Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Revolutionizing Mortgage ft. Pioneer Michael Cohan | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 49

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Michael Cohan, a seasoned leader with over two decades as CEO, has redefined excellence in the mortgage industry through customer-centric innovation and integrity. His tenure showcases a rare dedication to understanding and meeting the unique needs of each client, building a platform that’s both accessible and highly effective across various systems. Known for his straightforward approach and deep expertise, Michael has created a support-driven team that prioritizes client success, consistently going beyond expectations. Respected by industry peers, he exemplifies the value of reliability, knowledge, and genuine partnership in business—a true class act in the mortgage field.For More Check Out our Playlist: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPwyhl8CkXiM0cBtuY8A_6JS60FueLz3&si=0_2dnoPkYV6jcSGwCheck Us Out on all Platforms!Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffeez-for-closers-with-joe-shalaby/id1726674707Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KkQWRqHSHcCK3TVfsRKUK?si=hjTnUOjFS5eTDxBjgf4RwQ&preview=noneAmazon: https://www.amazon.com/Coffeez-Closers-Joe-Shalaby/dp/B0CRYLQRW6 Coffeez and Closers Socials & WebsiteWebsite: https://coffeezforclosers.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coffeezforclosers/TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbnU0T3RrLXdPbC1BR2NLc2lWcExqWklQaHlQUXxBQ3Jtc0tudi1GV2Zod3hRYzRhTkhONFBuMlptblNGSlJ1QzhpV0tzbHh5YThNR0R3Y2RnNnU5NV9ER3E5ZUhxMjdUUWp1UWo4MVl6Q2szeXo1cFh1OHNkYkxDR1F0MXZtMTZ6QnZoakdzSnJpVl9PcWZBOU9zZw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40coffeezforclosers&v=uXvk6LY9lS8Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa2pLZ2pMaUxmSTh4dy1qazMtdlBjX2pVN1AxQXxBQ3Jtc0tua2RUTUNsRmJob0RKWlVqeDhNaUN4US1rdlRvUG9Fdm5SNk1jU1pQNzNLQnVmUmtGMGtMYUViZ2pLMXJkOVJUci1kMk9DN2poTThVV2NFd0tISWdDMzNwOEZ2c3pVb09lbEhjemJHblRsS1RKdHZqbw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpeople%2FCoffeez-for-Closers-with-Joe-Shalaby%2F61556355642488%2F&v=uXvk6LY9lS8 Joe Shalaby SocialsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/josephshalaby/TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa3p6VlRzR1BWMkJQM1ZIaUdVZHhYVTYyak43QXxBQ3Jtc0tuUXVBOE1oZUJYTmZIZnNENUgxQkhjamk4RXJHb09MWU9OczJhLWpnX0JwN2pENzRhaV9NajJROW5nek1tQ1VvVE40ZFJuUUI2cnI0ajNKLXE4d1VMUUpkTGFHR0tGY0o5NUhnWnZnaXJoZXdEM0piaw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40josephshalaby&v=uXvk6LY9lS8Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josephshalaby E Mortgage Capital Socials & WebsiteInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/emortgagecapital/Website: https://www.emortgagecapital.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Emortgagecap #1 Mortgage Company on Social on 🌎#1 Non Delegated Lender in the Country🌟#1 Broker in CANMLS #1416824"Mortgages Are What We Do Not Who We Are"™https://finance.yahoo.com/news/learn-why-e-mortgage-capital-192000740.htmlAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What's up, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Coffee's Proposers where success is served hot. Today's guest hails from a leading national title company, known for its extensive business with some of the largest lenders in the mortgage industry. This tech-driven firm is at the forefront of developing innovative property technology. Join us as we dive into the world of national, lending services and cutting-edge tech solutions with none other than Michael Cohen, founder and CEO of Unisource Title and Unisource Credit. Let's go. Thank you for having me on board.

Nice to be here. Absolutely, Mike. Thanks for jumping in today. And it's going to be a good show. We got a lot to talk about. A lot of new things that recently have been rolled out by Unisource. and moreover, a recent acquisition of Unisource, you guys recently acquired MFI, so we're going to dive into that and how that can be very, very helpful for the mortgage community. So I like to start these shows off the same way with every one of my guests is their morning routine.

So, Mike, what is your morning routine every day? Sure. I usually get up around 5.30 or 6 in the morning. I start out usually with a little bit of a quick workout, if possible, and time permits, of course, to start out the day and start out with answering some emails, getting into the boxes out there and seeing what's happening. I like to read upon the news a little bit and get into that and get a little involved. I'm usually at the office by 7.30, 7.45 in the morning and we start our day. And our day takes us as long as it needs to be to get through what we need to. Grining early, staying late, and always, always hustling.

That's something I really admire about you. Now, let's dive into it. So what year did you start in the actual mortgage industry? I started back in 1994. I had just recently graduated from my graduate program and had an opportunity to join my father. And at that time, we were in the credit reporting business. And I had no idea of what credit reports were, had no idea what mortgages were, and had an opportunity to start out at the ground floor. I took it upon myself to learn a little bit about the business and seeing if there was,

a desire to stay in here. And many, many years after that, I'm still stuck in the mortgage business. So was your dad's title company? Was it your dad's company when you started? It wasn't my father's title company. He never got into the title side of the business. Well, we started out back in the days even before I joined the company was that he had started a credit reporting company back in 1986. Okay. And the desire to start a credit reporting company back in 1986 was based on pretty much lack of a technology to deliver what at that time if people recalled or recalled RMCRs, where there were really typed up manually on a typewriter. And the whole purpose of starting out the credit reporting company was to take a Apple 2E computer and electronize the RMCRs onto a computer,

which no one had thought about before or had the technology to move it along. So the whole premise of delivering these RMCRs that would take six weeks, five weeks, four weeks to deliver to a to a bank, the whole ideology was to do it on an Apple 2E computer and deliver those back in 24 hours. And really where it started out is that the banks really were accustomed to these, hey, I'm accustomed to six weeks and five weeks, turn times at best. And so the concept of using technology to deliver the RMCRs back then, to have it delivered in 24 hours, was unheard of. Yeah, revolutionary. Yeah, exactly.

So my father got started with that, in that business with his brother. And they were up until 2 o'clock in the morning every night, making sure that, these RMCRs were getting produced and they were being delivered to the customer at 6am, which really brought the success of the credit reporting company at that time to really deliver something that was not available in the market. And it eventually came out that in 1989, we started our own technology company. And this technology company produced the technology the algorithm to produce our own logic to build the own credit reports at that point. And again, we pioneered that in the market back in 1989.

And at one point, we had about 120 credit reporting companies, including some of the biggest ones like First American Credit Co, that were utilizing our technology to produce the credit reports. And it was very nice to see that we've been in the credit reporting industry prior to my time and the title side. We were the pioneers over and over again in building creative products that were wanted in the industry, automation that was not thought of. We built a lot of integrations to third-party loan origination softwares where it electronically, where it electronically, them getting a credit report within 30 seconds. And we really partnered up with a lot of these guys,

these LOS companies, and really delivered a product that was needed to help advance the credit reports to customers instantaneously. Wow. So you guys were one of the pioneers of delivering instant credit reports through LOSs. That's fascinating. and had no idea.

Yeah, we had a great platform. We built the platform. We managed a platform ourselves, and it gave us a lot of opportunities to really understand what the need was for the business, for our industry, and to pioneer a lot of it through our own developers.

We had at one point about 36 developers on staff, and we built a ASP platform that allowed us to go and sort of be in the cloud, sort of speaking, and deliver credit reports off a centralized database to 120 credit agencies out there that didn't have the technology to support their business. And we really helped them all out to be successful in their own ways. So I'm going to get this right. So you just kind of landed in this. the mortgage industry. You didn't pick the mortgage industry, just kind of followed in your father's

footsteps and just improved upon what he was doing. Very much. My father was, you know, I think in his late 50s, early 60s, the time I joined the company. And at that point, he had grown the organization to a level that he could grow, obviously very successful to his level. So me joining the company at 24 years old, fresh blood, fresh mentality, came in here and understood what needs to be done to take the company to the next level. What is it that we need a technology-wise, service-level-wise, ideology of growing that company. And so when I joined over there, it was a new perspective, a new generation that needed to become. I did not end up in this. this industry by will. It was more an opportunity that was given to me and strongly recommended to me,

I should say. And I was told by my father that, hey, you give it a year. If you don't like the business, you're free to go do what you want. And I assume that 24 years old, I don't have much to lose. I don't have a job. I just graduated from my MBA program and I was like, sure, well, why not? Let's give it a try. And it really had a lot of success and a lot of motivation to push as you were getting more advanced and pushing ahead. It really motivated me to continue on with it. And in July of 2003, we had the opportunity to exit the credit reporting business through a public offering through FISA, which most people probably know in the industry. And your career reporting company went public?

We did. And it was acquired at that time by FISA, which was at that time roughly an $8 billion. market cap and today they're valued at somewhere around 53, 54 billion dollars approximately. So they did go through a series of acquisitions of credit companies and related companies. Their goal was at the time to build an end-to-end solution for their customers to have everything from the beginning product, which was credit, all the way down to appraisals, to title. and whatnot and have a full offering to their customers. And we were one of the acquisitions that was done through it. Nice.

What was the company, the credit company called? At the time, the company was called Chase Credit. That was our business to business line. And our technology company was called Chase Credit Systems. Oh, awesome. So what year did you start Unisource? Was that your next venture after you guys sold Chase Credit? Yes, so we sold our organization in July of 2003.

How much of an exit if you don't mind my asking if you don't want to? No, not at all. It's about $100 million back in 2003 numbers. It's like $500 million now. Yeah, it's a pretty substantial increase considering inflation in there. And we were one of the most successful by far companies that had a platform for technology and a platform. So dad retired right after that.

He was just like, I'm done. Rightfully so. He did retire. He didn't want to be in a business which required this many extensive hours of being involved in an operating business. Were you the CEO of that company too or were you just a leadership? No, I was the executive vice president over sales and marketing. My father was the CEO. the president of the company of both companies, the technology company, and as well as the business to

business platform. You got to keep some of the exit then. Yeah, I was lucky enough. I did become a partner a few years before we exited it. And it did allow me a small piece of the organization, which really helped out. I was 31 years old. So a small piece at 31 years old, believe me, can add a lot of money, yes. And it allowed me to take that and understand that, hey, there's a business out there.

I was 31 years old. Certainly had no intentions of retiring and was looking for, okay, where is the next level? where is a technology needed and automation that's lacking in an industry. And I always had my desire to be on the title side. It comparatively to credit reports seemed a lot sexier. Albert, I don't know what's very sexy about mortgage anymore, but it... We're bringing sexy back to mortgage. I'm working on that. Apparently so.

We had that opportunity to get into the title side. It was really locking some serious technology. And in 2003, I, with a partner, had started off Unisource. And we started out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is the hub of all the national title companies and understood what the need was and started incrementally building the technology to understand what clients need and deliver that to them. Beautiful Pittsburgh. Why would you pick beautiful Pittsburgh right after a big exit? A couple of factors that took us there. Number one, I had a partner that was based out of Pittsburgh and he was already in the technology. He was already in the title business, excuse me.

And he already had a platform for it. That is number one. Number two, cost of business in Pittsburgh was typically a lot lower than most other areas of the country. And three, a fairly good amount of employee base with experience and title and escrow. So it seemed like a logical explanation of starting. there and can't and don't regret anything that we had started in there. In 2008, my partner and I decided to sell the remaining shares that I didn't own in Unisource, and in 2008 I took it over as the 100% sole owner of Unisource. And having a partner has certainly a lot of advantages,

but it also allowed as a single ownership at this point for us to understand what expansions we can have, what technologies can we continue to build and deliver. And after the acquisition of the remaining shares, it really, that's when the real growth started to happen at Unisource. That's awesome. So Unisource, you bought a national title company with all the licenses and the ability to do title in every state. I started it out. I was the founder and, yes, I built all the licenses, all the infrastructure ourselves. with a partner. So we didn't buy anything. We mostly built it from scratch.

You got all the licensing in every state, state by state. It was, and it still continues to be a uphill battle. Yes, in 2003, it was a lot easier to get licensing. It was a lot less regulations at the time. So we certainly went into as many states as we could possibly grow into. In 2008, when I took over the company entirely, it opened the door for us to invest pretty significantly and go into the secondary states where it was a lot tougher to get licenses. It had a lot more regulations into getting those licenses. and it allowed us to invest the capital into getting those licenses one by one and gradually over time, build into a lot of the states. Today we're in approximately with direct operations in, I would say, 43 or 44 states

that we operate out of. And those are mostly all the primary states where people do business in. That's awesome. I mean, to have a national footprint as a title company and escrow, that is one massive undertaking, especially on the regulatory side. It is. It continues to be, and I think certainly it will become and continue to become more difficult as new regulations come up. And there's a lot around, hey, what is it that you can do to keep your licenses and grow in? into other states as well. Right now we don't need predominantly any other states. We're pretty much almost into any major states that people do business in.

But I do anticipate it's going to continue to become harder to get licenses and maintain your licenses as well. Now, my question is, you know, since you had this big exit and you decided to like start a national company, hyper-regulated company, you know, what, motivated you to start Unisource knowing that you didn't really have to do it? Yeah, good question. There's a couple of factors in there. One of it is that you're correct. It is a hyper, hyper regulated industry. And we do like an industry that is regulated because there are some industries out there that are anyone can come into and anyone can get out this industry the entry of

it is quite complex and uh it intrigued me for the reason that you have to be sophisticated to go into such a business and the people that are in this business are have a sophisticated model as well, otherwise they wouldn't be in this business. So that challenged me to a certain degree of understanding, A, how we can get into the business that has a very high cost, the barrier to get into. And what challenges does this industry see that you can overcome? So there's two really aspects to it as well. You don't want to get into a business that anyone can come into $500 and in my opinion, of course, and you want to get into a business that has a need for a specific product or development or advancement that you can provide to those customers.

And the barrier to entry into the title space is not like you'd need some pretty decent money. That's why you were able to start at the level you were at. Yes, absolutely. So today we have multiple brands that we go into. We have, we've been very lucky enough to be successful in building multiple brands, some of them with other national title organizations, some of them the biggest ones in the United States. And so we do have multiple brands and we understood the process of building the infrastructure. and once we had the advancement of doing that, we're able to take it along and replicate it

into different brands as well. It's incredible. Now, let me ask you this. You think there's a specific skill or mindset that you have to have right now to be successful in the title industry or the mortgage industry as a whole? I do believe it, and I don't believe it's industry specific. I do believe that the skill set that someone needs

to have the opportunity to be successful. And the reason why I say opportunity is because there's certainly a lot of people that work extremely hard. And sometimes they don't have that success. So I preface by saying that success isn't solely based on how many hours you work in a day. Success to me is based on the opportunity you have. based on the hours that you work. So the skill set that you need in this industry as a minimum is definitely a good work ethic. Generally speaking, the good work ethic includes being disciplined to work hard to achieving what you want

and having that opportunity to achieve what you want. And I think that that is the base of whether you're in mortgage, whether you're in title insurance or any other industries to have the person that wants to build a company be disciplined to work hard enough to have that opportunity to grow the company. Excellent. Now, right now, given all your success that you've had over the years and your continual success and your ongoing success. and your ongoing mindset to continue to win, where do you continue to find that kind of motivation? Sure. To me, the motivation isn't based on dollars any longer.

For me, the motivation is how can we deliver a better product, better technology, better experience to the customer. So for me, it isn't only based on, okay, do we bring in this customer based on how much revenues they deliver to the table? It's based on how can we make the experience better for that customer and the motivation for me comes within understanding and challenging ourselves how to make a product better for the customer experience. And that's where it motivates me to build bigger and better in that sense.

Love it, love it. Now, what are you guys doing right now with AI? How are you implementing AI into the title space? Definitely we are. A little bit of understanding. In Unisource, I'm a big believer because of my tech background to build a lot of our own proprietary technology. So I'm a very big believer in that

because I do believe that you stifen yourself. If you're solely relying on third-party technologies, there's going to be developments you want to do. There's going to be time frames that you're going to need to do these developments on. And if you're relying on solely a third-party, get that work done for you and you're working on their time schedule, it's going to really prevent you from the speed that you need to grow your company. I'm a big believer in building automation.

I'm a very big believer in AI technology. We are at the very beginning stages at Unisource to implement some very advanced AI technology that continues the automation and they can deliver a finished product back to our customers in a significantly less time. So we are very much already developing automation. and customized solutions every day, but we're also implementing AI. We're on the back end.

It's going to be able to help us produce at a faster speed to the customer. So you'll be able to deliver title reports in seconds now? I think ours. I think that, and I think we are... Full title reports. Full title reports. We're doing it in many states today.

And thanks to the technology that's out there, we do have a relationship with our underwriters. We do have a relationship with developers that have allowed us in some of these states to have a full instant title report delivered within three, four, or five hours. What about for credit? How is AI being implemented in the credit space? You know, AI is going to, it's behind in comparatively to the tile space in the AI technology, I feel. I do believe that where AI is going to come into play is more on doing products, customer service products,

such as rapid rescuers, supplements, where actually the technology needs to be very, verified or information needs to be verified. I do believe that that is where it's going to be implemented as the lenders implement more automation and AI on their side as well that we can plug into. Yeah, so it's still a little bit behind on the credit side. I do think so. I think that it is in this infancy stages because a lot of lenders haven't adapted to build AI on their side. So it's pretty hard to implement technology yet. But I do believe that it is on the horizon to happen in the next couple, few years for that. Nice. Okay. So pivoting a little bit. Now, if you were to tell your younger self, your 20 year old self, some advice, what would that

advice be? I believe working smarter and not working harder is essential in understanding I think a younger self of myself, but I believe a lot of people will relate to this, is that working 20 hours a day because you have the energy at 22, 23 years old may not be the answer. It's how much you can get done and how much you can advance, not in the 20 hours, but how much can you advance in a day without working 20 hours? Nice. So just be, you know, be mindful of your time and work smarter, not harder. Yes, I'm a big believer comparatively to 20 years ago at least that that understanding what you're trying to achieve and having a roadmap to there doesn't equal to every single day having to work 20 hours. It certainly doesn't also, on the flip side, doesn't necessitate working to work.

hours a day and expecting success or the opportunity for success. But I think there's a happy medium between working enough hours without overdoing it to achieve your goals. Now, a follow-up to that question is, what would you tell a 20-year-old right now to build wealth? How would you, how would you tell a 20-year-old, what would you tell a 20-year-old right now to build wealth? I would I would really set out a couple things. And I know the generation after me has a different mindset than maybe our generation, Joe. So I say that one is number one. Find what you really like to do.

Don't get into a business because you think or you hope that one day you're going to like it. Don't get into a business that. Well, they all want to be YouTubers. If you want to be YouTubers, you're correct. and maybe having a backup plan of, hey, if YouTube doesn't work out, Instagram doesn't work out, what is it that I can do that's going to, A, support me? Because majority or some, or at least a lot of the people that go into a social media platform don't have the stamina to make it into a large platform.

And you do have to have a backup plan. You can't always go in and saying, well, I want to go into social media and I don't have a backup plan. So I do think having that backup plan is essential to knowing what is it, do you like it, and can you wake up every day seeing yourself doing it? I mean, I certainly wake up every day and I'm challenged, but the challenge is good for me. I like to see where I am and where I can be. and I think that if that person takes that same, the same viewpoint, it does really help them to succeed. So do they like it?

Do you like it? Do you love it? Or do you live it? I would say at this point I love it. And this is the prime of where we are right now. It's taken a lot to get here. It was not an easy work to get here. And some people come and they,

they base it on, oh, well, you're lucky or that it just fell into your lap. Nothing falls into your lap. Success is not, for the most part, it's not handed to you. There's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes to build that, whether people admitted or not. And the success that we've had enables me to love what I do so far. And I certainly don't have any intentions of slowing down, if not anything, expanding and building faster is what we're looking at. That's awesome.

Continue to grow, continue to dominate. Now, what is your favorite quote? You know, I've always been brought up with this quote over here, and it may sound cliche, but, you know, I always tell everyone, you miss all the shots that you don't make. And I'm a big believer that you don't take. That you don't take, excuse me. Say that again. You miss every shot that you don't take.

And I'm a huge believer in that because a lot of times there has been opportunities that has been so out of reach or seemed so out of reach. And we took that. We took that risk. We took that fear of being shot down. And it really paid off. And so I tell everyone out there, there's no opportunity and there's no shame in you trying for something. It may not happen. There's no guarantees in life, but I can guarantee you that. You would regret not trying to take that opportunity at the minimum.

You know, I love who said that. Michael Jordan said that quote. And it's, you know, I think we have that quote in our office somewhere here. So, you know, and it's such a wise quote from him. Yeah, it is. And it really speaks to, you know, like the way you even played basketball. So. Yes.

So that's great, very, very wise quote. And now what's the best piece of advice someone gave you? Don't be deterred by failure. Whether it's a failure of your business, whether it's a failure of something you tried to achieve, I'm a big believer that you learn based on your failures. I believe that you grow to be a better person and a more experienced human being as a result of your failures.

And never fear failure in itself because it gives you the opportunity only to be a better person and grow personally and in business by experiencing failure. Love that, love that. Now, we're coming close to kind of wrapping up here And I like to always kind of end on a couple of questions.

Now, this is a big topic in this society right now. Do you think that college is important right now? I do believe that college is important, and not only for the education side, but I believe it's important for developmental growth as a person. And people say, well, you can get it by working, or you can get it by being on a social platform. And I do think that the social platform

and by working brings a different level of developmental growth and social growth. But I do believe that in the long-term, education is something that no matter how wealthy you get or how unsuccessful you are in your life, pattern journey, that the education is something they can never take away from you. And I do believe that, in my personal opinion, that college is important. College is where you learn, colleges where you have fun and experience different things,

and you're careless with a lot of things. And it gives you an opportunity to spend those years, grow developmentally, and be more prepared and certainly people that don't go to college, it's not a bad thing, but I do think it's a opportunity that's worth the investment for a lot of people. So you're going to send your kids to college? Of course, I can't make anybody go to college, but if it's my desire, absolutely, I would love for them to go to college and be educated as much as possible. No, no, you know, I honestly agree with you. But it's just, It's a big topic of debate, and that's what we like to do here.

Now, kind of a follow-up to that question is, how are you instilling that same grit that was passed down from you, from your father, to you? Now, how are you going to pass that down to your kids? Sure. So a little bit of a difference in between what my father and I, our relationship was, comparatively to what I would probably do with my kids in itself. Sort of when I graduated, it was, hey, you got to do this. And if you don't like it, then don't do it. Which was a different approach that I would take with my children. I would like to give my children the opportunity to be valuable to society.

That's my number one rule. And to me, whatever you want to do, do it. But contribute to the value of society. And as long as you do that, and as long as you're a good person in this world and you do good to others, I'm completely fine with it. Now, two last questions. The first one is a three-prong question. What is a personal goal that you have for yourself? What's a family goal that you have for the family?

And what's a business goal that you have for Unisource Title and Unisource Credit? Sure. So I'll start out with my family because I think that's the most important piece of it. My family, my goal is to see my children grow up and be successful in their own ways. I've sacrificed a lot in my life, just like a lot of founders do in their lives to build something. And in my case, a title company and an escrow company and whatnot. but for my sacrifices that I've done is to provide my family with the opportunity to achieve what they want and not have to do what they need to do only based on financial results.

But do something that you truly enjoy. Do something that you're going to wake up every day and be like, wow, this is what I want. want to do. And as long as they achieve that and they have the opportunity to achieve that, I've set my goals and I've exceeded them on my family side. On the business side, I think this is truly the beginning of a snowball effect. I believe that as the industry has consolidated, certainly there are tons of national and regional companies, title companies, that have either exited the business, that have been acquired. And a lot of these acquisitions are by national companies that are unrelated to title and escrow or don't have much of the experience. So I do believe that

this gives us the opportunity to drastically invest. back into our organization that we've been involved in for over 20 years and to continue at an exponential factor to build better, build automation, build AI, but also you can have the best technology in the world. So if you don't have the people behind it that are committed to bending over backwards for your customers, it doesn't matter the best technology. in the world. It will be useless. So I do see that we have an opportunity of significant continued growth and really taking over and becoming a significant player in this market before it's my time to retire, which hopefully won't be too much soon for either one of us. You know what? You're the

type of guy. I don't think you'll ever truly retire. You grind so hard. You might not grind as bad and as much because you're one of the hardest working people I've ever met. But, you know, take your foot off the gas a little bit and relax. That's the goal. And as the new generation in my company come in here and challenge me, I welcome that, actually. I love it. I welcome it. And I think it's a very healthy transition over the period of time that you want to see your company growth.

And you want to see the people within your organization take over more. and do more than what you've been able to do. Exactly. And that's definitely the goal of it to train my management team to become better of what they do every day when they wake up and to help the continued growth of the company. And eventually one day I would like to see the company grow even without me when I'm not here.

And a personal goal for yourself? Personal goal is to understand that, I would like to really see that I enjoyed life to the fullest. I would like to see that, like you said, I eventually take my foot off the gas pedal a little bit. I don't know emotionally if I can continue to take my foot off the gas pedal a lot. I think inherently it's in my DNA as it is with a lot of founders out there that you feel fear, fear failure.

And that really helps you understand and deliver that we come from a background that we weren't extremely wealthy when we were growing up. And I've already seen that side of it. And I've already had the desire to grow and that fear that, hey, if you don't continue growth, you're going backwards. I do want to take that. want to enjoy life as my kids start to grow up and definitely continue to spend family time with them as much as possible. Nice. Now, one last question because this is a question we all face.

When you're in front of the pearly gates, what's God going to tell you? Were you a good person? Did you achieve what you want to? And I'm not talking about financially. I think financially, if you like what you're doing and you enjoy it and you work hard and you have the opportunities that come along, I think that's great. But no one leaves this planet saying, I wish I could work another day. It's based on the experiences that you have with your friends, with your families. And did you spend? quality time, are they going to remember you 20 years from now and the quality times that you spent with them? No one's going to remember your money. They're going to spend it all.

But the quality of the person and the memories you build with them is what's going to be your legacy that you leave behind. Let's go. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Mike Cohen, founder, CEO, Unisource title, incredible guests. Check them out. Make sure you do business with this guy. This guy is the man. God bless, guys. Thanks, Mike Cohen for joining us today. All right. Thank you.