Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Going with the Floify feat. Sofia Rossato | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 17

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Who: Sofia Rossato - CEO of FloifyRole: Visionary leader in the tech industry, currently spearheading Floify.Experience: Over 20 years of leading startups and corporate giants, including transforming a FinTech startup into a 400-person, $57M powerhouse.Achievements: Played a pivotal role in strategic mergers and developed data-driven platforms crucial to global financial institutions.Leadership: Managed billion-dollar divisions and steered a SaaS business to success during the pandemic, making her strategies notable case studies in business excellence.Reputation: Known for her resilience, strategic acumen, and visionary leadership within the tech community.This podcast offers vital lessons for professionals and entrepreneurs alike, blending family-owned business warmth with corporate wisdom.Sofia's SocialsLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofia-rossato-870b751/Website: https://floify.com/Coffeez and Closers Socials & WebsiteWebsite: https://coffeezforclosers.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coffeezpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@coffeezforclosers?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556355642488 Joe Shalaby SocialsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephshalaby/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@josephshalaby?lang=enFacebook: 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

This broadcast was brought to you by FlowyFi. Elevate your customer experience with our cutting-edge mortgage automation platform. Welcome to another episode of Coffees for Closers. Today we're diving into the journey of a visionary who's reshaped the tech landscape. With over two decades starting startups and corporate giants to unprecedented heights, this leader has mastered the art of transformation. from scaling a fintech startup to 400 people and $57 million to orchestrating strategic mergers and pioneering data-driven platforms still essential to financial institutions worldwide.

Her path is one of relentless ambition and proven results. Navigating billion-dollar divisions and leading a SaaS business to success even through the pandemic, Her strategies have become case studies in excellence. So who's the architect behind these achievements? The maestro of innovation and growth currently at the forefront of Flofi. Stay tuned for an inspiring tale of resilience, strategic acumen, and visionary leadership. Please welcome Sophia Rosado, the driving force behind Flofi. Thank you so much.

That was so kind and generous. too. Appreciate it. Thank you, Sophia. Thank you for flying down here for the show. I really, really appreciate it. We are blessed to have you. You're an incredible leader in the industry, and I think many people are going to have a lot to take away from today's discussion. So, you know, I appreciate the time you took out today. And I definitely appreciate all the time we got to spend together, just kind of diving into your brilliance and diving into all the projects that you're involved in. So what I like to do when I start these podcasts, every single one is We'd like to dive into who you are as a person and how you start your morning.

So how do you start your morning? What's your morning routine when you get up every single day? So it's different throughout the week. I would say my partner is the early morning one. So I wake up with him three times a week and go to CrossFit at a 5.30 a.m. class. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you to him for that because I don't know that I would do it if I didn't have someone saying the car's leaving. Let's go.

So that's about three times a week. And then a couple other days, I will hike the foothills in Colorado. Colorado has a lot to offer. I live in Boulder. So I can just walk outside and start hiking. It's beautiful. Nice. What time you do the hikes?

The hikes on the weekends are typically around anywhere between 8 and 11 a.m. Nice, man. That's what it's known for. Boulder is known for that. That's awesome. So you got started in FinTech, what year you get started? Right as soon as I graduated. So now everyone's going to know how old I am. So that's 96. I graduated and I went right into a small company called Wall Street on Demand in New York City. Graduated, I did not actually study technology. I started doing an internship first for a company called Payne Weber and financial services. I was actually in international relations and Spanish literature major at Penn. And I'm an immigrant. I'm from Argentina originally. So I came to this. country when I was six. And then I went into a high school called New World School of the Arts. And I was

in theater for many years. So improv station, we were talking about this earlier. The number one rule in improv is you never say no. You just kind of keep adding on. Right. Then I saw, oh, 1% of 1% of all actors make a living acting. And I did not want to be poor anymore. So I decided to get myself into an Ivy League college and go and figure out. And I did that by I have an identical twin sister, and she lives in New York City. She's a high fashion photographer, and we were always very competitive in a good way. So we graduated third and fifth in our high school and went on to do some amazing stuff. But it's because we had that drive, and I wanted to see what I could do in this country.

So that's what we did. Actually, there's two similarities there. You and I both have one. I'm an immigrant. I moved when I was five from Egypt. So I'm also, you know, an Egyptian citizen. and I like to joke around and say, you know, I'm the widest African-American you'll ever meet. But it worked because that's what I use for all my college applications.

That's great. And I still didn't get into Ivy League. Okay. Yeah. And then we were both improv actors. I didn't know you were an improv actor. That's super cool. I mean, that was my worst class.

I was probably the worst actor because I'm too much in my head. Yeah, yeah. You got to get out of your head when you're... It's hard. Improv is, I think those listening, like, Improves. Improvisation is just a crucial thing you need these days, especially if your kids are going to be on doing social stuff, you know? I mean, I agree. That's, we were talking about this before the show.

It's, it's all about making those connections. You can't be a creative thinker unless you've practiced improv in some way. Yeah. Yeah. So this show, and I like, this show is all improv. Like, I don't know what I'm going to ask you. I don't know where this conversation is going to go. And, you know, we just, just go with the flow.

So out of all the businesses you could have entered, why do you think you went into fintech? Was it the money that drove you? Is it like the idea of being in the financial technology space? You know, at first it was, I was facing $40,000 in student loan debt. And I was thinking, okay, how am I going to pay this off? And being an actor isn't going to do it, nor is it going to be, you know, being a professor in Spanish literature or something else. So I said, so this is what actually happened.

I went and got an internship because I thought, well, financial services, there's something there. So I got this little internship. And at the time, my boyfriend in college, I called him up because he was. was at the Wharton Business School. And I said, this guy that I'm interning for has literally a Rolodex of context. What do I do with all this? And he said, oh, just build them a database. And I said, what's a database? And so no one told me it was, oh, it's this big thing. You have to study. No, you just go and figure out, you know, there's little tools out there, figure out how to build a database. And that thing, not my Ivy League education, not anything else, but that one internship where I taught

myself how to build a little database got me my first job right out of college. And it was for a company called Wall Street on Demand. And we built it. I think I was hire number 12. We built it to 500 people. It grew. I had a great mentor, Jim Tanner. He was, hey, Jim, he hired me right out of college. And his dad was one of the top investment bankers in New York City. And he decided to start this startup and I was one of his early early people and I learned everything from him. And you know, one of the number one things to that I got from that is, and investment bankers are great at this, is it's all in the preparation. By the time you get to whatever meeting it is, you're going to improv. It's going to be whatever comes out of your head, your heart. But if you didn't prepare,

it's not going to be what you think it is. That's awesome. What are a couple of takeaways you think you learned from him? You can just share with this. One is prepare. Do your research prepare. The other one is just persistence. I mean, I stayed at that company for 20 years. That was my, before I went off on my own and before I was CEO of a chat and AI company and before I let up Flowify, I was at that company for 20 years learning everything, everything from customer service to leading customer service, from starting the project management team to before that doing database and IVR phone system programming, you know,

and learning all of these just playing different roles. I think I know Malcolm Gladwell's kind of focus in, you know, and become a genius at something 10,000 hours. Well, there's the opposite idea, which is range. And that's where I come from. It's if you can have range, then you can make those connections. And I don't know if that came from the improv side of things. My sister was going to the same high school as I was. She was an art.

She's now a high fashion photographer, my twin sister. But we were always creative thinkers. and we applied that to wherever we went. And so Jim was and his wife, Kathy, they were both just kept with me on how to have a job, number one, how to not quit, how to keep going, how to be the North Star and try different things when something doesn't work. And those were the kind of formative years of my career. Wow.

So, and I don't know if you want to dive too much into this, but so FloFo was recently acquired. Yes. And it was through Perch? Yep. So Flofi was acquired by Porch Group in October of 2021. And I was brought in to lead up the company as GM and president in 2022. And Porch, you can think of Porch. It's a company that has acquired multiple B2B software companies that all have to do with the homeownership journey.

So the idea is to how can we make the home more simple, right? And so Flofi is one of those B2B software companies, but they own, you know, we own companies that have software for title companies, software for inspectors, 50% of all home inspections run through Porch software in the United States. There's an ecosystem of moving. There's software for an ecosystem of pros, professionals as well. And then there's the insurance side of the business for Porch as well. They own porch insurance. And so the idea is how can we simplify the home? And what really got to me was this idea of, okay, I came to Flofi it because I want to get more people into homes.

Being an immigrant, I know that a home and owning a home means a lot more than just a place where you live. It means you can start a business. You can send your kids to college. You can use it as a financial asset. So it's to me, this idea of being able to put people into homes is a big deal. And then to be part of a parent company that then is going to say, okay, once you're in this home, we're going to help you make it a lot easier from the move. I didn't know this.

Moving. Third most stressful thing in life after death and divorce. Third most stressful. So I don't want to move ever again. Right? And so, you know, can we somehow de-stress that move? You've already taken time off work to find a house, find financing. Now you have to move and then you have to manage the house.

So the idea is to kind of stay in front of that consumer long after the loan has closed. You know, it's funny you say moving, like, my wife doesn't have a problem with moving. She's like, let's buy another house. It's like, I'm never buying another house, man. I didn't want to buy this house. How do you take that away? You're like the ambitious wife who just wants to just keep leveling up. You have multiple houses.

That's how you, that's how you salvage. Yeah, that's a, yeah, I guess, yeah, that's one way to do. I just keep in, you know, we tried, we tried to make our house like a makeshift like farmhouse. Like, so we got chickens and we got dogs and like, we're Newport Beach, sweetie. I can't really do all that here. Oh, no. No. You know, but then she realized that.

We can't maintain the chickens if she goes on vacation. So, wait, how much maintenance does a chicken? They got to get fed every day. Okay. Every day. And then apparently we weren't taking care of them properly. Oh. Yeah.

I mean, it's expected in Newport. So, um, so, so you took, you took a pretty big risk because you're Ivy League student, like, and then you just went into like this path of like the unknown in, in fintech because we're like, I'm just going to, what, what do you think what caused you to like? this big risk and going into a space that was like really just new. You didn't know what a database was. You know, actually, that's a really good question. I don't think anyone's ever asked me that question. I just like to dive deep into the brilliance of Sophia Rosetta here. I honestly, I know this is

a bit cliche, but I honestly think I got lucky. I was so focused on I have to get rid of this debt. I have to get rid of this $40,000 debt. Then in a way, it was keeping me from thinking bigger. but I got super lucky in that I knew I wanted to be in New York City near my twin sister, and I knew I needed to get into an industry that was, you know, rising, emerging tides lift all boats, right? And so financial technology was that area. But you know, at the time you got into it, like it was very unknown. Like now it's like it's a hot topic, fintech, fintech.

But like what year did you get into it? 96. So it was like. It wasn't called FinTech and it wasn't called SaaS, but those were the two things that we were doing. Actually, when I first got into it, it wasn't even the internet. This is how this is up. You were like really a trailblazer at that time then. It was the company was called Wall Street by Fax, actually, believe it or not.

So we had these fax machines and we sold, you could call one of 800 numbers. This is, and meanwhile, we were just starting to play with the internet, right? You could call one of 800 numbers, put in a ticker symbol and get a fax. of a stock chart faxed to you in five minutes or less for a dollar. And so when that deal made, we had Schwab as one of our first clients, Charles Schwab. And when they requested 600,000 faxes in one month, they asked us to renegotiate the deal. And that's how it took off. And then we ended up creating the quotes, charts, news, research sites, screening tools for the largest online retail brokers in the world. Schwab, Fidelity, E-Trade, TD, and then the big banks.

Wow. So you joined Flowfite 2021. What do you think in comparison to like all the other point of sales systems in the mortgage space? What do you think some of the key differentiators are? Because we got a lot of mortgage professionals listening. Like they're like using a Rive or they're using, you know, blink or whatever they're using. What do you think some of the main reasons why someone should leverage the technology

behind Flofi. Like me personally, I only use Flofi because I don't do any of the communication with the client in terms of following up with the clients, conditions. It berates them with,

you know, emails and automation tools. And I've, I've survived off Flofi and I'm able to do a lot of productions still doing virtually no work myself. And that's a true testament to the power of Flofi.

But what do you think some of the key differentiators are coming from the horse's mouth here? And I want to also ask about the future of Flofi after that. First of all, Thank you. Thank you very much for using Flowfine for providing that feedback. It would be borrower experience, loan officer experience, and the automation. Those are kind of three right

off the bat. If you think about what's happening right now, there are a lot of direct-to-consumer lenders coming out. There's a lot of fintech coming out. And so in a way, you have to be able to put your personality out there that you cannot scale if you're a single person unless you've got technology that helps you do that. And so that's where we're really good. We can, our system is the most configurable point of sale out there. And I don't even like calling it a single point of sale. It is much more than that because we've got this home concierge app as well as part of porch. I mean, just because I don't use GloFi in terms of like I'm not in it. I just send a link and it does all the work. Yeah. So I don't really dive into all the features.

Right. So like dive into what that home concierge app is because I'm, I want to know for myself just how I could leverage the tool more because I've really just put it on autopilot and it does the work for me, which is great, which is what technology is supposed to do. But, you know, the tools and the roadmap is important just because I just got to keep the top of mind. For sure. Okay. So let's start first with the borrower experience and the experience for realtor partners. So as you said, you have a link that you can give to your borrowers to start the application or your realtor partners. And you can put that link anywhere on social anywhere. You can also connect it with other CRMs. It's really configurable.

You can define what kind of questions show up when. You can define who gets notified. So if you want your realtor partners to get text, but only on these milestones, by the way, we don't charge for text, unlike some of the other platforms. So you're not going to get nickeled and dined for transactional fees on SMS messages. But you can configure your questions however you'd like. You can configure your tasks, which is what you've done. There's advanced task management, which I'm not sure if you're using this or not, Joe,

but you can actually do things that say, okay, if credit comes in at this score, automatically route it to a team member who can deal with low credit score borrowers, you know, so that you can create all kinds of business rules that will route your traffic, the way that it's coming into the exact right place without you ever having to touch it. So you can also do smart document requests. So if, you know, child support was listed as a liability, you can automatically request the appropriate documentation for that. without you ever touching it and set up all these templates that are smart document requests,

like you said, to put your business on autopilot. So that's kind of Flofy one side of it. We connect up with loan origination systems like Lending pad as well. And on top of that, you need to opt in for this piece, but you get access to a free porch home concierge app. And what that does is long after the loan has closed, as soon as the loan closes, your borrowers will get an email from porch that says, hi, welcome, congratulations. Here's an app you can download where you can manage your house. And that includes setting up, for example, cable, TV, and internet. You get both a person.

Think of it as corporate relocation for the rest of us. So you get a human being that stays with you through all these stages, not a link farm to a bunch of places. And you also get this digital experience. So you can upload your inspection report, for example, and it will automatically create home to-do lists from that home inspection report. So, hey, Joe, it's time to change your roof. Remember? Yeah.

Years ago, your inspector said it was going to, you know, you need to change this, you know. My feedback with that because I'm in the trenches is like adoption once they get that email is like, ah, you know, how do we like encourage the adoption? Because that's such a powerful tool with the Port Street apps. And I'm sure that's something that, you know, I'm not trying to play devil's advocate, but like wouldn't it be cool if like, both I would just make sure that they adopt it somehow? Because if I'd make them submit all their documents. Yes.

So that's where it's headed. So in the future, eventually, the application will be part of that app as well. So it'll all be in one place. Today, if they download that app, you as the loan officer show up right there on the app in contact. Very similar to milestones. I worked with the CEO of Milestones for a while and trying to make sure that – and I'm still kind of on that pilot with them. I see that adoption rate is poor.

Yeah. One way that Porch has addressed that also is through – so they're launching it also through inspectors. And so in order to get your inspection report, you got to download the app. So, and 50% of all home inspections. So there's this natural ecosystem that's being developed out, which is, we were talking about this earlier, which is why you kind of want to be in there if you're a loan officer early, because you can see where it's headed with these other business. Yeah. These other channels. I love what Porch is doing with the entire home ownership journey under one ecosystem. It's like I didn't know that that was happening.

Yes. Yeah. And it's very powerful. They've got home warranty. They've got help you with movers. I didn't even know moving was so difficult. You know, I come from the fintech set of things. So did you know that trying to set up moving? You know, you have to think about the logistics alone. Are you doing it within a city, within a state, across state lines, freight, full, you know,

two men in a truck, something else. So it's just getting through that. You know, you can start thinking about really cool things you can do from a partnership perspective. If you want to offer free home moving within, you know, 50 miles for or up to $500 or free home inspection or something else. These are all the kinds of things that are going to be coming up in the future. Wow.

Exciting stuff. Yeah. Exciting stuff that that they're working on. Now, let me ask you a question about like your work ethic. Like you're really, you have a really strong, perseverant work ethics, very, very hard worker. What do you think you've developed that? I think my dad.

my dad is he was a carpenter from Argentina his dad was civil engineer my grandfather on the other side was an architect in Argentina but my parents didn't go to college and so you know they came here for a better life for their kids so we kind of skipped this generation a bit and I just saw him go to work at the crackadon and I could hear his truck rolling back in you know at the end of the day and I thought wow I really admire that I admire that I admire that that you you are making your own weather you know you are making it happen yourself and and so i think he i think he secretly wanted a boy and he ended up with four girls and so we were all raised like boys in a way we're just working really hard yeah that's good because everybody who i meet who's like

just so perseverant such a grinder always has someone who's inspired them um now like what kind of traits or characteristics do you think someone has to have right now to be successful in the Pintech space? I would say if you're early in your career to pick your co-tails carefully, like who you're going to learn from is probably the most important thing you can do. I'm speaking from personal experience. I picked a great set of co-tails because he was intelligent. He knew the market and it kind of went up and I learned a ton. Right. So and so that would be one. the other, and I've been kind of, it's tough with this one because I used to actually have a license plate that said DFQ, don't effing quit. It comes from an endurance event terminology,

but you also have to know when to say, okay, that's not working, right? So those are two things that are really hard. It's almost cognitive dissonance, but you've got to figure out, you know, are you part of a rising tide where it's going to keep going? It's a lot harder to grow 10% If you're down 10%, then you've got to grow 20% or more, right? So first pick the right spot and then stick through it. In those 20 years, I was with that company, my wealth was not made in the first 10. It was the last 10. And a lot of it wasn't a lot of it was because it was additive, right?

We went public after that. We, you know, sold to multiple companies, including Goldman Sachs, you know, in the second half of those 20 years. So you have to, you got to figure out when to do. DFQ and went to say, okay, this, you know, this area has got some macro challenges to it. You talk about DFQ and I just went to the movies and saw a movie called Arthur the King with my wife and was Mark Wahlberg. And it's a whole movie about adventure racing. Oh, yeah. And they did it in Dominican Republic.

So it's like ties into kind of what you're doing. But this thing is like, they basically trek 500 miles, these people, 500 miles in like the worst terrain, crazy humidity. And it's like sprint the whole time. Oh my gosh. 500 miles. Like they run, they climb, they kayak through like crazy terrain. Have you ever talked to one of these people that does the 100 mile races, the ultra marathoners? I mean, other than David Goggins, I know that there's some loose screws in all these people.

I actually asked one, why do you do this? And he had just come back from something like 300 miles. And he said it's the closest thing to drugs. And I don't do drugs anymore. Yeah. I mean, I'm good with the Nike students. Like I get my euphoria right there. But it brings back the idea like the idea through that movie is DFQ.

Like at all we're not stopping. Like, you know, like, oh, you're not, you can't go through the water like carry the kayak. Right. You know, you can't. The zip line broke like. Right. You're going to crawl. Go and crawl.

Strap the bike to your body. Yeah. They had to go through a zip line with bikes on them. So it's like they just didn't quit. And it just, it's such a reminder like at all expense. Like, we're not stopping.

We're not quitters. We're just going to, we're going to go through it to the very end to win. How did you find your mentor in that company? Like, what did you do? Like, what was some,

you just stumbled upon them like luck? God sent them. You know, it was luck. I mean, I was graduating from Penn in 96. And I went to the career site and said, I need to find an internship.

I need to be in New York City. I went through multiple interviews, and they really gave me a shot, gave me a chance. And it was a small enough company where you were not put into a box, and this is the lane you got to stay in. It was a small enough company where everyone had to wear multiple hats, and you had to grow and learn by wearing multiple hats. So I just got really lucky, I want to say. Where do you, like, so where do you think you find a lot of your motivation, Nick

just keep grinding and keep growing. You keep winning all the time. You keep getting bigger in your space. You know, you're the president of Flowify. This massive, you know, publicly, publicly traded company that owns, you know, all these SaaS companies. Where are you finding this motivation to continue to scale and grow and get better? You know, I was thinking about this question ahead of the, ahead of the podcast. And, you know, my first initial response was, I love winning. I love it. But that's actually not the reason. You know, if you kind of dig down into it, I love solving problems for people. So I, you know, I don't know if you guys have purchased a home anytime recently since post 2008, but I could not believe how hard it was for me. And this is me,

you know, to get a house recently. I just finished building a home. And before that, I bought a condo while the home was being built. And it was one of the hardest things to just go through. And I, and I used the Flouify app to get through. You know what? This is before Flowify. So this was before, but I didn't use a broker. And it was still, I had co-signed on the loan and, you know, I had done all these different things that I didn't 100%. You know, I'm coming from the financial technology side of the space, not necessarily mortgage yet. And I thought, wow, there has to be an easier way to do this. And if I'm having to provide all these documents up front and do so much up front and have it almost not work at the end and then finally work, imagine what would happen for someone who, you know, was buying.

their first home or just coming in. So to me, it's, I love the idea of solving problems, getting a puzzle and figuring out how can I get more people into homes. My goal is to get 10 million people into homes in the next 10 years or less. Well, I'm going to help you get there. Okay. Good. I'm not, not like millions, though, you know, maybe 10,000 of them. Well, it would be cool if I could get to a million. I'm going to do my, you know, with a collaboration and all the different ideas I pitched you, maybe we'll get there faster. I'm sure. I'm sure we well. So, like, with all the different success you're seeing right now in the fintech space,

what do you think is on the horizon in fintech, given the huge advancement of artificial intelligence and how is that going to play into how Flofi does business and porch companies as a whole? Yeah. Lots of different ways we can go with this on the AI front. What I would say is up front is be careful with the kind of shiny ball squirrel syndrome, because there are so many people. I was just at a conference recently where they said,

you're not allowed to mention AI. That's how bad it's right. It just became a trigger term for so long. Yep, yep. And the reason is you've got all of these point solutions and providers coming out of the woodwork saying AI, AI, AI, but oftentimes you dig under the surface and it's actually not AI at all. I mean, AI means the machine is actually learning.

Yeah. So those are, you're not talking if then statements, you know, and a program in a program. We're talking about AI. I think we've really like just made AI the term itself like, yeah. So where I think it's headed is it's going to be, you know, you've got, you've got the hardware there. You've got these large language models there. Now it's going to be that application layer and it's going to be verticalized and even subverticalized.

So there's going to be, for example, a huge amount of work on the data front. We're doing that. Our parent company Porch is doing that, just looking at the data to see what kind of signals and can we pull out better signal. for consumers, for companies, for Flofi specifically where we're going to go phase one, because again, I don't want to go in and say we're going to have this, everything's going to be done by AI, right? And then you do nothing well. So we're going to baby step into it and really crush it where step one, step two, step three.

Step one is going to be all around expanding our automation and making sure that my goal would be that a consumer never has to upload a document in the future. So you just grab all the data. Grab all the data. But I think that's like near. That's like that should be like a roadmap in Q3. It's been it is and it is. And we already do some of that already today.

Yeah. But but then the next step would be, okay, how can we use AI to figure out how to get to close faster, a lot faster than we are today? And so that could be partnerships or it could be. How about enhance the consumer experience? Here's something I would pitch. Yeah. Like that we're doing right now is I would my. And I think it.

could be incorporated in Flophies adding an AI avatar of the loan officer. So instead of like just requesting the documents from the loan officer, like the actual loan officer sends them a video as them. As themselves. Yeah. And just kind of working on that right now. They're about to release it as well. Because I just did my avatar just did like 400 videos.

Yeah. So how do you feel about the avatar? Do you think it's, it's there yet? I mean, the avatar is decent. I can show you some, some videos after. But, and I'm sure it's going to get better. and I'm we're working with, and I mean, I almost don't want to use the term AI, but another tech, another AI company, tech company that's, you know, built out our, our avatars and,

and making it better. And it's improved significantly, significantly from V1, V2, V3, right? But I think that an AI avatar would help improve consumer experience just because they're just getting emails right now. It would be cool to get like me talking to them. Absolutely. Yeah. And you can, if you have that today, you can embed it into flowfize, just another.

video. So that can happen today. But actually doing the avatar and creating that tech, it's interesting. Okay. That's good feedback. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'd be cool. Like, I mean, it's not, but anyways, like, I don't know where that's going to go. That's just an idea I just had right now on this call. Like, it'd be cool. The avatars and it's, and you can see. They are AI. They are AI. The voice is, is AI, but it's your voice, but it's an AI version of your voice. Do you think people mind? Maybe some people don't mind. They get used to it. It's just another medium for delivering data. It is. It's just another, instead of texting me, you're AI avatars messaging me. Yeah. What do you think of? It's another way of customer service. Another medium for customer service.

Yeah. It's like on the channel, customer service. Yeah. So what I've discovered is that you're, when the client's going through the journey of homeownership, like you can never have too much customer service. You could annoy them with customer service. That's the only time you're allowed to be annoying. Like, you could be annoying with customer service. Like, man, this guy called me so much. much through the whole process. Like they're never going to mind that. Like they're never, matter of fact, they're going to be like, wow, that was pretty cool. Your AI avatar was messaging me the other day. He was talking to me. It was like, and we had a full conversation. Okay. So can I add something to that? So I used to be a CEO of a company that did AI chatbots and

customer service software and sales software. And so this is where you can't cross the line. So if you're using AI or a bot or a co-bot, if you will, if it reaches a wall and it's a loop, you have to give them an exit out because human beings are tolerant. We already thought about that. We already thought about that. And we're just basically going direct them to a life person at that point. Yeah. No, that's perfect. Our tolerance for bots is like down here. For human beings not getting it right. It's up here. But for bots, it's so low. Yeah. You've got to give them an out really early on. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you stump the AI, you have to let them talk to a real human. For sure. And that's where, you know, and you could always automate that process too. You know, what's the, what is it,

72% of consumers will say the number one ingredient for customer service. Number one ingredient is don't waste my time. And so if you can, because no one cares about our software or your software or the they just want the answer. Yeah. Right. And so. But that's the customer services, Flofi is just sending answers.

And the biggest problem like, for instance, that I have is like getting to all the answers. Right. That's what I was telling you. I have a recruit, you know, I can't recruit anymore because I can't answer the questions. I just need someone to answer the question that I can entrust. Like, who more to entrust in your AI avatar? Like, it's you. It's trained on all your right answers. Yeah, exactly. So, and it's trained by you with your mentions. But I'm sure that's coming, and I just wanted to put it on the roadmap.

Maybe add that into. For sure. Yeah. Next year's book. We'll have it. We'll need some. And then I'll pilot it for you. I'll give you all the feedback. I love pilots, by the way. Thank you. So do you foresee like any challenges coming up in the fintech space, specifically

flow, if you're integrating all this stuff? Like what kind of challenges do you foresee? I think you called it right there in the question, which is integrations. You know, it's people underestimate just how much time you need to spend to make sure that your integrations are dialed in and work together because more and more of these companies will come out and say, oh, we could do a really cool prequel or we could do a really cool, you know, this one point solution feature. number one, I would look to see, can your tech stack do it already?

You know, number one, instead of adding all the time. And number two, when you do add, just make sure that those integrations are tight and integrated. In terms of macro pressures, what I see is with direct to consumer lenders, with a lot of automation that's happening, you know, what is going to be the future for loan officers, right? And so you have to be able to put your personality out there. and that's where I think fintech can help. If you are on a platform like Flofi that lets you put your personality forward because it's not one-size-fits-all, you can configure it to exactly the workflow you want,

the exact messages you want through the different Omnichannel options that you want, that's what's going to differentiate, right? It's your people are going to trust people who they know are real, who have been there, they can see them, and it's not a one-size-fits-all option. I like that, but I could tell you what's going to definitely happen in our space is technology will omit a lot of jobs. Because now one loan officer can do, you know, 10 times, 20 times, 30 times more loans.

So, you know, those who are successful are going to be dominant and those who are weak are just going to be phased out. You know, so it's like the survival of the fittest is definitely applicable in the mortgage space now more than ever. And I'm seeing that as an absolute fact right now, just because technology is just becoming so, incredibly, like, intuitive to what a homeowner needs. And then I think Bofi is going to obviously enhance their journey and their consumer

journey, especially with all the data and the porch companies, like, integrating the data. Who knows, like, what's on the roadmap when you have that much power amongst all those different models? Yeah. And you want to be where the consumers are going to be. So you have to figure out what are those new ecosystems. You know, you're looking at Twitch, you're looking at all these new different channels. What's the next channel?

Where are they going to live? And that's part of the bet that Porta is taking, right, is that, hey, if they need a place to go to manage their home all in one place and make homeownership easier, how can we get, how can I get my Flofi clients there inside that ecosystem? And that's part of the idea of go to where your customers are. I love that. Now we're going to talk, I want to dive in. Like, this is the second part of the show where I, I just like to dive into, to like you a little bit more and how you, you know, because you're a mom, you got two kids and, you know, and. maintaining good parental advice in this crazy world is definitely like stumbling, especially to me. So I talked to you as a parent.

I talked to you as like for my own counsel because you walk to walk. You got teenagers. You know, I got one will be a tween soon. And like, but I'm already starting to see, you know, like just shielding them from the ways of the world is always like, it's a stumble. Right. We just seek counsel, wise counsel. and I see that you know, you, you've done a very good job. And how are you, like, how are you maintaining your kids' work ethic?

How are they able to sustain? And they see you working all the time. Like, how are you able to make sure that they're, you know, they're, they have the same path, the same grip path. Because, you know, we, we spoiled our kids. And we, I grew up for. And so I say to myself, I still maintain an immigrant mentality. Like, I, but my kids don't get that benefit. And I want them to have that.

Yeah. Okay. What I'm going to say might not be what you want to hear. But tell me the truth. Yeah. It totally depends on the kid. So with one kid, you might actually have to pull back because they are too ambitious and could get some anxiety from that.

With another kid, you might have to kind of push forward to say, hey, you know, keep going. But I've messed that up. So I would tell you that there is no one size fits all. You've got to see them as their own human beings. you're not in control of them, see what resonates with them. I will tell you that for girls, the number one ingredient to creating an alpha girl and read the book, Alpha Girls, is their relationship with their dad more than anything else. And so they just need to see you do what you do and be present for them.

But yeah, but other than that, it's there is no one size fits all. There's no immigrant and the next. In fact, us being immigrants probably in some ways hurts our kids because we've got this mentality of you have to work as hard as possible. otherwise everything could be taken away. And that might cause some anxiety for the kids. Yeah. That's good advice.

You know, I'm always looking for ways to really, like, improve my kids, make them the best kids that they could be. Meanwhile, navigating, like, weird society. Yeah. You're in Colorado, so society is not as strange it is here. Oh, it's still strange because of social media. I wish I could have kept social media away from my kids. until they were 16, 17, it was impossible.

It was impossible to do it. Yeah. And I've been telling, like, I've embraced social media for my, like, that's just, it is what it is. Yeah. Now you're going to have a lot of weirdos on it. It's the new media. There's no way around it.

There's like 40 media outlets. You know that there's a lot of weirdos around. You can tell them that. I think earlier in the days, it was we didn't know enough. I'm glad that you guys know, you know, this next gen. The next gen. Like, there's just a lot of weird. Like, this is the world now.

Like, this is who you should focus on in this. these group of people on social and these all these other group of people very weird yeah yeah you got to watch out for the what seems real and is not real for sure yeah yeah in a lot of forms yeah it comes yeah exactly so um so uh right now like what do you do what do you think some of your like main hobbies are to decompress you know and get away from all the stress and your mind is going all the time what are some of the things you do that you know just for leisure outside of crossfoot Yeah, I had, so I don't have a huge amount of time. So I hike, I crossfit and I work. And any time outside of that, and when I can get my kids to come on a hike, I can, I'll do that, even though

that's, that's like the H word hike. No. They don't like coming on hikes with you. No, especially when they were younger. It's, don't call it a hike. Okay, we're going on a nature walk. You know, just anything but the word hike. And so, I think, yeah, I had a friend. who moved over from New York City to Boulder. I live in Boulder. And he said, why is everyone smiling at me at the grocery store? What do they want from me? And I had to say, no, it's just different. You know, you can, the community that you live in, the people in Boulder and in Colorado are naturally outdoors people. It's, you know, I snowboard. I love snowboarding. I've done that now with my kids, multiple. They should like that. I mean, that's part. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's,

just be outside in nature. I think that's the number one thing to decompress is. Get outside. Get next to some trees, rocks, rivers, whatever it is. Yeah. I want to ask this question. So your kids are talented kids, right? How are you fostering talent with your kids? And how do you foster talent at both? It's a two-part question. That's a great question. Yeah. Talent with my kids is just let them experiment a lot in a lot of different domains. My daughter has been a pianist. She plays the flute as well. It did in high school. She was in the jazz band. She's, she actually is going to scripts here in California. That's cool. Yeah, she's, she had a lot of different interests, was into writing. And so whatever they're interested in, just continuously be curious about it and ask them.

It's not that different at Flofi. We have some incredible and incredibly talented people. And, you know, even though I have this idea and this vision, what I've realized over my career is you have to be very curious about how people believe or think that we could get there, that we could solve this problem. I'm very much a co-creator, so I don't like saying, okay, this is what we're doing and that's it. No one else has an idea. In fact, I don't run my management meetings that way. Every Tuesday we have a 90-minute management meeting. Our management team sits down. We go through the regular things, for example, headlines and how are our KR's doing for the quarter, what have you, and then we spend the majority of the time, 45 minutes just on

IDS, identify, discuss, and solve. And it can be any issue and anyone can bring up what do we think we need to do to solve it. It could be anything from should we have an extra vacation day to what is this new product line and AI that we need to take a look at and why should we do it? And anyone who's the head who's in that group can say, because the zones of genius can come from anywhere, right? We talk about connection points. And so those are things I've taken from some frameworks. One is called EOS entrepreneurial operating framework. Another is, you know, objectives and key results. And I kind of take what works, what I like from those frameworks, put it together and then create a collaborative space where people can help solve problems where we can do that together.

Yeah, we love doing that. One of our core pillars here actually at EMC is collaboration. Yeah. You know, like community and collaboration is how we win together. Like, we built this at massive organization and I didn't do it. It's the people that did it. Like, but I embrace that collaborative environment, and that's the real key solution to winning. With what you just said, though, like, how important do you think taking risks are right now for Flofi? Yeah, you have to because it's, you know, the necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.

And it's like, you know, I talk to many of it. So we have two sides of the business. We have the broker, our broker clients and our lender clients. I don't think, and, you know, other than you talk to the people who are at tip of the spear are top producers, right? But outside, even them, it's like, no one would want to repeat. heat 2023, right? And so everyone's, you know, I remember when I joined in 2022, I joined in April of 2022 right at the beginning of a big macro correction. And I thought, okay, well, this is going to be

fun. Okay, let's go. You know, let's figure out what are we going to do to get scrappy and to get innovative around this. So we had to look at flexible pricing models. We had to look at flexible partnerships. I mean, I'll give you one example. I've learned through my career that to do partnerships, you don't just say yes, right? Because you have a limited number of resources. So how can you create a give, get model? So if we want to partner together, you know, how can we both win? How can we make that happen? Do we have an anchor client who can come in and maybe help co-fund development? Do we have a partner who can do the same thing? Do we all put skin, how can we all put skin in the game in some way? Because what I've found is just throwing money or resources at something doesn't mean you're

going to get traction. And that is such a, it becomes even more important in a, in a time of transition, right? And so how do you shorten that learning curve? And the way that you do that is you make sure every single participant has skin in the game. I love that. I love that. Now, a couple last closing questions I have for you and the, they're real personal ones. But the first one is a three-prong question. What is a personal goal that you have for yourself? What What's a family goal that you have for yourself? And then what's a business goal that you have for the vision of Flofi? I'll start with Flofi because I already said it. I want to get 10 million people into homes. And that's, and do it. I know, giving myself 10 years, but I want to do it in five years. So that's my, that's my goal for Flofi. And it's a longer term goal. But I mean it. You know, I want to get people who don't normally think they can afford or can get qualified to get into homes. I want to help them do that. We've done quite a bit in that space. We've added, Spanish subtitles to our applications. We've added the ability to use, you know, the new directive that came in that said you can use 12 months of...

You're going to add Mandarin or Arabic or anything else? You know what? What I want to do is add just Google translate and AI and not have to develop it ground up. But, you know, we have to make sure that that gets approved through it. There's, there's so much regulation and mortgage even more than other parts of... Oh, I know. We're the most hyper-regulated business and every single state regulates us. In addition to, like, the different regulations. in addition to the CFPB in addition to HUD, like in addition to DOJ, I mean, every single regulator, like. Wild.

It's, I don't, did this all happen after 2008? Yeah, they're like, oh, we don't, they went from zero regulation to extensive, hyper. I mean, what's the word after hyper? I don't even know how to describe it, but it's like hyper, hyper, 10x hyper. What is Elon Musk call it in the cars? I forget, no. Yeah, like, it's plaid.

Yeah, it's plaid. It's regulation. Yeah, they overcorrected. And so we're going to, and I think they're kind of stepping back from that a little bit or trying to, but it's still this hodgepodge of regulation that kind of hamstrings a lot of, you know, the integrations between platforms, the way that. What they're doing is they're getting better at communicating. So the states are finally stepping up.

And it's been great. Like with the, you know, with the state regulators coming up with the new SaaS, uh, multi-state audits now. So instead of doing one audit, every state. single state audits us. They're now doing like 10 states to audit you at once. And then it's like, here's all the corrective actions you have to take with 10 states. Like, okay, great.

That makes it easy. And instead of all of you doing it individually, like, let's just do 10 at once. Yeah, it's smart. I mean, I don't have to deal with that. My partner deals with that. But he says it's going to be better. Yeah, over time. It'll be some time.

They definitely overcorrected. Personal goal is, well, I had this goal of doing handstand walks by the time I turn 40. So I got there. So now I have a personal goal of getting five chest of bar pullups by the time I'm 50, which is in April. So you could do you could still do hands hand swan walks. I mean, I used to be able to do up to 10 steps like five years ago, but now I'm like four steps. Yeah. Chester bar, that's all the way down dead hang.

That's well, you're going a little a little farther. I can do dead hang a few, but it's really the kipping chest bar. so the bar has to hit your chest. You have to. I would think that's easier than a chest than a dead hang. I don't know why I can't get it. Something's wrong with the way. It's just the kip.

Your kip is off. You just got to. I think it's something in my back. I think the kip is okay, but there's something not connecting. And it's been years. So that says a small. Yes.

Kips are hard for some people. And some people are just the body knows how to keep easily. I love that kips are the best. It's so easy. You can do like so many more. You know, Marines will tell you we're not doing real pull-ups. No, they're fake.

Yeah. You want dead hang. Yes. No, deadhangs are. Those are a lot harder. Yeah. Kips are fake gloves, by the way. Those of you who are doing, they're called Kips.

For a reason. Yeah. Goal for my family is I would like to take them on vacation twice a year where my extended family, where I'm just, I'm covering it and I'm doing it for them because I want to create those memories. That's what you remember the most, you know, let's get outside of your routine. So, and I do that. I do that sometimes. It's really fun.

Where are you going? Where do you want to go? Well, the next one, the mini one, and then a bigger one. I'm having a weekend decades party. My twin sister and I are turning 50 in April. My little sister's turning 40 and my daughter's turning 20. So we have the decades party coming up. And then, yeah, so that's the big one.

That's cool. That's cool. A decades party. What's the plan? You guys are going somewhere? We're trying to, well, New York City will be for that one, but we'll be in Costa Rica in the summer. Nice. That's nice. Yeah. Okay, so we hit all your goals. I love your goals. One last question.

When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you? You did it. It's a good job. You know, it's just your job was to live life and you did your job. That's just what comes to mind. That's awesome. That's awesome. Sophia, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Those of you guys are watching, Sophia Rosado, one of the most brilliant minds. the fintech space such a blessing to have you on the show god bless you thank you for coming i look forward to working with you i look forward to serving with you i look forward to helping your goals come to fruition as much as i can of that 10 million big goal but i'll do i'll try to put a little dent in that for you that sounds crazy i appreciate it thank you sophia thanks for coming thanks for coming on the show thank you thanks guys thanks for watching today