3-22-21 Process Over Event - Relationships Over Recruiting With Eric Levin

How important are your business relationships?

Our guest this week is Eric Levin of Model Match! We’re continuing our series on mortgage industry “recruiting” and the first message you’re hear today is, “Stop recruiting!”

Stop recruiting?!?

Yes!

The discussion today is about the value of processes over events, collaboration in building trust and using the leverage you have to buy time and efficiencies!

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.

Stop “recruiting”! Build a relationship with the individual and try to find some common ground. Click To Tweet

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.

Business Relationships: Recruiting is the wrong word. It engages the wrong muscle for many people.

I like that. It’s a relationship-driven business. I always say stop recruiting and stop pursuing. Everything I learned about recruiting, I learned at a high school dance. Everything I seemed to pursue, I chased away. When I started developing relationships, I drew people into a relationship and it was a much more successful outcome. One of the things you talk about is the value of processes over events. Explain what you mean by the value of processes over events. What events are you talking about?

There are a couple of big mistakes that leaders make when they are “recruiting” in local markets, regionally, nationally, you name it. One of those big mistakes is they think that because they’re a good salesperson, they can go into a conversation and wing it and close this opportunity. “I’m going to close this opportunity. I’m going to close this person.” Ultimately, there’s no process behind it. Tagged onto that, a big mistake that then happens is that you have a good conversation with someone.

A good conversation could be three minutes long. A good conversation doesn’t have to be an hour. It could be three minutes long. You’ve heard my voice now. You can tell that I’m not a hard sell. I’m not trying to twist your arm to do something you don’t want to do. Maybe we had some constructive conversation about the local market but the question is, what are you going to do next? Is there a future action associated with that conversation?

When we talk about the process, it starts there. It then goes all the way through the process of getting to know someone, getting to like them, and getting to trust them in both directions. That is a process. There’s an art to having a conversation, but there’s a science to the process of managing that relationship from point A to the point where you both realize, we can be better together. We can do more together. We can create efficiencies for each other. Now, I’m joining your company not because I hate mine or because I’m mad at my boss, but because I’m thinking about the value proposition and our partnership together that makes me believe that we can create efficiencies that I can’t create elsewhere.

You’re not going to get to that place by just winging conversations and ultimately, hoping you can make someone an offer and bring them on board. You create other problems for yourself if you do win people in that way. We all know that there are extreme costs to a bad hire. We can all agree. You’re a veteran in this industry. You’ve seen so many different things. You consult with lots of great mortgage companies. I’m sure this is something you talk about.

That process keeps you from having a bad hire. By the way, that bad hire can also negatively impact your perception in a local market. That’s going to make it that much harder for you to get the next hire that might be a good one. There’s value in the process that even goes beyond moving that opportunity along through know, like, and trust so that you can ultimately partner with someone. The other thing that it does, going back to the process, is it protects you from what is similar to the cost of a bad hire. That is the cost of an opportunity lost.

Business Relationships: A bad hire can negatively impact the way you’re perceived in the local market. It’s going to make it much harder for you to get the next hire.

I’m sure many people tuning in are branch managers, regional heads of production, you name it. You’re looking to grow a market. You have a conversation with someone in January, and the conversation goes well. This person is happy. They’re crushing it. Their pipeline is full. They’re going to make a bunch of money in the next couple of months. By the way, 2020 was nothing but delaying gratification for a lot of people looking to expand because of those reasons. You have this good conversation and you agree to stay in touch and that’s it.

Four months later, you’re fooling around on LinkedIn. You see that this person joined one of your competitors. You and your gut know that you could have created a better environment for that individual than the place where they went. Why did you lose them? You lose them because you have no process to hold yourself accountable for staying in touch with this person, but also to know what it is you should be talking about when you stay in touch with the person.

That’s where Model Match came from. That’s where our technology came from, which was how can we take the model or the processes that we built as an organization at Hammer House, which is the company that we started before Model Match, and ultimately Model Match acquired the assets of Hammer House in 2018. How can we take those processes and package them into a platform that essentially creates an environment so that the user can take advantage of the opportunity, and not allow things to fall into a black hole?

That is such a good point. I’d love the process. Get into a little bit of what are some of the things that your technology does. Folks, it’s going to get right on over. We have clients using Model Match. There are two ways you can go about it. This may be a good point of interjecting. You have the software and technology where you turn it on for an incredibly affordable price. I couldn’t believe how much data you have in there, how much process you’ve built into this technology, and how affordable it is. Also, you have a fully managed service. Talk about when they pick up your software. What are the processes embedded in there? What are some of the concepts? You mentioned social media. What they are about and what they’re interested in. Talk a little bit about what you get with your technology.

I’ll back up for a second. We live in between the static and the dynamic. Our technology is never going to be, nor was it ever intended to be a static CRM or applicant tracking system or job board. However, we also know that on the human capital side, our team is hired to do the recruiting work and partnership with our clients. There’s a capacity for that. There’s a finite amount of capacity that we have to be able to support at that particular level. The software has created this environment that allows a user to decide how much or how little they want. I need help expanding my market.

Model Match allows the user to license the platform to be able to track all of their opportunities to be able to capture leads in a market via data. Meaning, who’s doing the volume in my market? What does that volume look like across products, average loan amounts, unit count, and trends going back to 2016? I can see the data. I know who it is I should be building a relationship with, and now I get into the technology and I start making phone calls directly from the software. The software will track. You made a phone call. What happened with the phone call? I can disposition the phone call. I put a note in. That note is going to drop into a history section. I create a future task and then I move on. I don’t have to worry about this opportunity or this person anymore because the software Model Match, the environment, is going to remind me what to do and when to do it.

The beauty of that. Again, this is the first level of the technology, super inexpensive, but gives you the processes that you need to be successful. It also allows you to collaborate with other users within your company. I can mention David on a note, and then David gets a notification and can see, “Eric talked to this person today. Maybe I can jump in and help.” It allows others within the organization across any division, operations, technology, and human resources to have that visibility to support collaboration. That helps get you, first of all, more efficient in your processes because you have help. You have other eyes on the technology and in your processes, but also with the candidates themselves to be able to build trust by talking to multiple individuals within the company over time.

Going forward, you can add to the technology with additional data points. You can customize playbooks. Earlier, Allen talked on your show about gamification. We’re doing a lot of that gamification inside the technology. If a company says, “This is how we want to manage action, step 1, 2, 3, 4, you can customize that, bake that into the software, and make sure that all users across the organization are managing those processes the same way.”

Continuing with the customization through a company that may say, I know you have some relationships with some of our clients at this level as well, “We want to use the software. We see the value in it, but we have a market where we want to take a targeted approach and we want to invest at a higher level to have your team come on as the SWAT team. Help us to build relationships in the market and partner with us through ultimately hiring those individuals and supporting their onboarding and acclimation.”

The power of this tool and technology is wonderful. When you come on with a full service and get behind it, and then you’re using your technology, it’s still all available to the customer, your client. You’re managing it. It’s a nice turnkey process and solution. When you’re looking at recruiting, it’s about building trust. One of my favorite books, which came out in 2017 was The Trust Economy. We’re in a place where we’re trusting. We’re putting more into systems and we’re trusting more when someone calls us. Building trust is an important part of it, at least I would think, in the collaborative effort of recruiting or drawing people into your company or building relationships. Talk about building trust. How do you do that?

Recruiting is really about building trust. Click To Tweet

It certainly is in the mortgage industry for sure. We can all agree that more and more of the processes within the industry operationally, especially, are going more remote. They’re going more technology-driven. There’s maybe not as many conversations as there used to be. However, the vast majority of market share is still coming from consumers that are coming from referral partners that are being led to originators that have some relationship at some level. Even if it’s that I clicked on a link to get led to someone who can give me a better rate. Generally, at some level, most companies are still engaging with that consumer and building a relationship that then leads to trust, which can lead to additional referrals from that individual if they have a good experience as well.

Taking trust even deeper, I look at collaboration and trust as very similar things. Inside of the technology, we’re constantly encouraging our users about recruiting. David, you’re smarter than me, so you have to come up with a better word than recruiting because I haven’t figured it out yet. When you’re in there and you’re recruiting and you’re working on your opportunities, we’re constantly encouraging those users to figure out who within their company or on their team can also support them in those processes. You should bring them into the technology as well. Have them have eyes on it.

At some point, you are going to want to introduce those recruits to these individuals as well. I know Mr. or Mrs. Branch manager that you can answer the underwriting question that you got from this candidate. However, this is a perfect opportunity for you to acknowledge that the question is important and schedule an action for that individual to talk to the person who’s going to be managing your files from that perspective on a day-to-day basis. Don’t answer the question just because you can. Use this as an opportunity to introduce that individual to the person who’s going to take care of them.

Ultimately, what does that do? If you communicate consistently and predictably about the value proposition of your organization, it’s going to build trust. One of the things that you do well, we were talking about this on The Walk Podcast, when you talk to companies, one of the most important things is to find out who they think they are and who they ultimately want to be. We do it across six core components. Once you define what those core competencies are, it makes it a lot easier to bolt on those competencies to the individuals that you think you want to partner with.

The same thing holds true when you’re collaborating with individuals inside of your company that you’re going to introduce to these relationships. If you don’t communicate the same way, you’re going to have a problem. If you do and you collaborate effectively, ultimately, you reach a point where those individuals feel it and they build trust and you have an opportunity to partner with them.

You talk about core components. I like that. Talk more and get into some of what those core components are when it comes to this thing that we still refer to as recruiting, but we’re looking for another name, but talk about that.

I’d love to. Years ago my partners and I, and it was probably around the time that we started Hammer House. We started Hammer House in 2008 when the world was coming to an end. We doubled down on our place in this industry and we weren’t special. Like lots of other people, we had families that were wondering where the next paycheck was going to come from. Yet we were taking money out of savings to go start Hammer House, which ultimately became Model Match.

During that whole time, we had defined what we felt was the science of building those relationships. Part of the science is understanding those core components. The six core components that we work and coach to match between client and opportunity. Opportunity in this case is the individual or the group that you’re recruiting. That could be a loan officer or an acquisition. Those six core components are business, leadership, culture, operations, technology, and geography. There are multiple bullets underneath each one, as you can imagine.

Business could be things as simple as product and purchase to refi and what your referral sources are. Leadership could be things. How does leadership create value for you? How do you collaborate with local and national leadership? Do you have a voice? Operations, technology, geography, we could go on and on. Those are the core components. Once you can identify who you are as an organization across those core components, you can also drill down to local markets. Tampa, Florida is not going to be the same as Chicago, Illinois. There are going to be differences in business. There are going to be differences in culture, but there should be things at the corporate level that are relatively locked down. We can get into the nuance at the local level.

As long as you know what those things are as the local leader in the regional and national leader, and everybody that’s supporting you in your strategic growth knows those things and communicates them the same way, now we have “fertile recruiting grounds.” We can start to build relationships that bolt onto those six core components. The other thing that happens, we find a lot of times that one of the reasons that individuals aren’t comfortable recruiting is because they’re not comfortable with some of those core components. They don’t know how to communicate one or more of those core components of their own organization.

You and I were talking about times when we’ve seen people leave companies because they think they’re getting a tool at the new company. It turns out they actually had that tool at the old company, but the old company wasn’t communicating anything about that part of the value proposition. Those are the six core components.

I want to digress for a second. Listening to Allen talk about gamification, in one of the early versions of the software, we built in those six core components. As a user, you would answer questions relative to the individual you’re talking to inside of the software, and then the software would measure how strong the match is. What we found and maybe it’s shortsighted. Maybe it’s something we come back to, but our users told us that it was too much work. I’m mostly interested in the business side of it. What we did was we pivoted. We took that piece away. At some point, we bolted back on again in some customization fashion. What we did was we added playbooks. We still give the company the opportunity to say, “If we’re not going to measure this individual across the six core components, let’s at least make sure that we’re asking all the questions.” We build the playbooks with them and for them. They can track who has checked the boxes and who hasn’t, and at least make good hiring decisions.

There’s so much we could unpack within that whole area of those core components and explain those. We’re getting a question from one of our audience. As it relates to what you were talking about, what do you mean by a playbook?

Great question. This is something I haven’t mentioned yet. Whenever we’ve thought about the technology as it relates to mortgage banking and then coaching from a recruiting perspective, there are times when I’ll be invited by a company to come stand in front of a hundred branch managers and do an hour 101 about recruiting best practices. One of the things that I try to always come back to is the muscle that’s already built or that I know is already built. If I were to ask you anything about a particular file on the Smith file, how quickly could you answer that question for me? It’s super fast. I type in a couple of buttons relative to whatever LOS I’m using. I can see exactly not only where it stands and what’s up next but also who’s accountable for the current action. Can you do that with your recruiting pipeline?

They should be able to, but most have no clue.

That’s Model Match. That’s why we built the technology. Not only you as the individual user can see and remind me that it has been 60 days since I’ve talked to this person. What did we talk about? Where do we stand and what do I need to try to talk about next? Also, all those individuals that support you in that process. Your branch manager, your regional, your head of production, your operations support, your technology support, your marketing support. The same way that the Smith file is being managed within the LOS. The LOS are not on their own. They’ve got a processor, LOA, underwriter, and closers. They have a whole team of people that are supporting them.

Now playbooks, each company is going to have an individual playbook that they feel is the right process when trying to build relationships with the recruits. The first step might be to make a cold call. That’s an obvious one. Go call this person. We found some data. We know that this is an individual that you should have a relationship with, go call them. Steps 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are maybe the points where the company says, “This is where we now want to introduce our operations manager. This is where we want to introduce our regional. This is where we want to do a side-by-side comparison of product and price.” All the way through HR terms negotiation, and then even the first 30, 60, or 90 days of onboarding and acclimation.

Ultimately, that’s the playbook. In our software, the way that it works is when it’s completed, you move it to a completed section so that you can see who was it that completed that action. When we look back, let’s say we’re getting ready to think, “Are we at a point where we want to make someone an offer?” The first thing you ought to do is to look back and make sure you checked all the boxes. The last thing I want to do is make somebody an offer and they sit on it because they tell you, “I still would like to learn a little bit more about how you’re managing social media engagement with X, Y, Z.” It sure does if I put that little piece of paper in front of you with a couple of numbers on it, and now you want to take three steps backward. That’s what the playbook looks like. We built it in such a way that it’s customizable. We have a default playbook that we use, but the client can customize that playbook.

This starts getting into the topic of leverage. I would like to talk about the benefits of using leverage. Sometimes we need to buy time and create some more efficiencies in the process of recruiting. Talk about using leverage, the term you referenced when we talked earlier.

I don’t like one plus one equals two. I want it to be a multiple. I want one plus one to equal a whole lot more than two. How can we do that? It takes a lot of work and a lot of effort to start with zero relationship, build some trust with someone, and then ultimately be in a position where we can partner together. My question is, what did you learn from those conversations that might put you or the region or the organization as a whole in a position to leverage that opportunity, not the person necessarily, but what you learned from the opportunity to replicate that in either the same markets or other markets as well?

Here’s one of many examples. I’m a branch manager in Charlotte, North Carolina and I successfully recruited someone from XYZ Mortgage, and the reason that they joined was because they saw greater efficiencies in how we’re managing human capital on the operation side relative to their current company. They know that those efficiencies are going to give me more time and I can do what I want with the time. I can spend more time with my children, and with my family, or I can use that time to grow my business, do more volume, and make more money. If I know that about this company, why am I not leveraging that information to replicate that with other individuals who have maybe been with a similar company or have the same pain?

If my Portland, Oregon branch doesn’t know that just happened, they can’t leverage it. If my Raleigh, North Carolina branch doesn’t know that just happened, they can’t leverage it. You have experts on your show all the time who are providing data. What does the end user supposed to do with that data? They’re supposed to leverage it. To create efficiencies and how they’re managing their pipeline, whatever the case may be. We don’t do that in recruiting and there’s no reason for it because we already have the muscle built in how we manage files and how we manage individual loans. We can do the same things, but the problem is the industry never had a tool to hold them accountable for not only doing those things but to be able to collaborate inside of an ecosystem that’s specific to this strategic goal.

That’s a good point. I love the technology that you brought to this. It’s a combination and then using playbooks and the various elements that you bring together. The fact that someone can license your technology and do it on that basis has more than just a CRM. You also help them recruit the right people. You’re collecting a lot of data. A question regarding your services. Is it just a software package or is it fully bundled? Are you locked into contracts? How does that all work? Can someone start at one level and move up to another level and migrate back and forth?

It’s a great question. It’s funny. I need you, David. I need some consultation from time to time. We built something we’re very proud of. I’m super excited about where we’re going in being able to take feedback from our users. We’re up to a significant amount of developers. We’re not offshoring. Everything is underneath our roof, but we’re able to take their feedback and be able to make additions and customization relatively quickly based on that feedback. Going into this person’s question, and thank you for the question. Absolutely. We’ve built a model where you can move up and move back.

We have individual users that don’t ever ask us for help. They don’t ever call our customer success team. They know how to use the technology and they use it for their benefit, and they’re good. If they need something, we’re here for them. We have those same users that expanded into investing in more data, into customization, and then ultimately, investing in our retained solution where we’re partnering with them on their behalf, our recruiters, in a specific market on a specific project.

Business Relationships: We have individual users that don’t ever ask us for help. They don’t ever call our customer success team. They know how to use the technology and they use it for their benefit.

The beauty is you can go up the ladder. Let’s say that the user is at the top of the ladder, and I don’t mean that one is any more valuable than the other, the beauty is the user tells us, “What do you need?” We have an entire platform from A to Z that can support any of those needs. That person at the retained level, if after some amount of time, they say, “We had some success, but we got it from here. We don’t need to invest in that level anymore.” They had the opportunity to continue to license the software and license all the work that was done inside the software, but they turned our team off. They can now manage it internally. They can keep running with it.

One of the interesting things about recruiting in the mortgage space years ago is you’re going to retain or even contingently work with a recruiter that’s going to do a bunch of this work on your behalf or as far as you know. They’re going to go into a market and they’re going to talk to 200 or 300 people. They’re going to introduce you to 3 or 4, maybe you hire one of them. When you stop using that recruiter, what happens to all that work?

You lose it. You don’t have access to it.

In this case, you own it. You always have access to it. When we’re done with the project, that could be a year or it could be five years, whatever. You don’t lose all of that data. Going back to leveraging again, there are so many ways you can leverage that work, both backward and forward. We’re super flexible. If anybody is interested, they can go to our website, ModelMatch.com. They can click on a demo button, get a demo, and ask some questions about how we manage those things backward and forward.

We’re getting a lot of questions in, but we’re out of time. You struck a chord as a lot of questions are coming in. I encourage you to take a look or go to the website. We’re going to get that up here in a minute. You’ll be pretty amazed at what this can do to create lift and add leverage to your existing recruiting organization or plans or whatever. If you don’t have one, they’ll do it for you. This is a great technologist to support your current efforts. Great job. Eric, I enjoyed the interview. I enjoyed our time. I’m so excited that we get to share with our audience your business model. Also, you and your podcast. I love your podcast.

The Walk Podcast. Go check it out.

It is good. It’s like when you’re taking a walk. You’re outside walking with someone and that’s how it felt when you and I did our interview. It was so relaxed and so conversational.

Next time when things continue to open up a little bit more, and I know you’re in Texas and everything is open, I want an onsite number two with you on The Walk Podcast. We need to do half of it in your gym, and half of it is like the greatest barbecue joint in Austin. How is that?

That would be fun. That would be good. The barbecue place. I am stuffed in my face. We had one and had another meeting at one of my places. They’re going, “It’s so difficult to talk.” I enjoy your approach to business and your approach to the way you’re helping companies. It’s creating a flexible approach. You got to get to know this company and the way you go about it. You got to get to know Eric. They are good people and the whole organization is like that.

You’re bicoastal. One question. Let’s talk about that. You guys are located in several locations here in San Clemente, where we were talking to you originally. The guys are in surfboards there and they’re going to go out surfing. I loved that concept when I lived in Southern California. It needs to be close. Also, you have offices on the East Coast as well if I’m correct.

We have a North Carolina office. We have a Southern California office. We have some remote partners in different parts of the country, but that was also by design. We can support the East Coast and West Coast without any time zone differences or issues. We’ve got both sides covered.

Good job. The website again is ModelMatch.com.

Go check it out and poke around. There’s a demo button on there. Put the business development guys to work. Ask them a bunch of good questions. We love it. David, thank you for having me on. Thank you for everything that you do for the industry. You’re a pleasure to talk to and I’m glad to have a relationship with you.

I’m glad. I’m thrilled that my client referred me to you. It’s the beginning of a long friendship. Eric, I appreciate you so much here. Good to have you here. Have a great rest of your week and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon. Hopefully, in person. Next, Tony Caico will be joining us. By the way, I talked to Tony before I started working with Model Match and Tony said, “I like these guys. They have something solid you need to check out.” Tony is a recruiter and does a great job, focusing mostly on the C-level executives. We’re going to have him talk about some of the principles he uses in attracting good candidates for his clients.

Also, I want to say a special thank you to our sponsors, Finastra, CMLA, as well as Indecomm, Insellerate, Mobility MMI, as well as Modex, the MBA, Knowledge Coop, Lenders One, and the Mortgage Collaborative. Thank you so much, everybody. Have a great week. I look forward to having you back here next time.

3-22-21 Process Over Event – Relationships Over Recruiting With Eric Levin

Process Over Event – Relationships Over Recruiting With Eric Levin

Important Links