April 11, 2024 • 40 mins
Today, we're joined by Alexa Faithful. Alexa is a Loan Officer at CMS Mortgage from Williamsburg, Virginia, and has been in the mortgage industry since 2015. Alexa is also the author of the 2020 book, "Alexa, Get Me a Mortgage", and has amassed a TikTok following of almost 14,000 from making mortgage content.
Alexa is here to discuss: → The evolution of her social media, how she makes her social media content, and how she leveraged her book for marketing. → A simple way she tracks her pipeline to keep leads warm and the small changes she's made to her business that have led to major growth. → Mentoring the next generation of Loan Officers by helping with education, value propositions, and business development.
Alexa Faithful's Website: www.alexagetmeamortgage.com
Alexa Faithful's TikTok: @alexa_get_me_a_mortgage
Alexa Faithful's Facebook: @AlexaRae
CMS Mortgage Website: www.cmsmortgage.com
CMS Mortgage Instagram: @cmsmortgage
Order "Alexa, Get Me a Mortgage" here.
Learn more about the Direct to Consumer LO Accelerator here.
Loans On Demand Website: www.loansondemand.io
Loans On Demand YouTube: @LoansOnDemand
Loans On Demand Instagram: @loansondemand
Luke Shankula's Facebook: @LukeShankula
Luke Shankula's LinkedIn: @LukeShankula
Luke Shankula's Instagram: @lukeshankula
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
podcast, the show where we flipthe real estate status quo on its
head and put loan officers intothe driver's seat.
We give you all the tools,strategies, resources, and mindset
needed to modernize your mortgagebusiness and thrive.
My name is Luke Shankula, aka LongForm Luke, and this is the Loans
On Demand podcast.
going on?
Welcome to the Loans on a ManPodcast, the show where we help
(00:25):
loan officers flip the status quoon real estate agents to put loan
officers in the driver's seat.
And I'm excited because today we
have my friend, Alexa Faithful.
She is a loan officer.
She wrote a book in 2020, andshe's got some other cool things
that she's doing on social media.
And actually, I met you, I think,
back in about 2019 or so.
And obviously, you know, we've
known each other for a few yearsnow and obviously seen kind of the
(00:46):
growth and what you've been ableto do.
So excited to dive in, chat alittle bit and learn a little bit
more.
So welcome to the show, you so
much for having me here, Luke.
This is so much fun for me and
it's an honor to be Awesome.
Well, give us a little background
on who you are, what got you intothe mortgage industry?
Why are you still in the mortgageindustry?
Because obviously, we're goingthrough some crazy times right
now.
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
So I have been in the mortgageindustry since 2016.
(01:09):
Started out on the retail side ofthe business working for a
multi-billion dollar retaillender, nationwide retail lender.
I started as a processingassistant.
So I was working with, you know,my branch manager, he was a
producing branch manager, kind ofprocessing his files in
conjunction with his processor tolearn the back end of the
business.
What drove me to getting into
(01:30):
mortgages in the first place theyear before I just had, you know,
my first child had just gottenmarried and wanted to buy the
house, you know, the whole likekick caboodle.
And when we went to go apply for amortgage and to get pre-approved,
we were denied by the first twolenders that we spoke with, but we
were not really given any type ofclear feedback on why we didn't
qualify for the loan.
(01:50):
It was just like, Hey, your credit
sucks.
Sorry.
Can't help you.
So, you know, it took finding a
loan officer that actuallydissected, you our credit report
was it know, took finding a loanofficer like, that well, actually
you've, you know, our dissected,credit report was like, well,
you've got late payments on yourstudent loans from last year, and
you've got this, that, and theother thing, right?
Like, this is what you need to doto qualify.
And so that was a real gamechanger for me, because I was
like, man, how many other peopleare out here trying to buy a home
(02:11):
that are really more like six tonine months away from being able
to purchase a but they home, thinkthat they're like six to nine
months away from being able topurchase a home, but they think
that they're like six to nineyears away because they just keep
getting turned down.
they just So I was looking for a
career change anyways at thatpoint.
Prior to mortgages, I was workingas an executive recruiter and I
just was really unhappy in thatfield.
So starting on the processing sideallowed me to really learn the
business.
And then I started originating
(02:32):
full time about six to 12 monthslater.
And then in 2019, I made the jumpfrom retail to the wholesale to
the broker channel, which was agreat move for me.
I'm now with CMS MortgageSolutions based out of Virginia
Beach.
We're a small family owned shop,
but we're kind of like small butmighty.
We have a lot of amazingconnections throughout the
country.
It's a really, really great It's a
(02:54):
And being a broker has really justmoved the needle in a big way in
my career in lots of differentarenas.
It's interesting to me that thisisn't the first time I've heard
the story of someone getting intomortgages because of the
experience, the crappy experiencethat they had in trying to get
their own mortgage.
I mean, I've probably heard that
three or four times in the last, Idon't know, really in the last
(03:14):
maybe 10 or 15 episodes, a coupleof people have brought that up.
They said specifically, like oneof them was a veteran who got in
and was trying to get a VA loanand was, you know, denied.
They didn't pull a certificate ofeligibility or something like
that.
I don't remember exactly the
story, but it's interesting howthat works.
And I do find that unfortunately,a lot of loan officers will throw
people in the trash that are notready to buy in the next 60 to 90
(03:35):
days.
They just don't believe those
people are worth working with.
To me, that is the worst mindset
to have.
Because for one, this mentality
will forever keep you in the ratrace, it will forever keep you on
the treadmill of never being ableto get beyond a certain level,
because you're not learning theskills of nurturing and things
like that, right?You're not building a pipeline.
Think about six to nine monthsout.
Guess what?Six to nine months comes pretty,
pretty quickly.
And if you're nurturing these
(03:55):
people, all of a sudden you gotthese loans that are sitting
around in the future waiting foryou to do them.
And so many people just don't seeit from that perspective.
So for anybody who's listening tothis, think about your business
from a long-term perspective, notfrom a 90-day window.
I get it.
You want deals that close in the
next 90 days.
I totally understand that.
But if you ever want to get beyondthe rat race or the treadmill of
(04:16):
just two to three loans a monthand get beyond that, you have to
think long-term.
You have to understand what it
takes to build that long-termpipeline.
And we see people that close dealsthat were leads that came were
leads that came in, you know,2019, 2020, and they're closing
them in 2023, 2024.
So that is sometimes the cycle
that a human being takes.
And a lot of times people are 18
to 24 months, six to 24 months outfrom buying a home when they're
(04:37):
first starting to look, right?Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
For me, like I am incredibly ADHD
and I've learned to kind of like,you know, use that to my
advantage.
But of course, it also brings a
lot of challenges with it.
One of the biggest challenges with
that is out of sight out of mind,right?
Like if I have a client whodoesn't qualify right it.
One of I have intentions ofkeeping them in my pipeline, like
I don't have a physical visualreminder of my long-term pipeline
(04:59):
and my short-term pipeline.
Those folks, you know, can easily
fall through the cracks.
So it became as simple as having a
whiteboard that was like 12 plusmonths out.
Right.
And I would make a little note
like credit repair or like studentloans, or that doesn't have two
years of self-employment history,like whatever.
And it was so easy then becauseI'm like 60 days goes by, I'm
checking in with that person.
(05:19):
90 days goes by.
It's like a five minute phone callor a quick email and I'm staying
top of mind.
And it's like, it brings so much
satisfaction when you are able toclose those clients because you
can look back and be like, dang,man, we've been working together
truly for two years.
And you get to know someone, you
get to know what motivates them,what's important to them.
(05:39):
And for me, that keeps my heart,you know, in it a little bit,
which this is an industry, as youknow, it'll beat you up.
So it's, you gotta have thoseheart tie connections too.
have have those heart tieconnections too.
industry during times like theseare doing it because they have a
why that's beyond just the money,right?
Like, sure, you can make a ton ofmoney in the good times.
You can lose a ton of money in thebad times, right?
(06:00):
I mean, the last 18, 24 months isa huge indicator of what can
happen, right?From the highest of highs, you
know, everybody had recordproduction for two years to
everybody lost 60% of theirbusiness and just basically a
blink of an eye.
So I agree, you have to have a why
beyond that.
And I think also you talked about
(06:24):
is having those long-termconnections.
You work with them for a longtime.
Like you're the one that alsotakes that time to work with these
people.
These are people going to be
loyal.
They're going to come back to you
in the future.
And a lot of people don't think
about the lifetime value of aclient as well.
They think about the one-timevalue, right?
Like, Hey, I'm going to close thistransaction.
But like the average home buyerbuys every roughly 11 years,
according to monitor-based data.
And in that time, they do two
refinances.
That's four transactions in 11
years.
And they know in know people who
(06:46):
are buying houses.
That too.
Yes.
We're not even talking about
referrals, but what that tells youis also only 19% of consumers are
going back to the same loanofficer.
Really?So loan officers are failing
miserably at retention.
And again, because the problem is
they're so focused on this 90 daychurn that they never see the
long-term vision.
And by churning, I'm not saying it
in a bad way, but by working thedatabase, by working your
database, you're always going tohave people, especially if it gets
to a certain size, you're alwaysgoing to have people closing.
(07:06):
And so, you know, it just comesdown to building your database and
then working your database andthen continuing to work your
database and not stopping the workyour database.
Right.
So if anything, work your
database.
So I want to touch on your book.
We'll get to some otherstrategies.
I know you're doing some othercool things on social media, but
let's talk about your book.
(07:28):
I know you wrote that back in
2020.
Interesting year, obviously 2020
was an interesting year.
So tell me a little bit about
that.
Do you think that has an impact in
the way you do business at all in,you know, we're in 2024, where
it's not as virtual as it used tobe during I do.
Yeah.
So the book came about at a time
where I don't know if any otherloan officers will relate to this,
but before COVID hit, when it waslike, it's still a rumor mill type
(07:49):
of thing, right?Like it was this weird thing that
started in China.
And now there's these cases.
And I remember it was like lateFebruary, early March.
And we were starting to hear abouthow this could have devastating
economic impacts.
And I, as well as a lot of other
loan officers, at least in mycircle, were kind of like texting
each other like, oh, crap, what doyou guys think this means and
everybody can add the same thingit was like you better double down
on your marketing you better getclear because we all thought that
(08:11):
what happened like we thought theopposite of that was going to
happen we thought it was going tobe more like a 2023 happen we
thought it had the opposite effectbut i immediately started thinking
okay how am i going to set myselfapart from my competition both
here here locally, but that I canalso use to kind of like get a
bigger reach.
(08:31):
And going back to, you know,
authenticity and what feelsauthentic, what feels natural.
I'm a writer at heart.
I love the written word.
I love writing.
I love reading.
So I just started, I'm like, whatif I wrote a book?
And so it started as like, almostlike a manual, like a how to that
just kind of expanded into more ofan actual book.
It's still a short read, but Istarted gathering all of the
questions that I was asked mostfrequently by first time
(08:53):
homebuyers and decided to kind ofcompile a how to write like if
you're starting the home purchaseprocess and you have not bought
and sold 15 homes before, what aresome things that you need to know
before you start the process andwhile you're in the process?
So of course, that also kind ofhelped me kick off my personal
brand at that time of Alexa Get Mea Mortgage.
Totally capitalized on Amazon andused that to tee up my own
personal brand and decided to namemy book, Alexa Get Me a Mortgage.
(09:17):
And I noticed right away that thatwas one thing that nobody else was
doing.
I would take 10 copies and go to
local offices, local real estateshops, and drop off 10 copies and
say, hey, to your agents who aremeeting with first-time homebuyers
this week, have them take a copyof my book.
Or if I got a referral andpre-approved somebody, even if
they weren't a first-time homebubuyer, they were just kind of like
(09:38):
removed from the process for along time and just getting back
into it.
I would pre-approve them and then
mail them a copy of my book withlike a little note inside.
And it really, I think, helped setme apart just from a marketing
perspective.
That was something that nobody
else in my community was doing.
But it also kind of gave me a
natural level of authority becausethings that I assumed were common
(10:00):
knowledge that I assumed mostpeople knew they did not.
Right.
And so I was able to provide a lot
more valuable knowledge to a lotmore people that it.
And you're right.
I mean, I think just like this
podcast, it's interesting.
Sometimes having a platform and a
book and things like that.
Obviously, it's a lot easier these
days to publish a book than itever was with Amazon and things
like that.
(10:21):
But it still puts you in sort of
rarefied air because like writinga book, like not everybody does
that.
Like, yeah, I know maybe in our
circle, there's more people thathave written a book and there's
more people that have a podcastand things like that.
But in the general public, peopledon't just publish books.
They don't just have a podcast,right?
It just is not something thathappens.
And that creates that authority,that expertise, that almost aura
of like, hey, I'm in rarefied air.
(10:42):
You wrote a book.
That's crazy.
And so it does create that
authority.
And I love that you were able to
leverage that for social media.
But then also, it's almost like
you're using that as a leadmagnet, but a valuable lead magnet
where you're being able to givethis thing of value to someone.
I wanted to talk a little bitabout what you said briefly.
And that's this concept that theconsumer doesn't really know as
(11:03):
much as I thought they did.
This is one of the biggest things
that loan officers struggle with.
And I think this is not just loan
officers.
I mean, I struggle with this as a
marketer.
I talk about stuff that I think it
should be common knowledge andrealize that I'm talking over
people's head.
I'm talking about pixels and crazy
stuff like that.
Loan officers do this a lot too.
They talk about DTI and LTV andthey start talking all these big
words that are like, cool, theyshould know this, right?
(11:24):
No, they shouldn't know this.
So they do one transaction every
11 years or whatever.
If you count the refis, maybe a
couple more.
And in this case, if they're a
first time home buyer, they'veprobably never done this, right?
Like they don't see this stuffevery single day, like use a loan
officer, do loan officers see thisevery day.
This is a concept called the curseof knowledge.
And sometimes understanding thisconcept is like, I need to go back
to the fundamentals.
What do people need to know?
(11:45):
I worked for a mortgage companybefore I bought my house.
I worked for a mortgage company.
I thought we needed 20% down.
I thought I wouldn't qualify for amortgage.
I thought all these things, Iprobably wasted two or three extra
years from when I could havebought a home thinking that I
needed all these things as Iworked for a mortgage company.
So that's someone who is aconsumer.
I worked for a mortgage company.
I didn't know that it was a
reverse mortgage So company.
it's someone who is a consumer.
I worked for a mortgage I company.
(12:06):
didn't know It was that.
a reverse mortgage company.
So it's a little different, but
still it was a mortgage company.
I should have known.
I could have asked someone easilyand I didn't know that.
And so that's what the story I tryto tell loan officers is like
consumers don't know anythingabout anything.
They don't know that they need tosend all of the pages of their
documents, like all that stuff,right?
Like I know the law officers getso annoyed about this.
Like they don't know, like theyassume that it's okay.
(12:27):
Like there's nothing on that page.
Why would I send it?
Right.
Like, and then you get frustrated
and it's like, just cause theydon't know.
So I love that, that you talkedabout that because that's huge.
And I know what you're doing aswell is some cool stuff with
social media.
Before we get to the social media
stuff though, I hear you're afamous dancer now.
things And and is hilarious.
Far from famous.
Yeah, that's funny.
So the dancing thing was something
that came up last year.
There is a huge fundraiser that
takes place every year in mycommunity.
And, you know, need to speakEnglish and they do not speak
English or English as their secondlanguage.
(12:47):
And it has prevented them fromfurthering themselves
professionally or educationally.
So I love Literacy for Life.
They're awesome.
And then the other group that it
benefits is Big Brothers BigSisters of America, which is a
mentorship program for at-riskyouth and teens.
of groups.
And it's a really fun way that we
raise money for these groups whobasically host our own Dancing
with the Stars here locally.
So it's 10 professional dancers
who are legitimately, that istheir profession is dancing.
And they are paired with 10 peoplein the community who I'll say are
well-connected, have a lot ofconnections, because again, the
idea is to raise funds.
(13:08):
And so I found myself getting
nominated as a star, you know, forthis show and I'm philanthropy is
something that is very near anddear to my heart has been for the
last 10 plus years.
So when I found out that it was a
fundraiser, I was kind of like,all right, yeah, totally.
Let's do it.
And come to find out dancing with
a professional dancer, when youhave absolutely zero dance
(13:32):
experience is really freakinghard.
You have to put together a threeminute, you know, ballroom
routine.
I mean, like the whole shebang.
But it's funny that through thatexperience, not only did I end up
expanding my network tremendously,but I discovered a love of dance.
I had no idea that I would fall inlove with ballroom dancing like I
(13:55):
have.
So we actually ended up placing
runner up last year when I was inthe show, which was amazing out of
nine couples.
And then this year, I came back to
do an exhibition number with oneof his very first stars from 2016
when my pros started doing theshow.
So we came back for like a littlefun exhibition number.
But yeah, it's a lot of fun.
(14:16):
It's a lot of Well, and to segue
now into you wouldn't have gottenthat opportunity without a social
media presence, I assume.
And so my assumption is based off
of the things you're doing onsocial media, the exposure that
you have on social media, thattype of stuff, and obviously being
connected within the mortgage andreal estate industry in a small
community, or maybe not even thatsmall, but in a community that has
massive opportunities.
And I don't know if it's brought
(14:38):
you any business or not, but it'sgiving you the opportunity to
expand your network, which I wouldthink by default would create more
business at least over time,right?
And so talk a little bit aboutsome of your strategies that you
are using.
What is sort of the Alexa playbook
for social media marketing?Or what platforms are you really
leveraging the most?I would say the two platforms I am
the most active on for socialmedia marketing purposes would
(15:00):
definitely come down to TikTok andFacebook, right?
TikTok, I really love because itmakes it so easy.
And you could say the same thingfor Instagram and Reels being the
equivalent.
It makes it so easy to put out
high quality short form videocontent.
Like I remember I've been doingvideos on social media since 2018.
I mean, not before there werevideo editing apps like that
existed, but it was certainly noton my So I'm just I'm just
(15:21):
straight up in my office with atripod and a camera, like no
editing, no captions, no funfilters, no like splicing and
dicing, just like me sitting theretalking about loans in my quiet
little office and then uploadingthat video to Facebook.
And I look back now and I likecringe at some of those videos,
but I'm so glad that I just keptdoing it because there's this big
argument that like, what's moreimportant quality, right?
(15:41):
Or consistency.
And I've always been on the
consistency side of that argument.
And the reason being is if you do
something you will naturally getbetter at it, and the quality of
your content will naturallyimprove.
So it's been this journey from,you know, those, like, just
really, really raw videos toTikTok, which I feel like gives
you the ability to make reallyfancy videos.
As far as my actual content, Ilike just talking about things,
like you said, that you assumepeople know, but they probably
(16:02):
don't like the 3% down home ready,home possible loans that are out
there, or why get an appraisal or,you know, pros and cons of waiving
certain contingencies.
or pros and cons of waiving
certain contingencies.
Just anything that could impact a
home buyer's decision, small orlarge, like let's sit here and
talk about it and really kind ofget into the nitty gritty.
(16:24):
I just think there's so manydifferent topics out there within
the mortgage sphere.
And so you're never left without
content, right?Like if I wake up one morning and
I think I don't have anything totalk about or to post about, I'm
not doing my job correctly.
with that.
And so we were like, I don't knowwhat to talk about.
I'm like, start writing down thequestions that people ask you on a
(16:46):
daily basis.
I guarantee you, there's probably
10 or 20, like pretty consistentquestions that get asked.
And then off of those 10 to 20questions, there's probably
ancillary sort of details aroundthose things that you could talk
about.
In addition to that, like I'm
assuming it's not just businesstype stuff, or maybe it is, I
don't know.
But are you posting stuff that's
(17:15):
more organic, like life of Alexaon TikTok and some of these
platforms?Obviously, I think on Facebook,
you are just curious what yourstrategies on TikTok?
Is it mostly educational?Or is it also a mix of lifestyle?
Yeah, it's mostly educational.
And I don't know why you kind of
bring up a good point.
I thought so much about posting
more personal stuff on my TikTokpage.
But I always like stop shortbecause I'm like, that's mortgage
(17:36):
Alexa, right?Like, nobody cares about my funny
chihuahua and like all these likelittle sidebar anecdotal things
that happened in my life onTikTok.
That's what Facebook is for.
And on Facebook, I'm pretty split.
I would say about is isprofessional and 50% of my content
is personal.
I do think that whatever platform
you're on, people need to knowthat you're a real person, right?
Like you can't be like a suit allthe time, because I think you're
(18:00):
going to come across asunapproachable, and just maybe
even unrelatable.
But I think that there's a time
and a place and a platform forboth whether or not you're mixing
those or you have one, you know,that's exclusively for
professional content, one that'sexclusively for personal content,
I think there needs to be a goodmix.
no, I agree.
And that's why I was curious,
because I know a lot of times,when you're doing just video, it's
like, it's a little different,like when you're doing something
(18:20):
like Facebook, it's a lot easier,I feel like, to put out content,
especially because, you know, youhave a smaller limit of friends on
Facebook.
Whereas, I mean, you can get
thousands or hundreds of thousandsof followers on something like
TikTok or even Instagram.
So sometimes it's like, all right,
what sort of content makes themost sense on these platforms?
And I think it does make sense.
And I'm just curious if it would
work pretty well, especially ifpeople are following you
(18:42):
consistently.
If you started to talk about the
Chihuahua or had the Chihuahua inone of your videos, even if it is
a professional video.
Right.
And so you're just some thoughtsthere from my perspective is I've
always told people that like thething that people care about the
most is less business stuff andmore that who are you as a human.
And that's the most thing thatbrings people that makes you more
(19:04):
relatable.
And I remember way back in the
day, I remember one guy sayingsomething like, I just felt like
you were too busy.
And like, you know, you were just
almost inaccessible.
Like you talked about, and I was
like, I I was like, I was holycrap.
Like, I don't want that persona tobe out there.
Like, I always want to feel likeI'm accessible.
People can ask me questions.
(19:25):
You know, they can't say, can I
pick my brain, but they can ask mequestions.
I'm just kidding.
They can say whatever they want,
but for whatever reason, pick mybrain just triggers me.
It just asked me the question fromthat perspective, when you're
making the videos, are you usingjust your phone or what sort of
the setup?Like, how do you get people
started on using these platforms?$20 tripod ring light duo that I
got from Walmart like five yearsago.
(19:45):
And I still use that bad boy everysingle day for making videos.
I don't use any additionalsoftware.
I know there's so many differentapps that can allow you to just
splice and dice or you can film iton one platform and then upload
that video into TikTok or edit ithere and then upload that.
And for me personally, that makesmy brain like go scrambled And
then eggs.
upload And for that.
me personally, that makes my brainlike go scrambled eggs.
And then I shut down and I'm like,Oh, I'm just not going to do
(20:07):
anything.
I am a big fan of less is more get
a clean script, right?Like clean up your message, be
concise, be confident, shoot thatthing and don't overthink it.
Like don't delete video becauseyou said, um, three times or
because you talked for five extraseconds about that thing that, you
know, like I just spent so muchtime nitpicking so many of my
videos and so much of my contentwhen I needed to just be
executing.
And the more you do that, you
know, first of all, you justnaturally get better at it over
(20:29):
time, but you also start to learn.
Like I was growing my following, I
think I'm at somewhere around14,000 followers on TikTok, just
by consistently posting videos,there's really nothing in my
content that's like super fancy,or that requires any type of
special skill set, right?It's more about me being
authentic, talking about topicsthat matter, topics that people
care about, and also leveragingnarratives.
Like I love stories and I'vestarted to notice that people love
stories in narrative form.
So while yes, of course, in our
industry, you have to be carefulto always protect the client.
There's a lot of great ways thatyou can take what happened
(20:50):
yesterday, that like, oh, crapmoment, and kind of, you know,
make that a narrative.
Sometimes it's a success story.
And sometimes it's a, you know,proceed with caution type of
story.
But I love narratives for video as
(21:11):
well.
Yeah, stories are the best.
I mean, stories sell right at theend of the day, like that's really
what people want to hear.
They want to hear stories, they
don't want to hear facts, theydon't want to hear, you know,
here's how to get a mortgage, theywant to hear here's how I helped
Johnny get a mortgage, even thoughhe got denied twice by two of the
lenders.
And I was able to do X, Y, Z to
get him into a home.
And, you know, now he loves me and
he was crying at the closingtable.
(21:32):
Like just like a story like that,right?
Obviously I just made that up offthe top of my head, but like, I'm
sure you deal with that as a loanofficer on a regular basis.
You know, yeah, you have yourcookie cutter loans, but you have
your people that, you know, maybeyou had to work a little harder
for, maybe you last minute hadthis thing pop up and you can warn
(21:56):
people like, Hey, make sure thatyou don't freaking buy a car on
closing day or buy furniture atclosing.
Right.
Like, you know, like things like
that.
Right.
People don't know.
Right.
Again, this is one of the thingsthat loan officers get frustrated
with is like, consumers don'tknow.
They're like, I moved into thehouse.
Like I need furniture.
(22:17):
Let me go buy furniture.
Like, no, no, no, no, no. Do notdo that.
I've already told you that seventimes.
Do not do that.
But again, I think that's
something that you can use ascontent.
And I like that you talked about,I mean, I'm assuming would you
just use a TikTok platform to editit?
I do is on TikTok.
(22:37):
And then I've started doing more
with reels and same there.
I will sometimes film the video
just on my camera app, literallyon my iPhone and upload that
video.
But nothing beyond that.
I think those platforms areamazing because they give you so
many tools to create qualitycontent without having to reinvent
the wheel or invest in some ofthose, you know, higher level
platforms.
iPhone Yeah, that totally makes
sense.
And I think people do
(22:58):
overcomplicate it.
And when you're first getting
started, like you said, you'regoing to suck.
And people ask me the same thing.
Like, man, how are you so good at
video?I'm like, I've made thousands of
videos at this point.
I've done, you know, this is like
episode, I don't know, 115 orsomething like that.
I don't remember what episode thisis going to be.
Obviously, there's going to be alittle tag that says what episode
it is, but we're recording this.
I don't even know.
Again, I've done tons of trainingsand I've just gotten comfortable
on camera, but I go back.
I show people my old videos when I
had my license and I was trying tobe a reverse mortgage loan
(23:19):
officer.
I'm like, hi, my name is Luke and
I'm a reverse mortgage specialist.
And I'm like, that's how I
sounded.
Like, I didn't realize what I
needed to do.
And so it's pretty funny to go
back and look at those videos.
But at the same time, like you
don't get to being good on camerawithout having the bad.
And the other thing to note ispeople probably aren't going to
see many of your first videos.
You're not consistently putting
out videos.
You're not probably going to get
(23:40):
very much reach.
You probably don't have a lot of
followers.
Who cares?
Just post it.
Get used to it.
Build the muscle.
And then you get better over time.
And you talked about it.
Yes, you can use something like
TikTok, but there's tools.
There's AI tools like Opus Clip
that will edit it for you, right?Like there's things you can do
that make it even simpler,especially these days, right?
When Alexa started, there was noAI.
There was no CapCut, there was noDescript, there was no InShot or
NVIDIA or whatever that one is onyour phone.
(24:02):
And like, those are all tools thatare now available that are super
easy.
And a lot of times free that make
it super easy.
Use your phone.
These phones are crazy, likepowerful.
The quality of camera isridiculous already.
You don't need fancy equipment,get a little light, make sure you
look good, but overall good audio.
And truthfully, you said value is
not that important, but value is,but it doesn't have to be valuable
(24:23):
in terms of like a fancy editedvideo.
The content needs to be valuable,right?
The delivery will get better overtime and it'll get more
engagement, things like that.
But the value has to be in the
content mostly.
Like what are you delivering?
What is the thing that you'redoing?
Make sure that's super valuablebecause then over time you can get
better at the delivery, you canget better at the lighting, you
get better at the camera, you getbetter at the scripting.
But the value needs to be in whatis the content that you're
delivering.
So I think that's a huge sort of
caveat.
I know that's not what you meant
that value is not important.
(24:45):
But you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, do the consistencyover time.
But your value is like, hey, whatare you talking about?
Yeah, bring that to it.
the muscle.
that's huge.
It's amazing to see also over
time, when you first start postingvideos, like you were saying, it
can be discouraging because you'relike, oh, that video got one
comment and two likes.
But pay attention to those views.
If that video got 150 views or 250views, I've had referrals.
(25:05):
People literally like slide intomy DMs that have never liked a
video of mine, that have nevercommented on a video of mine, that
have never engaged with me onsocial media, that have been
watching every single one of myvideos for two years.
And now they're sending me areferral because I'm talking about
something that applies to theirclient today.
So don't discount the amount ofpeople that are seeing your
content that are simply notengaging with it.
That is still a part of your Butpay mine, that two a great way to
(25:26):
passively build your audience overtime.
But you can't build that withoutdoing the work, right?
Without consistently putting outvideo content or whatever your
content You need to have aconstant strategy, whether it's
posting written content on socialmedia every day, whether it's
making a video every day, whateverit is, or making two videos a
week, right?It doesn't have to be something
like that's crazy, but it has tobe consistent because at the end
of the day, people honorconsistency.
And that's part of your value.
(25:47):
If you can show up consistently
over an extended period of time,that's where you're going to get
results.
A lot of people give up quickly.
It's something like organicmarketing.
It's not a short game.
It's a six plus month game of,
Hey, if you don't consistentlypost for six months and you don't
continue to do that, like that'sone thing that I honestly don't
love about social media and whyI've gone so hard on YouTube
recently is because I've put outso much content, so much good
content on social media that'sgone in like 24 to 48 hours, like
(26:07):
completely gone.
And there's no use for it at that
point.
It's like that treadmill, but it's
also so powerful and so valuable.
And I think there is a ton of
value for people to do that.
Obviously do the fundamentals too,
call the leads, call the realtors,do the work, right?
But be consistent with socialmedia as well.
I wanted to touch a little bit atCMS.
You have been doing somementoring, newer loan officers,
things like that.
Like walk me through what that
looks like when you are mentoringa new loan officer, what's sort of
(26:28):
the main things that you talkabout?
How do you help them get up tospeed now as you know, getting
kind of back into full timeproduction?
What is like some of thosestrategies that you tell loan
officers to use as you're sort ofYeah, so a lot of the loan
officers that I worked with lastyear, some of them were coming
into our company that were newlylicensed, that had never even
(26:51):
taken their first application.
Some of them had gotten their feet
wet.
Maybe they've been licensed for a
year to two, but they don't havethat consistency.
And then of course, I had somefolks that were veterans and they
were maybe coming in from adifferent business model and they
were just trying to learn thebroker side, the broker channel,
and kind of fundamentally how toget going.
So depending on who I was workingwith, who I was mentoring, my
(27:13):
approach was a little bitdifferent.
Vast majority of the folks that Iworked with were newly licensed
loan officers.
And what's interesting is they all
had questions that had nothing todo with loans.
They weren't asking me about FHAguidelines or conventional
guidelines or how to run AUS orhow to interpret a credit report.
They're like, hey, how do I get arealtor to like have a lunch
meeting with me?And then when I get to the lunch
meeting, what do I say?So we started just kind of
(27:35):
building those fundamentalbuilding of is your value
proposition?If you don't have one, you need to
create one.
And by the way, you should have
two separate value propositions,one for your agents and one for
your consumer, one for yourborrower.
Those are two separate things,right?
the there.
And then when you are in front of
that agent, do not sit down andstart selling your turn times and
your rates and every other thingthat every other loan officer has
sold them at a coffee meeting.
(27:57):
Ask them about them.
Ask them about the pain points intheir business.
Ask them about their life, abouttheir hobbies.
You know, there are so manyinteractions that I had early on
with agents where we would have a30 minute meeting talking about
something we had in common withouteven talking about business.
And nine times out of 10, thosewere the agents that I ended up
closing a few deals with, right?And it was because they liked me
as a person, not because And itbest rates or the fastest turn
(28:18):
times.
I knew what I was good at, right?
I would sell those qualities, butnot before I really got to know
who I'm working with and how tospeak to them.
So So from there, we would kind ofsay, okay, once you start feeling
comfortable with talking to anagent, let's get you marketing on
social media so that you canattract some clients to
pre-approve to bring to thoseagents.
You know, we talked a lot aboutstuff that you and I just talked
about, how to be consistent onsocial media, how to get into
(28:39):
video content, how to leveragejust social graphics, right?
How to host classes, things ofthat nature, and just kind of
progressing so that when they didget that application, then it kind
of became a transition of, okay,now let's talk about how to take a
clean 1003.
But truth be told, technology
these days makes it so easy.
You don't have to be like the most
skilled loan officer out there totake a clean application, but
you're not going to get thatapplication if you don't know how
(29:02):
to talk to people and you don'tknow how to stay in front of your
market.
But in front of your market.
100%.
That's huge.
And I think that's one of thethings that unfortunately most
mortgage companies fail at isactually educating their loan
officers on how to do that.
Right.
I mean, you know, it's why we havesuch a, I would call it an
incestuous industry where peopledon't want to train up people.
(29:23):
So they just go and pay someone abonus and they steal them from the
next person.
Then they sue each other because
they're like, okay, I don't knowhow to actually train new loan
officers, what they need to do toget business because my whole
value prop is just go callrealtors.
And yeah, that's great in anumbers game, but what do you say
when you talk to a realtor?How do you reach out to them?
(29:44):
What are some strategies?And there's a lot of cool ways
that you can build value with realestate agents that doesn't mean
you have to cold call or you cancold call, but you use some ways
to warm up those cold calls.
I mean, I talk about this all the
time, like social media, go add 50or a hundred real estate agents.
Not at the same time.
Cause if you do that, you'll
(30:05):
probably get shadow banned, butadd five to 10 a day, whatever for
a couple months, maybe 30 to 40%of them will add you and then
start to freaking comment on theirstuff, like their stuff, shoot
them a DM saying, Hey man, I loveyour content.
This is great.
Hey, I love the story about your
dog.
Next thing you know, you can call
them and say, Hey, you know, I'vebeen watching your stuff.
Love your content.
You know, we'd love to get
(30:26):
together sometime for lunch.
Love to get together for coffee,
whatever.
Now all of a sudden it's not a
cold call.
It's a warm call, but yeah, it's
technically a cold call, but likehow but like this day and age,
there's no excuse for aninteraction being like ice cold.
Yes.
You're still going to have cold
calls.
That's fundamental part of it.
Like that's what we do here.
But at the same time, you have so
(30:46):
many opportunities to warm up thatcontact before you even ever reach
out to going to touch on on whatyou said about the lack of
education and training.
Interestingly enough, the folks
that came to us in the last, Iwould say 12 to 18 months that
came from other companies, right?Like we were not their first
mortgage company that they hadworked with.
I asked everybody this question,why?
(31:07):
Like what caused you to look forsomething different?
And 100% of them, 100% said thattheir primary motivating factor
was a lack of resources andtraining and education.
They didn't know how to be a loanofficer.
They were hired as newly licensedand then started kind of
floundering.
So I just think that's so pivotal
in our Well, and companiestypically do a decent job of
educating them on loan productsand the stuff, right?
The stuff that's going to keep youout of jail, but not the stuff
(31:28):
that's actually going to bring youbusiness and make you money or
make the company money, which tome blows my mind.
I'm like, you would think thatthey would be incentivized to
train their people to actuallyhave good conversations with
agents, right?Like, okay, cool.
They just say cold call agents.
I mean, I remember when I was an
AE, I was told, here's a list ofpeople that have closed a reverse
mortgage in the last 12 months.
Call them.
What do I say?Just call them.
(31:49):
That was what I was told.
Just call them.
I was like, okay.
I didn't do that very long before
I knew marketing.
And I figured out ways to send out
email blasts with value and showthem, hey, here's how you can...
It took a while, but I became topone or two at the company.
And that was because I was givingvalue, value, value.
Honestly, I didn't realize what Iwas doing.
I just was sending out thesecrappy little flyers that I made
on WordDoc and I screenshot it andsend it out as an email.
(32:09):
That was probably a terribleemail.
But it worked because I was givingYeah, that goes back to the
consistency breeds quality, likedidn't have to be an ace in the
hole when you started, right?But it gets to that point.
to me because like, you know, thatI've been doing marketing for the
last five, six years, I'm like,there's a million strategies for
loan officers to get business.
And obviously, as a marketer, it's
like direct to consumer, but somany other ways of doing it.
I don't think most loan officers,honestly, consumer direct or leads
buying leads for most loanofficers is probably not the best
(32:31):
way to do business.
Right?
I mean, cause it takes a wholedifferent, like you talked about,
like there's so many things thatyou can do.
Find the things that you're goodat.
Some people love cold calling.
They love pounding the phones.
Some people hate that.
Right?
So why would you pound the phones?If you're the type of person that
hates doing that, go buildrelationships, go network with
people, you know, hire someone tofreaking pound the phones for you.
Hire someone to send the emailsfor you, right?
(32:52):
I mean, there's countless waysthat you can build your business,
but you have to do that withconsistency.
And I think that's one of the bigkeys that we've talked about today
is consistency.
So real quick, as we close out
here, if you were to start overagain, go out there, get business,
like what would you suggest?Or maybe these new loan officers
that you were training?What is like the primary, the
number one thing that you wouldtell them to do today to get
(33:16):
business?Hard hitting or maybe these new
loan officers that you werequestions.
what is like the the number onething that training, you would
tell them to do primary, today toget business?
questions.
a lot of things.
I'll go with something that'sprobably helped me most
consistently in the last threeyears.
And it's more of like a mantra,but it's micro changes, right?
Make micro changes.
Meaning if you are someone that's
(33:37):
like, I don't really know where tostart.
Pick one thing.
Pick one thing.
Pick one thing that you think youcan kind of sink your teeth into.
Like the idea of putting togethera class like freaks you out and
you don't know where to start.
Don't start there.
But if you think you could bringyourself to film two videos a
week, start there and stay focusedon that.
Just execute two videos a week forthree months, four months.
Don't bring in all this othertechnology or sign up for this
thing or sign up for that thing ortry to do this and three other
(33:58):
things.
Pick one thing, really execute it,
really focus on it.
And you will find that once you
feel super comfortable, that'swhat I did with videos.
And it got to a point where videosdid not feel arduous to me.
I could put up a two tock and like15 minutes and that's like
scripting filming editing andeverything and so i felt
comfortable doing that so then icould say all right now i need to
get better cleaning up my crmstaying in front of my database so
then for another four months rightthat was the only change i made
(34:19):
was can kind follow-up andcleaning my database and adding
quality contact information to mydatabase.
And what I found is at the end of12 months, I had really cleaned up
and executed a lot of things in mybusiness, simply by making one
small change at a time for aspecific period of time and just
kind of building on that buildingon those I love that because I was
(34:39):
at the AIMFUSE conference in 2019.
And Gary V was on stage and he was
like, yeah, everybody, all youloan officers need to be on every
single social platform.
You need to be putting out 40
pieces of content a day.
I'm like, that is literally the
worst advice I have ever heard.
I'm sorry, Gary Vee.
No one has a four person teamputting out content for them.
That's impossible for anyone todo.
What's a better advice is getconsistent in putting out if it's
one piece of content a week, ifthat's all you can commit to,
(35:00):
great.
Do one piece of content.
If you can do more, great as well,right?
I mean, if you do five a week,perfect.
That's even better.
If you do 10 a week, even better,
right?Again, it's one thing at a time.
And interestingly enough, I havean executive coach I've been
working with the last eightmonths.
Someone who's built the business.
I have, I don't know, 15 people on
my team, 16 people on my team.
And he's taught me so much around
literally the same concept oflike, we're trying to move in 20
different directions at the sametime.
(35:21):
And so we're getting none of themdone.
We're just spinning our wheels inseven different ways, 10 different
ways.
And it was like, no, we're going
to finish one project.
And all of a sudden, this
six-month timeline for a projectturned into six weeks.
Because instead of working on sixprojects or 10 projects, we worked
on one and we just focus, focus,focus, got that done, moved on to
the next one, focus, focus, focus,got that done.
We've accomplished so much more inthe last eight months than we
probably did in the last threeyears in terms of some of these
(35:42):
projects that have been on ourplate.
So it's a huge concept that Ithink is valuable that loan
officers need to understand.
If someone wanted to connect with
you online, learn more about whatyou're doing, what's the best way
they can connect with you?So that would be probably or my My
Facebook, website is TikTok,alexagetmeamortgage.com.
website.
On I am Alexa my name is Alexa Ray
But interestingly enough,Facebook, Ray.
Technically, Faithful.
Facebook does not allow you to
change your name on Facebook morethan twice.
(36:04):
And I guess sometime in Facebook Ichanged my name.
So anyways, Facebook or TikTok.
I am also AlexaGetMeAMortgage on
TikTok.
Awesome.
My sort of big takeaways fromtoday was really coming down to
consistency and doing one thingconsistently over time.
This seems to be a trend with alot of these podcasts that I'm
doing is consistency, right?So many people like to give up on
things after whatever couple ofweeks.
I always kind of go back to thisAlex from Mosey quote, where he
(36:25):
talked about when he was firststarting his gym company, he
talked to a guy and the guy'slike, we do these flyers.
We sent out these flyers.
He's like, cool.
He puts out 300 flyers and the guyhits him up.
He's like, Hey, how did it go?He's like, I don't know.
I didn't get anything from it.
And the guy was like, well, how
many flyers did you send out?He's like, Oh, like 300.
(36:46):
He's like 300.
We don't do anything less than
like 10,000 or something likethat.
It was like some crazy number likeAnd he's that.
sometimes like, we don He's like300.
We don't do 300.
anything less than like 10,000 or
something like It was like that.
some crazy number like that.
And he's like, sometimes we don'tjust have to double our efforts.
We have to a hundred times ourefforts or whatever that number
(37:07):
is, right?And so it's like, we have to
understand that it takes what ittakes.
The market is the market and itmight take, you know, working a
little bit harder or maybe a lotof it harder or a lot of it
smarter in this market to get theresults we're looking for.
So thank you so much for your timetoday, Alexa.
It was great, super, supervaluable.
And for anybody who is listeningto this that is looking for some
(37:27):
help on flipping the status quo onreal estate agents and learning
more about our marketing system,go to flip the status quo.com.
Thank you so much for listeningand have a great day.
Thank you for tuning into theloans on demand podcast on loans
on demandcast.com.
podcast, the show where we flipthe real estate status quo on its
head and put loan officers intothe driver's seat.
We give you all the tools,strategies, resources, and mindset
needed to modernize your mortgagebusiness and thrive.
My name is Luke Shankula, aka LongForm Luke, and this is the Loans
On Demand podcast.
going on?
Welcome to the Loans on a ManPodcast, the show where we help
(00:25):
loan officers flip the status quoon real estate agents to put loan
officers in the driver's seat.
And I'm excited because today we
have my friend, Alexa Faithful.
She is a loan officer.
She wrote a book in 2020, andshe's got some other cool things
that she's doing on social media.
And actually, I met you, I think,
back in about 2019 or so.
And obviously, you know, we've
known each other for a few yearsnow and obviously seen kind of the
(00:46):
growth and what you've been ableto do.
So excited to dive in, chat alittle bit and learn a little bit
more.
So welcome to the show, you so
much for having me here, Luke.
This is so much fun for me and
it's an honor to be Awesome.
Well, give us a little background
on who you are, what got you intothe mortgage industry?
Why are you still in the mortgageindustry?
Because obviously, we're goingthrough some crazy times right
now.
Yeah, yeah, that is true.
So I have been in the mortgageindustry since 2016.
(01:09):
Started out on the retail side ofthe business working for a
multi-billion dollar retaillender, nationwide retail lender.
I started as a processingassistant.
So I was working with, you know,my branch manager, he was a
producing branch manager, kind ofprocessing his files in
conjunction with his processor tolearn the back end of the
business.
What drove me to getting into
(01:30):
mortgages in the first place theyear before I just had, you know,
my first child had just gottenmarried and wanted to buy the
house, you know, the whole likekick caboodle.
And when we went to go apply for amortgage and to get pre-approved,
we were denied by the first twolenders that we spoke with, but we
were not really given any type ofclear feedback on why we didn't
qualify for the loan.
(01:50):
It was just like, Hey, your credit
sucks.
Sorry.
Can't help you.
So, you know, it took finding a
loan officer that actuallydissected, you our credit report
was it know, took finding a loanofficer like, that well, actually
you've, you know, our dissected,credit report was like, well,
you've got late payments on yourstudent loans from last year, and
you've got this, that, and theother thing, right?
Like, this is what you need to doto qualify.
And so that was a real gamechanger for me, because I was
like, man, how many other peopleare out here trying to buy a home
(02:11):
that are really more like six tonine months away from being able
to purchase a but they home, thinkthat they're like six to nine
months away from being able topurchase a home, but they think
that they're like six to nineyears away because they just keep
getting turned down.
they just So I was looking for a
career change anyways at thatpoint.
Prior to mortgages, I was workingas an executive recruiter and I
just was really unhappy in thatfield.
So starting on the processing sideallowed me to really learn the
business.
And then I started originating
(02:32):
full time about six to 12 monthslater.
And then in 2019, I made the jumpfrom retail to the wholesale to
the broker channel, which was agreat move for me.
I'm now with CMS MortgageSolutions based out of Virginia
Beach.
We're a small family owned shop,
but we're kind of like small butmighty.
We have a lot of amazingconnections throughout the
country.
It's a really, really great It's a
(02:54):
And being a broker has really justmoved the needle in a big way in
my career in lots of differentarenas.
It's interesting to me that thisisn't the first time I've heard
the story of someone getting intomortgages because of the
experience, the crappy experiencethat they had in trying to get
their own mortgage.
I mean, I've probably heard that
three or four times in the last, Idon't know, really in the last
(03:14):
maybe 10 or 15 episodes, a coupleof people have brought that up.
They said specifically, like oneof them was a veteran who got in
and was trying to get a VA loanand was, you know, denied.
They didn't pull a certificate ofeligibility or something like
that.
I don't remember exactly the
story, but it's interesting howthat works.
And I do find that unfortunately,a lot of loan officers will throw
people in the trash that are notready to buy in the next 60 to 90
(03:35):
days.
They just don't believe those
people are worth working with.
To me, that is the worst mindset
to have.
Because for one, this mentality
will forever keep you in the ratrace, it will forever keep you on
the treadmill of never being ableto get beyond a certain level,
because you're not learning theskills of nurturing and things
like that, right?You're not building a pipeline.
Think about six to nine monthsout.
Guess what?Six to nine months comes pretty,
pretty quickly.
And if you're nurturing these
(03:55):
people, all of a sudden you gotthese loans that are sitting
around in the future waiting foryou to do them.
And so many people just don't seeit from that perspective.
So for anybody who's listening tothis, think about your business
from a long-term perspective, notfrom a 90-day window.
I get it.
You want deals that close in the
next 90 days.
I totally understand that.
But if you ever want to get beyondthe rat race or the treadmill of
(04:16):
just two to three loans a monthand get beyond that, you have to
think long-term.
You have to understand what it
takes to build that long-termpipeline.
And we see people that close dealsthat were leads that came were
leads that came in, you know,2019, 2020, and they're closing
them in 2023, 2024.
So that is sometimes the cycle
that a human being takes.
And a lot of times people are 18
to 24 months, six to 24 months outfrom buying a home when they're
(04:37):
first starting to look, right?Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
For me, like I am incredibly ADHD
and I've learned to kind of like,you know, use that to my
advantage.
But of course, it also brings a
lot of challenges with it.
One of the biggest challenges with
that is out of sight out of mind,right?
Like if I have a client whodoesn't qualify right it.
One of I have intentions ofkeeping them in my pipeline, like
I don't have a physical visualreminder of my long-term pipeline
(04:59):
and my short-term pipeline.
Those folks, you know, can easily
fall through the cracks.
So it became as simple as having a
whiteboard that was like 12 plusmonths out.
Right.
And I would make a little note
like credit repair or like studentloans, or that doesn't have two
years of self-employment history,like whatever.
And it was so easy then becauseI'm like 60 days goes by, I'm
checking in with that person.
(05:19):
90 days goes by.
It's like a five minute phone callor a quick email and I'm staying
top of mind.
And it's like, it brings so much
satisfaction when you are able toclose those clients because you
can look back and be like, dang,man, we've been working together
truly for two years.
And you get to know someone, you
get to know what motivates them,what's important to them.
(05:39):
And for me, that keeps my heart,you know, in it a little bit,
which this is an industry, as youknow, it'll beat you up.
So it's, you gotta have thoseheart tie connections too.
have have those heart tieconnections too.
industry during times like theseare doing it because they have a
why that's beyond just the money,right?
Like, sure, you can make a ton ofmoney in the good times.
You can lose a ton of money in thebad times, right?
(06:00):
I mean, the last 18, 24 months isa huge indicator of what can
happen, right?From the highest of highs, you
know, everybody had recordproduction for two years to
everybody lost 60% of theirbusiness and just basically a
blink of an eye.
So I agree, you have to have a why
beyond that.
And I think also you talked about
(06:24):
is having those long-termconnections.
You work with them for a longtime.
Like you're the one that alsotakes that time to work with these
people.
These are people going to be
loyal.
They're going to come back to you
in the future.
And a lot of people don't think
about the lifetime value of aclient as well.
They think about the one-timevalue, right?
Like, Hey, I'm going to close thistransaction.
But like the average home buyerbuys every roughly 11 years,
according to monitor-based data.
And in that time, they do two
refinances.
That's four transactions in 11
years.
And they know in know people who
(06:46):
are buying houses.
That too.
Yes.
We're not even talking about
referrals, but what that tells youis also only 19% of consumers are
going back to the same loanofficer.
Really?So loan officers are failing
miserably at retention.
And again, because the problem is
they're so focused on this 90 daychurn that they never see the
long-term vision.
And by churning, I'm not saying it
in a bad way, but by working thedatabase, by working your
database, you're always going tohave people, especially if it gets
to a certain size, you're alwaysgoing to have people closing.
(07:06):
And so, you know, it just comesdown to building your database and
then working your database andthen continuing to work your
database and not stopping the workyour database.
Right.
So if anything, work your
database.
So I want to touch on your book.
We'll get to some otherstrategies.
I know you're doing some othercool things on social media, but
let's talk about your book.
(07:28):
I know you wrote that back in
2020.
Interesting year, obviously 2020
was an interesting year.
So tell me a little bit about
that.
Do you think that has an impact in
the way you do business at all in,you know, we're in 2024, where
it's not as virtual as it used tobe during I do.
Yeah.
So the book came about at a time
where I don't know if any otherloan officers will relate to this,
but before COVID hit, when it waslike, it's still a rumor mill type
(07:49):
of thing, right?Like it was this weird thing that
started in China.
And now there's these cases.
And I remember it was like lateFebruary, early March.
And we were starting to hear abouthow this could have devastating
economic impacts.
And I, as well as a lot of other
loan officers, at least in mycircle, were kind of like texting
each other like, oh, crap, what doyou guys think this means and
everybody can add the same thingit was like you better double down
on your marketing you better getclear because we all thought that
(08:11):
what happened like we thought theopposite of that was going to
happen we thought it was going tobe more like a 2023 happen we
thought it had the opposite effectbut i immediately started thinking
okay how am i going to set myselfapart from my competition both
here here locally, but that I canalso use to kind of like get a
bigger reach.
(08:31):
And going back to, you know,
authenticity and what feelsauthentic, what feels natural.
I'm a writer at heart.
I love the written word.
I love writing.
I love reading.
So I just started, I'm like, whatif I wrote a book?
And so it started as like, almostlike a manual, like a how to that
just kind of expanded into more ofan actual book.
It's still a short read, but Istarted gathering all of the
questions that I was asked mostfrequently by first time
(08:53):
homebuyers and decided to kind ofcompile a how to write like if
you're starting the home purchaseprocess and you have not bought
and sold 15 homes before, what aresome things that you need to know
before you start the process andwhile you're in the process?
So of course, that also kind ofhelped me kick off my personal
brand at that time of Alexa Get Mea Mortgage.
Totally capitalized on Amazon andused that to tee up my own
personal brand and decided to namemy book, Alexa Get Me a Mortgage.
(09:17):
And I noticed right away that thatwas one thing that nobody else was
doing.
I would take 10 copies and go to
local offices, local real estateshops, and drop off 10 copies and
say, hey, to your agents who aremeeting with first-time homebuyers
this week, have them take a copyof my book.
Or if I got a referral andpre-approved somebody, even if
they weren't a first-time homebubuyer, they were just kind of like
(09:38):
removed from the process for along time and just getting back
into it.
I would pre-approve them and then
mail them a copy of my book withlike a little note inside.
And it really, I think, helped setme apart just from a marketing
perspective.
That was something that nobody
else in my community was doing.
But it also kind of gave me a
natural level of authority becausethings that I assumed were common
(10:00):
knowledge that I assumed mostpeople knew they did not.
Right.
And so I was able to provide a lot
more valuable knowledge to a lotmore people that it.
And you're right.
I mean, I think just like this
podcast, it's interesting.
Sometimes having a platform and a
book and things like that.
Obviously, it's a lot easier these
days to publish a book than itever was with Amazon and things
like that.
(10:21):
But it still puts you in sort of
rarefied air because like writinga book, like not everybody does
that.
Like, yeah, I know maybe in our
circle, there's more people thathave written a book and there's
more people that have a podcastand things like that.
But in the general public, peopledon't just publish books.
They don't just have a podcast,right?
It just is not something thathappens.
And that creates that authority,that expertise, that almost aura
of like, hey, I'm in rarefied air.
(10:42):
You wrote a book.
That's crazy.
And so it does create that
authority.
And I love that you were able to
leverage that for social media.
But then also, it's almost like
you're using that as a leadmagnet, but a valuable lead magnet
where you're being able to givethis thing of value to someone.
I wanted to talk a little bitabout what you said briefly.
And that's this concept that theconsumer doesn't really know as
(11:03):
much as I thought they did.
This is one of the biggest things
that loan officers struggle with.
And I think this is not just loan
officers.
I mean, I struggle with this as a
marketer.
I talk about stuff that I think it
should be common knowledge andrealize that I'm talking over
people's head.
I'm talking about pixels and crazy
stuff like that.
Loan officers do this a lot too.
They talk about DTI and LTV andthey start talking all these big
words that are like, cool, theyshould know this, right?
(11:24):
No, they shouldn't know this.
So they do one transaction every
11 years or whatever.
If you count the refis, maybe a
couple more.
And in this case, if they're a
first time home buyer, they'veprobably never done this, right?
Like they don't see this stuffevery single day, like use a loan
officer, do loan officers see thisevery day.
This is a concept called the curseof knowledge.
And sometimes understanding thisconcept is like, I need to go back
to the fundamentals.
What do people need to know?
(11:45):
I worked for a mortgage companybefore I bought my house.
I worked for a mortgage company.
I thought we needed 20% down.
I thought I wouldn't qualify for amortgage.
I thought all these things, Iprobably wasted two or three extra
years from when I could havebought a home thinking that I
needed all these things as Iworked for a mortgage company.
So that's someone who is aconsumer.
I worked for a mortgage company.
I didn't know that it was a
reverse mortgage So company.
it's someone who is a consumer.
I worked for a mortgage I company.
(12:06):
didn't know It was that.
a reverse mortgage company.
So it's a little different, but
still it was a mortgage company.
I should have known.
I could have asked someone easilyand I didn't know that.
And so that's what the story I tryto tell loan officers is like
consumers don't know anythingabout anything.
They don't know that they need tosend all of the pages of their
documents, like all that stuff,right?
Like I know the law officers getso annoyed about this.
Like they don't know, like theyassume that it's okay.
(12:27):
Like there's nothing on that page.
Why would I send it?
Right.
Like, and then you get frustrated
and it's like, just cause theydon't know.
So I love that, that you talkedabout that because that's huge.
And I know what you're doing aswell is some cool stuff with
social media.
Before we get to the social media
stuff though, I hear you're afamous dancer now.
things And and is hilarious.
Far from famous.
Yeah, that's funny.
So the dancing thing was something
that came up last year.
There is a huge fundraiser that
takes place every year in mycommunity.
And, you know, need to speakEnglish and they do not speak
English or English as their secondlanguage.
(12:47):
And it has prevented them fromfurthering themselves
professionally or educationally.
So I love Literacy for Life.
They're awesome.
And then the other group that it
benefits is Big Brothers BigSisters of America, which is a
mentorship program for at-riskyouth and teens.
of groups.
And it's a really fun way that we
raise money for these groups whobasically host our own Dancing
with the Stars here locally.
So it's 10 professional dancers
who are legitimately, that istheir profession is dancing.
And they are paired with 10 peoplein the community who I'll say are
well-connected, have a lot ofconnections, because again, the
idea is to raise funds.
(13:08):
And so I found myself getting
nominated as a star, you know, forthis show and I'm philanthropy is
something that is very near anddear to my heart has been for the
last 10 plus years.
So when I found out that it was a
fundraiser, I was kind of like,all right, yeah, totally.
Let's do it.
And come to find out dancing with
a professional dancer, when youhave absolutely zero dance
(13:32):
experience is really freakinghard.
You have to put together a threeminute, you know, ballroom
routine.
I mean, like the whole shebang.
But it's funny that through thatexperience, not only did I end up
expanding my network tremendously,but I discovered a love of dance.
I had no idea that I would fall inlove with ballroom dancing like I
(13:55):
have.
So we actually ended up placing
runner up last year when I was inthe show, which was amazing out of
nine couples.
And then this year, I came back to
do an exhibition number with oneof his very first stars from 2016
when my pros started doing theshow.
So we came back for like a littlefun exhibition number.
But yeah, it's a lot of fun.
(14:16):
It's a lot of Well, and to segue
now into you wouldn't have gottenthat opportunity without a social
media presence, I assume.
And so my assumption is based off
of the things you're doing onsocial media, the exposure that
you have on social media, thattype of stuff, and obviously being
connected within the mortgage andreal estate industry in a small
community, or maybe not even thatsmall, but in a community that has
massive opportunities.
And I don't know if it's brought
(14:38):
you any business or not, but it'sgiving you the opportunity to
expand your network, which I wouldthink by default would create more
business at least over time,right?
And so talk a little bit aboutsome of your strategies that you
are using.
What is sort of the Alexa playbook
for social media marketing?Or what platforms are you really
leveraging the most?I would say the two platforms I am
the most active on for socialmedia marketing purposes would
(15:00):
definitely come down to TikTok andFacebook, right?
TikTok, I really love because itmakes it so easy.
And you could say the same thingfor Instagram and Reels being the
equivalent.
It makes it so easy to put out
high quality short form videocontent.
Like I remember I've been doingvideos on social media since 2018.
I mean, not before there werevideo editing apps like that
existed, but it was certainly noton my So I'm just I'm just
(15:21):
straight up in my office with atripod and a camera, like no
editing, no captions, no funfilters, no like splicing and
dicing, just like me sitting theretalking about loans in my quiet
little office and then uploadingthat video to Facebook.
And I look back now and I likecringe at some of those videos,
but I'm so glad that I just keptdoing it because there's this big
argument that like, what's moreimportant quality, right?
(15:41):
Or consistency.
And I've always been on the
consistency side of that argument.
And the reason being is if you do
something you will naturally getbetter at it, and the quality of
your content will naturallyimprove.
So it's been this journey from,you know, those, like, just
really, really raw videos toTikTok, which I feel like gives
you the ability to make reallyfancy videos.
As far as my actual content, Ilike just talking about things,
like you said, that you assumepeople know, but they probably
(16:02):
don't like the 3% down home ready,home possible loans that are out
there, or why get an appraisal or,you know, pros and cons of waiving
certain contingencies.
or pros and cons of waiving
certain contingencies.
Just anything that could impact a
home buyer's decision, small orlarge, like let's sit here and
talk about it and really kind ofget into the nitty gritty.
(16:24):
I just think there's so manydifferent topics out there within
the mortgage sphere.
And so you're never left without
content, right?Like if I wake up one morning and
I think I don't have anything totalk about or to post about, I'm
not doing my job correctly.
with that.
And so we were like, I don't knowwhat to talk about.
I'm like, start writing down thequestions that people ask you on a
(16:46):
daily basis.
I guarantee you, there's probably
10 or 20, like pretty consistentquestions that get asked.
And then off of those 10 to 20questions, there's probably
ancillary sort of details aroundthose things that you could talk
about.
In addition to that, like I'm
assuming it's not just businesstype stuff, or maybe it is, I
don't know.
But are you posting stuff that's
(17:15):
more organic, like life of Alexaon TikTok and some of these
platforms?Obviously, I think on Facebook,
you are just curious what yourstrategies on TikTok?
Is it mostly educational?Or is it also a mix of lifestyle?
Yeah, it's mostly educational.
And I don't know why you kind of
bring up a good point.
I thought so much about posting
more personal stuff on my TikTokpage.
But I always like stop shortbecause I'm like, that's mortgage
(17:36):
Alexa, right?Like, nobody cares about my funny
chihuahua and like all these likelittle sidebar anecdotal things
that happened in my life onTikTok.
That's what Facebook is for.
And on Facebook, I'm pretty split.
I would say about is isprofessional and 50% of my content
is personal.
I do think that whatever platform
you're on, people need to knowthat you're a real person, right?
Like you can't be like a suit allthe time, because I think you're
(18:00):
going to come across asunapproachable, and just maybe
even unrelatable.
But I think that there's a time
and a place and a platform forboth whether or not you're mixing
those or you have one, you know,that's exclusively for
professional content, one that'sexclusively for personal content,
I think there needs to be a goodmix.
no, I agree.
And that's why I was curious,
because I know a lot of times,when you're doing just video, it's
like, it's a little different,like when you're doing something
(18:20):
like Facebook, it's a lot easier,I feel like, to put out content,
especially because, you know, youhave a smaller limit of friends on
Facebook.
Whereas, I mean, you can get
thousands or hundreds of thousandsof followers on something like
TikTok or even Instagram.
So sometimes it's like, all right,
what sort of content makes themost sense on these platforms?
And I think it does make sense.
And I'm just curious if it would
work pretty well, especially ifpeople are following you
(18:42):
consistently.
If you started to talk about the
Chihuahua or had the Chihuahua inone of your videos, even if it is
a professional video.
Right.
And so you're just some thoughtsthere from my perspective is I've
always told people that like thething that people care about the
most is less business stuff andmore that who are you as a human.
And that's the most thing thatbrings people that makes you more
(19:04):
relatable.
And I remember way back in the
day, I remember one guy sayingsomething like, I just felt like
you were too busy.
And like, you know, you were just
almost inaccessible.
Like you talked about, and I was
like, I I was like, I was holycrap.
Like, I don't want that persona tobe out there.
Like, I always want to feel likeI'm accessible.
People can ask me questions.
(19:25):
You know, they can't say, can I
pick my brain, but they can ask mequestions.
I'm just kidding.
They can say whatever they want,
but for whatever reason, pick mybrain just triggers me.
It just asked me the question fromthat perspective, when you're
making the videos, are you usingjust your phone or what sort of
the setup?Like, how do you get people
started on using these platforms?$20 tripod ring light duo that I
got from Walmart like five yearsago.
(19:45):
And I still use that bad boy everysingle day for making videos.
I don't use any additionalsoftware.
I know there's so many differentapps that can allow you to just
splice and dice or you can film iton one platform and then upload
that video into TikTok or edit ithere and then upload that.
And for me personally, that makesmy brain like go scrambled And
then eggs.
upload And for that.
me personally, that makes my brainlike go scrambled eggs.
And then I shut down and I'm like,Oh, I'm just not going to do
(20:07):
anything.
I am a big fan of less is more get
a clean script, right?Like clean up your message, be
concise, be confident, shoot thatthing and don't overthink it.
Like don't delete video becauseyou said, um, three times or
because you talked for five extraseconds about that thing that, you
know, like I just spent so muchtime nitpicking so many of my
videos and so much of my contentwhen I needed to just be
executing.
And the more you do that, you
know, first of all, you justnaturally get better at it over
(20:29):
time, but you also start to learn.
Like I was growing my following, I
think I'm at somewhere around14,000 followers on TikTok, just
by consistently posting videos,there's really nothing in my
content that's like super fancy,or that requires any type of
special skill set, right?It's more about me being
authentic, talking about topicsthat matter, topics that people
care about, and also leveragingnarratives.
Like I love stories and I'vestarted to notice that people love
stories in narrative form.
So while yes, of course, in our
industry, you have to be carefulto always protect the client.
There's a lot of great ways thatyou can take what happened
(20:50):
yesterday, that like, oh, crapmoment, and kind of, you know,
make that a narrative.
Sometimes it's a success story.
And sometimes it's a, you know,proceed with caution type of
story.
But I love narratives for video as
(21:11):
well.
Yeah, stories are the best.
I mean, stories sell right at theend of the day, like that's really
what people want to hear.
They want to hear stories, they
don't want to hear facts, theydon't want to hear, you know,
here's how to get a mortgage, theywant to hear here's how I helped
Johnny get a mortgage, even thoughhe got denied twice by two of the
lenders.
And I was able to do X, Y, Z to
get him into a home.
And, you know, now he loves me and
he was crying at the closingtable.
(21:32):
Like just like a story like that,right?
Obviously I just made that up offthe top of my head, but like, I'm
sure you deal with that as a loanofficer on a regular basis.
You know, yeah, you have yourcookie cutter loans, but you have
your people that, you know, maybeyou had to work a little harder
for, maybe you last minute hadthis thing pop up and you can warn
(21:56):
people like, Hey, make sure thatyou don't freaking buy a car on
closing day or buy furniture atclosing.
Right.
Like, you know, like things like
that.
Right.
People don't know.
Right.
Again, this is one of the thingsthat loan officers get frustrated
with is like, consumers don'tknow.
They're like, I moved into thehouse.
Like I need furniture.
(22:17):
Let me go buy furniture.
Like, no, no, no, no, no. Do notdo that.
I've already told you that seventimes.
Do not do that.
But again, I think that's
something that you can use ascontent.
And I like that you talked about,I mean, I'm assuming would you
just use a TikTok platform to editit?
I do is on TikTok.
(22:37):
And then I've started doing more
with reels and same there.
I will sometimes film the video
just on my camera app, literallyon my iPhone and upload that
video.
But nothing beyond that.
I think those platforms areamazing because they give you so
many tools to create qualitycontent without having to reinvent
the wheel or invest in some ofthose, you know, higher level
platforms.
iPhone Yeah, that totally makes
sense.
And I think people do
(22:58):
overcomplicate it.
And when you're first getting
started, like you said, you'regoing to suck.
And people ask me the same thing.
Like, man, how are you so good at
video?I'm like, I've made thousands of
videos at this point.
I've done, you know, this is like
episode, I don't know, 115 orsomething like that.
I don't remember what episode thisis going to be.
Obviously, there's going to be alittle tag that says what episode
it is, but we're recording this.
I don't even know.
Again, I've done tons of trainingsand I've just gotten comfortable
on camera, but I go back.
I show people my old videos when I
had my license and I was trying tobe a reverse mortgage loan
(23:19):
officer.
I'm like, hi, my name is Luke and
I'm a reverse mortgage specialist.
And I'm like, that's how I
sounded.
Like, I didn't realize what I
needed to do.
And so it's pretty funny to go
back and look at those videos.
But at the same time, like you
don't get to being good on camerawithout having the bad.
And the other thing to note ispeople probably aren't going to
see many of your first videos.
You're not consistently putting
out videos.
You're not probably going to get
(23:40):
very much reach.
You probably don't have a lot of
followers.
Who cares?
Just post it.
Get used to it.
Build the muscle.
And then you get better over time.
And you talked about it.
Yes, you can use something like
TikTok, but there's tools.
There's AI tools like Opus Clip
that will edit it for you, right?Like there's things you can do
that make it even simpler,especially these days, right?
When Alexa started, there was noAI.
There was no CapCut, there was noDescript, there was no InShot or
NVIDIA or whatever that one is onyour phone.
(24:02):
And like, those are all tools thatare now available that are super
easy.
And a lot of times free that make
it super easy.
Use your phone.
These phones are crazy, likepowerful.
The quality of camera isridiculous already.
You don't need fancy equipment,get a little light, make sure you
look good, but overall good audio.
And truthfully, you said value is
not that important, but value is,but it doesn't have to be valuable
(24:23):
in terms of like a fancy editedvideo.
The content needs to be valuable,right?
The delivery will get better overtime and it'll get more
engagement, things like that.
But the value has to be in the
content mostly.
Like what are you delivering?
What is the thing that you'redoing?
Make sure that's super valuablebecause then over time you can get
better at the delivery, you canget better at the lighting, you
get better at the camera, you getbetter at the scripting.
But the value needs to be in whatis the content that you're
delivering.
So I think that's a huge sort of
caveat.
I know that's not what you meant
that value is not important.
(24:45):
But you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, do the consistencyover time.
But your value is like, hey, whatare you talking about?
Yeah, bring that to it.
the muscle.
that's huge.
It's amazing to see also over
time, when you first start postingvideos, like you were saying, it
can be discouraging because you'relike, oh, that video got one
comment and two likes.
But pay attention to those views.
If that video got 150 views or 250views, I've had referrals.
(25:05):
People literally like slide intomy DMs that have never liked a
video of mine, that have nevercommented on a video of mine, that
have never engaged with me onsocial media, that have been
watching every single one of myvideos for two years.
And now they're sending me areferral because I'm talking about
something that applies to theirclient today.
So don't discount the amount ofpeople that are seeing your
content that are simply notengaging with it.
That is still a part of your Butpay mine, that two a great way to
(25:26):
passively build your audience overtime.
But you can't build that withoutdoing the work, right?
Without consistently putting outvideo content or whatever your
content You need to have aconstant strategy, whether it's
posting written content on socialmedia every day, whether it's
making a video every day, whateverit is, or making two videos a
week, right?It doesn't have to be something
like that's crazy, but it has tobe consistent because at the end
of the day, people honorconsistency.
And that's part of your value.
(25:47):
If you can show up consistently
over an extended period of time,that's where you're going to get
results.
A lot of people give up quickly.
It's something like organicmarketing.
It's not a short game.
It's a six plus month game of,
Hey, if you don't consistentlypost for six months and you don't
continue to do that, like that'sone thing that I honestly don't
love about social media and whyI've gone so hard on YouTube
recently is because I've put outso much content, so much good
content on social media that'sgone in like 24 to 48 hours, like
(26:07):
completely gone.
And there's no use for it at that
point.
It's like that treadmill, but it's
also so powerful and so valuable.
And I think there is a ton of
value for people to do that.
Obviously do the fundamentals too,
call the leads, call the realtors,do the work, right?
But be consistent with socialmedia as well.
I wanted to touch a little bit atCMS.
You have been doing somementoring, newer loan officers,
things like that.
Like walk me through what that
looks like when you are mentoringa new loan officer, what's sort of
(26:28):
the main things that you talkabout?
How do you help them get up tospeed now as you know, getting
kind of back into full timeproduction?
What is like some of thosestrategies that you tell loan
officers to use as you're sort ofYeah, so a lot of the loan
officers that I worked with lastyear, some of them were coming
into our company that were newlylicensed, that had never even
(26:51):
taken their first application.
Some of them had gotten their feet
wet.
Maybe they've been licensed for a
year to two, but they don't havethat consistency.
And then of course, I had somefolks that were veterans and they
were maybe coming in from adifferent business model and they
were just trying to learn thebroker side, the broker channel,
and kind of fundamentally how toget going.
So depending on who I was workingwith, who I was mentoring, my
(27:13):
approach was a little bitdifferent.
Vast majority of the folks that Iworked with were newly licensed
loan officers.
And what's interesting is they all
had questions that had nothing todo with loans.
They weren't asking me about FHAguidelines or conventional
guidelines or how to run AUS orhow to interpret a credit report.
They're like, hey, how do I get arealtor to like have a lunch
meeting with me?And then when I get to the lunch
meeting, what do I say?So we started just kind of
(27:35):
building those fundamentalbuilding of is your value
proposition?If you don't have one, you need to
create one.
And by the way, you should have
two separate value propositions,one for your agents and one for
your consumer, one for yourborrower.
Those are two separate things,right?
the there.
And then when you are in front of
that agent, do not sit down andstart selling your turn times and
your rates and every other thingthat every other loan officer has
sold them at a coffee meeting.
(27:57):
Ask them about them.
Ask them about the pain points intheir business.
Ask them about their life, abouttheir hobbies.
You know, there are so manyinteractions that I had early on
with agents where we would have a30 minute meeting talking about
something we had in common withouteven talking about business.
And nine times out of 10, thosewere the agents that I ended up
closing a few deals with, right?And it was because they liked me
as a person, not because And itbest rates or the fastest turn
(28:18):
times.
I knew what I was good at, right?
I would sell those qualities, butnot before I really got to know
who I'm working with and how tospeak to them.
So So from there, we would kind ofsay, okay, once you start feeling
comfortable with talking to anagent, let's get you marketing on
social media so that you canattract some clients to
pre-approve to bring to thoseagents.
You know, we talked a lot aboutstuff that you and I just talked
about, how to be consistent onsocial media, how to get into
(28:39):
video content, how to leveragejust social graphics, right?
How to host classes, things ofthat nature, and just kind of
progressing so that when they didget that application, then it kind
of became a transition of, okay,now let's talk about how to take a
clean 1003.
But truth be told, technology
these days makes it so easy.
You don't have to be like the most
skilled loan officer out there totake a clean application, but
you're not going to get thatapplication if you don't know how
(29:02):
to talk to people and you don'tknow how to stay in front of your
market.
But in front of your market.
100%.
That's huge.
And I think that's one of thethings that unfortunately most
mortgage companies fail at isactually educating their loan
officers on how to do that.
Right.
I mean, you know, it's why we havesuch a, I would call it an
incestuous industry where peopledon't want to train up people.
(29:23):
So they just go and pay someone abonus and they steal them from the
next person.
Then they sue each other because
they're like, okay, I don't knowhow to actually train new loan
officers, what they need to do toget business because my whole
value prop is just go callrealtors.
And yeah, that's great in anumbers game, but what do you say
when you talk to a realtor?How do you reach out to them?
(29:44):
What are some strategies?And there's a lot of cool ways
that you can build value with realestate agents that doesn't mean
you have to cold call or you cancold call, but you use some ways
to warm up those cold calls.
I mean, I talk about this all the
time, like social media, go add 50or a hundred real estate agents.
Not at the same time.
Cause if you do that, you'll
(30:05):
probably get shadow banned, butadd five to 10 a day, whatever for
a couple months, maybe 30 to 40%of them will add you and then
start to freaking comment on theirstuff, like their stuff, shoot
them a DM saying, Hey man, I loveyour content.
This is great.
Hey, I love the story about your
dog.
Next thing you know, you can call
them and say, Hey, you know, I'vebeen watching your stuff.
Love your content.
You know, we'd love to get
(30:26):
together sometime for lunch.
Love to get together for coffee,
whatever.
Now all of a sudden it's not a
cold call.
It's a warm call, but yeah, it's
technically a cold call, but likehow but like this day and age,
there's no excuse for aninteraction being like ice cold.
Yes.
You're still going to have cold
calls.
That's fundamental part of it.
Like that's what we do here.
But at the same time, you have so
(30:46):
many opportunities to warm up thatcontact before you even ever reach
out to going to touch on on whatyou said about the lack of
education and training.
Interestingly enough, the folks
that came to us in the last, Iwould say 12 to 18 months that
came from other companies, right?Like we were not their first
mortgage company that they hadworked with.
I asked everybody this question,why?
(31:07):
Like what caused you to look forsomething different?
And 100% of them, 100% said thattheir primary motivating factor
was a lack of resources andtraining and education.
They didn't know how to be a loanofficer.
They were hired as newly licensedand then started kind of
floundering.
So I just think that's so pivotal
in our Well, and companiestypically do a decent job of
educating them on loan productsand the stuff, right?
The stuff that's going to keep youout of jail, but not the stuff
(31:28):
that's actually going to bring youbusiness and make you money or
make the company money, which tome blows my mind.
I'm like, you would think thatthey would be incentivized to
train their people to actuallyhave good conversations with
agents, right?Like, okay, cool.
They just say cold call agents.
I mean, I remember when I was an
AE, I was told, here's a list ofpeople that have closed a reverse
mortgage in the last 12 months.
Call them.
What do I say?Just call them.
(31:49):
That was what I was told.
Just call them.
I was like, okay.
I didn't do that very long before
I knew marketing.
And I figured out ways to send out
email blasts with value and showthem, hey, here's how you can...
It took a while, but I became topone or two at the company.
And that was because I was givingvalue, value, value.
Honestly, I didn't realize what Iwas doing.
I just was sending out thesecrappy little flyers that I made
on WordDoc and I screenshot it andsend it out as an email.
(32:09):
That was probably a terribleemail.
But it worked because I was givingYeah, that goes back to the
consistency breeds quality, likedidn't have to be an ace in the
hole when you started, right?But it gets to that point.
to me because like, you know, thatI've been doing marketing for the
last five, six years, I'm like,there's a million strategies for
loan officers to get business.
And obviously, as a marketer, it's
like direct to consumer, but somany other ways of doing it.
I don't think most loan officers,honestly, consumer direct or leads
buying leads for most loanofficers is probably not the best
(32:31):
way to do business.
Right?
I mean, cause it takes a wholedifferent, like you talked about,
like there's so many things thatyou can do.
Find the things that you're goodat.
Some people love cold calling.
They love pounding the phones.
Some people hate that.
Right?
So why would you pound the phones?If you're the type of person that
hates doing that, go buildrelationships, go network with
people, you know, hire someone tofreaking pound the phones for you.
Hire someone to send the emailsfor you, right?
(32:52):
I mean, there's countless waysthat you can build your business,
but you have to do that withconsistency.
And I think that's one of the bigkeys that we've talked about today
is consistency.
So real quick, as we close out
here, if you were to start overagain, go out there, get business,
like what would you suggest?Or maybe these new loan officers
that you were training?What is like the primary, the
number one thing that you wouldtell them to do today to get
(33:16):
business?Hard hitting or maybe these new
loan officers that you werequestions.
what is like the the number onething that training, you would
tell them to do primary, today toget business?
questions.
a lot of things.
I'll go with something that'sprobably helped me most
consistently in the last threeyears.
And it's more of like a mantra,but it's micro changes, right?
Make micro changes.
Meaning if you are someone that's
(33:37):
like, I don't really know where tostart.
Pick one thing.
Pick one thing.
Pick one thing that you think youcan kind of sink your teeth into.
Like the idea of putting togethera class like freaks you out and
you don't know where to start.
Don't start there.
But if you think you could bringyourself to film two videos a
week, start there and stay focusedon that.
Just execute two videos a week forthree months, four months.
Don't bring in all this othertechnology or sign up for this
thing or sign up for that thing ortry to do this and three other
(33:58):
things.
Pick one thing, really execute it,
really focus on it.
And you will find that once you
feel super comfortable, that'swhat I did with videos.
And it got to a point where videosdid not feel arduous to me.
I could put up a two tock and like15 minutes and that's like
scripting filming editing andeverything and so i felt
comfortable doing that so then icould say all right now i need to
get better cleaning up my crmstaying in front of my database so
then for another four months rightthat was the only change i made
(34:19):
was can kind follow-up andcleaning my database and adding
quality contact information to mydatabase.
And what I found is at the end of12 months, I had really cleaned up
and executed a lot of things in mybusiness, simply by making one
small change at a time for aspecific period of time and just
kind of building on that buildingon those I love that because I was
(34:39):
at the AIMFUSE conference in 2019.
And Gary V was on stage and he was
like, yeah, everybody, all youloan officers need to be on every
single social platform.
You need to be putting out 40
pieces of content a day.
I'm like, that is literally the
worst advice I have ever heard.
I'm sorry, Gary Vee.
No one has a four person teamputting out content for them.
That's impossible for anyone todo.
What's a better advice is getconsistent in putting out if it's
one piece of content a week, ifthat's all you can commit to,
(35:00):
great.
Do one piece of content.
If you can do more, great as well,right?
I mean, if you do five a week,perfect.
That's even better.
If you do 10 a week, even better,
right?Again, it's one thing at a time.
And interestingly enough, I havean executive coach I've been
working with the last eightmonths.
Someone who's built the business.
I have, I don't know, 15 people on
my team, 16 people on my team.
And he's taught me so much around
literally the same concept oflike, we're trying to move in 20
different directions at the sametime.
(35:21):
And so we're getting none of themdone.
We're just spinning our wheels inseven different ways, 10 different
ways.
And it was like, no, we're going
to finish one project.
And all of a sudden, this
six-month timeline for a projectturned into six weeks.
Because instead of working on sixprojects or 10 projects, we worked
on one and we just focus, focus,focus, got that done, moved on to
the next one, focus, focus, focus,got that done.
We've accomplished so much more inthe last eight months than we
probably did in the last threeyears in terms of some of these
(35:42):
projects that have been on ourplate.
So it's a huge concept that Ithink is valuable that loan
officers need to understand.
If someone wanted to connect with
you online, learn more about whatyou're doing, what's the best way
they can connect with you?So that would be probably or my My
Facebook, website is TikTok,alexagetmeamortgage.com.
website.
On I am Alexa my name is Alexa Ray
But interestingly enough,Facebook, Ray.
Technically, Faithful.
Facebook does not allow you to
change your name on Facebook morethan twice.
(36:04):
And I guess sometime in Facebook Ichanged my name.
So anyways, Facebook or TikTok.
I am also AlexaGetMeAMortgage on
TikTok.
Awesome.
My sort of big takeaways fromtoday was really coming down to
consistency and doing one thingconsistently over time.
This seems to be a trend with alot of these podcasts that I'm
doing is consistency, right?So many people like to give up on
things after whatever couple ofweeks.
I always kind of go back to thisAlex from Mosey quote, where he
(36:25):
talked about when he was firststarting his gym company, he
talked to a guy and the guy'slike, we do these flyers.
We sent out these flyers.
He's like, cool.
He puts out 300 flyers and the guyhits him up.
He's like, Hey, how did it go?He's like, I don't know.
I didn't get anything from it.
And the guy was like, well, how
many flyers did you send out?He's like, Oh, like 300.
(36:46):
He's like 300.
We don't do anything less than
like 10,000 or something likethat.
It was like some crazy number likeAnd he's that.
sometimes like, we don He's like300.
We don't do 300.
anything less than like 10,000 or
something like It was like that.
some crazy number like that.
And he's like, sometimes we don'tjust have to double our efforts.
We have to a hundred times ourefforts or whatever that number
(37:07):
is, right?And so it's like, we have to
understand that it takes what ittakes.
The market is the market and itmight take, you know, working a
little bit harder or maybe a lotof it harder or a lot of it
smarter in this market to get theresults we're looking for.
So thank you so much for your timetoday, Alexa.
It was great, super, supervaluable.
And for anybody who is listeningto this that is looking for some
(37:27):
help on flipping the status quo onreal estate agents and learning
more about our marketing system,go to flip the status quo.com.
Thank you so much for listeningand have a great day.
Thank you for tuning into theloans on demand podcast on loans
on demandcast.com.
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