Bridging the LO/C-suite gap with TLOP’s Dustin Owen

HousingWire

Today on Power House, Zeb Lowe chats with Dustin Owen, mortgage veteran, SVP of Growrth at Lower and the host of The Loan Officer Podcast. After joining the industry in 2004, Dustin went from funding over 100 units annually to managing seven branches with $70 million in monthly production.  Dustin joins us t​​oday to talk about why an “opt-out” model should be the future of AI adoption in mortgage lending. He also talks about leadership’s role in retention and solving the disconnect between executives’ wants and LOs' needs.    Here’s what you’ll learn:  Dustin's career trajectory and achievements in mortgage  How AI is revolutionizing mortgage lending, with examples like UWM's AI, “Mia”  The disconnect between executives' enthusiasm for AI and loan officers' practical concerns  Strategies for loan officer retention, including creating a supportive work environment  The future of mortgage lending and the role of AI in transforming the industry   Related to this episode:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠  Dustin Owen | LinkedIn⁠⁠  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinowen/  TLOP⁠⁠  https://tloponline.com/dustin-owen/  Lower Mortgage⁠  https://www.lower.com/  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HousingWire | YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q   Enjoy the episode!  The Power House podcast brings the biggest names in housing to answer hard-hitting questions about industry trends, operational and growth strategy, and leadership. Join HousingWire president Diego Sanchez every Thursday morning for candid conversations with industry leaders to learn how they’re differentiating themselves from the competition. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio.

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to Powerhouse, where we sit down with the biggest names and the brightest

00:11minds in the industry. My name is Zeb Lowe, and I'm the Senior Director of the Content

00:15Studio here at HousingWire, filling in for Diego Sanchez. Our guest today is Dustin Owen.

00:21Dustin joined the mortgage industry in 2004. Within two years, he was funding 100 plus

00:25units per year in personal production. He then leveraged his success as an originator

00:30into a career as a mortgage sales executive. He was able to grow his production from one branch

00:36funding $40 million a year to seven branches funding $70 million per month. And if that's

00:41not impressive enough, he's the creator and host of the Loan Officer podcast, many of you know as

00:46TLOP. With over 1 million downloads per year, it's the number one podcast for mortgage originators

00:51and their clients. This led Dustin to launch TLOP's Originator Coaching, a business coaching

00:57and sales training platform. Dustin, thank you for joining me.

01:02Zeb, I'm super excited to be here, and you're doing a great job of filling in for Diego.

01:07Thank you. Well, I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm also recovering. It was a pretty busy and long early

01:13week for us. This is my first day back from the AI Summit.

01:17Yeah, my FOMO is at like level nine right now because unfortunately, due to travel conflicts,

01:24I couldn't be out in Texas with you guys. But I heard from others that it was an amazing event,

01:30and I've read the amazing write-ups you've done in Housing Wire about some of the keynote speakers

01:35and the interviews. And yeah, I'm sorry I missed it.

01:40For me, it's kind of interesting to get to see so much of the behind-the-scenes conversations

01:47and the insights that a lot of the executives are able to share with one another. Most of it makes it

01:58to the stage, obviously. But just being in that environment is a really special feeling because

02:07you know that what's happening there, what's happening in those discussions, and in many ways

02:12are leading the change or the future of the industry.

02:19Yeah, no, they definitely are. I mean, I look at AI, and I don't care if you're my 17-year-old

02:25daughter, you're my 20-year-old son, or you're a 40-year mortgage veteran. I'm literally telling

02:31everyone the same thing. It freaks me the F out. It excites me beyond belief. And I'm not going to let

02:39this get ahead of me. Meaning like, I feel like I missed out on YouTube. Like sure, I have a YouTube

02:47channel. It has 25,000 subscribers. I'm proud of that. But what if I started my YouTube channel 10

02:54years before I did? You know, I missed out on Amazon. I missed out on Facebook ads. Not that you

02:59can't run ads on Facebook. But if you're an early adopter 10 years ago with Facebook ads, there's a

03:06good chance you're able to propel your business into heights that it makes it very difficult today

03:11trying to do so. So I'm bound and determined I'm not going to miss out on this one. Although it freaks

03:18me the F out. Right. No, a hundred percent. I'm in the same boat. What does that, what do those

03:23conversations look like with the LOs that you work with? How are they, I guess, how are they using AI

03:32now? And then what's their, what's their general attitude to where it's going, where they see it

03:38taking them? I would say most aren't, right? Most, most are using AI as like a accelerated version of

03:46Google. And it's like, no, it's more than just a place to go ask your normal Google query. And

03:54like, I love to look at how UWM is using it with Mia. I mean, I was out to dinner with Alan Badun a

04:00couple of nights ago and Alan was explaining to me how the previous Friday Mia had made something crazy

04:07like 20,000 outbound calls on behalf of their broker clients in a matter of 15 minutes. Scheduled

04:15something crazy, like 500 appointments with homeowners who could potentially benefit from a

04:21refinance. So to me, if I'm talking to a loan originator or even a, a broker owner, or even a,

04:28a C-suite executive at a top 10 IMB, I think the answer is the same thing. You're either all in or

04:36you're all out. You're either all in on AI, you're all out of the industry. And I don't think that's

04:39mortgage. I think that's business in general. And for a loan originator, I'm going to tell you,

04:47you now have no excuses to not do your job. Whereas a loan originator is like, oh, well,

04:52I wasn't sending my weekly newsletter. Well, now you don't have excuses because I can show you how

04:57to write a newsletter that's good and formatted appropriately in about 15 minutes. Or I wasn't

05:03calling my past clients. Okay. Well, you no longer have an excuse. There's technology where you can

05:08upload your database and that technology will actually call your database for you.

05:13And then someone may argue, yeah, but you know, Dio, or you know, Zeb, it's not the same as if when

05:19I called, you're not calling. So you're right. It's not the same. It's better because a AI agent

05:27calling on your behalf is better than you not calling at all. And this is just sales and marketing.

05:33Obviously, I think it's going to absolutely revolutionize the landscape of mortgage operations.

05:40When you look at processing, QA, QC, underwriting, funding, et cetera, so many of those aspects are

05:49going to be able to be done consistently, quicker, more accurately, and with minimal human interaction,

05:57but definitely 100% human oversight. So yeah, I think it's a, I mean, we are living through

06:04our industrial revolution.

06:07Right. I've mentioned this to you in one of our last phone calls. It was a couple months ago,

06:16both Diego and I, we went to a conference or a summit with some of the top LOs in the, in the industry

06:25and the topic of not, not just AI, but just the, the rapid progress and an expansion of, of the

06:35technological capabilities of the platforms and software in our industry. Now, you know, we're,

06:43those are conversations that now, since I'm here at HousingWire, I'm, I'm privy to, and Diego as well,

06:48because he's talking to executives, you know, all day long, every day. And I remember Diego leaning

06:54over because in, at the, at the conference with these top LOs, they're, it's not like they were

06:59shunning AI or, but they, or the progress of, of tech just in general, but they were not reliant

07:07upon it. And they were not necessarily as hyped around it as, as the executives that we, that we

07:17talked to. And that didn't, that didn't surprise me because, and I'm sure that doesn't, doesn't

07:24surprise you because we've been LOs, right? We, we know that, we know that world, but I was, you know,

07:32sitting next to, to, uh, Diego and he's, he's not an originator, right? And he doesn't, he doesn't

07:38know originators to the extent that you and I do. And he leaned over and he's like, man, I'm, I'm

07:42really, this has blown my mind because all the, all of the executives in, in the mortgage space,

07:51in the mortgage tech space, they're all in on AI. They're all in on technology as they, you know,

07:55as they should be, because that is the future. And he was really kind of blown away by the, uh, I guess

08:00the disconnect between the, you know, the, the vision and, and, uh, and the tech, the conversations

08:08that executives are having and the originators, the salesmen, the people out, uh, you know, the

08:15boots on the ground in the industry and how oftentimes they're looking in different directions or kind of

08:19looking past one another. Yeah. So you coming from, from the streets, right? Coming out of the trenches

08:26as an LO and I wear those scars proudly. And I think at my core, I'm still very much a loan

08:33originator. But when I look at my friends in origination, so many of us are like, look,

08:38show me, don't tell me, right? Show me, don't tell me. It sounds great. But until you can show me

08:44someone implementing this, I'm probably going to be a little bit weary of what it can do.

08:50I think we're relying on our corporate entities to do their part, to make sure that we can

08:56manufacture a loan quickly, smoothly, efficiently at lower costs in hopes that that lower costs can

09:03push to the rate sheet and hopes that that, that lower rate sheet can help us capture and close

09:06more business. So I do believe like as an originator, we're trusting in our corporate entity to do their

09:13part. But because most of us as originators, and I coached this over at TLOPs originator coaching,

09:19I'm like, look, I don't care if you work for the number one retail lender, or you work for a small

09:23mom and pop broker, or you're at a credit union or anywhere in between. At the end of the day,

09:27you work for you, comma, LLC, a division of insert your credit union, insert your IMB,

09:35insert your national brokerage, wherever it is that you may work or hang your license.

09:41So that means from a sales and marketing standpoint, it's your personal brand, it's your reputation,

09:45it's your circle of influence. This is your community that you're serving as the subject

09:50matter expert, or as the source of information. And you need to be pumping out information

09:58consistently daily, you need to be racing to the consumer. And I do think that's a massive change,

10:05just in consumer behavior, as well as due to technological advances that originators need to be

10:10aware of, is before we can sit back and wholeheartedly rely on people reaching out to us,

10:16whether they were builders, realtors, or financial advisors, proactively reaching out to us, or whether

10:21it's our friends, our family, our co-workers, or our neighbors, and I guess it would be your ex-co-worker,

10:27or your neighbor reaching out to you. They did so pretty proactively. I think we have to go and meet

10:33them. Because if we don't, someone else will. And I think that's the rallying cry. If you won't,

10:40someone else will. So much of what it's going to be, it's almost like job preservation,

10:45not even job advancement. And that should be what fuels many people's fire. To say this,

10:52every single day, I'm going to choose my AI platform of my choosing, my picking, whether it's

10:59Gemini, whether it's Claude, whether it's Chet, and I'm going to start there, and I'm going to play

11:04for 15 minutes. I'm then going to attend things like HousingWire's AI Summit, or I'm going to follow

11:11Luke Shancula over at Loans on Demand, who Luke's doing some really cool things, giving away free info

11:17to originators. And I know I'm not going to become a master overnight, but if I just spent 15 minutes a

11:23day, every single day, working with some kind of an AI tool or an AI app, imagine how far I could get

11:32over a 12-month period of time. It's very much what James Clear teaches in his book, Atomic Habits.

11:38It's all about getting 1% better per day. But if you're not getting out and you're not implementing

11:43the 15 minutes daily, then I think we will be left behind.

11:46Right. Well, so what I wanted to talk to you about today, and that disconnect perhaps from

11:58the executives and the LO, I wanted to get more of your perspective on that. What do you think is

12:07the biggest perspective between the C-suite's perception of loan officers' needs and the reality

12:15on the ground? Oh, so I think where the C-suite misses is they expect the loan officers to have

12:25all the answers. And look, I'm speaking as a loan officer. So I'll speak for me. I don't want to

12:31offend anyone else out there, but for the most part, we are teenagers. So anyone who's ever parented

12:36teenagers, you know that teenagers say one thing, but that's not necessarily what they mean.

12:41They say one thing, but that's not necessarily how they feel if you were to just peel back the

12:47layers of the onion and ask the question behind the question. So the C-suite likes to hear what

12:56loan officers say and go and react, where if they paused and they took a step back and they analyzed

13:02the situation, or better yet, they got back into the trenches with us, what they would understand is

13:08that we're still a little bit lost. We're still a little bit scared. We don't have it figured out.

13:13When we bark up the chain of command, sometimes it's what we are feeling, but it's not really what

13:22we need. So I would tell anyone in the C-suite to slow down and recognize your LOs don't have all the

13:28answers. And really what we want, we want to be led. We want to feel included. And we want to know

13:37that we're a part of something bigger. We don't say it often because we're independent, we're

13:42entrepreneurial, but we do. We like that feeling of inclusion, that feeling of belonging. And then

13:49lastly, LOs are inherently lazy. And that's probably not true, right? That's probably a little bit of a

13:58clickbait. But what I'm getting at is LOs want things done for them. Just like a teenager wants

14:04things done for them. My daughter is not lazy, but she sure as heck loves it when her mother does

14:09her laundry. My daughter is not lazy, but she sure as heck loves it when I empty the dishwasher and

14:15don't make her do it. And loan officers love when things are done for them. So if we're talking AI

14:22and we're talking about leading a group of originators, the men and women who go out,

14:27build their relationships to drive in the revenue, I think we have to start thinking about,

14:31am I doing and saying the things that empower them? Do they understand that they're a part of

14:37something bigger than just what's going on in their world? And am I doing things for them?

14:44And at the same time, am I slowing down enough as an executive to figure out the question behind the

14:51question, realizing that a lot of times what the loan officer is saying, what the loan officer is

14:56saying is not necessarily what they want or what they need. That reminds me, I worked at a previous

15:05lender I worked for on the corporate side doing content creation. And the LOs were unhappy with

15:12flyers. And so I don't know how much money they spent building out a platform for LOs.

15:23We worked it out with our compliance department and the marketing department for them to be able to

15:27customize their flyers with the copy that they wanted and all this. I don't know. There's two,

15:32a half a year's worth of work went in. And the executives were so excited to roll this out,

15:40this custom marketing platform. But the LOs still had to do the thing. They had to figure out the copy

15:46that because they always had a problem with the copy that was already written for them. They didn't

15:51like that. They always had suggestions. They said that they wanted to be able to make their own.

15:56And then it was like, and I knew it was coming because like I said, I was an originator before I

16:01moved to the corporate side. And about five minutes into the training to just the starting to lay back in

16:10their seats or I starting to like close a little bit, or then just going off camera and like, Oh yeah,

16:14you know that they're, that, you know, that you've lost because they didn't really, they didn't really,

16:19they didn't want to be able to make their own marketing materials at all.

16:23No, let me ask you a question. Do you know why consumers ask about interest rates?

16:27Tell me.

16:28Cause they don't know what else to ask.

16:31Yeah.

16:31They don't know that mortgages aren't one size fits all. They don't know that we as originators

16:37have to tailor make the best financial instrument for them to qualify for home financing plus match

16:43their financial needs, wants and goals. Loan officers ask for flyers because they don't know

16:48what else to ask for. Right. Yeah. So if, if we are not working with them, whether it's through

16:54coaching, through sales training, or better yet through tools that we're providing, they will

16:59continue to turn your marketing department into a flyer factory. But what happens if you start doing

17:05things on behalf of your originators that, you know, is a best practice, whether it's purchasing

17:11that CRM, then automating it, APIing it, writing the copy, at which point when the originator works

17:18for your institution, this is just the way that you do things. And for the most part, it's done for

17:24them. Like where, where I operate, I operate from a opt out, not opt in. I don't want my originators

17:31having to opt in. I want them to have to opt out because I feel like my team and I know what's best.

17:37And as long as we can build it, automate it. And I think AI is going to allow for this at just

17:44absolutely crazy amounts of warp speeds, as well as discounted costs. Then I think that is the

17:51originator of the future is one in which originators get to plug into a system that's

17:57already built out for them. And honestly, I think that's what they're looking for. And once you build

18:01that, they'll start at, they'll, they'll stop asking you for that next flyer because you would

18:07have shown them how they can look, what are the things originators should be doing? They should

18:12be doing a weekly webinar. Why? Cause that's one to many, what type of webinar more than likely one

18:17for realtors, where it's more like a lunch and learn type event and one for the consumer as a way for

18:24them to race, to get to the consumer first. They should be sending out weekly newsletter to the

18:30referral sources. They should be sending quarterly video market updates to their entire database.

18:35They should be celebrating the birthdays of the men and women who mean the most for them,

18:41which is typically borrowers and referral sources. And they should be doing annual mortgage reviews

18:48because they recognize that they are this person's lender for life. And every year they should be

18:53sitting down with them, getting called up on life, as well as the market, as well as their current

18:57mortgage and seeing if their current mortgage is the best mortgage for them. But loan officers in

19:03general, aren't going to do much of that on their own. Now the top of the top do it. And that's why

19:08we celebrate them, right? Those 40, 60, a hundred, $200 million producers. They figured that out before

19:14everyone else. I think AI is going to allow us to do for them, which then by the way, you'll never have

19:21to recruit again, because what you would have built is a fly trap or a honey trap. I prefer to call it.

19:27And now you're attracting talent versus having to recruit talent.

19:31So yeah, that was going to be the question I was going to ask you earlier, which is how can

19:36executives dig past surface level requests to uncover the real drivers of LO satisfaction and

19:41performance? And would you say that opt out model as opposed to opt in model is probably the best piece

19:48of advice. It's my secret sauce. I'm giving it all away right now for free. I mean, yes, build something

19:53based on the best practices of top producers, based on what some of the top business coaches in the

20:03space are, are, are coaching and then do it for them. Automate it, API it, utilize AI, whatever you

20:11need to do to spoon feed it. I know it sounds counterproductive. I know we're talking about

20:18the men and women who make the most net revenue on a transaction, right. It's going to the originator

20:24like net revenue, not gross revenue, but net revenue does go to the originator. But you know,

20:29it's, it's a lot easier for me to swim downstream than it is upstream. So for me, I like to swim downstream.

20:36I know what I know. I know what I have. Um, therefore I'll build around that instead of trying to,

20:43you know, make the, the, uh, the water flow the opposite direction. Right. But as part of that, um,

20:51well, you not, uh, not fly trap, you call it a honey trap, right? Yes. Okay. So he's a little bit

20:57better than flies. Flies are kind of gross, honey's sweet. So yeah, I call it a honey trap. I agreed.

21:02Okay. So, uh, what does, uh, I think a, uh, career, uh, path is, is key to that honey trap as well,

21:12right? So in an industry where like titles can be more about, in our industry, a lot of those titles

21:19can be, you know, marketing more than merit on the originator side, what would a career path for an

21:25LO look like? And cause I think that would be, uh, uh, huge for, for, uh, for impact retention.

21:34Uh, I mean, excuse me, huge for, for retention. How do you think that, uh, that, that does affect

21:39or could affect, uh, retention for lenders? Yeah, this is a loaded question. I love,

21:44and I love this question. So we're going to unpack it a little bit. Uh, the first issue is I don't think

21:49we're going to be able to put the cat back in the bag, so to speak, which is our industry hands

21:56out titles, literally the way that rich kids neighborhood, uh, hands out like the full size

22:02candy bars on Halloween. Like we just, everyone gets a title. I mean, I can be brand new, newly

22:09licensed and go work for a certain national IMB. And they're going to make me VP of lending

22:13senior mortgage advisor, CEO. I'm like, what are you the CEO of? Well, of my company. I'm like,

22:20Oh yeah. How many employees you have? One. Who is it? Me. I'm like, okay. Um, so when you're looking

22:26at our industry and a career path and career growth, I don't know if you're talking origination,

22:31if everybody wants anything, but to be supported left alone and paid handsomely. It just, it's,

22:40it's one of those things that, and I'll speak from personal experience, the higher you get up the

22:46food chain, the more control others have of your career and the less money you can make,

22:56or the harder it is to control the money you make. So for some originators that are purely money

23:02motivated, there really isn't much of a stepping stone besides like in my perfect world, like the

23:10world of DO that we have unicorns and, and free candy handed out to all. Yes. You would start in

23:16this industry as a loan originator. Then after certain production level, we'd make you a senior

23:20loan originator. And then after certain production level, we'd make you an AVP. And then after certain

23:25production level, make you a VP of lending, because there is a way to gamify things and make people feel

23:31proud of their accomplishments. And then internally, there's also a way to recognize who's doing

23:37really well and who's just getting started. However, in order to do so, you'd have to get

23:41the entire industry on board. And that's just not going to happen because you can use titles to sway

23:48people into your organization, because there are certain people that the way that they are genetically

23:53predispositioned, they like to chase titles, even if that title comes with no extra money,

23:57or even if that title comes with making less money, but then you have the, the, the rare few that they do

24:04want more like loan origination was great. It may be how they made their first million or $2 million,

24:10but it's less fulfilling. Then yes, I think there's a career path where you can start as an

24:14originator, then become a top producer, build out your production team, take on a branch. And maybe

24:20after a branch, you can open up a couple of satellite branches, or you can become a divisional

24:24and maybe even one day go and open up your own company and be a CEO with, with hundreds of employees,

24:30or even stay with an organization long enough that you become their director of sales or even their

24:35CEO. But I don't know how feasible that is on a scaling side because of the entrepreneurial

24:42relationship originators have with their employers and how unique each originator is in terms of what

24:49they want. There are plenty that want to make their three, four or 500 grand a year and have minimal

24:54responsibilities besides what they can control, which is their leads, their fundings, and then

24:59whatever small team they built around themselves to support their production. Probably doesn't answer

25:04your question the way that you're hoping I would go, but it's a, it's a very loaded question with

25:09probably lots to unpack. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a complicated, it's a tricky problem and a

25:15complicated answer. It's complicated. Yeah. Like that's, it's complicated. It just is. Now,

25:21don't get me wrong. Just like LO Comp, I wish we could find a way to find some, some commonality,

25:28some uniformity around titling. And I wish we could have a more clear career path, but I think

25:36that's just going to differ based on, look, this industry, which I love dearly. I mean, there's a

25:41great career to be had in consumer direct. There's a great career to be had as a broker. There's a great

25:46career to be had at working for a credit union, great career to be had working for an IMB or even

25:51a bank. And I think all five of those that I just mentioned are also inside of them going to have

25:56their own culture and their own career path within. And then there's nothing wrong with traversing from

26:03consumer direct to IMB and IMB to, to running your own brokerage. And I think when you study someone's

26:0920 or 25 year career, you could definitely see that, which I think is just going to make it that

26:14much more, what was the word we said? Complicated. Right. Right. You'd mentioned this earlier and

26:20you know, there's so many different types of originators out there, personality types.

26:26You'd mentioned earlier people that are driven or, or pulled to a path with, with titles. Right.

26:35And you'd mentioned pay and compensation over, it's always, it's always been an issue. I think you've

26:41seen it really rear its head over the past couple of years where so many LOs are willing to jump ship

26:52based on a better comp somewhere else at the next company. And I don't know how many LOs I've known

26:59that the, the only reason that they didn't jump basically from one year after year is just a sheer

27:06pain. It's just a sheer pain in the butt to transfer your, your pipeline over and just the, the business

27:14related hassle. But there's, there's, there's just not a lot of loyalty. Um, not, not a lot of

27:22stickiness. And the, the, that seems like the, the, the largest, the driving factor is being lured away

27:27by better comp. And to a certain extent that obviously that makes, that makes sense. But what,

27:32what can, what can leadership do to create the kind of loyalty and stickiness that makes comp less of,

27:40it's not like it's never going to be a deciding factor, right. But less of a defined, uh, deciding

27:45factor. I love the question. And I think we probably answered some of it a couple of minutes ago when we

27:51were, when we were talking about the future of mortgage lending, but we'll circle back to it now,

27:57which is understanding originators, although they don't state it. I'm going to go back to my

28:03teenager analogy. I know my daughter loves me, but at 17, do you think she goes out of her way to give

28:08me a hug and say, dad, I love you? No, she's a teenager. I know that time will come when she

28:12probably gets in her twenties and recognizes, holy cow, mom and dad rode out the red carpet for me.

28:17They laid in bed worrying about me every single night. Let me make sure I show them my gratitude and

28:23my affection towards that. If loan originators are going to be compared to teenagers. And I say that

28:28lovingly, right. Cause in my core, I'm still an LO. I think the, the C suite, the company operators,

28:35the divisionals, et cetera, need to recognize that although they don't state it, they want to feel

28:40included. So are you sharing the vision of the company with the troops on the ground? Are you open

28:49and honest and transparent about the company's goals and objectives? And more importantly,

28:55how do they fit in? What can they do to make sure you achieve them? And then how do they get rewarded

29:01when the company does achieve said goals? And then what are you doing every day that makes them

29:07love where they work? It's either going to be in support or how you treat them. Are you recognizing

29:14their birthdays? Are you recognizing their work anniversaries? Are you just recognizing top

29:20originators or are you recognizing people when they do a great job or when people go above and beyond

29:26whatever it was that they were, they were producing before. And it's rarely about money. I think money is

29:35how you get an unhappy person to make a move, but rarely is it about the money. Now there's,

29:43they're small sex. Like right now I'm finding originators that are like 18 to $24 million originators

29:49that have a high ceiling and a lot of gas in the tank. And if those originators aren't currently

29:55being offered a P and L and they're capable and competent, then, you know, yes, that could be about

30:02money, but rarely is it truly always about money. It's look, if you can't get their loans closed,

30:08you have issues, right? I mean, that's a, that, that's almost like a loan officer who can't close

30:14on time. A loan officer doesn't, doesn't return phone calls to realtors. Well then look, you have

30:19bigger issues than your rates and your products. If you can't return phone calls and you can't close

30:24loans on time, same thing applies to a mortgage company. If you can't have a smooth, consistent,

30:31predictable process of taking loans from application to funding, then you can throw everything else out

30:39the window. But assuming you do, and most do, right? Most of us, we are underwriting files in 24 to 48.

30:44We're doing conditions in 24 to 48. We can close loans quickly, et cetera, et cetera. Then it has to

30:50be, well, what else? Like, how do you make this person feel about coming to work? How included are they

30:57in the, in the big picture? What are you doing to support them? And by support, it, it starts with,

31:02what are you doing to help them generate more leads? What are you doing to help them convert those

31:07leads into more closings? Because more closings is more income for them, but it's also more income for,

31:12for you, the company operator. Those are some of the things that I think we need to do when we're in the,

31:18the leadership role to make sure that we have a stickier component to LO retention.

31:28Now I'll tell LOs, and I don't think not enough people tell them this. I'll speak from experience.

31:33The grass is greenest where you water it four out of seven times, four out of seven. Like I've had this

31:38luxury over the past five years, kind of like a calling where I started podcasting, loan originators

31:44fell in love with it. And a lot of them are the loan originators who, who represent the future of

31:49mortgage lending, right? So these are the men and women that have been licensed three or four years.

31:55They have gas in the tank. They have a high ceiling and something that I offer to my audience say,

32:01look, if you want career free career advice, reach out, like reach out. I did this just yesterday.

32:06Then I ended up referring a guy to a branch manager. I know in San Antonio and they reach out.

32:12And I will tell you four out of seven times, my solution is go have a tough conversation

32:18with your direct report or with one of your leaders, or my, my solution is suck it up buttercup.

32:25You're now a big boy or a big girl. This is how the world operates. And it's not your company. It's

32:30you look at that man or the woman in the mirror and ask them what they need to do to get 1% better.

32:36But there is three times, three times out of seven, where I end up making a recommendation

32:41that they go and interview elsewhere. And that elsewhere more times than not all comes down to

32:47leadership and support. You deserve a leader who supports you better.

32:53So, so we covered a lot of ground and you gave a lot of really good advice out there for any leader

33:00looking to retain or improve that stickiness would, and what I, I'm kind of walking away

33:07with this. There'd be two, there's really two main objectives or two pieces of advice.

33:12One, right. Is that remembering that the, what did you say? Like if I'm, as an originator,

33:18I'm Zeblo LLC, you're Dustin Owen LLC. Correct. Right. And, and offering all,

33:24basically offering an opt-out structure or an opt-out method that, uh, that empowers and pushes

33:34Zeblo LLC forward and give me a voice, right? Make, make me know that my voice is heard.

33:43Yes. Yeah. You know what? Yes. And I don't know if I said that emphatically enough. I mean,

33:47something you should be doing at the executive level is allowing an opportunity for the

33:54ground troops to push their ideas up and to know that they're heard. Like you can hear someone

34:00without having to execute their ideas. You can acknowledge the idea and, and, uh, allow the

34:06person to, to feel that they were included, even if the idea is something that you can't execute.

34:12So yes, there's, there's a sense of belonging that we as humans all crave. And we're typically proud of

34:20the work we do. We're proud of the approach we take, but is the company actually taking the time to

34:26give their, their associates, that platform to be heard. And then more importantly, are the

34:32executives slowing down to make the, the, the people in the trenches, the troops to feel like

34:38they know what's going on. They know where they fit in. And then we all collectively know how we're

34:43going to celebrate when we achieve our goals. And more specifically for the LOs, when we achieve the,

34:49those goals, how is it going to benefit the originator? Right. It's like, talk to me less

34:54about your features. Talk to me more about the benefits. Yeah. How does this benefit me?

34:58Right. Excellent. All right. Well, we're out of time, Dustin. I thank you so much for, uh, for,

35:04for sharing your time with us and the insights that you provided. And I just, I, I really appreciate

35:10you. So thank you for joining us. It is my pleasure. Tell Diego we missed him, but you did a great job of

35:15filling in and y'all, if you don't already subscribe to housing wire, make sure you do so. Cause it is

35:20where I get my news from every single day. Dustin, thank you so much. You're welcome, Zev.

35:31Thank you so much for watching.

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