May 22, 2025 • 25 mins
In this episode, I share why a CRM will not make a difference for your business, breaking down what people think a CRM does for their business, what a CRM actually does, and alternative tools you can use for a more simple, customized approach to client management which lead to improved productivity and profitability in your business..
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Welcome to the mortgage game.
I truly, truly believe that
building a mortgage business, asuccessful one, is like playing a
game.
There's winners, there's losers,
there's certain things you try.
Some of us are playing checkers,
while others are playing chess.
I've had the ability to coach and
mentor hundreds of mortgagebrokers.
I myself built a very nicebusiness, so now I want to distill
(00:27):
all that information, all thethings I've learned from that, and
bring it directly to you in asimple -to -understand way.
I hope you enjoy.
All right, good morning.
Welcome to the Mortgage GamePodcast.
West Coast Wiley here on a rainy,drizzly day in the Dodge Ram
studio.
You might hear some rain coming
in.
(00:48):
I don't know.
It is what it is.
We're going to talk about a topic
today that it's... I don't getinto these conversations a lot
with mortgage brokers because it'slike talking to someone about
politics or religion.
don't get into these conversations
a lot with mortgage brokersbecause it's like talking to
someone about politics orreligion.
I just... avoid those topics witheverybody.
With mortgage brokers, it's CRMs.
What CRM do you use?
Do you use a CRM?What do you do with the CRM?
(01:11):
Like people will fight you.
They will fight you over their
CRM.
They're like, no, this is what you
do.
And it's amazing.
And it's blah, blah, blah.
And it does this and it does.
It's like, settle down there,cowboy.
Okay.
Settle down.
It's a freaking CRM.
Take a chill pill.
I've had these conversations,that's what I'm saying, from
experience.
But I've also had a lot of people
(01:33):
reach out and they're like, Ryan,what CRM should you use?
That is a question I get a lot.
And I can give you the old boring
answer, well, whatever one youuse.
And I can give you that, sure.
Or I can actually break it down.
Because I think a lot of mortgagebrokers, you're just dropping the
ball on CRM.
And I think you're using a CRM
because people tell you you need aCRM.
And they're not wrong.
but they're also not right in why
(01:54):
you need it.
And I think a lot of people think
if I just get, I can't tell youhow many times this happened,
especially when I was switchingbrokerages.
I had four brokerages throughoutmy career.
I believe four.
Yeah.
And when I'd go talk to someone orsomeone would approach me and,
hey, you need to come over herebecause we're also, it was like,
(02:16):
we have this tool.
We have this CRM.
It'll like the CRM will notfucking make a difference in your
business.
It won't like which one you use or
how you use it.
Will not like if it's the company
A versus B or C, but it's jammeddown our throats everywhere we
turn.
Where some companies telling you
we have the newest, latest,greatest thing.
It's like, cool, but the broker'sstill a complete idiot.
(02:38):
So do you have one that fixesthat?
No, no. Right.
So like, this is what I want to
talk about before we get into it.
This podcast is brought to you.
Bye.
Americano.
I switched up a little bit today.
I got a pump.
I normally get a black, but I gota pump of cinnamon dolce.
Don't know why.
I just decided to do one pump and
(03:00):
it's actually pretty good.
Okay, so back to CRM.
So the fundamental reason you havea CRM, that is true, but I think
most mortgage brokers think it'sgoing to solve and transition
their business.
And they think that if they just
get the CRM set up, if they justget it humming, the business is
going to come in.
And I know this.
(03:21):
Brokers think that that's going tofix the problems when really the
problem is them and just not doingthe work.
And so you hide behind, if I havethis tech, then the tech will do
the work for me.
That's not the case.
It's not how it works.
That's not how the game works.
So stop hiding behind.
tools and automations and thinking
you could just be a robot behindthe scenes and crush mortgages.
(03:43):
You can't.
It's a human business.
You need to put yourself out thereand connect with people through
social or in person.
There's a lot of stuff you need to
do.
Let's break down what people think
a CRM should do for the businessand what it actually does.
I'm going to explain what we didand I'm going to show you.
(04:06):
You don't need to go pay peoplefor a CRM.
You don't.
Most brokers are just using a
completely wrong Or there's fivethings it does and they use one.
And it's kind of like, just shutit down.
Shut it down.
Don't do it.
It's like social media.
Most of you have like one foot,
one toe in the water.
It's like, just don't even go in.
Go focus on other things.
Think how much stress you'll take
off your plate of always feelinglike you have to go post stuff.
(04:29):
Like if you're not in social mediafor the next 10 years, just get
out.
Don't even go in.
Same with the CRM.
If you're not going to use it
right, just stop.
Stop.
making the monthly payments andjust do the workaround I'm going
to tell you.
And I know mortgage brokers that
are running very good businesseswith no CRM, like a lot of them.
So CRMs, I think the misconceptionis it's going to go, and hey,
there's some people that havetheir CRM so dialed in and good
(04:52):
for you.
They geek out on it.
They're nerds.
They love it.
Good for you.
I'm not talking to you.
Okay.
So get that off out of your head
when you're like, no, but minework.
Yeah, cool.
Good for you.
Awesome.
You got to figure it out, bud.
Good job.
Most people don't.
And that's who this podcast isfor.
Okay, that's who we're talking to.
Because I know I'm going to get
(05:14):
the comments back.
Right?
You know what you're talkingabout?
No, I do.
I do very well.
I know exactly what I'm talkingabout.
Okay, I've lived this life.
And I'm living it right now.
And I'm seeing other people liveit.
So a lot of people think CRM isgoing to automate, just going to
bring deals to them.
work automation and these deals
are just going to show no you ifyou're an idiot you're still not
going to get the deals um there'sfour functions of what a crm
(05:36):
should do it should house dataokay number one house data and
when i talk data it's like contactinformation um mortgage
information like it houses thatstuff okay if it's not a mortgage
crm it's just going to house emailphone number address that basic
stuff if it's a mortgage crm Thenit's going to have the ability to
track maturity dates and interestand all that.
And then you've got follow -ups.
(05:56):
-ups.
So you can automate some follow-ups and have them trigger tasks
to come out for you to follow upwith people.
Okay.
So you've got housing data, you've
got follow -up.
Then there's a marketing
component, how you market to thepeople in your CRM and that's
through email.
Okay.
And then there's, these are thefour functional pieces.
And then the last but not least.
(06:20):
is the deal flow, seeing where
you're at, like in the clientjourney internally, where you're
at in the file, or your brokercomplete appraisals to be ordered.
And it's kind of like you can youcan move the file along.
And some CRMs have that and somedon't.
So those are the four points ofwhat a CRM does.
And a lot of you might have onehumming in there, but you don't
have the others, but you're justpaying money or using some product
(06:42):
and you're jamming someone else'sprocess down your own throat.
someone else's version of whatyour business should look like
down your own.
Me personally, I chose to pick out
the good things, the better tools,piece them together and customize
it for me and my business.
Instead of taking someone else's
version of what this should be andcould be with inferior parts
within those four components Italked to you about, because you
can't be good at all those.
You cannot be good at all those.
(07:03):
And then also to go set that allup.
My part is a much simpler piece.
So I'm going to break it down for
you.
And I'm going to break down some
preconceived notions and thingsyou aren't doing and you could do.
We overcomplicate the fuck out ofthis business.
We so do.
It's crazy.
(07:24):
We do.
You've heard me say it a hundred
times.
I'll say it a hundred more.
Complicated is easy.
It's easy to complicate shit.
I can give you a task on Mondayand then Friday we check in and
you have a complicated business.
And I'm like, what?
did you do?I gave you three steps.
Go do the three steps.
But you went off and created
seven.
Why?
For what?And we do this with our CRMs all
(07:45):
the time.
It's crazy.
So let's break down the areas.
Just had to have a little more.
I'm going to have a bunch ofthese, just letting you know.
Okay, so how's data?Cool.
You got your data in somewhere.
Well, guess what?
You can have it in a spreadsheet.
Just saying, we know that.
Excel file, Google Sheet, you canbuild, like we have quite robust
(08:08):
spreadsheet.
You can have this basic
spreadsheet where you just houseall the data.
Like if you just need mortgageinformation, address, like you've
got, they're out there floatingaround in our industry.
Go find them, go talk to people.
They're there.
From like people crushingmortgages to people just doing a
couple of mortgages.
They're all using them.
Okay, so don't tell me becauseyou've got data in there that
(08:31):
like, okay, so let's just takethat off the table.
And here's the thing.
If you're using a CRM, it doesn't
have the mortgage component in it.
Well, that's, you're wrong right
there.
I'm hoping you're using like a
mortgage CRM.
Okay.
So if someone, for example, fillsout an application in FINMO, we
zap the information onto thespreadsheet.
Done.
That's automated.
I don't have to do anything.
(08:52):
Here's the other part.
Why do you need the data?This is the question.
This is the million dollarquestion.
Ask yourself right now.
Because that's the point that gets
jammed down your throat is we needthe data.
What are you doing with the data?I know what the answer is.
But what are you doing with it?You've got this data inside your
file logics, your velocity, yourFINMO, your boss, your whatever.
(09:14):
There's so many things now.
You've got it in there.
What are you doing with it?Are you looking for rate arbitrage
opportunities?Well, the software doesn't do
that.
So you've got it in there.
Then guess what you got to do,Einstein?
You got to get the software out.
You got to get the data out.
(09:38):
So now you're putting the datasomewhere else in a CSV file or a
rate tracker sheet, which is whatwe have.
You're putting it somewhere.
So guess what?
You don't need the data in thething.
So X, put a big X through thatnow.
If you're going to use, thinkabout this, this is important.
The reason you track the data isso you can find opportunities to
(10:00):
go back for a refinance.
Okay.
Hey, if you're not tracking it,well, you're just money's just
falling out.
You might as well like, yeah,
there's just money's falling outeverywhere you walk.
Might as well have your pool openyear round, cranked up to 92 and
just see money floating off itevery day.
It's the same concept.
So let's assume you are looking
for opportunities for ratearbitrage.
(10:20):
Well, guess what?You're getting the data out of the
CRM.
Oh, just saying that out loud,
just like, oh, I can't, I can't.
So you don't need that.
Okay.
Marketing.
Let's talk about marketing.
So you're going to use your CRM
for marketing.
Well, I've seen a lot of these
CRMs and their emaildeliverability.
(10:43):
meaning going into spam, thathappens a lot because they're not
built on trusted systems and SMTPservers and whatnot.
And it's kind of just jangledtogether with some sort of email
thing where, yeah, yeah, we'llsend out emails.
Can you put video inside theemail?
Can you host it in there?Could you even put a Loom link in
there?Do you have to put a screenshot of
(11:04):
the video and then you have tohyperlink it back to the actual
thing?Can you build automations and drip
campaigns?Can you segment it out so you have
like a renewal campaign and youhave a different campaign and your
master list is in there and thenit drops them in and triggers
different things?Can you do this in a lot of these?
(11:29):
No. And even if you can, a lot oftimes the deliverability sucks.
And that's stuff you just wouldn'tknow.
And that's where you make yourmoney.
You make your money in two spotsin your CRM.
You don't make it in anythingelse.
You make it in two spots.
You make it in the marketing,
which they're inferior, and youmake it in the database mining,
which you don't do inside the CRM.
You see where I'm going with this?
(11:49):
The two tasks where you make themoney from your CRM is that you
don't even use the thing for.
So you could have a much better,
we use campaign monitor.
Massive, massive, massive company
with like they went out and builtall the trust on the SMTP servers,
which gives you deliverability.
So then we get to plug into that
(12:10):
and build on that trust.
So we built BrokerMail.
So we use BrokerMail for all ofour email marketing, but there's
no data in there outside of firstname email address.
There's nothing else.
We don't put mortgage in there.
Why would I put mortgage info inthere?
I don't need that in there.
That's on my rate tracker because
(12:32):
I look for rate arbitrageopportunities.
And guess what?When someone signs up for a call
on my calendar, or when I say my,I'm talking about like my team.
When someone signs up for a callon the calendar or fills out an
application in fin mode, theirinformation goes right over to the
master list, which is in brokermail, which then triggers a drip
(12:57):
campaign and they get marketed tofour to five times a month.
Ah, cool.
There you go.
See, two biggest reasons.
Ways to make money doesn't involve
your CRM.
Or in some CRMs, sure, some are
better than others at marketing,but I'd rather go have the best
marketing tool instead of onethat's a four out of 10, give me
one that's an eight or nine out of10 because I make money there.
So I want that.
And I'll just connect them all
(13:18):
with Zapier.
And to do all that, give me a $30
Zapier account.
Boom, done.
Okay, even if, and this isn't acost thing, by the way.
I'm not saying, hey, $200 for CRMor $100 for CRM.
I'm not saying, because that'ssuch a minimal cost in our
business.
And we freak out about expenses
way too much as mortgage brokerswhen in all reality, your overhead
is extremely low versus the amountof money you can make.
(13:40):
Yet we whine and bitch about it.
It's like, no, you need, that is
an expense.
You need expenses to run a
business, blah, blah, blah.
So this isn't a cost thing.
This is like, do you need thattool?
Or are there better versions ofit?
(14:02):
Okay, so that's number two.
Number three is follow -up.
Okay, so follow -up is somebody,you have a discovery call with
them and now you need to follow upfor documents and whatnot.
have a discovery call with themand now you need to follow up for
documents and whatnot.
Well, if you're using Finmo, Finmo
that's built in, it just followsup for you with the clients to get
(14:22):
all the stuff.
Okay, so you don't need that.
If you want to follow up, like doI need to put a task in?
This has always been a pet peeveof mine.
So I'm going to put a task in toremind me to follow up.
Like there's so many differentways I could do that without
opening up my computer and feelinglike I'm a robot that day.
And like going through the lines.
Like, man, there's so I could use
(14:43):
Boomerang within Gmail.
My email, main email out is, you
know, either is Outlook or Gmail.
We use Boomerang a lot.
So if we send someone out a link.
for something or we needed a
document or something, I'd put aone -day, two -day boomerang on
it.
It's a free thing in Gmail.
And a day later, it'll put itright at the top of my inbox.
We didn't hear back from thisperson.
Boom.
And I'll just go respond back to
(15:04):
them.
Right?
You can do that.
We also had Monday were follow -up
days.
So I know a constant pressure in
our industry is you always feellike you're always forgetting to
follow up with someone.
We all know the money's made in
the follow -up.
We know that.
Yeah, we don't do it.
And we know that and we feel it.
And then we carry on with our lifeand our day.
(15:26):
And before you know it, we justfeel this, always this cloud
hanging above us of shit we needto do that we're not doing.
What if, stay with me here, gonnablow your socks off.
What if Monday morning at eight o'clock, eight to nine, every
Monday, every Monday?Yeah, every Monday.
You followed up with everybody.
Oh my God.
And now no follow -up wentunfollowed.
following up.
(15:47):
I don't know what I meant to say
there, but you get it.
We leave no follow -ups behind.
Now, all of a sudden, when it'sWednesday, Thursday, Monday, or
Sunday, you're not worried aboutwho you're following up with
because you know Monday betweeneight and nine, that's what you're
doing.
So you're going to go and you're
going to follow up with all yourrealtors.
You're going to update them up onall the leads they've sent you.
(16:09):
It's a lead tracker we send outevery Monday.
And then you're going to follow upwith all the leads you received
that didn't book a call.
There's only so many here.
Like get over yourself.
You're not, there's not like a
hundred follow -ups you're doinghere.
Like the average broker, like,come on.
You're doing like within the hour,you'll crush that within 15, 20
minutes.
Okay, so you got that.
And then you're following up withall the people who you're waiting
(16:31):
on documents for.
You got that.
And then you're following up withlike whoever else you felt like
you had to follow up with.
So you go around all the people
you've already pre -approved inthe past six months.
You follow up with them everyMonday, checking in.
Do we need to do a refresh of yourapproval?
Do you have any properties youwant to throw the MLS listing to
(16:52):
me?We'll build a custom proposal for
you, right?Eight to nine, every Monday,
follow up.
Now you've covered your ass for
the entire week.
Done.
You sit there and sit there andthink about it.
But only in that hour, not onWednesday at eight o 'clock, not
Tuesday at noon, you know you havea catch -all.
All right, that's the bestpractice you all need, a follow
-up day.
Okay, so first one was housing
data.
Well, we're going to export
anyway.
Second is email marketing.
Well, you're using an inferiorsystem with bad deliverability and
(17:13):
maybe not even the bestfunctionality.
So go find something that'sawesome and use that instead.
And then you've got follow -up.
Okay, and then last but not least,
you've got tracking where you'reat in a deal.
So I love, hey, I've seen some ofthese.
The Kanban, I think is what theycall it, screen.
And you got your deals in there.
And you slide it from pre
-approval.
And you slide it over to approved.
(17:33):
And then it sends an email out.
And then it says, like, and you
slide it over again.
And it introduces you to the
lawyer.
You slide it over again.
And you feel warm and fuzzysliding things along.
And you get to see where you'reat.
I'm like, cool.
Am I putting all of my eggs in
this basket because I have that?No. Like, what are you actually
(17:55):
talking about?You're firing out an email.
Like we'd have 10 emails and, youknow, we're doing 10 to 15 files a
month.
And we have our 10 email scripts
throughout our client journey.
And then we already know like
fulfillment.
It's not me, by the way,
fulfillment.
This is this.
Let's make that distinction.
It's not me, the mortgage broker
(18:16):
doing this.
It's someone else doing it.
And so when the deal gets brokercomplete.
They go to email script numberseven, because that's a broker
complete email, and it's templatedin Yesware, which is free and
layers right on top of your Gmail.
You can house all your scripts.
And then I drop that in the emailto the client, and we type in
their name in the right spot, andthen we click send.
(18:38):
Boom, done.
And then we had all the deals.
We were working on a whiteboard.
We also had them, fulfillment had
them on a sheet.
We had them somewhere where we
could just see where we're at.
Like deals, like how many deals do
you have where you need like thisfancy software triggering all
these automations going out?Like how many deals are you doing?
(18:59):
The average broker does like oneto two files a month.
You can't keep that on a napkin.
You need this fancy, you know
what?You could get a Trello board.
I know people, they trackeverything on a Trello board and
they want, they like to see themove over, but there's no way in
hell, not a chance.
I'm connecting all these things
(19:19):
together and trying to get onething to do it all.
It's just not going to work.
Maybe I'll use components of here
or there because my submissionplatform has it.
I'm not here to fight you oversubmission platforms either.
I don't care.
I really don't.
We use Finmo.
It works.
We can get a lot of automationsbuilt out of it using Zapier.
(19:40):
A $30 account can zap stuff fromFinmo into your calendar.
So now I have an email address anda phone number at 5 a .m.
in my calendar showing me TomSmith's birthday today on repeat.
Boom.
Every year I call or text Tom
Smith instead of sending him thosebullshit birthday candle emails,
fake emails that try to make himfeel special on a special day.
Just reach out to him.
OK, this is a people business.
(20:01):
Go reach out to them.
Don't rely on.
That's a whole nother rant.
But you see what I'm saying?
So you can have that thrown there.
You can have it trigger a renewal
email campaign inside your actualmarketing CRM.
You can have that.
You can have all the data go over
to your rate tracker.
You don't need.
So all you're doing now is you'retracking files.
(20:22):
Once again, I go back to how manyfiles do you have?
Because we tracked all of ourstuff and I'd have them on a
whiteboard.
I'd have people at a whiteboard
beside me and it could be small.
And it was like I had my closing
dates.
I knew COFs I had, which ones we
had compliance, like I would trackthat way.
I just like physically seeing itand writing it down.
(20:44):
But we also did this in GoogleDocs.
We had four folders, right?Pre -approval, approved,
compliance, and didn't goanywhere.
And we would just move them alongthere inside Google Docs.
And our whole business was builtin GDoc and no cost because we
were already running Gmail.
So it was part of the suite, which
once again was not the reason wedid that.
(21:04):
because of the cost, because thecost I couldn't care less about.
This was the whole purpose of thisis I want to give you just to look
at things from a different angle.
And you're putting a lot of
pressure and stress.
A, you think a CRM is going to
magically change your business.
It's not.
If you're a dum -dum, it's stillgoing to make you a dum -dum.
(21:25):
If you're not following up withpeople and doing the boring work,
the money -making task, it's notgoing to go do that for you.
Can you build some automations andsome things?
Sure, here, there, but it doesn'tchange who you fundamentally are.
and how you run a business.
So stop thinking and believing
that this CRM, if you just get itset up, if you just go get the
data right, like what do you dowith the data?
(21:47):
I don't understand.
So I wanted to break that down for
you.
I don't want to go, there's a
better way, a simpler way to dothis type of stuff.
Or continue using your CRM, whichis cool.
If you've got it all figured outand it's all working and humming
along, great.
Good for you.
I love it. 90 % of brokers arelike, misusing their CRM.
So once again, I come back to,instead of tricking yourself to
(22:10):
think like, I just keep thatpayment coming out and keep that
going.
So at least it makes me feel like
I didn't give up on that.
Just shut it down and build from,
I always do this.
If you're not sure about
something, shut it down and thenrun your day.
The sun still comes up tomorrowand see what happens.
what happens.
And if you have to layer stuff
back in, then you do, but clearthe desk.
Shut it down.
And you start realizing, oh, I
(22:31):
don't think I really missed thatas much as I could.
And I found a different workaroundthat's actually better.
Okay.
So I'm going to wrap this up
shortly, but hopefully you pulledsomething from this.
It's that thing.
You have other fish to fry.
You have other things to focusyour energy on than your CRM.
And how many of you open your CRMand feel instant disappointment?
because you know you're not usingit how you should be, just get on
the spreadsheet.
(22:51):
Get on the spreadsheet, right?
And you can set that up, right?Or what about this?
Compliance time or every time apre -approval comes, you can
manually enter in the spreadsheet.
And yeah, and I'm not, we
automated that piece, but I don'twant to fight you on that either.
Okay, so there you go.
This was, oh, I don't want to talk
about CRMs, but I did because Iget hit with a lot of questions.
(23:13):
So I figured I'll just make thisand explain how you can piece
things together at a fraction ofthe cost with better
functionality, betterdeliverability within your process
too.
You're not jamming theirs, trying
to fit your process into theirjanky thing.
Okay.
That's it, kids.
We'll shut this down.
Enjoy your week.
Yeah, that's it.
CRMs.
Peace out.
Welcome to the mortgage game.
I truly, truly believe that
building a mortgage business, asuccessful one, is like playing a
game.
There's winners, there's losers,
there's certain things you try.
Some of us are playing checkers,
while others are playing chess.
I've had the ability to coach and
mentor hundreds of mortgagebrokers.
I myself built a very nicebusiness, so now I want to distill
(00:27):
all that information, all thethings I've learned from that, and
bring it directly to you in asimple -to -understand way.
I hope you enjoy.
All right, good morning.
Welcome to the Mortgage GamePodcast.
West Coast Wiley here on a rainy,drizzly day in the Dodge Ram
studio.
You might hear some rain coming
in.
(00:48):
I don't know.
It is what it is.
We're going to talk about a topic
today that it's... I don't getinto these conversations a lot
with mortgage brokers because it'slike talking to someone about
politics or religion.
don't get into these conversations
a lot with mortgage brokersbecause it's like talking to
someone about politics orreligion.
I just... avoid those topics witheverybody.
With mortgage brokers, it's CRMs.
What CRM do you use?
Do you use a CRM?What do you do with the CRM?
(01:11):
Like people will fight you.
They will fight you over their
CRM.
They're like, no, this is what you
do.
And it's amazing.
And it's blah, blah, blah.
And it does this and it does.
It's like, settle down there,cowboy.
Okay.
Settle down.
It's a freaking CRM.
Take a chill pill.
I've had these conversations,that's what I'm saying, from
experience.
But I've also had a lot of people
(01:33):
reach out and they're like, Ryan,what CRM should you use?
That is a question I get a lot.
And I can give you the old boring
answer, well, whatever one youuse.
And I can give you that, sure.
Or I can actually break it down.
Because I think a lot of mortgagebrokers, you're just dropping the
ball on CRM.
And I think you're using a CRM
because people tell you you need aCRM.
And they're not wrong.
but they're also not right in why
(01:54):
you need it.
And I think a lot of people think
if I just get, I can't tell youhow many times this happened,
especially when I was switchingbrokerages.
I had four brokerages throughoutmy career.
I believe four.
Yeah.
And when I'd go talk to someone orsomeone would approach me and,
hey, you need to come over herebecause we're also, it was like,
(02:16):
we have this tool.
We have this CRM.
It'll like the CRM will notfucking make a difference in your
business.
It won't like which one you use or
how you use it.
Will not like if it's the company
A versus B or C, but it's jammeddown our throats everywhere we
turn.
Where some companies telling you
we have the newest, latest,greatest thing.
It's like, cool, but the broker'sstill a complete idiot.
(02:38):
So do you have one that fixesthat?
No, no. Right.
So like, this is what I want to
talk about before we get into it.
This podcast is brought to you.
Bye.
Americano.
I switched up a little bit today.
I got a pump.
I normally get a black, but I gota pump of cinnamon dolce.
Don't know why.
I just decided to do one pump and
(03:00):
it's actually pretty good.
Okay, so back to CRM.
So the fundamental reason you havea CRM, that is true, but I think
most mortgage brokers think it'sgoing to solve and transition
their business.
And they think that if they just
get the CRM set up, if they justget it humming, the business is
going to come in.
And I know this.
(03:21):
Brokers think that that's going tofix the problems when really the
problem is them and just not doingthe work.
And so you hide behind, if I havethis tech, then the tech will do
the work for me.
That's not the case.
It's not how it works.
That's not how the game works.
So stop hiding behind.
tools and automations and thinking
you could just be a robot behindthe scenes and crush mortgages.
(03:43):
You can't.
It's a human business.
You need to put yourself out thereand connect with people through
social or in person.
There's a lot of stuff you need to
do.
Let's break down what people think
a CRM should do for the businessand what it actually does.
I'm going to explain what we didand I'm going to show you.
(04:06):
You don't need to go pay peoplefor a CRM.
You don't.
Most brokers are just using a
completely wrong Or there's fivethings it does and they use one.
And it's kind of like, just shutit down.
Shut it down.
Don't do it.
It's like social media.
Most of you have like one foot,
one toe in the water.
It's like, just don't even go in.
Go focus on other things.
Think how much stress you'll take
off your plate of always feelinglike you have to go post stuff.
(04:29):
Like if you're not in social mediafor the next 10 years, just get
out.
Don't even go in.
Same with the CRM.
If you're not going to use it
right, just stop.
Stop.
making the monthly payments andjust do the workaround I'm going
to tell you.
And I know mortgage brokers that
are running very good businesseswith no CRM, like a lot of them.
So CRMs, I think the misconceptionis it's going to go, and hey,
there's some people that havetheir CRM so dialed in and good
(04:52):
for you.
They geek out on it.
They're nerds.
They love it.
Good for you.
I'm not talking to you.
Okay.
So get that off out of your head
when you're like, no, but minework.
Yeah, cool.
Good for you.
Awesome.
You got to figure it out, bud.
Good job.
Most people don't.
And that's who this podcast isfor.
Okay, that's who we're talking to.
Because I know I'm going to get
(05:14):
the comments back.
Right?
You know what you're talkingabout?
No, I do.
I do very well.
I know exactly what I'm talkingabout.
Okay, I've lived this life.
And I'm living it right now.
And I'm seeing other people liveit.
So a lot of people think CRM isgoing to automate, just going to
bring deals to them.
work automation and these deals
are just going to show no you ifyou're an idiot you're still not
going to get the deals um there'sfour functions of what a crm
(05:36):
should do it should house dataokay number one house data and
when i talk data it's like contactinformation um mortgage
information like it houses thatstuff okay if it's not a mortgage
crm it's just going to house emailphone number address that basic
stuff if it's a mortgage crm Thenit's going to have the ability to
track maturity dates and interestand all that.
And then you've got follow -ups.
(05:56):
-ups.
So you can automate some follow-ups and have them trigger tasks
to come out for you to follow upwith people.
Okay.
So you've got housing data, you've
got follow -up.
Then there's a marketing
component, how you market to thepeople in your CRM and that's
through email.
Okay.
And then there's, these are thefour functional pieces.
And then the last but not least.
(06:20):
is the deal flow, seeing where
you're at, like in the clientjourney internally, where you're
at in the file, or your brokercomplete appraisals to be ordered.
And it's kind of like you can youcan move the file along.
And some CRMs have that and somedon't.
So those are the four points ofwhat a CRM does.
And a lot of you might have onehumming in there, but you don't
have the others, but you're justpaying money or using some product
(06:42):
and you're jamming someone else'sprocess down your own throat.
someone else's version of whatyour business should look like
down your own.
Me personally, I chose to pick out
the good things, the better tools,piece them together and customize
it for me and my business.
Instead of taking someone else's
version of what this should be andcould be with inferior parts
within those four components Italked to you about, because you
can't be good at all those.
You cannot be good at all those.
(07:03):
And then also to go set that allup.
My part is a much simpler piece.
So I'm going to break it down for
you.
And I'm going to break down some
preconceived notions and thingsyou aren't doing and you could do.
We overcomplicate the fuck out ofthis business.
We so do.
It's crazy.
(07:24):
We do.
You've heard me say it a hundred
times.
I'll say it a hundred more.
Complicated is easy.
It's easy to complicate shit.
I can give you a task on Mondayand then Friday we check in and
you have a complicated business.
And I'm like, what?
did you do?I gave you three steps.
Go do the three steps.
But you went off and created
seven.
Why?
For what?And we do this with our CRMs all
(07:45):
the time.
It's crazy.
So let's break down the areas.
Just had to have a little more.
I'm going to have a bunch ofthese, just letting you know.
Okay, so how's data?Cool.
You got your data in somewhere.
Well, guess what?
You can have it in a spreadsheet.
Just saying, we know that.
Excel file, Google Sheet, you canbuild, like we have quite robust
(08:08):
spreadsheet.
You can have this basic
spreadsheet where you just houseall the data.
Like if you just need mortgageinformation, address, like you've
got, they're out there floatingaround in our industry.
Go find them, go talk to people.
They're there.
From like people crushingmortgages to people just doing a
couple of mortgages.
They're all using them.
Okay, so don't tell me becauseyou've got data in there that
(08:31):
like, okay, so let's just takethat off the table.
And here's the thing.
If you're using a CRM, it doesn't
have the mortgage component in it.
Well, that's, you're wrong right
there.
I'm hoping you're using like a
mortgage CRM.
Okay.
So if someone, for example, fillsout an application in FINMO, we
zap the information onto thespreadsheet.
Done.
That's automated.
I don't have to do anything.
(08:52):
Here's the other part.
Why do you need the data?This is the question.
This is the million dollarquestion.
Ask yourself right now.
Because that's the point that gets
jammed down your throat is we needthe data.
What are you doing with the data?I know what the answer is.
But what are you doing with it?You've got this data inside your
file logics, your velocity, yourFINMO, your boss, your whatever.
(09:14):
There's so many things now.
You've got it in there.
What are you doing with it?Are you looking for rate arbitrage
opportunities?Well, the software doesn't do
that.
So you've got it in there.
Then guess what you got to do,Einstein?
You got to get the software out.
You got to get the data out.
(09:38):
So now you're putting the datasomewhere else in a CSV file or a
rate tracker sheet, which is whatwe have.
You're putting it somewhere.
So guess what?
You don't need the data in thething.
So X, put a big X through thatnow.
If you're going to use, thinkabout this, this is important.
The reason you track the data isso you can find opportunities to
(10:00):
go back for a refinance.
Okay.
Hey, if you're not tracking it,well, you're just money's just
falling out.
You might as well like, yeah,
there's just money's falling outeverywhere you walk.
Might as well have your pool openyear round, cranked up to 92 and
just see money floating off itevery day.
It's the same concept.
So let's assume you are looking
for opportunities for ratearbitrage.
(10:20):
Well, guess what?You're getting the data out of the
CRM.
Oh, just saying that out loud,
just like, oh, I can't, I can't.
So you don't need that.
Okay.
Marketing.
Let's talk about marketing.
So you're going to use your CRM
for marketing.
Well, I've seen a lot of these
CRMs and their emaildeliverability.
(10:43):
meaning going into spam, thathappens a lot because they're not
built on trusted systems and SMTPservers and whatnot.
And it's kind of just jangledtogether with some sort of email
thing where, yeah, yeah, we'llsend out emails.
Can you put video inside theemail?
Can you host it in there?Could you even put a Loom link in
there?Do you have to put a screenshot of
(11:04):
the video and then you have tohyperlink it back to the actual
thing?Can you build automations and drip
campaigns?Can you segment it out so you have
like a renewal campaign and youhave a different campaign and your
master list is in there and thenit drops them in and triggers
different things?Can you do this in a lot of these?
(11:29):
No. And even if you can, a lot oftimes the deliverability sucks.
And that's stuff you just wouldn'tknow.
And that's where you make yourmoney.
You make your money in two spotsin your CRM.
You don't make it in anythingelse.
You make it in two spots.
You make it in the marketing,
which they're inferior, and youmake it in the database mining,
which you don't do inside the CRM.
You see where I'm going with this?
(11:49):
The two tasks where you make themoney from your CRM is that you
don't even use the thing for.
So you could have a much better,
we use campaign monitor.
Massive, massive, massive company
with like they went out and builtall the trust on the SMTP servers,
which gives you deliverability.
So then we get to plug into that
(12:10):
and build on that trust.
So we built BrokerMail.
So we use BrokerMail for all ofour email marketing, but there's
no data in there outside of firstname email address.
There's nothing else.
We don't put mortgage in there.
Why would I put mortgage info inthere?
I don't need that in there.
That's on my rate tracker because
(12:32):
I look for rate arbitrageopportunities.
And guess what?When someone signs up for a call
on my calendar, or when I say my,I'm talking about like my team.
When someone signs up for a callon the calendar or fills out an
application in fin mode, theirinformation goes right over to the
master list, which is in brokermail, which then triggers a drip
(12:57):
campaign and they get marketed tofour to five times a month.
Ah, cool.
There you go.
See, two biggest reasons.
Ways to make money doesn't involve
your CRM.
Or in some CRMs, sure, some are
better than others at marketing,but I'd rather go have the best
marketing tool instead of onethat's a four out of 10, give me
one that's an eight or nine out of10 because I make money there.
So I want that.
And I'll just connect them all
(13:18):
with Zapier.
And to do all that, give me a $30
Zapier account.
Boom, done.
Okay, even if, and this isn't acost thing, by the way.
I'm not saying, hey, $200 for CRMor $100 for CRM.
I'm not saying, because that'ssuch a minimal cost in our
business.
And we freak out about expenses
way too much as mortgage brokerswhen in all reality, your overhead
is extremely low versus the amountof money you can make.
(13:40):
Yet we whine and bitch about it.
It's like, no, you need, that is
an expense.
You need expenses to run a
business, blah, blah, blah.
So this isn't a cost thing.
This is like, do you need thattool?
Or are there better versions ofit?
(14:02):
Okay, so that's number two.
Number three is follow -up.
Okay, so follow -up is somebody,you have a discovery call with
them and now you need to follow upfor documents and whatnot.
have a discovery call with themand now you need to follow up for
documents and whatnot.
Well, if you're using Finmo, Finmo
that's built in, it just followsup for you with the clients to get
(14:22):
all the stuff.
Okay, so you don't need that.
If you want to follow up, like doI need to put a task in?
This has always been a pet peeveof mine.
So I'm going to put a task in toremind me to follow up.
Like there's so many differentways I could do that without
opening up my computer and feelinglike I'm a robot that day.
And like going through the lines.
Like, man, there's so I could use
(14:43):
Boomerang within Gmail.
My email, main email out is, you
know, either is Outlook or Gmail.
We use Boomerang a lot.
So if we send someone out a link.
for something or we needed a
document or something, I'd put aone -day, two -day boomerang on
it.
It's a free thing in Gmail.
And a day later, it'll put itright at the top of my inbox.
We didn't hear back from thisperson.
Boom.
And I'll just go respond back to
(15:04):
them.
Right?
You can do that.
We also had Monday were follow -up
days.
So I know a constant pressure in
our industry is you always feellike you're always forgetting to
follow up with someone.
We all know the money's made in
the follow -up.
We know that.
Yeah, we don't do it.
And we know that and we feel it.
And then we carry on with our lifeand our day.
(15:26):
And before you know it, we justfeel this, always this cloud
hanging above us of shit we needto do that we're not doing.
What if, stay with me here, gonnablow your socks off.
What if Monday morning at eight o'clock, eight to nine, every
Monday, every Monday?Yeah, every Monday.
You followed up with everybody.
Oh my God.
And now no follow -up wentunfollowed.
following up.
(15:47):
I don't know what I meant to say
there, but you get it.
We leave no follow -ups behind.
Now, all of a sudden, when it'sWednesday, Thursday, Monday, or
Sunday, you're not worried aboutwho you're following up with
because you know Monday betweeneight and nine, that's what you're
doing.
So you're going to go and you're
going to follow up with all yourrealtors.
You're going to update them up onall the leads they've sent you.
(16:09):
It's a lead tracker we send outevery Monday.
And then you're going to follow upwith all the leads you received
that didn't book a call.
There's only so many here.
Like get over yourself.
You're not, there's not like a
hundred follow -ups you're doinghere.
Like the average broker, like,come on.
You're doing like within the hour,you'll crush that within 15, 20
minutes.
Okay, so you got that.
And then you're following up withall the people who you're waiting
(16:31):
on documents for.
You got that.
And then you're following up withlike whoever else you felt like
you had to follow up with.
So you go around all the people
you've already pre -approved inthe past six months.
You follow up with them everyMonday, checking in.
Do we need to do a refresh of yourapproval?
Do you have any properties youwant to throw the MLS listing to
(16:52):
me?We'll build a custom proposal for
you, right?Eight to nine, every Monday,
follow up.
Now you've covered your ass for
the entire week.
Done.
You sit there and sit there andthink about it.
But only in that hour, not onWednesday at eight o 'clock, not
Tuesday at noon, you know you havea catch -all.
All right, that's the bestpractice you all need, a follow
-up day.
Okay, so first one was housing
data.
Well, we're going to export
anyway.
Second is email marketing.
Well, you're using an inferiorsystem with bad deliverability and
(17:13):
maybe not even the bestfunctionality.
So go find something that'sawesome and use that instead.
And then you've got follow -up.
Okay, and then last but not least,
you've got tracking where you'reat in a deal.
So I love, hey, I've seen some ofthese.
The Kanban, I think is what theycall it, screen.
And you got your deals in there.
And you slide it from pre
-approval.
And you slide it over to approved.
(17:33):
And then it sends an email out.
And then it says, like, and you
slide it over again.
And it introduces you to the
lawyer.
You slide it over again.
And you feel warm and fuzzysliding things along.
And you get to see where you'reat.
I'm like, cool.
Am I putting all of my eggs in
this basket because I have that?No. Like, what are you actually
(17:55):
talking about?You're firing out an email.
Like we'd have 10 emails and, youknow, we're doing 10 to 15 files a
month.
And we have our 10 email scripts
throughout our client journey.
And then we already know like
fulfillment.
It's not me, by the way,
fulfillment.
This is this.
Let's make that distinction.
It's not me, the mortgage broker
(18:16):
doing this.
It's someone else doing it.
And so when the deal gets brokercomplete.
They go to email script numberseven, because that's a broker
complete email, and it's templatedin Yesware, which is free and
layers right on top of your Gmail.
You can house all your scripts.
And then I drop that in the emailto the client, and we type in
their name in the right spot, andthen we click send.
(18:38):
Boom, done.
And then we had all the deals.
We were working on a whiteboard.
We also had them, fulfillment had
them on a sheet.
We had them somewhere where we
could just see where we're at.
Like deals, like how many deals do
you have where you need like thisfancy software triggering all
these automations going out?Like how many deals are you doing?
(18:59):
The average broker does like oneto two files a month.
You can't keep that on a napkin.
You need this fancy, you know
what?You could get a Trello board.
I know people, they trackeverything on a Trello board and
they want, they like to see themove over, but there's no way in
hell, not a chance.
I'm connecting all these things
(19:19):
together and trying to get onething to do it all.
It's just not going to work.
Maybe I'll use components of here
or there because my submissionplatform has it.
I'm not here to fight you oversubmission platforms either.
I don't care.
I really don't.
We use Finmo.
It works.
We can get a lot of automationsbuilt out of it using Zapier.
(19:40):
A $30 account can zap stuff fromFinmo into your calendar.
So now I have an email address anda phone number at 5 a .m.
in my calendar showing me TomSmith's birthday today on repeat.
Boom.
Every year I call or text Tom
Smith instead of sending him thosebullshit birthday candle emails,
fake emails that try to make himfeel special on a special day.
Just reach out to him.
OK, this is a people business.
(20:01):
Go reach out to them.
Don't rely on.
That's a whole nother rant.
But you see what I'm saying?
So you can have that thrown there.
You can have it trigger a renewal
email campaign inside your actualmarketing CRM.
You can have that.
You can have all the data go over
to your rate tracker.
You don't need.
So all you're doing now is you'retracking files.
(20:22):
Once again, I go back to how manyfiles do you have?
Because we tracked all of ourstuff and I'd have them on a
whiteboard.
I'd have people at a whiteboard
beside me and it could be small.
And it was like I had my closing
dates.
I knew COFs I had, which ones we
had compliance, like I would trackthat way.
I just like physically seeing itand writing it down.
(20:44):
But we also did this in GoogleDocs.
We had four folders, right?Pre -approval, approved,
compliance, and didn't goanywhere.
And we would just move them alongthere inside Google Docs.
And our whole business was builtin GDoc and no cost because we
were already running Gmail.
So it was part of the suite, which
once again was not the reason wedid that.
(21:04):
because of the cost, because thecost I couldn't care less about.
This was the whole purpose of thisis I want to give you just to look
at things from a different angle.
And you're putting a lot of
pressure and stress.
A, you think a CRM is going to
magically change your business.
It's not.
If you're a dum -dum, it's stillgoing to make you a dum -dum.
(21:25):
If you're not following up withpeople and doing the boring work,
the money -making task, it's notgoing to go do that for you.
Can you build some automations andsome things?
Sure, here, there, but it doesn'tchange who you fundamentally are.
and how you run a business.
So stop thinking and believing
that this CRM, if you just get itset up, if you just go get the
data right, like what do you dowith the data?
(21:47):
I don't understand.
So I wanted to break that down for
you.
I don't want to go, there's a
better way, a simpler way to dothis type of stuff.
Or continue using your CRM, whichis cool.
If you've got it all figured outand it's all working and humming
along, great.
Good for you.
I love it. 90 % of brokers arelike, misusing their CRM.
So once again, I come back to,instead of tricking yourself to
(22:10):
think like, I just keep thatpayment coming out and keep that
going.
So at least it makes me feel like
I didn't give up on that.
Just shut it down and build from,
I always do this.
If you're not sure about
something, shut it down and thenrun your day.
The sun still comes up tomorrowand see what happens.
what happens.
And if you have to layer stuff
back in, then you do, but clearthe desk.
Shut it down.
And you start realizing, oh, I
(22:31):
don't think I really missed thatas much as I could.
And I found a different workaroundthat's actually better.
Okay.
So I'm going to wrap this up
shortly, but hopefully you pulledsomething from this.
It's that thing.
You have other fish to fry.
You have other things to focusyour energy on than your CRM.
And how many of you open your CRMand feel instant disappointment?
because you know you're not usingit how you should be, just get on
the spreadsheet.
(22:51):
Get on the spreadsheet, right?
And you can set that up, right?Or what about this?
Compliance time or every time apre -approval comes, you can
manually enter in the spreadsheet.
And yeah, and I'm not, we
automated that piece, but I don'twant to fight you on that either.
Okay, so there you go.
This was, oh, I don't want to talk
about CRMs, but I did because Iget hit with a lot of questions.
(23:13):
So I figured I'll just make thisand explain how you can piece
things together at a fraction ofthe cost with better
functionality, betterdeliverability within your process
too.
You're not jamming theirs, trying
to fit your process into theirjanky thing.
Okay.
That's it, kids.
We'll shut this down.
Enjoy your week.
Yeah, that's it.
CRMs.
Peace out.
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