Hybrid Loan Officer with Brian Vieaux of Finlocker

Hybrid Loan Officer with Brian Vieaux of Finlocker

In this episode of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken sits down with Brian Vieaux, a seasoned mortgage industry leader and the driving force behind FinLocker, to explore the evolving role of the modern loan officer. Brian introduces the concept of the "Hybrid Loan Officer," blending traditional referral-based practices with innovative digital strategies to engage homebuyers earlier in their journey. From leveraging social media and personal branding to utilizing FinLocker’s cutting-edge tools, Brian shares actionable insights for mortgage professionals to thrive in today’s competitive landscape. Tune in to learn how you can rethink your approach and prepare for the next generation of homebuyers.
[David] Listeners, our guest today does not need an introduction. Brian Vieaux has done so much on social media. He's so well known. Not only that he published one of my favorite books out here. Yes, we both have it up here. Rethinking everything. What's so interesting. And there's a story behind this. I had this out on the kitchen counter, the other day when it arrived and my wife looked at that and she goes, huh, that's a really good title. think we ought to do that. And there's more to that story. But anyway, we're rethinking everything. I think you need to do that as you go into the new year. So Brian, thank you so much for joining me. Congratulations on the success of the book and really honored to have you here, friend. [Brian] You have no idea how honored I am. This is like one of those lifetime achievement awards for me to be able to do this with you. So thank you so much, David. [David] Well, it's fun to be involved in something early on and then see others come in like yourself and others. this is my 52nd year in the mortgage lending industry. It's hard to believe we've been doing podcasting. Dave Savage and I, you know, David, real well, you were just on his podcast. And by the way, folks, if you haven't listened to that, we put that in the show notes. So you can go listen to that. they knocked it out of the park again. Brian, when you and Savage get together, it's like awesome. And I just love his energy, but you guys have been doing, but Savage and I have been doing this for 17 years on podcasts. It's hard to believe. We tried to figure out which one actually started first with claim first mover advantage. But I think it was about the same time we said, it'll be a tie. But anyway, Brian, I want our audience. Most people know who you are, but I think it'd be good for you to go through your background a little bit to kind of tell us about your journey. We have so many new people that new to the industry and they're going, how did you guys get to where you're at? And I think it's each one of us. It's a very interesting journey. So tell us about yours. [Brian] Yeah. So not quite 52 years in the industry, but I talk to people and when I talk about my 35 years in the business, a lot of the people I talk to are significantly, a lot of them are younger than 35, by the way. They're like, what, huh? Yeah, I started in the business in 1991 as a loan originator. Wasn't my intent. I didn't go to college to be a mortgage guy. [David] You got a long time though. That's good. Really good. [Brian] But I needed a job and I needed a job with benefits. And so before there was anything like Indeed or LinkedIn, the old school model of getting a job was you created your resume and you delivered it to people. Right. And so I did a little 15 mile circle around where we were living. We just got married and went and just handed off resumes to companies. And some company called me back like a day after I dropped my resume off. At the time they were known as Fireman's Fund. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And before that they were Manufacture's Hanover. Manny, Hanny. And so I get a call back from this company, Fireman's Fund. I'm like, that sounds familiar. So the building, and the building still stands, the mortgage business is long gone from there, but they used to have a red helmet, Fireman's helmet on the building. And I'm like, yeah, I know what that is. Had no idea that was a mortgage company. [David] Wow, yeah, I remember them. Manny Hanny, yeah. [Brian Didn't matter because I didn't even know what a mortgage was at that time. But I went in, interviewed, and I got a call back like four hours later, same day. Can you come back tomorrow and meet with such and such? I'm like, yeah, sure. So I go back there the next day and have a half hour conversation. And basically they said, can you start on Monday? And this was like Thursday or Friday. I'm like, yeah. I said, one question. We didn't even talked about like compensation. Frankly, I didn't really care. Do you have benefits? Yes, I do. Okay, good. I'm in. So my first job was what today we probably would call like a marketing assistant or a loan officer assistant. But I basically just called people and I had a stack of these callbacks and I would call them and say, you're currently at, and I'd read the number, 15%. If you could get 10 1/2, would you be interested in a refinance? I was also a CRM now that I think about it. If they said yes, I put it over here to the right and it went to a loan officer. If I said no, I crumpled it up, threw it in the can and we moved to the next one. And so I did that when the par rate back in 91 was something 12ish, whatever. And then that was the beginning of rapid falling in rates. And so when I joined this department, I was one of 15 people in the entire department. And we were a big servicer, Ginnie Mae servicer at the time. And as rates fell, all of sudden these refinances started to pick up. And so, Brian the LOA slash CRM in about six weeks time graduated to be a loan officer. Didn't take much by the way to be a loan officer back then. And then, know, over I'd say the next 18 months we kept growing and growing and growing. And I went from being a loan officer, I only originated loans for about 14 months in my entire career, like direct originations. And I went into a leadership role. And it's not because I was this great leader. I think I was very fortunate to be willing to work hard, but I was in the right place at the right time when this thing was going to grow. And so I've spent the vast majority of my career in leadership capacities and almost exclusively on the revenue side of the business production. And 31 of those 35 years was squarely in mortgage originations. Before joining Finlocker, I ran the third party business for Flagstar Bank. [David] That's right. That's right. You were a Flagstar. Another great company. Brian, you are the face of, and many think the founder of Finlocker because you're just out there. But if you could talk a little bit about Finlocker, its origins and ownership. [Brian] Yeah. So, Finlocker has been around for probably seven years now that I think about it. I've been with the firm for five and a half years. Again, joining after I left Flagstar. I started at the firm as an investor. friends of mine who you know, Tim Stern, Barry Sanweiss, were two of the founders of Finlocker after they successfully exited the Lenders One business to AltiSource. [David] Wow, okay. [Brian] And those two are serial entrepreneurs, You could trace their lineage back to their college days when they used to manage Gus Macker 3 on 3 basketball tournaments and sell T-shirts. That's how they made their living. So, these guys have always everything they touched, you know, turned to goal, right? And so when they brought this idea of Finlocker to me when I was at Flagster at the time, it was really interesting. It was a little bit ahead of its time in terms of the industry. Finlocker, the company, the brand is really short for financial locker. And the original use case for the product sat right square in the middle of the loan manufacturing process, specifically for processors and underwriters to have a more streamlined automated method of analyzing a consumer's bank data or bank statement. So, Dave, you and I all, we remember the rubber thumbs that you used to use to thumb through your documents. today we know of this product as verification of assets, digital VOA, Fannie Mae's calls it day one certainty. But seven plus years ago, it was a little early for consumers to say, I'm willing to connect my bank account and share access to it. That was a little spooky back then. And honestly, [David] Yeah, I've heard of it too. [Brian] Processors and underwriters were a little intimidated by, well, wait a minute, if, this technology going to be a risk to my profession, to my job? So the company didn't get a lot of traction on that original use case, but this financial locker that was created, which was the mechanism by which a consumer would connect their bank accounts and then share secure access to the data is really the genesis of what became the product today. And today, I call this holistic consumer financial fitness experience that is really focused and hyper-focused honestly on preparing early journey first time home buyers for mortgage readiness. And I like to define early journey first time home buyer because a lot of people are like, what does that really mean? And I'll define it in the context of a loan officer. And you and I know this better than anybody. Most loan officers even today, [David] Great way to put it. [Brian] Wait for a consumer to come to them, typically by a referral from an agent. And that consumer is raising their hand saying, Mr. Loan Officer, Mrs. Loan Officer, I'm ready to apply. I bought a house. Let's go. Right. What we are coaching now in our business with our product is a mind shift, a rethink everything, if you will. And so our product is focused on not the consumer that's raising their hand, that's the point of sale. We focus on the point of thought. And the point of thought for us is that first time or very near that first time when that younger consumer wakes up on a Saturday morning and says, man, it would be cool to own a home. What should I be thinking about? What should I do? And what we coach loan officers is you need to be, You got to get to the point of thought, man. You can't just rely on the point of sale. You got to get to the point of thought. And our product is built to nurture that consumer from the point of thought and to get them successfully and confidently to point of sale. [David] Yeah, it's, and we're there. mean, it was a concept for the longest time, but with the technology such as Finlocker, we're there. You can actually achieve that. And I want to talk about this because what you talk about in here, in fact, the title of our podcast is the hybrid loan officer. want to get into what you mean by the hybrid loan officer and how is this possible now with technology? You're, showing us what the power of LinkedIn, but there's so much more to all of this. Talk about that please. [Brian] Yeah, so hybrid loan officer, and it's not my definition. I probably ripped it off somebody else, probably you on one of your great podcasts. Again, if we go back and let's anchor ourselves on the traditional loan officer is, has been a traditional referral based loan officer, really a B2B salesperson that builds these relationships, these great relationships that bring them these consumers. Yeah. With realtors and builders and then, you know, yeah, exactly. CPAs, you name it. By the way, I don't think that ever goes away. But if we were to anchor, and today let's agree that maybe 80% of the average loan officer's business, probably more, but 80% comes from that channel. And maybe 10% or 20% comes from my personal brand as a loan officer, where I'm the top of the funnel. When I say hybrid loan officer, I believe that we're going to see this evolution or transition from a 90-10 to a 70-30 to a 50-50, maybe a 30-70 over the next three to five years. [David] And it's not because the realtor or the builder or the financial planner are giving it up, advocating it. they're not taking advantage of the tools that you have created with Finlocker. And so I really want to start getting into seeing how that really works. So if you could walk us a little bit through the life of a loan Brian, and your vision for how this actually practically happens. It's a great medium at the point of thought. I love the concept. How does that actually happen? [Brian] Well, first of all, in order to meet somebody at the point of thought, I have to be in their thought as well. Right. And so as a loan officer, and I firmly believe that the good loan officers, the best loan officers are bar none the single best resource for these early journey first time home buyers. Most of this cohort, they have not accumulated enough assets to have a private banker, or even a financial advisor, frankly. And so the loan officer, if positioned properly, if they built their brand in their physical and digital market, if you will, should be recognized as the first person I talk to when it's time to think about buying a home. that, again, I'm talking 6, 12, 18 months up the funnel, right? And so as a loan officer, how do I do that? Well, I need to do what I'm doing with you. need to be on this screen so that people see me where they are. And we know that this current generation and the next generation of home buyers, in fact, you know, the Gen Z segment of home buyers is the first digital native, right? Some of those kids probably learned to talk by, you know, watching videos on mom and dad's phones. So we've got this digital native generation that's coming into the home buying space and it's a big population. So where do they go? Where are they? They're on TikTok, they're on Instagram, they're on YouTube. That's not only where they go for entertainment, it's where they go to learn. They learn everything there.  I'm at the point now where if my washing machine breaks and I need to repair it, I go to YouTube to watch somebody show me how to do it. [David] That's exactly right. I'm changing out the RO filters the other day under the sink and I go like, how do we do this? I said, yeah, I saved that YouTube video. I go bring that out and it just walks me through it. That is the way things are being done. [Brian] So what I've learned over the last 18 months and studying this generation, talking to a lot of Gen Zs in our business, Allie Cardy is one of the best in terms of having a pulse on her generation. She talks about like, Googling is like so yesterday. that generation doesn't Google anything. They go to TikTok and search ask their question in TikTok. And then they get all these people talking about it and they find the person that looks like them, sounds like them, you know, they relate to, yeah. And there's a whole podcast just around, do you try to be someone else? the most successful way to be successful is be authentically you. That's it, man. can't do anything else because you can't fake it that long. [David] As much as I'd like to be Brian Vieaux I can't be, I'm David Lykken and vice versa. It's just when we are authentic cells, it works when we try to meet someone else. gets, we pick it up. [Brian] That's right. It's like I do a lot on LinkedIn, as you know, and you mentioned, and I've tested different themes and talking about things differently. And the stuff that I do that is just me being me, whatever that means, for whatever reason, it performs the best, right? It gets the most engagement. And so I see that with loan officers that are building their personal brand on these other platforms. Just like any business, we do business who we like, know and trust. And right, wrong or indifferent, the way that this next generation knows you, starts to like you and builds trust with you is how you show up here on social. [David] Yeah. And I always tell people that there is a group of people in the world that will relate to you, like you, and want to do business with you. And if you try to be anyone else other than that, but let's talk a little bit of what you are seeing loan officers do to stand out from others. Often, I always want to stress, be authentic, but what else can they do to stand out? [Brian] I think if we can check the box and say we all agree that social is something that's very important in terms So the other element of this, and this is like back to the future to a degree, but I think loan officers can be stronger on social if they're hyper local. so I live in Novi, Michigan. Let's say I'm a loan officer and this is kind of home base for me. And so not that I'm not gonna wanna do business, four towns over or maybe even in Ohio if I'm licensed there. But I'm gonna build content that's hyper local, meaning I'm gonna talk about the best restaurants, the best place to get your haircut in Novi, Michigan. And this is like an idea that Dustin Owen, I don't know if you've ever had Dustin, he's the best, right? Another podcaster, right? He talks about this hyper local podcast approach. So loan officer, stand up a podcast, talk about your community, talk about you, talk about the things you like, know, whatever, whatever, whatever. And then as you build your podcast up, go talk to local business owners, who doesn't want to come on a podcast and talk about themselves and their business. And guess what happens all of a sudden when people are coming into their shops and somebody talks about buying a home, who are they going to think about? It's a lot, it's like the old B and I, but it's like taking it to another level on digital. so, I, talk a lot about leaning into the fact that you're local and this is not a knock against, you know, the bigger companies with call centers and, and all that stuff. because there's a place for all these business models, but in the purchase business, we still know that the local loan officer is winning that business still at scale. It's why some of the bigger digital first companies are actively hiring local loan officers because the purchase business is still won that way. [David] Yeah, that's really good. Listeners, we'll put a link into Dustin Owens content. go out, listen, it's a great podcast podcast. And, I really recommend it. One of the things Brian that is so important is having a personal brand. And I don't think anybody has done a better job at building a personal brand than you. I mean, it's like, is Finlocker the brand or is it Brian? I mean, you have really done a maverick. How have you leverage LinkedIn and how could others use LinkedIn and other platforms to develop that brand and to grow it. [Brian] Yeah, some of this might be a therapy session for myself. So I'll thank you in advance. So, you when I left Flagstar and I jokingly say this, but it's not a joke. I left the comfy confines of corporate, right? And as much as when I was there, I probably complained too much about not having all the resources I needed or wanted. Let me tell you what happens when you go to a startup. What do you mean we don't have anybody in marketing? What? We don't even have a logo? What are we talking about here? So when I made that move, it was eyes wide open. I understood exactly what I was getting into. I knew, but until you're there and you really recognize and realize that unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves and get your fingernails dirty, this stuff's not going to get done. [David] Yeah. You knew what you were getting into. But still. [Brian] I did a self assessment and I'm like, okay, we're a startup. We've got limited resources. We don't have people in these roles and we're not going to have a lot of them when we do have them. And we frankly don't necessarily have a budget to go out and do traditional advertising or marketing, whatever you want to call it. And so I started this LinkedIn game and it was a game when I started back in 2008, when I was part of the meltdown, I was at an institution that was sadly seized by the FDIC. We were not deemed too big to fail, unfortunately. We probably missed it by 30 days, but that's another story and another podcast. So I created my LinkedIn account in 2008, coming up on I think 16 or 17 years. And I originally created it because somebody sent an email around the company saying, this is how we're going to stay connected guys. Put yourself on this platform. Didn't even know what LinkedIn was. And then when I needed to kind of try to reenter the working world after that, a little hiatus, I was using it. Like most people use the platform in his early days as a hiring go find work. Hopefully somebody finds me. And then over time, it kind of organically built itself up. By the time I got the Flagstar started to get a dabble. was just dabbling in putting content on LinkedIn, like once a month, if that would have been a lot for me. But by the time I got the Finlocker, had maybe 13,000 connections. And almost all of them were in our business. And so I looked at it and I'm like, okay, well, this is valuable. This 13,000 population is valuable because that's kind of the people we want to talk to. How do I do this? and there's a lot of trial and error. And I would say the the first six months that I was doing things on LinkedIn at FinLocker, was always FinLocker, FinLocker, FinLocker, FinLocker, FinLocker, FinLocker. And it didn't really move the needle. People didn't engage with that stuff. [David] And because it's people do business with people that they know, like, and trust. I think some companies get insecure. I can't have you build your brand because you work for us and companies. So I'm talking right now to CEOs, C-suite that are pushing back on your loan officer developing a brand. It is the biggest mistake you could make. People do business with people, not companies. with people that they know, like and trust. Encourage your people to build a personal brand. Sorry, had to get on a soapbox there a little bit. [Brian] I love that because this might get a reaction, but I think there's only one mortgage company brand where consumers do business with the brand. It's 20 miles from my house, by the way, so you guys can figure out where I live. There's some great brands and there's some great mortgage companies out there. But who's the consumer choosing to do business with? It's David, the loan officer at XYZ Mortgage. Not XYZ mortgage. so yeah, hey CEOs, come on man, let's get with the times, support your LOs. [David] Realize help your people build a brand. Yeah. So that's why your book Rethinking Everything. And it's got to start in the C suite about how we empower our people to build a brand. And that even goes down to the processor. goes out to opts people. They're all part of this very complex process called mortgage lending. And we got to make sure we're doing that. Let's talk a little bit about how FinLocker is helping lenders and loan officers today. I know you're having a huge impact, but could you give us a story that will really dramatize that Brian? [Brian] Some of our best use cases are loan officers again, that are focused and intentional about getting into consumers homeownership journey, 6, 12, 18 months up the funnel. I keep saying that and I'm going to keep saying that. And they're getting there in all kinds of different ways. One of the best one is, we had a loan officer down in the South she conducts regular like monthly home buying seminars in person seminars in her church for her community and she'll have between 15-25 people show up every month some of them are repeats, some of them are new and her company went live with our product summer of 2024 last summer and she did her first Webinar where she introduced this app, their version of the app. They happen to call it Ready Set Home. So instead of Ready Set Go, Ready Set Home. And she kind of tweaked her curriculum on what she presented to match the tools, the digital experience of this Ready Set Home app. And what she's been able to see is, first of all, her sessions now are like 2X. There's twice as many people showing up for these seminars. But now, the ongoing use of the app by these people that she's been teaching, they're seeing the value and she's hearing it directly from them. She gets to see to some degree, we're not creating spooky technology that's gonna scare away the consumer, but because the loan officer is part of this solution for getting somebody ready, we're able to share certain data that's happening on behalf of the consumer in this experience so that the loan officer can make timely reach outs based on activities, alerts, milestones, achievements, things that are progressing on the consumer's behalf in the app. And I'll just paint this picture real quick on like what the tool looks like. If people can think about the financial apps that are out in the marketplace that consumers use today at scale, Rocket Money, a great tool for understanding where you spend money for budgeting. have those features. Mint.com was a big tool, right? great for budgeting, great for setting financial goals. We have those features, Credit Karma, Credit Sesame. We have all those credit type tools built into our experience. Even real estate search, Zillow, Redfin, realtor.com. We have an embedded national real estate experience powered by Radian's home genius platform. So we've purposely built all these tools that consumers were otherwise going to these different places for. And by the way, I think most of us understand that each of those logos I just mentioned happen to be either lenders themselves or lead aggregators. And so now as a lender, as a loan officer, if I have this tool set and then what we've done at Finlocker is on top of those tools, we built this very custom journey that's catered to the persona of the user. So if we know, if we know you're an early journey, first time home buyer, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to take you through this journey as a user that's going to align with your goals and objectives, including your ideal timeline for being ready to buy. And so going back to my story of our LO and her seminars, last September, whatever August, she did her first seminar where the, I think in the first session, she had 30 people download the app in the room, create an account. And in December, she had two closings on consumers who started in the app and stayed connected and engaged with her through that process and actually closed in December. I'm not gonna tell you that we were magically got somebody from not ready to ready, but we kept those two people very closely engaged with the loan officer through the process. [David] That's the key. It's more about the engagement than having them come to you and ask you the questions so it's like, I don't want the app to solve all the problems. want them talking to me and if I have an app, I have a product which you have, which is brilliant. that keeps them coming to me. And that's a great, great story. Any other stories come to mind that you're seeing people are really benefiting from this. [Brian] Exactly. Yeah, I've got probably a dozen, maybe a few more of FInfluencers. loan officers that have become influencers, right? And these aren't like paid influencers that are then connecting people to loan officers. These are loan officers that are licensed loan officers that have created a personal brand on their own. And so we didn't design our product as a lead magnet, but through this Finfluencer experience. So we have a loan officer in Southern California, gentleman named Minh, M-I-N-H, Min Win, N-G-U-Y-E-N. His moniker or his handle on social is, what's a mortgage? What's a mortgage? So we stood up about two years ago, a little over two years ago, the Wam Wallet, what's a mortgage, W-A-M, Wam Wallet. [David] Yes. What's the mortgage? That's great. [Brian] That's an app in the app store, the Wam wallet and Minh, Minh has a big following. He's got half a million followers on TikTok, Instagram, et cetera. And 18 months ago, he started to do content with calls to action, download the Wam wallet, links in my profile or whatever the kids are saying out there, right. in the first 12 months, they had 5,500 downloads of the Wam wallet. And so if you think about it, from a lead gen perspective, that's probably pretty strong. And then I'm going to go off a little bit of memory. We have a case study on this on our website. But in that same 12 month period, they closed somewhere around 12 or 16 of those leads into mortgages, right? So like, [David] Are you serious? [Brian] Real return, real return. these were every one of those deals that they closed was a purchase deal. 12 of those 16, they referred to an agent in their network where that agent was able to close on the transaction. And I couldn't tell you now how many loans they've had come from those agents. Because you give an agent a lead, you're probably getting four or five back. So that social media strategy. We've seen it come to life where our technology becomes the lead magnet off of the great work that these creators are doing on their socials. [David] I love it. You're an enabler. You're not the end all be all you shouldn't be. I mean, it really comes back to a relationship driven business, but it's how you're using these tools to create a magnet, bring in the people, work with them. Let's talk about your book. And we wrapped this. I could talk to you, Brian all day long. first of all, you're just a really decent human being. I've watched you at conferences where you have shared with, and nauseam with people just asking questions and you just never seem to get tired of serving people. And that is such an important quality about you and characteristic about you. So people should just get to know you, but be respectful, don't drain them. But I want to talk about this book because how did this come about? This is such a great book and people gotta get in this. If you don't, I and also we got to, we'll put a link of how they can get the book, but get the book. [Brian] Thank you. Yeah, if you're in the mortgage business and you have an inkling to be in this business beyond 2025, and you're squarely in originations, Kyle Draper and I co-partnered on this. As a gift to the industry, we just reduced the price to $15.49. It's on Amazon. If you can't find $15.49 of value, email me and I'll Venmo you the money back. I pick up the book and I find something every time I look at it But where it started was this purple book. So Kyle Draper wrote this book. It's like a 90 page book. It's called Rethink Everything You Know About Social Media. If you don't know Kyle . You got to know Kyle Draper. Dude's got the biggest heart in the world, but he understands social and He's a social, he calls himself a social coach or a social media therapist, I think is his official moniker. But he wrote this book. And a friend of mine, not even a friend now, but this guy, Scott Payne sends me a package. I get a package, I open it up. It's got a QR sticker on the front. like, all right, I'll fall for this. I scan the QR code. A video of Scott Payne pops up. hadn't met Scott at that point. And Scott says, Hey Brian, I've watched you on LinkedIn. I love what you're doing. Keep doing it. This book may be helpful for you. He didn't ask for anything. He didn't ask for a meeting. He wasn't asking for anything. He just sent this out it would be helpful for me. So I'm reading this over the course of a weekend, like four times and I'm blown away by how impactful this book was. So I started to take screenshots of pages of Kyle's purple book, posting them on LinkedIn. need content sometimes. And I was making my comments, like doing a book report on his book. And like after a week's time, I get a direct message from Kyle. We weren't even connected on LinkedIn at the time. And he says, hey man, I don't know you, but, and I'm thinking, shoot, I'm giving away his whole book. Nobody's gonna have to buy this thing. He said, but your posts are blowing up my LinkedIn. I just wanna thank you for loving on my book. And I'm like, well. Dude, thank you for writing it. So that led to obviously a conversation on DM and I said, Hey man, if you've got 10 minutes, I'd love to pick your brain on a problem I'm having with social. And so we got on a call on a Saturday morning. It was going to be a 10 minute conversation that went like 90 minutes. And I learned during that conversation that, Kyle has had a vision at the time. This was his first book, but he had a vision for this rethink everything kind of like ABC for Dummies is out there. His vision was around this, you could rethink everything about everything, right? And so I kind of slept on that for a few days and it like hit me the following Tuesday or Wednesday. I woke up and I'm like, rethink everything you know about serving the next generation home buyer. That just came to my head. like, there's something there. so I reached out to Kyle and like, got your next book. And he's like, well, first of all, it's not mine, it's ours. Whatever's gonna happen, we're gonna do together. And I said, well, Kyle, nobody wants to hear from Brian Vieaux. I haven't originated a loan in over 30 years. And no offense, but nobody wants to hear from you except about your expertise on social. We need to go find experts in different areas and bring them into this conversation. So 37 chapters, each written by an individual who we believe [David] And that's how you did it. Yeah. [Brian] And believed in now more than ever believe that is expert in something that they do. We've got a section on mindset with some of the industry's leading thought leaders around coaching and mindset. We've got a section on personal branding by some of the people that have put themselves out there on social. And so it has been, it's now affectionately known as the green book. And we've got this kind of living community and experience that's happening around it and it's just been a blast. [David] Yeah. Well, it's really kudos to you for doing that. have been following you for a while. I love what you're doing and you're blowing up LinkedIn. but you're doing it with it's so much comes down to the motive. Why? What Simon Sinek's Why, and what's so amazing as you do this to teach others how to blow up their businesses, you, yourself and your brand has blown up in the midst of it. And I think it's so much about what Zig Ziglar says, help someone else get what they want and you're gonna get everything you want. [Brian] Yeah, I never thought I'd have to reinvent myself, but I did. I mean, I'll be honest. it was the transition from being an executive in a top 5, top 10 mortgage company to a small startup. [David] We all got it. Well, I remember I said, who is that guy over there? They go, that's Brian Vieaux formally of Flagstar. Now it's Brian Vieaux, the author of the green book. was so fun is to extent that you have done this. I mean, I'll do respect the Flagstar you had a great run there. They were a well-run company, for one, when they were there, they were there in a big way. And you were there in that company in a big, big way. But it's so important. have companies, we just watch Ally, just  now. They're shutting down their entire mortgage operation. I hate to say it, Brian, in this market, that's just the beginning. I don't wish this on anybody, but the reality is we're in a very competitive market and those that do not follow this are going to land on the trash heap or in the graveyard of the industry. And so you're going to have to learn if you're working with a company and you say, I am loan officer, Joe Blow with this company that should tell you something. You should say, I am at like, what's the guy in Southern California? I don't care what company he has. don't care. So anyway, I love this interview. This was so exciting. So inspirational. Thank you so much, Brian. [Brian] Thanks for having me on. I'll put this out to your audience because I enjoy having these conversations. If anybody wants to just pick my brain on kind of that transition, every time I do that, and it's not like I'm doing it a ton, but every time I do it, I learn another layer. So there's a selfish aspect by doing that, but I'm open and would love to have the conversation. [David] Well, good. How can people reach you? I was going to say that was a rhetorical question, but it asked him. [Brian] LinkedIn, come on, man. I mean, first of all, do me a favor. I'm chasing my friend, Greg Sher for the number of followers. So go to my LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn. I gotta pass that guy. He passed me and he hasn't looked back, by the way. He's on fire. He's doing awesome. [David] I have the opportunity. While you and I are doing recording this, Greg's been texting me. I didn't even tell him that I was doing this with you. so anyway, yeah. Make a difference in someone else's life. That's why I the privilege of doing with Greg and we're becoming fast friends. I'm just so excited to get to know you better, Brian. Thank you so much for the book. Thank you for being the example of what you're doing of just an amazing brand and teaching others how to do it. Appreciate you, Friend. [Brian] I appreciate you, man. Thanks for having me on. And again, I'm sincere in saying this is like, this is one of those moments. So thank you so much. [David] It's an honor. What a privilege. Appreciate that. All right. Listeners download this podcast, share it. There's so much here, but most importantly, go buy the book, the green book. So you can say, I've got the green book. That's the best way to get to know it. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. [Brian] Thanks David.

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I'm passionate about helping people achieve financial well-being and homeownership. With over 30 years in the mortgage industry, I've dedicated my career to creating innovative tools and solutions that empower consumers to take control of their financial futures. At FinLocker, we focus on developing secure, consumer-centric technology that helps people manage their financial lives and achieve key milestones, including buying a home.

Before joining FinLocker, I held leadership roles with some of the biggest names in the mortgage and lending sectors, including Flagstar Bank and CitiMortgage. These experiences taught me the value of customer-focused innovation and shaped my vision for what financial empowerment should look like. As part of the FinLocker team, I'm working to make financial tools accessible, intuitive, and transformative for all types of consumers.

Outside of work, I’m a strong advocate for financial literacy, often speaking on topics that can make a difference in people's lives. Whether it's mentoring professionals in the industry or helping consumers understand their path to homeownership, I’m always excited to share my knowledge and insights.

I host Fintech Fridays, a podcast that showcases the latest trends and solutions in the financial services industry.