?
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  But aside from all of that, just like
• 5:58
  your normal mortgage professional who's trying to get through this market and make the best living
• 6:04
  to help support their family that they possibly can, or get to the next goal that they're looking
• 6:09
  to get through, what are some of the, let's say, lower barrier to entry tools that they can step
• 6:16
  into and start using without giving away their humanity in the process?
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  Well, one of the first
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  things they can do, regardless, let's stay agnostic of specific AI platforms.
• 6:27
  That's fair.
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  Number one thing that I tell folks all the time, whether they're clients or whether it's just
• 6:33
  conversations like this, number one thing that I tell them to do is get better at prompting.
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  And that starts by getting better at asking the right questions because the issue that I see with so many of these AI solutions that say, use this prompt.
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  Well, that person used that prompt and they probably had about 15 to 20 hours of research and testing and iterating that they went through before they got to that specific structure or that specific formula for that specific prompt that they're advertising that you use or maybe even pay for.
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  And there's a whole lot of context that's missing.
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  One of the things that I have learned, one of the things that's been the best education for me on, it doesn't matter what AI tool I'm using.
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  But when I go in and I start a thread, I get probably 80, 90% of the way through what it is that I'm actually researching or seeking to get a better handle on.
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  And then I will stop and I'll start asking the AI platform.
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  It doesn't matter if it's Claude, Perplexity, ChachiBT.
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  Start asking it questions on how did you explain to me your thought process?
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  How did you arrive from point A to point B?
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  Like when I asked you this question, you gave me this response.
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  where did that information come from?
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  And you can even know in a lot of these models,
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  you can even open up that little sidebar that will show you basically the LLM's stream of
• 7:54
  consciousness of what it's thinking in real time before it spits out whatever response it's going
• 8:00
  to spit out.
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  That alone has been one of the best ways of educating myself on exactly how I need to
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  treat AI and how I need to think a little bit more deeply about the prompts that I'm putting in,
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  the questions that I'm asking, the personas that I'm telling it to take on, because that makes a
• 8:17
  huge impact on the outputs that are generated.
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  Because most people just say, just open up a new
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  thread and say, give me 10 content ideas for TikTok.
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  Okay, great.
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  It's going to do that.
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  It's
• 8:28
  going to do exactly what you requested.
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  But if you have a crappy question to begin with, you're
• 8:32
  going to get crappy results.
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  And I share this with somebody is that all of these AI platforms
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  are probabilistic in nature.
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  That just means that it's the sum of all the parts.
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  It's the law of averages coming into play.
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  So it's always going to tend their responses
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  and the way that they operate,
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  they're always going to tend to the mean or to the average.
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  So if you have a mediocre prompt
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  or if you are putting in mediocre context,
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  you are going to get mediocre results.
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  But where the true power of these things is,
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  is when you really start to dive in
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  and you start to understand how to structure your prompt
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  prompts in such a way that these things really do function the way that they were intended to
• 9:12
  function.
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  And that is as deep research or as deep analysis or understanding tone, understanding
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  more of the human aspects of what makes us unique.
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  And it starts to function more in that regard.
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  So you put in average content or average context with your prompt, you're going to get average
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  results and it's going to fall flat and you're going to waste your time and you're going to
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  spend a lot of money and a lot of effort into creating a bunch of mediocre crap.
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  You're just
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  you're going to be able to do it a lot faster.
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  So instead, when you focus on structuring your prompts,
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  and I don't want to call it prompt engineering
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  because that's a skill, not a position.
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  That's the big fancy term though, James.
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  It is the big fancy term.
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  Prompt engineering.
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  I'm going to jump in here and dumb this down a little bit
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  because you're too smart for me, man.
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  We're talking about teach me how you're approaching this,
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  Mr. and Mrs. AI.
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  I want to know what went into all of it.
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  Can you tell James used to be an English teacher?
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  Always seeking education, man.
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  But what if we want this stuff to just work?
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  Because a lot of the times I don't have time for the education.
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  I got a four-year-old screaming at me from the back door.
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  And I got a client that I got to answer.
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  And I got all sorts of stuff going on.
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  One thing that I started doing that was kind of a revelation for me, and this was probably about six or so months ago.
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  I started getting to that 70%, 80% point with my AI platform of choice.
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  I'm a chat GPT person.
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  gasp i have not ditched chap gpt and and launched full into claude like a whole lot of people do
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  but that's the trend currently who knows what's going to happen next week that's how fast these
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  things are changing but once i get to a certain point to where it's like man we're almost there
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  i will actually ask the ai platform i'm missing like 20 for us to be 100 all the way there on
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  this i can't exactly put my finger on what's missing how would you have prompted yourself
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  to go about doing this task?
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  Or can you please write me a master prompt that I can feed into a
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  new chat that will get this job done more efficiently and with higher quality?
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  And it'll
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  write a whole big old prompt for you.
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  And you just copy and paste it from there.
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  Like just ask it to
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  help you before, like when it comes to crap in, crap out, that's always a thing.
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  And that's just
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  not, that's not AI.
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  That's everything.
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  Like we're mortgage professionals here.
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  You submit a crap
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  file, you get a crap decision.
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  Like it's the thing.
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  That's what it is.
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  All of life.
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  Your outputs are
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  as good as your inputs, but you don't have to be crazy exceptional with your inputs.
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  You just have
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  to be a little bit more intentional.
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  If you're about to ask your AI platform of choice a question
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  before that, think about the one person in the world that you wish you had access to that you
• 11:52
  could ask that question.
• 11:53
  If it's Bill Gates, if it's Steve Jobs, if it's, I don't know,
• 11:57
  Shant Bosnan, because he's one of the biggest originators in the country.
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  If it's the top
• 12:02
  realtor in your area and you're trying to figure out how to get in their door, prompt the AI first,
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  hey, there's this person.
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  It's a target referral partner of mine.
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  I wish I knew how to get into
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  their door.
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  And I need to ask that person some questions.
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  Here's a little bit about them.
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  Can
• 12:19
  you act like this person as we do a little Q&A right now so I can figure out how to more effectively
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  get through to them.
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  Then the AI will start thinking more like that person that you want
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  to be talking to.
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  And your outputs that you get from it are going to be of higher quality because
• 12:36
  there was a little bit of intention before you started peppering it with questions.
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  Now, all of
• 12:40
  a sudden, it kind of knows, okay, I know who you are.
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  I know kind of what you do.
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  I know what your
• 12:46
  goal is to get in the door of this person.
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  And it reframes the context of how it's going to answer
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  you.
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  It's the same way that I approach content, whether it's video or written or whatever,
• 12:56
  you got to know what your target audience is for the piece of content you're making.
• 13:01
  If you
• 13:01
  actually want it to land with them, you have to know that before you make it.
• 13:04
  I always use the
• 13:05
  GPS analogy.
• 13:06
  I'm in Southern California.
• 13:07
  So like if I'm in San Diego and I want to go to the
• 13:11
  Hollywood walk of fame and I just type Los Angeles, California into my GPS and start going where it
• 13:16
  takes me.
• 13:17
  I can't get mad when it drops me off in Watts or Compton because I didn't tell it where I
• 13:22
  wanted to go.
• 13:23
  It was just, it was too general.
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  You know what I mean?
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  The output was just as good as
• 13:27
  the input.
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  And, and I think using the AI platform itself to help it prompt itself on your behalf is,
• 13:35
  is one of those, one of those little tricks that I learned and it probably took me too long to get
• 13:39
  there, but it's better late than never.
• 13:41
  And at the end of the day, let's, let's be honest, a whole
• 13:43
  lot less people are actually using these things on a day-to-day basis than we think because the
• 13:49
  power users fall into their own echo chambers and you think that everybody's at home vibe coding for
• 13:54
  four hours a night building apps and doing all this stuff your typical person in the general
• 13:58
  population hasn't even opened or downloaded chat gpt to play with it yet at this point in time
• 14:04
  the adoption cycles are slow on all of this stuff what what other type of tools let's get let's get
• 14:10
  I mean, AI is talked about ad nauseum these days.
• 14:13
  We probably don't need any more conversation about AI.
• 14:16
  How are you going about kind of nailing down?
• 14:19
  Let's say you start working with a new client.
• 14:21
  You start working with a new mortgage company and loan officers, real estate brokers, agents, branch managers.
• 14:29
  You guys can take a lot of this into your own context, into your own world.
• 14:33
  Like if James is working with a mortgage company, it's very common that you can use the exact same strategies.
• 14:40
  You just kind of do a little mind flip of the person you're trying to reach at the end of this strategy.
• 14:48
  And the context changes in a beautiful way that directly applies to you.
• 14:51
  You start working with a new mortgage company.
• 14:54
  This mortgage company wants to build more referral partnerships for their loan officers.
• 14:59
  What are the first things that you're looking at?
• 15:03
  When it comes to what they're doing now to identify kind of holes in the funnel, so to speak, that we can be plugging and kind of shoring up in order to strengthen an overall visibility and marketing strategy for referral partnerships specifically.
• 15:17
  Well, one of the first things I do is I really take a deep dive into asking great questions.
• 15:23
  And I start by just saying, what's your current process?
• 15:27
  And just shut up and just listen.
• 15:28
  Like map it out for me.
• 15:29
  Tell me what's the entry point.
• 15:31
  Like, are your LOs using any kind of structured scripting or are they using common ideas?
• 15:40
  Is there anybody in particular on your team that's better than all the rest by like a wide margin?
• 15:46
  I'd really just dive into those details and I say, okay, what's your objective?
• 15:51
  And like, what is it?
• 15:54
  Define for me what a true realtor partnership means.
• 15:58
  Are you just looking for referrals or is this going to be more of a two-way street where you are collaborating together to create more of a team environment where they depend on you for the best advice, advice that they can't get anywhere else?
• 16:13
  Like, what's the relationship going to be like?
• 16:15
  What's the end goal?
• 16:16
  And how are you going to structure it?
• 16:18
  And so you just dive into it.
• 16:20
  There's not, it's like you mentioned, you referenced me being a former English teacher.
• 16:25
  I told my English students all the time that I was in no way ever going to advocate formulaic writing.
• 16:34
  Like I was never, they would always ask me, how long does this need to be?
• 16:37
  Because they had grown up by the time they saw me when they got to high school,
• 16:41
  they had grown up having English teachers that say, write me a five paragraph essay on this topic and structure it this way.
• 16:47
  I didn't believe in that because if you're a good enough writer, you don't need five paragraphs to tell me a really good story.
• 16:54
  I can say that one of the best grades I ever got on a high school English paper
• 16:59
  was with one of the toughest English teachers in the entire system.
• 17:04
  And the assignment was a five-page long book summary.
• 17:07
  And I turned in three and a half pages because I couldn't figure out how to get it to five.
• 17:12
  And he gave me one of the best grades in class.
• 17:14
  And on the paper was a note that said,
• 17:16
  thanks for not filling the last page and a half with fluff that didn't mean anything.
• 17:19
  And I was like, okay.
• 17:21
  That's when I learned what a really good teacher was.
• 17:24
  He was able to even look at his own directive and be like, it wasn't right for this person.
• 17:30
  And that was amazing.
• 17:31
  And I love stuff like that.
• 17:35
  What type of questions should mortgage professionals be asking themselves about what they're doing on a day-to-day?
• 17:43
  Because I got to believe that you don't commonly come across tons of people that are doing egregious things wrong in their business.
• 17:50
  right?
• 17:50
  Wrong, no.
• 17:51
  For me, it's more about kind of identifying the strengths and superpowers and
• 17:55
  really leaning into them instead of, you know, bifurcating your energy into too many places
• 18:01
  that takes away from that.
• 18:04
  What type of superpowers are you uncovering that seems
• 18:07
  to resonate the most with audiences that people are trying to reach?
• 18:10
  It's interesting.
• 18:11
  For the
• 18:11
  last several years, we've heard all about owning your story, tell your story.
• 18:15
  You got to be a
• 18:16
  better storyteller.
• 18:17
  Everybody has a story.
• 18:18
  Not everybody has a point of view.
• 18:20
  And this is
• 18:20
  interesting.
• 18:22
  That's a, that's a very important distinction because I've got an origin story
• 18:26
  about my journey from being a high school teacher, getting into mortgage and real estate industry,
• 18:32
  having a couple of different jobs, taking over marketing, blah, blah, blah, led me up to what
• 18:35
  I'm doing right now.
• 18:35
  That's history.
• 18:37
  That's context, right?
• 18:38
  That's not a point of view.
• 18:40
  That's a textbook, right?
• 18:41
  Yeah, exactly.
• 18:42
  Right.
• 18:43
  Yeah.
• 18:43
  So the way that people are,
• 18:45
  The way that people are doing the best job of uncovering what is their unique superpower is understanding that, yes, you have a story, but you also have something even more powerful, and that is a point of view.
• 18:56
  You have an opinion.
• 18:58
  You have things that you believe in very strongly, and those opinions and those beliefs are not going to resonate with 100% of the marketplace, so stop trying to appeal to 100% of the marketplace.
• 19:09
  I'm not saying you should niche down and only focus on a very tight, small group of homebuyers' persona.
• 19:19
  I'm not saying that.
• 19:20
  I am saying, though, that you have a particular way of serving your clients that's unique to you.
• 19:25
  If you don't, you need to find one.
• 19:27
  And if you do know what that is, great.
• 19:29
  You're already ahead of the game.
• 19:30
  So once you find what that lever is for you, and we're both friends with Michelle Burr-Michael.
• 19:36
  She loves talking about things in terms of levers.
• 19:39
  and that you can activate in order to, in order to prospect.
• 19:42
  She's great about it, but it's,
• 19:44
  it's true.
• 19:44
  I mean, once you find that, once you discover what that superpower is or what that
• 19:48
  point of view is, and you find new ways to articulate that particular position, then you
• 19:55
  will start to attract the kind of ideal client that you have been dreaming of working with,
• 19:59
  but the kind that never knew you existed because you were either putting out content or it just,
• 20:05
  the message wasn't reaching their ears.
• 20:07
  And then finally, somebody saying something
• 20:09
  that really resonates with me deeply,
• 20:11
  I want to work with that person.
• 20:12
  I want to disagree with one thing you just said.
• 20:14
  What's that?
• 20:15
  You said you weren't telling people they got a niche down.
• 20:18
  I'm going to tell people they got a niche down.
• 20:20
  All right.
• 20:20
  Because if you are a mortgage professional,
• 20:24
  and it doesn't matter what level of mortgage professional you are,
• 20:27
  you could be a president, CEO,
• 20:28
  you could be a junior loan officer, I don't care.
• 20:31
  You all got a target audience you're trying to reach.
• 20:33
  If you're a loan officer, a junior loan officer, you're trying to reach referral partners.
• 20:37
  You're trying to reach homebuyers.
• 20:39
  You're trying to reach homeowners.
• 20:40
  They got some equity.
• 20:41
  Maybe they got some debt they need to wrap up.
• 20:43
  If you're a president, a CEO, you're trying to reach recruits.
• 20:47
  You're trying to reach that next sales leader that you want to bring into your organization.
• 20:52
  Or maybe it's expanding referral partnerships for your company, company-wide, things like that.
• 20:58
  If you're not niching down, then any messaging that you put out there publicly will not land with the people that you want it to land with.
• 21:07
  You get into that trap where you're speaking to everybody so it's not landing with anyone.
• 21:13
  It's just not meaningful to any one person.
• 21:15
  If you just say, oh, yeah, well, my target market is anybody who could be in the market for a mortgage,
• 21:20
  then how are you going to talk to any of those people meaningfully about, I don't know, a new down payment program you got access to?
• 21:26
  It's not going to happen.
• 21:28
  Okay, well, if I have this new down payment program,
• 21:31
  I need to be talking to first-time homebuyers.
• 21:33
  Great.
• 21:34
  Are they married?
• 21:35
  Are they single?
• 21:36
  Because the context changes.
• 21:38
  Do they have kids yet?
• 21:39
  Are they planning a family?
• 21:41
  Are they recent college graduates?
• 21:43
  Where are they located?
• 21:44
  Is it a college town?
• 21:46
  Is it a place where condos are heavier?
• 21:48
  Are we in a more rural area?
• 21:50
  The context in which you speak changes
• 21:52
  based on the answer to every single one of these questions.
• 21:54
  How much money do they make?
• 21:56
  How do they get paid?
• 21:57
  Are they self-employed or W-2'd?
• 21:59
  Context changes everything, everything, absolutely everything.
• 22:03
  So unless you're niching down with the messaging you're putting out there, whether it's in
• 22:08
  text posts or emails or text message campaigns through your CRM, video on social media, it
• 22:14
  doesn't matter.
• 22:15
  If you're putting messaging out into the world, if you don't know exactly who you want that
• 22:19
  message to land with, you're DOA.
• 22:22
  It's just never going to work.
• 22:24
  And does that mean that it takes a little bit more effort?
• 22:27
  Yeah.
• 22:28
  Shocker.
• 22:29
  Just like since the beginning of time, it takes a little more effort to stand out from the average Joe.
• 22:33
  This is nothing new.
• 22:35
  You know what I mean?
• 22:36
  But niche down.
• 22:37
  But don't niche down to where that's the only person you serve.
• 22:40
  I always coach my clients to come up with three to five core target viewer personas for their content.
• 22:47
  And that way, if you're talking to the high-powered real estate agent, the property investor who has 20 homes in their portfolio already, the first-time home buyer, the homeowner, or that person you're trying to recruit.
• 22:59
  Well, now, if you have multiple target viewers in mind for when you start talking about a thing, whether it's educational content or it's a story you're telling about a successful transaction or an unsuccessful transaction, a lesson you learned, that stuff humanizes you.
• 23:14
  It's important.
• 23:16
  you know you have a starting point of who you're talking to and also that allows you to multiply
• 23:22
  and expand the amount of content that you're putting out there because that story applies
• 23:28
  differently to all five of those people so maybe it should be five pieces of content not one and
• 23:32
  each one of those viewers get their own thing i'm a huge fan of niching down in content that's how
• 23:38
  my content has been able to resonate in a way that's helped me build a business that provides
• 23:43
  my family because I know who I'm talking to and I speak on their terms.
• 23:48
  Yeah.
• 23:49
  You know, and, and that's, and that's huge.
• 23:51
  And speaking of knowing who you're talking to and speaking on their terms.
• 23:55
  Yeah.
• 23:56
  Let's get, let's get people a little more comfortable with video.
• 24:00
  There's a lot, a lot of people are scared of the camera,
• 24:04
  but really the only camera we need to be using is,
• 24:06
  is right here in your pocket or purse.
• 24:08
  This is all I, it's basically all I use anymore.
• 24:11
  It's incredible.
• 24:13
  very capable the best way that i've ever found to get people comfortable more comfortable
• 24:18
  is and i'm going to give you all this challenge anybody who's listening or watching this
• 24:22
  tomorrow just tomorrow start with one day pick one text message that you were going to send
• 24:27
  somebody and instead of typing the message and shooting it off bring up the camera app hit record
• 24:33
  say exactly what you were going to type and then just text them that little video and watch the
• 24:38
  kind of responses that you get.
• 24:39
  This exercise has resulted most recently, a couple months ago,
• 24:44
  I advised a broker owner to do this.
• 24:46
  And for a week, he started giving all of his realtors
• 24:50
  loan file updates in the form of videos that he just texted to them instead of text messages that
• 24:55
  he was sending.
• 24:56
  By the end of that week, he got two more referrals.
• 24:59
  And one of them said,
• 25:01
  I just love communicating with you.
• 25:03
  Not because you're the best or the fastest or the lowest
• 25:07
  raid or this or that.
• 25:08
  No, you're the easiest to communicate with.
• 25:10
  I feel like I know you more.
• 25:12
  Like the one-to-one offline use of the most powerful communications medium that we have
• 25:20
  available being video is one of the most valuable things that you could possibly lean into.
• 25:26
  I know
• 25:26
  that you see, I don't know, we probably see it more than anybody else watching this sees it,
• 25:31
  you know, but when Kyle posts something, buddy Kyle Draper, when he posts something on LinkedIn
• 25:36
  and it's a screenshot of his camera roll.
• 25:38
  And it's just a load of videos of him
• 25:40
  because he's been doing a bunch of one-to-one video messaging.
• 25:42
  There's a reason that works.
• 25:45
  And it's because you get to show up right there in front of somebody
• 25:49
  as a pattern interrupt in someone's day
• 25:52
  without having to be there physically.
• 25:53
  But you get all the same goodness out of it.
• 25:56
  You get the familiarity bias.
• 25:57
  You get the eye contact.
• 25:58
  They get to hear your voice.
• 26:00
  They get to see you put them at ease
• 26:02
  or deliver the message however you want to.
• 26:04
  So what do you think is more powerful?
• 26:07
  Having that loan file update and you get off the phone with Jim, who's on his lunch break,
• 26:13
  and he's like, oh, yeah, I'll tell my wife Jane about all this stuff when I get home from work.
• 26:17
  That would be fine.
• 26:18
  But isn't it better if you just pop up the camera, shoot a quick video that says,
• 26:22
  hey, just talk to Jim.
• 26:23
  He's on his lunch break, and let's be honest, he's going to forget to tell you some of this.
• 26:26
  So I'm going to give you the update too.
• 26:28
  And then you shoot her a little 35-second video.
• 26:31
  The secret that we can keep between us is that those videos take no longer to make than it takes to type the message anyway.
• 26:42
  So your time investment is 0% extra.
• 26:46
  But the perceived value by the recipient is multiples more.
• 26:52
  Because, oh my God, they took the time to make me a video just for me.
• 26:56
  They did that just for me.
• 26:57
  That is powerful and that builds relationships.
• 27:01
  And that's just scratching the surface when it comes to using video as a communications
• 27:08
  tool offline, not just for Instagram Reels, not just for TikTok and LinkedIn and YouTube,
• 27:13
  just a communications medium.
• 27:15
  Toss links to them in your emails, whether it's a monthly newsletter or an email update
• 27:21
  about a thing.
• 27:22
  Work them into your text messages.
• 27:23
  pre-record some things that will apply to a specific section of your closed loan database
• 27:30
  and then set up a text campaign through your CRM that just sends that video out to them.
• 27:35
  Because make no bones about it, all those people have forgotten you exist
• 27:38
  because they got their own lives to deal with.
• 27:40
  What do you see going on in CRMs, James?
• 27:43
  Do you see more video being worked into client and referral communications?
• 27:48
  I see it when I recommend it.
• 27:50
  I see it as it is received as a novel idea.
• 27:54
  And they're like, oh, we can do that.
• 27:56
  It's what you were just, the example that you were just giving.
• 27:59
  When I led marketing, especially for Thrive, I had a license to originate loans.
• 28:05
  And I originated deals here and there.
• 28:08
  For the last three or four years that I was actively originating, that's how I would send my updates.
• 28:16
  I knew that the CRM was already sending out the email updates and probably even a text for certain milestones.
• 28:22
  But I wanted to make sure that they saw my face, heard my voice, and I would text the buyer's agent, the buyers themselves, and the listing agent.
• 28:30
  Different updates for each.
• 28:33
  But, I mean, like you said, it took less time to do that than it took me to type it all out and say, here's next steps.
• 28:40
  Just hit it and go.
• 28:41
  And I could do it in the car.
• 28:42
  I could do it at my desk.
• 28:43
  It didn't take hardly any time.
• 28:45
  I knocked it out in a minute and a half.
• 28:48
  Even if it's information that you can't deliver through that video message,
• 28:52
  even if it's like a link to a secure form or a portal that like it has to be emailed.
• 28:57
  Yeah.
• 28:58
  Prime that email with a video text.
• 29:00
  Hey, just want to let you know, these couple forms are going to be coming over to you.
• 29:04
  You got to complete them.
• 29:06
  Can't send them here.
• 29:07
  It's got to go through the email and click the link,
• 29:08
  but know that that's coming in the next 15 or so minutes.
• 29:11
  So look for it.
• 29:12
  Like it's a whole different thing.
• 29:14
  Whole different thing.
• 29:15
  All right.
• 29:16
  I've kept you for longer than I promised.
• 29:20
  But if you have time.
• 29:22
  I do.
• 29:22
  Okay, cool.
• 29:23
  Keep on going.
• 29:24
  I don't want to cut you off.
• 29:25
  I just want to be respectful of your time.
• 29:27
  All right.
• 29:27
  Back to your original question of how I'm seeing my clients that when they're asking questions about CRM,
• 29:33
  the primary question that I'm getting is do we have the right journeys, let's call it,
• 29:39
  or do we have the right campaigns or automations, whatever the terminology is used,
• 29:42
  do we have the right structure for continual messaging?
• 29:46
  And most of the time it's not about
• 29:49
  the in-processing workflow campaign.
• 29:51
  So I mean, those milestones, those are usually pretty well
• 29:54
  set.
• 29:55
  They're pretty standard across the board, but I will look at those just because I want to see,
• 29:59
  all right, how clinical are you getting with the information that you're displaying?
• 30:03
  Are you
• 30:04
  phrasing it in terms that only a processor and underwriter would understand and not a human
• 30:09
  that's not in mortgages all day, every day?
• 30:12
  Or are you putting some humanity in it?
• 30:14
  The CRM director that I had at Thrive
• 30:16
  had a brilliant idea of creating a tracker
• 30:21
  that was kind of the banner image across the top,
• 30:23
  like the Domino's pizza tracker thing.
• 30:25
  Okay.
• 30:26
  Ripped off Domino's idea,
• 30:28
  put it into our workflow campaign
• 30:30
  so people could see that stretch.
• 30:33
  It was just kind of-
• 30:34
  That gamification, you know, official term, right?
• 30:38
  Gamification.
• 30:39
  Like when you gamify something for someone, it's, well, there's a psychological trigger there that helps them get through it more easily.
• 30:49
  Because not only, I don't know, if you're a poker guy, I used to be a poker guy.
• 30:56
  Not only in the beginning does it give you a sense of accomplishment because, okay, I'm 10% done now.
• 31:01
  I am moving along.
• 31:02
  You do reach a point in like that 40, 50, 60% range where they are pot committed.
• 31:08
  It's like, oh man, I've come this far.
• 31:09
  I may as well just finish.
• 31:10
  You know what I mean?
• 31:11
  Like it does up the actual conversion of those things,
• 31:16
  whether it's internal conversion
• 31:18
  and to get trying to get your internal staff
• 31:20
  to complete certain things, certain tasks,
• 31:23
  or whether it's a consumer facing thing,
• 31:26
  that gamification is extremely important
• 31:28
  and more important every day
• 31:30
  as admittedly attention spans dwindle seemingly by the minute.
• 31:35
  Yeah.
• 31:38
  as far as to your original question as far as video content um yes it's kind of hit or miss
• 31:44
  because you can implement a solution where you've got sort of this canned video that's produced by
• 31:51
  the marketing team and it's inserted into this stage and it's not the loan officer's face it's
• 31:56
  not the loan officer's voice and you can do that yeah a whole lot better for both of the loan
• 32:02
  officer, their future business, their referral partners, it's a whole lot better if that
• 32:07
  loan officer will take the time to record those quick, short little videos and provide
• 32:14
  those assets within their own platform.
• 32:16
  Set the framework, set up the whole framework for whatever the campaign, give them the scripting
• 32:21
  or the bullet notes so that they can just speak freely and comfortably and naturally
• 32:25
  like they're sitting across the table from somebody.
• 32:28
  But you got to have them do it.
• 32:30
  If you want it to really be successful and to work the best and best possible way, have it connect back to them and then help them insert in those videos, whether it's whether it's a link in an email or insert as a MMS text message, outgoing message.
• 32:45
  However, however, the delivery mechanism gets set up, help them with that.
• 32:49
  But they're they're going to need some assistance.
• 32:51
  You marketing directors, you guys can set the framework for that and then give them the instructions that they need.
• 32:56
  I promise you is going to make a massive difference just because of the power of video.
• 33:01
  And if you are a marketing leader at a mortgage bank or broker, and you have been either instructed
• 33:08
  to look at or test or try to implement things involving AI avatars of your people, I'm not
• 33:15
  going to go into all the reasons why I don't like them because this will be a three hour long show.
• 33:18
  But I would love to make myself personally available to you if you would like to chat
• 33:24
  about AI avatars and why they are so bad for relationship-based business.
• 33:29
  Reach out to me
• 33:30
  on LinkedIn, Mike Ferrazzi on LinkedIn.
• 33:32
  I will make time for you and any of your leadership
• 33:36
  that you want to invite to that call.
• 33:39
  I do not hold back and I have no problem saying
• 33:41
  what I believe to whoever it is that ends up showing up because the AI avatar is going to
• 33:50
  the downfall of a lot of professionals who lean too heavily into it because in a relationship-based
• 33:58
  business, at-fishing people is not the way to get it done.
• 34:01
  So that's all I'll say.
• 34:03
  I'll leave it
• 34:04
  there on AI avatars.
• 34:05
  I want to wrap this up.
• 34:07
  I don't want us to go too long.
• 34:08
  I'm going to give
• 34:09
  my one thing I want people to take away from this and then I'll kick it over to you, James.
• 34:12
  If anybody other than my mom is still listening, hi mom, and also thank you for sticking around.
• 34:18
  If you're still here, if you take one thing away from this, the one-to-one video communication, huge power move, right?
• 34:25
  AI tools, amazing.
• 34:27
  Strategies, tactics, all good.
• 34:29
  But in the world of 2026, moving into, you know, spring and summer markets, there's so much noise out there about the things that you should be doing, about the tools that you should be using.
• 34:41
  whether it's content on social, video all over the place, these AI tools, those AI tools,
• 34:47
  all the AI tools in the world, which some of them are just automations that are being
• 34:51
  relabeled as AI, but that's a different topic entirely.
• 34:54
  The tech that may or may not be at your disposal.
• 34:56
  If you can leave this podcast with one thing from me, it would be before you embrace, test,
• 35:05
  or try anything new right now, ask yourself one simple question.
• 35:10
  Is this going to allow me to be a more efficient human for the humans I serve?
• 35:15
  Because if it's removing the humanity from what you do, it's a net loss.
• 35:20
  If it's freeing you up to be human with other humans more often, that's a positive.
• 35:26
  James, what do you want people to take away from this?
• 35:28
  Kind of pulling on that same thread right there.
• 35:31
  Do not allow AI to replace your thinking.
• 35:34
  Don't allow it to replace your voice.
• 35:36
  and this isn't just about,
• 35:39
  that statement is not just about
• 35:40
  AI avatar thing that you were talking about
• 35:42
  because I could dwell on that for three hours as well.
• 35:44
  I like to say that the AI tools that I use
• 35:48
  are like the most informed research assistant
• 35:51
  I've ever had the pleasure of working with.
• 35:53
  I'm not so certain that I,
• 35:55
  I'm getting closer to being okay with this,
• 35:57
  but I'm not so certain that artificial intelligence
• 36:01
  is really the right term for it.
• 36:02
  Artificial knowledge is probably
• 36:04
  a little bit better term for it
• 36:05
  because it's like Encyclopedia Britannica of all knowledge and all available resources
• 36:12
  available in the world or almost instantly recalled on your behalf.
• 36:18
  Yeah.
• 36:19
  Don't ever allow an AI platform to replace your ability to think critically and don't
• 36:23
  ever allow AI to speak for you.
• 36:25
  It's amazing to me how many people are getting great engagement on the surface with AI produced
• 36:32
  copy and paste stuff, AI images, and there's nothing necessarily against AI images, but you
• 36:38
  just look at their content and you're like, I can almost tell which AI platform wrote that,
• 36:43
  the caption copy for that post.
• 36:44
  And because there's all these little tells and it's not just
• 36:48
  the em dashes.
• 36:49
  All right.
• 36:50
  That's, that's, that's like last year's news.
• 36:53
  There are, I just know,
• 36:55
  I know that person, let's say, I know that person personally.
• 36:58
  I know that that's not how they talk.
• 36:59
  That's not how they sound.
• 37:00
  Those insights were structured by an LLM.
• 37:03
  Don't be that person.
• 37:04
  Use it to ideate.
• 37:05
  Use it to come up with a thought process,
• 37:09
  but use your humanity to validate whether or not,
• 37:13
  not just whether it sounds like you,
• 37:14
  but whether it's something that you actually believe.
• 37:17
  And if it's not, by all means, don't post it,
• 37:19
  but don't let it, simplified version,
• 37:22
  don't let it replace your critical thinking.
• 37:24
  I love that.
• 37:25
  We'll end it here.
• 37:26
  Thank you so much for hanging on for one more takeover of Mortgage Marketing Radio.
• 37:32
  And Jeff, we miss you.
• 37:34
  We love you.
• 37:34
  Get well soon, brother.
• 37:35
  Praying for you, Jeff.