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 because today we have a special guest, Tano Capadani. Capadani. All right. I got it. I got it. I was like, I probably should have had it in front of me, but man, I appreciate you being here. He's a CEO, founder of Easy Fundings.
He's a total cool guy, but also a big top producer does a lot of volume personally and then also runs a very successful mortgage lender broker correspondent we got it we got it all right you know i'll let you introduce yourself man welcome to the show how you doing excellent thank you for having me here look yeah man so give us a little background man who are you how long you've been in the industry and what sort of keeps you in this crazy crazy man it's crazy in a way but in the
same time it's fun you know a couple cycles I started in 2023 so I mean it's been a fun ride I'll be honest I mean 2008 was a little bit you know bumpy as we all know but you know what it did a lot of people went out of business so we you know kept grinding and grinding 2009 2010 to to know run. Then it slowed down a little bit again and then another great run. So, I mean, it's a type of business that if we put eight hours a day into it, the average will be okay.
So I'm happy that I'm part of it. Man, that's awesome. And for anybody who doesn't know, Tano speaks like 17 languages. He's just very cultured, man. So how did you learn all those languages? I know, I think you immigrated here. Tell me a little bit about that background, man. I'm just always interested because I grew up in Ecuador.
So obviously from my perspective, have a different perspective on life and everything in general, because, you know, if you're born and raised in the U.S., you kind of like see life through different lenses. And when you have different life experiences, it gives you a different perspective on life, right? So just give us a little background on that, man. I man. I actually came to the States in 1998 as an exchange student. Oh, no way. Wow, that's awesome.
I come from a South Europe country called Albania, a beautiful little country, about 3 million people inside, probably a couple million people outside of it. So I mean, we came here. Back then, there was some, you know, turmoil was going on, the government, you know, there's that civil war. We had a few things. So my brother actually came in before me in 1996. So I followed him in 1998 and best decision that I made, I mean, honestly, I came to LAX. I saw the fog, I saw the planes.
I'm like, all right, this is far as the language is going, as the culture, you know, when you're in Europe, all these countries are next to each other. So it's easier. You always have TV channels, let's say, in Spanish and Italian and English and French and Greek. You know, you kind of pick up all these things. And of course, it's up to the person to go to the next and practice them and study them and all that. I love that. And so, you know, that's awesome, man. You said 2003 is when you started
in the industry, right? So you're 21 years now yeah what was it like first man that's great question luke very very good question so when i first started i was actually working in talent restaurant i was oh nice and i oh this guy come in changing cars like every week right and i'm like oh man i gotta ask him what it obviously it did me 20 30 lunch. Only two or three people usually in this party, right? I got to ask him, what do you do? He's like, in the mortgage business.
I'm like, man, I have to come and work for you. He's like, well, you want to buy a house? No, no, I said, I'm coming to work for you. He goes, what make you think you can do it? And I told him, you know what, if you can, I for sure will as well. Why not? You know, he looked at me like this, like probably a couple of years older than me only. He said, you know, this is the kind of attitude that I need, you know, and come on, you're really high. So I go and see him the next day.
And I had absolutely no idea. I was studying at Cal Poly Pomona back then. I had a major political science, minor economics. I was continuing with my studies, which I did finish, by the way. I went to his office and I see this big space and like a boiler room, people making calls. It was kind of call center type of thing. And they would have only two or three closers to basically pass it on and they would close it.
And all I can tell you that I woke up in that office, basically going the first one to go and the last one to leave, making those calls. In two months, I was able to manage people that were there for two or three years. Wow. And in six months, I was a go-to guy for everything. I even replaced the sales manager. And after that, three, four months down the road, I did leave because I did not believe in certain practices that they had. And of course, we're in the people's business.
I truly believe at any kind of stage you are in life, Luke, it doesn't matter if you're too big, too small.
It's all about win--win situations meaning that if we do a business transaction with you if you're not winning out of it then we shouldn't be doing it even if i can win more than you do right or if it's a family member if it's a relationship it cannot be a never one-way street so i always have this on me for my humble means when i come we always take care of people we always you know if i don't give if i don't say anything nice i'm not going to do it i try as much as i can.
And in this case scenario, if I see that the people I'm taking care of, I saw some practices that did not align with my ethics and my character, and I left. And when I started another company as a mortgage, a small shop, probably seven, 10 LOs, I started with them in 2004. And I can tell you that I took off probably in a closing 15, 17 deals a month. Wow. First year, you know, I remember sitting for the young yellows. They're here on the call right now and probably listening to this podcast.
I can tell you, you know, we had to do yellow pages back then. There was no Facebook. There was no Instagram. There was no podcast. There was no viral videos. There was no cool content and all that stuff. Back then, few people even had business cards. A lot of these guys had yellow pages, right? So we used to call from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then I used to go to Cal Poly Pomona from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays.
So I would go to school and I would dial four hours by the time Cal Poly and the office in China was very closed. So I would do all these things nonstop, right? And at the end of the day, I mean, I never saw, I never had a clear vision because you do not know. What I had in my mind is that I'm going to do my best and let's see where this takes me. And I can tell you after the first year at this new company, which was 2004, I my first year was like probably $230,000. I don't remember.
And I never look back. I'm not trying to bring the financials here and I did this. say, oh, But it's about the mindset that I'm stressing on that it's not what tool and what business you use or what business plan do you have. bad do you want it, basically. Yeah, I love that. And the grind is real. And the fact that you put in that work is everything, man.
And interestingly enough, when I'm doing these interviews, I'm finding more and more that people that are on these interviews that are top producers, a lot of them started in some sort of a boiler room scenario, right? They started pounding the phones, cold calling, door knocking, doing some of those things that are just hard versus maybe some of them that started in 2020 and 2021, they're realizing that this business isn't always that easy, right?
I mean, because obviously, 2020, 2021, everybody thought they were the best loan officer in the world. And then we got humbled, right? I mean, a lot of people got humbled in 2022, 2023. In that time, you're still producing at a very high level. You're still doing a lot of business. I know you do a lot of purchase, but over those years, like, what would you say some of the lessons you learned from that perspective was just doing the fundamentals
day in and day out? Or what was the main thing that drove a lot of that business to you? Okay, great question, Luke. So I understood a little bit late. I would say last about six years or so, even though I've been in business for a very long time. When you are a perfectionist, you tend to have a little bit of that in you that I do it better. I don't want to hire. I'll make the call. I'll do this. I'll do that. Unfortunately, scalability, I wish I saw that sooner, right? I'll give you an example.
Let's say for every LO, let's say right now that they have one or two or three loans, I was the guy with closing 10. I had one assistant the whole time. If I had three or four or five, I would have closed 50 because the market dictated that much. Not because I'm the smartest guy around, I could get all the business. It's not that. There was so much business going on, but unfortunately, I put limitations on myself, not because of my abilities, it's because you cannot do it.
I don't care how smart you are as a loan officer. If you close more than 10 loans a month with an assistant, I'll be surprised. It just doesn't happen. You need an army around you in order for you to excel. And I tell these guys, I said, every time I have an interview for recruiting and this and that, I'll tell these guys, I said, listen, I'm a real estate broker in the area. Let's say I'll give you 20 loans right now. What would you do? You would choke. It would take one week to submit
every single one of them, right? If you give me 20 loans today, by tomorrow, everything is disclosed and submitted. Why? Because of the system that I created to make sure that it's scalable, it's efficient. There's an ecosystem where everybody does their job. And I understood this late, but as I say, better late than never, right? Absolutely, man. And interestingly enough, we just had a training yesterday. We talked about that concept and my buddy Skyler said, most loan
officers are grinders, right? Which is great. Build a good business or you can build a great income off of being a grinder. And it sounds like you were a grinder for a very long period of time, but most loan officers don't have a vision, right? What's the vision of what I'm trying to accomplish and grow and things like that, right? And so you get to a certain point. And then some people like to virtue signal about how much business they do without help. Right.
I mean, there's one lady that loves troll my ads and other people's ads. Like how many assistants do you have? How many of this, how many yet? Cause she does a hundred million with two assistants. Right. Cool. Like do a lot of production, probably hate your life. Clearly you do because you're commenting on our ads. Funny enough is like the systems and processes is what allows you to have scale and also to live a life that's absolutely worth living.
Because I mean, you know, yeah, I guess if you want to grind 14 hour days, you can, and if that's what makes you happy, fine. But if it's not, and you're miserable, then put together systems. So what sort of shifted for you? I mean, if you did that, you said six, seven years ago, you started to shift into was that kind of when you started easy fundings, or easy fundings been around longer than that?
Or did you already have a team and you were just, you know, for yourself, you were kind of resistant to it? What was that sort of transition look like? So I actually, Easy Funding was created, I opened the company in 2011. We got all licensed and everything in the end, but it started operating. It takes about two, three months to get approved with, you know, different brokers and all that. So January, 2012, we were actually live and I was still obviously originating more than recruiting.
We were probably two or three loan officers in this company, one processor or one assistant, I can't remember, but four or five people total, right? So as the company grows, I mean, I always had the LO mentality, but I can tell you that being a good loan officer doesn't necessarily make you a great businessman. Yes. Unless you work on yourself to sharpen certain skills, certain leadership skills, more patient now, more understanding towards your people, towards the lows.
So intended to have a 55, 60 LOS, right? I never intended to have, you know, heavy producers on my team. It was never my plan. I was closing loans, I'm making money and all that. But what I noticed is that as experience goes by, as you perfect, basically you master this profession, you attract people no matter what they come to you. RAOUL PAL, Right. SHARMINI PERIES, So when they come to you, they say, hey, man, can I be part of your team?
So what do you say? You cannot say no, of course, come on. Then another one comes up, another one comes up, another one comes up. So as years go by, I'm gradually switching to less in my own production and more to my people, right? So, I mean, where it's gonna go, I don't know. Probably we're gonna have another 300, 400 of those. Another numbers guy, meaning that I don't wanna have everybody with a license come over, a thousand people and whoever produces great.
I made sure the same ecosystem that I have as a loan officer, when I created it, is going to be the same thing, or it is the same thing, for every single loan officer that joined Easy Fundings. So that's extremely important. Because if I were to hire somebody tomorrow, cannot provide what I'm preaching and what I'm doing, I fail, right? Right. So every single day now, I make sure that every department is on tag, everything gets improved.
So I can give the same opportunity that nobody gave me years ago to change these people's lives and make them feel that, you know what, they have a good home. And also on top of that, they have a great support. Man, I love that. And I think that's huge, right? And we were talking about this before you jumped on, but there's kind of this curse of the one to two, three loan and one loan officer, because what ends up happening is they kind of go through these phases where like, I need business.
So they're going to go prospect, they're going to do sales activities. And then they go through these periods where like, oh crap, this loan has fallen apart. And I only have two or three loans in my pipeline. So I got to make sure this gets in line. And so you spend all this time processing the loan and making sure you're chasing conditions and talking to the borrower and doing all these things that really are not making you money, right?
Yeah, I agree they're making you money because you're closing a loan, but you know, it's forcing you to forego the sales activities. So how did that shift happen? I mean, it sounds like you were just grinding on that the whole time, but how do you sort of help a loan officer shift out of that mentality? Like, I got to make sure this loan closes to like, Hey, I'm a salesperson first. I need to make sure that these loans get submitted.
And you know, obviously you have a support system for that, but for loan officers that don't have that support system, my opinion is go somewhere where they do have that support system. Cause you're not going to grow beyond that point. If you don't relinquish some of that control, right? Absolutely. So that's a great question again. So the thing is this loop, I don't know what it is, but everybody wants to make a million dollars plus in mortgage business. Right, right, right.
It's like the magic number, right? Right, right. And the way I look at it is this. And the way I break it down as well is this. In one year, we have, what is it, 50 weeks, let's just say 2,000
working hours, right? So if you want to make a million dollars and you divide it by 2,000, what is it, 500 bucks an hour, more or less right so on a 500 bucks an hour is it gonna give me a 500 an hour if i call a bar for an updated pay now activity is going to give me 500 bucks an hour me calling it congratulations your escrow open which i do that by the way in my second call but if it does open but the problem is this we cannot be cheap i'm sorry to say we cannot be cheap.
I'm sorry to say, we cannot be limited in our mind that, hey, I cannot afford it. You have to believe yourself. You have to have the mindset of, I'm going to go get it, because you have to staff by design. You cannot staff when it's too late. When it's too late, you want to stop dollar. You messed up. The last six months of last year, brand new office. I had people coming in, training, LOAs, the database manager. I'm doing all kinds of crazy. Everybody's on you crazy. It's OK. It's coming.
I just need five, six months on positive, and we'll make up for whatever we paid for the year. Nothing wrong with that. And the reason why I bring that up is because we cannot have the scarce mentality of, hey, you know what? I cannot afford $3,000. Yes, you can. If you're closing two or three loans a month, and you're making $5,000, $6,000 I cannot afford 3,000. Yes, you can.
If you're closing two, three loans a month and you're making five, six, whatever, $1,000 per loan, let's say 12, $13,000, you can afford a $3,000 a system, right? And now if you go to five, six, then you can add more, then you add more support. You have to believe in yourself. If that's what you want, some people are happy with two, three loans a month.
I can't tell you to I But if you want to scale, you have to have a scalability mentality, what I was talking earlier, you need people around you, you need an ecosystem around you, or you can plug and play somebody who has it, or you can create one as well. It's not a rocket science, right? I'm not the first one that did it. I obviously did some coaching in the past. I kind of switched my mentality of having two, three people only versus an army, and things are much better, much easier.
Do I have expenses? Absolutely. Am I going to cry over them? No. What I need to do, I need to bring more business in. Yeah. Close more loans. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the concept of smaller piece of a bigger pie, right? I mean, you know, so many people are like so caught up in like, I want, you know, I remember talking to a guy who's like, I won't do a loan for less than three or 400 basis points. Right. And I'm looking at his production. I'm like, did you close one loan a month?
Of course you need fricking three or 400 pips. Like what if you instead got paid 200 bips and closed three loans a month, all of a sudden you're actually getting a pay raise. Well, that's a lot more work. I'm like, okay, well, whatever. I mean, that's the model you want. Fine. Like you want to close one loan a month and make 300, 400 bips on it, like more power to you. But you know, there's better ways I think. And you're also not betting over the borrower like that as well.
So, you know, kind of interesting stuff that can happen from there. What I'm interested in too, as well as like you talked about, you know, leadership, right? Like you have to develop, right? And it's funny because I've been working with executive coach and, you know, the transition from sort of entrepreneur to CEO is like quite a shift, right? He's like, honestly, like you're not really a CEO, right? Yeah, you have the title of CEO, right?
You manage people, but like the truth is, here's the things like over the next six to 12, 24 months, we'll turn you into a real CEO that understands how to manage people, that understands how to lead people, that has these processes that's tracking, like some of that kind of stuff. It's like, it's been pretty sort of game changing, sort of that transition. But I think that's what a lot of loan officers face is like being a good loan officer, you're good. But the truth is, how do you get
the best out of your people? Right? How do you create the process and systems to help them thrive within the system? Right? Because there's not everybody wants to be a loan getter, right? Like most people don't want to be a loan getter. Most people don't want to be an entrepreneur, although it is glorified right now to be an entrepreneur, but or the hardest damn thing I've ever done.
So it's not necessarily for the faint of heart, but if you do have these goals, like you do have to think about it from that perspective. So I love that. How have you developed that leadership over the years? Has it been from coaching? Was it sort of on the fly, just kind of learning or what's that sort of look like? Well, I mean, as I mentioned, my intentions always have been extremely good for people around me, from family to business.
So that always something that attracted people always have been extremely good for people around from family to business. So me, that always something that attracted people towards my path, right? Or vice versa, if I felt the same towards them as well. So having people who care and look up to you, it's a different level of, it just makes you wanna elevate yourself, right?
It's not like, oh my God, I went through this coaching, one class, two days in Vegas, I did this, and I'm a motivational speaker or whatever right right it's nothing to do with that it has to do with the responsibility that others that trust you make you lift up sure if a book of course i read audiobooks i mean music is very real i don't remember that music last time in the car but that's not it because those are just simply daily reminders and all that, right? Right, right.
But most importantly, it's the relationship that you create with the people and you care about them as well. Now, I had been blessed in my company, I'll tell you, I have about three to four or five key people that they take very, very essential roles. It allows me to spend time more with the It allows lows. me to spend some time in my It business. allows me to spend time more with the lows. It allows me to spend some time in my business. It allows me to do other things as well.
And we do have our daily hurdles. We do have our weekly meetings. We have our sales meetings. We have our monthly operational meetings of our company. So there is consistent things going on. We have a reporting, everything, what's happening, what's going on, this and that. So I've been blessed by having as well good people around me. And I can tell you, my intentions can be the best. I can be smart. I can be persistent, right mindset. Without the right people, my friend, we got nothing.
And I'm proud to say that a good team behind you makes you want to do wonders, makes you do things that you never even thought I could do myself. Yeah, man, I 100% agree with that. And it's been a journey. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it's also one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done as well is like, you know, helping a team grow and growing alongside with them and things like that. But I agree, it's, I'm not a very systems oriented person.
And, you know, most sales and marketing type people aren't, right? I mean, you know, and so it's like bringing in who's the operator. If you're familiar with traction, it's the integrator and the visionary, right? It's like, who is that person that like operations manager, COO, whatever you want to call it, whatever it looks like within your specific organization, but there's going to be someone that likes to do the detail-oriented work.
A lot of times like processors are going to be a lot more detail-oriented. You know, LOAs probably will be a little bit more detail-oriented than the actual loan officers out getting business, which is okay because we have strengths that we need to be relying on. And again, one of the things I just continue to learn is I'm not good at things and I don't want to do a lot of those things. It really burns me out.
And so finding the right people, put them in the right position where they're doing the thing that lights them up, like doing spreadsheets and like tracking stuff. Like I just want to shoot myself in the head. Like I don't want to do that stuff, but guess what? I got someone on my team that loves that kind of stuff that loves putting the systems, loves building SOPs that loves like managing people and making sure people get their projects done. I don't want to do that.
I want to coach them and you know, Hey, you know what, let's do a sales huddle. Let's freaking, you know, let's review a call, like little things like that. Let's do some marketing videos. Let's grow the business, but I don't want to have to deal with a lot of those intricacies. And so, you know, that's been one of the biggest learning lessons for me is I, a lot of times at the beginning, I did the same thing. I try to control everything.
And then what I did was I went from trying to control everything to over delegating and trying to delegate everything off my plate. Like, I just want to chill. I'm just going to be the, you know, the face. And it's like, well, you know, you still got to get your hands dirty. Sometimes you still got to get in the weeds. Like you talked about, you still have logins to these platforms. You still understand how to use these platforms, but you're not doing them every single day, right? Absolutely.
That's awesome. And let's talk a little bit about like from a production perspective. I mean, you do, I don't know exactly the numbers, but I know you typically do over a hundred million in personal production a year. Where does that come from? I mean, obviously you've built your business over the years. How do you sort of have these relationships? I'm assuming a lot of that's referrals. Yes. So what I did is this 2008, what happened is that, you know how the
market went completely dry, right? So what I did, I started actually towards the end, I started working as an in-house lender for this real estate offices, right? Because obviously the lenders were out of business, they were the countrywide back then, or I mean, big players, right? All the subprime stuff. Yeah. So I started as, you know, I got an office, okay, 150 agents. All right, so it took me three, four months to, you know, do my thing.
Do the candies, I used to sit in the little thing, I used to have little chocolates and candies, so they would just come and take one and I would say hi, right? Like a honey to attract the bee, right? In a way. Of course, of course.
So I would do like teachings as far as, you know, know hey what do we do in this case and investment properties so this is a new program this lender came with this and it came with us i would also go into like a little bit mastermind session with what they're doing for the business how they're getting it what kind of help can give broken houses and again we're would 2008 we were talking about what is it 16 plus years ago right so there was no tools back then that we have now.
Now, what I did, though, again, being a man of integrity, hard work, and putting other people's first, everybody can see that, right? Everybody can see my work ethics. Everybody can see my 100% closing ratio.
I can tell if people used to call me 11 p.m. or text message boom boom agents okay I got you I was always on call I'm telling you if I respond five seconds later than the text is sent or the call I still have it today right unless obviously I'm talking to you here right any normal environment I like to respond because every text every call is as important regardless of his personal business that means you show the other person you care no matter
how busy we are so i always had these little things on me but as i grew over time i started getting more people we started recovering more real estate agents more real estate agents but then you have you know 800 to a thousand of them right and now i we were put in a second or third position for two or three builders in the past as well actually our second position now in a builder and And guess what happens? You know, these guys come in and, oh, 45 rates ratio. I'm sorry, I can't touch it.
We can go up to 56.9% ratios, right? Sure. Problem. We can fix it. Or non-KM or 12 months, whatever the case might be. So it's all about the relationships that I created in the past. Again, I'm a veteran. I mean, I've been for quite some time working and doing these things, loans. But what I did, though, is the last two, three years, what I'm doing, I'm actually, if I have an office that they call me to be part of them, I actually send an aloha, put them there.
You guys are hungry because I'm not going to go and sit there. There's no chance on that. Slowly giving whatever I built for myself to You guys who deserve the most. If I see somebody showing up every day, driving an hour from a different city, coming and working in the office, making calls, doing this and hustling, he deserves in the office, right? Not somebody who, you know, does gym at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, right? So these are the people that I actually look after.
And I want to make sure I'm going to grow them. I'm going to build them so they can have the same outcome as me or even more. and I you said, though. I mean, you showed up and you gave value. And honestly, like, yeah, I mean, you know, I like to clown on people bringing donuts. But the truth is like, that's still a form of value. I think you should bring more than just donuts. But that's cool, right? Like drop off some donuts and tell them about a new product you got.
Drop off some donuts and show them how to freaking rank a video on YouTube. You know, bring right you talked about different programs non-qm dscr things like that that you can bring as value and show people that you are a person but look at this in 2008 i didn't know any better right yeah of course so now it's a little different now i already have the database i already have these people so sure so now what do, I want to make sure that I'm always in front of them three times a week.
Okay. To all my agents, I send them daily rate sheets. Nice. So when they go to an open house, they're going to be, hey, what's the rate today? They already know. Tana sent it to me, and they know by 9 o'clock in the morning. If somebody doesn't get it by 9.30, oh, my God, what's going on? I'm like, reprise. Don't worry. It'll come up.
They're getting worse, but we'll send it to you yeah yeah so but also program of the week we have a lot of zoom calls that we do for our agents so basically we it to one point we had like 48 first-time buyers in a zoom call and this is only market like a week before right there are so many ways again you can do zoom calls you can do first-time buyer, you can blast it through Google search engines, you can do SEOs, you can do all kinds of ways.
But the most important way is that you need to do it. Whatever it is that you do. If I walk into a place to a builder, they already know me. If I walk to a real estate office, the brokerage is not going to tell me to kick it out. So you might have a different approach. You might have to do a little bit more smoothing or whatever the case might be.
But whatever you got to do, you have to get to a point where you're completely comfortable and you have the reputation of closing deals and taking care of people. Until then, we got work to do, you know? and I love that you said that because, I mean, people come to us, I mean, full disclosure, obviously, if you listen to us, you probably know this, but we run a marketing agency that helps loan officers generate leads, go direct to consumer.
And a lot of times people come to us like they're brand new loan officers. And I'm like, no, you do not buy leads. Don't not buy leads for at least the first year. Because what you have to do is you got to get good at closing loans. Because the truth is, if you try to do both the things at the same time, unless you have like extensive experience in a different industry, like, you know, working leads, like you're going to have to learn two very hard things to learn.
How to structure loans, how to do the mortgages, how to, you know, do DTI and LTV and all the kind of crazy stuff that you have to worry about with the mortgage side. In addition to that, it takes time to close deals. So I'm a big believer in the fundamentals or the foundation that you have to build your business off of, but that's not where you stop. Yes, that's the foundation that you build it, but then how do you get more value?
You talked about that, right? It's like the foundation is I answer my phone, I do those things, but I also send them a blast, but I also do webinars, but I also do value, right? And so that is the big key here for anybody who's listening is you have to do the fundamentals. Answer your phone, call people
back in a timely manner, right? You don't have to be as crazy as Tano and his brother who answer in four minutes, but at least respond in a reasonable amount of time and be available for people because the truth is, that's what people are looking for is they're looking for consistency. And then guess what, if you can be that consistent person that's closing loans on time, that's doing those things that has good rates, it has the things that everybody likes to talk about.
And you're also doing these other additional pieces of value. Why are they going to leave you? Absolutely. Some people are trying to jump the gun, they're trying to be social media influencers are trying to do all these things. It's like, if you generate leads, and give them to someone, that's great value. Unless you suck at closing loans. Because if you suck at closing loans, it doesn't matter how many leads you give that real estate agent. That's right.
They're not going to work with you because they know you're not going to close their loans. They know they're not going to close their deals. And that's the foundation that you then build upon to then do those things. Then you want to go on TikTok and reels and do that kind of stuff. Great.
That's your going so good look right now because i'll tell you i mean i'll be honest if you see my instagram it sucks i'm not gonna lie i have somebody i pay they post i don't care for it i mean i should probably i'm not saying that you know i'm 43 years old it's not like i'm 60 i know how to open it we put you know post here and there but i'll tell you one thing what made me unique and this is very very important understanding guidelines i'm going to go a little bit here.
You have to basically master your craft, guys, whoever it is. Sure, yes, agreed. You need to understand how to put all together. I can do a 1003 loan five different ways, five different options. If the client tells me they're being truthful, not misleading me, not by intention, but they just don't know, if I take a 1003 with my head, I already know where it's going, payment, cash or close, everything done. Why? Because I know. I know which investor is going to take this.
I know which investor is going to take that. Whatever relates to this, whatever relates to that. What is an NKM stands for this, whatever NKM. And the reason why, because if I do it at a high level, you learn, learn, learn, learn. At first, I strongly encourage everyone to learn this the way that you want it.
And you can goes on Instagram and can even spell but you're mortgages, a great content you good writer, looking know, you looking guy, gal, know, always making sharp, fun reels and all But when it comes that. to mortgage, you have absolutely zero clue.
And you depend on the company that they think that they're doing, and you keep jumping from place to place to place to The The only thing you were supposed to give to the consumer was the mortgage advice and how to close it and best possible way for the client. And what you did, you just show it on reels and only thing you're a loan what you Unfortunately, the market has changed in the last few years because it's all about appearance, right? Oh my God, this girl or this guy, they seem so cool.
I should ask them. There is not enough education dumped to the public, right? To me, I will take somebody who will take 45 minutes to an hour from A to Z explaining what does it take to buy a house. You have a problem with assets, you have a problem with credit. This is how we fix it. One, two, These three, four. it's buy a guys, You have a problem house. with You have a assets. problem with This is how credit. we fix it. One, two, three, four. These guys, it's not right now.
They make a money in a month or two from now. But this is the type that what public needs. Public doesn't need to see, oh, it's funny. Oh, if you have a mortgage, it hit me up. This, this. They do all kinds of stuff in there and they get deeds. This is the wrong mentality of getting business because you're building on sand, not a solid foundation. When you understand how business works, when you understand how loans get closed, what does it take to close a loan? How many roles are in the process
of closing loans? And then you can master stuff that Luke was talking about. And I think this is agree, man. I mean, one of the things we talk about a lot is prescription without diagnosis malpractice, right? It's just this concept that so many people like do not have a good discovery process. They don't understand specific situations. Like what does the consumer actually want? Right? Like, are you looking to the future? Are you saying, all right, what do you want to accomplish?
Do you want to buy a home in the future? Are you looking to buy investment properties? Like, what are you trying to do? Oh, well then maybe you should do this program. Maybe a two, one buy down makes sense. Maybe two, one buy down doesn't make sense, but don't just throw stuff out there and put them into a cookie cutter solution. And so many people do that, right? Like, I don't know the amount of loan officers are like, well, yeah, 30 year fixed. Maybe that's not the best product for them.
Maybe they should do 15 year fixed. Maybe they should do a seven one arm. Oh man, are you sure you're not a loan officer? Hey man, I just understand what sales is and sales is identifying a problem and providing the solution to the problem, right? So many people think that sales is pitching the thing that you And do. that's not what sales In is. my opinion, that's a bad form of sales, right? So many people think that sales is pitching the thing that you And do.
that's not what sales in is, my opinion, that's a bad form of sales, right? What we do is we're identifying, okay, sir, what is the problem that you have? Do I have the solution to your problem? If I don't, then I'm ethically not going to sell you, right? I'm going to push you somewhere else. Maybe you should go to the credit union, because they do have better line of credit rates than I do. So true.
Right? You know, and so that is what being a true ethical salesperson is, is I'm going to help you find a solution to your problem, whether it's me or not. And so many people do not do that. And I talk about this all the time.
I don't think that this is really the case, but I say that online application is the worst thing to happen to the mortgage industry, not because the online application is a problem because of the habits that have been created by loan officers are too lazy to have a conversation. You talked about 30, 45 minute conversation with someone. I bet you most people aren't even having that. Oh, fill out this application. I'm going to give you the options. All right, here's a 30 year fixed.
Here's a 30 year fixed with a little bit of a credit. Here's a 30 year fixed. If you want to buy down the rate, here's Right? You options. Like, wow. You hit it on the head, but it's so true because I mean, when I have initial call, I'm like, okay, Mr. Luke, you have $20,000 in the bank. You have a seller credit as well for $15,000. So you can buy actually 3.5% FHA. The seller will pay that. Now, I need to ask you, are you cash to close sensitive or are you payment sensitive?
If you're both, you got to give on one. Because if I have $15,000 I can save you, I would rather, I said, if you want to keep the cash, I would still go, instead of going 2-1-by-down, I would save the cash for closing costs. You just come up with some payment. Now, if you don't want to save the cash, you want to dump it to the payment, but I can tell you one thing. We're anticipating from this year to this year, the rates are going to go here.
So the 2-1-by-down might be a good option if you really want a lower payment. That's fine too. But if I'm you, because you told me you'd rather have some cash, I would keep the $15,000 for closing costs. So these are little stuff. I mean, obviously I advise, but I also listen, right? And you said it. If somebody says, I need to run by Don, I'll ask him, can I please know why? Okay. And then I explain, okay, you're right. No problem. Let's do it.
Sometimes they think they get knowledge from other people, which is fine.
So it's extremely important extremely important dissect every single issue and then you provide the solution for it because i know i know so many people are neglecting that conversation or not having that conversation at deep enough level and truth is too like you're missing out on future business as well because one they're kind of forgettable right you're transactional you're not building a relationship you're not understanding the situation then
you don don't know, all right, what happens if they say, Hey, you know what? I'm having a kid, whatever. Like then you can follow up with them that, Oh, you guys need to have a bigger house now. And then the other thing I wanted to touch on is sales, right? I mean, loan officers are so scared to call themselves salespeople. They're like, here's the truth. How many transactions does an average consumer do? Not as many as a loan officer. Correct. Correct. So who's the expert? Who's the expert?
Who knows what the market's doing? Who knows what the rates? Absolutely. Allowing the consumer to make the decision. Yes, obviously, you know, they have to make the decision, but allowing them to run the show and make these decisions based off of gut feel is, I think, neglect, right? That's you being a bad loan officer. If you allow someone to say, nah, you know what? I'm not going to buy.
why not absolutely and I'll tell you what I noticed and obviously as more confident as you become in early stages you still have that oh you know what I don't want to be rude oh yeah yeah sure sure sure but the conversation for many many years has been extremely different now I'm like you know I'll tell you one thing you know I'm the best guy for the job in 21 days you know you'll get your keys you know my is going to ask you for updated stuff.
I make sure I set the expectations you're going to get. Needs list now. Needs list when we get approved. You might have a call. If sometimes there's a I add possibility, things that we underwrite it and see. So try to explain everything through upfront. And we send videos on every milestone update to make sure they know exactly what is a CD, what is an appraisal, what is a loan approval, what is conditional loan approval?
What is CDC and all this stuff that there is a video for all the milestones that get triggered through our sales force. So the more we dumb into our clientele, the less confidence and the better experience becomes for them. This is extremely important. One of my laws come to me and says, Hey man, this guy, he has four loan estimates. He's asking for one for me, but he's being this, he's being that.
I told him, listen, if you got four at least from other people, tell him, I'm sorry, but we're not a good fit. He's like, why? What do you mean that's business? If you haven't made his mind by fourth LE, he's going to make a mind by fifth LE. So it's waste of time. So we have to pick and choose clientele. You cannot work with everybody. You cannot work with every agent. You cannot work with every CPA. It just doesn't work that way.
But we have to do, because if people don't appreciate our hard work, our advice, our thing that we do, they disrespect it by any way, but whatever the case might be, it's okay. You never had the deal to begin with. You cannot lose what you don't have.
So it's okay, just go to the next You never had But I want to add a little bit more towards the agents, what we talked about earlier, something I was able to do well, and I'm actually, I mean, now that I thought about it, when it comes down to loan officers acquiring more market share and agents, one advice, guys, if you have four or five real estate agents only that they send you one deal a year, they do your two, three loans a month, you need 50.
Now, I'm not saying to go 50 and from San Francisco to Vegas to Florida, start locally where they know the closing agents, the listing agents, the close deal, start inviting them into things, mastermind events, show them what other agents, top agents are doing in the area, share it with them, see where their marketing dollar can go to make a better yield for them. There is a lot of things you can share with them, become a business partner versus a loan guy.
The reason why I say don't depend on five people is because when you depend on five people, and I was guilty of this probably 18, I don't remember, a long time ago, but when I see a loss, oh, I got this. What happens if they get divorced? There's power couplers you're using. And they say, what happens if they move out of state? What happens, God forbid, they die? Anything can happen. So you mean to tell me that five people would determine the outcome of my family? No. What happens if the market
changes? Whatever. So five people are going to be basically responsible for paying my my schools, mortgage, kids, my everything? Absolutely not. I am the guy responsible for that. And I want to make sure my job as a non-officer is to bring as many healthy relationships as possible and to make sure we take care of them and you become business partners. So if you have five, you try increasing by 10. If you have 10, you try to increase it by 15 and so on.
But the moment you have 50, I promise whoever is listening, 50 good ones that they know your names, you go out with them, you take care of them, you do your little things with them, you're gonna have anywhere from 10 to 15 loans a month, consistent in any market. Man, I love that because I was going to ask for one tactic, one strategy to implement. And honestly, that right there really resonates because I see this a lot.
I mean, I've seen this obviously over the last 18 months and the amount of people that say, well, you know, I only have four or five, six agents. Well, you wonder why you're struggling right now, right? Like the truth is you never systemized a outreach process. If you are going to be referral only, which is admirable, I get it. Like, you know, coming from a marketing guy, what bothers me about most people that say they're referral only is they have four or five people that they depend on.
And that to me is not a real business. It's not sustainable. It's not systemized and it's not predictable. And that's the problem with most referral only people is they don't have a predictable way to get more referrals. The predictable way to get more referrals is you have to consistently be replacing or adding to your referral partners. You have to be consistently adding.
That's the way you create consistency in a real business is you have to have systems around that, whether or not you want to buy leads, whether or not you want to market, whatever, like it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is you need to have a system, right? To acquire new clients. If you're referral only, that comes from referral partnerships. How many people are you talking on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, things like that.
And you always ask people that are struggling and you go down to the numbers. You're like, cool. How many people are you cold calling a day? How many people are you cold emailing a day? I'm not doing that. Okay, cool. Where do you expect to get business from? So this is called hope marketing. That's not a strategy. Hope marketing is not a strategy. You may be the best damn loan officer out there, right? You may be able to structure the loans with the best of them.
It doesn't matter if no one knows who you are, right? So like a specific strategy, what would you suggest? What do you tell your loan officers? How many people should they be talking to on a weekly basis? So first of all, okay, there is people who like to pick up the phone and there's people who are allergic to phones, right? Sure, of course. The guys who don't like the phone, they're more of a CIM type of guys, right? So it's different. Again, what works for one doesn't work for the other one.
I can't expect the same results from two different types. However, though, if you are a CIM techie guy, I mean, I would suggest any loan officer that if they don't have Bonzo set up with MMI, they're out of their mind. Sure. You're probably paying, I don't know, $100, $150, $200, whatever dollars.
If you do not have Bonzo set up, campaigns, videos, everything goes out to your 50, 100, whatever you have that you dump on your Bonzo as potential recruit, you have different section of Bonzo that you can put as a potential, like A, B client, you know, somebody that does really work with you or somebody that they work with you at some point or somebody you don't even know. So there's campaigns you can set up with those all three of them, and you can start dumbing knowledge on them.
You're not the guy now that you make calls. However, though, what happens, think about this, Luke. I see your post online, and this is a true story. I see you posting, posting, posting. I like it. I love it. Sometimes I'm busy. I don't. I'm doing something else, but it doesn't mean that I don't value it, right? But when you call me and say, Tano, this is Luke Shankula, after I've seen your posts for three, four, and five months, I will be honored to talk to you.
This is the power of social media and CRM. People do not understand this. The perception of you does not matter what you feel. The perception of others will matter to get the business part. So some of us have the little low self-esteem. Oh, I don't know this, that, I don't know if I can do it. However, though, some of us, they have no shame. They don't care at all when it comes down to, oh, if I bombard them, I don't care, I'm going to do it.
But when you make the phone call after two, three weeks, they say, you know what, Tano? I've seen your rates. I've seen your this. I've seen your that. You know what? I think let's sit down. And guess what? My lender is already acquired by another company. The rate sucks. I keep losing clients. I think it's time to do business together. Thank you. Boom. Done. I landed a five-people team. And they do three, four, five deals a month, right? So things like this, again, I mean, there is no script.
There is no formula. One plus one is two. this again i mean there is no script there is no formula one plus one is two it can go sideways it can go up it can go down but fix it find your niche where it will work as long as you're willing to work i have people on the other hand to your point nuke that they make calls they make calls every single day five to six agents conversations and they make two three meetings a week they sit down they call CPAs. I taught them how to call CPAs.
And one of them, they will call CPA, let's say doing your loan. So I can call the CPA. I said, man, tell me a little about it. Does he have a big line? Oh my God, the guy's always busy. There's like 20,000 people, big team. If you got a 20,000 big team, a CPA, guess what? He has 20,000 social security with income. Guess what? He's specialized in self-employed.
Who buys non-CAM? 12 months bank statements of profit and loss specializes in self-employed who buys non-pm 12 months bank statements of profit and loss right now self-employed people what is the average loan amount of that million plus at least minus when it comes to non-qm sure anybody can afford a 500 000 double 200 000 income but nobody can afford a million million and a half two i'm just losing one or an ounce again four million dollars profit and loss right i'm making two points of
that i said it it's fine work my ass off there's nothing wrong with that, right? What I'm saying is that it came from a CPA, because the CPA told this guy, listen, call this guy, go to this guy, he will take care of you. Because I always been solid, always answered, responded, helped him with the client, I make him look like a rock star. He wants to make sure his client is taken care of. By the way, guys, there is no financial gains in any way. I don't believe on that.
I give you this, give me that, send me that. This is bottom feeder stuff. This is true business that professional and appreciates one another. That's all. And I send him a lot of clients as well in return, right? So to go to my point, so you can go back to the client and say, listen, this is your CPA. Hey, Luke referred me to you. And he says, you're doing great. Now I have a lot of clients like Luke that do not know how to file their taxes or their businesses and stuff.
Are you interested in taking more clients? Yes. Can we please have a 20, 30 minutes conversation? I'll come to your office. That's it. I'm only hitting him with that. I go and see exactly how he does his stuff. I ask him questions. How do you do this and that? So the way I can prepare and I kind of prepare it for you and then I'll pitch in, you know what, by the way, here's my card. Here's what we do is a lot of programs. I show them the difference between six and a half, 6.625.
Well, now it's 7% conventional rate versus 7.75 on profit and loss or seven and a half bank statements. So liability for the IRS, if you're talking about three, $400,000 income tax or $400,000 income tax, I mean, $500,000 income tax, and you're showing $785,000. And then instead of them going up and down on their income, for a fraction of the cost and the rate, they can get this program. Now the CPA goes like, boom. Now you start thinking, oh, wow, you know what? This guy makes sense.
And he sends a deal. And in fact, I send him a client because people call me all the time.
You've got to have good CPA runspa around you got to have attorney divorce attorney yeah trust you got to have the whole gang behind you guys builder contractor you are the guys providing value not just selling loans so you got to have all these things when people ask you tano said this and that's how you make a name on the well you just dropped the little master class and getting referrals obviously giving referrals is a great way to do that.
And so that is a massive way that you could do that is like, yeah, getting in with CPAs, financial planners, attorneys, and all those people because they have clients with you and you probably have clients that can work with them, right? It's not all about realtors and so many people get so focused on realtors. But I love that you said though, in terms of like, you may be the guy that just cold calls. Great. If that's who you are, do it.
I am not a person that would want to cold call myself, but what I would do is I would warm people up via social media. You may have the CRM and nurture them via the CRM and then call them. Because guess what? That's no longer a cold call. Now it's a warm call because they know who you are. They've seen your content. They see that you engage in their stuff. And there's a massive opportunities for loan officers that are willing to be consistent.
And that's the biggest thing is consistency in everything. We talk about consistency in doing the work, the fundamentals. Talk about consistency with social media. We talk about consistency with reaching out to your partners and growing. So man, I appreciate your time so much today. Any final words as we're kind of closing out here, man? As I said earlier, stay hungry and stay humble, guys. Awesome, man.
If someone did want to learn a little bit more about Easy Fundings or connect with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you? You should have my Awesome, man. you can put it there. Google it, bro. Google it. Tano at EasyFundings.com. That's the email. T-A-N-O at EasyFundings.com. Fundings with an S at the it. Sweet. Well, and again, you can look them up. I mean, I don't think there's too many people with the same first and last name in California.
But if you have struggles finding it, we'll probably have it in the show notes. It's not a big deal, man. Thank you so much for your time. And for me, the biggest takeaways today, I mean, there's a bunch, but the biggest takeaways do the work consistently over time. And it seems to be the trend. I mean, anytime I talk to top producers, it always comes down to that really concept, right? We can talk about tactics and talk about things like that.
And we did brought some tactics as well, especially towards the end. And you have some good scripting there at the end that I wasn't expecting. So that was awesome. But again, a lot of it comes down to being consistent over time. And that's where the payoff comes out. So man, thank you so much for your time. And for anybody who is listening, that is looking for some help on flipping the status quo on real estate agents, go to flip the status quo.com. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening.
Have a great day. dot com. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. Have a great day. Thank you for tuning into the Loans On Demand podcast on Loans On Demand podcast dot com.