Welcome to the mortgage game. I truly, truly believe that building a mortgage business, a successful one, is like playing a game. There's winners, there's losers, there's certain things you try. Some of us are playing checkers, while others are playing chess. I've had the ability to coach and mentor hundreds of mortgage brokers.
I myself built a very nice business, so now I want to distill all that information, all the things I've learned from that, and bring it directly to you in a simple -to -understand way. I hope you enjoy. All right, good morning. Welcome to the Mortgage Game Podcast. West Coast Wiley here on a rainy, drizzly day in the Dodge Ram studio. You might hear some rain coming in. I don't know. It is what it is.
We're going to talk about a topic today that it's... I don't get into these conversations a lot with mortgage brokers because it's like talking to someone about politics or religion. don't get into these conversations a lot with mortgage brokers because it's like talking to someone about politics or religion. I just... avoid those topics with everybody. With mortgage brokers, it's CRMs. What CRM do you use? Do you use a CRM? What do you do with the CRM? Like people will fight you.
They will fight you over their CRM. They're like, no, this is what you do. And it's amazing. And it's blah, blah, blah. And it does this and it does. It's like, settle down there, cowboy. Okay. Settle down. It's a freaking CRM. Take a chill pill. I've had these conversations, that's what I'm saying, from experience. But I've also had a lot of people reach out and they're like, Ryan, what CRM should you use? That is a question I get a lot.
And I can give you the old boring answer, well, whatever one you use. And I can give you that, sure. Or I can actually break it down. Because I think a lot of mortgage brokers, you're just dropping the ball on CRM. And I think you're using a CRM because people tell you you need a CRM. And they're not wrong. but they're also not right in why you need it. And I think a lot of people think if I just get, I can't tell you how many times this happened, especially when I was switching brokerages.
I had four brokerages throughout my career. I believe four. Yeah. And when I'd go talk to someone or someone would approach me and, hey, you need to come over here because we're also, it was like, we have this tool. We have this CRM. It'll like the CRM will not fucking make a difference in your business. It won't like which one you use or how you use it. Will not like if it's the company A versus B or C, but it's jammed down our throats everywhere we turn.
Where some companies telling you we have the newest, latest, greatest thing. It's like, cool, but the broker's still a complete idiot. So do you have one that fixes that? No, no. Right. So like, this is what I want to talk about before we get into it. This podcast is brought to you. Bye. Americano. I switched up a little bit today. I got a pump. I normally get a black, but I got a pump of cinnamon dolce. Don't know why. I just decided to do one pump and it's actually pretty good.
Okay, so back to CRM. So the fundamental reason you have a CRM, that is true, but I think most mortgage brokers think it's going to solve and transition their business. And they think that if they just get the CRM set up, if they just get it humming, the business is going to come in. And I know this. Brokers think that that's going to fix the problems when really the problem is them and just not doing the work. And so you hide behind, if I have this tech, then the tech will do the work for me.
That's not the case. It's not how it works. That's not how the game works. So stop hiding behind. tools and automations and thinking you could just be a robot behind the scenes and crush mortgages. You can't. It's a human business. You need to put yourself out there and connect with people through social or in person. There's a lot of stuff you need to do. Let's break down what people think a CRM should do for the business and what it actually does.
I'm going to explain what we did and I'm going to show you. You don't need to go pay people for a CRM. You don't. Most brokers are just using a completely wrong Or there's five things it does and they use one. And it's kind of like, just shut it down. Shut it down. Don't do it. It's like social media. Most of you have like one foot, one toe in the water. It's like, just don't even go in. Go focus on other things.
Think how much stress you'll take off your plate of always feeling like you have to go post stuff. Like if you're not in social media for the next 10 years, just get out. Don't even go in. Same with the CRM. If you're not going to use it right, just stop. Stop. making the monthly payments and just do the workaround I'm going to tell you. And I know mortgage brokers that are running very good businesses with no CRM, like a lot of them.
So CRMs, I think the misconception is it's going to go, and hey, there's some people that have their CRM so dialed in and good for you. They geek out on it. They're nerds. They love it. Good for you. I'm not talking to you. Okay. So get that off out of your head when you're like, no, but mine work. Yeah, cool. Good for you. Awesome. You got to figure it out, bud. Good job. Most people don't. And that's who this podcast is for. Okay, that's who we're talking to.
Because I know I'm going to get the comments back. Right? You know what you're talking about? No, I do. I do very well. I know exactly what I'm talking about. Okay, I've lived this life. And I'm living it right now. And I'm seeing other people live it. So a lot of people think CRM is going to automate, just going to bring deals to them.
work automation and these deals are just going to show no you if you're an idiot you're still not going to get the deals um there's four functions of what a crm should do it should house data okay number one house data and when i talk data it's like contact information um mortgage information like it houses that stuff okay if it's not a mortgage crm it's just going to house email phone number address that basic stuff if it's a mortgage crm Then it's going to have the ability to
track maturity dates and interest and all that. And then you've got follow -ups. -ups. So you can automate some follow -ups and have them trigger tasks to come out for you to follow up with people. Okay. So you've got housing data, you've got follow -up. Then there's a marketing component, how you market to the people in your CRM and that's through email. Okay. And then there's, these are the four functional pieces. And then the last but not least.
is the deal flow, seeing where you're at, like in the client journey internally, where you're at in the file, or your broker complete appraisals to be ordered. And it's kind of like you can you can move the file along. And some CRMs have that and some don't. So those are the four points of what a CRM does.
And a lot of you might have one humming in there, but you don't have the others, but you're just paying money or using some product and you're jamming someone else's process down your own throat. someone else's version of what your business should look like down your own. Me personally, I chose to pick out the good things, the better tools, piece them together and customize it for me and my business.
Instead of taking someone else's version of what this should be and could be with inferior parts within those four components I talked to you about, because you can't be good at all those. You cannot be good at all those. And then also to go set that all up. My part is a much simpler piece. So I'm going to break it down for you. And I'm going to break down some preconceived notions and things you aren't doing and you could do. We overcomplicate the fuck out of this business. We so do.
It's crazy. We do. You've heard me say it a hundred times. I'll say it a hundred more. Complicated is easy. It's easy to complicate shit. I can give you a task on Monday and then Friday we check in and you have a complicated business. And I'm like, what? did you do? I gave you three steps. Go do the three steps. But you went off and created seven. Why? For what? And we do this with our CRMs all the time. It's crazy. So let's break down the areas. Just had to have a little more.
I'm going to have a bunch of these, just letting you know. Okay, so how's data? Cool. You got your data in somewhere. Well, guess what? You can have it in a spreadsheet. Just saying, we know that. Excel file, Google Sheet, you can build, like we have quite robust spreadsheet. You can have this basic spreadsheet where you just house all the data. Like if you just need mortgage information, address, like you've got, they're out there floating around in our industry.
Go find them, go talk to people. They're there. From like people crushing mortgages to people just doing a couple of mortgages. They're all using them. Okay, so don't tell me because you've got data in there that like, okay, so let's just take that off the table. And here's the thing. If you're using a CRM, it doesn't have the mortgage component in it. Well, that's, you're wrong right there. I'm hoping you're using like a mortgage CRM.
Okay. So if someone, for example, fills out an application in FINMO, we zap the information onto the spreadsheet. Done. That's automated. I don't have to do anything. Here's the other part. Why do you need the data? This is the question. This is the million dollar question. Ask yourself right now. Because that's the point that gets jammed down your throat is we need the data. What are you doing with the data? I know what the answer is.
But what are you doing with it? You've got this data inside your file logics, your velocity, your FINMO, your boss, your whatever. There's so many things now. You've got it in there. What are you doing with it? Are you looking for rate arbitrage opportunities? Well, the software doesn't do that. So you've got it in there. Then guess what you got to do, Einstein? You got to get the software out. You got to get the data out.
So now you're putting the data somewhere else in a CSV file or a rate tracker sheet, which is what we have. You're putting it somewhere. So guess what? You don't need the data in the thing. So X, put a big X through that now. If you're going to use, think about this, this is important. The reason you track the data is so you can find opportunities to go back for a refinance. Okay. Hey, if you're not tracking it, well, you're just money's just falling out.
You might as well like, yeah, there's just money's falling out everywhere you walk. Might as well have your pool open year round, cranked up to 92 and just see money floating off it every day. It's the same concept. So let's assume you are looking for opportunities for rate arbitrage. Well, guess what? You're getting the data out of the CRM. Oh, just saying that out loud, just like, oh, I can't, I can't. So you don't need that. Okay. Marketing. Let's talk about marketing.
So you're going to use your CRM for marketing. Well, I've seen a lot of these CRMs and their email deliverability. meaning going into spam, that happens a lot because they're not built on trusted systems and SMTP servers and whatnot. And it's kind of just jangled together with some sort of email thing where, yeah, yeah, we'll send out emails. Can you put video inside the email? Can you host it in there? Could you even put a Loom link in
there? Do you have to put a screenshot of the video and then you have to hyperlink it back to the actual thing? Can you build automations and drip campaigns? Can you segment it out so you have like a renewal campaign and you have a different campaign and your master list is in there and then it drops them in and triggers different things? Can you do this in a lot of these? No. And even if you can, a lot of times the deliverability sucks. And that's stuff you just wouldn't know.
And that's where you make your money. You make your money in two spots in your CRM. You don't make it in anything else. You make it in two spots. You make it in the marketing, which they're inferior, and you make it in the database mining, which you don't do inside the CRM. You see where I'm going with this? The two tasks where you make the money from your CRM is that you don't even use the thing for. So you could have a much better, we use campaign monitor.
Massive, massive, massive company with like they went out and built all the trust on the SMTP servers, which gives you deliverability. So then we get to plug into that and build on that trust. So we built BrokerMail. So we use BrokerMail for all of our email marketing, but there's no data in there outside of first name email address. There's nothing else. We don't put mortgage in there. Why would I put mortgage info in there? I don't need that in there.
That's on my rate tracker because I look for rate arbitrage opportunities. And guess what? When someone signs up for a call on my calendar, or when I say my, I'm talking about like my team. When someone signs up for a call on the calendar or fills out an application in fin mode, their information goes right over to the master list, which is in broker mail, which then triggers a drip campaign and they get marketed to four to five times a month. Ah, cool. There you go. See, two biggest reasons.
Ways to make money doesn't involve your CRM. Or in some CRMs, sure, some are better than others at marketing, but I'd rather go have the best marketing tool instead of one that's a four out of 10, give me one that's an eight or nine out of 10 because I make money there. So I want that. And I'll just connect them all with Zapier. And to do all that, give me a $30 Zapier account. Boom, done. Okay, even if, and this isn't a cost thing, by the way. I'm not saying, hey, $200 for CRM or $100 for CRM.
I'm not saying, because that's such a minimal cost in our business. And we freak out about expenses way too much as mortgage brokers when in all reality, your overhead is extremely low versus the amount of money you can make. Yet we whine and bitch about it. It's like, no, you need, that is an expense. You need expenses to run a business, blah, blah, blah. So this isn't a cost thing. This is like, do you need that tool? Or are there better versions of it? Okay, so that's number two.
Number three is follow -up. Okay, so follow -up is somebody, you have a discovery call with them and now you need to follow up for documents and whatnot. have a discovery call with them and now you need to follow up for documents and whatnot. Well, if you're using Finmo, Finmo that's built in, it just follows up for you with the clients to get all the stuff. Okay, so you don't need that. If you want to follow up, like do I need to put a task in? This has always been a pet peeve of mine.
So I'm going to put a task in to remind me to follow up. Like there's so many different ways I could do that without opening up my computer and feeling like I'm a robot that day. And like going through the lines. Like, man, there's so I could use Boomerang within Gmail. My email, main email out is, you know, either is Outlook or Gmail. We use Boomerang a lot. So if we send someone out a link. for something or we needed a document or something, I'd put a one -day, two -day boomerang on it.
It's a free thing in Gmail. And a day later, it'll put it right at the top of my inbox. We didn't hear back from this person. Boom. And I'll just go respond back to them. Right? You can do that. We also had Monday were follow -up days. So I know a constant pressure in our industry is you always feel like you're always forgetting to follow up with someone. We all know the money's made in the follow -up. We know that. Yeah, we don't do it. And we know that and we feel it.
And then we carry on with our life and our day. And before you know it, we just feel this, always this cloud hanging above us of shit we need to do that we're not doing. What if, stay with me here, gonna blow your socks off. What if Monday morning at eight o 'clock, eight to nine, every Monday, every Monday? Yeah, every Monday. You followed up with everybody. Oh my God. And now no follow -up went unfollowed. following up. I don't know what I meant to say there, but you get it.
We leave no follow -ups behind. Now, all of a sudden, when it's Wednesday, Thursday, Monday, or Sunday, you're not worried about who you're following up with because you know Monday between eight and nine, that's what you're doing. So you're going to go and you're going to follow up with all your realtors. You're going to update them up on all the leads they've sent you. It's a lead tracker we send out every Monday.
And then you're going to follow up with all the leads you received that didn't book a call. There's only so many here. Like get over yourself. You're not, there's not like a hundred follow -ups you're doing here. Like the average broker, like, come on. You're doing like within the hour, you'll crush that within 15, 20 minutes. Okay, so you got that. And then you're following up with all the people who you're waiting on documents for. You got that.
And then you're following up with like whoever else you felt like you had to follow up with. So you go around all the people you've already pre -approved in the past six months. You follow up with them every Monday, checking in. Do we need to do a refresh of your approval? Do you have any properties you want to throw the MLS listing to me? We'll build a custom proposal for you, right? Eight to nine, every Monday, follow up. Now you've covered your ass for the entire week.
Done. You sit there and sit there and think about it. But only in that hour, not on Wednesday at eight o 'clock, not Tuesday at noon, you know you have a catch -all. All right, that's the best practice you all need, a follow -up day. Okay, so first one was housing data. Well, we're going to export anyway. Second is email marketing. Well, you're using an inferior system with bad deliverability and maybe not even the best functionality. So go find something that's awesome and use that instead.
And then you've got follow -up. Okay, and then last but not least, you've got tracking where you're at in a deal. So I love, hey, I've seen some of these. The Kanban, I think is what they call it, screen. And you got your deals in there. And you slide it from pre -approval. And you slide it over to approved. And then it sends an email out. And then it says, like, and you slide it over again. And it introduces you to the lawyer. You slide it over again.
And you feel warm and fuzzy sliding things along. And you get to see where you're at. I'm like, cool. Am I putting all of my eggs in this basket because I have that? No. Like, what are you actually talking about? You're firing out an email. Like we'd have 10 emails and, you know, we're doing 10 to 15 files a month. And we have our 10 email scripts throughout our client journey. And then we already know like fulfillment. It's not me, by the way, fulfillment. This is this.
Let's make that distinction. It's not me, the mortgage broker doing this. It's someone else doing it. And so when the deal gets broker complete. They go to email script number seven, because that's a broker complete email, and it's templated in Yesware, which is free and layers right on top of your Gmail. You can house all your scripts. And then I drop that in the email to the client, and we type in their name in the right spot, and then we click send. Boom, done. And then we had all the deals.
We were working on a whiteboard. We also had them, fulfillment had them on a sheet. We had them somewhere where we could just see where we're at. Like deals, like how many deals do you have where you need like this fancy software triggering all these automations going out? Like how many deals are you doing? The average broker does like one to two files a month. You can't keep that on a napkin. You need this fancy, you know what? You could get a Trello board.
I know people, they track everything on a Trello board and they want, they like to see the move over, but there's no way in hell, not a chance. I'm connecting all these things together and trying to get one thing to do it all. It's just not going to work. Maybe I'll use components of here or there because my submission platform has it. I'm not here to fight you over submission platforms either. I don't care. I really don't. We use Finmo. It works.
We can get a lot of automations built out of it using Zapier. A $30 account can zap stuff from Finmo into your calendar. So now I have an email address and a phone number at 5 a .m. in my calendar showing me Tom Smith's birthday today on repeat. Boom. Every year I call or text Tom Smith instead of sending him those bullshit birthday candle emails, fake emails that try to make him feel special on a special day. Just reach out to him. OK, this is a people business. Go reach out to them.
Don't rely on. That's a whole nother rant. But you see what I'm saying? So you can have that thrown there. You can have it trigger a renewal email campaign inside your actual marketing CRM. You can have that. You can have all the data go over to your rate tracker. You don't need. So all you're doing now is you're tracking files. Once again, I go back to how many files do you have? Because we tracked all of our stuff and I'd have them on a whiteboard.
I'd have people at a whiteboard beside me and it could be small. And it was like I had my closing dates. I knew COFs I had, which ones we had compliance, like I would track that way. I just like physically seeing it and writing it down. But we also did this in Google Docs. We had four folders, right? Pre -approval, approved, compliance, and didn't go anywhere. And we would just move them along there inside Google Docs.
And our whole business was built in GDoc and no cost because we were already running Gmail. So it was part of the suite, which once again was not the reason we did that. because of the cost, because the cost I couldn't care less about. This was the whole purpose of this is I want to give you just to look at things from a different angle. And you're putting a lot of pressure and stress. A, you think a CRM is going to magically change your business. It's not.
If you're a dum -dum, it's still going to make you a dum -dum. If you're not following up with people and doing the boring work, the money -making task, it's not going to go do that for you. Can you build some automations and some things? Sure, here, there, but it doesn't change who you fundamentally are. and how you run a business. So stop thinking and believing that this CRM, if you just get it set up, if you just go get the data right, like what do you do with the data? I don't understand.
So I wanted to break that down for you. I don't want to go, there's a better way, a simpler way to do this type of stuff. Or continue using your CRM, which is cool. If you've got it all figured out and it's all working and humming along, great. Good for you. I love it. 90 % of brokers are like, misusing their CRM. So once again, I come back to, instead of tricking yourself to think like, I just keep that payment coming out and keep that going.
So at least it makes me feel like I didn't give up on that. Just shut it down and build from, I always do this. If you're not sure about something, shut it down and then run your day. The sun still comes up tomorrow and see what happens. what happens. And if you have to layer stuff back in, then you do, but clear the desk. Shut it down. And you start realizing, oh, I don't think I really missed that as much as I could. And I found a different workaround that's actually better.
Okay. So I'm going to wrap this up shortly, but hopefully you pulled something from this. It's that thing. You have other fish to fry. You have other things to focus your energy on than your CRM. And how many of you open your CRM and feel instant disappointment? because you know you're not using it how you should be, just get on the spreadsheet. Get on the spreadsheet, right? And you can set that up, right? Or what about this?
Compliance time or every time a pre -approval comes, you can manually enter in the spreadsheet. And yeah, and I'm not, we automated that piece, but I don't want to fight you on that either. Okay, so there you go. This was, oh, I don't want to talk about CRMs, but I did because I get hit with a lot of questions. So I figured I'll just make this and explain how you can piece things together at a fraction of the cost with better functionality, better deliverability within your process too.
You're not jamming theirs, trying to fit your process into their janky thing. Okay. That's it, kids. We'll shut this down. Enjoy your week. Yeah, that's it. CRMs. Peace out.