Next Level Pros - #120: Personal Brand Building 101

Starting point is 00:00:00 Yo, welcome to another episode of the Founder Podcast. Today, I am interviewing Joseph Chalabi. He is the founder of eMortgage Capital. This is one of the largest loan originating companies in the nation. Literally, they locked down a billion dollars in loans last quarter alone. Over the last three months, insane. This guy has built an incredible brand, impressive personal brand online. In this episode, we dive in on what it is like to build a personal brand alongside a great business. A lot of business owners are really wanting to build up that personal brand. How do I get started? What space should I start in? What kind of content should I be creating? This really applies to any business. I don't care what

Starting point is 00:00:48 industry you are in. If you are in business, you're in the business of building up your personal brand. We talk about all the details and more on this episode of the Founder Podcast. So Joseph, you are building one of the most incredible loan officer, loan origination platforms in the United States. One of the fastest growing. I mean, you did a billion dollars last quarter in revenue or in loan originations. That's wild. Tell me, how is that even possible right now? You got interest rates, you got really everything fighting against you. Like, how are you pulling this off? interactive platform for loan officers to just want to join. And what we really stand behind is marketing, technology, automations, so that you can reach a broader audience, and data aggregation. So we're big on data, we're big on lead generation. So we help our

Starting point is 00:01:59 originators not just on the best compensation side. So we offer the most aggressive compensation in the industry, but we also help them actually brand themselves, brand their social media, create content, create more opportunities for lead generation, data aggregation, and then help them systemize ways to really expand their audience. So, you know, there's a combination of things that we always push to innovate. And we're big leaders when it comes to innovation on tech, innovation on data solutions, and innovation on lead generation.

Starting point is 00:02:40 Yeah, I find that to be extremely important, no matter what industry you are in, right? Like, a lot of people have a great product, great solution, but very few have the leads, right? Like they suffer from the obscurity, getting in front of the consumer at the end. So, I mean, obviously you guys have figured out something pretty special to be able to do it. I mean, really, 2024 has not been a very kind year to anyone outside of the big tech companies. A lot of the small to mid-sized organizations, I mean, your middle upper size, as far as a company is concerned, most of them are struggling, right? Interest rates are crushing small to medium-sized business. And so what kind of strategies are you guys utilizing

Starting point is 00:03:28 to go and generate these type of leads where you can continue to push? So we're big buyers of data from the bureaus. So that's an easy solution. And one thing that's been unique to me specifically as a leader within the industry is I'm a big lead gen guy and I know the call center space and I understand it and I really try to push in that direction. So I understand lead monetization. I'm big on creating my own call center which I have many and then

Starting point is 00:04:06 creating the data creating the call the call center workflows to get folks to actually you know warm the leads up transfer them over to a loan officer so it's a hot transfer so you know understanding call centers understanding lead gen understanding the monetization process of data is pretty unique in our industry because it's usually like mortgage guys refer to call center guys to generate leads if they even think that majority of our industry is fully reliant on realtor relationships. 90%, 95% of our industry does not even think that there's leads to be that, that leads are a possibility. So you're, you're really generating directly from the consumer rather than,

Starting point is 00:05:00 yes, I help with the consumer direct platform and I help our loan officers understand that Consumer Direct is the way to go. And I know you're in the solar space, pretty similar. It's kind of like if you're competing against a solar guy who's just going on doors and knocking, like you're just going to crush him. You know, like, what are you doing? You know, that's such an old school way of lead gen. There's so many additional ways to generate leads. You don't have to door knock yet. 99% of the solar industry is doing it that way. Same in my space, in the mortgage space, like everybody wants to talk

Starting point is 00:05:34 to a realtor, you know, or work with their members at church or. So do you guys, you guys do all your own in-house marketing? You have a pretty big marketing team. We actually, so I have my own retail floor, Consumer Direct floor, but my Consumer Direct floor is a guinea pig for me to innovate new lead strategies, new marketing strategies, and then just roll them out at scale to my organization. That's awesome.

Starting point is 00:06:08 So how big's your marketing department? I mean, obviously, there's many facets to marketing. There's marketing, there's lead gen, there's content creation, there's podcast team. So, like, I got all types of people in every one of those departments. So marketing is pretty diverse amongst all departments, right? But the reason I ask is like what I found is that most successful companies own their own marketing, right? A lot of guys, they try outsourcing it, hiring agencies, everything else to be able to get to the top and they never quite learned their own strategy or develop their own team or anything like that. And I really feel like that was our personal success, right? Building a 30 plus man internal marketing team where we generated our own

Starting point is 00:06:54 leads, we created our own content, right? Like everything was, was self-generated. And so like, I guess I just was, you know, trying to try to understand a little bit more, like what that journey has been for you and building that out. Yeah, so we have our own call center. If you want to count each one of those agents as part of the marketing team, that's the call center. There's probably like 20 people there. We have our in-house marketing team for content creation.

Starting point is 00:07:22 We got four people full-time for that in-house. We got another six people overseas. Then we got like SEO guys. We got, you know, editors. But so we've been, fortunately, a lot of that stuff can be outsourced overseas. Right. We've probably got another 10 people there.

Starting point is 00:07:39 So, I mean, we probably have 35 plus people total in just the marketing space. Yeah. And I'm assuming you feel like that's like your main competitive advantage, like the fact that you own the lead generation. Well, that is one competitive. There's five of us mega companies in the country. And, you know, one of them are probably listening to this show. But what I feel like my biggest competitive advantage amongst my competitors is that I'm the only one who's got a massive social media following and who's also a true creator on social media and

Starting point is 00:08:19 has a podcast. So, you know, I try to differentiate because I got five major competitors. None of them have millions of followers. None of them have a top podcast. So I'm like, and I'm really leaning into being the biggest brand in the world on on in the mortgage space. I'm already the biggest brand in the mortgage space on the planet as a personal brand. And my company is the biggest brand on social media. We're bigger than any other mortgage company on social media by a personal brand. And my company is the biggest brand on social media. We're bigger than any other mortgage company on social media by like 10 X. I'm also three X larger than any mortgage influencer on social media. So I've leaned into that. That was an initiative I started this year because all my competitors, they could do the same thing. They could buy data,

Starting point is 00:09:03 they could market, they could create, because they could write a check for all that stuff. And they all have money, you know, so they want data, they want this or they want that, they're gonna have to, they could just stroke a check. What they can't do, Chris, is go viral, because that takes you doing the work. And what I've learned in this journey of going viral, especially over 40 years old, is I got to really like humble myself. Because to go viral over 40, like you got to do things that someone like, I don't want to say I'm prominent. I come from very poor roots, but I've been fortunate enough to really like succeed in life, you know, and, you know, to go viral, I do man on the street content, where I'm being rejected by like, I mean, it's humbling stuff. And it's cool. I've really accepted it. But it's been a journey.

Starting point is 00:09:57 And I know, my competitors aren't gonna do what I do. Right? You know, I know, I have an act, a background as an actor, I was really rejected a I know I have an act, a background as an actor. I was really rejected a lot when I was an actor, as a performer, you know, theater performer. So I kind of had that and had to kind of like tap into those years as a kid, 17, 18, just getting rejected all the time and then going back. And when I was, you know know starting my business or whatever but now it's like man this is like I'm starting over as an entrepreneur you know as a content creator so I mean it brings up it brings up a strong question strong topic like I mean you're in the

Starting point is 00:10:37 the uh loan origination space and you're focusing on a personal branding and everything else. Like, do you believe that a personal brand content creation podcast, whatever it may be, can impact any business? And like, I mean, how, how do you think that can impact any business? I love that question. Thank you for asking that question. Personal brand is the absolute future. And if you're not building a personal brand, regardless of what industry you're in, you are doomed. You are doomed and you should figure out what else to do because personal, because the few, the reason why I really leaned in hard to establishing a personal brand this year is because I mean, well, my competitor, the real reason was the person I selected, the biggest brand in mortgage was supposed to work for me. He ended up going to my competitor

Starting point is 00:11:32 and it really upset me. So I said, you know what? I'm just going to, I'm going to destroy you. So just that, that fueled me. But then it dawned on me that I had no big personal brand. My company didn't have a big personal brand. And I'm like, but we were still one of the biggest companies. Yep. My competitors don't have a personal brand and no one really cares. My industry were like archaic yet in the real estate space, you got Ryan Serhan, you got Gary Vee, you got, you know, Grant Cardone. They all understood personal brand in real estate, but in my space, which used to be the biggest industry pre-crash in 08, but after the crash, what happened to my industry? It

Starting point is 00:12:12 imploded. Nobody cared about personal brand. Nobody cared about mortgage. Nobody cared. But like, we are the backend to the real estate. Like without us, there's no real estate, but we don't have any Gary V's, grant cardone's nobody so like it's just like why does that industry have big personal brands but my space does not have it at all no big creators so i just thought set their contemplating going man my industry really is whack you know like and we're like the we're the most lucrative industry of all industries. Maybe solar is more lucrative, but, um, you know, we used to be the most lucrative industry and we're definitely more lucrative than real estate. Um, but, um, but I leaned in hard to the personal brand. You know what that has done for me establishing the biggest personal brand

Starting point is 00:13:02 in the industry. Now all the top talent wants to work here. Right. And all the top talent now just calls me direct. Like, I just want to go work for you. Like they're at my competitors, but I established such a big personal brand, such a big company brand, such a big podcast brand.

Starting point is 00:13:17 And all those feel one thing, my company. Right. And it's like- I couldn't agree more. I think personal brand is like obviously you see a lot more people leaning into the personal brand in in 2024 but i still think it's so underplayed and under you know and still so much room to grow yeah we're we're gonna see huge personal brands uh come out in the next two, three, five, 10 years and continue to impact

Starting point is 00:13:46 every space. Like I was talking with a podcast buddy of mine out of Atlanta and he was saying like, man, a lot of these big brands are just missing the mark on being able to go and like run a podcast, right? Like why is it Ford running a podcast? Why isn't Coke running a podcast, right? Like why is it Ford running a podcast? Why isn't Coke running, running a podcast, right? Like, yeah, taking their influence, making it personal. I think there's so much value to personal branding because it creates this real personal connection to the business. It's not skyscrapers and cash right now. It's, it's a face, it's a mentality, it's a personality, it's, it's, it's all these things. And so I, I really, I mean, obviously I agree with you. It's a mentality. It's a personality. It's, it's, it's all these things. And so I, I really, I mean, obviously I agree with you. That's, that's the reason why I'm in the podcast space.

Starting point is 00:14:30 You know, I heard the, uh, there's an adage floating around now. It's like every guy with a personal brand wants to be an entrepreneur and every entrepreneur wants to have a personal brand. And, uh, and so we're both like chasing, chasing the opposite side, right? Like both the right? Like the guys that only have personal brand, they're figuring out ways to monetize it and run a real business. And then there's me and you, right? Like we come from that space where we've made hundreds of millions in real business,

Starting point is 00:14:58 but we've done it faceless and we need to go out and be able to continue to create influence. So yeah, I just, I love that topic. I love I love the direction you're going. Like what what kind of so obviously you said it's provided recruiting opportunities and everything else. Like where else have you to as a consumer, because I have six jobs, right? I'm a dad. I'm a CEO, the founder. I call the decisions. I still originate business myself.

Starting point is 00:15:35 I'm the main recruiter. I'm a content creator. I'm a podcaster. So in every one of my jobs, even as a father, my friends, kids know me as a content creator. People know me like as a podcaster, I got a top podcast. So in every space, they're all kind of just feeling each other as a recruiter, all the top talents coming here, like in every one of my six jobs, it's fueling it, right? It's fueling the job, like one of my jobs. So where have I seen growth? It's helping me in every vertical, every single one of them. And not only that, above all,

Starting point is 00:16:16 the amount of opportunity through the contents, the contacts that I'm getting, meeting guys like you, meeting guys like, you know, Dan Fleischman, meeting guys like Carson Jones, meeting, I meet one or two new founders or CEOs or market movers a day, a day, every single day. Like now that didn't come from content creation because I work work with like you but I then I meet influencers from the content creation world every day like youtubers kids people that my kids look up to which is which by the way I'm super cool to my kids now right because I I'm on yeah dude it it is it is crazy actually I gotta share with you an experience that I had yesterday, Monday, Tuesday of this week because of my podcast. The amount of reach that you get from building a personal brand is absolutely insane. So I had the offensive coordinator for the Texas Rangers, Major League Baseball, World Series defending champs.

Starting point is 00:17:21 He reaches out to me on Instagram and he says, yo, uh, been somebody recommended your podcast. And I just wanted to let you know that I'm, I love your stuff. And then he reaches out to me again. He says, listen, I love, I'm connecting so much with, uh, your, your style and your methodology and everything else. He's like, I have this business that I want to talk to you about. He flies me out to Fenway yesterday, puts me up in the Ritz Carlton, go and attend batting practice, and then pitches me on this business idea that nobody is doing in the major leagues. He's developed this app, and it's a really cool idea.

Starting point is 00:18:06 I'm going to share later. I won't give all the details on this, but it's like, like how cool, like I'm, I'm sitting here living my childhood dream, hanging with major league baseball coaches and players like because of a podcast, right? Like, like how, how is, how is this even possible? You know? And so. It's so true. it's so true it's so true i'm like living my childhood dream every day like i was to your point i'm gonna use the same kind of example on sunday i took my kid to a rams game and we sat in not just the skybox suite

Starting point is 00:18:41 at sofi stadium like like a presidential suite at sofi stadium comp food comp drinks comp everything and you know i paid nothing i paid zero dollars was it huh was it with melzer yeah with dave melzer he gave me all that for free um i paid nothing this is because of the podcast right now like I met Dave through my you know he was on my show I was on his vice versa so this all happened I paid no money because of the podcast

Starting point is 00:19:13 and I want to tell you something Chris I've never been to a football game in my life never always wanted to go never went once always wanted to but here I am at like the nicest suite paying nothing and my kids here, and then the Rams girls come in and take pictures with us. It was like out of this world. And my

Starting point is 00:19:31 son's just like another day in life, you know, like piggybacking on all my resources. So, so it's just opened up. And that was just Sunday. Like every day is something new, something exciting, something like out of this world that I would have never thought would, would it be a reality for me? Have you ever heard the, uh, the rule of seven hours with content? No. Dude, this, this is, this will blow your mind. Okay. So no matter what your content is, whether it's a podcast or music or, you know, the written word, whatever, when someone spends seven hours listening to you, whether it's your music or whatever it may be, they think that you are friends. It's a subconscious impact, right? Like your, your mind creates this mental connection

Starting point is 00:20:18 and you truly believe that this person and you are friends. Okay. After seven hours, after 50 hours, you think you're good, really close friends. And after 300 hours, your best friends. And so it's the reason why influencers like can push brands, right? When somebody has spent 300 hours listening to Taylor Swift music or 300 hours listening to Joe Rogan's podcast or your podcast or whatnot, like their mind cannot tell a difference between you being best friends and their real best friend. And so like literally they will take everything you say as like, oh, my best friend recommended it, even though that's not necessarily what they're thinking. It's what their subconscious. And it's just like the power of content and creating and getting active users.

Starting point is 00:21:11 Like you create this one sided friendship. This is absolutely insane. You know, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to I'm going to piggyback on that. I shoot content with a 19 year old YouTuber and uh he's got you know he's one of the top 20 youtubers and when we go and shoot content um because he doesn't have followers he has fans we go and we shoot content together people are screaming like i was with the n-sync you know remember n-sync or backstreet boys or something like we walked through like a target, you know, and his demographic is like 11 to 17. And I had learned that I no longer market to 40 year old men. I market to their kids because if their kids know me, then they're going to come work for me.

Starting point is 00:21:56 And that's my mentality. It's like marketing toys. So I know that like and that's been my and I'm going to tell you a story on Sunday that happened. But what I realized with him is like, he has fans and these fans are screaming for him. And they're like stopping us and harassing us to take a photo. Like as we're walking through Irvine Spectrum or Target or whatever it is, like they're freaking out. They're like panting as you know, it's out of this world, you know, like to see these girls, these little 14 year old girls or 12 year old girls like screaming once they see him, you know, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, that's a famous TikToker. You know, like he's famous on TikTok and YouTube, but like he he really has created this like cult, you know, of, of followers. But, but he also is very, very versed at getting rejected.

Starting point is 00:22:48 Cause even though half the people will know him, we have to find the other half of people that don't know him. So we create content with them. You know, it's, it's crazy. Like there, I mean, just going to tie this all back to the personal brand. Like, man, when you can build a strong personal brand you can turn it into monetization and once again we're really starting to see this in the music industry in the acting industry like these people that have done a phenomenal job creating personal brands where

Starting point is 00:23:16 previously they made all their money from like selling records or uh filming, they've now shifted into selling product. You look at like Ryan Reynolds, for example, with Mint Mobile, you know, like literally leveraged his personal brand to building a billion dollar mobile phone business, right? Like that wouldn't even been like under consideration 20 years ago. Like people wouldn't ever, ever been doing this. There's just so much, so much power. And I love what you're doing with your personal brand. And I think there's a lot to be learned there. And one thing I want to tell you, just piggyback on what I said earlier is the demographic I'm on every

Starting point is 00:24:00 platform. So I'm, I'm the biggest on Instagram, but I'm, I'm pretty big on Tik, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook. And I was at church on Sunday and we're standing in line after church and you're waiting in line for food and your coffee. And there was three people in front of me. There's a grandma, like an auntie, and a little kid. The 10-year-old stops and goes, hey, I subscribe to you on YouTube. And the auntie, like the other lady, she's like, hey, I actually follow you on Instagram. She was like 50. And then the grandma was like, oh, I love your content on Facebook.

Starting point is 00:24:37 Like, it's the same content, mind you, on all three platforms with three different demographics with three, and they were all following me all of them you know so you know when people are like oh i'm only going to post on instagram or i'm only going to post on tiktok or i'm only going to post on snapchat like hit every one of them different i'm my the name of the game since i started this was how many eyeballs can i attract to the brand? Right. How many eyeballs am I touching every single day? Because I don't care. I'm not doing this for money. You know, like I don't need the money. I just want the brand. I want the eyeballs. And and and seeing

Starting point is 00:25:15 that materialize in my personal life and my kids life, because my kids, you know, their their friends know me or sometimes I'll put them in. I've really like taught my kids to embrace social media because social media, whether parents like it or they hate it, they have to accept it. So if you don't get your children to embrace it for good now, they will embrace it for evil later. Right. So I'm teaching my kids how to utilize social media in a positive way right now where they're not going to be impacted spiritually, emotionally, mentally, like they're ready for what's to come. Because a lot of parents like, oh, my kids will never go on Instagram or my kids will never go on Snapchat or TikTok. Like your kids are all

Starting point is 00:26:05 going to go on that. That's like our parents telling us you're not ever going to go on the internet ever. Like all business is done on the internet. Can you imagine like you're telling your kids you're not going to go on the internet? Oh man. Funny. So what, so you have millions of followers on these different platforms, right? Like, yeah, I have a, well, a million on, on,

Starting point is 00:26:27 uh, over a million, about 1.1 million on Instagram. My company has almost 3 million on Instagram. We got like 550,000 for my company on coffees. I got like a hundred thousand on Tik TOK, you know, 15,000 on YouTube,

Starting point is 00:26:40 50,000 on Snapchat. So it's, but it's growing by the day. So what would, what advice would you give to somebody that's listening to this podcast? And they're like, okay, look, I'm sold on going and building a personal brand. Where do I start? What focus should I have? Like what should be steps one, two, and three? And how long should they be taking those steps before they start seeing results? You have to create, I know this is cliche and it's like almost hokey,

Starting point is 00:27:10 but I'll put out content that totally flops and I'm like, how did that flop? I got a million followers. And then I'll put out content that is amazing. And it's like, but the algorithm will push to 10% of your followers and then it'll push to the masses. So your 10% might not like what you publish. So keep creating, don't stop. But most importantly, learn this big lesson, like be uncomfortable because you will not be creating good content

Starting point is 00:27:40 if you're just comfortable. Like if this is, if it's easy, it's not good content. If you're getting yelled at or spit at, or someone wants to fight you, it's good content that like that, that's, that's, that's good content. Like if you're going to get beat up for your content or you're running away from security for your content, that's even better. Yeah. I know it sounds weird. And I, and I say this when we're out filming in places i'm like

Starting point is 00:28:05 man i'm kind of like thrilled like security's chasing us right now to kick us out of this venue like it's kind of cool you know like here i am 42 year old man like ceo of the company like running from like an 18 year old security guard so so it sounds like i mean just create regular content make it make it a little bit divisive something that's going to elicit a little bit of emotion. What other piece of advice would you give to somebody that's just starting out? And you have to be pretty good at editing. So understand editing concepts. But the beautiful thing about editing is it's all like our editors are in the Philippines.

Starting point is 00:28:43 They're like five bucks a video, 10 bucks a video. So don't think like you got to do the work. A lot of people are like, I can't edit videos. Like, yeah, you're damn right. You can't edit videos. That's not your job. Right. Go on Fiverr.

Starting point is 00:28:55 Go on Upwork. Go on something. Send them your raw footage. Tell them how you want the video edited. Don't think you could do it alone. Like you can't do it alone. But that's what VAs are for. So the editors do the hard, heavy lifting. You send them the raw footage. A lot of people stop there. Like, I'm not going to create content. I'm not going to edit that. Like, that's like, I've heard people creating content. They edited themselves. They

Starting point is 00:29:19 stopped because they don't want to edit anymore. Like, dude, what are you doing editing? You know, like, why are you even doing that? You know, like that, that really just plays into the, the whole, uh, the energy concept. Like you can't be stuck doing stuff that's low energy, low value, right? Like, like stuff that you hate doing and that clearly you could go and hire out in the Philippines for five bucks or whatever, whatever it is. Oh, it's 10 bucks now. It used to be five bucks, but yeah, whatever it is. I mean, the, the reality is, is that's why most entrepreneurs stop, right? Like they get stuck doing the things that they hate. And, and so then rather than go and find somebody that will do it, they start giving up or they get burnt out or whatnot.

Starting point is 00:29:59 And so I think that's extremely valuable advice. Joseph, man, I appreciate it. Where are the best channels? So you're you're you start rolling a new podcast. How's that podcast? Yes. Make sure you are subscribed or listening to coffees for closers. C-O-F-F-E-E-Z. Just type in coffees with a Z.

Starting point is 00:30:20 You will find it on Apple. You'll find it on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon. And we post live on LinkedIn, YouTube. Make sure to follow me on Joseph Shalaby, J-O-S-E-P-H-S-H-A-L-A-B-Y on all platforms, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, LinkedIn. So but and then obviously I'll follow my company eMortgage Capital, EMC, eMortgage Capital on all platforms as well. We post live today. We had Greg Lutzka in studio yesterday. We're at Hubble Studios, the number one studio in Los Angeles. We were with the CEO, Vince Ricci, yesterday in their studio.

Starting point is 00:31:04 So we're posting with all the, you know, the top founders on the planet tomorrow. We're in studio with Travis Matthew, the CEO, Ryan Ellis tomorrow. So did you ever have him on your show? No,

Starting point is 00:31:15 man. That's awesome though. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we're, we're, we're,

Starting point is 00:31:18 we're, we're, we're with all top founders. Um, and I, I've just been like building that. I'm going into YPO because I've been like trying to find more founders

Starting point is 00:31:27 because between like joining the masterminds, like I just want to get every top founder on the planet on my show. And I'm sure you do too. Because they're just awesome people to collaborate with. So follow me on Joseph Shelby, Coffees for Closers, eMortgage Capital on all platforms.

Starting point is 00:31:42 Let's go. Joseph, thank you so much for your time. I know it's extremely valuable. You got a lot of really good content, really good, you know, just advice for these guys, especially in the personal branding. I thought that was just a fun topic to talk about. Appreciate you.

Starting point is 00:31:57 Until next time.

Next Level Pros - #120: Personal Brand Building 101

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