Cigars and Coffee w/ TheDM (Feat. Kelley from World Class Title)

There we are. And we are live. Awesome, man. Thank you. Hey, everybody, it's your boy, Mark Evans, DM hanging out here at Cigars and Coffee. 8:30am on Thursday. Today's Thursday. Yep, Thursday. All day today. Anyways, I'm here with the special guest. I got my amazing title company lady out of Ohio. Her name is Kelly. What's up, Kelly?

Hey, what's up, Mark?

What's up? So your title, company world class title. What's your website?

Www.worldclasstitle.com.

That'S easier to remember. People throw that up on the bottom. So, Kelly, I appreciate you coming on. I know you're sitting over there in beautiful 27 degree Columbus, Ohio and I'm sitting in a 100 degree garage in Florida. We gotta find the happy medium to that.

Yeah.

I wanted to just bring you on. I haven't talked to you for a while. We've been working together. How many years? It's been a while. 10. 10? Is it close? So long. I don't even, I don't know if it's 5 or 10. I have timeline gaps. I don't know if you do. Like I feel like I've done this for like a year and it's like 10 years later.

I know. No, it's been at least five or seven. So it seems like longer.

Yeah, it's been a long time. But we've done a lot of stuff together. I mean, we've, we've, we've been punched in the face a couple times together as a group and what. But the key is, is right, I think in business in general, it's just keeping focus and staying moving forward and more importantly, communicating. I know my team, you work with a lot of people. My team, Courtney and excuse me, Roseanne mostly probably now. And I think she deals with your girl Christian. Kristen. But I just wanted to bring it on here because, you know, I have a lot of people following me in the real estate investing space and wanted to kind of get from your side because you're on the inside, if you will, of real estate closings is how do you see the market in real estate right now? Do you see deals happening? Not happening. Where's, where's the bottlenecks? Where's the opportunities that you're seeing on the title company side?

We haven't slowed down. It's been great on our end. We had a record. Mark, we're seeing real estate moving. It's just, it's just not business as normal. I hear a lot of people saying it's business as usual, business is normal, but nothing about this is normal. But the one thing that you and I have seen over the last decade is real estate is always the one constant, you know, when everything else is changing, especially on the investor end. Yeah, we're still seeing a lot of those deals coming through.

Yes. I was going to say on your side that you guys are closing. Are you closing more refis? Are you closing more investor deals, more retail deals? Kind of. Where do you see the op. Where do you see the deals closing right now? I mean, you're an investor heavy company.

But yeah, we're a good mix right now. Our refi business has definitely increased. We've been doing, you know, way more than we have in the last, you know, five years, but our investor business is very solid. Kristen's been keeping up with that on a regular basis. We have closings daily with her. And I know tomorrow I think we're looking at 20 purchases across the board, investor and residential. So, yeah, it's a good mix right now.

It's Friday next. Tomorrow's Friday. Friday's are always fun for title companies. I always tell my team close on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They're easier for everybody.

That would be awesome. Yeah.

What's up, Rob? So Kelly, on your side as an investor, let's say, if I'm a newer investor, how would they approach you? What kind of questions? I'm just trying to talk to you because I know you guys do a good job. But you're not just in Ohio, you're in multiple markets. Can you share the market you're in? So, because we have a lot of different people here.

Yeah, we're Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and Florida.

Okay, cool. And you have a good streamlined process with the team. And you're out of Worthington, Columbus, Ohio area. Yep. What would you like to see people, when they come to you, what kind of business are you looking for? What kind of investors or agents or brokers? What's like an ideal client for world class title?

One that closes deals for one thing. Yeah, we get a lot of people that come in and they want to buy and sell and, you know, it may be their first deal. The best ones for us, especially on new investors, is the ones that want to learn the process correctly. I know you've referred a lot of people to us and when they come from your end, they're actually really wanting to do the right thing and do it the right way and get it done the most efficiently. We get some people that think they're Gonna pop in and do it, make a quick dollar. And they don't know what the process is, and they don't want to hear what the process is. They don't want to learn. But the ideal client is someone who will just let us do our job and let us guide them through the process and get us the information we need so we can get things closed.

That's awesome. You love clients that beat you up on your prices, right? That's always the best client for you.

Oh, yeah, I passed those on to Kristen.

Exactly. No, speaking of that, like, I always think it's interesting is I think investors and agents and brokers miss the point of a title company. They look at you guys as an expense, not an investment. Like, you're a part of their team. If you guys know this or not, this is the true story. You're a part of a team. So they can actually be your eyes, ears, guide you. They could, you know, they could help the closing process make it so much easier and streamline. Right, Christian? Kelly, I got questions over here from Christian, like, sorry about that, Kelly.

You're right. Yeah. No, I think you and I have never talked fees. I don't know. In all the years we've been doing this, we've never discussed fees. You've never asked us, you know, hey, can you cut this or cut that? If you're doing the right deal, you've accounted for those fees. But just like any company, we get paid for the service we provide. And you know the old adage, you get what you pay for. So I think that still stands true.

No, absolutely. I think at the end of the day, it's. You know, it's always funny. I genuinely have zero clue what any title company charges, because I don't look at that as a cost to. I mean, it's. What's the difference going to be anyways? A hundred dollars? Like, if you're worried about $100 as a business owner, you're definitely worried about the wrong thing in the business, right? Especially the people. What's interesting to me, Kelly, I always see people out there, oh, I'm crushing the game. Crushing the game. And yet behind the scenes, they're beating title companies up and inspectors up and all these people. And I'm like, how are you crushing. It's impossible to crush the game if you're nickeling and diming everybody through the process. It's impossible.

Right. And. Well, then we have an obligation, too, with our underwriters, that we have fees that are published, and those are the fees that we really have to stick to. So asking us to cut fees is asking us to go against what we've come to, an agreement with people that allow us to do our job. So we don't really get it that often, though. It's not as much as it used to be. But if you were to ask me what our fees are, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. It's not a conversation I usually have.

Yeah, well, again, it's like, do you see it as fees or investments? Like, we genuinely look at you guys as an investment and a team member in our company and we don't have to pay for you unless we actually perform.

Exactly.

I wish everyone on my teams work like that. The only way you get paid is if you perform for some reason. They don't. They don't all do that, but that'd be nice. We gotta figure that out. One day over at World Class. What are you seeing with hard money, private money? Are they belling, Are they sticking in? Are you getting conversations like, hey, they got more? Or is there any deals falling apart at the table?

Yeah, I know Kristin would be a better one to answer this, but I know that she's had a couple that had private money lenders or hard money lenders that have kind of been put on hold a lot of the cash deals. And there's still some lenders that we've been working with for a while on the private money and that they're comfortable lending because they are seeing the market still continue to be strong.

Yeah, well, I mean, at the end of the day, to investors, what people forget, real estate investors, the only way we make money is if we sell it for a profit. So if we're taking on private money, we typically have an exit strategy to make a profit. That's how we make money.

Exactly.

Our job as real investors is to protect the whole entire picture of the deal from start, that is private lender to the contractors to getting it sold and making a net profit. That's the ultimate goal for all of us.

Absolutely.

What on your side, like, what challenges are you guys having with the shutdowns? Is it things getting delayed? Is a title that could Normally close in seven days now, taking 21 days. Or what's the timeline changes over there?

The timeline changes. What we're dealing with is that everybody's working remotely. So a lot of the lenders, they may have a slight delay. I haven't noticed too much because they are trying to figure out how to work with people in different locations. And I actually thought that was gonna be a big challenge for us. But Chris and I. Chris is my co owner and he and I planned on this happening a few years ago. Not necessarily to this extreme, but what happens if the power goes out or, you know, you can't access your building? So we've all had the ability to work remotely with laptops, and about a week before we put that plan in place. So most of my girls, there's about 15 of us that are all working in remote locations right now.

That's awesome. What kind of platform or system are you guys communicating? Text. Just via text and email, or do you guys use like Teamwork or Monday or what kind of systems are you guys using?

We're doing morning meetings with Google Hangouts and we do a lot of Zoom meetings. My sales reps, they're still doing sales meetings, which is great. They're able to have marketing conversations via Zoom or Facetime even. But we have a daily meeting standing with our managers and then they meet with their teams as well. So we're face to face every day.

That's awesome. You know, it's interesting. What do you think about everything going on? Because, like, if you watch the news, you literally think nothing's happening. Everyone's sitting at home eating bonbons. We know Chris is at home eating Reese cups all day jelly beans, but I think he ran out. I think he had a run on those. But, like, what is why? I mean, we're so. You and I, we're just busy, so we're not even paying attention as much. But I do hear, like, people like, oh, my gosh, the world's over, it's coming to an end. Real estate will never be the same. It's okay. Nothing's going to be the same. But business still has to. There's a lot of people that still are working massively.

Right, actually.

Truth is, they're actually probably working more.

Yeah, I know that. It's just different. And, you know, unfortunately there's a lot of people right now that are furloughed and that don't have jobs. And we're doing our best, I think, as communities to try and support those that we can. And we'll get back to a place here. It's probably going to be another month or two before we're at a back place where people are working in a normal situation. But I'm really impressed with how we've come together and how, like, our industry's coming together and everybody's willing to help each other out and just Be a lot more understanding.

Yeah, no, I think that's what's going on. Because like, again, right, there's. Back in the day prior pre corona, there's always friction, like, I'm busy, you're busy, we're busy, we're doing this though. You figure it out on your own, blah, blah, blah. Now it becomes a collaboration. I keep telling our teams, like, I feel like people are more connected now than they ever have been because again, we're trying to unite together, pull it together as a team. How do we help each other? We're looking for the opportunities of inefficiencies and how to be more effective, right?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think people are more understanding, you know, instead of, you know, being as stressed out or snappy. Everybody's in the same situation right now. So our clients have been amazing to work with. And the biggest compliment I've heard from our end is we didn't even realize you guys were working remotely. We never noticed a shift at all in the service level. So that's been huge for us. And it's been a great kudos to my team. They've been just working so hard and definitely a lot more hours.

Yeah, no, I mean kudos to the team and obviously kudos to leadership. Right. On your guys side, Kelly. I mean, it's always at the end of the day for, you know, we're just trying to lead and do the best we can and, you know, sometimes, you know how it is, it gets crazy. But for you guys, I think too, like, our world, my world hasn't really changed much because I've kind of been virtual since 05, so this is kind of like normal to me. You know, we've done, we've created operation procedures with you guys internally, how we communicate. You guys click a button, we see it internally in Florida or California or whatever and all these things. So what's neat is kind of like, I think that, you know, we've always, I've always been. We've always been fought, like, dude, it can't be this easy. You're from afar, you have to see it. You have to go to Title. You know, I'm like, I've never understood like, since oh, five. Literally, like, why do you have to go to Title to get a check, right? Have a thing called wires. It's a new thing, it's been around forever, but it seems new to people. And I think it's more of an ego thing. They want to walk in, they want to shake your hand, they want to get a check that says $50,000 and they want to take a picture in front of Chase bank and all this stuff, which is cool. I mean, whatever. But, like, I think it's much cooler to be from afar. I can take a picture of my wire information inside my bank account, and I could be hanging out with my kids at the pool while that's all going on.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of it, too, is the barriers you have with title companies. Some title companies aren't able to do what we've been doing for years. You know, I still see people doing roundtable closings right now during all this. And I look at you, and I don't know, when have you ever had a roundtable closing with us? It's just.

Oh, never. I never have. Never.

It was a couple years before we even met face to face.

Yeah.

So, you know, Chris has been great about putting plans in place for us to have these closings that are remote as possible, putting our customer safety and our client safety first and foremost. So we're not doing closings in our office. We have notaries that literally stand outside a window and are witnessing signatures or having people drive up to the office and having deeds done while they're in their car. But that's been our biggest focus. And so roundtable closings weren't necessary a few years ago. And, you know, we've been able to do this so seamlessly right now, and we've gotten some great feedback on how it's happening.

Yeah, no, it's awesome. Do you think you guys company will look a little different once we get out of this? You think you'll have a lot less people coming into the office?

I think at some point we'll go back to face to face closings. But I think a lot of people have really enjoyed the comfort and the convenience of how we're doing things now. So I think a lot of that's going to kind of stay with us, which is good.

Yeah. Be interesting. I think it could buy back some time for you guys internally in your company, your office. Right. Say if you guys have all those people in the office and you have all these, you know, people coming in every hour to close a deal, it disrupts. Right. You're up walking around, they're like, hey, I forgot this. Oh, I'll be right back. And I mean, it's just a lot of chaos.

Yeah.

But like, from afar, it seems like people get their shit together a little bit tighter.

Yeah. You have to.

Yeah. You have to be prepared.

Yeah. We have two girls in Our office that are doing the closing packages and they're prepping those for our notaries and our runners and they have to make sure that what they're doing is right the first time. So it has put a pressure on us to make sure that we're doing things as seamlessly and as almost as perfect as possible. You know, we're never perfect, but they've really stepped up to the challenge and it's been great.

It's funny, I meant to ask you about this because we haven't even talked for a while, but like we had a pretty wild closing with you from our Chinese buyer, remember? Were you a part of that or. No?

I remember. Was he the one that couldn't get anywhere because he was one of the first people to be on like lockdown.

Yeah, it was literally like right when everything was breaking and he randomly was buying pretty big property from us that out of our norm picture. But like he was in New York. New York wasn't like the money couldn't flow. Like it was like all this chaos. John, my broker, he was freaking out. He's like, I don't know if this deal's closing. And I'm like, there's no way it's closing because I mean, he's from China, the money's coming from here, he's coming from New York. Now I'm like, it's impossible. But I think he was in and out of your guys office multiple times. If I remember right. Probably you guys were going to him. I don't even know. I just remember it was a pretty wild deal as this is all coming and unfolding.

That actually allowed Kristen to kind of figure some new procedures out on her end too. Because a lot of the investors that we deal with, they're not local. We do have some with our real estate investors, they're buying properties a lot of sometimes they're distressed properties. The people that are selling don't have the technology, they don't have the ability to get to certain places to close. So we've had to get really creative on how we're doing some of these closings with that.

Yeah. What's the biggest thing you've learned so far from that? Like, is there what's like the biggest.

Takeaway from doing the closings that way?

Yeah.

That we have to really think outside the box.

Okay.

And when we have our morning meetings, we usually have one situation that comes up every day that we're like, okay, let's brainstorm as a team. How can we do this? And you know we'll pull Chris in on the tech end a lot, but, yeah, just trying to figure out how to adapt to everybody's situation being so different. Even though we're all kind of in the same situation, it's still. Everybody's still people, and they're all different lifestyles and different, you know, ways of doing things.

So, yeah, I hope. My hope is what's going on right now is people actually think outside of the box because they've been kicked out of the box. You know, the mental. You know, everyone's talking about this quarantine is like a gel sentence or whatever. In my mind, I'm thinking, well, you guys have created this brain gel sentence that you. You have to go to a closing. You don't really have to. Actually, one of the guys here, Paul, is like, hey, do you have an office locally, or can I put remotely? Like, everything's remote now. You can do anything literally remotely besides have a baby. You might be able to have a doctor on video helping you deliver a baby now. I'm sure you could, but, like, literally anything could be done remotely. I truly believe in anything.

Absolutely.

So it's like, I think we have to start, you know, because we're so far out of the box. Start. What you guys are doing is asking a different question.

Yeah.

A question that's going to serve the bigger picture, not the moment piece. Like, well, let's just get to their house and just figure it out. No, like, we got to step back. We got to create the software. Hey, get Chris involved, pull this in. Boom. Now it becomes a global process across the team, and everyone wins.

Yeah. And you have to ask the right questions of your customers and your consumers. What do they need? What do they need to feel comfortable? And that's the biggest thing right now with us making sure our clients are comfortable. Because if they're not comfortable in the process, then that's a reflection on us as well. But, you know, there's been a lot of meetings, a lot of brainstorming, and Chris's ideas are always evolving. So keeping up with him has been challenging. But he's made this work. He's made these options available to all of us. So. Yeah, but I think the most important thing, though, is just listening to what people need from us.

Right. I got a silly question. I'm being serious, too. This is like a real question. I'm always confused by this. Out of all, I've bought thousands of properties, bought and sold. I've never once gotten the keys to a house ever. Right. Besides. Cause it's always on lockbox or whatever. Right. Why do people, when like especially investors, I'm talking specific investors, not retail. Why do investors like freak out if there's not keys at a title company waiting for them? Because. And it's an investment property, why would you want to have keys running around everywhere? Why wouldn't you re key the door anyways?

Right.

I never understood this and it's a serious question because my team and I, we always laugh about it when investors are freaking out about set of keys.

Yeah, you know, we don't get keys that often. It's not really between us as much. But you know, then you do have the sets of keys that are still sitting in my office months later and nobody wants to come get them because they've already re keyed the locks, they've already changed the code. So. Yeah, we don't handle a lot of the key swaps.

Yeah, no, it's, it's funny to me because some people are like freaking out. We close the deal at a different company because, you know, we were buying some stuff and we used their title company. By the way, I try to move every deal to you guys, you know that, right?

I know you do.

I'm like, no. If I'm doing private money deals or whatever, I'm like, no, it's got to go through wct, it's got to go through world class title. I don't want to deal with it. And, but again, it's like what can happen? Because I'm always confused by this too. Like I don't understand like, like what separates a title company from another title company? Is it efficiencies? Is it, is it them doing better paperwork? Is it having better title insurance? Like what exactly is it? Because I really don't know.

Well, that's actually a great question because we do have a lot of title companies that do investor deals. And I think a lot of it people choose their title company based on relationships. That's one thing. You have those that choose based on fees. Those probably aren't the ones that we're doing the most business with at this point in time. But I think at the end of the day an investor wants to get that deal closed. They want to get it closed with the figures that they're anticipating. They don't want any surprises coming up. They want clear communication. You find the right person that you're working with and you know that you've got this level of communication with them, you really don't leave it.

Yeah.

So you know, and I Think the experience is huge too. The fact, you know, world class title. We've been around 16 years, so I'm aging myself on that one. But we've been through the recession and the housing market crisis of 2008, which I would never want to relive. But we learned a lot from that and that's made us, you know, more aware of the situations and being able to handle those better. Now that we've come, we've come across some weird stuff. Mark, you've seen it. Yeah, title situations and Kristen gets those figured out.

So I'm always amazed at people that try to do the wrong thing with this side of business. It's like it's not a matter of if you're going to get caught, it's a matter of when. If you're doing anything goofy, right. Like people trying to game the system or sell the property three times to three different people, you know, it's like again, I'm not even in that world but I've definitely heard of it happening and I've been involved in deals where I'm trying to buy and they're like, oh, this is going on here and there. We're like, how, how, why would you even try to sell it to multiple people?

Yeah, we see it.

Yeah, you see it.

We still see people trying to do things that we won't participate in and we'll tell them outright. You know, it's not, you're welcome. If you've got somebody else that's willing to do this for you, you know, you need to take it elsewhere. But you're not only out to protect you as the client and all the people involved in. But I'm protecting my team, my company and our reputation. So we've worked too hard to do fudge a deal here or there for a quick dollar.

It just definitely not worth it. So let's talk about the wire fraud and all that stuff because it's pretty rampant and I think a lot of people may have not experienced this, guys, if you're depending on your deal volume or whatever. But you know, a lot of times, you know, we send emails like, hey, you know, we're clear to close at WCT. Send $80,000 to Blah and we'll put the details in there. But some people's figured out a way to hack emails, right? They'd be able to catch in the middle, change their wire information to their wire information and once you send that wire, it's gone.

Absolutely, yeah. World class. We've been working on wire fraud and the Prevention of that for the last couple years. You're familiar with Safewire. Safewire is a product that Chris co founded that prevents wire fraud. And he's still building off of that. He's recently acquired that as well. But we won't send our instructions in an unsecured format. And I still have people say, well just, just email them to me unsecured. And that's where it happens, that's where the fraud occurs. The second a property goes up on the mls, there are people out there that are looking for that email train. They're looking at the realtors emails and the seller's emails and it's really easy for them to intercept and just change a letter or put a dot in and say, hey, last minute change, can you send my money here? Or we don't want to be a part of that. We want to be the people that prevent that. So we're constantly trying to educate our clients on wire fraud. But I still get wire instructions sent to me from other title companies in word docs.

Oh, we do too. We do too. All the time. My team has to call and verify now and all that. Obviously to call like call the person contact. So what she means guys is like if you get an email, let's say if my emails Mark Evans, you know, one, you might get an email from mark evans2mail.com it looks the same. You wouldn't catch the one verse two because your eyes not thinking that or might say Mark Evans one one where it just blends in. It looks like it's coming from me. It's like, hey, we've changed wire information. Here's the new wire info. Or hey, I'm excited to close the day because they can read your emails through the system and then they'll put the information in there and literally as soon as you push submit. Because it's frustrating for me because if we send a wire, you know, the banks are on top of this like big time now. They're like, do you know the person? Have you ever done business with them? Have you talked to them? Where did the information come from? Like they're asking all these questions. So once they get on the radar, once you have the information stored in your system, obviously it's a little bit different. But if it's a new wire out, it can definitely, definitely cause a problem if you're trying to send money. Have you guys had, you guys have seen this clearly obviously happen?

Yeah, we haven't had it happen to us. We've had somebody attempt and say at the Last minute, hey, you know, they hacked an email and wanted to have our, have us send their money elsewhere. And we're like, yeah, that's not what we do. But with safewire, when the seller is going to be getting their proceeds, they have to log in through a two step verification process. They upload their ID, so the back of the IDs have a barcode that's scanned, it's verified against their bank account information, which they connect as well. So when we get to the closing table, we've already verified that seller and their wire information and we'll even reverify it with them at the closing table or require a voided check. And if we're not comfortable with it, we're sending a check. But it's rare that we have to get to that point.

Yeah, no, I think it's very powerful. I mean I, we're going to see this more and more, right? I mean this is not, this is not going to become a less of a problem. This is only going to become a real problem forever. People are smart, man. These technology pieces, they slide in like you said, they can get on the email trains, they can see who's involved in who, they can read this stuff behind the scenes. Guys. It's pretty wild. So I love it. What do you guys, what do you see kind of like in the next three months? You guys have any outlooks of kind of like based off of your book of business is things cranking, things on track, people freaking out? Because I know a lot of people are talking like all deals are selling like crazy and blah blah, blah. But what does that mean, you know, did they reduce the price by 50%? Of course you can get more sales. Like I do know there's some deal making going on at different levels, but what are you guys seeing on the books to close?

We're seeing still real estate moving at asking price, if not higher than asking price. Right now our investor deals, we haven't really seen a drop in those. People are still getting the deal that they've always been able to, you know, however they market and you market creatively and you know, you pick up deals from, from people that are looking to sell and that's still happening as well. But I'm not anticipating and I can't predict the future. I don't, I'm not a money market person, I'm, I'm a title agent. But from what I've seen and what I see, with the business still coming in order wise and with my clients and the communication we have with them, everybody's still working hard and still bringing forth the business. So I'm hoping that that stays the course. I think we're going to still be in this for a little while.

No, I mean, I feel at the end of the day, I mean, I think it's probably going to go till June ish or July. I really think it is. I don't think it's going to affect us. I think it's going to affect the small mom and pop businesses that are restaurants and such. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, I know a lot of people talk theory and thought. I'm more thinking like, hey, this is what I see on our books, right? This is what I can control. Like, you know, I send this much money in marketing. This is my results. You know, maybe we have to work a little harder to get the same results as we did last month, but we're going to get the results. We don't care how we get them. We just want the results.

Right? Well, I think one of the differences that, that keeps us in the forefront is we have different marketing tools. So we're just not talking about title. My sales reps, you know, they don't have to sit there and have conversations about title and title insurance. That's what Kristen and I do and everybody internally. But they're able to talk about marketing and how we can help our agents, even during this time where everything's virtual, how we can help them with virtual marketing and how you can get their brand promoted even more. And everybody's at home, everybody's on Facebook, everybody's on Instagram, and, you know, people are watching us. We're all sitting in the comfort of our homes, hopefully. So you just have to figure out different ways to help each other increase their business. And we try and see ourselves as a value asset for that versus just a title company.

No, I mean, I think that's why you guys have done what you've done, right? I mean, it's not. I don't think that's clearly why you've excelled. It's not like a transaction. You're not just doing a transaction, moving in and out. You're literally, hey, let's create a value proposition on both sides. I help you grow, you help me grow. You have. You like, it feeds the machine for all of us, right?

Absolutely. If we can help you increase your business, that increases our business. But we don't see our clients as just clients. They're our partners. And, you know, in turn, they also turn into Our friends and part of our family. So, you know, when all this started, you know, Chris and I, our focus was, okay, we've got a team of 22 people that we need to make sure, you know, are still, you know, doing their jobs and able to support their families. And that's what we've been able to do. But we're also doing that with our clients as well. You know, they're realtors, they're self employed.

I love it. Hey, do you have. Do you have a couple more minutes to kind of answer some Q and A? Possibly, if we have anybody, if you guys have questions about title and all that stuff or just business thoughts about what Kelly is up to over there? Love for you guys to hop on Beacon. If anybody pings us, let us know. Kelly, what do you, on your end? What challenges do you guys have? What are you trying to grow or is there anything I have or people watching have? I know, obviously get more deals to send to you. That's always key. But is there any other things that you need or like a big ask or want?

You know, our challenges right now is maintaining our service level, which we're doing a great job of. But we're always in need of quality people too. So, you know, we're going to be needing to add on a processor here soon. We're always looking for quality people to add to our team. That's not really a challenge. It's more of a. Yeah, that's a good problem to have. You know, we've really done well with this, working from home. I thought that was gonna be our biggest challenge going through all this. We're just trying to make sure that we keep everybody safe. And unfortunately, we can't control what other companies are doing. So that's where it's frustrating for us, is in the education of, you know, other people that aren't necessarily doing business with us. You know, it's when you're seeing roundtable closings, I think that's. That's where I cringe. Because we all want this to end sooner rather than later. And being able to keep everybody safe is going to be the quickest way to get this through.

Absolutely. Could you do like a round closing table? I picture when you say round closing table, you remember like the virtual gambling stuff online where you can see everyone's poker hands or whatever. However it worked. I didn't know, like card games. Could you guys. Are you guys literally doing virtual roundtable closings where you see them, they see you kind of like what we're looking.

At now, yeah, we have the realtors join in from their living room. We have the customers there. We literally do kind of what they do with doordash. We drop off the documents at the door. The somebody's going over the documents with them via camera, Zoom, Google Hangouts, FaceTime. And then when it comes to the notarized documents, you literally have somebody peeping in your window watching you sign those documents because you have to have that physical view. So on days when it's nice, my people don't as much. I think yesterday with the rain and sleet, they probably weren't as thrilled standing outside somebody's window, but. And your neighbors might be kind of creepy if you see somebody peeping into your neighbor's window. But yeah, you can have as many people in a closing as possible.

So just so we're clear, you're saying I can go stand on my neighbor's window and not get in trouble. I can act like I'm a title agent.

I am not saying that whatsoever.

My wife might not like that either. So, no, I think for you guys, I mean, there's so much opportunity, because what's cool is, like, you're talking about hiring people in a time where everyone's like, everyone's getting fired. Like, I don't. My companies are hiring. You guys are hiring Mike's company. I talked to you yesterday's hiring. Everyone I know is hiring and wanting to grow. So if you guys have, you know, like, the person you're looking for is a great person that is positive, upbeat, motivated, you know, self motivated, you know, focused on, you know, just growth. And is that the kind of individuals you're looking for, someone that could work?

Absolutely. You know, right now, we're hiring somebody internally to help with our escrow department. So that's kind of a niche position where you need to have the background and the experience. Especially with training somebody remotely, you kind of have to have a little more knowledge on that end. But once things are back to normal, we can do more face to face. We'll be growing our marketing team. I'm sure it's a little hard to do that right now and train somebody on sales when you can't really go out and do sales necessarily so. But our team is. I know my reps have just been crazy busy with a lot of these kind of meetings. The face to face, the zoom call.

Yeah. Kevin Thatcher, he's actually owns a title company here in Florida. He's my neighbor down the street. He's asking, do you guys allow remote online?

Notaries in Ohio, it's allowed. But the problem that we run into is, you know, there are certain lenders that just won't accept those signatures yet. So a lot of them are moving towards that right now. Our deeds can all be done notary and that's the one document on the sell side that needs to be notarized. So that part is being handled through the remote notarization. But still we're doing a lot of these, you know, the peeping through the window documents for the lender documents at this time. Some are somehow. But you're trying to change a whole program in such a short time that it's been a challenge.

Yeah. Kevin, if you want to hop on, feel free, buddy. I know you already done your hair and makeup over there, so I see you. But. So I think what's interesting, what you said about the sales position, I think it actually converts more to a serve position. You can actually serve your clients at a higher level now because you have a little bit more time than running around all over God's country to meet. So you're able to actually sit down and really get to know your customers business model. You get to know where their constraints are and why. Hey, you're doing two deals a month. How do you get to six? What does that look like? How could I bring you more value if we did xyz? Hey, if you're not, are you doing any kind of Facebook ads? Are you doing Instagram ads? Are you doing this, are you doing that? Are you sending emails to your list weekly, monthly, daily? You know, there's so much more the individual on the marketing side could do. Because I don't know about you, but I don't like hardcore sales. I don't do sell real hardcore. It's more like consultive style. Like hey, here's kind of what I would do and if it works great, we can do more business. If not like I've seen other people do it, so I know it work but like you got to do the work. And I think that's kind of what I've seen in my companies because we have a lot of salespeople at different companies and they're just like actually taking more of an understanding of what consumers do.

Yeah, you have to listen as a marketer, you need to find out what your clients needs are and how you can help them achieve their goals. And you don't get that by just selling them title. And you know, it hasn't really been a conversation that my team has ever had to have, but their Conversations are. How can we help you? What is. What is your biggest struggle right now, especially with the way the situations have changed? How can we help you through this? Do you need somebody to do virtual tours? Do you need help with the marketing on Facebook? And Facebook is still the top platform that we're seeing people be able to communicate through?

Absolutely. It's simple. It's easy. People are watching us right now doing a video. We're in a different system. It's broadcasting to Facebook, YouTube, all these other environments. And, you know, why wouldn't you be here? There's a lot of great connections, communication going on, advertisements in front of you that serve you. It's a pretty cool and very smart tool. Do you guys see any opportunity in acquiring to grow a company like yours? Is there acquisitions for growth? Would you ever do that, or are you just more acquiring from the client base that you have?

Would we ever acquire somebody else or would we ever be acquired?

No. Would you ever acquire anybody else? Because I think. And again, I'm in negotiations to buy a couple companies right now myself that would add to my other companies. So the way there's a couple ways to grow, right? We can go and do more marketing and build more team internally and, you know, spend a lot of time and energy doing that. Or we can literally just wake up and say, I want to buy your company. Here's some money. And now you literally double or triple your business, potentially overnight with an acquisition.

Yeah, no. Kris and I have talked about that in the past, and we're always open to having those conversations. And, you know, we've been not even. Not on an acquiring conversation, but we've been offered at the way things are now. If there's title companies that are struggling to get things closed and they need our help or our guidance through this, we're there as team members with them. We don't want, you know, yes, they're competition, but we're also an industry that's trying to be in this together. So we've really offered ourselves up to other title companies. If you're struggling to get things closed remotely, let us know. We'll help you out. But if there's a company that's, you know, they're. They're just done. They don't really want to do this anymore. Then we definitely want to talk with them.

Yeah. I mean, guys, what she's saying is, like, feel free to reach. How can they reach you, Kelly? What's the best way to reach you? Website.

Great. All of our contact information is on there. My Email is kelly@worldclasstitle.com we keep it pretty simple, but yeah, through Facebook, even Instagram, I'm on all the platforms though.

Yes. If you have a title company and you're struggling with the flow or whatever, I mean, this could be a good time to reach out. I don't know, or whatever, but it's a good time to connect. Worst case, just reach out and say, hi, this is my name, this is what I do. And maybe there's something three years from now that come about from this meeting. So. And again, Kelly, there's no. The agenda is to help. That's the agenda. Less. And if there's something bigger there, you communicate and talk about it and go from there. But like, you know, you guys have always been great about communicating, planning, the seeds, conversating. I mean, we've had a lot of different conversations that never went anywhere and some that went somewhere, you know, But I think that's kind of. It's collaboration over, communicate, connect. And it's not, don't be a pest, by the way, folks, just. But like connect and like really genuine, like, understand, like, hey, how do we grow? How do you do grow? Like, where's our flaws? Where's your. Where's the opportunities? And I think that's, I mean, again, that's what a team member does, right?

Yeah. And you know what we have, what Chris and I are great about is Chris has the tech background and he's got the marketing and the sales background. That's where he's strong. So we have half of the company that is, you know, under his leadership. And I've been operations and internal and managing the team. You know, as I said, it's been 16 years, so I'd like to think we're doing something right with that. But it's just really good that Chris and I have our dual talents, that we're able to bring a lot more to the table than most people can. So.

No, that's awesome. On your side, seeing if there's any questions here, Beacon, anything popping over there? What's up, Vinny? Nice to see you, buddy. On your side, because you guys have done a lot of events, right? You guys do a lot of monthly, weekly get togethers and all that stuff. What do you. Are you guys doing anything now? You just kind of nix that. Are you doing like virtual meetups or anything like that?

Chris is doing daily talks with different investors and real estate people, health care people. It's. He's got a wide variety of communications that he's doing. On a daily basis, my marketing reps are doing virtual happy hours. They're having virtual realtor meetings. We're doing a lot of ces. That's kind of something that Chris can post about on our Facebook page. If you go to our world class title Facebook page, all of our events are up there. But we're still trying to do CE classes. I mean, people still need to get their continuing ed in. So we do a lot with the wire fraud. So you'll see webinars on SafeWire and different continuing education on that platform as well. But we're still trying to stay and be in front of people every week.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a great way. Like I said, you know, even the system we're using, or Zoom or Facebook Live, all these things are great tools. I think people are realizing the power they've had in their hand the whole time with their phone. Yeah, you can actually video conference someone. You can. They've known. It's the capabilities there. They just haven't been using. They've been using it more as a consumption model, not a creation model. So we're all creating. I see a lot of hyper creation going on, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. I look forward to seeing how this changes our industry as a whole. You know, we've always been such, especially title. It's an antiquated industry where we're, you know, wet signatures, paper. We're seeing a lot of that change. So looking forward to seeing when all this has kind of come through, the technology changes that our industry has put together on the title end as well as the real estate end. So we're trying to help people through that challenges as well.

That's awesome. So do you have anything else? I don't want to keep you here all day. I know you got a lot of stuff going on, but is there anything else that you would like to. I don't know what we talk about on the title side, so I don't eat it. So we're on the same page. But so this is. That's an interesting point. Guys like, you know, Kelly's been that for 16 years. I've been doing a business owner for 23 years. Sometimes people ask me questions and I. I don't act like I know the answers anymore because I'm so far detached because I'm building the business from top down, not bottom up. And there is different things going on daily actions. Right. Who are we talking to? What are we talking about, what we're thinking about, what we're plotting about all these things when you're a business owner is way different than if you're tactical in the fields. You know, try, you know, fighting. Fighting the fight, if you will. They're both equally important. There's not one bigger than the other. They're both equally important. And as you know, like I think so, I think we work for them, they don't work for us. That's the truth.

Oh, it's so true. It's so true. And it's hard to get past that mindset when you own a business of you don't have to do it all, you don't have to know every little part of the business. I handle the fundings. That's it. When it comes to people's money, that's still my thing. I want to protect as much as possible. But you asked me what these are, I couldn't tell you. That's what I have a team of people for. I actually in our means. Okay, what do you guys need from me? They're doing their jobs. I don't micromanage because I don't have to. Because they all take ownership in their position. But on the flip side, as a business owner, I've given them that ownership of their position. So it's really hard, I think especially in new businesses to let go a little bit and to trust the people that you've got. I'm lucky. I've got a great team of people that I can rely on every day. Yeah.

I mean it's a process, it's a journey. I have a new book coming out. I'll send you guys some copies. But it's called Magician versus Mule. And really what you're talking about is when you're in the day to day business owner, in the beginning as an entrepreneur, we're just mules. We left a 40 hour week work week to go work 100 hours a week just to say working for ourselves right back in the day. But we're a mule. We're going to work hard and we're going to figure it out. I think where the real problem is when they don't understand that they have to ultimately grow up and become a real business owner. That's the effect like we can be here, we're working really hard down here. But now we got to elevate ourselves, let go, think about the bigger picture, take risk if you will, educated. We got to become better leaders. We got a guide, not just leaders, but we got to lead ourselves. Right. We got to think about bigger stuff. We gotta like we need bigger problems, different problems. And as you develop into an ownership, if you're still dealing with the same problems you did 10 years ago, you're not growing the company. It's just not how it works.

I know people are so afraid of taking that risk because they're afraid of they're gonna fail. But guess what? You're gonna fail. It happens. Everybody does it. And, you know, take three risks. Two of them may not work out, but that third one is the one that can elevate you. So it's worth it.

Exactly. Not only that, too. Isn't it cool to, like, watch your team grow to accomplish their goals and their life and they have kids and then they get a new house and they get the new car? And, like, to me, that's like my. I'm not even joking. That's, like, one of my favorite parts of all this.

Oh, absolutely. Seeing some of these people grow up with me, like, you know, Jacqueline and I have been together. Jacqueline was with me in Florida two years ago to see you. She and I have been together almost 18 years.

Oh, wow.

I've really seen her grow up. We planned our pregnancies around each other, for crying out loud. So it's been great to see these people, you know, turn out the way they have and grow and just. It kind of makes me feel old right now as we're talking about, hey.

Well, it's better than the alternative, right? Be old than dead. But, I mean, I think at the end of the day, too, it's like, you know, as ownerships and, you know, depending where you're at in your business career journey, Guys, I feel like we're just getting started. Even though I look back and I feel old and I feel, like, sad and excited and I wish I had done this different or that different. I'm looking more like. But I wouldn't be here today if I didn't have all those battle wounds right where I'm going. It's like, it's just part of the process. It's the journey. Right.

Oh. I still ask myself, what do I want to do when I grow up? I don't. I don't. You know, there's still so much out there that's a possibility. It's not going to stop right here. So this isn't, you know, just the end of title, but we are going to be coming up with a lot of creative things and a lot of new programs, so we're going to keep evolving and keep creating.

Yeah. I mean, that's. I think that's what keeps us going. Jacqueline said we aren't old. Smiley face.

I was referring to me, Jacqueline, not you.

Yeah, listen, I don't feel old until I hang out with like a 20 year old kid and then I'm like, I'm like, what are they thinking about? How do they move so easy?

Yeah. We had a college student working with us and she would talk about going out at 10 o'. Clock. I'm like, going out at 10 o'. Clock.

I already went to bed and woke up three times and I'm like, it's only 10 o'. Clock. I got to get back. I gotta get up in a couple hours.

Exactly. Those days are long gone for me.

No, it's not. I don't miss them either. No, that's what's crazy. It used to be fun, though. There were some fun times in that.

Yeah, what's that? Kids change that too.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And not only that, the children don't get the memo if mom and dad had too many drinks the night before. 6am they're screaming. It's rough. So, anything else before we go or you're good?

No. It's been great to see you. I wish that I could have, like, seen you face to face in Florida instead of, you know, doing that. But I think we'll have that chance here again. It's just gonna be a little bit of time.

No, absolutely. I appreciate you, Kelly. You and your team's amazing. And guys, make sure to check out worldclass title.com. if you're a title company and you need help on, you know, closing deals from afar, they're a great resource. She's clearly saying, hey, I'll help you guys or gals you have, if you're an investor going deals in the states they're working in, hit them up. I vouch for them. A lot of people's work with them and I mean, they stay working with you. It's not like they're in and out, you know, so that's a telltale sign as well. But again, get in their web, have conversations, meet the team, get to know what they do and how they do it. I think you'll be very pleased. So, Kelly, thank you guys very much.

For all your mark.

Thank you.

I said hi, will do.

Have a great day.

Thanks, you too. All right, bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Awesome, guys. So, guys, check out Kelly. She's amazing. She's got a lot of cool stuff going on. I'm here if you guys have any questions. Feel free to reach out to me privately on Facebook. I'm getting a lot of private messages. Make sure to follow me over on Instagram as well. Arkevans dm. I'm doing daily videos over there every single day. Me hanging out at the pool, smoking cigars, being silly, walking the talk from the walk the tip from the whip or getting smart from the cart because I'm doing more golf cart right now. But you can kind of get a glimpse in behind the scenes of what's going on daily in my life if that interests you at all. But I do share tips that could help you as well. It's not just all about me. What's up Tim? And not only that guys Apr 24 at 12:34pm I'm going to be sharing a link with you that I hope you guys will take action on. It's going to be the new book launch, Magician vs. Mule. I'm going to do some cool prizes and bonuses. It's my. I don't even know what number of book this is for me, but I hope to hit number one bestseller, which I think we will. The book's getting a lot of buzz, a lot of cool things are going on, so I appreciate you guys being here. I'm thinking about you. Magician vs. Mule Apr 24, 2020 at 12:34pm Eastern Standard Time we'll be going live. The button will be clicked. We'll be doing some cool gifts. Over a hundred thousand dollars in gifts I'll be giving away during the book launch. So I hope you guys are there. In the meantime, if you want to get on the list, the VIP list, get over to Markevans DM.com and go to the top. Sign up for the newsletter. I'll make sure to get you guys out some cool messages and all that stuff. So I appreciate you guys being here. Have an amazing day. I gotta get to my cigar. With that said, have a good day. Make today count.

Peace.