---
Process Over Event - Relationships Over Recruiting With Eric Levin
It is March 22nd, 2021. I hope you're having a great week. It's off to another one. We're going to be looking at the markets shortly with Matt. Anytime the market deteriorates, we blame Matt. We jokingly so. We're so excited to have you here. This show was created by Mortgage Professionals. It is for mortgage professionals, and we're so grateful to have you here every week and sharing it with others. That's how our audience has grown to the size it has. It's amazing. We’re approaching 600,000 downloads of our show, and 100,000 regular audience. Thank you so much. We appreciate you being here with us. Our commitment is to bring you timely information in an audio format that you can listen to anytime and anywhere. I want to pause for a moment and say that we've had a bit of a tragedy in our show family. It's so sad. We have two people that work behind the scenes. Paul King is on the line, and Nikki Whitaker. Unfortunately, Nikki Whitaker had a tragic sudden unexpected end of life of her twenty-year-old son, Ethan Michael Whitaker. He passed away. When she called me, I heard tears before, but I'd never heard tears from the depths of someone's soul such as I heard. Please keep the Whitaker family in your thoughts and prayers as they deal with this horrific, unexpected, and tragic loss of their twenty-year-old son. Our thoughts and prayers go out to you, Nikki, your husband, and your whole family. It was one of those moments when you take time to love the ones you take for granted. We assume they'll always be there. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way. Things happen and we're saddened. Our hearts go out to the Whitaker family. It is a good reminder for us all to love each other. Spend that extra moment saying, “If I don't get to see you again, know that I love you.” We love you, our audience, and we're so grateful to have you here. Talking about Levin, we're going to be continuing our series on recruiting top talent. We've had some great guests, including our good friends Bill Cosgrove and Alice Alvey. Bill was writing me back saying how much he enjoyed the interview. We've had so many other guests on already. I encourage you to tune into this series that we're doing. Rates are popping up. We're going to be possibly seeing for the first time what seems forever a potential of some layoffs. I don't know if that's going to happen, but it is possible if we see Matt continue to mess up with the markets and blame Matt jokingly. If the markets continue to deteriorate, it's very distinctly possible that we could see interest rates going up and layoffs happening. How do you keep the right people on the bus and the right people off the bus? What we're talking about is when we're growing, when we're planning this series, we are looking at where we're going to hire the next underwriter and how much are we going to have to pay them. We are looking at recruiting and we're going to be continuing now. I'm excited about our guest. We have Eric Levin, EVP of Client Development at Model Match. This is an interesting business model that was introduced to me by one of my clients. I'm excited to get on with Eric. He has over twenty years of supporting strategic growth needs of clients in the financial services industry. We're going to continue our discussion on recruiting. Also, Eric has his podcast. We did an interview of me that'll be released here. Stay tuned to the hot topic segment for our interview with Eric Levin. We're thrilled to be a part of IndustrySyndicate.com. It's a great way to get information and sources of other podcasts that are out there. Check out IndustrySyndicate.com. It’s great to be a part of it. I want to say a special thank you to our sponsors, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. We interviewed Michael Fratantoni on January 4th, 2021. You have to go back to that interview. Michael nailed it. He talked about interest rates going up. The question is did anyone anticipate them going up as fast and as high as quickly as they did her? Also, we were at a town hall meeting that the MBA puts out. If you're a member of the MBA, you get to get in on these town hall meetings. It's an update to the industry. I applaud Bob Brookman Marsha Davies and the whole team, Michael Fratantoni. The whole team gets on and does a spectacular job of doing these updates. I learned a lot. If you're a member of the MBA, you can download that. Also, Finastra, the Fusion Mortgagebot Solution. You can experience the power of a fully integrated approach to mortgage lending when you use this system. It simplifies the borrowing experience and streamlines the process for employees. Our interview with Dan Putney on January 11th was good. Check that one out. We’re pleased to be a part of the Lenders One co-op as well as the Mortgage Collaborative. I was talking with David Kittle, my good golfing buddy and mortgage professional friend. He's been busier than ever else. I value the relationship with both of these co-ops. Here's why you want to become a member of a co-op, not in place of but in addition to the MBA. It’s because you get an up-close personal experience and compare notes with your peers. I encourage you to check it out. There's the Community Mortgage Lenders of America, another organization that focuses more on independent mortgage bankers. Indecomm has great partnerships with lenders, servicers, mortgage insurance, and title insurance companies. They achieve one specific goal and I love this simple goal. It’s to help you grow your business. Check out Indecomm.com. Great company. You can get all this information on our website by going to the sponsors. One of our sponsors is Insellerate. They help lenders grow more quickly by radically changing how lenders communicate and engage with borrowers. There was a lot of information that was downloaded from the August 17th, 2020 interview. Check out that interview with Josh Friend. A lot of wisdom there, especially for some of you who are looking at converting to consumer direct. Insellerate works with a purchase model, builder model, traditional model, as well as consumer direct. A lot of wisdom in that interview. We're thrilled to have a relationship with Knowledge Coop, Perry's Company. Check that out for a mobile great training experience. Also, MobiltyRE and Modex. Both of these companies provide market intelligence about recruiting. It's a great topic we're on and it fits nicely into what we're doing. Check out Mobility MMI, as well as Modex. They work right alongside each other. We use both of these tools in advising our clients on how to recruit effectively. It’s good to have you with us. I want to say a special thank you to Alice, Allen, and Matt for their contributions every week. Normally we head out to the MBA for Rob Van Raaphorst, but we unfortunately didn't get the download. If you listen on a download basis, Rob may get us a report. He’s a busy guy over there at the MBA. We're missing his report. Let's get right into Les Parker's segment. Here's the deal. I got called out. Some of our audience are so funny. I got corrected by a lot of them. Kimberly with Freddie Mac called me. Remember Les Parker’s last theme song in his music was, “What Goes Up Must Come Down.” I said, “It's so good to hear that song from Chicago.” I got corrected. It was Earth, Wind, and Fire. Thank you so much. I'm a product of that music. I don’t know why I forgot. I'm getting so old. Let's get over to Les Parker. I'm not so fond of this music selection but it fits in with what's going on. Les, what have you got for us? The battle rages between investors and Washington. That is the Federal Reserve and Treasury. Europe and China want to end the US dollar's reign as the reserve currency. The Macron and Merkel alliance faded as the German elections pointed to rebellion against the establishment's failures. Macron becomes the classic Pandora ahead of the French election in April 2022. Treasury wants to raise taxes by record amounts, expect such talk to lead to lower rates briefly, but with violent moves. These views are my own. Want more? Go to TMSpotlight.com. Good message. It ties in with what's going on. I like the report, but I don't like the music. I still like Earth, Wind, and Fire. Check out Les Parker's newsletter. You can do so by going to TMSpotlight.com and you can subscribe. When you're at the subscription button, you put in “Power” for PowerSeller, and you'll get the paid version for free. Great word. Matt, good to have you here with us. We blame you for the markets going up or down. We give you credit at the end day. There hasn't been much of that going on lately. What is going on? We can't blame your singing, that's for sure, Dave. As a vocal major, that’s a slip. You have the voice of an angel. I'm bringing my guitar next time I'm out in Texas. We're going to get it done. You got it. We'll get it done. We'll get some good music going. Looking at the ten years, we're starting to get back down into the medium middle part of the range. The medium part of the range for sure. Before that, this might not have been the best place to be. There's a lot to cover here. We’ll dig right into it. We'll start with the more boring stuff, econ data. We talked about the first major report coming up was going to be retail sales on Tuesday. It missed a big minus 3.0 versus the forecast calling for minus 0.5. That's a huge miss for retail sales and markets did nothing on that. There was a revision to the previous month up to 7.6 from 5.3, but 45 minutes later, industrial production came out minus 2.2 versus plus 0.3. Another big miss in econ data. Yet again, no market reaction. This right out of the gate was a major clue as to the tone of the week and where the bond market's focus was or was not in this case. Even though the story of the economy coming back from COVID-driven lockdown economic weakness is central to the rising rate environment, it is not central to rising rates on any given week at any given moment. This week happened to be all about the Fed and not for the regular reasons. We talked about that SLR stuff. The Fed didn't change the verbiage of their announcement much at all. We'll get to SLR in a second. They did change their economic projections. This is something that Powell likes to remind reporters not to put too much emphasis on, but people are going to do it anyway and they continue to do it. This is the dot plot that everyone talks about. That's the one where Fed members vote on where they see the Fed funds rate over time. We still are not seeing a median view of a hike in 2023. That headline played well for bonds at first, but the dot plot did show we're now seven votes for the 2023 liftoff versus five last time. There's a little bit of migration in the dots, and that could give some traders some pause. All in all, it was fairly well received at 2:00 PM. When 2:30 PM rolls around, Powell starts talking, and by and large, he is dovish. He's bond-friendly. A lot of people think Powell has done nothing but damage the bond market. It was a great example of the opposite happening. I don't know if he would say he tried to talk rates down, but he was bond-friendly. One reporter asked if it was time to start talking about tapering or when it was time to start talking about tapering. Powell said not yet. That was the end of that question. He shut it down very quickly and reiterated their commitment to keeping inflation over 2% for a while, and their ability to deal with it if it started to run hot. They reiterated that they would be very clear and give tons of advanced notice when it came time to taper. They weren't close to that yet, but they were committed to avoiding a taper tantrum-like market reaction. All that was good, but there was a question that we were almost certain there would be about SLR, the Supplementary Leverage Ratio thing that is a temporary rule created last April that theoretically allowed banks to buy and hold more treasuries without it affecting their leverage ratios. It is set to expire at the end of this month. About half the market was looking for an extension and half was expecting the Fed to let it expire. When asked, Powell said, “I don't have a comment on that. We'll have something for you in the coming days.” That was tough because how do you take that? “We'll have something for you in the coming days.” Is it such a big deal to the Fed that they're going to announce an absence of an extension or do you take that to mean if they're going to announce something, it's probably going to be at least some kind of extension? Markets didn't react poorly to that at the time. Wednesday ended up being a decent day. Intraday yields moved lower, but then overnight, Asian and European markets completely blasted the US bond market. We quickly found ourselves up at 1.75%, which was the next technical target that we talked about last week after breaking 1.63. On Friday, a confirmation justified the market's fears in the form of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors releasing official statements saying the temporary SLR rule would be allowed to expire, and that they would revisit their leverage ratio rules to see if they should be any different right now. By that time, there wasn't a ton of market reaction left to have on that topic. There was the single biggest minute of treasury futures volumes that we've seen, and I can only go back so far to look at minute-by-minute volume, but it was definitely on the market's radar. I think a lot of that trade had taken place in advance. A lot of the weaknesses can be chalked up to that. We ended the week holding in that 1.7 to 1.75 range. Not a great place to be in terms of ten-year yields, but not a surprising place to be in the absence of SLR. Coming up this week, we get to find out, now that we hit that technical target, whether 1.75 will be the ceiling. It was 1.63. We broke it. Now it was 1.75. We're holding it. Let's see how we do with that. On the data front, existing home sales are already out. It’s weaker than expected. We’re not troubled by it. They are still great numbers. New home sales are expected to be weaker. We're seeing rising rates take a toll more so on refi but a little bit on the purchase market as well. It's hard to slow the purchase market down. The durable goods are expected to come in lower than expected. I'm going to say expected one more time. There we go, that’s three. Jobless claims are with us are always on Thursday, 70/30 versus 7/70 is the forecast. GDP is forecast to be unchanged at 4.1. No one is paying attention at this point because that is the second revision. It's very stale data at this point. Core PCE inflation on Friday is seen coming in the same as last time at 1.5. We are not yet to those reports that are going to be distorted by “base effects,” meaning that this month's number is based on a month in the previous year that was very different, thus distorting it. What we're going to see is very high inflation numbers in the coming months due to the very low inflation numbers twelve months ago in 2020. That'll be a factor in the next couple of reports. The highlight of the week is not on the data front. It is the treasury auction cycle. While it's not the most significant of the two treasury auction cycles, it was a market mover last time it came around. It can be again. We have 2, 5, and 7-year auctions on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday respectively. This will give the bond market a chance to endorse this new 1.7 range or push back against it. If we see very strong auction results without yields backing up too much further, it could be a sign that we're going to try harder to solidify this ceiling. We're taking things one day at a time when it comes to the sell-off because it defied a lot of expectations. Last but not least, on a loan pricing front, I know Alice is going to talk about this more, but we saw many more lenders roll out their non-owner and second home hits. Several lenders rolled out bigger hits. A couple of lenders said, “We're going to be adjusting pricing on this stuff very fluidly. We're not going to give you a heads-up every time we do it. We're going to reprice, and that'll be that. There won't be an official announcement.” People are trying to scramble to figure out the new normal there. It's causing a lot of headaches for a lot of people and a lot of surprises for clients who had been quoted non-owner or second home rates before last week and are coming to see that things have changed fairly drastically. That's an understatement for sure. That’s it. We’re hoping to hold the ceiling and see some more support this time around. From a strategy standpoint, we'll believe it when we see it. We're hoping to see it. We're still in the middle range. We'll see if we test the lows and then see what's going on. Who was I talking to the other day? Maybe it was Les Parker, and then someone else confirmed it also. We could see some pretty significant volatility coming up in the month of March. March madness and a different variable other than the basketball tournament. We have some things going on pending. We'll see. Some are predicting we're going to go below the floor that we're seeing, which is stuck at a little over 6.1. Depending on the extent to which Japanese accounts are influencing treasures right now, that's a hotly debated topic around trader campfires. We could see a strong April because Japan's fiscal year ends at the end of this month. Word on the street is they've been selling a lot of treasuries. As much of a factor as some say it is, April could be where we see our first nice correction in 2021. As I continue to tell my audience on MBS live, this isn’t a sell-off. This is a rising rate environment where you want to leave the burden of proof on bond buyers and rally to establish itself before you bet on it, or before you change anything about your strategy and your approach to the market. It has been defying a lot of expectations for resilience. When you have volatility, where are you looking to find out what's going on? You have to check out Matt's website, MBSLive.net. It is loaded with all kinds of good comments and information. The live news stream is one of my favorite areas. I'm probably locked mostly on the tenure treasury, the grass that's there, how you can roll across, and see where things are at. You got a 1-day view. You can go out 2 days, 5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 5 years, and all the way out and all. It's fascinating the amount of information you have on here. The best part, you let our listeners check it out and experience it on a trial basis and you double the trial period with a no-cost requirement of a credit card. Matt, we’re very grateful for that. We very much appreciate it. You bet. Matt, have a blessed day. I look forward to seeing you back here. I always enjoy it and I’m grateful for your participation. Thanks, Dave. Have a good one. You bet. What's that song? I realized the lyrics when I was talking about What Goes Up, What Comes Down. It's Blood, Sweat, and Tears from 1969. The lyrics of that song are so fitting, Alice. You and your wonderful husband were getting along pretty well at that age. Do you remember that era of music? It was such a fun era. I love it. I do. For our audience’s benefit, I was three. Just kidding. I love that stuff. I'm a Detroiter, so I love Motown as well. Lots of fun stuff. Matt brought up the rate and the pricing issues, and whether it's aggregate, monthly, or by lender now for our investment and second home property borrowers. Matt covered it great. I don't need to pile on with that. It is a challenge every single day right now. Lenders are trying to see how the market is going to react because no one wants to end up being the low-priced provider and then you end up being where everyone wants to sell you loans. You get adversely selected. The whole market is trying to gauge, “I want to be with everybody. I don't want to be adversely selected.” Some markets know they need this business. That's a big part of their business model and the climate where there are good loans out there. That doesn't mean they're all bad loans. That's where we're at right now. It’s constant change every day with that topic. That is an understatement. We're in the mortgage business. Change is the cost. If you thought you weren't going to ride a rollercoaster, you might want to pick another industry. That's what we tell people who are in the business who are new. My report is to let everybody know that Fannie Mae came out with a lender letter. The publication date was on the 11th as far as the letter dated itself. I know this was crossing everybody's desks in the last few days to make sure we all picked up on the changes that were coming out of this. This is Lender Letter 21-03 related to the COVID-19 rules that are impacting origination. The main thing is to see that each one of the topics is covered in detail. They've added some clarifications, but they're now saying that this is getting put in the guide and it's going to stick. When you think about what's the impact of COVID on our industry, it has now permanently changed underwriting guidelines. These are no longer every 30 days and every 60 days going to get pushed out. For those of you who might not be intimately familiar with what this is, there are some changes to verbal verification of employment, and how quickly and repeatedly you have to do that. Power of attorney, I do want to remind everybody that you should be looking at your POA policies, scrub them, and fix them. There are a lot of nitty-gritty details that people keep recognizing. I was talking to another lender and another shop. They had missed the POA requirements that Freddie published and then Fannie followed and required that the borrower sign an acknowledgment. This acknowledgment timing has to be between the time of the CD and closing. After finalizing the closing disclosure, but before the closing itself, somebody at the lender or the settlement agent must explain and discuss the terms of the mortgage and the use of the POA. That sounds easy. I have to have a discussion. The paragraph goes on to say, “How are you going to document and prove that you did this?” In mortgage banking, if there isn't a document or a record that says you did it, then the assumption is going to be that you may not have done it. It’s a good heads up on the POA that most companies have to revamp their POA policies and get that communication out to their teams to make sure they're getting that right. The other aspect of COVID has been the age of the documents that they could only be 60 days. Those of us remember when they could be 120 and 180 and longer for new construction. All of that is now staying in place. For the foreseeable future, all our docs must be updated every 60 days. That includes CDP credit docs as well. From an operational standpoint, you think, “Do I only have to do this for a short time? Maybe this will go away?” to “Now I've got to have this in place permanently. This is the way I'm going to train everybody. I’m going to make sure my systems are set up for the long haul to do this verification of self-employed borrowers.” All of that is super deep. Lots of analysis for year-to-date P&Ls. If you haven't done their tax returns for 2020, you need a 2020 P&L and a year-to-date P&L. Don't forget that, and the bank statements to go with them. Lots of self-employed borrowers are going to continue to feel the pinch. Same with the furlough borrower regulations, and the temporary eligibility requirements for purchase and refinance for borrowers going through lost mid or reinstatements. It's a nine-page lender letter, but it has a big long-term impact. The final thing is that they're not buying loans that are twelve months old anymore. It's down to six. As far as your seasoning, what defines a seasoned loan, and all of these being until further notice. That's the big change. Lenders are retooling for COVID guidelines that are now very long-term. I'll pass it back to you. Good job. I appreciate you so much, Alice, for being here. I'm looking at this. I went through a refinance and the documentation. I could tell the lender was so confused. Have you not tuned in to the show? Alice would've helped stretch you straight. They were going, “We need this. Don't we need this? Do we need this? We're not sure. We don't know what we're doing.” That’s what I wanted to say. Listen to Alice’s segment. It's so good. I appreciate you being here, Alice. Say hi to Bill. Tell him again how much feedback we're getting on the interview that we did with him on leadership. I can't wait to get into that topic in the hot topic segment. I know you can't join us because you're dropping out of a meeting. You are so busy there. You guys are growing because you have a great culture in the way you're growing the business. It's not surprising that you have to run to a meeting. We're sorry to see you go, but have the best rest of your week and we'll talk to you soon. I just want to clarify. There are certain items that are not being extended. Appraisal flexibilities, for example, are not being extended. I wanted to make sure everybody was clear. Some of the things that I was referring to are the items that are going to be permanent. There are some that won't be extended. Please make sure you go check those Lender Letters out. Good reminder. Thank you, Alice. I appreciate it. It’s good to have you here. Allen Pollack is joining us with the tech update. Allen, what do you have, friend? How's it going? It's good, other than embarrassing myself with who the artist is with What Goes Up and What Goes Down. It's all right. We like your singing. You dig well enough. You're good enough for a karaoke night at a leftover chili somewhere in the middle of nowhere. That's exactly right. Where nobody is listening. They're all too drunk to listen or they think it sounds good. What's going on in the mortgage technology? I know you know more about what’s going on out there. You could possibly share it with us. I just want to take you and ring you. There’s a lot happening in the world. A lot of exciting stuff. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on. It's these little stories that always catch my eye. This one is pretty cool. Everyone loves their pets. Pets are a billion multi-billion dollar industry. If you watch Shark Tank, every other episode is people selling something for their pets. LenderLogix is a tech company. They will send your pet a welcome to your new home gift box. A day after the closing, the homeowners will receive a text message asking what type of pet they have and how many. You'll get a welcome package for your furry friends, as well as a customized pet tag. I'm guessing it probably has their name and their new address. The best part is it runs automatically from the LOS. If you're interested in connecting with your borrowers, that customer experience is everything. The furry friends are everything. Check it out, LenderLogix. I thought that was pretty cool. TransUnion has now said that they found three data points about post-COVID borrowers. They're saying the first one, 35% of the population, their income has not decreased. No decrease is planned, so they’re in good shape. Twenty-seven percent of the population see that income has decreased, but they do plan to recover. Twenty-two percent of the population has seen a decrease. Some say they're unsure or doubtful that their finances will recover. I mentioned this not because I want to put clouds on today’s weather or anything like that. It’s just that we're continuing to leverage data partners like TransUnion are using trended data. They're helping us look at ways to understand who our customers are. This is important. As you continue to use data to look at your new customers, how you market, and how you ingest new applications and those experiences, data like this is extremely critical. I'm sure others have it as well, but you want to take a look at TransUnion. David, if you remember, I mentioned how excited I was. I love the fact that financial literacy is a big deal in banking and the mortgage side of the fence with new borrowers. There needs to be some type of education and literacy in those borrower and loan officer one-to-one experiences, like the in-branch experience or whatever you call it. Google announced the details of their new certification program and I quickly mentioned that last week. They've got three programs that are huge in project management, which is that no project lives correctly or can live correctly without project management. Data analytics, which we live on data. What would sportscasters do without having data to be able to say that this is the first time when it was sunny and I had a hot dog that this guy ran for three seconds? Also, the ability to be an expert in UX design, which we're going to talk about in a moment. I couldn't remember and I wanted to mention it, but Better.com has already hired thousands from this Google program. Better has increased its workforce from 1,000 to more than 6,000 over the past year. This Google program works for all types of people. If you're interested, you can reach out to Google. They are training people to fit within your organization. If you're looking to bring some fresh minds into your organization, maybe you want to connect with Google. David, as you and I know, not everybody is meant for a four-year college program. This is another way to get some good training from some of the best. Blend is doing all kinds of things. They announced that they're opening the digital doorway which is what we call omnichannel lending. They're giving financial institutions the ability to have one entranceway to multiple financial products. It’s one experience. It's all about the borrower's experience, the ease of use, as well as the backend. They need to retain that investment and continue to invest in their members and their customers. Blend made that announcement. Second, they agreed to acquire Title 365. What they're saying is they're going to deeply integrate title and settlement into the loan process by automating the title commitments, reconciling settlement fees in real-time, and streamlining between all the different parties that exist on the transaction, all part of their interface and part of their technology partners. Hats off to Blend. It sounds interesting. If you're a Blend user, you want to check it out. Virtual demo days, David. We have had plenty of them and there's more. HousingWire has an upcoming virtual demo day. If you're interested, you want to check that out. I want to spend a quick minute. I want to talk about product principles. We keep mentioning it and I've brought a couple of things up about customer experience and how important it is. I want to mention something. We're so used to today and you don't even realize it, but you have it on TikTok and you have it on Snapchat. It’s the way you scroll videos. If you're not doing it, your kids are doing it or your nieces and nephews are doing it. YouTube introduced it. The trend is moving. We're moving to where we no longer click on videos and see a list of videos on the right, but you swipe up and you swipe down with your fingers, and you click if you want to see more information. That's user experience. You know what else that is, David? That's gamification. Not only have the big tech giants started to go that way, including YouTube, but it's all about product principles. The reason I bring this up to our audience is it is so important that even if you have a bad product, you still have to have some type of product principle and a way to help guide your users. Those are things with videos. You can use this technology called WalkMe, which literally sits on your screen. Have you ever downloaded an app and all of a sudden, out of nowhere it says, “Click here?” It guides you on how to use that app the first time you use it. It's called WalkMe.com. It's a great technology. It's a how-to-use guide. No one wants to read Word documents and PDFs of instructions. We don't do it when we buy something from the store. Why would we do it on our computer when we want to get a piece of software? Having quick access to videos helps-to-guides like WalkMe is called gamification. It's called product principles and user experience. You can use and leverage that information to drive that experience. By the way, it's not just about your customers, borrowers, and members. It's about your internal users as well. It’s having that efficiency within your systems, and working with your partners to have the right documentation. A lot of partners will say they'll work with you to create your own videos and technical documentation. There's so much we could talk about product principles. We probably could bring a couple of folks on and have them talk about it. I just wanted to ring the bell in everyone's mind about gamification and product principles. YouTube is doing it. Everybody is looking at ways to better interact and work with the borrower. I noticed that when watching some YouTube videos. Very good, Allen. Excellent. We can do that here. You're right. We know guys don't ask for directions. That's an age-old joke. There’s all the evidence, at least in our household. It’s being able to have ways in which to educate people on your devices on a new app or whatever. People have to incorporate that. Good job, Allen. David, we should tell our audience that if they're interested in finding out which chilies you'll be moonlighting your karaoke skills or if they want to know more about gamification, product principles, design, and everything else that we do, they can reach out to David or Allen at TMS-Advisors.com. That's a good job, Allen. I appreciate you being on here every week, bringing us some great information. Have a great rest of your week. I know I can't wait for you to start sharing all the information that you're hearing about out there that we can't talk about yet. It's pretty exciting. That wraps up this week's Weekly Mortgage Update. We're now going to get into the hot topic segment. For those of you tuning in on a downloaded basis, you are going to move right onto the next hot topic. For those of you tuning in live, stay right here. We're going to move right on into it. Welcome, everybody. It's the hot topic segment of the show. We are looking forward to continuing our series on developing strategic teams. When I talk about strategic teams that work well together, how do we build companies that are going to function healthily and bring you the success that you desire? Joining us on the show is Eric Levin. Eric is the EVP of Client Development at Model Match. It's an interesting company. I'm fascinated by it. One of my clients turned me onto them. I reached out to them, and then I found out how many others are using it. It's pretty cool. Check out ModelMatch.com. Eric is a twenty-year veteran of supporting companies and their strategic growth needs in the financial industry. We're thrilled to have you join us, Eric. How are you doing, friend? I'm good. Thanks for having me on. This is an honor. It was always great to talk to you. I learned something. I always enjoy talking to you. I have to start though with this. You were joking around earlier about the mistake that you made on a song by Chicago and it was Earth, Wind, and Fire. Here's mistake number two and I'm going to give you a hard time. My last name's pronounced Levin. Isn't it funny these silly things we get sensitive about when we're little kids and the teacher calls your name? Out of respect to my dad, I had to at least correct that. I'm so glad you corrected me on that. I realize there's not an E at the end. I started putting it in there. Eric Levin, my apologies. That's okay. My last name is Lykken as most people call it. I try to be sensitive to that, but that's my bad. I was just so excited. It’s all good. It made me start thinking about when you were on my podcast. I hope I pronounced your last name correctly the whole time. I think I did okay. We’ll start with the mistake and then we'll move on to other things. Let's move on. When it comes to names and mistakes, I've made enough in my life. I just say, “I'm so sorry.” I move on and don't worry about it. The worst mistakes though in my opinion are the ones where people don't tell you. You go about your business making the same mistakes over and over again. Nobody corrects you. You think, “I've been calling you that for the last six months. Why didn't you tell me six months ago?” You and I won't have that problem. We won't because I'll remember that one. It's so good to have you here, Eric Levin. I'm going to have fun with that a little bit. You talk about what you've done in helping work and build strategic growth within companies. I'm interested in learning more about what strategic growth means. You mentioned that people should stop recruiting. This is one of your statements which is fascinating. We're building companies. What do you mean stop recruiting? What do you mean by that? It's a great question. People who listen to me probably get bored with me saying things like stop recruiting or. I wish we could come up with another name. The first time that I heard the word recruiting, and we probably all have similar stories, was when I was in high school. I was an athlete probably more in my head than physically. I wanted to play sports in college and I got hurt. I wasn't going to be able to play what I wanted to play. My folks called a military recruiter and said, “My son needs to do something. We should get him on this list.” I got a phone call from a military recruiter who was recruiting me. The reality was that I didn't ask for that phone call. I didn't want to be in the military at the time. My 17 or 18-year-old brain wasn't there yet. Immediately, we weren't on the same page. This person was trying to recruit me to do something that I had no interest in. I wasn't in a position to listen to them. Fast forward to what we do now. I got introduced to this industry twenty years ago. Not just mortgage banking, financial services, and real estate finance in general, but I got introduced to recruiting twenty-plus years ago. I noticed a common denominator. I was calling on a lot of people to try to talk them into doing something that they didn't want to do. They didn't want to talk to me. If I switched it up and ultimately try to build a relationship with that individual in some way, try to find some common ground, and try to find out who they are across some shared core components, all of a sudden, we're really not recruiting. [bctt tweet="Stop “recruiting”! Build a relationship with the individual and try to find some common ground." username=""] I take it a step further. All industries are a little bit different, and we're building Model Match. Our software solution is a technology platform that can support any industry. Our core competency is mortgage banking. We came up in this industry. We know people. We understand what originators and managers of originators that retail and wholesale correspondents go through. Here's the difference on the sales side of the mortgage banking industry for the most part. The people that you're “recruiting” or the ones that you want, do they need a job? No. The ones you want, are they miserable where they are? Probably not. Are they good at what they do? Meaning, do they have a book of business that has value? Of course, they do. Those are the ones that you want. Guess what? If they don't need a job and they don't think they want a job, what are you going to do when you get started? If you go into that process thinking, “I need to recruit. I need to fill empty desks, so let me start recruiting,” we believe that you're already starting behind the eight-ball. Let's keep playing it forward. There are a lot of managers, branch managers, regional managers, heads of production, presidents, and CEOs. You and I were talking about this. You were on the sales side. Ultimately, you ended up building companies. You were managing bottom, up, top, down, and across the board. Those managers, for the most part in the mortgage banking industry, where did they generally start? If you're managing production or if you're a branch manager or a regional manager, you probably started as a loan officer. Is that fair? That is fair. When you started as a LO and you had no book of business, what did you have to do? You have to go get some business or you have to hustle. You have to get some business. You walked into a real estate office, probably back in the day, with a gift card, a box of popcorn, or whatever. You try to strike up a conversation and get them to give you a loan. When I go through exercises with companies, I ask the managers in the room who have been tasked with recruiting, growing market share, building their branches, and building their areas. If I say, “We have to recruit. How does that make you feel?” Everybody's body language drops in the room. If I relate it to what you did when you were an originator and you built relationships with agents that twenty years later are still giving you a business, that still trusts you, or giving you loans, the muscle completely switches. They start to realize those 3 to 5 agents that they're still doing business with today. They did not win them because of product or price, generally. They won them because of trust and a relationship. You were able to show them the mouse trap of your company and how that mouse trap could help create raving fans. That’s a long-winded answer but that’s why what we do in this industry, recruiting is the wrong word. It engages this muscle for many people that's not a positive muscle. You go in right away negative.
Important Links
- Mortgage Professionals
- Model Match
- IndustrySyndicate.com
- Mortgage Bankers Association of America
- Michael Fratantoni – Past episode
- Finastra
- Dan Putney – Past episode
- Lenders One
- Mortgage Collaborative
- Community Mortgage Lenders of America
- Indecomm
- Insellerate
- Josh Friend – Past episode
- Knowledge Coop
- Modex
- Mobility MMI
- Les Parker
- TMSpotlight.com
- MBSLive.net
- LenderLogix
- TransUnion
- Better.com
- Blend
- HousingWire
- WalkMe.com
- www.TMS-Advisors.com
- The Walk Podcast