Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we had a pretty good episode today. Hopefully guys are going to enjoy it. Sam Simmons from exp. We talk a lot about entrepreneurship. We got into some fun stuff we got to do. The difference between I'm sorry and I apologize.
And Joe had a classic callback at the end of the, at the end of the episode.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: It was, it was a fun one. This is a, this is a good, good listen for sure.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of laughs. A lot of laughs. All right, enjoy.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: You're listening to Selling the Dream. This isn't an interview and we're not.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Journalists, but each week we'll ask our.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Guests to open up and share their secrets to business success.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Let's have a conversation and have some fun.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Selling the Dream podcast where we talk about sales, we talk about entrepreneurship, we talk about leadership, talk about all kinds of stuff here. And as always, I am joined by my co host coming to us from, From Carlsbad, California, Joe Iredell. Joe, what's happening?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: What's up, kj?
[00:01:11] Speaker A: How's. How's life on the west coast right now?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Dude, there was an earthquake yesterday. Two days ago. Oh, yeah, it was a big one. Well, it was a big. On the Richter scale. It didn't do any damage or anything, but everybody, everybody came out of their houses and stuff. I was in the garage. Like, everybody comes out like, oh, I got the alert on my phone. Like, did you feel that? No, I didn't, I didn't feel anything, dude. But everybody was like, wow, that was so crazy. Everything was shaking.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: But yeah, earthquake here a couple years ago.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: I know, dude. The one that was when we were in Jersey, that thing, like, I felt that, that was, that was scary. And then when, when I was in Puerto Rico that winter, there was like earthquakes all the time. And like Laura felt him. I was, I was half drunk the whole time, so I, I didn't notice, but nah, this one, dude, this one was.
It was weird.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: What year was that? You were, you were more than half drunk.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: I was, yes. I was pretty. I was.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: What you got to say? Carlsbad earthquake, 2025. Never forget something along those lines.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: See?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Bad. Strong. Yeah.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Well, glad everybody's self healthy and safe from the earthquake. We have an awesome show today. Our guest today is someone who I met. God, has to be 10, maybe 10 years ago. And we had a. We had an awesome conversation. I'll never forget some of the things that he had said when we, when we first met and when we reconnected a couple weeks ago, like I literally brought it right back up, you know, And I'm really, really excited to have Rob Wishnick from Guaranteed Rate join us today. Rob's been in the business over 20 years. Perennial Scotsman's Guide. For those of you who do know that don't know, Scotsman's Guide is the publication that ranks top loan originators in the entire country, number one top 1% mortgage originator in Mortgage Executive magazine. And also, I just found out in my dutiful research that he is also a graduate of Penn State University.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: There it is. So, Rob, what year did you graduate? First of all, welcome.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you. And congrats on your Scotsman's Guide ranking. That's. That's amazing. Great company here.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: It's not. It's not.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: It is not.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: You know, especially in this market. You gotta be hustling to get there.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. But I graduated Penn State in 1998, a long, long time ago.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: See, I missed. We missed him, I think, by one year, Joe. We graduated in 20. In 2000, right?
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, 2000. So he'd have been there.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Well, we were probably at Brandywine. Were you four years up there at State College, Rob?
[00:03:55] Speaker C: I was, yeah.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: Well, I got in summer session that first summer, but that wound up being the best summer of my life. That was quite an experience to go to Penn State with a fraction of the students that are supposed to be there. It really just, you know, I went from a graduating high school class of about 130 to Penn State, where it's 10,000 per class, and your freshman classes have 400 people in them. So to get that little summer in the middle and really just have like, a thousand students there all summer, that's cool, man.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Wild.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I got into Brandywine, which they called Penn State Delco at the time, and I wish they still called.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: It that, but they made me do.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: 30 hours of English and math before they would even let me in.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: I had to go there for summer school. I never did summer school my whole life. I gotta go to summer school just to get into Penn State.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: That's because you went to Upper Darby, dude.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: They saw that on your file. They're just like, I'm over here, buddy.
[00:04:58] Speaker C: Listen.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: We were a national school of excellence in the 80s, so.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: So Nancy Reagan was handing those things out like candy, bro.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: You're probably not wrong.
All right, so, Rob, tell us a little bit about yourself, the people that are listening. Give us your background, your bio. Feel free to get as detailed as you want. Starting you graduate Penn State with your degree in. What was it in business?
[00:05:24] Speaker C: Yeah, in finance. Yep, finance. Went to the brief brief resume is went to work for my brother in law's family business, wholesale furniture business. Did that for a few years right out of college.
Decided to get my MBA from Temple and never really did anything with the mba. Just felt like it was a little background that I wanted to have.
Got out of the my brother in law's family business went into a local company that basically sold anything and everything to the government via the bid process. And then this was now 2003. I'm in the middle of my MBA and a friend that I went to high school with and grew up with her father owned a mortgage company and so we're in the middle of the boom at this point and he just needed live bodies to help him get his loan officers deal to the table. I knew you needed a mortgage to buy a house. That was my entrance into the business. Literally nothing about the business and but picked up really fast. You know what underwears want to see.
How to price loans, how to process loans and really get other originators onto the table. While the goal was to build a book of business and took the slow road to do that. Really learn the business how it works. We were small correspondent lender so learned a little bit on the wholesale side of things and then eventually when the processing really wasn't worth my time, the salary wasn't worth my time and it was really just best to go out on my own and sell full time. It was about five years in and decided to do that. Stayed with that company a total of 12 years and then just felt I needed some change. If I'd just gotten little stale for me and I didn't really see a ton of upward mobility to be able to really to grow and you know to get a mortgage, you know it's not the easiest thing to sell whatsoever. Right. So it was. I was like you know what, I'm going to shake this up. I'm going to try something else. Came to guaranteed rate. It's now been 10 years and that was really where it sort of catapulted this starting to really grow.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: It's interesting for the loan officers that listening I really want the, you know, I want them to hear from a, a top producing loan officer. Right.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: You know what I would like to hear kj? I'd like to hear two truths and a lie.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that's right.
That's how to set up either you.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Give me the, you give me the hardest time, every time. Why didn't you remind me? You see how, like, how, awkward that interjection is when I have to stop you?
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Listen, I didn't say it was going to be easy, Joe. I said it was going to be required.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: All right, you know, let's. Let's. Let's go.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: All right, all right. We're gonna stop. We're gonna take a brief pause.
We're gonna do two truths and a lie that I. I want to get right back into it here. All right?
[00:08:27] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Thank you for the interjection here, John. All right, so give us. Rob, give us three facts. By the time we're done, Joe's gonna know which one's the lie.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: Three facts. I took my GMAT test to the entrance test for grad school on a whim.
My dream is to own a coffee shop, and I was scouted to play minor league baseball.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Minor league baseball. All right, those are pretty good ones.
We will come back to that. All right, now you're getting into the mortgage business. How quickly did you realize that this was a sales position?
And what were some of the things that you learned early on about selling and how this is not your average sales position, but nonetheless it is a sales position? What are some of the similarities or the preconceived notions about sales that we as originators have to understand in this position?
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, the fascinating thing to me about real estate is there's so many ways to make a living, and especially on the mortgage side of things, there's so many. There's various operational roles, there's sales assistant roles where you are basically like in the sales role. You're just not making the official sale. You're not quoting terms, things like that.
So the goal. I'm not for me to stick at my desk from 9 to 5. That's just not my style. So I sort of always knew that I would be in a sales position.
But I really. I like to take the slow and comfortable approach. I want to know something in and out before I can really then go and go all at it and take that to the street.
So I took a more slow and measured approach to it, to building a book. I kept, you know, I kept processing deals. My opinion, the best way to learn the business is processing.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: The more deals you can see, then you get, you become an expert. Right. You know, what works, what doesn't work, what's allowed, what's not allowed. Why are underwriters asking for certain things? And then it's easier to explain To a borrower. So on the sales side it really became just. I like to, I want to make sure that the trust is with me, right? So I feel like there's two types of salespeople, right? There are the people that just have that natural gift of gab and can, you know, the sell ice to an Eskimo type person. And then there are the people that lead with trust. And I am the latter. I like to lead with that trust. If you can't trust me, I'd rather even not work. Right. So learning just this was. I'm raw. I don't follow scripts. If I had to dial down a long list of call of names every day to call and deal with 95% rejection, I wouldn't have lasted. So it was really go out and find people that I want to work with, find people that I, I like the business that they are generating and try and embed myself in their business as a partner. And so that's really the business that I wanted. I knew I wanted it to be a referral business. I knew I wanted it to be something that I could really grow into. And it's raw. It's. Every call is different. There's no script I follow. I do wind up saying a lot of the same things on many calls just because a lot of the files are very similar, right? It's a similar process to get from A to Z. It's just different, different documentation, different personalities. But that was really it. It was just. I knew I wanted a referral business from day one. I don't know what clicked in me that that's what I wanted, but it was just the type of sale, I think.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. But I think there were a lot of guys go, go wrong when they realize, okay, this is a sales job. That must mean, like you said, I must have to have this big personality. You must have to have the gift of gab, as you said, or the ability to think fast on their feet. All that stuff is bullshit. Yes. Okay, fine. Some people, that's their personality, it is what it is. But you owe. The key is you had to identify a market, identify a group of people in your case and in mine, real estate agents that you want to work with. Once you identify that group, then you have to actually ready for that and you have to actually reach out to them, get them to know who you are, right? Get them to like you. Put yourself in places where you're going to interact and collide with them before you're ever going to be able to get A piece of business from it. And that is the part of the sales job that a lot of loan officers tend to forget. Like you said, they get this list and they just start calling people or they're, you know, I don't know, some guys are good at calling financial advisors. I'm not saying that that's not a market. Some people, you know, they only want to deal with sphere of influence. I mean the referral part of the business I think is huge. And you've built your entire career on that, correct?
[00:13:36] Speaker C: Yeah. And I fought solely having a realtor driven business for years and years. And I really, the initial basis and foundation of my business was financial advisors, accountants. I knew I needed some real estate agents but there was always a refi boom in that, you know, 2003 to 2000 and there were always refinance coming in. And so, you know, you could rely on that as a pretty consistent source of business. And so I didn't necessarily need all of the real estate relationships. And 2003 to 2010 you could trip and you're falling into the next application. Right. It was just a different time. So, so, and then when I got to guaranteed rate, I saw some, you know, I saw some of the countries biggest producers, all these Scotsman's rank like ranked people and loan officers. And I came in and I was like what are they doing differently? Like what have they figured out that I haven't figured out? Some of them are closing literally in a, in a month. What I'm closing in a year or even in two weeks in what I'm closing in a year. I'm like what are these guys doing differently? And then you meet them and you realize they're no different. They just figured out a system and it was like really just punching me in the face. Like why am I even like questioning that? Realtors are not the lifeblood of the business. For a referral based business they are the most important person in the transaction. From a referral standpoint, if, if your realtor says to call this loan officer, that's more powerful than their parents telling, telling, telling them or their accountant telling them their financial advisor. So it just really was just, it was punching me in the face like I've got to make this a referral. A realtor based referral business.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: So how do you identify? Walk me through, you know, you see an agent, you run into an agent, maybe they're on the other side of the transaction or they are someone who you've come across on social media. How do you, what do you do to really attract that business from that agent or put yourself in the way so that you're colliding with them.
What's the first thing you do when you highlight this is somebody I think.
[00:15:46] Speaker C: I want to work. Yep. So I get a sense of, you know, we have lots of data. We can see what their numbers are like. We can. I can see who they're already working with as far as, you know, on the loan side and where I think maybe I'm a better fit. Right. So I'm coming into a meeting saying, how can I take that up a level? Right. How can I make you. How can I help you write three more deals a year? You know, what can I do to get you to that position that's going to make you get to your sales? Right. Because I'll get you there. I'll make that loan as certain as possible so that you're not questioning if this deal is going to close or not. It's just when, when you want. And so, so, you know, bringing on that, that almost certainty that we're going to close this deal for you and you don't have to worry about the loans anymore, you don't have to worry about your clients being treated respectfully is an automatic. Now what else can we do to really help you get out in front of more faces and get through three, five more deals a year? And when they don't have to sweat the loan side of things and they, they let. Let me be the quarterback of that transaction, it takes all that off their plate to be able to do other things. Right. Because it's time. What can I. What is my team doing that's taking things off my plate so I can get out in front of more agents? What can I do for them to help them, you know, even, like, when it comes to the transaction coordinators, right. Like, so many loan officers get so, you know, pissed off at their, at these transaction quarters for just following up and doing their job, making sure things are happening. Because there's a propensity in our business to drop the ball. And it's like if you can't even treat them with respect, like, yeah, you're, you're in the wrong business. Right. You know, we fall down the food chain in a real estate transaction. We need that real estate agent happy. You know, we need their transaction coordinator happy. So just, just literally being there, picking up all the pieces, making, making sure things are happening on time as they should. It's three quarters of the battle.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: If you miss the mark, there's so many people not. You didn't miss the mark, but so many people miss the mark when they, when they don't recognize that a real estate agent's transaction coordinator, that's their right hand, that's their eyes and ears. They trust that person almost explicitly with whatever they need done. And if that person, who they have so much trust in turns around like, you know, that dude's an asshole, guess what, you're done. Like, like you, you, you might think you're somehow above too, too good to be, to be kissing the butt or, or showing, let's just say showing a lot of respect and, and, and service to a transaction coordinator. You gotta recognize that transaction coordinator, they are the linchpin of that real estate agent's business. And if they say you're not good, say it.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: One of my colleagues put it, put it best, he phrased it as. We are professional tongue biters. You know, what we see in here, it's, you know, it's, we hear it all right? We see it all and just shut your mouth and get the build on. That's all they want.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that, that's what's important to them. How you do it matters to a degree, you know? You know, they want to know that what your system is replicatable that you're not just a, that this transaction wasn't great by accident, right? They want to know that it was, it was great on purpose. But you're right, you just gotta, you just gotta, you just gotta get their loan to the table. That's really all they're looking for, you know?
[00:19:19] Speaker C: Tell me, are we exciting in here with all this up? Man?
[00:19:25] Speaker A: I was in the mortgage business for a hot minute too.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: You remember?
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a little bit dabbled in it when the, when the getting was good there for a brief second.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: Ken, what was, what did you, what did you do differently this year to really take it up a notch? Is there anything specific you can point to?
[00:19:46] Speaker A: I want to say not necessarily differently this year, but I will say, and I think Joe, you know, Joe and I have a lot of conversations around it. I think that this year was the manifestation of a lot of effort that went in the year before. And one of the things I learned about this business, and if you want to speak to this too, patience is key. There's so many loan officers, salespeople, entrepreneurs in general that have a decent plan, right? They have a decent structure. They have, their strategies are in line with their objectives and then they execute and then they don't have any Goddamn patience. And when the, when the business is not right there, right that minute, they immediately go to make changes and iterate.
You gotta have consistency and patience, right? If you, if you have consistency without patience, you, you know, you're, you're not gonna, you're not gonna continue, right? If you have all the patients in the world and no consistency, then really you're not executing any kind of a plan, right? So. So this year for me, 2024 anyway, and, and going into 2025, a big part of it was, you know, having my system in place, working my system. And then the things started to come and I was able to recognize, okay, this business, you know, essentially was born from this strategy. And now it's time to double down on this strategy. Double down.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Let me add to that though, because, like, I think that. And this is completely from an outsider's perspective because I know like all loan originators and whatever, they think that like there's A plus B equals C, right? But what happens is to Kenny's point here, that when you're, when you work in an industry or a market that like expands and retracts pretty regularly, like when times are good and rates are low and there's a lot of stuff out there, everybody thinks that what they're doing works and people come in and there's lots to go around and everybody kind of gets fed and then it retracts and the people fall off. So when it retracts, it's everyone who makes those adjustments and starts doing crazy stuff that they weren't doing before and vice versa. When it expands, like. So it's all about consistency in these types of industries. If you're consistent and you can ride out the lows, then that's when you gain the majority of the market share. That when it comes back up, you're. You're not competing with the people who are getting it at that time. So, like, it's not a. You have to look at a larger snapshot of your production as opposed to, like, I think people focus on year to year. You should really look at like 10 years, you know, or like as long as you can, because that's going to dictate exactly what's working and what's not working. So.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Dude, that's a great point because you're right.
It's funny, in this business, when things are going great, you give all the credit to yourself. When things are going bad, you give all the blame to your company, right?
[00:22:43] Speaker C: And you don't ever let.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: You've seen it, right. Rob like recruiters, like, they, they love catching a loan officer on a down year because they can be like, oh, it's your company, this your company that you come here, this company's gonna do this. But wherever you go, you're gonna bring yourself with you. Which brings me to my point about benchmarking, which is how do you know if you're doing good? Right? How do you like, really the only measure of not. It's not how much you closed, but how much did you close in comparison to your benchmarks? And sometimes the benchmark being another person is good, but you don't know what's going on in that person's world. Right. Like sort of benchmark against another originator is a little bit of a hazard. So. So Rob, what, what do you use for your benchmarks to determine if what strategies you have in place are actually working?
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Yeah, so for me, it's, we love to, you know, the industry loves to look at the dollar volume. As you know, that's what all the rankings are based on. But for me, it's the units, right? It's the number of loans that we're doing. As long as we're bringing in at least X number of loans a month, there's going to be busy seasons and slower seasons. But as long as those units aren't falling off the purchase units, at least then I know we're at least on a similar trajectory. Right? Because you're going to do a million and a half dollar loan and you're going to do a $50,000 it all. @ the end of the day, it all evens out. We always get to the same. My average loan size is about $400,000. In some years it's 410,000, some years 390. But it always comes out to about $400,000. So again, we're going to get the same customers and the customer mix. It's really just a matter of like, are the units there or are we. Because if the units are falling off, that probably means that maybe a relationship is falling off. And I don't lose relationships over poor service. It's not that at all. It's to stay in front of everybody, right? There's a lot of hungry loan officers out there. Especially now, every loan officer or every, every realtor is being hit up by multiple loan officers. And it's hard to, you know, always stay in front of them. So am I keeping up the relationships that I know something's fallen off, but we're doing. The quality of work is never, is never Faltering. So it's really. Are we keeping those relationships up? Did I lose a relationship? Do I have to go and gain another one back or two back to keep those same units there? So it's always units that we're looking at to make sure that we're on pace.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah, the relationship.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: I have a question for both of you. So if you're a. If you're a new loan officer and you identified that the realtor market is where you want to target, how much emphasis do you put on existing? You know, like, let's say a realtor that's a veteran Realtor that's been working with a loan officer, like, not stealing that business, but earning that business versus focusing on a bunch of new Realtors that maybe don't have the experience or like, where does that, where does that balance come in in terms of where your time's dedicated to target those types of. Of Realtors?
[00:25:51] Speaker C: Yeah, for me. So I, I. When I was starting out, it was very quick to see that the more experienced agents were, were almost all of them were already years deep into some relationship. The same relationship that I would want from them and that same loyalty that I would want from to. All right. A lot of those agents now created teams. And those teams, the veteran loan officers aren't wanting to pay attention sometimes to the person that doesn't have any experience and has to be handheld through a deal. So you start to gravitate towards that now. I think the market has changed so much that if I'm a new loan officer, I'm getting my butt out to every single open house, every opportunity that I have. Because you have a willing, a captive audience that is. Has to be in that home, and you have an agent that you're talking to. Maybe a client comes through, potential client comes through, but you're just meeting people you're talking to, talk more. And it's, you know, you just have to be comfortable with that FaceTime. Some people aren't, but I would be out at as many open houses as possible just to meet as many agents as I could. And now they recognize you. Maybe they're more willing to call you and trust you with a referral.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: So that's so. So that's your defense now, right? So you're established. There's a young K.J. there's a young Rob out there that's just starting. They want to eat your lunch. So how do you. How do you fend them off?
[00:27:21] Speaker C: Right, Ken, you want to.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: I'm coming for you, kj. What Your Business.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: First of all, I love, I respect loan officers that are doing it the right way and coming up and hungry and, and I, I appreciate it. Right. I appreciate it. I, you have to be aware that it's out there. And, and to Rob's point, you know that the analogy of spinning plates, you ever see that guy, you know, they spins all the plates on the, you know, and if you're not careful, one of them's going to crash. You do have to stay in front of your referral partners. You got to know a, you got to know you. If you don't have a CRM, I don't care whether it's an Excel spreadsheet or an actual physical like robot CRM, if you don't know who your top 25 top 30 referral partners are, then you don't deserve them. You have to know who they are and then you have to make sure that you're putting yourself in front of them for the reason that you just said. Joe, there is going to be somebody that comes along that's pro, maybe, maybe they're over promising, who knows, right? But at the end of the day, your agents are going to work with people they know, like trust, right? That's. You have to stay in front of those agents. You will lose some.
There's no doubt. There's an attrition factor. And Rob, if you took your top 10 referral partners from 20, 2018, I guarantee you that list looks different than it does today. You know, and that's the other thing that a lot of originators forget. A lot of people that are kind of at, in our stage of the career, they get this false sense of confidence that, oh, I built this business, I don't have to do anything anymore. It's just the business just going to come in.
[00:28:59] Speaker C: And that's not true.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: If you, in this business, if you're not growing, you're dying. So, so to your point, Joe, have at it. You try and come and get my people, right? And it's my job to make sure I stay in front of my, my top referral partners. And it's also my job to make sure that I'm still hungry enough to do what they're doing. And I want them to see that I'm doing what they're doing because I don't, you know, they might be able to run a little faster, but I still believe that there's not many people out there that's going to outwork outwork guys like us. And you know, they, that, that we're Going to gain their respect. I'll gain their, you know, you know, they'll gain my respect for their hustle. But I love that. I love that.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: I knew that would get you. I knew that would get you guys fired up.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Like, come on, bring it. What do you got?
[00:29:47] Speaker C: And then there's the, the aspect, too. When I was a year, five years in the business, what I know, 22 years in the business now is I'm going to show them some scenarios that, that newer loan officer is not. I'm going to show that client different ways. I'm going to say, hey, no, you can't do this. So the experience and the expertise is a differentiator, right? So it's. You not only have to be sharp, you know, and, and talk to talk, but at the end of the day, you got to execute. And execution is where a lot of the industry fails. And that's why, like, execution alone keeps Ken and I in business because we get calls every single week. Hey, we need you to pick up this, this failing deal that was supposed to close yesterday. And we close it, right? Sometimes, sometimes it's a dead deal no matter what.
But more times than not, we're fixing that deal and we're getting that to closing. So it's. The expertise is critical. Like, at the end of the day, you need somebody that knows what they're doing, or else.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: How does that conversation go when you find out that one of your top referral partners has given a deal to somebody else? Does that happen? And, like, how do you, how do you address that?
[00:31:04] Speaker C: It's why I try and stay off of social media, because it really, it is, it is a punch to the gut. Like, you know, you can't pretend like it's not. It doesn't hurt you. Like, it's not personal, right? Of course not personal. It's. There's a lot of loan officers out there, and there's a lot of hungry loan officers out there, and they're, they're, they're. A lot of them are going to do the right thing and do what they should be doing. But it definitely stings, you know, and it's. You'd be lying if it doesn't. But it's really why I try and not see it, you know, it's.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: What does he have that I don't have?
[00:31:36] Speaker A: I will say this. It's happened to me even as recently as this year, as I'm. Like Rob said, we have these tools, like, if I want to know who one of my referral partners is using I have systems I can plug in their name. I can see exactly how many loans I got, exactly how many loans these other people got. And it is, it is information you may or may not want, but if you're, if you're able to stomach it, it's. To me, I look at, again, I look at those as opportunities like, like I could go out and I could try and find a brand new agent who may or may not make it, who doesn't really know a whole lot, put a lot of time in engine and they still don't pan out or they end up finding out that their brother's in the business and they're going to use them from now on. Like there's a lot of that that goes on. But for me, I look at that age, I'm like, okay, a number one, are you honest with yourself? What did you do to let that crack in the armor impact that relationship? You have to be honest with yourself. And then two, is it worth the reinvestment? And if it is, then fucking reinvest, right? Then that person's going to hear from you more regularly. That person's going to get a birthday card from you, that person's going to get a handwritten note from you. That person, when they give you the next referral, that referral is absolutely going to be white gloved the whole way through and your whole team's going to know it. Your processor is going to know it, your underwriter is going to know it, your closer is going to know it. That's on you to make sure that, that you absolutely triple down on the experience for that borrower and try and win them back. Now you may or may not. You may or may not. But if it's worth it, if you look at that name, you're like, you know what? I'm fighting for this one. I'm not letting this one go easily. You just gotta triple down.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: That sounds romantic, bro.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: How do you, how do you not get romantic about the board? Dude?
[00:33:22] Speaker B: No, for real, dude. It's, it's like there's a lot of correlations there with dating.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: I guess that is funny because we, that's an analogy we use often, especially in training, when we're training other loan officers and we're like, hey man, like if you're trying to get married on the first call, dude, you're just gonna creep them out and they're gonna run.
The job of your first call is just so they know who you are, you know what I mean? And then from there you get them to know you a little more. Then they get to you.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Once you, once you put a ring on it, you got to keep them happy, bro. Otherwise, out on the town.
[00:33:59] Speaker C: Unfortunately.
It is, it is, it is dating. It's absolutely the realtor relationship. It is dating. And, and then there's the, I like to call it the Dazed and Confused analogy. Right. So real estate agents have their own life cycle. Right. So they start out as buyer agents. They're out all weekends showing buyers homes, things like that. As they mature in their business, then they shift more to the listing side. Right. Their initial buyers start selling their homes, they move, they start selling those home and their business shifts more to the listing side. And then a lot of them grow a team. Right. So they're not now working with buyers as much. They're deflecting their buyers to their teams. So it's sort of like we are getting older and the real estate agents that we're courting, those buyers, agents are staying the same age. Right. Based and confused line. So it's like you really have to evolve and you have to really play a jack of all trades. Like you have to be able to talk to 25 and relate to that 25 year old as much as the 60 year old.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: And that's why Rob's doing a ton of social media. He loves it, he loves tick tock, he loves Instagram.
So tell me about that. That's a great segue. Let's talk about that for a little bit. Let's talk about your love affair with social media.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: And why you decided this is going to be your year to, to double down.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I just, it really, I just wanted to prove myself I'm not a dinosaur. I, I, you know, I probably am five years a little too old for having been ingrained in like this one, a camera in front of me. I'm not. The camera's never been natural. I've gotten better at it over the years. But part of my humor is just like self loathing and I just never was able to get comfortable like making a post and it just not being stuffy or whatever. And then finally one day I was just like, I hate, hate social media. I'm certain I'm not alone and I just like hashtag, I hate social media. And it was just me talking to a camera being like, I hate this. I really don't want to be doing this and just slowly evolving and it's, it's just, I'm just having fun with it. But it made me, made me talk to the Camera a lot more fluidly, more naturally, and just going to run with it. We'll see how it goes. So it's been fun, and really, it's, like, rekindled some. Some prior relationships and things like that. So what I want to get out of it, but really, it's just. If I can make somebody smile for a second, that's. That's ultimately the goal I had.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: I had two loan officers, Rob, tell me they hate social media today.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: Today.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: Talk to them. Right? I'm turning the camera. I'm turning the monitor to. To those two loan officers. They're like, I just. I hate social media. Talk to them, Rob. Why do they have to do it?
[00:36:52] Speaker C: Yeah, Your competition's already five steps ahead of you, and if you don't do it, you're just gonna. You know, if you don't start now, you're just gonna get buried deeper, and then the next thing comes along that you're gonna get behind the eight ball. So you have to evolve. You have to evolve. You have to make yourself uncomfortable for me. Make, you know, this 2005, 2006, every day, I just tried to make myself a little more uncomfortable. This is pre social media, and I would make the call that I wasn't supposed to make, right? Or that everybody. Everything. Every ounce of my body is telling me, don't make this call. Don't make this call because of the fear and the lack of confidence. And. And then I made the call. And so it's just. You're just, you know, you hate it because you're uncomfortable. I hate it because I'm uncomfortable with it, and I don't love it.
So. But your competition's doing it, and if you want to do what somebody else is doing and this is the person that you see that that's. That's the business that you want, then you better get in front of it.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: I love it. All right, let's. Let's transition to another topic that I'm definitely interested in. And, Joe, I know that this is something you and I have talked about as well. I'm reading a book right now, and this would be a good one for you, Rob. Buy back your time.
Very good book. You started building your team 10 years ago, 12 years ago. Tell me, how is your team structured right now? What's your team look like right now?
[00:38:18] Speaker C: So I built. Talk about trust, right? The whole thing is built on trust. I built my team around OPS first, because if I couldn't trust that the deal was going to be done the right way, I Wouldn't be able to sell what I'm selling. So I had to make sure if I was going to delegate that it was going to happen the way that I wanted to. So the team that I built was really primarily around operations. I was the sole salesperson and everything else was a cog in the wheel to make this thing happen, to get the settlements.
And one of the people that I hired was. I grew up with them. We played little league together. And I just knew I could trust him. Right?
Yeah, I knew I could trust him. Yeah.
And, and I knew he was like the critical piece to take it up another level. And as a processor, as an assistant.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: What was your first hire?
[00:39:19] Speaker C: First hire was a sales assistant to really, you know, doc collection. And, and just the stuff that I felt was the easiest task, the piece of the role to give up.
And so, so again, it was more operational.
And then we had processors too, but I was sharing some processors. But this, this other person that I mentioned that I grew up with, he was more like. I call him my coo. Right. So he. Anything operationally he is on. So if it's a sales question, we just. He sees everything that comes into my inbox and if it's anything sales related, I handle it. If there's anything operations related, he handles it. And he doesn't answer as me. Answers as him, but he sees everything. So we both see everything happening in real time. And then we just know now at this point, this stage of the game, like who's going to handle what without even talking to each other.
And then as it grew, I started bringing on some sales help because Covid really was the breaking point for me where I was really handling almost every single sale and it was way too much for one human. And it really like, it just, it was non stop work. My, you know, phone was being threatened to be thrown in the ocean multiple times.
It was just, it was, it was non stop. And so that's when I was like, I need some sales up. I'd rather not even go. The volume isn't worth it. I'd rather not even go through it if this what it's going to be like. And they. And somebody within our branch was looking to make a move and I told them, I told them in.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: And so you actually hired them as a, as a licensed loan originator to take various aspects of the process of your plate or literally full blown, like this borrower is yours, this borrower is yours. This borrower.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: Both. Both. Yeah. You know, it's really more as a tag Team, you know, like we're, if, if I need help on a deal, he's fully able to, you know, he knows guidelines proficiently and he can run with a deal from start to finish. So it really just depends what the day looks like and if he's jumping in and running numbers for me or vice versa or sometimes I'll have on his deals like it's just whatever we need to do. It's every client, you know, it all falls into one.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: So Joe, in your, in your world, right, the, the idea of delegation and this is a con, this is a topic of consternation for a lot of people is what, when, when to delegate, when, how much should it cost, what should I pay? Why do I, I can't afford to grow, I can't afford to delegate. Like you know, in your, let's say your nonprofit. How much was you in the first year? And at what point did you guys decide okay, here, here, we're going to start to delegate some of this stuff.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Non profits aren't really the best example because every, because they're volunteers. So like I'll delegate everything, like, you know what I mean? Whoever's needing help. But for businesses that I've, I've started, it's. I play with the house's money. So like when the business, when, when we have, you know, sell widgets and we make money, right portion of that money is going to go to get the next deal or get the next, you know, grow. And so that obviously is going to take more people to do that. And so it's not like nothing earth shattering here, but when you bring people in, you give them limited responsibilities and things that like if it completely blows up, it's not going to wreck the whole organization. And then you kind of go from there and then you start to piece those people together and basically, well, so I'll take, you know, another one of my companies, we have somebody that came in at a certain level and turned out, you know, there were several people at that same position and one just outworked out rose the rest. And it was a no brainer that now they're in charge of hiring people to do the job that they had. And like there's other people at that level and you know, so it's almost like a, like a competition. You make it a competition based on responsibilities and based on trust is the main, is the biggest thing. So the delegation comes from the fact that like you set up the fail safes of like if I give this person this amount of responsibility and they Destroy it. It's like the worst case scenario. How, how systemic of an issue is that going to become? And then if it's once, once you're comfortable and you trust them in that, you elevate them to a different position and they know what your, your culture is, they know what you know, how the system works and everything like that. So they can bring people in, under them or around them. That also, you know, mimics your values and your trust level and everything like that. So that, that's really the best way to do it. And businesses and people get into situations where they get too impatient and they want to grow too fast and they bring people in because there's, there's a need, immediate need. Like I don't care who it is, I just need a heartbeat. This person can do this and they'll be fine and I can train them. And like ultimately that's what leads to the biggest catastrophes in all the businesses. If you just fill in spots to grow, then you're not actually, you're gonna, you know, it's short lived because they're gonna up and wreck everything. So that's, I don't know if that answered your question, but that's like legit, like personal experience recently that we've had.
[00:44:56] Speaker C: That very end is. You just described the mortgage business coming in and getting out of COVID It was like getting as many warm bodies as you could find because everybody, the industry was just taking, moving one person from one company to another and paying them whatever they wanted just because you couldn't find enough capable bodies. And then things went south and it was literally like, wait, we're, we're overpaying for now half of these roles that we don't need anymore because there's just not the volume. Yeah.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Did you have to restructure after Covid, Rob? Did you have to restructure your team at all?
[00:45:32] Speaker C: Not really because I've always been pretty lean. You know, it's, we've always been a very lean team. I, I brought on somebody that how I started the business where he came in and he, he had a sales role before but nothing tied to mortgages. And so he's really learned from the ground up and does some business dev stuff for us. But ultimately he wants to be a full time loan officer and you know, so he's two years in now and doing great. So really it's, we didn't have to shave off that much. The company did because there was a lot of, you know, as production went down, the company had to Go through several rounds, but we remained intact pretty much.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: I'll also share with you the worst equation, because I think this probably happened in the mortgage industry too, is that when you bring people on and you're like, oh, one deal pays for them. We just get one deal, it pays for them. And when you start attaching people or things onto your business based on like, oh, well, what's that, two deals, like, yeah, then they're covered and then the rest is profit. You start forgetting that stuff you added on, you already accounted for like five deals ago. And this is be like deal number 15 is going to cover that. So that's where businesses get really fat on the top end because they're calculating their cost based on deals that are going to come in or offsetting that cost. And then you end up like with a huge, huge top line. You're like, whoa, shoot, how can I cover this? I have all this overhead and none of these deals actually came in. So I believe that probably happened a lot with you guys during COVID Without.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: A doubt, without a doubt. I think we saw company wide. Yeah, you saw companies like Rob said, way overpaying people. And then you got to figure out a way to right. Size that compensation, you know, in line with the market, you know. And I think that what we saw a lot of things went from. And probably you saw this too, Rob went from, you know, full blown salaries to like, hey, you know, if we ever get back to this level, I want you to make that kind of money. But for now, we have to go here with salary and what go production bonuses on top of that, you know, so that way if you do more, you make more. Like, like I saw a transition in the operation side of the mortgage business which was not as prevalent prior to Covid, where the more talented people are now production based in some respects. Right. It's not just the salary anymore. It's like, hey, here's your salary. But you close, you process, you, you, you originate or you underwrite, whatever. Then yes, you'll, you'll, you'll make more money. So it protects the company from the fixed cost, but still gives the upside, you know, to the, to the operations person. And that was not as prevalent prior.
[00:48:12] Speaker C: To Kobe, you know.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: All right, so last topic before we get back to three. Two truths and a lie. What this is, I don't. I'm gonna work. Life balance. Is it a myth? Is it real? As an originator, especially as a top originator, you know, do you think that.
[00:48:34] Speaker C: That'S something that's achievable So I am not the best person to follow advice here. I'll. I'll be the first to admit it.
I. Because my natural instinct is if somebody asks me to do something that is related to my job, I'm going to do it.
And, and even delegation has. I've taken the slow approach to delegation. Like the person that I want to be when it comes to delegating is, is the work in progress.
It's, it's seven days a week. It's omnipresent. But I like it. I like the fight, right? I don't like the business. Nobody, nobody comes into this world saying, I want to write loans. Like, it's, it's not the dream that you. Anybody comes in thinking that that's going to be their career, unless maybe they grew up in the business.
So it's, it's really, it's. I'm passionate enough about it that the growth has become a lot of fun. And how can I keep evolving to stay relevant in the business, write a solid amount of loans and then grow to the next progression. Right. Which is ultimately try and build a team that will, you know, that will help originate a lot and make people better originators. But that's not the best thing for the, for my company, for my business right now. It's to keep grinding. Right. And, you know, it's. So I'm always on. As long as I have my phone, I can see what's going on. I can work. And if somebody needs something, I'm not going to leave them high and dry on a Sunday night. They're trying to win an offer like it's part of the business. And, you know, it's, it's, you know, I don't want to discourage anybody, but, you know, be prepared. You. Somebody else will answer that phone and somebody else will get that business if you don't. So, you know, you have to. Whatever's healthy for you. I can, I'm very good at dealing with stress. I've become very good at that. And I can, I can handle a lot on my plate.
But you've gotta. If it's not working for you, then, yeah, you've got to put measures in place so that, yeah, you can have your weekends off if you feel like you need that. Some of, some of my colleagues will, you know, they'll, they'll take off a weekend and somebody on their team is handling the calls that weekend. Whatever. Whatever it is works for you. If it wasn't working for me, I would have done something about it. But it's. I'm not the best when it comes to that because I will just keep grinding. So. But then I recognize that there's times where I need to put the thing, put everything down and have the family time and have my me time, things like that. But I get that, I try and get that before everybody's awake. So I'm an early riser, Ken. I think that's when we reconnected, when the five amers, right. So I love getting up early. I recognize that my whole life I've always been one of the first up in my house, in my fraternity house, and now and my family and I'll just get up and get out and go to a coffee shop and do some work for an hour, or just mess around online and just get my head clear for an hour. And it's one of the best hours of my day because it just gets me mentally ready for the rest of the day.
[00:51:53] Speaker A: This is a lifestyle. It really is. And I think for the loan officers out there that are kind of in the, let's call it the first quarter of their career, especially coming through Covid, if you came in early and Covid, with your early years.
[00:52:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: You got to recognize this is a lifestyle. And you know, to your point, Joe, if. If you think that that agent you've been working with for 10 years is okay with you ignoring them on a Sunday, you're opening the door.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: These hoes ain't loyal. These hoes ain't loyal.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: That's good. All right. Two truths and a lie, Joe. Two truths and a lie. I think we got one hint in there, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know how big of a hint it was, but.
Where'd I write them down? Here. All right, so you took your GMAT for your graduate degree on a whim.
Your dream is to open a. Own a coffee shop. I did hear a little piece about the coffee shop there at the end. And we're being scouted by minor league baseball clubs. Is that all? Is that like, Is that correct? Those are the three. All right, Joe, which one's the lie?
[00:53:10] Speaker B: Let me, let me see here. These are, these are tough ones.
I'm gonna say that the lie would be, you want to open a coffee shop. You don't, you don't seem like the coffee shop type of out of me.
[00:53:25] Speaker A: Well, he did say that in the morning, gets up, sometimes I go to a coffee shop.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: Yeah, but just cuz you go to a coffee shop doesn't mean you want to open a Coffee shop. I'm just saying I thought that might.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Have been a tell.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: I go to the grocery store pretty often. I don't want to own the grocery.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: All right, I'm gonna say he did mention Little League. I think that he wanted to play. I think he wanted to be scouted. But the fact that he went to Penn State means he either was a stud D1 player.
[00:53:55] Speaker B: He said he was in a fraternity.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: All right, so then he wasn't a player. So I'm gonna say scouted by minor league baseball teams is the line.
[00:54:05] Speaker C: Ken. You. You win. Yeah. Wanted to be a baseball player when I was young.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I think we all did.
[00:54:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: And then gravity just wouldn't. I didn't win the fight against crappy.
[00:54:18] Speaker C: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. No, I. Coffee shop. The truth. I want to sell baseball cards out of a coffee shop. Is the true, true dream. But, you know, little steps.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: All right, so that's not technically. That's not a coffee shop.
There's actually. You know what, Dan. Do you know what Dan Fleischman is? Dan Fleischman.
[00:54:40] Speaker C: He's out here.
[00:54:40] Speaker B: He's the youngest person to ever take a company public. He opened up a series of. It's called Cards and Coffee. It's coffee shop that sells baseball cards.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:52] Speaker B: Look him up.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Do you know him, Joe?
[00:54:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I've, like, spent time with him. He's part of our circle, dude. He's pretty.
Pretty hard. Got it pinned down.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Yeah. That's actually kind of cool. You know who else is big into coffee? You know, Joe Honorado is huge in the basement.
[00:55:10] Speaker C: Cards. Yeah.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: Big time. And Breck is actually huge into baseball.
[00:55:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that's my. That's my therapy. So I can't even. It's not a side hustle. It's just total therapy.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: There's actually a reality show on Comcast. They were running it during the rain delay the other day. I don't know if you saw it. They were doing, like, this whole thing on the. The baseball cards. It's becoming like the baseball card shops are coming back, and they're coming back in a big way. People are going to. Spending hours and hours at the baseball card shop.
[00:55:40] Speaker B: The Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie card.
[00:55:45] Speaker C: So you.
Yeah. What's your best card?
No, I. I'll. I'll flip stuff. So it's. It's not even. It's not even collecting. That's the fun part. It's like finding stuff that I think will ultimately. That people will be interested in, but I'VE had. You know, the guys that we grew up with, those were the cards they like. So like a Tony Gwynn in the top grade. You know, it's several thousand dollars, things like that, Tony Gwynn rookie card, stuff like that. But. And they're, you know that card now in that pristine grade is a four thousand dollar car. The, the craziness, the amount of money that is being spent on this stuff and it's gambling. Like the modern stuff is, it's gambler. It is, it's about chasing these prize cards, so to speak. So it's not. We're. We're probably creating a generation of gamblers and kids with all these, the pack rippings. It's not like it was when we were kids, but it's insanity. The amount of money that's being dropped on some of these cards.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like scratch offs, man. They're just like, give me another pack, give me another pack.
Right?
[00:56:55] Speaker C: That's like that pokey, man.
Yeah, it's crazy.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: I don't have room for another hobby. Yeah, I don't see myself getting into, getting into baseball cards, but I collect dead presidents.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: That's what I call.
[00:57:14] Speaker A: All right, Rob, I appreciate hanging out with this man. This was awesome. Obviously, selfishly, I was asking a lot of questions for my own pure curiosity. And I appreciate you being open and sharing this information with me and with Joe and anybody else that's listening and hopefully you'll be willing to come on again sometime in the future.
[00:57:34] Speaker C: A lot of fun guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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