Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Ep #50: Rick Elmendorf on Closing 560 Loans

Transcript

Ep #50: Rick Elmendorf on Closing 560 Loans · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with
• 0:04
  the real estate agents is essential for success.
• 0:06
  However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge.
• 0:11
  With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it
• 0:15
  can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections.
• 0:20
  Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read.
• 0:25
  Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals.
• 0:31
  And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships
• 0:34
  with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business.
• 0:39
  To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy
• 0:45
  of the case study today.
• 0:47
  You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million
• 0:52
  in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too.
• 0:56
  Don't miss out.
• 0:57
  Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today.
• 1:17
  Hey listeners, welcome to episode 50 of mortgage marketing radio.
• 1:40
  I am so thrilled you're here, episode 50.
• 1:42
  Can you believe it?
• 1:44
  50 episodes.
• 1:45
  And with me for any time now, I appreciate you and I thank you for tuning in.
• 1:49
  And this is among the best episodes that we've featured and of course, they're all good
• 1:54
  but I'm biased, right?
• 1:55
  So I'd like to know what you think.
• 1:57
  Hey, if you like the episodes, make sure you leave us a positive rating on iTunes.
• 2:00
  That's how we reach more people and do more good in the world.
• 2:03
  If you've got a question for me, right, you can go to the blog and contact me there, mortgage
• 2:07
  marketing institute.com where you can simply send me an email info at mortgage marketing institute.
• 2:14
  So episode 50 wanted to make it a great one and I promise you it is.
• 2:19
  If you've ever wanted to see here, you know, a blueprint for being a modern mortgage professional
• 2:25
  and succeeding in today's world, obviously some of our other guests definitely have a hand
• 2:31
  in providing that roadmap for you.
• 2:34
  And our special guest, Rick Elmendorf today with caliber home loans is on equal par with
• 2:39
  any other of the mega superstar guests we've brought on.
• 2:42
  So who is Rick?
• 2:43
  What is he all about?
• 2:44
  Obviously, I'll let him share that with you, but the quick bio on Rick.
• 2:48
  Number one, VA and military lending specialist in Metro, D.C.
• 2:53
  Top 1% of mortgage originators in America ranked number 29 on the Scotsman's Guide, 2016
• 2:59
  numbers.
• 3:00
  What did it look like?
• 3:01
  Are you ready for this?
• 3:02
  560 loans, $211 million.
• 3:06
  And one of the great things I love about Rick is not only is he incredibly intelligent
• 3:10
  and professional.
• 3:11
  He's also a go-giver.
• 3:13
  He shares.
• 3:14
  He gives.
• 3:15
  He believes in giving back and teaching others, right?
• 3:19
  So that they too can learn.
• 3:21
  As a matter of fact, I know he's a big starwars fan, so I got to give a shout out to one of
• 3:26
  his favorite quotes, which is always pass on what you have learned, mm-hmm.
• 3:30
  Who does that?
• 3:31
  That's Yoda's quote.
• 3:32
  That's my impression of Yoda.
• 3:33
  So I hope you like it.
• 3:34
  But anyway, today on this week's episode with Rick, we unpack a lot of stuff, right?
• 3:38
  It means to be a VA specialist.
• 3:40
  If you've ever thought about that niche, how to become one?
• 3:44
  What do you need to prepare for?
• 3:46
  What to do and what not to do?
• 3:48
  Does it matter that you're picking a niche or not?
• 3:51
  What are some of the affiliations you can associate with?
• 3:53
  What types of communication do you need to have set up?
• 3:56
  What structure and process in place if you're working with the military?
• 4:00
  Because there are certain expectations around that when you're working with VA, right?
• 4:03
  How to get educated and be intelligent and separate yourself as literally.
• 4:08
  An expert in that business.
• 4:10
  We also unpack a lot from Rick's brand new book, just released on Amazon.
• 4:14
  There's a link in the show now.
• 4:16
  It's for you to go get the book.
• 4:17
  It's only $30 in the Kindle store and it is literally a seminar in how to succeed as
• 4:25
  a loan officer.
• 4:26
  Here's the title of the book, the loan officer revolution leading the charge for creating
• 4:29
  realtor partnerships that actually work.
• 4:32
  And I bought this book and it is a page turner.
• 4:36
  It's written well.
• 4:37
  It's compelling.
• 4:38
  It's the thing I like about it most is it's not fluff.
• 4:41
  It's got real world tangible strategies, tactics, systems, things you can borrow.
• 4:46
  Rick just shares.
• 4:47
  He opens up the box of tools and tricks and things that have been proven to work for him
• 4:54
  as a makeup producer, conversations, how to engage with agents, how to set up the relationship
• 5:00
  so it's right from the beginning.
• 5:02
  And this podcast episode, gosh, we just really dove in deep here in terms of strategies
• 5:07
  and tactics, understanding how to be more successful in attracting real estate agents,
• 5:11
  how to convert the right agents, making sure that you've got the proper alignment there.
• 5:17
  We talk about using the disk profile, I'll give you a link to it in the show notes for
• 5:21
  how to hire and build your team.
• 5:23
  We talk about Salesforce, marketing automation, building a team, what's Rick's loan onboarding
• 5:30
  process.
• 5:31
  And does he get involved?
• 5:32
  When does he remove himself from the situation so he can scale and grow his business?
• 5:36
  I mean, man, this is just get ready to take notes, right?
• 5:39
  You're going to have to go back and listen to this one a second time.
• 5:42
  And of course, this is episode 50.
• 5:43
  So if you are at all interested in teaching agent classes, you've heard me talk about that
• 5:49
  a number of times with some podcasts, guests, most recently episode number 48 Vince Kingston.
• 5:57
  If you haven't heard that one, go back and check that one out.
• 5:59
  And if you want to learn more about done for you agent lunch and learn classes, check
• 6:03
  out and get powerful presentations.com because we're just about to close that down this month
• 6:08
  of July for the rest of the summer.
• 6:10
  So anyway, back to my special guest, Rick Almondorf, just an incredible interview, one that
• 6:17
  I'm very proud to bring to you.
• 6:18
  And if you like it, let us know, right?
• 6:21
  If you're new here, subscribe.
• 6:22
  This is episode number 50, more good stuff to come.
• 6:25
  If you want to leave a positive comment, do show on iTunes, leave us a rating.
• 6:28
  If you want to email me, got a question, comment, email me info at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com.
• 6:34
  So without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
• 6:37
  Hey, Rick, welcome to the show.
• 6:39
  Well, thanks for having me, Jeff.
• 6:41
  It is my pleasure and my honor considering all the great things that you're doing out there
• 6:46
  when in terms of a loan officer.
• 6:47
  You're one of those guys, by the way, I just have to tell you that I love, there's certain
• 6:51
  times I get to bring people on where you're a great example, if you will, of what's possible
• 6:56
  and of a professional standard in the industry.
• 6:59
  So I thank you for holding that lamp high.
• 7:01
  Well, that's my pleasure, thanks for having me on.
• 7:04
  All right, so for those listeners, quick summary, what's the brief bio on Rick, how long
• 7:10
  you've been in the biz and maybe some quick production stats, if you will, you know, it's
• 7:13
  whatever you want to give?
• 7:14
  Sure.
• 7:15
  Well, I've been in the business, I'm going to be dating myself now.
• 7:19
  I mean, goodness gracious, 1994, going back quite a few years now.
• 7:25
  Got into the business, listening to a, listening to the radio, I was listening to, I was a real
• 7:29
  state of prazer before coming in a prazer, technically, I was a full time golfer.
• 7:33
  So I got into college and then after college, all of my buddies were all people that I knew
• 7:38
  my brother and all of his buddies were real state of prazer.
• 7:40
  So I started doing real state of prazer, did that for a few years and turned around a
• 7:44
  briefcase of a bunch of, you know, loans to take pictures for and do a prazer for them.
• 7:50
  Like, who the heck is this guy doing all, and he's making a ton more money than I was.
• 7:55
  And I guess in the beginning for all of us is like, oh, it's going to be a great money
• 7:58
  being a loan officer of it.
• 7:59
  For me, you see money, right?
• 8:01
  Yeah, right.
• 8:02
  Easy money.
• 8:03
  Hey, maybe in the fast and easy days.
• 8:04
  Just chain how much money do you make?
• 8:05
  I don't worry about that.
• 8:06
  Right.
• 8:07
  You make $10,000.
• 8:08
  You manager.
• 8:09
  Oh, goodness.
• 8:10
  Nobody does that.
• 8:11
  But yeah, so I got in, took an interview for a mortgage company, a mortgage broker up
• 8:18
  in Cainesville, Maryland, and I drove for 18 months from Clifton, Virginia, living with
• 8:23
  my parents, driving up to Cainesville, Maryland for 18 months in a row, and then kind of work
• 8:28
  my way closer in and 25 years later.
• 8:31
  Here I am.
• 8:32
  Wow.
• 8:33
  Yeah.
• 8:34
  So that's the background there.
• 8:37
  Funny enough, early in my career, I was just probably like everybody else, and, you know,
• 8:41
  I was, you know, I was kind of just learning, learning by fire, and how you learn this
• 8:45
  business, right?
• 8:46
  Just get caught on fire, make a lot of mistakes, and just learn from them.
• 8:49
  But, you know, I became a real study of the industry, and read a lot, and back then we were
• 8:54
  doing these coffee lounge.
• 8:55
  Remember this as a, yeah, man, cost of funds index.
• 8:58
  Yeah, right.
• 8:59
  Right.
• 9:00
  A cost of your house index, you know, loss of house index.
• 9:06
  Right.
• 9:07
  Right.
• 9:08
  Yeah.
• 9:09
  Especially the guys that threw the three-year-hard pre-phase on there with the 4% margin.
• 9:12
  Yeah.
• 9:13
  I'm not even going there.
• 9:14
  I praise the Lord for, you know, my team, I have a really great team.
• 9:18
  I've got, there's nine of us here, including myself.
• 9:22
  And last year, my team was able to accomplish some pretty outstanding things.
• 9:25
  We did just over 211 million in volume, over 560 loans, so we've got a really, really
• 9:32
  nice year.
• 9:33
  Okay.
• 9:34
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 9:35
  And the story is awesome.
• 9:36
  Very relevant.
• 9:37
  Thank you.
• 9:38
  It's always interesting to hear how somebody became an LLO.
• 9:39
  Yeah.
• 9:40
  And many times, you know, it's funny.
• 9:41
  It's that same situation where it's like, hey, man, they're like, they're making a lot
• 9:44
  of money.
• 9:45
  I should give that a whack, you know?
• 9:46
  Right.
• 9:47
  And that was the similar journey for me.
• 9:50
  But you mentioned your team, and this has been kind of top of mind for me lately, 560
• 9:55
  loans.
• 9:56
  Wow.
• 9:57
  As soon as somebody hears that, right, many questions come up for people depending on where
• 9:59
  they're at in their career.
• 10:00
  One of the questions is, how the heck do you do that?
• 10:03
  How do you manage that, right, that because as you know, many people are like, man, I'm having
• 10:06
  a tough time managing my five or eight deals, you know, in the pipeline.
• 10:11
  So when you say you've got a team, give me a quick breakdown on who's originating on
• 10:15
  your team, who's, you know, production ops, that kind of thing.
• 10:18
  Yeah.
• 10:19
  Sure.
• 10:20
  So I have a slew of assistance, and each of the assistants have different things that
• 10:23
  they do for me.
• 10:24
  So I have, we'll call them two junior loan officers.
• 10:29
  They basically help me do more origination duties.
• 10:32
  And then I have free production assistants who kind of handle alone once it's alone.
• 10:37
  And then I have some, some, an admin that I have a business development person that handles
• 10:42
  kind of new leads, filters leads, handles like stuff like Zillow or maybe, you know, looking
• 10:48
  back in the past client database, which is a real big piece of originating nowadays.
• 10:54
  Ask me about that because it's a strong opinion on purchasing refinance business even in
• 10:59
  this market.
• 11:00
  But yeah, having somebody that's really focused on that.
• 11:02
  So that's how we're structured.
• 11:03
  So the junior L.O.'s, I got three free back in assistants and admin and a lead guy.
• 11:08
  Okay.
• 11:09
  So map out for me kind of your loan process, if you will, because I, you know, on my calls
• 11:14
  I work with L.O.'s, and oftentimes we're trying to structure the ideal loan process and
• 11:20
  the classic kind of metaphor example in the past has been, you know, the doctor patient
• 11:25
  thing, right?
• 11:26
  You're coming to the office, you meet with the nurse, et cetera, and, you know, so what
• 11:29
  is your process look like?
• 11:30
  I'll give you a perfect example.
• 11:31
  It just happened this morning, you know, at a past client, give me a call and said, you
• 11:36
  know, I'm coming up on year three and a half of my arm.
• 11:38
  We have a good arm rate, but I really want to lock this in for another seven years.
• 11:42
  We're going to be here longer than expected.
• 11:44
  So I do the initial call, initial contact.
• 11:46
  The initial contact is anywhere from six to eight minutes and sometimes it's longer depending
• 11:50
  on if it's, you know, the situation has a little hair on it.
• 11:54
  But we'll set it up in the database.
• 11:56
  So I'll create an opportunity record and Salesforce, which we use.
• 12:01
  And then once I kind of have a general direction, I will then assign it to one of my junior
• 12:05
  L.O.'s or depending on that, it might go directly to an assistant that would do, does
• 12:09
  a worksheet.
• 12:10
  Now, in this particular case, I was just kind of typing it up as if we went along, but
• 12:14
  either myself or one of my assistants will pop the worksheet out to the client, and
• 12:18
  then I tasked my assistant, my junior, to actually call him on the phone and she called
• 12:23
  him, not 30 minutes later, got the green light.
• 12:27
  And that's what she did.
• 12:29
  So then once the green light is given, the driver says, yes, she sends a actually getting
• 12:34
  things rolling email.
• 12:35
  That's kind of my way of when the process starts for the backend and when the process stops
• 12:41
  for me, is that getting things rolling email and that getting things rolling email is
• 12:44
  like, hey, thanks.
• 12:45
  We're getting things rolling.
• 12:47
  Here's what we're doing.
• 12:48
  By the way, here's the attached estimate.
• 12:49
  So it's clear as day, what they're doing, what they've agreed upon.
• 12:53
  And then at that point, then my backend, guys, one of my assistants will take it depending
• 12:58
  on the account that it's attached to, or whoever's assigned it based on their capacity.
• 13:03
  We'll take it, do a walk-in call, structure the loan, get whatever we need or don't need.
• 13:07
  And these digital mortgage days, and maybe we don't need a whole lot, hopefully.
• 13:11
  But gather what we need, get it in for processing.
• 13:14
  It goes into processing underwriting.
• 13:16
  And then once it comes back out of underwriting, I'll have that person either clear all the
• 13:20
  conditions or have one of my other backend people clear all the conditions.
• 13:25
  And then they do all the stuff that we have a big part of my system was like, I identified
• 13:29
  years ago, what are the things that can blow up a loan, right?
• 13:33
  So I kind of made systematic things like once a loan is in process, what are the basically
• 13:38
  four things I have to do on every loan?
• 13:41
  As long as you get to these milestones, we're okay.
• 13:44
  But if you choke and you miss one of these things, the loan could blow up.
• 13:48
  First one's easy, it's the loan approval.
• 13:49
  So we check the loan approval, we check the appraisal, and we do a 10-day prior to closing
• 13:53
  review.
• 13:55
  And then we do a what's called a final CD review with a client.
• 13:58
  These are phone calls.
• 13:59
  And there are also ways that on purchases, we can call the real estate agent, especially
• 14:02
  at loan approval.
• 14:03
  It's a happy call, right?
• 14:04
  We'd be appraisals in, happy call, 10-day, hey, happy call, I'm calling you, we're 10
• 14:09
  days out.
• 14:10
  And then the final CD, everything's been signed, everything's good to go.
• 14:13
  Because we'll see it closing in three days, that five days, whenever we do that final
• 14:17
  review.
• 14:18
  Yeah, so that's kind of our system.
• 14:21
  That's great.
• 14:22
  Who locks the, are you quoting the rate and who locks the loan?
• 14:25
  Yep, yep, the loan officer, everyone on my team is licensed, loan officer, and sometimes
• 14:31
  I may direct and the client on my may agree, hey, let's hold off, it's Friday, it's
• 14:36
  much Friday, nobody locks on Friday, we're up 20, we didn't get a really price, so we're
• 14:41
  going to wait and see how this thing goes out, comes up on Monday, we look at all the
• 14:45
  different services out there that kind of advise us to lock or not lock, NBS Highway is
• 14:50
  a really good one, I'm very happy that we use that, and that's how we kind of manage
• 14:55
  it.
• 14:56
  Typically, I or one of the general laws are locking it.
• 14:59
  And then do you punch back into that process at any time, or are there specific things that
• 15:04
  your team knows that this is when and only when to bring Rick in, for instance, appraisal
• 15:09
  come short or something?
• 15:10
  So my very first hire in this business, and I wrote about this, I just finished a book
• 15:16
  by the way, and I have actually have a part of the book on that, is like my almost big
• 15:21
  mistake, and I talk about when Rick is going to get back involved, but it's like the first
• 15:26
  person I hired in this business, which I actually couldn't even afford by the way, but
• 15:30
  I hired him anyway, and I paid for him, was this guy named Troy, no, I wasn't Troy, this
• 15:35
  was my new hire, it was Doug, back in the day, Doug was basically to handle everything
• 15:40
  once alone became alone, you handle all my issues, you handle all my problems, if I
• 15:44
  have to get involved, then involve me, but you know that my time is best used, doing
• 15:48
  my highest and best use, which is going to get more loans, right?
• 15:51
  So we kind of have that built in, and part of my book also, I wrote years ago, I was encouraged
• 15:56
  by a coach to write what's called a descriptive account, and I actually include that in the
• 16:02
  book too, for somebody to, anybody wants to plagiarize off of me, it's fine, but it's
• 16:07
  literally, it's like, I don't even know how long it is, it's like probably eight to ten
• 16:11
  written pages, it's literally taking the buyer through my entire process, from like how
• 16:17
  I want them referred to me, who refers it, how the process is, and injecting Rick in the
• 16:25
  process by the way, is actually kind of interesting, it doesn't have to be me doing it or me calling,
• 16:30
  it just has to be a team thing, for example, my team may say, hey Rick's in the office,
• 16:34
  you need to speak to him, they'll always say no, unless they really say yes, right?
• 16:39
  Because if somebody calls me, I only want it to be for one of two reasons, Rick, thank
• 16:43
  you, or Rick, I referral for you, those are the calls I really want to answer, other than
• 16:47
  that, it's probably a problem call, and I really would not want to think of those as phone
• 16:51
  calls.
• 16:52
  And what is the language, and by the way, your book, and we're going to come back to that
• 16:57
  a little later in conversation, but for those who want to know right now, it'll be in
• 16:59
  the show notes as well, a link to it on Amazon, the loan officer revolution, leading the
• 17:04
  charge for creating real-to-partnerships that actually work, that's going to be a lot
• 17:07
  of what we talk about for sure, and I love that that descriptive account is in there,
• 17:13
  I'm defiant a borrow that creatively.
• 17:16
  What's a lot of people I talk to, you know, are like, well how do I set the, how do I
• 17:21
  disengage myself elegantly from that transaction without making them feel like I'm kicking
• 17:26
  them to, you know, the curb, and they're not getting Rick, you know what I mean?
• 17:30
  Yeah, part of that, I will tell you this, most borrowers don't mind, and I will say the
• 17:36
  majority of borrowers don't mind.
• 17:37
  They understand the team concept, don't they?
• 17:39
  Yeah, they do.
• 17:40
  Yeah.
• 17:41
  It's our hardheadedness as loan officers that don't want to give up.
• 17:44
  We think we're so special.
• 17:46
  We think we need to micromanage everything in the process, and I'll tell you this, and
• 17:51
  there's been no bigger control freak than me.
• 17:53
  Before I hired Doug, and I was able to learn to let go, people tell me now I was like,
• 17:57
  my wife always jokes, and he's like, yeah, you don't do anything, Rick, all you do is
• 18:00
  sit at home and play video games, which I love, which I love to do side note.
• 18:03
  Oh, really?
• 18:04
  Yeah, okay.
• 18:05
  Okay.
• 18:06
  What's your go-to game?
• 18:07
  Come on.
• 18:08
  Well, for business purposes too, by the way, and I'll get into that too, if you really
• 18:11
  want me to, but legal legends, and I'll also play that competitively, and then I've called
• 18:16
  Diddy franchise as well.
• 18:17
  Look at.
• 18:18
  Huh?
• 18:19
  Yeah, look at.
• 18:20
  Yeah, actually sponsored cod champs two years ago, and was up in LA for it, and had a lot
• 18:27
  of really interesting people, so there's a lot of money in esports.
• 18:30
  People would not, it's not just 13-year-olds sit behind a console playing video games.
• 18:35
  The demographic is quite astounding.
• 18:37
  Well, they're intelligent.
• 18:38
  I know.
• 18:39
  Maybe, and let's, I'm making a note here on my sheet, so hopefully we'll have time to
• 18:43
  come back to this, because I've got a teenage kid, and maybe you can give me some perspective
• 18:47
  on that.
• 18:48
  Anyway.
• 18:49
  Yeah, go back to that.
• 18:50
  Yeah, but disengaging eloquently, I think it's just a decision that the loan officer can
• 18:56
  make.
• 18:57
  When I say, hey, Fred, I'm going to be putting you into process.
• 19:00
  My team is going to take care of you.
• 19:01
  We're going to be in touch in these four points in the process, guaranteed, and you're always
• 19:05
  going to be around, and I will always be available for you as well, and you and I will be in touch.
• 19:11
  When I say you and I will be in touch, my team is always keeping me in touch.
• 19:15
  Hey, Rick's in the office, you can just speak to him.
• 19:19
  Do you have any questions?
• 19:20
  Is there anything you want me to get Rick involved?
• 19:22
  It's always that type of communication.
• 19:24
  So they're asking that question often on the call then?
• 19:27
  Oftentimes, sometimes they forget, but the idea is that the borrower doesn't ever feel
• 19:33
  like Rick just left them.
• 19:35
  That's not the case.
• 19:36
  And here's the most important thing.
• 19:38
  What's the last thing that people remember?
• 19:40
  They remember the last person they spoke to in the transaction, right?
• 19:44
  So I instituted a system quite a while back, whereas I have a report that's run every
• 19:49
  Friday, and on Friday, I get a list of every single party to the transaction of every
• 19:56
  loan that closed the week before.
• 19:58
  So this Friday, I will get a list of everybody that closed last Monday through Friday.
• 20:05
  I will then reach out personally, first by email, and then I will then choose to call
• 20:10
  maybe the parties that I want to personally reach out to, like, pick them up the phone.
• 20:15
  But the email always gets a response.
• 20:18
  I mean, I will tell you, like, half of the people respond, hey, your people was great.
• 20:21
  I can email you guys if you want to see a copy of the email that I send out, but basically
• 20:25
  it's, hey, it's Rick.
• 20:26
  I just wanted to see how I'm checking in to see, I don't actually, I don't like that
• 20:30
  word checking in.
• 20:31
  I don't say checking in.
• 20:32
  I hate checking in.
• 20:33
  I hate checking in.
• 20:34
  I hate following up.
• 20:35
  Nobody likes to be followed.
• 20:36
  But I say something along those lines.
• 20:38
  I can get you the exact verbiage if you want.
• 20:41
  But basically says that I'm really curious as to to your standpoint, how did we do?
• 20:46
  I really want to know to help improve and all that kind of good stuff.
• 20:49
  And that goes out so generic, but it goes to the borrower and it goes to the buyer and
• 20:53
  the listing agent, all parties that were part of that referral process.
• 20:56
  Is that an individual email you're sitting down and, you know, cutting and pasting and sending,
• 21:00
  or is that automated from a software?
• 21:03
  Well, it's automated to the point where I actually manually send it every, but I send
• 21:08
  it to a list that goes to all of those people.
• 21:10
  I do it out of Salesforce.
• 21:11
  So it is automated.
• 21:12
  Yeah.
• 21:13
  Once it's okay.
• 21:15
  And do you in terms of leveraging online reviews, capturing testimonials, what do you
• 21:19
  do there?
• 21:20
  I'm just trying to follow this funnel the whole way out.
• 21:21
  Sure.
• 21:22
  Yeah.
• 21:23
  The online reviews are actually kind of cool and we're making some really positive changes
• 21:26
  to that too.
• 21:27
  Yes.
• 21:28
  I am a fan.
• 21:29
  Okay.
• 21:30
  I'll say I'm a fan of Zillow.
• 21:31
  I am.
• 21:32
  Not so hyped up on their search, but whatever there is what is.
• 21:35
  I love Zillow reviews because when people pop in, it's going to come up.
• 21:39
  So I'm been really kind of focused on trying to get Zillow reviews because I think it's
• 21:42
  the most closest to my industry where people are searching than any other review, even
• 21:48
  like Google reviews and stuff like that.
• 21:50
  I think people that are searching for loan officers or for real estate, if they see me
• 21:55
  highly rated on Zillow, that's going to be really, really good.
• 21:59
  So we've been really pushing to get, you know, the clients that we work with and that
• 22:03
  doesn't happen on every, every one, but we're trying to get it.
• 22:05
  We have, I think, we have well over 100 reviews on Zillow right now.
• 22:09
  So we're trying to, really trying to get those as up, I'm actually just trying to log on
• 22:13
  to see how many I have.
• 22:14
  I have 113 currently, we're trying to get, we want to get everybody that doesn't learn
• 22:20
  with us to do a review and yeah, so how do you get them to do the review?
• 22:24
  Well, just probably every company does their own review like they send it after closing.
• 22:29
  We kind of use that as a judge of, hey, that guy gave us a really good review because
• 22:33
  it's the simple one.
• 22:34
  Like, you know, they just click, click, click send right back to the company.
• 22:37
  Well, we get this and, oh, that guy gave us a really nice review or if I had a conversation
• 22:42
  with the guy, hey, you did a great job, Rick, or maybe they responded to my email that
• 22:45
  I do after the closing.
• 22:47
  That's kind of my cue along with my, my, the file managers that actually did the backend
• 22:53
  piece, you know, after the getting things rolling, that person handled it.
• 22:56
  It's their job to then contact the client.
• 22:58
  Hey, we really enjoyed working with you.
• 23:00
  I see you had a, you gave us a great review or you responded to Rick or we really enjoyed
• 23:05
  working with you.
• 23:06
  Would you do us a favor and give us a review on Zillow and we get them.
• 23:10
  And then you send them a link to the page.
• 23:12
  That's right.
• 23:13
  Yep.
• 23:14
  Okay.
• 23:15
  Cool.
• 23:16
  Awesome.
• 23:17
  All right.
• 23:18
  Very good stuff.
• 23:19
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 23:20
  Oh, and we tie comp to it.
• 23:21
  You tie comp to it.
• 23:22
  Now tie and comp to it.
• 23:23
  So we're now as just meeting with my wife earlier, it's like, you know what we're going
• 23:26
  to do is we're going to make these, these payouts quarterly and say, all right, we're
• 23:30
  looking for the Zillow reviews and we're going to, we're going to say, all right, if you
• 23:34
  had this one of your reviews, you get this amount of dollars per five star review.
• 23:38
  Oh, wow.
• 23:39
  That's great.
• 23:40
  Very motivated to get those then.
• 23:41
  Yeah, right.
• 23:42
  And in one last question, I guess on your team and your process, how do you hire four
• 23:48
  of those roles?
• 23:49
  Do you use any like, you know, disk assessments or anything?
• 23:51
  For example, yeah, we do use disk.
• 23:53
  We use that.
• 23:54
  I think the Tony Robbins disk assessment, I have kind of a weird disk.
• 23:58
  So it's like, I have most of you think of sales who they have, what is a D I or whatever,
• 24:02
  but I'm actually not even an I, I mean, no, if I'm probably more adaptive, I than anything,
• 24:07
  but I have a DS and we do use the disk and but I guess what I say, what I am is that you
• 24:13
  typically want people that aren't what you are as a loan officer to support you depending
• 24:17
  on what role they are.
• 24:18
  And if you want people like juniors, you want to make sure that they are, have that profile
• 24:23
  of a sales person.
• 24:24
  So you're not, I have a guy that works for me.
• 24:26
  He's a super great, highly organized dude, but that dude is not going to be a sales guy.
• 24:32
  He's going to be, he is really, really good and smart, but he belongs, helping manage
• 24:38
  at the back end of my process.
• 24:40
  This particular guy that we just hired, his name is Travis, actually son of a past
• 24:46
  corner of mine.
• 24:47
  So good place to hire people from right, by the way, smart young kids from parents that
• 24:52
  you've done loans for, not bad.
• 24:55
  He does a lot of admin for me and he also is getting into file management right now.
• 24:59
  Okay.
• 25:00
  What about you say, you know, like your junior LOs, what do you typically see for their
• 25:03
  profiles?
• 25:04
  Because oftentimes the question I get is, well, you know, I don't want to bring somebody
• 25:07
  in who's like a high D, because you're just going to like learn the biz and then leave
• 25:11
  me.
• 25:12
  Yeah.
• 25:13
  You want pretty much, I think a S is really important, that's what I am as well.
• 25:18
  So having that high I, high S is really, really key.
• 25:23
  That's the, it's the outgoing, you know, easy to connect with people.
• 25:28
  I don't need the high D.
• 25:30
  But also is consistent, yeah, caring, the high D is just a, can be a very, a nightmare.
• 25:36
  You're just class.
• 25:37
  Yeah.
• 25:38
  You will clash.
• 25:39
  I think the support in the junior LLO, it's going to be more of a high I, high S.
• 25:42
  Right.
• 25:43
  Well, I'm going to put a link to the Tony Robbins disc profile in the show notes for anybody
• 25:47
  listening.
• 25:48
  You can take it, we use it a lot in coaching and stuff and make sure we got the right people
• 25:51
  on the bus.
• 25:52
  Yep.
• 25:53
  Yep.
• 25:54
  Cool stuff.
• 25:55
  All right.
• 25:56
  So let's transition and then to, you know, your focus for business, you know, how you
• 25:59
  get business.
• 26:00
  Now, I know you are clearly, you know, a VA specialist.
• 26:04
  And by the way, another link will put is your website, Rick Elmendorf.com, but that'll
• 26:09
  be in there.
• 26:10
  And it's a very well done website, by the way, very professional.
• 26:13
  But you, what percentage of your business is VA?
• 26:17
  It's almost 50%.
• 26:18
  I was just doing the numbers last week and we closed just shy of $90 million in VA business
• 26:28
  last year of the 211.
• 26:31
  So a couple of thoughts on that one, you know, when I see somebody who's a VA, you know,
• 26:35
  one, first thing is, is I'm curious, right?
• 26:37
  Why?
• 26:38
  Right?
• 26:39
  Is there some affinity to veterans?
• 26:40
  Yeah.
• 26:41
  Number one, let's just start with that.
• 26:42
  Yeah.
• 26:43
  I mean, I have, my, my father was, is retired air force.
• 26:48
  And you know, I, you think, well, is there an affinity there?
• 26:50
  Yeah, of course, my dad, I didn't really love the military just because my dad was in
• 26:55
  the military.
• 26:56
  My dad had a good career in the military.
• 26:57
  He used to, my dad was crazy.
• 26:59
  Still is crazy.
• 27:00
  He's 90.
• 27:01
  He'll be turning 90 this, this next August 27th, so which I'm going down that to see him.
• 27:07
  But I mean, the guy literally just, he is like driven dude and he flew an F-94 that
• 27:14
  a straight wing flight fighter that wasn't supposed to go through the speed of sound
• 27:18
  well.
• 27:19
  He made it go through the speed of sound straight down full throttle.
• 27:21
  So that's how a guy, my dad is retired and yeah, I know, right?
• 27:26
  Retired in 1970.
• 27:27
  I was born in Bangkok, Thailand.
• 27:28
  So that kind of a sense of the military.
• 27:30
  My brother is more, who are older than me, 10 years older, you know, they traveled around
• 27:35
  with them in different locations.
• 27:37
  I was, he was stationed here at the Pentagon, then got out quickly, and then just, we stayed
• 27:42
  here in Northern Virginia my whole life.
• 27:45
  But he got me involved in a financial planning organization that he worked for.
• 27:49
  That was a primary to the U.S. military and I made some really good connections there
• 27:54
  and just honestly just fell in love with that type of clientele, you know, highly organized.
• 28:01
  You know, not that I was, I really, I was really in my career, I wasn't really in tune
• 28:05
  to like, oh, that guy's a shopper or that guy's not a shopper or this agent or this type
• 28:10
  of clientele is going to be shopping.
• 28:12
  You know, I never thought of it that way.
• 28:13
  It's like, I just really love working with military folks.
• 28:17
  I mean, I learned their lingo, I learned why they do, why are they moving in and out
• 28:22
  of the area.
• 28:23
  I learned why they come into DC, you know, what the career goals are, what kind of happens
• 28:27
  to them after the military, what are their options.
• 28:29
  And then some of the challenges that face them and their families and how important it
• 28:34
  is for them to make sure they have a good connection in the financial space to help them.
• 28:40
  So in part of that, I got licensed in a lot of different states as well to really help
• 28:45
  a lot of the military people that move, you know, to different states and whatnot.
• 28:49
  You and I talked about this before the recording, but you know, loan officers are often looking
• 28:53
  for that special tier, that niche, 203K, you know, FHA, whatever, obviously VA is one
• 28:58
  of those.
• 28:59
  If somebody's evaluating becoming a quote, VA specialist, what advice would you give them,
• 29:05
  you know, that you've learned what's important to know about that niche before diving in?
• 29:11
  Well, there is never a niche before that if you screw up a vet or an activity, you are
• 29:19
  host. I mean, but if you do a really good job, you're set. And that's the network amongst
• 29:27
  military is so tight. You can get a bad name quicker than you wouldn't believe in the military,
• 29:36
  but you can also get a really good name. So that's why I would say the first thing to just be
• 29:39
  wary of, I mean, you really have to have your ducks in a row and be professional. And yes,
• 29:45
  or no, sir, I mean, they're, they're used to a different, honestly, they're trained that way,
• 29:50
  and they're just used to a different demeanor. It's not, hey, buddy, hey, pal, I had to correct one
• 29:54
  of my assistants, prior back, she called them, she called this guy Chuck, Chuckie. I'm like, I mean,
• 30:00
  what are you doing? This guy's like a, he's a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. I call him Chuckie.
• 30:05
  I mean, he had the idea, this guy is sort of whatever. So I think the professionals of that. And
• 30:10
  then also you just really need to know your stuff. There's nothing like, uh, let me think,
• 30:14
  there's no, there's no room for, for error when you're dealing with the military guys. I mean,
• 30:19
  there's just, there's no room for error. There's a certain high standard of, of, of performance,
• 30:24
  and expect you to be on your game. And yeah, I get what you're saying. Um, know your stuff,
• 30:30
  study the loans, study the veteran loan. There's a lot of things about it. Study what the VA will
• 30:35
  actually do versus what your company may or may not allow because there's things that the company
• 30:40
  may not allow or overlays, so to speak that other companies have that aren't really VA guidelines
• 30:47
  that aren't really part of VA. And the bad advice that people are getting that, you know, I'm USA,
• 30:53
  just the other day, I was telling one of my clients, oh, you got to, you got to refinance your
• 30:56
  VA loan in Florida so you can free up all your eligibility to buy another one up here and say,
• 31:01
  no, you don't. No, you don't. You know, things like that. So how did you get educated on VA?
• 31:08
  I studied, I studied, and I studied, I read, I mean, I literally read the VA handbook.
• 31:15
  It just, a lot of those things, you just have to just, and it comes by experience too because
• 31:20
  there's, you can't ever be prepared for every situation. Um, and if you don't know something,
• 31:25
  it's okay to say, I don't know and figure it out. Um, you know, developing good relationship
• 31:31
  with an even an underwriter in your, in your company is how I was able to kind of learn as well
• 31:37
  along the road, but a lot of it's just study knowing what works and what doesn't work. How useful is
• 31:43
  it? Like, you know, you see these other organizations that are affiliated with helping the loan
• 31:47
  officers become right VA certified or, you know, other areas, I can't think of them right now,
• 31:52
  homes for heroes and military boot, boot camp, mortgage boot camp. Any thoughts or comments around,
• 31:57
  you know, affiliating yourself with an organization to help, you know, either brand you and educate
• 32:02
  you and things like that. Okay, so that, that has its positives and negatives, but let's just be
• 32:06
  realistic. It's all a marketing ploy, right? Well, any designation you get, it's, it's mostly for
• 32:12
  marketing. And, you know, I've, now, I will tell you this. Now there's some certifications you can
• 32:18
  get on the mortgage side like a, I think it's called military friendly and then there's a certified
• 32:24
  military lending specialist, I believe it's called, but those come with more rigorous training.
• 32:30
  It's nice to have the designations and it's nice to have all those things which I have,
• 32:36
  but it's more of a marketing thing than anything. Yeah, but that's a great point because, you know,
• 32:40
  that's a relevant thing to consider because it's like, okay, I'm an expert in VA, unless you bring
• 32:45
  that to the surface and, you know, use some branding around that, right? People aren't going to
• 32:49
  know that until you get on the phone. Like I see, I clicked on your website, you are, you use that
• 32:54
  term, military friendly, you've got an award, right? MS 17, an award for that. And then I click over
• 32:59
  to your site, which is red team lending. Yeah. VA loans with, so, so what's red team lending all
• 33:04
  about? Well, we were trying to do with red team lending as basically an arm of the Elmordorf team.
• 33:08
  So in order to kind of further my, let's say, my niche in the VA lending space, we wanted to have
• 33:14
  a place where we could send people that are going to be VA loans and also market it and brand it.
• 33:20
  So they come there. It's all about VA. It's everything about VA. Yeah, it's done very well by the way.
• 33:25
  And that's what I'm getting to the point about branding is like, I mean, you know, somebody who's
• 33:29
  in the military and it's funny, I teach a branding class for realtors and I talk a lot about branding.
• 33:34
  And there is a real estate company that's all veterans, nothing but veterans. It's, I forget what
• 33:39
  it's called, but you know, one of their mission statements is, we are a team of veterans, right,
• 33:42
  bonded together. And they serve the military and family, which to your point earlier,
• 33:46
  they've got unique needs in the military family, right? Moving around a lot, one spouse is gone
• 33:50
  more often than the other. And so, and that's a bond, like you said, it's a tight community.
• 33:54
  So I think that's very smart for you to just create this total positioning thing around a VA.
• 34:00
  Yeah, thanks. Yeah, very awesome. Okay. So, so how would somebody then, if they're thinking
• 34:04
  about a niche, I asked you this question before, I had a loan officer actually asked me, well,
• 34:08
  you know, I'm thinking about specializing in X. Maybe it's first time home buyers,
• 34:12
  doesn't have to be VA. It could be any quote niche, right? Am I going to lose out on other
• 34:17
  business? What if I just advertise myself as being, you know, I'm a first time home buyer
• 34:21
  specialist? Does that mean I'm not going to get that other business? What would you say to that?
• 34:24
  Yeah, I think no, of course not. I mean, yes, we advertise ourselves as VA loans, but,
• 34:29
  you know, you don't just do those VA loans. And it's funny, like one road always leads to another,
• 34:34
  right? So here's one thing I would look at, when you specialize in something, that's kind of a
• 34:40
  method for people to contact you, right? It's maybe it's a realtor. If you specialize in first
• 34:45
  time home buyers with these down payment assistance programs, I think that, and even like VA,
• 34:49
  you could argue is that that would be considered like kind of a specialty product that a realtor
• 34:54
  who currently has another relationship would not feel bad about you doing that loan. Well,
• 35:00
  well, it's a VA loan there for I said it correct, you know, or if it's a VHG loan, I sent it to,
• 35:04
  you know, to Chris or whatnot. So I don't think ever you would lose out on other business,
• 35:10
  just by virtue of being a specialist, I think just having that specialty will lead to other
• 35:17
  business as well. I mean, we've we've not gone out and said, hey, don't send me anything,
• 35:22
  I do VA loans and I don't think anybody in their right mind is a realtor or a financial planner
• 35:26
  anything would say, oh, well, Rick only does VA loans. I don't think anybody would think that.
• 35:31
  It's really our perception. It's like you said earlier about us wanting to control the client,
• 35:35
  you know, kind of process and being willing to let that go. It's our perception that if I
• 35:38
  become a specialist, I'm going to lose out on other business. But I like your point as well.
• 35:43
  Just put a tagline, you know, it's like, you know, we have VA military specialists and
• 35:47
  oh, by the way, I do all other loans as well. Don't forget. Well, I think it's like you and I
• 35:51
  were mentioning earlier, it's like you got to become known for something, right? And I like the old
• 35:55
  the old line is who makes more generalists or specialists. And you know, specialists for sure,
• 35:59
  but that doesn't mean they don't take on that additional business. It's just that hopefully
• 36:03
  gets you to rise above the noise in your market. Absolutely.
• 36:07
  Okay, so your book, let's let's go back to the book, the loan officer revolution, which is
• 36:11
  available on Amazon Kindle. There's a link in the show notes for those that are listening,
• 36:16
  leading the charge for creating a realtor partnerships that actually work. Are you implying Rick,
• 36:20
  that realtor relationships don't work? How did you guess? Yeah, you know, I spent a little time
• 36:28
  in the beginning of the book kind of explaining my thoughts on this and I spoke recently in Vegas
• 36:34
  with my good friend, Timberhey. I actually offended a couple of realtors who actually came to be
• 36:41
  afterward. And I tweaked, well, I tweaked my my Burbage in the book because there's a little
• 36:48
  bit more harsh, I guess. And I kind of want to ask myself is like, well, what are you upset about?
• 36:52
  The truth or are you upset? But the reality is I think that the issue that exists right now,
• 36:59
  and I hate this whole thing, how the whole market has gone to this, this whole pay to pay him and
• 37:04
  mentality. And it's not just from the loan officer's side. And by the way, I am not ever opposed
• 37:10
  for, and it's not all about pay to play, by the way, it's about, I don't mind investing money
• 37:16
  in the business of a real estate agent. I don't mind investing, having paying money to a real estate
• 37:22
  agent to advertise alongside of them. But the issue really revolves around what is the partnership
• 37:29
  there. I mean, is it really about deepening relationships that to where we can really leverage
• 37:35
  each other? And if you know, Darren Hardy is, but I saw Darren speak a while back. And if you're
• 37:43
  like me, you probably have a Brazilian project, and I haven't had hundreds of things I was thinking
• 37:47
  about doing about, I'm thinking to myself, gosh, I'm really close. I went out and talked to him
• 37:51
  afterwards. And there's nobody there. I'm like, anybody know what I'm going to talk to this guy?
• 37:54
  Well, I'll go tell him I'm like, Darren, I'm like, I'm mumbling to him. I'm bum-bombling. I don't
• 37:58
  even know what I was saying. And I was like, Darren, I got so many things I feel like I'm like
• 38:02
  right on the edge of like doing something great. But how do I get to like focus on what I'm
• 38:08
  supposed to be doing? And how do I make relationships work and do these things? I've got
• 38:13
  because I was in the midst of trying to write this book, too, that I did in a sitting actually.
• 38:18
  And he told me something very, very profound. He said, Rick, he said, you know, the decision to make
• 38:24
  the do or don't do something kind of revolves around these things. One, does it align with your core
• 38:30
  values? Two, do you enjoy doing it? Would you enjoy doing it? Would you enjoy going and helping
• 38:36
  this real estate agent? Would you enjoy investing in money in this? Would you enjoy being a
• 38:41
  loan officer for these military people? Would you enjoy doing first time home buyer classes?
• 38:46
  Okay, would you enjoy it? And then the last thing is would it provide leverage to your business?
• 38:51
  And and I think about that now in every relationship that I get into, I ask myself the question,
• 38:58
  forget if the real estate agent could add and leverage, have provide leverage for my business. But
• 39:03
  will I actually provide leverage to theirs? And I think that that's where that's where the
• 39:09
  issue and the partnership breakdown goes is that we consistently as loan officers have been in
• 39:14
  the wrong part of the sales funnel. We've been sitting at the bottom sitting there with our hand
• 39:19
  out to the real estate agent going, you real estate, do all the work, spend all your money time
• 39:23
  in after the generate context to talk to you. You go ahead and do all the qualifications, figure
• 39:27
  out who to talk to, who to not, who to put in your car. And then when you put someone in your car
• 39:31
  and you're ready to write off or go ahead and give me a call. And I'll be here with my hand out.
• 39:34
  And I'll go ahead and do your pre-approval error. And boy, I'll be fast. I'll be good. I'll get
• 39:37
  the closing on time. I'll get great. That's where we sit right now. And I think that's the issue.
• 39:43
  The two main problems that exist in the relationship are that A, the loan officer does not
• 39:48
  belong at the bottom of the sales funnel. Not by virtue of saying we don't deserve to be down there.
• 39:54
  I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in a good partner relationship, our job should be helped
• 40:00
  helping the client, the real estate agent, our partner convert leads. The reality, Jeff, is that
• 40:07
  realtors don't have as much time as we do. For every client, they probably invest, I think
• 40:14
  that they show homes for eight hours a day to one client, family sometimes, right? We can handle
• 40:19
  5, 10, 15 times the amount of people that they can. And we need to be looked at also. It's like,
• 40:26
  why aren't we coming alongside helping with the conversion, helping the masses of people to help
• 40:31
  convert for that real estate agent. And being that third party endorsement, a very wise man said,
• 40:37
  let another man praise the a not-but-own mouth of stranger and not-but-own lips, right? Let us be
• 40:42
  that third party endorsement. Let us be that partner for the real estate agent, but we're not being
• 40:47
  used like that. So that's how that's kind of the revolution part of it that I want to talk about.
• 40:52
  So I love that. That's a great setup. And I totally agree with that. The question becomes how do
• 40:56
  you set that up from the beginning? How do you how do you ensure that the synergy, right? The
• 41:02
  the foundation of that relationship is set up properly from the beginning? You literally discuss
• 41:06
  the problem. And I go through this in the book of how I actually go through not only the choosing
• 41:12
  of the real estate agent to engaging with them. And when I engage with them and I have an initial
• 41:17
  meeting, I talk about the problem. And the problem is that sales funnel. It's like you as a real
• 41:23
  estate agent and I get them to think to acknowledge how many contacts are you generating per month?
• 41:29
  You know, the average is about 25 to 30 per real estate agent. How many of those are you actually
• 41:34
  keeping in putting in your car and how many closings are you having? And then by the way,
• 41:37
  how many closings are falling out? They say 12% of all ratified contracts are falling out, right?
• 41:42
  For the finance or whatever. So where is your breakdown? Where do you see the partnership
• 41:47
  in what's happening? Do you not see that of the 25 people that you're currently getting per month
• 41:53
  to talk to? And if you're converting two of them, which is the standard than the national average,
• 41:59
  as the statistics find in AR, what are happening to the other 23? Oh, well, they're going into my
• 42:05
  drip campaign where they're going into this or they're going into that. But the reality is,
• 42:09
  is that of those 23, the bigger issue is that 50% of those are actually going to buy something in
• 42:15
  the next six to 12 months. And 48% of that 50% have a home to sell. But the reality is that
• 42:21
  they've guys, they have been, they have qualified. They have made a judgment upfront as to whether
• 42:27
  or not those people are ready or not, because the realtor is not prepared to handle the borrower
• 42:32
  that is in their education phase of buying. The realtor is not prepared to nurture that lead to
• 42:37
  the point of when they are ready to buy six to 12 months later. Is that what you're saying? They
• 42:41
  just don't have the capacity to bandwidth. So even like the latest software CRMs and all that,
• 42:47
  most realtor don't have that set up properly anyway. Well, and it also is just an email. And I
• 42:51
  will tell you that I've, I've coached a lot of agents recently and it's scary to see who doesn't
• 42:56
  even really have, and that's not, this isn't a knock. I mean, some people are very organized with
• 43:00
  their spreadsheets or whatever. They don't have a CRM. They don't have a follow-up database. And even
• 43:03
  if you do, it's just an email. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. That is such a great point and such a great
• 43:10
  conversation. It's funny you bring that up because years ago I got this list of 50 questions
• 43:16
  that every loan officer should be asking real estate agents from my buddy Walter Sanford
• 43:20
  who was a top realtor up in LA area selling a home a day every day for almost 15 years straight.
• 43:26
  And so he became a coach as well and I worked with him in doing a lot of stuff. But anyway,
• 43:30
  he gave me this list of questions and the 50 questions, right? And on, and it's like you know
• 43:34
  the deal, most L.O.s don't ever dive deep, right? They're just, yeah. What's up? What don't you like
• 43:39
  about your current lender? Great, you know, you know, that kind of thing. How come am I going to
• 43:42
  any business? Well, he didn't really interview him. And one of the questions you had on there,
• 43:47
  I loved, which is relevant to what you said, which is that LLL asks this question, what's your
• 43:51
  number one lowest cost source of leads in your business right now? And I love that question
• 43:57
  and you may think of it because it opens up this whole conversation about understanding their
• 44:01
  business model. How are they getting business? Where's it coming from? Where's the holes?
• 44:05
  And to your point, how can we help with that? How can we help use the term incubate, right? Those
• 44:11
  leads. So how do you do that? I'm assuming you've got that set up with some of your agent partners
• 44:16
  where you're going to take, you know, those 23 that aren't going to buy for six or 12 months,
• 44:20
  are you working them somehow? Yeah, we are. So we use sales first as a CRM. By the way, do you use
• 44:26
  the jungle version or just the straight up sales force? So I actually, I was looked in the
• 44:30
  jungle. Jungle is actually really good company. I recommend for people that don't have a team to
• 44:34
  go actually use jungle. Even if you have a team, it's really, really good. I was crazy and I
• 44:40
  said, I don't want jungle. I'm going to go ahead and do my own, right? And you know,
• 44:42
  Heinz, I'd be in 2020. I wish I would have done it. I'm too far and too invested in it now.
• 44:47
  But I spent the probably way too much money and did my own salesperson kind of built it the way I
• 44:52
  wanted to. I have this thing in my mind like I'm going to make this a huge difference in the world,
• 44:56
  I guess, but whatever. Anyway, so I made my own. So we use that to incubate people and to do. And
• 45:03
  I'll tell you one of the biggest things and that every loan officer I guarantee you has this,
• 45:08
  they probably got a way to give numbers, mortgage numbers to a buyer. And I have my own,
• 45:15
  marketed it. It's called my mortgage analyzer. And it's a basically, it's a fancy,
• 45:21
  dupped up spreadsheet that kind of lets the buyer play loan officer and does a whole bunch
• 45:26
  of cool things. So basically, it's a souped up Excel spreadsheet. We use that as lead gen.
• 45:31
  We use that as a way that we can see when we send it to a client or we offer it to somebody
• 45:35
  that they will actually then we can track, hey, that guy opened it or that guy did this or we're
• 45:41
  following up. Did you use my or worksheet? If you get somebody numbers, that is the number one
• 45:46
  trigger. I would say almost more than a home, finding somebody that you can get comfortable about a
• 45:51
  mortgage payment and start now looking at things like, oh, I didn't realize that a $25
• 45:55
  hundred mortgage payment actually equals about $2,100 rent and understanding the tax implications
• 46:01
  and the tax benefits of buying a home versus, you know, renting. Right. Right.
• 46:08
  So make it real for them, given the bottom line numbers and what it really looks like to buy
• 46:12
  a house. But back to the question about how you incubate those leads, how you, you know,
• 46:16
  create that handoff, handing you the baton. The realtor's like, yeah, I'm all in, Rick, I agree.
• 46:21
  So how can you help me manage my leads? Yep. So there's two ways we do it. We do it with sales force.
• 46:26
  So we incubate, we incubate them that way. By like drip campaigns. What do you do?
• 46:30
  Oh, no, this is this is boots to the ground. I mean, I believe in doing emails and stuff too,
• 46:34
  but I also believe in people that old-fashioned CRM called the phones. Yeah, the old-fashioned
• 46:40
  CRM called the phone. And we also use a product called Homebuyer's Marketing. It's called Next
• 46:44
  Gen HPM, which is a, it's a, it's a, it's a search for, it's a, it's a, it's a home search for
• 46:49
  the loan officer. Yeah. But one difference is that the, that the real estate agents have, and they
• 46:53
  all, obviously, realtors have the MLS, but buyers don't really have the MLS. But I will tell you, 99 out
• 46:58
  of 100 real estate agents, maybe even more higher percentage than that are still just emailing
• 47:04
  listings to their clients. They set them up on a search and they email them listings and do
• 47:07
  out the click here. I've done it because I've worked with realtors that do that for me, right?
• 47:11
  They just email it. But where are people spending their time? People are going on their mobile phones.
• 47:16
  Right. And they are looking online. They're downloading Zillow or Red Den or whoever it is.
• 47:22
  Truly, right? And they're using mobile devices, but the agent is offering the mobile device. So
• 47:28
  the clients are using somebody else's thing and they're not, you've been using the emails.
• 47:33
  That's the thing that you said that, man, I'm going through that right now. Yeah. So we've tied in
• 47:37
  what next gen does. It actually traps the buyer, the real estate agent and the loan officer in one
• 47:44
  area, this one collaborative environment that helps not only the real estate agent see everything
• 47:48
  that's going on on the front and back end, like they can literally track like a lot of the metrics
• 47:53
  that are going on from search and they're even getting in to even deeper like a lot of these
• 47:58
  companies are using like IBM Watson technology that can like kind of sniff social media on the
• 48:05
  different people that they're working with and kind of a big brother scary stuff, right? You know,
• 48:08
  like they typed in real estate. They're more like, oh, they must be looking for a house or they
• 48:12
  share the house. Oh, they're they're a higher score now, you know, but the way to like kind of see
• 48:16
  and sniff like, oh, who's hot and who's not and get and that's how we incubate them for the agent.
• 48:22
  That's a big way we can meet them as well. Yeah, I've seen that platform before. It's really
• 48:25
  cool. Yeah, it's changed a lot over the years. It's it's much different than used to be because I've
• 48:30
  used it for a lot of years. Is that also referred to as the home scouting? It is. It's home scouting,
• 48:36
  I will tell you, home scouting was lacking quite a bit and I'm not afraid to say this and
• 48:40
  anybody from HBM hears this, you'll they'll they'll first be admit. There was a lot of lacking in
• 48:46
  that program, but it's grown so much over the years. Next gen HBM is the next version of that.
• 48:50
  It's it's the real deal. Right. Okay. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. So that is such an awesome point.
• 48:55
  All right. So back to the discussion with realtors. I want to understand when you first meet a
• 49:02
  realtor or now you're training your juniors or whoever, you know, on that first meeting,
• 49:06
  what do you want to accomplish on that first meeting? Do you guys have a script? You follow? Like
• 49:10
  I mentioned, we've got questions. How do you know if the relationship's right or not? I guess.
• 49:16
  Yeah. So well, there's there's a couple of things. I mean, I will tell you that before you even
• 49:22
  have an initial meeting, you really need to have like a barometer of what agents that you really
• 49:27
  want to follow up with and it goes both ways, by the way, I have a I have a rule and I put this
• 49:31
  in my book chapter three called the agent barometer and I I look at this way. First and foremost,
• 49:36
  I want to avoid any exhausting relationships. And that goes both ways, right? It's like you just
• 49:41
  don't click together. You just want to avoid the exhausting relationships. And secondly,
• 49:46
  one avoid agents that want to play loan officer. And by the way, loan officers, we really shouldn't
• 49:50
  be playing real estate agent, right? So that's a big that's a big I've had that be a challenge in
• 49:56
  the past for me. You know, seek excellence regardless of experience. I think people shy away and
• 50:01
  they want to look at the agents that are doing all this volume. But I did business with 65
• 50:06
  different real estate agents last year. And a lot of them are onesie twosies. So I don't care if
• 50:12
  they're doing a lot of business. I care if they're excellent people that they care that they care
• 50:17
  about my business. That's the fourth thing. Do you care about my business? Do I care about I care
• 50:21
  about yours? Do you care about mine? And then I really the funny thing I put this is kind of a
• 50:25
  caveat. If I ever hear an agent say thank you to me or to my teammate, that's like a green like
• 50:30
  wow, okay, that means they're respectful of our time. These are like, they're now on my list.
• 50:37
  And in the initial meeting, when we choose, when we're able to choose, my team has a, we kind of
• 50:42
  do a work through like, how do you find these people using this as a guideline? It's pretty simple.
• 50:48
  Anybody that's done business can do this. There's four things that I look at. Sorry if I'm
• 50:53
  going over with the answer. Here are the four things we do. First thing you do is you review any
• 50:57
  recent experience you've had with that agent. Check with the team, processers, whatever. You're
• 51:01
  looking for agents that you and your team liked, treated as well during the transaction, right?
• 51:07
  Secondly, what I do on the back end after loan closings, calling all parties to the transaction,
• 51:12
  including the buyer, ask how it was. I always tell them ask, hey, how is it work? How is it to work
• 51:16
  with Susie? You know, because she wasn't riff, you know, maybe I picked her up. He was a past client.
• 51:21
  I never worked with her before. How is it to work with her? And you get an idea that making a note as,
• 51:26
  you know, would I want to work with this person? I also like to kind of stalk them a little bit
• 51:30
  on social media. That's the third thing. It's amazing what you'll find from like current
• 51:35
  loan officer relationships to organizations they care about, you know, based on what you know or
• 51:40
  maybe find out about that agent, you know, ask yourself, then does this person provide leverage
• 51:45
  to my business? And it goes maybe just goes beyond the deals they would send to. And then lastly,
• 51:51
  and most importantly, the most important thing can you as a loan officer help them? And can I,
• 51:57
  do I bring anything to the table? Because if you don't bring something to the table, then really,
• 52:01
  there's no reason why you should work with them. But if you feel truly that you can bring something
• 52:05
  to the table, maybe you're your interest to the same. Oh, this is a military. I'm in the military.
• 52:09
  Gosh, this is great. You're right by that. That sort of thing. Can you help them factory?
• 52:14
  Should back end of the decision? What are some ways you would, you would, you know, identify
• 52:19
  how an LO can help an agent. We talked about incubating leads and that's a great idea. But do you,
• 52:25
  you know, you also look at ways you can help them grow their business, whether it's, you know,
• 52:28
  teaching engine classes, we've talked about that or, you know, just bringing them information that
• 52:32
  might be helpful. Yeah. So I'm of the mind that, you know, everybody's out there with like, here's
• 52:37
  a product you can use or this is this you can use. I think the relationship and how you engage with
• 52:43
  an agent needs to be a lot more strategic than that. You know, I've even gone as far as like,
• 52:48
  people that I like, I part of my book is actually how to coach a real estate agent, you know,
• 52:52
  because we as loan officers, even if you're not like the most top professional business people,
• 52:57
  you think that, well, maybe I just can't do this. Maybe, okay, Rick, maybe you could coach or Jeff,
• 53:01
  you could coach somebody, but I don't know if I could. Well, that's, I don't think is the case.
• 53:06
  It's not about you being proficient at the coach. I give a guideline of like how to actually go
• 53:10
  down. It's about growing together and figuring things out about their business and what would
• 53:15
  accelerate their business together. And when you do that, your stock just goes through the roof.
• 53:22
  It's amazing what I've been able to do with agents that even starting off, not knowing really how to
• 53:27
  coach someone and then building this system that I have now of how to coach by just kind of going
• 53:32
  through it. And you kind of learn, learn by design. And if you're any bit of a successful loan
• 53:38
  officer, if you've done any sort of business, you've been successful doing some things, right?
• 53:43
  So what is that? How can you take what you've made you successful in your business and apply it
• 53:49
  in the real estate world with that agent and work together? I think that's where the dynamic comes
• 53:54
  in and of a loan officer really being able to help a real estate agent as well. Yeah, it's funny.
• 53:59
  I often find that agents need help with marketing ideas, how to navigate the digital platforms.
• 54:08
  We as LOs, we need to be educated on those as well. So just a matter of you getting up to speed
• 54:12
  and then sharing that info, that content, however you do that could be videos, could be class,
• 54:16
  whatever. I love the thing about coaching realtors. Do you have a good? Yeah. And the problem
• 54:20
  piece of it, that problem script that I do, the whole incubation thing is the number one problem
• 54:28
  that we can really solve for both of our businesses too. Because I think until it's painted in that
• 54:35
  sort of light, they see in every relative that's good, knows that they leave business on the table.
• 54:42
  And it's the people they had groovy relationships or great talks with six months ago and good
• 54:47
  intentions by the way side, right? But you know, Barry Habib mentioned on a call. He's like,
• 54:52
  has used a real estate agent ever called a buyer just to find out that they bought with somebody else.
• 54:57
  You know, it's happened to everybody, not just on the loan side, but on the real estate side.
• 55:02
  And that having that extra person, I said this, it's harder to cheat on two than it is one.
• 55:07
  And if the agent and us get together with that buyer, it man, they'll tell me stuff. They won't
• 55:13
  tell the agent and they'll tell the agent. Maybe the stuff, well, maybe they tell us everything.
• 55:17
  They don't tell them. I don't know. But but regardless, they tell this stuff that they don't tell the
• 55:21
  agent. And it's a beautiful opportunity for us to be that third party endorsement. That is
• 55:25
  the number one thing. Do you categorize your agents into various buckets of like ABC players
• 55:31
  in terms of referral volume? I don't. I don't do that. I see the reason people do that. I've
• 55:39
  never done that. My reports and sales for us are very dynamic. So I kind of know how many
• 55:44
  leads and loans I've gotten from this particular agent, not only company, but also down to the
• 55:50
  specific agent. Ever been the last 120 days. I know of agents that gave me business in the last
• 55:56
  20 120 days that have now they're on a report that they haven't given me any business in the
• 56:01
  last 120 days, right? So I don't really classify them. I think it's more of like what type of a person
• 56:08
  are they are they not one one list I do have are people that I refer business out to. I have that.
• 56:14
  I have a whole campaign drill. There are there are a list of agents that I give business to.
• 56:20
  Okay. And that's not based necessarily on how much business they're giving you or is it?
• 56:23
  Oh, no, that's not. In fact, there's people that yeah, quality quality person, quality person.
• 56:30
  Oh, no, that's interesting because you know, you mentioned you 65 agents you work with last
• 56:33
  year or last 12 months. You've had a number of ones. He Tuesday deals. You know, people tell you to
• 56:37
  kind of, you know, double down, you know, focus on the producers. Yeah. He got burned. He got
• 56:44
  burned. I've gotten burned there, man. Two years ago actually I had a mega agent that was 25%
• 56:50
  of my entire business literally just wake up one morning with a with a bad air day and say,
• 56:55
  Rick, we're done. So it wasn't because of anything you did. No, really. I think actually maybe,
• 57:02
  I think I wanted to help them with their business, but they're they just she just didn't want any
• 57:05
  anything to do with that. They wanted that whole loan off to the bottom of the funnel. You do what
• 57:11
  I say or I'm going to beat you with a stick or something. You know, that's that sort of relationship.
• 57:15
  And unfortunately, that that relationship does exist out there still. But, you know, that's not
• 57:21
  something I'm really, but you're always recruiting, right? You're always adding more people agents.
• 57:25
  It's your bus. I'm trying to add really good people. Yeah, we're always we're always adding really
• 57:30
  good people. Absolutely. Well, let me ask the question this way before we wrap up. How many?
• 57:33
  Because I'm always asking the yellows this one. It's like, okay, so I need more business. I need
• 57:37
  more purchase business. So one of the first questions is, well, great. How many agents do you have on
• 57:41
  your bus? And usually it's woefully short, right? Four, five, seven, maybe seven. And then the
• 57:46
  question is, of the agents you've got on your bus, right? Let's take a look at, right? The volume
• 57:51
  of referrals you're getting. So where am I getting that with this question? Oh, yeah. How many agents
• 57:56
  would you say I'm going to use the term A players, even though you don't categorize them like that,
• 57:59
  but on a monthly basis, how many agents are you getting deals from approximately?
• 58:05
  Probably opportunities. Yeah. At bats, I would say probably anywhere from 15 to 20.
• 58:12
  15 to 20. Consistent. Consistent. Consistent. Yeah.
• 58:14
  Somebody sending you, hey, got something I want somebody to qualify, check them out, right?
• 58:19
  Yeah. And you figure you probably need a good maybe a hundred,
• 58:23
  a hundred agents on the bus to make that happen. Wow. So for those of you listening,
• 58:29
  officers, what are you hearing, right? Lots of agents. Lots of agents. How do you manage them?
• 58:36
  How do you stay kind of top of mind and all that? So, um, so we do events actually,
• 58:43
  events are huge. We do events for clients and we actually just did events for an agent.
• 58:50
  I'm a big proponent of events. And in fact, movie events to be exact. Probably the best
• 58:56
  advice I can get from an event is to invite all your realtors into a showing of Star Wars.
• 59:01
  Oh, so hold on. You talking about rent out the theater? Oh, yeah, rent out the theater.
• 59:05
  That's not a right deal. That's not a respite deal. No. Why would it be a respite deal?
• 59:08
  Well, you're buying a movie ticket in hopes of getting a referral.
• 59:13
  No, we do that for clients, actually, but what we did was for the agent. I didn't know.
• 59:16
  I'm dealing with the, you know, I'm playing devil's advocate for those people.
• 59:19
  No, it's okay. We did it. We actually did it for a real estate agent. And we actually split the
• 59:23
  the theater 50-50 and we did it for her clients. That was great. And I actually invited some
• 59:28
  of my clients who didn't have real estate agents since I come up with that as well. So I was
• 59:31
  able to bring some of my clients to meet her. I invited a couple of financial planners to the
• 59:38
  event to meet her. And it worked out really, really well. She got an appointment from that title
• 59:42
  from that. She actually got a deal from it as well. Really, really worked out well. We did like a
• 59:47
  small with a hundred seat theater. We shoot, we showed trying to think of the movie we showed
• 59:52
  anywhere where it was now. Which Star Wars movie was it? Come on.
• 59:55
  No, no, it wasn't. That one wasn't a Star Wars movie. The Star Wars movie I've done every year
• 59:59
  has been for my past clients. But there are, no, there's come, there's actually a team
• 1:00:05
  in caliber that makes the whole world. They all they do is real estate agents. They invite
• 1:00:10
  real estate agents to like, you know, happy hours or they'll do a lunch and learn. Like they'll
• 1:00:15
  eat. They'll do what's called a business building monthly. And they will have them all
• 1:00:19
  into a room and they'll get anywhere from 40 to 50 real estate agents in a room at a given time.
• 1:00:24
  So I think the whole what you probably even touched on from what I got was like, you know,
• 1:00:28
  training real estate agents and like getting, you know, teaching them and getting, you know,
• 1:00:32
  stuff like that. The events piece of it is huge. And I did a thing called a crash course mortgage.
• 1:00:40
  Every agent is always bringing on new people, right? People that are green and they need to be
• 1:00:45
  learned kind of the mortgage side of things. How much how great is it to spend an hour to an hour
• 1:00:50
  and a half with somebody that's green that doesn't have solidified relationships with. And then
• 1:00:54
  to show the team lead how great you were to their new agent coming in and teach them all about
• 1:00:59
  mortgage. So yeah, crash course mortgage, you know, whatever you want to call it. But it's
• 1:01:03
  basically the ABCs of mortgage, you know, teaching them how to what the loan application looks like,
• 1:01:08
  what numbers look like. I show them my spreadsheet, how do people qualify the different loan
• 1:01:12
  programs that are out there with the watch watch watch out for just so they're in the know.
• 1:01:16
  That's awesome. Great ideas. Okay. So for the listeners that are looking at getting your book,
• 1:01:22
  which as I said, we're going to put it in the show notes, but is available on Amazon Kindle,
• 1:01:26
  the loan officer revolution. What do you hope they get out of the book or take away from that?
• 1:01:31
  Goodness gracious. That's a great question. My heart when I wrote the book was really just kind of
• 1:01:38
  to reach out. It was a book directed towards loan officers to how they can help not only it's
• 1:01:43
  yet about creating real estate partnerships, but there's also a lot in the book about how to like
• 1:01:47
  get your business in order. So that was kind of the whole idea. How do I get into the real
• 1:01:52
  into the loan officer's mind really just help them with their business? You know, I'm not looking
• 1:01:56
  to and when I bought this and like I told my wife, I don't really care about this. Not about money
• 1:02:00
  or selling books or doing that. I'm we're praise the Lord. I'm doing really fine financially.
• 1:02:04
  It's just you'll read the book. This all started about just an email that with my staff sent
• 1:02:08
  and then 20,000 words later here, I have a book about how why I'm doing what I'm doing. So that's
• 1:02:13
  what I'm hoping. I mean, I just want the loan officer to do a better job, change their mind about
• 1:02:17
  realtors and work more as a partner and just hopefully our industries can like just come together
• 1:02:24
  a little bit better than it is now. And of course, as one of the greatest coaches of all time,
• 1:02:28
  Yoda has said always pass on what you have learned. That's right. That's in my book, man. That's
• 1:02:35
  where I just took it from. So I am downloading this book today, Kindle. It's a no-brainer for
• 1:02:42
  three bucks. I mean, if you, you know, Rick, I mean, what you just shared here today is an education
• 1:02:47
  in how to be a better, more productive professional loan officer. So on behalf of myself and the listeners,
• 1:02:52
  we can't thank you enough, man. My heart goes out as a big, you know, bowing. Thank you so much. We
• 1:02:57
  appreciate your time. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. I'll also put links to your website in there,
• 1:03:01
  right? Red team lending, all that other stuff. So people can check out what you're doing and get the
• 1:03:05
  book, of course. But man, thank you. And I know you and I will stay in touch. But, you know,
• 1:03:09
  just want to say thanks again, man. Appreciate very much. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on.
• 1:03:13
  You bet. So for listeners, hope you enjoyed this one today. This was just wow, you know,
• 1:03:17
  an education. And so take what you've learned from here. Check out the show notes. If you like this
• 1:03:21
  episode, let us know. Give us a like on iTunes wherever you're listening and make sure you subscribe.
• 1:03:27
  So once again, I appreciate you. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
• 1:03:32
  Thanks for listening to mortgage marketing radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing.
• 1:03:38
  Get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com.
• 1:03:57
  Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before.
• 1:04:02
  And I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply
• 1:04:06
  need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it,
• 1:04:11
  agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good
• 1:04:16
  news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without
• 1:04:21
  the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos,
• 1:04:28
  a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need
• 1:04:33
  to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners.
• 1:04:38
  Plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class,
• 1:04:44
  getting agents butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates, real easy. But that's not all. You'll
• 1:04:50
  also get access to our weekly mastermind calls with top LOs, authors, speakers and coaches to learn
• 1:04:57
  the best strategies to grow your business right now in today's market. And as an extra bonus for
• 1:05:02
  limited time for all new members, you'll get access to a database of 200 agents in your local market
• 1:05:09
  that have closed anywhere to from eight to 50 transactions in the last 12 months.
• 1:05:15
  And we'll provide that list uploaded into our platform for you so you can get off to a fast start
• 1:05:19
  in reaching actually productive agents. So what are you waiting for? You can check out more at
• 1:05:24
  mortgagemarketing.pro, see more of the success stories there. And if you feel compelled to do so,
• 1:05:30
  book a call, we'll have a chat. We'll see if it's a fit. Don't miss out on this opportunity to
• 1:05:34
  take your mortgage business to the next level right now. Head over to mortgagemarketing.pro.