Jessica and Ryan both speak on the journey and constant trial and error it takes to get to where there are today and give tips on how to start and the obstacles and success you will run into. 

Ryan is a self-taught master of video creation combining unique storytelling and messaging with creative content to share his passion and help current and future home owners. Ryan and his wife Jessica have an unwavering mission to be the home financing partner that you trust to serve your family, friends and community. You’ll find them either at the gym or chasing an adventure with our 3 little boys; Tyton (9), Rush (6) and Steele (1).

Episode Transcribe

– Whoo. I don’t know why I did this. This is too long. I’m already dying and we’ve only done two sessions. And I’m killing myself but it’s okay, we’re gonna rock this thing now guys, we’re gonna bring on Ryan and Jessica Ehler, now. These guys, this team has rocked my world because I was like playing in video. And now I’m realizing like I was a kindergartner with an iPhone, like trying to figure it out. But what I love about these guys, is they tell tremendously cool stories, they self taught, they generated all this fun stuff, and they put out tonnes of amazing content. So I’m gonna bring them on right now. Let’s get them introduced. Where are they? Where are they? Here we go. What’s up everybody as we move on to our third session, that video masterclass, nobody is better equipped to lead us than this guy, Ryan Ehler. Now hopefully, we’ll have his wife Jessica with us as well because she’s obviously the brains of the operation and the looks like these two people have been absolutely changing the face of video. I’m so impressed. Not only with their creativity, but it’s all self taught. And they’re communicating their language and their mission and their ethos through video and they’re creating engagement and they’re generating tonnes of business. So let’s bring on the master for a video masterclass. Whoo, yeah!- Hey hey, what’s going on?- Hi.- It’s like I’m Interviewing the most beautiful people in mortgage. That should be our our topic today is like this. Our couple that crushes content and just is amazing. So thank you guys. Jessica, I’m so excited you’re here. Like,- I’m so glad to be here.- This is so cool. So man, let’s crack this thing wide open because what I’ve loved about what you guys do in Our Space, is you just went all in on video. You just went all in on video and and you do it in such a cool way. And I wanna frame this up first because I’m a big proponent of not over producing your content ’cause I believe that people lose their authentic voice. When they become scripted and they hire agencies and they try to overdo everything. I’m like, don’t do that just like please, like, be a human. And then all of a sudden, I saw you guys’s stuff and I’m like, oh, they’re doing both. They’re doing both. And they’re making it beautiful. And they’re being authentic and they’re sharing their hearts and you can like really get to know who they are. And I know it’s you’re radically changed your business, how you operate. It’s given you lots of control over your destiny, like how much business do I want to get? And how much should I work life balance? And so I want you guys to share how you got it. How’d you get in the mortgage space? What was that journey like? And then what was the pivot like for you when you decided to go all in on video? And let’s start there.- Yeah, so we used to own a gym and I know you you as well understand that right? So we did that for about a decade. And one of our long term clients was in mortgages. And he goes, guys, you have a little building behind a building with no sign and you have this place packed. Like if you took your marketing skills, and a applied it to mortgage, it would change your life and your family’s life. And literally, a month later, I passed the mortgage test. And that’s kind of how it started. Like, once I make a decision, it’s just like I can pivot like that if I have to.- So Jessica, did you just get pulled in behind that? or what happened? How did you ’cause you’re huge in this space.- Yeah. Yeah so I actually kept the gym going for a couple of years while he was in loans. And then we closed it down on and I was just going to stay at home with the kids and I got bored. And so I went on just to help him like as an assistant, and I was like, oh, I can do this too. Let’s double down. And the first thing we did was that “Superhero” video, just for fun. And that’s really kind of what the major pivot was.- The “superhero” video is near and dear to my heart. So share what you did and the idea behind it and why you did it ’cause it was, you know, I can see you maybe like, oh, this could just be cheesy. how’s it gonna be received? Like, who came up with it? And what? Tell everybody what you did.- We were just brainstorming just sitting there like, hey, what can we do that would be fun and witty and just throw it out there.- And we already have the costumes for Halloween. So we went with that, like we have, okay, we have Superman and Wonder Woman, what can we do with it? Okay, we’ll be the superheroes of mortgage. What are, some common problems and it really took off from there.- And it took 50 hours to produce and edit and finish up. So it was it was an endeavor.- Yeah.- So speaking about producing, how did you get into like, how did you learn to make your videos as great as they are? Like, how did you learn this?- YouTube.- YouTube so when we opened the gym, I started doing just basic videos all the time. Like I knew I just I liked video. I wanted to be part of it. And so I would just YouTube. Really what took my skill from like, okay to really good, was watching Casey Neistat. I don’t know if you know him from YouTube. And I challenged myself to do 90 days of a Vlog everyday. I would literally shoot all day while working and then edit until one, two, three in the morning. and I did that for three months.- Yeah.- Well so how— It was brutal,- Huh?- It was brutal.- It was brutal.- Well, I mean look, if you’re gonna learn a new skill and you’re gonna you know learn it, it’s gonna be hard, right?- Yeah.- If you want differentiation if you wanna show up differently then you’re gonna have to like step into it and like learn new, do hard shit. And that’s what’s you know, self evident what you guys did. But like what, when you’re gonna do a video, what’s your process? ’cause and by the way, you know, share with everybody how much of your business comes from, you know, video and social media. So I think — 100%.- Yeah well.- 100% has either come from it or we’ve made connections or people are reminded of us. I can literally just, this is what Jessica does. And it’s kinda funny. No matter how, what we’re doing, she takes all of our money and she hoards it and hides it from me. And then goes, hey, look at the bank account, we’re broke. And I go, What? And, and then I get going, and I’ll go out and put a video and then instantly we’ll see a return. And once that started happening, then that’s kind of been our flow is we would say, Okay, what are the gaps? What are people needing, what are they missing? What don’t they understand? And how can we make it in a fun, exciting entertaining way? and not be douchey and salesy in the process, and just be ourselves?- Yeah, ‘coz mortgages are boring, like they just are, mortgages are boring. And we have to do whatever we can to make people interested and still answer their questions,- Educate them on stuff that we know they need, but if I just went there and was sitting at my desk and talking about interest rates or down payments,- And they don’t understand, yeah.- So we try to put it into stories and just make it simple for people. And I wanna mention this, what really changed things for us is when we started being our authentic selves.- Yes. So, like, when did that aha moment come? Like what was the experience? What do you remember from that? Because that that is so missed. There are some people who believe, and Jessica, you just hit this too. Like, you’ve gotta be super professional, like you can’t have humor in your stuff or else that doesn’t pull your brand down and people are not going to respect it and blah, blah. And so I think people are trying to overdress their content, suit and tie it. How did this aha moment come? What was it like, and how do you change your business?- No, we did, the one that we did upstairs. So we did a video where we were, we had it scripted out we were sitting on the couch and we thought we were like spitting fire. We’re like, this is awesome. And then we watched the playback. And we’re like, this is garbage. I wouldn’t even watch it.- No energy, boring.- it was just no energy, it was boring. And that’s when we decided that we had to come up with a different method of delivery.- And then one day, I just started posting stuff about like my mountain biking and my hobbies and kind of tied in what we do, into it. And it just blew up. And we’re like, oh, that’s the sauce, as we tie in our personal lives and who we are and our personality, and like, I’m a goofball. And Jessica likes to egg me on, like, if you guys were recording what was happening in the background before you brought us on here, people would have been dying.- Yeah. We’re always like messing with each other and,— I was watching I was like, oh, they’re muted, but something’s happening over there ’cause they’re,- like poking each other, like, pushing each other. And so literally, when we started doing videos together, she would cry about five times during it because she was so scared and she hated it. And then once we started loosening, she started loosening up, then we started just kind of bantering and using that playfulness and like how we act with each other in real life. And we just started just being ourselves and you know, just having fun with it.- Yeah.- Jessica share that experience please of like the emotion of going through this ’cause you’re putting yourself out there both you guys put yourself out there in radical ways. And like that can be really intimidating and just without talking Neal, it stops people from getting out and like getting success and having their influence matter like walk people through your experience on that and how you dealt with it and how you got through it.- Yeah it was actually years. So like he had said, we were shooting video in the gym and I would avoid it at all costs because no matter what, no matter how confident I was in the material, I would still like I was so paralyzed by fear. I would just break down I would start crying at some point and then once you start crying, it’s just it’s over. You’re done. You have to try again another day. So I think like he said the playfulness is what really changed everything because we stopped rehearsing, we stopped going over and scripting. We would do bullet points and shoot from the hip.- That’s a big moment in personal development and people are struggling with that.- Yap.- So you just stopped? Or did you have like an like we need to stop? or did you just say one day just— I kept telling her, you gotta stop scripting out like she will write up every word.- I would write paragraphs.- And then it was just paralyzing her. And I was like, who cares if you mess up? like especially if it’s not live, like we’d do it 10 times 20 times if we have to, but usually when we do it, unless like somebody walks in front the camera which has happened before, when we were going out and about, it’s the first go, we just go and just riff it.- Yeah, and that really was the game changer. Once we saw that kind of scripted video and how bad it was. We just decided to do bullet points shoot from the hip, talk to each other. Even though we’re looking at the camera, we’re having a conversation together and everything changed.- And we usually always have props in our hands which kind of helps with like the fidgeting like you’re not fidgeting ’cause you’re holding these props and so you just kind of hold them there and stuff- Yeah I’ve got my little like nut and bolt thing that I— Yeah, yeah. So we have a don’t be a sucker video where it says the six you know, home buying mistakes or whatever, and we’re holding these suckers. And so we have those props. When we did our veteran one we had our American flags, and those props just kind of keep us from like fidgeting and stuff on camera.- Dude, I love the journey. I love the fact that you, you know went through the scripted mess and realizing that was bullshit and then you went to the hardness of, you know, just ripping the band aid off and going, we just gotta go in authentically, we just got to go in like unscripted. One take and that 100% of your business, comes from this effort. Yeah, it’s so it’s so empowering. Like, I really want people to hear that. Because that’s available to so many people, that they can just take control of their destiny so much, and put out the messaging you want. And so how do you balance? You know, you said this before, I want you to, you know, do it again. How do you find content that you’re gonna talk about?- I come up with a lot of the content and it’s usually it sparks by either seeing something on Instagram or a video.- Questions, we get.- Questions we get. So I actually have a list, when I get questions from borrowers. I have a list in my planner so that I can refer back to that when we’re making a video. And so for example, like the “Angel Devil” video, that was actually a Saturday Night Live skit, it was about food, like they were talking about eating, but I liked the concept of that and thought, Okay, what can we do to apply this to mortgage and make it interesting? Then I looked through my List of repeated questions, and we kind of just put it together and went from there. So that’s how most of our videos and content where that comes from.- And then I was like, okay, we need to shoot three or four different angles. And she was like why? And I was like, Just trust me, we’re gonna do it. And I repeat myself and I do these things in different angles so that I have more more pieces to work with and post. And then we had the most ghetto rig, green screen, you could imagine I had a piece of green paper. I didn’t have a green screen yet. We taped it to the wall, open up all the windows, grab every little light that I had. Just make it work.- Oh my gosh, I’d love it. By the way, for those of you that want nerdy tricks on green screen stuff, had you guys zoomed yourself yet? where you make yourself the zoom background? And then you can walk in on yourself while you’re sitting at the desk?- I haven’t done that.- Old money. So I wanna go back, about halfway through but I don’t want people to miss this part Ryan. How did you, you said YouTube and how you educated yourself. But I want you to really unpack the process. If somebody’s like, ’cause I can tell that you enjoy it, even though it’s hard work. Like I can see it in your content. I can see that like, oh, he made this ’cause he likes this.- Yes.- Like he’s not making this to try to prove a point to somebody he’s making this because this is an expression of him.- Yes.- And that’s why you don’t lose your authentic voice in your messaging, which I love. So if there are people who are gonna nerd out on video editing nerd out on you know, Photoshop and bottle Ah, really tell everybody your process, like go through it again. Like how did you start into it? You know, where did you go and how, you know, I want people to hear your story on this.- hundreds of hours of binge in YouTube because I told myself I was working. So I would just go on YouTube and just find like, how to edit on Photoshop, how to edit on Final Cut Pro or whatever editor you know, I was using, and then as you learn the basics, you start to see these little tricks that some of these guys do and you go, oh, now I know the verbiage for like, you know, tracking and motion. And things like that. And then I’d dig deeper how to do this. And then sometimes you’ll have to watch three or four different tutorials to find the one that works for what you’re trying to do. And then I just mirror it. And then over time, you learn your own little tricks and your own little techniques that you add to it, plugins, like I’ve bought in, and I don’t know, thousands of dollars worth of plugins for my video editor to speed things up. Yeah, so it’s like, like all the wording that pops up and does all that those are all plugins. I didn’t build that from scratch, like all the tracking software, that’s a plug in or I’ll buy another program that does it easier for me, like whatever it takes to like speed it up, then that’s what I would do.- Mm hmm. And you said about two years.- I’ve been doing it for 10 years.- 10 years?- Yeah.- I think it’s overwhelming that can overwhelm somebody who goes oh crap, I don’t have I can’t do that.- But let’s go back to that three, when I did those video a day. My skills skyrocketed like that really is what took it to the next level ’cause I was constantly like, I had an idea. I was like, well, I wanna do that. I didn’t know how to do it. So then I’d have to go watch the YouTube video before you shoot it ‘coz you have to know how you’re supposed to frame the shot. So I watched the video, okay, here’s how you have to do it. Then I go and shoot all day. Try to make that work. And then sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t. And then I just have to try it again the next day. Like, have you seen the “Reify” one that I did where I tripled myself and I was on my mountain bike doing a wheelie?- Yes, that was incredible. I was so I was so jealous . Anything like that?- She was so mad at me because I had no help. So I really, I went out there set up my camera. And I’m not really good at wheeling on the bike. So I literally would, I had 100 takes and then I nailed it. And I go in, and my framing was wrong with the camera so I had to go out the next day. Do it again. The framing was wrong with the camera. So the third day, I did it again and finally got it. And it was probably a total of two or 300 takes between three days. And she was like, are you just gonna give it up? And I was like.- Never.- No. So I’m literally rendering it as we’re leaving for vacation and she was like, let’s go let’s go like I had to like, hit the button and walk out the door to go on vacation like I get obsessed about these things.- But so I want to share a couple things for everyone paying attention to this like first of all, I love the rawness of rhinos undertake ’cause there are people that have done 100 takes on their iPhone trying to get like one minute video out so like people connect to that they understand like there’s effort there but clearly you get better over time if you practice consistently you get better every day. And then all of a sudden you hit this breakthrough point and it sounds like you guys something, I’m loving hearing your story ’cause this breakthrough points come and now you know there’s no lack of content, like Jessica is, I bet your book is full of content for months and days and years. You know, you break through, and now you can control your own destiny. And so, you know, there’s never gonna be going back. Where are you guys going in the future? and I, we Ryan and I talked offline about this and I love it because I want people to hear it like, where do you go with this now?- So here’s the one thing that I wanna get the point across is making money is awesome. But having that purpose of trying to like help people and educate them is really kind of what keeps driving us and just saying like, how can we make this better and reach more people and help more people from being taken advantage of from, you know,- Bad decisions?- Yep, the closer you get to money, who controls the money, the shadier people become unfortunately, you know, so if you think of where we’re at, then you go next level and people are, you know, start stockbrokers and doing shady underhanded things that we want to educate and be extremely transparent with our community so that they have the knowledge doesn’t mean that they’re all of them are gonna use us, but at least that we did our part in educating is just like being a personal trainer. You give people the information, you give them the tools, you give them the plan, and then it’s up to them to make that final call. And that’s how we look at it.- So I’d love for you both to also share your thoughts on your more I want to say under produce, but like your more organic content, you know, so like, the selfie stick and walking through your neighborhood. I mean, I’ve seen a bunch of videos from that stuff where I’m like, oh, you know, they’re coming down from the really super produce content and they’re making, you know, just really like I’m down the street like I’m a human. Share with everybody how that has landed in your efforts, what kind of connection that makes, business opportunities, when it’s just more organic.- The organic stuff in terms of turning content into business, hands down works the best.- Yeah.- But would I have the eyeballs if I didn’t do the produce stuff? That’s a chicken or the egg question. So we enjoy doing the produced and we think it does attract a lot of attention to our brand, but the down and dirty like my favorite camera right now is a GoPro HERO8 on a selfie stick, super clean audio super stable. It’s just an amazing tool. And then Jessica does her car videos.- Yeah, so the car video started because my kids were on spring break. And they don’t. They’re not ever quiet. So I just went in my car and shot a video with my cell phone and then Coronavirus. They’re still here. They’re still here. So the quietest places is my car, so I go in my car, I don’t even edit the video first take and people love it. People share it and it’s because they know that everything that I’m saying is coming from my heart. It’s 100% authentic and even if I no makeup sweatshirt, hair, they they connect with me more that way than like that.- Yeah, we let our community and our audience see us like our friends would see us. You know if we’re in a workout days.- That is so good Ryan. Jessica that is so, I hope everyone hears that a million times over because you don’t stunt double your life like you guys are just being humans. That reaches so much deeper. So let’s do this. We got 10 minutes left, guys, if there’s questions, throw them in here, we’ll put them up on the screen and get these guys answering questions. But I wanna, have you guys, if you had a brand new loan officer who’s never done video, who’s like, I’m ready to go, I saw this thing with Jessica and Ryan and I’m like I’m in, you know, and they’re sitting in front of you for your advice. What do you tell them to do? How do you set them up?- I know one thing is, don’t worry about the equipment is I’m an equipment nerd and it’s slowed my progress down substantially worrying about what I’m using. Do you have a cell phone, use your cell phone, get a ring light so that you ’cause lighting is key. Having good light is important and having good audio is important but it doesn’t have to be expensive. So get a ring light and get a wired lapel mic that you can plug into your phone. And those two things will take your quality above probably 90% of people out there. And then just start putting it out, just like Jessica said when she was afraid. You know what got her past being afraid. Keep doing it.- Keep doing it. Another thing that I would say is when I see new loan officers, they do it all the time. They’re talking so far above everybody’s head. They want to sound smart. But that’s not what people are going to connect with. People don’t want to be talked at, they want to be talked to. So you have to explain things like you’re talking to your friend.- So good.- So good.- Yeah. So those things is frequently asked questions, go after those videos first, talk about the things that you know about and what’s worked for me, is try to take a scenario in mortgage and relate it to something that you’re an expert in. So like me, like mountain biking, fitness, so I’ll say, you know you we heard somebody who had this challenge. So a lot like if you have this challenge and then it kind of just shows people the path if they don’t really understand a complicated you know situation you can make it to where more people will understand what you’re saying.- what has been some of your most successful videos in your opinion you know if you had a top three most successful, and by the way go ahead and define successful anyway you want. It could be how many deals you got from it or just it’s what everyone remembers, and it built brand for you. Like what do you think your top three are? And and I want people to hear kind of your your take on it.- The bike one got so many reifies it was insane. It was like I was extremely overwhelmed by how much business it brought.- A little bit like give him a little bit of grace back after you beat the crap out of him, for how long it took to do the bike one.- That’s how it always goes. He always makes me like eat my words.- Because when we find a winner we put money behind it.- Yes.- And that’s kind of where we’re gonna go in the future is you know, the more we grow the more we can expand our reach with advertising, the more people We can, you know, help out and see our stuff.- 100%. Okay, so we got the bike one.- Superhero.- Yeah. So yeah, those are all the produced ones but it’s because we put money behind those ones. So it’s hard to say like, you know, our organic ones we still get a huge amount of inquiries like I did one on forbearance, like right when Coronavirus happened just sitting in my car in my sweatshirt before I was gonna go to the gym, and I had, I don’t know, about 10 people messaged me asking me questions and people sharing it in and you know, people came up to me they’re like, thank you so much for that video. So even if it didn’t, you know, bring in a whole bunch of leads at that time. So many people were interested in it and appreciative of it that they’re going to remember me down the road.- And two more things before we end make sure we get it. Is doing this shirt has changed our business because now, I don’t have to say I do mortgages people just know.- By the way, I love that’s such a little thing. And yet it becomes such a big thing.- We did it just for fun for a conference that we were going to, and it blew up. Everybody loved it. It was a huge thing.- And I every time I wear it out, which is almost every day I have, like I have to order more.- Like the it’s all like, Oh, I lost your video come back. Oh no. Someone kicked the cord. By the way, if you’re getting value out of this, guys, please find Jessica and Ryan and connect with these guys on the internet. Like I said before with Neil, when you find people who do incredible things, learn from them. I’ve learned so much from watching Ryan and Jessica dominate their video space and laughing with them. I’ve seen all their stuff. I’m super big fan of their stuff. So you can get back on here in a sec. No, they just do a really great work. So we got disconnected from services. If they can come back in the next five minutes. We’ll bring them back. ’cause I really want you guys to hear this and I was going to try to pull Jessica into this and have her share more about it. And obviously she’ll do that if we can get her back. But man, fear, like she was so honest and authentic that like she was crying, doing videos and trying to push through the bullshit that is holding us back from putting our authentic self out there. And now all of a sudden, you look at it, and you see what they’re doing. And you’re like, holy crap, holy crap, their whole lives, their whole trajectory of their business has changed. And I am like, this is insane. This is incredible. I’m sending them a text. I letting them know I love them. And it’s just, it’s one of those things. So yes, my friends.- We are back- By the way, I got my green screen hanging behind me here. I can be as cool as you guys one day. You guys are amazing. So do this, Jessica. I know you could hear me on this, bragging about you, you know, and I talked about this with Neil and everybody else. Man, fear is crippling, it’s so crippling, and you were so vulnerable and honest being like, I would cry, I was frustrated, I was angry and I couldn’t get through it, it would ruin the day I could film the next day. And I just for the next couple minutes, as we wind down here, I want you to share more about that so that other people, they’re in the exact same place, they are in the exact same places, as you. And they’re, paralyzed, they’re sad they’re frustrated and so I mean, just go back there and share how you got through that, what happened in it because right now like it’s so fun to see you guys now. Like you’re animals, you just kill it. You have such fun, I can see that I can see the energy, the positivity, but it wasn’t always like that. And so please share.- Yeah, it’s still not like that. So even before coming on today, my heart was pounding. And this is just a live type of thing. I’m an extreme introvert, and you wouldn’t even tell you wouldn’t be able to to tell from our content, but it was just continually pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Because, you know, the magic happens outside of your comfort zone. And failure is going to happen no matter what you do. And you just have to keep pushing past it if you want to get where you want to go. So you just have to push your shit aside. and just put yourself out there and see what happens.- I mean, just look at what happened right now. Like our main camera died. We just put the cell phone you know, plan A doesn’t work, just go to plan B ’cause getting out there is the most important thing we talked about. What’s your best video? You know? The best video is the next one you make. It really is true. It really is true. Just keep pumping it out there. Just keep going. Keep going because it’s an accumulative effect. There’s not one video that was a magic bullet for us.- Yeah.- I love it.- I mean if we just stopped at the superhero video, we wouldn’t be where we are. So even though it was extremely successful. If you stop if you don’t keep going, you’re not going to go anywhere.- Dude. I love you guys. Thank you for sharing thank you for being authentic. Thank you for helping lead the industry and doing cool stuff that people can follow behind. Thank you for sharing your story. I know for a fact as we release, there’s a bunch people watching now but as we release this and other people get to see it the past they’re gonna be like, hopefully, it’ll be the one that pushes them through.- You know, I hope so. Thanks for having fun.- All right, guys. You rock. Have a wonderful day. Thank you guys.- Thank you too.- Man. Dive into the water team. Like how much more proof do you need, dive into the water! I don’t care where. Go all in and have fun with your career with yourself. Don’t take yourself so seriously. And at the end of that stuff is unbelievable opportunity. If you’re willing to play. I hope you value today. Please go find these wonderful human beings online, connect to them. All of them, do what they’re doing. Man, I appreciate you all. Have a wonderful day and a wonderful week, stay on the internet.

Scott goes into the importance of facebook groups or online communities alike are important for the growth of your business and what it takes to be in one and the benefits of being part of that community of like-minded people.

For nearly 20 years Scott has been providing quality mortgage products to his clients on the Eastside of Los Angeles. As an online coach & live event facilitator, Scott has delivered keynote speeches & workshops on sales, marketing, and lead generation. Recently Scott also became an Amazon best selling author with his book Lead Generation: Double your pay in 61 days.Enter your text here…

Episode Transcribe

– Man, I love that. That is just like the core of our business right there. Video dies, craziness happens and you just keep rolling. You just keep rolling ’cause that’s what humans do and I love those guys. So please follow ’em. Man, okay, we’re gonna pivot a little bit here. We’re gonna go into Leading a Digital Community, which is probably the most important topic we’re dealing with right now because we’re like stuck being digital, this is… We can’t do what we used to do, man. We can’t go hang out and… Some of us are doing it and I’m watching you with no masks but I’m just, I’m thrilled for this next guy. Scott Groves has been somebody who I followed in this business for a long time. I’ve watched what he has done. I’ve been a super big fan and I’ve been most impressed with how this guy pours into digital communities, into Facebook groups to drive connection, to drive value and let’s get on what that’s done to his business, let’s bring him on and talk about what it’s done for his life and let’s see whose beard is better. All right, friends and professionals. In our next topic, Leading a Digital Community, man, nothing could be more important right now than your ability to lead a digital community in this land where everything’s digital and this guy, Scott Groves has been a huge leader of that. Leveraging Facebook groups and building massive amounts of influence with the people he wants to online. He’s gonna share all his secrets with you. Let’s bring on Scott Groves, Leading a Digital Community. Woohoo!- Yo, whoa! That was like a real intro. You were doing some big boy shit on here.- I green screened that. Oh, man, I’m so proud of my little intro.- That is some good stuff, bro, congratulations.- I see your trim and you’re keeping it clean and tight now. There’s been a couple of videos where I was like, Oh, I think he’s lost it.- Bro, I got this all cut and trimmed just for you. No, that’s a lie, I got it for my wife. She said she wasn’t gonna make out with me until I clean this stuff up. So, yeah, you’ve motivated me to put in the facial hair. I can see my neck again but luckily I’m still hiding the double chin. So life is good.- So guys, for those of you don’t know Scott, this guy is just a leader of people. He’s been pushing positivity, pushing connection, driving some of the biggest Facebook groups I’ve seen and been a part of. In a minute I’ll have you break down what that means, Scott and why you did that and all that stuff. But you’re a coach, you’re a loan professional, you’re a leader of people, husband, father, all that fun stuff and I just think you’re the man. So I think this is a really cool topic for the next 30 minutes on leading a digital community. I think that’s hard, I think it’s a new skillset and I think you’re one of the pioneers in it from my perspective. And so as we start, I wanna ask some kinda queue up questions. Why do you start doing this? Why did you start building groups and creating connection? How do you continue to pour into it like you do? ‘Cause you just feed it all the time. You’re always there contributing and then what has it done for your life in business? And before you go, guys, I’m dropping in the comments right now on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, all of Scott’s handles, his book which is incredible. It’s on my stand, you guys need to connect with this guy and see what he’s doing like I said before, connect with great people and you get to learn what they’re doing. So Scott, how’s it going, dude?- It’s going well, man, thanks, I appreciate this and this is a crazy world we live in. We’re like, this is the new normal. For 20 years, professionals, loan managers, everybody’s been telling me like, just have a candy bowl on your desk at the real estate office and go to the coffee appointments and everything will be fine and now it’s like, no, now you need to know how to do this digital stuff and I’m already got my assistant. I’m like, “Dude, check out StreamYard. “I like how they’re doing stuff. “I gotta get something similar to that.” So, one it’s super exciting. Two, it’s, let’s be real, super dangerous because all loan officers and most salespeople have shiny object syndrome. So I could totally blow off the rest of the day learning how to use StreamYard and that’s probably not the best plan for my realtors and my clients but yeah, it’s a whole new, it’s a brave new world, I think I read that somewhere once.- You think you did. So you started building Facebook group communities. What made you do that? Why were you like, I’m gonna put time into this? and then, your latest one Generate is incredibly cool. I’m watching all the time and people are just networking and growing and so what has the effect been? Walk us through the process.- Yeah, so I gotta give a big shout out to my friend, Hal Elrod and Hal Elrod is the author of the book, “The Miracle Morning” and about six years ago through pure dumb luck, I ended up at one of his live events. It was actually the first live event that he had ever done and it’s because he had created this community on Facebook of people that had read the book, “The Miracle Morning” and they were looking for some accountability partners. And I think way back then he probably had five, six, maybe 10,000 people in that group. Now it’s up to a quarter of a million people and one of the things that Hal said is he said, there’s a guy named Dan Kennedy who’s written a bunch of books called, “The No BS series”. So like the no BS marketing, the no BS management and Dan said and Hal echoed this. He said, “At some point in the future, “the size of your database is going to be more important “than the quality of your work.” And I know a lot of people don’t wanna hear that because we’re all very proud of the hard work that we put in but just to clarify, we’re primarily talking to loan officers here, right?- Likely.- Okay, so— I don’t have a big reach elsewhere.- Yeah, there you go. So, let’s say for example, a new VA construction to perm product comes out and Alec is a better loan officer than I am. He’s kept in touch with his clients better than I have. He serves his clients at a higher level, they remember his name and so his database is, 500 people of clients that really love and respect him. He’s crushing and let’s just say, I’ve done a good job but not a great job. I’ve got the job done but I didn’t leave everybody with this wow feeling but I’ve got 15,000 people on my database or in a Facebook group or eyeballs on me or in a mailing list. Well guess what, man? When that new product comes out, construction to perm, VA widget, whatever, when I can go to my audience of 15,000 and Alec can go to his audience of 500, even if he’s converting at 10 times the clip that I am, I still win and I still get more clients. So now that’s not to say that I don’t do a good job. That’s not to say that I could care less about my pipeline or my clients or my loan process or my professionalism. No, I care about all those things but we’ve just gotta get in front of more people. That’s just the name of the game right now and sadly I think it’s only going to get more dramatic as we go into the future.- So number one, I agree a thousand percent. And then all of a sudden, even going back to your analogy, Scott, imagine that you and I are those loan officers in question and we’re both at the same level of expertise and we’re both competent and you got 15,000 and I got 500 and now it’s like, holy crap, what’s gonna happen? And we all see it and so you got inspired, you started building these groups. How big are the groups that you’re a part of?- I have one that’s just for loan officers that has a 3,000 or so. I have a couple of other groups that I would say that I have influencing, whatever the hell that means. I have about 10,000 in it— Hold on, I want to pause ’cause you’ve made joke about it but it’s not. You have a voice- Right- Through your hard work in those digital communities. That’s a real thing.- Sometimes it’s hard work, sometimes it’s just me being obnoxious.- Just controlling people, yeah.- But, yeah. So there are probably a cross section of, I dunno, 10,000 loan officers that I have some type of influence with where if I make a post, I’m gonna get some interaction. And then the goal with this Generate Group that I just started, which I would love everybody to be a part of is I said, the message in the book that I wrote, which is “Lead Generate: 61 Days To Double Your Pay,” shameless self promotion. The message in there it’s really for any entrepreneur, fully commissioned individuals. So this new Generate Group that I’m building and I think we’re up to about 2,000 people in that group. I want all my realtors, I want anybody that sells knives or insurance products or door to door widgets or they’re an entrepreneur and they own a bakery, basically anybody who needs to sell something to make a living, I want them in that Generate Group because there’s so many principles that we are all living in the mortgage industry and there’s so much that we have had to do in a shifting environment to build our business and stay relevant and keep lead generating and manage our pipeline and be business owners and be salespeople and be processors and be doctors. There’s so many skills that are transferable to any other industry. Why not go on that journey with other people alongside us instead of just hiding and pretending doing loans thing is a secret sauce?- So let’s do this, before we go into how and why you actually are and how physically you’re doing this, what has this done for your business, for your life? What are these groups that you’ve pioneered to done for you?- My wife would really like the answer to that question and I think that’s what’s so challenging. Yes, I do mortgages and I do well for myself but I’m not the number one guy in the country. Sometimes I lose focus and I do things like open a coaching business and I think we have a phenomenal coaching business for loan officers but we don’t have thousands of clients, we’ve got a hundred clients and then my wife’s like, “So what are you gonna do with this Generate Group? “Is there a monetization, return on investment? “Is this just to pick out like your mortgage business?” I’m like, “No, none of that, “just doing it to do it,” ’cause I wanted another side project and I really have no motive or end goal. I just know that it’s kinda like that field of dreams thing. If you build it, they will come. One day of this Generate Group gets up to 10 or 20,000 people in it. I say, “Hey guys. “I don’t know, we’re gonna do a live Lead Generation seminar “for two days and who’s got 200 bucks to come to LA “to do a live,” maybe that’s the end result. I don’t really know. It’s kinda just been like I have ADD, not diagnosed but I’m sure I have something like that or maybe it’s like the second level or fifth level of ADD. So it’s like in addition to my core business, which I spend 40, 50 hours a week on, I’ve always gotta have these little side projects going or I just don’t feel fulfilled. And one time I had a realtor busting my balls about like, “Oh, well maybe you couldn’t get back to me “’cause you got all this other stuff going on.” I’m like, “No, I get back to you at 10 o’clock “at night because I put in my eight or 10 hours a day “and load off some stuff,” and then instead of watching reruns of “The Walking Dead” like you’re doing, I just go build a side business for two hours and I spend two hours with my family then I come back to work at 10 o’clock at night. And so we’ve got plenty of time, all of us, to do these little side projects and side hustles or don’t, I don’t really care. But if you’re interested in getting eyeballs on you, it’s a 100% free to build all this stuff.- That’s what I wanted to hear, dude and that’s what I think everyone’s not understanding or not connecting the dots on. Maybe they understand but not connect to the dots. Your ability to start a Facebook group, Generate to get people connected, to have them sharing and sharing leads, sharing ideas, sharing community and you started it when?- I started at 60 days ago, I think.- And you have 2,000 people in it?- Yes.- Now Scott, for everyone paying attention to that, that doesn’t just happen, Scott’s good at this and he works hard at this but I’m walking that being like, holy crap, dude, you’re just putting a megaphone in front of your mouth ’cause to your point, Scott, if you wanna put out a message that says, “Call me for a purchase loan or refi loan “or this new product came out,” you’ve got this audience that you’ve been investing in ’cause you’re not just on there humble bragging. I’m in some of these groups, you’re not just putting your reviews out like, I’m amazing but you’re out there and I just shared it on Facebook for the Generate Group so you guys can join. We’ll get the link on YouTube and LinkedIn but this is you pouring into other people with no expectation, no secret buy my ebook for 80 bucks on the way out.- No ebook yet.- No ebook yet but at the same time, you were watching these people respond, build influence, build relationship with Scott and then when it’s time for reciprocation, when it’s time for, hey, help me, this is the opportunity he’s generating around himself and this is what it’s like when you lead a digital community. So Scott, lemme ask you this. How much, ’cause I’ve seen it so I know the answer but I want you to share. How often are you feeding into that community, helping build it, giving value to it? Kinda describe that.- Yeah, so here, I think the trick for all of this is you’ve got to put out content and contribution without getting consumed. I had the benefit of partnering up with somebody several years back that told me, “Hey, one of the criteria of us partnering up together “in the mortgage business is you just gotta stop “arguing about politics on Facebook,” ’cause I was the guy that would write a 27-paragraph dissertation on the libertarian thought process and it was intense. And I realized that I was getting absolutely consumed by social media instead of just being there to provide content and also to give contribution. And so what I do now is I say, okay, cool. Four times a day, roughly, when I wake up around nine o’clock and then twice throughout the day, I’m gonna go on, I’m gonna post something of value. I’m only gonna interact with my inner circle in those groups that I run. There’s three different groups that I run. One of them is a paid group so you can’t just jump in there but I’m gonna give a contribution to them, I’m gonna add content to them and then after I kind of got in that rhythm and the group started to grow, well, then I could afford a virtual assistant in the Philippines for eight bucks an hour, who then updates me throughout the day like, “Hey, Alec tagged you in this. “I think this is something you wanna respond to,” or she’ll respond to my incoming Facebook messages, which gets weird sometimes because she seen some stuff on Facebook messenger that maybe I would like her to unsee but yeah, it’s all about contribution and content without getting consumed into the endless bullshit that’s on social media and I’m still not perfect. I still get sucked into a political argument once in a while but I’ll live with it.- But just, guys please hear the echo chamber of this. From Phil to Neil, to Ryan and Jessica, to Scott, some of our content is a one way street. It’s just us humble bragging about how good we are and then we’re forgetting that the real power of this is to connect and have add value to others, to validate others, to communicate and be in the conversation. Neil said it about link about Instagram, comment on other stuff, that’s how you do a follow you back- Yup.- And Scott’s sharing the exact same thing. If you’re willing to build a group, pull people in, add value selflessly, all of a sudden now you’re gonna build a community of people around you and it can transform your business and your life.- Yeah, I mean, for example, I could go into my group every day and tell people to spend 14 bucks on this book or whatever Amazon has it listed at. At the end of the day, that’s just me self-promoting. So what am I doing instead? I’m going live every single day at nine o’clock, like clockwork. I read a chapter in the book, which is like three or four pages. I’m giving out 100% of my content for free and I don’t even know why I’m doing it ’cause like I said, the Generate Group has yet to have a principle or a thought process or a monetization, I just want everybody in there. I want it to be a safe space where every other loan officer can bring every one of their realtors if they want, without feeling like anybody’s advertising to them. I’ve already cut off some of the self-promotion in the group and then block.- Yeah, just like block- You be really clear about what you want to accomplish and then you just contribute from that point. And that is the one thing I would say is like, even if you don’t know what the end result is, be kinda clear about your rules, be clear about what you wanna do, be clear about the contribution you wanna give because I just had a guy pitch me on turning the Generate series into a podcast and I sent him about four paragraphs of exactly how that might work and he wrote me back. He’s like, “Whoa,” he’s like, “You don’t fuck around.” He’s like, “You actually know what you wanna accomplish “with this stuff. “I have never had somebody get ready “to sign up for a podcast,” and by the way, this guy charges $20,000 to build out your entire podcast network. He’s like, I’m reading the email right now. He said, “I’ve never had anybody follow up “with exact details about where they’re at “and where they’re going.” So again, I don’t have a way or an idea on how to monetize anything to do with this Generate Group but I know what the purpose and the mission is and it’s crazy to me that this guy that is a very well known podcast setter upper of things, he’s like, oh yeah, nobody ever has that much of a mission. They’re like, “Well, I’ll just go online and talk.” And he’s like, that doesn’t work.- So let’s talk about this, then. Let’s go into it, Scott. If somebody’s like, holy crap, they’re seeing in this conversation, the opportunity that’s for them and their city, their space, their digital community, they’re like, “I should be doing this.” How do you coach them? How do you set them up for it? What are the pitfalls? You just had a couple of them so like, have your purpose, hit it again. But how would you coach somebody to do this?- Yeah, if you’re gonna build, I think a Facebook group is the lowest lying fruit because you can even start a Facebook group with your immediate circle of friends that are really into Frisbee golf and you get your eight friends in there for Frisbee golf and this is how this stuff starts. Then they invite their friends and then whatever. I had an assistant, this is the craziest shit, Alec. I had an assistant. Tell me this is not like a niche within a niche, within a niche, within a niche. He was in a adult male, rollercoaster enthusiasts, gays only. There was 30,000 people in that group. So here’s a group of guys that are all gay, that all love this roller coaster lifestyle, where they tour around the world going on roller coasters and they’d make retreats out of it and stuff like that and they’re all these roller coaster enthusiasts and the dude that runs that group, he’s making bank organizing these trips. Now he has a membership program where this little pamphlet on new roller coasters that are opening around the world. I mean, think about 30,000 people that are in this Venn diagram of Venn diagram of Venn diagrams and then people would wanna have anything interesting to talk about, everybody’s got something. So maybe you’re gonna do it for business, maybe you’re gonna be the East Stevenson Ranch, HOA expert and you’re gonna get everybody in that neighborhood in there or maybe you’re gonna be the Alec Hanson, like I wanna teach people in the mortgage industry how to do social media 2.0. Whatever the case may be, I think the Facebook group is the lowest lying fruit and then the easy thing is you just invite every single friend that you have that is in that Venn diagram of interest into that group, private message them, ask them to be part of the group and contribute. So that’s kinda how you start and then I will tell you, you need a couple plants. You need a couple of undercover agents and whether you pay them or you bribe them with a steak dinner or you give them some type of discount in whatever world you work in, Facebook really rewards the algorithmic interaction early on in the history of anything. So if you do a live post, the quicker somebody likes it or comments in on it, the more the algorithm is gonna push it out. So what you need, and if my buddy Hal Elrod was on this post, he would admit to you that his huge group of a quarter million people started with him posting a question and then texting five of his really close friends, “Hey bro, can you respond to that question real quick?” And then it started, they basically were more professional moderators for each other and it started this critical mass where like, oh, well John commented on Hal’s things. So then Facebook pushed out to Alec who then felt interested in commenting and then Scott was another plant, I came in on commenting on Alec’s thing. So there is a little bit of gaming the system where you wanna find people that are on your team, that you can either pay or bribe or call in some favors and get them to put authentic content into your group. So the Facebook algorithm says like, oh, this is an interactive group where people are actually communicating. We need to push this out to more group members. So I have failed at doing that in the past and on the Generate Group, I’ve got a couple of professional moderators.- I just, I wanna hit this besides the hack, which is fun ’cause that’s where we go next level on this. What Scott said here, guys, I think everyone might have missed. It doesn’t need to be about mortgage. It needs to be about something that you care about. This is like building digital community. This doesn’t say building digital mortgage people. This is building digital community. Everyone knows you’re gonna do mortgages, everyone’s gonna know that, it’s fine. I joked earlier ’cause I got a buddy who’s running a podcast on adult men’s baseball leagues and he’s killing it. He’s getting business from it all the time and it’s got nothing to do with mortgage and this is your opportunity, it’s right in front of you. I talked about it, like it’s the gold rush of our generation. This is not gonna happen again. Your chance to build this connection, your chance to put yourself out there and then pour into it, it’s not gonna happen again. So it’s like, it’s unbelievable timing to make this thing happen and Scott, you’ve been doing it again and again for multiple groups from mortgage centric to coaching, to Generate, which is awesome. What pitfalls can you share to avoid if somebody’s getting into this?- Oh man, it can be a total time suck. It can be a total time drain. You have to know that you’re building for the future. So just to give you some context for anybody that’s watching, I’ve been doing this loan racket for like 20 years. I’ve come just at the tippy top of hitting 100 million by myself several times. My previous partner, Justin Bale, awesome, huge shout out to awesome guy, Justin Bale. We hit over 100 million a couple of years together. I will be honest, for the last 10 years, it would have been way more profitable for me to stay off of social media, not have a Facebook account, head down, email database, cold call 50 of my own clients every day, cold call 50 realtors, 100% would have been more profitable for the last 10 years. But where I think we got ahead of the curve a little bit is I think for the next 10 years, I’m gonna be way more profitable because I’ve done all of this and I’ve built the groups and I have the people in there. So, I made a big gamble, I’ve probably left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table by not just grinding mortgages, grinding mortgages and there there’s a lot of guys in the top five of Scotsman Guide that are doing 200, 300, 500 million a year who they don’t even have a Facebook page. So I’m not saying this is the only way to do things but I believe that we’re gonna start to see a shift where those people’s numbers over the next 10 years are gonna go like this and people who have engaged in social media and are giving out a ton of value, their numbers are gonna start to go like this and I don’t know where those two inverted yield curves meet and do that little dance but I think this has been a good investment and frankly, I just enjoy it more. I can maybe make 50 grand more a year by making 50 cold calls a day or I can have a good time and be playing racquetball by the way this actually happened and somebody walks in and they’re like, “Oh God, are you Scott Groves?” And I really thought I was gonna get my ass beat. I was like, “Okay I sleep with your girlfriend “in high school or something?” he’s like, “No, I’m a loan officer. “I just wanna say thanks. “I really enjoy the stuff you put out there.” That made me feel good, that really pumped my ego up and then I went and did five videos that night. So, I think it’s gonna be worthwhile. The biggest thing, don’t get sucked into it, don’t consume more than your lifestyle allows and then the other big pitfall is, right now it’s very toxic and dangerous to maybe be your 100% authentic self. I would say, do it anyway, you’re gonna find your tribe that wants to follow you and wants to do business with you. There’s plenty of people that have opted out of my funnel as sadly clients and referral sources that just don’t get what I, they just don’t get me or we disagree or I wore some hat with a snake on it ’cause I’m a Libertarian and that really pissed them off because they were Republican or they were a Democrat and I’m like, well, I don’t really care, that’s who I am. I’m not gonna hide who I am. I don’t hide pictures of my kids. I’m not gonna hide who I am or what I believe. So, yeah, those are the traps, too much consumption and not being authentic ’cause then people just know you’re full of shit.- And everyone listening to that heard the traps. There’s also something there that you might have missed earlier by Scott. Number one, we all have the same 24 hours in a day and you can use it watching “Dawn Of The Dead” and “Walking Dead” or you can use it to build a Facebook community, in addition to the hard work you’re doing slinging loans and helping customers and dealing with underwriting issues and all that other stuff that comes along with your day to day. So that’s a huge, if you believe in it, if you think this matters, then you’re gonna put the time aside to it. And then the other thing that’s been happening all day on this Collab guys is there are so many paths to the customer. There’s so many paths to the customer. If you’re like, I don’t wanna be on Instagram. It’s like, well then build Facebook communities. If it’s like, I don’t wanna do that, then start building the podcast network and putting your voice out into the world and sharing what you’re passionate about and this avenue though, what Scott has done and what I see him do and the reason I want him to share his insight on this stuff is it’s low hanging fruit, man. It’s like right there in front of you and by the way, it’s so powerful. If you’ve been in retail lending for a long time, you realize that a lot of your business was geographically limited. It’s where you could drive to, where the open houses were on the weekends, where the real estate companies were. There’s no geographical limitations on the Internets. Scott’s groups span the entire country and probably people outside of the country, which you can’t get loans for but maybe if he wants to do a trip, they can help him out with an Airbnb or something. But like, this is the power of digital communities. This is the power of it.- You know, shout out to RJ who’s a regional manager down in San Diego that you and I know from a mortgage company, great guy. One of his big initiatives is he’s telling all of his loan officers, “I want every loan officer in my region “licensed in at least three states.” One, because you’ve got a lot of people. COVID-19 is showing us, you can work from anywhere. You don’t have to be geographically relevant anymore. So we’ve got a lot of, Californians is moving to Nevada and Boise, Idaho and Phoenix, Arizona and then a lot of people there are moving here ’cause they’re like, “Well, if I’m gonna be stuck at home, “I wanna be in nicer weather where I can go work outside.” So he’s like, “I want all my people licensed “in multiple states,” because that’s gonna be the new normal. If you can’t market and keep up with somebody when they move from San Diego to LA to Phoenix, let’s be honest, man, your physical mail’s not gonna do it, your email’s probably going to the spam filter but if they can see pictures of your kids and they know what you’re up to and they can celebrate your successes, that’s huge. And you can only do that on social media digitally and so, come up with a content calendar. There’s some easy ones if you guys wanna email me at scottgrovesteam.com. I’ll send you my content calendar. It’s just like Monday is a business success, Tuesday’s a personal story, Wednesday is a funny story about the business world in general, Thursday is something motivational and on and on and on and on and on. So, it’s just, you get into a rhythm and I used to use that content calendar. Now I kinda just know what to do and it’s not as hard as you think. Pick something that you like doing and build a group around it.- So guys, I know this is in the comments on Facebook and LinkedIn. So you can’t click it when I show it on the screen but this is a great example of what the group’s doing. So if you’re seeing this, I know you can’t click on the screen, scroll up in the comments and click on it and go over there and you’ll start to see what’s happening in this community and you can start to take a lesson from a guy who’s done it for years now and who’s continuing to build value in it and go, “Hey, is this for me?” cause I’m telling you right now, if it is and you can find your niche within a niche or whatever it is you’re going to talk about, it can generate huge opportunity for you in the long run. Huge influence opportunity for you in the long run. So we’ve got four minutes, dude. Scott, what’s your final kinda words of wisdom to the people that are listening on this topic?- I would say have fun.- Like yes.- Have fun and be yourself because, you and I are both fans of Gary Vaynerchuk and some people are a little burnt out on him ’cause that guy is omni-channel everywhere. Once you watch one of his videos, you can’t escape but he talks a lot about his Sidecar issue and his Sidecar issue is, even if you’re never gonna hire Gary Vaynerchuk, you’re never gonna work in media or social media or marketing. People that are in his geographical area can relate to the fact that he wants to own the Jets. He talks a lot about making enough money in this game so that one day he can own the Jets. I talk a lot about drinking iced tea and smoking cigars. A lot of my posts or my still pictures on Instagram, I love cigars. My wife, not a huge fan. Hopefully they’ll learn how to regrow lips by the time I get some type of weird lip cancer but at the end of the day, I really love them. And so I’ll show up to a live event and I don’t ask for their stuff, I don’t pander for it but it’s like, I’ll show up at a live event and someone will walk up and be like, “Hey man, this is my favorite smoke. “This is the Liga Privada T52 Robusto. “You gotta try one,” and I’m like, “Hi, I’m Scott.” And they’re like, “Yeah, I’m Bill, man. “I just really love your shit. “I thought I bought you a cigar,” and I’m like, “That’s wicked.” So, pick something that you’re in love with and just talk about it, have it be the side issue and I think there’s such an opportunity to just be yourself and find other people who like you. They like you, they really like you like that Saturday night live show. “They love me, they really, really love me.” And then you’ll just, you’ll find people that wanna connect with you and then once in a blue moon, you’ll ask them to do business with you and you’ll make a lot of money.- Dude, mic dropped that. That was so good, it’s so true. Scott I appreciate you dude. Thank you for leading the way in this space, man. You’re the man and I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope everybody else goes and joins Generate right now and finds out what’s really happening in that space ’cause it kicks ass, dude. Thank you.- Thanks man, I really appreciate you.- Talk to you later brother.- Talk later.- Man, dive into the water, team. How much more proof do you need? Dive into the water. I don’t care where, go all in and have some fun with your career, with yourself and take yourself seriously. At the end of all that stuff is unbelievable opportunity if you’re willing to play in the space. I hope value today. Please go find these wonderful human beings online, connect with them, follow ’em, see what they’re doing. Man, I appreciate you all. Have a wonderful day and a wonderful week. I’ll see you on the internet.

 Tune in with Scott and I as we discuss what we can learn from how we speak and write and how technology can help improve our communication.

In this snippet of the Modern Lending Podcast Live….

• You probably are worried more about your pitch when you should be listening to whats being said
• Find out what Scott’s original concept for Cyrano.ai 
• Your Customer is literally telling you everything you need to know
• This Zoom plugin is a game changer.

Episode Transcribe

[Alec] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Modern Lending Podcast Live. I’m Alec Hanson. It is 10:00 AM and you are joining us across men, multiple platforms today. We’re on Twitter, we’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. No, not Instagram, YouTube. That’s the one. We’ll get on Instagram eventually. I love you Instagram. Today, man, this is gonna be fun conversation. Number one, we’re gonna go down a rabbit hole. So I hope you’re ready to like go deep and get weird. Number two, I’ve known Scott Sandland for years. We went to high school together. This guy has been somebody I’ve looked up to for a long time. And what he’s doing today with artificial intelligence, hopefully makes you nervous and excited at the same time. And by the way, we’re not even gonna talk about just artificial intelligence. We’re gonna talk about what’s going on in hypnotherapy, and all the things he’s doing, and why he started his company. But pay attention. Pay attention to this because what words you use matter. And we’re gonna unpack that. ‘Cause if you’re in sales or management or leadership or whatever, the words you use matter. And so let’s understand that with Scott Sandland. Let’s bring him on right now.

*Modern Lending Intro Jingle*

[Alec] What’s up, dude?[Scott] How are you, man?[Alec] I’m so good, man. It’s gonna be a blast ’cause many people don’t know our relationship, right? And so I wanna set the stage here really quick for everybody to really understand how you and I kinda grew up together. But first, you saved me from grinding my teeth.[Scott] That’s me. Yeah, I’m the guy.[Alec] You actually stopped me from grinding my teeth. And this is the funny story as we open this up, and then I want you to share your background and all this fun stuff. ‘Cause when I met you professionally, obviously I knew you growing up and all that stuff ’cause you were water polo and you had that killer body and you’re just shredded all kinds of stuff.[Scott] Thanks for saying so. That got in the past tense by the way, that felt good.[Alec] Yeah, well, I mean we’re a little older now. Our buddy Kevin Kramer was like, I was joking about I’m grinding my teeth and he’s like, hey Scott’s a hypnotherapist. And I was like, what do you mean? And I’m like, he’s been like the circus. Like he’s like the guy that[Scott][Scott] I’m at the fair.[Alec] And makes you dance at the fair.[Alec] He’s like, no, he seriously does this. And you should see him. ‘Cause I was grinding through like full on like football[Scott][Scott] Mouth guards.[Alec] Mouth guards. And three sessions with you, dude.[Scott] Yup.[Alec] Three sessions, and I don’t grind my teeth anymore. So from that story, who are you Scott? Like what doing?[Scott] We can leave it there. And, everyone use a loan depot and don’t grind your teeth and wash your hands, right? So, yeah. Alec and I have known each other. We’ve known each other what? 25 years more.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] But yeah, so 20 something years ago, I was the world’s youngest hypnotherapist. And I was a water polo player like you said. I was in a car accident where I ended up on pavement which destroyed my shoulders. My shoes flew off, like all really bad stuff. And I found out that night, by the way, I was with Randy when that happened. Of course I was.[Alec] Yes.[Scott] So like I found out that night, that opiates don’t really work on me. Like they help a little bit, but like my tolerance for getting wasted is way different than my tolerance for getting pain relief. So the amount I would have to take in order to have any kind of sustained help was terrible. So long story short, I tried everything and totally skeptical, like last ditch effort, I tried hypnosis and it worked better than everything else combined. So, I’m a skeptical dude, but if it works, it works. And so, I was a water polo player in college. So all my friends were athletes. Everybody had chronic pain, and I just started doing the hypnosis that the woman was doing for me, for my shoulders on my friends, and it kind of worked. And I was like, oh, this is cool, I’m helping people. And the rest is history. I started doing it in drug rehab centers, started doing it with professional athletes, started doing it in dental offices for like oral surgery, when people are allergic to anesthesia, they would use me. Things like that.[Alec] Well, so I really wanna talk about that for two minutes before we get into what you’re doing with AI and all this crazy stuff. But like, it blew my mind a little bit when you’re talking about using hypnotherapy because people in like oral surgeries when they couldn’t take pain medication. And all of a sudden through hypnotherapy, they could tolerate it. I mean, what is that like?[Scott] So here’s what’s crazy is like, that is really old school stuff. Like before the discovery of ether and things like that, that’s what was being done like in India, like thousands of years ago, they were using meditation and hypnosis like stuff for dental procedures and things like that all the time. But what it’s like when someone’s getting a medical procedure. Like I’ve done skull surgeries with people where they’re like, it’s really stressful. Like I don’t enjoy it. Everyone involved is like, they’re used to having the anesthesiologist tell them when everything’s working.[Alec] Yeah, you’re walking in, and like[Scott][Scott] Yeah, and it’s like me, like with my hands in my pockets. And, they’re like, they’ll look at you the first couple times like, so now? Really now. And I was like, yeah. How do you know? It’s my job. So I’ve done all that. So words matter to me.[Alec] Well, that was weird. Did I lose audio?[Scott] What was that?[Alec] I don’t know. Somebody like joined our call. I don’t know.[Scott] Oh, that’s exciting.[Alec] Keep on. By the way that’s because your wife stole all your podcast gear, and now you’re forced to use all this gear, right?[Scott] Yeah, I’m definitely using the B team set up here. My wife and I are both on podcasts right now, we’re competing. And she took all the gear. And so[Scott][Alec] You don’t have the lighting, you get the other mic.[Scott] No, I own all the lights. I’ve got the ring light. I’ve got the whole thing. I promise my webcam is propped up on a water bottle right now. [Alec] For sure, yeah. All right. So years of hypnotherapy, you’ve led conferences, you’re on podcasts and all this stuff, and then you decide to start a company. What’s going on with that?[Scott] Yeah, so I wanted to scale. Like I just one[Scott]to[Scott]one I did hours with people, and helping people and that’s great, but I wanted to scale how I could help people. And I was really looking at the teen crisis, right? Just people don’t know this, people really don’t pay attention to this. Suicide is the second leading cause of death under 24 in America. 3000 high school students attempt suicide every single day. And 80% of them have very obvious warning signs, and many of them have asked for help. So it’s this huge problem. And that doesn’t even get into like over[Scott]medication or dropping out of school or any of that stuff. I mean, that’s just like final tier stuff.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] So I looked at it and I was like, we need to do something about this. So I was working with at[Scott]risk teens and adolescents. I got set up with seven or eight drug rehab centers locally. And I hired a team of about 10 people. And we were doing group sessions. We were doing 40 hours of group therapy a week. We were doing one[Scott]on[Scott]ones that come from that. We were seeing a thousand people a week for years. And about two years into doing that as the executive director of the clinic, I realized we were still chasing everything, and we were still getting there too late. And a good friend of mine who I’ve known for a long time. He’s a neuro linguist and sociologist. He and I were having lunch and a school shooting had happened, and we saw it on the TV. And he’s like, you know what’s crazy is every time there’s a school shooting, kids grab their phones because they know their phones are more powerful than they are. And I was like, that to me was okay, I need to stop trying to scale with humans and I need to scale with phones because kids trust phones, they don’t trust adults. And so they will tell their secrets to a phone.[Alec] And it’s almost true of like adults these days cause I joke about it all the time.[Scott] Increasingly.[Alec] We don’t go to local professionals or referral partners anymore and ask for questions. We go to our phones and look stuff up.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] So the trend is pushing way through youth, but it’s fascinating to hear you say it from a youth person.[Scott] Yeah, I mean, people say like, oh, those darn millennials. Millennials are in their thirties. Like I’m a millennial.[Alec] Paying taxes, millennials.[Scott] Yeah, these damn millennials worrying about their parents. Anyway, so like as soon as I heard that, I was like, okay, I need to figure this out. And you know, I’ve always been like a tech nerd. And so I just started reading it and learning and figuring out how artificial intelligence works, how natural language processing works. And I saw this real opportunity where the people who are building, like the reason Chatbots suck, and Chatbots are pretty terrible.[Alec] Yeah, they’re widely used.[Scott] Yeah, they’re widely used cause they’re easy and they’re cost efficient, but one of the main reasons they’re so terrible and frustrated ’cause they’re basically a frequently asked questions interface. And it’s because they’re built by data scientists who care about math and correct answers. And the thought leaders in that industry talk about openly, their goal to have complete, accurate responses, which is the opposite of effective communication. And I saw that[Scott][Alec] Why? Unpack that. You can’t just like leave that out there. Why is accurate responses the opposite of effective communication?[Scott] Because effective communication is about messaging. It’s about knowing what to say for the audience. It’s about being able to feel the room. The cliche is that show “Big Bang Theory” where the main character has Asperger’s. And so he’s always accurate and complete, but that’s really frustrating to interact with. And the point of the show is that it’s frustrating to interact with. And if you get rid of the laugh track, it’s somewhere between annoying and sad.[Alec] And painful, yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.[Scott] And that is the prototype data scientist. And that is the prototype, like the guys who, by the way, are way smarter than I am. Like the Lex Friedman’s and the Richard Soldiers and like these guys out of MIT and Stanford who are brilliant, hardworking, talented people that are better than me and most categories in life are wrong about this. And I just saw it like “Moneyball,” where there was like this opportunity where everyone was going in this direction and they just didn’t see this. And I was like, oh, if I can build a robot that like cares more about empathy, that’s what matters. And empathy is about genuinely caring about the other person’s situation. So the difference between sympathy and empathy, sympathy is you’re having a bad day, that sucks. Empathy is you’re having a bad day, how can I help? Situation.[Alec] You have this desire to help teens. Teen suicide’s up here. It’s a tragedy. Now they’re on their phones. You’re realizing, hey, there’s a connection here. How do we bridge this? Maybe AI is a solution to start talking to these teens.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] How does that turn into what you have today?[Scott] Yeah, so I started building it, started learning, and I realized AI when you’re building it, it’s not very good at first, and it just gets better and better and better. And so I was like, oh, where I don’t want to learn is in the teen crisis hotline. Like suicide hotline is not the place to get a C minus. And so I was like, okay, I need to find a place where I can prove this works. Keep refining my models, keep refining my data, and make funding happen. And I was like, oh, that’s sales. Sales, there’s a winner. Like you can see if the conversation works, and there’s money in it. So we built everything to be influential sales, high value conversations, so that we can go save lives.[Alec] Well, and that’s where we started talking about this, interestingly enough. And I remember it over whatever cocktails it was, but this concept of a listening AI that can pay attention to the word choice being used, and that can come back around and deliver real[Scott]time results of like how to best communicate with somebody. I mean, I really want you to break it down ’cause when I posted this, some of you guys saw the article I posted, thank you for sharing it. But there’s a Zoom plugin you’re leveraging where these calls are being transcribed and then the plugins reading it and then coming back. It’s almost a little, feels a little creepy.[Scott] Oh yeah. It could definitely go like somewhere down the “Black Mirror.” Like there’s, I think two episodes of “Black Mirror” that are about my company. It’s super creepy.[Alec] In layman’s term, like break down what it does. Where’s the position? Like give everybody the core of this thing.[Scott] Words are a behavior. The way you speak about things is an external set of data points, right? Like the way Google pays attention to what you search for. Good salespeople pay attention to what you say. So a lazy example is I want to buy a car. I need to buy a car. I will buy a car. The difference between want, will, and need, is a hierarchy of commitment. Or, I’ll try to stop by. It means I’m not coming. [Alec] For sure.[Scott] And so there’s like all these different things that as humans, we just know, like we just understand that. And state[Scott]of[Scott]the[Scott]art right now in the industry is a thing called sentiment analysis, which is like fourth grade reading level. Did they like it or not? And what we’re talking about is what humans can do. Know what fourth graders can do. What like a good sales person can do is like read the room and like feel their audience out and say, okay, this person is this type of guy. And I can tell by what he’s saying, that he’s gonna value just bottom line results. And I’m not gonna give him details and bore him to death. Or this is the person who needs all the homework to make their own decision. And a good salesperson, I mean, an average sales person with experience can do that. And so, we were just looking at how you can measure that. So my co founder is a sociologist, neuro linguist who has like written books on sales language. And he and I just got to work on these categories of words. And it’s very similar to the way the human brain does it. We just built a computer to do it so that you don’t have to.[Alec] So I love what you said and I wanna unpack it like a little further, ’cause there’s been tons of books, articles, thought leadership on how to read somebody in order to understand how to speak to them so they can hear you.[Scott] Yep.[Alec] And so often like a novice salesperson won’t take the time to pay attention to that stuff while they’re just spitting at somebody. And that person is not, it’s not even going into their brain. Like it’s just being blocked like right here. And so, you’ve developed an AI that can read a transcription of a conversation and really break what it delivers back to the end user. You used it on me.[Scott] Yeah, I used it on you, it’s fun.[Alec] It’s fascinating.[Scott] You should, yeah, post in the notes, what it says about you.[Alec] I don’t think they’re ready to hear that about myself.[Scott] Well, the truth hurts. So the Zoom tool that we built, it does a couple of things. First, it addresses your overall commitment. So your commitment to follow through on the thing you’re talking about. Like, I’ll try to stop by, or I will buy a car, those kinds of sentences. But it does this with thousands and thousands of words. And all the words are way different values, and phrases are different values. And so it’s very mathematical process that creates a graph in five minute intervals that says how committed the person is. And then from there, it goes to the priorities. So in any conversation you have a mindset and it’s not a personality, it’s just your mindset going in that’s very context dependent. So do you care about like rules and order and process? Do you care about trusting your gut and instinct? Do you care about facts and data? Or do you care about feelings and relationships? And it tells you this person’s, and no one’s just one of those. So the combination of those is kinda how you navigate that person. Then you get their communication style, and you combine all these different things, and then the system just generates a report of bullet points of this is what they’re like, here’s how committed they are, here’s what the next steps should be. And if you wanna have a longterm relationship with this person, here’s how to do it. So it’s not just about transactions, and it is not just about closing deals. Oh, you posted a thing a couple of weeks ago that I loved by the way. It was about like customer for life and like loyalty past the sale. So they’ll always call you back and like, you worked all this to have this relationship with this person. Like I read that, that you posted it on LinkedIn. And I was like, that’s exactly it. Like, we’re in a world now where lifetime value of a customer is everything ’cause it’s so easy to reconnect.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] Yeah, so that’s what we built. We built a system that’s optimizing for a lifetime value of a relationship.[Alec] And what’s the stat you said to me? Like how many people are using this right now on a regular basis or accessing it?[Scott] We’re adding like 5,000 users a week right now. We’re processing over an hour of conversations every minute. And oh, and all our stuff is HIPAA compliant, right? Because of my background, everything’s all HIPAA compliant. And privacy is like number one, and no human’s ever listening to the calls, and we don’t even get a recording of the call. So all that’s safe.[Alec] Yeah, I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’s like, oh, he’s listening in on my calls, and he’s like, nah. But this is what’s fascinating to me. And I think you’re on the tip of the spear of something that’s gonna become more and more prevalent is, this AI assistant/kinda concept where some AI is helping you as a sales person, a professional do your job by giving you information so that you can see through it and understand where to go from there.[Scott] Yes. Yeah, I mean, the idea of augmentation is I think the story of the next five or 10 years.[Alec] I’m just sitting here, like with my head spinning, and this is even spinning before we get on this podcast, which is like, man, can I imagine a world where all of my salespeople, even my direct to consumer partners who are over there on the phones all day doing six hours of talk time right now, a day, talking to customers, getting fed back a report saying, hey, when you talk to Susie, she’s in, she wants this loan, like there’s all symptoms point to go. And this is the language you should use to talk back to her. This is what she cares about. This is what she’s interested in. Here’s the word choices. And all of a sudden, the conversion of that loan officer goes up exponentially because they come back in the same way that customer wants to be communicated with.[Scott] Yeah percent.[Alec] Sorry.[Scott] We’re looking at like a 26% increase in conversion so far.[Alec] Just by giving them help and information about how to talk to people.[Scott] Yeah. Because all we’re doing is we’re taking the middle people. Like we’re not telling anyone how to do their job. We’re just giving them a playbook and like a headstart on, hey, this is one of those people who’s like this. This is one of those people who’s like that. And you go, oh, okay, I know what to do about that. Thanks, I wouldn’t have known that because I was so busy paying attention to my pitch.[Alec] Right.[Scott] We just help them pay attention to their customer, just to help them pay attention to people.[Alec] So let’s go a layer deeper here, Scott. Talk about what it’s actually listening for.[Scott] Okay.[Alec] Let’s just talk about it like that you are gonna train someone to actually listen like your AI listens.[Scott] Sure.[Alec] How are you gonna coach him? What are you going to tell them to listen to, listen for, take notes on? Break it down.[Scott] Okay, so an easy one is the word, but. And everyone knows, like try and but are two words that are like very like a linguistics 101 kind of stuff. And so, a great sentence in a real estate sales. So it’s similar to loans is, I really like this house, but the kitchen is too small. So the first half of that sentence is, hey, I really like this house, but. And now the second half negates the first half. So the good thing was just undone by the second thing. So if you can just take that sentence and flip it on the but. So this is where my co founder, Dan Paris, he created this, it’s called the but flip. And so he goes[Scott][Alec] A very professional term.[Scott] So all he does is take the whole sentence and pivot it on the word, but. And he goes, so you’re saying the kitchen’s too small, but you really like this house. And so you just, that simple thing. So you’re looking for words that are connected to strategy. I really do see conversations very much like a chess match. Not that there’s a winner and a loser, but there’s a board and we both take turns moving pieces. And sometimes one piece keeps us going in a direction, and sometimes a move changes the landscape of what’s happening, and what we should all do.[Alec] By the way, before you go any deeper on that, you have to go back to your previous point. Most salespeople aren’t even listening to the chess piece moves.[Scott] Right.[Alec] They’re already thinking of the next thing they’re gonna say while the other person’s talking to them, and they would just slow down and pay attention. They might have a chance to actually move the conversation in a different direction.[Scott] Yeah, one of the things that I’ve noticed lately is that talking is at an all time high, and listening is super valuable. Like the supply and demand of listening is better than ever. Everybody wants to feel heard. Everybody likes to talk and wait to talk. And the more you can prove that you’re paying attention, the more the person likes you and respects you. And so all we’re doing is giving a tool that makes it easier for you to know what to listen for.[Alec] What are the things is the AI listening to? You said try.[Scott] Yeah, try, but I mean, tens of thousands of words. But an example is, when a person’s talking about what we call softening or hedging. So I just, or maybe, or might, those words are really interesting because when you correlate those with low commitment and high logic, that’s a person backing away. But when you correlate those words with high commitment, that’s a person negotiating. And so they’re trying to like mask their commitment level by throwing in like just here and there. So there’s a signal to noise game where you have to figure out which things matter in which categories. And that’s why you use an AI.[Alec] Yeah. Otherwise you’re sitting there fumbling around going, are they just negotiating or are they just saying they’re gonna try to go to my birthday party?[Scott] Right, you’re tallying on a whiteboard next to yourself, and yeah. So that’s what the AI does. Is it just tallies for you in a couple of dozen categories, it tallies thousands and thousands of words, but some words get five tallies and some words get one tally. And so it knows what the ultimate math problem is.[Alec] I’m sure you’re getting lots of feedback, even though I know that your company and this product is really in its infancy. What kind of feedback are you getting? What are people saying? What are they experiencing? You mentioned the conversion rate, but like what else? Like what the actual things are happening here?[Scott] Yeah, so it’s really interesting. People use it the first time and they’re freaked out because it tells you about everybody on a Zoom call, and we[Scott][Alec] It’s like taking a personality profile test for the first time, and you’re like, I didn’t know.[Scott] Yeah, it’s that.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] And so you get this report that tells you something about everybody on the call, and you’re one of the people on the call, so you get a section on yourself.[Alec] On yourself.[Scott] Yeah. And so you’re like, how does this thing know who I am? It’s very personal. And then, so like, my wife is using this tool with her business stuff. And so she’s on Zoom calls and she gets these reports, and she will be talking it at dinner. And she is like, I saw new stuff on the report today. ‘Cause it creates new reports every time. It’s dynamic, it generates like 20 billion variations. And so it’s not like the same, like three pictures every time, it’s new. And she’s like, I saw a piece of feedback on the system that I had never seen before. And I was like, oh, what was it? And she tells me, and we have like this interesting conversation about the person. So it actually creates conversation. And then like I’ve had conversations with people where they say, hey, thanks for sending the report. ‘Cause I use it on every Zoom call and I’d forward it to the people like, hey, here’s what it says about you. And they’re like, this is crazy. How did it know this thing? And then we can talk about them as it relates to our relationship and how to work better with them. So it’s great for relationship and team building.[Alec] Yeah, I absolutely could see that, right? ‘Cause you get a lot of managers, and by the way, we’re all on Zoom calls now.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] Everyone runs calls now. Everyone’s on these group Zoom calls, and all of a sudden having real[Scott]time feedback, even as a leader to go back to your team and be like, hey, I’m not communicating the way this person would wanna hear it. And if I wanna up my leadership game, I’ve gotta start paying attention to this.[Scott] Yeah. Or just notice 60% of the people on my team, the AI says 60% of the people on my team are highly auditory and not visual. And so all the graphs and charts are nowhere near as effective as a good Q&A. And so I need to, as a manager or a sales person, adjust what I’m saying so that my message is getting transmitted. Rather than just being correct, I wanna have effective community.[Alec] Yeah. It’s funny when I put this together, I was like, the power of words. Now I’m realizing it’s not the words themselves that matter, it’s how they’re being used, it’s how they’re being framed up. And that’s where the depth of the AI comes in to understand all the different intricacies of where it’s being used and how it’s being used. And it’s fascinating to me because, I mean, this is sales 101. Build rapport, listen to somebody, speak to them back in their language, all the way back to like how to win friends and influence people’s stuff. It’s like, this is the deal. What company is this? I need this, LOL. Scott, Jennifer’s asking. It’s right there under his name.[Scott] Yeah, cyrano.ai. Oh, if you go to insights.cyrano.ai, that’s where you get the Zoom tool. So insights.cyrano.ai, there’s the Zoom tool, right there.[Alec] Awesome. Mikey, throw that in our banner real quick, and so we’ll put up on the screen so everyone can see it. So Scott, let’s go back again. ‘Cause now we’re 26 minutes in. By the way, if you’re viewing this right now, first of all, drop in where you’re viewing this from. It’s always fun for me to understand like who’s viewing from where, I love that. And if you’re watching this in the future, hit #bypass, ’cause I always get a little smile when somebody pauses their day to watch an episode of this stuff and engage. But I think the stuff is that. Is that right? Right there, insights.[Scott] Yeah, that’s perfect.[Alec] Go there, you can check out what the product is, how it ties into Zoom, but think that the future of our business in sales is to understand what our customers want. And you’re clearly doing that with a powerful tool about language. Keep it up there, Mike, we got another comment too. I’d like to see who’s jumping in. Oh, we got Boston. Nice. So where does this go, Scott? Like where does this go?[Scott] So we’re plugging into CRMs right now. We’re figuring that out. We wanna get on Microsoft teams, hopefully in 2021. Like Q1 2021, we want to be in teams. We wanna be in Enterprise. Honestly, the only reason I care about doing that and going at scale and my COO. My COO sold his Salesforce company and is now working with us. So he’s great at enterprise, CRM, all that stuff. And I’m looking at, okay, how can I get this tool? ‘Cause it works real time in text, chat and text message. I was like, how can I real time immediately, as soon as possible, get this into Teen Crisis hotline, Veteran’s Affairs, those high value conversations. That’s really my focus. Now that we’ve got 10,000 users, I can start pointing my efforts there ’cause it’s gonna take time while the rest of my team focuses on the enterprise and scale of that sort of stuff.[Alec] Yeah, you gotta love where your heart’s in on that. It’s always fun to see like, you’re not in here necessarily to make a quadrillion dollars selling AI to help a sales person close a loan faster. The end game is to get this kind of tech in front of kids, on their phones who are struggling and have a place they could talk to without this adult figure or scare.[Scott] Yeah, there’s no judgment, there’s no data mining. This is my office, this is my therapy office that I’m in right now. Like, I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours sitting across from a person who needs help. Like, that’s been my career for 20 years. So I know what it’s like to have all the things that get in the way of listening, even with best intention. So my memories, my feelings, my random associations, my thoughts and predictions, my bias, all those things, I have to effort[Scott]wise, try to remove, to focus on the person in front of me. And the point is this tool doesn’t have any of those things. So always be 100% attentive with no ego. And I think that for people who need help is huge. And every one of us has had someone listen when we needed someone to listen, and we didn’t care what they said, we just needed them to reflect back to us. I hear you and it’s things like this that you’re saying. And the process of doing that is therapeutic. And that is a thing that we can give to people who either socioeconomic[Scott]wise or logistics[Scott]wise or for a whole bunch of other reasons, don’t have access to help, we can provide that 24 hours a day for basically nothing.[Alec] That’s so cool, bro.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] That’s so cool. And at the same time, by the way, this technology is so cool. So we have a couple little late joiners and we’re tailing down, so I want you to do this, Scott. I want you to go back a little bit and go, okay, here’s what… Your elevator pitch for what your company does. What’s the elevator pitch?[Scott] The elevator pitch is, we’ve built an artificial empathy engine that helps people be more effective in high value conversations.[Alec] And I just look at the future of this tech guys, and if you haven’t played around with it, you can see the banner down there to get it on your own Zoom. Jump on a Zoom call with your friends, jump on a Zoom call with your parents or your team, and watch this run in the background, and watch what happens when the report comes out. ‘Cause when Scott, when you did it to me, it was amazing. And all of a sudden I realized, yeah, this is right. Like, if in the next call, Scott starts talking to me in these languages, in these choices and this kind of this is what matters to me, I’m gonna be more connected, I’m gonna be more interested in buying what you’re selling and the power of words matter, man.[Scott] Totally do. The expression is not what you say, it’s how you say it. That’s true. And so it’s a fun thing to be working on. There’s a bunch of challenges and the biggest challenge we have right now is people not believing that it’s real. They’re like, this, it can’t be true.[Alec] I mean maybe from like, we’re talking and somebody could be watching this and being like, this is bullshit. AI’s gonna read my words and tell me what? But then when they get a report and they’re like, oh yeah, that’s 100% right. Like, that’s how I like to be talked to. Talk to me like that.[Scott] Think about what Amazon and Google are doing when they say people who purchased this tend to like those things. And you’re like, oh, you’re right. Easy things like, oh, I bought diapers, therefore, we’re gonna show other baby related things to you, right? But some of them are weirdly connected and it because of like three things you purchased combined to make an interesting output. And we all trust Amazon to do that. We all trust ways in Google to reroute our traffic. We do these things constant. Even like in neighborhoods we know. And so all of a sudden in conversation, we’re like, oh, not that one. Yeah, that one. Because every word is a data point. And there’s more data here than there is an Amazon.[Alec] But you said something interesting in the beginning, you said that our word choices are a behavior.[Scott] Yes, absolutely.[Alec] So, go a little bit deeper on that. What do you mean by that?[Scott] So go back to your Dale Carnegie thing, right? People like people that are like themselves. And your social circle has a way of speaking. You guys talk in a certain way. And not just slang, actual diction. You guys fit, and your communication styles overlap well and compliment each other well. And people who have very different ways of speaking, and I’m not just talking about slang or like regional dialects or anything like that.[Alec] Yeah.[Scott] Yeah, like social groups. Social groups have ways that they speak. And you can guess a lot about a person really accurately by listening to them talk for an hour. Like, you can get a ballpark education level, you can get a ballpark socioeconomic level, you can get those things and you do them automatically. You just don’t show your work. You’re doing this subconsciously all the time. And your speech is a representation of your subconscious priorities and biases. And so if we can just really look at all that data and measure it, everything we need to know about a person, they’re telling us on purpose.[Alec] Such a good line, dude.[Scott] I came up with right now, it sounds good.[Alec] Just right there.[Scott] Yeah, thanks for getting that.[Alec] We’re gonna clip it out for you dude. We’ll clip that clip for you. So Scott, what would you share for somebody who is exposed to this right now, they’re hearing your heart for kids and they’re loving that, but then they’re exposed to this and they’re like, they’re skeptical or they’re, is it safe? You mentioned HIPAA before. Give somebody some background in this.[Scott] Okay, it’s free right now. We’re making it free during COVID. How about that?[Alec] It’s very nice. But I don’t know if I want you listening to me.[Scott] No human listens. The way we’ve built it, no human listens to anything. Our robot does it and automatically sends you a report and we don’t keep things, we delete everything. We don’t want it. We just want you to trust our system so that we can… Like, the game I’m playing right now is earning trust. That’s it. The way you talk about people needing to be online and live, to earn brand and credibility and trust, the brand I need to create for my company is, you can trust us with high value conversations and you can trust us with your truth. And so right now I’m just proving it. And so our tool is right now, free on Zoom. If you want a business account on Zoom, you just press the button on our website and it works. If you don’t, we partnered with a company that’s a Zoom bundler, and for the same price, you just get it. So we’ve made it effortless there, really easy. And the free version, you get five calls a week for free. And if you like it, you upgrade to more. And it only works in Zoom when the recording feature is on. And we did that for everyone’s privacy. So if you don’t want to call it to be transcribed by our system, turn off recording. If you want the call to be transcribed, turn on recording. And that’s it. So you can opt in and out of every single call.[Alec] I would encourage you guys who are listening and paying attention to this, to go give it a try. Just try it out. I had it tried out on me, I’m trying it out now on some of the conversations. I always, always, always, when I’m talking to somebody be like, hey, can I record this real quick? I wanna try this, I wanna send you this. And they’re always like, oh, I’m super interested, I wanna see what it says. And it’s fascinating that the word choice you use is powerful. And we don’t listen. We don’t listen to it at all. We’re too busy pitching and selling and thinking about what we’re gonna say next. We do not listen, but this technology will help you.[Scott] Yeah.[Alec] So Scott dude, thanks for hanging out with me today, man. This is a blast. What you’re doing is super cool. I cannot wait to see this mature into a tool that can help kids who are dealing with terrible times. So you’re the man, dude, I appreciate you.[Scott] Thanks, man. I love you. I’m so glad to be doing this. I love everything you’re doing on this. I know I said that off the air a couple of times to you, but like everyone needs to listen to Alec, he’s killing it.[Alec] Guys, have a wonderful day. If the Modern Learning podcast brought you joy, subscribe, share, like, comment. Appreciate you all, have a wonderful day. I’ll see you on the internet.

You may have or may not have heard that I put out 100 videos for 100 days. This coming LiveTime, I want to talk to you about what that did for me and as difficult as it was I’m glad i did it!

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec…

• 100 Videos does not change the world, it changes you
• Your customer is not playing by your rules anymore.
• You should have started 10 years ago.
• Its going to take vulnerability and courage

Episode Transcribe

– What’s up, everybody?

Welcome to another LiveTime With Alec!

Woo, so good to see you guys. Man, this is fun. It’s fun to be back out of Tahoe. No beard, I know, I know. Don’t judge me, it was done, it was done. I looked like a hillbilly, it was so gnarly. You cannot have a beard like that anymore. My wife was like, “You’re done. “Get rid of the beard.” I’m like “Fine, it’s fine.” It’s fine, what we do for marriage in life, you know? So guys, this is gonna be a fun conversation today. This guy right here, this guy, what a crazy guy that guy is. 100 videos in 100 days. I have to revisit this topic because I see so many more people coming into the digital world. They’re stepping out, they’re putting the light on, putting the camera on, and I’m freaking loving it. I’m obsessed with it, I’m liking everybody. I’m so pumped that people are willing to do this. And I thought I would talk about this challenge. What happened in it? What was the purpose of it? What was the result of it? And man, I’d love to do it live with you guys. And then from there, what did it do for me? I think that’s a question people want to really know because it happened, it was a thing. And I joke all the time because I know you didn’t watch it. But I have to, I mean, you maybe watched one or you’re like, “This is novel, what’s he doing?” Or “This is weird,” and then you watch half of one or whatever it was. And that’s fine, I love you, I appreciate you. I know you didn’t watch all 100. I had a tough time filming them all. So let me explain why I did this. Let me give you some context and let me explain why I think you should do something very similar. And I’m not saying a hundred, don’t. Woo, it’s a lot. But let me explain the background here. I saw two clear trends happening in our industry. That’s part of why I wrote the book. This whatever, it’s back here. Two clear trends that are a threat to the local professional. And you have to remember that I’m a local professional. I mean, I was raised going door to door to talk to realtors, going to broker previews and open houses and networking events and going, speaking at the offices and doing drop buys and setting appointments and trying to build relationship with real estate professionals because they’re awesome humans. And they were getting customers and I wanted those customers, so I went and built relationships with them. Okay. Humans don’t do that anymore, meaning in 2003 when I started back then to get a… to find a house for sale, you didn’t go on your phone. Okay, we had a Nokia crappy brick phone. We did not have all of human knowledge in our hands. In fact, the multiple listing services was private, you couldn’t access it. This is real life, dude. Ladies and gentlemen, dudes and dudettes, real life. Now, our customers aren’t going to real estate professionals until they’ve already fallen in love with a home on their phone. Now you might say, “That’s not true “and there’s niches there” and fine, I’ll give you a little bit of that grace. But I’m gonna say it pretty emphatically, they’re not going to realtors first, they’re going on their phone. They’re going on their phone. And when they go on their phone, what are they looking and bumping into? Well, they’re bumping into mortgage companies like Zillow. They’re bumping into lead aggregators, like LendingTree. They’re bumping into digital mortgage companies, like Quicken and LoanDepot. They’re bumping into those places and what they’re not bumping into is the local mortgage pro. They’re not. They’re not because you’re not there, or at least you weren’t, you weren’t there. Now, we’re coming in full force. By the way, for those of you joining right now, thank you so much. We’re live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Drop a comment, let me know where you’re watching from. I love hearing the engagement. I love seeing where you’re all kind of tuning in from. It gives me kind of a perspective on things. And if you’re watching this in the future, hit me up with a hashtag bypass. It always gives me joy when I get a little notification come up, ’cause I know you’re not just pausing your day ’cause Alec Hanson’s live, I get it. You got a lot of stuff to do. Hopefully a lot of customers to serve. So, let’s dive into the why. No, our mortgage professionals weren’t there. They weren’t on the internet and the customer was going on the internet. I was coaching people and pushing people, being like, get on the internet, get into social media, build connection and do video, do video, do video. And then I turned around one day and I realized I am doing zero video. That pissed me off. It pissed me off. ‘Cause I don’t, I don’t like people. I should not say like. I lose respect for people that tell you what to do and then never do it themselves. I just have a hard time with that. I have a hard time with that. Now, if you’ve done something before and you’re not currently doing it now, I still want to hear what you have to say ’cause you did it. But I just, I looked around, I’m like, “I’m a hypocrite.” “I’m telling everyone to make videos and get out there “and I’m not out there and I am not gonna tolerate that.” And so, I opened up a Google Excel Drive document. Yep, Google doc, Excel, and I started. In fact, let me see if I can even pull it up right now and then I’ll share it with you guys. ‘Cause that’s how weird this is. Oh yeah, here it is, okay hold on. Give me 30 seconds, ’cause I just maximized it and I don’t wanna do that. Okay, so let’s go share screen, remove, stop share, share screen, check this out. You’re gonna die. Share. Content strat, 100 in 100. Oh, there it is. Oh my gosh, so look at this, look how good this is. Now they’re all completed. But what I started doing is right here, I would do stories of being an LO, right? And then I would do like, leadership and then I would do like, technology. And in each of these subsections, I would write like, drive away from open house, right? And like, setting first appointments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I started filling in topics that I was gonna talk about, that would be my videos. And then as I would complete them, I would highlight them yellow and put them in the completed box. And so look, here’s my intro. Here is, I don’t remember what blank was for number two, or maybe I forgot. Here’s my video on drive time. Here’s my video on video is king. Here’s my video on do a brand on it. And if you skip on over to YouTube, you can see where I started storing all of this content and I’ll get there in two seconds as I switch account. But this is exactly the process I would go through. And I put 30 to 40 topics onto the Google Drive doc, and I was like, “30 to 40 topics, I’m gonna crush this. “Let’s go for a hundred.” And I hit go. And I filmed my first video going for, where I declared I was gonna do a hundred videos in a hundred days. That’s how this whole thing started, dude. And I way overshot the mark. Oh my God, was that a huge mistake. So watch this, I’ll stop this and share this. This was a hysterical mistake, but we pushed through. So there it is. There’s a hundred videos in a hundred days that I started leaning into, and it was super fun. I started doing them and by the way, so here’s the hack, right? People think like, you know, you’re not gonna have the motivation to do a video every single day. First of all, you’re a busy professional. And if you’re working right now in our industry, you must be a slammed professional. Shouldn’t stop you, here’s how you do it. You have a T shirt rack, I had it right here, a tee shirt rack with seven or eight different T shirts. I would carve out 30 minutes on certain days of the week where I could find it, or I did it on the weekend. And I’d come in, I’d have my topic list, right? ‘Cause we just saw the topic list. I’d have my topic list. And I would immediately start filming one of the seven videos, one of the videos on the list. And it was hysterical, because I would just store ’em in Dropbox and all of a sudden, I’m gonna show this again. I want you to see how high level professional this is. Like this. I didn’t have some super secret plan here, guys. And sorry, the Twitter thing’s over my face, but we’re over it. It’s more important that you see how hysterical this is. But these were my topics. And as I filmed them, I put them in here and you can see, they go down, down, down and I started labeling them later, ’cause I got like, you know, I was realizing I’m losing my mind here. I started putting dates next to it cause I was losing it. But… it’s so crazy, the power of what this can do. It’s so crazy, the power that you will experience when you start putting yourself out there. I’m not joking, this process to create this and to just realize, “I can create content at scale. “I can do things that matter.” And I have to tell you, the amount of people in our industry that I’m wanting to connect with from other companies, from our company, from you know, just from vendors, from you know, man, most of them, a lot of them think we’ll look back and go, “Hey, you were the guy that did those videos.” They probably didn’t watch one of them. See, what you think is, you think you’re gonna make a video and you think somehow that’s gonna change the world. I’m gonna say this slowly. It’s at the nine minute mark and I want you to hear it. You think that you’re gonna make a video or a hundred and it’s gonna change the world. And I’m here to tell you, you are a thousand percent wrong. When you make a hundred videos and you step into that consistency, that hard work, you play the game, you make no excuses and you put that out there, it doesn’t change the world, it changes you. That’s the power of this kind of stuff. Sure. Do people recognize me more or have a relationship with me deeper, digitally, because they saw some videos? Yeah, yeah of course, that’s part of what it does. Did I immediately change my entire life and my business exploded and recruits just started calling me and falling down saying, “Please, Alec, can I work around you? “Oh my God, you’re amazing”? No, no, of course not, that’s not how it works. When you make 10 videos and you put ’em out in 10 days, are you gonna get 75,000 loans? No, no, you’re not. But if you start showing up consistently, if you start showing up authentically, it’s gonna change you, and then the opportunity comes. This guy right here. This guy right here, man. Oh, thank you, dude. I’m a fan of you too, bro, I miss working with you. This is how the world works in this space, guys. And this is my encouragement to you. It is available to you, it is free. It costs nothing but the death of a little bit a part of you that says you’re not worth it, you’re not good enough, you don’t sound good, you don’t look good on video, that part is gonna die. And then it’s all good. I was joking with a buddy in the industry, Jimmy, who made a great comment about how he still struggles with going back and looking at content and like self-judging. And this is incredible because by the way, that ends, the self-judgment ends if you keep pushing forward, you stop really. I have people like, “I never listen to my stuff again. “’cause it’s terrible,” you know what? I listen to my stuff all the time now. Why, because I want to get better and I’ve let go of the self-judgment. Now I can listen to it and I have no self-hate about it, even though sometimes I know I’m sounding stupid and I said something dumb. I have no self hate on that stuff. It’s all now just like, “Huh, that was cool, interesting.” Or the best part about it, is I found opportunities where I saw something I filmed and I was like, “Man, you did a good job there, dude.” And I’m like, “Oh, I’m on the other side now.” I’m on the side of the demon that says all the stuff I put out is garbage, no one wants to listen to it, no one cares. And I actually can look at my own stuff and look at my own eyes and go, “You did a good job there.” And I want that for you! Now, don’t hear me inaccurately here. I don’t think you should do a hundred videos in a hundred days. That that was for me. I do think you need to be out there. I do think you need to figure out how to put yourself out there on a consistent basis. For me, a public challenge is exactly what I need, baby, I thrive in that environment. Put it out in the universe and now everyone’s gonna judge me if I don’t get it. And it just pushes me, it’s rocket fuel. But I’m playing my own insecurities against myself in that game, and I want you to do something similar if it’s helpful. But I think that if you’re gonna play in the mortgage space, if you’re gonna be consistent, if you’re gonna try to win, the only way, like I just talked to my buddy, Dave Savage this morning on the phone. And if you don’t know Dave, he’s a stud. He was on the RE resource with Ryan up in Seattle. Movement guy, great guy, talking about Quicken. Talking about Quicken, everyone’s talking about Quicken. And of course, why wouldn’t you? They’re in the news, they’re number one. They’re going IPO, there’s fun stuff happening there. And the conversation really surrounded is, how are you gonna beat Quicken, man? They’re beating you and by you, I mean the local pro. They’re beating, they’re stepping on you. They’re stepping on you. And they’re doing a dang good job. And you can say like, I keep seeing realtors and other people be like, “I never accepted an offer “from Quicken.” And I’m like, I keep checking the scoreboard and they’re the number one market share in your county, so someone’s accepting the offer from Quicken. Like stop, and why are you demonizing a company who’s just playing the game better than you? I know that’s the easy thing to do, I know it. We wanna hate on somebody ’cause they’re better than us. We want to be like, “Oh, they must suck “and they must be terrible people.” It’s like, they’re just, ’cause they’re winning? Like, stop. The reason they’re winning, I just did a little mini podcast this morning with somebody outside the industry who said, “Yeah, I mean, they’re quicker, faster, “and easier, and cheaper.” Really? They’re winning ’cause they’re quicker, faster, easier, and cheaper? Yeah, you bought their marketing line. ‘Cause any of us in the industry knows they’re not doing anything different than any of us out there. They have no technology that makes them so superior, no price position that somehow they figured out fulfillment to such a degree that they’re so much cheaper than everybody else, they’re not. They made a lot of money last year. You don’t make a lot of money at the cheapest place in the whole country. So it’s interesting to me and hearing this as you realize, “Oh, we’re just hating on these people “because they’re beating us in our own game.” And they’re only beating us in our own game because the customer is not playing by our rules anymore. Please hear me on this. Your customers are not playing by your rules anymore. What are you gonna do about it? Demonize the guy that’s beaten you, or start to understand why? And start to think of, what can I do now? And start to figure out what the opportunities are for you. This is where the true power lies. And this is why video, yes video, ’cause we’re talking about video, matters. You want to make human connection? You want to make personal connection to somebody, turn the camera on and hang out with them. Put yourself out there in a position of vulnerability and authenticity and make human connection and share what you believe in and have some fun doing it. Make digital connection and you will thrive in our business. If you think for one second that our business is not about relationships, you lost. It’s 100 percent about relationships. Now, let’s unpack that a little bit because everyone starts thinking, “Well you know, I’m the local pro “and all the relationships are with me.” No, relationships are with a brand too. I say this a lot and people don’t hear me. You shop on Amazon. You don’t know a fricking person there. You have zero connection to a human being at Amazon. You hang out with Bezos? Bay-zos, Bee-zos, whatever it is. You hang out with that guy, no you don’t. You have no connection with Amazon at all. None. You have a connection to their brand. Wake up, like that’s real talk. You have an absolute connection to their brand. Not a person. And yet, I see the same loan officer turning around and being like, “Well, it’s all about personal brand “and I’m the local guy” and I’m like, no, they don’t care. They don’t care, consumers don’t care. An individual might care. A group of them, a consumer base, they do not care. They’re gonna go where they have a connection, right? And if you’re thinking, “Oh, they’re not gonna go “to the big global brands, you know, “cause they don’t have a connection,” you’re delusional, they’re doing it! You’re doing it! This is where video changes the game. This is where video changes the game. If you’re willing to put yourself out there through video and make the effort to create digital connection, you can win, you can absolutely dominate. You can do something they can’t do, which is create both the emotional connection to you and to your personal brand, as the same connection they have with the mega brands. Like the Amazons and the Netflix. You don’t know anybody at Netflix, you love Netflix. It’s a one, two punch, guys. Quicken swinging hard from the right, with a full brand play. What are you gonna do? And this is where I’m just telling you, if you play in video, you’re gonna be shocked and delighted, and amazed, and realize you should have started 10 years ago, like I feel. I should have started 10 years ago. This is your opportunity. And it’s gonna take some vulnerability, some courage on your part, it is. And it’s gonna take you being willing to learn new things. I’m going live next week to talk about why your video calls suck, and I’m very passionate about this because video calls right now are terrible. Mainly because people don’t know how to leverage video or use video and they don’t know how to set it up. They don’t have mics, they don’t have camera angles. They don’t have lights, they don’t think. They’re not thinking about this. But if you start in video production, you start putting that out there, you’ll start thinking about it a lot. Like where’s my camera in relationship to my eyes? Where’s my mic in relationship to my mouth? Where’s the light in relationship to my face? And now all of a sudden, you transform not only your digital ability to connect, but you transform how you handle video calls and it’s gonna improve your ability to close and sell people because you can make authentic connection with them through this. So I learned a ton. I learned about camera angles. I learned from other professionals. I learned about microphones, I learned about lights. I learned about what makes what people like and don’t like in video. I got much more comfortable talking just like this, with no script and no bullet points, just with a topic. And I got much more comfortable engaging in this medium and hanging out with you guys digitally. And all of a sudden, now it spurred into a podcast that’s now done live every single Thursday. I try to do one podcast a month. That was my goal after the 100 videos, one podcast a month. I’m doing one a week now, because this stuff compounds. And plus, you realize it’s fun. I talked to somebody of the day, a great originator, who basically just said, “Originating is fun again. “This is so fun, I’m having so much fun. “Making videos, doing jokes, meeting people digitally, “hanging out, connecting, and I’m having so much fun.” And I sat there being like, that’s what it’s about. That’s it, that’s it, this stuff is a blast for me. I love my Tuesdays to go live at 9:30, I love this. I’m always looking forward to it. I love my podcasts on Thursdays live with the guests that I bring on it so much, I love it. Why, because I get to see you guys watching and I get to hang out and I get to see comments like this from Will. I mean, I don’t know if I ever would have met Will if I wasn’t doing 100 videos in 100 days. The amount of people I’ve met across this industry now through this stuff has been so fascinating and so fun. And my encouragement to you guys is all available to you. And I don’t mean, for whatever your goal is. You guys saw my social media collab, I hope you did. If you didn’t, you can go to YouTube and check out the social media collab, but go to Andrew Cady’s session on digital connections. This guy spent two years building up his Facebook profile to be 400 plus, I’m sorry, 4,000 plus realtors. Man, anytime he puts on a video, he’s hanging out with 4,000 realtors. Can you imagine? And I also have to tell you this, those of you that are gonna judge yourself and not get a million, ’cause we’re in a like society and you know, it’s all bullshit. But we’re just like, “I didn’t go viral.” Check this out, check this out. I guarantee you, you put out five videos in five days, three videos in three days, dear God, just something that’s not just one for the day. Like just do something and your first video, by the way, can be about how awkward you feel doing this video. There, you’re welcome. And have a goal for your 10 videos or five videos about what you’re gonna do. Here, I’m gonna set you up for success. COVID’s messing up everything in the world today. Most people are confused. How do I buy a house right now under COVID? Or should I be refinancing right now with rates here, are they going lower? Both those mega topics, right, should I be refinancing now with rates going lower potentially? I’m seeing in the news, or how do I buy a house in COVID when I am scared of getting the disease. Make three to five videos on those, one of those topics. The first video should be how uncomfortable you feel, but you have an important message and you want to get it out there. Make those videos and watch what happens. Michael, dude, good to hang with you, dude. We gotta get on Zoom again, man. This guy’s the man. Check this out, I had a friend who was like, “I did a video and I got like three likes “and I didn’t get any loans.” And I go, “Let me see the video,” I pull it up. In fact, I’m curious if I can pull up something right now on Facebook and actually show you guys what I’m talking about. Let me see while we’re talking, I’ll scroll here for a second, see if I can find it. And I said, “Let me pull up the video. “Let me pull up the video and see what it says “and take a look at it for you.” And they go, “Oh that’d be great, Alec. “Thank you, I’d really appreciate that.” And so I pulled it up and yeah, you know what? You’re right, it didn’t have a ton of engagement. It didn’t have a ton of commentary. It didn’t, I can see it didn’t, you know, generate what this guy thought it would generate, which is like a million views or whatever it is, or, you know, whatever. But then I looked over at the view count. I’m gonna do this, and then I looked over at the view count. 275 views. Now, I recognize some of those views were likely a scroll through or maybe they didn’t watch the whole thing, or they just looked at it for a second. Got it, put that aside. But do you realize, you just filled a room with 275 people who watched your one minute video? Sure, maybe a couple of ’em got out in the first 10 seconds and they walked out ’cause they were over it. But you made an impression to 275 people with one video. You know how many people that is?! Have you ever spoken in a room in front of 275 people? Like, I can’t tell you the power of this. You are missing out. 275 people got exposed to that. Hung out with that, watched it. You can’t buy that kind of exposure. And yet, you’re still afraid of the stupid camera and the stupid light ’cause you’re judging yourself so harshly and I could tell you right now with 100 percent certainty, nobody is judging you like you’re judging you. You need to stop it. ‘Cause life’s on the other side of that stuff, man. I went a little longer than I normally do on this one, but I just, I want to impress upon you the power of video. If you are in sales today, and I don’t care what you sell. Yourself as a leader, a mortgage product, I don’t care what you sell. If you’re in sales today and you are not going all in on video, you are going to lose! And let me end with this. Man, this thing is so important. Please freaking hear me on this one. And Mikey, clip this and send it out to everybody after this, ’cause this thing makes me nuts. I hear so many garbage excuses like, “I’m not for video.” “I got a voice for, I got a face for radio,” whatever it is. First of all, shut up and stop judging yourself. Second of all. I had a guy and we got into a heated discussion because he was like, look, and he was an engineer style brain. If you guys know those people or if you’re one of them, you realize like, oh yeah, yeah, he’s very analytical. He doesn’t speak fast, he speaks with intention. He’s a good listener. He pauses, he doesn’t rush into things. He makes good decisions. He is very analytical when it comes to numbers and things he believes in. He would describe himself as an introvert. Which by the way, don’t judge, I’m an introvert. So stop it, but we can do good things. But he said, “I could never do a podcast “or a video because of who I am. “No one would connect to that.” And I called out BS on that, right to his beautiful face, because here’s the deal. If you’re watching me or if you hang out with my content, you realize that I come and bring the noise, I do my best. I come with energy, I come with excitement, I’m passionate. Sometimes I cuss inappropriately. I’m in, like I want this for you! And he’s like, you know, he somehow had, and he’s working with another guy who podcasts, who has the same outspoken charismatic style. And I go, “Come on, man, come on. “You think that’s what the world wants? “There is a unique audience for “every single person out there. “You cannot tell me that if you got out “and started a podcast, other people who “are analytical, thoughtful, who wait and think “before moving and acting, who crunch numbers, “who have great analytical capacity, “you think they connect instantly to me? “Of course not. “Of course not. “But they’ll connect to you.” You have unique audience waiting for you, dude. It’s amazing, they’re there. They want to connect, they want to hear from you. They want to hear your voice, your authentic-ness. They want to know how you think. They wanna know your opinions. It’s time to show up for ’em. Have a wonderful day, my friends. I’ll see you on the internet.

WE all do it, we all get hard on ourselves about the set up, where everything needs to be “perfect”, I’m telling you what you think is not good enough is in actuality…GREAT!

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec

• Stop waiting for the perfect moment, perfection leads to procrastination.
• Not good enough is great, not great is good enough.
• The journey is the destination.
• With a constantly improving mindset, you’ll always be “not good enough”

Episode Transcribe

– What’s up everybody, happy Tuesday, hope you’re having a wonderful day.

It’s so fun to be live with you guys here in Lake Tahoe!

I’m on vacation, my family, we all needed a little vacation, but I wanted to get a message out to everybody today. I had this queued up and I’m like, I’m not gonna wait. I’m gonna carve a little bit of time out of my vacation to go live and hang out with you guys. By the way, we’re also live on Twitter right now, which is fun. Figured that out, so thanks Periscope. So we’re on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter. Throw me a comment, I’d love to hear where you guys are watching from right now and hanging out with. And I like to share with you a really fun conversation today, man. First of all, isn’t the beard a lot like more fitting in the wilderness. I feel like I’m like fully on-brand right now. So I’m really excited about it. You can go out babe, I got from my family here hanging out. But this is a really cool conversation. I was sitting with Adam Encinas, who’s a really good branch manager for us. By the way, also, if you’re watching right now, how’s the headset volume coming through? Do you guys give me a comment, let me know how it’s going through. We’re trying to figure this out out here in the wilderness, so we’re going for it, but I got good Wi-Fi. So we know that we’re strong there. So listen up, hi Melissa on LinkedIn, nice to see you, this is awesome. I’m using my phone for this. It’s really working out really well. So I’m happy with it. Man, not good enough is great. And this is the conversation I wanna have with everybody today. ‘Cause I know somebody needs to hear this because I needed to hear it. And I was sitting with Adam who’s like I said, a really great branch manager and we’re having this conversation. Oh thank you, Melissa, the audio’s good. I appreciate you. And we’re having this conversation about not good enough is great. And you know, he was saying, “I’m so far behind. “I have so much to do. “I have so many systems to implement, “things I wanna do, articles I wanna produce, “videos I wanna make, content I wanna do, “and I’m feeling like I’m so far behind.” And I sat there and I’m like, “I have the same feeling.” I’m like, “I am behind all the time!” And I’m like, “How do I figure this out and catch up?” And then I had this kind of epiphany and this moment of settling, where I realized we’re always behind, and that’s great! And here was the thought process. If you’re not iterating and improving all the time, that’s where growth is, that’s where life is. It’s always like in pushing to the next thing and striving for the next thing. And I’m an achiever and an Enneagram three and all those things and on the DISC test, I’m a D, and you know, I like to strive and push and strive and push. And when you’re doing that, especially if you’re in sales, like I know a lot of my mortgage professional friends and colleagues, you know, we’re always, we’re strivers, we’re achievers, we’re doers. When you live in that state of mind, you realize, man, I’m always gonna feel behind. Because the second you think you’ve got it figured out, you’re gonna be like onto the next thing. The second you nail down one system, you’re gonna be trying to iterate and build out another thing. The second you figure out, you know the LinkedIn algorithm or the Facebook algorithm, it’s gonna change. And now your ads suck and they don’t work, and you have to figure it out again. It’s a process. And if you’re in a position in your mental state where like, I’m not doing enough, I’m good enough right now. I’m not mastering this right now. Then the answer to that is yes, that’s perfect. That’s perfect, be in that space, ’cause you’re always gonna be in that space and you should be in that space. I don’t want anyone to sit back on their laurels and be like, I figured it out. I nailed it, it’s done. All set, got it done. And then sailing off into the sunset ’cause that’s never the reality. The reality is there’s always a place to go. And if you’re in a place, a mental place right now where you’re like, my content’s not good enough, my videos aren’t good enough. My audio’s not good enough, my lighting’s not good enough. Great! Because at least in that space, you’re in the game. If you’re sitting back and like, I’m never gonna start, like I did a Livetime on why you should start a podcast or how easy it is to start a podcast, and people were like rolling over because they’re like, it’s just Zoom. Just do a Zoom, after you’re done with the Zoom, download the audio, upload it to a Simplecast or a million other podcast hosting sites, just Google that crap, and it’s everywhere. And now you have a podcast. But if you’re sitting back going, well, no, I need to have the nice mics, and I need the nice mixer first, and I need the nice setup, I have the cool background and the neon lights. I’m like, no, but just play. Just play and be okay that not good enough is great because that means you’re in the game. That’s the truth right there. Not good enough is great because it means you’re in the game. And a lot of people, you just need to be in the game because you’re gonna learn. As soon as you kick off the edge, you’re gonna realize how much fun this is playing in a new way. I got a letter of encouragement from somebody digitally ’cause I love this crap, and I love how we can all connect digitally and just send a message and now you’re talking to somebody across the world that you never knew before, it’s amazing! And she said, you know, “I was nervous about starting a podcast. “I saw this thing and I just did it. “I went ahead and started a podcast. “And now I’m connecting with all these business owners. “And now my origination strategy is fun again.” You see, what she was doing before, which is what many of us do is we use the old playbook, and she was grinding it. Everything felt like a grind. Now her work feels free. Now, she feels like she’s doing something that she can enjoy, that she’s thrilled about. And she’s not caught up in the race. And it was so uplifting for me because she was just in the game. And that’s my encouragement for every one of you guys out there right now who listens to this on Crazy Tuesday, or if you’re watching this in the future, hit me up with a hashtag bypass. It lets me know. It gives me encouragement that somebody saw this later. I love that. But that’s the truth, guys. If you’re feeling like you’re on the journey, and you’re feeling like you’re behind, perfect! Embrace that space, because trust me, if you’re going to push into new skills, if you’re gonna push into this like digital connection world, you’re always gonna feel behind. You’re always gonna feel like that guy or gal did something cooler than I could do. And I gotta figure that out now. And this new technology came out, I got to drop that out now, great! Just keep playing. And you’ll pick up the small stuff. Does this make sense? If you’re understanding this, like let me know in the comments, because this is like a core, like I got so much relief, so much personal relief in my conversation with Adam, because I was like, I got permission from myself to be like, it’s okay that you don’t have it all figured out. It’s okay that you don’t run the number one mortgage podcast in America. It’s okay that you don’t have the social following you want, that you don’t have the distribution you want on my weekly download newsletter. Like it’s okay. Just be in the process. And that grace for myself freed me up to be like more excited to play the game. I didn’t care if the lighting wasn’t great, or if the audio was terrible, or if I’m in Lake Tahoe or whatever it was, I had freedom to play the game. And that is what I want everyone to hear right now. Just play the game, have some fun, and realize that not good enough is great. You have to hear this. If you think that at some point in your path forward of your career growth, whatever that looks like for you, that you’re gonna have it nailed down, you’re done, you did it all, you landed it. The second you get in that space, you’re gonna realize, oh, there’s 17,000 more things to do. And you’re gonna be immediately back in that head space of, oh, I’m just not good enough, it’s just not good enough. The video wasn’t good. By the way, you know how freeing live streams are? I know that someone’s gonna freak out right now when I say this, but you know how freeing livestreams are? How many of you have filmed 75,000 video takes on your phone? Like if you pull your phone up and scroll through the pictures, like how many times is there like take one, take two. And there’s just your face over and over again. Like, guys not good enough is great. Just go roll one. But that’s where live, thank you Melissa, that’s where going live, like it’s so much more freeing because even if I said the sentence wrong, we’re still rolling through the conversation and it’s authentic and it’s not scripted. And it’s organic, and you get to engage that way. I’m telling you, live, it’s a lot more easy than recording stuff. I, in my a hundred videos in a hundred days, I had the same thing. I had a wall of like videos that I didn’t like, and I kept like re-recording it. The journey is the destination. You’ve heard that a million times. I didn’t just say that and like rock your world. But what I am hoping that to do in this little message is for you to realize that you’re always gonna be not good enough. If you’re really into furthering your own development, if you’re really into furthering your own development, you’re never gonna be good enough. You’re never gonna have landed it. And it’s done, and you’re the king or the queen, it’s over. It’s never gonna happen, guys. It’s never gonna happen. This is a great quote by Eric, I put on the screen. “Not good enough is great, not great is good enough!” You’re never gonna be great. When do you think you’re gonna end it? You’re just gonna end your personal journey. It’s over, you did it. You went live once, you did it. Like no! The next time you’re gonna be like, how can I make that better? Why was no one watching? What content is getting a ton of views, what content is not getting a ton of views. Where’s my audience. You’re always gonna be improving, which is what I love about this space. And what I love about this message is because it’s free. If I got freedom from it, I know you can get freedom from it too. If I sat there with Adam, and had an epiphany of like, oh man, I’m always gonna be pushing. I’m always gonna be pushing. I’m always gonna want it to be better. I’m always gonna want my message to land more clearly. Oh, Eric, that’s your own personal quote. I love it, dude. I’ll put it back up for people to see for a minute. That’s really good, I really enjoy reading that. I think it’s right, man. I think that’s the right thing because you’re never gonna be done in this journey of life. You’re never gonna be done, and that’s perfect, that’s freeing, that’s awesome, because you can let go of all this tension and pressure to be something you’re not in this moment. I wanna say that again. A lot of stuff that’s probably holding you back is probably stuff that I’m struggling with that holds me back, is don’t feel like I did it. I’m not good enough. This isn’t a good enough production. I need to heighten the graphics, I need more graphics. I need intro music, I need captions, which I still don’t have because I suck. I can’t figure it out, I’ll figure it out one day. But like, this is the reality. And as soon as you land in that space and you go, wait a minute, hold on. Why am I putting so much judgment on myself? And when I have captains, will I be done then? When I get captions, finally on my stuff, am I gonna be done then? No, cause there’ll be something else that I’m gonna trying to lean into and going, oh, this is, oh. Eric’s just dropping bombs right now. “Perfection leads to procrastination,” man, isn’t that the truth? How many times are we frozen by our own like desire to be perfect, ’cause we don’t look like this person who’s doing it so good, and you’re so jealous and envious. And this, Melissa, is the best comment I think I’ve heard today. This is easier for me now because I’ve done 400 of them. That’s just how it is! Like, it’s wasn’t easy the first couple times, like this is a lot easier for me now because I’ve done a lot of them, and I’m gonna do a lot more. And I’m hoping that they’re gonna get better. We all hope they get a little better, right, over time. But like, this is my like excitement for you guys in this conversation is if you’re feeling like this isn’t good enough, I don’t have it mastered, and so I’m gonna hold back, you have to realize that’s a mistake. That’s an inherent mistake. You gotta play the game, and not good enough is great because you’re always going to be not good enough. I don’t mean that like you don’t have any inherent human value. You have tremendous value. But what I’m saying is you’re never gonna be happy with it, man! At least if you’re like me. I’m such a judgmental person, I’m always like, that’s why I have a hard time when I re-listen to some of my stuff. For a while, I didn’t re-listen to anything. I just shipped it. By the way, I’m working with a great professional who’s coaching me in a lot of things. And one of the things he’s always pushing on me, he’s like, “Just ship it.” I’m like, what does that mean? He’s like, “Just ship it.” I’m like, “I don’t mail things.” He’s like, “No, like create it and ship it. “Like stop overthinking it. “Stop over-analyzing it.” Like Melissa, I’ve deleted 400, yeah, me too! Like, I feel that so deeply. So now my motto internal in my mind is like, just ship it. Like we’re in Tahoe, I’m like, just ship it. We’re going, we’re gonna see what happens. I don’t know if the audio is gonna be working at all. I’m in the woods, a bear’s gonna attack me. Like I have no idea what’s gonna happen. I’m not gonna get attacked by bear. But if you’re struggling with content, with your message, with what you’re going off, just ship it, you’ll get better, you’ll learn, and be okay with the reality that you’re always gonna live in a space of it’s not good enough, at least if you’re like me. And that should give you freedom to be like, oh, of course I feel this way. I’m always gonna feel this way if I’m pushing myself forward. I wanna say that again. If you’re pushing yourself forward to become better, to further your career, to generate more influence, to make more human connection. If you’re pushing yourself forward, you’re always gonna have this feeling inside you of I’m not doing it good enough, this is not good enough, I’m not where I want to be. The second you rest back and go, I landed it, we got it, is the second that you get behind. Like that you start, it’s not where growth is, right? Like we know this intrinsically, like growth is in that process of being uncomfortable, growth is in that process of putting yourself out there and being vulnerable. That’s where growth is, that’s where success is. We know this, we’ve heard it from every single professional speaker and book author and everybody, athletes. Like it’s all about striving to go forward. Which means it’s always about feeling inside here of like, man, I’m not doing it the way I wanna do it. This is not like the end game for me. But it is what I’ve got today. So I’m gonna deliver that today. And that is damn good enough. That is amazing! And that is freeing. And then you should be excited that you feel that way. ‘Cause that means you’re in the right space. The second you feel like this isn’t good enough, but I’m doing it anyway, you are in the right space. You’re in the right mental space, you’re in the right uncomfortable growth space. You’re there. And you’re always gonna be there if you’re pushing yourself forward. So be excited about it. Be excited about the fact that that feeling is the right feeling. If you’re having that, and you’re like, dang, okay, then this is the right space, ’cause that means I’m pushing forward, that means I’m getting uncomfortable, it means I’m figuring it out, then you’re crushing it. You’re absolutely in the right space. Man, I hope that helped today, ’cause it helped me a lot when I just like got to relax and realize, oh, I’m always gonna be pushing ahead. I’m always gonna be trying to drive new stuff, and that’s gonna make me always feel like somebody else is doing it better, I’m not doing the best I could possibly do yet. I don’t have captions. Can you tell them super judgy about the fact that don’t have captions? That’s it guys. And by the way, I’ll kind of end with this. Since I try to keep these like around the 15 minute mark. Ask people for help. If you’re like, how do I do this better? Then ask the people who you think are doing it better to tell you what they’re doing. They’ll all tell you, they’ll all share. It’s all out there, it’s all public information. All of human knowledge is sitting in your hand in a phone that’s connected to everything you could possibly want. And I’m live streaming on four platforms in Lake Tahoe on vacation, on my iPhone. It’s incredible. It’s like the world we live in is so good. So I thank you guys, thank you Leann for the nice comment. I hope it pushes you into more fun space, Eric. Thanks for all your contributions today, man. That was really great quotes. And Christina, I love you, so good to see you. You’re awesome. And yeah, just ship it guys, ship it. You’re always gonna feel like it’s not good enough and that’s perfect. Ship it. Have a wonderful day, everybody.

Join Sudhir and myself as we explore the tech behind it all and how its made our jobs a little easier.

In this snippet of the Modern Lending Podcast Live…

• What makes a company a mortgage company or a FinTech company
• What it means for a company to go all in to tech
• How Sudhir sees his IT team and business team side meld
• What is the main purpose of the tech behind the business

Episode Transcribe

[Alec] There it is. Whoo, welcome everybody to another episode of the “Modern Lending” podcast live. I’m back in the studio feeling feisty today. It’s gonna be a really, really fun conversation. I have with us right here, I gotta read it ’cause he has two titles, Chief Information and Chief Technology Officer for loanDepot, Sudhir Nair. Now, we actually go back, Sudhir to like old school, country[Sudhir]wide days. So I’m really excited to bring on Sudhir to talk about the future of mortgage technology, where it’s going because so many loan professionals, mortgage salespeople see mortgage technology as either a threat, as something to be afraid of ’cause it’s gonna take their job, or they see it as something that’s gonna be a savior, it’s gonna come in and it’s gonna do something and it’s gonna radically change their lives and there’s a lot of myth and a lot of fuzz and we’re gonna carve through that. So let’s bring on Sudhir. Right on, Sudhir, good to see you my friend. Oh, I wish we could be in person but COVID is just ravaging the country and it’s making it hard, but thanks for joining today.[Sudhir] Good to see you. I like you looking good.[Alec] Oh yeah, I got my quarantine beard that I told my wife I was gonna shave when we are back to work and now it’s looking bad. Like I’m never gonna be able to shave it ’cause we’re virtual forever.[Sudhir] Still looks good on you, though.[Alec] Oh, man, so thank you for joining. We were talking a little bit before going live. You’ve been leading the charge at loanDepot now for a little over nine months[Sudhir]ish. Getting in, making changes, stirring things up, and I would love for you to share a little bit about your background ’cause people always going frame up like, “Who is this person that’s running technology “and information for loanDepot?” So share a little bit about where you came from, what you’re doing and how you got into this space.[Sudhir] So technology’s been my forte since I left high school. So, I went to computer school engineering, engineering school, so that’s my undergrad, did my grad also on Information Systems Engineering, so there you go, so that’s how it started.[Alec] Wait, I got a , you’re gonna laugh at me here, but I gotta tell you this. So at school, up at Berkeley, I took one computer science class, just basic coding, just figuring out like how it all works and I missed the final because I got my dates screwed up. I was a freshman, I was stupid. And I went back to the teacher and said, “Can I make it up?” And he’s like, “Sure.” And he made me do it all by hand. I had to hand write all the code on this thing and I failed miserably ’cause I couldn’t check it and check it and check it, so, that was the end of my coding experience.[Sudhir] I do have a story though that I gotta tell because I was not headed to the computer science school. I was headed into becoming a doctor. So, I start that side of the house for a few weeks before I ended up going into the engineering line and things like that and then first job was at Hewlett[Sudhir]Packard, so they’ve a lot of work there in terms of writing operating system and such. So it was mostly heavy duty tech and writing databases, writing OS is very different than commercial applications and so on. And then that led me into another area which is mostly to detect fraud and passport frauds, and cheque frauds and so on and so forth. It’s a sort of a different type of sophisticated algorithms, detection technology and so on and so forth. So I spent a lot of time in Europe, Middle East and Africa and things like that, implementing systems like that, engineering systems like that. And then I left on and moved on to other areas. So I came into, believe it or not, supply chain retail and it was the times when supply chain distribution retail was changing and then there was also this threat of E[Sudhir]commerce, if you will, at the time that started. That was in the ’90s. So, part of that industry worked for a leader software technology company that was a leader in that space. I did a lot of work there. The likes of several names that do not exist or have been consolidated to Amazon and worked on some really cool stuff there with writing routing logistics, distribution management, automation of some of the warehouse inside the house and the best route to take for a track to deliver the item as fast as possible and some really cool stuff like that. So got very much in that industry and then giant, Washington Mutual, as the E[Sudhir]commerce and online banking team which is the E[Sudhir]business team. So that’s how I got into banking and financial services and so on and so forth. And then after launch of some of the very critical platforms there and getting them into the E[Sudhir]commerce side of the house, I was hired into Countrywide which is the first time I actually got into the mortgage side of the land and I had no experience in knowing anything about mortgages at that time. Other than the fact I owned a home and paid my mortgage. That’s all I knew about it. And so, it was very interesting because I came in and saw the model, the country where I put together, it was actually the beginning of the boom, that was 2003, beginning of the boom up that rates going down and everything is increasing in terms of demand and so on and so forth. Home affordability also is actually become pretty good. So I actually sat in a retail branch, I don’t know if you recollect in Santa Monica on your beach, it was like on the 14th floor or something like that. For two months I sat there because if I’m going to be developing technology, I better know what the business is. So I actually sat there side by side with the origination team there, kind of saw how they . I actually did help, when the assistant was not available, I actually helped and I filled the 10 on three. I did all the actions. So that was fun. And then I actually responsible for, taking the mortgage solution at Countrywide to the next level, which we did, which, as you know, we had several different systems over there. So that was an incredible experience and then on came into Bank of America where I actually worked also on the servicing side of Countrywide and just on technology, of course, and then managed a very large servicing portfolio there. And then, did a lot of transformation of that platform and then after that Bank of America acquisition, I worked on both servicing originations, some on the title and closing side of the house and so that was the next path. And then after that took me on a path to work for Mr. Cooper. So there, we launched Zone which is a marketplace with auction and so going into another digital transformation, you could say, but you could also argue it’s actually a transformation of the real estate, proud of itself and auction was a completely brand new game, and doing an online auction was even cooler. So that was fun there and then I actually took a little bit of a hiatus into a completely different industry. I just wanted to test my waters somewhere else. So I went into higher education. So the largest provider of higher education online, a company worked there, they actually manage online programs for major universities in US, about 55 of them and things like that. And then I noticed how similar the industry was to what we do in the mortgage side of the house, which I actually if I look back, whatever I learned in supply chain, and retail was actually portable into the market in the last three years, portable into that and then I came back into the mortgage space because I got all the experience I needed into some of the new technology areas and the new environment. And one of the things that I was very particularly interested is to get that external experience so we could bring it back into mortgage because mortgage technology has always been in the backseat, if you will and also catching up pretty late, and so on and so forth.[Alec] You think? I mean, like when I started in the game, like it was an MS[Sudhir]DOS[Sudhir]based system that you had to tab through. You couldn’t use the mouse. That was the pinnacle of the tech.[Sudhir] Absolutely, so that’s my journey and here I am in loanDepot. And what a great time to be at loanDepot.[Alec] Oh, I know, we’re having a blast and this is fun. So real quick, we’re getting a ton of fun comments and a bunch of viewers right now. Please type in where you’re viewing us from. I love to kind of see that, just kind of like where people are tuning in to right now. Most of the reach of this podcast comes later when people actually have time to listen and consume. And so I know we’re just diving into your day, but if you’re choosing to join us right now, type in on the comments. In fact, Sudhir, give me two seconds ’cause I gotta click a button. All right, I’m shorthanded, I had to click a button and I see everybody, Bay Area, Nashville, awesome. Now I got comments flowing in so this is really cool. Mike Brown saying, “We need to get Sudhir one of these cool mics.” Yes, we’ll figure out how to do that. Okay, so, Sudhir, this is gonna be fun. So now you’re back in mortgage, you’ve got all this experience, you got a huge track record, tons of fans, which is fun. I was joking with you earlier how the bunch of people on LinkedIn, we’re already being like, “Can not wait to hear what Sudhir has to say.” And to your comment earlier, man, technology and mortgage is behind. It’s been behind for a long time. And so, let’s just open the conversation up to where it’s going and why did it take so long and what happened in that perspective, from your perspective? I’m assuming the crisis played a role, but what have you seen and where are we going and what are you excited about?[Sudhir] So, I think, technology is not just in mortgage that it’s actually pretty backed up behind. But if you look at banking and financial services industry as a whole, you still see a lot of challenges with technology being behind. I think the consumer banking side of it is probably in a much better shape than some of the other parts of financial services then, where we are, and that’s mostly because it was more of a necessity than a need, so it just… The onset of the web revolution which happened in the ’90s and then followed by the mobile revolution which came after in 2000 changed a lot of that and kind of made it more of a necessity than choice. So I think that’s one. But if you look at mortgages, just the sheer complexity, the nature of how you get a loan because it’s a, unlike a consumer[Sudhir]lending environment or a credit card, et cetera, this is secured debt, your house is the security. So, it’s a complex process, because it involves a lot of, there’s a lot of complexities involved and you gotta make sure that you… It’s not about checking off boxes and things like that, that’s one. The other part of it is, it’s the decision making process is very different. As an individual, if you think about it personally, the decision making process to buy a home is extremely important. It’s a life changing event, it’s a life event, right? Followed by that, you gotta go and secure a loan is also a very emotional purchase, if you will. It’s not like going to Amazon and buying something, that’s not an emotional purchase. This one is very emotional.[Alec] Well there’s involved when you get your gift, even you get your package the next day. So there is a little bit of that going on. You’re right, you’re totally right.[Sudhir] It’s emotional also because you’ve got decisions to make. As a borrower or a consumer I have decisions to make. So I cannot make those decisions sometimes without having all the information in front of me. So the first thing I would do is rely on an originator that I would work with. Why? Because that is the person that’s gonna help me get all the information as well as the permutation and combination of scenarios that based on my, what you call as my financial ability, as well as the characteristics of the home that I’m buying and so on, so forth. So that’s a very complex process if you think about it. And I always think that if you work with a investment banker, if you work with a financial planner, you actually have that information exchange and talk to them about how you wanna manage your investments so that you have a good retirement fund. The originator or the loan officer that you work with is like that because they have to be like that. Because not every individual or a property is going to be the same. And so that three[Sudhir]way conversation between property, the loan and individual’s very, very different. That’s a lot of permutation and combination. So that cannot be addressed without having the right data, right information. Right information as in what is the right loan product that fits me? There may be five or six of them and I’m sitting here thinking, “Wait, how do I make a decision? “Which one should I go with?” So that’s the complexity. Now, while this is happening, and the complexity is still there, on the other side technology is just, the consumerization of technology is just going in parallel at a very fast pace. Mobile phones came up. Lot of people think mobile phone came, all right, great, but what they forget is… Remember the Sony Walkmans?[Alec] Yeah, absolutely.[Sudhir] They went away. Guess what happened to them? They came up in a very small hard disk because the hard disk started condensing in form factor and then all it had is a circle around it and they called it an iPad, iPod, right?[Alec] Mm[Sudhir]hmm.[Sudhir] That’s what happened to Sony Walkman if you remember.[Alec] Very well.[Sudhir] And then, pretty soon What happened to that iPod is they put camera on it, right?[Alec] It’s right here, I have it.[Sudhir] And they put phone on it. Now you got all of these condensed in one and then they replace the, remember the Nu[Sudhir]Vois, GPS?[Alec] Hundred percent.[Sudhir] Those are gone. What happened to that? It’s on your phone, right? So that was happening. That’s what is happening to the consumer on their day to day lives. Things have been changing. Things are, consolidated and all of that is happening, the form factor of what you have in your pocket, in your hands et cetera also is very condensed and so on and so forth. So, all that is happening while mortgage is also happening on this side. But the absorption of technology in mortgage has not been as good as it should be. And I think the challenge with that is because why we are very good to solve smaller problems, when I say we, the tech community, smaller problems like putting a Walkman or enabling a phone or things like that, we are not good at solving the complex workflow and processing and steps and checks and measures, et cetera and putting that and enabling that to be much more technology. Why would you do that? Because you gotta help them. The loan officer cannot be going at five different places to find all the information to provide to me to get me to make a decision, right? It should be relatively easy for them and that’s the reality. No one sat down to kind of the… What I would say is this, applied technology is the key word, right? You gotta take technology and you gotta apply it. In order for you to apply it successfully, you gotta understand the business. You gotta understand the business process that’s been involved, you gotta look at where you can help Alec produce more loans or close more loans because you cannot be working 12 hours a day and only closing like one or two loans or selling one or two cars or whatever it is.[Alec] Sudhir, what’s crazy about this as you talk to great producers, and as you see, their ability isn’t limited in how many leads they can get. I know a lot of really talented professionals and their time is consumed by the process. And they have to scale and add expense. They have to hire assistants and coordinators and processors and processor tools and you need more underwriters. And I think the old saying was, “For every great originator you hire, “you have to hire like two to three operations people “to support them.” And so when I ask a loan officer, “What’s your day consists of?” And if they’re talented, and they have large pipelines, it’s in pipeline management and paper management. Tracking down crap and sending it in this back and forth style system. And that’s always been like the actual, the thing that holds back a guy from doing 10 deals who could do 50. So share with me your thoughts on that and how can how can technology come in and provide solutions there?[Sudhir] I think the other part that the industry is probably a little bit lagging and it’s getting better is around use of data.[Alec] Yes, absolutely.[Sudhir] We all keep saying data, why is data important? We know data’s very important. “I gotta look at my reports.” Okay, that’s one thing, but what I said earlier, in order for you to be successfully talking to a consumer to help them get a loan, you have to provide them with information. What is information? It’s knowledge combined with data. That’s what information is and we don’t combine it that way. We look at it as a, what you call a data issue. And then we look at that and then we look at another issue as a business process issue, or we don’t connect is, you gotta bring the knowledge component in there. Only then you can make it information that can be used by the loan officer or by the borrower, or by others to make their decision faster and you get the right product, right pricing and so on. Now, underwriting the processing side, I have a lot of empathy for those folks. You know why? Because they get a lot of, there’s a lot of work and if they will be more efficient, if you provide them with good, right information at the right time which is data and knowledge in front of them, along with their ability to manage their work, which we call as workflow but that’s what it really is. You move it from one step to the next and to the next at a faster pace. So if we could start thinking about it that way, which is what I think the industry should start thinking about it very differently, is how do you take data, how do you take knowledge package it in information provide the right information at the right time and the right steps, that’s gonna help that processor, underwriter, closer, operate much faster so they can actually spend time with their family after five or six.[Alec] And by the way, how needed is that right now? Record pipelines, record originations, and it’s like, ” Oh, man, it’s a lot of work.”[Sudhir] See, that’s the other thing, right? This is a example of when your demand increases, which is we have demand, increase in demand. Now, you should be able to scale to that. Now, if you don’t have the right set of automation and efficiencies powered by information, you’re not going to be scalable. So you are going to spend 12 hours and 16 hours if you don’t have the right technology and automation in place to get to do that. I think that’s another interesting point to think about. But the industry as a whole is pretty much I would say lagging still. And I think a lot of efforts are underway to, in multiple different areas to say, “Hey, this is a ripe opportunity to disrupt, “it’s ripe for disruption.” I don’t think it’s a disruption challenge, it’s much more of a transformation challenge. It’s more of how do we start providing mortgages smarter and helping the borrower and customer better? How do we improve the customer relationship better? That’s really going to be the play and it’s all gonna be, I think the next big wave in mortgage is gonna be information power.[Alec] So, I love these kind of conversations because I like to live in fantasy land. But if you fast forward yourself to whatever point in the future you think that this transformation is completed, and I know tech is always a journey, ’cause you’re always improving and you just continue to iterate. But, what could that look like? What could it look like in the future as this stuff lands and changes? What do you see?[Sudhir] So if you go outside the financial services industry a little bit, just look at technology in general, I think the challenge with technology is to stay current and keep up with what’s going on. You can be a step behind, a couple of steps behind, but if you are like 10, 15 steps behind, you have a problem. So you gotta go through a transformation to get to that. Not more than five steps behind, all right? That’s the problem. Now if you take that, in the mortgage industry, we are probably about 15, 20 steps behind. We need to get to that five steps, that’s step one. I don’t think that is just only, that’s the industry overall, if you look at it, right?[Alec] Yeah.[Sudhir] And then once you get to that five steps, then it actually becomes easier, believe it or not. It’s easier if you have the right process and the right operating model intact and business. It is easier to keep up with that five[Sudhir]year catch up than if you translate that into years instead of steps, right? Five[Sudhir]year catch up is better than a 20[Sudhir]year catch up. So I think that’s kind of where it becomes easier, but it’s really not five years, it’s just five steps. Just just keep it current, stay aligned with what’s happening in the technology world. This is for all my tech colleagues in the industry, gotta keep up. The other part is you have to wear your applied technology hat on so if something cool comes on, you gotta think about, “All right, this is how I can apply it,” and then say, “Eh, Alec, how do you feel “if I can give you ability “to enable this particular technology?” And you will say, “That makes totally no sense.” I got my answer, right? Or you would say, “That’s interesting. “Lemme think about it.” That’s what I need, right? So the persuasion begins when you say no to me. And that’s really what is also not happening is just that that conversation, the ability to realize and know the challenges that you’re going through, be it at scale or be it business as usual, what are the challenges then addressing them applying the right set of technology and tools. I also say this to many of my tech colleagues, “You gotta be careful. “You cannot have hammer looking for a nail.”[Alec] Yes, absolutely.[Sudhir] Then don’t go buy and get technology, get excited about technology, why? Because Amazon is using it or Apple is using it et cetera. See how you can apply it. Sometimes you may have to admit that it’s not applicable to this industry or what I do and move on. Otherwise your hammer’s gonna still look for the nail and sit in your garage.[Alec] That’s so true, that’s so true. So guys, we have a lot of viewers right now and we’re about 30 minutes in. If you have questions for Sudhir, please throw them into the comments. We’d love to answer them and I always ask this, if you’re watching this in the future, hit me with a hashtag bypassed and let me know that you’re engaging even though you’re not live with us, you’re watching a repost or you’re watching something else but please let’s join the conversation. It’s so much fun to do this live because we get to hear from you guys about what your questions are too and it’s not just Sudhir and I sitting in a room talking about mortgage tech which is fun too but different. So, Sudhir, what do you love about what you do?[Sudhir] I love new challenges, as in when I look at businesses, and when I look at the ability to go and get into heavy demand, large scale, that’s a challenge, that we manage the scale. Can we address that? How can we address it? And the how maybe through automation, the how maybe through much more stable systems the how maybe through a whole bunch of different things. Interestingly enough, we are going through such your time right now. With everything that happened to COVID, guess what that did? We didn’t have a choice.[Alec] What was that like trying to lead a tech industry and all the team through this dramatic shift where everybody had to go home? What was that like for you and your team? Like what was the environment like?[Sudhir] I think it was a big challenge. You know what they say, right? “Necessity is the mother of invention.”[Alec] No kidding.[Sudhir] That’s what happened to us, quite frankly. We saw that unless we get the capability built in to get our folks to work remotely from anywhere, from home, et cetera, we’re gonna be having challenges if we can’t do that. It’s not enough if you just do that, then comes the next step, which is how do we keep our employees safe if they’re operating in cyberspace? And when you operate heavily in cyberspace, bad actors come in.[Alec] Yeah, absolutely.[Sudhir] You gotta keep them safe and you also have to secure your data and your systems and so on and so forth. So there’s the balancing act of that. The other part of it is, this calls for a whole different level of business continuity than what was originally spoken in the past. Many are times I’ve seen organizations say, “Well, BCP and disaster recovery and business continuity “is a requirement because you gotta have a, “It’s a compliance requirement.” Yeah, but what happened here is not a compliance requirement. So it’s a health issue, it’s a safety issue, created a challenge for the entire world if you will and in order for us to operate in that environment, we need a completely different line of thinking. And that’s what we did in technology. We started thinking very differently. How do we keep power? How do we enable remote capability, for example for call center?[Alec] Yeah.[Sudhir] Right?[Alec] Absolutely.[Sudhir] How do you do that? And then we had to think through that. We had to look at what are the different ways by which you can do that? We came up with the solution, which is by far the best in the industry that once you get that, the next step is how do you keep those systems resilient? How do you keep them stable? How do you make sure that they are highly available, and so on and so forth. So we addressed that and we had different levels of thinking and we brought them together. There’s been lot of debate amongst ourselves, which is kind of good, I think healthy debates are always good in technology as long as you get a solution at the end of it which we did. So, we had a lot of good debates and we are at a point where we now we are thinking about, “Okay, what if a third party system goes down? “How can we still operate without that?” And so we are enabling that and we have now enabled such a different set of capabilities that is just, we can now operate from anywhere and we can be operating very safely, our systems will have the resilience, if you will, to perform and that’s what all of you would like on the business side as well, right?[Alec] Yeah.[Sudhir] And I think that’s really what happened. So it was truly a wake up call, it expedited the way. For us, I can tell you for my team and I, it was a jolt that was given for us to start thinking how IT should operate differently. You can’t wait for three months and four months to get something delivered, why? Because it’s a health issue, we’re going tomorrow. So you can wait that long. So it changed our model. We started thinking differently, it changed our model, it changed our internal processes to start thinking about delivering things much faster. So there’s lot of benefits and we looked at it as an opportunity for us to come out of this leading the way, leading in technology as well. And being a leading business is, good solid business is… You know, one of my former bosses always says this, “Good, solid businesses have a good, solid technology team.” And I think we are positioned for that at loanDepot.[Alec] I wanna echo, which is just so fun, first of all, I love hearing your mindset about how the challenge was exciting, how the challenge was something that you wanted to come out as a leader through and you wanted to push the team through and got you thinking differently and there’s such a strong parallel to great salespeople who are having the similar like challenges that this is presenting. I just talked to a guy today from New York who was saying, the normal line which is, “I can’t do what I used to do. “I used to be able to go out and see all these realtors, “used to go out and weekends and go to open houses “and go to board events and go to networking events “and do pop[Sudhir]bys at real estate offices where I had friends “and I can’t do anything right now that I used to do.” But he’s starting to go all in on social media. That’s how we connected. And because there is this silver lining of, there’s opportunity in hardship, there’s opportunity in this time right now and the people that are willing to lean into it and have the same mindset that you have, which is I wanna come through a leader, I wanna come through stronger and better are doing that. And it’s really cool to see like[Sudhir][Sudhir][Sudhir] So I also wanna share something else with you. I also have a little bit of a tenure in promotion sports. That’s what coaches teach you, right?[Alec] Yep.[Sudhir] It’s about how do you stay resilient? How do you stay to make sure that you can either sit down and think about everything that’s gonna go wrong or do something about it to make it, how do I set it to go right? And I think that’s really what this environment has taught us.[Alec] You know, William had a comment in there and I think it’d be interesting to hear your take on it, I mean your take on it. “Mortgage company versus fintech company,” and fintech has become very buzzy as a word. You know, there’s lots of fintech companies and all that fun stuff and then you got mortgage companies which tend to be, I’ll just kind of smash our industry, they tend to be, not sexy. Just mortgage tech is like, you know… But fintech sounds cool. You know, and Anthony plays in the fintech space, how do you see the definition of fintech and mortgage tech and mortgage company? Are they a blend? Are they together? Quickens going IPO and they’re positioning themselves as a fintech slash mortgage company. What’s your take on that as a definition?[Sudhir] I think that you have a lot of these definitions that have come about well. If you look at the onset of the E[Sudhir]commerce timeline, people say brick and mortars becoming brick and motors and so on and so forth. But there’s something about fintech that is very important and interesting at the same time. I think a company that has successfully embraced technology as a business enabler is a fintech company. It’s not enough if you just say that “I wanna automate,” or “I’ve gotta bring efficiencies,” and so on and so forth. It’s important for even us in technology to go and look at what our business is. A lot of times there is a divide between, I’ve even written an article about it between the technology teams and business and I think you should close off that divide. You should actually go visit your business, sit with them, see how they’re using your technology ’cause that’s gonna give you a proactive way of saying, “You know, Alec, you’re clicking here, you’re clicking… “What the heck? “why are you clicking in all these places? “You shall unclick.” So, instead of waiting for that, for you to come tell me and then pick up a ticket, stand in line. It should be better if I can come and do that once in a while. I think that’s very important. You’ve gotta be plugged in. enabler, you become a business enabler when tech is used effectively, provides the right set of information at the right time so you can be successful as a loan officer, for example. The other part of it is investment. Investment in technologies is important. It’s important but tech folks are pretty expensive, I can tell you that. Technology tools are expensive. Tech is not cheap. So technology tools are expensive as well. So, the investment part of it is very, very important. I think when those two come together, the realization by technology that we’ve had the right investments and we have the ability to understand our business well enough to apply and help them do better to be able to scale, not just business as usual, but should be able to scale and grow, right? It’s run, scale and grow in that fashion if you think about it. I’ll be able to successfully run the business, I can now scale the business as demand grows, organically or inorganically grow the business as well, I think that’s very key. If you have those things powered by tech, right?[Alec] Yep.[Sudhir] That’s really what fintech means.[Alec] Well, I’ve seen some competitors… I do a lot of my work recruiting and meeting other companies, meeting other professionals and I got introduced to their technology platform and I’m like, “There’s five people here.” And their IT team’s five people and the reason it’s five people it’s ’cause all their technology is being vendored to somebody else who has the tech team. And so their mortgage IT department is five people whose job is to interface between the vendors, their tech width and their loan officers and I think that your point on what differentiates a mortgage company versus a fintech company, I think the definition’s right. They’re either are all in on the fintech side, and they got the team and they’re building it out, or they’re vendoring it out and they’re trying to manage it that way.[Sudhir] How we take our data, package it into information, what we develop with it, a lot of the algorithms that we write, not the tools that we use, it’s the algorithms that we write becomes the secret sauce for us. And that’s your competitive edge, right? If you have the idea of having them in tech[Sudhir]enabled form is the fact that you can scale and grow, right? So that’s really, if you look at it, at the end of the day, that’s what makes you a fintech company. It’s the ability to be a business enabler, technology enabling, empowering the business is what a fintech company is all about.[Alec] So I wanna end on that in a minute. But Andy has an interesting question here that I think a lot of people have, and it gets super granular a little bit but that’s okay. “What are some of the key business processes “you are currently focusing on transforming “via automation or other solutions?”[Sudhir] I think we are looking at the next generation of how we manage and handle our customers. The customer journey is gonna be very, very transformed, very differently and we are looking at that. Again, loanDepot is a 10[Sudhir]year[Sudhir]old company, so there’s not a whole lot of green screen and blue screen and white and the legacy platforms out there. So we have edge over some of the others. And so what we are doing is working on the next generation of things that even some of the tech companies are not part of. So that’s kind of where we’re working on to make the consumer journey and experience much better than what it is today. We are already on the forefront of it, but it’s gonna become much more, much better.[Alec] Yeah, I always described it as nurse and doctor functions where the nurse comes in and they take your vitals they take your blood pressure, they take your temperature, and they gather your paperwork and put it on a chart for the doctor. And today, a lot of that nurse function in mortgage is the collecting of documents, the validation of documents, the reviewing the documents, getting it from a to b and let somebody else over there review it and then all of a sudden, all that information gets presented to the loan officer and they can have a real conversation. They could be the doctor that comes in and says, “What’s the best option for you?” So your point earlier, Sudhir, like the emotional connection. They can come in and walk somebody through this big decision, help them make a decision, be that consultative professional. And I think one of the fun parts of watching what you’re doing in technology is just having those nurse functions start to be picked up by technology, and supported by technology. And so all of a sudden now we’re getting quicker to an actual decision point, we’re getting quicker to serving the customer the way they wanna be served. I mean, I always joke that it’s hysterical that I can order a pizza and see my pizza tracker being made and know when the pizza’s gonna be here, and yet in mortgage in general, talking about the industry, there’s this huge linear process that there’s not much transparency into, it’s hard to see like, where’s my file? Well, it’s in a turn time, and it’s over there somewhere in the cloud. It’s like, “Well, hold on.” And so I know that your team’s been working hard building into that and streaming an app.[Sudhir] Specifically, Andy’s question about what key business processes, it’s very difficult for you to say, “What is the key business process?” Because the whole buying process itself is very key and important. So, if you divide it between the front end and then fulfillment side of it the initial focus that we have is going to be really around between the time you apply a loan and all the way to you getting the loan. And that’s an area we are trying to implement some new tech opportunities to implement some new technologies and tools internally for us.[Alec] Well, that’s where the mess is. That’s where the mess is ’cause no person comes in with the same profile.[Sudhir] Yeah, and that’s why you have to use some new approaches of curation of that data as it traverses, as the customer journey progresses. So, for the tech folks, we’ve got an incredible opportunity with machine learning. Why? Because data’s already there, you applying machine learning algorithms to that data, you can start powering it up and getting that going and providing that information to the processors, the underwriters, closers that’ll help them significantly. So, that’s an opportunity that I see. The other part of it is everybody forgets the servicing side of the house.[Alec] Yeah, I know. We’re sales people, we don’t wanna talk about servicing.[Sudhir] But that’s a customer[Sudhir]for[Sudhir]life opportunity because what happens is while you’re servicing a loan and in the market, the rates go down and things that’s a refinance opportunity, guess what happens? It’s an opportunity for you to come back and refinance. Now, you don’t wanna lose that customer, let’s say. How do I keep that customer as customer for life? They will call you, Alec, if they have the ability because they’ll say, “Alec, rates went down. “Why don’t you give me a call? “Why don’t we talk about a refi, right?”[Alec] Yep.[Sudhir] I think that’s important. So that’s why the business process, we gotta look at it in it’s complete sense from the front[Sudhir]end origination to the operations side as well as even the back end. That’s the opportunity for us to look at this very differently and try and get back to under the five steps, if you will. That’s really where we have to go and I think loanDepot’s there. We’re very excited, we will be there.[Alec] This is a great close question by William, which says, well, actually, hold on, we got another one that I think is gonna be fun here. Yeah, I like this question. I’m curious for your answer, Sudhir. So Ganesh says, “What is the industry benchmark or standard dates “for closing a loan “and how do we see it five years from now?”[Sudhir] I think the industry benchmark or the industry data for average day to close loan is 45 days. Now here’s the problem, that’s not the median, that’s the average.[Alec] Yeah, see people don’t like… Yeah, thank you for clarifying. ‘Cause even me, I was like, “Well, then, let’s talk about that in person.”[Sudhir] But, that’s how they gave the rating, right? They give you an average but the problem is that’s not the median. So, that’s the issue. But if you really think about it, that is also pretty long pole. Even the average, that number is pretty big. So, five years from now, if you asked me five years before now, it was, guess what? 50 days average. They took us five years to cut five days down, right?[Alec] Yep.[Sudhir] So not a good benchmark, if you will. I think what needs to happen is there has to be a leader that goes in, leads this and brings about a change, the others will follow, the competitors will follow ’cause there will not be a choice. I think that’s what we will be.[Alec] So William has this as a closing question, Sudhir, and I love it because I think it’d be a good way to wrap it up here. He says, “As you close on your first year with loanDepot, “what are some of your standout observations you’ve had “up to this point?” I think that’s a cool way to end our conversation.[Sudhir] Absolutely great company to work for. Outstanding culture. It’s a very team[Sudhir]oriented culture. There’re a lot of good people in the company that have been here since founding and every single one of them have been extremely good to work with. I don’t have organizational charts and things like that so I go talk to everybody and I think it’s just been a, there’s a culture of can[Sudhir]do attitude, there’s a culture of confidence and also there’s a culture of appreciation, if you will, which is very important. There’s one thing that I absolutely noticed that, and I wanna make sure that that culture is there in technology as well as, but I didn’t have to do anything because it was already there, inclusiveness. And I think inclusiveness is a very, very important right. And we are in the forefront of technology so what else there is? But it’s a great company. We have very good leadership. Anthony is a absolute visionary, and he definitely is and he is changing the, he’s transforming the industry as well in the process. So that’s what I would say. My observation is, great company, not as challenging to transform as in my previous experiences and roles, because when you have a good company with good culture and good attitude, good team, it’s actually easier to transform than otherwise.[Alec] Well, Sudhir, today thank you for joining today. Really, really just excited you’re on the team, love working with you, love our collaborations we’ve already had together. I mean, you’re speaking the truth, you’re definitely accessible reaching out, trying to figure out how the world works and what the business side needs. I loved your example earlier of sitting in the office in Santa Monica with a bunch of loan people like watching them push buttons, love our collaboration with your tech team and everybody else. So guys, we’re gonna wrap down, if you have any more comments and questions, we will get to you, I will answer these to you, please continue to engage on the social and again, if you like this podcast, we put out on next week, so subscribe on Apple, and I’d love to see you there. Sudhir, have a wonderful day my friend.[Sudhir] Thank you so much, glad to be here and looking forward to a future podcast as well.[Alec] Absolutely, we’ll bring you back. Take care everybody. We are out for the day.[Sudhir] Take care.

Neel explains how we can use Instagram and how to hack the system. He also speaks upon the growth it brings his business.

Neel is top producing manager based in Nevada.  He has exploded his business through content marketing on multiple platforms, and was recently recognized as a 2019 Video Influencer by BombBomb & Tom Ferry.  Neel produces a large volume of content on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.  He also produces a podcast, The NeelHome Podcast – which is available on YouTube and all major podcast platforms.

Episode Transcribe

– Friends we’re gonna pivot into Instagram. Neel Dhingra hidden studio hanging out, this is gonna be a really fun conversation, so without further ado, another 30 minutes, let’s go into Instagram and bring on Neel. All right friends and professionals, we are on to present a number two, with our topic of mastering Instagram, now, when I found Neel Dhingra. I was like, holy crap, this guy is producing content envy, if content envy is a thing, it’s a thing. And I first saw him on Instagram, dominating the space 20,000 plus followers, but actually getting great collaboration on that platform. And so I was like, hey dude, let’s dive in to mastering Instagram and he said, yes. So here he is without further ado, let’s bring on Neel Dhingra, check out the master of Instagram. I love the music, dude, I get pumped. I actually have to those otherwise I would die of talking to myself too much, Neel what’s up, dude?- Hey buddy how are ya?- Dude I’m so stoked to talk to you today, thank you for being part of the collab. Thank you for sharing all that you do, and I know, but just before we start guys. I know we’re gonna talk about Instagram and dive into that platform, cause it’s important, there’s people there, there’s opportunity there, but man, this guy does so much more to, I mean, this is another guy who’s had a podcast with Gary Vee and I hate him for forever. I mean, this guy is producing content at scale across multiple mediums. And so thanks for diving into one today, dude I’m really excited.- Yeah man, thanks for doing this, I really, you said how you found me and I had found you same way through LinkedIn, like you found me on Instagram, I found you on LinkedIn, and I saw when you were doing those hundred days every day.- No, never again.- And I was like, who is this guy? I cannot get him out of my feet, like every day there was another video and another video and it just kind of came out of nowhere and then I started watching them and then I started learning and it’s kinda cool how there’s people popping up within the industry now, that are helping others at other companies, because like I was preached at. We should collaborate, not hate and not compete because there’s so much business, and I think once you realize, how much business there is, like, once you, a bunch of business gets to a point where you could take on more, then you finally get that point of like, okay, now I understand what all these guys have been saying. Like there’s enough out there for everybody, so we should all help each other.- Man, I love that well, let’s talk about Instagram. When did you get into Instagram? When did you make it a focus and a core part of your strategy?- So I started on Instagram, an account just about two years ago, I didn’t even have an account. Okay, so I had a Facebook and— Hold on a second, everyone’s gonna freak out on this, like that’s two years ago?- Yeah.- That’s not like I’ve been building it for 10 years.- No.- And by the way, if you’re following on Facebook or YouTube and LinkedIn, look for the links we’re gonna post right now that are gonna have his handle, so you can go check out what’s going on. So two years ago you decided what made you get in?- So, I just been following content, from everybody and I was a consumer of content not really creative content and I just started seeing all this stuff, and it was just a cool place to be like, if you think about it, who’s the cool kid, of all these things, I guess we’re not getting into TikTok yet, but for me it was Instagram because that’s where that was kind of red hot, that’s where everybody’s at, that’s where my age group of content creators was at, that’s where all the big influencers, the most known influencers were at. So I started following and learning from other people, and then I kind of started seeing what they were doing, I was like, I can give this a shot. And the first, foray into posting content that was bad, like, I didn’t get anything from it, it’s a hard one to crack.- I wanna talk about that, why was it bad? Like why do you think it was bad?- Well, it’s because you’re learning. You don’t know what’s gonna work, and a lot of times in our business, like we’re so used… I’ve been in the business for 18 years. I’ve got the sales thing ingrained in me right? So I thought I was supposed to go on and say, hey, I’m the best mortgage lender, I have the best rates products, and I’m the most experienced, so you should work with me, like I started overselling myself and not really realizing that that’s coming across bad.- Well, so pause, cause that’s such, everyone’s not gonna hear that right away, I don’t wanna hear that right away, I want you to hit it again, because if you’re gonna go into social media, people think it’s social selling, I need to sell, I’m gonna sell. And so your experience was that didn’t go so well.- No, it doesn’t sales on… When you’re growing, you’re trying to grow and influence, to build your brand, grow an audience, selling works against you. So it’s counterproductive, so you want to, shift that whole mindset, and it’s hard for us in this industry, because like I said, we’ve all been taught from the first time closed mouth doesn’t get fed, always be closing, you have all these things that you’ve been trained, and I come from a background of like coaching and I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the core of coaching and things like that. And it’s very aggressive as far as like, you gotta ask for business, you gotta call these 20 people and ask them for business and ask them and shut your mouth. And you’ll be surprised what happened and all those things they teach you, and so that does work, like it’s, I’m not knocking the core or any of that coaching stuff or the sales stuff, it works, but it does not work on social right, so I had to get off that.- So what do you start doing?- So then I started thinking, okay, what are the guys who are growing. How are they getting, engagement? And, trying to figure out that hack, and I think it’s very difficult because what happens is on Facebook, I think the audience is more forgiving. They’re willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, on YouTube, you’re just kinda like tree in the forest, you post your video, you’re not really expecting much feedback, same thing with Twitter, you’re not really expecting much, but on Instagram when you post something and you get no engagement, it kind of hurts you, you’re like kind of bummed out, right?- So I wanna talk about that, cause that’s when people immediately go, this is bullshit, like, this is not for me, this is whatever, because they got that initial, stab.- Yeah, so what you’ll see is like, people reach out, they’ll ask me that question, like I’ve been doing it. So I just kind of gave up on Instagram, because it’s not really working for me. And you’ll see a bunch of posts that are all sales related or that are just canned corporate type produced content that everybody’s using, so it just, it doesn’t stick out. So you have to think about it, other than TikTok for Instagram, it is the shortest attention span. So we think of YouTube, we think of Facebook, we think of all these platforms. And as far as the users intent on Instagram, it’s their intent is quick, short things, they wanna get some piece of information or they wanna laugh or they wanna get some entertainment, and it’s fast, that’s why you see Instagram stories is the fastest growing thing. They literally put Snapchat out of business, almost like they came out with stories and it just took off, it’s insane, the daily user growth on stories, so what happened was. That tells you that stories is fast, it’s quick, it’s real and that’s what people want on Instagram, so like I had to figure out how can I create content that fits the intent of the user on that platform?- That smart, that’s totally, that’s absolutely dead on, people are missing that point.- Yeah and that’s where people I think are failing on Instagram so what I wanna try and do is. With things like this and with the content I put out is, I wanna help people, create content that would get better reach on Instagram, because it’s the hardest one to crack. And also, find success because like, what you’re saying is when you don’t get any positive feedback and you don’t get any engagement, you don’t get any results from there, you give up on that.- Yeah.- And that’s the problem. So, just simply posting, there is not gonna get it done. You actually have to engage there, and I know you do a great job of this, on LinkedIn and I’ve seen you on active on many platforms, engage with other people’s content, so that way they see you and then they come check you out.- So yeah, we have to unpack that deeper because I think that’s honestly the core truth by the way, on every platform.- Yes.- And so, especially on Instagram, because on LinkedIn or on Facebook you send a request to connect and now you’re buddies, but it doesn’t work that way on Instagram, you can go, I can go like Neel and follow Neel, it doesn’t mean Neel is following me.- Yeah, so in order for that, so you can like, you can follow somebody, but the main thing that will get somebody’s attention, either a client, a friend of a friend, somebody you wanna network with, somebody in industry or even an influencer. Is to leave genuine comments, genuinely engage with their content, so don’t spam people, but actually look at someone if you’d like, if you saw a piece of content, like it’s an image of a carousel or a video and you liked it or something stuck out to you leave a comment, like put yourself out there. And then that sticks out, because when somebody for a smaller account, when somebody leaves a comment, they only get five, to 10 comments. Yours sticks out like a sore thumb, now, all of a sudden you’re like, who’s this Alec guy I’m gonna go check him out. Oh, he’s in the industry too, or Oh, he’s friends of so-and-so, I know them and then all of a sudden it starts the connection.- Dude I love that? We have a question here for ya, I threw it up there. Do you think that conversations or vibes are different in the DM across all platforms? And how much do you utilize or I add to it, how much you utilize direct messaging in Instagram personally?- I use it a lot because the reason why it’s super easy, it’s native to the platform, you can leave, you can send voice memos, you can send video messages and you can send texts. But the cool thing about it, is the more engaged you are with people on DM, the more they will see your content, because then the algorithm realizes that. If me and Alec are DMing all the time, then when I post Alec’s gonna be one of the first people that the algorithm shows the content to, because the algorithm knows that we’re connected. So it helps to DM with people, and to be responsive when somebody DMs you to respond, in a reasonable timeframe because then it’s actually working for you as far as increasing your engagement, increasing your reach on the platform.- Well, lets talk a little bit about results Neel, so you’ve put a lot of two years of effort into this into that platform specifically. Share with everybody, like what has that done for you? What has it done for your business? How has it helped you? Are you getting business? Are you getting DMs? Like what what’s going on there?- Yeah, so I was in the industry, like many of us asking for business, getting referral partners, asking for meetings and things like that right, and I was asking and if you ask enough people, you get the business, but I was getting more more burnt up because my efforts were becoming less effective, so I would have to ask way more people in order to get the same results and then each time that’s growing, because people don’t want to deal with unknown individuals. They’re not taking, they’re not answering cold calls, things like that. So buying leads was, it just seemed like a dying business for me, so I said, how do I change that to attract? And so I started doing this stuff and then what happened was, as I started to find more success, people start to reach out to me, and I think you’d be shocked when it happens the first time when someone DMs you and says, hey Alec, do you have time maybe today to meet with me to discuss, my financing or would you have time to talk to me about this? I know you’re a busy guy, blah blah. And you’re like, do I have time? Yeah, this is awesome, so people start reaching out to you, hellos, like, would it be cool if a realtor asks you to coffee? Like the first time that happened to me, I was like, oh shit, I’ve been asking realtors to go out for 10 years, and now they’re asking me like, what’s up with that. So, once you become a thought leader, once you become putting out good quality content, I mean, I think of it this way. There’s so many people knowledgeable in our industry like that know the job inside out, they provide extreme value, but nobody knows it except a small group of clients that they work with. So imagine taking all those secrets and all those things and all your expertise and putting it out there in pieces of content. Now, all of a sudden, everyone gets to see it and you’ll be surprised how many people are attracted to that, so they’re like, who is this guy? That’s sharing all this great information, and then they ask you, can I pick your brain? When I need you, the first person I think of is that guy who’s, I’ve seen 10 of his posts. I started to get more and more inbound, more, more inbound, and then it just kinda took off like, it was really slow, and I think this happens with all businesses, as you’re trying to scale communication, it’s super, super slow and at the end, it’s fast, it’s big. And then all of a sudden it’s like a snow, it just started piling in, so my business from 18 to 19, quadrupled, so it was insane. So I had to hire and figure it out along the way, but— Exactly, in 2020, I will make four times the money that I made in 2018, as far as the annual net income basis, that’s a direct result of content marketing on these platforms.- So a lot of people haven’t that are now getting fired up. They probably clicked on your handle and it looked at your stuff on Instagram and they’re like, holy crap, it’s beautiful, it’s amazing I could never do that. I mean, he must have a full production team behind him producing this amazing looking carousels and content. And when we were rapping about that, cause I even asked you like, so share the secret man.- Yeah.- How do you get beautiful content like that without hiring a production crew and spending all this money and,- Yeah, and you’ll be surprised, I don’t know if I, can you share screen in here?- Yeah, you’re gonna break my… Let me see what happens here, oh yeah he broke my— Oh, okay yeah, we’ll do this for a second, okay so, yeah, so what I’ve got is… If I wanna show you guys one post here, can you see this?- we can’t see your posts, we just see .- There we go, okay so this was just a tweet. So you talk about like, this was a tweet. I’m just gonna tell you right now, this is the most reach I’ve ever got from an Instagram post and out of all those beautiful carousels and videos, think about this. I got videos with Gary Vee and this tweet outperformed the video okay?- I’m sorry, ’cause , I love that you’re doing this keep going.- Production value doesn’t matter okay, so don’t worry about the optics, I have a passion for things that look cool. So I put a little bit more effort into it, but it doesn’t mean that, that means it’s more successful that just means that I like it to look that way, that’s my preference, but that’s not gonna be why it’s successful, so if you look at this post, this was a thought I had one day I was sitting here and everybody was super negative on the media and everyone was super negative on Facebook and I was like, look guys, what you focus on grows? Like, it’s a simple thing and I basically said, don’t watch the news ’cause it’s gonna kill your mindset. And that’s all I said, it was just a thought I shared, and I was like, oh shit, I tweeted that screenshoted it and shared it on Instagram, and it reached 10,000 people in that day, and I was like, and half of those people weren’t following me by the way. So I don’t know what happened, but a lot of people started engaging with it and it was a thought that resonated with people and it took off, so I just wanted to show that to you guys because it’s kinda like. It shows that the quality doesn’t matter, but what I found was like, this is a, I’ll show you guys— That one was amazing, dude that one— That’s a part about squeezing content, but I’ll show you this. This is one I just recently posted and it was about the housing market and it was saying, is the housing market gonna crash? And there was, a lot of clients were asking me this. So this is where I get my, most of my topics. It’s either business partners, coworkers, or clients are asking these questions a lot. You could find it on Google Trends if you want, or you could take real data from the questions you’re getting on your email and in your DMs, in your phone. So this was one, I just got, and I thought, how could I share this real quick? So I just wrote down my thoughts and then I put it into this, image posts and what happens is when you’re on the platform and you see this, if I just said, is the housing market gonna crash? Look at my ideas. It’s not going to stop your thumb, so you think about people on Instagram, their thumb is going up and down on the platform that is feeding. I need to stop the thumb somehow, so I said, let me take a picture with my cell phone because you don’t have to get a photographer. They just made the, oh shit, “Home Alone” face, whatever that is, I don’t know. And I said, is the housing market gonna crash? And because this is kind of like catchy or like, may it stop, I have a better chance of stopping your thumb if I use that image. So try and do things that would… So that’s how I got people to stop on this, and this is a great performing post, I got a bunch of business from, because it answered a question that many consumers have, and it answered a question that many realtors are getting asked by their clients. So they could share this with their clientele.- I love so much that you just shared that you’re most the most reach you’ve had in a post is a picture of a tweet. It’s just destroying people’s excuses right now, which I always love because the real excuse is we’re just afraid of being rejected or being, not having our, that’s a real issue, and so we say things like, I can’t make beautiful content, And then Neel’s like my best pieces picture of my .- I don’t know why dude, I can’t explain it, but what I will tell you is that mix it up because don’t say no for the audience. It’d be like me asking you Alec, hey, can we jump on a podcast? But it’s okay, if you don’t wanna do it, I understand you’re really busy. Like you would never say no in the same sentence, so that’s what people are saying. They’re like, I have this idea to post, but nobody’s gonna like it, and then they don’t post it. So I had the idea to post it and I just posted it. You’re not offending anybody by posting it. You’re not, I guess you could offend, but if you, if it’s a general, if it’s your own genuine thoughts or your own general advice, you’re not offending anybody. If somebody doesn’t like it, they’ll just keep the thumb going, no big deal.- So, okay so let’s do this within a . If you guys have questions, we have 12 minutes left on this with Neel. Please go check out his handles, you’ll get the… By the way, the one of the best things you can do, if you’re learning these new games guys is just to go follow people like Neel and just pay attention. Like just what are they doing and how is it working? And like, that’s how people learn.- And to your point, Alec I thought I learned. Gary Vee says this, “watch what I do, not what I say.” So he says, or he does in his videos, he takes the most impactful clip or the most impactful thing in the video and puts it to the front of the video, so if you ever watch any of his microcontent or many creators do this nowadays as well. You’ll watch the video, the video that comes up in your feed and it’s him saying something that was kind of polarizing or him saying something that was catchy or whatever the most important thing of the piece was. And then it goes into the video, so I started doing that and it greatly increased my reach on the videos, because what I’m saying is on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, when you post a video, the intent of the user is to watch a video. So they stop on your video and they’re gonna watch it, and they’ll give you some time. On Instagram they’re not gonna give you that time. So if the meet, if the most important part is like 47 seconds in, they’re probably just gonna keep scrolling they’ll never get to see it, very few will see it, I mean, some people that are, that wanna watch your stuff, they’ll see it, but everybody else who’s new to you won’t see it or if who’s busy. So if you put that to the front, you just, all of a sudden get more reach on the video, so I started doing that. That’s a great example of like, just take the idea like from somebody else and try it in your own, and then if it doesn’t work, try it again. So that was done with a simple video editing app that I use, on my phone, it’s called InShot. You can do this stuff with your own apps that are free either on your PC, Mac or phone.- So here’s a question and this would be a good, like wind down for the next 10 minutes as we kind of get to the closing Instagram. You got a brand new person does not necessarily count and feels like I need to be in that space. Number one, do you tell them to go in? So, you say yeah, you need to be in there or not right? So that’s one question I want you to ask and then piggybacking off this one, how do you start building that initial audience? You’ve hit that a couple of times in our 20 minutes already, but just let’s land the whole thing on like, one-on-one get in, what do you do?- Okay so first I would get on the platform, yes. Optimize your bio, okay so if somebody lands on your page, your bio page, what does it say? Who are you? Okay, why should I follow you? because, so in my case, I would say, here’s who I am. Here’s what I’m passionate about, here’s what I do for a living. Don’t just self promote, but just say like what would be in it for me as someone to create that, I would say, to have an image of yourself, that is gonna catch somebody’s attention. That’s actually shows your face and is happy, some people use like a logo of a company or something that is not personal. We’re only gonna follow people on here, we’re not necessarily gonna follow companies, so I would use that. So put yourself out there and optimize your bio, then create a piece, a few pieces of content, just post, it could be pictures, it could be carousels, It could be like, if you just said a tweet, screenshot of a tweet, it could be a quick video, whatever. So post those, and then what I would start doing is engaging with others, so, go to your client, follow all your past clients and friends and people in the industry that you like and all that stuff, and start engaging with them, liking, commenting on their content. I would just, for me, I spend like probably an hour, in the beginning of the day, now it’s down because they’re so busy with day-to-day stuff that I may only have 10 or 15 minutes, but just spend a little bit of time each day, engaging with other people’s content and then go into like your friends and colleagues and go into those people’s, go into their friends and engage with them, because that’s connected.- That’s gold, people are gonna miss all that, so you got, I’m gonna to echo it again. Number one is just start engaging with people authentically with comments, thoughtful comments, like be a part of the conversation and then go to the friends of your friends and you can pull their list up and find who they are and start connecting and so Matt has a great question from YouTube, should this be a business account or should this be like your personal Instagram?- So I would convert it to a business account because it’s not gonna diminish your reach, but it gives you additional tools and analytics, it gives you the ability to promote and run ads. It gives you the ability to see all this backside analytics that are not available to personal account and be sure I forgot about this, make sure your account is public, because if you — can get that.- I mean, I see people all day on here, private and then you’re not gonna like, you can’t see any of their posts, you can’t see anything. It says private, so I mean, I asked people and they’re like well I do that because it’s private to me, it’s my family, that’s fine. Create a separate account maybe if you wanna not share family stuff, you do whatever you wanna do, but for your account where you’re gonna try and build your personal brand, it’s gotta be public.- So there you have it guys, I mean, if you’re gonna play in the space where the people are there in Instagram, Neel has been very clear, it’s radically transformed, not only in uplifting his personal brand and bringing him up to a new level where actually customers and realtors are like, Neel, can you help me? But he’s given you the roadmap, which is make it a business, get the analytics and then make it about them, start engaging other people. You have any advice brother? For anybody that’serious- And you brought this up earlier Alec and this, many people have asked us, how do you create this type of content? Okay, so if you’re busy in the mortgage business right now, you probably make an a good amount of money, right? Is it okay if this month you take like a little bit of that money and you hire someone to help with this stuff? Is that acceptable, if you just take home a little bit less money? Maybe we can, I don’t know, maybe hoard a little bit less this month. So I think there’s a lot of business out there, so if you’re doing a lot of business, spend a little bit on this, because this is important, like many times we’re hoarding all this money, we take all the money out and we hoard it for what, we’re scared to invest in our business, in our personal brand, because we don’t know what the ROI is gonna be, so we don’t do it. So I would tell people, look, go on Upwork. You want a graphics designer, go on Upwork and look up graphics designer for social. There are people where you can hire them for like couple hundred bucks a month to create, to help you create that. I don’t know anything about Photoshop, think I create those, I can’t do them. So what I do is I write down my idea. I give them some pictures that I took and I say, could you make this look cool here’s my idea. And then I get, the next day in my inbox, I have a post ready. So, leverage people to help you with where you’re deficient. I’m not great at video editing, but I know video editors are everywhere on Fiverr and on Upwork, so pay someone to help you edit the video, and then scan it, that allows you to scale, so I think at the beginning you could do it all yourself, I did all my stuff from the very beginning, I use tools like Canva and these free apps, and then as you want to start increasing the quality, if that’s something you wanna do, then you can have independent contractors help you, and it’s actually quite affordable I would say people think it’s super expensive to have that, it’s not, it’s very cheap.- So you’re just blowing up excuses, like Mike I’m blowing it up, showing that your tweet was like one of your biggest reaching things, you don’t need to have this higher produced stuff, but you can go to Fiverr and Upwork and you can find all these resources and spend some money, invest in it because it’s important. And so I want to end with this. The very first thing you talked about, cause the excuses are really, I’m just afraid. Cause it’s not about knowledge, knowledge is at the literal tip of our fingers we have all of human knowledge. So it’s not knowledge, it’s that I’m afraid, I’m insecure I’m nervous, whatever it is and when you push through it, you figured out how to post it when no one was responding. I wanna go back into that space where you were, when you first started your account two years ago and you were getting crickets, what was your motivation to keep going?- It’s, if you create something that is going to help somebody else. So before you post it, think what would somebody get out of this? Even if you just have all your close friends and your family following, they will engage with that and they will share it, okay. And you’ll be introduced to somebody, so when I saw the first couple of people say, hey, man, this really helped me, thanks for sharing this. Please do more of this, or I got that first DM where someone’s like, “hey, I saw this, “could you help me with this?” Or had questions, I think that’s when I was like, oh shit, this works and now I can, it gives you the motivation to going. So if you put out something that would help somebody, even if you have a small audience, it’s gonna resonate with people and then you’ll start to see results and that will motivate you to do more, more and more. But if you don’t ever put out anything, that’s gonna help and it’s all about you, nobody’s gonna really engage, and then you’re probably gonna quit, so I think first, fix that issue first and then you’ll start to find your own motivation before.- Dude, thank you, you guys, if you’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, all of his handles, all of his connections, YouTube channel, all of his Facebook, all his Instagram right there, connecting with Neel, find out what he’s doing because he’s doing really, really cool stuff. Hey, Neel I got my producer, Mike is telling me getting mad at me that I have to do a selfie for the gram.- All right- Or else I’m not on the gram.- I’m gonna do one as well. We’ve gotta do it, yeah, we’re talking about content creation, this is a piece of content right? So thanks so much for doing this Alec, I really appreciate it, man.- Oh man three minutes, any final words of wisdom and advice, what do you got?- I would just say, look guys, if you’re in the industry, there’s a lot of things you hate about your job. there’s a lot of things you’d love, there’s a lot of things you hate, the things that you don’t like about your job, this will solve that, okay so everything that bothers you, being treated like a commodity being commoditized. People grinding you on interest rates or price or commission or whatever. this will solve it, trust me, because this will have people value you and it makes your job much more enjoyable. And to me it’s given me, I was getting burnt out and it’s given me a whole new, motivation to keep going,- Dude I love that, that is so good. That’s so true and right now the opportunity has never been more ripe it’s just time. Thank you so much for hanging out with Collab man.- Thank you so much.- Talk to you, see ya on the internet.- All right, buddy- Later, buddy.- Man, dive into the water team. Like how much more proof do you need? Dive into the water, I don’t care where but go all in and have some fun with your career with yourself, or take yourself much seriously. At the end of all that stuff, is unbelievable opportunity if your willing to I hope it you value today. Please go find these wonderful human beings online connect with them, all of them do what they’re doing, man I appreciate you all have a wonderful day and a wonderful week I’ll see you on the internet.

Phil Treadwell – The Power of the Podcast If you are worried about content, hear from Phil how much you can pull from one podcast and how easy it is to just hit record. 

Phil is a 16-year mortgage industry veteran and the Founder & Host the Mortgage Marketing Expert podcast, with a simple mission: to help mortgage professionals build their business and do mortgage marketing better. I interview top mortgage industry experts who share firsthand experience and advice that mortgage & real estate professionals can use to build a more effective and efficient business.

Episode Transcribe

-I’m really excited for our first one, The Power of Podcast with Phil Treadwell. Let’s bring him on right now. All right, friends and professionals, here we are with topic number one. And what better way to jump into this social media collab and the Power of Podcast with Mister Podcast himself, Phil Treadwell. Now, this guy’s been running a podcast for over two years, dramatically changed his whole career, the trajectory of his path by putting his word out for everybody to connect with and engage. And so let’s talk about the Power of Podcast with Phil Treadmill.- Woo intros bro, intros.- Nice dude.- What do you know about intros?- I’m right in the background dancing to this Intro music. I’m like this is good stuff.- Well dude, Phil, thank you for being here today. Thank you for talking about this topic that I know you’re super passionate about. And I have to tell you before we start, you’re a major inspiration to me in my podcast. Just the fact that you were willing to, you were the first one I got exposed to in mortgage.- I appreciate that man. That’s awesome.- So let’s talk about your podcast dude, but let’s set it up. How long you’ve been doing this game? What’s it like?- Well mortgage game, 16 years. Podcast game a little over two. I mean, technically I started the podcast a couple of months before the podcast officially launched, but you know it was one of those things I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while, and like all great mortgage professionals, I’m a procrastinator and I waited and I bought all the equipment and the microphone, and then I did nothing with it for like a year. And so I decided one day, I had a really bad bout with pneumonia and I’ve had pneumonia a few times. I’ve always had some asthma and allergy symptoms and my mortality kind of flashed before my eyes, as I get older, I realize that hey, you know we only got a short time on this rock to do what we wanna do and not to go morbid but at the same time, I’m like hey why haven’t executed some of these things, and I was sitting on my couch on a Sunday night, and I thought “You know what? I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna do a podcast,” and I started inviting some of the biggest people in the industry, people that I knew, people that I didn’t know and by the next morning, I had three podcast recordings later that week, and then I realized you know what? I want to do this podcast but I’m not really sure how to do it. And so I called a friend of mine and told him, I said, “Dude you’ve got a podcast. It’s like out on Apple, it’s on all these different things and bro like let’s be honest, you didn’t do this, like who helped you? Come on man.” And so he gave me his production team and we were off and running. And so launched with five episodes on the first part of June in 2018 and went to mastermind promoted it everywhere, started collaborating with other podcasters and the rest is history.- Dude, well I mean the rest is history. I mean it’s still it’s current life.- Right for sure.- You’re still living in this space. So I mean let’s just quickly, you mentioned insecurity, as you mentioned like I don’t know if I should do this or how to do this and you mentioned procrastination. A lot of people have been dealing with that in their own life, and so let’s just kind of dive into some results for a second and give some people some hope into like, is this worth it? What happened to your career, to you, when you just finally jumped off?- Man it’s been all positive. So first of all, let’s start with the procrastination insecurity and some of those barriers to entry that a lot of people have. You just have to go do it. There’s no quick fix. There’s no solution. The solution is to take action and that’s really what happened is before I even knew how to do the podcast, I started booking interviews and what happens is if you subscribe to that ready fire aim mentality, a lot more gets done. And so at the end of the day that’s really what I did and then from that point what happened was I’ve started collaborating with some of the industry’s best influencers, experts, industry Titans that came on the podcast because my sole purpose was to help people build their business and do mortgage marketing better. Anybody that’s listened to the podcast, here’s that mission in the beginning and so what we did is we were just trying to add value and content and so by collaborating with these people, I got to know what they knew. I got to share it with other people. I got exposed to a lot of concepts and people that I wouldn’t before and then through that, my business group. Podcast downloads grew; social media followers grew; income grew. It all grew because I subscribed to ready fire aim, and I didn’t, some people all the time, you can’t have paralysis by analysis. Everybody wants to have their setup and they want to know how gonna do it in the scripts.- Hold on, hold on let’s talk about your first setup dude.- Please.- What was it, like tell everybody– You mean, what is it ’cause we still have the same first setup. We got a right here it’s a blue Yeti. It’s the old school OG silver one. Yeah that’s a black one right there. I bought this a year before I started the podcast so 2017 bought a $100 microphone. I still have the same $40 Logitech webcam right here.- Yeah- Yep. You see what happens is if I go too high def and you see what I really look like, you’re gonna understand why I have a radio faced into the podcast and not like this whole video thing that you’re just rocking out of the park by the way. And so I mean at the end of the day, my first setup was about a $150 worth of equipment. I found a podcast hosting platform that was like 15 bucks a month and then everything else was because I didn’t want to take the time to learn how to edit, and I paid someone else to do it. So I mean again my setup was minimal and I still use it to this day.- Well see I love that dude because it’s just telling people dude just jump off the edge like, it’s just jump off the edge. It’s clearly worth it and we have a LinkedIn question here on this about solo style podcasts okay, which I love and I don’t know why I LinkedIn is throwing up LinkedIn User 1.0, but share with your thoughts on solo style podcasts.- Yeah you run an outline on what’s going on shared flow, as it goes, yeah, so I don’t do a lot of solo podcasts. I typically do an interview style. However, through industry syndicate, my partner Dustin Brown and a lot of other people do solo podcasts. Ones that I listen to and ones that I know that are most effective like Alec said you just talk. Now you may want to have some bullet points or some ideas of hey over the next half hour, I want to cover these concepts but if you try to make it scripted, it’s going to sound scripted and let’s be honest nobody wants to listen to that.- Nobody wants scripted.- At the end of the day you need to have an idea of what you want to talk about but you need to do it by telling stories right? A good friend of mine Rene Rodriguez has amplified, and he talks about frame message and tie down. That’s what a good story is, you wanna frame it up and tell people why they should care. You wanna cover your message and then bring it home with a call to action or with a challenge or if why did you listen to all this to begin with and if you have a couple of concepts, and you’ll tell stories that illustrate those points, you’ll have a lot of people who will listen and at the end of the day the reason memories are important is because you don’t have to memorize your own memories. So if you’ll just tell stories and talk about what you know and share, people will listen because you have something to say.- So Phil, did you ever think that starting the podcast two years ago would take you where you’re at today?- Absolutely not.- Yeah you didn’t see it either ’cause you know, I saw you sitting up there podcasting with GaryVee and I was like the most jealous like just sitting back like and like you know so two years ago to nothing to sitting down with GaryVee.- Yeah, yeah. So at the end of the day I started it specifically because I wanted to give people something to see when they googled me or looked me up on social media, because as a regional, I recruit and hire, I network, I like people, I love this industry. I want to move it forward and a podcast was a way for me to accomplish three things. One get exposure into the industry that I wanted to create credibility with. I wanted to add value and information to the people who was my audience and the third thing was I wanted to do content in a way that was passive, because I don’t watch a lot of long-form YouTube videos, and so podcasting you can get people engaged longer, and you can do it at the gym, you can do it while you’re at work, you can do in the car and that’s what I wanted. As a busy professional, that’s how I consume content. I wanted to create an outlet that did those same things.- So I want to hit something you said, because I don’t want people to miss this. You know what Phil’s doing is creating human connection at its core right? And so it’s framed up in mortgage ’cause that’s his space but I want to share a side thought and let Phil jump on it and go deeper because he’ll know people like this. I have a loan rep that works with us up in Seattle who started doing the podcast ’cause he’s starting to listen but his podcast is not about the mortgage industry.- Right.- His podcast is about adult men’s baseball leagues and these people that play baseball leagues competitively as adult males and are into it, like deep into it not just in watching it, but in playing it and so he started this thing called the Comebacker, and I’m like, “Well how much business are you getting from this?” And he’s like, “All of its now coming from this.” Because they know he does mortgages, like he doesn’t need to be like sponsored by me, the mortgage guy. It’s just amazing what it does and you’ve been living this.- Yeah, so personal branding I think people miss this a lot is about the person not the brand. And so many people want to create a shtick or a website or a logo and call that their personal brand when really what they need to be promoting in their content is themselves and just like this guy did with the podcast with the Comebacker, I’ve have a loan officer that created a podcast because he and his family to do a lot of ministries. They do a lot of nonprofits. They adopt kids and so he created a podcast in his community that does nothing but highlights other nonprofits, and charities and ministries in the area and again people know he’s a loan officer. You don’t have to go out and amplify that fact but he’s getting to get into circles and talk to people that he didn’t think that he would and so that’s really what this whole thing is about. With me my audience was other mortgage professionals, people I wanted to network with, people that I wanted to potentially recruit and hire and that’s the formula you have to choose. Who is your audience? You have to decide what type of message you want to give that audience and then number three, you choose the best medium to deliver that message to that audience. For me it was podcast because other busy mortgage professionals may not have time to sitting around and watch a 30 minute video but most of them do have time and are capable of listening to a 30 minute podcast. And so you know then it was a matter of just a little bit of hack and culture. I bring huge people on who had something to say you offer you know thousands of dollars a month is what their coaching costs or their platform and we get ’em for 30-45 minutes for free to ask any question, I didn’t care if nobody listened. I was learning all kinds of crazy stuff.- I like this again dude. The fact that you just asked people of credibility to come on, like who’s Phil Treadwell? And you’re like come on my podcast and they said yes, because I mean people want to talk about themselves and you’re giving them a platform to talk about themselves. You don’t even have to do the talking.- You don’t and that’s the cool part about it is most of them initially, I would never forget Todd Bookspan. He’s a good buddy of my now. When I reached out to Todd ’cause I had seen him at GaryVee he was there with a group of like 10 people and he was like, “Who are you? Why are you asking me on?” Whatever and I let him know, listen I’m just starting a podcast about mortgage professionals for mortgage professionals. I want to bring people on to offer content. We’re not monetizing this. I’m just trying to add value to the industry and those first 10 or 12 conversations were they realized, there was no hack as far as trying to get something for nothing. I wanted to amplify them add their value to my audience. I was gonna get to learn something and at the end of the day, once I had those first 5 or 10 guests on and had credibility, I was able to continue to get bigger and bigger guests and then now it’s you know a lot of people will answer my email or social media message because we’ve had you know the GaryVees and the Ryan Serhants and the Steve Sims and some of these people even outside of the industry that have come on, and so it was just a matter of asking. I learned that from 4-Hour Workweek with Tim Ferriss. Pick up the phone and ask and you’ll be shocked what happens, people like what do I need to say? What is my script? No call and say, “Hey here’s what I’m doing. I think you can add value. Here’s the type of value I can add for you. Are you interested?” And you’ll be shocked about how many people will say yes.- I mean it takes courage. It takes courage to do that but as you’re hearing from Phil directly guys, it’s gonna surprise you. Leslie I hope we answered your question. I think that Phil nailed it. Do what you’re passionate about. Connect to things you’re passionate about. You can see Phil’s passion about driving the industry forward, the mortgage industry, but trust me if you’re not connected into your passion, It’s not gonna land. Comment by Julian. By the way we’re on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube and in a second you’re gonna see either myself or producer Mikey drop all of Phil’s social connection places. So where you can subscribe to this podcast, where you can find them online, his YouTube channel that’s gonna come across about all of them but this is a great point and personal branding is about the person not the brand, just driving it home Phil. So let’s do this. Someone’s gonna start a podcast dude. They are gonna follow it up now. They heard you. They’re like oh my god, changed his career, changed his life. I gotta get in there you know you can do audio only podcast like how you started Phil ’cause you know you’re joking about Face for Radio– Radio face I’m tell ya’, yeah.- But that’s actually powerful because some people were like I don’t want to be on video and I’m yelling at ’em to be on video all day.- For all of those people that don’t want to listen to Alec listen to me, like it works. We got yin and yang going on here.- So if they want to sort of podcast and they’re coming to you for consultation, what are you gonna tell them?- Yeah so again I go through that three steps, who’s your audience? What type of message you’re trying to deliver? What’s the best medium because sometimes podcast isn’t the right medium. The same way people, “I want to do Facebook Ads.” Facebook Ads may not be the best medium for what it is you’re trying to do. So I try to want to make sure that podcasting is what they want to do. The second like Leslie was talking about is what subject matter, what are you gonna talk about? I agree with Alec. It needs to be something that you’re excited about, that you’re passionate about. I know it’s crazy but I am very passionate about the mortgage industry. I am a young guy. I, you know 16, years in I learned from Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, but I’m 38. I’m kind of one of the original Millennials and so I kind of bridged that gap between the old school and new school and I’m passionate about moving this industry forward. Hanging onto our long-term you know, the long-standing success principles and applying them in a millennial world. And I think you need to be passionate about that whatever that subject matter is. The very first podcast I ever listened to was called Basic Brewing Radio. I’ll give ’em a shoutout. They’re a home brewing podcast that was near where I was and they’re national all over the country, because I was in the process of opening up a craft beer brewery. And so I loved beer. I wanted to learn and that’s my first exposure to podcasting was home brewing. I’ve listened to podcasts of all kinds of subject matters and that’s what you have to do. Find something that you’re interested in, bring people on who want to talk about it, have a microphone going and go. So it’s very simple as far as find a good host. I mean there’s Libsyn and Buzzsprout and SoundUp and there’s all kinds of great places that you can put that audio recording and they blast it out to all the places that we listen to podcasts, but it’s as simple as grabbing a microphone, plugging into your laptop, having a conversation or having a conversation with yourself and putting that up for people to listen to and then market it a little bit on social media, do some videos like Alec was talking about the process of a podcast is not difficult. There are so many great resources out there. You can google it. You can message me, you can message Alec. All of these people and all these resources are out there for you. You just have to make the decision that you want to do it and that you’re gonna do it consistently and persistently over time. I don’t know if persistently is a word but we’re going to use it. Consistence and persistence over time is how that you’re gonna have success with this.- Dude I was joking with somebody Phil. They’re like I don’t know how to do a podcast. I’m like “You know how to do Zoom” and they’re like yeah. I’m like you see the record button at the bottom? Yeah, you just did a podcast , like you just did podcast.- You joke. What people don’t know is that, a lot of people know, but I don’t think I mentioned enough is every single one of my podcast recordings from day one has been recorded through Zoom, even the ones that are live right? So that’s how my first podcast producer taught me how to do it, because when you record in Zoom, as we all now know, it gives you an audio file and a video file.- You’re done.- It splits it off, so that audio file I send it to an editor. For a little bit of money they you know create a little intro and outro with some cool music. They put those bumpers on there and we upload it and that’s it. Even when I’m live and people laugh at me, but you know hey it’s a poor man’s podcast. I’m gonna roll with it. I’ll have people live. I’ll open up my laptop put the webcam on top. I’ll hit record in Zoom and record me and that person right next to each other. I know there’s all kinds of more techie ways to do it, but I didn’t know how to do it. I was a mortgage professional right? I had a microphone, I had a camera, I had a laptop and I did the thing, and so I mean we’ve had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of downloads and guests all over the place because we used a little bitty mic, a little bitty webcam, we pushed record and that’s all you have to do. We didn’t do anything special. We just did it consistently over time.- Man I love that message so much. So many people need to hear that that are in their space, whether it’s mortgage or so anything in sales, anything in sales we want to build community, I’ve got a buddy who does hardware components for computers you know transistors and blah blah blah and international distribution and he started a podcast and all of a sudden these guys at billion-dollar companies are like can I be a guest? And he says, there’s no one else in his space like contributing to the conversation, all of them were audiences.- Well and I now get at least one a day, if not two a day, people that reach out that want to be guests on the podcast. Some are a great fit and some aren’t because again my mission and the whole point of the podcast is when mortgage professionals listen that they’re hearing something of value that can help them build their business or do mortgage marketing better and some of the topics may not be as sexy as others right? That doesn’t mean that there’s not value there and sometimes I’ll throw on those episodes that a lot of people even my, you know, my own wife she’ll listen to me and help me out was like, “Well I mean that was you know an okay episode or whatever” and I’m like the people need to hear it. And so you kind of get to that place where you’re sharing information, whether it’s popular or not because your point is to do that, but be excited about it. I learn so much new stuff by having conversations with people and we all do it at events, the difference is they put a microphone in front of mine.- So I got a question here from a LinkedIn user. It’s fun, it’s gotta be the same person because everyone else on LinkedIn I’m getting their names but what’s your take in group discussion style podcasts? In your opinion are Millennials consuming this type of podcast content?- I think Millennials are consuming all types of podcast content first of all. And second of all, I love group style discussions, especially if you have a topic that you can just kind of like throw in the middle of them and let them go. That organic type of conversation, the authenticity that comes along with it is super powerful. I think there’s plenty of podcasts out there that are very scripted, that are well produced and there’s nothing wrong with that but I think something that people have related to our podcast from the beginning is, we don’t edit out every um and uh. We don’t go through and ask super scripted questions. Now there’s maybe some questions that we make sure and want to ask or if you listen to my podcast, I go through the same process of giving someone a background so they can frame-up hey here’s my experience, so here’s why what I’m telling you is going to be relevant, but I love group style podcasts. I love having more than one person on there, because enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm and so I’m not typically this enthusiastic and excited on camera, but I’m feeding off of Alec, and we’re talking about something that I really really like and so the more people you have, especially if they’re also equally excited and passionate about the topic that you’re going to have, man I think that that’s gold, and I think a lot of people will listen.- And I want to head to another thing you said and just see if you’ll go deeper on it for everybody. Man there’s so much to talk about. There’s so much content and there’s so many things and sometimes you know as a personal example, when I was doing that stupid 100 videos challenge, I had a video that I was, I woke up that day to post it out of Dropbox and I was like this is garbage. I like looked at I like watched it again, I’m like this is total garbage, but I didn’t have time to do another video. So I just posted it and sure enough later that day, I got an email from somebody who was like I really needed to hear this today. And I was sitting down there thinking this is garbage. No one cares about this. This is a stupid thing. How have you experienced that in the content you put out?- Yeah so when I first got started before the podcast, I actually started an Instagram page called Mortgage Marketing Expert and the whole point was to do a mortgage marketing tip of the day and I did that because as is, my team and my wife heard me coaching and helping other mortgage professionals. I was recruiting people or whatnot I would have these little one-liners that I would say. Like you know it just kind of came out you know personal branding is about the person, not the brand. It’s things that I think about and I say repetitively and so she started writing them down, and I put them out as a mortgage marketing tip of the day.- I love it.- Ironically the podcast was a byproduct of after about a 100 days, I started running out of stuff to say, and so I wanted to bring people on and steal their quotes and make those the new mortgage tips because I didn’t want to be redundant but the point of what you’re saying is the tips that I thought were gonna be awesome and were gonna get a lot of engagement and a lot of shares and a lot of likes, kind of fell flat and the ones I’m like I mean it’s okay, I’m gonna post one today those are the ones, the same thing, there were people like, that’s what I really needed to hear, and I realized that you can’t prejudge the content on the front end because either a podcast episode, a video, a piece of content that I’m not sure that I don’t know if it’s really any good or not, sometimes those are the ones that perform the best, but the end of the day, you have to keep hitting record. You have to keep hitting submit post, whatever euphemism you want to use, ’cause if you prejudge it at the end of the day, you’re robbing someone of something that they may need just because you didn’t like it, and so put it all out there and see what happens. I have to echo that man. For everybody listening now and in the future, just stop judging yourself so harshly dude. You’re your biggest critic not that, the world is way more accepting than you think, like everyone’s like “Oh I’m gonna sound stupid. I’m gonna be judged” and I’m like no you’re not. You’re doing that to yourself and this is you know Phil’s just sharing openly about his experience through this and the connection is created. And stop judging yourself man.- The enemy of great is perfect and everyone that tries to be perfect that tries to have the right saying that tries to produce it that has the right background like all these different things, you’re robbing yourself of doing great things, putting out great content, really accomplishing something because of that perfection. If you look at the statistics, there’s a very very small percentage difference in great that’s pretty easily attainable if you work hard and this perfection that’s unattainable, you really don’t get that much lift between the two. So focus on making the mistakes ’cause I know Alec will say this because I will too. Every really impactful thing that’s ever happened to me or that I’ve learned has been coming through a mistake that I’ve made or a failure that I’ve had or learning through someone else’s failure. And I say that all the time is you know you taking your experience and failures and imparting that into someone else is the very definition of wisdom, and so you know you can’t have great things happen without failures is the point. So don’t worry about making mistakes. Just go do a bunch of stuff, figure out what works, figure out what doesn’t work and the formula becomes very very clear.- So guys we’ve got about seven minutes left on The Power Of Podcast before we’re going in deep diving on Instagram. So this is your chance to really dry out your own personal questions and ask Phil what’s really going on. I think it’s self-evident you know, okay let me ask you this Phil, should everyone have a podcast?- I don’t think everyone should have a podcast. I think everybody that wants to have a podcast should. Podcasting is still wide open. I’m getting ready to post a blog post that talks about the things I’ve learned over the first two years and the very first point that I make in there is there’s still room for everyone. We’re not at critical mass where there’s not a lot of podcasts and the cool thing about podcasting and podcasters is we’re not mutually exclusive. We’re actually each other’s business development right? If someone that’s not been exposed to podcasts comes and listened to my podcast, chances are they’re gonna go subscribe to three or four or five others and vice versa. So we want to lift each other up. We want to help each other, so if you’re wanting to do a podcast, one of my first recommendation’s reach out to other podcasters. And so yes go out there and do it. We have I think the number is close to 100 million people now listens to podcasts on a monthly basis, but there’s still like half of the country that still has never even heard a podcast before. And I want to throw out a couple of real stats real quick because I think it’s extremely important. The average podcast episode is 37 to 40 minutes long and 93% of people listen to most or all of an episode that they begin. Only 7% of people listen to just the beginning or less than half and a couple of stats on that the reason that’s important is because a podcast listener is 45% more likely to have an income of $250,000 or more. You should hear target market and then the other part of that is that 70% of podcast listeners say that they’ve become aware of a product or service specifically because of a podcast episode, and that’s super important because when we’re talking about unfolding content and we’re talking about really creating ideas and unfolding plots and whatnot, you can’t do that in the first 10 seconds of a video but you can do that in the first five minutes of a podcast and so man I really, really encourage people if you’ve got a cool idea go do it. Be committed to it. Don’t do it for three months. I think it’s Lois House that says if you’re not committed to putting out a podcast episode consistently for two years, don’t even start. And I agree with him. I will say you don’t have to do it every single week but you need to do it consistently but yeah I think it’s a long-term play that people need to jump on board.- So let’s ask this and try to get this out in like a lightening round here. So let’s talk about momentum because you just made a comment that I think might scare people, which is you’re not willing to do it for two years, don’t do it and everyone’s like, “Aaah, it’s too much commitment.” And my personal experience on that is I was gonna do one podcast a month in 2020, that was my goal, that’s 12 podcasts.- Yeah.- And then all of a sudden now, I’m doing one a week. And I’m booked out through like for next 60 days and I was like holy crap, like the momentum is, it just rolled on me, and I’m like I think if you put yourself out there, you’d be surprised how it all connects.- For sure.- But then let’s talk, did you take on long-form content? Like this is long form term content, a podcast, but what does that do for you in terms of creating like as a pillar content for you? How does that help?- That was a softball. That was a great queue up right there. Podcast in my opinion is the best way to create long-form content. Example if I use Zoom, if Alec and I were on a Zoom call right now and I’m recording both audio and video, we’re gonna have a 30 to 45 minute conversation, and now what happens is you can use the audio for a podcast, so you have audio content. You can shorten those into smaller clips and do it on Alexa flash briefings on the Amazon device. You can take those and create audiogram graphics. You can take some of the quotes and create quote picks. You can transcribe it and create a blog. You can take two or three minute videos and create highlighted videos on YouTube. You now have a pillar content and long-form content that you can break up into micro content to put across any social media platform anywhere that you’re putting content out period. So my point is that you can have one 30 or 45 minute conversation, a week, a month however often you want to do it. I don’t want to scare people with that. I just want to make sure people don’t wait it and some will do three podcast episodes and cross my fingers for results, because there’s an element of a long term play here, but you could create a podcast even if it’s not officially a podcast you could have a conversation with someone and break that up into micro content, hundreds of different ways and now you don’t have to worry about what content do I create? What do I say? Go have a cool conversation with someone and break that up into a bunch of different pieces and now you have content to share all over the place.- Dude you’re the man.- You’re the man.- I’m so appreciative of this, like this 30 minute engagement time. I mean there’s so many comments here about like this is amazing and thank you and you know just your commitment to pushing the industry forward to having these conversations to sharing openly and honestly about like what gear you use, no secrets no hidden thing, no buy my ebook for $20 in the back, like no just that authentic nature is what’s crushing it dude. So I really appreciate you. Two minutes left; final comments from Phil Treadwell. What have you got?- Man you know effective marketing is the balance of trust and attention okay?- You wanna wrote that down.- What’s that?- Say it again, say it again.- Effective marketing is the balance of trust and attention and it’s something I say all the time so people are probably getting tired of me saying it, but I can light myself on fire or light Alec on fire and put it on TikTok and we’re gonna get all kinds of attention but we’ve not created any trust that people want to do business with us, but we have a lot of some of the most trusted mortgage professionals out there and real estate professionals that aren’t putting out content, that aren’t trying to build a brand and so they’re still not doing any business because people don’t know who they are. You have to balance the two. I will say to take it a step further that I think the future of production in our industry are built around technology, automation and access to data and I think that if you, you do a podcast and you create that micro content there’s all kinds of ways to automate it, but man at the same time, you know go out have fun with it. Do something that you’re going to every morning wake up and be like I’m excited to do this today. Don’t count the results. Look up six months a year later and you’ll be shocked at what’s happened.- Dude keep crushing it man. Thank you so much. All right, you’re out, you’re free brother.- Thanks man.- Appreciate you.- Have a good evening everybody.- Man, dive into the water team. Like how much more proof do you need? Dive into the waters. I don’t care where. But go all in on and have some fun with your career, with yourself, and take yourself more seriously. At the end of all that stuff is unbelievable opportunity if you’re on the playing space. I hope your I brought you value today. Please go find these wonderful human beings online, connect with them, all of them. See what they’re doing. Man I appreciate you all. Have a wonderful day and a wonderful week. Ill see you on the Internet.

This one’s about creating your personal brand as we know No Brand is a brand and we don’t want that. Come have a talk with me as I drop some tips on how to curate your personal brand.

In this edition of the LiveTime with Alec…

• Your tagline is not your brand.
• Your logo is not your brand.
• Your Social Media handle is not your name.
• The way a customer feels when they see all the above…that’s your brand.

Episode Transcribe

– What’s up everybody? Welcome.

Another Live Time with Alec… I’m Alec and it’s Tuesday.

A lot’s happening in the world out there, isn’t there? Crazy stuff happening in the world out there. Just had a fun podcast with a buddy of mine. So Adam runs an amazing company. I’d love to share some of those clips with you later. I just watched it this morning. I got all pumped up, so it was really fun. Thanks, for doing that. Hey, let’s talk about this guys. If you saw this little clip before and the little image right there, and you’re like, what is he talking about? I really wanna lean into this concept of branding because it’s so buzzy. So buzzy everyone’s like brand, you gotta have brand, personal brand. I’m like running out “personal brand.” And sadly, there’s a huge misconception of what this really means. And so we gotta break it down. First of all, I made a little joke on this. I’m sorry if I offended somebody, but your witty tagline, that’s not your brand. Stop it, like seriously. I know if you like it and it gives you joy wonderful, but the first time as people think brand they’re like, “I’m going to become like a tagline guy or girl.” And I’m like no, that’s not your brand at all, Stop that. Like, no, “I have a logo and a social handle.” By the way, The Fancy Home Financier. Come on, how good is that social handle? It’s not taken by the way. I gotta tell you how hard it was to make this graphic, because every time I would make a stupid tagline or a handle, I’d actually go look and be like, Oh, that’s somebody’s real handle. And I delete it cause I didn’t wanna go live and be just trashing somebody who’s like, “No that’s my handle.” Well there is no Fancy Home Financier. So you’re welcome internet, you can take that one and run, But just stop for a second. I lean into somebody and say like, They’re like “I need to get a logo.” That’s gotta be it, I got a brand I need a logo. Like you don’t, you don’t need the logos, they are absolutely meaningless, they’re meaningless. You know what gives a logo it’s meaning? Your experience with that brand. I’m gonna say that again, ’cause I don’t think you heard me in the back. The brands and the logos you see out there, they are absolute meaningless garbage. What brings them to life is the emotion you connect to that through the experiences you have with it. Does that make sense? So, your cool tagline, and your social handle, and your personal logo graphic from fiber are garbage, garbage. They don’t mean anything. They’re not helpful because what’s gonna happen is, you could have a circle with a thumbs up in it, could be your logo, and that logo will mean nothing, until the customer starts seeing it and experiences it and learning and just to feel what it means. It’s a feeling guys, a brand is a feeling. Your brand is a feeling. That’s what I want you to understand right now. People are like, “I can’t have my URL, which is, alechansonthemortgagegod.com. Cause I’m like stop, just stop. We talk so much, I talk so much lemme rephrase that. I talk so much about what your authentic self means and how to lead with that, versus lead with some kind of Logan or slogan, Logan slogan or tagline that are irrelevant. Here’s an exercise, here’s an exercise I wanna go with. And I’m just as guilty on this, ’cause in the beginning of the whole process, I did the same thing. Learning of personal branding and I did this exact same thing. I sat down with a bunch of loan officers. And so we’ll do this right now. In fact, if you’re watching this right now, I want you to comment too, you can be part of the conversation. So this is more of a dialogue. But this is exactly what I did. I sat down with a loan professional and said, “Hey look, let’s start working on your brand.” What are the five key adjectives? The five key words you want to be known for as a mortgage professional. Right there, there you go. The five key words and this is what I got and by the way a throw to comment in, if you have an additional one. One of my favorite, I’mma be a professional. I’mma be a professional. Okay, that’s what you want one of your five key brand names to be? Yeah, professional. Great, Well, what’s next? I wanna be honest. I wanna be known as the honest mortgage professional. Okay, what else? Amazing customer service. Right, that’s not a word, but I’ll give you okay, It’s three. Fine, you wanna have Amazing Customer Service. That’s one of your brand ethos, got it. What else? I wanna be kind. I wanna be known as a kind, professional, caring. I got that one a lot. I got reliable. I wanna be known as reliable mortgage, So people would write down the five adjectives to describe what they want their brand to be known for. You get things like I’m gonna be a man of integrity, Professor of integrity, yes excellent, so good, so wrong. None of those are relevant. First of all, let’s talk about brand for a second. It’s an emotion, it’s an emotional connection to a thing, to a person, to a logo if you will but that comes later. It’s an emotional connection. And so when you say the words like, “I wanna be known as a professional” and yet I go look at what you do, and I mean by what you do on the internet, ’cause that’s how we judge people now. I don’t need to frame this up anymore but it’s clear, we judge everybody by what we see them doing on the internet. Yes we do, yes you do. And so the first thing I wanna be known as professional. Excellent, awesome but I can’t find you anywhere. You don’t exist on the internet, so, that’s not helping your brand or I go online and I’m checking out your social media and I see nothing, but I see the absolute opposite of professional. Let’s just take away the drunk, like hitting a beer bong, of course that’s probably not gonna work. But let’s just say I just see a family guy. I just see somebody who loves their kids. I see somebody who looks like they have fun on the weekends, and they like to go hiking. Okay, that doesn’t mean you’re not, did you guys get it? You’re not connecting your content to the ethos, the feeling, the emotion you wanna drive forward into. I’ll give you another good example. In sales today, you gotta be Switzerland. If you want, I mean you don’t have to be, but how many times do you go on somebody’s social media and you see political posts, political posts, excellent. You letting the world know how you feel Woo! And alienating half the population in the process. I don’t know if that’s gonna help to sale. I don’t know that’s gonna help drive, I don’t know what kind of emotion you’re tryi^ng to connect to your brand. But being hyper political probably, it’s an angle. I’ll give it to you, it’s an angle. But this is what I want you guys to hear as you kinda lean into personal branding. There’s a really, really great speaker that I heard in the past. And he said “There is a secret in action.” And he described it like this, he goes look, “I thought that if I went out and loved everybody, “just loved on everybody that I would get love in return. “But the reality is that wasn’t true. “When I loved everybody, I became a loving man. “I thought when I would go out in the world and help people “help, help, help, help, help, help. “I would get help in return. And that’s not true. “What I found was that I became a helpful man. “When I went out and was caring and cared on everybody “and helped other humans through my care, “I didn’t get care in return, “I became known as a caring man.” When you are building a brand, every single thing you do, is going to create a connection with other human beings, a good one or a bad one or a neutral one, but everything you do right now, if you’re watching this, we’re having a moment. Even if you’re just listening to me and you’re already doing emails and whatever, we’re having a connection here and whatever I say next, whatever I do right now is going to pile in, to how you perceive me. The same is true with your brand. As you lean into what you do in your local market. Does that make sense? It sure as hell does to me. And it’s so obvious, but I keep missing it. Everyone starts to focus on the tagline, the logo, the social handle, you are your brand. Hey Dan, what’s up dude? Good to see you buddy. As you continue to show up in the digital space, as you continue to show up in any relationship, you’re building an emotional connection and that is your brand. If you wanna be a man of integrity, of honesty, or a woman of integrity and honesty, then you better show up in such a way that everything I witness doing, builds that definition for me. That’s it. And the other thing that really bothers me is, everyone wants to be professional, good customer service, of course that doesn’t differentiate you. It doesn’t make you special, It makes you decent at your job. But when you start to show me your real human side, when you start to show me what you care about, what makes you tick? What makes you move? I start to get a human connection to you. I’ll give you another gold nugget. It was dropped by Shondell on the podcast we did yesterday. If you missed it, shame on you. It’s on YouTube and it coming out Wednesday, tomorrow. It was an amazing nugget. one of the things she said I resonate with a hundred percent, is that “if you want to be known “as somebody who is reliable, trustworthy, committed, “then you gotta show up every day. “The only way to prove that “is through consistency over time.” There it is, and if that’s one of your brand, definitely the pillars, I wanna be known as a reliable consistent professional. Then you gotta show up every single day, being a reliable, consistent professional. But I also don’t want you to get over mixed on these big words. I put all these words up here, ’cause these are the first ones that pop up, when I started talking to people about, what do you want your brand to be? Who do you want to be known as? Like kind, caring, reliable, integrity, honesty, professional, blah, blah, blah. What about being a good friend? Now you could say that reliable makes you a good friend. And so does honesty and integrity and all that stuff. But if you put out content that shows you’re being a good friend, people are gonna get that ethos and experience. This to me it’s that old saying “your actions speak so loud, “I can no longer hear you talk.” I don’t care about your witty tagline. It doesn’t mean anything to me. What I care about, is how you show up every day on the internet. and locally when we can hang out and hug and all that good stuff, because that is how I’m going to define you and your brand. Do not start with this stuff. The stuff on the screen, That stuff is a trick. It’s a trick on the branding conversation. It’s like you gotta start doing personal branding. And now you need a new website. and no you don’t. No one cares about your freaking website. Dude. Like no one cares. They don’t. People spend hours and hours and thousands and thousands of dollars building out a beautiful personal branding website. Like no one cares, dude. Why would you do that? Do that later. Like this stuff is not how you build brand. It’s not all of a sudden “Hey, I have a logo.” “I have a cool social handle.” ” I’ve got my witty tagline.” “And now I’m branded.” ” I’m a personal brand.” No, no. Your personal brand is developed over time through action. It’s how you show up. It’s how you are experienced. And it’s the emotional connection that happens to you, and the people you’re trying to serve. That’s how you develop and build personal brand. It’s a day by day process where you just continue, Karl’s doing it right now. When you would continue to show up, and you declare to the world why you’re showing up, why does it matter to you that you’re here in this place? And then you will start developing a brand because the emotional connection other people have will define it for you. Now yes, if you show up certain ways, people are gonna have certain reactions to it. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. But they’re not having a reaction to your stupid logo. I’m gonna say it again. They’re not having a reaction to your logo. They’re having a reaction to you. And that my friends, is how you build your personal brand. Don’t fall into the trap. The trap is that you gotta build this other stuff around it. Nope. The game is you just show up and you play. I have to repeat this quote that Shondell said yesterday on podcast. I have to repeat this quote ’cause it was so good. It’s now burned into my mind. And it’s part of my mantra now I’ve adopted it. It’s so right, because if you’re stuck, if you’re feeling me now and you’re like, okay, I gotta put out content and that will build my brand. Like that’s what I’m trying to do. Lemme just be very clear. You put out content, it will build your brand over time The type of content you put out will make an emotional connection. and it will build your brand over time. And you will become known by something via the emotional connection other humans have to you. And then yes, if you throw a logo there, it will start to mean something too. But it doesn’t mean anything in the beginning. It’s garbage. It’s white noise. Don’t get caught up in that. But if you’re feeling me on this. and you’re like, okay, I’m gonna start showing up. I gotta do it. I’m gonna do it, ’cause I believe in myself and I believe I have a purpose on this earth and I gotta step into this game, but I don’t know what to say. And I’ve teased this before because I’ve sat down with more professionals and even on lives, and said I don’t know what to say. And I go okay, Let’s talk about first time home buyers. How much down payment do you need? What FICO score do you need? Can you get a gift? What’s inspection? What’s appraisal? What’s gonna happen in the loan process. You need to come up with like 75,000 pieces of content. But even then, Shondell went one step deeper. And this is from her brain to yours. You’re welcome, It’s a gift. She mentioned being part of Facebook groups as a start to this. And I was like, okay, that’s a relevant conversation. I mean relevant topic. There’s a million Facebook groups. There’s some in your city right now that you should be a part of. Why? Because there’s thousands of people in there that you don’t have to be friends with and now you could be in a conversation with. You can be connected to. It’s like, Oh crap! That’s pretty cool. Like real estate investing as a group. Pretty good, probably pretty good to be a loan officer being in that group. But she said, “If you’re struggling with what content to put out, “you’re not in the right conversations.” And I was like, go on. And she just started to elaborate using this concept of the Facebook group. Inside this Facebook group, guess what? People are asking questions all the time. All the time. They’re saying things like,” Hey, I found this new house “and I wanna buy it and rent mine. “And I wanna try to refinance “so I can use my VA Benefit. ” Does anybody know what to do? I’m confused. ” And so her comment is so dead on. If you are struggling with what to put out to meet your personal brand, to answer questions, you’re not in the right conversations. Because if you are in those conversations, you’ll know exactly what content to put out because people will be asking those questions over and over again. If you’re, look here’s another, if you’re a Reddit nerd like me, every now and then I go down, like, it’s the dark web, but it’s fun. Whatever I like memes just don’t judge me, but you can go to Reddit and you can go to Subreddits like, mortgage info or real estate info. And Oh my gosh! There’s so many questions being asked there. All of a sudden now, you have the answers. You know what content to post. Go to these big Facebook groups, listen, and watch the questions being asked, now you know what answers to post. Guys this is a game. It’s all a game. It’s all a game, but I’ll tell you how you win the game. You win the game by serving others and being in relationship with them and building up enough of a reputation or a brand with them that as they have mortgage needs and questions, you’re the person they think of. That’s how you win the game and you can do it at scale. You can do it for free. All this stuff right now is at your fingertips. And all you have to do is have the courage to step into the light and share about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. That’s it, and listen, and you’ll find the right questions and you can answer them and you will kill it. But please my friends, do not start the personal brand journey. If that’s you, and you’re like, “I gotta get into the personal brand game.” Do not start with this stuff. It’s a distraction. It’s white noise. You get to start on your personal brand journey by putting out content, videos, pictures, articles, tweets, all the stuff you put out will start creating a human connection and it will start building your brand from the ground up day by day, every day. Brands are not built overnight, they’re built video by video, by video, by video over time. If these things give you joy, just have some fun with it. I just don’t want people to get distracted, that’s my main point. If you love The Fancy Home Financier, clever social handle, great, great, love it do it. But please don’t get distracted by what really creates brand. You could have the stupidest logo of all time, but if you show up and you kick ass every single day and you build gigantic human connection and emotional connection online, through all the content you do through all the engagement you do, they’re gonna see that crappy logo and they’re going to be like, yeah, that’s a good, I like that person. But it’s not the logo that mattered. It’s the experience they had with you. All right, kick some ass today guys, I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday. Join me Thursday, we’re gonna have the Chief Technology Officer of LoanDepot sit here on, to talk about tech and mortgage and what’s gonna happen to change our lives in amazing ways. Hope you guys have a wonderful Tuesday, by the way, if you’re watching this in the future, hit me up with a #bypassed I love seeing those come through on my comments, on my notifications ’cause I’m like, yeah, yeah someone’s watching this, brings me joy. #bypassed Have a wonderful day everybody. Talk to you later. Thanks Justin. See you guys.