Scott and Carol Recruiting Data

Hey, Scotty. Hey, Carl. It's Richard Milligan here. I guess you don't need an introduction anymore. I'm just so used to saying Richard Milligan with 4C Recruiting. But all that said, I've got this presentation here for you. I'm gonna walk you through this. Doing this on a recording, that way you guys can go back to it again and again. There's some takeaways here that we can talk about in person. What I did was I went through, I think it's 7 different studies that were done By 2 organizations over the course of the last 18 months, really dissecting those to figure out, um, the science around recruiting right now. Uh, because a lot of people are really struggling connecting the dots on moving talent. Uh, I mean, yesterday I had 2 conversations. One guy said he had moved over 600 people. Now, whether that was true or not, he'd moved over 600 people in his career and he can't seem to recruit a single loan officer right now. Another guy mentioned his number was 300. I think he had recruited 3 loan officers in the past year. So those numbers aren't stacking up very well. So I think it's really critical in this moment where there's a lot of content, happy loan officers, where processes and systems are improving, where we see some disruption in the market in terms of lack of inventory, rate compression, you know, technology, all those things are playing a part in this. And so I just love the idea, a statement that Newt Gingrich made several years ago, which was, he said, we all, um, we all have our islands of success that we've built our bridges of excellence to get to, but the lake of mediocrity always gets up on, gets on, gets up on our bridge of excellence and tears it down. So we always have to be building new bridges of excellence to an island of success. So really want to go through some data. Well, what I'm looking for is blue ocean. Blue ocean is the mindset that— I don't know if you've heard that statement before, but red ocean is where's everybody else fighting over something, right? That's where it's bloody. That's where it's the most difficult. Blue ocean is let's come up with a strategy that nobody else is using, and then let's go act on that. Okay? So sometimes that can be, um, you know, just, um, looking at the numbers through a different lens. I want to go through this with you. Let's have some continued conversations around this, but I want to get this started by getting this out to you as quickly as I could. A lot of data to go over. So I'm going to do a screen share with you now. I'll pop up in the top right-hand corner. Here we go. So we're really looking to build a recruiting model, the perfect recruiting model, really centered around just the slight edge, right? The advantage of blue ocean, which is what we've already talked about. So where'd the data come from and when? So this data came from the last 18 months, came from Stratmore Group, came from— I think it was 6 different reports from Stratmore Group. And then a really large study that Flowify did, which was 13,000 originators. Now, they focused in that study on producers that were $21 million in production or more. Okay, so that was the critical number. They were looking for what they called high-achieving loan officers in the study, and how did they act, how did they respond in a recruiting environment? So one of the things we've already talked about, you know, the Stratmore Group says that 60% of all Loan originators are the ones who actually deliver almost 94% of all production. So we invert that, flip that, we go 40% of originators are, are worth just about 6% of the production. So qualifying is really critical here. And if you look at this, what you'll find is that in this study, they saw that 86% of loan officers who have been in the mortgage industry for 5+ years Or $21 million or, or more in, in annual loan volume. That tells me several things. One, that says that things like NMLS licensing, um, you know, the difficulties of actually going through the continuing education, that that's actually pruned this business to a large degree. Also says that the people that struggle are the people that— The people that come into the business in, in, in all the way through year 5 Those are the people that are going to struggle. So a really good qualifying factor here is if you want to focus on good producing loan officers, is simply saying, have you been in the business for 5 or more years? Because 86% of those are going to be $21 million producers or greater. Now, some other data here. If you're really looking for the mega producers, 70% of loan officers who are in the $100 million range have been in the mortgage industry for 10 years. And 40% that are in the $100 million range have been in the industry for 15+ years. So that 5 to 10 year window, critical window to getting, you know, to getting to that big mega, mega producer, more so than, you know, saying you've been in the industry 15+ years. It just says if you're a winner, you're a winner. Okay. You figure that out beyond 5 years. So my takeaways, really want to qualify when we're recruiting people. This will help you in your coaching business. I know that's one of the things that you've talked about in some of our sessions is, um, you know, you know, what, what are we attracting and how are we qualifying those? I think especially when we're recruiting people from a recruiting to our company standpoint, we're investing a lot of time, effort, and energy, money into getting people to a place where maybe they're not qualified. So if someone is, uh, under 5 years, You know, in the business, maybe we ask for more information before we move them to a site visit. Maybe we, you know, ask for things like W-2s and pay stubs, you know, more data before we put them on a plane and fly them in for a corporate site visit. Um, but let's figure out how we really qualify people early on. NMLS is basically the walking living resume. So we can immediately go there and see Is this a person that we want to try and move to that next step? Because I know you're qualifying people as you're asking questions and as you're giving your free sessions away. It would be really easy to qualify people from a tenure perspective to say, hey, is even moving to that next step in a recruiting model— does it make sense? So we're looking for a minimum of 5 years, ideally 15+ years. Now, this is obviously an aging business. The average age is between 46 and 47 right now. And, uh, and that's new data that says that's the average age right now. Um, but, uh, you know, if you go 15 years, it means you got in the business at the age of 32. Uh, and, uh, and so, you know, there's probably a good percentage of this business that's in that category. Um, but definitely 5+ years. Okay. Um, does number of lenders worked for disqualify you? A lot of people I work with believe that if you've worked for a lot of lenders, that disqualifies you. What's crazy to me is this. Look at these 2 categories: more than 5 lenders, 29%, and 5 lenders, 13%. We go in front of that and say 4 lenders, 16%. If I just take these top 2 categories, about 42% have worked for 5 or more lenders in their career. These are, these are not, you know, these are not guarantee hoppers. These are not sign-on bonus hoppers. These are people that are producing $21 million or more. So it does not disqualify you to have worked for a lot of lenders. In fact, as we look into some of this other data, you will— we're going to see that loan officers really wait a longer window of time than, than, than I thought, and maybe you thought, to still qualify a lender as to being a good fit when they make a move to a lender. So we'll look at that in a second. But yes, I would say no, number of lenders does not disqualify you. I'm going to go back to 86% of lenders that have been in this business for 5+ years are going to fit into that $21 million category. So 30% of loan officers with $100 million annual have worked for more than 5 lenders. 50% of high-performing loan officers in the mortgage industry for 1 to 5 years have worked for only 1 lender. And that's intriguing to me, an intriguing stat. 35% of high-performing loan officers who have been in the industry for 15+ years have worked for 5 or more lenders. So takeaways: length of time, you know, that's a good qualifier. 80% of all respondents— think about this— have worked for 3 or more lenders. And then 42% of the $21 million+ producers have worked for 5 lenders or more, and 58% I've worked for 4 or more. So let's not disqualify people based on tenure. Okay. How are loan officers finding their next company? This is going to be really important. Look, they recruited me. That's only 25%. Like, if you— they recruited me. If you've got an internal recruiting model and an external recruiting model, you're only getting 1 out of every 4 people. Okay. Look at this. I solicited them. 7.5%. Now a lot of people will say, well, that's not a big number. It's 1 out of 11. Look, yesterday morning I got a call from a gal in a market, $30 million producer, and she's asking me, do you know— basically what she was asking me was, do you know of an attractive leader, someone with vision in my market? And she was framing it a little bit differently, but she was saying, I don't know of any strong leaders in my market. I don't know of any companies that have great systems and processes in my market. And she was calling me to see if I could qualify somebody for, because she knows that I'm in the recruiting business and I coach recruiting leaders. And so that falls— she fell into that category. She's one of the 11 that's actually going to solicit. She's looking to solicit someone in her market that she can actually go locate herself and work for them. What does that say? That says that we really need to be using social media To be presenting our organization in the light that we're— we are an attractive organization. But look at this, a colleague referred me, 42%. That's, that's crazy to me. So if we take a colleague, not, not a coworker, a colleague, somebody in the market that I know, probably have worked with before, somebody that I trust, somebody that I run into at title companies, networking events, Maybe see them at even some of your events. These are people that are referring them to their organization. These 2 categories right here, if we nailed those, if we nailed these 2 categories, we would get half of the market simply by making sure that our loan officers understand how to refer us, how to represent us in places like social media. And then, and then positioning ourselves well in that, in those places for where people can actually see what we're doing, see who we are. This is something that most lenders are missing. Most lenders are putting the pressure here on this recruiting model, which is only 1 out of 4. And because of that, they're limiting their success. Okay. So bring up both of these here. Um, in, you know, internal recruiting departments and recruiting leaders account for 1 in 4. So if we hit those 3 categories, which is, hey, we're going to represent ourselves as an attractive organization, as attractive leaders in social media, we're going to ensure we have something in place for our loan officers to win. Loan officers love games. Give them something that they can win at in this place of referring people to you, the recruiting leader, or to you, the organization. Like, look, this is something we've talked about here, like Like, like people are going to refer, like 42% of people will land somewhere because they were referred by somebody. So let's put this in play. Let's figure out how to put this in play. All right. So how long before deciding if a company is a fit? Look, this is crazy. 68% give their company less than a year before deciding if they are a fit. In fact, a really good percentage of these 27% plus, plus 9%. So we've got 36% will not even give their lender 6 months before deciding if they're a fit. You would be surprised working with organizations how many people say they were just at another company 6 months ago. This has got to be a job hopper. No, that's not the case. Now we look at some of the statistical data that says that It's high producers are more inclined to, to, to be at multiple companies. And now we see data that says that, that they will actually not give people a really long leash in determining whether they're a good fit. 31%, only 31% will give you more than a year to determine whether you're a fit. So, um, one of the things that we, that we really need to talk about and focus on is You should have a specific process that you put a loan officer through upon identifying them as transitioning to another company. This is something that I did when I was the recruiting leader. If I identified you, if I called you and said, oh, I just landed over here, I just moved to this company, I put you through a completely different recruiting model than I would anywhere else. What most companies do is they say they put a checkmark in the box and say you just transitioned. Let's stay in touch. No, no, no, no. This is the time to be painting the picture most of what we provide in terms of support, um, who we are as an organization, because it's easier to be an attractive, um, organization when somebody is transitioning, when somebody is having to learn a new LOS or new processes and new systems. And what most companies do is they give you 30 days of really good stuff and then they high-five you and, and, And check out and say, you know what you need to know. That's not a good model when you look at the statistics right here. That's losing in the game of recruiting. So we wanna have a specific process and system built around, once we identify somebody as just having moved, how do we paint a clear picture? What's your transition process? Right. What are the things that you do in terms of supporting a loan officer, not just through a transition, but long-term? There's opportunity there. So again, here's the mindset. I come back to this and I say, what's a blue ocean? Blue ocean to me is that if you're up for grabs because you've just transitioned and every other lender is saying, oh, you just transitioned, we realize you're going to be there for 2 or 3 years, right? The industry standard is 2.5 years. We'll check back in in 2 years and make sure the relationship's going. I'm looking for blue ocean here, which is this. You just moved to a lender and you're going to evaluate them for the next 12 months. Let me stay in front of you when every other lender has said we won't stay in front of you. Okay, what's important to loan officers? This was a part of the study, was that they had them rank these things and the importance, you know, 1 being not important, 5 being very important. Sorry if you can hear me with this cough drop. I'm trying to keep from coughing in your ear. I don't want to wait till I get well to send this. 80% of loan officers who exceed $21 million in loan volume prioritize the lender's ability to support high loan volumes. It's very important to them. That's, that's a very important— 80% of them. You take in category 4, which is important and very important, you're almost the entire market, right? That's not very surprising to any of us. We get this. You guys have built your coaching model around this. Most lenders aren't able to support loan volume and don't have good turn times and good processes and systems around all of that. So not surprising though. The thing that we wanna do though, where we're missing out, and I'll talk about this in my takeaways, is how do we show people that we do this and that we do it well? We need to have the framework to allow our loan officers to move into places like social media. to be able to talk about the things that we're doing. 62% prioritize technology and systems. Nathan, 62%, um, said that, um, that was very important to them and, uh, important, another 28%. So really big deal, technologies and systems. We want to talk about that in the framework. How does this scale your business? Okay. Not, let's not just talk about technology. Let's talk about it in the framework of how does this scale your business? This was surprising to me. Only 20% of loan officers said that marketing support was very important. Look at this, comprehensive marketing support, 20% that said that was important, very important to them. So here are my takeaways. Most don't see training and mentorship as a big incentive. Okay. If we go back to that and you'll get, you're going to get this presentation from me, go back and look at that. Most don't see training and mentorship as a big incentive. 82% say engaged and responsive executive management is seen as important. That's, that's nuts to me. Engaged and responsive executive management. I don't know that I would even put that on the question, the questionnaire. But almost 50% say it's, it's, it's really of the utmost importance. And then another 30+% say that is important to them. So what do we do about that? Well, one, I say executive management should be involved in the recruiting process. Something, something for you to think about, to have them involved. A lot of companies don't. So make sure that they're involved, that they're being seen as involved in every part of the organization. So that's, that's a really easy takeaway. Another easy takeaway is engaged and responsive. Man, executive management should be— should, should, should have a presence on social media. They should. If you look at 2 companies that are doing really well, and, and, and so having worked with a lot of the recruiting leaders at these organizations, what I know is that is that they're getting people that are moving towards them versus them having to move towards people. Those 2 organizations are Movement Mortgage and Loan Depot. Both companies have done this very well where their leader, their key leader, is out there in LinkedIn and has a voice and is consistent in sharing that voice. 67% say lender reputation is important. 78% say team-oriented culture is important. 98% say fast turn times are important. Look, if we go back to that one where colleague referrals are 42% of how loan officers end up in a new company, think about how important social media is in the last 3. It's really important. So you've got to make sure we're giving our teams the framework, or we ultimately are are reducing, we're handcuffing ourselves where it comes to having this opportunity to recruit people, the easy recruit. This is not having to have a recruiting team. This is not, you know, having to try and move people through needs analysis and selling vision. I mean, this is simply, you know, giving people the framework to represent our company out in places like social media. So you're saying there's a chance? That's the Dumb and Dumber line from the movie. Um, how satisfied are you with your current employer? Very satisfied, 60% said very satisfied, 11% said satisfied. So 71% of the market is currently satisfied or greater. Um, we've got 5% said very unsatisfied, 24% said somewhat satisfied. Um, and so there's about 3 out of 10 that are available right now if we're, if we're in the market. Um, you know, recruiting models— this is, you know, 3 out of 10, we talked about that just now— recruiting models should be designed around building relationships versus recruiting. Think about this. Most people are now going to go focus on the 3 out of 10, and they're just going to up the energy. In fact, I know companies that are actually increasing the size of their mortgage department, their recruiting departments, Because they're upping the energy around recruiting because they're not having the success that they've had in the past. But where we focus on building relationship versus recruiting, right now we're beginning to think like a farmer instead of a hunter. Look, the last— we go back to 2008, you know, 2009 and forward from that, there's been a lot of low-hanging fruit. We've all, we've all been conditioned to hunt. Now, what the really smart mortgage companies are going to do is they're going to— they're now going to begin farming, understanding that they're going to plant seeds and they're going to need to till the soil. They're going to need to fertilize and water and provide some sunshine, right? Those who build recruiting models around, you know, relationship building versus trying to move people quickly in a hunter mindset, are the ones that are going to win long-term. Okay, so here's some real specific takeaways. You know, if we're going to build out a loan officer recruitment path and we take these bullet points from this, these, these specific pieces, um, you know, like for example, supporting high volumes and fast turn times, that was important, right? We can model this with our teams. We're having our teams talk about this in social media. Create a framework. Think about this, like, why not have a template that they can insert the date that they took the app or the date that they close, and it spits out a form, you know, a template that they can just share over on social media and make it easy for them? They want to promote themselves. They need to promote themselves to real estate agents. They see this as a value add. Well, guess what? As they're doing this, this is a value add to you, the leaders. So the lens they look at it through is, what's in it for me? Well, I get to promote my deals getting to the closing table quickly. I build relationships easier with realtors who see that. That's the framework. So what about creating a template that allows them just to input a start date and a finish date, and it creates this awesome thing that they can go share on social media? You know, the other part is make it a priority to discuss this within your core values. You know, a lot of leaders, recruiting leaders breeze over this. They don't spend enough time really talking about how this is not just something that we do, it's actually a part of our core value. We want to be very clear on the system that we have, the expectations that we have, the timelines that we have, all of those things. Any metrics that we have around this, right? Numbers never lie. That's something that people will say. Numbers never lie, people do. Numbers never lie, people do. Uh, so, you know, those are great. Those are things that, that, that give you, give your leaders the ability to talk around this one piece that's really important. Okay. Scalable technology and systems. You know, again, my, what I would recommend here is, you know, I want to equip my recruiting leaders. Um, you know, uh, as part of this, um, you know, you guys recruit a little bit differently though, than a lot differently than most models. So you really want to think about, you know, how are we, um, how are we presenting this to people? Because again, um, if we— you right now, you basically have, you know, what I see as a standalone pillar for recruiting, which is your coaching model. And you bring people through the coaching model, see if there's opportunity, and if there is, you move to the next steps. What we're talking about here is building multiple pillars. All successful businesses have multiple pillars. Where are we pulling and attracting people from? And the more pillars that we've built around this, right, your leaders should be what I call recruiting leaders. Teach them how to recruit. Teach, you know, feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. So we want to teach people how to become a recruiting leader and then equip them, helping them understand next steps in the recruiting process that allow them to create momentum, which is what I've got here. So why not have a recorded session professionally done by the marketing department and have that as something that you're sharing with people that you're conversing with about your model? Okay, compensation. I think we'll talk a little bit more about this in a couple other slides. You know, you know, that's definitely, you know, there's definitely strategy around how we structure that, especially with new hires coming in. I'll talk about that in a second. Engaged executive management. Right, there's just, you know, there's an awareness gap between loan officers and executive management, and it seems to be growing. Okay, so what we want to do is this. We want, we want to involve executive management in the recruiting process. Already mentioned that. A really nice touch is to have them make contact with a qualified— even not, you know, with a potential candidate. Would you be willing to talk to our executive management team, our ED, or Our president or whoever that would be. Um, you know, this is a great way to move people to next steps. Um, one of the things that an executive management team can do is show their engagement with— on a platform like LinkedIn, and that positions them into that attractive leadership status. So if 1 out of 11 is going to make that decision on their own where they're going to move, And if, you know, you know, 4 out of 10 or 42% are going to allow a colleague to refer them to that next company, when they go look at that organization from the outside, the outer shell, where there's a lack of presence by the executive management team or the executive management individual, then, um, then we're missing out on opportunity. Next, culture. You know, this is, this is just something social media is a perfect place to model this. That's all I've got to say. Culture is, is one of the things here that really jumped out at me. When we come back to this study and we talk about culture, team-oriented culture, look, almost 50% said it was very important. In fact, the call that I got yesterday, she's looking for synergy is what she's looking for. She's looking for a team environment. She's a standalone branch on her own. And she's looking for that team environment. She's just not seeing that represented. Look, 31% say it's important. So as we go back to this culture, yeah, let's represent that. It's easy. It's something that we should just do. Blend reputation. Again, social media. This is, this is critical. It was important in the study. Let's represent this. Competitive rates and pricing. This can be a place where I've seen recruiting leaders really get caught up. They get hung up here. They get caught up in, give me your rate sheets, or give me your logins to your pricing. And those things may be necessary. Where we're seeing margins compressing, rates becoming a bigger deal, people shopping more, this will continue to— the noise around this will continue to elevate. You gotta create the framework. As a leader, you gotta create the framework that the others are going to have the conversations through. So do not leave this up to your individual leaders to create a narrative. Create your own narrative, okay? Your own values around this. And then, and then, and then, you know, bring them into ownership on those, okay? That will help you in this place because I see a lot of people getting caught up. This is all left-brain recruiting. And a lot of times recruiting leaders get caught up in left-brain recruiting versus right-brain recruiting. So one of the things that will help them in terms of framework moving away from this is understanding how to tell great stories about how you guys are overcoming this. Great stories around how this is maybe a non-issue because of how you've— how you're figuring out to— how you position yourselves in your markets. That's good framework. Okay, diverse loan products. Again, you need framework for your recruiting leaders to discuss this through. I would not leave this up to the individual that you're recruiting to define it or your individual leaders to define it. Create narrative around this. Training and mentorship. You know, I was surprised by how few people saw this as important, as an important criteria. The truth is that I guess you get to $21 million or more You're now a mature loan officer, right? 86% of those have been in the business for 5 years or more. I would see where that loan officer says, I've got it figured out. I'll devalue training and mentorship. I don't need that as much as I used to. But still, 51% in this, in this report saw this of value. So, and loan officers in the 5 to 10 year, 10 year, 10 year range saw it more important than the people that were 10+ years. So I think we identify the audience, we make sure we tailor a message to them. If you're under 10 years, mentorship is still really important to you. If you're all in the business longer than 10 years, we understand it's not going to be as much value to you. And lastly, marketing support. You know, the need for corporate-driven marketing has ultimately declined. You know, has declined. A lot of companies are still trying to sell this corporate-driven marketing piece. But digital marketing technologies really help loan officers just become self-promoters. You know, and the good loan officers, which this is what this report was really centered around, are really great self-promoters. They understand things like social media. They understand the fact that they need to be out there presenting on a daily basis in those platforms. And so they're doing it. With that said, you've got to create the framework. Your recruiting leaders will create their own narrative. Unless you help them. So make sure whatever the framework is that you, that you created, and then you hand that off. Okay, moving on. What about effective recruiting models? Okay, look at this. This does not surprise me. It's something I've been saying for, you know, a decade. Branch managers are your, are your, are your most effective method for recruiting experienced loan officers. Why? That's the leader that the experienced loan officer is moving towards. Where we don't have the branch managers recruiting and we're not holding them accountable to recruit, then we're really missing out on a big opportunity. Okay, right? Because that's our, that's our, that's our strongest, most effective recruiting model. Beyond that, inside recruiter is definitely important. In fact, inside recruiter was more effective than external recruiters. So Having an internal recruiter is going to be important. Um, that's a nice pillar. And you guys are moving towards some of this. You're, um, you're, you're working on, you know, bringing in some, you know, you just brought in someone, you know, in that space. You know, if you, as your coaching is a standalone pillar, and then you have another pillar, which is you really ask your managers, your recruiting leaders to become, uh, recruiters in their markets. Now you've got 2 pillars. A nice third pillar is the inside recruiter. Um, and you can build a successful, a really aggressively growing organization around that, around those 3 pillars. I like to see more pillars. So as you look at this, what I know already is that external recruiters put on retainer are ones that will actually deliver more. Sorry about that. than external recruiters who are simply just paid to place somebody. Those are hired guns. An external recruiter is the on-retainer, someone that you're paying a monthly fee to, and then you have— you meet with them regularly, you go over your expectations, you go over the pipeline, but they're a consultant. They're outside the organization. Really nice positioning, by the way. When I go back to 2014, one of the things that I did was I created my own external third-party company. And what I was doing is taking my W-2 earnings, moving a portion of those over into the external recruiting company to support that model. So that is where you've got a really close relationship. Or let's just say we've built our 3 pillars, which is our coaching model. We move people through that. We've trained our recruiting leaders to actually go on and, and recruit. We now have an inside recruiter. A really nice 4th pillar that you can build around all this is actually owning the external recruiter, right? Like you actually start the company, you hire the person, you train them on your systems, you set the expectations across the board. It's what I did. And, um, and that's some secret sauce right there. It's not something I've shared with maybe 3 people ever that I did that, but there's definitely secret sauce in that. All right, let's talk about where's the pressure coming from, because I want to look at blue ocean. And, and blue ocean is where, where are people not focusing their efforts and energies? Okay, 91% recruit originators from independent mortgage companies. Okay, there's a big focus on that. The people I talk to say they're getting 5 to 10 phone calls a week right now. 91% recruit from, from independent mortgage companies. 58% target entire independent mortgage branches. 79% recruit from bank-owned mortgage companies. These are bank loan officers. That could even be a company like a Prime Lending, right? 'Cause they are not licensed at the state level. So, they're considered bank-owned. So, there are some companies out there that fit into that bank-owned mortgage company category. That those loan officers tend to be good fits, even in independent mortgage company models. And the last number is, look at this, 37% recruit entire bank mortgage branches. So, um, that number comes down from the independents pretty, pretty significantly. And, and so, you know, those people aren't typically being paid the amount of comp that the independents are being paid. Those people, those branch managers that are typically in a model where it is a tiered, it is a tiered override system. A lot of them are making 2 to 5 basis points because it's dependent upon expenses, it's dependent upon revenue. So 2 to 5 basis points on volume, that's blue ocean to me because there are mortgage banks out there that that is just a small shift to get them to the independent model that are self-sourcers that have gone out and built their own business. And so, I see that as a larger opportunity than I think the market's actually taking into consideration. Because again, only 3 to 4 out of 10 are gonna even ever focus on bank mortgage branches. And you would be surprised. I stopped, pause it for a moment because this just pops into my head. In, in the smaller markets, there's a lot of these local banks that have set themselves up as correspondent lenders and built small mortgage teams, you know, $5 to $7 million a month mortgage teams. You know, those exist in a lot of places. A lot of people don't realize they exist. I've recruited teams like that. So I say that Because few people even realize where to go find those or where to look for those. But on the flip side of that, you know, few people are actually even focusing on that period in terms of effort and energy. Okay, we talked about each one of those statistics already. Okay, so let's talk about tenure numbers. You know, this is a key component when we're recruiting people. Look at this, look at this graph here. 10-year goes really sky high up to, you know, this 1 to 2 year window. Somewhere around this, you know, 15 month window, 10-year really, really, really accelerates until you get to the 2.5 year window. This is data that we know. The average 10-year inside the mortgage business is 2.5 years. This simply supports that. Okay, and this is a new report. So it just says that that has not changed. But look at this. So we get that, right? You're going to change between 18 and 2.5 years. So we're going to really identify that where that person's at in terms of timeline with the organization. But look at this. At year, you know, 6. Moving forward through year 12, look at how quickly this accelerates. Like year 6 to year 12, there's a huge acceleration. These are people that are tenured at organizations, and between year 6 and 12, there's a really steep drop-off. So again, another great place to identify. Look, a lot of what I hear— and I bring this up because I hear a lot of recruiting leaders say this— if someone's been in an organization for 5 years, there's no sense in reaching out to them. That's a waste of my time. No, it's not a waste of your time. It's actually a great investment of your effort and energy to reach out to that person and to build relationship because a significant number of them are gonna move out of that organization within that 5-year window of time. And it doesn't make a difference whether you're an independent mortgage company or whether you're a bank. I mean, they accelerate at the exact same pace. So that's simply what I state there. So think about that. When the volume predictor says 86% of those loan officers are producing $21 million or greater, what a great target. What a great place to invest your time. Okay, so let's look at recruiting ponds. You know, success rating from the recruiting ponds. Okay, so the highest success rating out there is independent mortgage companies. This is where most people have success recruiting from. Second, individual branches is, you know, the second, you know, a big one here that I see recruiting. I was surprised by how many individual branches are recruited. The aggregate score here was a 3. And then other outside the mortgage industry, you know, you know, this here was a surprising number to me. That tells me that a lot of lenders are looking to bring new talent into the business. And we see that age coming on from 52 to 46 to 47 over the last few years, the average age inside the business. And so I see a lot of young talent coming in. Um, so there's definitely some data here that says, hey, if we're going to focus our efforts and energy, let's focus it on independents and bank loan officers. And then let's focus it on individual, you know, mortgage branches. But I'm still surprised bank mortgage branches Still had a good score as to— it was easy, almost as easy to score a bank mortgage branch as it was to score a college graduate into this business. Those numbers are pretty— are really close. Okay, turnover by quarter. There's a misnumber. The misnumber is that Q1 inside this business is where most people make their move. Okay, so My— here's maybe an idea around this. Q1, more— there's more noise around it than there is at any point in time, and more people are willing to looky-loo during that window of time because volumes typically shrink. But in terms of turnover in that window of time, it just is not true, and it's not even close. So when you look at the stats here, now this report by Stratmore Group, they accidentally Populated this green with independents. It's supposed to be banks. So banks are green, independent mortgage companies are tan. But you can see as you go through the year, it increases. So Q4 is the highest. Q3 is the next. If you look at independents, independents, it's really close here between Q3 and Q4. So what does this mean? That means that we really farm in the first and second quarter. We spend a lot of time farming. We harvest a lot in 3rd and 4th quarter. So in this study, one of the pieces of this was loan officers who left in Q4 had a higher average production, and they had longer tenure than loan officers who left in any other quarter. So if there is a place where I'm going to focus a lot of effort and energy in trying to move people to powerful next steps, it's going to be in Q4. There's a, there's a higher return, a higher investment on my time and effort and money that I spend doing that. In Q4 than any other time. So, I mean, we're getting lengthy on this recording here, so I'm— we'll talk about this several times. Here are some takeaways. Recruiting is a science. A lot of people think it's a lot of art, it's a lot of woo, it's a lot of salesmanship, a lot of timing, you know, and definitely timing plays a key in it. But if we're using targeted message for each recruit, And it's just specific to the larger pipeline, which is what most companies do. They present the same across the entire board. We're really missing out on opportunities. Pay attention to the time in business. We talked about that. Pay attention to time with company. Those are critical pieces. We have data support how we should, how we should approach each individual as an individual versus a larger You know, approach. So by doing this, we increase our opportunities. So as an example of that, right, 10-year plus 10-year makes training and mentorship much less appealing. And a lot of people are positioning themselves with the training and mentorship just straight across the board the same. Okay, so you want to boost retention. Here's a nice nugget in this, in this, in this last report. Look at this. If 3rd and 4th quarters where most people churn, Boost retention by, by in your current model with the people you've already recruited and that are there by paying a portion of compensation on overall annual production. Okay, so you go all the way through year end and you pay that in Q1, right? If you do that, how smart is it? We put ourselves into the Q1, which is when most people are less likely to make that move. That's just a numbers game. That's being a smart business person. So, you know, you could put some sort of payment kicker in there. That could be enough to keep your loan officers from shopping new lenders during the holiday season. Okay, what's it gonna take to get you? We need to know how to structure offers for success. That's a part of this. So this, this really discussed recruiting incentives, paid-to-recruit, and it even discussed retention of seasoned loan officers in this. Okay. So this is really all originators. I'll jump to this. Guaranteed compensation obviously works really well. Um, you know, so if we're qualifying well, right, our tenure and timeline in the business, um, solid producer, um, you know, this, this is a place where most people are looking and leaning. But a lot of people, I was surprised, there's a lot of people giving non-refundable sign-on bonuses. You know, meaning that non-refundable, meaning that there's no strings attached. You get the money and you show up. I was surprised by how many people do that. It seems to me like that's a very bad business decision. I've never done that before, by the way. And then increase commission scale over a limited timeframe. That's a popular model as well. So, but what we want to know is what works. Okay. So then that's really what the next piece is going to talk about. So in recruiting seasoned loan officers, lenders tend to focus on guarantees and increased commission over a limited time frame to incentivize LOs to come over. They do that because they don't want to commit to the long-term higher compensation piece. Now here's the cost-effectiveness of those strategies. And so, you know, you'll have this slide. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to go to the bullet point here. But you'll have this, you can go back to it and look at it. Here are my takeaways. Non-refundable sign-on bonuses, they ended up being rated as the most unattractive from a cost-effectiveness perspective by 59% of independent lenders. And so, people that are doing this, which there are people out there doing this, they'll write a lot of really big checks, it's a losing proposition for them, and they're realizing this. So here, both banks' independents rated increased commission over a limited timeframe or on a permanent basis as the most cost-effective incentive to recruiting loan officers. I mean, we know that, you know, if we're running a profit model and a good model, increasing commission over a certain limited window of time gives them an incentive to jump into production quickly. And, and then if, of course, if it's a good producing loan officer with a good product mix, You can do that on a permanent basis and still make money with that, with that model. Okay, immediate applications. Let's talk about this. Okay, I don't want to come to those conclusions here in this video. I really want to highlight the information, plant some seeds for thought. Let's, let's have some starting some conversations around this. You'll probably have some immediate takeaways from this that you can go back and implement in your business right away. So action items, let me know if what immediate ones you come away with. So I can engage in those with you, but then let's talk about this in an ongoing conversation. How do we take this data, how do we apply it and make ourselves, give ourselves a slight edge in recruiting? How do we move ourselves towards blue ocean using this data and seeing the things that are ultimately unseen by a lot of people? Okay. So thanks for your time. I appreciate it. I value you both and enjoy any time I get to spend with you. Enjoy the rest of your week, and with that said, I'm out of here. Bye.