Building MOMENTUM in 2024 with Don & Gino from PRMG

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Welcome to Seeking the Truv, where we explore how successful companies and business leaders use data to make confident decisions. Hosted by Darshana Shetty, VP of product at truv, a one stop solution for income and employment verification.

Welcome to the Seeking the Truv podcast. I'm your host, Richard Greaser, VP of marketing at True and and today I have two very special guests. They're special guests for me personally and for True because they are clients of Truth and they're really just really good people and I'm really, really happy to have them with me. Don Getling and Gino Fronte from. They're both western regional managers at PRMG & Co owners of Momentum Builder. Hopefully I didn't push her and murder that enough. You killed it. But hey guys, thanks so much for, for joining me here. This, you guys are just really fun and I think everybody listening is going to enjoy. This is going to be a quick, really fun podcast. So tune in and thanks everybody for listening in. Chino, Don, let's get into it.

Cool. All right, well, it's going to be great because we've already had some great conversations with you, Richard, so we know this can be easy.

And fun fact for you, Richard, is that Don and I did AM radio for 10 years, so no strangers to the microphone.

Yeah. And your guys aren't shy. It's a weird thing I've learned about you too is you're not shy. It's strange. Yeah. So, so let's, let's start off right now, Don. If anybody's listening on the podcast, Don is wearing a shirt that says Momentum Builder. I'm going to just going to kick it off right now and just say like. And there's all over your background too. It's a really special event. But before we jump into that, why don't you just tell me, both of you tell me a little bit about yourselves. Just a couple minutes. For anybody not familiar about yourselves, how you came to be at PRMG and how you came to start Momentum Builder and what it's all about.

Gina, I'm going to let you handle the PRMG side. I'll handle the Momentum Builder side. How about that?

Perfect. Divide.

We. We divide and conquer. Like no one perfect.

Go ahead, Don.

So regarding Momentum Builder, it's a passion play for us. It really is. It actually was an accident. It was something we decided to do that became we. You know, June and I never wanted to become event promoters. We actually run a region for PRMG and we've been in, we're in the grind in the mortgage business daily. And that's what we do. That's our day jobs. But what was really cool is my business coach was coaching me and he's like, don, he goes, After 37 years and you run in one of the largest regions in the nation. He goes, I can't really teach you too much about mortgage now or how to run a mortgage company or how to do loans. He is, so what do you want for your legacy after 37 years? And I basically said, it's funny you should ask. I'd really like to provide an opportunity for others to learn and had the resources that helped Gion and I become successful and enjoy the business. Because at one time I was quitting the business because I wasn't doing it right. I was trading dollars for hours and I was running out hours. And I'm like, this is a stupid business. I, I, I, I can't make any more money because I don't have any more hours. And fortunately, I, I told that to some of my compatriots and they're like, well, that's because you're doing it wrong. You need to go hook up with these coaches, use these tools and get inspired by these people and like, all right, I'll give it a go. And it changed my life because hooking up with Todd Duncan, Barry Habib, Dave Savage and Jim McMahons and some of the icons in the industry that took me in and I learned from them and, and used the tools that I should be using, like MBS highway and Mortgage Coach and all that, all of a sudden I'm like, oh, it taught me how to become a better professional. Therefore, I liked my business better and become more successful. So Momentum Builder is where the one agnostic event. Most events are selling something of some sort. We call ourselves brand ambassadors. Our goal is to present everybody with the best coaches, the best tools, the best inspiration, motivation, and creating a community that all helps each other be successful. So that's kind of where Momentum Builder started. And now we're doing events in Vegas for 4, 500 to 600 of the best professionals in the industry.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I'll tell you right now, we're really happy and proud to be a sponsor and a part of it. So it's a special event. I'm excited for it, and I think it's just gonna be electric. I think if you're a top producer, I think if you're even an executive at a lot of lending companies, this is one I would want to be At.

Yeah, well, you guys are part of it and you should be proud of it because we're very specific of who we partner with. You know, we have to know the product, understand the product and use the product basically to know that it's of its value for our community members. And you guys are great. We really love our partnership with you guys and your platform has been wonderful for us.

Yeah, I'm going to kind of go backwards a little bit, Richard, since this. It started with Don just demonstrating what our partnership is. Let's talk about that for a minute. So the reality of the matter is that we're living in a world where the consumer experience is everything. And our good friend Brittany Hodak, who wrote a book called Superfans, also was doing her second presentation for us and she was talking about the consumer experience. And she said something to me that pretty much changed the trajectory of my mindset for the last two years. She said, if 51% or 56% of your borrowers are going to be first time home buyers, that means they've never gone through the mortgage experience before. And I was like, oh my God, that means they don't know it's supposed to suck. So I said, well, how do we make it not suck, right? And who is my competitor? And so what I identified in that moment is that my competitor was no longer other mortgage companies, but my competitor was Amazon, which is a reliable, simple mobile experience that I know is going to provide the result that I'm looking for 99.5% of the time. And so ever since then, I've been on a quest to be able to replicate that for our consumers. And there's a lot of different tools that do that. But one of the things that's always been difficult is how do we calculate and how do we gather documentation as it relates to income. Hence, that's where you come in, where truth comes in. Because what we've always done is say, scan me a bunch of documents and then I'll tell you all the pages that are missing. Don't take pictures on your cell phone because I won't be able to use those because they're not good enough. I mean, meet with me in the office and we'll go over the paperwork. Then you have to go back home or log into the computer. So many steps. And I'm like, that is not a great consumer experience in any way, shape or form. And so with your system, they do something they're already used to doing. They use their username and password, they go into their Payroll system. And let's be honest, a lot of times we don't remember our username and password to the, to our own payroll systems. So you use the forgot password feature and there you go and you're right back in. But they're doing something familiar to them that results in them not having to give me any paperwork. It just gives me permission to access their pay stubs, their past year's W2s and everything that I need to make a lending decision. So for me that was a massive step in the right direction for making the consumer experience better. And as a, as a branch owner and a regional manager, the cost is absolutely the best thing on the marketplace and it smashes the competition. So for us it was a really great thing. And to back up and give you a little history of how we ended up at PRMG, I actually went to work for Don in 2007 as a loan officer and I had been in the industry since 2004. I'd been a real estate investor since 2002, which is still what I consider to be one of my primary functions as a real estate investor. And I went to work for Don and I was a broker at the time and I, you know, hot kid, thinking I knew everything and I went to work for Don and he showed me that I didn't know almost anything. So I learned a bunch of new projects and worked under him in a branch for a little bit and hooked up there in 2007 and been through growth with a lot of companies from loan officer to business partner with Don, branch manager and now regional managers at prmg.

Awesome. I think what you missed missed is so people don't really understand how big a branch you guys were running. Like you're just running a branch that was a lending company basically like a huge lending company.

Like I just looked at the numbers.

Like brand, you know, like we'd have.

Been like this year, I think that size would have been like top 75 or something like that. That because it was 1.5 billion and 3, we were doing 300 loans a month and 1.5 billion team of 160 and it was awesome. It was a really, really good thing until unfortunately Finance America decided to close their forward mortgage division. So we had to find a new home. And we did spend some time finding the right home.

I was just going to go into that. We went and shopped 20 of the top independent mortgage bankers in the nation and we had this giant grid of all our non negotiables and the things that we wanted we walked away from some really, really big offers because they weren't the right fit. We definitely wanted, we had some things that were non negotiables. Like we didn't want a public company, we didn't want anybody that was hedge fund owned. We didn't want any debt on the books. We would like a servicing portfolio, but that wasn't mandatory. And maybe another 10 to 20 other things that we had to have. And most importantly, leadership and depth chart. And that's what we found at PRMG was great leadership, great depth chart, great leaders in every division. And that's what made us comfortable to bring our team here. And we haven't looked back.

That is awesome. Well, look, first of all, Gino, thank you so much for the kind words that you said about truv. We care about our customers deeply. We care about improving lending for the borrower experience. So it makes, it makes us feel great when we hear that, that it resonates with our clients and our customers. So thank you for that. And I just, everybody knows, like, that's unscripted. Like he's throwing that out there. I just want to throw that out there.

Like, yeah, we didn't clearly he did.

That so well that it sounds like someone had written it for him. But it was just like awesome. Like super fans.

Exactly. Same thing. Richard. Like, wow, that was really good. I'm sold.

That was really good. That was like demonstrating that someone really knows the product really well and it's.

Valuable all the way back to the beginning. But I started my life as a tech nerd. I was 13 years old and fixing people's computers. And so I've carried that throughout all of my endeavors in life. And you guys are a perfect fit for me as I try to marry tech with mortgage.

Well, let's get married, man. I love it. The, the, it's really funny. Some of the things that people don't know about you guys, I have learned recently and like, for example, you know, a lot of the success that you were just touching on, I feel like most people would get wined and dined by like a vendor saying like, hey, we're going to own this supercar racing event. We're going to bring you out to a track in Las Vegas. There's a company called Dream Racing that a lot of vendors do that. They bring him out, they put him in a Ferrari and let them do a couple of laps. And it's like a big deal for someone, right? Sending pictures to all your buddies and your family and being, look, I drove this Ferrari. Just so everybody understands Gino's flipping Ferraris for his fun like that. Just so. Just to be clear, I'm definitely not inviting Gino to the track to drive some supercars. The guy is doing that all the time.

You know, part of my racing legacy. I grew up racing go karts and Don grew up racing too. It's, it's funny how we came together and we both had some similarities in our upbringings. I grew up in construction, he grew up in construction. I grew up like we say in four wheel racing, he grew up in two wheel racing. He likes the dirt, I like the road. But I never lost my passion for cars. And during COVID I was looking for something to keep me sane and I found that I really enjoyed picking up supercars that I thought were gonna go up in value and worked out pretty well.

That's awesome. So look, I, I'm just gonna say one last thing on Momentum Builder. You guys put so much work into producing this event and I think if anybody is on the fence, listen, this event, I mean, listening to this podcast, just go, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. You're going to have a fantastic time. You're going to leave inspired to go and Crush 2024. And my advice right now is get off the fence. Just go if, if you are there.

Yeah. So this way to get to that is go to momentum builder.com and why don't you go ahead and use the Truv 300T R U V300 to get 300 off the, off of the retail price.

There you go. I love it. So we're going to pivot now. We're going to do a little bit of a pivot and talk a little bit about, you know, your daily, what you're focused on right now in your daily with your teams. What are you talking about? So what I want to, what I want to hear from you guys is what are you laser focused on? And I know a little bit about this from talking to you, Gino, but like, what are those, what are those needle moving strategies that you are pushing really hard on the team for the business?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things we learned when we were doing all that volume and we had so many people and you'll hear this, I don't remember who this, who it was that said this, but that you don't rise to the level of your goals, but you fall to the level of your systems. So I think that it's a good time right now to evaluate your systems and find out where the gaps are. Where can you make it better, what tools can you use to make it better? And how can you ensure that your systems are prepared to scale? Because we had to scale very quickly last time. And if, if refis and home sales go up rapidly because there's a large rate decline, we need to be prepared to scale again. The one thing that the industry didn't have last time was efficiency scaled quickly. We just threw a bunch of bodies at it. This time we want to make sure that we have scalable, efficient systems in place so that we can grow and be more profitable in a much more competitive market.

Don, you want to take a snap at that or should I just give you let you guys go to the next strategy? Because I know you have a couple others that I want you definitely to touch on. I think one of them specifically, actually, I'm just going to up because you, I'm sorry, jump in the gun here, Don. But it's so good that I want to make sure we cover it. And it was basically lost lead conversion. You know, Gino, Don, whoever wants to touch on that, I mean, that's so vital for any lender right now.

Well, right now, I mean, we have a team. Like I said, the benefit of, you know, us being on like a podcast is we're in the trenches. We're literally side by side with our team. We're leading with the flag right now because it's been a challenging year, but we have a ton of experience, we don't mind working hard and we know what's on the other side. The good news is, yes, it's a challenging and I've gone through more of these down cycles than most, so I do know how challenge. I do know that they tend to last a couple of years. Everybody was hoping it was going to be a, you know, six to eight month thing, but it doesn't ever work that way. So it's a couple years. But I do know what the other side of it is. In fact, you know, Gino mentioned when it went down, he's like, do we want to do this again? And I'm like, hell yeah. He's like, you know, it's going to be a grind. I'm like, yeah, but every time we get to the other side, we're smarter, we're better, and we have better people with us, so why wouldn't we even be able to do it better the next time than we did last time? I go, so let's just. We know what to expect. We know how to do it, we know how to prepare for it. And we have even better people and better company, man. And we're good. Let's go ahead and, you know, grind it out and we know what the other side is. So the, the big challenge for our team right now, and the reason I bring that up, is that we are in the grind. And our team's biggest challenge right now is conversion. And industry wide, it's, it's a, it's a challenge.

Sure.

If you've got a lead, you can convert 50 out of, you know, 50 to 70% of them into a transaction eventually. Right now, because buyers feel that they're overpaying for a home and overpaying for the payment due to the higher interest rates, they're looking for any excuse to get out. So right now we have to figure out a way to make the customer more sticky because right now conversion rates nationally are between 10 and 15% only. Very challenging for all lenders across the nation, and especially for our team because we love on our team and we hate to see them challenge, we hate to see them lose deals. So our biggest challenge right now is to make sure that we create a better experience and better value proposition up front so that the clients feel confident that we are the right choice, they don't need to go somewhere else, and that we have their best interests in mind and their experience is going to be the best. And that's of course why we choose to work with Truth. It helps us with that experience.

As Gino mentioned, I mean, the reality of the marketplace too, is that there's a demographic change that's happening on the loan officer side and a demographic change that's happening on the consumer side. And so it's also very important that we're adaptable to technology so that we can relate better to early, late millennials and early Gen Z adopters of the housing market. So that's something else to keep in mind, is that we have to work with a different group. In fact, this is the first time ever you've got three or four generations in the housing market. You still have a very small fraction of a silent generation in the housing market because people are staying in their homes longer and aging in place. But we have four different generations of homebuyers and we need to be able to deal with all.

Yeah, totally. I think if it was me originating right now, every conversation can turn into 10. I mean, that's how I would approach it. Everybody's got a parent who's going to have to downsize a home at some point. So everybody's got a brother or sister or, you know, they have, you have kids, they're going to grow up. There's so many different reasons why mortgages happen. You know, the death, divorce, all of it. We've heard it a million times. And I would, I would be focused on just making sure every conversation turns into five or 10, you know, just amplifying every single conversation. One other thing that. And by the way, I'm doing all the talking. This is really supposed to be you guys. So tell me about referral partners. I know it's a huge part of your strategy is your relationship with your referral partners, different types of referral partners. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how you coach your teams and what your approach is to, is to working with them.

Well, I mean, look, there's a couple of different ways to approach that. And I don't think that it's one size fits all. I think it's one size fits some. And if it was one size fits all, then the big banks would have beat us all a long time ago. Today, the role is that of an advisor. It really is. And you talked about the 10 conversations. You could only do that if you know how, what the needs of all those generations and all those people are. So you have to be a great advisor. And so as you go out to grow your referral partners, a, you have to build trust. And how do you build trust? You're reliable, right? You have to be. Sometimes people have a hard time with the word integrity because you could challenge someone's integrity. And they say, oh, my God, you're calling me a liar. I'm like, but you don't do what you say you're going to do. And in the mortgage industry, that's unfortunately too common. And so I think we lead with integrity to make sure that we do the safe that do the things we say we're going to do. If we say we're going to close on a certain date, we close on a certain date. Right? We don't deviate. There's no wiggle room for error. And so I think that slowly what ends up happening is your referral partners gravitate to you over time because of kind of going back to that consumer experience. There's also a referral partner experience simultaneously that gives them reliability in their referral. There's something valuable when somebody refers you, they're saying, this is the best person I've met in my life to do the thing you're looking to do? Well, I don't want to disrespect that. I want to take that seriously and I want to make sure that we honor that referral. And I think that's what's grown our referral partners and our partners in the industry referenced by all the people that we have together with us at Momentum Builder. These aren't like paid speakers. We don't, we're going to let paid people pay to play. These are friends and people that are icons in the industry giving back to the industry because that's where they're at in life.

That's how it's amazing, Gino, isn't it, that how many that want to give back, that they're at a certain level. That's what, you know, we wanted to do. I've got, I've been, you know, Gino knows a speaker on many stages and they always ask, why are you giving away your secrets? And like, I want to give back. And two people will probably do something with it, you know, unfortunately. And that's why we're having so much more engagement at this one is a lot of times you go to an event, you hear a speaker get up on stage, they do their one hour presentation and then they walk off and you know, was there real engagement? Did they understand what really happened? And so this year we changed up to where our, our speakers. I'm like, I'm sorry guys. You don't get an hour, you get 20 minutes. Just like a TED Talk. And there's a reason there's ted talks are 18 minutes is to keep people engaged, but give you enough time to get to the point. So we're kind of doing the same thing, but then we're going to follow it up with live Q A to make sure that the attendees understand the message and get to ask questions about the message so that they know how to implement it. So it's going to be very intimate, a lot of engagement. And the networking events are going to have the speakers part of the events. They're not, you know, it's, it's different when you can walk up to a Barry Habib or a Todd Duncan or Ryan Grant or I go on and walk up and talk to them because they're real people and they like helping, they like being part, they like being talked to, they like being asked questions. It's very exciting. So it's excited us a lot.

Yeah, that's awesome.

They love what they do, right? I mean, that's how I would put it. I mean it's like a good loan officer. They love what they do. Right. I mean, they're curious. They want to have those conversations to find out about family members and their friends more, because they're just curious and love learning and love talking, love helping people. Right. It's not just like, oh, what is the minimum number of questions I have to get to close a loan? Right. Like, that's not at all the approach. And those people don't work in this industry.

Yeah. The nice thing is to see that things are coming back to really relationships. Right. For a little while there, we thought tech was going to take over the world and that you could AI and automate anything. It's just not true. It's just not true. The beautiful thing about humanity that's still coming out is that the generations that have come out, the millennial generation and even Gen Z, are still dealing with humans and they still want that relational touch. Now, it might be over Zoom, right. It may not be in person pressing flesh. So we might be a hybrid of technology helping us connect better, but we're still wanting to have relationships with people. And to that point, Richard, I mean, you know, you mentioned that you that Truv is a sponsor at Momentum Builder. I'd like to change that word a little bit. You're a partner of ours. A sponsor is someone who pays to be somewhere. That's not how we see it. We don't accept just anyone. It has to be somebody that we use the product or know the product very deeply or know the person behind the product very well. So if we don't have a prior existing, deep relationship with the product or group, somehow, how could we stand on stage and say, use these people? We would never do that. So for us, just happy to have you guys as partners. Happy to have you at the event as well.

Well, I appreciate it. Look, I mean, we consider you very good partners of ours. And, you know, look, obviously PRMG is a really important client to us and partner. And so, you know, we have. We can spend money ever all over the place if we want to, and we choose to go to the places where we know it makes sense for us to be there. And, you know, you guys are a very close partner. And so thank you for reaching out to us and inviting us to be there.

You want to have some more fun? I have some clips teed up if you want to see.

Let's go.

So I'm going to share my screen and audio.

Sometimes audio over Zoom is tricky.

I don't know. We'll see if it is. But you can still watch.

Yeah.

You see my screen?

Yeah.

All right. This is one of our TV shows and you were talking about us being on bikes and stuff. There's Gino's car.

Well, I love the Ferrari Simple. Yeah. You know, just my Toyota Camry.

Hey, nothing wrong with that. I gotta tell you, last downturn, just to tell you a little funny story about Don and I is we are not afraid. Whatever it takes, right? The entrepreneurship growth pattern is never a straight line. And in 2010-2013, we rolled hard in a Corolla for quite some time. We rolled everywhere. All our business meetings. One time we went to Javier's in Laguna beach and we parked very far away from Javier. We parked at Ralph, so we walked to Javier.

Don, what kind of bike is that? I got to know the first one.

Was a Tenere, which is an adventure bike. And now this is my passion right here.

Is that you?

That's. That's me.

Oh, my God. You know, anybody who's listening should know that Don is flying, hurtling through the air about 30ft over the ground on a. On a dirt bike on this beautiful course. Is this California?

Yeah. Is that LA County Raceway? So I raced professional motocross and supercross for quite a few years and still ride. That was just a couple years ago. And I raised mammoth this last year. So still at it.

There's a really cool place you can take go dirt biking and off Roading in St. Louis, Obispo. A really big. I don't know if you've ever been there, but I went with my buddies and we had a great time.

They have a great off roading there. Really good.

Yeah.

This is our food adventure show. You're like, oh, I want to be part of that. So this is in San Diego with Craig Sewing. He's the owner of American Dream tv. There's our Food Adventures logo.

Totally Barbara.

Yeah. So we went around the different restaurants, tasting food, meeting the owners, meeting the chefs. That was a really nice thing that we were doing. Great experience. Some of it was towards the end of COVID so it was hard to get into the restaurants. But that was a wonderful experience and just a hobby of ours to, you know, people want to do business with people they know like and trust. And so in a video or a media world, how do they know if they like you? Show them what your hobbies are. Don't just talk about business.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I got a hobby is food for me, for sure. So you're, you're Hitting it right?

Making you hungry yet?

Oh, man, look at all that food.

They put on our, our table.

Oh, my God.

It was ridiculous.

That's amazing. You're not leaving until it's all gone. Guys, I'm, I'm super excited for Momentum Builder. Thank you so much for being our partner and bringing us into the fold. And thanks so much for joining us today. Look, we're going to do these again. I want to have you guys back on the podcast and just thanks so much for coming in, lending some.

But we're going to have a lot of content after Momentum Builder with all the, I mean, we have every top, you know, influencer, coach, speaker, author, you know, at the event from, you know, we're talking Todd Duncan, Barry Habib, Dave Savage, Ryan Grant, Neil Dingra, Arjun Dhingra, the mortgage nerd, Denise Donahue, Deborah Bird. I mean, I go on and on. We have Jeremy for Bill Hart, I mean, Sean Herrera, books fan.

It goes on. I mean, and that's just who's going to be there, that's going to be on stage this year. We've also reinvited all the prior speakers as well. So it's a community, not an event. The event is the place that we gather the community at so that we can all get better at our jobs, at our lives and just have more general success and happiness.

So I'm going to tell my production team to get this published as soon as possible so we can help kind of get the word out. Gentlemen.

Well, they can use DG 2024, get a nice discount, and we have a guarantee. We know that anybody goes will walk away with pearls of wisdom and fun. It's going to be a blast. And, and the networking, you know, the value of networking, you know, like meeting you. You never know who you're going to meet. That's going to change your life.

Absolutely. And I had a fun place to do it, too. Gentlemen, look, thank you so much for joining us today. I really value the partnership. Let's do this again very soon. Thanks so much.

Thank you. My pleasure.

Thank you for listening to Seeking the Truth. You can keep up with the latest on our podcast@True Groove.com podcast or wherever you get your pods. We'll see you next time.