129: Darin Rhodes - Mastering Marketing Strategies and Managing Your Mindset - Loans On Demand Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(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 and put loan
officers in the driver's seat.
Now I'm excited because today we
have Darren Rhodes, the founder ofMortgage Marketing Renegades.
He's been in the business for wellover 20 years or a couple of years
over 20 years and just has awealth of experience.
I've done a bunch of marketing andsome other stuff in this industry
and I'll let him introducehimself.
Welcome to the show, man.
Luke, thanks for having me on.

(00:46):
It's always great to chat withyou.
Another great colleague in theindustry.
It's fun to follow Luke and seewhat he's got going on.
Always something innovative andfun.
Awesome, man.
welcome to the show, man.
I'm excited to dive in.
But before we get into the fun
stuff, let's talk a little bitabout who you are, what's your
background, what has you still inthis industry after, I think you
said 22 years.
Yeah, right on.
Well, you know, my true love andbackground is actually marketing

(01:08):
and advertising.
I went to BYU back in the, well,
I'm going to say it, in a previousmillennium.
So I graduated in this millennium,but I was there a previous
millennium.
We graduated in marketing and
advertising.
I was there previous millennium
we've graduated in marketing andadvertising and I've always loved
marketing and advertising I lovethe psychology behind it and I
love the gathering behindmarketing and advertising and
interestingly enough of themortgage industry just kind of led

(01:29):
to a really great outlet for thatbecause we have some challenges
you know that a lot of otherindustries don't have.
Usually you don't say my industryis different, but there are some
challenges we face.
And there's also some real
opportunities that we have aswell.
So we'd like to go after theopportunities and tackle our
challenges.
Oh, Well, so like give us a little
rundown, man, like, you know, 22years in this industry, as you

(01:51):
just mentioned, this industry isvery lucrative, but it also has
its shares of very low lows,right?
As we're experiencing one rightnow, what was the journey like?
I mean, did it start out great?Was it tough?
Like what was the journey like atthe Well, it's kind of an
interesting story, but I got intoit really just through an
opportunity with a friend and Iwas brand new, married.
I just graduated and thought, hey,you know, something in sales and

(02:12):
marketing would be great.
I ended up talking to a friend who
was a loan officer and we ended upworking together at the same
company.
And to be honest with you, I was
always looking down the road aboutthree to five years at that time
thinking, you know what, I'm goingto be out and into my real job in
about five years.
You know, and probably all of us
in the back of our mind at somepoint or another, maybe feel that

(02:35):
same way.
But, you know, as we went, there
was just more opportunity tocontinue to hone my craft, hone
our craft, get good at loans.
And the thing that I really liked
about it was the opportunity toserve your community, but also
really that outlet.
So the cool thing about being a
loan officer is you do havemultiple outlets that you can go
down, whatever your strengths are.
So some people love to shut the
office door, say, don't talk tome.

(02:56):
I'm crafting loans today, right?And other people say, I was just
talking to somebody the other day,and it's like, man, you know what?
My company's got me in the backoffice doing loans.
I want to be out marketing.
I want to be out meeting with
people.
I want to be doing those things.
So the industry really does caterto what your strengths are.

(03:17):
And it's almost like just acatalyst to really become who you
want to become.
So for me personally, you know,
I've been up and down a lot ofdifferent pathways, find myself
still in the business.
Overall, the last few years, I've
spent most of my time really inthe marketing and advertising side
of the mortgage industry and thecoaching side.
So it's really, reallyinteresting.
I've had my own mentors andmentored by Frank Kern, went
through his Sandor program, gotSandor certified, which was
really, really eye-opening.

(03:37):
But there's one thing that I
really learned from Frank Kern,and that's this, it's impossible
to read the label when you're onthe inside of the bottle.
And in fact, Luke, before westarted recording here, you were
talking about being on a call withyour coach.
And you find that no matter howsmart you are, no matter how

(03:58):
involved you are, your brain doesplay tricks on you.
Like your brain is geared acertain way, it's geared for your
survival.
And sometimes we just don't think
accurately because we're on theinside of the bottle.
So that person on the outside ofthe bottle that can give us some
help and some encouragement andactually correct our thinking can
be really, really valuable.
And to be honest with you, it's
really essential.
Well, and interestingly enough,
that same coach, one of the thingshe talks about all the times is

(04:21):
like, there's the things you know,there's the things you don't know.
And then there's the things youdon't know, you don't know.
Yeah, right.
So that's the real blind spots.
Because like, you obviously kindof have a pretty good idea of
like, you don't know what you'renot good at.
Yeah, then there's things that youmay not know that you're not good
at, or you may not know is a blindspot that you're missing out on.

(04:43):
And having that externalperspective is massive when it
comes to growth, because like theycan see it from an external
perspective.
Well, one, they can see growth as
well, right?When you're in the grind and when
you're the one that's sort of likegrowing in this process, it's
pretty hard to see growth, right?When you look at it in a macro
perspective over long periods oftime, it's easier to sort of
picture it.
But when you're looking at it in
the grind, right?If you're right now a loan officer

(05:04):
that's grinding in this market andstruggling and not feeling like
they're getting very muchprogress, the truth is you're in
this market and you're still aloan officer.
I mean, I think I saw a stat thatwas like, there's only about
95,000 loan officers left in themarket.
I think about 50% or more havealready dropped out of the market
over the last couple of years.
And so if you're here, if you're
listening to this podcast, you'rea loan officer and you're still
around, that's a testament to thefact that you're resilient.
You are putting in the work andthat on the other side of this

(05:28):
bust or whatever you want to callthis is down cycle.
There's going to be massiveopportunities.
Right.
And I think putting in the work
now and also understanding, Imean, we talked about coaches is,
you know, I know sometimes there'scoaches out there that are kind of
full hot air, but the truth is, Ithink everybody who has succeeded
at some level has had coaches,right?
You hear a lot of people like,well, coaches are just people who
like, you know, just can't do thething.
And it's like, well, that may bethe truth.

(05:48):
There is some people like that,but there's a lot of people that
can do the thing and choose tocoach because that's what, you
know, drives them.
That's what, but also like we all
need coaches, right?Like sports people need coaches,
like executives need like?Like sports people need coaches.
coaches, Like executives needcoaches.
Like just because maybe they'renot the best maybe they're
producer, good at systems.
Maybe they're good at mindset.

(06:09):
Maybe they're good at process.
You there's know, so many things
that they could be good at thatdoesn't necessarily mean that
they're a good originator, right?So just thinking about like, oh,
well, they're not doing the thingI do doesn't mean they're not
valuable for you as a learningexperience.
And so, I mean, Frank Kern,obviously a legend in the
marketing space.
What's your biggest takeaway from
the marketing perspective fromFrank?
that's the I think just Okay.
Yeah.
So there's a number of differentavenues that we could go down on

(06:29):
this.
I'm going to just focus on a
couple.
I'll give you some foundational
things, and then I'm going to gothrough some tactical things that
I think will be very, very useful.
The very first thing that I run
into, and this is something Ilearned heavily from Frank,
actually, and it was wildlyhelpful, is nobody's thinking
about you as much as you thinkthey are.
It always feels so personal, like,oh man, you just took a pot shot
at me.
But let me give you an example.
Anybody who's listening today, howmany times have you actually
thought about your own mother?All right, now this is the

(06:51):
individual that gave you life,that gave you birth, brought you
up, helped make you into who youare today.
And this is somebody so importantin your life, but how many times
has she crossed your mind?Now, maybe if you've got a problem
or something, she's got healthproblems, you're thinking about
her a lot, but generally speaking,most people like, oh yeah, I
really haven't thought about mymom too much today.
Okay, so if you haven't thoughtabout your own mother very much

(07:13):
today and her problems, well thenhow much is the marketplace
thinking about you?They're not, they're not.
And in fact, kind of a hardquestion to ask yourself and to
answer honestly is if you were toleave the business today, how many
people would even know and howmany people of those would even
care?And the number is usually
shockingly low.
So what that does is it does two
things for us.
It gives us a foundation from
which to work where we reallycan't overwhelm people very much

(07:35):
with marketing, number one.
And that's something that I see
most people when they're justgetting their feet wet in
marketing, they will only do alittle bit.
They'll just dabble because theythink the world's going to see it,
right?Well, the fact is, is a
professional marketer thinks exactinverse.
They think I'm going to put apiece of content out there, for
example, and nobody's going to seeit.
So I better do 10 of them or Ibetter do 100, right?

(07:58):
Right.
So that's really item number one
is you don't have to worry aboutwhat people are thinking because
they're not thinking about you.
And then that also speaks to the
fact that you don't have to worryabout being perfect.
I get caught up in this.
I know we all get caught up in
this.
You know, your marketing is your
baby.
It's your message.

(08:18):
It represents you.
You'll spend a lot of time on it
and you'll think you'll put it outin the world and have this great
offering for the world.
And then you find out, gosh, I
spent three days on that video andI got two views out of it.
Nobody cares.
Right.
Right.
And there's ways to get around
that.
But if you're starting with the
foundation of that alone, then allof a sudden it frees you to speak

(08:40):
more freely and it frees you tospeak more.
Both of us.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting to you.
I mean, if we bring it down to the
more like granular level, likesort of more down to the ground,
it's like, think about socialmedia, right?
Like specifically, if we'retalking about advertising on
something like social media is thealgorithm itself, let's say you
have a thousand friends, likemaybe 10 to 30% of those people
are going to be an impression,right?
That are going to be served yourpost, probably less most of the

(09:00):
time, unless you're like aprolific content creator.
And you're a prolific contentcreator you know how the algorithm
works but for the person who'smaybe not using this is like maybe
10 to 30 percent of your friendsare actually going to see your
posts yeah so if you think byposting multiple times a day like
oh i'm just gonna be everywherelike they're gonna keep seeing my
posts they're gonna get annoyedwith me it's like no that's not

(09:24):
the case.
Because the truth is, unless
you're posting multiple times aday, there's not going to be a
problem.
And even multiple times a day.
I mean, I have some points in mymarketing career.
I've posted three, four, five, sixtimes a day consistently.
Like I actually had a buddy whowas like, more, more, more.
You need to do more.
And I was like, I feel like I'm
being obnoxious already.
And he's like, no, man, like just
keep going, man.
And so that's something that that

(09:44):
is huge.
But I do think people overthink
and also even like video, like yousaid, is like, people spend so
much time on video, making it lookpretty and all that kind of stuff.
And what I've actually found,especially recently is that the
market really prefers verticalvideo, like, you know, a term in
marketing is UGC user generatedcontent, the algorithm is almost
favoring less produced lookingvideos.
So it's like, stop overthinkingit.
But interestingly enough, when youtalked about like the concept of
like, no one's really thinkingabout you.

(10:06):
Think about that from themarketing perspective as well.
Right?Like what's in it for me?
I mean, I just was kind ofroasting one of my mortgage
buddies because he showed me acold email.
And like the whole first paragraphwas like, me, me, me, I'm this,
I'm that, I'm this.
I'm like, where's the benefit to
the real estate agent?Like, what do they get out of this
email?They're going to delete this email
instantly.
Same thing with content on social
media, right?So like, what is your take on
that?Like, how do you sort of frame

(10:26):
social media content or any sortof marketing content around that
idea?Like what is sort of your
suggestions or when you're doingcoaching or consulting, how do you
so that?Yeah.
Okay.
So you're asking then about a
framework for maybe contentcreation.
So somebody grabbing their cameraand they got to start talking
about something.
And that's a question that comes
up all the time.

(10:47):
You know, if you can get past the,
how I look and how I soundproblem, which, you know, you can,
everybody can, if I can do that,I'm telling you, anybody can do
that.
But there is this very, very
simple framework you can follow.
You'll hear it in a lot of
different avenues, but there'susually three parts to it.
Okay.
And they are this, goodwill,
value, and an offer.
Okay.
Another way to say it, RussellBrunson, he does hook, story,
offer, right?Dennis Yu does the what, why, and

(11:08):
how.
Wait, did I say that right?
How, why, and what?Something like that.
So you have to look at one.
I look at one.
I know Dennis, you has his littleSo yeah, but they all boil down to
the same thing.
Goodwill value and an offer.
So here's the great thing.
Nobody's thinking about you.
And again, not trying to offendanybody here.
Nobody cares.
The only thing they care about is
their own problems, right?I mean, what are you thinking
about all day?You're thinking about what

(11:29):
problems you have and how you gotto solve them.
And the best way that you canmarket yourself is to talk about
people's problems and how you canhelp solve them.
And you may not be great at it,but who cares?
You just start.
A really great way to do that is,
I was talking with a client today.
This client had this particular
problem.
Here's some ideas we came up with
and it solved this problem.
If you got this problem too, then

(11:50):
shoot me a message and let's seeif we can't solve your problem
too.
Right?
So I didn't say, Hey, my name'sDarren.
I'm a really awesome loan officerand I'm delivering really great
rates or whatever the case may be.
They're just speaking to the
problem over and over.
So that gives you goodwill, right?
Because you are helping, you'reproviding value and you have an
offer.
So another good way to say it,

(12:11):
here's what I got.
Here's how it helps.
Here's what to do next.
Really great framework.
Very, very simple.
And I got to tell you, Luke, you
know, as a marketing guy, I thinkI've spent a lot of wasted hours
trying to come up with really,really great technique on sales
copy and that sort of thing.
But let me tell you something.
We're in a little bit differentenvironment.
And I'll give you an explanationhere.
So about 10 years ago, I partneredwith a team.

(12:32):
There was real estate agents, someother people.
And we created this TV show in ourlocal market.
And our local ABC station pickedit up.
And in fact, I think they're stillrunning it.
So it's been going for 10 yearsplus.
And I remember, dude, we had toget the venue.
We had to get good writing.
We had to get camera crews and oh
my gosh, this is expensive.
So now we had to get sponsors,
right?And so all of a sudden, all of us

(12:53):
are out of our own business andwe're out selling media time to
make this stupid show work.
And the whole goal of the show was
just to get loans and real estatedeals.
So a funny thing is when you'respending that kind of money and
you're being that deliberate, youhave to be really, really good at
delivering the right message.
Otherwise you'd be bankrupt
really, really quick.
And even then it's really, really
difficult, but check this out.

(13:13):
This is what's crazy.
So right now, each one of us inour pocket, not only do we have a
video production studio, but wehave the distribution.
So literally there is nothingstopping you from creating, let's
use the number 100, 100 videostoday.
There's nothing stopping you andposting those videos to multiple
platforms.
Now getting them out and paying
ads, you know, that's a differentstory.

(13:34):
But think about it.
Like when we were doing that show,
we could only do like, I don'tknow what the number was, but we
had four slots a month and it was30 minutes and it costs so much
and da da da da da.
There were all these restrictions.
There's no restrictions anymore.
None.
Yep.
Yep.
I agree.
And it's interesting that you
brought that up because so manypeople are like, I don't know

(13:57):
where to start or cameraequipment.
Should I buy?I'm like, if you're not
consistently putting out contentwith just your phone, then you
should not buy any equipment.
And I talked to some guy that had
spent like $17,000 building out astudio.
Yeah.
He was using a studio.
None.
None.
Yeah.
Not at all.
And I said, all right, bro.
Like what?
Like, so you spend all this moneyon the studio.
It's not the studio's problem.
It's not the equipment.

(14:17):
That's on the studio it's not thestudio's problem it's not the
equipment that's the problem it'snot any of that it's not the
lighting it's not the audio likesure if you get consistent with
actually putting out the contentthen you can start to worry about
those things because they domatter to a certain extent right

(14:39):
like good audio good lighting doesmatter but that doesn't
necessarily mean you got to spendthousands of dollars you could buy
buy a $50 lav mic and a, you know,a $20 ring light and you're okay.
Now I'm not a huge fan of ringlights, but it'll work right.
You know, there's so many likethings that you can do for super
cheap these days.
And like, you can use your phone,
you can use portrait mode orportrait video mode, which makes

(15:00):
it look sort of similar, like kindof blurred in the background.
You can use an editing software.
They have like in shot and a bunch
of stuff on there.
There's AI-based editing
softwares.
Like I use a teleprompter on my
phone called BigView that'llliterally have the word scrolling
down right below the camera.
Like you could do everything.
You'd use an AI platform to createa script for yourself.
Like you literally could doeverything from a phone and not

(15:21):
have to pay expensive copywriters.
The barrier to entry to do video
these days is so, so low.
What I will say though, is going
back to this whole idea is likeone thing that loan officers do.
And if you're listening to this,probably the main thing from this
conversation, I want you to takeaway.
One is take action.
That's the really, the biggest
thing to take away from it is justtake action because the truth is
you're going to suck a video atfirst.
Yeah.
It doesn't matter because no one's
going to see it.
Right.
Very few people are going to seeit just post video, post video.

(15:42):
And I always point people back toan old video that I did years ago.
And I was like, Moonlighting as areverse mortgage loan officer.
I was like, it was like right whenI was first getting started.
And it's terrible.
The video was terrible.
Hi, my name is Luke.
And I'm just, I'll show people
like, look at this video.
Compare this video to like my new
videos.
Like clearly I've done a lot of
work.
I've done thousands of videos over
the years.
And so now I know what I'm doing

(16:03):
and I still feel like I suck.
Let's be honest.
But the main thing I'll say whenit comes to actually doing the
video.
So if you've gotten past the whole
idea of taking action, what's init for the client?
I know I brought this up early,but what's in it, right?
A lot of times we start with, hi,I'm a loan officer in Colorado and
I do this and I do that.
And then it's like, okay, like, so

(16:24):
you've wasted 15 seconds onsomething that is not relevant.
First of all, you're doing this onsocial media.
So they already see your profile.
Like you don't need to introduce
yourself to First the.
of you're all, doing this on
social media, so they already seeyour profile.
You don't need to introduceyourself.
Get to the point.
So when you're consulting with
people on this type of stuff, Imean, it sounds like you have a
ton of experience with this in thepast.
And I know these days, everybody'stalking about short form video.
Everybody's talking about videoreally in general.
What is sort of your structure?I mean, do you have a framework

(16:45):
for how people actually record thevideos and script it?
What do you He was at know,there's so to see to introduce
there?Yeah.
So always go back to the goodwillvalue and offer.
And by the way, we all have reallybad videos in our past.
In fact, most of the videos thatwe make are bad, right?
Most of them are not gonna beseen.
Most of them are not gonna beeffective, right?
Because we don't decide that.
That's the thing, is your brain's
gonna tell you what's gonna besuccessful or not, but you don't

(17:05):
decide that, the market decidesit.
And here's, what's great by theway.
And let me make sure I answer yourquestion.
But when we did that TV show andit was going broadcast out to the
masses, whatever that looked like,we didn't really get any feedback
on what they like.
We got some viewership numbers
from the station, but really whatmattered, of was the phone course,
right?But ringing, the algorithms
nowadays, are so good, thefeedback data is and you don't
even have to be a technical whizto see it.
fantastic, We look at engagementnumbers to see if they reach that
and 10%, if they reach that then10%, that's hey, a video that
worked, and we'll keep using Butit.
the great thing is, is you couldshoot, let's just say 10, we've

(17:26):
used the number 100, but you canshoot 10 videos today, all
different topics or saying thesame thing 10 times who cares,
right?And the algorithm will help you
decide if it's successful based onviewership and engagement.
It's remarkable.
So you don't even have to guess.
So if I were talking to someonetoday who said, hey, I want to get
started in shooting some video, Iwould say, listen, do the short
form right out of the gate, makeit really short, make it really
concise, and always go after thegoodwill, the value, and the
offer.
You can put all three of those in

(17:48):
one video.
You can put just one in a video.
You can mix two.
It doesn't matter.
You're not going to mess it up.
And that's the key is you can't
really mess it up because some ofthe crappiest videos that we make
are the ones that end up beingsuccessful sometimes.
Right.
So it's crazy.
So yeah, you're right.
Motion is always better than
meditation, as they say, just doit.

(18:09):
Like right now it doesn't cost youanything.
Yeah.
You already a phone in your
pocket.
I mean, you can think about even
like 10 years ago, 15 years ago,you couldn't use a cell phone to
take video anywhere near good ButI enough.
over the last mean, probably eightfive, it's been years, pretty

(18:30):
crazy to see I like, mean, thisliterally, phone is probably like
about 10 times better than acamera that got bought for me for
you like, 10 years know, by mysister ago, for And Christmas.
it's just it's wild like, to me tothink like that in our we have
pockets, these super powerfullittle devices that have just
about everything we need on whichis it, And so powerful.
when someone comes to you and hassome like consulting, what is the
way that you sort of approach it?Like how do you approach people's
business or companies?What does the structure look like?

(18:51):
Or what does like the strategylook like when it comes to you
Okay, so what I will usually do,depending on how deep they want to
go, I use the Sandor methodology,which really simply put is where
are you at right now?We take a look at all of your
assets, everything you've got,everything you bring to the table,
and we look at where you want tobe and in what period of time.

(19:12):
And then we just simply startputting the pieces in place to get
you to where you want to be,right?
As fast as possible.
That's really the goal.
And there's some techniques tofind out what would be the best
way.
Because as you know, not everybody
is going to either A, want to doeverything and B, is good at
everything.
You know, everybody has their
strengths and we like to cater tothe strengths and we like to

(19:34):
leverage the assets that somebodyalready brings to the table.
So for example, loan officer comesto the table.
First thing we'll do is we'll talkabout where they're at right now,
where they want to right?be, And then we will go through
what they're bringing to thetable.

(20:09):
So do they already have agentsthat are sending referrals?
How big is their database list?Who's on their team right now if
they have a team?If they're working for a what
company, employees do they havethere team?
If they're working for a company,what employees do they have there
at the company?So what groundwork has already
been laid?And then we can start to really
expand from there.
So as part of our program, we have
marketing platform, True PartnerAI that we train on to help 10x
basically everything that they'redoing, the communication, the
social media, the referral partneroutreach, all of that kind of
stuff too.
So we'd like to mix all of it
together to really in the endthough, is to get somebody to
where they want to be as fast asNice.
Is there any like preferredplatforms that you recommend
using, or is it just kind ofdependent on what they do?
As far as marketing?Yeah.
Well, in our program, we providethe True Partner AICRM, which is
built on high level.
It's our custom version of high

(20:29):
level.
And we deploy that for our people.
And then we also have some otherthings that we've added on to,
including social media ads.
But we're actually adding on one
that I'm really excited about,which is a direct mail piece
integration.
I'm still a great big fan of
direct mail.
There's a lot of great things
happening in that space still.
And the competition has gone down.
Right.
A lot of people have gone digital.

(20:49):
And so direct mail is kind of itsown baby.
But we're adding that piece onvery soon where you'll be able to
send mailers out of your marketingplatform, closing gifts out of
your marketing platform, just witha few clicks.
Because consistency is the name ofthe game, right?
And that's where we all run intotrouble is you get involved with

(21:10):
life and business.
It's just very difficult to be
consistent.
So yeah, I can imagine.
If there's too many steps in theprocess, it's always going to be
tough.
And so, yeah, it is important to
have less friction in the processwhen you're dealing with something
like that because implementingsomething, and that's why we talk
about the phone, right?Using your phone to record video
because like you think that bybuying all this equipment, you'll
actually do the work.
And the truth is like, that just
creates more friction in theprocess.
So now you got to set up yourcamera.

(21:36):
Now you got to, you know, you haveOBS or do you have something that
you can stream it into?If not, you got to like take the
SD card, upload the SD card intoyour computer.
Then you got to get from yourcomputer into like a Google drive.
And then from the Google drive,you got to get it to an editor or
you have to edit it yourself.
Like there's like so many steps
and it just makes it so much moredifficult.
You pull it up on your phone, it'sso much easier to implement.

(21:57):
So to leave them with like anugget, like what's some ideas
that a loan officer could go outtoday in this market and find some
business, whether it be fromrealtors or direct to consumer,
whatever it is that you think isvaluable right now.
Because again, we're in a toughmarket.
I think people are always lookingfor a way to get business, but
especially right now, what's agood strategy that loan officers

(22:18):
can pick up right now and goimplement?
that by So now you Okay, awesome.
Let me just give you a quick
rundown of our agent attractionsystem, because if you know
psychologically where we sit inthe space of the mortgage space,
then it'll help you get the rightframework for this.
Okay.
So real estate agents are an
obvious choice to go after forreal estate partner or a referral
partner.
Sorry.

(22:38):
And why is that?Well, if you go to a car
dealership, then you're not goingto the car dealership for either
the salesman and certainly not forthe finance guy, but you're going
to the car dealership for whatLuke?
For the car.
Yeah, dude, you want the car.
You want that car.
That's what's so exciting.
And in fact, that sales guy canactually be an impediment if
they're not careful, and theyoften are.
And even the finance guy can be animpediment.

(22:58):
But nobody's going to the cardealership because they want to
hang out with the finance guy,right?
Okay, so we are the finance peoplein the real estate world.
And so what people really careabout is the house.
And in fact, if we're beinghonest, I'm not sure I've ever met
somebody that in the end actuallywanted a mortgage.
They got it because they wantedthe house and they didn't have the
money to buy it in cash, right?So funny thing is we're having to
sell a product that people reallydon't want.
So that's okay.
That doesn't mean that this is a

(23:19):
crappy product or anything likethat.
You just got to understand thatthere's a reason why attaching to
a house in a purchase market is avery, very smart thing to do.
Okay.
So really, really quick, I'm going
to give you a couple of quickbackground things.
I'll talk to a lot of loanofficers that are nervous about
approaching real estate agents.
Why?
Well, their brain's telling themthat there's something about that
agent that's amazing, that thatagent's going to hate their guts
if they even talk to them.
And they're going to lay out a ton

(23:39):
of excuses.
They've already got 10 lenders
lined up, blah, blah, blah.
Well, let me tell you a couple of
funny stories.
So my wife's a real estate agent.
Okay.
And in fact, I have my real estate
license too.
So I get to kind of watch it from
the other side of the table, whichafter 20 years, I got to tell you
it's eyeopening.
So we're down at a meeting.
I go with my wife.
We go to a small company meeting.

(24:00):
They're talking about lenders.
How did you meet your lender?
Right?So this time around, I'm sitting
there at the table, not as alender, but as a real estate
agent.
And so let me tell you what they
brought up.
Okay.
The broker who is the broker ofabout 250 agents said, I really
liked this guy that I'm usingbecause he brought me a hammer
from home Depot with my nameinscribed on it.

(24:22):
And he's like, who does that?And I'm like, wait, what?
You know, I'd spent how many yearstrying to craft a perfect loan
business to get everything closedon time.
And he's using the guy thatbrought him, you know, not
something of value, I imagine, butright.
No rest of the violations here.
Yeah.
I'm sure it was a cheap hammerthat you know they threw out in a

(24:42):
parade or something okay so i'mlike wait what in the world and so
then the second one this otherlady she did a reasonable business
i wouldn't say she was a heavyhitter but you know did a
reasonable business she said man ilove my lender you know what he
does he gets me pots and pans forchristmas every year now i don't

(25:04):
know if that's a respa violationor not.
I was like, wait, wait, what?You use your guy because he gets
you pots and pans, you know?So, and there was all this like
fluff discussion, you know, ofcourse the competence came up and
all that stuff too.
But I was like, you gotta be
kidding me.
Somebody shows up with a little
bit of goodwill and agents loveit.
And I got to tell and agents loveit.

(25:26):
you, ever since COVID especially,And I gotta tell ever you, since
COVID especially, agents are verylonely.
There's nobody in the officesanymore and they all live on an
island.
They're living in fear.
They're probably worse off thanyou are in a lot of respects.
And so anybody that shows up withgoodwill helps brighten their day,
pitches in a little bit, all of asudden it's really, really easy.
So if I were to provide any kindof advice, if you're a little bit

(25:47):
nervous about cold calling a realestate agent, let me tell you what
you can do.
Okay.
This will be really, really short,but a few steps.
First thing I would do is justsponsor a local meeting.
There's a million of them, right?You've got sales meetings.
You've got, you know, associationmeetings.
You've got tours.
There's a million of them.
Hey, can I sponsor your meeting?So you don't even have to set up
an event.
They already have them.

(26:07):
Okay.
Show up to the event, do your five
minute pitch.
Don't worry about if your five
minute pitch is awesome or not.
Guess what?
They don't care.
Right.
But bring some sort of giveaway,some even cheap merch, a hammer,
you know, right.
And then ask them to enter the
raffle, right?And a lot of times they'll pass in
their business cards.
And I'm telling you, I've been at

(26:28):
these meetings of agents of allkinds.
They all pass in their cards.
They all get excited, right?
They pass in their cards.
You do your giveaway.
They go on tour.
And then here's the key that
nobody does is you call them thevery next day or even just text
them or send them a video message.
It was awesome to get to know you.
When can we take 10 minutes on thephone or a Zoom call to get to

(26:51):
know each other?I want to network and build my
business with somebody cool likeyou.
That's all it has to be.
Right.
So now we use True Partner AI toactually help with that.
We use some tech where we getpeople to enter their info into
the CRM through a QR code and someother cool ways to do it.
And then we automate the follow-uptoo.
So there's some really cool waysyou can kind of cheat the system
because everybody knows the worstthing about some of those events

(27:12):
is going home with a stack ofbusiness cards that you got to sit
and enter into your CRM.
Right.
That's why nobody does it.
So- Business cards these days, to
be honest.
I mean- Yeah, exactly.
But I'm telling you you, it'sknow, So funny.
business cards these to days, behonest, I mean, yeah, exactly.
But I'm telling you, you know,it's funny.
And so I went to one of thesemeetings not too long ago, it's
probably about a year ago, therewere about 50 agents.

(27:32):
Okay.
Now, there were three sponsors to
the meeting we went to one was alender.
The other one was like homewarranty and home inspection,
whatever.
But all three of them did their
pitch at different times, I justkind of observed like this is
gonna be interesting.
All of the agents bought into I
just times.
kind of observed, this like, is
going to be interesting.
All of the agents bought into it.
I watched them all pass in cards.

(27:54):
I watched some of them that didn't
have business cards, like youwrite said, their name on a
sticky, pass it right?in, And I got to tell you
something, by the way, the lenderthere, his older guy shows up and
just, you know, shorts, t-shirt,which is fine.
I didn't matter.
And he got his manual and he read
the pamphlet.
And I'm not exaggerating.
I do reverse mortgages.
And these are really good for
people that don't want a monthlypayment, right?

(28:16):
Like he didn't even go into thatit's for older or any of the stuff
where I think, wait, you reallyneed to explain this.
Well, guess what?So I'm watching and I'm not trying
to disparage this guy.
Okay.
I'm trying to make a point here.
Right.
Everybody passed in their cards.
I'd watched him talk to people
afterwards.
Great job.
Great job.
So nobody cared about his pitch,

(28:37):
but here's the interesting point,Luke, and this is the biggest
takeaway.
So nobody cared about the pitch.
That's number one.
Number two is I said to my wife,
it's going to be reallyinteresting.
We had three sponsors.
There were 50 people at that
event.
It'll be interesting to see who
follows up and reaches out to youand says, Hey, you know, how can
we help your business of thosethree sponsors?
How many do you think you got it?Not a one zero.
And my wife was sitting there andshe said, I really liked that home

(28:59):
inspection guy.
And I wonder if we can use that
home warranty guy to bundle withsome of my services.
That's what she said.
But guess what?
Not even a text.
Yeah.
That's about right.
I mean, we see this all the time
with and I talked to even the topproducing agents and I say like,
Oh, you must be getting bombed byall these calls.
Cause everybody's talks about coldcalling agents.
No, I don't really get any calls.

(29:20):
No, nobody's marketing right now,
man.
Nobody.
Well, and they should be.
And here's the thing is like,
everybody talks about cold call.
Everybody talks about the 40 cold
calls on Mondays.
Like you hit it right on the head.
People don't want to call.
People don't want a cold call.
And I think partially what yousaid, I think on the other side of
that is they don't want to callbecause they don't know what to
say.
They don't know what to talk about
and they don't have a valueproposition.
Here's the truth, right?In my opinion, all the things you

(29:40):
talked about, and I don't mean allthe things you talk about, all the
things that value that they saidwere valuable't mean all the
things you talked all the about,things of value that they said
were valuable to them.
If you're listening to this
podcast, that tells you how lowthe barrier to entry is.
That's how low the bar is set.
That's a great point.
Like bring them value of somekind, like the value set of
freaking hammer.
I know.
What if you could bring themleads?
What if you could show them how tomarket their business on

(30:00):
Instagram?What if you could show them how to
market their business onInstagram?
What if you could show them how tostart a YouTube channel?
What if you could show them how torank on YouTube?
Like there's about a million ideasthat you could do that you bring
value.
What if you told them that, Hey,
I'm going to call your lead seventimes in four days guaranteed.
Oh wow.
If I refer somebody, you're going
to call them seven times in fourdays.

(30:20):
Yeah.
That sounds great.
I struggle to get my loan officerto call even any of my leads once.
Yeah.
So like, I mean, it's not that
hard, guys.
It's not that difficult.
You guys are missing the point.
Like, personally, I believe
there's so much opportunitybecause again, you mentioned it,
right?Like the things they've said were
valid.
The reason I work with them is not
because of I close on time, allthat stuff, because everybody says

(30:43):
those things.
They did something out of the
ordinary.
And honestly, to me, as I'm like
almost laughing, I was almostlaughing and said, when you're
telling me that, because it itdoesn't surprise me it doesn't
surprise me because no offense toloan officers you guys have set
the bar so low like you guys allrun around telling agents your job
description has value right intothe phone i close on time like
those are the things you should bedoing anyway right that should not

(31:06):
be the value that you're providinghow do you provide value it's not
because you have 30 years ofexperience it's not because you've
been with a specific broker.
It's not because you have lower
rates.
That stuff is important once you
become a partner with them.
But how do you get your foot in
the door with an agent, right?Like I love the idea of sponsoring
an event and having a pitch.
I think there's ways that you
could, you know, even make thatbetter.
But clearly the entry is so lowthat like you don't have to go

(31:27):
that far above and beyond.
Yeah.
Pick up the phone and call people.
Yeah.
They don't give you a card becausethey don't want information.
They're handing you a card becausethey want to have a conversation.
They want information, want tohave a conversation.
They want information, right?Like, you know what, the sky's the
limit on the value propositions.
I agree.
Luke, I know you're really, reallygood at this, but if somebody
wants to do something that's justsuper simple, when somebody calls
my wife and says, Hey, do you wantto go to lunch?
Hey, let's just meet and hang out.
Her response is like, dude, I
don't have time.
The text is that she does respond

(31:49):
to or the calls that she doesrespond to are, hey, I've got this
thing that will help you with yourclients.
So really great.
Man, if you want something so easy
to do, so easy, it's almostmindless.
Call an agent.
They're all looking for content
okay so you call an agent and sayhey listen can we do a five minute
zoom video where you're talkingabout one of your listings and you
and i are just going back andforth you're telling me about your
listing and then at the end i'lltalk about the financing package

(32:11):
maybe there's a special financingpackage that would work out for
that okay cool we'll record itthen you got one for your database
i I got one for my database.
We'll both post it and it'll be
awesome.
Right.
And they take like 10 minutes.
So my wife would not turn that
down just so you know, Oh yeah,I'd love to.
Great.
You know, it's funny that you
brought up the whole thing, likethe and stuff like that.
I was on a call with, Oh, what'shis name?
Rene Rodriguez.
And he talked like someone was

(32:32):
like, yeah.
So I would, uh, you know, I would
love to like, get to know you alittle better.
And Rene, because he was basicallyrole-playing with the loan
officer.
This guy had been in the business
for like 30 years.
And he's like, I don't know how to
talk to real estate.
So Rene was like, oh, so you want
my leads, huh?So he's like, think about it from
this perspective.
You say something like that, all
they're thinking in the back oftheir head is you want my leads.
Yeah, of course.

(32:52):
Right, like I'm going to take you
to lunch.
You want my leads.
You know, you have to fill thatspace.
You actually have to give them areason.
And I love what you said, likebring them something of value.
You can help them record a video.
That's super easy.
Do a Zoom.
I mean, there's softwares.
There's a one called Opus Pro,Opus Clips, that'll let you do a
long form video and you can chopit into small little things as an
AI based video editor.
Sweet.
Literally upload a long formpodcast.

(33:13):
I can do that with this podcastthat we're having now.
Upload it to Opus Clip.
It's going to pull a clip.
It's going to put the subtitles onthere it's going to turn it into a
one to three minute clip and i canpost it on social media some of
them suck but there's a lot ofgood clips that come out of that
and so the barrier to entry likewe said earlier is very very easy.
Do very very low yeah yeah and soi mean let's be honest don't
paralyze yourself i mean justfigure something out and make the

(33:33):
calls, do a video text if you needto, or even just a simple text if
you need to.
But nobody's reaching out to
agents right now.
I ended up building a lot of
relationships with good agentsbecause I would tell them, let's
talk about marketing, how we cando some marketing together and
build your business.
And so we would sit down just like
you and I are right now.

(33:55):
And I would just brainstorm ideas.
I love marketing.
So that's a strength of mine.
That may not be a strength ofyours.
Speaking to whoever's listening,your strength may actually be
crafting the loan.
Okay.
So if that is the strength, thenattach it to the house, like we
talked about, just like the cardealership and give something that
the agent can use to help thembuild their business.
Because one thing, which is reallyinteresting, you look out at all

(34:17):
these agents and you think, man,they're already really good at
lead gen.
They're great at content creation.
They're good at database mailing.
I got to tell you, almost all of
them are doing none of it.
I had an agent that was in the
business 30 years.
It was like, I'm not sure how to
create a flyer.
I mean, like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You know, you mean like justsomeone on Canva, you know, or
something like that.
And it's totally cool.
So just know that there's a lot ofhelp and value that you can Yeah,

(34:37):
and what I'll say is, I mean, yousaid maybe you're not good at
marketing.
Here's the thing.
If you're a loan officer, youshould be good at marketing and
you should be good at sales.
And if you're not good at those
two things, you know what YouTubeis?
It's a lot of free resources onthe YouTubes that can show you how
to be a better salesperson, canshow you how to do a whole bunch
of things.
Use AI, learn marketing, use
Facebook ads.
There's a whole slew of ways that
you can bring value.
I mean, there's podcasts all over
this podcast.
There's TLOP.
There's all kinds of good mortgagepodcasts out there that have a

(35:00):
bunch of ideas on how you canbring value.
I mean, again, stop shacklingyourself.
I think that's the biggest thingis they haven't sat down and
thought about like, well, how canI bring value?
And so they just kind of likefreeze and like, I don't want to
call an agent because I don't knowwhat's valuable because you
haven't sat down and actuallythought about it.
And if you really aren't valuablebeyond the things that you do,
then get valuable, learn theskills to be valuable.
Right.
And I think everybody has value.
And just to touch on your point,tie it to the house, right?

(35:22):
So like, you know, people alwaystalk about rates and it's like,
oh, I have good rates.
The way I tell loan officers to do
this right now, especially in thismarket is flip it.
If you're a broker, you have goodrates, like real low rates.
All right, well, a quarter of apoint and a $500,000 house might
be, they qualify for an extrawhatever.
I don't know, 15, 20, I don't knowthe numbers, but how much more
house can they qualify for?Maybe there's people on the fence
that aren't qualifying with yourcurrent lender that I can help you

(35:43):
get into financing because my rateis a quarter better or whatever it
is an eighth better.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know how much thataffects it because I'm not a loan
guy.
But you know, that's the way I
would frame it is like, hey, let'sget your person into more home or
you know, actually get qualifiedso they can buy a home that's in
this market, because we're able togive them that lower rate that's
the way i would position rate ifyou are someone that has a low

(36:06):
rate i wouldn't say i'm the lowrate because they don't really
care yeah it's in it for them okaywe can close more deals because
you can get more deals in contractbecause these people can actually
afford the house that biggestthing is they showing them yeah i
can qualify more of your people.
Anything that helps them get more
leads and more conversions, right?So again, going back to that
facilitator, you really are afacilitator of that for both your

(36:28):
clients and the agents.
But the cool thing is, I think the
point of all this, Luke, is youcan have a lot of confidence.
Like go out there with confidence.
And if your brain is telling you
that there's gonna be big problemsand the world's gonna hate you and
you're gonna lose all your moneyand starve to death and die.
That's the survival mechanismgoing on in your brain.
You have to learn how to ignorethat.
That's one thing we help with atMarketing Renegades.
Probably, you know, to be honestwith you, that's probably the

(36:50):
biggest thing.
Mindset.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mindset.
And people don't like to talk
about it.
They want tactics, which tactics
are awesome, but tactics only workif you've got good mindset and
understand.
But man, I'm telling you, your
brain, that survival mechanism,that thing's always telling you to
watch out for what's on thehorizon.
It's going to kill you.
So you better not take any risks.
Mindset.
if you are not in the right
mindset and when i do any sort ofcoaching with anybody that's

(37:10):
struggling to produce or whateverit always comes down to what's
your morning routine look likewhat are you doing in the first
thing in the morning how are yousetting up your day and a lot of
times it's pretty clear they'renot going to the gym they're
waking up late they're not eatingyou know there's like all these
sorts of things like okay welllike you're setting yourself up to
fail yeah and then you're notfeeding your brain things that are

(37:31):
positive right you're watching thenews you're hanging out with
people that are negative of courseyou're going to be negative you
know we talk about tactics youcan't do the actions that are
required if your mindset's in thewrong space so whenever i talk
with someone i'm like first we gotto get that clear you do that for
a week you do that for two weeksthen we can start to talk about
tactics and strategy andimplementing stuff because until
then nothing's going to happen soman thank you so much for your

(37:52):
time man yeah this has so much foryour time man yeah this has been
really great i would just want toencourage everybody out there, no
matter how brutal it's been foryou the last couple of years,
there's a lot of opportunity rightnow.
And you can do it.
Yeah.
Like if you've made it throughthese last couple of years, lots
of change has gone on.
And there's just lots of
opportunity.
And, and it's something, if you're
sleeping in, and that's fine,it's, you know, if you're kind of
got that inside gut feel where youfelt like things are collapsing

(38:14):
and, you know, it's hard to getmotivated, then, you know, that's
where maybe it might be useful tohave a discussion.
But in the end, just realize,dude, everybody's got God given
talents.
They really do.
And everybody's got that divinespark and you just got to find
that.
And then you'll just take It's
off.
awesome.
And Awesome, you just got spark.
to find that and then you'll just
take off.
It's Awesome, man.
Well, thank you so much for yourtime today.
I mean, you know, we've talkedabout your platforms and stuff
like that a couple times.
If someone wanted to learn a

(38:34):
little bit more about what you'redoing, connect with you online,
what's the best way to sort offind you connect with you learn a
little bit more about what you'reYeah, you bet.
So you can go to mortgagemarketingMarketingRenegades.com.
It's our brand new site.
We use, of course, True Partner
AI.
So you can go to
TruePartnerSuccess.com to find outmore about the tools that we use.
And of course, just look me up onsocial, send me a direct message.
We'll hang out.

(38:55):
I love chatting with anybody.
It's always fun to connect.
So you're awesome.
You run a great company.
I've been following you for a long
time and I appreciate everythingyou're doing in the I appreciate
space.
Hey, Well're you, man.
You run a great awesome.
I've been following company.
you for a long time and Iappreciate everything you're doing
in the space.
Hey, I appreciate So Well, thank
you so much, man, for your timetoday.

(39:15):
I think we got a lot of value outof this.
I mean, to me, my big takeaways iswe spent a lot of time talking
about just taking action.
I mean, I think that's a pretty
common thing and a lot of peopleare like, well, yeah, take action,
bring value and stuff like that.
We talked about some tangible ways
you can take action.
And we talked about some tangible
ways that you can bring value.

(39:44):
You know, obviously, you know, if
you want to do video, if you wantto do social media, just start
putting content out there.
It's going to suck at first.
It really is.
But that's how you get better.
It's just like being a loanofficer.
Like if you're just gettingstarted with loans, right?
Like, you know that you don't knowanything about the loans, right?
If you've been in the industry for30 years, you know that it sucked,
right?Learning how to be a good loan
officer takes time, just likelearning how to create good
content, just like getting good atvideo, just like getting strong at
the gym.
It all takes time and consistency

(40:04):
and effort.
So take action, do the things, put
in the work.
And again, we gave some tangible
things at the very end, like somestrategies, go sponsor an event,
go bring value, go find some stuffon YouTube.
I mean, there's so many resources.
I mean, I have a free YouTube
channel, this podcast andstrategies every single day or
every single week.
Sorry, I mean, we do this once a
week.
Tons of opportunities, right?
So thank you so much for your timetoday, Darren.
And for anybody who is listeningthat is looking for some help on
flipping the status quo, goingdirect to consumers so that they
can get more agent partners tocome to them, go to

(40:26):
flipthestatusQuo.com.
going you for tuning into the
Loans On Demand podcast onLoansOnDemandPodcast.com.

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129: Darin Rhodes - Mastering Marketing Strategies and Managing Your Mindset

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}129: Darin Rhodes - Mastering Marketing Strategies and Managing Your Mindset