[David] Welcome listeners to another special podcast. Our guest today is Garrett Locklear. The reason why so many of you should be paying attention to this is because Garrett is one of the top loan originators in the nation. And he is, I’ll let him get in and tell you about it, but he is just recently, well, it’s been a while. He’s been building some technology I’m extremely excited about. Loan officers are getting excited about it. Companies are getting excited about it and he’s one of our sponsors of our podcast. So I’m grateful to have him. Also, he’s a client and becoming kind of like a son to me. Garrett, good to have you with us. I almost got a little sentimental there.
[Garrett] Thanks David, I appreciate that intro. I didn’t mean to make you cry.
[David] No, I know. It’s just kind of, it was just like, yeah, that’s really nice. It’s got to work.
[Garrett] I’m a two-time repeat offender now on your show.
[David] Yeah, you have, it’s not like you’ve been, is, yeah, this is a, this is a repeat and, another one. anyway, we’re glad to have you back. And I’m really excited because you recently did something that caught some people’s attention and listeners. you ever heard candid acquired unify CRM? And a lot of people are saying, well, know, candidate, is this a small little company? Is there anything significant about it? But this acquisition established you Garrett as a serious player. And a company to be reckoned with. I’m excited about that. That’s why we want, that’s one of things I want to talk about today. So what was your reason behind this?
[Garrett] Yeah, good question. Well, to give you a little background, I am still a loan originator, hold my active NMLS license. I have for the past 12 years or so, but about five years ago, maybe six now, we felt the need and saw a big need in the market to create a mortgage marketing and sales operating system, which is candid. And that’s the idea of, hey, we’ve got all of these great vendors, over the place, but we need logins and integrations and full-time teams to manage all this, why don’t we have native experience that does the same thing, similar to making a call on your iPhone but also sending a text message and looking at a map? We can do all of that from one device. Why don’t we have the same thing for mortgage marketing and sales? And so that is sort of the birthplace of Candid and fast forward recently, last month, maybe this month, time’s flying. We did acquire Unifi, which is a CRM. It’s been around a while, at least a couple of decades.
[David] Yeah, I think it was this month,
[Garrett] And it was just a great opportunity. We got approached from the owners of Unifi. And we took a look at the system. And it came with some really great tools that we could implement and integrate directly into Candid, the operating system. And it also came with some really amazing, talented people that were working on building into our team as well. And so there was two or three things there that we looked at and we said, well, this is actually really interesting. And the more we looked, the more we got excited about it. We came up with a structure of a deal that sort of worked for everyone. And it was a quick three or four months, and we closed on it in early December.
[David] I heard you had a really good consultant advising you too. wasn’t Folks, that’s me. I was being behind the scenes working with advising them because I’ve gone through several of these and I do, I really did believe in this as a, just a no brainer, but some more times than not, M &A deals fail. And I want to make sure this one succeeded. And the way you’re executing on this, it very much is going to be a success. But how does this acquisition position candid relative to other players in the.
[Garrett] Yeah, he wasn’t bad. It’s true. Well, let me back up to what you said a little bit earlier. I readily admit, as a lone originator with a decade plus experience under my belt, and I’ve closed over billion dollars in mortgages, I feel pretty good about how to originate a mortgage. But when it comes to &A, I’ll happily admit to anyone who asks, I have no idea. So what I do is I surround myself with people who have tons of knowledge in that space. And one of them is you, David. And it’s been a smooth process. You’ve been super supportive and helpful and I want to go on public record to say thank you.
[David] Thank you. It’s been an honor to work with you, Garrett. I’m, excuse me, get, those coughs out. Now it’s been a real honor to work with you, Garrett. And thank you for those kind words, but it’s, it’s, you know, it’s fun to work with bright young people that have got great ideas and you’re doing some things within a candid that quite honestly, no one else has done, or in my opinion, even contemplated doing it. But how does this acquisition position Candid relative to other players in the tech space.
[Garrett] Well, think of Candid as an operating system. So at first, if you rewind the clock about six years, Candid’s really core function was CRM, and there’s lots of those out there. And that’s where the birthplace started. However, what happened over time is we said, hey, rather than go out and buy this particular vendor service offering and work on integrating it, we found some big holes, just an integration as a whole. It’s very costly. takes constant maintenance. There’s compliance risk involved because now you have your data in more than one place and the list goes on. And so what we did instead of that, so we said, hey, why don’t we build a native experience for exactly what we need? It’s not an integration, but it’s simply an additional tool that our operating system can offer. And so when you talk about differentiation among the marketplace, we looked at Unifi that same way. We didn’t look at Unifi from the standpoint of can we integrate with this platform? But instead, what tools and what experiences can we take and enhance and build into our operating system? example, Unifi has a great relationship with Experian, and Experian has great tools from credit monitoring to trigger leads and beyond. And so we can take that and we can implement it into our operating system. So we don’t have to go to our users and offer an integration or another username and password to memorize. Our users can log into their operating system known as Candid and take advantage of some of these really great tools. Another one is access to MLS data, which we’re really excited about.
[David] yeah, yeah. That does start getting exciting. Will Candid’s acquisition of UniFy help attract new customers and deepen the relationships with the existing ones? I would assume that’s a yes, but if it is, explain why and how.
[Garrett] It’s a huge win-win for everyone. Our existing users, they don’t even know it yet, but they’re going to have more amazing tools that they can pull from. So, example, we built Scenarios, which is an incredible mortgage presentation experience, natively built into our client portal. It can be shared to the Realtor portal as well. Well, now we can power that with a Genworth mortgage insurance integration so we can populate mortgage insurance quotes doesn’t have to go anywhere else to do that. lots of wins for our existing users, but Unifi also came and comes with some great partnerships as well. I’m thinking of American Financial Network, Bay Equity is another one we’re really excited about we’re going to be able to, we’re already talking with them about offering some really amazing enhancements and really upgrading and helping them to raise the bar on what they should expect out of technology moving forward.
[David] Good. I mean, I do anticipate your existing clients are going to benefit. Certainly Unifi clients are going to benefit because they’re getting a major upgrade with, with Candid. How does this acquisition fit into the broader trends within the mortgage industry, especially the mortgage tech industry, such as digital transformation and automation Garrett.
[Garrett] Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of that going on. It seems like every time you read something on the internet, there’s something new that’s going on. And that’s why we really feel quite strongly about Candid being an open architecture operating system. And that is fancy language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[David] Or those that don’t understand, explain open architecture because everyone hears that, but I really want them to hear your definition of it.
[Garrett] Yeah. It’s such a good point because there’s so many buzzwords out there and we get excited about them and no one knows what they mean. But by open architecture, what we mean is, and let’s say a new technology offering comes along or maybe a new vendor. Well, because we’re built on open architecture, within a matter of minutes or hours, we can take that new offering and actually implement it into our system. It doesn’t take weeks or months or years to build out integration or new tech offerings. And the same with old ones. We can sunset old ones very quickly. Open architecture also allows on a very micro level, it allows our users to create unique experiences, let’s say per branch or per model in their business. Retail, you want a different experience. You want different fields, you want different components, you want a different technology platform than you would direct to consumer and direct to consumer versus wholesale. So we can go to organizations and say, your organization is extremely diverse. You need to be able to offer that type of diversity with your technology as well. Let’s create custom user interfaces for each branch or each model of your business, all the way down to fields. If you need a new field dropped in or dragged out that’s a 30 second job. You shouldn’t have to wait weeks or months to have these changes made. And especially with compliance constantly changing, it creates security and compliance risks when you have to wait weeks or months to get simple changes made to your platform. We say, hey, this should be something that you should expect within hours, and we can do it for you through Candid Development Services. We can train you how to do it, and your admins can do it themselves. But these are very simple no code or low code drag and drop functions that your basic admin should be doing on their own.
[David] I think it’s so important to have that. A lot of people talk about it, but thanks for expanding on that. It’ll be, give us a little more perspective. You know, what can we expect from the next combined or let me have brief. I’m going to redo that question. Sorry. Started afraid, put the wrong phrases, put emphasis on the wrong words. So let me do this again. Anyway, what can we expect next from the combined entity in terms of product innovation? You’re always innovating with candid already. So how are you? What’s next?
[Garrett] Great question. The heart of Candid is constantly developing, constantly looking at what’s out there and how can we leverage it to help our users consolidate, help our users save, help our users create a better, more modern mortgage experience all the way from…
[David] When you say a modern mortgage experience, would you expand on that? Cause I say that all the time when we’re doing the podcast and I always say for the modern mortgage lender and I go, I gotta get some, I gotta get some, let’s get some meat on that. Explain that so people can understand what the modern mortgage lender looks like versus old adequate one other than they got gray hair, baby. But, but I think some of us gray hairs are fairly innovative. But anyway, what, does it look like?
[Garrett] Yeah. I always start with the consumer and work my way backwards when I’m thinking about the more modern more age experience and this isn’t a new idea these are ideas that have been around a long time but always starts with what does the consumer want they want a seamless experience start to finish with seamless marketing seamless even down to what phone number am I receiving a text message updates from? And what number am I getting the call from? And this should all be the same. But if you’re buying, if you’re buying a home, you want one place to go where you complete your mortgage application. You want the same place to go where you upload documents. You want the same email to give you the updates along the way. You want the same place you upload the documents to be the same place you go to see where you’re at in the mortgage process. But, and everyone’s shaking their head at this point and thinking, yeah, yeah, I’ve got that. But it doesn’t stop there because once they’re closed on the home, You want to return to the same place to be able to check your credit score, to be able to look at your appraisal, the home that you bought a few years ago, to complete your annual mortgage review, to complete your surveys, so on and so forth. The consumer wants one place to go that looks and feels the same as the emails you’re receiving and creates a consistent brand experience. I explain to people all the time, excuse me, start, there’s a reason. You can go into any Starbucks, 5 10,000 locations in the United States, and they all smell exactly the same. Starbucks has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure when you interact with their brand, it is 100 % consistent. Because when I say Starbucks, everyone in the United States instantly has a smell in their nose. That’s not by a mistake. Exactly.
[David] Exactly. Yeah. And you, and you know, what’s on the menu. mean, it’s like, it doesn’t vary.
[Garrett] And the mortgage experience should be exactly the same. From the first moment that you receive an automated email, we all know what those look like, that brand experience should be exactly the same from that to milestones. Your home value report that you’re receiving after closing should be the exact same brand. Every year you complete our automated annual mortgage review, that should be the same brand experience. Top to bottom, years in the making, create a strong brand experience and that’s what I mean by a modern mortgage experience.
[David] Garrett, I want to get your thoughts on where you think innovation is going. We’re seeing artificial intelligence, AI playing a bigger, bigger role. Certainly creating some new opportunities. There’s a lot of hyphens, a lot of it right now. So can you kind of level set what we should have as an expectation for innovation and where this could be going?
[Garrett] AI is definitely the most exciting thing that is happening, but I can’t emphasize enough discernment. was on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago and I just noticed a post from a CEO of a mortgage company talking about, vendors, here’s what we’re working on for 2025. Here’s our top three things. It’s AI this, AI that, and AI that. And I think we should always be looking to the future and certainly AI is part of that. But man, I think as an industry we have a bad habit of always chasing after the next shiniest object. And really wanting to do back flips and do sprints before we learn how to walk. And so to me, before we get too excited about whatever the next tech thing is, let’s make sure we have our fundamentals in place. And at Kandon, as an operating system for loan originators and loan origination experiences,
[David] Right shiny objects, yes so true.
[Garrett] It’s all about having a strong fundamental backbone in place. Once you have that, I’ll tell you a quick story actually. The first, excuse me, the first automation that we ever built at Candid was a birthday email. That was it. I had this big dream of what Candid was. It’s gonna do this and this and it’s gonna do all of these things. But you know what?
[David] Really?
[Garrett] And we didn’t have just a basic happy birthday automation. What are we doing? And that’s the first thing we built. But then from there, we integrated, hey, if we’re gonna wish someone a happy birthday, we should tell the realtor about it five days before. Hey, if we’re gonna tell the realtor about it five days before, we should send a handwritten card and not just do electronic automation, but do physical automation. And so we got really fancy, really fast, but at the core of it is very basic. And I think that’s where you have to start when it comes to technology. Make sure you’ve got the basics in place and then start dreaming beyond that.
[David] And you’re focusing on what is, should be your initial core, thrust or wherever. So here you start with a business card and you start looking at all the things around that. It just becomes like just a concentric circles out from there that brought about so many of the things that are wonderfully texting versus emailing. you guys do that beautifully and that’s gotta be one of the best things. That is gonna have greater traction with the consumer because at the end of the day, we talk about the consumers, number one, absolutely agree with you, but it’s how we communicate with them. Less than 23 % of, yeah, and how they’re communicating, exactly right. Some people are still wanting email, but the vast majority of people today are wanting, hey, I don’t have time to go look at my emails. Could you just show me a quick text on that? And that is such a key. How are you viewing that? And I know you’re doing that well, so explain to our listening audience how you do it.
[Garrett] Or how they’re communicating.
[David] How core that is to your system.
[Garrett] Texting is huge, but remember, if we didn’t have a strong email automation in place first, what are we doing with texting? But luckily we’ve got both. For texting, it’s not just about communicating with your home buyers and your real estate partners through text. It’s about communicating them through text how they want to be communicated with. Video texting is one thing that we offer. Very successful.
[David] You do video texting.
[Garrett] We offer video texting. What an amazing way to communicate with home buyers, real estate partners, even prospecting for little trip partner. Sending them a quick video which you record natively straight from our texting component. But think about this as well, David. It’s not just enough to offer two-way text messaging. You’ve got to offer the MMS features, meaning group texting. A lot of loan originators receive referrals by group text, but there are very, very, very, very few components out there who can handle that. So the loan originator gets a text from the realtor, it’s introducing to the client, but the client’s not on the text message. And it’s simple things like this that we look to solve for. And so we’re going to be introducing group text messaging next week actually, in addition to video text.
[David] Group texting, wow.
[Garrett] Yeah, and you need to be as simple as this sounds. You need to be able to handle emojis and gifs. This is how the modern mortgage experience works. If you can’t send the thumbs up, what are we doing? So you’ve got to be able to communicate not just by texting, but how people are communicating by texting as well.
[David] Exactly. that’s really so true. You are based, let me rephrase. Let me start that question again. The foundation of your system is a well-known system. just remember, forgot the name of it. So thank you. Let me restart that again. Candid is built on the Salesforce platform. A lot of people have a Salesforce and they could save money. If they take on a candid product, you’ll actually reduce their Salesforce bill because of the size of your contract with them. I think it’s a notable thing to mention here. Just kind of, as we get close to wrapping this up.
[Garrett] Salesforce has been an awesome partner of ours for years, but there’s a couple of misnomers about Salesforce. One, Salesforce is kind of like a blank slate, like a canvas, if you will. You buy it, you got the licensing, but you’ve got to build and you’ve got to create a masterpiece on it for you to get the return on that investment. And it can be an investment. So…
[David] And it’s expensive,
[Garrett] It can be expensive investment. We recognized the power of Salesforce years ago, but there’s a lot of barriers to entry to it. And one of them is that that mortgage is so niche, it’s so unique. And so what we did was we partnered with Salesforce. We’re actually a direct seller of Salesforce licensing. And we got off of their clouds, like Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, and we essentially created our own specific for mortgaging with deep, deep knowledge in the mortgage space. And so we can go to organizations that already use Salesforce but aren’t receiving the return on investment that we can get for them. And we can offer some incredible opportunities there from either components and licensing those or talking about our entire application whatever it looks like, we’ve actually run into a lot of organizations who use Salesforce, but it’s so powerful and they’re only using a small fraction of it. So we’ve had some really exciting conversations about hey, what if we took what you’re using Salesforce for? Example, let’s say there’s using it for managing licensing for their LOs. Why don’t we take it and let’s talk about spinning up our recruiting cloud so that your recruiting department can use the same platform. And then let’s talk about what getting your loaner engineers on it as well and off of all of their desperate systems. And then…
[David] That’s brilliant.
[Garrett] And from the recruiting department to the LOs, let’s talk about your loan officer assistance, your processors. Let’s talk about the automations that can significantly increase the return on their time. And so we can look at multiple parts of an organization, even if they’re just using it for one thing, and say, hey, have you considered doing this? Let’s show you what that looks like.
[David] That’s really good. Any future acquisitions in the works?
[Garrett] You know nothing that we can talk about, David. Right, we’re always looking for great strategic partners. That could be an acquisition. That could be a mortgage organization to partner with. But we’re definitely growing. We have some incredible partners we’re working with now, talking with more partners, and very excited about the future.
[David] None that we can talk about. Congratulations on the acquisition of Unifi CRM. It’s really exciting. I am looking forward to sharing this interview with our listening audience. I think you’ve got some wonderful features that people should be looking at. I there’s some great CRMs out there. There’s been some legacy ones, some older ones like Unifi, and are now coming into a bright new exciting future. So encourage people to check it out. Or can they do so, Garrett?
[Garrett] You can find out more information at candid.inc and you can even sign up to have a discussion with us. Check out how we can serve your technology needs and really excited. Thanks for having us David for spending time on your podcast. Big fan of the podcast. Listen to it every week. I would encourage everyone to do the same.
[David] You bet. Thank you very much. That’s C-A-N-D-I-D dot inc. I-N-C. Check it out. Garrett, thanks so much for being with us. Happy New Year. So good to be with, in partnership with you. You bet.
[Garrett] Same to you, David.
Important Links:
I have personally originated over $1 billion in mortgage volume and founded CANDID to revolutionize mortgage marketing and sales experiences. Instead of relying on outdated spreadsheets and fragmented tech systems, CANDID uses an open architecture technology to consolidate and enhance mortgage marketing and sales experiences. It power the Modern Mortgage Experience for loan originators to grow their business, boost revenue, and free up time for focusing on strategic, big-picture goals.
I am a motivating leader with extensive expertise in the financial services industry and technology, particularly in how it can enhance relationships. I prioritize serving others and strive to make their experience with CANDID a standout aspect of their work. I guide my team to focus on fostering trusted professional relationships that deliver mutually beneficial outcomes.