268 - "We hit $17M in under 2 years. Here's exactly how." | Mike Benton

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “We hit $17M in under 2 years. Here’s exactly how.”

Making It with Jon Davids, Episode 268
Guest: Mike Benton (Responsive Mortgage)
Host: Jon Davids
Date: July 28, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Jon Davids interviews Mike Benton, co-founder and CEO of Responsive Mortgage, a company that scaled from $0 to $17 million in annual revenue in just 25 months and now aims for $30 million next year. Mike shares a step-by-step breakdown of how Responsive Mortgage revolutionized mortgage partnerships for real estate teams, recruited 200+ employees at lightning speed, and built a unique culture and operational model in a traditional industry. The discussion is a masterclass for ambitious entrepreneurs, focusing on innovation in real estate and mortgage partnerships, building for scale, and leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Responsive Mortgage’s Model and Growth

• Business in a Nutshell

  • Responsive Mortgage partners with real estate teams and builders to embed mortgage branches within their existing businesses, increasing revenue and customer value.
  • "We bring a mortgage component inside their existing business" (Mike Benton, 01:04)

• Scale and Impact

  • 200+ team members, $17M in 2025 revenue, aiming for $25–30M next year (01:13)
  • Achieved in just over two years ("It's the 25th month" – 01:24)

• Rapid Client Acquisition

  • Mike attributes growth to strategic partnerships: “My partner, John Chaplak, is the number one team leader coach in the country. His reach is wide and deep” (Mike Benton, 01:38).
  • Seed growth came from being able to leverage these relationships from day one rather than cold-starting.

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2. The Old Model vs. The New Model

• Traditional Setup

  • Under the old way, real estate teams did co-marketing and limited profit-sharing through advertising partnerships (like Zillow, realtor.com).
  • Capture rates (converting real estate customers into mortgage customers) were low, typically 10-15%.
  • Mike’s innovation: “...we’re driving capture rates inside our business of upwards of 50 to 70% depending on the market and the size of the team.” (02:52)

• Responsive Mortgage’s Solution

  • Instead of surface-level partnerships, team leaders now own a piece of the mortgage branch itself, gaining a direct share of profits and control.
  • “We are opening up side by side with team leaders actual mortgage branches. So we're teaching them how to run a mortgage office inside their real estate business.” (Mike Benton, 04:39)

• Key Value Add

  • New revenue stream for customer-focused real estate teams, giving them a way to compete against mega-platforms like Zillow and Rocket, but at a local scale.

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3. The Founders’ Origin Story and Skill Matrix

• “Avengers” Team Formation

  • Partnership between Mike Benton (operations and mortgage expertise), Preston Guyton (leads and technology via easyhomesearch.com, a high-traffic portal), and John Chaplak (top coach with deep industry influence).
  • “You brought together sort of like an Avengers team of people…” (Jon Davids, 06:49)
  • Partners have known each other for years and brought together complementary skills.

• Personal Insight

  • Mike leveraged 12 years’ experience as a Realtor, team leader, and investor; deep understanding of industry pain points allowed for rapid onboarding and process-building.
  • “Being able to speak that language and understand what their challenges are day to day was easy…” (Mike Benton, 05:44)

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4. Real Estate Team Structure Explained

• Industry Breakdown

  • Thorough run-down of the real estate “pyramid” from franchises like Century 21 down to team leaders and agents.
  • Team leaders often run entrepreneurial teams beneath larger brokerages, offering systems, training, and support.
  • “On a $10,000 gross commission, [the team leader] may be taking up to $7,500 and the agent receiving $2,500.” (Mike Benton, 13:27)
  • Most agents make more on teams through increased deal flow and support, even with lower splits.

• Value Creation & Compliance

  • Big brokerages provide brand, liability coverage, and regulatory compliance.
  • Responsive Mortgage fits into this structure by helping team leaders generate additional bottom-line profit.

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5. Compliance & Trust in Mortgage Integration

• Legal Framework

  • Strict compliance: Disclosure to homebuyers when a real estate team has financial interests in mortgage services is required and built into Responsive’s model (14:48).

• Customer Advantage

  • Trusted relationships give Responsive’s partners an edge: “Having a close relationship with the transaction coordinators, with the agents … and having a way to communicate effectively… is really, really important. Because mortgages are complicated.” (Mike Benton, 15:27)

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6. Zero to One: Hustle & Early Operations

• Startup Hustle

  • Mike personally originated loans, recruited, and built operational systems for 6–8 months straight, working “full time, seven days a week” (17:31).
  • First $1M in revenue largely from his own origination (18:01).

• First Partnerships

  • Quick early expansion through partnerships with local real estate teams.
  • Growth mechanism: “Each month,… we’ve been averaging anywhere from one to four teams, partnership models per month for about 24 months.” (Mike Benton, 19:09)

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7. Competitive Landscape

• National and Startup Competitors

  • Faces competition from giants (Mutual of Omaha, Citywide Financial, top-10 mortgage banks) and nimble startups.
  • Competitive advantages: unique coaching-led culture, in-house tech, and a nationwide sense of community.

• Culture as a Moat

  • “...our culture is really, really strong and foundationally just off the charts compared to other companies and how they operate.” (Mike Benton, 21:53)

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8. Building a Team and Culture at Scale

• 200+ People, 225–275 Loans Monthly

  • Employees are mostly W2: loan officers, processors, underwriters, closers.
  • Biggest challenge is recruiting quality loan officers who accept a slightly lower commission for long-term partnership benefits (22:36).

• Centralized Culture, Decentralized Operations

  • Daily optional morning huddles with 75–80% participation—crucial for maintaining cross-country unity (Mike Benton, 25:14).
  • Three in-person retreats annually, plus layered coaching and training.

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9. Candid Lessons from Failure

• Entrepreneurial Transparency
  • Mike shares a loss of “multiple Harvard educations” after purchasing a 152-unit development in 2007, succumbing to the crisis: “Ended up having to do a deed in lieu of foreclosure … a multiple Harvard educations lost on just that one deal.” (Mike Benton, 27:17)

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10. Bottlenecks and the Path Forward

• Current Bottleneck: Recruiting

  • Main growth constraint is building brand recognition among loan officers and expanding to homebuilders.
  • Larger institutions offer big signing bonuses: “It’s almost like the NIL for mortgage.” (Mike Benton, 29:28)

• Under-Investment in Marketing

  • Growth so far mostly via personal networks and minimal marketing spend: “We built it with zero ... very little money invested into the marketing side outside of driving leads for existing team leaders.” (Mike Benton, 30:00)
  • Looking to develop consistent marketing (especially evergreen educational video funnels), rather than live webinars.

• On Marketing Channels

  • Jon challenges the effectiveness of webinars for high-level team leaders: “I’m just not convinced that when you’re selling to somebody other than the beginner ... webinars are the way to go.” (Jon Davids, 33:33)
  • Mike agrees, planning to build “evergreen video to educate folks about … who we are.” (Mike Benton, 34:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We’re driving capture rates inside our business of upwards of 50 to 70%... That’s just a huge upside.” – Mike Benton (02:52)
• “We are teaching [team leaders] how to run a mortgage office inside of their real estate business.” – Mike Benton (04:41)
• “Being able to speak that language and understand what their challenges are day to day was easy…” – Mike Benton (05:44)
• “Everything in our past prepares us for where we are today. I feel like everything I’ve done ... was just prepping me for this opportunity.” – Mike Benton (23:57)
• “Our culture is really, really strong and foundationally just off the charts compared to other companies...” – Mike Benton (21:53)
• “Ended up having to do a deed in lieu of foreclosure … a multiple Harvard educations lost on just that one deal.” – Mike Benton (27:17)
• “We built it with ... very little money invested into the marketing side...” – Mike Benton (30:00)
• “I’m just not convinced … webinars are the way to go ... Give it to me in a video.” – Jon Davids (33:33)

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Important Timestamps

• [01:02] – What Responsive Mortgage does
• [01:13] – Scale and revenue figures
• [02:29] – Origin of the business model
• [03:21] – Industry paradigm: Old way vs. new way
• [05:41] – Unique founder advantages
• [08:07] – Definition and role of a team leader
• [13:27] – How team leader-agent commission splits work
• [14:38] – Legal compliance for dual interest
• [17:31] – Zero to $1M: Mike’s personal hustle
• [19:09] – Team partnership growth model
• [21:44] – Competitive differentiation
• [22:29] – Team size and bottlenecks
• [25:14] – Building culture with daily huddles
• [27:11] – Mike’s biggest entrepreneurial loss
• [28:39] – Bottleneck: Recruiting and marketing
• [33:33] – Marketing insight: Why webinars may not work

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Conclusion

This episode provides a rare, detailed look at how Responsive Mortgage upended legacy models in the real estate–mortgage ecosystem, leveraging coaching, tech, and an unbeatable network effect to blitzscale revenue and headcount. The story is rich with tactical advice, leadership philosophy, and cautionary tales of past failure. The company’s next phase focuses on solving recruiting bottlenecks and refining high-leverage marketing and educational content.

Listeners will gain actionable insights on partnership-led growth, culture-first scaling, and go-to-market pivots for high-ticket B2B services.

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Transcript

[John Davids]

This guy took a business from zero to $17 million in two years and he's barely getting started. His name is Mike Benton and the company is called Responsive Mortgage. He's basically helping real estate teams make more money and provide a whole bunch more value to their customers. And there's a lot to learn from how he's doing it. Mike and I talk about what it took to go from 0 to 1 million, how he recruited 200 employees at Lightning speed, and his exact plan to double to 30 million in just the next year.

If you're actually business builder or you

hope to do that one day, you're going to love this conversation. My name's John Davids. I own influicity where we help a lot of companies get a lot of customers. And you can get my best stuff to your [e-mail] okay, here's Mike.

You're listening to Making it with John Davids. So Mike, what's the name of your business?

[Mike Benton]

Responsive Mortgage.

[John Davids]

And what do you guys do?

[Mike Benton]

We partner with real estate teams and

builders and bring a mortgage component inside their existing business.

[John Davids]

And what does the business look like today? How big is it?

[Mike Benton]

We're about 200 team members strong and

2025 revenues were around 17 million. Our next target is 25 to 30 million.

[John Davids]

How long are we doing it for?

[Mike Benton]

It's their 25th month.

[John Davids]

25th month.

So just over two years. You got a business to 17 million targeting 30.

How are you getting clients today?

[Mike Benton]

So I have a partner who is the number one team leader coach in

the country by the name of John Chaplak. So his reach is wide and deep.

[John Davids]

So you've got kind of a known quantity, a known entity in the space who you partnered with and that just gave you the rocket fuel to take off.

[Mike Benton]

Absolutely.

[John Davids]

So what did the first year look like? Year two, we know ended in 17. What was year one?

[Mike Benton]

Year one was a lot of blocking and tackling and a lot of building

the airplane in the air, figuring out the model that was going to work best for our partners and then building the kind of the operations and processes and procedures to onboard so many teams at once while still being able to deliver a great experience to the consumer and to these high producing teams at the same time.

[John Davids]

So what was the initial idea, what was the back of the napkin idea that you came up with?

[Mike Benton]

It was just to bring a Traditionally more big Real estate brokerages have had

joint ventures inside their offices for many, many years. Probably 25, 30 years, if not longer.

But these larger mortgage Banks have never

been really good at partnering with real estate teams. And real estate teams have been the growing trend since COVID And it's tip of the spear with the real estate teams being able to control the transaction and be able to really drive capture rates higher than a traditional brokerage that, you know, gets around 10%, 15% capture rate, where we're driving capture rates inside our business of upwards of 50 to 70%, depending on the market and size of the team.

[John Davids]

Okay, so let's break this down. For a total dummy like me, just give me the lay of the land. Tell me the old way and the new way. Because it sounds from what you just said that you figured out some way that the people in the business, the people doing the work, are capturing more of the upside. So what was the way that people would traditionally do this? And then what, what was the big aha that you figured out?

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[Mike Benton]

Yeah, the old way was MSA relationships

like a co marketing with folks partnering with leads.

So they would spend, let's say 5,

10, 15, $20,000 and partner on an ad spend of pay per click or Zillow or realtor.com where we are opening

up side by side with team leaders,

actual mortgage branches where they're able to capture a percentage of the profit of the actual mortgage office. So we're teaching them how to run a mortgage office inside of their real estate business.

[John Davids]

And when you say a mortgage office inside their real estate business, what is their main real estate business?

[Mike Benton]

Selling homes, condos, land in their particular MSA's markets.

[John Davids]

So, so these are Realtors, these are normal real estate agents and you're bringing a second line of revenue, Is that what it would look like?

[Mike Benton]

Absolutely, yeah.

It's another source of revenue to allow them to compete.

You know, big boxes like Zillow and

Rocket have been aggregating data and capturing mortgage and real estate all in one transaction. We're just doing it on a localized level.

[John Davids]

And so what was the secret sauce that you had? I mean, you mentioned one thing, was obviously a big personality in the game, but were there other pieces that you brought to the table that others couldn't or hadn't yet?

[Mike Benton]

I think so. I mean, I spent 12 years as

a Realtor, team leader and full time real estate investor before I got into mortgage banking myself. So I had a deep understanding of what it takes to win as a Realtor, what it takes to win as a team leader. And being able to speak that language and understand what their challenges are day to day was easy to go in and speak to them and understand their business model.

[John Davids]

And then you also mentioned that players like Zillow have a bunch of data they've aggregated, and Zillow and the rockets of the world, they've aggregated data. Have you somehow unlocked data? Have you given Realtors access to data that they otherwise couldn't access?

[Mike Benton]

Well, my other partner, I have two partners.

One's John Chaplak, the other is Preston Guyton. PRESTON Guyton owns a a or the fourth highest trafficked real estate portal in the states called Easy Homesearch.com. so we have another component to the business similar to Zillow. Obviously not the size and traffic of Zillow, but hundreds of thousands of hits per month and over 20,000 registrations per month that we're able to target and work those leads as well.

[John Davids]

Okay, so it sounds like you brought together sort of like Avengers, team of people who have these specialties. How did you guys all meet? How did you connect? Like, where was this? Like years in the making?

Like, what was the actual inception of it?

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, great question.

So Preston Guy and I have been

friends for 20 years. We started out both in real estate in South Carolina together in 2003 and four. And then he and John Chapl. John's been a real estate coach for, God, maybe 10, 15, 20 years. I don't know the exact timeframe, but they started working on several different businesses about five, six years ago. And then several years ago, Preston made the introduction to John to ask him if he was interested in partnering with us in this venture.

[John Davids]

And he said, yes, I understand what it is today. What was the Day One version of the venture?

[Mike Benton]

The Day one was, hey, Mike, you're going to run the mortgage company and

Preston's going to continue to work on his tech company to drive more leads for team leaders, and John's going to drive team leaders to the business.

[John Davids]

What is you keep mentioning the word team leader. What is a team leader?

[Mike Benton]

A team leader is someone who. It's basically. I mean, it's a. A real estate agent who has other

agents underneath them who run their business

day to day for them.

So they are, they're. They have processes and procedures for agents. They have training, they have coaching, mentorship, and they provide a lot of different opportunities that an individual agent wouldn't be able to provide on their own.

[John Davids]

And a team leader would work for a brokerage, right?

[Mike Benton]

Correct.

They typically, most team leaders, they have

independent brokerages we partner with. They have their own independent brokerages, but they also partner with bigger boxes like Exp. LPT Real Brokerage, Century 21, your traditional franchise type models as well, where they pay a percentage of their revenue to hold their licenses and take on those risks.

[John Davids]

I've done a lot of research into the real estate world. We have a lot of real estate clients at Influxity. But just unpack this for me a little bit. So. Because this whole thing seems like a pyramid to me, you have a century 21 at the very top, which is franchise, by the way. I didn't say pyramid scheme. It's just a pyramid.

[Mike Benton]

Sure. Yeah, you're right.

[John Davids]

So you've got, you've got Century 21 at the top, which is a brand which is basically just franchising the name and I'm guessing some system services of century 21. Then below that, you've got a team lead which is like John Smith, Century 21 Inc. And that's a franchise of Century 21. And John Smith in that case is a team lead. And then John Smith has, let's say 20 people under him who are all real estate agents who are working for John Smith, who is working for Century 21. And there's some split of money. There is the picture that I just laid out kind of. Right.

[Mike Benton]

It's 100% accurate. Yeah, you get it.

[John Davids]

Okay. Where is the value being generated there? And are there pieces that don't actually generate value but are taking money in return?

[Mike Benton]

No, I think for the, for the agents, where are they receiving value or

where's the team leader receiving value?

[John Davids]

So I want to start at the top. So like, what is the actual value that Century 21 Inc. Is providing? What's their value?

[Mike Benton]

Their value is the, the broker. The licensing of the actual agents.

So they provide a. A layer of liability and oversight for the contractual laws in that particular state.

[John Davids]

Got it.

[Mike Benton]

And then they pro. They, they pro. Most.

Most brokerages provide some sort of technology systems Processes that maybe not like super unique at this point in time, but and along with some brand recognition, depending on the flag that they're carrying.

[John Davids]

Yeah, I've done a lot of research into Keller Williams and the education and all the stuff they provide. Certainly is a value to someone who's getting into real estate. So that's one piece. Then you have, I'll call it the team lead, the franchisor. I think that's the same person. So they would come in, they get all the assets of the century 21 in this case and then are they basically just an entrepreneur setting up a new business?

[Mike Benton]

Absolutely, yeah, that's exactly how it works. They're setting up a new business, they run a real, their own separate P and L separated from century 21. And they have their own expenses, employees. A lot of times they have their own office. Most times they have their own physical offices and many times multiple physical offices in a location as well.

[John Davids]

And do they have the freedom to use their own branding, they have to follow certain systems or they have their own branding, their own marketing, their own operation systems freedom there?

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, they, I mean, yeah, they have

a lot of independence with freedom of how they market, who they market to, how they generate their business outside of like some simple framework that's typical license law in that particular state.

[John Davids]

And then what's their pitch to the real estate agents, why they should come work? Is it, are they, are the agents getting paid a salary or is it just better commissions or is it we provide better education?

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, it's typically a lower split, so

lower commissions per sale but more opportunities for growth. So whether it's, you know, coaching, training, mentorship and then opportunities via, however that team leader may be driving other, other leads to the, to the team itself, along with a lot of different support levels of transaction coordination.

So they're doing like, usually less doing

the main thing which is selling homes as opposed to a lot of agents will, you know, have to do their own contracts, have to go to their inspections, have to just do a lot of the day to day paperwork so that they take them out of the revenue producing activities.

[John Davids]

And so the team leader in that case would make money. Would they also be a producer selling their own homes or at that point or have they, are they not selling homes at that point?

[Mike Benton]

I would say like 80% of the

team leaders that we work with, they're at a level where they're true operators. I have several team leaders who are usually husband and wife team leaders. So they own a team together and then one spouse will oftentimes still be in production.

But I would say the majority of

team leaders that we work with are true operators of businesses and they're not in the day to day production of selling homes.

[John Davids]

And what's a typical split between a team leader and their real estate agents? Because they're making money. When their agents make a sale, are they taking 20% of the agents commission? Something like that?

[Mike Benton]

It could be set up to 75% of the commission. I mean it's holy smokes, hefty split. Like on a $10,000, let's say gross commission, they may be taking up to $7,500 and the agent receiving 2,500 depending on the responsibilities and the in the market.

I don't really get into the commission

side for them because it's doesn't really affect our, our business model. But I, I know that those are similar. There are splits as low as that. But these agents are all highly incentivized and make typically a lot more money on a team than they do individually. That's why they stay.

[John Davids]

You're saying they make more money on a team because they take a share of the whole team or because they

[Mike Benton]

just sell more, they transact more?

[John Davids]

Yeah, got it, got it. Okay. I really appreciate this masterclass. I'm learning a ton here. So this is awesome. So then you come in and you're providing these team leaders with another line of revenue.

[Mike Benton]

Absolutely.

[John Davids]

And aren't there?

I don't know. I know like a lot about the sort of car insurance, home insurance, bank relationships. Are there certain laws around the person selling the home is also the person helping with the financing of the home? Are there restrictions there?

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, there's, you know, HUD changed the

guidelines several years ago where you could actually have dual representation. We don't practice dual representation.

The what you have to do is

you have to provide a disclosure notice depending on the state, but you have to disclose to the client that you have a financial interest in the mortgage relationship and any other third party services that are related to the transaction. And then they're provided that any clients provided that up front as well as upon the disclosure of the loan as well. So multiple times they're aware of the financial relationship.

[John Davids]

And I would think a lot of the time if you have a relationship with an agent and you've just, you know, been working with them for the last four months finding a home and they finally found you a home, you'd actually prefer to work with them on the financing because you trust them. So they have that Advantage too, right?

[Mike Benton]

Absolutely. Yeah. We're. We.

We consider ourselves either in house or trusted partner of the. Of the real estate teams and builders that we partners with, partner with, because having control of the financial relationship is one piece, but having a close relationship with the transaction coordinators, with the agents who you're familiar with doing business, how they do business, and having a way to communicate effectively, efficiently throughout the process is really, really important. Because mortgages are complicated.

[John Davids]

Yeah, that's an understatement. They're pretty complicated. I have a lot of mortgages. I'm not sure. I'm still not sure I understand how they work.

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Okay, let's get to the business now. So you told me before the mics heated up that this whole thing started in a text chain. So do you still have a screenshot of that text chain?

[Mike Benton]

Oh, yeah, I have. You know, it's funny, I did a. I had my admin pull the entire

text chain through Claude and then do a summary. So it's, you know, constantly. It's an education in and of itself of two years back and forth with the three of us. So it's. It's pretty cool.

[John Davids]

It's like your declaration of independence. Those are the founding documents, text chain. So you got to blow them up, put them on the wall. So give me the story of zero to a million. What was the first hustle like?

[Mike Benton]

You know, I've been an originator since full time, since 2018, so originating loans for other. For consumers and realtors throughout the country. And I was day one, I was originating loans every day, along with talking to team leaders, talking to loan officers, and then building the foundational pieces of operations for the first. Really six to eight, eight months full time, seven days a Week that and

[John Davids]

that got you to a million. Just you doing the work.

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, me. And probably, I mean the first, the first 90 days, I think we had about 20 people, I don't know, million in revenue. I mean, yeah, I probably created over

a million in revenue quickly myself. There's, there's a decent amount of money in every mortgage that you do, but the cost to produce is much higher than most people really probably understand. To originate a loan, it's a manufacturing process with 98 plus steps. And there's a lot of hands in the cookie jar originating a mortgage to this day.

[John Davids]

And when you say 98 steps, those steps are like what, talking to banks, talking to, like doing the legal work. What are some of the steps there?

[Mike Benton]

Disclosing the loan, collecting the documents, the compliance piece, processing the loan, underwriting the loan, closing the loan, post closing the loan.

[John Davids]

Right.

[Mike Benton]

So there's, there's, there's a lot of

[John Davids]

steps and then at what point, because it seems to me like the real unlock for you guys. It's one thing for you to sit there and originate these loans, but the real unlock was when you started to get into the team leaders. So when did that channel open up for you?

[Mike Benton]

I mean that opened up day one.

We partnered with a local team here in Sarasota and then we, we created another partnership in Destin within the first like 30 days. And then, you know, each month, you know, I don't know exactly month by month, but we've been averaging anywhere from one to four teams, partnership models per month for about 24 months. You know, that's, we're partners with 75 plus teams as of today. So in 24 months you do the math. Like we're give or take, you know, two, three a month.

[John Davids]

So the growth mechanism here is just get more team leaders on board. What's your pitch to those team leaders? What do you say to them?

[Mike Benton]

So typically the team leaders, they're in usually one of two different areas, meaning

they're in an existing mortgage relationship where they're in a model similar to ours. And typically what I found is that it's not performing for one reason or the other either it's lack of revenue, it's poor execution with the manufacturing of the loan and the capture rate is low, or B, they don't have a model to generate additional revenue or the revenue is more of the old school model where it's a split marketing, co marketing type relationship that there's not a long term relationship and foundational piece there.

[John Davids]

So do they already have some type of mortgage loan service they're offering and it's just not very good or they just, they don't have any of that.

[Mike Benton]

Sometimes they have, they already have one.

Like for instance I boarded a team yesterday who had a similar relationship but it was a relationship that was not performing at the highest levels. And she had reached out and asked us to review her financials. And after the review of those financials we saw many gaps of the reason she wasn't performing well. And through the course of a discovery and multiple calls she decided to partner with us and leave her previous relationship.

[John Davids]

And who are the competitors? Are there a lot of national or regional players that you compete with who do what you do?

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, there's. So Mutual of Omaha is a pretty large company.

I mean multi billion dollar company. I think they have about 150 plus of these types of relationships. There's Citywide Financial which is multiple billions of funded loans per per year. There's, there's some small startups as well.

So I mean the competition is definitely

more and more companies and then you have the biggest mortgage companies in the, in the US cross country mortgages gotten in naf, new American funding. I would say most of the bigger mortgage companies, top 10, top 20 have some sort of this model.

But with our unique, I think we're

definitely the fastest growing in the country for sure.

It's, you know, we have a couple

different competitive advantages which is, you know my partner John Chaplak from a coaching mechanism. Second is having Preston with the technological advantage that we have. And then third, what we've done really, really well is built a community around our business and culture of like, even though we're bifurcated by city and state and branch, we, we operate like one large team across the country. So our culture is really, really strong and foundationally just off the charts compared to other companies and how they operate.

[John Davids]

So what is the team today? How many people are there? What do you guys do?

[Mike Benton]

200 plus and we're closing anywhere from

225 to 275 loans per month and

we have anywhere from, you know, our biggest bottleneck today is really like finding

you know, quality loan officers who understand the business model. Because just like a team leader, their commission is for agents, their commission is lower when they sell for the team. When we recruit a loan officer away from another mortgage bank or lending institution, our commission model is also slightly lower than the average commission that they may make on like a self sourced deal sphere of influence, somebody that they already have a relationship With.

[John Davids]

So you have 200 people on your team and these are employees or these

[Mike Benton]

are contractors, or These are independent W2.

Yeah.

[John Davids]

Okay. And they're, for the most part, they're the loan officers.

[Mike Benton]

Loan officers, support staff.

So processors, loan partners, underwriters, closers.

[John Davids]

Okay. It's a pretty. I mean, you've got this like you're oozing with self confidence, which I love. Man, this is great. But build 200 people in a business in 25 months while also taking that business to 17 million on its way to 30. Like, was this hard or was this just like you've done this before? So it was easy or was there a lot of pain behind the scenes?

[Mike Benton]

No, I mean, it's been the most enjoyable two years of my life. I think that everything in our past

prepares us for where we are today. And I feel like everything that I've done in my real estate and mortgage career was just prepping me for this opportunity. So it's right. People has been a key. The people that we're partners with are really like minded in our value systems, our standards, how we do business. Because of the community that John Chaplak has built over many years. In his coaching style, he attracts a certain type of avatar of hungry, humble, coachable, gritty individual who understands, you know, that it's a long game, not a short term game that we're playing.

[John Davids]

And when you talk about the partners, you're talking about the, the team leader, the real estate folks, right?

[Mike Benton]

Absolutely. Yeah.

They're the tip of the spear for the partnership because they are, they're not only driving capture, but they're also helping us find the loan officers in their local market to support their business as well.

[John Davids]

And so what are you doing? I mean, you have John, so that might be the answer, but what are you doing on the community building side? Is it really just John's community that's elevating this or are there other aspects to it also?

[Mike Benton]

No, I think, I mean, one of

the biggest things we're doing internally is,

you know, we have a morning huddle

every day that's optional for our entire team, but it's 15 minutes every single day optional. And we probably have anywhere from 75 to 80% of our entire organization that'll be on that huddle.

So when you're bifurcated, right.

When you're not in the same office, when you're not in the same city, it's a point to see everybody every single day and feel connected to something bigger than yourself.

And then we have multiple different coaching

opportunities throughout the week with not only John, but, you know, coaches inside of his current community, outside training that we brought in. And then we do three in person events per year at his ranch as well in Mississippi. So not an easy trip.

[John Davids]

And I was going to say Mississippi, are you. You're totally remote. There's no central physical office.

[Mike Benton]

We have about, I don't know how many physical offices today we have, but

I know we have a physical office here in Sarasota. About 50%, 70%. I don't know the exact number of our teams actually have physical offices as well. But just because we're all in different physical offices because of 30, 40 different cities across the country, I don't know how many at this point, we don't keep track, but everybody's in different cities and states and whether they're in a physical office or they're working from home, it allows us to come together and keep the community really, really tight.

[John Davids]

Have you had entrepreneurial failures in, in a business like this? In other words, have you tried to build this kind of business before and it didn't work or was it did this kind of hit from day one?

[Mike Benton]

Not this type of business.

I mean I've had failures in real estate related to real estate development, but not this type of business that has failed. This was the.

[John Davids]

Well, anybody who's done real estate development has had failures in real estate development and that comes to the territory. What's, what's been your biggest loss on the, on the dev side, on the development side?

[Mike Benton]

Yeah, I, I bought a.152 units in Birmingham, Alabama.

I closed on in 2007 and the height of the, you know, when the Great Recession was heating up.

Bought it for, you know, 4.2 million.

And then I found out that the owners had inflated the, the figures and, and the financial package. And by the time, you know, I had figured that out six, eight months into the ownership, you know, the world was melting down and I had other collapses that I was focused on. So I couldn't even go after them for any financial, you know, misstatements or misrepresentation and ended up having to do a deed in lieu of foreclosure about

a year and a half into that project. So it was, it was a multiple

Harvard educations lost on just that one deal.

[John Davids]

I was going to say, you know, people ask me like I, I went to college, you know, I took business courses. I have spent way more money on my education as a business owner. Tens and thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars through all the mistakes I've made, way more than I would have paid in tuition.

[Mike Benton]

Oh yeah, yeah.

I'm in the multiple seven figures, I think in mistakes for sure.

[John Davids]

Yeah. So talk to me about, about where this goes. Like you're at 17 million today. You want to get to 30. I have no doubt you can do it because of your record. But this thing stopping, you said is recruiting. So expand on that a little bit. What's, what's the problem there?

[Mike Benton]

I think, you know, we're still a, I will say like a baby brand, meaning there's only so many people.

Loan officer wise. I think there's a hundred thousand plus loan officers in the country.

I would say that we need to

continue to build our brand to be more well known throughout the industry itself.

We would like to continue to build

the business not only with team leaders, but increase our opportunities with, you know, small to medium sized home builders as well. So that's a new lever of growth that we're really going after, you know, not only in the third and fourth quarter, but will continue in 2027 as well.

So it's just a, a time resource.

And there's a lot of big mortgage companies who buy production. So they'll go out to you as a loan officer and if you're doing 20 million in production, they'll say, you

know, hey John, come over and you

know, we'll give you $200,000 signing bonus. It's almost like a, the nil for mortgage.

[John Davids]

So are you capped because the marketing like you don't know how to market to those people or the marketing doesn't work on those kinds of people or you're just not doing any marketing.

[Mike Benton]

We have not developed a, our complete marketing plan. We've really relied heavily on our, our

local influence to find us folks.

And you know, we've done several webinars

but not put enough. We put zero dollars behind any webinars and we built it with zero. Like when I say zero dollars, very little money invested into the marketing side outside of driving leads for existing team leaders. But outside of that there's been very little upfront put into some of those other channels that we could go after.

[John Davids]

And the webinars are for the new segment or for the current business segment?

[Mike Benton]

For both.

You know, we've done several loan officer recruiting webinars and then we've done several

team leader webinars as well. But when I say several, I think we've done two or three on each over the last 24 months and it just hasn't been consistent like anything, I think we need to have it consistent and then be able to learn each month by kind of having a proven like a process around it. We've just kind of one off them.

[John Davids]

These team leaders. Can you just give me an idea? Are these generally people that are making millions of dollars in their current business or are they kind of earlier in the business?

[Mike Benton]

No, there's, I mean I would say that there's a segment of team leaders

that are definitely making multiple millions and then there's some team leaders that are probably, my guess is in the neighborhood of a quarter to a million.

And bottom line, I mean everybody, top

line is doing, you know, definitely in the multiple seven figures outside of maybe a few smaller teams. But the, the bulk 95 are doing multiple seven figures in top line.

I think that's one of the big

pieces is, you know, there's vanity in the top line and then as margin compression has been real and there's less transactions, then yeah, I have a high top line, but my bottom line is really reduced. And that's where we come in and try to help that bottom line number right.

[John Davids]

One of the challenges I found is webinars. I mean ever since Russell Brunson blew up, you know, in 2013 or whatever, we all have been told that webinars are the ultimate way to get clients. And for a few years, I mean when I started my business in Fluicity in 2020, 2015 or so, we did webinars for like three, four years and we were selling at the time to a super high end client, you know, kind of, kind of like a 50 million plus revenue type business leader. And our show rates were just dismal. And we still did it for three years. You know, I would do webinars to nine people. And our thought process was, oh well, we're building brand reputation. Honestly, I'm just not convinced that when you're selling to somebody other than the beginner, other than someone who's like genuinely kind of a solopreneur or well under a million in revenue, I don't know that webinars are the way to go because people like you and me are not going to sit through a two hour webinar like I'm not, I'm not doing that. Give it to me in a video. And so I don't, I actually don't know that. Listen, people can prove me wrong. People have proven me wrong on certain edge cases. But I don't know that webinars are the way I'd go if I were you, I would think that you can reach people more on sort of podcast channel which is I'll just call on demand audio or video. And then the second way to do it would be through short content. I guess this would be more top of the funnel where you have short clips or dedicated short videos that are attracting that super high level individual and then driving them to some kind of on demand. I don't know that webinars are a channel that you need to get working. Unless you're convinced in some way that I'm wrong.

[Mike Benton]

No, I'm definitely not convinced. I think, I mean I think you're

probably like dead on because we have a, we're not partnered with this particular team leader, but he is a coach for, for my partner and he's, he's doing exactly what you said, which is driving to a, to an evergreen video that's 30 to 45 minutes long. And then by the time his recruiter gets a hold of that person who's been through that evergreen video, their conversion rate is through the roof. So that is something that is in our like we run eos and that's in our this quarter's rocks. To be able to create that evergreen video to educate folks about like because people don't know who we are.

[John Davids]

I mean still hope you guys like that.

If you did, make sure to hit subscribe and get my best stuff to your inbox@john davids.com if you sell B2B products or services and you want to generate more qualified sales opportunities, I want you to head over to john johndavids.com grow. I'll show you the growth system we've used at influicity with 40 B2B companies in just the last year. Go to johndavids.com grow and watch the short video. And by the way, if you're already spending money on LinkedIn and trade shows and sales enablement and all the rest, this is even more important because it could give you a huge advantage in the marketplace. Go to johndavids.com grow and I'll see you there.