Geoff Zimpher: Hey, hey people, what's up? Geoff Zimpher. Welcome back to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. So glad you tuned in. Geoff Zimpher: Yes, that's my live virtual studio audience. Live virtual studio audience. What am I saying? Geoff Zimpher: Anyway, what I want to tell you about, if you haven't heard, yes, I'm talking about it again, that is my brand new book, Disrupt Or Die: How To Survive and Thrive The Digital Real Estate Shift. Geoff Zimpher: Listen, just the other day, I had a loan officer who came back and ordered a second round of these books for real estate agencies. He started with 20. Those went so well and the feedback was so positive that he came back and ordered 50 books at wholesale. You want to drive conversations with real estate agents? You want to help them navigate the digital shift, help them read what other agents, top performers, coaches from around the country are doing when it comes to not only real estate, but mortgage? Hey, this book is for you. Disrupt or die, right? Geoff Zimpher: If you haven't got it yet, go check it out for free. Yes, you can get the book for free and just pay for shipping. You can go to getdisruptordie.com. That's where you can buy the book and I'll give it to you for free. You just pay for the shipping. Geoff Zimpher: Now, if you are interested in bulk quantity of books at wholesale, these books are available should you be interested in giving some to your real estate agents. It's all about conversations. It's all about driving conversations with real estate agents. How are you doing that? Hopefully you're doing it in a unique and different way that isn't cold calling, which is, "How was your weekend and do you have a deal for me?" It's, "Hey, I'd like to share something of value with you. Do you ever consider, wonder, need help with navigating the digital real estate shift?" You've got a gift for them that will help them do that. Geoff Zimpher: You can use this for when you're targeting top producers and you want to send something before you do call, before your meeting. You're working in an in-house lender relationship, you have a relationship at a brokerage, do you want to help a broker with recruiting and retention? The book can be used so many different ways. And if you order a minimum of 50 copies, I will host a free class for you. Dare I say free class. That's right, a free class on the same topic, disrupt or die, that you could invite your agents to, use the books to gift to them, and I will host the class over a Zoom or webinar platform, which will walk them through the core concepts of the book about how to survive and thrive the digital real estate shift. You get all the credit for it. You get to build your realtor database, add value, and everybody wins. Geoff Zimpher: So if you're more interested in that, send me an email, podcast@mortgage marketingradio.com, with the subject line wholesale books, okay? Podcast@mortgagemarketingadio.com, wholesale books is the subject line. All right, that's that. Geoff Zimpher: Let's get into my special guest this week who I'm thrilled and honored to finally be having a conversation with, and let me set it up this way. So we recently surpassed 200 episodes, 450,000 downloads of the podcast. And I want to just say thank you very much to you, my listeners. I'm grateful for you for continuing to tune in. And by the way, if you get a chance, leave a podcast review. I just noticed I haven't had any reviews in the last 30 days and I really needed some reviews. Geoff Zimpher: But anyway, so here's the thing, right? My point in sharing with you, those numbers and stats is I get quite a few LOs who ask me, "Hey, what's the top thing to move the needle with real estate agents? What digital marketing platform works? What are the top three tools that you're seeing top producers use?" Those are the kind of questions I get a lot. And here's what I do, I ask. I go around the horn and I ask people all around the country, "Hey, what are the top three tools or platforms you're using to have success with past clients, with realtors, with the digital shift?" Geoff Zimpher: And more often than not, right, one of the platforms that continually is ranked among the top from these producing loan officers is Homebot. Now, I don't know if you have Homebot, I don't know if you've heard about Homebot, haven't done anything with it yet. I don't know where you're at. Here's what I do know. I do know that Homebot, like any other tool, is a tool, and when used properly, can perform certain tasks for you, such as mining past database refinances, building a fence around your past database of clients, helping to protect you from your past database being pillaged from other people, companies, right, trying to get after your client who you just closed and they're now getting the messages from them or whatever that now is the time to refi. Geoff Zimpher: Look it, all of our databases are at risk, how strong of a fence are you building around them is part one of the value Homebot provides. Part two, I'm talking to more and more loan officers who are succeeding in leveraging Homebot to drive conversations with producing agents, and you're going to hear some of those ideas on today's podcast episode with my special guests. Geoff Zimpher: And Homebot has just also just continued to evolve and they've come out with this incredible contextualized video, whether it's one to many or specific video libraries that are milestone-based that you want to build out into the Homebot experience. I'm seeing loan officers team up with agents and use Homebot to, here's the thing, guys, here's the killer thing right now, what if you could approach your agents and say, "Hey, you're struggling with listings? I know. So is everybody. What if I could show you a way that we could get more listings for you? Would you be interested in a conversation?" How many agents are going to say no to that? Okay? Geoff Zimpher: And then what you can do is have a conversation about how Homebot is able to capture more potential seller leads, right, and convert and nurture those two listings over time. I'm not going to get into the details now about how you do that. You're going to hear it on the podcast episode, but I'm just thrilled to have two people, Ernie Graham, the CEO of Homebot, and Austin Larr, who's a successful originator with Fairway in Indianapolis. And you're going to hear the stats on his production and how he's leveraging Homebot, and Ernie's going to talk about some cool things and best practices with Homebot, but also some new features that have recently been added that I think are relevant for you to hear. Geoff Zimpher: Now, here's what's good. If you don't have Homebot yet, hey, listen, I wanted to do something special, so I asked Homebot could we do something special if anybody wants to sign up, they said yes. So if you're going to sign up for Homebot, you can go to homebot.ai and use the promo code MORTGAGERADIO200. Okay? MORTGAGERADIO200. What that does is wave the signup fee. So there's zero setup fee for you, the podcast listener, if you're using the code MORTGAGE200 over at homebot.ai. Check it out, give it a run. Geoff Zimpher: I know if I was producing today, this would be one of my absolute go-to platforms or tools I would be using. And I'd be leveraging it not just for past clients, but to have those conversations with real estate agents. And you're going to hear about how to do that on this episode. Geoff Zimpher: So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Geoff Zimpher: Ernie and Austin, welcome to the show. Ernie Graham: Thanks, Geoff. Austin Larr: Yeah, thanks, Geoff. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah, let's do this. Let's quickly identify who's who so the listeners know what voice to put with whom. Ernie, why don't you go first? Tell the listeners who you are, what do you do? Ernie Graham: Hey, everyone. I'm Ernie Graham and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Homebot. Geoff Zimpher: Awesome. Austin, how about yourself? Austin Larr: Yeah, Austin Larr. I'm the area manager for Fairway Independent Mortgage here in Indiana. Geoff Zimpher: Okay, awesome. Hey, just real quick, Austin, how long have you been in the business? Austin Larr: 11 years. Geoff Zimpher: 11 years. And I'm on this thread that a lot of people are used to me asking, what is your number one source of business and like units volume? Austin Larr: So the Austin Larr team last year did 1300 units and about 284 million. Shout-out to my team. They're awesome. And our number one source of business, we're about 75% purchase, 25% refis, and most of our refis are past clients thanks to Homebot. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. Awesome. Fantastic. And how about the purchase side? Is that mostly focused on realtors? Austin Larr: It's a lot of builder stuff too. Geoff Zimpher: It is? Okay. Austin Larr: So maybe a little more 50/50 realtor, builder, and even our own past clients, referrals. We do a little bit of lead gen ourselves trying to get to that consumer first. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Hey, I appreciate your sharing that. That's wonderful context. And yeah, congrats to you and the team. That's a massive year, 1300 units. Geoff Zimpher: Okay. So we're here to talk about Homebot, which I love talking about because there's a lot of loan officers who come to me and ask me, "Hey man, what's the best this? What about that? What would you recommend?" And I have to say that I have a short list of activities or platforms or tools that I usually go to or usually recommend, and Homebot is always on that short list. Geoff Zimpher: And if there's somebody listening who's not familiar, this is for you, Ernie, who's not familiar with what Homebot is or what it does, I don't think there's anybody better to tee that up, Ernie, but how would you kind of break that down for people? Ernie Graham: Is the spotlight on me from a 60 second pitch right now? Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. This is your chance, man. Ernie Graham: The short on this is that Homebot's a financial dashboard for homeowners and renters. And so customers like you, like Austin, give it away for free to all of your past clients, all your prospects, and its a dashboard that does two things. It tracks home value, it tracks loans, it tracks home equity, and then the other thing that it does is that it gives these personalized insights that helps your client, your prospects make great decisions to build wealth, like when to buy, when to sell, when to rent, when to remodel, when to refi. You can imagine that refi module has been exploding here over the last year. Ernie Graham: But that's really the net of it. It's an empowerment tool for consumers. And if you're an LO and you care and you think that empowering your clients and prospects is good for business, you should use Homebot. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah, and I'll have to say in my own podcast group and in other organizations that I work with, the response rate on the success, the level of engagement, the open rate, I mean, the level of that Homebot with past clients drives conversations, it's just always just like off the charts, man. I don't know if there's a better platform out there that will drive past client engagement. I haven't seen it. Ernie Graham: I appreciate that. And it's just been an amazing ride for five years. I credit it to a couple of things. We're maniacal about the North Star being consumer empowerment, that we want to create a beautiful user experience that the consumer feels empowered, empowered, empowered. In a lot of ways, when we think about the business that we're in terms of helping lenders do better business by empowering their clients, we feel almost like an arms dealer. Because the truth is, is that when you've got these huge companies out there, the Quickens and the Zillows and the bank rates, and these guys that have pretty much unlimited resources to dazzle the consumer, you can't go to a thermonuclear war as a LO with a slingshot. And so we'd like to think that we're giving the industry something to fight back with in a way that has intrinsic value for the consumer. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah, I know. And it's funny what you say there. It makes me think of how I'll hear a lot of LOs get aggravated, speaking of some of those companies, that so-and-so company is like mining my database or pilfering my... You know what I mean? It's like they get these offers of solicitation and then LOs get upset because another company has come in and captured that business or captured that attention, which I think is one of the great things about Homebot is we have to do that. I mean, nobody said just because you close that loan that it's over and they're never going to shop you ever again. So the question is, is, well, how are you keeping that relationship sticky and tied to you? And I think that's where Homebot comes in in a very strong way. Ernie Graham: It's game on. It's game on. I mean, and that's the thing now too, is that everybody's got CRM, you've got these big- Ernie Graham: That's the thing now, too, is that everybody's got CRM. You've got these big guys every minute of every day. I mean, we're all consumers, right? Every time we look at our phone, we're getting targeted for something. Geoff Zimpher: Right, right. Ernie Graham: There's no reason to expect that our clients aren't being targeted as well. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. So Austin, tell me a little bit then, how do you get your clients, once you've closed a transaction with them, how do you introduce and segue them over to Homebot? Austin Larr: Yeah, that's a great question. And it's not just our past clients, by the way, that we're putting in here. Literally anybody. I was at my local watering hole yesterday and someone was like, "I think about selling my house." Hey, give me your email, give me your phone number and I'm going to send you this report. Right? So it's definitely not just our past buyers, but we are putting all our past buyers in after closing. We actually introduce Homebot at time of CD. Austin Larr: So when you're calling the buyer and going over that CD and that final number, you're calling it a gift. "Hey, we're going to be providing value to you. We're going to be sending you a report every month. This report's going to is going to track the equity in your house. It's going to tell you what the value is. It's going to tell you what your current mortgage balance is that you can go in and update. And it's going to take that number and show you what you can do with that equity. There's anything we can ever do for you down the road, please call us back. You're going to be getting that every 30 days." Geoff Zimpher: I love that, the way you introduced that. So you're putting leads in there as well? Austin Larr: We do put leads in there from time to time that could even be buyer section. Mostly it's the homeowner section, but we do put some buyers in there from time to time as well. What I really, really like to do is I also like to put our realtors in there. And so for those people that don't know, Homebot, you can actually have a co-branded version of Homebot. It's extremely inexpensive. And so you can have access to your realtor's database. And when I say that, you're not taking it over. You actually don't get to see their info if that's an issue for your realtor. However, you are seeing that one of that realtor's leads came and wanted a CMA or wanted to go search houses or whatever. And so it's just a trigger for you to reach back out to that realtor. Austin Larr: But anyway, I put in all my realtors because I want them to get their own report. And I want them to be curious about what this is that we're doing and how can they be a part of it. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because I had intended on going there as well. In addition to I want to cover some of the new features that you guys have recently rolled out, like the video and things like that. But let's hang out here for awhile because it is an area that I have found LOs struggle with in various levels in getting agents on board, in getting agents to upload their database, whatever. So I'd love to hear, Austin, how you introduce it to real estate agents. Austin Larr: We're all in presentations, we're all in coffee, lunches, whatever. Just ask for their address. "Hey, do you want to see this thing that we're doing for our buyers? You're going to really like it. It's not the average what your home value is. It's actually going through and figuring out what the balance is on the mortgage and taking the equity and showing them how they can refi, how they can rent, what they can do to turn that equity into investment, all of those things." Austin Larr: And so you're just getting the address right there. I'm signing them up from my phone as we're sitting there. And then it's great. Because of the tracking tools, I can see how many times I open it. I can see when they look at it again. Some forget about that lunch, then three months down the road, then they start opening it again. They're like, "Oh, I forgot about Austin and what he said." And it's a reason to reach back out to them. "Hey, I saw that. I saw that you're loving Homebot. Is this something you want to sign up for and put your 600 past clients in there too?" Ernie Graham: Geoff, it's a super select move because I call it the mansplain move. You skip the mansplaining. The realtor's got a very limited attention span to begin with. And it's one of those things where it's like, "Hey, I got something that'll keep you from getting Zillow'd. What's your address?" And then let them see it for themselves. Let them teach themselves. I love what you're doing too, Austin, where, because he gets click stream, he's actually now able to see how obsessed that realtor gets with this tool that he just gave you. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. So just to clarify, in case anybody doesn't know, you can see the activity that people are engaging with on that financial digest, right? The clicks, the views and all that kind of stuff, and all the different things you have that are action oriented, the calls to action. You're getting all those analytics, right? Ernie Graham: Yes. Austin Larr: Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, one thing I do talk to my loan officers about too is making sure that they're "working" that activity feed. So every day you can go in and look. Now you're going to get alerts through email as well, but we open up our activity feed once a day. We look to see who's the most active. What's great is you can put notes in Homebot So you know when you did reach out to somebody and when you didn't reach out to somebody. We just have someone kind of dialing it, just checking in on you. "How you been? Austin and I were talking about it. It looks like you could actually save a bunch on a refi. Looks like maybe you're searching houses. Can we help with a new pre-approval?" Whatever it is. So I'm telling my loan officers, don't wait for the people to reach out to you. Which you get alerted that they reached out to you, but be working that activity feed. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. Let's go back to the realtor side of things because I know people would love to dig deeper on this. So I think conceptually, we get the call to the agent. I love the whole don't get Zillow'd thing, keep it simple and sweet. They get it. They're on the digest a couple of weeks, whatever. Help us make the transition from that to actually agents upload their database. How does that thing happen in the real world? That'd be for you, Austin. Austin Larr: And I'm sorry. Restructure that. You actually froze briefly on me. I apologize. Geoff Zimpher: Oh, did I? I keep playing that trick on people. I freeze midway. Austin Larr: I am so sorry. Yeah. Geoff Zimpher: No, no, no. Okay. So take me from you've got an agent who's got the Homebot digest for their own property. Now, how do we move them from that to, "Great. Let's upload your 500 past clients"? Austin Larr: Yeah. So again, we're looking at the activity feed. We're seeing that person's opened it. We're seeing they're opening it every single time. So it's just a phone call. "Hey, did you put any more thought into what we talked about at Homebot? Remember, it's very inexpensive. It is very, very inexpensive." And then you do the math for them. "Hey, if you get one listing out of this, if you close one more deal, you paid for it for eight or nine years." That's how inexpensive it is to co-brand with that realtor. And so they're more than happy to go upload their 500 past clients, their 100 past clients, whatever it is. Geoff Zimpher: Listen, anybody who doesn't know, I'm the chief truth teller, guys. So you haven't run into any friction with getting agents to actually execute on that? Austin Larr: Listen, it's not for everybody. There's probably five or six agents out there floating around that I've had the conversation with that maybe have something through their current company. So it's not 100%, but I would say the majority of people that I put in end up signing up for it. Especially when you tell them the price. I know- Ernie Graham: Austin, have you played with the freemium model yet with agents? Austin Larr: A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. By the way, great point, Ernie. So the freemium model works. That's what I've seen people do is the agency, they use it for their own property or they have up to what? How many? 25? Austin Larr: Yep. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. So, so agents can, for free, upload 25 of their past contacts, I believe. Right? Austin Larr: That's correct. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. So that gets them started. And guys, just so you know, why I'm hanging out here is because what I try and do is solve problems for people that I'm hearing. And look, I know this varies. Mileage will vary based on loan officer. You don't have to tell me, I'm sure I don't have to tell you. All due respect to those listening, some people get stuff done. Some people don't. Some people come up with reasons why it won't work or excuses because there are plenty of loan officers who have succeeded in getting agents to upload their database. And then, frankly, there are some who haven't. Geoff Zimpher: I think what I've seen for those who haven't succeeded in getting agents to actually upload their database, I've seen the biggest mistake is the approach from the get go. They're very hands-off, they're very laissez faire. They're very like, "Hey, I sent you that thing. You should upload your past database." And of course they don't because they don't understand the context of why. So I don't know, Ernie, if you're hearing this, you want to unpack anything else here, best practices kind of stuff? Ernie Graham: Yeah. So there's an interesting angle on freemium that I don't see enough LOs right now taking advantage of. Here's the angle. The angle is you walk into a room or a virtual room of agents and use freemium to carpet bomb the room. You you could spend all your time trying to find the five people in the room who are actually going to be motivated to upload stuff. But carpet bomb the room. You give out Homebot to 20 or 30 or 50 agents. And then Homebot tells you which ones actually loaded one or two clients. So it doesn't cost them anything. Ernie Graham: So in a lot of ways, the freemium can act as sort of a signal detector. The people that you see adding one or two or three or five, those are the ones that you absolutely focus on because they already have that predisposition say, "Hey, I want to use the tool," versus spend a lot of time on agents that you're just never going to get to load clients. So that's part A. Ernie Graham: Part B is 10 clients. Package it down. Instead of your whole database, you can just get them to load 10 past clients. And I'm telling you, that is a magic number. And here's why it's magic. It's magic because with Homebot 50% engagement rate, five of those 10 are going to be engaging every month in their Homebot, and one of those 10 is actually going to reach out and say something or ask something of that agent. So I say parsing it down to the achievable. So once you get signaled with somebody, then say, "Look, I'm not asking you to put 500 in. I'm not even asking you to put 25 in. Just put 10." Because what'll happen is an agent, you put 10 in and they start to see success, that's the biggest motivator for them to keep on, keep on, keep on. Geoff Zimpher: Right. Right. Austin Larr: Ernie, I've got a question along those lines for me. If I want to go, I've got 400 agents or whatever in my database, is there marketing materials that I could send out on Homebot's website or a link or anything like that where they can sign up for the freemium version? Ernie Graham: Yes. We have an entire package of videos, how to, blog articles, even material that you can brand along those lines, 100%. Just picture a customer success person and they'll send everything to you. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. By the way, we're going to put links in the show notes to the Homebot website and I'll make sure I put the link to the real estate agent specific page that that Homebot has because I'm on that page right now. You guys make it so easy for agents and to share this with agents. You've got PowerPoint decks, you've got explainer videos. You've got overviews and templates, scripts of what LOs could say or share and email scripts. It's like 80% done for you. I'm just pointing this out for those who don't know it, Austin, but that, to me, is what I love because a lot of vendors don't provide that. Ernie Graham: And there's a power shift going on right now, Geoff, and this is something I'm curious, Austin, too, if you're starting to see this. But the power shift is LOs have always had beautiful databases. That's just kind of a compulsory part of being in the business, right? You got to be in your LOS, you have all those homeowners in there. The shift that's happening right now is of course the inventory crisis. What Homebot can do is to find the people ready to sell in your database. And this is something agents actually have historically never been good at is actually having a great database of their past home owners, their past buyers. They don't put the addresses in. They have all of these leads, but they rarely have addresses with those. And where I'm going with this is inventory is the goal now. Listings are goal. It's such a rare supply. So to the extent, Austin, that you can get listing signal out of your past client database, now you're dealing with a goal- Ernie Graham: ... your past client database. Now, you're dealing with gold. You've got something to hand out to your realtor partners. But then downstream of that, again, it goes back to those realtors, you get a realtor to put 10 in and they get 1 listing out of that 10, or 1 listing out of that 20, the stat is, is that even if they're paying for Homebot that basically 1 listing pays for 20 years with Homebot. Ernie Graham: So, I'd just say that's where we're putting a lot of energy into right now, because of course, 65% of all buyers are existing homeowners and lenders sit on that beautiful database of homeowners. So the power shift has commenced. Geoff Zimpher: Amen to that. And if I could add on that, Ernie, I put this class together for a lot of my clients and LOs that I coach, speaking of the inventory issue, the class is 10 Ways To Get More Listings In a Low Inventory Market. A very timely class, and Homebot is one of the things I feature in there for the reasons you just explained. And in particular, I'm looking at the slide right now that I've seen a number of agents use Homebot to generate leads. They're running a CMA lead for example, or what's your home worth, type of an opt-in thing. And then what's really cool is you guys have this whole process... Well, maybe I'll just let... So Instant Offer. This is what I'm looking at. Are you familiar with what I'm referring to there? Ernie Graham: I am. Geoff Zimpher: So unpack that for how an agent might use that. Ernie Graham: Well, Instant Offers are really threatening to the traditional real estate industry. This is the open doors now at Zillow. So this is where these big portals now are buying properties directly from your clients. So yes, the agent's getting cut out of the listing, which also... Now listings, of course, lead to the buy-side too. So very, very threatening. Ernie Graham: And so, the point here that what we've done with Homebot is that instead of the agent pretending like it doesn't exist, the agent can now shoot a video, turn a module on inside of Homebot so when their client is interested in iBuying or Instant Offers, they stay the central point of being the advisory on that. Because there's a story. And there's advice that really needs to be in context with Instant Offers. So it keeps the agent there. Ernie Graham: And the story is pretty simple. If the agent gets that phone call from one of their clients that's thinking about taking an Instant Offer, the agent can basically say, "Oh yeah, that Instant Offer, you're getting less money but you're taking less risk. Let me show you a little bit more risk, a little bit more inconvenience, but a lot more money. So let me just show you those two scenarios so that you can make the most educated decision there." So instead of hiding under a rock it really puts the agent in a place to charge that so that they, again, the worst thing that can happen is the realtor gets cut out of the conversation. Geoff Zimpher: Yes. If they're not even part of the consideration for sure. And I love the fact that even with just generating or using a, "Hey, what's your home worth," offer, whether it's on an agent's website, whether it's a Facebook ad or something, in your digest. I'm looking at the screenshot of it here. When people are wanting to get an estimated value of their home they can tune the value, which is cool. Because then they can like say, "Well, I don't think it's worth that," or whatever. And of course, you're going to get the notifications that they're tuning the value. That's brilliant. Geoff Zimpher: But also there's that button, Instant Offer, of what would my house be worth today? Boom! Just to create that very cool engagement. And to your point, is the agent can create a video, whatever. Anyway, roll this back to all the loan officer is, I'm a believer and it sounds like everybody here is, way beyond doing loans and performing on the transaction, which is of course, table stakes today. What, beyond that, am I going to do for my realtor to help them with their business? That's how I'm going to continue to build that relationship, earn referrals, all that kind of stuff. So that's why I think Homebot and I think a lot of people listening have found Homebot to be a great solution for that. Geoff Zimpher: So, all right, let's talk about then what's coming new. I watched this video about a week ago or so. There's a lot happening with you guys and video and scaling your expertise through video. I'm looking at this thing called Power Ups. I don't even know what that is, but what do you want to tell us about what you've rolled out or what's coming? Ernie Graham: So it has been a dream of mine for almost four years now. And so basically, Homebot, you guys have seen it. It's beautiful. The consumer loves clicking on it. It's the modern experience. But the thing that's always been missing from it for me has been a multi-dimensional brand. And here's what I mean by that. Ernie Graham: The LO's brand is not just their face and some contact information. Your brand is your humanity. Your brand is your biometrics. The way you look. Do you look trustworthy to me? It's how you explain things. Do you sound trustworthy to me? It's a lot of different stuff that goes into what your brand is. Ernie Graham: And for us, obviously we're promoting the LO's brand to their own clients for that engagement, but I've always wanted to take it to the next level, which was to allow the LO to record an infinite number of videos. Well, let's just start with a dozen. And that those videos are carefully placed at all different places across the Homebot experience for their clients. So in that way you're actually advising 25 hours in a 24 hour day conceivably, because that's the power of video. Ernie Graham: And of course, we've been students of this industry for a while and we say that, hey look, most of the top producers are using video very aggressively because they get that their brand is not just they're the lowest rate or they're the hardest working. You know what I'm saying? Or they have the coolest office or- Geoff Zimpher: We close in six minutes. Yeah. Ernie Graham: So really what the Power Up is, is that every Homebot, every pro user of Homebot can basically drop any and all video, evergreen, custom video of them right into their Homebot experience that goes out to all of their clients, right place, right time. And here's one little other little trick to it. When they're co-sponsoring realtors it syndicates down to the realtor's Homebot as well. Ernie Graham: So in other words, that video now gets exposed to the real estate agent's clients, which is great, because remember, this is a subject matter around finance and financial education and that sort of thing. What better person than your partner to speak to that in Digest? Does that make sense? Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. Austin, have you had a chance to use any of the new features yet? Austin Larr: Yeah, we did. And in fact, our goal was to put, one, a video out every other week and especially around refi time. And we'll continue to do that even though refis are starting to change maybe more into cash out. We'll continue that video barrage on people. And the response is amazing. Austin Larr: Like Ernie said, people want to see your face. They care about connecting with Austin. And we actually take it another step further. It's great to blast the videos out to 4,000 people or whoever's in your sphere. But if we see, if we've tried to get ahold of somebody and we can't get ahold of them, and they've been looking at that, they've requested a CMA or whatever it is, they're super active, we're going to make them a one-on-one video. We use BombBomb, and it's basically us sharing our screen and just walking them through what that Digest actually means. Austin Larr: And the response that you get on doing something when you're calling them by their name, and even though they didn't answer their phone or their text, but you not send them a video it's watched every single time. And you can see how far they're watching it, 95 to 100% of the video, that, to us, has been a huge tool. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Very personalized, which is what people are looking for these days. Regarding the videos, Ernie, the Power Ups or whatnot, I'm looking at the different examples of videos here, like Homeowner Intro, Intro to Refinancing, Trading Up to a New Home, Buyer Intro, PreQual. How do these go out and in what cadence? Does the LO control how those are rolled out? What happens? Ernie Graham: There's a couple of different ways that video works with Homebot today. The first way is, as Austin was describing, there's a blast [crosstalk 00:35:01]. Geoff Zimpher: One-to-many. Yeah. Ernie Graham: Yeah, you can do a video, do a one-to-many. And so the Homebot experience gets coupled with whatever your message is. And that could be very effective. Ernie Graham: The other way is where you have a library of videos. Let's say a dozen videos, and they are simply embedded into the Homebot Digest that every one of your clients always looks. So it's really a self-serve. Ernie Graham: Let's just use refi. They click on the Refi module. They're going through that and looking at the numbers, playing with the sliders, and then boom, Austin's video pops up right in the Refi section where he gets to speak to maybe of something that's going on with the refi market. And this is meant to be a live. This is meant to be evergreen. Ernie Graham: I mean, some of this could be evergreen, but this is also meant to be very dynamic. So if all of a sudden rates went up another half point, he might record another video to speak more clearly to what the dynamics of the market right there. So, that's more of the self-serve where the consumer is choosing based on their engagement with Homebot. Geoff Zimpher: Well, what I love about that is it's contextual video at the right time. Ernie Graham: Yeah. Geoff Zimpher: I mean, if they're in that Refi module, or if they're in that Buying a New Home or First Time Home Buyer module, and you've got that relevant video based on the context in that moment of what they're... That's super engaging, Ernie Graham: It's funny. When I talk to a lot of top producers, like Austin, you're almost a victim of your own success. When you had a small database you could always give face time to people. When you have a huge database, geez, the way that you spend your human time, who's going to be ready to receive you live? This is a great way to basically take your personality and your expertise, right time, right place, right message. Geoff Zimpher: There you go. So Austin could be many different places at once. Austin Larr: Yes, I like it. I like it. Geoff Zimpher: So Austin, the agents that you've got on Homebot, would you say that that has either a) have you leveraged... Let me say it this way. Have you leveraged Homebot to get conversations with agents you think you might not otherwise have succeeded having conversations with? Austin Larr: Yeah, that's a really good question. I actually tell a funny story when I'm telling people about Homebot and my other LOs, is, you've become really good friends with some of your realtors where it's more even like a friendship than it is that business relationship. And I had guys that got mad at me that I didn't show them to this sooner. They're like, "Dude, what are you doing, man? We uploaded our first..." Austin Larr: So I actually use that story to tell how to other realtors. And they're big hitters in town so people know who they are. And I asked them if I could use their name and they said that's fine. And so I actually used that as my intro story to get more realtors that maybe didn't want to work with us or didn't already work with us to begin with. Geoff Zimpher: So you're like, "Hey, I don't want you to be angry with me later." That's why I want to show you this now. Austin Larr: That's exactly right. Yeah. Geoff Zimpher: That's pretty brilliant actually, because as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking how could an LO, as we're making calls or whatever, use Homebot to have a conversation with somebody on their hit list who might be a producer or whatnot? It could be an approach right there. Austin Larr: Right. Make the video too, make the video for realtors. Show them how you're leveraging video and how they can leverage video to their past clients. Geoff Zimpher: So you're saying make a video with maybe doing a screen share of the Homebot Digest, for example? Austin Larr: Exactly. We're screen sharing all the time. In fact, just this morning I sent out to all of my loan officers a screen share of me sharing a Homebot and how I could sort it by equity. Because I'm getting everybody, "Well, refis are drying up. They're drying up." I was like, "Guys, that just means... Austin Larr: I'm getting everybody's, "Well, refies are kind of drying up. They're drying up." I was like, "Guys, that just means we need to determine the cash out refies." And, and Homebot allows you to sort by whose got the most equity. And a thousand other ways to sort. But I just made a screen-share video to show the guys. Hey, this is who you would need to be contacting. Make your goal five of these a day and make a video for each one of them. Geoff Zimpher: Brilliant idea. Anything we're missing, Ernie, in terms of high points, where LO's should be aware of what you could do in Homebot? Ernie Graham: It's funny. You kind of caught me off guard there, Geoff, because I'm like so intensely listening to what Austin's doing. And I'm just going to say it. This is the gold for us as a company is to listen to Austin tell what he just did. It sounds so simple, but hopefully your listeners really dialed into what he just said. These little things just have so much nuance and they sound so simple, but they can be so powerful. Ernie Graham: So I was just thinking about how can we build something to make that easier for him to do what he just did. I think that with realtors right now... Again, this isn't anything new. With realtors, it's hard to get their attention. There's a million shiny metal objects in their universe of technology. Ernie Graham: One thing right now that I would, if I were an LO, that I would just be banging the drum is a listing machine. Because realtors are suffering. It is suffering, the inventory crisis. And really positioning this as listings is the gold. You want to mine for gold, put your clients in this thing and that's how. Ernie Graham: Because one thing I've noticed is that LO's are really, really thoughtful about the story. Of empowerment and financial literacy and multi-generational wealth and caring about their clients one year, two year, five year, 10 year. That doesn't really translate to most realtors. I don't want to be insulting. I was a realtor. And it's so transaction oriented. And for so many reasons, it's really hard for them to carry those relationships for 10 years. Ernie Graham: What are you going to talk about for 10 years? The buyer sold their home. Geoff Zimpher: Banana bread recipes. Ernie Graham: Yeah. It's just so hard for them. There's just not very good subject matter. So as a lender, when you partner with them, you're now giving them all of this amazing content subject matter to really push that nurture over years and years and years. Here's the problem right now, agents don't care. Why?They don't have any listings. So I would say right now, the timeliness of this is to narrow that message to, "Hey, you need listings? I got someone who will get you listings." Geoff Zimpher: And the way you do that is both with the past clients, with the financial digest, but also using Homebot as a top of funnel, lead gen capture slash nurture thing, right? Ernie Graham: A hundred percent. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. It's like somebody once said. Solve problems. Show up and solve problems for people. And that's the biggest problem agents have to your point. But now you can actually do... Because the classic thing with LO's is... Well how do I actually help my realtors be successful? How do I actually do that? Well, this is one way you actually can help solve a pain point. And you and I both know that many, I won't use the word most, but many realtors, are woefully lacking when it comes to appropriately capturing leads. But even bigger than that is nurturing them. So I think Homebot is a great tool for that. Fantastic. All right, Austin, any other nuggets you want to share? You got a brand new LO in front of you. They're like, "Homebot, what do I do? How do I...?" Anything else you want to tell them? Austin Larr: Yeah. Listen, we've said it a couple of times, but leads are currency, right? And when you can get this currency that you can hand back out to realtors... I swear for every deal we hand out three, come back to us. If you're a brand new loan officer, get a hundred people in there. You know a hundred people and you know a hundred people that own houses. Austin Larr: This is such a good... It's funny. A lot of the new loan officers, they don't want to go after their sphere of influence. They don't want to be pushy, but this is a way to not be pushy and just slightly remind people what you do every 30 days. So we're getting every single person we know and getting them into Homebot. Austin Larr: Like I said, we have about 4,600 and I wish we would have been doing this forever my 11 years because we'd have way more in there. And at some point we've had to almost turn one of our junior loan officers just to our Homebot loan officer to keep up with it all. It's currency, guys. It's currency. Sign up. And I'm not getting paid, by the way, to say that. So I truly, truly believe in it. Ernie Graham: Well, I'm getting paid. And I think the other consideration here is to know that it's not good enough to just say "buyers". They're either homeowners or renters, and two thirds of them are homeowners. So, I think it's really important to understand that those homeowners sit in that database and they're ready... And so if you're purchase focused, your purchase leads are sitting in your database because those folks are going to convert over. Ernie Graham: So with that context, and I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble saying this, because I can't remember... Our product team rules out so many new features. But I am going to share something right now that I am beyond excited about. Maybe Austin, you can tell me, or Geoff, if this has been announced by us. But we are quietly rolling out Homebot for insurance agents. Geoff Zimpher: I think I heard of that. Yep. Ernie Graham: And it's so powerful because everything that we've just talked about with real estate agents, where they don't keep good databases, it's hard to get them to load their data and everything. You don't have that problem with insurance agents. They got a whole other set of problems of retention right now. Their industry is getting disrupted, especially the independent insurance agent. But everything we just talked about as it relates to how do you get access to another sphere, increase your sphere, I think those insurance agents are just right. They sell homeowners insurance. All of those homeowners in their database, they use Homebot, they're exposed to [crosstalk 00:45:35] Geoff Zimpher: So you're saying a new niche of referral partner for LO? Ernie Graham: Huge. Yes. Hundred percent. I know a lot of folks are already doing it, but it's been kind of soft. We've spent the last eight months kind of drilling in deep with a bunch of insurance agents and piloting and seeing where this thing works or doesn't work and where it breaks. And I think we've found a really sweet spot. And by the way, the insurance agent cannot get Homebot today without the LO. So it's really the same story. Everything that we just talked about, whether it's premium or even co-sponsorship, same price, same everything. But for insurance agent. And Austin, I would just say, that you should be carpet bombing the insurance agent with it. Austin Larr: Well, it's funny you said that because we had several of our LO'S start that maybe about 90 days ago. And that's a whole different conversation because there's five insurance agents that come into your office a day. Right? So that's a completely different conversation. They have just as many people in their database than a realtor does, maybe more. Ernie Graham: Oh, way more. Way more. I mean, again, the insurance agents, the homeowners are written on napkins and five old iPhones laying in the basement. And their databases are all over the place. The insurance agent is one click from every single client. Geoff Zimpher: Well, because they recognize the value of their database for sure, for residuals and all that. Ernie Graham: Hundred percent. Geoff Zimpher: Yeah. That's cool. That's another great niche. All right. We'll look for more good stuff to come on that insurance niche. So, you heard it here, folks. Perhaps an exclusive on mortgage market radio. Geoff Zimpher: All right. Listen, I know you guys are busy. You've shared a lot. I am incredibly grateful for it. All right guys, so listen. We've got a partnership going with Homebot, mortgage marketing radio. And if you're interested in taking the next step with Homebot. If you don't have it yet, you'll want to check it out. We're going to put links to all this in the show notes, but you want to go to homebot.ai. Homebot.ai. That's their website. And if you're going to get started, use the code "mortgage radio 200". That'll save you 200 bucks off the sign up fee. Geoff Zimpher: So there is no sign up for you whatsoever, as a podcast listener. It's "mortgage radio 200". You go to homebot.ai. Check the show notes for those links if you need them. But other than that, hope you've heard enough here today to be convinced, if you're not using Homebot yet, to get on it because of the impact it can have. And if you are using it, then take some of the ideas you've heard from Austin and Ernie today and apply them in your business. Geoff Zimpher: Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for being here. Appreciate the time. Austin Larr: Thank you for having me. Ernie Graham: Great stuff. Thank you, Geoff. Austin Larr: You bet. And listeners, you know what to do. If you enjoyed this episode, go to homebot.ai. "Mortgage radio 200" is the code. And leave us a review if you are so inclined. We appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.