Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Less is More with Roger Moore | Coffee's for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 16

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

This Week on Coffeez for Closers: Roger MooreTune in to this week's engaging episode of "Coffeez for Closers" as we welcome the dynamic Roger Moore, CEO of Loan Pronto. Roger is a seasoned professional in the mortgage and lending industry, recognized for his innovative approaches to simplifying the loan process. With over 19 years of experience, he has significantly impacted the sector by integrating cutting-edge technology and providing strategic solutions that enhance client experiences.🔹 About Roger Moore:Roger's impactful career is defined by his commitment to making mortgage services more accessible and understandable for everyone:🚀 Industry Innovator: Roger has revolutionized the mortgage process, making it faster and more efficient while ensuring clients receive optimal service.💼 Entrepreneurial Leader: As the founder of Loan Pronto, Roger has demonstrated exceptional leadership and a deep understanding of the financial needs of homeowners.🏠 Mortgage Expert: Known for his expertise in all aspects of mortgage lending, Roger's leadership at Loan Pronto has empowered numerous clients to achieve their homeownership dreams.💡 Visionary: Roger's foresight in harnessing technology for mortgage solutions has set new standards in the industry.🎙 What's on the Agenda:Insights into Roger's journey in the mortgage industry and his vision for Loan Pronto.Discussion on the innovative strategies Roger employs to enhance the loan acquisition process.Exploration of Loan Pronto's unique offerings that distinguish it in the competitive market.Prepare yourself for an episode filled with insightful discussions on innovation in mortgage lending and entrepreneurial wisdom from Roger Moore himself.👉 Hit Subscribe!Ensure you subscribe to "Coffeez for Closers" to catch this must-watch episode with Roger Moore. Join our community and stay engaged with discussions that drive growth and innovation.#RogerMoore #MortgageInnovation #LoanPronto #Entrepreneurship #HomeOwnership #CoffeezForClosersAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What's up everybody? Welcome to Coffees for Closers, a show about visionaries, entrepreneurs, and of course, closers. Here we talk about their wins, their failures, and ultimately the story of their success. What's up, everybody? We are here live with Roger Moore, founder and CEO of Loem Pronto, founder and CEO of title Pronto, founder and CEO of title pronto, founder and CEO of that. Diamond Insurance Services and the co-founder of Red Dynamics, which was a pretty significant exit.

Roger Moore is one of my favorite people in the country, in the mortgage industry, one of the best guys you'll ever meet. Absolute powerhouse in the space. We are here live. May we welcome Mr. Roger Moore himself. Thank you, Roger, for coming to the show. I'm flattered. Appreciate it. Thank you.

We're here live. Copies on tour. Our first guest, and I really appreciate you coming. So we're going to dive into it. Now, I don't know how much of the show you've had the opportunity to watch, but we'd love to get together with different founders. Rogers here and his company is here in Phoenix, getting some sun. Got some sun today, yeah.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It means a lot. Yeah. How do you like in Phoenix so far? I love it. It's nice, warm, no time change, no daylight savings time.

No time change? There's no daylight savings times here. Oh, man. Yeah. North Carolina gets it. So I love it. It's a beautiful city, nice weather. So I'm glad to be here, man.

I appreciate it. Thank you. So I'll dive into it here. Roger, so, you know, real, real successful guy, and you've been a success for years. I'm going to dive into, what's your morning like? What do you do when you get up in the morning? So, it depends.

Sometimes I have three kids, a wife. I usually try to wake up about 4, 30, or 5, knock out about an hour or two of work in the morning. Hopefully the kids don't wake up early. If they wake up early, I make breakfast for the kids. I don't have a set routine. I think a lot of these people out there are kind of had the set routine, shower, workout, cold plunge.

That's not really me. My morning's a little more ad hoc, kind of bob and weave with the kids. But the goal in the morning is to get up a little bit early, get my mind right, get my day together. I spend time with my kids. As an entrepreneur, you know, that you have a little bit less time with your kids at times.

So the times that you do have them, I try to make it an infill and special. So I make my kids breakfast every morning. I try to make their breakfast for them, other lunches. and kind of get out the door. So nothing firm every day except try to get up early, get my mind right, get the day gone, get some emails out and kind of get my vibe going my flow. That time with the kids, you know, like that's real special.

The fact that you're making them breakfast and lunch, you're doing both. I try to do both. You're a man of service. God bless you, man. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. I like that. I like cook. I've, for me cooking for people's, it comes from my heart, something I like to do. So for me to spend out time of my kids in morning is something I really enjoy doing. So you're cooking food? You're not just slapping together like some bagels? No, you know, eggs, bait. I like to cook. I'm a cooker. So yeah, I like to get that to them and talk with them and I'll sit with them and eat as well. And it's a cool little time we have the morning to kind of chit chat and, you know, talk shop, talk school, talk goals,

bought a little bit, yeah. Love it. And we're going to talk goals in this session here too. So, you know, I want to talk about all the businesses you have. You know, you're such a driven entrepreneur. And we're going to talk about loan pronto and the success of loan pronto, Like you got loan pronto, you got the insurance agency, you got title pronto. Like, what inspired you to get so diversified in all these different ventures? So the mortgage business to me was always easier, right? I've been a mortgage company since 2007, so going 17, 18 years. For me, title and insurance isn't a diversification.

It's more of a vertical, right? So if you have a mortgage company and you have clients that need to close loans, they need a title company, right? So it's an easy, seamless way to bring in more revenue. make your client's experience easier. And same concept with insurance, right? Insurance, you know, everybody who gets a house, buys a house, or refinances has an insurance policy. So to create those verticals for us wasn't for me very, like, I don't stray outside mortgages a whole lot. I don't get obsessed with shiny things.

I don't do solar, although I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I try to stay within my lane, which is mortgages. And these two verticals were a way to accomplish two goals. One, make my client experience a little better and create more revenue for the company. And so that was easy for us to do. It was a simple step, a couple of JVs and a couple other people already knew, create the vertical,

make my client experience better, bring in some revenue and just make a more successful company. What have been some of the obstacles setting those up? Because I know a lot of people probably watching the show right now going, I thought about insurance,

I thought about title. The obstacle for everything is manpower. Employees. Like how are you going to, like, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don't want the people to do it, it will fail. Like I created a real estate company

any home pronto three or four years ago, actually 2020, it failed because I couldn't find the manpower to do it. So for us, those two verticals were, can we, can we do it? Can we launch it? Can we find a partner to get it into it with us? Because we can't do it on our own. And from there, can we find the employees, right? So what we did there is we just moved a couple of our employees inside of our loan pronto team to our two verticals. So it was pretty easy. Honestly, it's pretty damn easy. It didn't take much at all. Home, I mean, insurance is not that easy. It's, I mean, for you, Easy is like a state of mind because people aren't like you. Well, I don't, um,

it wasn't hard. I mean, for me, it's like you, if you try to go out right now, launch an insurance agent when you're going to be pretty tough. But I had a guy who knew who had an insurance company. He was ready to,

he was ready to grow a little bit. I bought half into his company. And then we just had an agent. We kind of launched it. So it was actually pretty simple. I think most things. That's not easy, man. You just can't go and,

buy half of an insurance company yeah yeah so i um i tend to think things are as difficult as you make it and as simple as you want it to be and for me i don't find those things like mortgages to me are tough right scaling a mortgage company to me is extremely difficult launching a title company or insurance company is just finding a right partner to do it getting the people in place and make sure the processes and the procedures that exist and last so um i don't know it was it was it was It wasn't a huge obstacle. It wasn't a big one. The key for me was it didn't take away from my primary role, which was building a great mortgage

company. Anything that took me away from that, I wasn't interested. And for me, this was helping create a better mortgage company, so that made it easy for me. What about some of the regulations behind having a title company and having an insurance company? Has that been, like, were there obstacles behind getting, when you're disclosing? And you're also a lender as well. So how does that all jive?

So nothing's harder than mortgage, right? I mean, we're possibly besides financial services, SEC-based stuff, we're likely the most regulated industry in the nation, right? You've got federal regulations and you got, I mean, I'm in 21 or 22 states. That's tough, right? I mean, we have, you have a full-time compliance person. For us, the insurance and title piece, you play within the same rules, but it's a little more lax, right?

And what we do, title insurance-wise, is done through fidelity, right? So Fidelity kind of carries that load for us. And for insurance-wise, we have a parent company that we broker everything through, so they carry a lot of the regulations. So from a regulation perspective, it's wildly simple compared to what you and I are used to in the mortgage piece, which is complicated and expensive and timely and very complex. So, you know, I always tell people, if you can do mortgages, you can probably do anything because there's nothing more complex than a mortgage from top to bottom, end-to-end, A to Z.

regulation-wise so for for it's not it's it's it just wasn't any harder quite a bit easier actually you who's on your leadership team to like who you can trust this much to delegate you because you're an army of one in terms of like you're just the so we run a flat company you know I have I have leaders in my team I have my first employee he's been there since day one he's my CEO he's kind of my right-hand man he runs most things that I can't run technology biology wise and processes wise, but we purposely run a smaller, flatter organization where we don't need a big leadership team. And I can do most of it on my own and what I can't do, I hand off to him.

I've got some other leaders in the company that can help me as well, but we try to keep it flat and simple. We're not a complex organization. We have 50, 47 employees, 19, 20 loan officers. For us, small is better. It's more agile and it's simple to run. You know, you're not just small. This guy's not small.

He is super mighty. I mean, mighty's not even the word. I mean, to be as big as he is right now, it's, you know. Thank you. You're very small, but very mighty. And I'm going to talk about how you, per loan officer, per loan officer, have the most fundings per L.O. In the country.

Yeah, we're proud of that. And I love to see that. I love that you boast about it because it's a fact. Yeah. You know, it's, what is it, like six loans per L.O. In a down market? So we average right now, most months 11 per low. 11 loans per loan officer.

Yeah. So guys, if you're watching and you want to make money as a retail originator in your North Carolina, this is the guy. Well, for us, like I don't, you have a big company. He said, don't take it the wrong way, but I always say, and I didn't make this up, it's a Steve Jobs thing, it says a small group of A players can run circles, around large groups of B&C players. So we built our company, my hypothesis was,

with the right marketing, right processes, right technology, I know you're big in technology as well, my hypothesis was I could do a lot of loans, it's a flywheel for me, so I could do a lot of loans with a small amount of people. And so we try to be very thoughtful about who we hire, why we hire that person. You know, we're not gonna hire an L.O.

doing one loan a month, right? I'm not saying that's a bad thing, that's normal and it's average, but that just doesn't fit with us. Our goal was people that can do a lot of deals each month, low-maintenance LOs, and an operation staff that can tear it up, too. And so that's what we've always built ourselves on. I'll never be accompanied with without. I mean, maybe I'll get there one day, but for us, my goal is to see if my 20 LOs can do, you know, 800 loans a month.

So for me, that's a point of pride. That's something that we take a lot. They take very seriously. You're like the 300 movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, our peak, we were doing 650 with 16. So, you know, we have a good system and it works. And, you know, obviously it's very rate-driven and market-driven,

but I think it's a good business model that works for me, but it's just not for everybody. Not for a lot of people, actually. And you're the only one that could do it. I've never met you. And I don't understand how. And that's what we're going to figure out on this podcast today. Marketing.

Marketing. So one thing that everybody knows about your company is culture. Yeah. Like, you got such a fun culture. Like, you guys hang out together. I know you guys do annual trips. Yeah, yeah. And they're not just like, oh, you know, we're going to UWM. Like, you guys are going to like the Bahamas.

You guys are traveling, having a great time. And I'm talking you up and I got people in North Carolina going to go, you know what, Roger is. Yeah. You know, culture's interesting because you can't, you know, every company has a culture. And if you don't think you have one, you probably have a bad one. Right.

And you have to be very thoughtful about it. And you can't just walk in one day and say, hey, e-mortgage guys, like, this is our culture, right? You can't just change it on dot. It's something that's created from day one. It's something that the owner curates. And the owner casts a long shadow on the company, right? I mean, you know, a company is the, uh, it mimics the owner in every way, shape, or form. So I built the company from the scratch.

That was extremely, extremely thoughtful in who I hired, why I hired him. I hired very few people from mortgage. I hired almost everybody outside of my business. mortgage because I was very more do I like you I this I call it the airport bar test So what I say is if I I would meet us I interviewed every employee we have and and as we've grown I don't I still do but like in the very beginning I would meet every employee Intimately go get a beer and I always asked myself if we were stuck in an airport And we had a our our flight got delayed or got you know for four hours

Could I be with you at the bar for four hours like could I enjoy your con kind of enjoy your conversation? We'll be with laugh together, would we tell stories together. And if I couldn't, or I didn't want to, I didn't hire you. Right. So our entire thought process was like if we can create people, we would love to be around, they'll love to be around each other. And then what happens is, as you bring those people in, you know, the first four or five employees, I was super thoughtful. They were people that I loved to be around. They're all still here. Every single one of them, after six years and a lot of tumultuous, tumultuous times of the mortgage industry, but those people will be the DNA of your company. So when you're building a company,

which you've already done, but those first four or five people, they will be your rocks. That's like your foundation. Those are your pillars. And those people will develop your culture. And if they're people that are like you, like your long shadow, their culture will develop the way that you want. But then once you get it going, I always say culture is not cheap either, right? You have to really do things and be thoughtful.

And we're not perfect, but we do care. We try to do things, events. I take my company on a trip every single year, up or down markets. We still do it. And what we try to show people to say, you give us all you got, we'll give you all we got, and maybe and then some. And people like it. And then the key is, if you have a great employee, does their husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend like to be part of it too, right? Because if the spouse is bought into the culture,

they want to be around there, then they're not going to want the husband or wife to leave. Like, you know, this is a good place to be. Like, a place I work doesn't have this. So, you know, it's hard to create it. If you don't already have a culture, it's hard to turn it. But if you start from day one and you're really thoughtful about it and everything you do is trying to keep in line with what you, the promises you made early, your culture will create itself in a very special way. I think we've done a good job. We're not perfect. I mean, we've fucked up plenty of times.

I've made mistakes, but, you know, most of my employees stay there. And I think that's why. Man, your culture is the best. You got great culture. People love you. Your employees love you. And even here in the Masterminds event, like, you're the most popular guy. I don't know about that.

And it's a reflection of who you are as a leader. I try to do myself at all times. Yeah. And you're like, exactly, you don't change. The vibe of Roger Moore's is always the same. You see what you get. It's constant. Yeah, I appreciate that.

And I admire that about you. I really do. And for those listening, like, what's some simple practical advice you can give to people to build a solid culture for their companies? So, I think a lot of owners, of companies get out of the trenches too early. And I think that hurts it a lot. And especially if you're not a huge company.

You know, a lot of people start a company because they believe that they can work less or they can do less or they can step back from what made them great. And I know I have friends at home companies and the moment they take their hands off the pulse or get out of the trench, I would say the trenches, right? Things start to go off the rails pretty quickly.

And I think that a lot of people in the early stages get away from things. Like right now, I still originate loans. When I do a lot, when somebody's out of the, so I have, my office is in an office. I have no doors. It's an open office. I have a desk. But when somebody's out, when somebody's out on vacation or sick, whatever, I go sit with my team. Right.

And I think what I'm trying to say there is you're not, you know, you're a servant leader at all times. Take out the trash. Do this shit that nobody else likes to do and your team will respect you for it. Like I will, I'll originate loans. Like I'll go meet with realtors. I'll do everything that I asked them to do and then some. And if they see you do and I think it goes a long way. And what I'm trying to say is if you try to think you're better or you don't want to do what they want to do,

you can't create the culture you want because you're not the person that you're not emulating what you expect them to do. So for me, my main thing is, you know, get in the trenches, work with them, do what they want to do. work harder if I can, wake up at 435, sling out emails because they know that you're working and they respect that late night emails that you're working hard. But then ultimately care about them too, you know, do special things for them, you know, try to take them to lunch, buy lunches, you know, there's a lot of little things you can do that make people think you care, especially when the market sucks, right? You know, I mean, we all know that last year sucked. I mean, it just wasn't great. I mean, it was hard for every company, but, you know,

you can't take away all their perks. You don't mess with their income. Don't mess with their commissions. Sometimes you've got to make less so your employees make the same. And if you can do that stuff, people will respect you for it and they'll go to war with you,

which I think is what you want. You want people that are going to go to war with you at all times. That's how I look at it. Warrior, soldiers. That's my leader. That's my general. He'll fucking take out the garbage. He'll originate loans.

He'll meet real estate agents. And he'll do the same thing as we do. He'll pick up the phone call and answer Colin, right? Like, he's no better than us. He's just one of our guys. That's a true leader. Yeah. That's a true leader. And that's reflected. Yeah, I mean, I, I, people laugh when I take out the trash sometimes. I might have, even at, we had a party. I'll be taking out the trash at a party. You know, it's like, beer's coming out of the bag for spilling on me. You know, the take out the trash thing is such a cliche, but it's really that true.

It's like, why am I going to do something that you want? don't do like we work together like I don't like I always say we I don't say I say us not me I always try to think of it like we're in here together and I'm not better than you I just I started the company but the company doesn't exist without you so we're on the same level playing field and we all need each other that's awesome now you know you talk about sending out emails at 430 5 in the morning saying out emails late at night but you also have three kids you got a wife and we know wives are demanding and how and you got a most

multiple successful businesses, how are you balancing? Give us some secret sauce on how to balance all of this. I don't, you can't. You don't ever balance it. I mean, the key is to, it's hard. I mean, I'm asking for a friend. Yeah, I know. You know, I mean, you know, there's probably not a harder job than me,

a wife of a driven entrepreneur because the thing about, I talked to my wife there today and my sister's husband is the one as entrepreneur as well. It's like, we have the need. to build, right? Like, it's, it's, and part of my soul, like, I have to do this. And there's no way, like, if I didn't do it, it'd be like a dragon slayer,

lose no dragon. Like, it's just part of your soul, right? Like, you have to build this, right? You and Sam, you got this company. You have to build it in me the same way. And so being a marriage and entrepreneur is a very tough job because they have something that they have to do it.

And there's just no way around it. And if you take it away from them, you take away a piece of their soul and their being, and that's even worse, right? So I think it's, you have to find the times that you can be with your family and enjoy it. Like, so when I'm sending out emails in the morning

so my kids aren't there, and when I send out emails in the evening because my kids are in bed, right? So I'm probably taking away time for my wife, but I think she gets it. But I'm not perfect. I mean, there's definitely times where I'm sitting there and my kids are, like,

needing me, and I'm on my phone doing something. I wish I didn't have to do that. But I hope that their takeaway in time is that my dad fucking gave it all. Like he was all, he was a hustler than I'm going to, I want to emulate that.

I want to be a hard worker. I want to build something too. So it's a juggling act. You know it. I mean, yeah. There's time. Like,

I'm away from my kids right now, right? Because I'm doing this mortgage thing. I don't love it. But I think it's just a balancing act that's really hard to get perfect. And it's, and you just do your best

and you hope that the long term of it is that you're, financially, you put yourself on a spot, that you can do the things that you love to do. And from a visual perspective with your kids, that they saw their dad do everything they could to make their life better.

And I think ultimately that's how I look at it. I don't know if I'm right or not, but that's my vision on them. No, everything you said is absolutely correct. And it's a perpetual juggling act for myself. Something I learned from Matt, and I try to do this is like, you know, go on airplane mode when you go home.

But then it's like... Sometimes you can't. You can't. I mean, sometimes there's a shit show at work or something happened and you have to make it happen. Because if you don't, it's really bad. And so sometimes I'm like, I have to do this. Like, I don't want to do this right now. I have to step away from dinner or whatever it would be.

I would say one thing I try to do. I try to get him the same time every single day. What time is that? Between 555 and 610 every single day. And I try to leave the work every single day at the same time. And you make dinner with the family? You make it for dinner? I do.

I always try to make dinner or breakfast with them. So I try to get a full meal. I think I've figured out a way to do as much as I possibly can. And I could do, I always tell my wife this, I'm like, I could do a lot less. And I can build a lot, probably, my business would probably be bigger. But I get that there's a little sacrifice. But I try to do as much as I can, but there's sometimes where I can't do as much as I want to do. And that's just part of the sacrifice you make if you want to build a great company, which is part of my soul.

That's what I want to do. What do you think division is for the company? You talk about, you know, growing it massively, but your loan officers are funding 11 loans per loan officer. You know, we got 900 LOs. Yeah, so I don't, I try to be careful of what the vision thing. My vision for my company, I want to be the top five broker in the United States with a 10th of the L.S. That's my goal. I think you hit that at some point.

I did quite a few times. I want to do a consistent basis. I want to build a place that people, my biggest goal is to build a place where LOs don't leave. Like, I don't have LOs leave me. They never leave, right? Because they love being there. I take care of them.

And I think my bigger goal outside numbers and size is like, can I create a lasting company where people love to work? They're proud of it. They brag about it. They want their friends to work there. They tell their family about it. They tell people on social media. That's my biggest goal.

And if I can do that, I think my monetary goal, which is to do this amount of loans with this amount of people will come with it as well. So let me ask you this. What really inspired you to grind so hard? How did you become this? Was there a person that made you this way? No, I grew up poor. I didn't have money growing up. I mean, I didn't have a whole lot.

I mean, I didn't grow up like in poverty, but I grew up a, you know, a challenging life. And, you know, most of my family's problems revolved around money, you know, the lack thereof, you know, fights and arguments and, you know, not going to go here or not being able to buy that. And I always just told myself, like, I don't ever want to deal. I don't want to deal that, you know, deal with that. I had nobody in my company that ever started business. I think I was one of the first, I think I was the first person I graduate college, me and my, me and my sister. And so for me it was I just wanted to grow up a certain way and have a certain life. And I also don't play well with others. You know, I don't really like to work under somebody.

I can deal with authority, but I don't like it. And so for me, I didn't want to work for anybody. I wanted to have a certain way of living, a certain way of being, and a certain lifestyle I wanted to live. And the only way to do that was to build something and build it well and work hard at doing it. Did you have any mentors along the way? No.

I don't have any mentors. You know, you've always been like, you're the president CEO. You don't have, and you've said that to me before. Like, I don't play well. And, you know, I just don't, I don't know. I never, everybody's like, I got a mentor. And I'm not saying, listen, I wish, I, maybe I need one. I should have one.

I don't have a hero. I just don't. For me, it's just, I know what I want. I know how to get there. I don't need anybody to tell me how to do it. Because I think I know how to do it. and I think I can get there without it, but I don't think it's bad to have all that either.

Yeah, I love it. So one thing I want to ask you, it's like you've come so far with each L.O's production, and each L.O. is funding 11 loans. Like, give me some secret sauce how that's being. Marketing. But what about marketing? Everybody's doing marketing. Who's doing marketing?

Every L.O does market. Some sort of marketing, right? Well, what is it? What are some of the ideas that you have? You've implemented. You don't got to give you a playbook. I'll get about my playbook. So we,

so I owned, this is my second mortgage number I have owned, and we used to, I used to, and I used to buy another company, actually is a UWM broker as well, and I started that company in 2007 when the economy fell apart,

and we used to buy leads from lending tree. And if you know me, I don't like to rely on other people for anything. Yeah. And so we was like, how can we bring a business of our own? So we got into radio marketing business. It took a long time to figure it out. But what I found with radio is if you're consistent, you're intelligent, you write good copy and you're not afraid to spend a lot of money, you can make the phones ring. And so I've always done radio. And I do that because I can control my destiny. I don't have to rely on anybody else. I don't have to worry about lending tree, bank rates,

fee structure changing. I don't have a lot of competition. I am extremely bold. and I understand risk in the right way. But radio is so risky with regulators, CFBB and, you know. But it's not. It's only risky if you try to be risky. Right. But if you put a good message out there, an intelligent message that doesn't work in a gray area, you can accomplish several goals.

One is you can create incredible brand equity. Like some of the markets I'm in right now, Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Charleston, Jacksonville, I've been there for five years. I'm a household name for a lot of people. So people come to us because they've been here us for a long time. The problem with radio and the problem with almost all marketing, problem with podcasts, everything is people don't have the longevity to make it work, right? You have to be able to do something for a long period of time on a consistent basis

in the face of maybe losing some money early to do it. When most people fall apart with all marketing is they quit too fast. Maybe you quit your podcast after two months instead of two years. Or maybe I quit marketing after three months instead of three years, right? So the consistency is so important. If you can get through it in all times, it will work. TV works. It all works if you do it consistently with a great message.

I always say like your advertising budget probably need to make you a little queasy each month. What's your advertising budget? I mean, no one has this advertising budget. No, I mean, like we probably spend some of the high twos, $250 to $290 range right now. At our peak, we were spending $7,000, $800,000 a month. right now there's just there's not as much meat on the bone so you got to be intelligent but we'll spend whatever we need to do to spend it and even you know there's certain markets where we might break even over the last couple years but you know brand equity is so

takes so long to get it but it's so short to lose it right so you have to keep moving forward even when you think it's not working because it will work long term just don't get out too early is what we've lost how are you framing your your your radio messages depends on the market I mean so like today I just changed all my ads today right so when rates dropped in late December I turned everything so we for all 22 most 22 and 23 we got way out ahead of the curve we started advertising he locks I was like you're you're a fucking idiot Roger like nobody's in he locks I'm like dude people are gonna start doing he locks you

watch it right so we started doing heavy he locked advertising that all a lot of that turn into full refinances right because a lot of people can get heat lock. So we were doing a lot of that. When rates dropped, you know, late December, early February, we switch it all quickly to first mortgage business, right? If your rate starts with seven, you're going to be in heaven is what we used to say. So people were calling us to refy, there's seven and a half percent. So you came up with cash phrases. Oh, yeah, monikers are great. Monarchers are wonderful. People love to remember something. You remember your best brands have some sort of monitor. Do you have a jingle for loan product? No, we don't.

Is there a reason why you never did a jingle? I think they're corny. But you got monikers? I like a moniker. Jingles are annoying. So today I switch everything back to our express line ahead, an express line of credit advertising move because nobody wants to rate in term right now because rates are back close to seven again. So it's beautiful for us because I can change my message very quickly, and it works because our brand equity has been so strong for so long.

And what are you seeing an influx of right now? Purchase, refi, e-lock. So we do a little bit of everything. We have a really good purchase business. That's all referral-based. So we do about 30% referral purchase. Because you're a huge brand. Everybody.

I don't think anybody in North Carolina doesn't know. Everybody knows... Yeah. So we have a cool hybrid model where we do a lot of advertising, which brings in business. But that's 35% of what we do, 30% to 40% of what we do is referral-based. That's a mixture of purchase and refi.

We're 30% purchased right now. The rest is all new generation stuff off of Alfredo stuff. That's awesome. So you've... I want to ask you this question. Have you always been an entrepreneur, or did you start as in retail? Did you start your business in retail? Did you start your business as a broker?

So when I got out of college, so when I got in the mortgage business, I was, I didn't even know. I only think I knew mortgage had a G, two Gs at the end. I really didn't know anything about it. All my buddies that graduated college before me, my fraternity brothers, all went down to Charlotte. and they were working on this big mortgage brokerage, and I heard some guy had a Porsche. And this was right when boiler room came out, right? Remember that movie?

And I heard some of us had a Viper. And a Corvette, I was like, what the fuck? What is going on down here, right? And they brought me down, they interviewed me, and my mom was like, you're crazy, it's 100% commission. I was like, I don't care. I'm good. I'll make money, watch.

And so I joined that company, and I did well, very early on. And then I was there for a little while, and I started my own company when I was 27. him but um that's how i got in i mean it was just a random event that happened one day i saw somebody i knew and he mentioned i could get a job there i was like let's go so it's like the butterfly effect kind of thing was super random but very i actually started my my first mortgage company at around it was about 25 what why did you start your own um i just felt like i was smarter than the owners of the company i worked at and i looked up one day and i saw them three up

there and I was like I know I'm smart I'm not trying to say I just knew I was better than all three of them and I felt there's three owners and you're like I'm better than I was I was all I was producing more more revenue I was a better all oh I just thought I could do them and I just didn't want to work for somebody anymore I didn't like it I just didn't feel like they were but they weren't offering anything to me then I was only giving them money I just like I'm just like I'm just doing my thing so I didn't think a lot about it just see it was always easy for me I don't think things are that hard. I think people ever think things a lot. Yeah, but you think everything's easy. You know, like, so you think everything's so easy? Tell me some of the challenges.

Everybody, well, challenge, challenge right now, like, how do you bring it? Like, so my speech, how do I bring in more business, right? Like, I have to run a marketing campaign to, to feed, you know, leads to 19 LOs, right? I have 19 LOs that are, that are primarily lead-based, right? So moving the needle in this type of market is extremely tough. I mean, what's the message going to be across 10 major markets that are going to get the phones ringing that are going to get an ROI that's going to make your company grow that's really tough right how do you keep 50 45 employees so we know we've never laid off an employee during all these we didn't 22 or we've never let off one employee how do you keep the the the gears grinding to keep

those employees engaged happy financially solvent Without losing your team, right? That was incredibly difficult, right? That's that's really tough, you know, and that's those are those are challenging. Those are hard challenges. The easy thing is start a company. A hard thing is how do you keep it running efficiently and keep people happy? That's really tough. So give me some suggestions on how to give the the audience listening some some suggestions on how to do that? How to keep people I think people I think a very cheap way. I don't think you can cut your way to profit it, but you can cut your way to a bad culture pretty quickly, right? Like, let's say an average employee makes $6,000 a month, right? You cut five employees, right?

You save $30,000, but you've destroyed the culture of the company, because now everybody's walking around with a guillotine over their desk. You have to suck it up, and you have to realize that you either going to make less money or lose more, but you have to keep your team in place because if you don't, the other The other side of that is you're going to lose a lot of people. I make a lot of people cut early and it's a cheap way to try to make money and you can't really make money by cutting expenses, unless your expenses are super bloated. So we've been really disciplined about that. You can't cut comp.

You can't go to your OLOs all the time and say, we're not making more money. I'm going to cut your comp. Then you also cross the morale, right? So you just have to just suck it up as an owner and realize that if you have a viable business plan, you're going to lose more money now, but the upside of that is you have an infrastructure to explode when it happens. And that's what I always thought. I was like, why would I lay off three people? I'm going to say 15,000 a month.

Like what's that? Then what like they're all good? They all love each other. They're all friends. So if so and so see so so get fired, like you don't think they're looking for a job the next day. And also you're great people leave. I think a lot of people are going to mistake early. You fire too quickly when it goes down and you've all.

also, they're all, all the people are also thinking like, hey, I gave you everything I had all those years and I'll lose money and you fired me right away. So I think it goes back to culture, but you just have to suffer a little bit as an owner. That's great advice. You do have to suffer sometimes. That's great advice because a lot of CEOs, and especially in our industry, they're very quick to lay people off like, oh, let's just cut their car. Let's just fire this guy. We need to cut overhead and they don't realize that they're cutting people's lives. Yeah. And it's also your fault for, you know, we, we didn't, hire a lot during 21. We tripled our volume, but we didn't hire a whole lot. And so when

things got worse, we didn't have to fire. I think that was a good, that was a really great movie made. But I just think firing people that are great employees that gave you all they have is a very cheap way to try to make more money. And it actually loses more money. Roger, my last question, this is my favorite part of this whole podcast. And it's a three-prong question. What is a personal goal that you have for yourself? What is a family goal that you have for your family? And what's a goal that you have for loan and pronto? Any order you want? I would say from a company perspective, our goal is to grow again. You know, we've been stagnant in terms of employee account. We haven't lost. We haven't gained. I'd like to get back up to a billion dollars a year in

fundings in 25. I like to get to like 600 this year. I'd like to, you know, that's the main goal. Get to a billion, right? Get back to profitability. From a personal goal, that's a really good question. I'd like to become a better leader. I really try to be a student of the game and I think I'm a good leader right now, but I think I want to be something that everybody looks up to a lot more and wants to emulate and look up to be a mentor maybe somebody's here I'm not I mean that's the wrong word but I don't you know personally speaking I just really you know I want somebody I want to be somebody that my kids love and care about and think it's a phenomenal dad I don't have like anything like a

like a place I want to go or thing I want to buy like I don't really roll like that but I think I just want to be a better leader what was the middle what was the one in the middle and a family goal a goal that you have for your family this year? I want to start seeing the world a little more. We don't go a lot of places. I'd like to start, you know, seeing the world, seeing, I don't want to see the United States. Honestly, I'd like to start, you know, I spend a lot of time with my kids, but I like to start taking them on adventures that, you know, allow them to see the world and America and the national parks and all that stuff that matters that creates lasting memories that when I die one day,

like they think that was the coolest thing they ever did, you know, kind of stuff. So I don't have, like a place I want to go or a thing I want to do. I just want to be a really good dad and a good business owner and I want to grow my company. I want everybody to stay there and I want people to just love what they do and I want my family to be proud of me and I want to be proud of my company. I'm proud of you, Rodney. Thank you. I'm proud of you and I'm proud of everything you've built and I'm proud of like your work ethic, your grind. Most importantly, I'm proud of your company. You're one of my favorite guys on the planet and I appreciate you for doing this podcast. Loam Pronto, this guy's the man. Make sure you guys follow him. He, he,

crushes it, by the way, on TikTok. God bless you, Roger. Thank you for coming on coffee on tour. All right.