podcast, the show where we flip the real estate status quo on its head and put loan officers into the driver's seat. We give you all the tools, strategies, resources, and mindset needed to modernize your mortgage business 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 Demand Podcast, the show where we help loan officers flip the status quo on real estate agents, put loan officers in the driver's seat.
And we're going to have a good one today. My good friend, Taylor Briggs over at People's Mortgage. She's the vice president over there and he runs a team. I think it's the Briggs team. So welcome to the show, man. Excited. We've been friends on social media, I think for a couple of years now and just kind of seeing the evolution and the growth over the years. And, you know, I know you're doing some big things. So excited to have you on, man. Welcome to the so much. I appreciate you having me.
I'm looking forward to it. man. So let's get a little background on who you are. Obviously, I gave you the little spiel, but, you know, kind of walk us through who you are, what kind of got you into the industry? What's that all looking like right now in terms of your business? sure.
So I've been in the industry about 10 years total in various capacities, started my career in operations, working in the finance, like back of the house, dealing with airlines kind of stuff, moved over into the lock desk for a couple of years and had a bunch of LOs asking us if we could beat other companies and with sure we were profitable. And I slowly realized they were making more in a month or two than I made in a whole year. So I've been dealing with that for a couple of years.
I realized I just wanted to move to sales. Worst case scenario, I can always go back to the lock desk. Moved into sales and been originating since then. And each year I've grown my pipeline or my closed business by at least 5% regardless of market conditions. So it's been fun. I really enjoy it. I'm glad I took the leap. man. Well, that's crazy because locked desk, secondary market type stuff, let's just call it nerdy work,
right? I mean, I guess so as being a loan officer to a certain extent, but usually the people that are sort of like good at the details, that would be someone that would be good at something like a locked desk and secondary market type stuff is going to be that detail-oriented person that's maybe not going to be so good at sales.
So the fact that you were able to transition from a operations role to a sales role and actually excel is a testament to the fact that you're one of the unicorns out there that can kind of do both well. And one thing that I talk about a lot with some of my buddies that are loan officers is like, being a loan officer is a pretty unique role because you really have to be good at two things that generally don't come in the same person.
Be good at sales and marketing, which is generally the person that's less detail oriented, stuff like that. And then you also have to be good at like structuring loans and the details of getting a loan closed. So like, tell me a little bit about how do you sort of combine both of those into like a coherent business? Because, you know, again, I mean, I don't think most people can kind of do that. And why most people kind of go do these ups and downs, they'll prospect and they'll kind of fall off.
So how have you set your business up for that success and growth over those Yeah. So, you know, definitely over time, I dealt with the same thing most loan officers deal with where you'll have one or two really good months and then something happens with that pipeline where you're just, you know, micromanaging and focusing on that. And then the next couple of months suck because the last 60, 90 days of activity really predict what's going to happen in the next month or two.
So for me, the biggest thing that I focused on was time blocking that no matter what happened, if a file was completely going sideways or somebody called off and I had to hop in, I still made sure every day, at least Monday through Thursday, I blocked out two to three hours of green time or prospecting time to where I had a theme each day that I was prospecting. So no matter what I knew at the end of every week, I had at least eight to 10 hours of prospecting.
And I know a lot of loan officers weren't doing that. So last year when the market, you know, the average LO was down 40 to 50%, I was actually up 6.2% over the year before. And a lot of the team is having success doing kind of the same things as well. So really just trying to put together, you know, a foundation and a game plan to where no matter what happens, you can kind of fall back on that.
And then just making sure that those agents that I do work with, that it's more of a partnership versus just, hey, the me deals. It's transactions. I really try and pour into them or help them work their database because that's a majority of my business is past time referral. So it's not even agents that send me a lion's share of what close. Man, that's pretty impressive.
So I want to get into some of those details, kind of skip past the part that I normally get through, which is, you know, talk about the journey a little bit, right? I mean, you said you grew, but it's hard, right? I mean, you know, I think getting into it is hard. Like, what did that journey look like from the beginning, you know, where there's some hard times that you had to go through to sort of, you know, learn the lessons?
Was it kind of smooth sailing? I mean, you know, I've heard of a few unicorns that kind of had smooth sailing, but I feel like most people that have accomplished anything have had some pitfalls along the way. And especially in markets like we just haven't been through, sometimes it's good to hear the struggles and the hard stories. So kind of walk through that and then we can kind of get back to the structures and stuff like that of been day. Yeah, absolutely. So I was very fortunate.
The very first company that I worked for in the marketplace that I'm in, they were more flexible on some underwriting guidelines and credit scores than some of the other local lenders. So like my first two years in the business, I went to any agent that would talk to me and really just kind of asked for their turndown. So I think, you know, my first two years, I probably closed between the two, 110, 120 loans total across the two. I think the average credit score that I did was a 600, a 602.
So it was everyone probably filled the files that nobody wanted. But when I did close those, it built that foundation that if I can do this really well, imagine what I can do on the cookie cutter loans that everybody I think probably able to use that to kind of leverage new relationships. Or even if I didn't pick up brand new agents that were new to me, it was still in their office that, hey, Taylor can get this done. If he can't get it done, no one else can.
And then as I built that relationship with those agents, I had more of a bargaining chip of like, hey, kind of stop sending me the garbage. I'll still do it. But let's see if we can do something else with some of these loans you're sending other places. And then use that to kind of build my business from there. And now I was looking last year with all the loans I closed, my average credit score was like a 730. So over time, it's definitely gotten better.
Loan amounts have increased because of inflation, but it wasn't smooth sailing. Jokes that I got about 20 years of experience in the first two years because pre-loan, I was like the fifth lender they talked to. My background in lock desks and the operations side, I think really helped me understand the guidelines and profitability of loans. So that way, when I had to go to management for something, I already had everything figured out and I could just send it to them.
Here's why I think we should do it. And 90% of the time they'd sign off. Nice. That's cool, man. And what's interesting, something that I've learned in doing a lot of these podcasts, I mean, I think there's going to be episode maybe 1, 12, 13, 14, somewhere around there. So I've done a lot of episodes and a pretty interesting, I guess, similarity between most of these people that I have on the show, people that are producing at a high level is they started out kind of doing something hard,
right? Whether it be consumer direct sort of like call center, whether it be, you know, what you just talked about, which is, Hey, I took all the turndowns, man, I took the crap. You know, you probably had to work twice as hard to close the same amount of loans because every single loan was probably just had to babysit across the line. You had to look at every scenario. You had to fight underwriters, all that kind of stuff.
And so it's interesting to see the people that seem to have success in any market and even markets that are hard. It's like, because they started when it was hard, they're like, yeah, it's just kind of normal for me. Versus the people that maybe started in 2020 or 21 are probably getting their butt kicked because they're like, they started when it was easy. They never had to do the hard stuff, right? They did just a bunch of refis, closed a bunch of deals.
This is pretty interesting to see a pretty common thread across most of the people that are sort of achieving at a high level. They started in the trenches and the hard stuff. And honestly wasn't even really out of design. It was just something as I started taking a bunch of meetings with the agents that would sit down with me, like one of the first questions they would ask is what's the lowest credit score that you can do or like what are your programs?
So I figured, you know, at least for the first year or two, I was getting my feet wet. I should lead with that. And then as I build that book of business, I don't have to leave that nearly as much. But like last month, I closed probably three deals that were below 620. But that's still not my major book of business, but it's still there. It brings me a couple deals every month with agents that, you know, I've been working with for five years at you know, yeah, that's impressive.
And so one thing that I'll say is that, you know, so many times people think that those down payment assistance deals or those lower credit scores are like, Oh, well, you know, if you take those, those are the only things are going to send you right, that's kind of like the perceived thing from that. Talk me through how did you shift out of only being the guy that got the turndowns and became the guy that got the 730s and the A paper and stuff like that?
Because most loan officers, they want those A paper. But the truth is, everybody can do those A paper loans. Like it doesn't make you any different. If you could do those, anybody can do them and they can do them quickly. They can close on time, they're going to get everything done because those are easy. Yeah. So it's one of those things that I was very fortunate when I started.
I had a mentor that I knew that had been in the industry a very long time and said, regardless of marketing conditions, there's always a subset of the community that no matter what happens is going to buy. And that can be military, which is a big book of my business because we're constantly moving because they get new orders, divorces, things like that. Her, she did a bunch of mobile homes. She called herself the queen of wheel estate. So that was something that she did a ton of.
But it's something that, for me, I found because I focus so heavily on the client experience, not all of their friends had bad credit or no money. That may have just been them. They were in a tough spot, maybe they were going through a divorce, or something that impacted them. So as I did a good job on their loan and asked for referrals, I started getting referrals for better clients, and I was able to give that back to the agent.
So I ended up being a loan officer that not only was doing deals that other people couldn't do, I was also a loan officer that was giving back good amount of business to agents that didn't have representation. So, I mean, this year alone, I mean, it's for February 2nd, and I've already given back six deals to my agents already this year. And last year, I think I gave back 22. And as a team, I think we gave back 46 when I looked at it. So like our team actively works those referrals.
So for me, finding those relationships, pulling referrals and leveraging them with new partners, but also knowing that because they've probably heard no multiple times, they're probably going to be the biggest advocate for you if you can get that deal. And so for me, everybody wants the A paper, but you might not be in an area where there's a lot of A paper That's another thing. People live in places like Georgia, New Orleans or places like that.
And there's like, I think 11 or 12 States that like 40% of the population is considered subprime. Right. And so you're like, okay, so you want the eight paper stuff, but you realize you live in a market where there's maybe 60% that are falling into the bucket. And of course, then they have to be a percentage of those that are actually are actively into so you got to understand some of these people need credit repair. Some of these people, you got to think about it from a long-term perspective.
So I love the fact that, you know, you work with those people because a lot of people are like, nah, I don't want it. They're not ready to buy now. They're not ready to buy in the next 90 days. Like, man, they're tire kickers. And I'm like, you're always going to be spinning your wheel because you're not building a pipeline for the future, right? Like, I mean, I think most of the top producers, they know there's people out there that are going to be 12 months out, right?
There's going to be people that are six months out. There's going to be people that are 18 months out. Just keep jumping them, calling them, following up with them. And I know you said a lot of your business comes from past clients. You're able to give back to your agents, man. That's the whole point of this podcast is helping loan officers with the status quo.
Our whole business is around generating leads and helping them get in front of consumers so they can give those back to real estate agents. So that's a freaking awesome point of leverage. How are you doing that six this year already? So it sounds like you're going to blow 22 out of water this year. For me, I mean, I think the biggest thing that we do a really good job is asking referrals and making sure that our process regardless of the product that we get.
So it doesn't matter if it's a 580 credit score VA loan or an 800 credit score jumbo doesn't matter what it is. We have everything done the same way every time. So my assistant is trained to ask for referrals and kind of gauge the clients, you know, with how that's going. Same thing with real estate agents, trying to get feedback. So if there's things that we can implement and adapt, that we do that. So for us, it's constantly making sure that we stay in touch with them.
So for me personally, every Tuesday, I do an update to all parties involved in the transaction. And at the end of that, we kind of jokingly ask for referrals to see if they know anybody and we'll joke with them and be like, hey, I know you're probably sick of me asking, but we just want to make sure that, you know, we work appointment only, referral only, past clients are our bread and butter, you know, who gives us business.
And for our agents too, the company I work for is able to do business in 39 states. I think maybe now because we've onboarded some more branches. But with that, I do about five states myself. But because we have a company program to where I can put it with the back of the house to do it, I can do technically 40 states.
So my agents, when we have somebody relocating somewhere, I always try and get them pre-approved because then I can help them control the referral fee process because I hear all the time from agents. Oh, I sent them to so-and-so in Kansas. I didn't even know they closed. I never heard anything. And I lost out on my 20%, 25% referral fee, whatever it is. We try and control that entire process for the agents.
So even though we're not actively working with them, we're still working for them because our biggest thing is other than client satisfaction, we want to help the agents make more money and save time while doing it. And if we can do all three of those things between the client satisfaction and those two things for the agent, we have found that gives us quite a bit of deals back, especially on the past client side of things. all that's brilliant, man. I talk about this all the time.
It's like, let's be honest, real estate agents want one of two things. They want more time or they want more money. And so many people are like, oh yeah, I close on time and I answer my phone and I, you know, whatever, I got good rates. It's like, the truth is like, that should be standard. Like that should not be your value proposition. That should be the standard.
And so I love that you're doing a lot more than that, you know, one to give back to your agents, but also to help control that situation. And I brought this up a lot on the podcast lately, because I feel like retention is one of the worst parts of this industry is that, you know, according to Monitorbase, the average loan officer is retaining about 19%, right? So 81% of the people that they work with are going and working with another loan officer in the future.
How are you managing that? Do you have like a cadence? Are you working with any softwares? Like what does that sort of look like in terms of making sure that you're staying in front of your past clients regularly? Ultimately, I mean, you're probably in this industry another 10, 20, 30 years, right? So it's like, that's a lot of transactions that if you don't follow up with them, you're gonna lose out on. absolutely. So the way that I manage and my team, I kind of have them manage it same way.
But what has really worked for me is, like I said, this Tuesday updates during the transaction are huge. After they close within seven days, they get thank you cards, they get follow-ups from me. I make sure the move went smoothly. Do they need any vendors of any type? Was there repairs that needed to be done? Did the movers back out last second? I try and give them a lot more than I get from them within the first two weeks after closing.
I have it set up to where I call them about 30 days in because typically their first payment letter has gone out. And then after that, it's usually about once a quarter. I'm big on client appreciation events because I am so past client heavy for referrals.
So I do appreciation events about once a quarter as well some of those individually just with all of my clients that are in the area and then if I have an agent who I've done ideally about six to eight deals with we'll do one with them especially if it's recent we try and do something fun for them but I have one agent that we've been doing one once a quarter and we normally have 30 40 people come in nice breweries will go to the gun range, all those kind of things.
So I think doing things like that to stay in front of those past clients and having it set up to where I have alerts in my system through my CRM. I have it set up that home anniversaries, birthdays, things like that automatically go out. Then obviously like social media, I keep tabs on that. So if I see some major life event, I always make sure I reach out like they had a kid or something like that. And a lot of them, you know, forget about you.
I mean, I have people I went to high school and college with that I've known damn near 20 years that will message me because I posted some video. Hey, I forgot you did this. Can you take a look at this? I was like, dude, I've been posting stuff five times a week for the last five years. I'm happy to take a look. And a lot of times I end up working with them. But it's one of those things that have to stay top of mind or I'm pretty sure that business is going to change.
I Yeah, that makes sense, man. And I actually have a YouTube video dropping on Monday this next week that talks about that. Like add your past clients on social media because like what's a better way for them to stay in touch with you and you stay in touch with them, you know, versus like calling them and being kind of awkward and like, hey, what's going on? I'm your loan officer. How's it going?
Like, you know, it's like, that's almost more awkward than just being able to follow them on social media, like a couple of their posts here and there and, you know, and congratulate them. And then you can call them for a reason, right? Same thing with realtors, right? You can do the same thing with realtors. Look at their posts. All of a sudden, it's not a cold call. It's a warm call because like, Hey man, I just saw that post was freaking sick.
Like, I really love what you're doing with the content that you're putting out there. Super easy, super warm, such a valuable thing, man. One of the I think really helped me last year is I hired a coach and got in a coaching group of some really high producing people. But one of the biggest things that they preach is being owned before being known. So social things like that. And I thought honestly it was a crock of shit, but I figured I'd give it a try. And it's been huge.
Just doing these staying constant on social the amount of deals that are starting to come in or meetings from agents when I reach out. videos, media, Like you it's not cold at all. said, It's much more warm. They're much more receptive. So like you adding the past clients said, is huge. Staying in front of agents on social is huge. And agents love to complain about when things don't go well.
You'll see them complain about title companies, insurance, you know, contractors, or even lenders on there. And that's a good time for you to step in with, you know, vendor recommendations, or you just pop in with, you know, this is what we do differently in that situation. Social It is, man. And, you know, I think people look at social in a way it's like the short term thing. And it's not like this is a long game, right?
It's going to be 6 months or more of consistency before you start to see the returns. And I pretty much built my whole entire marketing agency off of social media. Before I started doing any paid ads, I pretty much grew entirely organically. Just posting results, mostly as being myself and then partially posting results of our clients and things like that.
And I probably generated millions of dollars over the last 5 years in just organic social media, not including the you know, the paid stuff, but it's hugely valuable. And that's if you're consistent over an extended period of time. So loan officers, I'm seeing a lot of loan officers do that too. And, you know, there's sort of the old brigade of the, you know, even the core and stuff like that, what's his name actually just got on social media the other day.
I saw that he got on social media, but it's kind of funny because a lot of those guys will be like, ah, yeah, all these guys are on social media, not doing any deals. And I'm like, well, how many of these guys that aren't on social media and are cold calling aren't getting any deals too? Like, I mean, come on, dude. Like, you know, yeah, there's some people that are doing great, but there's also a lot of people that are using YouTube channels. You know, it doesn't have to be
the short TikToks, right? And dancing around like everybody thinks you're doing, right? It's like, how are you providing value to your audience in a way that is relevant to where we're at, right? I mean, this is a modern society, right? Like people don't want to freaking have a phone call. They want to text. No, call. They want to text. No, that's something too. Like so easy to say top of mind, if you're actively, you know, take an application and having success.
I just keep a notepad in my clients that ask me questions during the week that I seem to be a recurring question. I'll do a video about it, make it like a minute long, do a video, put it on social media. And those get a lot of good feedback. It doesn't have to be super complicated. You just have to be consistent. Yeah, man, that's awesome. Going back to your events, talk to me about that. Are you just strictly like going to have fun? Are you kind of having a pitch at
any point? Or they're just purely like, hey, come have fun. We're Yeah, absolutely. So it depends on the event we are doing. So I'll do leveraged events. So lunch and learns, things like that with agents. But if it's just past clients, because we do so many VA loans as a team, I found that it's a little bit of a pitch because obviously you'll talk to all of them and things like that. We have a lot of military clients that want to use their VA to build a rental portfolio.
So I feel like every time I have an event, I'm having like five or six different conversations of remaining entitlement. Can they buy again? How long do they have to wait? Cash flow, you know, things like that. time So it's not a hard pitch where we stand in front and talk to them about all these different topics, but we gauge the room, you know, we follow up any things that they have issues with.
But we honestly, because I think it's so laid back and we pick a fun environment, whether it's axe throwing, the shooting range, drinking, cornhole,hole whatever it is people are way less you know on the defensive because they're just by families so they have their kids whatever it is and it goes really well we usually pull a couple referrals and then we'll do like a little raffle or something so that way if anything's changed email wise or whatever we can stay
up to date with that and then we can you know give us a reason to follow up with everybody for entering the raffle and all that fun stuff thank you man. That's awesome, dude. Obviously, that's an expense. But at the same time, like, you know, clearly it's worth the investment. And, you know, thinking about that from the perspective, like, yeah, you're going to have to spend some money to make some money. And now you've built a team. I mean, you were solo as of 2020, I think you said.
Yeah, so I've solo up until last year. Started with two of us and then it was four of us. And now since I switched over to a new company in August, we've hit the ground running. It was just two people, myself and one other person when we started. And now we're seven LOs that we've brought on here personally total. And we've got a couple more that we met with this week that I think will probably come on.
So my goal for 2024 is to be a $100 million a year team, which if everyone hits their numbers, we're going to be right at it or a little bit over it. nice. Nice. Well, that's if there's not a big refi boom here in the next. Yeah, absolutely. That's cool, man. That's what's fun is, you know, Amir probably he talks about that refis are the bonus, right? Yeah. You know, purchases are your salary and refis are the bonus. And so that's a cool sort of way to look at it is, hey, you know
what? Never be too good for refis. I saw it during the 2020 and 21 markets. Yeah. Some people love the virtue signal about, I was still 90% purchase. So that means you're missing out on 50% of the business that you should have been doing because you were too proud to freaking do the refis. Or you were so priced out of the market that you couldn't do the refis. I mean, who knows? But I think that's wild, man. From the perspective of social, what do you find to be your biggest driver of new deals?
Talking about past clients mostly, what's the biggest driver you think of that? I So the past client, I think it's the consistency and the follow-up. So we're big on asking for reviews, staying in touch with them on a regular basis. And from that, when they do refer us people, we make sure that we thank them. We send them a thank you card. And we do everything we can to knock it out of the park for that client.
And even on the off-ch options they don't work with us either they're shopping us like crazy and the parents phase them to go somewhere else or the market's not for them right now we still thank them for their time we think they're like we kind of lead with gratitude there but right now i would say outside of past clients i've been going after financial advisors super heavily they are definitely underrepresented for sure with how they work loan officers.
And right now, because of inflation, I'm finding they want a mortgage partner that can help them strategically, especially if you do reverses or any of those niche projects, really help them free up some cash to put some more assets under management for these financial advisors. That's been huge recently. I've picked up a couple of those. I've got a reverse that I put under contract today. That'll close this month as well.
So that's starting to be probably about 15% of my business and the rest is a mix of social media and real estate agents. to man. So you're doing the heck up for purchase for that? Yeah. Oh, nice, man. That's pretty cool. I mean, with that product, obviously, it feels like it's a smaller percentage of the reverse product as those purchase. And a lot of people don't even know those exist. I used to be an AE for reverse mortgage company.
So I have a pretty good background in reverses and the fact that loan officers are unaware of the product or they have the negative connotations around the product. To me, that's like, are you even a professional? If like you like, Oh yeah, reverses are a scam. You're like, do you know anything about the reverse? I saw a guy that like commented on someone's post saying, Oh yeah, like your reverses are predatory. I was like, how many reverses do you close a year? It didn't respond.
You're wrong, bro. You don't understand. The amount of people that I saw, it changed their life. It changed their life. And yet we're going to say it's predatory because, oh cool, the rates are whatever. Dude, you can give this away to your kids or you can live out the rest of your life in relative comfort.
If The one we have right now it's a rather large house and she has a bunch of money from a life insurance from her i guess widowed husband or she's a widow and she just doesn't want a mortgage payment and she'd get pretty run out of an annuity and all that stuff so doing the reverse she is not going to have a mortgage payment she's gonna get a monthly annuity every month to help supplement her retirement and she still has all these other things invested with a financial advisor.
She just wanted to make sure she didn't have to worry about ever having to pay a mortgage payment. She got sick and bills started up. Sure. Yeah, man, that's huge. And I know that a lot of people talk about, you know, going to financial planners and advisors for the reverse mortgage referrals. Like how do you approach that conversation? Or do you sort of approach it from a different angle? And then, hey, by the way, I also do reverses.
Because obviously, again, even in that financial advisor space, there's that negativity around the reverse mortgage product as well. How do you sort of approach those financial advisors from that perspective? as absolutely. So I mean, with any vendor that I try and recommend, so like I have financial advisors to recommend estate planning, attorneys, contractors, whatever it is.
So typically, what I do is if I find out it's a financial advisor that I think would fit some of the clients that I have always asked her to take a new referrals and 99% of the time they say yes. So that usually gets my foot in the door. And I learned a little bit more about their process, which is obviously any kind of sales call that you do. But as I've met with more financial advisors, I found a lot of them just sell insurance.
Like they say they're financial advisors, but they're but they're selling whole life insurance or Right. Right. Term, all that stuff. Yeah, kind of use that. Like, I don't even know if I want to work with them yet. Cause I'm waiting for that pitch for them to try and have me buy life insurance from them. And then if that's not how it goes, they actually have, you know, private net worth, you know, wealth clients, things like that.
I feel like they're going to kind of match how we handle the mortgage consultation on our end because we're big on the financial literacy and education force. And that's why we are so past client heavy. I don't care about the number of transactions. I want to just make sure the clients have a good experience because if that goes the way that we hope it does, the numbers are going to take care of themselves. And we want the same thing as a financial advisor. So we figure out, do they have a
fiduciary responsibility? Do they get paid as assets under management? What is their financial advisor fee look like? Because if we have clients, we're sending them and they're taking one and a half percent of whatever they have under, you know, management, they're not really making the returns that they're hopefully making. We want to make sure that we have somebody in line with what our client's goals are. So we kind of find that we can refer, it works out.
And then on the reverse side of things, we kind of go over our process, what we have seen. So like we do also a decent amount of asset depletion loans because we do have financial advisors. So I kind of just go over a couple of things that I have seen personally from my clients that have worked out that other lenders may not have known how to do or offer. Like some lenders in my market don't do reverses and just see what their lending relationship looks like and see if we can supplement it.
And just kind of stay in touch with them. It's something that I may pull one or two deals a year from that particular financial advisor, but they're usually pretty solid clients. Right?
a good thing about typically financial advisor type of referrals, you're not probably dealing with someone who's broke and, you know, for 80 credit score and all that kind of stuff, you're probably dealing with someone that has, you know, some decent money and all that kind of, which is again, why I think they are underserved.
But I think again, because they are a little more sophisticated, the average loan officers, probably a little less apt to have that conversation because they're worried, like, how do I have this conversation with them? What do I say to them? What do I pitch them? Like, what's the thing of value that I give them? So I love that you're doing that, man. I wanted to talk because I know that you're a big surfer. So for anybody who is listening, Taylor works.
I mean, he works a but lot, he also gets to play a lot so talk a little about how you've structured your team so that you're able to take these vacations i know you go surfing you gallivant around the world maybe bliss i live vicariously but yeah i'm gonna talk about that yeah absolutely someone What do just kind of give a rundown of what i was able to do last year while still bringing a bunch of people on the team and growing my personal production by 5% last year.
I did surf trips to Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica, Portugal, Spain, and I feel like there's one country that I'm missing. So we travel a lot. I think my wife and I did like seven or eight trips last year, and all of them were at least five, six days at a time. And the way that we've been able to do that is really focusing and trusting our back-end operations people.
So I have an assistant, Rachel, she's been with me for about three years now, jokingly call her radar because she picks up on everything that the underwriters would hate, and she just kind of makes it disappear and makes it super clean. And so for her and the other ops team that we have, I mean, other people on the ops team that we have, we've just kind of set non-negotiables. Like they know what my role is as a loan officer, that I'm going to take a clean 1003.
I'm going to get a couple of up front just so I know when I run AUS and the pre-approval, it's tight. After that, and it goes in the contract, it's all Rachel. It's all processing. It's everybody else. If I need to step in, I will, but I don't have to. With that being the case, I went from working 80 plus hours a week doing the volume I was doing to doing more volume. I think I'm averaging maybe 35. It's probably closer to 30.
And it's just the way that we've really structured our team, knowing that it's going to suck the first like two or three months of you saying, I'm not doing this anymore. These are my roles. This is what my team's going to do. And it's going to be some growing pains. And we've had to hire and fire to find people to fit. But every LO that I've hired recently is doing more production than they've done in a very long time. They're working less hours.
And the hardest part for them, they said, is letting my And as soon as they decided to let go, I don't care if they do more volume or not. They're not working nearly as much. They're spending time with their family and they're way happier. At the end of the day, as a manager and as somebody that has a family myself, that's all I care about at the end of the day. The money and the clients will take care of themselves, but the family is the most important thing.
that's Yeah, all I care about at the end of the the money day, and the clients will take care of themselves, but the family's most important soon as Yeah, 100%. And I think the industry as a whole, and that's not just the mortgage industry. I mean, any sort of entrepreneurial sort of place where you can make good money. There's sort of this hustle mentality around, oh, you got to hustle, hustle, hustle.
And I mean, there's even this one particular person that loves to virtue signal about how much business they do. And they do great business, but it's like, it's them and like an assistant or two. And it's like, cool. So you're working a hundred hour weeks and you want to poopoo on anybody else that has teams that maybe, yeah, maybe their margins are less, maybe they're making less per loan, but enjoying their life. Right.
Like who cares how many people are on the team if they're profitable and they're having a good life. I mean, you know, again, people like to say, I did Oh, a hundred million by myself. a good I life. you mean, know, again, people like to say, I did oh, 100 million by myself. Yeah. Well, I don't care. And it's one of those things, too, that, you know, you see a lot in this industry.
I assume, you know, really any high income earning industries that so many people push you to hustle for the sake of hustling and not being as dedicated with your time. But, you know, I've definitely heard from multiple mentors. That's cool and all until you sacrifice the family portion and get a divorce. And now you have to make double because you're giving up 50 percent. Right.
When you could have just taken the time to focus on your family and make sure, you know, your work still moves when it needs to move. But you don't need to hustle for the sake of hustling. You just need to be dedicated with your time. up 50 percent. Yeah. Well, and that's the other thing, too, is people think that, you know, hey, I'm going to get more done in 12 hours than I do in eight.
And the truth is, most likely you're getting the same amount of work done because you're not effective for four to six for pretty wild. But, you know, I think it's important for anybody who's listening to this and maybe you're getting started or maybe you are already successful in understanding that like, there's a way to do this without having to sacrifice that. And I mean, I've even seen it for myself. I mean, in 2020, I was like, I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this for you.
And she's like, you haven't even been here for two years. So like, Oh, that hurts. Right. And it's like, you see that a lot in this industry. And it's like, I'm doing this from family, we're gonna do this, you know, and then next thing you know, their kids are 18 years old, they're like, you just grinded through their whole childhood. And now they're 18. You're never gonna see them again.
And that's the thing with this industry is we have to wear a million different hats, we have to know the processor job, closure job, underwriter job, and hopefully, it a little bit better than they do because we have to fix things all the time. But you need to be able to just give up the reins a little bit. You need to be able to put people in place that if they can do it like 70 to 80 percent as good as you can, like just send it.
And if you are new, you know, this is what I did when I started when I was doing two, three deals a month. But you as you me and another LO in my branch that were doing two, three deals a month. We pulled our resources and had a team LOA. You may not be able to afford one yourself, but there might be people in your branch willing to split it with you until you start growing your volume. But the biggest thing is you just have to get out there and sell.
Make sure you're doing the active prospecting. And as long as you're doing that, the operations stuff will take care of it. You don't get paid to do the processing or the closing. You get paid to do sales and Right, right. Well, you know, the concept that people always say, well, no one can do it as good as me, right? Oh, I'm the best at this.
The amount of people that I've heard say that I'm like, dude, there's got to be someone that is actually the best and everybody else is a liar, you know, or they got overinflated self-worth or whatever. But I get it. Like, you know, I dealt with the same thing is like to a certain extent of control freaks. And then it's hard to give up control because one, you think I can do better, but two, you think, and if they mess up or whatever?
Like, it's also hard to give it up because you have to work a lot to replace that. Right. It's like, do you take the temporary pain of bringing someone on, training them up, going through the whole process of maybe having to fire them, stuff like that? Or do you continue to grind yourself? Yeah, sure, you're going to get it done. You're going to get it done in a quicker time. But now all of a sudden you're doing this across hundreds of transactions, thousands of transactions.
And now the time that would have taken you to train someone up is much larger because you've taken all this time to just do it yourself. And I love what you're doing with the team. If you were to get started today, man, what is like one or two things that you would go out there today in this market and go get Yeah, I had to start from scratch with no book of business, the biggest thing that I would do is trying to one leverage any kind of relationships that I already have.
So whether it's social media or just friends or family that I'm close, if they have bought a house, ask them who they use. If they had a loan officer, ask them who they use. Cause maybe that loan officer, not every loan officer is going to be a pain to try and help you out. Some of them will give, give, give. I've gotten way more from LOs that I've never worked with, but they've just been good people than I have from some managers that I've had.
Having them recommend the real estate agents, that's an easy way for you to get a meeting. Hey, I was talking to a good friend of mine from college. She said, you're an amazing real estate agent. I just got into the industry. Can I pick your brain on what has made you successful? Things like trying to make whatever you can as warm as possible. that, And if you're in any kind of leverage that. communities, Like for like you me, I surf.
said, So anyone that I know through the surfing I've leveraged that. community, I also wrestled in high school and leveraged that. college, And then I also compete in jujitsu currently. So I have different areas of my life outside of work that I still get loans from.
So if there's something that you're actively doing, or you know, your kids play t ball or whatever it is, like, that's something that gives you a chance to be around other people to leverage, you don't have to do what I did and call 150 real estate agents to try and meet with you to see they can give you turndowns. Because I mean, right now, a lot of companies are approving a lot of things they normally wouldn't because volume's down with people.
Just find a couple good people to try and make those warm introductions for you. And it's going to take time. But if you stay on top of meeting with those people, following up, someone's going to drop the ball at some point and give you a shot. Yeah, that's what it is, man. And I don't know if you know Alex Ramosi, but Alex Ramosi always talks about a lot of it comes down to effort, right? Like sometimes you think that you need to like two or three X your effort and you may have to a
hundred extra effort, right? Maybe you got to do what Taylor does 150. Maybe you got to have, you know, 20 conversations a day, whatever it takes, right? Like it doesn't matter. The market's going to tell you what to do. But I will say is this as a marketing person, I don't recommend if you're brand new to the industry, don't buy leads. And I know that's weird for a marketing person to say, don't buy leads probably the first year or two. It's a different ball game.
It takes a whole lot of a different style of sales. You just go grind it out. I mean, people come to me all the time and they're brand new and they're like, Hey, should I buy leads? I'm like, no, don't buy leads. The unfortunate thing is when you're first getting started, part of it is a grind. You're just going to have to grind it out because one, you probably suck at doing think Yeah.
Like figure out how to do loans first, figure out the fundamentals of being a good loan officer before you've spent a bunch of money on things that may or may not work. But I think that's huge, what you talked about. Like leverage your network and don't make it weird. Like don't be like super salesy. Like I think a lot of times people are worried about doing that because like they don't want to be that MLM, the person that you had in high school that are trying to pitch you on their newest MLM.
Like, oh yeah, you want to go have lunch? I'm like, dude, I haven't talked to you in six years. What are you hitting me up about lunch for? Oh, of course, you're going to pitch me on, you know, whatever the next thing is. in final thoughts before we sort of check out here? I mean, not really. I think this year is going to be a really good year for a lot of people if they keep their head down and just keep grinding.
I know we've got some big goals as a team from a recruiting standpoint and a volume standpoint, but our motto in the office is doing more in 24. So I hope everyone has a good year. And anyone ever has questions, I'm always available. I'm happy to help I possibly can. Awesome, man. Well, and just to kind of shout that out, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, what's the best way to find you? Yeah, so the easiest way is probably finding me on Facebook. So it's Taylor Briggs.
You'll see me. There's a picture of a beer in my hand and surfboard at the airport in Cabo San Lucas. Or you can find me on Instagram at GBRIG005. Awesome, man. so much for your time, man. My big takeaways from this, which is pretty cool, is you can get a lot of referrals from your past clients. Work your past clients. I know I bring up this stat a lot with MonitorBase, but it just kind of blew me away when I had that interview with William LeBaron.
It was like 19% and someone was like, I actually thought it was lower. That still blows my mind. Cause I'm like, man, you're missing out on so many transactions, not even including referrals, like what you're able to pull. It's like, you're just missing out on their transactions of people that you've already done business with. And instead of that, what do they call it? They step in over a dollar to pick up pennies, right?
Like so many people get so stuck on this sort of mentality of like, I need to go get business that's for today. And while yes, that's important, you do need business today in order to get off the treadmill, the hamster wheel of, you know, doing two, three loans and then falling off and not doing a loan for a month and then kind of prospecting again, like you have to consistently prospect over an extended period of time.
And one of my favorite books, fanatical Prospecting talks about the 30 day rule. And so what I like about what you've done is you basically implemented that in your business. Like, Hey, I'm consistently going to do the actions eight hours a week. And it's funny is that's about the number that I tell people. I'm like, if you can just spend two hours per day prospecting, you're going to be better than 95% of salespeople out there. This applies to any industry,
right? if you're getting started, Really, you should be spending eight hours a day prospecting. But if you can at least spend two hours a day, you're going to be better than just about every salesperson out there. So thank you so much for your time today. man, It has been a huge man. huge, pleasure, What a great episode. I love what you're doing, man. Reach out to Taylor. Good you can tell he's a guy. Obviously, So if you I love what surfer. you're episode. Reach out to Good doing, guy. man.
Taylor. you can tell he's Obviously, a surfer. So if you you'll surf, hit him up right? too, See how he's doing. I'm always down for a surf trip, so. Man, he's, I mean, he goes on seven, eight trips a year, man. I have four kids, so I don't know that I can of eight trips. probably in El Salvador in February for a Yeah, man, that's so much fun. So thank you so much for your time today, man.
And for anybody who is listening to this and is, you know is looking for ways to flip the status quo on real estate agents, go to flipthestatusquo.com. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day. Thank you for tuning into the Loans On Demand podcast on loansondemandpodcast.com.