January 8, 2025 • 32 mins
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Bekim is joined by Tom Hall. Tom is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of BluMortgage from Toronto, Ontario, one of the top independent CRMs for mortgage brokers in Canada. Used by 3 of the top 5 brokers in the country and over $11.5B in mortgage volume managed annually, BluMortgage is leading the transition from a historically manual-process to a digital-first experience for agents and their customers, and was named one of the Globe & Mail's Top Growing Companies in 2024. Tom is also the host of the Mortgage Tech Talks podcast, which covers the latest in mortgage technology, and was named one of the CMPs Rising Stars of 2024.
Tom is here to discuss: → What led him to BluMortgage, what BluMortgage is and who's their avatar client, and how BluMortgage has evolved from a diagnostic to a prescriptive business. → How to implement good CRM habits, separating your customer journey process from a system, and building a good business foundation with data & open source frameworks. → Where AI fits in the mortgage industry, predictions on the future of mortgage tech, and what's coming from BluMortgage in 2025.
BluMortgage Website: www.blumortgage.ca
BluMortgage Instagram: @blumortgage
BluMortgage LinkedIn: @BluMortgage
Tom Hall's Instagram: @mortgage_tech_tom
Tom Hall's LinkedIn: @TomHall
Tom Hall's YouTube: @mortgagetechtom
Mortgage Tech Talks Podcast: @mortgagetechtalks
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thank you for listening to theLending Thoughts podcast sponsored
by Rocket Pro.
I'm your host, Baken Murdita.
And as a guest today, I have...
Tom Hall, who is the founder of
Blue Mortgage.
We have an awesome conversation
and it's so good that we actuallydecided to cross interview each
other on each other's podcast.
So once you're done listening to
this, I highly recommend going tocheck out Mortgage Tech Talks,
(00:21):
which is Tom's podcast as well.
But Tom and I dive into the topics
of AI, of course, because I can'tresist.
We also talk about how toimplement some good CRM habits as
a mortgage broker and agent.
early on in your business to gain
a leg up on the industry.
And we talk about the industry and
consumer experience overall sothat you can run a better
(00:42):
business.
You're not going to want to miss
this.
Have a listen today.
Hey, Tom, thanks for joining metoday.
Hey, great to be here.
Absolutely.
So I'd like to start out with aquestion that tells the audience a
little bit about you.
If you could please tell us your
life story in 60 seconds or less.
(01:03):
All right, you got the clock on?
You're on.
Here we go.
I'll try to keep it simple.
Grew up in a small town, about 5
,000 people.
I had a twin sister, which kind of
kept things quite competitivethroughout my entire childhood,
which I'm thankful for now.
Went to school for engineering,
never did it.
Went right into consulting, which
we were just chatting about.
I did that for three, four years,
(01:24):
traveling around, helping bigcompanies do things.
Got kind of sick of that travelingaround.
That was 2019.
And then my good friend Massimo
was working on CRM stuff.
And I said, hey, that seems kind
of interesting.
And I jumped on at that time.
2019, that's when we launched BlueMortgage and been doing that ever
since.
It's been a fun ride and time.
on. Here we Very cool.
So yeah.
What is Blue Mortgage?Well, the punchline is we are CRM
(01:47):
for Canadian mortgage brokers.
We've grown it now to be, we call
it the top independent and we canget into independence and what
that all means, I'm sure.
But the top kind of independent
CRM in Canada right now forbrokers, you know, this idea of
CRM.
I think does get convoluted
sometimes.
Some people think it's just
newsletters, which it can be, butCRM does a bunch of things, right?
(02:11):
It's ultimately kind of a hub.
It's kind of your second brain in
a sense of really you can run mostprocesses or our most successful
brokers, I should say, run a lotof their business processes
through it.
So lead management, deal flow,
live deal flow, and of course,stay in touch with clients
afterwards.
But even partner management,
realtor management, a whole bunchcan happen in there.
So it's a database, it's a place.
(02:32):
to store information and a place
to automate things coming out ofthat.
Great.
And who's your core client as you
think about it?Like when you guys go to market,
who are you trying to get inconversations with to say, Hey, we
have a product and we think ithelps.
Yeah, I think it's, it's evolvedover the years.
You know, it's one of those thingswhere, you know, and we kind of
launched, we are naive and we justsaid, yeah, any, any mortgage
(02:53):
broker, what do you mean?Anybody can use us.
And I think that's still the case,but.
You know, I think in the techworld, people are obsessed with
this concept of product marketfit, right?
I'm sure you've heard that.
And I think where that product
market fit is most for us is, youknow, it doesn't have to be big
producers.
I mean, we do have quite a few of
three of the top five producers inCanada using Blue Mortgage right
now, but it's more for peoplewho... who want to scale, who want
(03:17):
to grow, right?It doesn't matter where they're at
now, but are looking at themselvesand their business and saying,
hey, do you want to grow?I do want to build a team and I do
want to build processes andsystems that'll help me get there.
And that's really, really where wehave a really strong product
market fit.
Gotcha.
So the way to think about it'slike a great individual producer
wants to grow a team or wants togrow their own business and
running a loosey goosey.
process becomes problematic as
(03:37):
your volume starts to grow now youneed to systematize your business
yes to make it scalable andrepeatable and that's where
somebody like blue mortgage comesin and says like hey here's the
prescription or maybe even to askyou that as a question is it like
here's the prescription or is itmore diagnostic and that you're
(04:00):
going like tell me what yourprocess is and i will build you a
custom crm for your business tosystematize things that you want
to do to take care of your clientsthe way that you want to.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, to the first part of yourquestion, you know, that's exactly
right.
And, you know, you talk about that
loosey goosey, you know, startingpoint, I think a lot of people
(04:23):
start at, and I think actuallythat's like super necessary to
start.
Yeah.
Right.
I always say, you know, you got to
be able to like, yeah, take thatphone call at 10 PM and just like
drag that deal over the finishline.
Like, I think that's absolutelyessential.
That's.
such an important skill.
And, you know, some people aregood with that.
Some people like the chaos, somepeople like, yeah, whatever, I'm
going to take that, whatever, I'mgoing to be running around and
doing that.
And I'm great at it.
And that's good.
(04:43):
And that's for them.
But yeah, where Lou kind of reallykicks in is when those people say,
okay, I've done this for X periodof time.
It was what I needed to do at thetime, but now I want to shift.
And I think it is a mindset shift.
I think it requires that mindset
shift to say, no, I'm not going tobe doing that anymore.
I do want to scale.
I do want to get things
repetitive, whether I'm bringingon a team or not.
I want to get the scale to dothat.
(05:03):
And so, yeah, take some of theseprocesses or redefine some of
these processes to fit it into asystem to allow me to build up
from there.
So, yeah, I think that's right.
And then in terms of theprescriptive versus diagnostic
approach.
You know, again, it's similar to
what I was saying earlier, whereit kind of evolved over time,
where when we started, if I goback to 2018, 2019, when I was
first kind of chatting withMassimo, hey, do I kind of jump in
here and help what you're doingover in the CRM side?
At that time, Massimo wascompletely doing the diagnostic.
(05:25):
Like we didn't even have a system.
Like we were just working with
like Salesforce and HubSpot andsome of these, and he would
just... you know, come in, heworked with some big names, like,
I don't know if you know, ButlerMortgage, a lot of people know
that name.
Yeah.
For better, for worse, we know Ronwell, of course, but yeah.
So he'd come in and just say, youknow, what are you doing?
(05:48):
What's going on here?And build the system around it.
Yeah.
And so that's where it started,
but he did that many, many timesand it got to a point to say,
okay, well, I've done thediagnostic so many times, but the
prescription's always the same.
Right.
If I'm continuing the prescriptionanalogy of, hey, take this
medicine and get lots of rest.
You know, the medicine is always
the same.
You know, maybe it's rest for one
person.
Maybe it's lots of water for the
next person.
Again, bear with me for this
(06:08):
analogy.
But the point I'm getting at is we
realize what was consistent andthat's what Blue Mortgage came to
be.
Right.
Which is the medicine piece.
When we do the diagnostic, what is
always consistent?Let's give that out of the box.
Let's have that as a product.
That's really what we've gone to
market with.
And then all the other pieces
around it, we can give thatadvice.
We have webinars and we have alsopartners, people who will come in
(06:30):
and help people do these types ofthings.
But that's become actually less ofour business.
We're focusing, again, and it kindof comes back to...
Very much so like a broker'sjourney going from loosey -goosey
to more systematized.
That's what we did for Blue
Mortgage.
When you're doing more diagnostic,
it's different for every person.
So you're trying to figure it out.
We wanted to get to a place where,hey, if we're always prescribing
(06:51):
the same medicine, we can reallybuild a process and a product
around it.
And so that's how we've evolved
our business.
Right.
So it's part prescriptive, partcustomized for the individual to
say like, here it is in its baseform.
If you want to take it to anotherlevel, here's some other things
that you could do in building itin such a way.
That's really interesting.
You know, as you told your story
(07:13):
there, it's starting to make moresense for me that going back to
like the engineering andconsulting background.
How has that background helped youinto building CRM?
For example, I'm, you know,originally from the Detroit area,
it in built around auto,everything's assembly line.
In many ways, a lot of what Ilearned at Rocket in the early
days is that a mortgage processcan be like an assembly line if
(07:33):
you design it that way.
So how much do you think that that
background has led you into thesuccess that you're having at Blue
Mortgage today?Yeah, I mean, it's good.
Yeah, the engineering side ofthings, I never used it.
I mean, I ended up doing a coupleinternships at some oil and gas
companies and said, maybe not forme.
But it sticks with you, right?It's also a way of thinking, I
(07:54):
think engineering is.
I think it's the art of problem
solving in a sense.
And I think that's a lot of
consulting as well.
But I think, yeah, I think what it
came down to in both of thosecases, or I guess in both of those
experiences, then translating intoBlue Mortgage really is building
those processes.
You know, I was able to kind of
come in and look at, you know, ifI'm looking at what Massimo was
(08:15):
doing, which was a bit morediagnostic, a bit more loosey
-goosey at the moment, and say,okay, well...
What can be repeated?What can be processitized, if
that's a word?What can be repeatable?
Because I think when you get, youknow, something that can repeat,
that's when you can, you know,bring in staff to help you out
with it.
That's when you can bring in, you
know, automations that can just,hey, I'm doing the same thing over
and over again.
Why couldn't a computer just do
(08:36):
this?And so, you know, having that
problem solving mindset and beingable to be, you know, very
objective when analyzing aprocess.
I think that allows us to, firstof all, of course, build Blue
Mortgage to address all thosetypes of things, kind of apply the
same mindset.
But even in our business
ourselves, we are able to alsoapply that, right?
To say, okay, and the way we go tomarket and the way that we
position Blue Mortgage, we're alsoable to build processes around
(08:59):
that, if that makes sense.
It makes total sense.
sense.
If I'm a mortgage broker... I
mean, you must have learned somuch now through the years about
mortgage broker processes.
What are maybe two to three things
that when you look at a mortgagebroker's business, like if you're
not doing, you know, A, B and C,you're crazy.
This is sort of like the core ofwhat you need to be doing to
actually run a successfulbusiness.
That's repeatable.
(09:19):
Few things that you might be able
to share there.
You know, first and foremost, when
we talk about.
you know, these processes and
these types of things.
You know, I think that it is
important to separate, you know, aprocess from a system, right?
And so, well, what do I mean bythat?
Well, the system, and in thiscase, when I'm referring to the
system, maybe in the CRM, helpsyou achieve the process, but
(09:39):
there's still different things,right?
So a lot of times, you know,people sign up for Blue Mortgage
and say, hey, yeah, I'd love tonow stay in touch, you know, with
my clients.
Can you help me do that?
And we say, sure.
But, you know, we say, OK, well,
what's your client journey?And they kind of look at us and
(10:01):
say, well, aren't you supposed totell me that?
And, you know, it's that back andforth.
And, you know, you can havedifferent opinions on it.
But the point really for us is tosay, well, the client journey
almost should be separate.
And all Blue Mortgage is doing is
helping you execute on it.
You know, I almost say, you know,
the best brokers that we see outthere, they have their client
journey, but it's like it's just aGoogle Doc, right?
(10:23):
It's just like this thing wherethey just say, hey.
The very first thing that I dowhen I get a referral, I always
send this template and I'vewritten it out.
And then I always follow up in twodays.
And it's just, it's literallywritten, like not even a concept
of how I'm going to execute onthis.
That's maybe a tomorrow problem.
But today I'm just going to go
point by point, step by step,touch point by touch point, and
just write it out.
How do I want to interact with the
(10:45):
client?And that becomes first.
And that's maybe the answer toyour question.
Or the first example I can thinkof is, I think every mortgage
broker and all the successful onesI know, they all have that written
out.
Like, yeah, Google Doc or however
they like to do it.
This is how I interact with my
clients.
I give it to every single team
member.
This is how we interact.
So yeah, I'm using Blue Mortgagetoday and this is helping me
execute against that.
(11:05):
But if tomorrow, maybe for
whatever reason, I switch to thenext system or, hey, there's this
brand new fancy... AI thing thatcomes out that blows everyone out
of the water and blue mortgagebecomes irrelevant.
Well, I still have this backbone,this process that exists.
It's not going to change becausethis is how I run my business and
this is how I interact with myclients.
So I think that's the first one Iwould think of at least.
Yeah.
I mean, that's super helpful.
Yeah.
(11:25):
I can't resist my... you know,
willingness to jump into an AIconversation with you.
So since you said it, I'll takeyou there.
Where are some places, given thatyou stay pretty close to the
technology side of the mortgagebusiness, where are some places
that you think are natural fitsfor AI as some of these models
develop in time?Yeah.
Yeah.
I opened the AI rabbit hole, but
always happy to jump down here.
But honestly, you know, right now,
(11:46):
I don't know, actually, you know,and I can guess and I can
speculate and I think that'suseful to do.
But I think for me, my positionright now is I think we're just
so, so early.
Like we're just insanely early in
this AI, I guess you'd sayjourney.
And, you know, one point that Imade recently that maybe I'll make
now is I don't even think we know,you know, what AI is even going to
(12:07):
look like.
And the example I give is, you
know, I remember when like, youknow, phones first came out, like
phones that had, you know,internet on them, smartphones.
And everyone came and was like,oh, this is amazing.
This is going to be great.
We're going to be able to open up
web pages on our phones.
And that was true.
And that was great.
And that was useful.
And that's, I feel like wherewe're kind of at with AI right now
(12:31):
of trying to fit AI into like anexisting modality or trying to
say, hey, we can do what we didsomewhere else just through this
lens of AI.
But if you continue the mobile
analogy for a second, you say,well, yes, you could do that.
Yes, you could load a web page onyour mobile device.
That was great.
But the real unlock, the real
interesting thing was when the appstore came out, right?
(12:52):
When, yeah, you could, you know,have these standalone apps or you
play games on your phone with the,you know, accelerometer and you
could press things, you could dothings and Instagram and, you
know, Uber and all these thingsthat wouldn't have even made sense
on a desktop.
Right.
So, you know, I think just likethat, mobile enabled new things
that we couldn't evenconceptualize.
I think AI is going to do that, isthat in five years, we're going to
(13:14):
be looking back and saying, wow,yeah, this is completely different
than the way we used to do things.
And I think at least in this
moment right now, we're trying toforce AI in all of our existing
platforms.
How does AI help, you know, maybe
this software product, right, thatI'm using on my desktop?
Or how does AI help, you know,this other thing that I'm using on
(13:34):
my mobile device?I think it's going to be
completely different, right?Like I think it could be, you
know, we're using these AI toolsin ways we couldn't even
conceptualize.
So all that to say, I guess, you
know, I don't want to make anystrong proclamations one way or
the other, because I think we'rejust so early and so naive in what
this thing can do.
But with that said, I mean,
obviously there are some areasthat seem interesting.
(13:55):
I think for one, generative AI isgoing to be helpful in hyper
contextualized conversations,right?
Being able to you know, reach outto clients.
I think that right now we're in anera in mortgage world where I say
we're going from transactions totrust, right?
A broker's job used to be maybemore processing transactions.
Now it's about being a trustedadvisor.
So we're going from transactionsto trust.
And I think having contextualizedinteractions really builds trust.
And I think AI can help that.
(14:17):
So, you know, instead of reaching
out to a client and...
You know, just saying happy
birthday, being able to look atall the interactions you've ever
had with that client and formulatesomething super contextualized for
them and being able to put that ina birthday message as a simple
example.
I think that's something
interesting.
And then the other one, I think,
is also obviously in underwriting.
This will come to, you know,
actually really access to dataultimately.
(14:38):
But if you can use AI to, youknow, analyze big sets of data,
you know, underwriting.
becomes, I wouldn't say easier.
Easier is maybe not the rightword, but it's a new paradigm
shift, right?If these big computers can do
things very quickly with largesets of data, we enter a kind of a
different era in terms ofunderwriting, I think, right?
I guess, of course, it alldepends, but those are some areas
(14:59):
that seem interesting to me.
I appreciate that.
appreciate that.
So what are some things that you
think a mortgage agent should be?implementing, moving forward based
on what you're seeing in themarket right now.
I think a lot of people arethinking about the future when it
comes to AI.
They want to make sure that
they're sitting on technologystacks, at least your technology
forward agents and brokers to takeadvantage of these things.
(15:20):
Because if you're not built fromthe ground up to implement any of
these things into your process,they are borderline useless.
You can go to the web version ofchat GPT all you want and say, how
would you respond to this emailand whatnot.
But if instead, you got the emailfrom the client, it was logged
into your CRM, and then it justauto -populated a suggested email
(15:41):
response to the client.
And you can click yes.
But you're like, yeah, click yesif you want to hit send.
So you're like, huge time saver,right?
But like, what should folks bethinking about as they build a
foundation of... their business?Yeah, that's a really good
question.
I think any system, when I go into
the CRM and someone signs up forthe first time, what are the
(16:03):
components of a CRM?What are the two most essential
things?It's the features, so what it can
do, but then it's also the data.
So what's it going to do it on?
What's the basis?And okay, yes, it can respond to a
nice email, but the client needsto be in there in the first place
in order to even enable that.
What does that kind of lead me to?
(16:24):
It's to say, okay, well, foranyone who's forward -looking, And
I just talked about big data,maybe on the underwriting side,
but I think it applies anywhere.
I mean, I think these AI systems,
they live off data, right?It's like oxygen to them.
And anyone who's gone to chat GBTand gotten a bad response or a
hallucination, as they call it,it's usually a result of maybe
some bad data.
So I think that anybody looking
(16:44):
forward needs to kind of realize,I think, that data is going to be
more and more important.
Data is really going to be king in
this world of AI.
First of all, get your data super
clean.
I think, I mean, I know so many
brokers who just kind of havemaybe a spreadsheet with, you
know, half updated.
Yeah, I'll get to it when I get to
it.
I don't think that's going to be
as optional anymore.
(17:05):
So having it super clean, super up
to date so that, hey, when, youknow, this revolutionary AI comes
along, you can just apply itversus spending months and months
trying to clean up your data whilethe forward looking brokers are
already.
off to the moon with these new
types of tools.
So getting clean, clean data.
And then also the other side of itis also the ownership side of
things, right?In the broker space, it's always,
you know, who owns the client?It's always confusing, you know,
(17:27):
the broker thinks they own it, thelender thinks they own it, the
brokerage thinks they own theclient because they're ultimately
responsible from a complianceangle.
And I think everyone does in somesense, right?
I mean, at the end of the day,it's kind of the client's
decision.
No one owns that person.
That doesn't really make too muchsense.
It's a relationship that you wantto have.
At least on the data, have controlover the data that you need to
(17:48):
enable those relationships.
So, you know, that's the first
part, the data side of things.
And then on the feature side of
things, I would say look for opensystems, right?
Because again, I don't know what'scoming.
Who knows what's coming?Could be a crazy new tool that we
could never even conceptualize.
So I'm not going to say, yes, use
Blue because for sure we're goingto be ready for that.
(18:09):
I hope we are and we're planningto be, but I can't put my rubber
stamp on it because I don't knowwhat's coming.
But I can say with Blue and I'dsay for any other system that
you're looking at, make sure theyhave open APIs, you know, methods
in which to interact with theseexternal tools because, yeah, we
don't know what's coming.
And you want to at least be
(18:30):
nimble, right?Agile so that, hey, when they do
come, hey, I can quickly build anintegration and it's in my system
and I'm ready to go.
If you have a closed system.
then, hey, the only way to usekind of these new, I guess, AI
tools is to switch systems.
And again, you're spending all
this time switching systems whenthe person who used an open system
is already using these greatinnovations.
(18:50):
So to summarize, clean data thatyou own and systems that have open
APIs, open frameworks that you canintegrate with.
Yeah, that's really well said.
I mean, I even think about our own
technology stack that we builtover time.
It's probably important to notewe're on Salesforce.
This is CRM today.
Part of the reason that we made
that decision, it was just theflexibility and the ability for it
to be an open system and for us tobasically plug in anything that we
(19:11):
want into that CRM to make it workfor us.
And so many people build forSalesforce or build with
Salesforce in mind, right?It's like I'm building an
independent platform.
And my next logical step as a
technologist or developer, etcetera, is to then make sure that
it can be used in Salesforce.
The next thing that people
typically do when I'm building isthey build a Salesforce plugin
immediately after.
And what we have found is that
allows us to be quite nimblebecause, you know, trying to build
(19:33):
a hard -coded platform, it's very,very difficult to see that far out
into the future.
to know everything that's going to
be needed and companies are justmoving at such a fast rate in
terms of their developmentespecially you mentioned data like
data infrastructure like i thinkwe're on our third you know data
product now because it was likeyou know five years ago it's like
you need this and then it's likeoh you need this and now it's like
(19:53):
that and then you know aws is likea new tool seemingly every like
quarter that they roll out they'relike oh you don't need any any of
these three things anymore we justboxed it right here and it's out
of the box and it's just like asimple little sas product and we
charge you based on your datausage and it just keeps moving
along and we're like oh man if wehad spent all this time and energy
(20:16):
building our own database asopposed to something that is more
similar to like an operationaldata store that's just like hey
like using a single place thatjust like holds the data And then
we can move that data around andwe can make that data populate
anywhere we want based on the waythat these other systems are
flowing.
So in some ways, like the
technology story of our business,we accidentally made ourselves
(20:38):
dynamic because we were trying toget to market fast.
But in reflection, it probably wasthe right decision because I would
look at other people's systems attimes and I would get jealous.
We should have just built that.
So shiny and new.
and I and new.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so shiny and new.
You know, they've got all theirbranding all over it.
But then you fast forward two,three years, the management of the
(21:03):
code base becomes a really heavycost on the business.
And you're like, oh, man, like allthis new technology is coming out.
We can't.
use any of it because we're on
this.
And that's, that's a lot of times
what's happened with the banks,for example, like people were
like, why can't the banks justmove faster and just implement all
this new technology stack is hardcoded 25 years old.
Yeah.
It's so shiny and new.
You we're You can't just rip andreplace.
(21:24):
Everything's connected in andaround those systems.
Totally.
Yeah.
We've done migrations of, youknow, an organization of 10 people
and it takes months to do, to movethem from system to system.
You imagine a bank to do that.
It's It's crazy.
But I mean, to your point, I mean,absolutely.
I don't know if I mentioned thisat the beginning, but Blue
Mortgage is actually built onZoho.
Zoho, I don't know if you'refamiliar with that platform, but
yeah.
Okay.
So it's a competitor toSalesforce, but it's very much so
(21:44):
something that we thought abouttoo, to say, hey, stay up to date,
to have the DevOps, to constantlybe building to new user
expectations and new technologies.
It's huge.
And they invest billions andbillions of dollars.
I just talked to a, broker justlast week, but it's a conversation
I've had many times where theysay, I don't use any of these CRMs
that are made specifically for themortgage industry because I did
that before.
And then 10 years later, I have
(22:05):
this thing that looks completelyout of date that I can't use and
it's not very useful.
So I want to use something like a
Salesforce or something like aZoho because literally every year
they're spending billions andbillions of dollars keeping up
with it.
And to your point, I don't know if
I can't to your point, they havethe developer community.
which my bold prediction, I guess,if we're making those, I think
(22:25):
this concept of the developercommunity is going to increase
much more just across all tech.
Now we're kind of getting outside
mortgage tech, but all tech intothe future because the cost to
develop is going to go down,right?
With AI tools, with these thingslike Copilot, which is Microsoft's
AI tool to help you code, youknow, they say, hey, we can double
your coding speed.
So just by that, if everyone who's
using GitHub is now using Copilotand can double their coding speed,
well, now we're getting double theapps or the cost to develop has
(22:49):
just halved, something like that.
And so the opportunity for these
developers to build these add -onsand build these tools, I think is
just going to explode.
And I think that's going to be
great for developers.
And I think that's going to be
great for users too.
I think we're going to see both
sides of that.
I agree.
I think that the future isactually much more low code, no
code.
Yeah.
Then the current state, if I'mmaking a prediction, since you
(23:11):
made one, I will as well.
I think each day we inch toward a
future that is less code and morelow code, well.
I day we inch toward a future thatis less code and more low code, no
code.
Things start to look a lot more
drag and drop, even CRMs.
It's like, you know, I want the
birthday email to go out to theseclients.
(23:33):
You mentioned, you know, keepingclean data in a clean database.
Like when I think about thosethings, like what are we really
talking about?For most people, it's just client
name, email, phone number.
You know, you said, birth date,
maturity date, current interestrate, current balance, things like
that.
Sure.
Yeah.
Like just that alone, if I could
then automate a system just in adrag and drop fashion without
having to, you know, hire a bunchof developers to make it happen
every time, you know, a client'slike current rates are 2 % or
(23:58):
something below the client'scurrent rate.
I want that client to get a textmessage.
want Or I want that client to getan email or whatever that thing
is.
Or if I have a portal, I want it
to populate another portal that,hey, you should probably
reconsider your options at thistime or something like that.
To me, that is what I'm thinkingabout when I'm thinking about CRM.
(24:19):
Not as rigid and sticky as it istoday, but something that is more
dynamic and has the ability toleverage AI to think a bit on its
own and make some decisions aboutsome opportunities to reach out.
I think there is a whole otherversion of AI that's further out,
but I think there's a more short-term version that's actually...
very close to available today, ifnot already available today, that
(24:39):
some people are starting toleverage.
And I do think in the next fewyears, we'll start to see some
people pull away because they'rejust moving faster because they're
just leveraging the tools that arethere.
And they don't have to spendmillions or tens of millions of
dollars to try to pull that off.
You know, the advice I hear, and
it's the one I give now, which Ithink is right, which is, yeah,
(25:00):
it's not going to be AI thatreplaces brokers.
It's going to be the brokers thatare using AI will replace brokers
who are not using it.
And I think that, you know, to
your point about the no codestuff, I think, you know, that's
always been the story oftechnology forever.
Like if you go back however manyyears, it was like, you know, the
zeros and ones, right?That was the most basic coding.
And then we abstracted the layerup to say, okay, well, we're going
to have, you know, C++, which is abaseline.
Then we're going to have commandline.
(25:23):
Then we're going to haveJavaScript.
Then have all these layers goingup and up.
And so what you're basically doingwith each layer is you're
connecting.
basically the computer to humans
and how humans think and humansinteract.
And if you think about AI andthese natural language processing
generative AIs, that could be thefinal layer because ultimately
that's really how humans talk andthink, right?
(25:43):
Is through language, right?And so these AI tools, you know,
if we can speak to them, likeliterally how we're talking here,
like if you could just talk to anAI and say, yeah, hey, anybody who
has a rate under 2%, whenever itgets there, just send them an
email.
That's how we think.
That's how we talk.
And if there can be that layer
that they can translate that tocode that can then translate that
into a CRM and then all the waydown that line.
(26:04):
So the computer's just doing it.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Picture an AI on the other side.
Thanks, Tom.
Consider it done.
No pushback.
No That's the CRM.
Is that your dream?
You get a lot of pushback?What's going on here?
that your dream?You get a lot of pushback?
What's going on here?Perhaps, right?
Like trying to wrangle togetheragents to say like, this is the
process, right?Like this is the way, you know, we
know the challenges.
(26:25):
I saw some data that suggested
this was specific to the realestate industry.
A gentleman named Mike Delprettyfrom the US.
ran some tests and did a bunch ofonline forms for real estate,
which created real estate leads.
And only 50 % of the time were
they actually contacted by anyreal estate agent.
And I'm just picturing like thelayer of management who's saying
like, Hey, we're sending you allthese leads.
Can you just call them like prettyplease?
Yeah.
The client gave you name, email,
phone number, and consented to becontacted and said that they were
(26:47):
interested in properties in thisarea.
things that most would kill for.
But if there isn't a lot of
structure around that, and thesethings aren't automated in some
way, people just get busy andthey, they slip.
So part of my obsessions withpeople and how they relate to
their CRMs.
And the reason that I wanted to
talk to you today, which I thinkis made for an awesome
conversation.
So maybe to wrap things up on this
side a little bit, I am curiousabout what is next for you and
(27:09):
Massimo and Teamit.
blue and, and some of what we can
look forward to in 2025 and beyondand some of the legacy and impact
that you guys want to have on, youknow, a really exciting industry
as I see it.
Sure.
Yeah.
Big question there.
But at the end of the day, Ialways, you know, maybe this goes
back to my engineering days, butfor me personally, maybe I'll
(27:31):
start there as I always want to bea builder.
You know, I think that that'swhere I'm.
you know, I guess happiest if youwill, but also I think where I can
find a lot of success and, youknow, building's one of those
things, which is great because ifyou build something useful, then
other people want to use it tooand makes their life easier.
So I think that that's kind of myNorth star.
So when you talk about maybe evenbeyond 2025, we always want to be
(27:51):
building.
And, you know, obviously based on
this conversation, there's a tonof new tools that are coming to
market and with new tools meansmaybe new things to be able to
build.
That very much so excites me.
You know, more immediate term interms of Blue and me and Massimo
and what we're up to, I think, Imean, it's really not too
(28:11):
different that vision.
You know, this is an exciting
industry for sure.
I think it's been a tough couple
of years for some brokers outthere.
But I think that we're starting toenter a time where the combination
of both these tech tools and, youknow, just with the market and a
lot of renewals coming up, I thinkthe next few years are going to
be, you know, turning the cornerfor a lot of people.
(28:31):
And we want to be there to servethem.
And ultimately, when we serve ourclients, they serve us.
We learn a bunch from them and weget smarter and we get to build a
better product out of that.
So I think we'll just kind of
continue doing that and a lot ofhope for 2025 with some of the
things that we're seeing.
(28:52):
That's awesome.
I said that was the last question.
I'm going to pin you for one more.
Okay.
Is there anything exciting that we
should look for from Blue in 2025?Anything new coming that would
excite us?In terms of features and that sort
of thing?sort of thing?
I don't know if I have anythingsuper specific for you.
I think we want to find the rightAI tool to use.
I think that that obviously iswhat a lot of people are asking
(29:14):
for.
I think there is a lot of
opportunity there.
For us, it's just navigating.
We don't want to hitch our wagonto a horse that becomes the lame
horse within.
six months, right?
So, you know, we're very curiousand we're very kind of have our
ears to the ground of some ofthese new AI tools.
It's just finding the right one, Ithink, for us.
So I think that's what it'll be.
But specific wise, I would say
TBD, but honestly, because it'sTBD in our mind too, it's finding
(29:36):
the right horse to hitch our wagonto, so to speak.
All right.
So I'm going to put you on the
record.
It's likely AI, but it's also TBD.
That's exciting.
Lots of acronyms.
You sound like everybody rightnow, which is like, it's AI, not
sure how, But it's coming.
Somehow, please.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Well, thanks for being on with me,
Tom.
I appreciate you joining me.
It was a good conversation.
Appreciate it.
This was great.
Awesome.
Thank you.
(29:56):
exciting.
Lots of acronyms.
You sound like everybody right
now, which is like, it's AI,that's awesome.
Thank you for listening to theLending Thoughts podcast sponsored
by Rocket Pro.
I'm your host, Baken Murdita.
And as a guest today, I have...
Tom Hall, who is the founder of
Blue Mortgage.
We have an awesome conversation
and it's so good that we actuallydecided to cross interview each
other on each other's podcast.
So once you're done listening to
this, I highly recommend going tocheck out Mortgage Tech Talks,
(00:21):
which is Tom's podcast as well.
But Tom and I dive into the topics
of AI, of course, because I can'tresist.
We also talk about how toimplement some good CRM habits as
a mortgage broker and agent.
early on in your business to gain
a leg up on the industry.
And we talk about the industry and
consumer experience overall sothat you can run a better
(00:42):
business.
You're not going to want to miss
this.
Have a listen today.
Hey, Tom, thanks for joining metoday.
Hey, great to be here.
Absolutely.
So I'd like to start out with aquestion that tells the audience a
little bit about you.
If you could please tell us your
life story in 60 seconds or less.
(01:03):
All right, you got the clock on?
You're on.
Here we go.
I'll try to keep it simple.
Grew up in a small town, about 5
,000 people.
I had a twin sister, which kind of
kept things quite competitivethroughout my entire childhood,
which I'm thankful for now.
Went to school for engineering,
never did it.
Went right into consulting, which
we were just chatting about.
I did that for three, four years,
(01:24):
traveling around, helping bigcompanies do things.
Got kind of sick of that travelingaround.
That was 2019.
And then my good friend Massimo
was working on CRM stuff.
And I said, hey, that seems kind
of interesting.
And I jumped on at that time.
2019, that's when we launched BlueMortgage and been doing that ever
since.
It's been a fun ride and time.
on. Here we Very cool.
So yeah.
What is Blue Mortgage?Well, the punchline is we are CRM
(01:47):
for Canadian mortgage brokers.
We've grown it now to be, we call
it the top independent and we canget into independence and what
that all means, I'm sure.
But the top kind of independent
CRM in Canada right now forbrokers, you know, this idea of
CRM.
I think does get convoluted
sometimes.
Some people think it's just
newsletters, which it can be, butCRM does a bunch of things, right?
(02:11):
It's ultimately kind of a hub.
It's kind of your second brain in
a sense of really you can run mostprocesses or our most successful
brokers, I should say, run a lotof their business processes
through it.
So lead management, deal flow,
live deal flow, and of course,stay in touch with clients
afterwards.
But even partner management,
realtor management, a whole bunchcan happen in there.
So it's a database, it's a place.
(02:32):
to store information and a place
to automate things coming out ofthat.
Great.
And who's your core client as you
think about it?Like when you guys go to market,
who are you trying to get inconversations with to say, Hey, we
have a product and we think ithelps.
Yeah, I think it's, it's evolvedover the years.
You know, it's one of those thingswhere, you know, and we kind of
launched, we are naive and we justsaid, yeah, any, any mortgage
(02:53):
broker, what do you mean?Anybody can use us.
And I think that's still the case,but.
You know, I think in the techworld, people are obsessed with
this concept of product marketfit, right?
I'm sure you've heard that.
And I think where that product
market fit is most for us is, youknow, it doesn't have to be big
producers.
I mean, we do have quite a few of
three of the top five producers inCanada using Blue Mortgage right
now, but it's more for peoplewho... who want to scale, who want
(03:17):
to grow, right?It doesn't matter where they're at
now, but are looking at themselvesand their business and saying,
hey, do you want to grow?I do want to build a team and I do
want to build processes andsystems that'll help me get there.
And that's really, really where wehave a really strong product
market fit.
Gotcha.
So the way to think about it'slike a great individual producer
wants to grow a team or wants togrow their own business and
running a loosey goosey.
process becomes problematic as
(03:37):
your volume starts to grow now youneed to systematize your business
yes to make it scalable andrepeatable and that's where
somebody like blue mortgage comesin and says like hey here's the
prescription or maybe even to askyou that as a question is it like
here's the prescription or is itmore diagnostic and that you're
(04:00):
going like tell me what yourprocess is and i will build you a
custom crm for your business tosystematize things that you want
to do to take care of your clientsthe way that you want to.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, to the first part of yourquestion, you know, that's exactly
right.
And, you know, you talk about that
loosey goosey, you know, startingpoint, I think a lot of people
(04:23):
start at, and I think actuallythat's like super necessary to
start.
Yeah.
Right.
I always say, you know, you got to
be able to like, yeah, take thatphone call at 10 PM and just like
drag that deal over the finishline.
Like, I think that's absolutelyessential.
That's.
such an important skill.
And, you know, some people aregood with that.
Some people like the chaos, somepeople like, yeah, whatever, I'm
going to take that, whatever, I'mgoing to be running around and
doing that.
And I'm great at it.
And that's good.
(04:43):
And that's for them.
But yeah, where Lou kind of reallykicks in is when those people say,
okay, I've done this for X periodof time.
It was what I needed to do at thetime, but now I want to shift.
And I think it is a mindset shift.
I think it requires that mindset
shift to say, no, I'm not going tobe doing that anymore.
I do want to scale.
I do want to get things
repetitive, whether I'm bringingon a team or not.
I want to get the scale to dothat.
(05:03):
And so, yeah, take some of theseprocesses or redefine some of
these processes to fit it into asystem to allow me to build up
from there.
So, yeah, I think that's right.
And then in terms of theprescriptive versus diagnostic
approach.
You know, again, it's similar to
what I was saying earlier, whereit kind of evolved over time,
where when we started, if I goback to 2018, 2019, when I was
first kind of chatting withMassimo, hey, do I kind of jump in
here and help what you're doingover in the CRM side?
At that time, Massimo wascompletely doing the diagnostic.
(05:25):
Like we didn't even have a system.
Like we were just working with
like Salesforce and HubSpot andsome of these, and he would
just... you know, come in, heworked with some big names, like,
I don't know if you know, ButlerMortgage, a lot of people know
that name.
Yeah.
For better, for worse, we know Ronwell, of course, but yeah.
So he'd come in and just say, youknow, what are you doing?
(05:48):
What's going on here?And build the system around it.
Yeah.
And so that's where it started,
but he did that many, many timesand it got to a point to say,
okay, well, I've done thediagnostic so many times, but the
prescription's always the same.
Right.
If I'm continuing the prescriptionanalogy of, hey, take this
medicine and get lots of rest.
You know, the medicine is always
the same.
You know, maybe it's rest for one
person.
Maybe it's lots of water for the
next person.
Again, bear with me for this
(06:08):
analogy.
But the point I'm getting at is we
realize what was consistent andthat's what Blue Mortgage came to
be.
Right.
Which is the medicine piece.
When we do the diagnostic, what is
always consistent?Let's give that out of the box.
Let's have that as a product.
That's really what we've gone to
market with.
And then all the other pieces
around it, we can give thatadvice.
We have webinars and we have alsopartners, people who will come in
(06:30):
and help people do these types ofthings.
But that's become actually less ofour business.
We're focusing, again, and it kindof comes back to...
Very much so like a broker'sjourney going from loosey -goosey
to more systematized.
That's what we did for Blue
Mortgage.
When you're doing more diagnostic,
it's different for every person.
So you're trying to figure it out.
We wanted to get to a place where,hey, if we're always prescribing
(06:51):
the same medicine, we can reallybuild a process and a product
around it.
And so that's how we've evolved
our business.
Right.
So it's part prescriptive, partcustomized for the individual to
say like, here it is in its baseform.
If you want to take it to anotherlevel, here's some other things
that you could do in building itin such a way.
That's really interesting.
You know, as you told your story
(07:13):
there, it's starting to make moresense for me that going back to
like the engineering andconsulting background.
How has that background helped youinto building CRM?
For example, I'm, you know,originally from the Detroit area,
it in built around auto,everything's assembly line.
In many ways, a lot of what Ilearned at Rocket in the early
days is that a mortgage processcan be like an assembly line if
(07:33):
you design it that way.
So how much do you think that that
background has led you into thesuccess that you're having at Blue
Mortgage today?Yeah, I mean, it's good.
Yeah, the engineering side ofthings, I never used it.
I mean, I ended up doing a coupleinternships at some oil and gas
companies and said, maybe not forme.
But it sticks with you, right?It's also a way of thinking, I
(07:54):
think engineering is.
I think it's the art of problem
solving in a sense.
And I think that's a lot of
consulting as well.
But I think, yeah, I think what it
came down to in both of thosecases, or I guess in both of those
experiences, then translating intoBlue Mortgage really is building
those processes.
You know, I was able to kind of
come in and look at, you know, ifI'm looking at what Massimo was
(08:15):
doing, which was a bit morediagnostic, a bit more loosey
-goosey at the moment, and say,okay, well...
What can be repeated?What can be processitized, if
that's a word?What can be repeatable?
Because I think when you get, youknow, something that can repeat,
that's when you can, you know,bring in staff to help you out
with it.
That's when you can bring in, you
know, automations that can just,hey, I'm doing the same thing over
and over again.
Why couldn't a computer just do
(08:36):
this?And so, you know, having that
problem solving mindset and beingable to be, you know, very
objective when analyzing aprocess.
I think that allows us to, firstof all, of course, build Blue
Mortgage to address all thosetypes of things, kind of apply the
same mindset.
But even in our business
ourselves, we are able to alsoapply that, right?
To say, okay, and the way we go tomarket and the way that we
position Blue Mortgage, we're alsoable to build processes around
(08:59):
that, if that makes sense.
It makes total sense.
sense.
If I'm a mortgage broker... I
mean, you must have learned somuch now through the years about
mortgage broker processes.
What are maybe two to three things
that when you look at a mortgagebroker's business, like if you're
not doing, you know, A, B and C,you're crazy.
This is sort of like the core ofwhat you need to be doing to
actually run a successfulbusiness.
That's repeatable.
(09:19):
Few things that you might be able
to share there.
You know, first and foremost, when
we talk about.
you know, these processes and
these types of things.
You know, I think that it is
important to separate, you know, aprocess from a system, right?
And so, well, what do I mean bythat?
Well, the system, and in thiscase, when I'm referring to the
system, maybe in the CRM, helpsyou achieve the process, but
(09:39):
there's still different things,right?
So a lot of times, you know,people sign up for Blue Mortgage
and say, hey, yeah, I'd love tonow stay in touch, you know, with
my clients.
Can you help me do that?
And we say, sure.
But, you know, we say, OK, well,
what's your client journey?And they kind of look at us and
(10:01):
say, well, aren't you supposed totell me that?
And, you know, it's that back andforth.
And, you know, you can havedifferent opinions on it.
But the point really for us is tosay, well, the client journey
almost should be separate.
And all Blue Mortgage is doing is
helping you execute on it.
You know, I almost say, you know,
the best brokers that we see outthere, they have their client
journey, but it's like it's just aGoogle Doc, right?
(10:23):
It's just like this thing wherethey just say, hey.
The very first thing that I dowhen I get a referral, I always
send this template and I'vewritten it out.
And then I always follow up in twodays.
And it's just, it's literallywritten, like not even a concept
of how I'm going to execute onthis.
That's maybe a tomorrow problem.
But today I'm just going to go
point by point, step by step,touch point by touch point, and
just write it out.
How do I want to interact with the
(10:45):
client?And that becomes first.
And that's maybe the answer toyour question.
Or the first example I can thinkof is, I think every mortgage
broker and all the successful onesI know, they all have that written
out.
Like, yeah, Google Doc or however
they like to do it.
This is how I interact with my
clients.
I give it to every single team
member.
This is how we interact.
So yeah, I'm using Blue Mortgagetoday and this is helping me
execute against that.
(11:05):
But if tomorrow, maybe for
whatever reason, I switch to thenext system or, hey, there's this
brand new fancy... AI thing thatcomes out that blows everyone out
of the water and blue mortgagebecomes irrelevant.
Well, I still have this backbone,this process that exists.
It's not going to change becausethis is how I run my business and
this is how I interact with myclients.
So I think that's the first one Iwould think of at least.
Yeah.
I mean, that's super helpful.
Yeah.
(11:25):
I can't resist my... you know,
willingness to jump into an AIconversation with you.
So since you said it, I'll takeyou there.
Where are some places, given thatyou stay pretty close to the
technology side of the mortgagebusiness, where are some places
that you think are natural fitsfor AI as some of these models
develop in time?Yeah.
Yeah.
I opened the AI rabbit hole, but
always happy to jump down here.
But honestly, you know, right now,
(11:46):
I don't know, actually, you know,and I can guess and I can
speculate and I think that'suseful to do.
But I think for me, my positionright now is I think we're just
so, so early.
Like we're just insanely early in
this AI, I guess you'd sayjourney.
And, you know, one point that Imade recently that maybe I'll make
now is I don't even think we know,you know, what AI is even going to
(12:07):
look like.
And the example I give is, you
know, I remember when like, youknow, phones first came out, like
phones that had, you know,internet on them, smartphones.
And everyone came and was like,oh, this is amazing.
This is going to be great.
We're going to be able to open up
web pages on our phones.
And that was true.
And that was great.
And that was useful.
And that's, I feel like wherewe're kind of at with AI right now
(12:31):
of trying to fit AI into like anexisting modality or trying to
say, hey, we can do what we didsomewhere else just through this
lens of AI.
But if you continue the mobile
analogy for a second, you say,well, yes, you could do that.
Yes, you could load a web page onyour mobile device.
That was great.
But the real unlock, the real
interesting thing was when the appstore came out, right?
(12:52):
When, yeah, you could, you know,have these standalone apps or you
play games on your phone with the,you know, accelerometer and you
could press things, you could dothings and Instagram and, you
know, Uber and all these thingsthat wouldn't have even made sense
on a desktop.
Right.
So, you know, I think just likethat, mobile enabled new things
that we couldn't evenconceptualize.
I think AI is going to do that, isthat in five years, we're going to
(13:14):
be looking back and saying, wow,yeah, this is completely different
than the way we used to do things.
And I think at least in this
moment right now, we're trying toforce AI in all of our existing
platforms.
How does AI help, you know, maybe
this software product, right, thatI'm using on my desktop?
Or how does AI help, you know,this other thing that I'm using on
(13:34):
my mobile device?I think it's going to be
completely different, right?Like I think it could be, you
know, we're using these AI toolsin ways we couldn't even
conceptualize.
So all that to say, I guess, you
know, I don't want to make anystrong proclamations one way or
the other, because I think we'rejust so early and so naive in what
this thing can do.
But with that said, I mean,
obviously there are some areasthat seem interesting.
(13:55):
I think for one, generative AI isgoing to be helpful in hyper
contextualized conversations,right?
Being able to you know, reach outto clients.
I think that right now we're in anera in mortgage world where I say
we're going from transactions totrust, right?
A broker's job used to be maybemore processing transactions.
Now it's about being a trustedadvisor.
So we're going from transactionsto trust.
And I think having contextualizedinteractions really builds trust.
And I think AI can help that.
(14:17):
So, you know, instead of reaching
out to a client and...
You know, just saying happy
birthday, being able to look atall the interactions you've ever
had with that client and formulatesomething super contextualized for
them and being able to put that ina birthday message as a simple
example.
I think that's something
interesting.
And then the other one, I think,
is also obviously in underwriting.
This will come to, you know,
actually really access to dataultimately.
(14:38):
But if you can use AI to, youknow, analyze big sets of data,
you know, underwriting.
becomes, I wouldn't say easier.
Easier is maybe not the rightword, but it's a new paradigm
shift, right?If these big computers can do
things very quickly with largesets of data, we enter a kind of a
different era in terms ofunderwriting, I think, right?
I guess, of course, it alldepends, but those are some areas
(14:59):
that seem interesting to me.
I appreciate that.
appreciate that.
So what are some things that you
think a mortgage agent should be?implementing, moving forward based
on what you're seeing in themarket right now.
I think a lot of people arethinking about the future when it
comes to AI.
They want to make sure that
they're sitting on technologystacks, at least your technology
forward agents and brokers to takeadvantage of these things.
(15:20):
Because if you're not built fromthe ground up to implement any of
these things into your process,they are borderline useless.
You can go to the web version ofchat GPT all you want and say, how
would you respond to this emailand whatnot.
But if instead, you got the emailfrom the client, it was logged
into your CRM, and then it justauto -populated a suggested email
(15:41):
response to the client.
And you can click yes.
But you're like, yeah, click yesif you want to hit send.
So you're like, huge time saver,right?
But like, what should folks bethinking about as they build a
foundation of... their business?Yeah, that's a really good
question.
I think any system, when I go into
the CRM and someone signs up forthe first time, what are the
(16:03):
components of a CRM?What are the two most essential
things?It's the features, so what it can
do, but then it's also the data.
So what's it going to do it on?
What's the basis?And okay, yes, it can respond to a
nice email, but the client needsto be in there in the first place
in order to even enable that.
What does that kind of lead me to?
(16:24):
It's to say, okay, well, foranyone who's forward -looking, And
I just talked about big data,maybe on the underwriting side,
but I think it applies anywhere.
I mean, I think these AI systems,
they live off data, right?It's like oxygen to them.
And anyone who's gone to chat GBTand gotten a bad response or a
hallucination, as they call it,it's usually a result of maybe
some bad data.
So I think that anybody looking
(16:44):
forward needs to kind of realize,I think, that data is going to be
more and more important.
Data is really going to be king in
this world of AI.
First of all, get your data super
clean.
I think, I mean, I know so many
brokers who just kind of havemaybe a spreadsheet with, you
know, half updated.
Yeah, I'll get to it when I get to
it.
I don't think that's going to be
as optional anymore.
(17:05):
So having it super clean, super up
to date so that, hey, when, youknow, this revolutionary AI comes
along, you can just apply itversus spending months and months
trying to clean up your data whilethe forward looking brokers are
already.
off to the moon with these new
types of tools.
So getting clean, clean data.
And then also the other side of itis also the ownership side of
things, right?In the broker space, it's always,
you know, who owns the client?It's always confusing, you know,
(17:27):
the broker thinks they own it, thelender thinks they own it, the
brokerage thinks they own theclient because they're ultimately
responsible from a complianceangle.
And I think everyone does in somesense, right?
I mean, at the end of the day,it's kind of the client's
decision.
No one owns that person.
That doesn't really make too muchsense.
It's a relationship that you wantto have.
At least on the data, have controlover the data that you need to
(17:48):
enable those relationships.
So, you know, that's the first
part, the data side of things.
And then on the feature side of
things, I would say look for opensystems, right?
Because again, I don't know what'scoming.
Who knows what's coming?Could be a crazy new tool that we
could never even conceptualize.
So I'm not going to say, yes, use
Blue because for sure we're goingto be ready for that.
(18:09):
I hope we are and we're planningto be, but I can't put my rubber
stamp on it because I don't knowwhat's coming.
But I can say with Blue and I'dsay for any other system that
you're looking at, make sure theyhave open APIs, you know, methods
in which to interact with theseexternal tools because, yeah, we
don't know what's coming.
And you want to at least be
(18:30):
nimble, right?Agile so that, hey, when they do
come, hey, I can quickly build anintegration and it's in my system
and I'm ready to go.
If you have a closed system.
then, hey, the only way to usekind of these new, I guess, AI
tools is to switch systems.
And again, you're spending all
this time switching systems whenthe person who used an open system
is already using these greatinnovations.
(18:50):
So to summarize, clean data thatyou own and systems that have open
APIs, open frameworks that you canintegrate with.
Yeah, that's really well said.
I mean, I even think about our own
technology stack that we builtover time.
It's probably important to notewe're on Salesforce.
This is CRM today.
Part of the reason that we made
that decision, it was just theflexibility and the ability for it
to be an open system and for us tobasically plug in anything that we
(19:11):
want into that CRM to make it workfor us.
And so many people build forSalesforce or build with
Salesforce in mind, right?It's like I'm building an
independent platform.
And my next logical step as a
technologist or developer, etcetera, is to then make sure that
it can be used in Salesforce.
The next thing that people
typically do when I'm building isthey build a Salesforce plugin
immediately after.
And what we have found is that
allows us to be quite nimblebecause, you know, trying to build
(19:33):
a hard -coded platform, it's very,very difficult to see that far out
into the future.
to know everything that's going to
be needed and companies are justmoving at such a fast rate in
terms of their developmentespecially you mentioned data like
data infrastructure like i thinkwe're on our third you know data
product now because it was likeyou know five years ago it's like
you need this and then it's likeoh you need this and now it's like
(19:53):
that and then you know aws is likea new tool seemingly every like
quarter that they roll out they'relike oh you don't need any any of
these three things anymore we justboxed it right here and it's out
of the box and it's just like asimple little sas product and we
charge you based on your datausage and it just keeps moving
along and we're like oh man if wehad spent all this time and energy
(20:16):
building our own database asopposed to something that is more
similar to like an operationaldata store that's just like hey
like using a single place thatjust like holds the data And then
we can move that data around andwe can make that data populate
anywhere we want based on the waythat these other systems are
flowing.
So in some ways, like the
technology story of our business,we accidentally made ourselves
(20:38):
dynamic because we were trying toget to market fast.
But in reflection, it probably wasthe right decision because I would
look at other people's systems attimes and I would get jealous.
We should have just built that.
So shiny and new.
and I and new.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so shiny and new.
You know, they've got all theirbranding all over it.
But then you fast forward two,three years, the management of the
(21:03):
code base becomes a really heavycost on the business.
And you're like, oh, man, like allthis new technology is coming out.
We can't.
use any of it because we're on
this.
And that's, that's a lot of times
what's happened with the banks,for example, like people were
like, why can't the banks justmove faster and just implement all
this new technology stack is hardcoded 25 years old.
Yeah.
It's so shiny and new.
You we're You can't just rip andreplace.
(21:24):
Everything's connected in andaround those systems.
Totally.
Yeah.
We've done migrations of, youknow, an organization of 10 people
and it takes months to do, to movethem from system to system.
You imagine a bank to do that.
It's It's crazy.
But I mean, to your point, I mean,absolutely.
I don't know if I mentioned thisat the beginning, but Blue
Mortgage is actually built onZoho.
Zoho, I don't know if you'refamiliar with that platform, but
yeah.
Okay.
So it's a competitor toSalesforce, but it's very much so
(21:44):
something that we thought abouttoo, to say, hey, stay up to date,
to have the DevOps, to constantlybe building to new user
expectations and new technologies.
It's huge.
And they invest billions andbillions of dollars.
I just talked to a, broker justlast week, but it's a conversation
I've had many times where theysay, I don't use any of these CRMs
that are made specifically for themortgage industry because I did
that before.
And then 10 years later, I have
(22:05):
this thing that looks completelyout of date that I can't use and
it's not very useful.
So I want to use something like a
Salesforce or something like aZoho because literally every year
they're spending billions andbillions of dollars keeping up
with it.
And to your point, I don't know if
I can't to your point, they havethe developer community.
which my bold prediction, I guess,if we're making those, I think
(22:25):
this concept of the developercommunity is going to increase
much more just across all tech.
Now we're kind of getting outside
mortgage tech, but all tech intothe future because the cost to
develop is going to go down,right?
With AI tools, with these thingslike Copilot, which is Microsoft's
AI tool to help you code, youknow, they say, hey, we can double
your coding speed.
So just by that, if everyone who's
using GitHub is now using Copilotand can double their coding speed,
well, now we're getting double theapps or the cost to develop has
(22:49):
just halved, something like that.
And so the opportunity for these
developers to build these add -onsand build these tools, I think is
just going to explode.
And I think that's going to be
great for developers.
And I think that's going to be
great for users too.
I think we're going to see both
sides of that.
I agree.
I think that the future isactually much more low code, no
code.
Yeah.
Then the current state, if I'mmaking a prediction, since you
(23:11):
made one, I will as well.
I think each day we inch toward a
future that is less code and morelow code, well.
I day we inch toward a future thatis less code and more low code, no
code.
Things start to look a lot more
drag and drop, even CRMs.
It's like, you know, I want the
birthday email to go out to theseclients.
(23:33):
You mentioned, you know, keepingclean data in a clean database.
Like when I think about thosethings, like what are we really
talking about?For most people, it's just client
name, email, phone number.
You know, you said, birth date,
maturity date, current interestrate, current balance, things like
that.
Sure.
Yeah.
Like just that alone, if I could
then automate a system just in adrag and drop fashion without
having to, you know, hire a bunchof developers to make it happen
every time, you know, a client'slike current rates are 2 % or
(23:58):
something below the client'scurrent rate.
I want that client to get a textmessage.
want Or I want that client to getan email or whatever that thing
is.
Or if I have a portal, I want it
to populate another portal that,hey, you should probably
reconsider your options at thistime or something like that.
To me, that is what I'm thinkingabout when I'm thinking about CRM.
(24:19):
Not as rigid and sticky as it istoday, but something that is more
dynamic and has the ability toleverage AI to think a bit on its
own and make some decisions aboutsome opportunities to reach out.
I think there is a whole otherversion of AI that's further out,
but I think there's a more short-term version that's actually...
very close to available today, ifnot already available today, that
(24:39):
some people are starting toleverage.
And I do think in the next fewyears, we'll start to see some
people pull away because they'rejust moving faster because they're
just leveraging the tools that arethere.
And they don't have to spendmillions or tens of millions of
dollars to try to pull that off.
You know, the advice I hear, and
it's the one I give now, which Ithink is right, which is, yeah,
(25:00):
it's not going to be AI thatreplaces brokers.
It's going to be the brokers thatare using AI will replace brokers
who are not using it.
And I think that, you know, to
your point about the no codestuff, I think, you know, that's
always been the story oftechnology forever.
Like if you go back however manyyears, it was like, you know, the
zeros and ones, right?That was the most basic coding.
And then we abstracted the layerup to say, okay, well, we're going
to have, you know, C++, which is abaseline.
Then we're going to have commandline.
(25:23):
Then we're going to haveJavaScript.
Then have all these layers goingup and up.
And so what you're basically doingwith each layer is you're
connecting.
basically the computer to humans
and how humans think and humansinteract.
And if you think about AI andthese natural language processing
generative AIs, that could be thefinal layer because ultimately
that's really how humans talk andthink, right?
(25:43):
Is through language, right?And so these AI tools, you know,
if we can speak to them, likeliterally how we're talking here,
like if you could just talk to anAI and say, yeah, hey, anybody who
has a rate under 2%, whenever itgets there, just send them an
email.
That's how we think.
That's how we talk.
And if there can be that layer
that they can translate that tocode that can then translate that
into a CRM and then all the waydown that line.
(26:04):
So the computer's just doing it.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Picture an AI on the other side.
Thanks, Tom.
Consider it done.
No pushback.
No That's the CRM.
Is that your dream?
You get a lot of pushback?What's going on here?
that your dream?You get a lot of pushback?
What's going on here?Perhaps, right?
Like trying to wrangle togetheragents to say like, this is the
process, right?Like this is the way, you know, we
know the challenges.
(26:25):
I saw some data that suggested
this was specific to the realestate industry.
A gentleman named Mike Delprettyfrom the US.
ran some tests and did a bunch ofonline forms for real estate,
which created real estate leads.
And only 50 % of the time were
they actually contacted by anyreal estate agent.
And I'm just picturing like thelayer of management who's saying
like, Hey, we're sending you allthese leads.
Can you just call them like prettyplease?
Yeah.
The client gave you name, email,
phone number, and consented to becontacted and said that they were
(26:47):
interested in properties in thisarea.
things that most would kill for.
But if there isn't a lot of
structure around that, and thesethings aren't automated in some
way, people just get busy andthey, they slip.
So part of my obsessions withpeople and how they relate to
their CRMs.
And the reason that I wanted to
talk to you today, which I thinkis made for an awesome
conversation.
So maybe to wrap things up on this
side a little bit, I am curiousabout what is next for you and
(27:09):
Massimo and Teamit.
blue and, and some of what we can
look forward to in 2025 and beyondand some of the legacy and impact
that you guys want to have on, youknow, a really exciting industry
as I see it.
Sure.
Yeah.
Big question there.
But at the end of the day, Ialways, you know, maybe this goes
back to my engineering days, butfor me personally, maybe I'll
(27:31):
start there as I always want to bea builder.
You know, I think that that'swhere I'm.
you know, I guess happiest if youwill, but also I think where I can
find a lot of success and, youknow, building's one of those
things, which is great because ifyou build something useful, then
other people want to use it tooand makes their life easier.
So I think that that's kind of myNorth star.
So when you talk about maybe evenbeyond 2025, we always want to be
(27:51):
building.
And, you know, obviously based on
this conversation, there's a tonof new tools that are coming to
market and with new tools meansmaybe new things to be able to
build.
That very much so excites me.
You know, more immediate term interms of Blue and me and Massimo
and what we're up to, I think, Imean, it's really not too
(28:11):
different that vision.
You know, this is an exciting
industry for sure.
I think it's been a tough couple
of years for some brokers outthere.
But I think that we're starting toenter a time where the combination
of both these tech tools and, youknow, just with the market and a
lot of renewals coming up, I thinkthe next few years are going to
be, you know, turning the cornerfor a lot of people.
(28:31):
And we want to be there to servethem.
And ultimately, when we serve ourclients, they serve us.
We learn a bunch from them and weget smarter and we get to build a
better product out of that.
So I think we'll just kind of
continue doing that and a lot ofhope for 2025 with some of the
things that we're seeing.
(28:52):
That's awesome.
I said that was the last question.
I'm going to pin you for one more.
Okay.
Is there anything exciting that we
should look for from Blue in 2025?Anything new coming that would
excite us?In terms of features and that sort
of thing?sort of thing?
I don't know if I have anythingsuper specific for you.
I think we want to find the rightAI tool to use.
I think that that obviously iswhat a lot of people are asking
(29:14):
for.
I think there is a lot of
opportunity there.
For us, it's just navigating.
We don't want to hitch our wagonto a horse that becomes the lame
horse within.
six months, right?
So, you know, we're very curiousand we're very kind of have our
ears to the ground of some ofthese new AI tools.
It's just finding the right one, Ithink, for us.
So I think that's what it'll be.
But specific wise, I would say
TBD, but honestly, because it'sTBD in our mind too, it's finding
(29:36):
the right horse to hitch our wagonto, so to speak.
All right.
So I'm going to put you on the
record.
It's likely AI, but it's also TBD.
That's exciting.
Lots of acronyms.
You sound like everybody rightnow, which is like, it's AI, not
sure how, But it's coming.
Somehow, please.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Well, thanks for being on with me,
Tom.
I appreciate you joining me.
It was a good conversation.
Appreciate it.
This was great.
Awesome.
Thank you.
(29:56):
exciting.
Lots of acronyms.
You sound like everybody right
now, which is like, it's AI,that's awesome.
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