How They Crushed It

Blake Hyatt | Joining the Industry at 16, Scaling a Successful Business, & Making Mortgages Glamorous.

• Direct Mortgage Loans • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Blake Hyatt shares his journey in the mortgage industry, starting at the age of 16. He emphasizes the importance of building relationships and providing exceptional customer experiences. Blake discusses the process of scaling his business and the significance of hiring the right people. He also highlights the value of networking and asking for referrals. Despite the challenges of a changing market, Blake remains optimistic and focused on delivering value to his customers.

Direct Mortgage Loans (00:

00.078) So I got into mortgages when I was 16. It looked very glamorous. Glamour mortgages. It's unique. Didn't have another option. You're not being scared to ask for advocacy. You can never be scared to ask for business. You don't just wake up one day confident. I asked the right questions. What kind of questions? I can't tell the viewers that. Keep crushing it, man. Welcome everybody to the first episode of the How They Crushed It podcast brought to you by Direct Mortgage Loans. I'm Dean Johnson and our first guest today is Blake Hyatt. He's new with our company. He's a longtime industry veteran despite still being a young guy. His story is a great one. We're glad to have him. He started in the industry at 16 years old, but you'll have to listen to the whole episode to get all the details on that. It's a great story. Blake's doing a great job. He's definitely crushing it and can't wait to hear the details on how he does it. Okay, Mr. Hyatt, welcome to the first ever episode of the How They Crushed It podcast. I don't know when we came up with this name, but it's apropos when it comes to you, so welcome my friend. What we're going to talk about is sales and marketing today. So when we talk about how you crushed it, in the vein of sales, in the vein of marketing, in the vein of your story, we had some fun ideas to start. I didn't tell you this ahead of time, but today's top Googled question is how to screenshot on an iPhone. Do you know how? I do. What are you watching on Netflix? Shoot, I'm like thinking, what does my wife have me watching on Netflix? That's a good enough answer. More importantly, market fluctuations lately, man. We don't wanna get too far into mortgages, even though that's what you and I do for a living, but what are you thinking about what's going on out there right now, market fluctuation wise? You know, look, rates are coming down. You know, everybody got really excited come October. They were hoping that CPI number would come down, inflation will come down, interest rates will come down. We held until we got a weaker job report.

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53.566) So we're starting to feel that now in December. Rates have come down, I think from, well not I think, rates have come down from about 8% to about the high sixes, which has been fantastic because I know the NAR came out a couple months ago and said every 1% of those four million home buyers come back into the market. So we're hoping from a borrower standpoint, it'll be more cost effective for customers to purchase going into 2024. Well that was gonna be my question, better time to buy or rent. You know, 30,000 feet, that buy or rent? Right now, with rates getting into the sixes, I would say buy. 8%, things were getting a little hairy. It was convincing customers, or not convincing, but explaining to customers that rates are temporary. You could always refi, but it was definitely tough to sell a mortgage at 8%. I tell people though, if they can find something that they can afford to buy it. whether the rates are at eight or six. But as they go down, it does feel a little more palatable. It's as much how people perceive it. The payment is the payment, but how they perceive the payment's a little different. But I say buy if you can afford, if you can find something. But let's jump into, I think the part that I enjoy the most. Tell us a little about your story. Prior to the industry, and I know you got into the industry at a very young age, which is fun to talk about. So I got into mortgages when I was 16. So I went to Calvary Hall. 16. Went to Calvary Hall. My father's office was right by your old office on the south, and I would walk there after school. So I'd get off around 3.30, walk over there, sit down. I would hear people on the phone talking, doing their sales pitches and everything like that. And I was like, you know what? I could really do this. Like, I just heard people having- At 16, you said I could really do this? Yeah, because all they were doing, I just heard them having fun conversations. That was the old like boiler room atmosphere where you had people just on the phone selling people on refinances. and guys were just having fun. And it looked very glamorous at that time. I was like, glamor mortgages. Yeah, I was like sitting there, I was like, this looks fun, like you're just talking to people. I've always been a people person. I enjoy talking to people on the phone. I'm still the worst with that because I'm still, when I prospect customers, I'm always calling and I'm like, man, I could really save a lot of time if I texted, right? And just getting got a lot more done in my time. But I like talking to people on the phone. So story short, 16.

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07.978) got interested in it, went to college this semester down in Tampa, transferred to Towson. And my dad's one rule before coming back and working for him, he's like, look, you can work in the mortgage industry. Well, I'll get time out for a minute. Yeah, so you. Take us from 16 to graduating. From 16 and when, you know. What were you doing when you were 16 though? When I was 16, I was handing out leads to a lot of the talent marketers and I was processing some loan applications into the system. Not really talking to people yet. Not really talking to people. I had to deepen my voice a lot at 16. I didn't have that deep. You have a nice deep voice now. Now they know who they're talking to. Got it. Then I was just doing some easy, clear graphical stuff. When I got 18, that's when you can really get licensed and get registered. We were with a bank at that time. So then during the summers, I would come home, you know, I got registered, then I would be on the phone with them and be on the phone with customers and really do the sales pitch to like tee up the loan officers to make the sale. Dude, so you were in this, you're like almost like from birth. 16 is close to birth when you're as old as I am, but. Didn't have another option. Couldn't have been a doctor. Not that I wasn't. Well, I think you're smart, you could have been. You chose not to be. I chose not to be, but I decided this was the area, I always looked at it like, in life it's good if you can figure something out that you like doing. You become really, really good at it, and then you can succeed at that point. So when you go to Tampa, you come back to Towson, are you drawn back magnetically to this thing the whole time at that point in your life? Tell me. I didn't love being a bar back. You did not love being a bar back. So what I ended up saying, you know what? I don't love being a bar back. I got, my dad runs a mortgage company. I can be a telemarketer for him or a loan officer's assistant. So I went to him and he said, look, I'm going to let you work here, but you have to stay in school. Cause he knew what would happen at this time. Rates started coming down. He knew the money would probably be pretty easy to make. This was when the first drop in rates, when rates were going from like four and a quarter to 3.875 and he was like,

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05.874) you need to stay in school. So I stayed in college, worked for him. College graduate. Graduated from college. It afforded me the ability to pay for college, which was awesome. Made a lot more money than probably I ever thought I would. Than the bar backs? Than the bar backs. Your bar backs. I can't say, some bar backs clean up really, really well. I made more money, oh my taxes. I got it. And I was able to pay for my tuition. that to the point when I graduated from Towson, I was offered the position to be a branch manager for a mortgage company. 21 years old, 22. 22, there was a lot of shakeup in our lives. My dad decided he wanted to go work with Josh Shine. The company I was with at the time offered me, they said, look, we have the lease, why don't you just stay and see what you can do? And I said, all right. So luckily this was during Brexit. Rates were coming down again, so it was again, timing is everything. Rates were coming down, the FHA MIP was dropped, and next thing you know, I'm closing three to four loans a month, no employees. I was literally sitting in the office with the lights off because I was worried about the electric bill. I'm like, yeah, I was like literally sitting there, I had one light on, and I'm like, you know what? I gotta scale this. You know, you talk to anybody that runs a really good business, and they have good people working around them. So I had about two or three months of working by myself. And I was like, I want to share this with other people. I want to take what I'm doing because I am succeeding and I want to give it to someone else. And I want to work with somebody that I really like. So I called my buddy Adam Hearn. And Adam came and worked with me, another Calvary Hall guy. And it was just me and him. We would make some calls. We were behind high tops at the time. So we would go out to high tops for lunch. And then we'd come back. If we sold two to three lunches during the day, we'd get out of there. I've heard people define luck sometimes as hard work meeting opportunity. Clearly an opportunity presented itself to you and you applied some hard work to it at a time when I was that age once. I wouldn't have been pursuing it quite as hard as you did. Good for you. It's unique. I mean, that's the word I'll apply to it. It's a unique story. I'm a hundred percent person.

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17.186) And that's maybe, it drives my wife absolutely crazy because when I'm in on something, my mind is made up and I'm driving at it. You know, and so we got a boat and like, that probably was a, probably should not have been there. It should have been 100%. But you know, you've already worked with me enough to know when my mind's made up, I kind of dig my feet in and that's where I'm gonna be. And it's a good and a bad thing, but it has awarded me a lot of successes because... I can focus on one thing and that one thing was mortgages. Well, we're pumped to have you at DML, the age you are now. I feel like you're young in the industry, but when you tell me you started at 16, it made me, I mean, this is like, you've had a lot of years of experience already. I say 22 is when I really started my mortgage career. I was, had been in the industry from 16 to 22, hanging around, but yeah, it's been a, it's been a funny story. So that is so, so good. So talk to us about the last number of years. I mean, the industry's been through some craziness with the pandemic and everything. How have things been going and what's your story been like the last few years? Yeah, so just backing up. So I had my buddy Adam working for me. And then as I grew, I found, look, you need to be able to scale this business. I made the decision. I didn't wanna be a loan officer sitting in an office by himself. doing two to three loans a month, having very low staff. I wanted to build up my support. I wanted to do a lot of business. And that's kind of how I scaled my business. That's when I started scaling, right? And that's the most important thing, hiring a loan officer's assistant. hiring a processor, hiring a processor's assistant. Time out, the whole point of the podcast is to talk about how you crushed it. Scaling is one of your big, do you think that's one of the big keys? And again, we don't want this thing to just be about mortgages, we want this thing to be about, with applicable stories that can go to any industry, you know, is scaling, do you think one of the main ways that you crushed it? I mean, networking locally, you've mentioned Calvert Hall a couple times, you've mentioned guys you knew, talk to me about how you were finding people and how you approached scale at the beginning. You have to, number one, understand

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13.968) drives you, what gets you the business first off? And people say, In any industry. In any industry, but people will say, well Blake, you're a salesman. No, I'm just really good at getting customers to understand that I do care about them, and I do want them to achieve, and I want them to have a really good process. And the way that you do that is you get other people that, number one, share that same goal. So every time I've hired, I always ask people in the interview, What's your goal when you're working here? What do you like to do? But I also ask them, how do you talk to people? What would your friends say about you? So customer focused is what you're screaming for. Exactly, you have to be customer focused in this industry because that's the differentiation between you and the other loan officers. Well, that's everybody. I mean, Sam Walton from Walmart always talked about, he focused on the customer first. The customer was more important than anything else. And meanwhile, Walmart's one of the biggest companies in the world, but same sentiment. So good for you. So once you get that, right, once you have that focus, then you start growing out. All right, if I'm gonna do 20 loans a month, right, which at my height, I did 40 loans personally a month. And you need to make sure that if you're gonna do 40 loans a month, I need the customer to feel like they're my only customer. Key, key, everybody hear that one. Every customer needs to feel like they're your only customer, amen. Because if they don't, they're gonna go elsewhere, they're gonna have a bad experience, and that's why I've always scaled out the parts of my business that don't lose that customer focus, right? For viewing income docs, processing loans, creating the estimate worksheets. But where am I? Where's Blake sit every day? I'm the one on the phone with the customer. I'm the one on the phone with the agent. I'm the one talking to the customer about structuring the file and what loan they're pre-approved for, because those are the points where they wanna talk to their loan officer. That's great, great. Let's back up again. So you're finding these first couple of people, you're focused on customer experience and people that can deliver great customer experience. How does your growth go at that point? When you start taking the leap from...

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20.35) You and Adam fighting for two loans in the afternoon before you go to high tops to growing to 40 units. There's a big leap there. That's where networking comes in. Getting your name out there. Obviously using your customers as leverage. Say, hey, I did a great job for you. Can you share that with your family, your friends, your coworkers? Not being scared to ask for advocacy. You can never be scared to ask for business. And then the same thing goes, establishing really, really good referral partners. and making the decision in this industry. There's a lot of loan officers I'll sit and talk to and I'll hear them talk about their business. And I'm like, why are you in this business? They'll sit here and say, oh, I hate this referral partner. Oh, I hate this customer. Oh, I hate it when my customers call me at nine o'clock at night. Like I look at it like, man, I'm. happy that the customers are comfortable with me to call me at nine o'clock at night. Well, that's a mindset thing, Blake. And you have to have the right mindset because that's the thing that helps you grow is when you live in the industry. Having boundaries is important. That was one thing. My wife loves to travel. We travel. But that's where having a team, you can scale. If you scale with people that are focused on the customer, you can unplug a little. Yep. Amen. And that was the biggest part of my success. was creating that scalability, not letting the customer forget who the most important person is, which is them, and then multiplying that. Going to the referral partners, living with them in the industry, so letting your referral partners know, like, hey, I got your back, I'm here to work with you. Putting in the extra time at nine o'clock at night, trying to figure out the tough loan, and letting people, I always say, you've heard me say it too, sellable moments, it's more of, differentiating moments, explaining to your customers and explaining to your referral partners, this is how Blake Hyatt does it. So to summarize, find customer-focused people, scale through them, network, and don't be scared. Don't be scared to ask. Talk a little bit more about that, because I talk to a lot of people in a lot of industries that you can see that they have call reluctance. And call reluctance, I think, holds back a lot of people in a lot of industries, because they're just scared to put themselves out there. Clearly, you're not scared of that.

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34.994) No, because I ask the right questions. Like what kind of questions? Well, I can't tell the viewers that. Okay. No, look, I'm asking questions about, talk to me about your business. Yeah, you should be scared. You know, let's just say calling a realtor and saying, hey, you need to send me business. You can't call somebody and tell them what to do with their business, but there's ways that you can sit down with somebody, especially maybe an agent that you admire, and ask them about their business. Have them play it out. If there's an opportunity, be a business. You're running a business. Find the opportunity there when you're talking to that referral partner. Say, hey, I've noticed you're not doing anything on social media, maybe I can help you with that. Hey, I've noticed you're doing a lot of investor loans. Have you looked into this product? Start putting yourself as a differentiating point for them because you want them to feel like, you know what, if I'm gonna use Blake Hyatt, I wanna make sure that. Blake Hyde is gonna fit into my business. So find reasons to have meaningful conversations. Yeah, and that's why people are nervous. Like you should be nervous if you're just reaching out. If you just call them and say, what's up? What's up? Yeah, like they're busy. And trust me, even if they're not busy, look, from someone who's busy, when I have a free second, I wanna go home. I wanna enjoy my family. I wanna enjoy time off. You know, I don't wanna just sit there and I'm not looking for things to do. So you have to put yourselves in their shoes too. If you're gonna utilize or take someone's time, make it worth their while. Let's transition a little bit. How do you feel like you started to build a name for yourself though? Because we talked about the journey and we talked a little bit about some of the key things you did, but where do you think it went from Blakehide to does a couple loans to people in this town knowing about Blakehide? How does that transition occur? You do enough loans the right way, your name's gonna grow. That was the best advice I got. I'll be honest, I can't remember who gave it to me. Do enough loans the right way. Yep, you really, you do enough loans, you should do every loan or attempt to do every loan the right way. If you screw up something, take it on the chin. Don't hide behind your processing, don't hide behind the company. Take it on the chin and say you missed it. So own it. Yeah, because I always look at it, if I come in every day, if I do everything to the best of my ability.

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49.71) and I surround myself with the right resources and I do screw up, I'm gonna be able to get away from that negligence. Why do people screw up in the loan process? Because they're negligent, they're rushing through things, they're not reading documents. Well, you're also, there are humans though, so sometimes there's gonna be mistakes, but- But that should be the mistake. I missed it. Right. What's the old saying, eat the frog, wake up in the morning and eat the frog, eat the frog first. And I made a lot of calls in that morning that people don't know about. Like there's been a lot of tough phone calls that, you know, I don't have as many of a knock on wood right now, but you know, there's a lot of times where I'm coming in and I'm like looking at my list and I'm like, man, I got to call this customer today because I messed up. Business lesson I learned a long time ago, make the bed call first. Do you agree with that one? Yeah, 100%. Get it out of the way, knock it out first thing in the morning. Because you're just going to keep making excuses. And it's eating at you just a little bit. Right. I'm going to call this person after my second cup of coffee. I'm going to call this person after lunch. I'm gonna call them after my three o'clock appointment. Next thing you know, it's five o'clock and you're pushing it to the next day. Well, let's talk too about, you've had success at a young age, you're still a young guy now. What advice would you give in any industry about somebody that's, the average age of a loan officer in the United States, I think is still like 54 years old. You're not close to that. How would you suggest to others to stand out when you're outside of that key demographic, so to speak? You're still a young guy in the industry's eyes. How do you stand out? How do you differentiate that way? You gotta look at yourself and say, I'm really good at X, Y, and Z. And that is what you have to put out into the community. Confidence. You have to, because if you're sitting there and you're not good on the phones and you don't like talking to your customers, you can't go out and say, I'm really good at talking on the phones. I'm gonna call every single one of your customers. Well, I have a weird question then, because I've given my kids advice on this. You don't just wake up one day confident. You kind of grow into confidence. Would you agree with that? Yeah, 100%. So it's a little bit of fake it till you make it sometimes. Just keep putting out positive things, and that's not faking it like in a negative way. That's just convincing yourself to put it out there. You agree with that? Yeah, look, I think there's definitely a lot of different fake it till you make it type people. You know, I think.

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04.05) It doesn't mean you have to go out and buy the nice suit. I've actually, I'm very proud. It's a nice sweater. I've never worn a suit in this job. Maybe once or twice when I go to a conference. But I don't feel like that's the direction you have to go. You don't have to sit there and fake it and have a nice watch, go buy a nice car, and dress to wear a four, five, $6,000 suit. I think you can put yourself out there as an expert in the industry. without being flashy. And I think the biggest thing that I would say with confidence is you become confident from doing things the right way and getting comfortable with doing things the right way. And you're saying that a lot, I agree with you. Yeah, erring on the side of doing the right thing never fails you. Building back, fake it till you make it. Everybody always thinks that you should go right to, fake it, get the nice suit, get the nice car, all that stuff. No, confidence is built from doing transactions. My best advice for anybody starting in this industry is- Look at this camera. Go work for somebody who does a lot of business. That is the best advice that I can give to somebody. If you're gonna work for somebody, if you're gonna go work for a branch manager, if you're gonna go work for a loan officer, go to the one who's doing a shit ton of business. And if they're not hiring, give them your resume and say, call me when you're hiring. or is there anything I can do? Yeah, because you have to look. I always said that's the best part with anybody that's ever come and worked here is they get a unbelievable amount of knowledge. Like I had to learn on the go. Like I learned on the go, I learned through transactions. Like I said, I call it luck, but you know, in market is generally luck, but I got a lot of transactions that once based off of where interest rates went. And if I would have started, and this is really for all the loan officers that really started this year, it's a tough year. I always thought like, man, if I had to pre-approve a customer with when I was first starting to do this and they needed seller help and all this, like, thank goodness, a lot of my customers are doing 10% or 20% down. It can be really, really competitive in this market. But think about the customers that I got when I first started in this industry, like 3.5% down, needing seller concession.

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26.514) I know that's what a lot of new loan officers are dealing with and they're not getting the repetition, right? It's just like if you played a sport, you got to go out and you got to practice. You want to practice and that's the best advice that I can give somebody on how to build confidence and fake it till you make it is go fake it and while you're faking it, work for somebody that does a lot of business. Somebody trying to break into sales, other than working for somebody big, talk to me about that transition. Like how does somebody... first start to get into sales after they've worked for somebody for a little while, what are some of the best first steps? On how to get into if you're already a sales loan officer? If you're working in a mortgage office or you're working in any company and you wanna break through and start to separate yourself and start to step out of your comfort zone, what are the best first steps? Ask questions. Go to the person who's doing all the sales in the office and ask them how they're doing all the sales in the office. I can tell you the one thing. that most salespeople are really, really good at is talking about themselves. That's funny, you're right. So if a loan officer were to come to me and say, hey Blake, how do you do X, Y, and Z? I'd be like, sit down, let's talk about it, right? And I think people, if you go to the right person, they're gonna be really open to share. So we've covered a lot of good ground, dude. I'm enjoying this. I could ask you a million questions. You know, we talked a little bit about younger people. Talk to me about what's going on in the market today, because our industry is tough right now. Yep. It's like, what things do you think you've had to implement in this last couple of months or this last year that are different than maybe you've done historically? Like what new things are you forced to do to deal with a challenging economy and a challenging mortgage market? So I always said, what a time to be a customer looking to buy a house. The information is at your fingertips. You can go shop your interest rate between YouTube and Google. Really, the information's all there. So based off of where the market is and where I think it's going, I've shifted my whole business concept. Everything we do here is based around, and I guess it's nothing different from how we've been doing it, but the relationship comes first. There's, like you were saying with Walmart, everything is based off the relationship.

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38.642) in any sales job. So the referral partner or the customer or both? Both. You have to have a strong relationship on both sides because the realtor is going to help you, the referral partner is going to help you establish a relationship with the customer or vice versa, right? You're going to have a really strong relationship with the customer and then you're going to be able to refer out to a realtor or the realtor refers to the customer. Remember that everybody focus on all customers in a transaction. That's not just all your borrowers in our industry.

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08.534) been a part of it. Yeah, but once you establish that relationship, you gotta educate. Because education's gonna be key. And you want the customer to understand that your goal is to educate them. Because it is the most important thing, right? And it came from when you lose a loan and they're going with another lender because of interest rate, and you're like, well, I'm looking at the quote that other lender gave you and they got all these charges on here. I wasn't charging you anything. Well. If that's ever happened to you as a loan officer, it's because you're not educating your customer. Now, there is a difference. You can tell somebody something and they don't listen, right? But if you establish in the beginning, this is my process, I'm going to take you through X, Y, and Z. Then you should only ever have the situation where a customer says to you, hey Blake, I heard there's a better rate elsewhere. And then at least they're coming back to you. The ball is in the loan officer's court. Now it's time for you to explain. Is your process the same for all of your borrowers? This education process, like the way you set it up, it's the same, you have a streamlined and a homogenized process for every customer that you talk to. Yeah, I'm crazy. I come in, I do the same thing every day. My day is very, very structured. I come in and the way I pre-approve customers is very similar and I just take everybody through the different channels. And you have to too. You can't run a system out of the Wild West. if you're delegating. You have to have a system of structure, you know, and you have to hire people. I can tell you, my loan partner, Francesca, is one of the best, she's one of the best application takers. Customers like her more than they like me. And what better way? Well, I'd like her more than I like you too. Exactly, but what better way than to put yourself out there and hire strength around you too, because then you're adding to your service. So in a world where, People are doing their application online. I'm the one saying, hey, you can do it online, but I recommend you do it over the phone. We're gonna get further quicker with that. And then I got customers raving, oh my God, I had such a great time talking to Francesca. And then, you know, then the file goes to Vincent, who's our operations manager within the branch, who helps with all the sales stuff. He'll get involved, this is a tricky file, so we're getting answers quick back to our customers. But then it allows me.

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27.89) Once I get them in the system, make them feel super, super comfortable, now I can explain to them what programs you qualify for. Here's the closing calls. Here's why you're not doing this. Here's why you're not doing that. And they feel fulfilled because I'm answering all their questions before they get there. Got it. I have a question. This is one I've asked people for years and years and years, and I haven't asked you this one yet. Do you... ask for follow-up business or referrals from your customers. Is it a part of your process? I don't even think I've explained this to you, but yeah, I have a concierge service. We follow up not only with the customer after closing, we're checking in to see if they filed their Homestead Tax Credit a year after. We're letting them know, hey, we helped you with the mortgage. We have other relationships within this industry, whether it be financial advisors, CPAs, trust attorneys. we can refer you as an extension of us to our preferred partners. And that's been a huge success in my business because now it's opening up a lot of different streams of referrals. So this gives, you're creating good reasons, not just weird reasons, good reasons to reach out and give people more information. And then as part of that, you're asking for, hey, if you know anybody, I mean, tell me how you do it. Are you just saying, if you have other people might need my services, let them give them my name? Or are you doing it, what kind of thing are you doing? Don't give them the option if you know anybody. Say, who do you know? Who do you know looking to buy or have? Because if you say it any other way, you know, if I said, Dean, who do you know looking to buy or sell? Or maybe even refinance when the market goes there. You know, I always, even when the refis are really, really good and rates went from 4% to 3%, there's only so many deals that I had in my pipeline. Where I grew my business even more was I asked for referrals from my current customers. And then they're like, man, Blake, you made this so easy. But the process has to be there first, because then they're bragging about the process, then it opens you up to ask. Customer-focused process gives you the ability to ask. Correct. Because if your process sucks, you shouldn't be asking for business. They should be running the other way. You hear that everybody? That's any industry. Customer, customer-focused, great process, have to ask. It's great stuff. Well, look, this has been great. I'm glad to hear the story.

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49.182) 16 years old, it's quite, you know, anybody watching this, guys started at 16 years old. But- Got a head start. You're still crushing it now, which you should be very proud of because the industry's tough. I'm optimistic about 2024. How are you feeling? I feel really good. I think we're in a great spot. I think that the market's starting to shift a little bit. Hopefully more inventory will start popping up. You know, my wife and I just bought a house and it was about a three year search. and we finally found one. And just to add too, that's another big thing is remember how tough this process is. So make sure when you're talking to your customers, give them grace, because this is a stressful process for them and it's really good. That's a great piece of advice. It's a great piece of advice. It's just another thing that we do every day is we really understand that they're making a life-changing decision. Be there for them, don't work against them. I can't even tell you how many customers will come to us for a second opinion. They're like, man, that last lender, I felt like he just wanted me into that house that I didn't want. She's probably right. He probably did. He just wanted the paycheck. So it's important for loan authors, if they're gonna do it, this model, and my model is different from others, they have to make sure they approach it the right way. Got it. Well, look, thanks for the time, man. Look, this is our first episode of the How They Crushed It podcast. If anybody watching or listening or seeing this wants to. participate and be a part of it. This isn't just gonna be mortgage people. It's gonna just be some of our people that we work with and some people from outside our industry as well, talking about how they crushed it. Keep crushing it, man. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Appreciate it. Talk to you.

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Dean Johnson

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