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- [00:11]
Jeff Zimfer
What's up, my friend? Welcome to the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. I am your host, Jeff Zimfer. Hey. This is the place where mortgage professionals get smarter, faster insight strategies and success stories to fuel your growth. In today's episode, we're talking with Nicole Perrone, aka the Billion Dollar Banker. Nicole has over 15 years experience in the mortgage industry, including leading the number one Wells Fargo team in the country. What I love about our conversation today with Nicole is she brings a fresh perspective and powerful insights. If you're looking to level up your game, I want you to listen for three key takeaways and more. But these three ones are a highlight of our conversation from today. Number one, we're talking about diversification. Nicole emphasizes the need for you to offer a wide variety of products and diversify your referral referral sources, especially in this changing market. We also talk about embracing the digital shift. What's the origin story behind the Billion Dollar Banker brand? What is that all about? What's it mean? How has it impacted her business from doing zoom consultations to Instagram connections that drive relationships and referrals? Nicole reveals how she's using social selling to reach clients and partners nationwide. And she urges you, the listener, to build your online brand now before it's too late. And then lastly, speaking of personal brand, that's what we unpack a lot. Nicole shares her journey in creating the Billion Dollar Banker brand. Why it's critical for success for you to have a brand in today's competitive marketplace. Not only will it open doors, but it'll help create lasting relationships, new business opportunities and conversations, just like it did for Nicole and I today. So if you enjoyed this episode, two requests. Number one, share it with somebody. Number two, if you're enjoying the content, please leave us a review. There is a link down below in the description that says, rate this podcast, leave us a review, something like that. Simply tap on it and you'll be taken to a page where we can leave us a review. And if you do leave a review, go over to my Instagram right, and just DM me and let me know that you left left a review. I'll look it up and then I'll get you a free gift for leaving us a review. It's a surprise gift just for that. So appreciate you tuning in, guys. You're going to enjoy this episode. Without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Nicole, welcome to the show.
- [02:23]
Nicole Perrone
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
- [02:26]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah, it's, it's great. To connect with you. I appreciate you reaching out on LinkedIn. That's partly what's so cool on LinkedIn. Sorry, Instagram, I just been following you like crazy, so. And this morning I was feverishly LinkedIn doing some messaging. But that's what's cool about today's world, right, is we can really make a connection with anybody anywhere. And you know, we're, we're reachable. So that's what brought you here today.
- [02:47]
Nicole Perrone
Where you are in the world. Actually, we haven't even covered that yet.
- [02:50]
Jeff Zimfer
I know, right? You're in New York, right?
- [02:53]
Nicole Perrone
New Jersey. Close.
- [02:54]
Jeff Zimfer
Right. All right, all right, cross the bridge.
- [02:58]
Nicole Perrone
That's it.
- [02:59]
Jeff Zimfer
I'm here in Vegas. So whenever you're in Vegas, right, we can show you the off strip, where to go. That's the non touristy places.
- [03:07]
Nicole Perrone
There you go.
- [03:08]
Jeff Zimfer
That's amazing. Yeah. So what do you want to share for the listeners? You know, obviously they heard the intro that I did, but what would you like to personally. So obviously this is loan officers listening, you know, who is Nicole? What is she all about? What is she trying to do in the world right now?
- [03:26]
Nicole Perrone
That's a great question. So you know, I've been in the mortgage industry for a little over 15 years. Started in the broker world and then spent 13 years of my career at Wells Fargo where I rose the ranks. I, you know, before I left there I was running the number one team in the country for Wells Fargo in Manhattan and private mortgage. It was incredible journey there. Loved my time, loved the people, but decided to make a change into the correspondence side of the business where, you know, about 80% of the overall mortgage market is in the broker correspondence side. When you look at the 160, something,000, I think was the last figure. Loan officers across the country, the banks, these big banks like the TDs, the Bank of America's, the Wells Fargo, the Chases, they have about 300 retail loan officers each ish around the country. So you look at the percentage of people that are working in the bank space and the percentage of people that are working as loan officers on the broker correspondence side and it's just very clear where the direction of the market's going. So I'm super passionate about following the puck. I'm a leader in this business, been a leader for a while. I'm a producer as well. So you know, I'm in the game with my team. But I, I came, I came over to cross country after visiting Cleveland, Ohio. Ron Lenhardt, our CEO is absolutely phenomenal. Super impressive, Amazing culture, progressive Environment and I'm looking to help change loan officers lives. I'm helping, I'm hoping to help them increase their business by being with the number one retail distributed mortgage lender in the country. That's my main goal. And now I'm getting my message out to people across, across the country, across all platforms, about everything else I do, about all the people I'm connected with. And I'm hoping that it just inspires, motivates and spreads, spreads some excitement across the Internet about what people can achieve and so on both sides of the lane. I love seeing people achieve what their full potential is in general in life. I think that's a big passion of mine and I like to lead the front in that.
- [05:26]
Jeff Zimfer
In that sense, yeah, you're definitely leading out there with some content and media. We're going to cover that in today's conversation for sure. Building a personal brand. We're going to talk about the. The Billion Dollar Banker, right? Is that, is that the name?
- [05:38]
Nicole Perrone
That's the name, yeah. The Billion Dollar Banker, yeah, we're going.
- [05:41]
Jeff Zimfer
To talk about that. Well, it's definitely eye catching. It makes me curious. I want to unpack that in a moment, but, but first let me go back to something you said which is you made a change based on where you saw the industry heading. What do you mean by that? Where do you think? What was behind that?
- [06:01]
Nicole Perrone
I think that we saw historic time in our industry that just passed with where rates went and then what happened after and the pandemic. And you saw a lot of banks make decisions specifically in the portfolio space that historic. Right. The banks were letting go of loan officers across the country simply because they had too much portfolio business and it wasn't profitable. And so banks were worried about their deposits. They needed to get, you know, cash liquid, they needed to really beef up the books. And what you started to see is loan officers had to really become kind of like financial advisors. They had to get money and they had to bring the money over to the bank in order to really lend at favorable rates. And it became this very competitive kind of commoditized world where we weren't offering a ton of products. We weren't, we weren't there to help as many customers as we can. We weren't there to serve the real real estate community. We're really there as an ancillary addition to the, to the bank, right, to the wealth platform. And so I think Wells Fargo specifically, for a long time led the way and being like a mortgage company, not just a bank, but I Think, I think we're almost done with, with, with mortgage companies that are inside of banks, you know, to work for a, a private company that only does mortgages. It's just, it's very refreshing. And so, you know, you just, the numbers don't lie, right? Where the business is going doesn't lie. There's, there's less of it out there. There's less of us out there. But right now what you need is you need the ability to build a brand because I think five years from now you're going to regret if you didn't. You need the ability to be online and be digital and you have to have a wide variety of products to serve all kinds of customers. When the, you know, when the, when the opportunity contracts, what you offer has to expand.
- [07:52]
Jeff Zimfer
Oh, that's interesting. Take. When the opportunity contracts, what you offer has to expand.
- [08:00]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah. Because you get 10 referrals. You don't want to say, oh, I can't do FHA down to 600 or I can't do renovation, or I can't do home equity lines of credit, or I actually, I can't do that. You know, that program with the down payment assistance for first time home buyers, I mean, you're turning away client after client after client in this environment for loan officers. I mean, you can't succeed that way. You just can't.
- [08:23]
Jeff Zimfer
So what you're saying is you need a larger portfolio of solutions to be able to offer.
- [08:28]
Nicole Perrone
Exactly. You gotta be able to help as many customers that hit your desk because there's less and less customers coming our way now with where the market is today. You know, and also I think from a consumer perspective, when, you know, you want to know when you land on someone's desk that they're able to really tailor your needs to what's available, not just what they have.
- [08:48]
Jeff Zimfer
All right, let me ask this question here. I've seen some people talk about concentration or specialization in a product type, and one example of that would be, you know, becoming a, it sounds funny for me to say this, but becoming a conventional loan specialist. Right. And what. So to unpack that a little bit, what. I mean, like, if it was this loan officer who did this scenario and they looked at like the percentage of loans that they closed, what were they, right. What were, how many were outside of the box, FHA versus conventional. What they found, anyway, bottom line is like, hey, 80%, 90% of my business falls into this bucket, conventional. And me getting muddied down in the waters of all these, you know, kind of one Offs and FHA and DPA and all this kind of stuff really negatively impacts my operational efficiencies and ability to scale. And wondering how you would feel about that based on like, you know, you think diversity of product line makes sense?
- [09:44]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And I can, I can really understand why that loan officer would, would think that way. Because the reality is, is 80% of the market, you know, if you drew a pie, 80% of the market is agency business. I think though, you know, when you're competing, especially with referral partners, you know, sometimes if everybody's walking in saying, I do conventional loans, it's like, okay, well what's the difference between you and somebody else? So then that person in particular would really need to differentiate themselves from a service level perspective in a pretty strong way. Because the reality is if I'm walking through the door and I'm talking about Renault and all these other things that I do, I think I might have the opportunity to brand myself as someone that can do all types of lending, which I personally believe in strong diversification of products. I don't think anyone should be the specialist of anything. I've just seen too many times. I mean, I ran one of the most, one of the biggest branches for Wells Fargo in Manhattan in private mortgage. And these guys in the height of 2021, we're doing $500 million, $400 million a year in business. Five, six assistants. I mean, they're the best of the best that, you know, working with clients that are really tough, really difficult customers and big pipelines. The reality is, as I watched that business go from like the most wanted thing, everybody wanted to write two, three, four million dollars loans to being something that like, oh my gosh, Now Manhattan is 70% cash. Now there's First Republic and now there's, you know, all these other banks stepping on the scene like crushing us in rate. We can't compete. It's impossible. Somebody else is offering crazy asset under management discount and like we can't meet that. You know, they already have their assets. With Chase, they have their assets. So it became very commoditized. And then those wealthy clients, they pay cash when times, times get hard. So set 70 cash in Manhattan overnight. So I just think that I've seen renovation specialists that used to work for companies that, that, that's all they did was renovation. That was it. They, they would get all the referral business from all the other loan officers that didn't do it. And it looked good at the time. But I saw that business completely go away. You know what? Renovation's not profitable anymore. We're going to get rid of that product. I've seen reverse go away. So I think history teaches us some lessons, and one of the things it teaches us is, like, you have to be ready to pivot quick, and you have to be very agile in this business. I even think I'll go further. Geographical diversity is really important, too. Like, I don't think loan officers can make a living just in one county in their state anymore at the level that they want to. Right. Like, if you really want to get out there, I think you got to be in Florida, you got to be in California, you got to be in New York, New Jersey. A loan officer that's just licensed in New Jersey running around one county. It doesn't make any sense to me anymore in this market.
- [12:28]
Jeff Zimfer
You don't think there's enough business in one's own backyard, right? Diamonds under your feet.
- [12:33]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah. I mean, well, I think it depends on what your. What your. What your standards are self. How much you really want to achieve. Yeah. If you think the 50% of loan officers, I think, are doing under $15 million a year, if that's where you want to be, there you go.
- [12:47]
Jeff Zimfer
That's the real. If you want to get the real point. Like, I mean, if you want to do $100 million. Right. Yeah. Can you pull that out of your backyard? I think it depends on your backyard. You know, like, Oklahoma might not be able to hit 100 million.
- [13:00]
Nicole Perrone
No, probably not. Probably not. And look, in this world, like, look, you're in. You're in Vegas. I'm in New Jersey. We don't even know. We don't even know each other. Today we're getting to know each other. Like, you could be a Realtor. I could have reached out to you as a Realtor on Instagram and said, hey, why don't we connect? Why don't we collaborate? We could have this zoom call. We could have an amazing conversation, and me and you could do business together. And now I've expanded. Now, if Hurricane Sandy hits New Jersey, or if I'm a loan officer in Tampa or Clearwater and all my inventory is gone and I can't land, and it's just a mashup, or there's a major snowstorm or a pandemic in the middle of Manhattan, now I can go plug into my Florida contacts or my Nevada contacts, and I could start upping that business and opportunity because I. Because I've expanded. I've Diversified.
- [13:43]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah, I would agree. Over the years that I've been in the business, I've seen an increased number of loan officers diversify states and get licensed in multiple states. You know, there's. There's two I know of. Top of mind. One, one. Leslie O'Neill, shout out. What's up, Leslie? If you're listening, I think she's got licenses in six states. Shout out to Leslie Dave Marzinki, if you're listening. California to Florida. Boy, he's licensed in both states. Others that I can't just remember right now, but I'm definitely seeing it happen. So what you're saying is true, the diversification and reaching into other states? Because what you referenced there is the migration we're seeing. Right. I left California six, seven years ago and moved here to Vegas. Lots of other people are doing that, right. To other places. So. Yeah, and the other thing, too.
- [14:26]
Nicole Perrone
Second homes.
- [14:27]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah, second homes. I'm looking for one right now. And for anybody who's licensed in Idaho, yo, hit me up. But.
- [14:36]
Nicole Perrone
Nobody said nobody hello, right?
- [14:39]
Jeff Zimfer
Exactly. Here come the dms, man.
- [14:42]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, exactly.
- [14:43]
Jeff Zimfer
This dovetails back into what you mentioned earlier, which is brand and in this new world and post Covid, what we came out of, you know, one of the positives, if that you know, of that, if you will, is what we're doing right now is we're communicating remotely. The zoom. Right. And the ability to actually facilitate transactions, dare I say relationships remotely. Right. Any. Any experience you want to share with that, of how that's evolved for you?
- [15:12]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, absolutely. I. I see loan officers today that aren't as engaged as they should be on social platforms as a way to generate new relationships and meet new people. And I call it social selling. I think it's the new way to, you know, the loan officers that started back in the day, some of them are still doing this, driving around once a week and stopping over at real estate offices. Well, instead of doing that, like, just get online and start reaching out to people that you want to try to do business with and stay connected with them there. I think, you know, I just give you a couple great examples through hosting a podcast. And by the way, this could be done through any forum you decide to. If you decide to do video on something completely different. Maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's products, but. Met an incredible guy, Eric Aramida, on Love it or listed HGTV. Amazing show. He did 10 seasons. We connected on Instagram. He saw. He saw the podcast. He loved it. We connected, and he came onto the Show Eric has 180,000 followers. He's a licensed New York, New Jersey realtor. Super connected. Have a deal with him right now, today. I would never have known him if it wasn't for connecting on Instagram. So I think that, you know, it just. The possibilities are really endless. For branding yourself, it's free. Marketing yourself online is free. Connecting with people is free. You don't have to spend any money on gas. You don't have to spend any money on donuts. You got to evolve in the way that you're doing business. And, you know, like, speaking of technology and utilizing it even with customers. Right. We just got done with a sales rally in Austin. One of the things I love about cross country is it's a true sales culture. And with all due respect to companies I've been at before, you can become a lazy seller. You know, here's my rate, here's my cost. My assistant's going to email it to you and let me know what you'd like to do. Where I grew up in a world where you spent a lot of time on rapport before you started talking about interest rates, you spent a lot of time on education before that, and you spent a lot of time face to face before you really got into those discussions. And so I think that we've taken this culture back to a consultative sales approach, where in sales, sometimes people think it's a dirty word. It's an amazing word. Selling, when you sell the right way, is about discovering someone's needs. It's about helping them understand things. It's about navigating them through a process. It's about walking them through so they make the best decision for themselves. It's not about just giving them what they think they want. Like, oh, okay, yeah, the rate today is X. And then three weeks go by and they still haven't locked in, and they don't even have a contract and they're working with someone else because that day the rate was Y and it was better. So meeting with customers over zoom is something that I think I would recommend people to do. It's a strong way to build rapport. You can share insights with one another. You can show them around your screen. You got to talk about your history in the business, what you do, your service, your goals. Before you get into anything associated with price or rate, you have to spend time there, leverage technology to do zoom, to create relationships, to deepen the ones that you have. This is like, to me, this is like a lunch. I don't do lunch appointments. Anymore. I do podcasts. Right. I do zoom calls. I mean, sometimes I'll go to networking events and things like that. I'm still very involved in that stuff, but I'm not, I'm not sitting down for a two hour lunch in the middle of the day for $150 anymore.
- [18:37]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah. And the people you want to work with, they don't have time to do that either. Until you get to that stage where it's appropriate to. All right, let's, let's dig in, right? Let's break bread and all that. Are you integrating this, you know, zoom or whatever experience into your. Or you recommending or coaching loan officers that they integrate Zoom into kind of like that, you know, initial discovery process?
- [18:58]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, 100%. We, we speak about it a lot here and it's, it's, it's, it's a huge part of what we do. There are some people that their whole day is just filled with zooms because that's every call, whether it's a pre approval, it's like, hey, you know, Jeff, let's hop on a, on a quick zoom call. When do you have some time to be in front of a camera? Let's connect. I want to tell you about me, who I am, what we do here. I want to learn about you.
- [19:22]
Jeff Zimfer
Do you have any take on, on how that. Yeah, not that. I'm just curious. Like, do you have any, you know, not, not official feedback or data from the streets? I mean, because I've, I've definitely floated and there's other lo's out there, you know, who, like shout out. Denise Donahue. Right? Another shout out. Like she does that a lot with her process, the consumer adoption of that. Any, any quick take on that. It's consumers willingness to get on a zoo.
- [19:49]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, I would say it's like a super normal thing. I think, I think we have, have had more discomfort with it.
- [19:56]
Jeff Zimfer
We overthink it.
- [19:57]
Nicole Perrone
I think it's just like it's normal, right? It's in our mind. It's like, oh, I'm going to ask someone to get on camera on their, on their. Like, it's, it's like at home. Like, it's almost like it's our own, like pre. It's our own inability to evolve quickly and just like make it normal. Like, hey, let's jump on a zoom later. If someone's like, oh, no, I don't do zoom or I don't want to be on camera. Fine. If they don't want to be on camera, they don't have to be, but that's how you set it up. So I think the reception is extremely high. And I'll say this, like, I have a lot of loan officers I talk to about coming on to work here at Cross Country. And that's a predominant part of what I do, is I work with loan officers, try to help them see what we have here behind the door, walk them through all the rooms in the house, and then let them make a decision about what's best for them. Because I really do think people might think where they are is good. It's okay, but it could be amazing and great somewhere else. I think we owe it to ourselves to figure that out. But I'll tell you this, that, you know, people don't work with the companies that have the most competitive rate, right? It's not, if that was the case, better Rate.com would have the most market share, you know, in the country. And so some people are very hesitant to make a move because they feel like my rates are really, really, really sharp here. And it's just so great right now. And I gotta tell you, I think that the success that I've seen the people here have with a rate that sometimes an eighth higher, a quarter higher, sometimes it be, sometimes it's better, sometimes it's not. But I think people need to get back to understanding what their value is. Is. Someone said to me the other day on my podcast that they. They're a flipper. They buy and flip houses. And they said that, you know, think about when you trade a car in, right? Most people that have a used car, they want to buy a new one, they trade it in. They don't detail it and take pictures of it, put it on CarGurus and wait four months for it to sell because that's not as convenient as taking it to the dealership and trading it in. Right. And they know they're going to get less money when they go and trade it in, but they do that because it's more convenient, because it's easier, and it helps them with this process that they're going through. So there's something to be said about service and convenience and the experience you give someone, and there's a price for that. And so I think we get very comfortable with having that conversation here. And I think when you can have it and look at someone, I think it helps them understand what that really. What that really is. It helps you convey your message and your passion.
- [22:13]
Jeff Zimfer
Agreed. I think the takeaway from that little session there is adaptability, both in terms of product suite. Right. And then personal brand, which we're going to unpack now. But also being, you know that term modern mortgage advisor, and the ability to have these connections without necessarily needing to be in person. Yeah. And streamline your business. Love it. Hey, podcast family. Are you tired of chasing down real estate agents for referrals, making cold calls and feeling like you're just not getting the results you deserve? What if in just 90 days you could double your agent referrals and finally lock in that consistent monthly income you've been striving for? My Agent Classes is the ultimate program designed to help you effortlessly attract, engage, and convert real estate agents into top referral partners. We've done the hard work for you. You'll get a full library of turnkey done for you presentations, a marketing automation platform to streamline the entire process. Plug and play marketing email flyers, social media posts, text messages, weekly coaching and accountability calls. Plus access to a private community of high performing mortgage pros from all over the country sharing what's working in today's market. And to top it off, we'll even load you up with 200 producing agents in your local market to help you get started fast. So stop chasing agents and start building meaningful relationships that lead to real, consistent business without the stress of cold calling or feeling undervalued. And don't just take my word for it. Head on over to MortgageMarketing Pro or check the link in the show notes and you can read real success stories from mortgage pros just like you. So if you're finally ready to grow your agent referrals without chasing and have fun doing it, check out Mortgage Marketing Pro today. Let's pivot then and let's now jump in to talk about what you're doing, which is building this brand, right? Which is Billion Dollar Banker. Like that definitely. When I saw that come across my feed as that definitely like, you know, interrupts my pattern and I'm like, whoa. Well, all right, time out. What's. What's, what's. What's Billion Dollar Banker? What's she doing there, man? What's she, what's she building? Like, tell me about that. Where did that, what was the origin story of that?
- [24:20]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, it's. So it actually started with me. It evolved. But what it started with me thinking like, you know, our industry, we haven't done a very good job attracting talent into the mortgage business. Attracting new talent, right? For every 10 people that leave, there's like nobody that comes in, right? Unless it's like somebody's child, they're convincing to work on their team or something like that. You're not seeing people, you know, run to, I want to be a mortgage banker, right? But conversely, in the real estate industry, yeah, like, they don't even know what bankers look like. Like, if they were to, if, if I were to ask someone to draw me what a banker looks like, a mortgage banker, I don't even want to see what the picture would look like.
- [24:56]
Jeff Zimfer
Old white guy. That's what it looked like.
- [24:59]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, like, you know, disheveled suit or something. Yeah, I don't know. But, but so we conversely think about real estate, right? Think about what real estate has done to make it an exciting place for new young professionals that want to come into this atmosphere of real estate. And so the one of the shows that had done that is Million Dollar Listing, right? And I jokingly said, like, someone needs to make a show called the Billion Dollar Banker, you know, and because at the time, our team, we had teammates that were doing a billion dollars in business. I had, I mean, our, our office funded $2.1 billion, a group of 16 loan officers in one year. So it just like, and to me, I'm like, we're, you know, we're like, we're servicing all these agents, like the big time agents that are on these million dollar listing shows. We're working with them on deals. We're like, this is fun. Like, the drama, the excitement. So it kind of started with the idea, like, wouldn't that be cool if someone could make mortgage banking sexy, right? Like, someone could turn it up and say, like, wow, that looks like I would love to do that. I would love to make that kind of money, but I don't think anyone has really, really done that. It wasn't about, like, I would be the one to do it. It was just. I love the idea. I love the sound of the Billion Dollar Banker. And so being that I funded billions of dollars of business in my career, I've managed billions of dollars of business. I said, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if this name could work for our handles and for our branding. And then as time went on, what it would have started to mean to me and represent to me, because I was in this transition in my career is that, like, I can accomplish anything. I can be anybody. I could do anything, I can create anything. And that name now, it signifies, like, my ability to take a risk and take a chance and to be vulnerable and to step outside my comfort zone and to really try to do something that I'VE never done before. Right. To leave a great position at an amazing company and to decide to start fresh and new and see who wants to come with me and pave a path and make a decision for myself and believe in myself. So when I see that logo, it's a representation of transition and opportunity for me and most of all, potential. And so it makes me excited and I love it. And it's catchy. So, yeah, that works.
- [27:14]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah. And there's a strategy you have with this now as well, around content, right?
- [27:19]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah. Yeah. So we obviously have launched the Billion Dollar Banker podcast, and I'm the host of the show, and we shoot at an amazing studio. We've had some incredible guests. Our mission is to just inspire and empower people through the stories of others people's trials and tribulations, and to help these other individuals, these guests, share their message and to continue to create value for our audience. And it's an evolution. It's a constant feedback loop. When you're doing these things, you gotta be vulnerable, put yourself out there. And I think ultimately, if you just keep with it, like any other activity you do in life, it'll pay off through time.
- [28:01]
Jeff Zimfer
Okay, a couple questions, then. Let's. Let's go a little bit deeper here. I'm looking at your Instagram page right now. I got your YouTube up in the other tab over here. What's. When did you launch the podcast?
- [28:14]
Nicole Perrone
Seven months ago.
- [28:15]
Jeff Zimfer
Seven months ago. So what's happened thus far in terms of, like, you mentioned that one individual from the show saw the podcast or whatever, but what's bubbling up for you, you think since launching the brand and the content strategy?
- [28:30]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, I think, you know, some things are just brand plays where people. I'll be places and people will say, you're the Billion Dollar Bank. Like. Like that. You're the billion dollar banker. Like, I've seen your stuff, I've seen your show. It's so cool. I love it. Like, you do mortgages, right? Like, so that when someone says that to me, like, what it means is, like, okay, because some days you'll wake up and you're like, is this really working? Right? Like, right. You know, you spent a lot of time doing this, so. And then when you have a moment like that, you're like, okay, it's working because I'm branding myself. Someone saw me. They know who I am already. And that, you know, for a realtor to say that, especially, like, she's like, you know, I would love to work with someone like you like that, that's just amazing. I didn't pick up a phone, I didn't go to a open house or brokers open. I'm just pouring myself into these videos and something's coming of it. So there's, there's the brand opportunity that comes from that. There's the collaboration opportunity that comes for people like you and I where I can say hey, you know, I have 40,000 followers and growing, you know, I'm literally can offer you something of pretty, pretty substantial value and vice versa. Right, because you have all these followers too and say like wow, like we can cross collaborate amongst our communities and share one another's message and literally just help each other out and help our audience out. So it's just kind of a win win all around. And I think ultimately as your audience continues to grow and you look back three years, four years, five years after doing it, you're going to say like wow, I've, I've, I've, I've had people come up to me now and say I would love for you to coach me. I'm like how do you do this? Like do you, can you, can you do some trainings? And I've actually started a coaching program now where I'm teaching people how to step out and get into the social media world. I'm teaching people how to stay accountable with those activities because I think there's a real need for people to have help in that space that aren't, you know, just aren't sure how to help themselves. And then a lot of mortgage opportunity and Realtor relationships and amazing people. So like I said, Eric Aramita who love it or list it was on our show was amazing. He had 10 seasons on HDTV. Phenomenal phenomenal guy and, and has had a ton of success. We just had John Stein Graver who was on a E's 24 hour flip which was, was a great show about how he's a real estate investor who's flipping houses in 24 hours. So just some incredible people. Just had Max tremble on who's a, a life love coach who has a tremendous following on, on Instagram and beyond. He hosts retreats all over the country. So I'm learning things, our audience is learning things. People are getting to know who I am. I'm helping other people expand their network and vice versa. And it's just, it's just been a win win all around. It's a great place to create community and I'm loving doing it, I really am.
- [31:13]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah, there's so many opportunities that come from It. I'm curious from a content strategy standpoint because, you know, I've had multiple conversations with LOS over the years. The content focus and yours isn't specifically mortgage related all the time, from what I can gather. Correct. And tell me about what your thought is around content.
- [31:39]
Nicole Perrone
So. Well, I think everybody has to follow what they feel like is most comfortable for them and what they think is their path. Right. Because some people might not feel comfortable doing a podcast, might not feel comfortable on video, but some people create amazing videos and you never even see their face. Right. So I think you got to tailor it to what's best for you. But I do think similar to when you sit down on a sales call with someone, if you and I went out to lunch and I said, hey, Jeff, could we go out to lunch? I'm in the mortgage business. You're. You're a realtor. I would love to connect and see, see if we have some synergies and you say, yes, and we sit down. I'm not going to spend. I'm, I'm going to spend the smallest amount of time talking about the mortgages. Right. I'm going to spend most of the time trying to get to know who you are. You get to know who I am or what I'm interested in, what you're interested in. And so I kind of look at content the same way people, people start to get to know you, they start to get to know who you are, and then. And then inevitably, like, they know what you do. Right. And at some point, there is a sales process to this. There is the asking for the business, there is hopefully finding what problems people have and presenting solutions. And I think that's why a lot of these podcasts, inevitably, you know, you offer a program, you offer a coaching program, or you offer a service or a product. And so there is an element to all this that's, there's monetization 100%. And those strategies we've been kind of working on now. And in the coming months, we're opening up the opportunity for sponsorships for 2025, where, you know, if you're a local business and you see our, you see our show and people you know have been on it and you want to advertise on the show, we're opening up those opportunities. And I think, Jeff, honestly, I think it's the greatest place that local businesses can spend money. Instead of being at a trade show with a table and a couple pamphlets for 50 or 100 people, sponsor a podcast. I think that's the best Place you could spend sponsorship money today, even, even beyond newspapers and magazines. I think that's. That's the new wave.
- [33:40]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah, that's a great point. When you think about it. What are these people that are potential sponsors, businesses, colleagues and affiliates within the industry? They're all looking for reach, right? And so this goes back to why you're building a personal brand. Why you should be a content creator in this new world, is because you're building an audience, right? You're building a community is the latest buzzword. People are moving away from audience and now using community. But I get it, it's true, right? I heard this saying the other day that content is no longer king. Community is the queen and she rules the place.
- [34:12]
Nicole Perrone
I love that.
- [34:13]
Jeff Zimfer
So I agree, though.
- [34:14]
Nicole Perrone
Great quote. It's a good reminder. Yeah, right.
- [34:16]
Jeff Zimfer
I mean, you've got various communities, you've got your Instagram, you've got your Facebook or YouTube or whatever. These are all, you know, quote, unquote, audiences, slash communities. But that's the point, I think, is to take this, quote, audience eyeballs attention and then migrate a percentage of those to a community engagement. You know, over time, you're building this trust and all those types of things. And so you're going to have relationships, outreach, down in the dms, right? Bubble up all from that. And it's just beginning for you. It's just starting for you right now. I was going to say, your point about the sponsors is as if you compare that to like traditional advertising, even. Even Facebook ads. The. The advantage for you being at the, at the helm of this community, right, is you have reach of an audience who's engaged and we know who the audience is. And so that's whatever the quote, unquote, sponsor, person, guest host. That's why they're like, yeah, you have a podcast, you have an audience. I want to get my message out there. And just the symbiotic relationship of what comes out of that. Not all the time, of course, but I'm sure you're already seeing it where people are like, hey, this was really cool. Hey, what can. Oh, will you do this? Like, yeah, let's meet. I got a deal here. Like, it's already happening for you, right?
- [35:30]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's just, I, like, I tell other loan officers now, like, this is just another sales activity now. You know, it's add it to the. Add it to the calls, add it to the database outreach, add it to the lunch appointments, maybe substitute it for lunch appointments if you can. But I mean, anyone can jump on live, anyone can jump on a zoom and do something similar to this and they meet someone interesting, you know, send it out or I tell loan officers to take the things you're doing today anyway and just publicize them. Just. There's so many people that even, you know, you look at a data, an email database as an example. Most loan officers, they don't. They don't email their personal contacts. They don't email their friends they went to college with or high school with or their local community, their neighbors, the people they go to school, sports with and all that stuff. They don't. The people at the gym, none of those people. But all those people are on their Facebook, on their Instagram, right? And many of them don't even know what you do because they're not really looking at the flyer you posted or like, whatever, whatever information that like is irrelevant. But they'll look at your video. They'll look at your video and you're like, hey, guys, I'm at this amazing open house today. I just wanted to show you. I'm with my, the coolest realtor in the world over here. Come take a look with us. They'll look at that, right? They'll look at the presentation that you're giving in front of a real estate office. Put that on video, get set up the tripod, hire a cameraman. We need to spend money on marketing, and we need to be marketing companies first and everything else second. And that's, that's in any business. And I'm, I'm an entrepreneur, I own other businesses, and I can't tell you how much comes from lead generation social media and the marketing spend. I mean, it should probably be 20% of what everybody's spending their money on should be marketing.
- [37:14]
Jeff Zimfer
I love that you just said that. And if I can for a moment, I'm going to riff on a post that I put in a private Facebook group that I have for loan officers that comes from Alex Hermosi. I'm sure you know who Alex is. I'm not going to go through the seven points, but you just highlighted a couple of them. Number one, nobody knows you exist. You need to advertise more, period. Like, big takeaway right there. I tell you what's so funny about that, Nicole. A quick side note is, you know, after doing this podcast for eight years, you think you're reaching people.
- [37:50]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, yeah, I got a lot of.
- [37:53]
Jeff Zimfer
Work ahead of me. You know what I mean? It's just like there's just so many people to reach and that's why the consistency. And you've got to constantly put your else yourself out there because people forget short term memory. Like if I don't. Out of sight, out of mind. Right. Crazy.
- [38:07]
Nicole Perrone
You know what? You're probably learning so much as you go along the way. And everyone I talk to that's doing podcasts today, I'm like, we need to start a podcast community, a podcaster community where we can recovery group. Yeah. Ideas and philosophies. And look, it's just like anything else. I tell loan officers that used to do open houses as a way of building relationships. It was like, you can't just judge it off that one open house. Look, go do it consistently for three months and see what comes of it. Right, right. And so this is a long term thing and I know you know that and realize that. And that's why we reached out to you and wanted to be on your show and be involved. And you have great content, you have good information. I like how it's very targeted too. I like how it's targeted to this, this market.
- [38:51]
Jeff Zimfer
Well, I'm a former LO. Right. For 10 years. And so I totally, I have a ton of empathy and understanding. Right. And I'm still connected. I still do a lot of things in the market, such as you mentioned a moment ago, presentations, teaching classes and workshops. I want to get a little bit tactical for a minute on the referral side, the realtor referral side of things. Because whenever I, you know, it's funny, you know, when we talk about these new media kind of modern strategies of content and podcast and video and all that kind of stuff and it's all useful and have, it has its relevancy. I always like to dig a little bit deeper on somebody like you to find out. You're like. One of the questions I always ask is like, what's your primary source of business? And I've asked that of hundreds of top producers. So I'd be curious to get your hot take then on where you, in terms of activities, how you balance the traditional classes, workshops, whatever, going to the open versus this new kind of media thing.
- [39:49]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah. And so. Well, I think it can all be one thing. Right? It all can be one thing. I just talked to a loan officer the other day and said, I just don't know what to do. What content should I do? If I do content, I'm like, let's just start with this. How about everything you do already? You document it. Document. Document your phone calls that you make to realtors in the morning. Document Your open house visits, document your brokers opens, document your office visits, document your presentations that you're doing two, three a month of those. So like that's net time. There's nothing else. I, I told her there's nothing else that, no additional effort at all other than you calling right now a camera person and saying, I want to spend a thousand dollars a month and have you follow me around for 10 hours a month or whatever it is. Let's say cameraman charges a hundred dollars an hour here across country we have an in house video editor, which is amazing. So you know anyone that's done video editing, you know, that saves a tremendous amount. I mean I probably have 60, 70 videos edited clips edited a month. I mean that would, at $15 a clip, let's say that's expensive. Yeah, so, so I think, I think you have to think about it, about like what you're doing today, how can you document it and then how can you, can you add a little something in between? How can you add a little something extra in between? Like maybe just your walk in the morning and talk to people about what's going on in the market or you know, something that happened industry wise, you know, or education. I mean you look at like the tiktoks of the world now. It's like that's where people Google now. That's like you know how to make spaghetti. You don't Google it and read an article, you, you watch a 15 second video and like now you know how to make spaghetti.
- [41:32]
Jeff Zimfer
I have, I have a, I have a saved Instagram recipes, you know, so there we go.
- [41:38]
Nicole Perrone
See, there you go. Exactly. And you don't need to be like 19 to do this. You could be, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, doesn't matter. That's where people are. So you want to make videos about educating people. You know, I think these are all the things that you're having conversations about already. Use it as a tool to like, hey, I'm going to explain this one product and then the next time I want to solicit for this product, I'm going to have my list of accountants or financial advisors or realtors. And now you take that one message and you can take that and you could spread it to thousands of people. When I send an email out, it goes to 6,000 people. So if we did this today at lunch, Jeff, nobody would hear about it. It would just be our little conversation. But now your followers plus my followers plus 6,000 people in my email are gonna, hopefully somebody's gonna click on this, a lot more than just me and you, at least.
- [42:29]
Jeff Zimfer
Which reminds me, gotta take a photo, right, for the stories. All right, real quick, before we run out of time, I wanna talk about on my whiteboard. I have be brilliant in the basics. I want to get your quick, hot take on the mistake that what I want to. I want to make sure people listening are not hearing. Nicole's not saying abandon, quote unquote, what works. Do not abandon the relationship building. Let's take realtors, for example, because it's easy to throw the realtors under the bus. And a lot of people are saying, you know, consumer, direct buy leads, all that. Look, there's a hundred ways to do the business. But you obviously, you know, with your experience in wide breadth of access to loan officers, do you think the. How do I say this? Where would you rank the importance of realtor relationships of referrals even in this modern market?
- [43:25]
Nicole Perrone
I still think that historically the top producers in this industry, the ones that I've managed most of their business, comes from Realtors. But I do just the same way. I believe in the diversity of products, I believe in diversity of referral sources because again, everything changes. It could change overnight. One day they could be like, no more realtors. I mean, the likelihood is maybe very slim. But what if that was the case? What if it was like, hey, you know what? Zillow is going to sell your house now we've banned realtors. It's finished. And so now what? You don't want to recreate the wheel at that point. You want to have accountants you're working towards relationships with. You want to have builders. Like, I can't tell you how many loan officers I've coached from dependency on realtors to builders. When we have inventory challenges. That's another example where we are today. You might have 50 realtors you work with and most of them you're talking to today are like, there's nothing to buy, there's no houses. I don't know what to do. It's just been the worst year ever. So what do you do? You got to figure out a solution. So I think builders, financial advisors, accountants, realtors, you got to have a good spread of all. In New York, when I worked in Manhattan, majority of our team, their business was their past clients. Like 30, 40% of their book was past client business. In the city, people tend to move a little bit more, move up, move out, second homes, etc, so don't discount your book of business either. It should be a pretty even split between a bunch of different things. It's the same thing. Like your product should be diversification.
- [45:02]
Jeff Zimfer
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. We are unfortunately out of time, but this has been incredibly amazing. I'd love to have you back perhaps in 2025 sometime and do an update. I'm going to put links to everything that I have in the show notes for people to go follow you. But what would be a couple of shout outs where they can go right now as they're listening?
- [45:21]
Nicole Perrone
Yeah, please check us out on YouTube at Billion Dollar Banker and also an Instagram at Billion Dollar Banker. Everything's at Billion Dollar Banker. And you know, we're just going to continue to put out content. Hopefully you guys love it and can stay connected. And as time goes on, there'll be much more that we continue to share. It's going to be a little break now for two months as everyone should be taking a little bit of a reprieve from working in the business. Start working on it. Think about next year. Think about your vision, your plan, Reach high for your goals. Don't settle. Know that you can achieve anything you really set your mind to. And if you're looking for more leadership, more direction and you just want to do more, I'm always here to talk.
- [46:01]
Jeff Zimfer
That's awesome. Yeah, thank you so much. And I would definitely encourage you guys to go follow her via all the links in the show notes. She's got some amazing content and incredible leader as well. Nicole, thank you so much for making time.
- [46:11]
Nicole Perrone
Jeff, thank you for having me on your amazing show and I look forward to watching your journey and seeing you again soon.
- [46:17]
Jeff Zimfer
My pleasure, listeners, you know what to do. Follow the links in the show notes, leave us a review and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Okay, that's it for today's episode. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes. Your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to cold call again, instead building real lasting relationships with top producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations, marketing, automation, weekly coaching. It's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit MortgageMarketing Pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.