Blue Ocean Report Recruiting Data

Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with 4C Recruiting, and I might have just started that with a little too much energy, but you gotta have fun with this recruiting thing, you know. And so we have a lot of fun with it here at 4C Recruiting, and one of the things that we, that we do is we do what we call a blue ocean report. And so if you haven't heard of that terminology, blue ocean, the idea is this, is that We can all be spending time in this place recruiting, which is what we focus on, what we focus on here, um, in, in this space recruiting in the same arena that everybody else inside the mortgage industry is focusing on. And if we do that, that becomes bloody water. You bet you better have the best compensation. You better have the most products. Um, you, you really should, um, you know, have a sign-on bonus and 6 months of— give me the 6 months guarantees to get me here and all of those things. That's, that's, that's red water. That's red ocean. We want to move to blue ocean. So this is what we call Blue Ocean Report. And we try to do this quarterly where there's good information available for us to actually do it. And so there's a handful of you, about 50 of you, they're going to get this report. And so I would encourage you that as you're going through this, I'm gonna do a screen share with you here in just a split second. As we're going through this, write down your takeaways. What's the immediate action steps you should, you should be taking? In order to use this recruiting data and then applying it to your business. Those who apply it are going to be the ones that win. Now, part of this, we've tried to tell a story with this. I'm going to try to tell a story with it. But in the end, I'm going to take— go back to some of this and draw some conclusions for you and just kind of bounce around so that you can see how you could take this data and really go use it towards actionable steps of not just recruiting better, but actually retaining your current employees. Because look, Your people are being recruited all the time, just like you're recruiting all the time, right? So where we understand the mindset and what the data is telling us around recruiting, then we do a better job. And that's one reason why I teach attractive leadership at the heart of everything that I do. And so the attractive leader retains their employees because they understand that recruiting is simply predicated on one thing. And the one thing is this: if I can get them to believe this, This one thing, then they have to join me. And the one thing is that you above all other leaders will help them accomplish their why, their vision, what's important to them. Okay, so this— that's why this day is going to help you figure out what is the loan officer looking for. So we have used— it's 6 different data points, 6 different reports over the last 18 months. We pulled that information into this. We're going to give credit where credit's due. There's 2 primary sources that we got all that information: Flowify and Stratmore Group. So we'll give credit to that. And with that said, I'm gonna do a screen share here and let's get started. Let's just go to full screen here. That'll be an easier view for you. So recruiting data. We want to figure out how we build the perfect recruiting model, but numbers don't lie. So we want to do it data-driven. We want to get the slight edge. It's a great book that's been written if you haven't read that. We're looking for slight edges. Okay, so as we said, this came from 4 separate— well, from different places, 4 separate studies. that were completed by Stratmore Group, one that was completed by Flowify. The Flowify study really focused on top originators. So what they determined was that a $21 million producer or higher is a high-achieving loan officer, and they solicited over 13,000 of those to come up with this, with this insight. So this is good stuff. So let's just start. So, um, how do we qualify recruits? Now, a lot of people will buy the CoreLogic MarketTrax report. That's a good— they find that as helpful. A lot of questions I get around how do I figure out who's qualified and who's not, there's really not any, any better way than getting the old W-2 pay stub and compensation plan. But now we're seeing where companies are getting in trouble for actually doing that. So you got to ask yourself the question, you know, and answer that. Can we do that? I'm not here to answer that. I'm only here to cover the data, but I want to figure out how do I qualify recruits possibly even before I call them? Because the investment of that phone call, that face-to-face meeting, moving them through next steps, engaging them with my people to get to a place where I figure out they're unqualified just doesn't make sense. Okay. You're too busy. Uh, don't have enough time on your, on your calendar to actually do that a lot. And so we want to, we want to figure out how do we qualify them all? Well, Data says, Stratmore Group says, that, that 60% of the originators produce almost 94% of all production. Okay, so invert that and go 40% of all originators produce just about, just over 6% of all production. That's, that's, that's, that tells you, guys and gals, we've got to qualify people. Now, this study by Flowify said that 86% of loan officers who have been in the mortgage industry Between 5 and 15 years, produced in the range of $21 million and $40 million in average annual loan volume. If you told me that I could take one statistic and qualify somebody, and that's called tenure, and I would be 86% of the time right, I'd probably take that data point. I would use it to my advantage. So I encourage you to do that. It's a big one that jumps out here at me. And then you've got the grid there, really sorts through, um, you know, um, how many loan officers are doing $21 million or more fit into the different buckets. It's obvious, the longer you've been here, the more production you have. The less time you've been here, the less production that you've had. So if you're recruiting someone that's been in the business less than 5 years, there's an 87% chance that— or is that right? I think that's 88% chance that they have not broken that $21 million production level. So my takeaway is here, qualify when recruiting. Time in business is an incredible qualifier for defining good recruits, and I'm looking for a minimum of 5 years, ideally 15+ years. Okay, so next question: does number of lenders you've worked for disqualify you? Having sat in the seat of the recruiting leader inside the mortgage industry, I know this is a question I would ask myself from time to time. How many people have you been with? I mean, how many mortgage companies have you been with? And is that— should that disqualify you if every 2 years you're at a new place? Well, if that's the mindset around this, then statistically you're going to eliminate a lot of top producers. In fact, almost 30% would say that they've been at more than 5, so 6, 7, 8 lenders, right? So if the average tenure is 15 years and they're at 6+ lenders, you can do some real quick math and say that about every 2.5 years they've transitioned. When I go over and I look at NMLS, a lot of people I find disqualify those. I don't want to disqualify a $21 million producer. That's in my sweet spot. It's my wheelhouse. So I'm not going to disqualify people because of the number of lenders. When you look at— you add up the category where they've had 5 lenders and the category where they've had 4 lenders, you're well over 50% that have worked at 4 or more lenders. So this, this shouldn't be a disqualifier from a production standpoint. Obviously, you make decisions around, you know, fits and, and, and, you know, are they bringing all the intangibles that you want to the table? But from a volume perspective, is not a disqualifier. So length of time in business, we know, is a good qualifier for great recruits. 80% of our respondents have worked for 3 or more lenders. 42% of producers Worked for 5 lenders or more, and 58% have worked for 4 or more. So I'm not going to disqualify based on tenure. Okay, so how are loan officers finding the next company? This was very insightful to me. One of the things that I teach is becoming the attractive leader. You've got to become the attractive leader. So you all know that, know this about me, you're in my coaching. I was blown away by this number. Look at the I solicited them number. This is the number of loan officers that are actually soliciting their next company themselves and are not being recruited. 1 out of 11 loan officers will actually solicit the next lender as their own initiative. Okay, that, that to me is really insightful. Let's use places like LinkedIn to talk about our leadership. Sorry. One of the things that I teach is that the attractive leader has a vision, can clearly articulate, articulate the vision, and then acts and lives in accordance with the vision. Well, we do that on LinkedIn. Right. Our summary talks about us and our vision, our core values. We post around our vision, our core values, and the things that we're doing, right? So people get to see that as we post and we simply document what we're doing as a leader, that we are living and acting in accordance with that. And if we do that, I'm gonna— I have the opportunity, a really big opportunity, to catch 1 out of 11 loan officers. So the other, the other category that really blew me away was Over 40%, it's 43% of loan officers say that they found their next company because of a colleague referral. Okay, so now we've got to determine what's a colleague, because that's the verbiage they use in the survey. Didn't say coworker, it said colleague. So colleague to me says it's somebody that they know in the industry, in the business. Could be an MI rep, could be a title company, could be another loan officer, could be a real estate agent. Those could potentially, in my opinion, be a colleague. So your branding is super critical to you. Your branding and reputation in the marketplace are super critical. We'll look at some of that data later on in this report that will actually say yes, that we know that that is being true. So, but here's an easy takeaway for me. Okay, jump down to the number 2, where referrals are the biggest opportunity within recruiting, and then to number 4. Where loan officers or loan officer referrals play a significant role. 43% went to the next company because they were referred. I want to— I think one of the things you take away from this is, are we incentivizing our current team, which they have colleagues in the marketplace? Are we incentivizing our current team to go into the marketplace, be willing to step into a conversation in a title company to To say, hey, you're just walking out of closing, are you a loan officer? I am. You should really talk to my leader, like, he's doing an incredible job, and oh, by the way, can I have him call you? We need to give them that scripting, we need to give them the eyes to see, because they are not observing these opportunities because we haven't opened their eyes to see these opportunities. So how do we do this? How about this, create a game that your loan officers can win at. Okay, they love— these are competitive people typically that love to win. Create a game that they can win at. What does that look like? Well, I'm definitely going to add to the things that I track and things that I score and the things that I recognize as being referrals. Okay, so simply there's a way that they can win. How about this? Maybe the biggest recognition piece, the biggest trophy you give away as recognition at the end of the year is the person who referred the most people. A lot of us are tracking, you know, the key metrics of volume and units and maybe applications, you know, these things around our loan officers. Why not add another category to that, which is how many people have you referred? What we measure gets improved. Okay, so that's a, that's a key takeaway for me in this. You may already have an incentive plan for your loan officers to refer other loan officers. If you don't, that's a good idea, but you really should be raising the noise around this and making sure that they understand that you're— you are asking them to be a part of the recruiting team so that you're referring loan officers in the market. Okay, number 3 was internal recruiting departments or recruiting leaders. They only account for 1 out of every 4. Okay, so one of the things that, that I teach people is how to do that 25%. Okay, if you only focused on that single standalone pillar for your recruiting model, Then ultimately you would only be able to tap into 25% of the market. That would increase your opportunities with 25% of the market. All right, how long before a loan officer that joins another company decides they're a good fit? This is critical because this tells us a lot of times you may be recruiting someone and you may lose them to another company. We go, oh, lost them, there's 3 years, I'll stay in touch with them, you know, starting around year 2. We— one of the things that is an indicator whether someone will transition to another company is that they just transitioned. Okay, well, we'll look at some more data that will support this later on in this report. So I'm telling you this now so that you have the right lens to look at this through. A loan officer who's just transitioned sometime in the first 2, 2.5 years is highly likely to transition again sometime in the next 2, 2.5 years. That's just data. Okay, so instead of saying high-five that individual and say, wish you all the best, and then mentally you check in and go, I'm gonna follow up with them in 2 or 3 years, what we have to do is really create a stronger plan specifically around month 15 to month 28 while they're at the next lender. That's the sweet spot. Okay, the truth is this, and I had a conversation with somebody earlier, earlier this week around this data. were a top producer in their market, 2 months into the next opportunity was already talking to them and they were concerned. Is this a good fit? Well, let's look at the data. Look at this last category here. Out of this, out of this, out of this survey, about 9% say that they will have— they will decide the company is a good fit within the first 3 months, from month 1 to month 3. Well, then you should have a plan Of identifying those, those officers who have transitioned and then in helping them understand what the transition looks like if they were to move to you. This is a— this is an advanced technique. It's one that I use very well. If I lost somebody to another company while I was recruiting them, that's how somebody ended up on my radar, was I was recruiting. If I lost you to another organization, had a very defined step-by-step plan for the next 90 days where I would stay in contact with you and I would ask you how the transition was going, and I would actually play out my own transition plan in alignment with where you were for the next 90 days. I'm not kidding you. I would send you emails and text messages that would tell you at this point right now, where would you be if you were underneath my umbrella? This data supports that. Look at this. We go all the way out, 68% give their new company less than a year before deciding if it's a fit. Take this data and use it to your advantage, okay? So, sorry, I'm jumping around between slides. So the takeaways we just gave you, number 1. Number 2, you know, mortgage company focused on recruiting should have a specific process they put a potential loan officer through upon identifying them as transitioning to another company. Do that. That's a good takeaway. All right, what's important to loan officers? I apologize for about the coughing. I still have this upper respiratory infection I'm trying to get over, but I don't want to delay sending this out any longer. What's important to loan officers? There's 10 categories here that, that were measured, and we're going to look at these categories, and some of these are going to jump out at us immediately as, oh yeah, that makes sense. There are going to be others that jump out at us immediately and go, I had no clue. Okay, so we want to move towards a blue ocean. Most companies recognize things like the top 2: technologies and systems help me scale my business. Is that important to loan officers? Of course it is. The second one, ability to support high loan volumes and fast turn times. Is that important to loan officers? Absolutely. We know this. In fact, most of us over the last decade have built our entire systems— I mean, our entire recruiting model— around convincing people that we can do things in a shorter timeline. But again, that's left-brain thinking. I teach right-brain thinking. If you're still trying to win everybody through that methodology today, where companies have gotten solid operationally, you will— you, you have to have that But you will not move people because of that today. Diverse loan products, that's important. Competitive rates and pricing, that's important. This question, engaged and responsive executive management. I don't know of a lot of companies. Immediately in my mind, 2 companies surface that have done a really good job from a distance of identifying this for the larger market. You can do this very simply through involving executive management into your recruiting process. So a really powerful next step that I have used a lot in my career to my advantage is, is actually having you do a 15-minute conversation with a company president or company owner. Now all the executive management teams that are watching this are going, Please don't, please don't tell everybody that they, that they, that I need to be doing this. But what I'm telling you is this, if you've identified a candidate as being a top recruit, as someone who is a top producer, the best investment of time that you can get from your executive management team is to have them take that 15-minute conversation. Why? Shows they're engaged. It shows they're responsive. And when you look at the statistics, it says that 83, 82% The larger market says that that is— that's critical. That's important. So I can, I can use this in my strategy, recruiting strategy, to actually win. Comprehensive marketing support, you know, it was important, but it wasn't as important as a lot of the categories. And again, this is coming from the $21 million producer or higher. So what does that say? These are people that are further along in their career, have larger books of businesses, probably have more steady referral streams. They don't have to be offering, uh, things like marketing tools, marketing support in order to bring in the agents that, um, that tend to lean into that. They have a more mature book of business. Compensation, of course, that's important. Team-oriented culture, look how important that is. You can do— you can reveal This from a distance. In fact, just today I had a young lady that reached out to me via LinkedIn and said, hey, do you know anybody in my market that's looking to— looking for a team, 5 loan officers and a branch manager? And, and, and so she's actively— she's one of the 7.5%, the 1 in 11 that's actually going to seek out her next company on her own. And the one thing that she was intrigued by was having a company that had team culture. Okay, so that's, that's important. You can reveal this with cool creative videos. If you want— need— if you're like, I don't understand what you're talking about, um, touch base with me and I'll show you how a relatively small company has done a really good job of actually showing this through a short 4-minute video. Okay. Training and mentorship. Again, this is a mature loan officer. It's not as important as you think it is. Okay, um, and that's just because they're more mature in their career. Lender reputation, a pretty big deal, right? 67% say lender reputation is important. So you better figure out how you actually show that. An easy way to show that without spending really any money at all is to ask your larger team to be engaged and involved with each other on places like social media. LinkedIn, phenomenal place to show that you've got a team culture. That your executive management team is engaged and responsive, and that you've got a strong lender reputation. In fact, what I would encourage you to do is create, create some framework around your lender reputation. You can take that ability to support high loan volume and fast turn times and lender reputation and give your loan officers some very easy framework, which is, here's a template that our marketing department developed. You only have to insert your application date and your close date, and immediately it generates a, um, a, uh, post that you can put, um, a meme that you can put on social media, right? Days to close and a big number, application date, closing date, right? So you can create, uh, um, the framework for people to be able to do this and to do it easily and well in a place that they'll see themselves as winning as much as the company. Takeaways. We've gone— I've gone through most of these. I wanted to bullet point them out here so that you can pause this video and really look at these. But I go back to the colleague referral being 42% of how loan officers end up in new companies. Social media plays a key role. Okay, it's a critical link to number 2, number 3, number 4, and number 5. Don't miss that. This is such an easy place for you to win. Okay, so you're saying there's a chance. Um, the reason why the Attractive Leadership Recruiting Model works today and works very well, and why I have conversations like I've had 2 this, this week, um, with leaders. One leader said, I've hired over 600 people in my career and I can't seem to move the needle on recruiting at all. Another one said, I've hired over 300 people in my career and I've lost my mojo. Those are, those are the statements. The reason why is because most people are used to recruiting in an environment where there's low-hanging fruit, where this piece of the pie, where very unsatisfied was much larger and somewhat satisfied was much larger. Okay, well, 95% of the market, when you look at this data, is content. 95%. So 5% is kind of the needle in the haystack, right? Yeah, we're going to go after it. What's the needle in the haystack? So, um, so the attract— understanding attractive leadership is critical to recruiting because when I look at this data, what it says to me is this: you're no longer recruiting hot and warm candidates. You're actually recruiting cold candidates. Okay, cold candidates are content candidates. The only way you get a cold candidate is if you build what I call the epiphany bridge. And the epiphany bridge is what's your vision? What's your core values? What are your core convictions? Okay, it's also pursuing me through the lens of my why. Why am I in this business? What motivates me? Right, that's one of the things that I teach is that if you can't immediately answer what's the why of the people that are in my recruiting pipeline that I've at least made this face-to-face presentation to, then you've lost. Okay, and this supports that. So you're saying there's a chance that's the Dumb and Dumber line? Some of you may have already gotten this, maybe you may not have. So 3 out of 10 loan officers are in play. I took the category somewhat satisfied and very unsatisfied to come up with that. Recruiting models should be designed around building relationships versus recruiting. And that just lends to the fact that 7 out of 10 loan officers are satisfied or very satisfied. That is a longer-term pursue model. You gotta build more relationship. What I want you to do is to think like a farmer. Versus thinking like a hunter. Okay. You know, farmers believe in tilling the soil before they plant a seed. Hunters are looking for the easy opportunities, right? They're opportunists. And we want to be opportunists as well, but we've got to change our strategies from hunting to farming. Those that transition to that are going to find blue ocean. All right. So I won't go over each one of these individually. You have the opportunity, you're going to get— you got this report as part of the email that I'm sending to you. You want to build out a loan officer recruitment path. Okay, and so, and so to do that, we can take this data, the top 10 things, and how do we address each one of them specifically so that we're ensuring that we're putting ourselves in the best position to have success in recruiting? So these are each one of these. Okay, we've talked about a lot of these already coming to this point, but I bullet pointed them out so if you didn't get the general idea, um, that you would have— that you have it now. Social media is playing a big part in this, as you can see. But in these— in 7 and 8, the one thing that jumps out at me is this: I think it's important, really important, for companies to help create the framework That their leaders recruit through. If they don't create the framework, then the leader will come up with their own mantras, their own mindset. And when you get into a rate environment like we're in right now, it's, it's more, probably more difficult than it's ever been. Compressed margins, less inventory, you know, deals are getting 15, 16, 20 offers, right? That's not uncommon right now. You know, consumers are more savvy and are shopping for mortgage rates more than they ever have. And part of that is that they probably have more time to do it now. The other part of it is that we obviously have some technology disruption that's coming in. We're seeing things, you know, Rocket Mortgage and competitors along the same lines play a part in that. And so your, your managers, your leaders need to have a framework for this? Because if not, you could lose people from a retention standpoint because they don't have the right framework. Okay? So don't leave this to them. Help them create the narrative. And then from a loan product standpoint, it's real important that you help them create that narrative as well. Don't leave it up to them individually to create the lens that they look through. Help them create it. When I say that, what I mean is this. As an example, In launching a new market, you may not have all your products, but the mindset of the organization is that we will, we will do, we will get bond loans set up within 45 to 60 days. And if there's a product that they need from a down payment assistance program, that we'll get that set up. That if someone says they need this specific loan category, that we'll move towards that. And here's our plan for moving towards that. Helping them have the framework to understand that and making sure they're using that framework is going to be important. Okay, training and mentorship, not quite as big of a deal, although still 51% saw this as a value. Marketing support, you know, this is a— you know, the need for corporate-driven marketing has declined is what this report found, as digital marketing technology has helped loan officers become savvy self-promoters. Okay, now let's get into some more data. Effective recruiting methods. This doesn't surprise me at all. One of the things that I talk about all the time is that your most successful value proposition is training your recruiting leaders, your branch managers, to become better recruiters. This score, this came from a Stratmore report. Um, you see the 3.29 score. that said that that's the most successful model they have. Outside of that, if you said, what else should we be doing? Internal recruiters are your next value— best valuable proposition. And then if you're going to use external recruiters, um, retain them. When I say retain them, I mean exclusivity. Be willing to put some money in their pocket every single month regardless. And what that does, that allows you to position yourself As closely as possible as an intern with them as an internal recruiter with some expectations. And the cool thing is that they're not wearing the same brand as what your organization is, but you have to retain them, as you can see, to have the more influence. If you're using external recruiters and just simply paying for placement, we'll pay you basis points or flat fee. That model is not as beneficial as actually bringing someone in and retaining them. Look, if you retain someone, it's wise to have them come see who you are. Put them through your dog and pony show. Put them through a corporate site visit. Help them create their own narrative around, around your organization. It's worth the money. It's worth the investment to do it. Okay, where's the pressure right now? 91% recruit originators from independent mortgage companies. That's an incredible number. You have a big fat bullseye on your back if you're with an independent mortgage company as a loan officer. And what I hear is that that's 5 to 10 phone calls a week right now. So you're getting all this, it's intense pressure on the independent mortgage companies. 58% target entire branches, 79% recruit from bank-owned mortgage companies. And then only 37% recruit entire bank mortgage branches. That is a— there's some— that's blue ocean to me, gang. Nice. Why I say that is that there are a lot of small community banks that have set themselves up as correspondent lenders that don't have the knowledge, the experience, and the infrastructure in terms of support To, um, to be able to deliver well. And so to be able to go in and to pull, whether that's a leader with the team, um, or, you know, um, whatever that looks like, but to be able to pull an entire group out of, you know, a bank, um, that where they've got a mortgage division, no, very few people, you know, 3 to 4 out of 10 are focusing on that. That to me is a slight advantage, is a slight edge. Having done that myself multiple times, I can tell you that this— that method, that strategy really works. The other thing for you to think about this is that there are a lot of companies out there that we think of as independent mortgage companies. Okay, those companies are actually— there are mortgage places out there we think are mortgage companies that are not. They're mortgage banks. In this research, They assume them as mortgage banks. I don't want to mention any names here. If you can't come to any conclusions, conclusions on this, you need some names, just ask me, I'll give those to you. But I'm saying that that's an area where they're not being as pressured. They're not getting the recruiting volume that the independents are getting. Okay, talked about that. Okay, this is really good data right here. Originator tenure numbers. Look at this from start To basically— you— in tenure increases with originators until they get into about month 15. And at about month 15, what happens is there's this incredible decline in tenure. It continues all the way through about month 28. So if there's a sweet spot to recruit somebody, it's between month 15 and month 28. You said, Richard? You can only recruit somebody in the life cycle of how long they've been with an organization. You give me month 15 to month 28 and I'll win in that, in that strategy. As a comparison, check this out. The next best trend is down here and it actually starts around year 6, but this trend goes through year 12. This is a 6-year trend here. This is a just over a year trend here. Great place to focus your efforts and energies. Now go back to some of the data, connect the data to how long does a loan officer actually, um, you know, uh, give an organization to prove themselves as a good fit? Less than a year, and a lot of them less than 6 months. Okay, so I'm definitely going to be in the game recruiting people in that window of time instead of putting them to the back burner and saying I'll come back to them and invest my time more wisely. In year 2 or year 3, I'm going to be all over this window of time right here and recruiting people. And seeds don't ever— look, we're talking about farming. Sowing and reaping are 2 completely different seasons. Okay? So, so the strategy, and I'll give you some more data in a couple of next slides that will help you create this strategy. If you want to do this one-on-one with me, then let's do it. But data says that 3rd and 4th quarter are the most productive quarters for, um, for high loan officers to churn or for loan— for you to have success recruiting, 3rd and 4th quarter. Okay. So with that said, 1st quarter is the lowest. Now, most people come to me thinking 1st quarter is the highest. It's not. 3rd and 4th quarter are the highest. And in fact, there's not a significant drop-off from those in the 2nd quarter, which is the peak season where people go, nobody would ever transition. In when? April, May, and June. Not true. A lot of people transition in those months. Here's a strategy for you. If people begin transitioning between month 15 and month 20, we'll say month 28 here, that 13-month window of time, I already have to have my seed planted. Okay. So what's the critical window for me planting and building relationship and Getting to a place where they know me, trust me as a leader, as an attractive leader in their market. I'm going to go in front of that. And now if I'm going to say 3rd and 4th quarter are my peak moments when the larger producing, most tenured loan officers are going to leave, I'm going to be in front of that 15 to 28 month window. And I'm going to have a strategy around, uh, what, what I'm putting them through in my processes, in my systems, in my next steps to make sure that I'm giving myself the most likely opportunity to land them. Okay, so we talked about that. You know, this blew me away— steep decline in retention between years 6 and 12. You would think that that would be a place where, you know, now I know everybody by their first name, and— but, you know, that, that's not the truth. And so these are great targets for you. Okay, success recruiting from which ponds? So where are people having success? The most success people are having recruiting right now is through with the independents. Okay, but then close behind that are banks. Now, what I'm not able to, you know, when I say what the other— what we're able to extrapolate from that is that that's— that is outside the mortgage industry. And, and that just means that people are hiring, you know, people that haven't been in the business before, bringing them in. And we see that, we see that in data right now. The average tenure of someone in the business is between 46 and 47 years of age. That's now down from 52. What does that mean? We have younger people coming in the business, which means that we're bringing people in from outside the business. Thus, the other category being a success and the college graduate category being a success. You want it, you want a lot of bang for your buck. You can focus on individual mortgage branches. That's a 3. If I'm gonna focus my energy and I can get 5 or 6 people, that's, you know, getting there is a great place to get. And then, you know, this— it's interesting, this bank mortgage branches, this number is low. But when I look at the data, what I also see is that a very small percentage of the people are actually focusing on that. So I would expect that to be a low number because they asked them, they asked the entire survey, which category are you finding success in? If you compare this, now this is blue ocean. Okay, you compare this, 91% of people focus on independence and they rate their success 3.31. I think the number was 37% focus, it may have been 39%, focus on bank mortgage branches and it's rated at 2.39. So from a perspective of how many people are focusing on it versus the success factor, this In proportion, it's much higher than the independents. And if you're with a mortgage bank, you're going— you're saying right now, because I have some people that I co-chair with mortgage banks, you're saying, stop picking on us, stop telling everybody to recruit our people. I'm just looking at the data with my eyes. Okay, turnover by quarter. A lot of people go, oh, I never— I didn't have no clue. For independent mortgage companies, the lowest churn quarter is number 1. I'm going to give you a really cool strategy that, that if you connect the dots on this, and some of you may be able to do this and you may not, but this is going to help you retain your people, taking some of this data, because this is retention data as well, right? When are your people going to leave? Your people are going to typically leave around 3rd or 4th quarter. We're gonna look at some compensation data that's going to say why are they going to leave in a second, and we'll tie this to this. Okay. In this report, Stratmore, the green was supposed to be banks. They listed it as independents, and we took this snippet from that report. So the tan is independent mortgage companies. But you can see, without a doubt, 4th quarter's high. 3rd quarter runs a really close second, especially within the bank loan officers. And then, you know, in the 2nd quarter, it's not that much of a drop-off. Look at this, peak quarter for independents, 29%. Independents are still at 24.5% in turnover in second quarter. And then you go to Q1, and if you compare the numbers, that's your biggest drop-off right there. Okay. Now, in this study, one of the things that we figure that we saw, loan officers who left in Q4 had the higher average production and longer tenure than any loan officers who left in other quarters. You want to focus on the mega producers. They're more, more likely to leave. Thanksgiving, Christmas, right before the New Year. Okay, so, um, you know, a couple of takeaways here that I want to leave you with. Um, you know, some, some insight that you can take into consideration. I want you to look at this through a retention piece. If you were to pay a portion of compensation in overall annual production, that promise of that bonus kicker payment, whatever you want to call it, If you look at this data and you said, listen, you produce all of 2018 and beginning of 2019, we're going to give you an extra 5 basis points or 8 basis points or whatever the number is. It's a retention tool. Why? It's pretty obvious that the soil is being tilled in second quarter going into third quarter, and then those, those larger producing losses are going to leave in fourth quarter. So instead of— I'm going to give them incentive to stay through all that, stay through the first quarter. Why? Because it's, it's less likely that people will churn, people will leave in first quarter. Okay, what's it going to take to get you? These are the incentives that are paid to recruits, but also they included retaining seasoned loan officers in this particular report. So This blew me away, and I don't want to offend anybody with this, but this seems like some common sense stuff. Why are we paying non-refundable sign-on bonuses? I don't get it. I don't understand it. I pause it for a moment. If you're doing it, I'm going to show you some data that says that that's not a winning value proposition, because now I've got another report that says which of these actually works. Okay, so a good percentage of people pay non-refundable. Pretty good people, a group of people paying refundable. It's interesting that banks are significantly less than the independents in this space. Upfront advances against future commission, the independents love that idea. Paying you money that would then— this would be a guarantee against commission. Guaranteed compensation over a specific amount of time. Not surprising the banks are high there, but again, we get pipelines and transitions and the fact that we've got to guarantee some compensation. So independents are still doing that. Increased commission scale over a limited time frame. Personally, I like that. I'll pay you— I'll pay you— in fact, the strategy I just gave you for retaining your loan officers Is increased commission over a limited timeframe. You may pay that out through year 1 and they get it in quarter 1. Okay. And then increased commission scale and other. So, you know, in recruiting season, loan officers, lenders typically focus on guarantees and increased commission. Um, that, um, that doesn't commit them to long, long-term, you know, higher compensation. Now here's the cost-effectiveness. Now, Guaranteed compensation over a specific amount of time, that really worked for hiring bank loan officers. This, to me, there's 2 really big takeaways here. The independents who paid increased commission scale over a limited time said that worked really well. So I'll pay you out maybe 6 months, maybe 90 days, but I'll pay you increased commission over this window of time. And so we can do some easy math, right? We'll pay an extra 25 basis points. If the meg— if the studies that we're looking at included $21 million producers, if I did that for the first 6 months, that's $10.5 million. I think I did the math right. $10.5 million through the first 6 months and $10.5 million through the second half. Pay you 25 basis points on your production for the first 6 months that you're here. If that's $10.5 million in volume, I paid north of $25,000 in extra compensation because I gave you increased commission over a limited period of time. Okay, so it's, it's, that is a really nice model for reducing the risk with hiring loan officers. It's one that says that it's cost-effective, and it's one that's definitely in line with the market, right? Because we looked here, we were looking at the positioning of others. Yeah, guaranteed compensation is high. Yes, these other categories are high, but increased commission over a limited time frame is also a really high one. There's definitely competitive for you to do that now. Other, this 67%, you know, this could be blue ocean. We don't know what other means because they just said other, but let me— that I can give you some ideas. In fact, the idea I gave you around year 1 compensation, paying extra 5 or 8 basis points, that falls into other, right? And so figure out creatively. This says to me, those people that are thinking outside the box, that are getting creative on compensation, are the ones that are seeing success because they said it was almost a 70%. Attractive model for them. And attractive in mortgage banking means money. So other is definitely something for you to focus on. Okay, we didn't talk about this, but I kind of laughed at the beginning. Non-refundable sign-on bonuses. The independents, almost 60% said that was unattractive. It didn't work. I mean, I know this. I know you know this. Sometimes we get caught in positions where we're trying to get top candidates and we're going through We're having to be competitive. I get that. It doesn't work though. So now you gotta ask yourself the question, from a risk management standpoint, if almost 60% of the time it's not attractive and it fails, then is it worth the risk? Okay, is a 40% win risk make sense of the opportunity? Only you can answer that. So immediate application, get your takeaways. There's a lot of storylines here to tell, okay? In fact, I can look, I can back out from this data and look, I've been studying this for a long time. I can back out from this data and I can say, come to some real quick conclusions, right? I'm going to take Q1, Q2 to plant a lot of seeds. I'm going to really work hard to, you know, to move people through my process going into 3rd quarter and 4th quarter. I'm going to, when I come across loan officers, I'm going to identify this space, this 15 to 18 month window. And I'm gonna put more effort into that window of time with a loan officer than I would at any other point. I'm going to focus again, blue ocean here. If you said, Richard, go hang your hat on one category, I'd go hang my hat in the category of bank mortgage branches, just based on the statistical data that other people aren't focusing on that as much. Um, I would take what's important right here and I would pull out things that other people are missing. The things that people are missing is the importance of engaged and responsive executive management. I would never have put that question on the survey. Although, you know, being a high-level leader, I realize the importance of that. I'm not assuming that loan officers see the importance of that, but they do. Okay, they see that as being something that's extremely important. And team culture. Is a lot. It means a lot. So I'm going to reveal that in places like LinkedIn. And then, hey, I've got a question. I mean, I got a call on Monday this week from a loan officer in a standalone branch. I say standalone loan officer who's really a— has the title of branch manager calling me to find out. She was asking me questions around what leader do you know in my market that I should be reaching out to because I'm going to leave. And, um, and the reason she's far away from, um, the, from home headquarters, there's nobody close to her in her market. She's all on her own doing around $30 million in annual production. And, um, and she said, I have identified myself as needing the synergy of team to find my job fulfilling. Like, that's a real conversation I had this week that fits into that 7.5%, 1 out of 11. She's seeking somebody right now. Okay. Um, so yeah, you can take some of this data and you can create storylines and application. I encourage you to do this where I can help you do this. We have questions about this. Don't hesitate. I am very hopeful this brought some value to you. And, uh, and with that said, uh, that's the end of my recording here. So look forward to talking to each of you soon. Have a good weekend. And, uh, this is it.