Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to season four of the Mike Dupp show, where every mortgage has a story.
This is the ultimate hub where the hidden stories behind the mortgage industry come to life. I am your host, Michael Kelleher, and alongside me, my co host. And in every episode, we together 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 trying to advance your career, scouting your industry leaders, or exploring opportunities in fintech and prop tech, you're in the right place. So get ready to unlock the story behind every mortgage. Let's dive in today with Kristen Metzerle and Dave Savage, who are commonly up on stage or commonly on social media, driving the message forward on how to reach customers out there in the industry, help loan officers expand their business and really nailing home the responsibilities of loan officers to be that first responder of financial literacy here in America. So I am excited and the whole point of the show is so our audience maybe can't go to all these conferences. Maybe they're, you know that I always say that their boss doesn't send them these conferences, but whatever reason, they don't make it out there. You're going to get a real great, great day today. Do you both want to introduce yourselves to the audience quickly before we dive into your amazing journey?
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
So I'm Kristen Messerley, executive director of First Home iq. And just a little bit of the background story. I grew up in mortgage, so my family was all, you know, in mortgage, had a brokerage, but I started my career as a social worker and I, I worked primarily with homeless youth and underserved communities and then just became really passion it through that process about financial education and building community partnerships and seeing the power of those relationships to actually move people to, you know, to new levels in their lives. And so I built a company called Cultural Outreach where I worked with lenders across the country and helping them build their strategy to reach underserved communities and millennials. And, and then just I've surveyed over 77,000 millennials and gen Z and again, just kind of continue to release reports and research help lenders.
And that's what has kind of ultimately led to Dave and I deciding like, let's build a nonprofit where everyone can come together to bring financial literacy into their communities and solve the financial literacy crisis through homeownership.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: And I'm Dave Savage, chief growth officer of TrustEngine and founder of Mortgage Coach, is passionate as ever of turning loan officers into modern mortgage advisors.
Really dedicated my 38 career, 38 year career in mortgage to just being more than a transaction based loan officer. I've always just had a passion for just the value alone provides to a consumer is profound. But when you actually help a consumer get a loan and achieve financial freedom through homeownership, not only is it a, a great way to improve conversion, not only is it a great way to improve profitability, it just feels good. So that, that's just always been something I've been passionate about. I, I developed coming out of the meltdown this purpose and profit just a personal narrative that, that like with Mortgage Coach like hey, profits matter but impact matters more. And if I really obsessed with impact and the way I measured that at Mortgage Coach was how many borrowers were getting a Mortgage coach experience where they were like seeing options, seeing how those options would perform over time, see how they could pay off. I, if I could get to where millions of consumers were getting that experience one we'd make real change in America.
Improve financial literacy, improve homeownership. And I get purpose and profits I do really well. And that has led to also being one of the co founders and board of directors of First Home IQ where we're, we're just really passionate about helping.
Let's get, let's get the average age of homeownership back with a 2 in front of it or, or at least with a low 3 instead of. I think it's 38 last year and I think it's likely going to be over 40 this year.
So I'm all about, I think you.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Both do a great job of carrying the torch in between conferences. We have the tendency go to them, get jazzed up and then you leave and, and how do you put it into action? And so the first Home IQ is such a powerful way whether you're seeing your branding on social or as I the cheerleader of mobile apps. I have to tell you this First Home IQ community app, if you're not it's unbelievable.
It's through circle like every day I'm in it more and, and we can get into that later. But I have to tell you if you don't know about it, you should find it. It is one of the more it is the most engaging community already well built out. I even looked today on the M. I couldn't believe how many members are in the app that are just at a click of the finger. So you guys have built this.
It's not something you just came up with. When you actually see how deep even the app goes, can you.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Where did it all come from?
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Where did you guys meet?
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Yeah, so I don't know if it, I know it was over 10 years ago, I think Kristen now it's been over 12 years. And we were both at the IMB conference in San Diego, it's Coronado. And I just finished a meeting with Mitch Kiter in a coffee shop. And his next meeting was with Kristen. And as I was walking out, he's like, dave, you need to meet Kristen. She was one of the speakers at the IMB conference and she was really talking about how to connect with the next generation, how the mortgage industry needs to help underserved markets.
We met, we talked, I mean, quickly, like she was like mortgage coach. After I described it and just gave her the elevator pitch. She's like, this is huge. Why doesn't everybody do it? And so we became friends, we became impact partners, you know, just like sharing stages.
You know what I believed she believed in terms of homeownership. And then I don't know.
And was it 23 that we started talking about first home IQ? And then 24 was like, hey, let's bring this to life. And Kristen is the executive director and runs it.
[00:06:34] Speaker D: Wow.
Can you tell us a little bit of the story of implementation of First Home iq? Because everybody has come up with some kind of semblance of financial literacy, regionally speaking as an originator, financial advisor or combination. But tell me about your implementation process of First Home IQ and how you brought it to fruition to its present in the state.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah, first of all, one of the main points of bringing of kind of bringing First Home IQ together is the, the idea that we would make it easier for people to bring financial literacy or home buyer education into their communities. Because a lot of people do want to do this and they want to, you know, either have this as part of their strategy to win first time home buyers by doing events or being involved in their community or you know, social media education. But they don't have the time or they just want to be giving back. And they also feel like, ok, yes, I could volunteer this time, but I don't have the, you know, the time to put together good education.
So that's our job.
And then secondly, we want to make education a lot more engaging and memorable.
You know, of course the way people learn today is we have shorter attention spans, but also people are really overwhelmed with financial information, both because of the complexity, but also because of just the world that we live in. So, and the skepticism that is growing that's a big part of my research today is just looking at financial overwhelm and, and some of the distrust in lenders and institutions. And so, you know, the education we've created is all about empowering consumers in a way that, that allows them to process that information. It's engaging. It's. So, you know, we, we have presentation material, but we also have, you know, a lot of guides and playbooks and strategies for helping people to online courses, things that will allow them to both connect with the, the audience, whether it be a webinar in person or social media or whatever, so that it makes it easy for that loan officer or whoever to do the education, but also give them something to be able to, to walk through that education on their own. So that's kind of, I don't know, Dave, if you have anything to add to that.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I think, you know, our, our goals. First of all, there's, there's, I think I did a perplexity search and there's like 9 million consumers in America that qualify to buy their first home right now. And when rates come down by half a percent, it's like it opens up another 2 million. So my whole philosophy is the opportunity is now as an industry, we need to quit waiting for people to call us and we need to go on the offense. And then we all know, like, if you're in the industry, the wealth gap in America is who owns versus who rents. I mean, homeowners have 40 times the net worth of people that rent. And, and then when you look at why is this all, why is this a problem?
The why is really simple. There's a massive misconception around what down payment is required to buy a home. There's a massive misconception about what is credit worthiness for homeownership. And so as I really, you know, Chris, I started talking about it, we're like, hey, at age 16, people can drive and they, they go through a lot of work to get a driver's license. They get a lot of work to, to get that driver's license. For a fraction of that, they could be homeownership literate. And at age, age 18, the race for homeownership starts. And they're going to get started, they're going to get targeted by credit companies.
They're, they're going to be able to sign for student loans. Like we, as an industry, we could do more loans, we could sell more homes if we are the financial literacy. So for me, a lot of it is just creating awareness in a way that's inspirational to both mortgage and real estate professionals. And then as an industry, we need to get really good at making it inspirational to folks in their 20s.
[00:10:30] Speaker D: It's interesting you use the word inspirational, Dave, because inspiration is an emotional concept. It's not necessarily something that's in your head, it's something that you feel. And I think that one of the things that we've been missing with financial literacy is how does someone invest their time so that they have the willingness to go and make future investment decisions, fiscally speaking? And I think that's part of the fiscal literacy.
How does being a part of the first home IQ community not only convey financial literacy, which is informational, to translate into an emotional aspect so that people can make active decisions for that purpose?
[00:11:14] Speaker C: I guess I'll go first on this one. So first of all, stories, you know, stories matter. And so we, we have, you know, for the hundreds of loan officers and realtors that are actually ambassadors, you know, they're donating time and money monthly, sharing stories and then sharing stories on social media, connecting with your database. I always say, like in this world of AI and when you look at what's happening with the Rockets, loan officers need to future proof themselves. So to future proof yourself, you need to win your database and you need to win locally.
So I think telling stories, connecting emotionally. And then of course there is an emotional element of everything that we're describing, which is huge. I think as an industry, we don't do as good a job of telling that emotional side of the story story. And then there is a logical element of that. You know, how do you qualify for a home? So we just work on building the community and then collecting the stories and then amplifying the stories. We really appreciate this opportunity to help amplify that.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: And just kind of tactically in the community, we really work hard on not just providing people with, you know, a bunch of slides or with a, you know, some online courses, whatever. We're really focused on bringing tactical information like playbooks, you know, or showcasing other people, what they're doing to reach more first time homebuyers or to, you know, half of our community is really focused on like community partnerships, so showcasing some of the examples of how people have built relationships with schools or libraries or whatever.
And then for those who are like, if you want to do a webinar series, not just giving people again, the slides and, and kind of a playbook, but as Dave was saying, really showing. Here's what Joe Soto does with his webinar strategy and Helping people to follow that. So it's, it's very much community powered.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Can you elaborate on your view of victories versus the loan officer's view and some of the view, some of the victories they've been sharing.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: So our view of victories as an organization versus the loan officer victories.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yes. And hearing both of them.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting to, to put it that way because I think partly, you know we're always listening to the ambassadors in our community. Those are people who are like you know, donating, being we have a program specifically for them and, and I think for them we see that one, you know, one type of ambassador is the one that is going to feel really good when they have been able to build some quality relationships in their community whether it be or delivering a successful rollout of classes in their local school or someone who feels like okay, I've been able to like Jane Floyd is, has been doing library presentations or presentations with our library. She feels really good about the strategy that's you know, moving forward with that.
But then there's another Persona in our ambassador group that's and most people fall into this bucket to some degree but looking to you know, increase their leads through with first time home buyers. And so, so we're measuring that, we're looking at how can we continue to help people with things like we have a first home IQ quiz that every ambassador gets and they, when someone takes that quiz through that person, that ambassador's link, they get the name, email and results of that person, you know, who took the quiz. So it's a lead funnel, you know we work with them on, on that type of thing. As an organization our, our number one met and how we can, you know, increase the homebuyer education access within the next generation. Ultimately that's going to lead to increased homeownership rates at younger ages. It's going to increase financial confidence, reduce financial overwhelm those types of things. But you know the, the metric is around education access and the way I.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Would answer that, you know part of it is just data driven. So I just shared a link to my ambassador link and, and so one way to win an ambassador and for our organization, Kristen said it but like how many people took that quiz and that that is the tip of the spear of our impact. Now the loan officer wins because every time someone takes that quiz they're building their database. Think of it as like a lead magnet.
Loan officers, a lot of mortgage professionals that are part of our community, they give that to their first time homebuyers so along with, you know, filling out an app, giving a link, they're giving them this. It's 15 questions. It's making them a better customer. It's also an incredible brand statement that, hey, I am this financial literacy first responder. I'm more than a loan officer. I'm a loan officer that really helps my community and the people I serve get smart around homeownership. So, so I would say that link is definitely the North Star of impact. We actually recognize who are the loan officers or professionals, our community that had the most people take the quiz. And then, like, Michael, you called out, you're. You're in the app. We look at, like, our database. How many people have, like, said, hey, I want to get updated on this. We look at how many people are active in our circle list. And remember, you don't all have to donate and pay money. Like, that's. The industry has funded this, you know, with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But, but it's free to teachers, it's free to, to parents, it's free to everyone in America. And I, and I truly believe I have yet to see a financial literacy online platform focused on helping homeowners that is better than this. I mean, that was part of. Chris and I were, like, looking for this in a way that we could participate and make impact, and we couldn't find anything, you know, and so it was like, we need to create it.
And then we just felt like, hey, this is the. And by the way, this is not ours. This is the mortgage industry's financial literacy platform.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Oh, aha. Moment of this podcast is the taking the quiz early, getting a score, and the attachment to improving along the way. It wouldn't have thought of it like that, but handing it out to consumers, saying, hey, you got 11 out of 15.
Let me help you get to 15 out of 15. And I feel like that's very sticky. Probably, Kristen, you could talk about this. It's probably more sticky to millennial Gen Z, who like, kind of an informal tutoring versus the old school, where, you know, I'm going to go to my uncle and he's going to teach me.
[00:18:03] Speaker D: How to own a home.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yes. And we try to make it fun. We've actually just improved the, the quiz model a bit this year. And, and we'll be releasing a report on where we've done research on this here in just a couple of weeks. And, but the, the quiz, at the end of taking the quiz, you get a results page, you get some recommendations. It's something that someone can take really quickly and learn, but then it also connects you with that person that gave it to you. A lot of people deliver it at the beginning of presentations or whenever or on social media or before someone comes, you know, they have a meeting with somebody, as you were saying, Mike. So yeah, I think it's a, a great opportunity to, to connect with people in the fun and it lowers the bar of like starting the conversation because a lot of people also just don't even have the language to ask the questions. So when they take the quiz they're able to be like, oh yeah, what's, you know, the, the down payment question. It still blows my mind that how many people get that wrong?
We had, I think it's like 92% of people taking the quiz get that question wrong about how much payment option you have for a conventional loan. So it's. Yeah, it's important.
[00:19:21] Speaker D: Do you have a metric right now on a national basis on how many, how many originators or how many companies or how many teachers or whoever? How many are using the first home IQ as a resource? Whether it's like majority California for now because it started out here or whether it's in the Midwest. We had cash on from Ohio last week and I know that there's affordable housing out in, in, in Ohio. So how many, how many can we get out there that are only in California versus the United States? What does that metric look like at the moment?
[00:19:52] Speaker B: It's really all over the place. Like I actually just asked someone on my team to look at where we had clusters of ambassadors and people using the, you know, the quiz, their own version of the quiz. And, and we don't have a lot of places where there's overlap. It's spread out a lot throughout the country.
I, Yeah, I think we have about.
Well, yeah, we have people like a cluster here in the LA area, but, but otherwise there's not too many, you know, close to each other. So.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Yeah, and there are a couple metrics that were. By the way, we're trying to grow and we appreciate being on us. We have not crossed 200ambassadors. And an ambassador is someone that is donating money monthly and someone that is active. And by the way, we also give scholarship. So if someone really wants to get behind this but just doesn't have any money to donate, we'll give like a three month scholarship.
And then we have over 600 people that are active in the community, they're on the mailing list, they're engaging with us.
I know Churchill is a company that has donated you know, pretty large sum of money annually and gets behind this movement Mortgage has gotten behind this. Then we have a number of down payment resources.
Rob, the founder of Down Payment Resources donated money personally and also donated money from down payment resources.
We've recently started building the board. Mitch Kiter because he introduced us as one of the first people that joined our board.
Clayton Collins has joined our board.
You know how many board members are we up to now? I think about 12ish.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: 15 now.
[00:21:40] Speaker C: 15.
So, so we're really, we, you know the last year was like minimally viable.
Todd Booksband, myself and Kristin founded it, funded it. Kristin has made this just you know, her mission.
And and then we, we did raise a little less than $300,000 last year. I think it was what was it like 260 something which really built this minimally viable. And then this year it's like okay, let's build a board, let's formalize it. Let's really make this the industry's nonprofit.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: And so we're doing and we've talked a lot so far about the impact on you know, first time homebuyers and things like that. But we also have a whole program specifically for teachers and educators that' think Dave mentioned that it's free for teachers, free for schools. And so last year we, we focused primarily on people that want to do you know, a guest speaking at their local school or whatever. And that's still a big part of that ambassador program.
We educated a thousand students last year, over 5,000 through the, the first home IQ quiz. But then this year through some other partnerships externally we will bring that education to over 40, 000 students and teachers in schools across the country. So this is you know definitely that impact is growing exponentially this year. And we're and it's as Dave said, fully supported and funded through our, the support through the mortgage industry.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And the whole story is just every time, you know just hearing it makes you want to go and reach out to a at school or we had Jeremy Davis on it where he said barber shops right and and like corner stores in religious places are just community congregation. If you could have your person that sells everybody there on the corner store handing out one of these like that's really who is. Is super impactful.
So speaking of support, we are able to do what we do thanks to our sponsors. So we are going to. We're always looking for new sponsors. We're also doing a big push here for NBA annual and a spin off show for our sponsors. So if you're interested in joining, please reach out. If you're just a listener right now, good time to ask for a Like or a subscribe. We're going to take a quick three sponsor break and on the other side of the break we're going to ask some questions about what loan officers can be doing should be doing in this market as well as maybe some some personal questions about both of your journeys along this way.
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[00:25:37] Speaker F: Year where the company can do the configurability so we have no code on this so they can go in their settings, they can set it up all the way down to loan officer if they want to. We also have a customer support team that's assigned to each account.
If they want they can overhaul everything.
[00:25:52] Speaker D: If they wanted to.
[00:25:52] Speaker F: They have a new product, especially dynamic apps. With dynamic apps we can fit multiple, we can fit the Fannie Freddie loans, we can new construction, one time clothes, HELOCs, you know whatever those workflows are, they can design that workflow for each individual app so it's not a static app. And plus two is as they're answering those questions, it'll ask them specifically what they need. So the borrower has everything at their fingertips right then and There you know, when a question gets answered, certain documents are required and we have that engine that handles that. So if uploads directly into flow fi pushes it automatically into the los. If the loan officer, they are able to set it up where it looks like the processor needs something they can communicate as a team. So it looks like it's coming directly from the loan officer that they're already used and have that relationship with. So it's not somebody that they never talk to. Now what's going to take it to the next level is the AI and the OCR piece.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: You're both running communities and Kristen, you're the first home IQ.
Dave, obviously you have the mortgage coach community on YouTube.
When you wake up in the morning, how are you able to handle all of that noise? And obviously it's great noise, but how are you able to handle it and how do you attack the day?
[00:27:14] Speaker C: Well, first of all, I try to consume an hour of useful and positive content a day that doesn't have news involved in it. So stay out of that. And things that just make me better, things that I control.
And then I try to create content every day. You know, I dedicate about five hours a week to creating and just looking for stories of people that are winning Mortgage Coach and The Mortgage Coach YouTube channel. I'm always looking for people that are doing better this year than last year and right now. So anybody that I interview is, is outperforming their previous self and they're outperforming their market. I mean, sometimes I am literally interviewing the number one market leader in specific markets. So 38% of the top 1% use mortgage coach. So I'm pretty lucky that I, I have a community of some of the most successful professionals. But, but for me, I, I stay positive because I super careful about the content that comes in my mind and then I'm, I'm creating every, every single day I'm trying to interview someone.
If I'm doing a sales call, like, I'm trying to listen more than I present. I'm trying to learn every chance I get. So that's kind of part of my formula.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: I was kind of laughing whenever we were thinking about Dave's response because he just, I feel like is such a unique human being, if you can even say human. I don't know, I just, I wake up to, you know, texts from him being up for so many creating content already having consumed great content. So.
But I, I will say I think and something I've learned a lot from Dave is that whole like Having your own mindset set first. And.
And he, you know, is teaching this like, live by your own code. Know your code and live by that. And so that's a big part of how, what drives the way that I build our community as well, being very mission driven, being focused on what is fueling me, and putting that energy towards the community.
But I do think one of the biggest things that has been supportive, as I mentioned earlier, is like hearing not from me, but hearing from others in the community, what's working for them. And so that that collective voice from people that are active in our community has been the biggest, you know, biggest part of how we've grown.
[00:29:45] Speaker D: One of the things I think people think about in present time is AI, artificial intelligence and how it could replace salespeople or whatever the situation in technology would be. But really, money's not emotional, people are. And so what can originators do today instead of having fear about AI, utilizing it as a tool and utilizing it for education?
[00:30:10] Speaker B: I know we both have a lot to say about this.
I will say, I just want to mention that we did a survey in January, Millennials and Gen Z, thousand of them, and 43% said that they would use ChatGPT to gather home buying information.
And so that was wild, you know, but then what we just found, and we did an August survey, and it has jumped up to 68%.
So that's just in a few months. I mean, you think about, like, where we are today and we're looking. So this is part of how people gather information, and we cannot shove that to the side. I think the biggest mistake that loan officers make is trying to compete with AI instead of leveraging that as a tool. And, you know, you look at how much distrust there is with millennials and Gen Z, especially with lenders, but also institutions in general.
If you go in and say, just listen to me, they're going to be like, you're not. You're not for me. So if you go in and say, you know, use tools like Mortgage Coach and use other education, you say, hey, why don't you, you know, put this into Chat gbt, put this into whatever tools you use, and then come back and let's talk about it some more. And. And that opens people up to say, yeah, okay, you're empowering me to make smart decisions for myself, and I'm. I feel better about having this conversation with you. So that's one thing. There's a lot of different directions we can go with. A1 I wanted to specifically, you know.
[00:31:39] Speaker C: Talk about yeah, and my, my thought that I've been talking about a lot is the illiterate of 2025, like this year are not those who can't read and write, they're those who cannot use AI. And, and, and truly because you don't need to know how to read and write anymore, by the way. It is a good idea. So for any young people out there, learn how to read and write. But, but you know, your ability to, to use AI, use tools like Mortgage Coach, be parts of communities like First Home iq, leverage technology to deliver convenience of value for consumers. Like if we could deliver convenience of value for consumers now, something I am very passionate about and Kristen knows about it. She called it the code. I'm currently writing a book called know your code, live your code, share your code.
Because I really believe, like that's the one thing the better you can know yourself. What are your beliefs, what are your values, what are your principles?
You got to know yourself at a new level, by the way. You need to document that you're seeing and I'm sure both of you guys have done this, they call it brand books. There's a lot of different terms for putting who you are in a documented way into AI.
But I want to push the envelope to where I needs to know your values, needs to know your principles, needs to know your philosophies. You know, I've got a little term that I call have fun playlists. You know, it's one of the cornerstones to my code. But what I couldn't have fun and play loose if my advice didn't make a difference. I couldn't have fun and play loose if I didn't wake up early in the morning and not consume a bunch of toxic media that I have no control over. So I just think like my answer is the, you know, the loan officer of the future is the mortgage professional that can unlearn kind of like old school ways of doing things and can learn how to use AI and the technology they should like that. That's at a very macro perspective. That's my thought.
[00:33:45] Speaker D: I've heard that there's a saying, when your values are clear, your decisions are easy. Right.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: If you're living them, if you're living well, right?
[00:33:54] Speaker D: Like I'm, I'm going to walk to the next room. Your value system says it, but versus I'm going to walk into the next room that's full of knives and guns that's going to shoot me because you, you don't want to die. And my point is that sometimes people accidentally walk into a room where there's going to be knives and guns shooting them because they're, they're not clear of that value system to say, if I walk into that room and they don't even know it, they don't know what they don't know.
And I think is there, is there an emotional method as a part of your, of the activity that causes someone to think, I want to know more about how I think because I don't even know what I don't even know.
So what is it that we can do in, in activity either as salespeople, originators, realtors, leadership, what do we do as activities to put us into that position, to say, you know, what I've been doing, activities which I thought I should be doing versus this is actually who I am and this is what I need to do because it aligns to what I do. We grind because it's rough, but it won't be the grind when it aligns with our value system. So how do we do more of that inactivity?
[00:35:01] Speaker C: Well, first of all, I just put a link to the know your code Facebook Facebook group that I'm, that I'm creating and that's what I'm writing a book on is, you know, how to, how to know your code, how to document your code, how to live your code at a higher level and then, then play it forward, you know, share it with your family, share it with your team. There might be a difference in what you share with your family, what you share with your team, you know, share it with AI so that you're, you're doing it. So I, I put my, you know, highest level answer to that is it's time to get to know ourselves better than ever. I mean, you've got to know yourself better than ever. You've got to document who are, what you stand for better than ever, or you'll, one, you can't live it and two, you cannot leverage it in the way that I think you need to to win going forward.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: And I do think we are in such an overwhelming environment today. The world is chaotic and we are bombarded with information and noise all the time and it's leading people to burnout. And so, you know, I, I know for me, if I'm not really grounded in those values, it's, I, I'm tired and I'm not moving the same way that I, you know, I want to be moving or making those decisions very clearly. And I think that, you know, the most, most of our community Is is in this community with first home IQ because they realize this is one of my values. And it not only supports them with their business or giving back or whatever, but it also fuels them, gives them energy to be better at their jobs, you know, and it like that energy leads them to other things doing, doing those better, faster, all of the that. So I think, you know, living by your values helps reduce that burnout too.
[00:36:49] Speaker C: And I want to add one more like part of my code, always be masterminding. You know that's what I love about you Michael. I love like this, this is a mastermind. And then you've, you've, you've got it playing on LinkedIn and you know, I've watched you execute for a long time, Michael. You're always masterminding. And so that's, that's the other thing is I do think more than ever we need to mastermind locally, we need to mastermind nationally.
I just moved to Oregon and had lunch with a local mortgage coach, Annie Ransom. What's up Annie? And she was telling me about, I can't remember the name of the group but it's a group of mortgage professionals that are all top producers, all growth minded that have been masterminding here in Portland. Oh it's called the 8020 group.
Shout out to Stu Standards, the leader of the 8020 group in Portland, Oregon. But I do think we need to always be masterminding is a really important part of that.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Yeah, my mantra has been if I'm grabbing attention, outlast people and it allows me to not focus as much on the vanity metrics and it's how I been able to break through say starting a community. Kristen to the community. Dave has, he's been doing it for so long.
Obviously it's easier now to get up when it. The gardens already has all the flowers in it. When you're first putting the seeds in it's, it's not as easy to do. I will do like a mastermind piece then here and have both of you guys respond to it. A little bit unorthodox on what we do lately, but what we used to do, which is fun for me, I like the evolution of what I've heard here is I think what you both offer is the ability to see how Gen Z and like younger millennials are acting. I think our industry says they know but they don't really do much.
Get in their shoes and actually figure it out. And then Dave, you show everybody what successful loan officers are doing and I think when you put those together you're able to better attack what is a short attention span generation. And we had our guest who was my intern, I thought she knocked it out of the park, but she was saying how the, the younger generation is, is lazy and that's why they don't buy homes. She knows like five people that were looking and then they just stopped looking. And then I tried to give her an out and I was like, you don't mean lazy? And she's like, I think three times. She's like, no, they really are. And I was. And like it's the short attention span where if the first two houses aren't and you don't have the right coach to coach you to keep going, they're just going to go on rent.com app and then double click and end up in a nice beautiful oceanfront rental for a year and like they're done. And so I, I'm not asking whether you agree with that or not, but just how do you just keep doing what you're doing? Because I think the short attention span is underrated on how much you have to relate to that and how difficult it is for our industry. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:39:47] Speaker C: I'll go first on that. So first of all, there's two parts of my code. Always be on a mission. Like that's something that is a three to five year thing that I'm always going after.
And then truly one of the life changing, career changing TED talks was Simon Sinek's TED talk. I think it was like 2011 around starts with why. And so I think it always comes down to your why, you know, like, like I would not, 15 years later still be doing a YouTube channel and interviewing top producers if one, I didn't have a deeply personal and emotional why.
And then I'd also say a why. That has changed. You know, like when I first did it, we were coming out of the meltdown.
I had been through multiple layoffs at Mortgage Coach.
There were very few sales meetings taking place in the mortgage industry.
I was humbled, I was hurting. And I go, you know what one of my most valuable assets was? I've got really successful mortgage professionals using Mortgage Coach. And then I've always believed that like when it's difficult, great leaders have a meeting. They, they communicate. So I had that why? And I go, you know what? I'm going to start doing the best sales meeting in the mortgage industry every week and I'm going to bring in one of these badass mortgage coaches.
And you know, so I, I had a why, you know, now if that would have been my only why, you know, heck, I would have started before I sold Mortgage Coach. I probably would have stopped when I had my private equity deal because my why had evolved to I want to change how people get into debt in America. You know, my why evolved to I want millions of Gen Z's to get educated. So like, you know, it all comes down to your why. And, and so, you know, whether you're starting a community, whether you're, you got a community and you want to keep it growing, if the mission doesn't change, if the why isn't personal, deep enough, clearly understood it, well, at least for me, that's my story. That's how I have, you know, been driven and continue to be driven, so to speak.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: From the research that I've done on, on Gen Z, I, I mean, we seek repeatedly, year after year, at least two in three say that they don't trust lenders to help them make smart decisions about their mortgage or their future. And, and they are like the majority, vast majority don't feel confident in their own knowledge. This last report I've been focused on, we looked at financial overwhelm. Over half say that they are overwhelmed by financial information and over half say that how that makes them delay financial decisions. So to me, there's not just a, you know, I don't know how we define the laziness, but I would argue it's overwhelm. It's the burnout conversation. It's the, you know, the feeling like I'm going to make a mistake and I don't know who to trust and I can't even trust myself. So I, I feel like of course people are not going to feel confident stepping out, making the biggest financial decision of their lives.
So, and with the market changing the way it is, so that's where I think we've got to come in with empowering education, transparency, really showing up consistently with people they do trust, influencers, whether it be in their community or online, but that it's a different ball game today.
[00:43:23] Speaker D: Kristen, I'm gonna ask you a personal question. I hope it's okay to ask this one. But what, what have you ever been afraid of, professionally speaking? And then you just went and said, okay, I'm really scared to do this, but I'm just gonna, I don't know how I'm gonna overcome it. I'm just gonna overcome it by doing what is, professionally speaking, what is something that you've done to overcome that fear so that, you know, because we Just talked about fear of home ownership. So what is a fear that you may have had? And then maybe Dave can have the same question.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: I love this question, by the way.
[00:43:56] Speaker C: I'm glad he called you first.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: I know I'm going to use a really easy one because I speak a lot at conferences and things like that. And I think I have repeatedly had times where I'm really scared to get on stage, even though I often really love it.
I. There's, you know, it's either an audience I really am nervous about, especially early on.
I was very. It was a big fear. And in fact, when I first started speaking, I mean, I would, like, cry before going on stage. And. And Dave has been a big support with his have fun, play loose. That was. That's a comment he's told me so many times before getting on stages. And it has really helped me to be like, you know, that's. That's one thing is to say, okay, I'm. I know my stuff. I'm going to have fun. And.
And that. That tends to overpower the fear. The second thing is being there to bring value.
And if I am thinking, if I'm focused on, I have a message that I care about bringing to this audience that, well, overpowers the fear, because the fear is typically around what are people thinking of me? And that's the case with a lot of the professional fears I would say I have is like, am I going to make a mistake? Am I going to. You know, but I. So I don't know how this will translate to a home buyer buying a home, but I think it is around this. Like, let's. You've done your best to prepare. Now let's take these steps to, you know, to. I don't know, because I know the value that it's going to bring.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: Before you go, Dave, and we'll get to you. Is that how you got through the gathering? Because your message was something you care about, but that was an intimidating.
It was like Broadway. It was you up there, like soliloquy and spotlight, like in the rest of the place, dark in front of what was now considered one of the larger, greater audiences in a long time.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: What was actually hard about that was that I. I think I had like, two minutes, and I can speak for an hour, but. But to say okay or 10 minutes, you know, I can. I can distill the. The message, but to bring it to two minutes.
But, yeah, it. Absolutely. It was 100% about. Like, that one was really about. I have a message that I Care about bringing here. And, and that's how. Yeah, gotta work through that one. I was definitely scared.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: You did great.
[00:46:30] Speaker C: Yeah, so, so no people will believe this because I have spoken on so many stages right now, but I don't think there's anyone that had a bigger fear of speaking in public. I took public speaking in college and at the beginning of the year, the teacher said, if, you know we're going to have a big presentation at the end, if you don't do it, you're automatically going to lose a grade. And I immediately was like, well, going to get a B in this class and I better be getting an A because I'm not doing it, you know, in my head.
And so, you know, I had a really transformational experience in my twenties at a Tony Robbins event where I walked on fire. I learned about neuro linguistics and neuro linguistics, you know, the conversation you're having with yourself, the questions you're asking yourself.
And I, you know, I was really afraid to do video. You know, like video. But I, that starts with why I started telling myself, well, I can't misspell words with video.
Anybody who knows me, like, you know, like, I was the worst at spelling in the entire school. You know, I'm ADD and dyslexic. And so I, I just, my, my hack is that I am super aware of the questions that I'm asking myself in the narrative that I have. And then, by the way, I'm very competitive. I like to win.
You know, I like to achieve my goals.
And that's just something at birth, I was always very competitive at anything and everything.
You know, I'll beat all three of you at cornhole. You know, bring it. Even though I don't know that I will. Like, that's just how I think.
Like, so when you want to win, you know how to use why on yourself. You know how to use that. Like, that's. But speaking and video were really hard to overcome.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't even like asking questions some. Like, my heart races so much, I'm like, maybe I just won't ask it so my heart can stop racing. I sit there sometimes, so I totally get it. And my final question would be for, for maybe for the audience out there. So maybe if you were a loan officer, how would you do this? But I'm fascinated by the term. We haven't had one in a while, but first time refinancer. So like, to the Gen Z millennial that this is going to be their first time refinancing.
What Would you say to that experience or advice on what, what's ahead of them or how a loan officer should prepare for it and maybe assumptions they shouldn't make?
[00:49:02] Speaker C: Well, I'm a really quick answer that, but to me, to the audience right now, the bigger opportunity right now is the first time sellers because anybody who bought a house in the past three to five, three to five years has equity and in many of those people qualify to buy a bigger home and they want to buy a move up home.
So to me that is truly one of the most valuable niches for a mortgage professional to understand that scripting around that. We actually have some scripts on our YouTube channel around that. But so first of all, I just want to call that out as a takeaway for loan officers. You know, I've got like how to train realtors to call their database and get listings with first time sellers, how to call your database to get first time sellers. But I think what I'm going to say for first time refi is this. It would apply to almost any refi because by the way, it's coming. I mean hopefully it's really coming soon and we're not getting another dead cat bounce.
But, but you always want to show people the monthly savings and then you always want to show people the power of taking that monthly savings and prepaying your mortgage. And it's also like, hey, do you want to lower your monthly payment by $373 or do you want to lower the term on Your loan by 7 years and pay off your house in 23 years, saving yourself 204,000 in interest over the life of your loan? Like, like you really. By the way, that's a little financial literacy lesson.
Like literally in two minutes you gave that person the understanding of you can save monthly, but if you reinvested that in principle, you could save. So I just think that's a, by the way, that's a lesson that every high school kid should understand. That's a lesson that, you know, before you turn 18, you should understand the power of prepaying debt. You should understand the power of hey, what If I took that 370 and invested that in my, you know, my investment account?
Do I want to prepay my mortgage or do I want to invest a difference? So it's financial literacy. It's great information. And you know what else, guys? It'll help you beat the servicers because the servicers aren't going to do that.
Get ahead of them, teach that little financial literacy lesson and you'll do Great.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:51:28] Speaker D: In, I live in San Diego county and it's interesting because if I go into, into Oceanside, California, the, the high school reading literacy rate is like 40%. Like only 40% of high school graduates actually have the ability to, to read at the high school level in that city or in that high school. And then you travel literally 15 minutes south. And it's not even about literacy, it's about what kind of university you're going to be going to.
And I think that there is tremendous opportunity whether it's in a higher income area like Southern California or even a lower priced area such as like Cahoon county in Ohio, which is where Cleveland is at.
And I think that there is, there is an inspiration that is a potential not only for originators but to collaborate more within this first home IQ community. Is it, is there ways that other professions can be added to the community outside of originators so there's greater amount of collaboration and how do they get involved and how does the originator go and seek out those people? And I will say for selfish reasons that there may be some business selfish accumulation involved. But really there is a greater transparency of saying I'm not just doing this for business, I'm also giving back.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: Well, yeah, yeah, it's where your values meet Your, your business too. And I think that's awesome.
Yeah, I, I mean we have a, we've talked about like really expanding outside of mortgage. We have some realtors who are involved. We have here we've had a couple of, you know, financial advisors say like, you know, get involved and I think this is where we can. Everything is applicable even to parents where we're going to do a webinar specifically for parents on teaching their financial literacy. So all of it, we've designed it initially with input and involvement from the mortgage industry because that's where our community was. But it's, it's very much applicable outside of that and a huge opportunity. We do have a lot of people use the materials like we put all our research in there and presentations to use with partner groups and things like that. So. Or some people go into businesses and do presentations like lunch and learns in local businesses.
But there's also anyone can get involved in the community. There's a free community firsthomeiq.com industry.
There's a tab in there about the Ambassador program if anyone's interested in actually going deeper into the ambassador program.
But yeah, definitely invite anyone and everyone to get involved here.
[00:54:18] Speaker C: Yeah, and I, I use a term a lot that I call you know, be the captain of the wealth team and, and the, you know, the wealth team in America for most Americans, you know, 90 plus percent, their majority of their wealth comes through homeownership. And, and then I'm also very passionate about just helping future proof local advisors, local professionals. So whether that's a, a loan officer, a realtor, a financial planner, a cpa, someone selling insurance, if they're a local advisor, they can be the captain of the wealth team. And so I do think while we from a go to market standpoint have really focused on the mortgage industry because it is homeownership readiness, that is where our community is. But I think easily anybody and by the way, local or national, but our go to market outreach is future proofing local professionals, because we think the formula for future proofing is winning your database and winning locally. And we think that the content we're creating, the platform we're building, they can win their database with it. Like, let parents know that this thing's out there. Let communities know that this thing's out there. So win your database and then win your local community.
So I like where you're going with it. Michael and I would love to keep this conversation going with you. Have you?
[00:55:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you, Dave and Kristen for captaining our mic'd up boat here as we continued along our journey. We want to thank our audience obviously for joining us. Thank you for joining us on this journey into the heart of mortgage innovation.
Remember, every mortgage has a story and we're here to help you write yours. If you enjoyed today's insights, please subscribe, share with your network, work and connect with us on social media.
Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and uncovering the stories that drive our industry forward.
