AIME Podcast Network

Angelo Datseries, Broker/Owner of Leverage Lending Group, is out to make himself a household name in his local market of Charlotte, North Carolina. Starting his brokerage in 2007, he had to dramatically scale back his brokerage to survive the 2008 Stock Market Crash. Since that scale down, he has been organically growing back his brokerage through community engagement, social media, and video marketing. Staying true to his goals and himself, he has built a successful brokerage, but for Angelo, the sky’s the limit. 

Before joining the Broker channel in the mid-2000s, Angelo was working as a service technician until he seriously hurt his back. After spending a few years in a service advisor role at his brother’s brokerage, he decided to venture out on his own and open Leverage Lending Group. 

Starting off, Angelo had a team of nine loan officers, but not long after, the recession upended the industry. Most of his loan officers left to join banks and Angelo had to completely rework his business. After a conversation with his father, he decided to massively scale back unnecessary expenditures, starting with his large office space. Shifting his focus to FHA loans, Angelo survived the market crash and was able to start growing his brokerage back up from scratch.  

The key to Angelo’s success is embracing organic growth. Instead of throwing money at expensive leads, he has made it a goal to become a well-known name in his local market. He holds community meet and greets and happy hours with his referral partners, and emails personalized videos, and shares organic social media posts with his ever-growing following as well. He embraces the philosophy of “focus(ing) on helping people and the business will follow.” 

Angelo’s parting advice: Build your database on day one. Every person you talk to, every person you make contact with, needs to be added to your database. Once you have that database in place, you need to set up an automation drip to keep yourself in front of them. 

Notes:

This episode is sponsored by Guaranty Home Mortgage

The post Building Back From Scratch: How to Successfully Start Over & Shift Focus (With Angelo Datseris) – Episode 93 appeared first on AIME.

Arman Ghamami, a mortgage broker and branch manager with C2 Financial, has become a high-producer by putting the borrower front-and-center. He personalizes their entire process, has staff dedicated exclusively to borrower questions, and automated procedures in place to streamline the client experience.

For Arman, there is a distinction between customer service and consumer experience. Customer service is answering your client’s call or replying to their email. It is the basic things you need to do to operate. Consumer experience is where Arman makes himself and his branch stand out. Throughout the loan process, Arman has an LO available to his clients to answer all questions they might have. Having an experienced loan officer available to answer borrowers’ questions might seem simple, but it also goes a long way. He also established an automated outreach plan to consistently keep his borrowers up to date on what step of the process their loan is in. If a borrower is calling to ask for updates on their loan, then you’ve failed, Arman said. 

A significant part of providing your borrower with a memorable experience is understanding their needs. Often, mortgage documents are challenging to understand, so Arman and his team take the time to explain everything to their borrowers in a way they would understand. His guiding principle is, “how would I want this process to go if I knew nothing about loans?” Along with acting as a true advisor for their clients, Arman and his team take the time to understand their borrower’s specific needs and tailor their process to serve those needs best. If you can identify and meet their needs throughout the process, you will leave them with a memorable mortgage experience. 

Arman’s parting advice: It’s okay not to know everything. If you focus on your borrower and find out their needs, then you will find success. We are all trying to make a living, but don’t chase the money. If you put the borrower first, success will follow. 

Notes:

Getting into the Mortgage Industry (1:15)
Growing Your Team for 2022 (6:00)
Going Out On His Own (11:04)
Customer Service V Consumer Experience (18:20)
Parting Advice (31:21)

This episode is sponsored by CF Wholesale

The post Customer Service vs Consumer Experience: How To Anticipate, Manage, & Exceed Borrower Expectations (With Arman Ghamami) – Episode 92 appeared first on AIME.

Brandee Stephens, a mortgage broker with Answer Home Loans, has become a top producer by helping the borrowers who are turned away the most. A majority of her clients are not credit-ready when they come to her so she works with them to improve their credit and get them ready to be homeowners. As a Mortgage Broker in the Wholesale Channel, Brandee believes it to be her obligation to educate borrowers and help those that retail operations and banks would turn away. Once she has those borrowers, she goes above and beyond for them. When a borrower didn’t have or know how to obtain a Verification of Employment, Brandee went as far as driving directly to their multiple past employers and getting their VOE herself. 

Brandee does not come from a long line of homeowners. Her mother did not become a homeowner until she was almost 40. If it was not for her younger brother, who bought a home at 19, she may never have become a homeowner herself. During the process of buying her first home in the 90s, her interest rate jumped 1% before signing without warning. While buying her second home, her broker locked her into an adjustable-rate mortgage without explaining the difference to her. That is when she knew she could offer a better service. She joined the mortgage industry working at retail banks for 12 years until she made the jump to the broker side in June 2019. 

As a Broker, Brandee focuses on helping educate borrowers on the homebuying process. Instead of turning away credit-bruised clients, Brandee works to create a financial plan to help get their credit ready within six to nine months. As part of this effort, Brandee has made it a focus to help Hispanic and Latino borrowers. She recently hired a fully-licensed originator who speaks Spanish to assist her with the effort as well.  

Once Brandee has started helping those borrowers repair their credit, she goes above and beyond to provide them the best possible service, and that starts with a customer service mindset. Part of that service is Brandee and her team helping borrowers get their credit in a place where they can purchase a home. They personalize a plan for each borrower and follow up every month to see how the process is going, but it doesn’t just stop there. Brandee once helped a borrower who had been unemployed for 10 years because of a serious brain injury. She broke down the borrower’s career history, year by year, job by job, even going so far as to reach out to the past employers herself. Nothing was going to stop Brandee from doing right by her borrower. “It’s not a job, we’re really changing people’s lives,” she says.  

Brandee’s parting advice: Find what gets you up every morning. You can either have a job that forces you to get up every morning or a job that gives you a reason to get up every morning. “Nobody has to tell me to get up and tell me how I’m going to help the next person,” she said. Once you find that motivation, hire people who share it. You can teach people many things, but you cannot teach someone to be passionate about your “Why”. They either are or they aren’t.

Notes:

Getting into the Mortgage Industry (1:05)
Helping First-Time homeowners/Unconventional Borrowers (5:22)
Helping Hispanic Homeowners (14:28)
Going Above and Beyond for Your Borrowers (19:38)
Parting Advice (27:45)

This episode is sponsored by First Look

The post Above & Beyond: The Hallmark of A True Mortgage Broker (With Brandee Stephens)- Episode 91 appeared first on AIME.

Amanda Rawls, a Mortgage Broker with Answer Home Loans, has become a top producer by thinking outside the box. Leaning on her experiences as a debt collector, she often takes on complicated Chapter 13 bankruptcy loans, which has allowed her to carve out her own niche within the Wholesale Channel. To keep up her production, Amanda has developed a CRM system that allows her to stay in front of past clients and leads, and even nurture leads who are not yet ready to buy a home.

Amanda started her career as a bill collector, but she quickly found it draining. She left debt collecting to join the mortgage industry because she saw it as an opportunity to help people get into a home. In April 2018, after 10 years with a direct lender, Amanda rejoined the broker channel when she became a loan originator for Answer Home Loans. Now she’s “taking care of others and serving hearts.”

The key to her success? Thinking outside the box. Leaning on her background as a bill collector, Amanda has built a pipeline centered around Chapter 13 bankruptcies where she works with CPAs and bankruptcy attorneys. Carving out her own niche by taking on loans that other Brokers may avoid has allowed Amanda to become a top-producing broker.

Part of that success comes from the relationships she has built as well. Amanda has built up a full pipeline of past clients and potential leads through her CRM. “[Your] CRM is the bread and butter of your business,” she said. With her CRM, she can organically stay in front of her clients with follow-up reminders and personalized gifts after closing. Amanda’s biggest lesson in pipeline management was realizing she could choose who she worked with. That way, she has the opportunity to get to know her clients and needs instead of adopting a “churn and burn” approach that is common in retail operations.

Amanda’s parting advice: Stay true to who you are. When someone decides to get a loan with you, they are working with you because of who you are, so do things the way you want instead of how others think you should. Tailor your process so it works best for you. Ultimately, work hard and be honest and success and business will follow.

Notes:
Getting into the Mortgage Industry (1:49)
Thinking Outside the Box (7:20)
Building Relationships (12:05)
Retail V. Wholesale (18:30)
Parting Advice (27:23)

This episode is sponsored by REMN

The post Thinking Outside the Box: Growing Your Brokerage By Going Where Others Aren’t (With Amanda Rawls) – Episode 90 appeared first on AIME.

As Broker/Owner of MS Lending, Michelle Dugan has become a champion for veterans and an advocate for building community. As an active member of VettedVA, a veteran education group, Michelle protects military veterans from predatory business practices and helps them get the home of their dreams. She originates in the same town where she grew up and went to school. That intrinsic knowledge helps set her apart from retail banks and has positioned her as a trusted mortgage advisor. Within the broker channel, she is an active member of multiple wholesale mortgage groups where she shares her knowledge and expertise to help elevate the broker channel. 

Michelle joined the real estate world in 2001 when she worked as a paralegal for a real estate attorney. At the time, she wanted to go to law school and practice real estate law herself. While working as a paralegal, she got her Broker’s license so she could originate on the side. Not long after getting her license, she had her first child and deferred her law school plans. She joined the mortgage industry full-time in 2007 and never looked back. After years of working for Brokers, and a short stint on the retail side, she opened her own brokerage in 2019. 

Starting out in the industry, Michelle only did a few VA loans a year. It wasn’t until she went to a VA loan education session in person that she witnessed the passion that really motivated her to serve those who had served. Not long after, she met Chris Griffith before he started VettedVA. She immediately saw his passion and wanted to join his cause. She told him “Whatever you’re doing, I want to be part of it because I know something good is going to come from it.”

For Michelle, building community is incredibly important. She originates and runs her brokerage in the same town she grew up in. That community knowledge proved to be a major advantage for Michelle since she had built-in clients with friends and family and knew the wants and needs of the community better than retail banks. Michelle has also found and built a community within the broker channel. As an active member of AIME’s Brokers Are Better and Women’s Mortgage Network Facebook Groups, she adopts a “givers gain” mentality where she can share her knowledge with others while also learning from them. “I wouldn’t be as successful as I am in the broker channel without Brokers Are Better,” Michelle said. 

Michelle’s parting advice: Lean into your community. Whether it’s your local community or one you build with others in the industry, you serve to gain so much if you’re actively engaged. Within BAB and WMN, there are so many knowledgeable brokers who are there to share their knowledge and help you succeed. Those groups have been a game-changer for Michelle and she credits them with helping her avoid burnout.

Notes:

Getting Into Mortgage (1:40)
Serving Veterans (7:42)
Building Community (15:30)
Pipeline Management (28:26)
Michelle’s Parting Advice (39:40)

Sponsored by PRMG

The post Givers Gain: How To Grow Yourself & Your Brokerage By Giving Back (With Michelle Dugan) – Episode 89 appeared first on AIME.

As Broker/Owner of Mindful Mortgage Kim Clancy has become a master at building communities. For Kim, everything she does for her community is not about promoting her business, but about being a supportive member of the community. She wants to be a part of her community and she wants to be a trusted mortgage advisor to her neighbors. Implementing that approach, Kim has established Mindful Mortgage not just as a mortgage brokerage, but as an integral part of her local community.

Kim joined the mortgage industry in 2000 after working as a clinical social worker in California. Her mother had recently become a retail loan officer and helped her join a retail shop as a loan officer assistant. She stayed at that shop until 2008 when she moved to Colorado and joined another retail shop before finally making the move to Wholesale in 2019, when she opened Mindful Mortgage in Erie, Colorado.

Living and originating in a small town, becoming an important part of the community was crucial to Kim’s success. For her, building community is a philosophy, not a strategy. She wanted to be that person in the community that neighbors could come to for mortgage advice and she actively worked to become that. She made Mindful Mortgage a sponsor of a local charter school and she participates in community events like Homecoming Parades and volunteering for the local Parent Teacher Organization. “It’s not about selling your business,” she said. “It’s about people getting to know you.”

Part of that community building is Kim’s dedication to supporting other women in the mortgage industry. At her first retail shop, every loan officer was a man and women were assistants or processors. That experience has motivated her to support other women in the industry. She is a mentor with AIME’s Mentorship program, where she requested to mentor another female broker as well as an active member of AIME’s Women Mortgage Network (WMN) Facebook Group. Those groups give women an opportunity to share experiences and skills with each other. Early in 2020, Kim was struggling to balance the increased business the refinance boom brought to her business while also caring for her family. She posted about her struggle in WMN and received hundreds of comments from other women in the industry who were feeling the same struggle.

Kim’s parting advice: Be genuine. People know when you are not being your genuine self. “Be true to yourself and everyone will feel it,” she said. That means following your instincts and intuition and also staying true to yourself and your ideals. If you do that, success will follow.

Notes:

Getting into the Mortgage Industry (1:06)
Building Community (11:21)
Supporting Women in the Mortgage Industry (21:56)
Parting Advice (31:36)

The post Brokering 101: Building Communities By Fostering Genuine Relationships (With Kim Clancy) – Episode 88 appeared first on AIME.

As Broker/Owner of Price Mortgage, Andy Price knows how to scale a business. Starting out on his own, Andy took over a year to build out and perfect processes before he hired his first employee. Now with five years running his own brokerage, he has grown Price Mortgage to a team of 50 through organic growth and investment in his existing employees. 

Andy first joined the housing industry as a real estate agent but quickly made the change to broker, joining his family’s shop. That is when everything clicked. He worked as a loan officer for years until he opened his own brokerage, Price Mortgage, in March 2017. 

In the first year of Price Mortgage, Andy did not hire anyone. Instead, he focused on setting up the groundwork, the processes, and the tech stack so when he did begin to hire loan officers everything would fit perfectly in place. He focused on making Price Mortgage a brokerage where LOs have all the tools and resources they need to thrive. Andy worked to identify pain points he experienced during his time as an LO so he could minimize or remove them. 

When he did begin hiring staff, he took a quantity over quality approach. Andy has never pushed to massively grow Price Mortgage. Through organic growth, Andy now has a team of 50 loan officers, processors, and loan officer assistants. The key to not only building a large team, but a successful one is to hire the right people, Andy said. That also means knowing when someone is not a good fit for your company. “Not everybody’s a good fit and you can’t always make them fit,” he said. 

The other key to building a successful team is to continue investing in your current staff. Instead of always hiring new loan officers, Andy works with his existing LOs to help them grow. It’s easier and ultimately a better return on investment to help a current employee increase their production instead of going through the hiring process. When he does bring on new employees, he is careful to bring on a few people at a time at most. If you bring in a flood of people, your resources will be strained to accommodate all those new hires.

Andy’s parting advice: Treat others the way you want to be treated and give them the service you’d expect. A mortgage is the biggest decision many borrowers will ever make so make sure they understand the whole process and are comfortable with everything. The same advice goes for your team. Andy never asks his employees to do something he is unwilling to do himself. Any brokerage that is more focused on money than building relationships will lose in the end, Andy said. If you focus on your borrowers and staff, the money will follow. 

Getting into the Industry (2:06)
Starting your Own Shop (10:03)
Hiring & Training (25:22)
Parting Advice (36:27)

This Episode is sponsored by Homepoint 

The post People Over Profits: Scaling Organically By Investing In Your Team (With Andy Price) – Episode 87 appeared first on AIME.

Join us for a special edition of the Broker to Broker Podcast recorded LIVE from the floor of AIME Fuse 2021. Listen as AIME President Marc Summers pulls brokers from the crowd for quick conversations on Fuse, the future of the mortgage industry, and much more.

AIME created the Fuse National Conference to aid in its mission to unite originators across the U.S. to build a community that had never before existed in the industry. AIME Fuse 2021 drew 3,000 brokers and wholesale mortgage professionals from all across the country last week for the largest nationwide gathering of independent mortgage professionals in the industry.

“We saw record levels of attendance in this year’s Fuse National Conference with 3,000 mortgage professionals from across the nation attending the conference,” Katie Sweeney, AIME CEO said. “Fuse is a culmination of the hard work and determination of the broker channel and an opportunity to experience the power of the broker community. It’s a once in a lifetime chance to collaborate with top producers and game-changers in the mortgage industry and brokers turned up in full force.”

As AIME heads into 2022, the organization is focused on furthering its goal of educating borrowers that brokers are truly the best option for their home buying experience. AIME plans to expand its training programs and add certification programs for brokers to help them better serve consumers.

This episode is sponsored by CF Wholesale

The post Broker to Broker: Special AIME Fuse 2021 Edition – (Episode 86) appeared first on AIME.

Adrian Placinta has perfected his processing to the point that he can get a clear-to-close in a week. The broker owner of True Path Loans has been honing and perfecting his processing since he joined the mortgage industry in the mid-Aughts. That expertise in processing has not only allowed him to handle a pipeline of over 100 loans as a one-man shop but also allowed him to easily and quickly scale to a shop with 30 employees in just the last year and a half. 

Adrian joined the mortgage industry in 2005 after finishing college at San Diego State. He initially joined a retail shop where he stayed for six months learning the ins and outs of the industry. Leaving for the broker channel, Adrian landed at a wholesale shop where he lasted through the stock market crash. Leaving the industry briefly in 2010, he quickly rejoined landing at another brokerage where he stayed until 2017 when he ventured out on his own. 

Starting with $10,000, Adrian was a one-man shop for his first few years. It was not until 2020 when the refinance boom hit that he hired his first employee. At that point, he had well over 100 loans in his pipeline and needed a second person to handle the increased workload. He started by hiring a processor, then a Chief Financial Officer, and then finally a sales manager. Those were the first of many hires that saw Adrian grow from a one-man shop to a brokerage with a team of 30 in roughly a year. 

The key to that growth, Adrian’s mastering of processing. From his early days in the mortgage industry, he has always had a knack for processing. At the retail shop, he quickly learned he hated sales but loved processing. He teamed up with an amazing salesperson who handled sales, while he processed. When he joined the broker channel, he had no choice but to master processing. At his first brokerage, he learned as much as he could from their processor so he was prepared when he went off on his own. “You gotta have a process or you’re going to fail eventually.”

Adrian’s parting advice: Engage with the broker community. He would never be where he is today if it was not for the connections he made with AIME. He credits the 2019 AIME Fuse conference for giving him the motivation and drive to scale his brokerage. One way to interact with the community is by attending AIME Fuse 2021 in Las Vegas on September 24th and 25th. Get your tickets before it’s too late. 

Notes:
Getting in the mortgage industry (1:21)
Processing (7:30)
Scaling & Training (16:47)
Parting Advice (26:19)

The post How to Perfect Processing To Successfully Scale Your Pipeline (With Adrian Placinta) – Episode 85 appeared first on AIME.

Angela Caputo has mastered the art of email marketing. Drawing from her database of 3,600+ clients, Angela sends out a monthly email that updates her clients on the mortgage industry and promotes products like Homebot. Her last email took her roughly five hours to create and netted her seven refinance applications. She builds that database by keeping strong relationships with her referral sources including real estate agents, insurance brokers, and real estate attorneys. By email marketing to her database, Angela has been able to build a consistently successful pipeline.

One thing that makes Angela stand out is her relationship building, especially with her referral sources. Real estate agents are her biggest lead source, but she also gets business from insurance agents and real estate attorneys. She lives by the “if you send business to someone, they will send business back” philosophy.

Once Angela gets those clients, she adds them to her database. Once she has them in her system, she organically stays in touch with them through her monthly emails. A few recent topics included Homebot, insurance leads, updates on FHA’s student loan calculations, and VettedVA. The key to her success? “Being genuine goes a long way,” she says. Angela is careful to never come across as salesy. Instead of reaching out when she needs more business, she keeps up to date them even when she does not expect them to bring her business.

Angela’s parting advice: Create your database as soon as possible. Even if you only have a database of 20 people, it is never too early to start building it. And once you have that database, never stop engaging with them.

Notes:
Getting into the industry (1:18)
Building Relationships With Your Referral Sources (6:03)
Getting Leads With Email Marketing (13:37)
Angela’s Parting Advice (28:15)

The post Staying Top-Of-Mind With Clients By Building Your Database (With Angela Caputo) – Episode 84 appeared first on AIME.