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- [00:00]
Todd Ballinger
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Jeff
Hey, what's up my friend? Welcome to the first interview for 2025. On this episode I'm featuring my friend Todd Ballinger. I believe it's at least his second, perhaps his third visit to the podcast and it's an appropriate time to be talking about this in the current market because we are in a transaction recession. Overall transaction volume is down.
- [00:30]
Todd Ballinger
Right.
- [00:31]
Jeff
There's a lot of shifting and moving movement going on in the industry both on the Realtor and mortgage side. And so Todd, I wanted to have a conversation with him about, you know, the difference between Realtor versus financial advisor insurance professional as referral partners plus and minuses and most importantly how to add financial advisors insurance professionals as a another pillar to your business as a source of your business. If you followed me for any time now, you obviously know that I'm bullish on Realtors as referral partners for the ob reasons of that they are focused on transactions and actively seeking opportunities for people buying and selling homes which if your relationships are lined up correctly, thus benefits you. However, those markets can often be affected by cycles and so it makes sense if you've ever thought about adding another pillar to your business. Well, one pillar is the financial advisor side of things, which includes insurance, CPA and all that as well. And so there are few experts that I know that I would use that term expert in the country for people who are well versed in steeped in that side of the business, such as financial advisors. So Todd's got a ton of knowledge and wealth about this. He's co founded 10 companies, he's been in the mortgage business for decades, refers to himself as 84 years old, but more importantly he is the founder of Borrowsmart University and founder of a program called the Certified Liability Advisor. He actually hosts a community of like minded mortgage professionals. The links are in the show notes to all his stuff that we talk about here on the podcast. And if you're looking to get educ if you're looking to get financially fiscally literate in a way that will help and equip you with approaching financial advisors insurance insurance professionals to have meaningful conversations that are going to generate opportunities for you, this is the podcast for you and Todd is the guy to follow and get more information from. So with that said, remember that if you are still in a situation where you do need more or better Realtor referrals, the best way to do that is by going one to many, reaching realtors at scale with a value proposition that's attracting versus chasing and that is through educational Content and classes what we do in the My Agent classes community A win of the week. I wanted to share with you one of our members orey shout out to you. He recently taught one of our classes. He had 13 people register, 11 showed up and had a top five buyer agent show up who he has tried to approach before but never really got any engagement. And post class he was set up with all the realtors in the class but one wanted to meet up, set meetings with him which he did with most. He's got referrals, closed transactions and specifically from that top five buyer agent. And he is getting in front of agents at scale minimizing the ups and downs of this transactional cycle that we're in right now. So if you want to learn more about how we do that, you can go over to the link in the show notes which is the My Agent classes link in the show notes. Check that out and look at the other success stories. Testimonial testimonials we've got there. See if the program is right for you. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show.
- [03:41]
Todd Ballinger
Todd Ballinger, welcome back to the show.
- [03:44]
Jeff, thanks for having me man. Happy to be here.
- [03:47]
Happy to have you. First interview of 2025. And I like this because I think when we're entering a new year, I don't know about you or the listener. I do a lot of evaluating, like what do I want to do? Like how do I want to show up? Who do I want to be? What's my business going to look like? All the business planning. And I think this is a relevant conversation. We have had a lot going on, obviously since you and I last talked a new president, interest rates are different. But before we get into that, for anybody who might not be familiar with who you are and what you do, what would you like to share?
- [04:19]
I'm kind of a performance coach meets financial literacy financial advisor person. Kind of most famous for creating the first mortgage industry designation back in 1997, which was the certified mortgage planner. And then we added some other designations that the one our main one cla. But we've been big fans of that. My sort of goal has been sort of incorporating financial literacy and financial engagement into the lending process, which is something I'm sure we'll talk about if we talk about financial advisors and working with them today. And you know, big picture before I leave the industry, I want to train a thousand loan officers to become liability advisors. So that's sort of my biggest I call it my Last hurrah.
- [05:04]
Okay, so that answers the question for people curious about cla Certified Liability Advisor, is that correct?
- [05:09]
That's right, Yep.
- [05:10]
Why don't you break that down briefly? What does that really mean in.
- [05:15]
In. In simple terms? I use an analogy of the balance sheet that I think most people, loan officers, spent their lives, you know, looking at 1003s, and that is a balance sheet, right? And you have two sides. You have assets and liabilities. When I started my career, I was a financial advisor and I crossed the balance sheet. That was my first book ever was called Crossing the Balance Sheet. And it was a book about why I left the financial planning industry, become a mortgage lender. And that was actually done with a professor at the University of North Carolina back in 1993. And what we found was we could have a bigger impact on people on the liability side of the balance sheet. And we could the asset side, because it was more expenses there. The house was 40% of the typical person's expenses. There were all these mistakes they were making there that were keeping them from getting to the asset side of the balance sheet where they could create wealth. So that's why we crossed it. But financial advisors, they own the asset side of the balance sheet. That means any asset from. From cash, stocks, bonds, securities, private equity. I mean, they don't say, I'm going to just do this one little thing. I want to. I want to manage your assets, and I want to do that for one purpose. I want to increase your wealth over time. What I realized on the lending industry side, or what I'll call the left side of the balance sheet, it was a very narrow focus on, like, mortgage. And then that way we weren't managing liabilities, we were selling mortgage loans. Right. So I was a financial advisor. I'd come to this industry in the lending side, and I said, wait, I want to be. I want to be like I was over here, but I want to own the left side of the balance sheet. So I want to look at credit card debt, home equity lines, any kind of borrowing. What's the funny. Because I believe ultimately people who own a home do so not just because of the quality of life. There is a financial component to it. So we actually say there's house and home. Home is the experience that you have living in a house, and it's very emotional and it's very important. But house is a physical structure. It appreciates and depreciation depreciates. It has maintenance and cost. It's like that's sort of the logical side of living indoors. So home is really important, but we focus on the house and you can show, just like going to college, you'll make over 1.2 to $1.4 million more of your lifetime than someone to high school. We can see the people who own real estate versus renting end up being much wealthier over time because of that compounding, because of that wealth dynamic of appreciation and tax benefits and other things that are actually psychologically proven career advancement from the stability of owning your home versus renting. There's all these interesting things about that which could be another topic someday. But at the end of the day you want to live in a house. And once you live in a house, you have this experience called home. You can have an experience called home in a rental is still home to you. Right? You make it home, but you can't, you know, but owning the house versus say renting the house is a very different experience. So we said, look, we want to own that, that left side of the balance sheet, Anything associated with this thing. And that led us to the third side of the balance sheet and that's real estate. And that sounds a little weird to say. It's really a three sided balance sheet. But real estate is something that we all have in common as well. You know, I live indoors, you live indoors. Most of us want to live indoors our entire life. And at some point that's not going to be our parents. It's going to be a place that we pay a mortgage. And you always pay a mortgage. It's either your mortgage or your landlord's mortgage. Once you leave your parents house, you are always going to pay a mortgage. The question then becomes which strategy creates the most wealth for me over my lifetime. And it is a 20 to $25 million potential decision. A lot of people don't understand the magnitude of the compounding of living indoors. If you say starting at 21, I'm out of my parents house. And for some people it's 18, let's say 21. You'll live in a house until you're what? Yeah, 70s, until you die.
- [09:28]
Yeah, right.
- [09:29]
And so, and if you move into assisted living, guess what? Your mortgage payment is going to quadruple because now you're going to pay ten grand a month to live indoors. So you're always, and you're just paying a commercial mortgage at that point. So you want to do that as late in the game as possible. 72. We compound every seven years. What starts to happen is these decisions you make at 20 and 25 30, 35 round real estate compounding. We have examples where you can show that it's a 10, 20, $25 million decision because of the compounding of wealth. Money doubles every seven years in a 10%, say, growth environment. So the last double is massive. Like if, if you're 72 and you've got 2 million, your next double by 79 is 4 million. And at 79, if you have one more double 86, that's 8 million. So these, these kind of, these decisions are really important, but the cla, it's like understanding that not only is there a different game to play, but you could actively be impactful in a totally different way with a client. And by doing that also you can start to create totally new referral models that you didn't know existed. You know, with all these other financial oriented people out there in the world. Okay, long answer.
- [10:46]
But hey, yeah, we'll come back to cla, actually in a few minutes we get more specific about that and the value and why would somebody want to consider being a cla, you know, benefits, all that kind of jazz. Let's, let's pivot for a moment because, you know, back to like the start of the year, people are looking at their business plan, activities, how do I grow my business? We're in a, what I've heard referred to as a transaction recession. As a matter of fact, I was watching a video yesterday that said that I think it was mortgage applications for purchases are down 10% this month, which is huge. So knowing the listener, the average listener is like, you know, loan officer, mortgage professional, needing to originate loans to grow their business, feed their family. I spend, because being a former originator, you as well, we both can, can relate to this. I spent a lot of my time thinking how do we get people to deals faster, right, with those sources. And so you and I kind of, before hitting record, kind of played around with this, the battle of the referral partners idea, Realtor versus financial advisor. And I want to unpack that a little bit and maybe it makes sense to set the frame first and foremost. It's not one versus the other. Right. It's both. But let's talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages. Let me, let me, seeing as I kind of have owned this setup, let me frame this and then you can kind of, you know, jump in and play from here. I think end of last year I was creating some content around the difference between a realtor versus a financial advisor. And here's the positioning I took on, that is who gets Paid for, actively seeking out clients for you. Right. Realtor versus financial advisor. Like a realtor gets paid when they sell a house.
- [12:26]
Right.
- [12:27]
And so they're either finding somebody to sell a house or finding somebody to buy a house. And so therefore they are actively involved on a day to day, week to week, hopefully basis where they're going to be, you know, seeking opportunities, prospects, et cetera. My proposition was that if you've got your relationships lined up correctly, then you are the beneficiary of the activity of the real estate agent who's doing that consistently throughout the year. And the parallel to that was the financial advisor. Right. Correct me if I'm wrong. Obviously not focused on acquiring people to buy a house, but doing other things. So there we go. That's my first positioning. I'll allow you to respond.
- [13:02]
Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, so, so, right on. So the Realtors primary economic incentive is to close real estate transactions right. Now, would you agree that they're going to get paid whether there's a mortgage or not?
- [13:17]
Yeah, absolutely.
- [13:18]
Right. And if every client walked into their office to buy a house, paid cash, nothing, you could be completely disintermediated. Right. As a mortgage professional. So the Realtor is out there advocating for themselves, as we all are, because they want to earn commissions and stuff. They use the loan officer because they have to. And it's because most consumers can't pay cash. Right. So that's just one thing I would throw out there. The second thing is the realtors themselves are not able to make markets. And by making a market, we're in a transaction recession because of inventory constraints. In many markets we're also there because of interest rate constraints and I would even, even say tax policy because a lot of the people that I know are stuck in their house because if they did sell it, the capital gains they'd have to pay. Even with the, you know, section one, you know, 61, 53, those kind of things for capital gains still leave them writing 100 $200,000 check that that then reduces what they have to buy the next house, which is going to go from four and a half percent to seven percent. So the shock of all that is such that they're really kind of handcuffed and stuck. So the realtor can advocate for customers and if that customer needs financing, then come to you as a resource, but they can't actively create a market that doesn't exist. And what one of the benefits, and this is kind of flipping to the financial advisor side is they may have 100 200, 300 clients. You show them a reverse mortgage strategy that releases equity that can be used for long term care and retirement planning and increase that customer's income in retirement. You suddenly are making a new market for yourself because they may have seven customers right now that need that particular help or an advisor whose client we're going to call the mass affluent. There's different criteria. There's sort of starter, your Henry's high income, not rich yet. You're, you're wealthy, you're your, your family office type people there. There's five or six categories of wealth in the United States that advisors look at. But the mass affluent, which is the majority. We're seeing an ameriprise client come in with a hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt because they've, they've been sort of thinking they were going to do something and then they, you know, they didn't sell the house or they didn't refinance or whatever they keep. And suddenly the advisor's saying look, I got a client, here's a situation. They got a $600,000 house with a $200,000 mortgage and they got a hundred thousand credit card debt. Right? That's that you can make a market because if you educate an advisor on what that does for that client, consolidating that, that. We just did a case Yesterday, the average EPR on the debt was over 8% for the client. They had a four and a half percent, you know, first mortgage, like a 9% second mortgage and then 100,000 credit card debt. It was around 24%. Well jeez, you wait that out, right? A 7% mortgage is a great deal when you're paying you know, eight and a half, nine percent on all side debt. So that creates an opportunity to make a totally new market which is what you're saying is spot on. If you're in a transaction recession you want as many possible opportunities for transactions as possible. And that means you've got to go out and see people that you haven't seen before. Because my guess is if the realtor and I, I've seen different statistics. I think we're down close to a third of the, the industry professionals that are still in the mortgage industry right now compared to we were in 2021. I mean we're down to about 84,000ish, you know, people and they're giving up their licenses, they're not doing a lot of the renewals and stuff. They're, they're exiting or re retiring. A lot of people came back and now re retire again. So the people that are still in the industry are going to be calling them those realtors. So it's, it's sort of a red ocean. If I'm calling, if I got five people in my community calling the same cold banker agent. So you gotta do that, but you gotta also be calling people that no one's calling on right now. And the blue ocean is, is sort of this other group.
- [17:39]
I love that. I love the context. What I wrote down then is you said realtors don't make markets. So what I wrote down is the loan officer needs to make their own markets.
- [17:47]
Absolutely. Because making, making a market the trend. We have these things, we call it the three major pivots in our, in our little program. And the first one is moving from selling mortgages to becoming a liability advisor. The second one is moving from, from engaging the market to making a market. And it's a, it's a major mindset shift when you realize this loan officer got in our program in December. He's called on 23 financial advisors so far that he's met with eight of them have referred him alone so far.
- [18:20]
Refi, probably a deck and sol or.
- [18:21]
Something or typically like that console vacation property reverses debt consolidation is actually a big one. I don't know all the context, but I know a couple of them because he sent me some of the cases as we've been kind of, we played with these case studies in our, in our community. But he's like, this is just mind change. It's mind blowing to me because that means if I go out and talk to 100 advisors this year. Right. While I'm, I still have a realtor base that I'm working with and supporting, but they're doing what they can do to survive. I know I'm going to get my shots at that. This gives me something to actively be growing because if I can get to 100, then by that same metric I should have 32 referrals coming in on an ongoing basis from 100 advisors compared to the 23 sending me eight. Right. Roughly, you know, a third.
- [19:07]
Sure. All right, well, let's unpack that a little bit.
- [19:10]
Yeah.
- [19:10]
We're talking about pillars and sources and we already established the fact it's not one versus the other, it's, it's both. But, but as you well know. Well, let, let, let me, let me. Well, let's just, I'll just say it. So a lot of loan officers don't know how to approach financial advisors. This is one of the things you help them do. So let's maybe give them some quick tips or like you said, this person Ell called 23 financial advisors. Like how, what did they do? What did they say? What should you say? What should you not say? Like, aren't these my. The perception is they're difficult to reach.
- [19:40]
They can be. And so let's, let's define advisors. There's three groups of advisors. When we think of advisors, the easiest to reach is the insurance agent.
- [19:51]
Just by insurance, what type of insurance do you mean?
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That would be like Northwestern, Northwestern Mutual, New York Life, things like that. But people that primarily focus on that niche of life, insurance, annuities, things like.
- [20:04]
That, they're doing universal, whole life, all that kind of stuff.
- [20:07]
Exactly, exactly. Term life. You know, depending on your, your company and their culture. Many of are also financial advisors, but this group are, they're incredible salespeople. The average insurance agent needs to talk to 50 people a week to make their, you know, quota, you know, so to speak, as, as a producer. So when you meet one and you build a relationship with them, you're meeting someone that's growing their network by 200 people a month. Because that's the nature of that industry, credibly lucrative industry if you can do it and do well at it. But heavy sales. So they're simple in that. You know, I used to sell insurance, Jeff, but if I said, hey Jeff, do you care about your family and you know, if something happened to you, would you want them to be taken care of? Everyone answers that question the same way. Right. The problem is I got to pay for insurance and that reduces my current lifestyle by transferring money for something I hope never happens. So the insurance agents is in, is in a cash and cash flow business and a loan officer freeing up debt and consolidating debt and, and, and helping to refinance to lower rates, all those things, that's all a found money strategy. You become an incredibly viable partner. It's a really simple conversation. It's just I can help you and your clients, you know, find cash flow. Cash and cash flow they may not know is there by just simply saving them money. And what's your biggest expense? Housing. So that I'm, that's, I own that side of the balance sheet. I'm going to try to find them money. I'm not asking them to reduce their lifestyle. I'm asking them to let me look at their financial situation to see if they're making mistakes that I can potentially help them with that would free up cash Flow for them. And guess what? By freeing up cash flow for them, it makes your job easier. So we start with life insurance agents. Then you have CPAs, enrolled agents and accounting professionals. That's another group that their group as an industry are being asked to get their securities and insurance licenses. That's an industry that's in transformation. They believe the opportunity of doing a third of the year of really working hard, doing returns and a third of the year kind of maintain your business, a third of your taking off, there's a big opportunity there. So you're seeing this sort of cultural shift in the CPA and accounting industry. And they're fun because they have a huge base of clients and they know all their financial stuff. Those clients often call, say what? You know, if I buy a house or I buy a vacation property, you know, their tax benefit. I mean, these are conversations that they're having and they're in a position to say, I've got someone you should talk to. The third group is the traditional financial advisor. You think of Schwab and Ameriprise and Merrill lynch and Raymond James and Edward Jones, but you also have independent registered investment advisors. You have all these classes of sort of niches of financial advisor. But they are the ones that are meeting with clients on a regular ongoing basis. They're actually requesting, required by law under kyc. Know your customer to meet based on assets and other needs on a regular basis. And because of that, the core conversation is really simple. You own the right side of the balance sheet, the assets of the balance sheet. You're a mortgage, you're a financial advisor, I'm a liability advisor. That's why we position it that way. I manage the left side of the balance sheet. I manage the client's largest expenses and guess what, their largest asset. Because 84% of Americans have more wealth in their house at retirement than they have in all their qualified and non qualified plans. Because typically by the time you retire, you've got a 6 to $700,000 house with a mortgage paid off. The average person retiring, according to Vanguard, has about $246,000 in retirement savings. Right? So that's a lot of wealth tied up in the house that needs to be and probably will be managed at some point, even if it's just by default. Have no choice, you know, I can't eat my house. Reverse mortgages and things are going to be important. So you're positioning to say I understand what you do. That's important because most loan officers don't understand what financial advisors Do. So by learning and understanding what they do and their focus and them understanding what you do, you're just really announcing a collaboration that is win both of you. And that's, and that's just like it's win win for the realtor. If it wasn't for the lender, all the people that can't pay cash couldn't buy houses for the financial advisor who's getting a 1% fee annually to manage those assets.
- [24:25]
Yeah.
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Now I've got additional value add and services and part of my team that I can bring into this conversation.
- [24:32]
Well, okay, so you have an opportunity to coach loan officers listening right now. And let's just say it's, it's a crash course of like, okay, okay, here's the do's and do nots. Back to your example of this low called 23 financial advisors. There's a certain probably best practices protocol, whatever, how to approach. And I know this because I've done things on the divorce attorney side and there's a very specific how to and how not to approach. So I imagine there's some, some similarities. But what would you want to articulate for anybody listening about the do's and don'ts when you're considering.
- [25:05]
Seek to understand before you seek to be understood. That's one of your classic seven habits of highly effective people. But it is foundational. Financial advisors will meet with you just because they hope you'll become their client. That same with insurance agents. Right. So you can get in to see them and meet with them. And you don't want to come in and say, look, I got to jump in.
- [25:27]
I got to play devil's advocate here. Right? Yeah, because, because I'm putting myself in that, like I'm, this is why I'm saying you've got to be well prepared, trained, scripted, whatever. Like if I'm going to call 23 financial advisors, what's my pitch? Right. What's to, to say, oh, they're going to be willing to meet with you? Because I think, as you well know, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but this is just, you know, I got to get very tactical. These financial advisors, yes, there's various levels of savviness.
- [25:53]
Right.
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But in general, they're pretty savvy. And if they've been around for a long time, they're, they, they, they hear this, the pitch through the right veil of like, you know, just want to meet, want to be more valuable, whatever. So I imagine there's a fair amount of resistance. Not interested Whatever. So how do we overcome that?
- [26:11]
Okay, so. All right, so you said kind of crash course, so I'm going to take you if. If. So we have this thing called the FAST course, Financial Advisor Success Training. And the first thing that we have you do, and I'm going to tell anyone that's doing this, is you want to go in warm. And how do you go in warm? You call every customer you have today and you ask them simple question. I am looking to help my clients who need financial advice. And I'm curious, do you have someone that you currently work with today that provides financial advice that you would recommend? If they say yes, I'm going to ask for the name. And then, you know, I can look up the number, but I wanted the name. And who are they with? You have. Okay. You know, Jake, Jake Martin over at Edward Jones. Great. Do you mind if I gave him a call? Is it okay if I let them know that. That I talked to you and you. You made a referral? And last question. I gotta ask you this. On scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate Jake? This is like the. The. This is the most important part because 7 is like the F word in, in. In survey ratings, right? If. If there is like, fine. So seven or below, they really have no. No real relationship with that person. They would be happy to exchange them for someone else. 8, 9, or 10 tells me that there's something there that Jake's doing that this person really values. And they're probably a pretty good a partner. So you tell me. Looks Jake is able to join. You know, I give him a nod. He's really good. Right? Jake? Hi, is this Todd Ballinger? I was just talking to Gloria Swanson, and we're putting together a list of financial advisors that we can work with. Our clients who need financial literacy. Asked her if she had someone she recommended. She said yes. She gave me your name. I gotta tell you, she ranked you a 9 out of 10. You know, there's no, you know, tens for God. Right. Nine is pretty solid. I rarely hear that from other people that, that I've talked to. Would you be open to meeting with me for half hour and let me understand the type of people that you're looking to work with, because I understand some advisors, you know, Merrill lynch, they want a million dollars in assets. Edward Jones work with anybody. They're just starting out. You know, put 200amonth together. I don't ever want my client to be in a situation. If I refer them to you, that you tell them I'm sorry, this is not who I work with. I want to screen my clients because I have their financial statement from the loan applications that they're doing. But I want every client I work with to work with a financial advisor. I think it's important to at least have a relationship. Could we get together for half hour? Just talk a little bit about what you do, who you're looking for. And by the way, we have an interview form that we give people for that. Just so you know, really great questions to ask. But that is a very high conversion rate because you're coming in warm from an existing client. They've already told you that, you know, they like you a lot. And you're saying I'm looking for people like you right now. The benefit of that, on the flip side is I call a client, they have no one. I actually tell Jake when I'm meeting with Jake. By the way, when clients tell me they have no one, I'm going to say, I just met with a guy the other day that we're. Jones named Jake. He got a nine from one of my other clients. Would you be open to talking to Jake? Is that something that you know you would be interested in? It's a hub mentality. But what you're starting to do is you're connecting realtors and financial advisors and clients around a common need, which is to create some wealth over time for when they aren't working. So we call retirement. But that's really the. The heart of it. And there's all these other layers to how you go deeper and deeper. But if you just call every client, put them in a sorting hat of I have someone or I don't, and then ask on a scale of 1 to 10, how are they? And know in your heart that if it's 8, 9 or 10, you want to meet them and if it's 7 or below, you want to replace them. Because if it's a six, I'm going to call them back and say, look, I hate to do this. You told me you were working with someone at, you know, Raymond James. You gave him a six. I've been talking to clients and they all love this one guy who's a 9. Would you want to meet with him? You'd be happy to make the introduction. If you don't, that's fine. But I'm never going to call that six advisor anyway. Yeah, right. So I'm not like I'm worried about alienating, but I'm going to make that recommendation if I can. And that's Where I'd start, If you got 100 clients and you end up with 30 advisors from those calls, you've got a foundation to start building on and networking. And then the other simplest tip I'll give you, and this is, this is for anything that you do, you never leave a conversation without two names. If you do that, you have an unlimited network of potential opportunity. And the simple question is, Jake, I really enjoyed my time with you. This was fascinating. Let me ask you, who do you trust for real estate? Like, where would you send your mom if she was buying a house or, you know, wanting to, say, relocate? And then who would you trust for tax advice? Right. If I talk to five people and I follow this rule, I'm gonna. I'm gonna end up with 10 people to talk to. And if I talk to 10 people and I follow this rule, I'm going to have 20 to talk to. And there's something magic about your territory blooming in front of you to where you're suddenly going, I don't have time to get to all these people. And that's a great feeling. As opposed to, I don't know who to call. And I don't have anyone to call because I don't want to use the phone book. I'm calling the tax advisors. I just met with Jacob Edward Junk, who was referred to me by Jeff Zempler, who was one of his clients. Man, he's a great guy. Clients rate him a nine. Guess what? He told me you were the guy he'd go to for tax advice. Would you be willing to spend 30 minutes with me and just let me understand a little bit more about why he recommended you and what he's doing? And that person's like, yeah, sure, come on, let's come. You know, let's. Let's meet. Right? Same thing. And that. And you just keep. If you just did nothing but that, there's. There's an incredible opportunity right there.
- [32:02]
I love that. That's a very simple and brilliant strategy at the same time. It's easy to execute on everyone listening, I would assume, has at least some clients to call. Right. Of a various number. And that is a fantastic way, I think, to kick off the rest of the month of January as you're listening to this, maybe whenever you're listening to it, make the calls. But that's brilliant. Thank you. That's what I was looking for. Tactical baby.
- [32:26]
I like it. Thank you for helping to refine my.
- [32:29]
Sure. That's what I do. That's what I do. Put the Loan officer hat on. You're like, yeah, yeah, just man, what can I do today? You know?
- [32:37]
Absolutely.
- [32:39]
Okay, let me ask you this question along the same vein of you're talking to these prospective buyers that are buying a house, right? We've got people at various. It'll vary based on the individual. But in general, you know, because we. I've heard of that, you know, cross selling the 1103. Hey, who do you have a finance. I love the ranking system. Do you have any non scientific data on when you ask that question of those buyers or clients and you find out it's a six and you're like, hey, I've talked to this person, you know, got a nine, etc. Any, any, you know, tea leaves or like insights on resistance of like hey, no, no, no, I'm good. You know what I mean? Or any feedback on that?
- [33:20]
Yeah, we actually teach. So we call it the Wealth Team and the Wealth Team or page five of the application. Whatever you want to call. There's. I've heard different people using different versions of it. I am going to be talking to your realtor. It is possible I may need to talk to your financial advisor, your cpa, your homeowner's insurance agent that you want me to work with on the homeowners and stuff like that. So if I could real quickly all I'm. And we have a one page worksheet. It just says as the six people, your attorney. So in other words, you're packaging. It is I'm gathering. Who are the people in your life that are going to be in this transaction or that you would typically call on if we do need to call them? I just want. It just feels like it's part of the loan application process. You don't want it to feel like weird and like, you know, you're doing some. I just want to know what these people are and I'm asking the same thing. Let me get them down. Okay. I know, I know Rick. I've done a ton of closings with him and oh, Gloria Remax, she's fantastic. I've worked with her before. You know Jake. I've never met Jake before. He's at Edwards Jones. I'm still going to ask them on scale one to ten, I got to just ask how do you. How do you. How do you feel about them as a partner? Because again, that is, that is my sorting hat for, for knowing how strongly I want to meet with them and it's part of my script.
- [34:28]
But are you going to ask that of the realtor on, let's say the whoever's representing, you know, if you don't have a relationship with the realtor, are you going to ask them to rate the realtor as well?
- [34:37]
No, no, this is just for the client. Just for the client. Yeah. Because I'm going to use that client thing. If there's six people on my list and they only give me three names because that's all they have, I get to come back and fill in those other three blanks in time. When I'm sitting around, I'm going, I got some dude, I got my folder. I got all these people in there. I'm like, let me call up this client, you know, I know she didn't have anyone here and see if I can make introduction again. Just the power of the goodwill that comes from working to introduce people to each other. You know, we have a saying. Your network is your leading indication of your net worth. If your network is growing, your net worth can't excuse my double negative. It can't not grow. Right. I mean, you know, I mean, look at how people get paid in athletics and stuff today. Why is that? It's because of television, the Internet and the network of people that watch you has grown exponentially. It's the same in any industry. You add 100 people you didn't know this year to your network, you will not make the same money next year. It just. Yeah, they're good market conditions, but you're going to have new referrals and new things come up that you never imagine.
- [35:42]
Well, I love the example you gave as well because, you know, you're expanding your network and like the phrase I love is conversations leads to contracts. And so you're just simply having more conversations. You're love it.
- [35:52]
Absolutely, Absolutely. It's a hadron collider. You're in it. You want to be colliding with as many possible as you can. A hadron collider. You know, like.
- [36:02]
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Did we just go into science class here?
- [36:05]
Yes. I love physics. I think of myself as like an atom bouncing around. I want to bounce into as many problems as possible because then I'm going to be more valuable. I mean, because right again, if people could not work with you, they would. I mean, it's really simple.
- [36:20]
Well, it's funny and that parallels back. Let's bring this back full circle and we'll kind of wrap up here for sake of time. But the parallels back to what we opened up with about agent versus versus financial advisor and it's Both. And it comes back to, as you just said, your personal network. The example that I love to give is becoming five mile famous. And so what I say to people is if there's a billboard in town with your picture and logo and everything up on it, and take the realtor example, take financial advisor example, and every realtor drove by that billboard every day, how many of them would recognize your face? Right? And it's probably very, very few. And so that's the biggest problem you face is we're in a transaction recession. There's less deals to go around. So you need to meet more people, have more conversations. As you said, expand your network.
- [37:00]
And you know, I could go into, you know, asymmetric and, or let's just call it non correlated referral sources. If all my referrals are coming from agents, I'm in a correlation wave. When there's a transaction economy, when rates go down, when rates go up, what I want is, I've got that wave and I want another wave that's non correlated. And financial advisors are calling because my clients are getting divorced. They have this situation where she wants to keep the house, he doesn't. We're trying to figure out can we take her off the title, can we take him off, can we do the loan, how do we do that? Right, that's an advisor referral to a, to a liability advisor that says I get to refer out to a realtor for house. I get to do this. So these life events, I'm making an addition because we're having a kid and we've decided we can't afford to move right now. Which is not an uncommon conversation with advisor referrals. These are all non correlated to the realtor who's not going to be in any of those transactions. So you're building a safer, less volatile business by adding non correlated referral sources because you've got more opportunities for these transactions throughout the year, have nothing to do really with interest. If you, you just sold your business for $12 million and your whole life you want a beach house and you come to your advisor and you've got $12 million, an advisor is going to say pay cash. An advisor we've talked to is going to say you might be better off taking a strategic mortgage loan for 1.6 million and investing that 1.6 million because over the next 30 years you'll get that house plus two more houses for free just based on the average cost of borrowing and the average return over that 30 year period. Now the client's like wow. So I get the house for free after 15 years and I get another one free after 30. They start to learn to talk about these things in a win win way. Because as an advisor, that means I retain that 1.6 billion to manage, which is 1% a year. That's 16,000 a year in income to me to manage that money versus just typically saying just pay cash. It's no big deal. Right. So you're also teaching them back to making a market. You're teaching them how to help themselves create more assets to manage over time while also doing good for the client because they just don't think about these things traditionally.
- [39:17]
Right.
- [39:17]
Love it. And the last. And like we talked about this, you know, in the very beginning. Just do remember that. You know, I don't know how many licensed realtors there are. I'm sure it's shifted. Just like in the mortgage industry, it shifted quite a bit. But if you look right now in the financial, you know, sort of space, there's about 1.8 million insurance agents, 1.4 million accountants, and 600,000 licensed financial advisors. It's about 3.8 million professionals that are in the business of calling on clients to manage wealth and wealth creation. Just from hitting a target with your eyes closed. That gives me if I'm calling on a million to 2 million realtors, I've got another close to 4 million people here I could be building relationships with that actually are touching the clients on a more regular basis.
- [40:04]
100%.
- [40:05]
With accounting professionals, it's at least annually. With financial professionals, it's typically quarterly. Insurance agents, it's annually. You get a lot of touches in there for that particular group.
- [40:14]
Well, let's do this. People, I'm sure, are curious. We've educated them. We've probably enticed and teased them on the value of going after financial advisors or revisiting that. If you've tried in the past, you've got this amazing community we wanted to invite people to participate in. Right. Would you mind just briefly telling people what it is and then we'll put.
- [40:32]
Jeff
A link in the show notes so.
- [40:33]
Todd Ballinger
They can check it out.
- [40:35]
Absolutely. So, you know, we do, we have newsletters, we send out every Friday. We have materials. I have a book that I'm happy to share that I wrote a lot of content, all free. And then we have a community where you can join for free and just learn from us. We have a community is paid as well, where you can get coached and learn this stuff more intimately. So we'll share that circle community with, with your listeners. They can come join, they can ask questions, they can access resources that we have in there as well as get our newsletter and some other resources just helpful to them. I mean, again, you'll learn stuff hanging out with us that just like today, you wouldn't have learned had you not been on this call with Jeff and and had us in your ear for 30, 40 minutes. But over time I've had people just hang out and they start to get better at managing their own stuff because they start thinking about their own wealth and the fact that, wait a minute, I don't even have a financial advisor. Why don't I have a financial advisor? Or why haven't I decided I'm going to manage my wealth? Because there's a decision there that has to be made and decisions again compound over time. So come join the community, use the link that Jeff's going to share and you know, we'll connect you with some of the things that we're, we're doing.
- [41:39]
Yeah, you've got a lot of content in there, learning content and this is where you can kind of, you know, the entry point with Todd and the other things he does. And he's just a wealth of knowledge and education. We'll put a link to your website as well. Borrow Smart University in there. But definitely you've been around for a long time in the industry.
- [41:56]
84.
- [41:56]
Come on man, you look good for 80 something.
- [42:00]
Thanks, man. Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [42:01]
Anyway, everybody, thank you for tuning in. Hope you got some value. I would say take the lessons from today's episode on how to approach financial advisors. Add them as a pillar to your business. Make the call to your past clients like today, right now and ask the question.
- [42:15]
Jeff
Use the script that Todd gave you.
- [42:16]
Todd Ballinger
So Todd, once again, thank you man.
- [42:18]
Awesome. Hey, thanks Jeff. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.
- [42:20]
All right, listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, share it with somebody and or leave us a review. We'll see you on the next one.
- [42:25]
Bye for now.
- [42:26]
Jeff
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 Mortgage Marketing 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 bros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.