October 30, 2024 • 30 mins
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Bekim is joined by Scott Peckford. Scott is the Founder and CEO of BRX Mortgage and both the I Love Mortgage Brokering Podcast and Facebook Group from Kelowna, BC. Being in the mortgage industry since 2006, Scott has never been scared to take risks and try new things. He's also built multiple successful businesses including the VIP Club and the 10 Loans a Month Training Academy, and is one of the most influential people in the Canadian mortgage industry.
Scott is here to discuss: → Scott's journey in the mortgage industry, how copying businesses is actually a positive thing, and his inspirations for founding the I Love Mortgage Brokering community. → The power of building a community and sharing knowledge, optimism as a weapon for overcoming failures, and the importance of rapid execution of ideas. → Improving the future of lending, and the impact he wishes to leave on the mortgage industry.
BRX Mortgage Website: www.brxmortgage.com
BRX Mortgage Instagram: @brxmortgage
Scott Peckford's LinkedIn: @ScottPeckford
Scott Peckford's Instagram: @scottpeckford
ILMB Podcast: www.ilovemortgagebrokering.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Thank you for tuning into thisepisode of Lending Thoughts
(00:02):
sponsored by RocketPro.
Today, I'll be interviewing my
friend, Scott Peckford, who's theCEO and founder of Bricks
Mortgage, as well as the I LoveMortgage Brokering Facebook group
that so many of us love.
We'll be talking about the power
of building community, the timefrom ideation to execution,
optimism as a weapon foroverlooking failures and keeping
going and how being a copycat inthe business world is actually a
(00:26):
positive thing listen in hey scottwelcome to the show today how are
you i'm awesome man thanks forhaving thanks for having me
absolutely it's good to talk toyou again i'm gonna dive deep here
over the next roughly 30 minutesor so and talk a little bit about
you and your journey.
(00:47):
We're good friends.
I've gotten to know a little bitabout you over the last four or
five years that we've known eachother, but I've never gotten the
full life story.
So I actually was curious from
myself as well.
Can you tell your whole life story
in 60 seconds or less?I will do my my best.
So I was born in Manitoba.
My family's from the East Coast,
Newfoundland.
My dad was military.
And so I moved, went to sevendifferent high schools from K to
(01:11):
12.
I felt like I was in the witness
protection program.
I got to know people like, hey,
everybody, time to leave.
And so I was always the new guy in
every town.
I actually think that's part of
why I do what I do.
I can talk about that later.
In my 20s, I was a paramedic fornine years, loved it.
And when I turned 30, I got intothe mortgage business.
That was 18 years ago, almost 19years ago.
And for the first 10 years, justbeing a mortgage broker, then I
decided, hey, I'll start thispodcast a decade ago and talk to
(01:32):
some really smart people andstarted coaching.
And so the coaching spun out ofthe fact that I learned some
things, some things you can learnfrom someone that are great that
only they can do and some thingssomeone else can copy.
And I was always interested inwhat could I learn or duplicate
from somebody else.
And so that led me into creating a
training academy, which then ledme three years ago into a mortgage
brokerage, which I never in amillion years would have thought I
would have done.
(01:53):
In hindsight, when you look back,
the dots connect really well,like, hey, this worked, it was not
by design.
I just follow my curiosity mostly.
And my curiosity, some thingswork, some things are dumpster
fire, but all of it at the end ofthe day, I'm having fun and I'm
learning and get to work with coolpeople.
Personal side, three awesome kidsthat are 19, you know, almost 18
and 15.
And my 18 year old is joining me
in the mortgage biz, which hasbeen a ton of fun.
(02:14):
has been a ton of fun.
Yeah.
That's really cool.
So turning into a family business
after all that.
Yeah.
You talked about foresight.
You didn't have foresight.
No, no. Kind of like your ownforay.
You know, it's kind of funny asyou tell that story, as you talk
about it, it almost sounds likevery natural in that, like I did
this and then like that kind ofturned into this and that kind of
turned into that and that turnedinto that.
(02:34):
Next thing you know, I start like,you know, a community group.
I love mortgage brokering.
see it on the t-shirt right now i
want to talk to you a little bitmore about that it's the acdc
please don't sue me acdc you guyshave lots of stuff in your
mortgage biz and so yeah it's beenan amazing journey and the people
i've met through that haveliterally changed my whole life
and trajectory for and trajectoryfor sure so it doesn't sound like
you had like the full picture whenyou started doing it that like,
this is where I'm going to be 19years from now.
(02:57):
And I'll be running, you know,this brokerage that's growing
super fast year over year.
And like everything I will have
done up to that point will haveled me to this moment.
No, not at all.
Like for me, what I tend to do is
I'm very curious.
I love to learn.
And I find a lot of my best ideasdon't come from our industry
because we're a lot of like copyeach other and it's like, hey,
they did it.
And what I like to do is look
(03:17):
outside our industry and then go,hey, could this work here?
So for instance, I love mortgagebrokering because 10 years ago,
podcasting was not like it istoday.
Like everybody has a podcast.
But back then it was like, what is
a podcast?And I was listening to this
podcast called I Love Marketing.
And I thought, man, I should start
a podcast.
And if you look at my original
branding, it actually looks almostlike I Love Marketing.
That's how much I copied it.
And then the second thing, the
Facebook group started about thattime.
(03:37):
And it was because I was in aFacebook group with Pat Flynn from
Smart Passive Income.
And I thought, why don't we just
start a Facebook group?I had no idea that it would turn
into this forum for mortgagebrokers that share deals and stuff
like I've used it when I wasbrokering and I see people helping
each other.
I can't even imagine the dollar
amount of deals that has flownthrough that place over the years.
Now there is some misinformationin there because some people,
frankly, they answer questions andlike, that's wrong, that's
(03:58):
illegal.
And so you still have to use your
own judgment, but in terms ofcrowdsourcing ideas and solutions,
there hasn't been a betterplatform for that.
But again, that was just curiositydriven.
I copied something in anotherindustry and thought maybe it
could work here.
And it did.
I did not think that it would turninto what it has.
So that's cool.
I mean, I think it speaks to the
power of testing, launching andlearning, as we like to say here.
(04:19):
Yeah.
And the power of community, which
I want to talk to a little bitmore about, dig a little bit
deeper there.
Like, again, in hindsight, it all
seems so obvious.
Now you're building a brokerage.
How advantageous is it to havethis community of I love mortgage
broker?But like, you know, when you
started that, you didn't reallyknow where it would go.
But it sounds like you had someidea that like, there is value in
connecting people in that way.
(04:39):
And in many ways, you've been able
to build a business around that.
Can you just maybe speak to the
power of community as you've seenit and what that's meant for you?
And now, yeah, sure.
I could probably give a couple of
different examples when I thinkabout the community aspect.
So I listen sure.
I could probably give a couple of
different examples when I thinkabout the community aspect.
(04:59):
So I listen to the podcast that Ilike.
I love marketing with Dean Jacksonand Joe Polish.
And the thing that I found when Igo to a mortgage conference, I
actually usually found more valuein sitting in the lobby, having a
beer or a coffee with a topproducer and just asking lots of
questions.
So my goodness, just the value I'm
getting from this conversation wassignificantly higher than often I
get from the speakers.
And so the other part, the reason
that I started the podcast wasbecause I was like, how do I do
more of those conversations?How do I talk to people like Peter
(05:21):
Matheny and these other topproducers that have been in the
business a long time and have alot of wisdom?
And then I thought, why don't Ijust record them in a podcast
format, then other people canlearn.
And I've been grateful that somany people have been willing to,
you know, jump on and do that withme.
I recorded 10 podcasts before Ieven launched the show because I
had heard most people don't getpast six.
So I'm like, well, if I record 10,then at least I got past most
people when I started.
(05:41):
And if you listen to my first
shows, I was very nervous.
I was extremely nervous and I
followed a very rigid conversationstructure, which don't as much now
now i just again follow mycuriosity that's how that piece
came then the other part when itcomes to the training so what i
would do and i'd look at somebodyi would talk about their business
and there's conversations thathappen recorded and you turn off
the recorder then sometimes you'llbe dropping gold that they're like
oh man i wish the recorder was onbecause this is so dang good and
so what would happen is is that iwas looking for things that could
(06:03):
duplicate.
And I use the example of like, you
know, Michael Jordan's a fantasticbasketball player, but if he could
coach you, it's very unlikely youor I are ever going to be able to
dunk from the free throw line, nomatter how much he coaches us,
right?That's just unique to his
skillset.
But what I can do is what are the
things in his game, if you will,that I can duplicate in my
business.
And that's always what interested
me.
Once I found enough of those,
that's what propelled me intocreating the training company.
(06:23):
So I'm like, hey, these areactually, you don't have to be a
Michael Jordan to do this.
You know, a lot more people can
use this.
And so that led me into creating
the training company.
And that sort of led me down that
path.
And in the training company, what
I loved about the training is thatI would give my best ideas to
people that would come into it.
And some of them would take the
ideas and improve.
I would be like, oh my gosh, you
just took my idea and upgraded it.
(06:44):
So the thing would constantly
improve because there was thisfeedback loop of best ideas, smart
people, they're running a bunch ofexperiments in different markets
and different personalities.
Some stuff would come back and
you'd be like, oh man, you justupgraded it for everybody.
And so it was this constant, westill do today, but that's what I
love about doing coaching andworking with smart people is that
that collaborative effect is likeno one person is smarter than the
group if the group has access tothe same information.
And so that's the thing I loveabout the collaborative piece.
(07:04):
It's like, man, it's verypowerful.
Yeah, that's kind of reminiscentof like the Medici effect.
You sort of like put work into theworld around other people that are
putting work into the world andyou let other people judge improve
you're constantly putting stuffout being judged i don't know what
the medici effect is so like i'venever heard medici effect is so
like i've never heard this beforeso and i like these so this is
great whatever this medici is soyeah medici is so yeah not to go
(07:27):
down to like a deep rabbit holebut basically the renaissance era
around italy at that timebasically the medici they were
family they loved art and theystarted collecting all these
artists from all over the placeand asking them to come there and
perform their art i see right likethey were a painter musician
otherwise and they were funding alot of these artists like in their
early days and it's like where alot of the best, most expensive
(07:48):
art as we know it today withoutgoing in like on an artist level
because you'd recognize some byname or maybe you don't follow art
at all and you'd recognize none byname.
Suffice to say, a bunch of reallyfamous artists from today started
all around the same period.
I think that's the same area.
Silicon Valley, Valley, like ifyou look at Silicon Valley over
the last 25 or 30 years, like lookat the concentration of talent in
that area and what it's producedfor the world.
(08:10):
And so, yes, I think that we cando that in an extremely small
scale in the mortgage space byputting smart people together and
sharing.
And I think they'd say the Medici,
you know, they would probably havethe Medici effect.
You got to put some like, youknow, a little bit of personality
in that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Throw some hand into some hand
into it you gotta throw some handactions or like i don't know what
(08:30):
you're talking like that's rightso hand actions or like i don't
know what you're talking likethat's right so further to that
point you talked about just likegetting out there putting work
into the world i think one thingthat i've continually been
impressed with like i've evenpitched you on idea scott in
conversations i'm like hey i hadthis idea this thing improve the
industry by x improve brokeringimprove improve lending, improve
this, improve that.
I swear, I feel like half the
(08:52):
things I tell you that I want todo, like you've already done them
in some regard.
Now, they might not have turned
into billion dollar businesses,but you're like, yeah, I already
built a website for that actually.
Or yeah, I already tried that once
and like it didn't work out, butyou know, like spent a little bit
of time on it, sold this business,sold that business, threw this one
away, this one turned intosomething, somebody else makes a
living off doing it now.
Like, what's a little bit of that
journey been like, you aresomebody that I just really
(09:12):
respect for like ideation toexecution.
Like you just seem to have areally short time window on that
frame.
Well, a couple things I'll say
about that things I'll say aboutthat one, I would say I'm
naturally optimistic, and I havean unrealistic, I tend to think
things are not going to be thathard.
I mean, how hard can it be?It turns out like starting a
brokerage, how hard can it be?A lot freaking harder than I
thought, put it this way.
(09:33):
But once you get into it, somebody
gave me I a, got a banner here.
It says, we didn't start this
because it was easy.
We started this because we thought
it was easy or basically too farinto it.
And so that's usually what happensto me.
It's like, oh, that can't be thathard.
I'm like, oh gosh, yes.
I would say that's one of my
natural is that I don't think mostthings is going to be as
difficult.
And so I'm willing to try them.
(09:53):
I'm also okay with failure, thingsnot working.
Like I've had stuff not work andsome of the best lessons that I've
had and the way that I functionnow is better because of those
failures.
If I was really smart, I would
learn those lessons from otherpeople, but some of them I had to
learn myself.
And so there's the other part that
I would say to that.
And then the last piece to this,
now that I have a brokerage, Irealized everything I was doing
before, like all the stuff that Iwas creating, I could just create
(10:13):
that within the brokerage.
Like I've got this network of
amazing mortgage brokers I get towork with.
And it's like, what do they need?And then so I would never have
been able to do it back then.
But now anything that we build is
within what I'm doing.
So I'm like, I get to still do a
small degree.
I get to still experiment.
But now it's like, I get to helpall of our people.
So that part I community I get tostill do a small I get to still
but now it's I get to help all ofour Right?
(10:35):
Right.
really...
Training, building.
degree.
experiment, like, people.
So that part I really- to help all
of our people.
So that part I community I get to
still do a small I get to stillbut now it's I get to help all of
our Right?Right.
really...
Training, building.
degree.
experiment, like, people.
So that part I really- Training,community building.
Support or any kind of tools oranything that we want to come up
with.
All these things that you talked
about, this is basically like allof your past ideas, good and bad,
throw out some bad ones for sure.
Like try not to make all the same
(10:56):
mistakes again, but like try totake like the best of them, I
suppose, with all the lessons thatyou've learned and just put it
into the business that you'rebuilding today.
Right.
And you can work with work with
somebody long- term.
And I do love coaching.
So I have to say the one thing Idiscovered in this is that in a
previous life, I would have been ateacher or a professor or
something because I love to learnand I love to try and synthesize
and simplify things.
So it's like, okay, this is cool.
But like, again, back to the,there's people that are really
good at their job, but they do notknow how to explain to you.
And they don't even realize whatthey're doing sometimes is unique.
You know, I can't tell you howmany people say to me, Scott, I
don't do anything special.
And I start digging in.
I'm like, what about this?What about this?
What about this?They're like, oh, it's second
nature to them, but I see it.
And then I go, okay, copy this,
(11:16):
copy, copy, copy.
And then someone else can, you
know, apply it to their business.
And so if I had a superpower, it's
one is I can find that thread andjust start pulling it.
I can find somebody else'ssuperpower sometimes better than
they can, not but sometimesalways, because they're so close
to thread and just start it,pulling I can find somebody it.
else's sometimes superpower,better than they Not but
sometimes.
can.
always, Because they're so closeto it, they can't even see it.
It is often very difficult.
I mean, we think about mortgage
brokers as producers, for example.
I've often talked about the fact
(11:37):
that you can put them side byside.
You can tell them both exactlywhat to say.
You can give them a similar typeof client for whatever reason,
like, you know, span it across 30days, six months, a year, one will
outproduce the other one by 10 X.
Yeah.
Good luck trying to like draw outthose things.
Like they're very subtle.
The difference between success and
failure is very subtle.
And I actually want to go back to
that idea.
Cause you talked about in your
previous answer failure, and thenyou started by talking about like
some of the ignorance, like had Iknown it would be this hard, I
(11:58):
wouldn't have started.
And some people might look at that
as like a disadvantage.
It's interesting to hear you frame
it as an actual advantage to whoyou are and what you do and for
what it's worth, I would agreewith you in that.
But you're basically saying thatI'm ignorant enough to believe
that like these things are easyand I could just go do them.
And then before you know it, I'mjust like, I'm doing them.
I'm in it.
And I just keep going.
But, you know, what would you sayto others who are trying to start
a mortgage business, trying tomaybe start a mortgage lender,
which is what I would describe asa little further up the path for
(12:19):
some folks.
Obviously, you know us at Rocket,
started out as a brokerage, thenmoved on to becoming a lender.
And then you just keep expandingthat and all these other parts of
the value chain and continueimproving, improving, improving.
For us, we said, let's start likethis thing as well as we can.
Then, you know, we knew that thenext logical step was to start the
next thing, the next thing, thenext thing.
But that's because like ouroriginal mental model for how we
would build this business was tolike control the value chain so
(12:41):
that we could control the clientexperience.
And we thought that if we couldcontrol the entire client
experience, that we could delivera better experience than anybody
else who's ever done it before inthe industry.
That's like what this all startedfrom.
So, you know, we've been executingthat, but man, like same boat, we
had no idea how hard it was goingto be.
And had we known, we probablywouldn't have done it, but like,
we're here now, we keep going.
You sound like you took a very
similar Like you journey.
built a very similar journey.
(13:03):
Like you built it the same way.
I think there's some advice to
pull away from there.
Can you just speak to that a
little bit more?Sure.
Well, I would I would say firstoff, what you guys do with rock, I
think is awesome, but you're alsocopying what they did in the U S
you now have rockets since 2012rocket pro TPO is the second
largest wholesale.
(13:23):
Like they work with mortgage
brokers, pro tpo is the secondlargest wholesale like they work
with mortgage brokers secondbiggest in the country and you
also have a direct to consumerside and they coexist no problem
and everybody's happy both sidesare happy so i think just like me
i copy and paste you're like heythis worked before it copy pasted
here and make some edits to makeit work for your you know specific
situation but i would say i'mdefinitely optimistic i I have an
(13:43):
optimistic bent anyways, when itcomes to these things.
And then I also don't mind problemsolving.
So then you just run intoproblems.
I'm just like, okay, well, we'lljust figure it out.
We'll just figure it out as we go.
And some of the most exciting
things that I've been a part ofhave just been that just get up
each day, you know, you startedthis thing.
And now it's like, okay, whatnext?
(14:03):
And how do I figure it out?And I love that part.
I love the creative process ofbuilding something and it not
going how you expect, right?When you look back on your life,
if you're gonna, you know, whenyou're 80 years old, you're not
gonna be thinking, oh man, I triedthis thing.
I was a smashing success and itwas really easy.
And then I was like, that's it.
I was like, okay, there's no
story.
It's kind of like winning the
lottery, right?Like you go like, oh, I was poor.
(14:24):
Then I won the lotto and now I'mrich.
And you know, nobody's gonna watchthat.
You know, I've known so manyentrepreneurs who are on the verge
of like, you know, the FedEx storywhere the guy has not enough money
for payroll, they go to Vegas, andhe gambles the last money he has
and makes enough money for payrollto keep the company going.
You know, those are the storiesthat make you go, man, that's the
entrepreneur.
And so thankfully, like, because
I've made so many mistakes inother businesses, the brokerage
(14:45):
has been profitable all threeyears, it's doing great.
I guarantee you, I would not havehad the skills to do this 10 years
ago.
No chance I would have.
And I feel like right now, evenI'm at the edge of my leadership
ability that I have.
I'm getting coaching on because
I'm at the edge of I've neverbuilt something so big or complex.
So I'm like, OK, I realize now Ineed help.
I know the stuff I don't know.
And there's no chance that Scott
minus 10 years would be able to dothis.
He would completely F this up,like, for sure.
(15:07):
But I've learned from all theother experiments that we've run
good and bad.
It's interesting.
We sometimes will joke here, likeevery day we show up, we're
running the biggest business we'veever run in our lives.
Yeah, that's really good.
That's true for me, too.
It's like every day is bigger thananything I've ever done.
It's like looking at you for theanswers.
And you're like, I'm just doingthis for the first time, too, by
the way.
Right.
And it's no different thanparenting no different no
different than parenting nodifferent than parenting though
like most people you know youdon't know when you don't have
kids and especially if you don'thave kids you have this sort of
(15:29):
arrogant like oh if i had kids i'dmake them do this and you get kids
you're like oh my gosh this is notand you've never like i've never
had a 19 year old an 18 year oldand 15 before you know but you
figure it out you know so youdon't go oh i want to put them
back or something but you can't soyou just have to keep going and
you learn as you go.
no as you go.
Yeah, that's really well said.
You know, we spent some time in
the beginning talking about powerof community building, what that's
(15:51):
allowed you to do for yourbusiness.
And I try to give other people inthe mortgage community some tips
and tricks and some views thatthey could take away from these
conversations.
Hopefully, that's why I'm doing
this.
What do you think others can take
away from your journey and whatyou've done?
Specifically speaking to what youbuilt with I Love Mortgage
Brokering and that cool shirt thatyou're wearing.
Is there anything that if you'renot Scott Peckford, he'll say,
okay, that's cool.
(16:11):
I don't even know what you have,
like 10,000, 11,000 people now inthe Mortgage Brokering group or
okay, like, I don't know that thatnecessarily gives me a bunch of
mortgages.
Like, you know, I'm just trying to
close two months so I can make aliving.
I think you can do it on a smallerscale in your own you can do it on
a smaller scale in your owncommunity.
So I did a podcast recently, likehow to be the most well-known
mortgage broker in your community.
Cause a friend of mine had moved
and he's like, Scott, what wouldyou do if you moved down here?
I'm like, this Oh, is what I wouldLike do.
that, that, that, that, that likeliterally step-by-step.
(16:32):
And I'd say, you give me twoyears.
I may not be the most highestproducing yet.
There would be nobody thatwouldn't know who I was.
And so you can build a communitywherever you are.
And so if I'm in wherever thatplace is, you know, Halifax, Nova
Scotia, or Moncton, New Brunswick,or, you know, I was just out there
on the roadshow.
I'm just thinking of places.
of places.
Just drop you off in a helicopter.
Yeah, drop me off, dude.
I believe you're free to stay.
to let's figure it Like, I couldbuild a mortgage out.
I could build business.
(16:53):
a mortgage Just drop you business.
off in a drop helicopter.
me Yeah, I believe off, Let's
dude.
figure it out.
you.
I could build a mortgage business.
I could build a mortgage business.
I have no doubt.
If I had the advantage oftechnology and social media, I
could do it faster, but I wouldn'teven need that.
You just need nowhere to start.
(17:14):
If I had the bandwidth, it would
be kind of a fun thing to try, butI just right now, like, you know,
I can't do it.
I would love to do would love to
do it, though.
I would love to.
That's like a founder's dilemma oflike that little sick side of you
that's like, tear it all down.
No, no, no. I would say to myself
that I just drop me in there anddocument building a mortgage
business from scratch.
A hundred percent.
That's my point.
It's that feeling of like, I could
(17:34):
start from zero.
Just what I know.
No money, nothing.
Just like what I know.
Could I do it all over again?Naval Ravikant actually talks
about this.
He says like, I want to know in my
head that if I were dropped intolike a hundred worlds, I could
create wealth for myself in 99 ofthem.
Like I want to remove luck fromthe equation and I want to turn
success into a skillset that Icould actually repeat over and
over again, just based on what Iknow today.
And I think that's, you know, aneloquent way to talk about what
(17:55):
we're talking about, which islike, you could recreate success
just with a playbook that existssomewhat in your mind, somewhat,
if you just follow the OutlookMortgage Brokering Facebook group.
I mean, I can't tell you how muchstuff.
no. I would say to how much stuff.
Yeah, there's tons of value.
But here's the thing I see is thatthe most successful, we talked
about this earlier, it's like, youput two people in a room and
they're both getting leads.
Six months, 12 months later, one
of them is out performing by 10X.
I still can't predict who that
will be.
We bring on, we have experienced
agents and rookies.
I have people that fool me all the
time.
I'm like, this person, I don't
(18:16):
know.
But I'm like, hey, they're willing
to give it a go.
And they completely smash my
expectations.
And the way that I settle this in
my own mind of being like, well,Scott, maybe you're just not good
at hiring.
I remind myself that the NFL has a
lot of data when they hire peopleto go to professional sports.
They cannot predict with a largedegree of certainty who's actually
going to be a smashing success andwho's going to be gone in two
years.
They lose tons of money on these
(18:36):
things all the time.
So I think it's the same thing
when it comes to sales.
We give everybody the same
opportunity.
They get to decide what they do
with it.
There are certain characteristics
that successful people have.
And one of them is they do not
take very much time between ideaand execution.
So they hear a good idea and theyexecute on it.
And it's probably badly executed.
There's probably spelling
mistakes.
And they execute ridiculously
(18:57):
fast.
Every single person who is rapidly
successful, there's people thatget there slower, but the people
who kind of have, if you see theirtrajectory, it looks like a hockey
stick, they execute quickly.
And so they do not get stuck in
their head.
They don't worry about perfection.
And I would say I'm more linedthat way than not.
You know, I still get stuck in myhead about some things.
There's certain things I still,you know, most of my things I can
(19:18):
execute fast, but there's always acouple it's like, Oh, and so, you
know, I've got to coach myself onthose things.
So anyway, that would be somethingI'd recognized in, you know,
people who are rapidly would besuccessful.
Just that time gap betweenideation and execution.
We've kind of come back to that acouple of times.
It reminds me of sort of how welaunched our broker channel
business, Rocket Pro.
Everything else that we did was
built over the course of like fouryears that rocket pro business
even though we kind of had an ideathat you know that was to come
(19:40):
from the time that we said let'sdo that to the time that we were
actually in market with bricks waslike really working on for like
four months yeah which is likevery small time to like stand up a
broker channel lender for therecord it is not elon musk fast
but it is damn fast it's not elonwould have said like we need to
cut that time onto a weekotherwise we're not doing it yeah
but i mean four months to standeverything up start like make sure
that your technology the peopleall that's in line like start
(20:02):
accepting deal flow and thendelivering on that there's a lot
of pressure right because at theother end of the transaction is
the broker and then on the otherside of that is a client who
doesn't care that you just sentthis deal to this brand new lender
who's like trying to figure theirstuff out still.
But we're in market, we'redelivering for our consumer
agents.
(20:22):
We say, okay, this is working.
We're really fast.
We think we're really good.
We think other people shouldexperience this now.
We think we're ready.
Well, now we gotta go stand up
this next thing really fast andactually call it on you and the
Briggs team.
Cause I'm like, I need someone I
can trust who like isn't gonnacall me and, you know,nan chris
like tori other people on my teamand be like you know you guys suck
and you messed up this deal oryou're too slow or you're too that
(20:44):
we're like we're probably gonnamess some stuff up i think i told
you but you guys were great thoughyou i mean honestly great even
right out of were great though youi mean honestly great even right
out of the gate you guys were goodeven the first iteration was
pretty good it's gotten a lotbetter but like it was good right
out of the gate, you guys weregood.
Even the first iteration waspretty good.
It's gotten a lot better, but likeit was good right out of the gate.
(21:08):
But I think it's because you guysare data driven, but you were
already doing the same thing withyour existing internal
salespeople.
Obviously, there was some stuff
you had to figure out, but I thinkthat's why it went pretty well.
it went pretty well.
Well, probably like many of the
things that you've done, there'slike a hamster on the wheel, like
going nuts behind the scenes tomake it all feel okay for you on
the other side of it.
Right.
Because there's just things thathappen that you're like, Oh no, we
(21:28):
never thought of that.
Kind of like when you're building
a business, right.
Which is like, I've got this idea.
I'm going to go out, I'm going toexecute them to launch.
And then you do it.
And then like, it's like day two
and you're like, Oh, how do I fillthe order?
You're like shipping shoes overthe internet.
You find out that you hooked upwith a manufacturer who doesn't
include laces with the shoes.
You're like, oh no, there's no
laces.
Next thing you know, you're lacing
laces up yourself and trying torenegotiate your contract with the
(21:50):
supplier to include laces movingforward because it's your first
time.
And it was our first time.
You were complimentary there,which I appreciate.
But for us, it was like, how do wedo this fast?
How do we learn really, really,really fast?
And then how do we start openingup to others, which now we've
taken that journey we've done.
I'm curious, I mean, you've been
doing this a long time.
I think one of the things that,
you know, you and I jammed on andgot excited about was like, the
(22:12):
future of lending, you sort oflike see it for what it is today,
which is like, everyone tries to,you know, make it appear and feel
better.
But we know there are things that
need to be fixed.
When you think about like what's
to come for lenders in this spaceand how lenders serve brokers,
what would you like to see?What comes to mind for some things
that like you think are justmassive opportunities to be
better?Basil says this, focus on the
things that never go out of style,which is, you know, fast
communication and making surepeople know what's going on.
You know, if it's going to be ayes, BS, if it's a no, that's
okay.
Just be a no. It's not that sexy.
The most successful businesses arelike Groundhog Day.
(22:35):
I tell people it's the best salesmovie you could ever watch.
It's the same thing every day.
And you get better at the day.
And by the time you've done theday, you know, 60 times, you can
catch a kid falling out of a tree.
Remember the movie, he catches
that kid and the kid's kind of noteven grateful for it.
And so that's what we do.
And as a guy who's creative, I
struggle with that because I like,you know, the variety.
But the thing is, is in thecurrent role I'm in now, we get
(22:56):
Groundhog Day with some varietybuilt in terms of like, okay, how
are we going to serve our agentsnow?
What are we going to do different?What are we going to improve?
And so I get to do, I feel like abit of both.
In terms of what I think thelenders are going to, I think
you're going to see AI is going tobe more supportive.
I know your friend there, MikeFawaz was telling me about this
pre-qualified voice thing thatthey have.
(23:17):
The AI voice, have you heard aboutthis?
You probably know about it, right?So I'm like, that's crazy.
You know what?I'm like, that's helpful.
So maybe I'll give some context ifyou're listening.
So it basically, in the US, theyget verified pre-approval letters
so they're underwritten andsomebody wants to go write an
offer and say there's 330 000saturday night at seven o'clock
place they want to buy is 350 inthe past they would reach out to
the broker the mortgage brokerbecause when i asked them this i
(23:38):
said why do so many mortgagebrokers want to use rocket rocket
you know in the u.s and in canadarealize that the broker is the
customer so they're like oh wemake things easier for them like
this you know ai voice thing sowhat happens is the person calls a
phone number, but it's not aperson.
It's 24-7 AI voice and says, hey,you know, hey, Beckham, what was
your mortgage pre-approval number?Ask them some questions.
What's the property that, youknow, MLS taxes, whatever.
(24:00):
Then, oh yeah, no problem.
You're pre-approved.
I'll give you another letter.
I'll send it to you right now.
And boom, they have anotherverified and the brokers can be
sitting at home with their family,you know, having dinner with their
family and not having to runaround.
And I'm like, that kind of stuff,I think, is great.
The quote that I've heard and loveis that you're not going to lose
your job to AI.
You're going to lose your job to
someone using AI or, you know, theperson who uses it as a tool.
(24:20):
And so I think that I'm sure youguys will have more of that stuff
as it comes.
And, you know, stuff like that, I
think, is useful.
I don't know where the answers are
at the moment, but that's what Iwould say.
I don't know where the answers areat the Yeah.
the answers are at the but moment,that's what I would say.
Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of it just
remains to be seen, but I thinkthere's some early places where AI
is going to definitely play afactor.
(24:41):
And, you know, we certainly prideourselves on being one of the
first to try to push the forefrontof technology in the space to
streamline the way that some ofthese things are.
And we're excited to work withyour team on that.
Scott, I'll round us out here byjust talking about some of the way
that some of these things are.
And we're excited to work with
your team on that.
Scott, I'll round us out here by
just talking about some of theimpact that you've made.
I think you've done someincredible things for this
industry.
It's been fun for me to even just
(25:02):
get the opportunity to catch upwith you, chat with you over the
last five years.
You've done so many things as
we've talked about.
And I'm curious though, like with
this bricks thing and all theother things you seemingly working
on at all times, what are you mostexcited about going forward?
And what do you want your lastingimpact to be on?
Oh, okay.
That's easy.
So basically my vision with bricksis we want to make it completely
agent and team member owned.
One thing I learned as I got older
is coaches are great.
(25:22):
And so we've got some great
coaching from people that havedone this.
You know, our coach has done it ahundred times with these basically
a profit sharing scheme for yourteam.
The problem with business that Isee is that you have the owners
that see the profit and then youhave all the people that work in
the business.
They get their job, but they don't
really understand how theiractions affect overall profit of
the business.
Right?
And so it was a sports team.
It's like owner has the scoreboard
and everybody else just goes towork and they're thinking about
(25:44):
themselves.
Well, the way these guys set this
business up is that they get aline of sight.
So there's full transparency forthe person working in the
business.
They can see the score, what the
profit looks like, and they get astake in the outcome.
So if they improve it, which theyare the best people to improve it,
then they can get a stake in theoutcome, which means there's
profit sharing.
And so I think that it is a
massive competitive advantage.
It's still in the very infancy,
but give us six, 12 months once weget this thing cooking.
And I think it's going to make theculture like just ridiculous.
And so stage one is get the teammembers, our staff, your team
members to embrace this wholething and then agents.
(26:09):
And so my vision is to continue togrow the brokerage.
And right now I'm the biggestshareholder.
I'm happy with my percentage goingdown if we're growing the business
and making it bigger.
I'm happy to have a small
percentage of a massive companythat's in multiple countries and
everybody wins.
So that is what I'm excited about.
And, you know, I could talk aboutthat for hours and go into more
detail.
But essentially, at a top level,
that's what we're doing.
That's really well said and really
clear.
100% of zero is zero.
And it sounds like, you know,you're going to need other people
to get you there.
Dude, and people are it sounds you
people are like, you're oh, notgreedy.
(26:29):
I'm like, I'm oh, greedy.
I'm long term.
Like, you know, the wholemarshmallow test.
It's like, oh, do you want amarshmallow day two tomorrow?
I'm like, I'm no, going to wait.
Give me five years.
I want a bag of marshmallows.
I want to play a game.
And the people that we want toattract are people that want to
play that game.
The people that are like, yeah, I
(26:51):
get what you're, I want to be partof this.
And the last thing I'll say tothat is, if you look at the best,
you know, Ryan Reynolds and ConorMcGregor and Kim Kardashian, they
made their money by owning stuff.
They built their influence and
they made, you know, Ryan Reynoldsgets paid to do movies.
He made a fortune by owning a partof fast growing companies that he
was able to attach his brand to.
(27:11):
There are brokers out there that
are helping make other people afortune, and they're going to get
to the end of their career and go,what was the point of like, great,
now I have something I can barelyeven sell.
I want to flip that.
That's what That's what we're all
about.
That's amazing.
Solving a problem that has existedin this and many other industries
forever.
And much like everything that you
said today, you're not necessarilythe inventor of it, not to steal
any credit from you.
(27:31):
It's all been done before, man.
It's all been done before.
You're just trying to like take
it, repeat, build something betterin your own way that's uniquely
yours with a model that's provento work in other places at other
times.
And you're willing to give it a
shot and just keep going and letother people join in on that fun
and join in on the upside.
That's an amazing story and I
appreciate you sharing.
Yep, thanks, man.
Thanks for joining man.
(27:51):
Thanks for joining us, Scott.
We'll talk to you soon.
Thank you for tuning into thisepisode of Lending Thoughts
(00:02):
sponsored by RocketPro.
Today, I'll be interviewing my
friend, Scott Peckford, who's theCEO and founder of Bricks
Mortgage, as well as the I LoveMortgage Brokering Facebook group
that so many of us love.
We'll be talking about the power
of building community, the timefrom ideation to execution,
optimism as a weapon foroverlooking failures and keeping
going and how being a copycat inthe business world is actually a
(00:26):
positive thing listen in hey scottwelcome to the show today how are
you i'm awesome man thanks forhaving thanks for having me
absolutely it's good to talk toyou again i'm gonna dive deep here
over the next roughly 30 minutesor so and talk a little bit about
you and your journey.
(00:47):
We're good friends.
I've gotten to know a little bitabout you over the last four or
five years that we've known eachother, but I've never gotten the
full life story.
So I actually was curious from
myself as well.
Can you tell your whole life story
in 60 seconds or less?I will do my my best.
So I was born in Manitoba.
My family's from the East Coast,
Newfoundland.
My dad was military.
And so I moved, went to sevendifferent high schools from K to
(01:11):
12.
I felt like I was in the witness
protection program.
I got to know people like, hey,
everybody, time to leave.
And so I was always the new guy in
every town.
I actually think that's part of
why I do what I do.
I can talk about that later.
In my 20s, I was a paramedic fornine years, loved it.
And when I turned 30, I got intothe mortgage business.
That was 18 years ago, almost 19years ago.
And for the first 10 years, justbeing a mortgage broker, then I
decided, hey, I'll start thispodcast a decade ago and talk to
(01:32):
some really smart people andstarted coaching.
And so the coaching spun out ofthe fact that I learned some
things, some things you can learnfrom someone that are great that
only they can do and some thingssomeone else can copy.
And I was always interested inwhat could I learn or duplicate
from somebody else.
And so that led me into creating a
training academy, which then ledme three years ago into a mortgage
brokerage, which I never in amillion years would have thought I
would have done.
(01:53):
In hindsight, when you look back,
the dots connect really well,like, hey, this worked, it was not
by design.
I just follow my curiosity mostly.
And my curiosity, some thingswork, some things are dumpster
fire, but all of it at the end ofthe day, I'm having fun and I'm
learning and get to work with coolpeople.
Personal side, three awesome kidsthat are 19, you know, almost 18
and 15.
And my 18 year old is joining me
in the mortgage biz, which hasbeen a ton of fun.
(02:14):
has been a ton of fun.
Yeah.
That's really cool.
So turning into a family business
after all that.
Yeah.
You talked about foresight.
You didn't have foresight.
No, no. Kind of like your ownforay.
You know, it's kind of funny asyou tell that story, as you talk
about it, it almost sounds likevery natural in that, like I did
this and then like that kind ofturned into this and that kind of
turned into that and that turnedinto that.
(02:34):
Next thing you know, I start like,you know, a community group.
I love mortgage brokering.
see it on the t-shirt right now i
want to talk to you a little bitmore about that it's the acdc
please don't sue me acdc you guyshave lots of stuff in your
mortgage biz and so yeah it's beenan amazing journey and the people
i've met through that haveliterally changed my whole life
and trajectory for and trajectoryfor sure so it doesn't sound like
you had like the full picture whenyou started doing it that like,
this is where I'm going to be 19years from now.
(02:57):
And I'll be running, you know,this brokerage that's growing
super fast year over year.
And like everything I will have
done up to that point will haveled me to this moment.
No, not at all.
Like for me, what I tend to do is
I'm very curious.
I love to learn.
And I find a lot of my best ideasdon't come from our industry
because we're a lot of like copyeach other and it's like, hey,
they did it.
And what I like to do is look
(03:17):
outside our industry and then go,hey, could this work here?
So for instance, I love mortgagebrokering because 10 years ago,
podcasting was not like it istoday.
Like everybody has a podcast.
But back then it was like, what is
a podcast?And I was listening to this
podcast called I Love Marketing.
And I thought, man, I should start
a podcast.
And if you look at my original
branding, it actually looks almostlike I Love Marketing.
That's how much I copied it.
And then the second thing, the
Facebook group started about thattime.
(03:37):
And it was because I was in aFacebook group with Pat Flynn from
Smart Passive Income.
And I thought, why don't we just
start a Facebook group?I had no idea that it would turn
into this forum for mortgagebrokers that share deals and stuff
like I've used it when I wasbrokering and I see people helping
each other.
I can't even imagine the dollar
amount of deals that has flownthrough that place over the years.
Now there is some misinformationin there because some people,
frankly, they answer questions andlike, that's wrong, that's
(03:58):
illegal.
And so you still have to use your
own judgment, but in terms ofcrowdsourcing ideas and solutions,
there hasn't been a betterplatform for that.
But again, that was just curiositydriven.
I copied something in anotherindustry and thought maybe it
could work here.
And it did.
I did not think that it would turninto what it has.
So that's cool.
I mean, I think it speaks to the
power of testing, launching andlearning, as we like to say here.
(04:19):
Yeah.
And the power of community, which
I want to talk to a little bitmore about, dig a little bit
deeper there.
Like, again, in hindsight, it all
seems so obvious.
Now you're building a brokerage.
How advantageous is it to havethis community of I love mortgage
broker?But like, you know, when you
started that, you didn't reallyknow where it would go.
But it sounds like you had someidea that like, there is value in
connecting people in that way.
(04:39):
And in many ways, you've been able
to build a business around that.
Can you just maybe speak to the
power of community as you've seenit and what that's meant for you?
And now, yeah, sure.
I could probably give a couple of
different examples when I thinkabout the community aspect.
So I listen sure.
I could probably give a couple of
different examples when I thinkabout the community aspect.
(04:59):
So I listen to the podcast that Ilike.
I love marketing with Dean Jacksonand Joe Polish.
And the thing that I found when Igo to a mortgage conference, I
actually usually found more valuein sitting in the lobby, having a
beer or a coffee with a topproducer and just asking lots of
questions.
So my goodness, just the value I'm
getting from this conversation wassignificantly higher than often I
get from the speakers.
And so the other part, the reason
that I started the podcast wasbecause I was like, how do I do
more of those conversations?How do I talk to people like Peter
(05:21):
Matheny and these other topproducers that have been in the
business a long time and have alot of wisdom?
And then I thought, why don't Ijust record them in a podcast
format, then other people canlearn.
And I've been grateful that somany people have been willing to,
you know, jump on and do that withme.
I recorded 10 podcasts before Ieven launched the show because I
had heard most people don't getpast six.
So I'm like, well, if I record 10,then at least I got past most
people when I started.
(05:41):
And if you listen to my first
shows, I was very nervous.
I was extremely nervous and I
followed a very rigid conversationstructure, which don't as much now
now i just again follow mycuriosity that's how that piece
came then the other part when itcomes to the training so what i
would do and i'd look at somebodyi would talk about their business
and there's conversations thathappen recorded and you turn off
the recorder then sometimes you'llbe dropping gold that they're like
oh man i wish the recorder was onbecause this is so dang good and
so what would happen is is that iwas looking for things that could
(06:03):
duplicate.
And I use the example of like, you
know, Michael Jordan's a fantasticbasketball player, but if he could
coach you, it's very unlikely youor I are ever going to be able to
dunk from the free throw line, nomatter how much he coaches us,
right?That's just unique to his
skillset.
But what I can do is what are the
things in his game, if you will,that I can duplicate in my
business.
And that's always what interested
me.
Once I found enough of those,
that's what propelled me intocreating the training company.
(06:23):
So I'm like, hey, these areactually, you don't have to be a
Michael Jordan to do this.
You know, a lot more people can
use this.
And so that led me into creating
the training company.
And that sort of led me down that
path.
And in the training company, what
I loved about the training is thatI would give my best ideas to
people that would come into it.
And some of them would take the
ideas and improve.
I would be like, oh my gosh, you
just took my idea and upgraded it.
(06:44):
So the thing would constantly
improve because there was thisfeedback loop of best ideas, smart
people, they're running a bunch ofexperiments in different markets
and different personalities.
Some stuff would come back and
you'd be like, oh man, you justupgraded it for everybody.
And so it was this constant, westill do today, but that's what I
love about doing coaching andworking with smart people is that
that collaborative effect is likeno one person is smarter than the
group if the group has access tothe same information.
And so that's the thing I loveabout the collaborative piece.
(07:04):
It's like, man, it's verypowerful.
Yeah, that's kind of reminiscentof like the Medici effect.
You sort of like put work into theworld around other people that are
putting work into the world andyou let other people judge improve
you're constantly putting stuffout being judged i don't know what
the medici effect is so like i'venever heard medici effect is so
like i've never heard this beforeso and i like these so this is
great whatever this medici is soyeah medici is so yeah not to go
(07:27):
down to like a deep rabbit holebut basically the renaissance era
around italy at that timebasically the medici they were
family they loved art and theystarted collecting all these
artists from all over the placeand asking them to come there and
perform their art i see right likethey were a painter musician
otherwise and they were funding alot of these artists like in their
early days and it's like where alot of the best, most expensive
(07:48):
art as we know it today withoutgoing in like on an artist level
because you'd recognize some byname or maybe you don't follow art
at all and you'd recognize none byname.
Suffice to say, a bunch of reallyfamous artists from today started
all around the same period.
I think that's the same area.
Silicon Valley, Valley, like ifyou look at Silicon Valley over
the last 25 or 30 years, like lookat the concentration of talent in
that area and what it's producedfor the world.
(08:10):
And so, yes, I think that we cando that in an extremely small
scale in the mortgage space byputting smart people together and
sharing.
And I think they'd say the Medici,
you know, they would probably havethe Medici effect.
You got to put some like, youknow, a little bit of personality
in that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Throw some hand into some hand
into it you gotta throw some handactions or like i don't know what
(08:30):
you're talking like that's rightso hand actions or like i don't
know what you're talking likethat's right so further to that
point you talked about just likegetting out there putting work
into the world i think one thingthat i've continually been
impressed with like i've evenpitched you on idea scott in
conversations i'm like hey i hadthis idea this thing improve the
industry by x improve brokeringimprove improve lending, improve
this, improve that.
I swear, I feel like half the
(08:52):
things I tell you that I want todo, like you've already done them
in some regard.
Now, they might not have turned
into billion dollar businesses,but you're like, yeah, I already
built a website for that actually.
Or yeah, I already tried that once
and like it didn't work out, butyou know, like spent a little bit
of time on it, sold this business,sold that business, threw this one
away, this one turned intosomething, somebody else makes a
living off doing it now.
Like, what's a little bit of that
journey been like, you aresomebody that I just really
(09:12):
respect for like ideation toexecution.
Like you just seem to have areally short time window on that
frame.
Well, a couple things I'll say
about that things I'll say aboutthat one, I would say I'm
naturally optimistic, and I havean unrealistic, I tend to think
things are not going to be thathard.
I mean, how hard can it be?It turns out like starting a
brokerage, how hard can it be?A lot freaking harder than I
thought, put it this way.
(09:33):
But once you get into it, somebody
gave me I a, got a banner here.
It says, we didn't start this
because it was easy.
We started this because we thought
it was easy or basically too farinto it.
And so that's usually what happensto me.
It's like, oh, that can't be thathard.
I'm like, oh gosh, yes.
I would say that's one of my
natural is that I don't think mostthings is going to be as
difficult.
And so I'm willing to try them.
(09:53):
I'm also okay with failure, thingsnot working.
Like I've had stuff not work andsome of the best lessons that I've
had and the way that I functionnow is better because of those
failures.
If I was really smart, I would
learn those lessons from otherpeople, but some of them I had to
learn myself.
And so there's the other part that
I would say to that.
And then the last piece to this,
now that I have a brokerage, Irealized everything I was doing
before, like all the stuff that Iwas creating, I could just create
(10:13):
that within the brokerage.
Like I've got this network of
amazing mortgage brokers I get towork with.
And it's like, what do they need?And then so I would never have
been able to do it back then.
But now anything that we build is
within what I'm doing.
So I'm like, I get to still do a
small degree.
I get to still experiment.
But now it's like, I get to helpall of our people.
So that part I community I get tostill do a small I get to still
but now it's I get to help all ofour Right?
(10:35):
Right.
really...
Training, building.
degree.
experiment, like, people.
So that part I really- to help all
of our people.
So that part I community I get to
still do a small I get to stillbut now it's I get to help all of
our Right?Right.
really...
Training, building.
degree.
experiment, like, people.
So that part I really- Training,community building.
Support or any kind of tools oranything that we want to come up
with.
All these things that you talked
about, this is basically like allof your past ideas, good and bad,
throw out some bad ones for sure.
Like try not to make all the same
(10:56):
mistakes again, but like try totake like the best of them, I
suppose, with all the lessons thatyou've learned and just put it
into the business that you'rebuilding today.
Right.
And you can work with work with
somebody long- term.
And I do love coaching.
So I have to say the one thing Idiscovered in this is that in a
previous life, I would have been ateacher or a professor or
something because I love to learnand I love to try and synthesize
and simplify things.
So it's like, okay, this is cool.
But like, again, back to the,there's people that are really
good at their job, but they do notknow how to explain to you.
And they don't even realize whatthey're doing sometimes is unique.
You know, I can't tell you howmany people say to me, Scott, I
don't do anything special.
And I start digging in.
I'm like, what about this?What about this?
What about this?They're like, oh, it's second
nature to them, but I see it.
And then I go, okay, copy this,
(11:16):
copy, copy, copy.
And then someone else can, you
know, apply it to their business.
And so if I had a superpower, it's
one is I can find that thread andjust start pulling it.
I can find somebody else'ssuperpower sometimes better than
they can, not but sometimesalways, because they're so close
to thread and just start it,pulling I can find somebody it.
else's sometimes superpower,better than they Not but
sometimes.
can.
always, Because they're so closeto it, they can't even see it.
It is often very difficult.
I mean, we think about mortgage
brokers as producers, for example.
I've often talked about the fact
(11:37):
that you can put them side byside.
You can tell them both exactlywhat to say.
You can give them a similar typeof client for whatever reason,
like, you know, span it across 30days, six months, a year, one will
outproduce the other one by 10 X.
Yeah.
Good luck trying to like draw outthose things.
Like they're very subtle.
The difference between success and
failure is very subtle.
And I actually want to go back to
that idea.
Cause you talked about in your
previous answer failure, and thenyou started by talking about like
some of the ignorance, like had Iknown it would be this hard, I
(11:58):
wouldn't have started.
And some people might look at that
as like a disadvantage.
It's interesting to hear you frame
it as an actual advantage to whoyou are and what you do and for
what it's worth, I would agreewith you in that.
But you're basically saying thatI'm ignorant enough to believe
that like these things are easyand I could just go do them.
And then before you know it, I'mjust like, I'm doing them.
I'm in it.
And I just keep going.
But, you know, what would you sayto others who are trying to start
a mortgage business, trying tomaybe start a mortgage lender,
which is what I would describe asa little further up the path for
(12:19):
some folks.
Obviously, you know us at Rocket,
started out as a brokerage, thenmoved on to becoming a lender.
And then you just keep expandingthat and all these other parts of
the value chain and continueimproving, improving, improving.
For us, we said, let's start likethis thing as well as we can.
Then, you know, we knew that thenext logical step was to start the
next thing, the next thing, thenext thing.
But that's because like ouroriginal mental model for how we
would build this business was tolike control the value chain so
(12:41):
that we could control the clientexperience.
And we thought that if we couldcontrol the entire client
experience, that we could delivera better experience than anybody
else who's ever done it before inthe industry.
That's like what this all startedfrom.
So, you know, we've been executingthat, but man, like same boat, we
had no idea how hard it was goingto be.
And had we known, we probablywouldn't have done it, but like,
we're here now, we keep going.
You sound like you took a very
similar Like you journey.
built a very similar journey.
(13:03):
Like you built it the same way.
I think there's some advice to
pull away from there.
Can you just speak to that a
little bit more?Sure.
Well, I would I would say firstoff, what you guys do with rock, I
think is awesome, but you're alsocopying what they did in the U S
you now have rockets since 2012rocket pro TPO is the second
largest wholesale.
(13:23):
Like they work with mortgage
brokers, pro tpo is the secondlargest wholesale like they work
with mortgage brokers secondbiggest in the country and you
also have a direct to consumerside and they coexist no problem
and everybody's happy both sidesare happy so i think just like me
i copy and paste you're like heythis worked before it copy pasted
here and make some edits to makeit work for your you know specific
situation but i would say i'mdefinitely optimistic i I have an
(13:43):
optimistic bent anyways, when itcomes to these things.
And then I also don't mind problemsolving.
So then you just run intoproblems.
I'm just like, okay, well, we'lljust figure it out.
We'll just figure it out as we go.
And some of the most exciting
things that I've been a part ofhave just been that just get up
each day, you know, you startedthis thing.
And now it's like, okay, whatnext?
(14:03):
And how do I figure it out?And I love that part.
I love the creative process ofbuilding something and it not
going how you expect, right?When you look back on your life,
if you're gonna, you know, whenyou're 80 years old, you're not
gonna be thinking, oh man, I triedthis thing.
I was a smashing success and itwas really easy.
And then I was like, that's it.
I was like, okay, there's no
story.
It's kind of like winning the
lottery, right?Like you go like, oh, I was poor.
(14:24):
Then I won the lotto and now I'mrich.
And you know, nobody's gonna watchthat.
You know, I've known so manyentrepreneurs who are on the verge
of like, you know, the FedEx storywhere the guy has not enough money
for payroll, they go to Vegas, andhe gambles the last money he has
and makes enough money for payrollto keep the company going.
You know, those are the storiesthat make you go, man, that's the
entrepreneur.
And so thankfully, like, because
I've made so many mistakes inother businesses, the brokerage
(14:45):
has been profitable all threeyears, it's doing great.
I guarantee you, I would not havehad the skills to do this 10 years
ago.
No chance I would have.
And I feel like right now, evenI'm at the edge of my leadership
ability that I have.
I'm getting coaching on because
I'm at the edge of I've neverbuilt something so big or complex.
So I'm like, OK, I realize now Ineed help.
I know the stuff I don't know.
And there's no chance that Scott
minus 10 years would be able to dothis.
He would completely F this up,like, for sure.
(15:07):
But I've learned from all theother experiments that we've run
good and bad.
It's interesting.
We sometimes will joke here, likeevery day we show up, we're
running the biggest business we'veever run in our lives.
Yeah, that's really good.
That's true for me, too.
It's like every day is bigger thananything I've ever done.
It's like looking at you for theanswers.
And you're like, I'm just doingthis for the first time, too, by
the way.
Right.
And it's no different thanparenting no different no
different than parenting nodifferent than parenting though
like most people you know youdon't know when you don't have
kids and especially if you don'thave kids you have this sort of
(15:29):
arrogant like oh if i had kids i'dmake them do this and you get kids
you're like oh my gosh this is notand you've never like i've never
had a 19 year old an 18 year oldand 15 before you know but you
figure it out you know so youdon't go oh i want to put them
back or something but you can't soyou just have to keep going and
you learn as you go.
no as you go.
Yeah, that's really well said.
You know, we spent some time in
the beginning talking about powerof community building, what that's
(15:51):
allowed you to do for yourbusiness.
And I try to give other people inthe mortgage community some tips
and tricks and some views thatthey could take away from these
conversations.
Hopefully, that's why I'm doing
this.
What do you think others can take
away from your journey and whatyou've done?
Specifically speaking to what youbuilt with I Love Mortgage
Brokering and that cool shirt thatyou're wearing.
Is there anything that if you'renot Scott Peckford, he'll say,
okay, that's cool.
(16:11):
I don't even know what you have,
like 10,000, 11,000 people now inthe Mortgage Brokering group or
okay, like, I don't know that thatnecessarily gives me a bunch of
mortgages.
Like, you know, I'm just trying to
close two months so I can make aliving.
I think you can do it on a smallerscale in your own you can do it on
a smaller scale in your owncommunity.
So I did a podcast recently, likehow to be the most well-known
mortgage broker in your community.
Cause a friend of mine had moved
and he's like, Scott, what wouldyou do if you moved down here?
I'm like, this Oh, is what I wouldLike do.
that, that, that, that, that likeliterally step-by-step.
(16:32):
And I'd say, you give me twoyears.
I may not be the most highestproducing yet.
There would be nobody thatwouldn't know who I was.
And so you can build a communitywherever you are.
And so if I'm in wherever thatplace is, you know, Halifax, Nova
Scotia, or Moncton, New Brunswick,or, you know, I was just out there
on the roadshow.
I'm just thinking of places.
of places.
Just drop you off in a helicopter.
Yeah, drop me off, dude.
I believe you're free to stay.
to let's figure it Like, I couldbuild a mortgage out.
I could build business.
(16:53):
a mortgage Just drop you business.
off in a drop helicopter.
me Yeah, I believe off, Let's
dude.
figure it out.
you.
I could build a mortgage business.
I could build a mortgage business.
I have no doubt.
If I had the advantage oftechnology and social media, I
could do it faster, but I wouldn'teven need that.
You just need nowhere to start.
(17:14):
If I had the bandwidth, it would
be kind of a fun thing to try, butI just right now, like, you know,
I can't do it.
I would love to do would love to
do it, though.
I would love to.
That's like a founder's dilemma oflike that little sick side of you
that's like, tear it all down.
No, no, no. I would say to myself
that I just drop me in there anddocument building a mortgage
business from scratch.
A hundred percent.
That's my point.
It's that feeling of like, I could
(17:34):
start from zero.
Just what I know.
No money, nothing.
Just like what I know.
Could I do it all over again?Naval Ravikant actually talks
about this.
He says like, I want to know in my
head that if I were dropped intolike a hundred worlds, I could
create wealth for myself in 99 ofthem.
Like I want to remove luck fromthe equation and I want to turn
success into a skillset that Icould actually repeat over and
over again, just based on what Iknow today.
And I think that's, you know, aneloquent way to talk about what
(17:55):
we're talking about, which islike, you could recreate success
just with a playbook that existssomewhat in your mind, somewhat,
if you just follow the OutlookMortgage Brokering Facebook group.
I mean, I can't tell you how muchstuff.
no. I would say to how much stuff.
Yeah, there's tons of value.
But here's the thing I see is thatthe most successful, we talked
about this earlier, it's like, youput two people in a room and
they're both getting leads.
Six months, 12 months later, one
of them is out performing by 10X.
I still can't predict who that
will be.
We bring on, we have experienced
agents and rookies.
I have people that fool me all the
time.
I'm like, this person, I don't
(18:16):
know.
But I'm like, hey, they're willing
to give it a go.
And they completely smash my
expectations.
And the way that I settle this in
my own mind of being like, well,Scott, maybe you're just not good
at hiring.
I remind myself that the NFL has a
lot of data when they hire peopleto go to professional sports.
They cannot predict with a largedegree of certainty who's actually
going to be a smashing success andwho's going to be gone in two
years.
They lose tons of money on these
(18:36):
things all the time.
So I think it's the same thing
when it comes to sales.
We give everybody the same
opportunity.
They get to decide what they do
with it.
There are certain characteristics
that successful people have.
And one of them is they do not
take very much time between ideaand execution.
So they hear a good idea and theyexecute on it.
And it's probably badly executed.
There's probably spelling
mistakes.
And they execute ridiculously
(18:57):
fast.
Every single person who is rapidly
successful, there's people thatget there slower, but the people
who kind of have, if you see theirtrajectory, it looks like a hockey
stick, they execute quickly.
And so they do not get stuck in
their head.
They don't worry about perfection.
And I would say I'm more linedthat way than not.
You know, I still get stuck in myhead about some things.
There's certain things I still,you know, most of my things I can
(19:18):
execute fast, but there's always acouple it's like, Oh, and so, you
know, I've got to coach myself onthose things.
So anyway, that would be somethingI'd recognized in, you know,
people who are rapidly would besuccessful.
Just that time gap betweenideation and execution.
We've kind of come back to that acouple of times.
It reminds me of sort of how welaunched our broker channel
business, Rocket Pro.
Everything else that we did was
built over the course of like fouryears that rocket pro business
even though we kind of had an ideathat you know that was to come
(19:40):
from the time that we said let'sdo that to the time that we were
actually in market with bricks waslike really working on for like
four months yeah which is likevery small time to like stand up a
broker channel lender for therecord it is not elon musk fast
but it is damn fast it's not elonwould have said like we need to
cut that time onto a weekotherwise we're not doing it yeah
but i mean four months to standeverything up start like make sure
that your technology the peopleall that's in line like start
(20:02):
accepting deal flow and thendelivering on that there's a lot
of pressure right because at theother end of the transaction is
the broker and then on the otherside of that is a client who
doesn't care that you just sentthis deal to this brand new lender
who's like trying to figure theirstuff out still.
But we're in market, we'redelivering for our consumer
agents.
(20:22):
We say, okay, this is working.
We're really fast.
We think we're really good.
We think other people shouldexperience this now.
We think we're ready.
Well, now we gotta go stand up
this next thing really fast andactually call it on you and the
Briggs team.
Cause I'm like, I need someone I
can trust who like isn't gonnacall me and, you know,nan chris
like tori other people on my teamand be like you know you guys suck
and you messed up this deal oryou're too slow or you're too that
(20:44):
we're like we're probably gonnamess some stuff up i think i told
you but you guys were great thoughyou i mean honestly great even
right out of were great though youi mean honestly great even right
out of the gate you guys were goodeven the first iteration was
pretty good it's gotten a lotbetter but like it was good right
out of the gate, you guys weregood.
Even the first iteration waspretty good.
It's gotten a lot better, but likeit was good right out of the gate.
(21:08):
But I think it's because you guysare data driven, but you were
already doing the same thing withyour existing internal
salespeople.
Obviously, there was some stuff
you had to figure out, but I thinkthat's why it went pretty well.
it went pretty well.
Well, probably like many of the
things that you've done, there'slike a hamster on the wheel, like
going nuts behind the scenes tomake it all feel okay for you on
the other side of it.
Right.
Because there's just things thathappen that you're like, Oh no, we
(21:28):
never thought of that.
Kind of like when you're building
a business, right.
Which is like, I've got this idea.
I'm going to go out, I'm going toexecute them to launch.
And then you do it.
And then like, it's like day two
and you're like, Oh, how do I fillthe order?
You're like shipping shoes overthe internet.
You find out that you hooked upwith a manufacturer who doesn't
include laces with the shoes.
You're like, oh no, there's no
laces.
Next thing you know, you're lacing
laces up yourself and trying torenegotiate your contract with the
(21:50):
supplier to include laces movingforward because it's your first
time.
And it was our first time.
You were complimentary there,which I appreciate.
But for us, it was like, how do wedo this fast?
How do we learn really, really,really fast?
And then how do we start openingup to others, which now we've
taken that journey we've done.
I'm curious, I mean, you've been
doing this a long time.
I think one of the things that,
you know, you and I jammed on andgot excited about was like, the
(22:12):
future of lending, you sort oflike see it for what it is today,
which is like, everyone tries to,you know, make it appear and feel
better.
But we know there are things that
need to be fixed.
When you think about like what's
to come for lenders in this spaceand how lenders serve brokers,
what would you like to see?What comes to mind for some things
that like you think are justmassive opportunities to be
better?Basil says this, focus on the
things that never go out of style,which is, you know, fast
communication and making surepeople know what's going on.
You know, if it's going to be ayes, BS, if it's a no, that's
okay.
Just be a no. It's not that sexy.
The most successful businesses arelike Groundhog Day.
(22:35):
I tell people it's the best salesmovie you could ever watch.
It's the same thing every day.
And you get better at the day.
And by the time you've done theday, you know, 60 times, you can
catch a kid falling out of a tree.
Remember the movie, he catches
that kid and the kid's kind of noteven grateful for it.
And so that's what we do.
And as a guy who's creative, I
struggle with that because I like,you know, the variety.
But the thing is, is in thecurrent role I'm in now, we get
(22:56):
Groundhog Day with some varietybuilt in terms of like, okay, how
are we going to serve our agentsnow?
What are we going to do different?What are we going to improve?
And so I get to do, I feel like abit of both.
In terms of what I think thelenders are going to, I think
you're going to see AI is going tobe more supportive.
I know your friend there, MikeFawaz was telling me about this
pre-qualified voice thing thatthey have.
(23:17):
The AI voice, have you heard aboutthis?
You probably know about it, right?So I'm like, that's crazy.
You know what?I'm like, that's helpful.
So maybe I'll give some context ifyou're listening.
So it basically, in the US, theyget verified pre-approval letters
so they're underwritten andsomebody wants to go write an
offer and say there's 330 000saturday night at seven o'clock
place they want to buy is 350 inthe past they would reach out to
the broker the mortgage brokerbecause when i asked them this i
(23:38):
said why do so many mortgagebrokers want to use rocket rocket
you know in the u.s and in canadarealize that the broker is the
customer so they're like oh wemake things easier for them like
this you know ai voice thing sowhat happens is the person calls a
phone number, but it's not aperson.
It's 24-7 AI voice and says, hey,you know, hey, Beckham, what was
your mortgage pre-approval number?Ask them some questions.
What's the property that, youknow, MLS taxes, whatever.
(24:00):
Then, oh yeah, no problem.
You're pre-approved.
I'll give you another letter.
I'll send it to you right now.
And boom, they have anotherverified and the brokers can be
sitting at home with their family,you know, having dinner with their
family and not having to runaround.
And I'm like, that kind of stuff,I think, is great.
The quote that I've heard and loveis that you're not going to lose
your job to AI.
You're going to lose your job to
someone using AI or, you know, theperson who uses it as a tool.
(24:20):
And so I think that I'm sure youguys will have more of that stuff
as it comes.
And, you know, stuff like that, I
think, is useful.
I don't know where the answers are
at the moment, but that's what Iwould say.
I don't know where the answers areat the Yeah.
the answers are at the but moment,that's what I would say.
Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of it just
remains to be seen, but I thinkthere's some early places where AI
is going to definitely play afactor.
(24:41):
And, you know, we certainly prideourselves on being one of the
first to try to push the forefrontof technology in the space to
streamline the way that some ofthese things are.
And we're excited to work withyour team on that.
Scott, I'll round us out here byjust talking about some of the way
that some of these things are.
And we're excited to work with
your team on that.
Scott, I'll round us out here by
just talking about some of theimpact that you've made.
I think you've done someincredible things for this
industry.
It's been fun for me to even just
(25:02):
get the opportunity to catch upwith you, chat with you over the
last five years.
You've done so many things as
we've talked about.
And I'm curious though, like with
this bricks thing and all theother things you seemingly working
on at all times, what are you mostexcited about going forward?
And what do you want your lastingimpact to be on?
Oh, okay.
That's easy.
So basically my vision with bricksis we want to make it completely
agent and team member owned.
One thing I learned as I got older
is coaches are great.
(25:22):
And so we've got some great
coaching from people that havedone this.
You know, our coach has done it ahundred times with these basically
a profit sharing scheme for yourteam.
The problem with business that Isee is that you have the owners
that see the profit and then youhave all the people that work in
the business.
They get their job, but they don't
really understand how theiractions affect overall profit of
the business.
Right?
And so it was a sports team.
It's like owner has the scoreboard
and everybody else just goes towork and they're thinking about
(25:44):
themselves.
Well, the way these guys set this
business up is that they get aline of sight.
So there's full transparency forthe person working in the
business.
They can see the score, what the
profit looks like, and they get astake in the outcome.
So if they improve it, which theyare the best people to improve it,
then they can get a stake in theoutcome, which means there's
profit sharing.
And so I think that it is a
massive competitive advantage.
It's still in the very infancy,
but give us six, 12 months once weget this thing cooking.
And I think it's going to make theculture like just ridiculous.
And so stage one is get the teammembers, our staff, your team
members to embrace this wholething and then agents.
(26:09):
And so my vision is to continue togrow the brokerage.
And right now I'm the biggestshareholder.
I'm happy with my percentage goingdown if we're growing the business
and making it bigger.
I'm happy to have a small
percentage of a massive companythat's in multiple countries and
everybody wins.
So that is what I'm excited about.
And, you know, I could talk aboutthat for hours and go into more
detail.
But essentially, at a top level,
that's what we're doing.
That's really well said and really
clear.
100% of zero is zero.
And it sounds like, you know,you're going to need other people
to get you there.
Dude, and people are it sounds you
people are like, you're oh, notgreedy.
(26:29):
I'm like, I'm oh, greedy.
I'm long term.
Like, you know, the wholemarshmallow test.
It's like, oh, do you want amarshmallow day two tomorrow?
I'm like, I'm no, going to wait.
Give me five years.
I want a bag of marshmallows.
I want to play a game.
And the people that we want toattract are people that want to
play that game.
The people that are like, yeah, I
(26:51):
get what you're, I want to be partof this.
And the last thing I'll say tothat is, if you look at the best,
you know, Ryan Reynolds and ConorMcGregor and Kim Kardashian, they
made their money by owning stuff.
They built their influence and
they made, you know, Ryan Reynoldsgets paid to do movies.
He made a fortune by owning a partof fast growing companies that he
was able to attach his brand to.
(27:11):
There are brokers out there that
are helping make other people afortune, and they're going to get
to the end of their career and go,what was the point of like, great,
now I have something I can barelyeven sell.
I want to flip that.
That's what That's what we're all
about.
That's amazing.
Solving a problem that has existedin this and many other industries
forever.
And much like everything that you
said today, you're not necessarilythe inventor of it, not to steal
any credit from you.
(27:31):
It's all been done before, man.
It's all been done before.
You're just trying to like take
it, repeat, build something betterin your own way that's uniquely
yours with a model that's provento work in other places at other
times.
And you're willing to give it a
shot and just keep going and letother people join in on that fun
and join in on the upside.
That's an amazing story and I
appreciate you sharing.
Yep, thanks, man.
Thanks for joining man.
(27:51):
Thanks for joining us, Scott.
We'll talk to you soon.
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