to 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. And my name is Luke Shankula, aka Long Form Luke, and this is the Loans On Demand podcast. Hey, what's going on?
Welcome to the Loans On A Man 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. I'm excited because I have my friend, Mike Hajar, on the podcast. We've been friends on social for a few years, and he does some cool things on social media. He's grown. I mean, he came out of Consumer Direct round back in what, 2016, 2017, I think somewhere around there.
And he's gone on to do some really big things, both with Realtors, but also some other referral sources. So we're going to dive into some of that stuff, but welcome to the show, Mike. Excited to have you, pleasure to be here, brother. I really appreciate you having me Awesome, man. Well, I guess give us a little background as to who you are, what got you into the industry and what keeps you in this crazy industry. Obviously, still a little bit of an interesting market.
So give us a little rundown. What does look like? Yeah, I got into the business October 2005. I was 18 years old. I was in college at the time and a cousin of mine had a mortgage shop, Consumer Direct. I started working there. I worked for him for about five years. Very grateful for that model. I definitely picked up some things. I think what we were talking about before, right? Sort of that relentlessness on phone calls, right? Sitting there two, 300 calls a day. That was just the way that I
learned, right? I didn't know a different way. And then I started probably, like you said, around 2016, I started to shift out to a little bit more of a mix of consumer direct and then started to work with some realtor partners. And, you know, I was trying to work with a hundred realtors and, you know, that wasn't the right way. So over the years, we really started to nurture very strong relationships with the few, let's say 10 realtors that I do work with.
And our Florida office works with a lot more, but then myself and Rob Zbar, which is my mentor, my business partner, we both run a mortgage planning model, right? So I'm in Michigan, he was in Florida. We actually know each other prior to AFN. So last year, Rob and I do, like we were talking about, a lot of the heck comes together, a lot of the retirement planning, Rob helps with that. So we had to make a decision, you know, were we stronger off together or apart?
And we tried to do it apart for about a year. And he's been at AFN one year longer than me. I've been there going on five years. But then with that combination, I sort of veered off into over the last, I'd say, three to four years because of the mortgage planning model, a lot of financial advisors, CPAs, estate planning attorneys, life insurance specialists, because that's who we surround our client with. So as we talked about last year, it was humbling.
Thank God we still ended up number one at AFN, our branch, but it was still a rough one.
It was in all rainbows and butterflies but that's just kind of a high level overview of the last 19 years and kind of where my career started and where we're at and it's crazy to think 19 years man 2005 really 19 ago yeah man holy i wasn't gray back then would have been like a sophomore in high school i think something like that so it's what did graduate 2007 oh okay so i'm 05 so yeah i'm right out in school, I think something like So that. it's where you Oh, 2007. okay. So I'm all five.
So yeah, I'm right out of high school jump into more crazy, man. Well, I mean, that's a long time and straight out of high school. Obviously, you have the background in consumer direct.
Obviously, you know, we talked a lot about direct to consumer on the podcast, and everywhere I talk about direct consumer, because, you know, we talked about the idea of the hybrid loan officer, the loan officer that can understand both how to generate their own leads, whether that be from paid ads, whether that be from creating reels and TikToks and short form, whether it be YouTube channels, stuff like that, right? How can you get direct to the consumer first?
You can give those out to referral partners. But on the other side of that, the hybrid loan officer, like I talked about, is the consumer direct, plus the person that also understands the other side, working with referral partners, working with agents, working with financial advisors, which I love is kind of what you've done at this point is you've become that, again, that hybrid loan officer that I think is the future of this industry because I do think that as the SNAR lawsuit rolls out, as
new sort of things roll out, it's imperative that loan officers get in front of consumers early on in the process. So just kind of walk through, like what does it look like when you are working with, you know, these financial advisors and things like
that? Like, are you able to then take those sometimes and then refer them out to your referral partners or something like that, which is, again, another cool model, another way to get kind of consumer direct, kind of, I mean, you get in front of them in a different way, but. Yeah, it definitely creates deals for our real estate agents. And we've done a great job of, and I got to give my partner a lot of credit on it, is that we do a lot of putting them in the same room, right? So it's tough.
Like we do a housing wealth and strategic equity workshop. The one I did maybe like three months ago was rough because I was talking to advisors, estate planning attorneys, CPAs, and realtors all at the same time, right? So the advisors were getting a little bit bored in the you having to explain it to everybody else. But at the end, everybody was able to connect, meet with each other. So sort of that connector mindset. So they do deals, you know, even outside of me.
And sometimes it's from the financial advisor to the CPA or whatever it may be. But yes, definitely creating business for really everybody that's part of that client advisory team that we surround the Of course, which is huge. I mean, I think that's a massive opportunity that most loan officers are not touching on, right? I mean, most people are getting it from realtors. I think there is, again, a small segment of people that are starting to understand going direct to consumers is important.
But I feel like there's a massive missing opportunity as well within these other realms of, okay, now you get a, let's call it a consumer direct lead or a referral from a real estate agent. Hey, do they have a CPA? Do they have a financial advisor? Do they have whatever else they need and having all these people?
So now you can refer the same lead to three or four people and you're creating these reciprocal relationships built on value, but built on, you know, also giving deals to each other, which is hugely probably valuable. And what's helped you guys grow? And I mean, being the number one branch at AFN last year, that's not small, right? I mean, you know, obviously, we had a tough year. But so you're doing these sort of literacy, where did you learn this information from?
Like, how did you get to the point where you felt comfortable presenting to all these different sort of people?, you know, obviously very different ideologies when you're talking about financial advisors and CPAs and stuff like that to We're going to thank again, Rob Zbart for that, but I'll tell you how he did it to me.
Rob spent a lot of time with me, like read this book, you know, that obviously I've been to his workshops multiple times just because we've been close friends before we were even doing business together. But one of the first classes that I taught, Rob was supposed to zoom in from Florida, like pull him in on Zoom. And he was supposed to help me teach the class. And, you know, we had some sort of emergency down there.
And he's like, Mike, I'm sorry to do this to you, but you got to teach the class solo. And I think the good part about that was so nervous, right? I was It sweating. was definitely nerve But wracking. then I realized the good part about I was so that, right? nervous, I was sweating. It was definitely nerve wracking, but then I realized I knew a lot more than I was giving myself credit for just from really being
a student, right? Just obsessing over, I'm in an area, you know, I've got the Rockets, the UWMs, the loan depots around me. So a lot of these trigger lead shops, a lot of these people who are taking advantage of clients. And I think for me, a lot of that came from the empathy and just obsessing and being a student to be able to share that with all these different sorts of Yeah, I love it, man. And you're right. I mean, Michigan has got to be interestingly enough.
I mean, it's not a high cost market. It's not like California where, you know, your average loan amount is huge, right? It's small $200,000 loan amounts, but yet it's probably one of the most competitive markets in the country because of the fact that we got UWM and Rocket who basically churn out superstar salespeople. And whether you like them or not, what they do is they create powerful salespeople that understand how to convert.
Whether you like their ethics or not doesn't really matter, but they understand sales psychology. And for the most part, they are going to eat most, let's call it advisors lunch because they're much better at sales. Now, that's why I'm a big believer in you're an advisor, but you're also a salesperson and you're kind of a salesperson first. And sales is not a bad word. I think maybe sales in the wrong capacity is a bad word.
If you're pushing someone into something they shouldn't be in, but sales and leadership and sales is something that I think, again, why a lot of these consumer direct background people tend to do so much better once they understand referral relationships is because they understand sales at a high level. From that perspective, man, like how do you compete in those markets and what is sort of the approach that you take? Because that's tough out there, right? I mean, how do you compete in a
market like that? That's super saturated with, you know, a bunch of real killers in the sales room. no, that's a great question. It took a lot of years of differentiation, right? It didn't happen overnight. And I think what we did well was we didn't lose sight of the purchase side during the refi. A lot of that was me planning a lot of seeds and our whole team did a great job of it. Now, did I definitely push consumer direct during that time?
Yeah, I'm still a huge fan of direct mail, you know, all these things because they work, right? Of course. Doing a boatload of PMI removal, like appraisal waivers on all these. So obviously I got the rockets in my backyard. So I was able to easily bring in a team to your point of people who really know how to convert those sorts of leads while the other half of us were still out building those relationships.
But my coach, Anthony Casillas asked me years ago, what do you want to be known as, right? What do you want your reputation to be? And I said, I want to be known as the lender with the most integrity, right? I'm tired of seeing all these people around us take advantage of veterans and seniors. And I just got zero tolerance for that. And if I had to give up multiple seven figures in the refi boom because of that, that was okay.
But it gave us the longevity play of being able to say, well, wait a minute, we're some of the ones who are still here. Everything around us was more of, we would say no, probably more than we would say yes. Just to make sure that what we were doing was within integrity of what we believe with Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Because the reason why people have a bad sort of connotation around sales is because of the traditional used car salesman approach.
I mean, let's be honest, even a lot of the strategies that Rocket pushes are not of the highest integrity, right? They're just kind of pushing everybody possible into processing. And that's sort of their strategy, which again, it works from that perspective.
But I do think, especially when it comes to stuff like cash out refis, like, you know, there is a sort of like, all right, well, when does it really make sense for the borrower and almost saying like, Hey, it doesn't make sense right now to do this. You know, when it comes to purchase, if they have the capacity to buy, even in a high rent market, I think you need to believe as a loan officer, that is a good time to buy.
And you have to, you know, to a certain extent, convince them, you know, obviously you can't make them do anything. You can't push them to do something they don't want to do, but you can present a good case for why it makes sense to buy in a market like this. I think right now, being a strong salesperson is what's keeping people alive, but also having integrity. Cause you're right. Reputations get built over years, but they can be torn down in a night. Right.
So it's like you make one bad move and you know, it can be a big problem. So I love that you did that. I love that you built that reputation, but also, I mean, a lot of sales does come down to say no to people because sometimes it's the right thing to do. And it may cost you, you know, short-term revenue, but you know, coming from the long-term perspective, and we were talking before this, a lot of loan officers look at business very transactionally.
And despite what they might think, they think they're relationship driven. But stats tell us otherwise, right? Stats tell us that according to Monitorbase, 81% of consumers work with a new loan officer on their next transaction. And that means only 19% are staying with the same person, mostly probably because they're not staying in contact with the person. And one thing that I see all the time is loan officers only wanting to work with people that are ready
to buy in the next 90 days, right? That to me is very transactional. You only want people that are ready to buy, otherwise they're fire kickers. No, they're people that are not ready to buy yet or refinance yet or whatever, right? So how do you sort of approach that? Because you're talking about longevity, you're talking about building this sort of long term plan. And I think, again, so many people are so short sighted, in terms of
longevity, right? They don't think about the LTV of future transactions, they don't think about the LTV of building relationships in the right way. And like these types of things, it's just like, how do I close as much business today? What does that look like, man? Like, I mean, you know, I know, it's kind of a broad question, but no, a great question.
I think one of the things you said, right, is probably, unfortunately, most lenders, if you say LTV, they think you're talking about loan to value. They don't know what a lifetime value is. Right. So I put out a video maybe two weeks ago and they were asking me, they said, which clients do you see that have the most success? And it's truly the clients that come to us that are six, 12, 18 months out because we can put a game plan together. Now, does that mean we only work top of the funnel?
Absolutely not, right? We've got a mix. Otherwise we wouldn't make any money if it was always top of the funnel. But what I said in the video is that I think a lot of lenders don't have the systems nor the empathy, right? To look that far out when, you know, people do need to look that far out. And Neil Dingris, that's a mentor of mine on the video, said a great thing. One time he said, human beings have a problem with depth perception.
So they may think they're 18 months out, but they don't know they're more like 12, four, you know, again, we got 43% of first-time homebuyers who think you need 20% or more as a down payment, right? So these are people that they're probably like, oh, I'm never going to be able to buy. Well, it's a 10-minute conversation. And, you know, we start to say like, hey, 3% is $7,500, right? You know, and that just starts to change things.
So I think really just putting these game plans in place for people and realtors appreciate that, right? Because a lot of them, they want that long-term relationship with the client, but a lot of them never knew how to build it without, like I have one of my realtors is like, Mike, I'm not going and giving out pies every year, right? I'm just not going to do that. I want to add value with the things that we talk about.
So we do a, you know, workshop for them every year, wealth building and just all these different strategies. So yeah, man, I think again, back to that mortgage planning model is there's the before, the during and the after. And I think we've done a great job with the before and during and obviously the after. I love it, man, because you said depth perception. I actually really love that. I've never said it that way, but I talk about that all the time is like the average consumer doesn't
know, right? If they say they're six months out, why? Why are they six months out? Right? Like, I mean, if they have income, they have the credit, they have the down payment. Why are they six months out? Right? And again, so many loan officers are so scared to call them out on that kind of stuff.
Because here's the thing, like as a loan officer, you see how many transactions a month in a year, the average consumer, the average home buyer, buys one home every 11 years, according to data, and they refinance twice in those 11 years, right? So that's four transactions in 11 years that you can capture if you understand lifetime value. Most people aren't. They're not capturing one of those
four deals, right? And so what's wild is if you just understand it from that perspective, like consumers don't know what's good for them a lot of times. And again, this comes down to being an ethical salesperson and why sales is powerful, but it's also kind of scary because you can get into the, you know, hey, pushing someone into a product they shouldn't be in or doing it at the wrong time or things like that.
But I think there is also an ability as a salesperson to say, hey, like we need to get you moving now. And, you know, we talk about objects arrest, stay at rest. And so sometimes you just need to get them off there, but ask them for the freaking application, get the credit pool. All of a sudden they're out shopping and they're like, Oh, actually I can buy a home. And we see that all the time. People say six months out, give them a pre-approval in their pocket and show them some houses.
All of a sudden they're like, Oh, I can actually afford to buy some stuff. Cool. Right. And next thing you know, two, three months later, they're in contract and buying a home. Right. And I think again, so many people are so scared. Oh, you're six months out. OK, handle the damn objection. Do teach your team this? Do you guys train on some of this sort of stuff around having those conversations and showcasing why it makes sense to buy? single week.
So our region and our branch is landmark mortgage planners. Right. So every one of our sales meetings is a lot of these sorts of conversations around. It becomes unlimited. This happens to be one of those examples. But I think a lot of it has been around bringing on the right people because we could teach strategy all day long. This and that. I can't teach integrity and empathy. Right. Of course.
Right. So I think when a lot of the hiring has been around that, it's easy to teach strategy at that point to people who care. I think probably in regards to the training, absolutely. But, you know, we're blessed to have people in the industry like the Dave Savages and Rene Rodriguez and this and that. And we put our guys through that stuff because we're in those meetings. Right. And nutting out on mortgage coach. were in those meetings, right? And nutting out on mortgage coach.
And so it is mandatory that back to the Tim Brahim days of the page 51003. I mean, that's where we start getting into asking for their financial advisor, their CPA. Yeah, so we train on that all up front. Good. I mean, that's a good thing. Because again, you know, depth perception, man, I love that statement. Because the truth is, they don't know. I worked mortgage industry for, I think, five years. So when I bought my house, I could have bought a home two or three years earlier.
And obviously, you know, at the time, it would have been maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars cheaper, maybe not quite that much, but you know, maybe a hundred thousand cheaper. California, probably. Yeah. Well, I mean, cause we bought, you know, a home for 390 in 2015. And, you know, I could have qualified probably even for like a CalHFA or like a down payment assistance or, you know, something like that earlier on, or I would have just known that I didn't need 20% down.
And I could have easily brought up, whatever, 10, 15 grand for a down payment. And I didn't understand that. And this is working for a mortgage company. I work for a reverse mortgage company. So it's a little bit different, but still like all it took was asking a loan officer there. I'm like, hey, so what do I need to do to buy a home? And he's like, oh no, you don't need 20%. Now what are you talking about? And I work for a mortgage company.
So like, think about the average consumer, they're thinking the same thing, you know? So I like to leave some tangible sort of like strategies for people on the podcast as well. So I know you guys are attracting a lot of these people. You're doing these classes. How do you get people into these classes? Like, what does that look like? Do you have a marketing strategy for that? If you're open to sharing, what does that look like in terms of like getting people into a room?
And then from that perspective, do you have any sort of ways of, and then engaging them after those classes? Cause I think a lot of times people are like, well, I'll do these classes. Then they don't send me anything. Well, it's like, okay. Yeah. We struggled with that. And I'm not dropping names. Like, because I know people drop names to drop names. This is more really me giving credit to a lot of I'm like, so grateful for names to drop names.
This is more really me giving credit to a lot of like, I'm so grateful for a lot of these people. Andrew Pollack, Lead Pops, there are funnels for after the classes. So we just drive them to housingwealthmastermind.com. And that does, you know, the newsletter. And then, but what we love is that typically we don't see somebody come to the class one time. It's a lot of information.
So my top producers and referral partners, I mean, some of them have been in the class five, six, seven times, but getting them into those seats, it's funny, man, I'm a digital guy, right? So I was doing all this marketing and ads and I'm like, why am I getting like five people? So I was like, you know what? Let me truly tell the truth because I do believe how important this information is. Then I just I went back to just old school, picking up the phone and really making it invite only.
And it was not open to, you know, every not because I didn anywhere further back in the room, you can't see, you know, when we started trying to show the tax free line of credit on the heck, if they can't see these colors on the lines and whatnot, they're losing the visual. Right. So it is funny that this happened to be how we're filling those rooms, whether it be here in Michigan or down in our Florida office, it's been a lot of intentional.
I think intentionality is the biggest one and calling people that say, okay, well, I know that this person would benefit from being there. So I know it's not the fanciest thing in the world, but just like you tell people, call the leads, man. Sales is a contact sport, It is, man. I have a couple of hot takes. One of my hot takes is the online application is one of the worst things that's ever happened to the mortgage industry.
And I say that because just like automation in CRMs, people are solving for something that they probably shouldn't solve for in terms of automation, right? They want an automated way to close a couple more loans, right? They want an easy way to get someone to fill out an application. That's great, right?
You do want to have options for people, but more likely than not, most people are having a 10 or 15 minute conversation, sending an application link and missing out on a massive opportunity to have an in-depth discovery call. In addition to that, right? We're talking about using the CRM for automations, right? Like I talk about calling the leads. Like you have to pick up the phone. Like these other mediums are great for conversations and starting the conversation.
They're not great for conversion, right? And so when it comes down to it, you use text message to start a conversation. You use emails to start the conversation. They're not great for conversion, right?
And so when it comes down to you use it, text message to start a conversation, you use emails to start a conversation, you use voicemail jobs, going to start a conversation, but then you have to pick up the phone and have the actual conversation because that is where the sales are going to happen. And that's our preferred medium as a salesperson. That being said, when you are communicating with people, sometimes they prefer to start texting and then eventually you can get them into a call.
But again, I mean, I'm a big believer in picking up the phone, making the dials because sometimes that's what it is. I mean, people will be like, Oh, can you run ads for real stages? I'm like, well, yeah, we could, but it's like a hundred and something dollars an appointment for us. Are you willing to spend $10 a month on ads? Oh, probably not. Okay, cool. Pick up the damn phone and call them. Right? Like that's the easiest way to do it.
And yeah, you're going to get better show rates and stuff like that as well if you have those conversations. But if you are running digital, you also can't just expect them to show up. One of the things we talk about with seminars and webinars and stuff like that is you will get probably a 30% show up rate if you don't have a robust automated follow-up and manual check-in process and also create scarcity and urgency on why they should be there.
Those are some of the elements that need to be in place, whether you're doing a consumer direct, right? If you're doing like a seminar for veterans or first time homebuyers, whatever, like there has to be a reason for them to show up, right? There has to be a hook. There has to be some sort of way that people can actually do that. So yeah, man, that's cool that you said, I mean, calling people, that's really it, you know, it's the manual process of calling people.
So you finding people like on my are these people that you've worked with in the past? are Like, you using tools like that? Or just kind of calling people. So are you finding people like on MMI? Are these people that you've worked with in the past? are Like, you using tools like that? Or just kind of calling people in the area that can meet up? warm outreach on some of the bigger events.
I did a lot of cold and I probably left out an important part on social media is that's kind of how I've identified, oh, this person would be when I say intentionality. So as much as it is technically a cold call when I call them, and even though I tell them, hey, you don't know who I am, by the time I start talking to them, they're like, yeah, I know you from Instagram or Facebook, but that's because I'm thoughtfully engaging
with them, right? It's not like people think like, oh, I'm going to hire this social media person. And no, if right now somebody took over my social media and started talking to you, you'd be like, this isn't Mike. I instantly. You you would And I know on your end. know, know. Yeah. social Man, media, just again, another right? medium, Just another way to, yes, MMI is a match to that. And then we'll look at some of those numbers and then start to look at them on social media.
They start posting negative stuff, things like that. And that's just kind of not the people we want to be around. So on top of just the numbers, it's more about like one of the agents that's had major success with this was I would see her always talking about client first, client first, client first. And I called her, I said, I know you're one of the top producers in the state, but when somebody says client first that many times, that like warms my heart. It was genuine.
I didn't do you want to go to coffee? say, hey, Whatever they say. And of I ended up landing the meeting and getting that. course, But it was truly from intentionality. But I was able to get a lot of that from social. Powerful, right? I mean, this is one thing I tell people as well as like, I'm a big fan of cold calling, but there's much better ways to cold call, right? I mean, you can use social media to pretty much never have a cold call again. Right. I mean, you're right.
I mean, like adding new people on social media, following them, liking it, commenting on their stuff, slide into their DMs, right? Or even just give them a call, but you can slide into their DMs first, have a couple conversations and then call them. Hey, you know what? I'm loving your content recently. So there's so many ways that you can warm up a prospect.
And I'm personally not someone that I would love to cold call myself, but I have built pretty much my entire business off of organic social media, creating that, and then having these conversations. These are technically strangers that I've never talked to before, but a lot of times me and you, like, I don't think we've ever met in person. We've talked via social for years and years and years.
Right. And so, I mean, I don't know, I can't remember if we met in Miami or not, but I don't even know if you were I know at the Miami event anyway. So it's, you know, it's like, we probably have never even met in person and yet here we are, you know, talking like we've been friends forever, right? We don't know that if we have or Yeah. Yeah. We don't even know if we've met in person. So, Hey, we probably haven't, I'm assuming.
So yeah, man, I really, you know, I appreciate kind of you sharing your wisdom with us. I like to leave it with one tangible strategy tactic, something that loan officers can take and implement today to go out and get business. So like, is there any one or two or whatever, a couple of different ideas or one idea that someone could implement today to go out and find some more business, whether it be from real estate agents, consumer direct, I mean, you know, whatever got.
Yeah, because I was guilty of this. I got so caught up in the tech side of it that I had to get back to the fundamentals. So I think this mixture of tech and getting back to the fundamentals, we got to shake hands. We got to start to continue to meet people. But I think getting back into some sort of mix of exactly what you were just saying of, yes, we can use these things, social media, email this and that, but picking up the phone with intentionality.
And then on the advisor people side, call me all the time and but picking that, up the phone with intentionality. And then on the advisor side, people call me all the time and say, well, how do we get in front of advisors? I wish the easy answer was, you know, just tell them you'll help them grow their assets under management because that's truly what we do. But then they need to actually know how to do that. Right. So it's really just becoming a student, man.
I wish there was some sort of shortcuts and things like that. But I think it really comes down to let's not forget about the fundamentals because I did. I was so caught up in the tech that I'm like, man, I'm not doing the daily activities and just simplifying it to am I having 10 voice to voice conversations a day? Because the sales math I've got on that board will tell me that for every 25 quality conversations I have, I'll fund one loan. That's good. And I will say that I'm a big fan of Zoom.
If you're not the type of person that loves to meet in person, you know, at least on the first time, use Zoom because it's as close as you can get to being face to face. But, you know, phone calls are great. Zoom calls are great.
I mean, what I literally tell people too is like, if you're meeting someone for the very first time, I personally am a fan of meeting them via zoom because they suck by that i mean like if they're like a realtor that you're trying to talk with it's like if they suck like you're gonna find that out pretty quickly right you gotta go take them to like some coffee day you don't gotta waste 30 minutes driving there 30 minutes driving back you know hour
there whatever it is like you can have a conversation for 30 minutes oh cool you're a good person let's meet again let's go actually have coffee let Let's go have lunch, whatever. Because I'm a big believer in that because I find that one that also creates more efficiencies. Let's be honest. Yeah. Belly to belly is ultimately going to be your best bet in terms of that. But Zoom, I think is the next best thing and also a hell of a lot more efficient when it comes to that too.
So man, I appreciate that because I do think that people forget the fundamentals and think that, you know, they're just going to go post on social media and a whole bunch of stuff's going to come from that. And the truth is it's yes. And right. It's not just, you know, Oh, you do that one thing, especially nowadays. I think that there is a shift where well, not just kind of have to do everything. You kind of have to do the fundamentals of calling everybody, you know, doing the updates.
You kind of have to be on social media and posting content regularly. You have to be out there, you know, marketing, you have to go to events, I mean, you just kind of have to do everything these days, right? You know, I don't think it's no longer the time where you can kind of sit behind a desk and just do pre approvals, because someone else is going to come and get your bacon, right? They're going to come and take your deals, because they're out there doing those things.
But then also, they're doing the stuff on social media. And they're also good at structuring deals, right? You know, so I don't know, that's just my belief. And I think that maybe it's, you know, unfortunately or fortunately, I guess for the people that are willing to do the work, it takes more these days with social and all that stuff to show up. And I think doing the fundamentals is fine as well. But I think then there's the old school guys are like, Oh yeah, screw social media.
Like I get all this stuff from this, that, and it was like, Oh cool. But how much business are you missing out on? Because you aren't willing to do that other stuff. how long are they going to be in three to five years? Right. Right. And you're going to be able to be found. Exactly. A hundred percent. I don't remember who it was on the podcast, but someone said that their kid was like, mom, you need to get on social media. I'm not going to refer people to you via text or via email.
Like you have to be on social media. So that was like a, just kind of funny. It's still stuck with me that the kid was like, yeah, you need to be on social media because that's just how people do business these days. And it was like, okay, cool. Like there's a mix of everybody. You should do everything, I think. So anyway, man, thank you so much for your time today, Mike. Any parting thoughts before we go? Yeah, Well, definitely. Thanks for having me on.
I think one thing and one other takeaway, right, for people is I talked about being that student. And I think one of the things you hit and you said very well was that people are, you know, somebody just tells them six months or whatever, and they're just like, oh, OK, they don't know how to handle that objection.
So I think one thing that in regards to some of these objections and not being order takers, I'm part of a group called Circle of Wealth, which is like, I don't know, 1500 financial advisors. There's only me and my business partners. We're the only mortgage guys, but they just talk about mortgages all day long. And when I started to understand why is because real estate is the number one place that people lose money unknowingly and unnecessarily. How they acquire real estate, like cash, right?
Or massive down payments. And then how they pay for their mortgage, the 15 years, the things like that. So whether you're going to work with financial advisors or not, when we start talking about the best of the best are going to make it, the ones who have to do everything, I think knowledge is going to always be power.
I think right now, being able to explain to somebody, hey, maybe you shouldn't put 50% down or 20% down, you or, we know, could look at three or 5% and being able to explain to somebody, maybe hey, you shouldn't put 50% down or 20% down or, you know, we could look at three or 5% and being able to explain why, even in a very simple way, I think is the difference maker of how they're going to grab deals and relationships versus them just, you know, if I just wanted to get that information,
I'll just go online to one of these websites and fill out a form. Well, and to your point, you said even in a simple way, I think it has to be in a simple way because I mean, unless you're talking to a financial advisor who understands this thing, like you don't want to talk down to people. So you want to speak in typical person's language. And a lot of times I think we end up speaking, I mean, even for myself as a marketer, I started talking about pixels and stuff like that.
And loan officers like, what is he talking about? Offers, unique value propositions, right? You know, unique mechanisms, the words like that, that if I start using those words, people start to zone out, right? And it's the same thing with the consumer. If you make them feel stupid, like, but if you can present it in an easy way, you know, the cost of waiting or, you know, like things like that, or why it makes sense to put less down.
And so many people, again, Dave Ramsey, we were like, oh, put 20% down, put 50% down. I was like, well, now you have all this cash That's not liquid that you can't get out of your house and it's not doing anything. And, you know, I don't know. It's, there's so many ways that you can frame that, but back to objection. Sorry, man. You said the whole, like, you know, waiting six months.
One of the things we tell people too, is like, instead of saying, what's your timeline, say something like, if we were able to find you the right house at the right price and right payment, like how soon would you want to move in? Now, all of a sudden, instead of saying six months, they're going to say right away. And I listen. Yeah. Because instead of asking them, what's your timeline? They think they're six months out.
But if you put the scenario in front of them, if you find the right house at the right price, the right payment, and everything worked for you, how soon would you want to move? It's the same question, right? We were talking pre getting on here, tonality and talking and scripting and stuff is really powerful. Part of that comes down to, you know, understanding human psychology and understanding how people react to certain things.
And also that people have this sort of defense mechanism or natural responses to things. So again, man, thank you so much for your That was incredibly well framed. Good job, man. Thanks, man. Yeah. Well, you know, it's been doing this for a little bit. So yeah, I know a little bit about a little bit. So appreciate your time today, my man. Thank you so much for everything you brought.
I mean, today, obviously, my biggest takeaways for loan officers that are listening to this is you got to diversify, right? I mean, you know, you talked about having your realtor partners, but also finding other avenues that you can generate leads and pre approvals from, you know, also being able to reciprocate those people is powerful as well. So, you know, getting out there learning at the end of the day, there is no hacks.
It's one thing that seems to be apparent in every single one of these podcasts that I do is that there is no shortcut. The shortcut is the process. The shortcut is the fundamentals stick to the fundamentals and everything good will happen. It's going to take longer than you want it to, but if you stick to it and you look at it from a long-term perspective, it's all going to work out in the end. Thank you so much for your time today.
And for anybody who is listening and is looking for some help on getting direct to the consumer and flipping the status quo on real estate agents, go to flip the status quo.com. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day. Thank you for tuning into the loans on demand podcast on loans on demand podcast.com.