Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Mike Dupp show, the ultimate hub where the hidden stories behind the mortgage industry come to life. I am Mike Kelleher.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: And I am Michael Zou.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: And in every episode, the Mike's dive deep into the entrepreneurial spirit, the strategic insights and the breakthrough innovations that build the world's greatest mortgage companies. So whether you're advancing your career, scouting for industry leaders or exploring opportunities in fintech, prop tech, any tech around the home, you're in the right place. Get ready to unlock the story behind every mortgage. Let's dive in. And today we often joke our show is for anybody who wants to build a career in mortgage. If you listen to a lot of our episodes, the lender side always says it is one of those professions where the potential income is almost unlimited for how easy it is to get in. But once you're in, there's a lot that goes into it. We offer a lot of that. But we do joke that we offer access to people that you would have to maybe be at a conference to meet and give you some exposure to them. And so I say that because our guest today, Drew Gillette, VP of marketing at Guild, which is a top five, even higher, depending on what charts you're looking at, mortgage company in our country and is even higher in the numbers of how many people are actually in communities managing brick and mortar loan officers, processors, etc. So I actually met him at the housing wire gathering, so that that was what I was getting to and just getting to know him. I thought he'd be a great addition to what we're able to bring to you as a show, which is somebody that has been in the forest, now can look a little bit above the forest, but understands where the industry is going, especially around understanding data and then bringing data into opportunity and bringing opportunity into relationships around the home. So thank you, Drew, for jumping on today. We appreciate you having us or having you here.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Yeah, happy to be here.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: And I know everybody falls into mortgage, but I think your background is very interesting. Seems a lot of the leadership in mortgage, if it's not sales driven, it's somebody that knows something about law or comes from a law background. I think it's that compliance aspect. Sounds like you didn't jump directly from the law. You had a consulting stop in technology. You're up in the Seattle area, so it's no surprise. Can you give us a little bit of that arc into mortgage? And then when you were able to kind of get into mortgage and look at it, did you know this was the Path you were, you were going to go.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you say that all the time. Right. Like everybody didn't mean to get into mortgage. Some people did. And there's a lot of families that evolve into this space too. Right.
So my journey, I never really intended to have any job that I've had in any of my careers.
So like you said, I started out in the legal field and grew up with attorneys. So it made sense I would try and find a job in that space.
And I did that for a while and kind of got burnt out.
That happens with a first career after seven or eight years. Sometimes took a pause to go into consulting. Like you said, I was working with big tech out here in the Seattle area and then was going to continue down that path, but ended up getting a call from a recruiter I was working with who convinced me to take an interview with the mortgage company.
And initially, I think I've told you this before, but my first reaction was, no, I don't want that interview. It sounds boring. Why would I go into mortgage when I'm in tech at the cutting edge of things?
And really it came down to trust. Working with that recruiter and her giving me kind of personalized service and really understanding my needs and where I would fit. And I trusted her. And so I took the interview.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say what, what, what is that that causes you in your, in your brain pattern thought of. How is it that you decide to say, well this is exciting versus not exciting? Because what I've noticed that there's a difference in sales and marketing. Sales is what you go and do and marketing is kind of like I have to do it because I'm in sales. And you are directly related into marketing. And so you're, you're not just in charge of how the originator is out there, you're also in charge of the brand recognition for Guild Mortgage. Its.
So can you dive a little bit deeper into how you're deciding? Well, mortgage isn't that exciting for marketing. So what's your thought process as you went through into the industry?
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Well, I think it started when I was working in legal, also a very boring sounding industry. Right.
And so what I was doing, I was working in consulting, litigation consulting. So working with attorneys, going to trial, which is very interesting. They make TV shows about this kind of stuff. Right.
And so Runaway Jury was based on that.
Turning something that has a lot of opportunity into something interesting is something I've always done.
And so when I took that interview and decided to work at Guild it was because of the conversation I had with the regional vice president at the time that I was talking to.
That's basically how he framed it.
They knew that I was coming in overqualified for the entry level marketing role that we had. It was very immature marketing organization.
And he told me, if you come in and work here, I just want you to do what's best and really try and stretch things and move the needle, but also push the boundaries.
And it sounded like a very interesting opportunity.
That's what really drove me to it.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: In the movie Runaway Jury, I think that's the movie with Gene Hackman. And he goes, and they study all of the potential jurors before getting into it. And then they try and do this. Are you doing the same thing when studying the mortgage industry? Are you studying the individual originators or are you studying the leaders?
What is it that you're studying when it comes to the actual marketing portion?
[00:06:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I say that movie, but really only the first five minutes is reality. Everything else is Hollywood.
But to your point, like studying. Right.
My focus has always been on both qualitative and quantitative. So what people say, but also what data you can numerically calculate.
And it really doesn't. The data is just a piece of evidence.
Just like in a trial, the story that you tell around it is the important part. And so what really drives me in the marketing aspect is being able to help tell that story and empower other people to tell their story, which is what you get when people interpret data differently.
And so that's a really key point is.
I'll give you an example. We were doing a mock trial back in my legal days, which is where you bring a bunch of people together and present the case as if you were in trial.
They do surveys beforehand and afterwards. So we get quantitative data and then we watch them debate the case and we bring in attorneys to present the case and we hear what they say and hear their discussions afterwards. Afterwards.
I think it was one of my first mock trials that I was working on. This one juror became really fixated on the amount that they were asking for. And so he got stuck on 50 million. Like, I don't think they deserve 50 million. I don't think this is worth 50 million.
And so before they even started debating the data, the evidence, the examples and the facts in the case, it colored how he was thinking about it and how the rest of the group started thinking about it.
And so bringing it back to mortgage, you know, it's the idea of how you're Presenting the opportunity for somebody, how you're presenting a debt consolidation, how you're presenting the future opportunity for generational wealth.
It really does come down to the story and how you frame it the right way.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: So then at what point is marketing objective toward the customer versus subjective to the originator that's actually doing the marketing themselves?
[00:08:35] Speaker C: I mean, from the marketing side that I mainly focus on, which is the overall brand to support our loan officers, all we can do is set the stage, right? We can be the brand that somebody might recognize or might not, and we can empower that loan officer. So our message has to be strong, it has to be consistent, it has to be a gold standard among the options that a consumer could choose to work with.
The loan officer has to have their own voice, right? They have to have their own personality. And that's where the difference really happens.
Because at the end of the day, a mortgage is a mortgage and we're all kind of selling the same product.
But who you work with and how that experience happens, that's the lens that a consumer is looking at it from, right? How hard is this for me?
Do I trust this person? Are they gonna slip in a bunch of hidden things and not tell me and I'm gonna get a surprise? Am I making the right decision? This is a big commitment.
And so the loan officer really has to help tell that story.
And the way I like to frame it is Guild's brand is built from the ground up by our loan officers.
If they don't do a great job and we don't equip them to do a great job, then our brand doesn't mean anything.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Our industry is plagued by two pieces, I think. One is people typically think on 30 day cycles. And two, there is a overwhelming amount of possibilities and data and information of which to act on.
To do another analogy of your past life you've taught people getting them ready for deposition. The big part of getting ready for deposition is just answer the question. And where most failure happens is when you start to go on and speak freely.
What's marketing's role in narrowing the lenses for these loan officers out in the field so that they can focus on get having a brand that people actually know what it is.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
Well, I think the key point there when you're talking about how you say something is that being technically correct is not the same as being understood.
So when we're working with loan officers and developing how they convey a message to their customers, to their partners, to anybody out that will listen to them, their audience, it's really focusing in on a few key content pillars.
I'm a really big proponent of that focus on a few key things, not everything. Because if you try and do everything for everybody, you're doing nothing.
And so really focus in on something personal about yourself, something business related and then a niche category.
And so if you consistently tell that story out to your audience in a way that your audience wants to receive it, you're going to see some traction.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Can you tell us about the first moment that when data stopped feeling like a collection of numbers and started revealing a story to you? I mean, we can, we can take a series of numbers and just go up.
Oh, yeah, this is what it is. But actually maybe what the numbers are telling us is not what the story is telling us. So tell us that moment.
[00:11:59] Speaker C: I don't know if I can remember the first moment. It's something I do throughout forever. But I'll give you a recent example. How about that?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: So think, let's think about websites.
Loan officers care about websites, companies care about websites. We care about traffic. We want people to go there.
We want them to work well. Right.
And so earlier last year, we started seeing a drop in traffic of new visitors coming to our website.
And we're trying to figure out, like, well, what's going on? Why is this happening?
And then we suddenly saw a spike. We saw people start coming back, but we hadn't really substantially changed anything.
And so we had that data that told us that there was something we needed to figure out, but it wasn't yet a story.
And so we had to dive into what are people doing on different pages, how are they getting there?
Are there any other kind of factors that could be playing into why this is happening?
And what we ended up figuring out is that it was related to a handful of things and no one thing would have led to this change. But you have to dive into what the data is telling you, get to the real problem so that you can go and fix it.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: I think your ability, what stood out when we first met is most people that can come to that conclusion have to be able to bury their head into.
Looking at a B testing, just looking at what would you call like experiments. Right. And seeing the outcome and then taking the analysis and going with it. Those same people typically don't always have like this grit. And sort of like you said earlier, big opportunity. Let me go tackle it. That brain usually can't sit down for three hours and tackle.
I, I know. So my question would be like, when you, what was that grit that you had that really said, okay, mortgage is going to be boring. But I see this huge opportunity in this interview, I'm gonna go take it. Like, what was that?
I guess, what would it be today that keeps you going?
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I guess I've always had a personality trait of wanting to stick with things and see them through, which really kind of fits into the Guild culture. I guess I accidentally fell into that.
And many of the biggest accomplishments I've had through my career at Guild have been through determination and consistency, which I think is an underrated value and can be portrayed in different ways.
An easy way to say it is you look at somebody's resume and you see them hopping jobs every two years and people say, oh, well, you can't trust them to stick around. Right.
But when you find somewhere that fits and you can really make a career out of it, it's worth it to stick around and it's worth it to question if the grass really is greener on the other side.
You know, there are absolutely times where I thought, you know, should I start looking somewhere else? Things weren't going well, or there was a challenge with a manager or something else, but pushing through and really focusing on what do I want long term and what do I want to accomplish. Some of those goals were years out and taking that approach beyond the 30 days, the 90 days, even the one year is really going to add value. And a lot of that is like compound interest. Right. It adds up over time and it's substantial over time.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: We had a follow up question that we sent and it's intriguing to me to ask you this one. Have you learned how not to confuse an unfamiliar opportunity versus an uninteresting one?
[00:15:55] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think that comes to curiosity as a personality trait.
Unfamiliar can mean scary, right? It can mean unknown, uninteresting.
For me, that really just falls into repetitive. And some people like repetitive. That's their jam.
But for me, it's always trying to find something new, something better, something to improve, a problem to solve.
Which I think a lot of loan officers and salespeople fall into too. You get that instant dopamine hit every time you solve a problem or you close a loan.
And so for me, that's always been a driver. So I've always kind of had one foot in sales, one foot in marketing, in my personality as well. But I've always leaned more towards marketing. And so I think distinguishing between unfamiliar and uninteresting is is it scary or is it boring?
[00:16:51] Speaker A: To me, I saw a real recently of the. The former Papa John gentleman. And then I heard one of your past interviews on Evocalize podcast. Really good one. Go check it out.
And just the way you talked about how you guilds in so many communities and it's actually brick and mortar, not just working from home and in actual buildings, my head went back to seeing that reel where Papa John talked about creativity and confused the podcast owner. And he said, what does creativity have to do with opening a pizza shop? And Papa John went into like, we want him to have as many rights as possible because it's 40% faster for deliveries and signage. And then I just was thinking of you and how much pride do you take into the creativity part of the physical presence of guild?
[00:17:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of our best aspects, right? Being local in the communities, our local loan officers, it also enables them so much more to be able to be successful. And it's not to say that they can't scale and expand outside of where they are, which is the power that we help provide for that business model.
But I think when he was talking about the example of the creativity that goes into it, you open a physical location, you become a member of that community.
That's so much different than just joining the community. It's participating in the community, it's living in the community, it's interacting with the business owners around you.
And it really establishes who you are and can not only accelerate your business growth as an individual producer, but it helps establish the presence of the brand and anybody else in that community as well.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think when I originated back in 2012, 2008, the creativity was more internal, like what type of seat are we going to get with a rolling chair next to the desk? And I think being part of the community now, you do need some sort of presence. You do need an Apple Store type feel, even if it's just a small office, but something that invites others in, not just you. Going out to networking events, totally a grand opening, right?
[00:19:26] Speaker C: Inviting the community in that sense, or participating at the farmer's market and having a stall and interacting with people, it's.
It sounds like common sense, but the more you engage, the better you do.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: It's interesting because I hear that we tend as people, it doesn't matter to me. I've seen lots of different personalities show up at social events and I've seen some extremely extroverted people end up being a wallflower, at least for the first minute or two. Just kind of scope out the room until something happens. And, and it kind of goes back to the original question, what's unfamiliar versus what is comfortable?
And when it comes to marketing, when we're looking at either HMDA data or website traffic data, what is the natural gravitation? Is it something that's unfamiliar or something that is uncomfortable? And how does physical geographic location take into account where the originator should actually place their marketing efforts?
[00:20:39] Speaker C: I mean, I think the data can absolutely guide you through that.
But just like in your example of kind of scoping the room first until you step foot in that community, the data can always lead you astray too.
And so finding out where the businesses are that people are going to gravitate around or where their high traffic areas, low traffic areas, if you're expecting that type of interaction, you want to find that. And so you can use data to find that as well. You can also use it to position just like a pizza store. Where is going to be the biggest market opportunity for me to work with people who want to come in and sign documents to buy homes around here. Where are the big developments? That also changes over time.
And so I think as you're figuring out where do you want to place a physical presence, you need to take all of those data points into account, but also apply judgment on the data. And that's really where the value of experience comes in and where leadership decisions can come in.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: James Clear from Atomic Habits says you should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than your current results.
Guild Mortgage, for those listening, is well known to be one of probably the best company in mortgage over the last 15 to 20 years. At M and A. When they acquire a company, they have a system and it's proven in the facts the results are better than any other mortgage company. And they've acquired some really great names I've worked with in the past like Cherry Creek, Atlanta, some, some great people at those companies.
I gave that quote because it is a fact when they join Guild their trajectory is going to go up. That's why they came over to Guild.
But I love the physical location, I love owning the zip code. What type of makeover do you offer them when they come over on their existing location? Do you encourage them to get a new location? Do you give them a checklist on how to update their location or what kind of secrets can you tell us on that M and A rebranding? Don't tell us anything you can't tell us.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: No, I'm happy to share.
I've been through six or seven M&A projects so far academy, those large ones that you mentioned. Right. Sometimes hundreds of loan officers.
And so when a team joins us, we want to one. It's custom every single time. There is no one playbook to fit them all. That's the first piece.
The second part is when it comes to rebranding or changing the way they're going to appear to their community, the transition has to be intentional, and it cannot be something that we just dictate. It doesn't work that way because every single producer coming over and every leader coming over has invested equity in this brand that they've built.
Blood, sweat and tears at times. And so that's not a small thing to us to give up.
And so we want to make it as easy as possible for them to retain all of that value that they've built.
And so that comes into talking with every single person about timing and what do you want to change and how can we help convey and communicate this change to your partners, to your past clients?
And so we give them hundreds of different options of how we could do that and really make it prescriptive, not just for the company that's coming on board, but for each group and each branch and each producer.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: How do you. When does the data for. For acquisitions or new hires, when does it. When does the data create clarity For Gil to say, yes, we made the right decision and we want to continue to go on this, on. On this line, even though every acquisition is going to be different in. In the people or person.
When does it create clarity saying, we like this, this personality trait, and when does it create false confidence? In other words, that does. Does volume really cure all ills?
Or can personality traits cause in a larger organization some disturbance in the force?
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Sure.
The number one thing that will lead to success is culture fit.
And I know people say that.
Okay, but what is culture fit?
It's aligning on the values that the producers, the leadership team, the style of the company. Like every company has its own kind of feel of who's here, how do we work, how do we operate.
That is the number one thing that will determine success.
Now, we start with the data, right? So if you're looking at, well, who. Who would make a good fit? We absolutely start with the data, just like any company would. Are they going to be a good fit? Is there a revenue opportunity?
Do we need to invest, to build? Do we need to rebuild? Is there trouble?
Or is it just power connecting with power?
And so you start with the data there, the numbers, but then it goes very quickly into meeting with people so it comes back to people.
And if there's not a fit, I mean we have not done nearly as many MA deals as there are opportunities for them. And that's the key reason
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Price people and you also when you're M and A or you're trying to expand to your possible trajectories, you do want the best software possible.
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[00:30:04] Speaker A: thank you to our sponsors.
So back in 2016, you're one of the ones known to be pushing for video across all platforms.
You understood early that video really had trust because you could see the person. And then, I'm sure, your marketing background, you understood the algorithms, loved it too.
What was your gut on it back then and how has it changed now?
[00:30:37] Speaker C: I was just thinking about this the other day as I was thinking about kind of my early career, prepping for this.
So, in trial, the strongest evidence you can present is testimony, deposition, video.
And so you can show a transcript of a deposition and, like, call out quotes and, like, challenge somebody on it, but you can also show a video of this person being deposed. Right. We've seen plenty of celebrities and their. Their video depositions and what they said.
And the reason that's powerful and why they do it is because you can read body language, right? You can see how somebody answers. You can hear how they answer, which is so different than reading an email or reading a text, which all of us have misread what should have been sarcasm, but we read in a very different way.
And so it comes off differently. And so that was kind of where I had just come from, was a career doing that and seeing that constantly. And so when I came to Guild and was really focused on how do we empower our salespeople, there were people doing video here and there, but it was not consistent. It wasn't pervasive. It wasn't a tactic that was widely taught.
And so early on, that was something I focused on, was we got to get you on video. We got to get you recording a video and sending it to somebody. They're like, oh, no, just. Just, my kids do that, you know, But. But it really does create that connection.
And now today, video is obviously so pervasive, like you said, across the algorithms. They pick it up, they show it. Instagram is almost entirely video at this point.
And so it clearly has won out and become normalized.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Have you seen where originators manifest their own demise in video, for example, we do what we know instead of actually doing what we should be doing.
And if that makes any sense.
And so what's an example of an originator doing the right thing, saying, okay, this is the right thing, versus okay, I know I can do this.
But then you see them, meet them, see them on a zoom call, and then you have this interaction. You're like, what you really need to be doing is this. Because this is. Has the potential of bringing you more. Buying more brain cells when it comes to getting more loan applications and thusly more closings.
[00:33:02] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, I think where people go wrong with video is thinking that it's all about the production and thinking that that is the entire value. And then the next issue is what they're saying and how they're saying it. And so if they're just conveying what they want to say, it's not going to land.
I'm not saying production doesn't matter. You should do the right things. But you don't have to be highly produced to be successful in video.
Just using a clean lens on your iPhone is a big step up from not thinking about how you're shooting a video.
But the key is back to communication and voice and information and how you convey it.
You need to be answering the question that your audience has in their mind, not the information that you want to tell them.
And so a little bit of what you're talking about is in this industry, so many people have the curse of knowledge where we know so much about the product and like, how it can impact somebody's life and how it works.
When you get caught up in telling somebody what you think they need to hear versus what they want to hear, your message doesn't land and they don't hear you. So that's where I think people get stuck on video and they think they're doing it, but they're not seeing the results.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: In a similar world, I did a presentation at a sales summit for a mortgage company, the podcast mindset how to win your zip code through podcast. And I presented the famous facts of 90% of people don't get past their fifth episode, then 90% of them don't get past their 21st, which puts you in the top 1%.
Then I asked them just those. I was going to do the 5 and the 20, but when I did 5, nobody raised their hand. So I said, wow, no. Loan officers are doing podcasts. What do you think that number is on weekly videos, but not what percentage of the general loan officer public you think makes it past five weeks of or what week do you think is a cutoff? What would be a similar stat? Your gut instinct?
[00:35:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I think most loan officers try video for three to four weeks.
It's about the typical abandonment cycle for any kind of new thing in the marketing world with mortgage.
And you're honestly never going to see results that fast unless there was some other random factor that happened.
But that's an average, right? That's across everybody. There's absolutely people on other end who give up after their first one or give up after their hundredth.
I don't think the challenge is really the filming the video or sending the video out. It's the not getting immediate feedback. Right. Driving that dopamine response like we talked about that we're so used to with, oh, I got to solve a problem. Now I get a hit.
I got to close alone, now I get a hit.
And so when you're doing something often in marketing, that takes a long time, that long term commitment, you really got to commit to it and see it through.
It takes somebody who's willing to put that in and really invest in it.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Yeah, real quick for us, I think you don't know what you don't know. And it takes nine months. It takes that 21 episodes makes sense. It takes about, I don't know, six months, nine months, 12 months to really understand why you're doing it. Like for us, it's about the guests. We don't. The vanity metrics are not what drives our core engine. It is the guests. And it took us a long time to validate that. And if you did a weekly video of mortgage by the donuts, I think what you would find is about a year later, when everybody has a donut and they make a mortgage joke, they're thinking of you. And now your why is like, can I find more donuts to do this with? And you really start to get it. Then every week you're doing new donuts and it all makes sense. But until you find that why, sometimes you just have to swim around with a great marketing leader like you, you can get them on the course. But I think each person will be far more powerful when they find the why they're making those, those weekly videos 100%.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: And so when we, when they figure out their why, do they figure out whether they should be actually advertising themselves personally with their face on? The video we just saw at the, at the break, we didn't see any salespeople on there. All we saw was branding of the commercial. Itself. And so what's your recommendation to the original wants to get into it? Do they have to say, do they have to show their face? Or should they just put out the information and let AI do all the work or what, what, what, where do you, where do you draw that line on showing the branding of the face versus the team versus the company?
For the originator, sure.
[00:38:05] Speaker C: I mean, the first question I would ask is, do you want to take the easy road or the hard road?
The easy road is get on camera. Like, it's not that crazy. You look the same as you do in person.
That's the easy road. If you want to try the hard road, you can. It's going to take a lot more work, it's going to take a lot more time. And you can do faceless content, you can do kind of general brand awareness, but you're not going to see results very quickly or very cheaply. Right. And so at that point, like, why wouldn't you just get on camera?
[00:38:38] Speaker A: According to the book Purple Cow, remarkable means something worth talking about.
You encourage loan officers to go beyond just building relationships with the traditional circle of real estate agents and truly be hyper local.
As a marketing strategy, what does it look like to be remarkable authentically in a community versus remarkable to where it looks like you're trying too hard?
[00:39:08] Speaker C: Sure.
I mean, think of anybody in your community who, you know their name, right.
They participate, they go to the events, they meet people.
If they're at a baseball game, it's not just because they bought a banner that's up on the stadium, it's because they're there. They're there supporting their kid playing little league or they're playing in the pickup game.
And so I think when you think of how are you participating versus just existing, that's the real difference.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Could you expand on that? Because I think that most people have an inherent fear of implementation in general. So when you talk about participating, every originator has to participate by default. They're in sales. That's what they do.
But what, there's a certain switch which to go, oh, I actually have to listen to marketing.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: Sure.
So I think when you, when you're engaging in marketing versus sales. Right. If we're going to draw the line that they're different, in my mind they're very much overlapped.
Making sure that you are not missing the opportunities that you have in front of you when you're thinking about a marketing strategy as you're doing all of those sales activities is really where it clicks.
And so as an Example, if you're going to a happy hour, that is loan officers and agents, are you just introducing yourself and maybe trying to set up a couple of meetups for coffee later and handing out a business card or two. Right. Something you might just generally do at a happy hour and think, oh, I checked the box, I did it.
Or are you really trying to activate within that event and trying to capture as much value as you can from. Are you promoting that event on social media to try and get other people interested in it? Are you recording content and sharing that online to show not only was I there, but you're also promoting the people who were there and really trying to, you know, find ways to add value. And so you can do the. Just the sales activity and check the box that I went to an event and got two coffee appointments out of it, or you can layer in the marketing and really build a system out of it.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Then. Is there a difference then in marketing and sales? For example, like, I'm in Southern California, huge base of people versus like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which there's going to be smaller, less, less people. And so is the marketing any different? And is the. Is the progression of effort going to be any different? Because it seems to me like there might be even less effort if there's a smaller amount of people, but yet because you have less originators too, that might be the same. So what is the. What's the difference in larger versus smaller demographics?
[00:42:03] Speaker C: Sure.
The easy answer is, it depends, right?
[00:42:07] Speaker B: That's a lawyer.
[00:42:11] Speaker C: The challenge is, I don't know. I think when you're in a larger market, you have to struggle to find where is your place. In a smaller market, you only have one place, and so you have to fight within that pond. Right.
And so when you're trying to establish yourself, I think if you are in a newer market like that or you're new to the business, you have to be intentional about it. You have to go out there and make your face known. You have to engage with the community.
But you can do that just as easily in person as you can digitally, and that is easier in a larger market.
What I mean are things like finding your local subreddit and engaging on it, answering questions about, you know, the city that you're in, finding ways that you can promote local businesses on social media, and everybody then gets to feel like you're helping them as an influencer.
So there are ways you can do that. Digital marketing to establish your presence just as much as you can in the physical way.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: It seems like that is the best case for best use case for AI that I've heard. And my next question was going to be AI. So I don't know if you want to answer this as a originator or as a company just. But I just wanted to put at least one AI question out there since we have a lot of sponsors that are in it. Do you think loan officers should be using IT for better processes, better coaching on their plan or to build ui or a category that I didn't think of? Those are the three I think of usually.
[00:43:50] Speaker C: So I think I look at AI. I'm a big fan of AI and how it's evolved and integrating it into the way that every business does business.
But AI is the most valuable when it creates additional capacity.
Everybody has said the words like, oh, it's a second brain. Well, what's the value in having a second brain if you don't have a second head? It creates more capacity for your human brain.
So when it's helping with things like research or first drafts of content, or repurposing content, analyzing data or administrative work, when it creates more capacity for you to use your human brain to do those more important things, that's where it really starts to add value.
And advice is another way you shouldn't shift over judgment and advice and your actual critical thinking to AI Advice, empathy, accountability, relationship building, those are all things that should very much stay with you.
It's just the, the behind the scenes stuff. Some of that middle effort that, that really AI is going to revolutionize in my mind.
[00:45:02] Speaker B: So we're going to, we're going to bring this or into a head and go from the, from the front of the line to the, to the back here. And I'm asking this way. You entered into an industry where you initially assumed it to be boring and eventually you found yourself helping leading marketing for arguably one of the largest mortgage banking associations now publicly traded, even in the United States. And when you look back across that entire journey, what part gives you the greatest sense of joy or fulfillment for you?
[00:45:45] Speaker C: I think the most fulfilling part is seeing something that I got to work on, create value beyond the moment that it was built in.
And really for me, that's in my team.
And so there was a point in time a few years ago where every single member of my team, either I had interviewed and been part of the decision to bring them on or had trained them directly, and our team has grown since then, so that's not the case anymore. But seeing those team members grow and seeing the longevity and the careers that they've had both at Guild and since they've moved on from Guild is really where I find the most fulfillment.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: We appreciate you coming on the show and taking the extra time to go through what is a remarkable story, and I think it's an inspiring story. A lot of our listeners are trying to build career growth. That's purpose A, Purpose B, I guess, is I always joke 15 years from now, if we have a technology, an electricity outage for more than 60 days and people have to learn how to actually originate again without AI, you know, they can come back and watch these shows.
But I am curious on the way out, you know, there is this view of marketing in mortgage and I think it's really different depending on the size of the company and who is there. For somebody aspiring to get into marketing and mortgage. Or maybe they're on that boring interview, but.
But maybe they're listening to this podcast or trying to research on their way there to see if it's worthwhile. What.
What do you see as the future role of marketing for different channels and in different sizes? Not. Not just at Guild in mortgage.
[00:47:34] Speaker C: Sure.
And I think this applies to many careers. But I would say pay attention to the problems that people repeatedly trust you to solve.
Your job title might not tell you exactly where your career is going, or you might not be happy with it, but the recurring patterns of things like that often will.
So if people are asking you for help with certain things, what work ends up giving you energy versus taking it away, where your experience allows you to solve something that somebody else might miss, those are the things you should pay attention to in the kind of career planning, building, questioning phase.
Like I said at the beginning, I could not have drawn a straight line from where I started to where I am today. It would have been impossible.
And so your path might be looking disconnected while you're living it, but that doesn't mean that the experience that you're gaining is wasted.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: That sounds very similar. You would recommend that a book online, Unspoken Rules, and it has some similar themes there on.
I just never put it together that way. I also have not finished it yet. But asking what people need and then seeing if it keeps popping up, that's really powerful. Appreciate you coming on the show today, taking all the time.
Thank you. And hopefully you'll be on sometime in the future.
[00:49:04] Speaker C: Yeah. I enjoyed it, guys. Thanks for having me.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us on this journey into the heart of mortgage innovation. Every mortgage has a story and we're here to help you write yours. If you enjoyed today's insights. Please subscribe, Leave a comment, share it with your network and connect with us on social media.
Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and uncovering the stories that drive our industry forward.
