#MortgageBrokers #RocketPro #Inclusivity #BrokerCommunity
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00:00Because we believe like this is what America is and this is how business should operate in America.
00:05It's so symbiotic.
00:08I'm Diego Sanchez, president of Housing Wire, and I'm thrilled to connect again with Dan Segorka,
00:15GM of Rocket Pro, and Katie Sweeney, EVP of Strategy and Broker Advocacy at Rocket Pro.
00:23Dan, it has been almost a year since we last spoke. What have you been up to at Rocket Pro?
00:28Hey, thanks, Diego. Yeah, time flies, man, especially when you're busy and you're having a lot of fun.
00:36So let's see. The last year, man, we did RPX. We did a ton of broker conferences.
00:45I've been all around the country with our partners, big and small, diving in, understanding their businesses.
00:53Rocket went on a little shopping spree. We bought Redfin and Mr. Cooper.
00:58And just closed on Cooper. And so really working very hard on behalf of our partners and trying to figure out
01:07how we bring this entire ecosystem to bear for their benefit. So it's been busy, man.
01:13Hugely busy year. And Katie, you know, Dan mentioned RPX, which sounds like it was an amazing event.
01:24And really, I think it shows that you want to be part of the broker community, not just serving it.
01:33How does that embedded approach set Rocket apart?
01:36Yeah, I mean, I think Dan has said it a lot throughout the year. When I joined the team, we had a lot of conversations about needing to do a lot more listening.
01:45And that's a general statement across the board. I think all lenders need to do a lot more listening, not just over here at Rocket Pro.
01:52And we really took the time throughout the last six to nine months to not only understand the challenges of our current partners,
01:59but to also understand the landscape for the rest of the channel and the folks that aren't working with us yet.
02:06And I think at the end of the day, the conversation that's consistent across the board with every type of business owner and every type of broker out there is this desire to be a part of a community,
02:16whether that's your local community and your environment back home or a larger community within the broker channel or the industry in a more agnostic way.
02:24And so our objective and our goal has been to just foster as much of that as possible.
02:29We're trying to do as many local events as we can so that we can really get into understanding market dependencies in specific regions.
02:35But we're also trying to create a general sense of community and belonging for businesses of all sizes.
02:40I think, you know, we're in an industry that really praises production and and a lot of times the biggest companies out there get a lot of attention and they get a lot of a lot of of effort behind lenders trying to court them in their relationship.
02:56But often that leads behind or leaves behind the small and medium businesses, the shops that are really trying to embed themselves locally.
03:03And Dan has done a fantastic job of allowing us to sort of spread our wings and to provide community belonging to everybody of every size.
03:11And I think that's important. You don't get that from a lot of other lenders out there.
03:14When you've got limited resources to be able to deploy, you go, you know, the most bang for your buck.
03:20And I think what really sets us apart and that's been a really wonderful part that I found inside Rocket is that every business matters and every company size matters.
03:28Every production size matters. Every community is important to us.
03:33And so we've really been able to create an environment here that that shows everybody that they're just as important as the next broker.
03:40Yeah. Following up on that, Dan, I got a lot of feedback that there were small brokerages and diverse voices represented at RPX.
03:51Why is inclusivity central to your strategy at Rocket Pro?
03:55We have an ism at Rocket and it's every client, every time.
04:00And I think when you look at that through the lens of our pro business, to Katie's point, you treat everybody the same, whether they're doing three loans a month with you or 300 loans a month with you.
04:12And when you do that, you really have to have a business and a channel that can support a lot of different entrepreneurs and the style that they want to work in.
04:24And then when you're also kind of a global, certainly national brand like Rocket, you have to worry about every geography.
04:31Right. And so when we come to play, that's how we kind of go to market.
04:36Right. We want to be great. We want to be the best partner and counterparty for every location and every type and size of business.
04:44And so it's very important for us to kind of reflect that back to the community so that they see us showing up that way in our advertisements, in our in our social and certainly how we support the business.
04:58Right. We can't be in a position where someone feels like I'm not going to get an attention because I only do 10 loans a month.
05:06Like that's not how we operate at all. So it's really it really goes through the entire go to market and the how we support production.
05:15Katie, let's keep going on that, because I feel like the broker manifesto that you launched recently really signifies a lot of what Dan was just talking about in terms of inclusivity.
05:26Yeah. I mean, look, it's critical. It's the same in the consumer world.
05:31Every consumer needs to see themselves in the industry that they're trying to get a service from.
05:35And we happen to be in an industry that gets to help make people's dreams come true every single day.
05:41And the connectivity between a consumer and a loan officer is so imperative in building trust.
05:46And so when we take that same model, having brokers feel like they're represented and reflected with the people who we choose to platform and spotlight is the most important thing that we could do.
05:58Everybody needs to feel like they're a part of the story because they are and they have the ability to impact consumers from all different areas across the country with different backgrounds, different access to financial education.
06:09And brokers are truly dream makers. They really they make this stuff work locally in every market across the country.
06:16And so we wanted to be able to highlight people all different ages, gender, ethnicity, experience level, production totals.
06:23That was crucial. I mean, goodness, I probably drove Dan nuts because I think I gave him 50 different versions of the list of people that we wanted to feature in the manifesto.
06:31But it was so important to get right because we we wanted to be able to spotlight the folks that are doing really good work back at home.
06:40But we also wanted to be able to show every broker in America that there's a place for them here and there's a place for them in the story of creating the American dream and bringing it to life.
06:49And so I hope that we achieve that. We've gotten some really great feedback.
06:53It was a really incredible project to get to be a part of. And I'm even more excited to be able to bring more of that to life going into 2026.
07:00Yeah, Dan, let's talk specifics. What is the broker manifesto from your perspective and how is it going to guide how your business Rocket Pro operates?
07:12I think the manifesto goes kind of hand in hand with the broker promises. Right.
07:15And we really wanted to go out and say these are the things we stand for. These are the things we fight for every day.
07:21This is what we're going to deliver to you with consistency and intentionality and then just show up every day and do it. Right.
07:29It's just it's a lot easier when you just say, here's a list of 10 things. Now let's go do them versus like, hey, we do good things for you and, you know, trust us. Right.
07:38So so that was very important for us. But when you think about the things that Katie mentioned and this actual broker manifesto where we had all those different people together, it goes back to what I was saying previously.
07:49Like I was at a dinner last week and I sat at a table with a gentleman in his mid 50s, a lady in her early 30s and a kid who was 24.
08:01And they all happened to be at the same top producer dinner that we hosted. And, you know, to hear all those different stories is just it's just so powerful.
08:13And it also told me like we're on the exact right path. Right. Because they have to see you as a partner for them in order for them to say, this is who I want to build my business with.
08:24Right. Because we're so important, like without us, they can't operate. And without them, we can't operate. Right.
08:32So it's so symbiotic. And once you kind of align there, then, you know, the marketing and the manifesto piece is just about saying, hey, not only do we see you, but we're not afraid to go out and show that and put Rockett's marketing muscle behind it.
08:50Because because we believe like this is what America is and this is how business should operate in America.
08:55So it was just really cool to do. And I think it was pretty emotional for a lot of the people involved.
09:00And it's it was great to sit there at RPX and watch our partners all see it for the first time and see the emotions that they felt because they really felt seen and heard.
09:12Dan, you have a technology as big part of your background and your career building technology for the mortgage ecosystem.
09:22How are you pairing this broker manifesto and this focus on inclusivity with technology in a way that's going to empower brokers rather than replace them?
09:35That's a great question. So my my vision from early on as these tools started kind of evolving was how do I make every broker the best broker in the United States?
09:48Right. And then how do we bring, you know, these these hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to small mom and pop entrepreneurs throughout the United States?
09:59And and so that's really the model. Right. It's like we have this tool set that we've developed that's super powerful. Right.
10:06And, you know, kind of to Katie's point, if you said, oh, let's just give this to the big players, then that kind of drives the small players out. Right.
10:14You see that in a lot of businesses. You have a Walmart. Now you don't have, you know, Katie's, you know, you know, little shop down the street. Right.
10:23But we took an opposite approach, which was like, you know, kind of more of like an Amazon approach of like how if we power the entire ecosystem and give them the tools to be more competitive and help them win.
10:35That's the right model for all of us. Right. Because we think, you know, the future of real estate is hyper local.
10:40And it's and we also believe, you know, the American dream is really two things. Right.
10:46One, it's home ownership, but two, it's small business and entrepreneurism.
10:50And so we get we have such a privilege to be able to bring those things together.
10:56And technology is kind of the tip of the spear.
11:00So now, you know, someone who can't afford an IT team, who can't afford a full stack of CRM, LOS, POS. Right.
11:09Like, OK, doesn't even know how to integrate those things and is operating a small business, can use our tools and go in and be almost empowered, as empowered as if you had a team of 20 IT people working on your staff.
11:22Right. So that is a really powerful thing for us.
11:25And the tools are really centered around a couple of different things.
11:28One is like, how do we help them grow their business and identify new opportunities?
11:33How do we help them be more efficient as they kind of originate?
11:36And that includes like their efficiency and our operations team's efficiency.
11:41And then the third piece is then how do we put that together in a way that they spend less time using tools and more time with people leveraging their humanity, their empathy to build their businesses kind of human to human.
11:56So it's been it's been really fun.
11:58It's been a great part of the last year for me.
12:01Yeah, really, I love that pairing of of the of that manifesto and the way that you're interacting with brokers with really strong technology and kind of enabling them in a way to compete with some of the bigger shops out there.
12:15Katie, I feel like you have a big hand in in this strategy of giving great technology to the most local, hyper local of broker.
12:27How do you think about technology when you're out there talking with mortgage brokerages?
12:32Yeah, I mean, Diego, I've been on a mission to democratize the mortgage industry for probably seven years now.
12:39I think I stood up on stage back in 2018 and said the same thing that I'm about to say now for a really long time, technological investment was limited to enterprise solutions.
12:49And that's it. The people didn't really have an interest.
12:51They didn't have an understanding of the impact that local originators play, that to be able to keep that money in their communities, to be able to influence local economies, to be able to be a trusted advisor.
13:03There's so much information that exists online these days, but it's incredibly overwhelming.
13:08And we're seeing a shift in the narrative of people trusting what they Google to now distrusting everything that they see.
13:14And the only way to manage trust is to have local relationships, which means that's the area that we have to continue to invest in.
13:21These are people who have personal relationships and the ability to influence decision making at a scale that we simply could never match.
13:28There's not a company in America that could match the decentralization and the power that local originators bring to the table.
13:34And so investing in creating flexibility in the way that people run their business and allowing them to do so in whatever way best fits the people who they serve, that's the ultimate objective with every technical investment that we're making.
13:48All of these launches, everything we're bringing to the table, it's all about allowing people to run their business the way that they want to run it and to utilize these services to eliminate friction in as many areas as possible so that they can spend more time doing the things that they want.
14:02And that could be recruiting, scaling, doing more production, meeting more real estate agents.
14:07That could also mean hanging out with their kids and spending more time with their families and getting that time back to be present in a business that doesn't often celebrate that.
14:16We're all kind of in the middle of this hustle culture and we celebrate, you know, die, grind or die.
14:23But there's a benefit and a flexibility that technology brings to the table that allows you to make those decisions independently and autonomously.
14:31It's not up to us to dictate the way that you drive your business.
14:34We're simply here to provide as many platforms as possible and allow you to pick and choose the best way to facilitate the business model that works for you.
14:43Yeah, I love that.
14:44And inclusivity, you know, means also people have lives outside of work and different kinds of lives that require different commitments at different periods of time.
14:55So I love that.
14:56I love that message, Katie.
14:57So, Dan, let's wrap up with you.
15:00When we hopefully we'll talk again earlier than a year from now, when we talk again a year from now, as I imagine we will, what do you hope to have accomplished over this next year that we can that we can talk about?
15:15I think this year is going to be really impactful in terms of the adoption of these tools that we're bringing to our partners and their use of them.
15:25Like we're on version one.
15:27People have been literally blown away.
15:30But, you know, when you sit in a room with 50 people and you really say, how many of you are fully utilizing this tool set to run your business, you know, 10 hours a day, every day, one or two people raise their hand.
15:43You know, so like we're in very early adoption of like, how can I really dive in and get my hands dirty and change the way my business operates?
15:52So I think we're going to see that happen.
15:55I also think we're going to bring some amazing things together as we really integrate Redfin Rocket, Mr. Cooper.
16:04Right.
16:05This is this is something that's never been seen before.
16:08You know, we there there's a lot of excitement and people are like, when can I do this or when can I do that?
16:13And I'm like, we just closed the deal seven days ago.
16:16Like, let me breathe a little bit.
16:17Right. But so when that starts to come to fruition, what it looks like to have a top of funnel at scale, real estate portal integrated with the best mortgage machine in America, integrated with the best servicing operation on the planet at scale.
16:36Well, there's going to be a lot of things that that we can deliver and bring to our partners that we're really just kind of putting into process right now.
16:49So I think in a year from now, it'll be really great to sit back and say, Dan, we talked about all these things.
16:54Wow. Let's talk about what we've accomplished.
16:56And we'll have a lot of facts and data in terms of thousands of hours saved, thousands of leads delivered, you know, servicing on behalf of broker.
17:04Just all these stories that that aren't aren't happening today.
17:08It's not going to take us that long to put them into motion.
17:11So that'll be what our combo is about.
17:14What a terrific place to end.
17:17Dan, Katie, thank you so much for joining me today.
17:21Thanks, Diego.
17:22Thanks, Diego.
17:22Yeah, appreciate it.
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