Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Conversations at Scale ft. Jason Perkins | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 26

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Jason Perkins is the President and co-founder of Bonzo, a groundbreaking relationship management automation provider for mortgage and real estate professionals. Under his leadership, Bonzo has revolutionized the industry with its innovative CRM platform, which enhances efficiency and personalization through automation and real-time updates.Since its founding in 2018, Bonzo has grown significantly, boasting over 2,000 clients and 10,000 users. The platform offers key features such as a campaign builder for customized outreach, messaging support for voice, video, and text, and an ad builder for Google and Facebook ads​.Perkins, with over a decade of experience in mortgage and real estate marketing, has driven Bonzo’s mission to improve client engagement and streamline communication. His efforts have positioned Bonzo as a leader in the industry, ensuring continuous adaptation to modern technological advancements and the diverse needs of its users. The recent acquisition of Bonzo by Mobility Market Intelligence (MMI) further underscores the platform's value and potential in the market​.For More Check Out our Playlist: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPwyhl8CkXiM0cBtuY8A_6JS60FueLz3&si=0_2dnoPkYV6jcSGw Check Us Out on all Platforms!Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffeez-for-closers-with-joe-shalaby/id1726674707 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KkQWRqHSHcCK3TVfsRKUK?si=hjTnUOjFS5eTDxBjgf4RwQ&preview=none Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Coffeez-Closers-Joe-Shalaby/dp/B0CRYLQRW6 Coffeez and Closers Socials & WebsiteWebsite: https://coffeezforclosers.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coffeezpod/ TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbnU0T3RrLXdPbC1BR2NLc2lWcExqWklQaHlQUXxBQ3Jtc0tudi1GV2Zod3hRYzRhTkhONFBuMlptblNGSlJ1QzhpV0tzbHh5YThNR0R3Y2RnNnU5NV9ER3E5ZUhxMjdUUWp1UWo4MVl6Q2szeXo1cFh1OHNkYkxDR1F0MXZtMTZ6QnZoakdzSnJpVl9PcWZBOU9zZw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40coffeezforclosers&v=uXvk6LY9lS8 Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa2pLZ2pMaUxmSTh4dy1qazMtdlBjX2pVN1AxQXxBQ3Jtc0tua2RUTUNsRmJob0RKWlVqeDhNaUN4US1rdlRvUG9Fdm5SNk1jU1pQNzNLQnVmUmtGMGTMYUViZ2pLMXJkOVJUci1kMk9DN2poTThVV2NFd0tISWdDMzNwOEZ2c3pVb09lbEhjemJHblRsS1RKdHZqbw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpeople%2FCoffeez-for-Closers-with-Joe-Shalaby%2F61556355642488%2F&v=uXvk6LY9lS8 Joe Shalaby SocialsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephshalaby/ TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa3p6VlRzR1BWMkJQM1ZIaUdVZHhYVTYyak43QXxBQ3Jtc0tuUXVBOE1oZUJYTmZIZnNENUgxQkhjamk4RXJHb09MWU9OczJhLWpnX0JwN2pENzRhaV9NajJROW5nek1tQ1VvVE40ZFJuUUI2cnI0ajNKLXE4d1VMUUpkTGFHR0tGY0o5NUhnWnZnaXJoZXdEM0piaw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40josephshalaby&v=uXvk6LY9lS8 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josephshalaby E Mortgage Capital Socials & WebsiteInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/emortgagecapital/ Website: https://www.emortgagecapital.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Emortgagecap #1 Mortgage Company on Social on 🌎 #1 Non Delegated Lender in the Country🌟#1 Broker in CANMLS #1416824"Mortgages Are What We Do Not Who We Are"™https://finance.yahoo.com/news/learn-why-e-mortgage-capital-192000740.htmlAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What's up, everybody. Welcome to a very special episode of coffees for closers, where success is served hot. Today we have an extraordinary guest who has made remarkable waves in the mortgage and tech industry. Our guest today is the dynamic leader and co-founder of the Incredible CRM Bonzo, which was recently named AIM Partner of the Year. He recently made headlines by successfully selling Bonzo to MMI, an achievement that underscores his visionary leadership and strategic acumen within the mortgage and tech sector. Join us as we dive into his journey, uncover the secrets behind his success, and explore what the future holds for this tech trailblazer. Join me in welcoming the founder and CEO.

of Bonzo, Jason Perkins. Dude, that's an amazing intro. I'm flattered, brother. Thank you so much. Absolutely, bro. And it's awesome to have a friend and someone who has really been instrumental in the growth of our organization. And I like that we were mutually able to help you guys as well in achieving even

greater heights. And the relationship between our organizations continues to flourish. continues to influence the mortgage sector and many other verticals as well. So I appreciate this partnership, appreciate our friendship, this relationship, and I hope that we both achieve greater heights together. Absolutely. You know what's funny too, Joe, is like,

I remember the first time we met. It was at the AIM conference, I think it was 2022. And we were, you know, obviously were looking at the tech, but we were talking about other stuff, like life and family, and there was just this really cool connection on a personal level that you and I experienced before we even signed any contracts with EMC and Bonzo. It was really just building that personal relationship and getting to know each other and finding that commonality and connection.

I thought that was really cool. And obviously, it's carried over. Like, you know, we worked out together at your house this morning. How cool is that? We've come such a long way. So it's awesome to be a part of that and be your friend today as well. Yeah, we're like brothers now, you know. Exactly.

Yeah. Now I'm copping your haircut. We got our haircuts. We got a trim this morning. Yeah. Yeah. We got trims together. He's got cooler hair than me, but whatever.

I don't know about that. So I like to dive into every podcast the same way. And whenever I interview a successful founder and entrepreneur, every founder and entrepreneurs likes to start their day a unique way. So what is Jason Perkins' morning routine? Man, you know, that's a great question. So I've got two girls, a two-year-old and a six-year-old. And they get up early.

You know, my wife likes to work out in the morning, so by the time I get up, she's gone, right? So she gets up at like 4.30. That's her morning routine. I get up around 5.30. It gives me about an hour before the kids start to wake up. But the first thing I do, and I learn this. And I think, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about this, but it does work. And I can promise you this.

If you're not doing it, please try it. Try it for a week. Just the first thing you do when you wake up, don't even think or look at your phone. Get up, look outside, walk around, clear your thoughts. the other thing too is that I like to go downstairs and are you familiar with LM&T? It's a powder that you can put in your water, but it's full of sodium, salt. When you sleep at night, you deplete a lot of those electrolytes and salt in your body. The first thing a lot of us do is we go for the coffee pot, and again, it's tempting.

It's tempting to go to the phone. It's tempting to go to the coffee pot. The first thing I do is I walk downstairs, I clear my head. I get my element tea powder in my water and I drink that. Then I go get my coffee. Then I go get my phone. but what I'm doing is I'm clearing my mind and I'm creating discipline in my morning, right? If we get in a habit of going directly to the phone or the thing that are attracting us and pulling our energy and pulling our positivity, we're taking away from our day.

So I like to start my day up by feeling my cup up emotionally, physically, all of those things. And then I can go to the things that are secondary on the list, like checking my emails or checking my Slack. Because, again, we've got to prepare for the day. that's a really cool morning routine and this is why I love this question because I learn every single time I'm not doing LMNT sodium in the morning I'm barely like I was just told to drink a lot of water you know it's like it's cool because I mean obviously you get dehydrated at night right but the biggest thing is that you're you're depleted of salt and salt drives energy it it drives clarity it drives mental enthusiasm and you know I've been doing that for about

year and uh because i used the same thing you know like glass of water chug that but man if you aren't trying like an element tea or something similar to that Celtic salt fill fill that gap too absolutely yeah yeah Celtic salt in the morning put a little bit in your water i promise you it's like it's like a jolt right it's like you get that that first sip of coffee is like that beautiful jolt that you get in the morning but putting this element tea or any type of salt and stuff of water i promise you guys we try it out you're it's gonna it's amazing i love it it's a really big win for the That's great advice, great nutrition advice. If you guys haven't noticed, if you can't notice on the camera, Jason's like ripped.

Not that much, but I appreciate it. 170 pounds, and he looks like he's 220. It's the element T packets. So how did you get started in the mortgage industry? It's a great question. So, you know, I was always a very curious person. person, young adult, my 20s, I traveled the world, took odd jobs around the world, trying to figure out who I was. You know, there's a lot of pressure on teenagers and young adults these

days to figure out what you want to do as you're still developing as a human being, right? You know, what's your degree going to be? What are you going to be when you grow up? That put a lot of pressure and anxiety on me. And I don't think that's the right way to present and look at life is that you have to have it figured out by the time you're 16. You know, The average person has, what, six, seven different careers throughout their lives. And I'm a big believer in driving curiosity in life. What is attracted to you? What are you attracted to?

And I took that at heart. So when I was, you know, I obviously worked in a number of different jobs. I worked in the service industry for a number of years through high school into my early 20s. And we'll get into this probably a little bit. But I, you know, I attempted college and I attempted university. But at the end of the day, I knew that I wanted to be an observance. adventurous with my career. I want to be taking risks because I knew that at a very young age,

that if I could take more risks, those risks can eventually bring in success in a number of different ways, not even just monetary or career. A risk taker in life is going to bring multiple opportunities. And I can promise everybody that's listening to this or watching this, is that allow that idea of fear and curiosity to drive your success, because it will. But so I, anyways, I, I, I, I, I, I traveled the world, took jobs in different parts of the world. And, you know, I came back because I was going to go work for a competitor when I was about 25. I came back to the United States and got a job at a real estate company. And I was training realtors and loan officers.

And this is back in like 2010 when Facebook really wasn't that popular. Instagram was barely a thing. And I was training these realtors and loan officers how to better, enhance their digital brand on these channels where attention spans were gaining eyeballs on phones and screens. So how do these realtors and loan officers gain more traction? And so at that moment, I really fell in love with that advisor element and consultancy element of where I was as 25, 26 year old and working with these lifelong career holders of the mortgage and real estate industry. And I felt like there was there was a gap there that I could fulfill. I looked at these

industries and realized that they were quite antiquated on where the industry was heading, especially in this very digital footprinted world, and felt like I could take advantage. And I had a number, I'd started a number of different companies. Again, entrepreneurship is built around failure. I mean, I failed in my entrepreneur journey multiple times. I mean, I opened up so many different agencies and different companies that could help fulfill social, digital interaction. And again, it's all built around failure, but I learned so much from those interactions and those risks that I was taking. And I eventually became a loan officer because I looked at the industry and said,

look, look, this industry is quite antiquated. I know that there is a need for loan officers to go directly to the consumer and build a brand. I know that there's a need to work with your referral partners and give them value. And if I can do that, I can build a really cool business around this. And so that's when I really fell into. When I got into the industry, I looked at the technology in the industry, which was also antiquated and said, there's a big gap here. There's a big opportunity here. And that's when I really started to think about how can we utilize automation and authenticity and our personal voice. Because I was always taught when I came into the mortgage industry that you really don't

have a personal brand. You have no brand. The brand is the company that you work for. And we're going to send you out chinty flyers and how to get leaves out of your gutter and how to, you know, pumpkin pie recipes on behalf of your past customers, because at the end of the day, we own that customer, we own that attention, not you. And I look that as completely different. I look this as like, like, what are you talking about? That relationship is owned with me. They like me. They work with me because of me and who I am and because of my knowledge and the relationship that I built with them. Well, how would I let that go? So these are the questions that started asking myself and saying, okay, there is a story, there's a narrative, there's a truth to this.

how can I build a platform around those templates and understandings? And that's really when I started to really dive into the idea of Bonzo, which, you know, has accelerated from there. That's amazing. A lot of people don't really know the story of Bonzo. And you kind of gave a, you hinted at, you know, why you started Bonzo. But, you know, the problem that a lot of independent entrepreneurs have right now is they don't realize the importance of brand building. They don't realize the importance of owning your customer. they don't realize the importance of, you know, the longevity with this customer.

And I like to always preach to loan officers that, you're a physician at heart and your clients are your patient. That's right. And, you know, your patient doesn't come to you one time. He doesn't go, I'm going to go for a checkup. And then that's the last checkup he's ever going to have. Yeah. And he comes to you frequently for any sort of checkup.

You know, you're like, I need a test for this. I need a test for cancer. I need a test for, you know, heart disease. I need to do my annual checkup. I need to do, you know, a specialized surgery. So they should be coming to you for everything in the financial sector. Yeah. And you should have an answer for them, even if it's like, again, even if it's a financial

advisor that you need to refer him to or a divorce attorney or whatever it is. So loan officers are losing that idea. And that's one thing I think that Bonzo's done really well is kind of change the narrative. Like these are your customers for life. Yeah. Figure out how to stay in front of them. And one thing that's beautiful about what you guys are doing is you guys are really starting to figure out how to keep.

a client in that loan officer's ecosystem, especially with the recent acquisition, with MMI acquiring you guys, and all the things that we're going to be discussing in terms of the rollout, rollouts that are coming and the enterprise partnership with e-mortgage capital.

Yeah. Now, you kind of tapped into, you know, and you kind of tapped into this, but what is it really that was the mindset that you had when, that drove you to become an entrepreneur? Because it is risk, you're a risk taker, naturally, but what really drove you to start your own company because it's kind of crazy

to start a company. Yeah, we're both kind of crazy, right? I think you're a little bit crazy than I. I'm like one of the craziest. You know, it's interesting, is that I think everybody should have a little bit of urgency and anxiety in their life around what they want to do, right, and where they want to go, what they want to push themselves to achieve. Now, again, that's not built for everybody. I do think that most people in this world are not built for the entrepreneur space. And that's okay. Like, my wife is, like, she's like, no, I want stability. Like, and that's most- My wife, too. Yeah. You know, it's like stability wins for 95% of us. And that's okay. But I think it also can maneuver. Like, those that feel like they're on the fence of, you know, maybe should I hold down a steady job or should I become an entrepreneur, like looking at these industries where you can kind of have a foot in both of those worlds? Like, being a loan officer or a real estate agent, we have the support from a corporate backbone, but then you still have the flexibility and freedom

to try new things and fail at those things and succeed at those things and be innovative in your way that you look around your worldview, your business, and your life, that creates momentum for deeper, deeper, innovative ideas and thoughts that you can build around your life. But yeah, I forgot what I was going with that question because I kind of went on derailed.

I do that sometimes, Joe, so I apologize. Yeah, no, it's all good. On some ideas, but at the end of the day, yeah, entrepreneurship can be, it's a rocky road. Like, we all know that. Like, when you're building your own thing, you have to put so much trust in yourself, and you have to say it, believe it, every single day.

Because the moment you start doubting yourself is the moment you start telling yourself a narrative and a story that's not true. Now, one thing I admire about you, Jason, is like you're such a grinder. and you know you've been resilient especially like you built bonzo during the time where most companies were going out of business you know like during like the worst rate environment ever yeah right rates went from two and a half to seven half you actually didn't build your business during the rates when they were

at their lowest you built your business when the rates were at their highest now that took a specific mindset that took a specific resilience to adversity what you know what do you think really inspired you to have that sort of mental grit. Yeah, yeah. And that resilience in extreme adversity. Yeah. So I guess this kind of goes back to lessons that I've learned in kind of my personal life in a lot of ways and my hobbies. You know, at a younger age, I was really into running and running marathons and ultra-marathons.

And I learned so many lessons through that that carries over into career and entrepreneur. ship. And one of those is when you're going through an incredibly tough time, that you still have energy left in the tank, and that grit's going to continue to carry you. A good example is, you know, I used to do ultramarathons, and I was doing a 24-hour run at one point. And I remember I was about 18 hours into the race. It was pitch black. and, you know, four o'clock in the morning. And you run around in this mild track. And I remember thinking to myself, how crazy am I?

What am I doing? This is insane. Like, what am I doing this for? And you start telling yourself thoughts that you really want to believe because you're in so much pain. You're in so much mental anguish and physical anguish. You start to believe that you are doing this for the wrong reasons. But at the end of the day, your mind is the most powerful thing.

It can overcome any physicality, any hurdle in your life. The mental power that can push you to go through anything is unbelievable. And I know this sounds cliche what I'm saying because I'm sure a lot of, you know, there's a lot of like mouthpieces out there on the world. A lot of David Goggins listeners on this, I'm sure. Yeah. And it's a very, I mean, unfortunately it's a very similar story. he's obviously way, way, way above where I was.

But it's the same idea, right? Is that when you could teach your mind to push through anything, you're unstoppable. And so those elements and lessons that I learned in my physical life, literally my physical life, transcribed into my career in entrepreneurship, right? Like I look at anything. If I want to build something today, I know I can do it and be successful with it. Now, again, that's what I'm telling myself. Will it be?

Depends on market. There's other factors that influence whether you're going to win or win or lose in entrepreneurship. But what I'm telling myself, those lessons that I've learned and putting myself through very, very difficult situations when it comes down to how my mind perceives what's in front of me, I'm going to push everything through. And I'm going to find angles. I'm going to find ways to win. It's the same thing.

And again, you learn more as you put yourself in those situations, right? So the first way to get started is to put yourself in situations that are going to make you incredibly uncomfortable, incredibly uncomfortable, that are going to put you in situations where you're probably going to fail, but there's a shot that you could win. And the more that we do that, the bigger the chance that we're going to be successful. That's awesome. Yeah, I actually didn't know that you ran ultra-marathons.

I don't do it anymore. Yeah, it's... How old are you running those? Late 20s, early 30s. Yeah. Wow. You know, it's a physical toll on you, right? I mean, it's also very time-consuming.

Yeah, 24-hour run. That's like, I need eight hours of sleep every night or seven at least. Yeah, yeah. I just can't imagine running during when I'm sleeping. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a fun time. It wasn't fun. Wow. Well, that explains your mental grit.

Yeah. For sure. Now, we've seen a lot of changes in the mortgage tech sector, and we're continually seeing changes, and we're going to talk about some of the changes or the rollouts that are coming. coming, but what do you foresee in the, in terms of, especially with the advent of AI now being, and now it's such a buzzword, and you've actually mentioned this on some posts because it's such a buzzword now. What kind of changes do you see in the mortgage tech sector given the emergence of

AI and, you know, some of the things that you guys are implementing with AI? Yeah, it's a, it's a fascinating topic. It's a great question. There's a lot of moving pieces. And I think that, again, And I think, you know, I had created some content, some posts around this idea is that there's a lot of fluff out there that everybody needs to pay attention to when it comes down to AI and technology. Because I can slap on an AI sticker on Bonzo and say, hey, we got AI. I've always been saying Bonzo's AI, but it's like. Which it is, right? If you look at the definition of artificial intelligence, it's like, you know, it's the same kind of connotation as a CRN, right? It's very robust.

It's very generic. Now, when you look at how can AI really help in technology, there's a lot of nuances to it. And specifically what we do at Bonzo is we don't want to come out and say, like, hey, we've got it, which, you know, we got AI and we're going to just market this idea that we have AI, which a lot of companies do because they want to jump on the AI bandwagon. What we look at and focus on is how can AI help the Bonzo members? How can it help facilitate better interactions, better transparency, better, a deeper, deep diet. into the database and opportunities. And that's really what we're focused on. So a lot of these companies, if there are some tech companies out there, you know,

looking to dabble into AI, like the first thing I would ask or question is, how are you developing it around your systems, right? How is it going to facilitate and interact with your interlinkings and interworkings of your direct system? So a good example of that is obviously Bonzo is a, communication forward CRM. And we've seen a lot on AI as it relates to video, right? And we know that there's barriers with, with AI and video, and also people putting

themselves on camera. Like, what we're doing right now is a very uncomfortable thing for many people, right? Yeah, like 98% of people. Right. It's very uncommon. I mean, it's even uncomfortable for me. And it's like, you've got to put yourself in these uncomfortable positions. But most of us do not want to put ourselves on video where we, it's so much of a mental

friction for us. we put it on the bottom of the tonal pull of things that we have to do for the day, and then we just don't do it, right? I'm sure you have a lot of loan officers at EMC. They go, yeah, I'm going to do videos next week. Yeah, I'm going to do videos next week. But they don't do it. But they know it's very impactful, right?

Like when we see people and we see the interactions in their face and their, and their personality can shine through video. But we're just so afraid to do it sometimes. We just never do it. So what we looked at that question, we know it's a friction point for so many users on Bonzo. And one of the first things that we really focused in on is like, okay, let's focus in on AI video, right?

Because so many loan officers and so many users of Banzo want to be able to use video, they just can't get past that. So are you going to do avatars for the loan officers? Yeah, so we're actually rolling that out in two weeks. We've been developing this for about seven months. And the beauty of this is they can literally record themselves for two minutes on a screen, and now they can type out all of their videos. And it's just as natural as you and I, you know, right there on the screen, right?

It's just as natural as that. You'll create an AI avatar in two minutes. So, yeah, you read the script for two minutes, and then it'll generate your AI and any of your messages. So let's look at a good example. Let's say you have clients moving through the milestones of your LOS, right? So they're going through pre-approval, underwriting, clear to close, and you want triggers going out to all the parties involved in those milestones. Well, you just type a script like you would in email or a text message, but then it's going to automatically generate a video and send out to those parties that are involved on the, milestones and you get to say their name in a video and you get to say there's any data point

that you collect you get to say these things your avatar does but how cool is that right that's crazy i'd even know that you guys are even even have that coming out that that's one it's just that's one of the many things that the new product rollouts or rollouts that bonzo has in the works right now that's that's obviously an incredible new AI feature um and then uh how about like like AI intelligence into the database where we're able to identify more opportunities within the Bonzo database or the CRM database, you know, where, you know, we can type in certain parameters and like, hey, identify these opportunities for me, automatically message them for me, et cetera. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And that's the beauty of this is that you take baby steps to take macro steps, right? Do microst steps to take macro steps. And one of those is we're looking at the LLMs with AI and how can we, we can use real search and data search to pull up opportunities. So, you know, one thing that we're looking at is you have so many, like that's the crazy thing about the mortgage industry. So much data is collected on their people, right, on the prospects and the clients. But majority of us to only use, you know, the day that they closed and their first name and the last name, their email and their phone number, right? Maybe, maybe they, like their dog's name, right? if you're really diving into it too deep.

But look at all the opportunities in the data that we collect, right? We know how much, you know, we know that they are, let's, I'm building an avatar scenario for you. Let's say it's a first-time home buyer. And we know that the wife was pregnant when they purchased the home. And they know that there's, you know, at least now three people in the home. And most likely, based off of historical days, data that they're going to have another child or two more children. So we know that in that timeline

that there's going to be an opportunity to buy another house in the next five years, three to five years, maybe even sooner, right, depending on that. And so we can use AI to determine that data to nurture up and tune up opportunities based on all of the relevant data that we collect on our people and our clients. So instead of guessing based on, okay, well, they've got margins because rates dropped and they closed here, they could be an opportunity for refinance. There's a new way of thinking about this is the data that we collect and then the AI optimization on the opportunities, I mean, on real life scenarios where we can not only build and nurture one-to-one relationships with our clients, but use opportunities based off the data that we collect and the AI to

tease us up opportunities, it's going to be endless and it's going to be amazing and it's going to be scary that what we're going to see here in the next 12 months as it relates to database opportunities, but also just our entire prospect database. It's going to be really cool to see. And the stuff that we're building and our engineers are building in the product team, they're nonstop. They're maniacal about innovation. I think you've probably heard me say this a lot. But I look at Bonzo as Bonzo is always in beta in the sense that innovation is key. We have to constantly be innovating and testing and trying new things. 90% of stuff that we test doesn't even make it to market. A lot of people don't know that. So we have a whole R&D department that's

constantly testing new things when it comes down to AI or even just, you know, features that we think you're going to work or might work, but we actually play with it and get feedback from our beta users and we're like, no, it's not going to work, right? So, but part of that is constantly testing and constantly innovating. And by the way, Joe, I say all of that because that's a good life lesson for a lot of us. Our life should be in beta all the time. We should constantly be testing ourselves and who we are with our friends, family relationships, business career. It's all relative. It's like a giant circle, right? It goes round and round and, you know, we should constantly be innovating our lives and beta-testing our lives and being a better person for our business, our career, and our families.

You know, and that plays into like why you're always concerned about health and like these new health hacks, these new tech hacks, these new, you know, leaning out hacks, whatever it is, you know. And we talk about all this stuff. So it's, you're right. It's a, you know, we always need to seek a life of perpetual improvement. Yes, I love that. Seeking a life of perpetual improvement is the way we continue to grow as human beings. And all great stuff. And then, you know, I got a, you know, I got so much to talk about, you know, and we're only doing this for an hour.

So, you know, because we can dive into the artificial intelligence for a while. But it's good to see that the landscape of AI with Bonzo is really starting to shift to more usable AI. Let me ask you, are we able to implement now? Because we have like chat bots already in place, not through Bonzo, like ZappiChat or something like that. That's already a plug in. We can plug into Bonzo. We don't have to go through. Yeah.

So one thing that, yeah, we have a lot of users today that just zap their AI chatbot. based on OpenAI directly in DaBanzo. You can do that today. Like, just through our Zappa integration, you can pull your chatbot in. But we are building... On our LLM. Yeah, we are building our own,

which is fascinating because there's a lot of regulation. By the way, just for awareness, regulation and AI is going to change dramatically. We're in the wild, wild west of AI right now. Regulation is going to change. It's going to put... Reading articles about it all day long.

Yeah. But right now, take advantage of the Wild West. That's what we're doing. right until regulation comes down and makes a shift but it's always good to be aware of what's coming down the pipe so you can prepare for it so part of that i say that because chat bot AI chat bot and as far as like running an actual dialogue and closing a client sure it's going to be able to do that but there is a hundred percent going to be a massive regulation around massive regulation but also required disclaimers that you're the the prospect speaking with that's already in place now required disclaimers that you are not speaking to a human being exactly Exactly.

And so, an AI chat bot. Exactly, right? And so that's what's going to change is how do you blend authenticity? Because that's what people are going to want, right? Like, AI is going to take over. It's going to make a lot of people's lives easier. But at the end of the day, a lot of this relationship revolves around the person that you're connecting with. So how do you blend those together is a big question that I have that we're working through internally at Bonzo?

Is how do you build the authenticity, the personal relationship with this magnet AI that anybody can talk you and now potentially, right, it's going to take over the mortgage industry and you can talk to an AI and get pre-approved and take you down the closing. But there's got to be a personal element there, that relationship status. And so it's a teeter. It's a dance. And it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out with regulation as well. Marketing is always a dance. Yes. It's always a dance between regulators. It's like, oh, what can I do now? Oh, no, you're not allowed to do that anymore. Oh, what can I'm going to try this. Okay, you can do that. But you can't do that next week. Right, right, exactly. So you pivot, you change, which I love that you guys.

do, like, that is the beautiful thing about EMC is that you're not afraid to, like, try something and pivot, try something and pivot, lean in on something and pivot. Make adjustments, make tweaks, keep, like, that's the coolest thing. And that's what, it's testament to your guys' growth, right? Like, if I was a loan officer today, 100%, I want to be with a company like EMC, because you're constantly innovating, you're trying out new ideas. It's beautiful to watch that from the outside and to see how, how you guys innovate and how you guys train and you guys press the, the gas, right? Always having a sense of urgency to win is an awesome thing. And that's what every, if you're not loan officer and you want to be in a positive environment where you're going to

scale your business and win, you got to put yourself an environment like EMC. And I'm not like, this wasn't like, I'm just being genuine in this and this. It's really cool to watch that. No, trailblazing comes at significant cost. I take big risks. Like, you do. It is what it is. And most people won't take the risks I take. Most people don't want to even go down that path. people don't want to do the crazy things that I do. Yeah. How important is it to take risks in what you do? Oh, it's the only reason why, personally, why we exist.

We exist to take risks. Risk on business, career, life, love, family, relationships. It's risky. It's risky having kids. You have kids. We both have kids. It's risky. It's scary, right?

But we do it because we love it. And it's built into our natural DNA to take risks. safety is the worst place you can be. Playing it safe is the worst bet that you can make. It's sure it's consistency, but it's not going to evolve you as a person. And I say that to my kids all the time is that, you know, safety is your worst enemy in the sense of when we look at the world and opportunity, opportunity doesn't exist without risk. We have to lean into it. We cannot be afraid of it. And that's how I think, you know, you live your life. I see that. And I want my kids to live like that. I want my employees at Bonzo to live like that. I want my friends and family

to live like that because you realize once you're living a life with risk, it rewards opportunity, it rewards good behavior. It rewards being a better person for yourself and for the people that you love. And since we talked about the kids, and I love that you kind of instill that your kids too. How are you instilling like that same grit mentality that you have in your kids? Well, my kids are six and two. So the two-year-old

is she's got her own crazy grit. But, you know, the six-year-old I can actually start, it's fun because I can start to have those conversations with her. And it's micro-habits, right? It's like a good example is, you know, she started playing soccer this year and

first time on the field, she was crushing it, right? And, but she kept falling down. When she'd run to the ball, she'd kept, she kept falling down. I said, babe, why are you falling down on time? And she's like, well, I'm afraid of what happens after I take the ball, which is interesting to me. She said she was afraid to basically have an opportunity to score a goal. She wanted to go to the 40-yard line and essentially quit, right? And I said, well, let's talk about that. Like, why are you afraid? And really what she said, what she was trying to say to me was that she was afraid of failure.

She was afraid of taking the ball and getting it down to the goal and missing the goal. And I said, that is so cool to see and hear that you are realizing that there is an opportunity to win or fail in life at such a young age. And so we talk through it, right? And I said, babe, look at me. Look at your mom. We have failed multiple times in our lives. Day in and day out, we fail. Day in and day out.

I said, but when we don't give ourselves an opportunity to win, every day we're going to lose. And so she looked at that, and it was really cool to watch. The next week, she went in, and she didn't fall down once. But I also told her she fell down, she owed me 10 push-ups. But that wasn't part of it. She did a fantastic job, and she didn't fall down, and she scored a goal that following week. But it's cool.

It's like those micro hits that you can take these lessons from your own personal life and kind of just kind of sprinkle them into your kid's life. And again, like, we learn from what, like kids learn from watching, right? Like, 90% of what they're learning is how they view me and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, interact, um, how we interact, um, how we speak to each other, um, how we deal with, uh, stressful situations. They're always watching, especially at that five, six year old, uh, range. And so, um, we try to be very cognizant of that, um, and, and, and lean into that as we, you know, as we, as we, you know, as we, we give these lessons to our kids.

You know, it's incredible that kids can, you know, identify failure and winning at such a young age. And I don't recall at what age my children were really able to identify that. But it's like, it's fascinating to kind of push them to, and enable them to overcome it. I mean, that huge stride and improvement in just one week. Yeah, right? It was just a mental click, right?

Just a mental like, oh, okay, I can do this. Like, I can fail, right? That's it. Someone just needed to just point that out. Just a little nudge, right? Life is about micro nudges. Yeah. To always stay on path.

We're always going to go off of path. Life is about micro nudges, and we need those nudges from ourselves, but also other people and the people that we surround ourselves with. Now, back on the topic of mindset for a loan officer or anyone in like any basically salesperson or entrepreneur, is there any particular mindset that you think one must have right now to really be successful in this environment? In this environment, you know, patience is a big one. It's an interesting combination to have urgency and patience together. But, you know, as many of us who have especially been in this industry for, you know, more than five years, this is a natural life cycle of the

industry, you know, market's going to get better, right? People are going to buy more houses. They're going to refinance. And it's... Rates could drop. They could not, maybe. Right. You know, it's going to love, I mean, that's the thing. It's ebbs and flows of the industry. This happens multiple times. Like, look at the last 50 years, right? I mean, look at the early 80s, late 80s, mid-80s, was where rates were nearly 20%, right? And they dropped and they go up. And then you got presidential elections that can influence, you know, behavior on the 10-year and the market and all these things. And so that's why I say patience is key for any loan officer, but also urgency. And I say that

because opportunity is out there. And you know this. And a lot of these, your loan officers know that there's always opportunity always opportunity you just got to dig deeper you got more conversations build more relationships uh increase the frequency of your connections but again we just you got to you got to drive harder this isn't just a toss-up year um next year's probably not going to be a toss-up year we got to drive harder but it makes us all better there aren't going to be any more toss-up year yeah i mean it's like technology is going to has omitted that right exactly and you know there's less people buying that's a reality um and there's more loan officers and real estate agents that are trying to to get market share.

But if you have a sense of urgency every single day about going after those opportunities, you're going to win, right? But at the same time, you've got to have patience at the same time because, again, there's a good dance in the blend between the two of them. Yeah. So right now, I want to kind of talk about the talent at Bonzo because what I've noticed that Bonzo has right now that's unique to Bonzo is like, there's so much great talent, you guys got. Yeah. I mean, so many, so many leaders within the organization itself.

Yeah. And one thing I admire is the amount of talent that you guys have really fostered. What are some of the things that you're doing over there at Bonzo right now to really foster talent? So, you know, that's an interesting topic, and I always say this, is that culture can't be forced. But culture breeds a very, a positive or negative work environment. And depending on what that is, you're going to find great people or, or, not so great people. I'll give you a story. I was working for a mortgage company, and, you know, they were growing, and they really wanted to identify and build their own culture.

So they hired a very expensive consultancy firm to build out basically their culture, right? And I kept asking the question, like, why are we building this out? It's natural. Like, why are so many loan officers attracted to this company? It's not because of the culture that we're trying to write out. but it's the culture that's naturally been instilled. And we saw, we rolled, so it's interesting. We rolled out this, like, blueprint of this culture that we hired these consultants to build,

and it was a massive failure. Nobody wanted to adopt it. It wasn't real. It wasn't, it wasn't authentic, nothing. And, you know, my brother is interesting. My brother's an entrepreneur as well, and he owns a bunch of men's, like, high-end, like, hairstyle shops, right? and he is every barber in every territory that he's in wants to go work for my brother.

My brother is not a natural businessman. He's a fantastic artist and he's extremely creative and he loves to help people. I mean, he has helped so many barbers become, you know, from nothing to masters because he genuinely cares about his employees and he generally cares about his clients. And that is natural culture. That's why so many great people want to go work for my brother is because it's naturally built. It's organically there. Good people, good atmosphere, loving atmosphere.

That's what matters. And so when we were looking at, you know, starting to build Bonzo and finally starting to get some employees, we didn't want to press into culture, right? We wanted that to be in how my co-founder now interacted with each other. That's a big indicator of what it's going to be like to work somewhere, right? Like how we interact with each other first. Again, same thing with my daughter viewing my wife and I. It's the same thing with business. How do the co-founders interact with each other?

What's important to us? What's not important to us? What's the work-life balance? What does that look like? How do we instill respect and care for everybody on the team? And naturally, you attract amazing people. It's funny, right, Joe? Yeah.

Naturally, when you build natural interactions and culture, you start to attract amazing people. And because here's the thing, we're competing with companies that have built and wrote down the culture for everybody to follow. And they come over to bonds and go, wait a second, like, this is how you guys operate? This is how it is here. You're laid back, but we have a sense of urgency and we're trying to be innovative. Like all those things attract amazing people.

And that's, I mean, has nothing to do with me or my co-founder. It's the way that we naturally are and want our employees. employees to feel cared for at a place of work. That's really, I think, what helped our company grow as well is, like, everybody knows that it's like family here. Me and my partner, we've been best friends since we were 14. And we interact jokingly all the time, like, we got a good environment. But yeah, same thing.

Like, there's urgency. It's fun. It's family. It's, you know, a large operation with a small, you know, family vibe. How you and Sam, it's so cool to watch how, because we were out last night for a bit. And I asked you how long you've known Sam, and you said since you guys were 14 years old. And I thought, oh my gosh, that is the coolest thing that you guys, you know, again, you know, and you basically came from nothing together to building such a cool company, helping so many people, right?

consumers but also loan officers grow their career and it started at 14 years old and i don't want to become the the interviewer in this and but it's like that is so um and then seeing both of you like you know we're all sitting standing there and just seeing that natural respect for each other and interaction with each other and you see so many co-founders now like they hate each other after two years, right? They can't stand each other because there's misalignment on goals and what you're trying to do and where you're trying to go. But that respect that you guys have for each other is unreal.

It's so cool to see. So kudos. That is a beautiful thing to see. Yeah, yeah. And you don't worry about being the interviewer if you want to ask questions. But, you know, we've obviously, we started off like, you know, as best friends in high school, we were both kind of like the kids that were, we were both middle east of Middle Eastern descent.

I don't look Middle Eastern. kind of found each other through our cultural heritage and kind of aligned there and both were kind of like the bullied kids, which were also poor. So, you know, we had, we didn't have the greatest financial situation. So we just found ourselves like really aligning at many different levels. And we've been, you know, we come from very cultural, a very cultured background, very faith-based. So, you know, not only do we find ourselves connected at a cultural level, but we also found ourselves connected at a faith level. Our families knew each other. So, you know, there was a lot there. Both, you know, all my siblings know all his siblings. He was one of four,

the oldest of four. I'm one of four, the oldest of four. So that's so cool. You know, how do you, how do you build the respect? Because, I mean, you know, it's, it's 14 years old. I'm sure you've had, like, bicker fights with each other through the years. And it still happens. Like, we're like brothers. So it's, yeah. But how do you continue to instill that respect for each other and and that relationship with each other, but not only being best friends outside of work, but being really, like,

best friends running a company together, owning a company together. So the beautiful thing about the way we run this organization is, I'm very good at one thing, you know, like branding, not one thing, I'm very good at the things that he's not very good at.

So he's very good at operations, running a business at, you know, running the company pretty much, and doing all the things that I would never do. Matter of fact, when I walked by his, office, I get nervous.

Because I know he's dealing with the auditors, the regulators, the lawsuits, or whatever it is, you know, or the compliance, the, you know, all of the stuff that just makes me cringe. Now, maybe it makes him cringe. Maybe it does. Sometimes it makes him cringe, you know, depending on the severity of it. But I'd rather never know what he does. And as soon as he finds out what I do, like, it causes conflict because he doesn't get it. And it's not his space.

And, you know, it only caught, it's, it's, it's, he's not a marketing guy. He's not, never, you don't see him on camera. You don't see, you know, even though he's better looking than me. And even though he's like probably more charismatic, he never wants to be on camera. It doesn't. So we, what we do is, it's a true yin-yang relationship. Yeah. You know, I do everything that he'll never do.

And he does it. And vice versa. Yeah. So that, that, that, that I feel like with any company, any large. publicly traded company, always see, you know, that there's one person who's in the limelight, there's another person who's running it in the background. And that's really what it takes to have an incredible organization is you have to have a yin-yang leadership.

And that's really kind of why we've been able to thrive so much and continue. It's a work marriage, you know, so it's like, you know, same with my, I'm sure your marriage. Like my wife is the exact opposite of me, you know, so. Right. So she's like, you know, kind of an introvert, that sort of thing. I'm an absolute extrovert. Can I ask you one more question? Because I get this question a lot from younger entrepreneurs and they say,

should I have a co-founder or should I do this alone? How would you answer that question? I mean, I absolutely think that someone should have someone doing what they never want to do. Because if you're going to run a massive organization, there's just, there's a lot to it. And you can, this is, we breed at eMortgage Capital, a culture of collaboration. And I live and die by this saying, it's like, you can go far alone, but you can go so much farther, so much faster. Yeah. Together.

Yeah. So much farther, so much faster together. So, you know, the reason why we as a company have been able to excel so quickly is because we really rely on all the brilliant minds within the organization. We've got so many brilliant minds. and together we're so much stronger. So like we are a collective of 900 independent companies. Yeah. That's how I look at it.

And everyone has resources that another person, everyone has different resources. So you see, you know, that's why I, you know, I always talk about going to Mastermind's events and one of these different organizations and collaborating, you know, like because it just snowballed so much faster. Like when I started this initiative with social media and the podcast, like these podcast opportunities are me. collaborating with the most brilliant people that I would never get the opportunity to collaborate with. So it's the same concept. And one thing I always push and when I do like a speaking engagement at our conferences, like, guys, talk to each other.

Yeah. You're going to have dinner with each other. Go talk to them. What are you doing? Like you're an independent broker. I was an independent broker. We got people own their own mortgage bank here. People own, you know, founded different companies here.

So, you know, that's a beautiful thing about our platform is that they're all the most brilliant people in the space. Yeah. I basically have found this kind of hub of other brilliant mortgage. I like to say, we are our own association of mortgage experts. I love that. That's huge. And through, but the difference between our association of mortgage experts is that, like,

I really push collaboration. We're literally the same team. Yeah. You know, we are one family. And you see it. You feel it. You know. Walking through the hallways here, like everyone just, you know.

Yeah, collaborative environment. Yeah. You saw it. All you saw when you walked through those. always like everyone was smiling at you. Yeah. I wanted to hug you. Yeah.

It's awesome, man. So we just continue to push that environment and we're growing quickly as a result. And I think, you know, just like you guys, we're very much at our infancy. You know, we already have the accolades of being this massive organization. But we're very, very much. Future's bright. You know, very much in the very beginning of what we're doing. You know, and hopefully all the regulators and auditors are in our favor.

And I look at them as partners too. Right. Yeah. So. Exactly. I got to start attending those conferences, you know. When I saw Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the conference at UWM Live, I was shocked to see that the government was at a conference.

And I was like, wow. Yeah. You guys are here? It's pretty wild. They're next to you. Yeah. And to see that the government was there, like, advocating for our channel. I'm like, you guys are the ones who are usually like on the other side trying to shut us down is how I felt, you know?

Yeah. I'm like, it was good to see them kind of advocating. and that's, we need more of that, you know, like the FTC. I'd like to go get dinner with the guy at the FTC. I'd like to go get dinner with the guy at the NMLS. I'd like to go get dinner with the guy, you know, at Fannie Mae. Right. So we need more of that collaboration because there's too much of a misnomer like with the state auditors and the regulators.

Like they're like, there are enemies. No, these guys are our partners. They're our friends who are trying to make us better. We just got to get on the same page and just have more dialogue, communication and collaboration with them. That's awesome. that's going to come and I'm going to advocate for that and you should too especially on Capitol Hill 100% I was just there two weeks ago yeah exactly um now uh let's talk about uh some of some of the things that really have inspired you now I know kind of some of your hobbies interest you like to work out ultra marathons you know

what are some other hobbies interests that you got oh that's a great question you know um you know family is my biggest thing right family is my hobby um you know being with my daughters and being with my wife and going and exploring and being outside. You know, it's, you know, obviously we work a lot. And, you know, at this time, especially our, you know, everyone's at different chapters in their life. But my chapter right now is very busy. And so any free time that I have, I really like to spend that with the family and growing

together. And, you know, the kids are in such an interesting time of their lives where like every day is a, you know, it's a new chapter of their lives because it's just growing so fast, right? Yeah. And, you know, I remember, you know, growing up. up like my dad was gone a ton, you know, a lot of work. And we learn those lessons. Again, life is a lesson. And I just, I, you know, I have a lot of anxiety around making sure that I'm there for my kids, even, you know, we're trying to run a business and grow and be there for everybody else.

It's, you know, family comes first. So my hobbies are really built around being around my family and doing the things that my kids want to do and explore. My daughter, she's really into ninja right now, ninja warrior training. She's been doing it for about a year now. And she's really good. So she, like six months ago, she asked me, she said, Papa, will you do Ninja Warrior Training with me? I said, absolutely. They got a gym there or something? Yeah, big gym. So her and I do Ninja Warrior training together two days a week. We go to the big gym. We, you know, fly, you know, she's much, she's much better than I am, but she'll, like, you know, do a backflip off the thing into the phone pit and then, like, climb a wall, whatever. But we do it together. It's a lot

of fun. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, we don't have any Ninja Warrior Training gyms around here. That'd be cool. I know my kids would love that. Yeah. Now, what is, what is, uh, what is a, uh, a quote, your favorite quote. Oh, at least. I've got a lot. But I would say, let me make sure I get this right. Yeah.

Well done is better than well said. I believe that was Benjamin Franklin. But it's a really, it's, and I say that because when you do something the right, like we can all talk, right? Everybody can talk. You know, companies can talk. Loan officers can talk.

We can all say we're the best. But when we do it, right? We show up. We do it. That's what matters the most. And that's why I like the saying, well done is better than well said. Because a lot of people talk. Talk a lot of trash.

But let's bring it to the table because we're all super competitive, right? You and I are super competitive. It's like let's bring it to the table and see what works the best here. So I live by that number of other things, but well done is better than well said. I like that. I like that quote a lot. I'm going to use that. And then what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Uh, let's see. Okay. Uh, let's, are you familiar with rumination? I've heard of it. You've probably heard of it. So essentially what rumination is, is, um, the idea that, um, when there is something negative in our minds, we constantly think about it. But what happens when we do that, it actually makes it worse and it grows.

Um, and negativity can enter our minds at any moment, any time. And we're constantly trying to, uh, force negativity out of our minds. But the more we think about any, type of negativity or anything that is holding us back, it continues to grow, continues to grow. The opposite of that is obviously manifestation, right? We think about positive things and where we want to go and what our goals look like. The more we think about those, the more we get closer to those things. And manifestation is real. I can promise you that. And we think about what our goals and what we want to achieve and we put that in our forefront. One, rumination goes away. The negative

thoughts go away. But two, the positive thoughts always stay at the forefront of her mind. And that's where, you know, someone gave me that advice a long time ago. And I, I, I, because I, you know, as a kid, especially in the, like, there's probably a lot of people in their, you know, early 20s, mid-20s, you know, it's tough to escape that cycle of negativity. We have a lot of anxiety, especially when you're younger of like, what we're going to do, when you all want to make money, we're all going to go find a spouse and this and that and that, there's a lot of pressure on us at a young age. But when we start to think about those positive thoughts, I know it's cliche to say that, but when we manifest where we want to go and what we want to, what we want to, what, we want to be, we put urgency and patience around it together, we're going to be a really good mental spot. But again, that rumination piece, it can breed a very unfortunate thought process. That's a cycle that's very difficult to get out of. And someone taught me that a very long time ago, thankfully, and it helped me out tremendously. That's great, great education. Thank you for that. And let me ask you this. If you were 20 right now, how would you build wall? So there's a great question.

You know, I would look at today, if I was like 20, I would look at the service industry in a number of different ways, right? There's so many cool ways to become a single business owner and start without a lot of capital, right? You know, window washing, pull cleaner. You know, and the cool thing about being a 20-year-old today is that you know the social, digital landscape more than anybody else, right? So you know how to grassroots, grow your business, brand yourself, take videos, post things, that stuff, knock on doors, make calls, use Bonzos, whatever CRM to get in front of more people. But there's a lot of cool service-based industries that you can get into that's going to make you a lot of money and with very little initial capital that you need to build it, right?

I mean, even car washing, window washing, you know, driveway repair, all these service-based elements that nobody wants to do because it's unsexy, but it's the revenue on that and And the margins of that is through the roof. You could be making six figures in your first six months as a young entrepreneur going into some of these micro industries that don't have a lot of competition that you could blow up because of the knowledge you have on the digital landscape. I would 100% lean into that. And that's going to teach a lot of entrepreneurship skills as you grow. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. And that actually leads me into my next question now.

Like, given this whole shift in mindset, especially with this AI tech phase that we're in. entering, you really think given AI, and I talk to a lot of college students, I just run all my coursework through, you know, chat GPT, then I run it through another system called QuilBot and makes it sound like me. So it's like I just basically like type a couple sentences in and boom, I got the essay, it's done in two minutes. Yeah. You know, given AI and the advent of AI and how fast it's scaling, do you think we, like,

do you think college is important now? So it's all relative to what you want to do, right? If you need to be told what to do and do it a certain way, and again, this is my experience, college is a good opportunity for you. I didn't go to college. I tried it for about a year and a half, and I said, listen, everything that they're teaching me is what I'm already doing in real life. I always wanted to work and I want to learn from real skills.

and I took every opportunity that I possibly could to enhance my, to enhance my own skills in the real and the real work environment. Now, again, college can be a huge benefit for a lot of kids, right? There's a lot of networking opportunities, right? When you go to a university, you get to know a lot of people. I think that's fantastic. And depending on what career you want to go into, of course, you need a degree if you want to be a nurse or a doctor, an attorney, etc.

But if you're looking at, you know, becoming a marketer, you know, a communicator, if you want to build your own business. experience, in my opinion, experience outweighs, you know, four years, you know, half partying, half, you know, learning from somebody who hasn't really done it, go in and find somebody that can mentor you that's being successful, like you, Joe. Like, oh my gosh, if I was 18 years old and I had an opportunity to go to a university or go work at EMC and learn from Joe Shalby as an entrepreneurship and building my business, I would 100% skip that college and go learn from you, right?

Real world experience is going to outweigh depending on what you want to do. And of course, we have all the answers on the Internet, right? So again, I think the university route is going to fundamentally shift over the next 10 years and what that looks like. I honestly believe that universities are going to shift in the way that they educate, but they're also going to look at your digital footprint on your social channels to actually. I think that's going to shift over like SAT scores, right? It's like what kind of content, what kind of connections, what's your social media footprint,

what are you posting, what are you posting about, what kind of connections are you making? I think it's going to be a big driver in the way that institutional learning shifts for the next 10 years. But it's exciting times for institutional terms. I think there's a lot of disruption that can happen around institutional learning. It's already happening. It's already happening. And they are assessing your digital footprint already.

And they are assessing real life implementing, like, you know, I think internships now, they're pushing kids to get internships in high school. Yeah. So just in case they don't go to college, right? So it's already that disruption started to happen. But it's very fascinating to see how colleges are going to pivot because there's such an archaic way of doing business or educating. Right. Yeah.

They're not catching up. So it'll be fun to watch. And like to that point, there's a lot of disruption that is available. for a lot of these young entrepreneurs out there to capitalize on the education. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to pivot to a couple other questions. First off, because this is like something I want to start asking people on the show. It's like, what's the most painful thing you've been told?

I'm not good enough, right? We all have egos. We all have egos. We don't want to be hurt. And when someone that you look up to or admire, tells you that you're not ready and you're not good enough, it's an ego hit. However, I needed it, right? We all need an ego. We all need to bring down our ego in some capacity. We all need to level ourselves and where we are today. Ego can be a good thing in helping kind of blind

and being naive to situations, which can also bring opportunity. Like, I think nightivity is a good thing in some capacity. But we also need to bring ourselves down to where we are. So we know where we are and we know where we need to go. Some people stay at a very high ego level and they don't want to believe the reality of where they actually are and they don't grow. So when somebody told me that I wasn't good enough, it hurt really bad, but I needed to hear it. We always need to hear that, you know. I actually like, I feed off of the negativity. It drives me, especially now that, you know, I'm much bigger on social media. Just all you hear is just haters. It's like, oh, you get shot down every day. All day. Like, you know, all day long.

You're talking about that earlier. Yeah. It's like it's just, ingrained in me now. I'm just used to like so now it's like when I'm accepted it's what? Well. And what? This is a three-prong question. What's a personal goal that you have for yourself, a family goal that you have for the family, and a goal that you have for Bonzo. Okay. Personal goal. Gosh, personal goal. I would love to You know, just off the cuff, I have this, so I do a daily journal, and it's one of the things I do in the morning, by the way, when I actually have my cup of coffee, I go in my daily, it's very easy. You know, you just, you know, what are three goals you want to accomplish today? What's your big goal that you want to do and accomplish this year, whatever the case may be? I like to travel when I can. And I like to, so anyways, with all that being said, there's, there's, I've been wanting to do this for about 10 years. There's an, there's a half iron man in Spain. that I would love to do at some day. And I got to like, those one of those things that I keep putting on the back burner,

but I've got to like actually, you know, go do it. And it's something I, it's like, it's always in the back of my mind, for whatever reason. I got to do it because I've been, I told myself and I write it down in my journal. Once I write it down, it's not going away. And so I got, I got to get there. That's my personal. Family, you know, I think that my goal for my family is just, is continue to get better with my family. personally. I need to be a better father. And I think that always having that every single day of saying,

tomorrow I'm going to get one percent better as a father, as a husband, as a family member. You know, when we get complacent, whether in business, life, or family, that's when we start to lose. So every single day, I try to get one percent better, micro habits to get better, to be a better dad, to be a better spouse. And then for Bonzo, you know, it's, we're doing some really cool stuff, right? And obviously, you know, we're Carrier by MMI, which is one of the coolest companies and best people out there on the leadership and on that team. And we've got big goals, right? Very big goals.

And we want to take over the industry in a number of ways. And bringing the teams together and bringing the technology together, we've done that. We're going to continue to evolve that. And our goal is to take over the industry and tech in the mortgage industry. I've got a big goal. I love that. I love that. And I'm here to help in any way I possibly can.

and bringing that vision to life. Then the last question I have, as we adjourn here, is it's something we all have to deal with, is when you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? You know, I think about that a lot, right? I hope he says that you gave love and gave instead of tried to get from people.

And that's why, you know, I try to live my life of giving as much as value as I possibly can. I hope he says that. I really do. Or they say that, I really hope they say that when I get to the gates is that you gave love. And that's what matters. That's why we're here, right? That's right. God bless you. I hope you accomplished all your goals. You've been an absolute blessing and I have. Such a good friend. Jason, Perkins, CEO, Bonzo, one of the coolest people you ever meet. Thank you guys for watching. Take tuned.