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 Long Form 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 and put loan officers in the driver's seat.
And I'm excited for today's episode because today we have Tyler Hodgson. I think I said that right. He's the Executive Vice President of Growth at YouMortgage. His company has been on the Inc. 5000, I think three years in a row. Welcome to the show, man. Glad to have you. Yeah, no, you. Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me here. Excited to be on today. And yeah, it's gonna be a good conversation. Awesome, man.
Well, give me a little background, who you are, you know, what has you in the industry, what's keeping you in the industry? And just who is Tyler? Yeah, I mean, quick background. I'm a Marine Corps veteran. I was in the military and getting into the mortgage industry, I actually kind of fell in it like everybody else. I was buying for my VA loan, trying to use my VA loan for the first time. I got denied for the loan, but got offered a job.
I got offered like an accounting and finance admin position for a small mortgage company. And then ultimately they convinced me to get my license. And I never pictured myself as a salesperson because I went to college for accounting, went to the green floor to blow stuff up. So none of that really has to do with mortgages or real estate finance. But yeah, ultimately got licensed and realized I'm actually passionate about sales. I'm passionate about mortgages and the home buying journey.
And I love real estate. And so things just kind of took off from there. And after a short period of time, I'd closed 12 loans to my name and decided I'm going to start my own brokerage. I'm going to do this myself. I know everything there is to know about writing loans. If you close 12, you can close any and started my own brokerage, started growing a team, adding more loan officers and growing over time.
As you mentioned, probably one of my favorite like accolades is, you know, being on the Inc. 5000 list and doing that three years in a row. So we grew really rapidly. And I've just loved and enjoyed the challenges of business and growing a team and seeing my team grow and succeed as well. And just kind of the journey I've had as a leader. And so here we are and continuing to learn and improve every day. And yeah, I'm happy to talk about anything today.
Mortgages, you know, social media, marketing, sales, leadership, productivity, time management, accounting, CPA. We can talk some CPA stuff if you want. Yeah, yeah. We'll bore everybody with the accounting stuff. That sounds like a great idea. Just kidding, man.
But no, seriously, what I was kind of interested to learn a little bit is, do you think that being in the Marines helped from the perspective of, you know, you talk about time management, you talk about leadership, like, do you think that played a part into, let's be honest, 12 loans and starting a brokerage, which is already like a ton of work that is outside of origination, right?
You have to do call reports, you have to do licensing, you have to worry about all that kind of crap and you close 12 loans. So how do you think that being in the Marines maybe had some impact on the way you show up, the way you lead, the way you sort of run your day to day or does it have any? Well, even before I was in the Marine Corps, I was always very like disciplined. I was an early riser. You know, I like to just get stuff done and organized.
I think the Marine Corps just like put all that on steroids and emphasize everything. So yeah, I would say after the Marine Corps, it just continued to like, I just want to accomplish the next thing, do the next task. I did learn a lot of leadership principles and stuff from the Marine Corps. I saw both great leaders and leaders that I did not want to be like, I almost learned people that you're like, I don't like that person. I've had bosses and stuff in the past.
Well, like the Marine Corps has got a lot of them. So just, you get a lot of life experience too. I mean, in a few short years, in your late teens, early twenties, you're experienced to a lot of different life circumstances and I feel like quickly mature and grow.
So when it came to starting my own brokerage and building my own business, I just didn't really have any fear of like failing, like worst case scenario, I just, you know, have a college degree, I can go back to doing accounting, I've job security and stuff there, I've got some money in savings. So it was like, I'm just gonna do this thing and try this thing. And I think I can accomplish and achieve whatever I want.
So yeah, I think some of those principles, some of them lived in me I yeah, think some of those principles, some of them lived in me already. And then some, you know, grew from the Marine Corps and the experience of the Marine Corps have definitely contributed you to, know, my success in business and a mortgage today. and Yeah. That's cool, man.
I mean, obviously you can be taught discipline, but I mean, you know, some of the discipline comes down to like understanding what you're doing things for. And one of the things I've done to try to be more disciplined, because I mean, I'm ADHD and all over the place and hard for me to like focus and do things. So I have to sort of create habits around, I mean, my morning routines, going to the gym, things like that, because I know those things are going to help my mental health.
And so, man, I love that you've been able to learn from that. But leadership, obviously, like growing a team, what I'll say is growing a team has been probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Because prior to me starting my business, I had never led anybody, right? I mean, I were in the subway, and I was a team lead, I guess that's the closest to leading people I got. And I played soccer my whole life. And I was you a, know, captain on a couple teams.
But from that perspective of actually, like, you know, delegating and leading and giving up control and things like that, that's one of the hardest things I've ever done is learn how to delegate, man. So talk me through kind of what that looks like, from your perspective. Like, was it pretty easy to sort of do that right away or that take some time to develop over time? is still like the hardest one for me too. Like, yeah, you just want to do something right. You want to do it yourself.
You're so used to doing yourself.
And the reason delegation is so hard is because it does take more time and effort to teach someone else how to do it right initially up front than it does to just do it yourself but when it becomes repetitive and continuous then you realize like well this is better for someone else to do it if i train them once they can do it you know many times over so yeah i struggle with delegation because i'm just control freak i like things exact you know that military side of me so that's
something I'm still trying to improve with. And honestly, you know, early in my mortgage career, I was like self-processing all my own loans and like, didn't have an assistant. Like I didn't hire my first assistant until like the end of 2021. So I went through the whole refi boom. Like I closed over in 2020 myself, like with no processor and no, I'll just do it on my own loans, you know? And I know there's a couple other, you know, brokers and LOs out there who've been like that.
It's like, I was just crushing myself doing it, but I felt more efficient doing that. And really it's a lie. Yeah. I told myself, but it took me a long time to like build the trust in someone else to hand that off because it was so important to me. And I think as business owners, that's why it's hard to delegate because we do care about it so much and nobody else ever care about it as much as we do. So yeah, constant struggle to delegate.
So you're one of those mortgage unicorns that is good at the details and also pretty good at sales because that's not typically a combination, which is why I think the loan officer position is a very interesting position and why a lot of loan officers get stuck in that sort of two to three loan a month realm because they're not really salespeople.
They should be, right? I mean, I talked about earlier, marketing and sales is like the most valuable things you can learn as a loan officer or as a human in general. If you want to get paid well over the career, like learn how to do marketing and sales, and you're always going to have a job somewhere because companies always need marketing and they always need sales, right? Like how do companies grow?
And so it's an interesting thing because as a loan officer, you have to be detail oriented, look at all the guidelines, structure things right generally. And then you also have to, you know, be good with people and having conversations and making calls and all that kind of stuff. And it's like hard to find people that have both of those things. And so like, you know, you just see so many people that kind of flounder because really they maybe shouldn't be loan officers.
Maybe they should be structuring deals. Maybe they should be like a, you know, LOA or a junior LO or something like that. That's kind of structuring loans because they love structuring loans, but they're not so good at getting it. What would you say to someone like that? Like, you know, what are the, some of the strategies that you used to grow? Cause over the time, obviously 200 loans closed, you clearly have figured out some things on how to market your business, do some sales.
What does that look like in Yeah, I agree with the unicorn piece. And when I first started my brokerage, unfortunately, I built and structured the brokerage based on my profile of an LO. Because we didn't have a lot of processing, we didn't have a lot of support staff, because I was just doing it myself. And so over time, we've shifted our team and our company to add more support for the LOs and recognize like, okay, LOs focus on sales activities. You go find loans.
We'll give as much back end support as we can, you know, and find that happy medium there. So you can focus on the sales side of it. But, you know, I mean, I found a lot of success. Like I still don't picture myself a salesperson. Like I know I'm a salesperson. I'm proud of it. But when you hear the word salesperson, you just think of like the negative connotation. Right, right. Cold calling, door knocking, like, you know, sleazy, like hair slick suit kind of person.
And that's like not the case at all. So where I found success is just really focusing on... It's a relationship-based type sales and relationship business. And everybody who's listened to this has probably heard this a million times. But it's like relationships and just having great communication and speed and building your own personal brand and people knowing who you are and what you do. That's all sales and marketing is. Do you know who I am?
And do you know what I do so that when you need it, there's an opportunity you think of me. I'm very active on social media. That is my personal brand. That's who I am. And I think anyone connected with me on social media probably has a good sense and a good feeling of who I am and would trust me to do their mortgage. Even if they're mortgage people themselves, they would probably pick one other loan officer, do their mortgage. I hope they would think of me.
And that's kind of the messaging I try to portray out there in the public. So yeah, I mean, it's hard to nail it down exactly of like, here's one thing I did to, you know, get successful as a loan officer early on and go from one to two deals to four to five to six to eight. But a lot of it also just has to do with consistency. Yeah, that's it, bro. Consistency. I mean, that's the hack that people are looking for is what's the hack?
The hack is, well, you got to do it over a long enough period of time that you actually get good at doing it. And you have to do it for a long enough time people actually know about it because so many people like, they may be a good loan officer, but no one knows who you are. If no one knows anything about you, like it doesn't matter how great of a loan officer or how great you can structure loans. That's why I say sales and marketing is the most important thing. And you're right.
I mean, sales has such a negative connotation because we think about sales as the used car salesman, like you said, the sleazy guy. But the truth is that ethical sales is identifying a problem and providing a solution. That's all sales is right. And so many people are like, I'm not a salesperson. I'm an advisor. I'm a whatever. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry, Mr. Loan officer that gets paid $5,000 a deal.
You're a salesperson because if you weren't a salesperson, you wouldn't get paid $5,000 a deal. I'm sorry. That's just the reality of the situation. Yes. You're an advisor as well. Yes. You're an educator as well, but you're a salesperson first, because let's be honest, like consumers don't know as well as a loan officer, if they should buy a home, right? Like if you know, they have good credit, good income, good down payment, that's a good time to buy a home, right?
If you're planning on staying in the home for the next five years, 10 years, whatever it is, understanding the situation is what matters. And so many people think the sales is pushing people into products that they shouldn't have. And that's not true, right? It's identifying a problem. If you're the person that can provide the solution, great. If not, point them a different way, tell them they should wait, tell them they need credit repair, tell them whatever, right. That's true ethical sales.
And so I think people just need to shift the way that they view sales as not a sleazy thing, because it's true. We've been conditioned to believe that sales is a bad thing, right? I hate salespeople. Well, you hate bad sales people's what you hate. Right? So I know like you do a lot with social media, you know, so when you were first getting started, was it always kind of easy? Were you able to pick up a bunch of deals right away? What did that all look like?
Cause I kind of like to hear a little bit about the struggles. Maybe you had struggles, maybe you didn't, I don't know. Maybe you were also a unicorn and you never struggled. I don't know. not a I mean, I think I got, you know, kind of lucky early on where I met a couple of realtors who were newer to the industry when I was newer to the industry. And I like, you know, young and motivated and hustling. We're all trying to find clients and deals.
And we kind of grew together and I was able to help mentor them and teach them the loan side and the mortgage side and answer their questions. And I've always had a lot of success in like newer agents who then become the more successful they become, the more successful I become, obviously, and loyalty. Now you got to be able to recognize when like, hey, this agent, like, is this a time suck or not ever progressing?
Or I just know this person is going to be a, you know, one deal every couple months kind of person. I'm in them as someone who I see with a good growth trajectory. When I first started out, it's like, I didn't know anything about social media. Like, you scroll back to my social media and look at posts. Like my Facebook is still as posted, you know, memories pop up and I'm like, I posted this in 2009. Like, Oh my God. I know dude. I mean, I just delete it and start from scratch.
Cause I don't want someone to scroll back and see some of the stupid stuff I said, but it's funny. Cause there's a meme went around. It's like, there's no one I have less in common with than the person that posted my post from 10 years ago, It's bro. like such a funny I meme.
a meme that went around that's like there's no one i have less in common with than the person that posted my post from 10 years ago bro it's like such a funny meme i was like oh that's so funny because i'm like what the hell was i thinking back then right it's like this is like the dumbest but i guess it's also like back then it was like luke is feeling like this or luke is and so you kind of like post it from that perspective it's kind of weird but anyway yeah that's funny that you say that
because i talk about my early videos and sometimes i'll show people like hey check this out they're like man, you're so good at video. I'm like, you have done thousands and thousands of thousands of videos. I've been on thousands of zoom calls. I met 113 recorded podcast episodes. I think this is number one, 14 or one 15. I've done a lot of video. Go look at my video from before. I was hi, my name is Luke and I am a reverse mortgage loan officer. I have a video like that.
We're going to look back at even like these, like the poker this video now, now, five or 10 years from now, and you're that like, was dumb. Yeah. why did I say um so much? Man, Why did I do that? You so one thing I do like, know, recently you've been doing more talking on stage, you know, some of that type of stuff. How do you develop your ability to sort of, you know, get up on stage?
Is it, you know, you're practicing a lot or what does that sort of look like, you know, for anybody who maybe is listening that the once I start to do some of that, I'm not a good like, outgoing person. I'm not a want to speak on stage kind of person. I remember like a college speech class, like I would just blush and get red in the face. Anytime a teacher would call on me, I'd have to like talk in front of people.
So like, somehow just over the years, by doing more and more and more, I've progressed out of that and got comfortable on stage. I like being on stage for like the adrenaline rush it gives when you're like presenting and like just it's that elevated, you know, state. Dopamine. You know, I still get the fear. But also just like after the fact, because it's really about like,
what can I give to the audience? What can I do to benefit them and it's really cool after any kind of presentation if someone comes back to you and validates that like something you told them really meant something to them right so anytime after a presentation and it could be like hey i spoke on a big stage in front of a bunch of people when it was motivational or whatever or even just like you know i did a training class in front of a couple agents or a couple LOs.
And they're like, wow, I really learned something here. And now I'm going to be able to go take that back or even just like a podcast like this. And I'm sure you get it all the time. Like someone listens, someone hears, they send you a message, man, I really learned something and I appreciate that.
And so to me, that's what has really become like my passion of just sharing knowledge and sharing information and trying to inspire people so that they can, you And best they can be, or they can potentially learn something from me. And so speaking on stage, it's like, you got to take in small steps and small chunks. And I got better because I had to like speak in front of clients. I had to speak in front of realtors, speak in front of my own LOs.
Like we had our, you know, monthly team meeting, a weekly team. I've got to present something, get on videos on social media and get on camera and send your clients videos. So over time, you're just going to improve at it. And, you know, back to the consistency concept. Right, right, right. You're going to suck at first, to be honest. That's the truth. There's no hack again.
What I love about you said though, man, I literally just like a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, I had someone jumping on a call with a guy and he says, right before, right as we're getting started, he's like, by the way, your podcast changed my life. I was like, you're just going to throw that in casually like that? Like, come on, man. But you know, it was like pretty cool because you know, the podcast is a lot of work.
You know, obviously I love actually doing the interviews, but getting people booked and finding, you know, podcast editor and a producer and then getting all that stuff set up at the beginning, especially is a lot of work. Now I kind of have a really good system and it's pretty easy for me. This doesn't take a lot of my time other than our interviews or whatever, 30 to 45 minute slots. But yeah, it's a lot of work, but consistency over time. I mean, I'm 113, I think, published or 110 published.
I can't remember exactly where we're at. And so that same guy has gone through like all basically started at the beginning. I said, why are you starting at the first podcast? I sucked at those first podcasts. And he's like, no, I wanted to see the journey. So he started the first podcast and basically worked his way up to like 90 something podcasts. I'm like, that's wild. I don't know. I've ever heard of anybody listening to every single one of my podcasts, but thank you very much.
So that's what it's all about, man. It is about impact. That's such a little bit on your social strategies. What is your philosophy around social media? What do you think makes people attracted to working with you via your social Sales is about building trust, right? So we want to build trust. And the only way that you truly trust someone is if you feel like they're authentic and genuine to you. If you feel like someone's fake or disingenuous, then you're not going to trust them, obviously.
So the goal of social media to me is not lead generation. To me, it's brand building and brand recognition. So I want to build that trust over time by letting them know that I'm authentic and I'm genuine and this is who I am so that the people who want to work with me, they'll choose to work with me. The people who like who I am, they will do work with me. And some people may not, and not everybody's going to like me. And that's because I don't need everybody to like me.
So my social media strategy is a lot about posting about just, you know, who I am, what I'm doing, what this means to me, how it makes me feel, ask for other people's opinions. What do y'all think of this? You know, add in my personality and like, be funny.
And what i like i like the dallas cowboys and i like playing volleyball and i like real estate and i like all these things you know over time i think people are just attracted to that they want to know who you are and it helps deepen those relationships so that when it is time for them to buy a house or refinance, or if they're a realtor looking for a new lender or a loan officer looking to join a new company, like they think of
you and they remember you and they feel like they know you and trust you. The weird part about social media is like, I post a lot, give a lot of information about myself and other people see that and consume that. So they know a lot about me. I'll meet someone in person for the first time. And it's like, I don't really know anything about them because they post as much, you know, they may interact on my stuff. And like, I recognize their name. I know who they are.
Yeah. I don't know like personal things about their, you know, I mean, I post about my family. I post about my daughter, my wife and all that kind of stuff, my friends. And so it is a little weird when you meet in person and you're like, but I, I don't know anything about you, but you know, all this stuff about me. So know anything about them I agree, man. Parasocial relationships, man, is kind of the term for that. Right.
Which is like, it's kind of like celebrities, you know, you kind of feel like, you know, celebrities because basically their whole lives are exposed. Right. It's the same thing, right? If you show up online and showcase your life, people literally say, man, I feel like I know you. And like, it's funny, my podcast editor, she'll hear this, but she told me the other day, she's like, I feel like I know you like really well. Cause I edit every single one of your podcasts. I know so much about you.
I know when you're going to stutter on a word. I know like what things you're going to mess up on. And I'm like, what? I'm like, that's crazy to think. But it, you know, it's like people started to see that from that perspective. And that's, what's so powerful about content. But also the truth is so many people think that posting business stuff is what gets them business.
And I have actually found almost the exact opposite is the business type stuff is the least engaged stuff, the stuff that gets the least engagement, but the stuff that gets the most engagement is family stuff is, you know, celebrating stuff, you know, things like that. And again, I mean, you know, be authentic, be who you are. And I hate that word authentic. Cause obviously everybody throws it around, but I love the idea of true authenticity show up as who you are.
Cause a lot of people show up as their perfect version or as the version they want to showcase as positioning. And I've heard that I'm a marketer. They say that all the time, positioning, positioning, positioning. I'm like, I don't care about positioning. I want to showcase who I am, right? I want to repel the people that aren't like me and I want to attract people that are like me because the truth is trying to appeal to everyone is a good way to not be attractive to anybody. Right.
Yeah. I like that. So, you know, from that perspective, like, I know you talk about business from time to time, but like, what would you say is kind of your mix of types of content, right? Yeah. You talk about your family. And so why, right. I talk about my family a lot, right. You posted about the whoop. I actually reached out to you with talking to you about the whoop. Cause we were both, you know, I have the whoop. I've had it since 2020 and not a lot of people have It's it.
starting to get more popular, but not as many people have I'm it. like, He's cool.
got the whoop because we were both you know i have the whoop i've had it since 2020 and not a lot of people have it it's starting to get more popular but not as many people have it i'm like cool he's got the whoop oh yeah let's compare notes your recovery today you're kind of dry again you must a red recovery yeah yeah show me your whoop man how'd you sleep last night what's your deep and rem look like you know that type of stuff and that's the type of power that you get and i've built
basically my whole business office of organic social media and obviously we do paid ads as well. But my whole network of people that I've grown over the last five years has strictly been social media, which is how powerful this platform is. So from that perspective, how much are you doing business stuff? How much are you doing personal just random stuff? Yeah. So I wasn't doing social media a lot, a big step was to get to the point of like, I want to post every single day. Right.
So if you're not posting a lot currently, at least like make your next goal to be like, I need to post once per day. So I need to find something to talk about and share at least once per day. Sure. Now I'm at the point where I'm posting like usually three times a day, maybe twice, maybe four times. Sometimes like things just start popping up and now it's like hard for me not to post about something. This will be such a great post. And they used it so hard.
Like, what am I going to post about today? And it just like reveals itself to me. The majority of my posts, like at least once per day is pretty much like, what am I doing like in my life today? It could be as simple as like, oh, I was at Starbucks and you know, they misspelled my name on my cup and we joked about it.
And it was great to see the Starbucks people, you know, like that's just a day in the life or you know i'm here at this event and connected with other people so much fun like just what am i doing could be family could be personal could be a business event could be at the office this is funny because one of my alos shared this yesterday they're like well tyler's social media is like you know he's always doing something that's just so exciting and my
life's boring and the elo on my team was like, do you know what Tyler's life is? Like he wakes up in the morning, he exercises, then he goes straight to the office. Then he's at the office for like 12 hours. Then he goes home and like puts his daughter to bed. And then he goes to sleep at nine o'clock. Like his life is boring. Yeah, Not doing anything, but like going to the office every day. And like, you know, there's still always something to post about or talk about.
So you may think your life is boring or mundane or routine, but like, there's still always something to talk about every day. Other types of stuff I like to share is, you know, shout outs and recognition of others. Sure. People will engage better if you're giving shout outs of others. The other one is sharing, you know, third party validation of yourself. So like testimonials, but not like I created this Canva template of a five star review and like, right, right, right.
And about me, super businessy. Yeah, the super business. Like if I get a legitimate text message or a message from someone, like I'll screenshot that and like post it. Right. Like that's the one way I can, you know, humble brag on yourself. Yep. But you know, I try to keep that to a minimum, but I, you do still kind of have to share those things because it does create social validation. Right. It's good. These other people said it.
It's a of social proof that people don't understand is like, yeah, man, there's a bunch of different types of social proof that you can use is that, you know, proof of upward spiral, like just saying, Hey, like a business is growing, right? Another social proof is reviews, testimonials, things like that.
Or, you know, maybe you got, you know, you know like the ink 5000 thing you talked about like those are different types of social proof that doesn't have to be directly some sort of like testimonial right and people are like oh social proof is just testimonials it's like no and truth is no one wants to see that super cookie cutter canva template with the freaking five star and like most of the time people don't engage in those things but they
will engage in like a man you totally changed my life thank you so much for helping me close this loan. Like that's a much better freaking screenshot than like a fancy Canva thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like if a client texts me, it was like, that was bad-ass, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like people engage in that or, you know, and then I also post like, I keep to a minimal, anything that's like news, mortgage guidelines, updates. I do sprinkle those in.
Cause like, especially if I feel like it's actually important and relevant, I'm not just like posting it for randomness. I'm posting it because I'm like, I think people actually probably should know something about this, but I've tried to also communicate it in a way that's like not just... But But you conforming limits. Yeah, yeah. Everyone loves the loan limit Everybody loves the loan limits.
Like as if anybody even knows what the hell that means, which no one does know what that means, by the way. So if you are going to talk about that, talk about it in a way that actually helps people understand what you're posting. Obviously, I mean, maybe you're posting it for real today. Just if that's the audience you're trying to post to, they may understand it, but the consumer doesn't understand it. Right. I know you're doing a lot with AI as well, man. So talk a little bit about AI, man.
I know that's a hot topic. So how are you using AI to, I guess, make your life easier? Like are you using it in business, personal? What's that sort of like? Yeah. A little bit of everything. Probably about two months ago is when I actually like finally started like, okay, I'm going to get on chat GPT. I paid for like the chat GPT for membership like for six months ago, $20 a month is coming out of the account. And then finally I was like, I just started using it. Like, how do I actually start
using it? Because I think a lot of people, and probably many people listening to this is like, it sounds like a good idea. It seems great. And we kind of talked about this earlier, too. Like, I'm sure there's all these uses for it. Like, how do I actually use it? So I kind of made a commitment to myself kind of tying back to the consistency theme. I was like, I'm going to use chat GPT every single day, at least once.
So like when I log in in the morning, I just open chat GPT, just like open my email inbox and my task list and my LOS. I just open it up and it's like going to use it for something today. Even if it's something as simple as, you know, help me pick a good emoji for this social media post or help me write the social media posts or write it longer, write it shorter. It doesn't do a great job always of... It's not going to just perfectly write something for me.
Even though I created a custom GPT that's supposed to take my voice and my brand and try to write it, it's just not going to do it. But it may give me one extra idea or say something in a different way that I'm like, Oh yeah, I like that better. Right. I use it for mortgage guidelines. So I uploaded the mortgage guidelines to my chat GPT and I'll quickly search something there and I can get an answer more quickly.
in in the can be hit or miss if it's truly accurate or not, but quick enough for me to know like, Oh yeah, I recognize that's legit. I'm not like fully trusted in it yet. Probably the thing I like to do the most is taking videos and just taking the transcripts and upload transcripts to either let it summarize it. So now I can like review a whole meeting that I missed or something quickly, or, you know, write a caption or a post or a summary about this transcription.
One thing we've done internally with our team is get all of our like coaching calls and sales trainings and stuff. And we upload all the transcripts to a GPT. And now like you could ask it a question, what's a good strategy for an LO to talk to a realtor for the first time? Oh, well, you know, Tyler Hodgson recommends that you do this. And you're like, oh, wow, like it's getting a real answer from an expert LO instead of just some generic thing that you may find on Google. Right.
But again, it's like, to me, is that a real use case for an LO? Like, is an LO going to go in there and like type that in to hear how to host an open house or how to cold call a realtor? Maybe not. So a lot of it right now is just kind of learning and testing. And when can I use it? When can I not use it? Things like Excel reports, I'll just upload Excel or data and like try to ask it something funky with it.
Like, can you help me identify this or that or, you know, certain trends or thresholds or data points or filter it into some way. So yeah, I'm really just like at this point, if I can try to use chat GPT every single day and try some new things here or there, I'll kind of learn what works good and what doesn't work. Right. And six months and 12 months and 18 months from now, I'm going to be really freaking good at chat GPT.
Just I'll probably look at what I did in chat GPT initially and be like, that was stupid. That was dumb. It's like our posts and our videos. But two or three years from now, I'm going to be a chat GPT expert, AI expert. I mean, you know, I say chat GPT, but you know, I'm talking anything, you know, posts of AI.
And there's going to be loan officers and real estate agents that like they still haven't created their account and logged in and by the you know light years ahead of them on using this tool like we know it'll be a good tool now it's just kind of learning what is it best to use for we talked a little bit earlier like you know from your perspective what do you use in ai for? I use it a lot. A couple of different platforms.
I use Opus Clip. So basically these long form podcasts, I actually upload a long form podcast to Opus Clip. It edits it, turns it into short for me. And so I can post that a couple of times a week and I don't have to pay for an editor. It's like, I don't know, a hundred bucks a year for that platform. It's not perfect. Again, a lot of these platforms aren't perfect. They're going to have hallucinations. They're going to mess stuff up.
But man, a year ago, it would have been considerably harder to edit a long form podcast. I tried having people find good clips, but it was either like you pay a lot of money to get these clips done for someone who is native to the US or you have to basically pick the clips for them, tell them exactly what they need to clip, exactly how you want them designed, exactly what the transcript is. And it's like, okay, after all of that amount of time, I might as well edit it myself.
So there's that platform. I use ChatGPT almost every day as well. I use a combination of ChatGPT plus another platform called Cloud to basically script out my YouTube videos that I've been doing. And so that's been pretty cool. Again, none of this is 100%. I use Cloud a lot for my long form posts. Same as you, I upload, you know, transcripts and you know, go ahead, look at other YouTube channels and see, oh, this is a good script. I like the way they do it.
Upload, you know, basically get all the transcripts uploaded into something like cloud, analyze their writing style, analyze their speaking style, and able to use that to basically create, you know, better scripting and things like that. Upload, youpload thousands of viral TikTok clips or TikTok hooks. And then say, Hey, help me come up with some more based off of what you've analyzed. There's a lot of ways you can do that. I basically took the 5 top podcasts that I had that I wanted to do.
I took the transcripts, uploaded them in there, and then was able to create some booking emails that I was going to start using. But I've just been too busy with just people that I found on social media that I haven't even been able to start using those, but some pretty cool things that you can do with it. And ultimately it comes down to what you talked about. Cause I did the same thing when I first started, I didn't like it because I was like the output suck. It doesn't speak in my voice.
Like I didn't know how to basically program it, prompt it, whatever you want to call it. So there's some ways. And you know, I guess a little shout out, I am dropping a video on Monday, which by the time this podcast drops, it's been there. So go to the loans on a man, YouTube channel. There's going to be a chat training that will probably blow people's minds because you're really, I mean, this is a lot of things that I've learned is like, you have to ultimately train it on
who you are, right? Talk about the business, what your business name is, you know, give it like the pains and the desires of your market, you know, like little things like that. Frameworks for like TikTok videos need to have a framework. You need a hook. What's the hook. The hook is like the first part of the video. That's going to get people enticed. So you tell it, Hey, follow this framework. I want to teach you the framework to do viral Tik TOK scripts.
So, you know, you do a hook body call to action and you tell exactly what it should be in each of these sections. All of a sudden the outputs get way better than they're just generic outputs. So thinking about it from that perspective, like you have to train it to get the outputs. The problem with it is if you don't know what a good TikTok is, you don't know what a good hook is. You don't know good marketing. You're just going to think it's good.
So like my suggestion is you got to get good copywriting. You got to get good at understanding what a good TikTok is. Most people are doing, hi, my name is Luke and I'm a mortgage broker. You've already lost the consumer. You've already lost the person viewing because you talked about yourself for eight seconds and no one cares about you. They care about what is it in it for me.
So again, just some of those things there, it's like AI is a little scary because it's going to just have people putting out crappy content because they don't know what good content looks like. And that's the scary part to me. So Yeah. It's not going to be smart enough to turn crappy content into good content. Well, and crappy content into good content. Well, and people need to know, like people need to know the difference between good and bad content.
So I have done a lot of studying for copywriting. I've written social media posts for years. So what I was able to do is I was able to upload my own version of all of my posts that I'd done. So, Hey, emulate this and just basically do something like, Hey, what did you notice about the way you wrote it versus the way I wrote it? You know, what can I tell you to write exactly like I do? And over time, it got better.
What I found was Cloud just did a lot better job right out the box without needing all that additional prompting. So I started using Cloud a lot more for that type of style posts. But there's an unlimited chatbot that you can build with AI that literally has good conversations back and forth. It takes a little bit of work, but you can do it. There's an endless possibility, man, with AI. And there's people that are much, much, much, much smarter than me that are doing crazy things with AI.
I'm just using the products right out of the box, but some people are programming their own bots, things like that. I have a buddy who created his own basically like underwriter, right? So kind of like what you do with the GPT, but just better, right? He built it into the backend of open AI and he has like all of the guidelines uploaded for Fannie, Freddie, all that kind of stuff. So it's like pretty legit almost every single time.
You can kind of train it over time to get better and all that kind of stuff. So again, there's an unlimited amount of ways that you can use AI and it's pretty exciting, but kind of scary at the same time. It is what it is. So I like to sort of like closing these podcasts out with some sort of strategy tactics, something that loan officers can go out there today, or let's just say you were getting started again today.
What would you suggest a loan officer to go out there today to try to get business basically as soon as possible? So this is something I did just a couple of weeks ago that had pretty good success. And it seems basic. It seems simple, but I searched some real estate agents using Redder. You can use MMI, Modex, Redder, whatever one of the softwares you want to look up, agent production.
And I found some agents in different counties that had a certain number of buy sides in the last six months and last 12 months. I was really focusing on those where I saw they didn't have as much in the 12 months as they did the six months.
So they're more up and coming, you know if you try to send a cold call or email blast whatever to like a top agent hey they already have someone they're established with someone right here you are they're maybe not going to respond to it but if you can do an analysis pull like two spreadsheets maybe chat gpt can help with this i did try to chat gpt and i had too much data. Yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to figure out how to do it in AI.
But if I take a 12-month list and a six-month list, and I say, point out to me the names that appear, you know, they have more per month on the six-month list than they do the 12-month list. That shows me someone who's in an uptrend. And then I messaged those people and I just said, hey, you know, sorry for the random friend request. I sent them a friend request. Social. Yeah, social. And then waited for them to accept. I came back two days later and like saw who all accepted.
So I sent maybe 10 friend requests, got maybe 10 accepted, maybe eight. And then I sent those ones messages and said, I was pulling some production data. You know, I saw you're one of the top ranked realtors in the County, you know, great job. Sorry for the random friend request.
I just like to be connected with other top performers in the area i assume that we'll probably run into each other sometime sooner later on a transaction whether the same buyer or a different buyer or something like that and i got really good response from those three of them were like oh where'd you get that list from like especially if they're newer they don't really know where to find the production they're like oh how high ranked was i they may not realize like they were number six
in the County in the last six months. Cause they're like such a new realtor. They may not know how high they ranked. So I then scheduled a follow-up zoom meeting with them. I'm like, let me show you, I'll log you in. Like I logged into my redder and like type their name, like show them their production and show them where they ranked. And like that just built me a a couple new relationships that I didn't really have. And so now I'm just, I'm true and false to those relationships.
So that's probably a good way to like, just filter, find kind of this target audience, you know, using some data and then try to connect with them and, you know, continue to progress them through that sales process of like building this relationship, giving them some value and see if you'll be a good fit to work together. Man. I love that. That's a unique one that I haven't heard so far in terms of that.
Because I mean, you talked about earlier, like you work with people that are more up and coming and what most people try to focus on again is sort of the top producers and all those guys are getting hit up by everybody. And the other thing too, is like, why don't we work with a new agent? I'm like, well, you don't know if that agent is going to be the next big thing.
Right. And so I like the way you did that with the six versus 12 months, because that really does show who's actually growing in this market. Because a lot of people, man, you pull up their 12 or 14 month production and they look pretty good. But then you look at the last 6 months, like, oh, maybe not so much. They had a bump over there still towards the end of 2022. They were still doing some decent business, but 2023 kicked them in the teeth.
And so they may not have adjusted or they may still be... I mean, unfortunately, in this market, a lot of people just hoped that it would change and they hoped that the rates would come down. They hoped that the inventory would stop and they didn't really change the way they were doing business.
And honestly, I feel like the people that got affected the least by the downturn have been the people that were consistent on platforms like social media, especially loan officers, because a lot of loan officers got sort of stuck with the fact that they only had five or 10 agents that they worked with. And while that worked really well in everything up until 2021, it didn't really work in 22 and 23.
Because all of a sudden, those five agents are down 60% in their production, which means you're down 60% of your production, and you have nowhere else to get the deals from. And so I mean, one of the things that I talk about all the time is like, you need to have a consistent way to get business. If you want to be referral only, again, I'm a marketer. I love referrals. You need to have a systematic way to get more referrals.
How do you do that? You need to have more conversations with more real estate agents regularly. Stop depending on four people. I mean, unless you just want to be up and down and not have any control of your business. But I don't know. My recommendation is always be reaching out to new real estate agents. Yeah. I'm constantly replenishing my pool of agents because some of my agents who were my top producers two, three, four, five years ago, they're not anymore.
Like they're doing more listings or they just not hustling or they get so much rev share from their brokerage. They don't need to do I got to always be adding more Yeah, absolutely, man. So if someone wanted to learn a little bit more about you, connect with you online, what's the best place for them to find you? Connect on social. I'm most active on Instagram and Facebook. My Instagram is at Chief Loan Officer. Facebook, you can search my name, Tyler Hodgson.
And I'm on LinkedIn and TikTok as well. But primarily Facebook and Instagram is where I do most of my Tyler And I'm best, on LinkedIn Hodgson. and TikTok as But primarily Facebook well. and Instagram is where I do most of my best content, I feel like. So I encourage everyone to just, hey, if you want to learn social, watch what other people are doing. If you're seeing posts and you notice you like them and you interact with them, watch what I'm doing and just copy what I'm doing.
Copy any of my posts if you want to. right, right. Yeah. Well, and what I'll say is this is like, also when you first get started with something like social is don't expect the same results, right? Like maybe you got 30 comments or whatever, you know, 40 likes on a post, but it's like, the truth is you've been building the consistency. You've been building sort of that reciprocal relationships with people by engaging with their content over time.
And so thinking that you can just put up a post pretty similar to what Tyler put, you're going to get crickets mostly, but it's okay. My big takeaways from today was obviously we had a lot of sort of value bombs in here, but it came down to consistency, consistency in video, consistency in speaking in front of people, consistency in social media. Like all of this stuff comes down to consistency over an extended period of time. And that's when people win, right?
It comes down to doing the fundamentals over and over and over again. And I know that sounds unsexy, but that's the hack. That's the Can I add one more thing that like... Yeah, absolutely. We didn't mention this the whole time, but I just thought of it. And like, when we're talking about social media, we're talking about content creation and what are you posting? And like, to me, that's only half of my social media strategy. The other half is me engaging.
So you can't just get on social media and just post and engage with everybody else. Like Luke, you're great at this. Like you're always commenting on people's stuff. You're sharing stuff. You're responding to the people who commented on your comments. So just as much as I know, I need to post a certain amount of times per day. I also have to log on and like comment on people's stuff. And I just see it in scroll.
It's like, if I see it and I stop and I read it, I'm going to comment and I try to get somewhat decent comments. So don't forget, it's not just posting. It's also engaging with those people as well. Yeah. A hundred percent. Right. The infamous post and ghost that people talk about, right. It's like so many times we think that, Oh, we just post and like, and I see people like, you know, and I get it.
Like sometimes you kind of get busy and stuff, but some people like just never respond to comments. And I'm like, who do you think you are? Like these people are commenting on your post and you don't respond to their comments ever. Like I get it. Sometimes you're not going to respond to every single comment, but like, I just think that's disrespectful to people. Most of the time, this is like a congratulations.
I don't always have to go through like, you know, thank you to like 500 people that said that. Right. It's just like, all right, I'll just love your comment. I love your comment. I love your comment. But yeah, I agree, man. Engaging with people. I mean, that's the way you build relationships. You don't build relationships by just posting and, you know, being on your high and mighty horse. I just post content and I'm a content creator, but I don't respond to people.
Maybe at a certain level, you can get away with that. If you grow to a certain point where you really don't have capacity and you're going viral every time or whatever, but that's not what's going to typically happen in the mortgage industry. So yeah, be consistent and engage, man. So thank you so much for your time today, Tyler. That was a fantastic episode. And for anybody who is listening that is interested in flipping the status quo on real estate agents, go to flipthestatusquo.com.
Thank you so much for your time today, Tyler. That was a fantastic episode. And for anybody who is listening and that is interested in flipping the status quo on real estate agents, go to flip the status quo.com. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day. Thank you for tuning into the loans on demand podcast on loans on demand podcast.com.