Lykken on Lending

In this SPECIAL PROGRAM, David Lykken sits down with Ken Perry, CEO & President of the Knowledge Coop to discuss why Knowledge Coop does what they do, the growth Knowledge Coop experienced as a company, as well as the new community launching on 4/1!

The Knowledge Coop has a brand new look and platform that brings you more value than ever before. Now, not only will you be able to enjoy our critically acclaimed CE courses, but you’ll have access to a community of industry leaders, compliance resources, and mortgage training that will revolutionize the way you do business. Got to “Try the Coop” to check it out!!

To read more about this podcast click here!!

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SPECIAL EPISODE: Future of Collaboration in 2022

Ken Perry, it’s so good to have you back on the show. I enjoy your energy and what your vision is, and I’m so thrilled to have you back on.

Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure to get some conversations with you.

The Knowledge Coop and Ken Perry are synonymous. It’s your vision. Talk about growth and excitement. We’re here to talk about some new things that you’re launching and we’re doing this ahead of the launch. I can only imagine how frenzied and crazy it must be at this moment for you.

I will give a speech at some point in the future. I’m launching technology and new tech systems. You’ll learn a ton. It’s not like once you’ve launched one, you’re a pro. You keep learning. It’s been a real adventure but seeing it come together is a lot of fun.

Let’s talk about it. Everyone knows The Knowledge Coop as what it is. You’re an advertiser on the show. We’re thrilled to have you as a sponsor and as a business partner as well. We refer over to you. We believe in your vision, but let’s talk a little bit about those that might not know who Knowledge Coop is. What’s the broader vision, Ken?

We started the company back in 2003, coming out of being an account executive for a lender and realizing the industry needed training. I built training and was teaching and doing seminars all over the country, and then we launched The Coop actually in 2012. It was after the CFPB had released their examination manual. I started going, “Nobody has systems that will help them comply with this. Specifically around uploading policies and procedures, assigning training, monitoring, making sure people have done the things they’re supposed to do.”

We built it with that in mind and up until now, it’s been an enterprise solution. A company that’s on The Coop is using us for all the training we create they get. They assign that to their people along with their own training. They store all their documents in The Coop. It’s one place where you store all your information but also where you deliver all of your training.

That was the original vision.

Yeah. It’s sad because when I started the company in 2003, small companies didn’t have training departments, and I wanted to give them that. When we went to enterprise, it was tough for us to manage smaller clients because we provide the same massive amounts of service to every client. If somebody has three people, it didn’t pencil for us to be able to make that work and still have it affordable.

This is us going back to our roots. In 2022, there is a lot of fear out there. A lot of people don’t know what they’re going to do. They don’t know even where to start. People are staring at the wall going, “Why did I choose this job?” in some cases. Others are successful. What I know is that the more you know, the more you can sell and the better you can sell.

The more knowledge we can feed people and the more collaborative we can create an environment for them, the more success they could possibly have. We’re trying to reach out and say, “If you’re not sure what’s going to happen in the market, at least get to a place where you can get more information. Get more training and grow. You take this time to figure out what you’re going to do to make yourself successful in the future.”

You have had tremendous growth in the company. I look at that. Give us a little bit of idea of the trajectory that you’ve been on because it has been exciting.

We were so small for so long. We were 9 people at the beginning of 2020. We started growing when COVID happened. You remember because we talk all the time. When COVID happened, I did not do very well. I don’t like being locked inside, and I need to be out living the adventure. When my adventure was taken away, I got pretty depressed.

As soon as I snapped out of it, I was like, “We created a system that helps people work remotely. This could be good for us.” As soon as I shook that and was able to get back out and start firing up again, we started growing. We started adding the right people and building the company. We’re at 42 right now with 4 more jobs posted. The trajectory has been insane growth over the last several months.

With growth, you oftentimes have to grow with your technology. You outgrew what you had. Now, we want to talk about what you are launching. It’s not going to be a joke. It’s the real thing. You’re launching something significant on this otherwise notable day here of April 1st, 2022. Tell us about the new Knowledge Coop.

First of all, a funny thing about April 1st. April 1st is when I quit my job several years ago to start this. On April 2nd, we had our second child. We like doing things all at once. April 1st has a lot of other significance for me. It was when we brought on an investor. My good friend, Mark Greene, became part of our company during that time. I can go back and track a lot of different April 1st big moves.

We also bought the technology platform we’re on that we had built. A lot of things we’ve done that are significant in the company happened on April 1st. That was part of why we wanted to do it. Also, it is funny, it’s so on brand for us to launch something on April Fool’s Day. The goal of this is to create a place where the industry can go to learn, grow, and win. If you want to learn something in the business, it’s in The Coop.

Future of Collaboration: The goal of this is to create a place where the industry can go to learn, grow and win.

You want to learn, grow, and win. I love that. Where’d you get that message?

My good friend, Mark Greene, was like, “What are we doing?” We started looking at what we were going to do with this, and he goes, “Basically, if you want to learn something, it’s in The Coop.” I go, “Yeah.” He goes, “If somebody wants to grow, can they find that in The Coop?” We’ve always been looked at as a compliance company because we know a lot about compliance and do a lot of compliance training.

We have a lot on growth and we have a lot of friends in the business that we can bring in and that we have brought in to help people understand how to grow their businesses. Leadership-type stuff is going to be in there as well. It’s been my firm belief since I was a loan officer in 1998. The reason I was the top loan officer in our company is that I went in, dug in, and read every single guideline.

I knew more than any of my underwriters. My knowledge is what helped me win. If we can provide as much knowledge and training in there that everybody needs, they can go in and learn to win like I did when I started in the business. We’re putting all the Fannie and Freddie guidelines in there. FHA guidelines are in there. Anything you want to learn will be found in The Knowledge Coop.

For many people, it’s free. If you join up, you can search for guidelines. You can watch some of our videos. What we’ve done is our continuing education, our pre-licensing education in all the states that people need when they’re getting in. We built out an academy. All of that comes with the premium membership. We didn’t want to lock anybody out. It’s my goal that when you’re talking on your show, whomever you’re talking to, you’re going, “You might want to put that in The Coop, so everybody can find it later.” We want to be the storage facility for all great content in the industry.

We’re great content. We’re going to be on The Coop as well with the show. I’m excited to have you hosting it there. It’s a real honor. We’re thrilled about it. Talk about this new version. What was the vision for this new version? What was the need for it?

The interesting thing, the enterprise edition that we’ve always had, it depends on the company building it out the way that they want it. We’ve given them a lot of customization. This one is ours, so we needed it to be as intuitive as humanly possible. When you go in there, we want you to be able to easily see what you’re going in there to do.

If you’re going in there to ask a compliance question, we want that to be easy. We redesigned the entire UI for the system. Down the road, we’ll be rolling that UI out for our enterprises so that they can have the same UI with all the bells and whistles that come with the normal coop. It’s different because we’re moderating it. I did a demo for a guy that’s going to be in there.

My good friend, Scott Nicholson, is going to start delivering content there. I was showing it to him and he goes, “I’ll never go on Facebook again.” I’m like, “Me neither.” I’ll post on Facebook that I’m no longer going to be talking mortgage on Facebook because I don’t need to. I have friends and high school friends on there. That’s not what it’s made for.

Every time I go on Facebook, I get angry because I see whatever Facebook’s trying to feed me, and then I get distracted because I see all the stuff. By the way, Facebook thinks I like seeing people get in fights at Walmart. Every time I go on Facebook, it’s like, “Have you seen this guy get in a fight by the register?” I’m like, “I can’t stop watching.”

I need to not go on Facebook because, during this time, I don’t need any distractions. On the way to work, where I normally listen to NPR, I turned off NPR. I’m like, “I’m just going to be in quiet right now. I need to think because there’s too much to do.” That’s what we’re trying to provide people. I don’t want people going on Facebook as loan officers getting distracted and wasting their time.

I want them going to a place that’s straight-up mortgage content. If you have a question for somebody in the industry, chances are, I’ve got somebody in there that can answer your question. I want you to go there and not be distracted by all the other stuff. We had to have a UI that was good enough that people could go there and know how to do things and know how to find information.

You talked about having all the regulations and guidelines in there. Talk about Fannie and Freddie. Is this now going to be the new improved regs?

The goal is that this would replace it. Here’s the funny thing, though. Fannie and Freddie have done such a good job with their search engines. They didn’t use to be as good as they are, but Ask Poli is great. We’ll be dropping that in. Their search is actually not that bad if we can provide links for those things that they’re updating and then provide all of their updates inside The Coop.

You could probably help me with one of the things we’ve talked to Freddie about that we’re going to try and get them into. We want Freddie Mac as an admin in there, dropping in all of their updates. I want every lender that has guidelines that they would like to drop in. I want every lender to drop their stuff in there because this is the place that people will go to find information.

That’s what we’re looking at now. We’ve got the 7(a) group, which you and I are part of. We’ve opened up right out the gate with just the companies that we are close friends with through the 7(a). When people log in, they’re going to see groups for each of the 7(a) members. Take Sales Boomerang, Mortgage Coach, Docket’s in there, and you guys are in there.

People can go in and just find out information on whatever they need on those things starting right out the gate. Lender Launchpad‘s going to be in there. They’ve got some killer stuff. That initially will be the information you can get. What we’re looking for is for people to go to their lenders and vendors and go, “Why can’t I get training on your system inside The Coop?”

We want them to reach out and go, “How do we get our training in there?” We just make it easy. Let’s get your stuff in there. Way more than what all regs have done, we’re going to be the place where you get everything. Not just a guideline but also all of your program updates and all of your leadership guidance. Right now, this industry needs leadership. You provide it. I do my best to provide it. We’ve reached out to the people that provide the best. We want that all in there.

One of the things that get me excited about this is the word “community” because that’s what you’re saying. You got great content, but you’re creating a community. Expand on your vision for that.

It has to be both. I’ve been saying a lot around the office that we have to stop these alone officers and make them loan officers. Loan officers don’t collaborate nearly as much as they need to. I’ve seen it in some Facebook groups where people are engaged. Some of those groups I’ve seen turn pretty sour where all of a sudden, there’s in-fighting and stuff like that.

We’re going to keep our community as clean as we possibly can. We’re putting in a report button. If somebody gets off the rails or whatever, then we can have some reporting in there and try to keep it focused. We are building a community. We’ve been doing these pre-licensing classes, 20-hour pre-licensing online with some connection.

While you’re taking the class, you’re on an actual call with a bunch of people, and you can see everybody. We want to make friends out of them because those are the people you’re going to lean on. It used to be that you couldn’t just reach out and talk to somebody in New Jersey because he didn’t know anybody in New Jersey.

Now, you’re going to have a community you can go into and go, “Who does loans in New Jersey? I have a question. I have this deal I want to send over.” This isn’t unique. You can do this currently on Facebook. You can do it on LinkedIn. You’re just doing it in a place that doesn’t have all the garbage of those other programs that you have to go into a community that’s super sour. You’re doing it in a community that’s a very focused and very mortgage-based community.

It sounds exciting. I can’t wait. I’ve already had a chance to see parts of it. I’m so excited to get our content up. We’re scrambled to get ours ready to go for the launch date. Congratulations. We’re going to get something up there. We’ll be live when you go live. I’m very excited about that. Ken, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day to be here with me and share about this exciting new launch. I’m very excited about the community and the content, but I’m more excited about the platform and what it can do to bring us all together. Outstanding job.

It’s going to be great. Thank you so much. We’ll see you in The Coop.

I’m looking forward to it. That’s a great way to say it. See you in The Coop.

Important Links

• The Knowledge Coop
• CFPB
• FHA
• Ask Poli