Summary
Are you struggling to stand out in an overcrowded mortgage market where everyone claims to have “great rates” and “excellent service”? In this episode of the Local Marketing Lab, Eric Mitchell, Chief Revenue Officer at Client Direct Mortgage, reveals how to transform your approach and become a truly valuable mortgage partner. Eric shares game-changing strategies that helped him break free from traditional methods and build a thriving mortgage business through strategic partnerships.
Focus on valuable partnerships instead of cold calling realtors. Eric explains why calling is an outdated strategy in today’s market. Instead, he recommends building relationships with bankruptcy attorneys, immigration attorneys, and divorce attorneys who can refer pre-approved buyers. This approach positions you as a valuable mortgage partner who brings business to realtors rather than just asking for it.
Differentiate yourself beyond rates and service. The most successful mortgage professionals understand that talking about price, product, or service won’t make you stand out. Eric demonstrates how to identify unique financing solutions others miss.
Communicate your unique value effectively. It’s not enough to have valuable knowledge—you must articulate it properly. Eric shares how to approach strategic partners with a focus on helping them first, making it clear what’s in it for them.
By implementing these strategies, you’ll transform from just another loan officer to someone who brings real value to every relationship. Listen to the full episode to discover the exact scripts Eric uses with attorneys and how to leverage these partnerships to generate a steady stream of qualified mortgage leads.
Key Takeaways
Here are some topics discussed in the episode:
- Generate leads through strategic partnerships with attorneys and other professionals
- Why traditional cold-calling of realtors is ineffective in today’s market
- Differentiating yourself beyond “price, product, and service”
- Leverage free credit repair services as a value proposition
- The power of focusing on your “why” rather than just chasing money
“Being in business without effective marketing is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you’re doing, but it’s not getting you anywhere.”
ERIC MITCHELL
Resources
- Connect with Eric Mitchell on LinkedIn.
- Learn more about DiscountMortgage.AI.
- Check out Client Direct Mortgage.
- View Eric’s book, “The WHY of MONEY: How to Get Out of Your Own Way & Finally Earn What You Deserve“.
Transcript
Justin Ulrich
What’s up everyone, and welcome to the Local Marketing Lab, where you get real-world insights from industry pros to help you drive local revenue and local for growth. This podcast is brought to you by Evocalize – digital marketing tools powered by local data that automatically work where and when your locations need it most. Learn more at evocalize.com.
Well, what’s up and welcome to the Local Marketing Lab. Joining us in the lab today is a guest with over 25 years of experience in the mortgage industry. He loves dogs, is an author of The Why of Money, coach, and the chief revenue officer over at Client Direct Mortgage. Eric Mitchell, thanks for joining us in the lab, my friend.
Eric Mitchell
Happy to be here.
Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Yeah, I was super excited. I know that some folks from our org had recently had conversations with you and wanted to get you on to talk a little bit about, you know, your perspectives on local marketing.
But before we jump in, maybe you can give us a brief primer on, you know, your background and kind of how you got to where you are today.
Eric Mitchell
Yeah, I mean, I came in the business by accident in 1999. It was good timing, right? I’d love to tell you, I planned it. It’s like, nah, I just fell into it. I think like most loan officers. I don’t know anybody, you know, at eight years of age going, I can’t wait to grow up and be a loan officer.
You know, we all got pulled in somehow, some way by someone we knew. And had a good run, you know, and then 2008 did a big transition, ran a short-sell joint venture division for a mortgage company.
And then in 2011 did another transition. I was the national lending partner with Craig Proctor Coaching, one of the largest realtor coaching companies in America. I was a lending partner for several years. And, you know, in the process, I’ve had some of the greatest mentors and teachers.
I’m a big fan of find somebody who’s brilliant at whatever you’re trying to do. Just do what they tell you to do, right? Don’t have an opinion on it. I try very hard, unless I’ve proven something, right? I try and take notes and be a student.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for the most part, everything’s been done before, right?
Eric Mitchell
It’s all been done, man. It’s been done. The moment you say, well, my way is, hold on, hold on, hold on. My way. How many loans did you close last month? Well, in 2021, what I, no, no, no, no, no.
It’s 2025, brother. Whatever you did in 2021, probably not working the same way in 2025. So my way is how many loans did you close last month? That’s it. That’s the metrics. And it doesn’t feel good, right?
A lot of people are aware that doesn’t feel good. Well, okay. Truth sometimes doesn’t feel good. That’s fair. It doesn’t stop it from being true, right? Like in the mortgage industry, we get paid, you know, biweekly or monthly or whatever your payroll is, but it’s based on your closings.
And so if you’re not evolving, right, then you’re not growing, then you got problems, right? And so how do you solve those problems in a viable manner? And that’s what I try and help loan officers with is a step-by-step process on how to get out of that grind.
Justin Ulrich
And how long have you been coaching for?
Eric Mitchell
I mean, I started off and on quite some time ago, but I got a lot more involved in it for about the last 10 years.
Justin Ulrich
I know in digging in a little bit to your background, I know that you do a lot of work with rescue dogs and fostering dogs and caring for them. Is it something just within you innately that
wanting to help others, wanting to ensure their success? Like does the coaching align with that other kind of part of your being?
Eric Mitchell
Yeah, I mean, the fostering dogs, right, is a healing process for me. I’m recently divorced. And so they heal me more than, I mean, yes, I rescue dogs, and I foster them and get them found into permanent homes.
But they help me more than I help them, right? Like the unconditional love and the adoration and all that stuff that you get from a foster, I mean, it’s unmatched. The helping loan officers comes from childhood trauma that I had.
I had a very unique childhood. My dad was absent, you know, traveling, working, you know, 18 hours a day, seven days a week. I mean, I never saw the guy.
And my mom was sick. Doctors diagnosed her with MS because she was bedridden, but she was just clinically depressed. She married a guy who was basically her father, who wasn’t good.
He didn’t have a good father, didn’t have a good husband. My dad’s, you know, I haven’t talked to the guy in over 20 years. He’s still alive, but haven’t had a conversation with him.
And so I don’t have a single memory of a childhood family dinner, right? Like where you just sit around the table and you have dinner with your family. Now, we would go to holiday dinners at our uncle and aunt’s house, right? Like we do that twice a year, three times a year. But at our house, just having a family dinner, it just never happened ever. I don’t have a single memory of one.
And so the concept of family has a different connotation to me. And I don’t know how you, I don’t have kids. I’m recently divorced. So I don’t want to give anybody any relationship advice or how to raise kids advice, right? I’m definitely not qualified. Don’t take any of that advice from me.
What I am passionate about is I don’t know how you could have a successful marriage or a successful raising of your children if money causes stress, right? If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and you’re always worried about money, then you’re not present. And so how do you make enough money that you get to be present with your family, that you get to be home for dinner with your family?
That’s the passion. That’s where that comes from is like if you don’t zero in on these activities and these practices, then you’re always going to have stress. And I don’t want that for you.
Don’t raise your kids that way. Like I was raised that way. It’s bad. It’s not good. It’s not fun. So how do I help you get out of that grind?
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I haven’t heard that perspective from any guests with regard to any really part of their career as to why they got into it. And it makes total sense.
Part of why I do what I do from a marketing standpoint is I grew up somewhat similar fashion. My dad was a building contractor and there were lots of times and there were just financial struggles like constantly.
And I don’t do sales personally because I like to have a guarantee of a paycheck. And it’s terrifying to think that maybe the money wouldn’t be coming in like I experienced growing up. And it’s it absolutely it brings turmoil into the home that can be avoided if the income was there.
Eric Mitchell
Yeah. When you look at causes of divorce, there could be several reasons that can cause a divorce, but there’s there’s just a select few primary reasons. Right. So money problems is a big one. The way you want to parent your children is another big one. Right.
You get married, you have kids and also your parenting styles aren’t in alignment. Yeah. It’s a big that’s a big problem. But money is I think the biggest cause of divorce rate, lack of financial stress, whatever that is. And so if you can remove that, you have a much better shot.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah.
Eric Mitchell
The odds are already against all of us. Right. They just are like it’s not good odds of getting married, raising kids, having good family, staying happy. Right. Odds are not in any of our favor. So how do you get the odds to be at least a little better? Yeah. Have money. Make money.
Justin Ulrich
You know, that’s true. So what are some things that you guide folks through? You’ve got years of experience doing this stuff. Like, what do you think moves the needle enough for loan officers to start really taking control of their own destiny financially?
Eric Mitchell
Well, we’re in a new market. And so the activities that were typically taught in this market just don’t work. Right.
There’s been too much, very significant changes, whether it be technology, the NAR settlement last year, how realtors are functioning now, which is very different. And so, you know, one example would be some coaches will teach you, you have to call 50 realtors every Monday morning. Right.
Just call 50 realtors, new realtors every Monday morning. Yeah. I mean, 90 percent of realtors right now don’t have clients. So they don’t have clients. Then who are you calling and why are you calling them?
And like, that’s that’s not a good strategy anymore. Right. Most buyers agents don’t even know how to sell their buyer fee now. Right. Before they were free. The listing agent, the seller paid it. But now you have to sign a buyer agreement and and you’re agreeing that somehow, some way, the buyer agent is going to get paid three percent or two percent of wherever your buyer.
Well, most realtors don’t know how to sell that. So they don’t have clients. And so when you look at any market, I don’t care what market you’re in, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, whatever market you’re in, run the multiple listing service data. Right. The buyers are controlled by typically the top 10 percent of realtors.
So I don’t want to call 50 realtors every Monday morning that are broke. I want to call the top 10 percent of realtors and that’s it. But that’s every loan officer. Every loan officer is making the same phone calls to the same realtors. Right.
So what are you saying that’s different and unique? And so I’ve learned there’s three things that you can’t say. See, you can’t talk about price, product or service. Hey, I got great rates. Yeah. What? Everybody’s got great.
Justin Ulrich
Lots of folks.
Eric Mitchell
When I hear a loan officer say that, I just cringe. It’s like, oh, my God, you realize there’s one Fannie Mae, there’s one Freddie Mac, there’s one FHA, there’s one V.A., there’s one U.S. like we’re all selling for the same coupon. It is like, what is it when you say that?
You’re not valuable. You’re not unique. Yeah. Stop saying it. Right. Like, you know, I’ll show you. I’ll show you what to say instead. So and then service. Hey, I’ve got great service. I’ve been doing this 26 years.
And when I tell you this is going to happen, this is going to blah, blah. You know, everybody else, it’s the same script. Every loan officer is, you know, reciting the same script to realtors.
Or I do down payment assistance and I’m great with veterans and I do V.A. loans. Do you know any lender right now not doing down payment assistance and not doing V.A. loans and not like it’s all automated? Like what are you doing?
None of that is unique or valuable. You can’t talk about price, product or service. So what do you say instead?
And so what I’ve learned, I kind of learned this by default. So as you get to know me, I’m I come across like in a setting like this with you and me, I come across like I’m extroverted and I’ve learned to project my voice and I use my hands a little bit. OK, I’m not. I’m an introvert. I love being at home, like if I go to a social function at the end of it, I’m exhausted.
I mean, I need to sleep 12 hours like it is. I have spent all of my energy. Right. And so when I when I go out to social functions in the industry, most of my friends are extroverts and I latch onto them and I’m their rescue. Right. I’m the introvert.
The extroverts, I latch onto them. But when I would notice early on in my career, I’d go to events and, you know, they’d be working the room, shaking hands, you know, doing all that things. I’d go off and get us drinks and, you know, I meet you in the corner when you’re done.
And I noticed, though, that that’s not good. Right. Like if you’re in sales, you can’t be the guy saying, I’ll meet you over there. I’m going to get drinks like that. You don’t make money doing that.
And so I would be sitting there watching and trying to figure out, OK, I need to solve this. Do I become a different human? Like do I do I find a way to somehow become magically extroverted?
Or is there a strategy I can deploy that makes being an extrovert irrelevant? And so that’s what I that’s a lesson I learned early on is you can either solve the problem or make the problem irrelevant. Well, that’s it. Or move on to those who then move on. But so what I learned is you go be extroverted, be charming, shake their hands, whatever. And then when you’re done, I’m going to go in.
I’m going to get all their business because I’m more valuable. People make decisions based on who’s most valuable. Yes, you have to be likable. Right. Like people do business with people who they know, like, and trust. Yes. But they’ll always choose who’s most valuable.
And so how are you valuable? How are you unique and how are you communicating that? So instead of calling realtors, here’s a different strategy. So we’ve got a program where we have unlimited access to free credit repair. Okay.
Right. Okay. I have free credit repair. What does that mean? It means I can go to bankruptcy attorneys and offer free credit repair to all of their clients to get bankruptcies removed from their credit reports. Now, have you ever met a bankruptcy attorney who would say no to that?
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. No, I don’t think I’ve ever met any bankruptcy attorneys.
Eric Mitchell
Well, good for you. But I mean, in networking and whatever, right? If I’m a bankruptcy attorney and somebody offers me free credit repair to remove bankruptcies from all my clients credit reports and it’s free.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Why not?
Eric Mitchell
Of course. Okay. So now I get an influx of all these people that want bankruptcies off their credit reports. I put them in the system. It’s all automated.
We remove the bankruptcies from their credit reports, but all of a sudden I’ve got pre-approved buyers. Now I’m calling a realtor saying, Hey, I’ve got a client, Sally and Sam Smith, who are pre-approved to buy home up to $500,000.
We’d like to come to your office and meet with you to interview about being with their buyers agents. Does next Wednesday or Thursday work for you? Yeah.
Have you ever met a realtor who says no to that meeting? But being an introvert, I don’t want no. It’s almost a phobia. Right. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t like rejection. I can’t call 50 realtors every Monday and be rejected like that.
I can’t like my brain just, I can’t deal with it. And so I’d much rather be so valuable that the concept of the person in front of me saying no, it’s just, it’s just not going to happen.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. And you’re effectively creating your own. It’s like fish in a barrel. You’re creating your own pool of folks to.
Eric Mitchell
Yeah. You get a bankruptcy attorney to send out an email to their database of clients, one email, their database.
Now think about this, right? I’m a consumer. I recently declared bankruptcy in the last months or years or whatever. And I get an email from my bankruptcy attorney. Do I read it? Yeah. I read it. My bankruptcy attorney sent me an email, right? Now it says, Hey, guess what? I’m so excited to let you know that you can have your bankruptcy removed from your credit report. Call this guy. It’s completely free of charge.
I’m taking 50 to a hundred loan apps that day. Go to my website, go to my website, go to my website, go to my website, right? They go in, it’s free, right? We do start the credit repair. Now I’m outbounding them, setting up appointments to do zoom calls with them like, like this, right?
Hey, so excited. Your system should take us about 60 to 90 days to get off. In the meantime, let’s get you pre-qualified, assuming that’s gone. So you can start thinking about the markets, thinking about buying a home.
Justin Ulrich
And so then are you then taking those leads and you’re specifically reaching out to the top 10% agents?
Eric Mitchell
Well, if I’ve got a pre-approved buyer, I’m reaching out to the top 5%.
Justin Ulrich
Top 5. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Cause then you’re immediately giving them value and they’re going to want to return it.
Eric Mitchell
Well, so no, it’s, no, you would think, you would think that, right? Cause you’re thinking like, like a, a normal rational person. But realtors thought that’s not what happens, right? So you have to set the expectation.
Right. So I, yes, I’m coming to you. Yes, I’m handing them to you. Right now I have 50 more. But I do one-to-one. I’m going to hand you the first, but I won’t hand you another one till you reciprocate.
So you hand me one, I hand you one, you hand me one, I hand you one, right? It’s one-to-one. So I just doubled all my business, but you have to set the expectation.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. But then you’re also setting yourself up for long-term success by then engaging with a, you’re casting your net much wider with those top 5%. And cause some of them may not give you a lead back. Some of them may.
Eric Mitchell
Hold on. There are several that won’t. Right. Because they don’t, they just don’t believe you can do it again. Right. And so you have to explain how you have this many. Right. Cause they just don’t believe you. Right. It’s just so foreign of a concept that a loan officer can match them one-to-one like what?
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have loan officers are getting their leads from the real estate agents.
Eric Mitchell
That’s correct. That’s correct. And so I target bankruptcy attorneys, immigration attorneys, divorce attorneys, financial planners, CPAs, insurance agents, and there’s a different value proposition per category.
Each one of them has a different pain point. So bankruptcy attorneys, free credit care. Divorce attorneys, we show them how to, so Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac capped a loophole last year, June of 2024.
They capped the ability to use trust income with no seasoning. So all these divorce attorneys were showing their clients how to use trusts instead of alimony and child support, call it a trust payment. And now the wife can qualify, not always a wife, but mostly, most of the time it’s the wife that can qualify to do a cash out refinance to pay off the departing husband.
Cause she now qualifies based on the trust payment. Right. And so Fannie, Freddie capped the loophole, but I’ve got four investors on Wall Street still allowing us to do it’s not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, it’s Wall Street, but I’ve got four investors still allowing us to do it. Divorce attorneys are all over it. And they don’t believe you. It’s like, no, it stopped June of last year. We can’t do it anymore.
Yeah. That’s what your other loan officer, I’m still doing it. It’s not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. What? And so now I’m able to refer those types of clients to realtors. Immigration attorneys, we do 97% financing for anybody with a visa. And so loan officers don’t understand what that means. Right.
So, so when you, so I’m originally from Canada, so I’m Canadian, I’m now a US citizen, but I had to go through the entire immigration process, which is mind-numbing. Right. The only way you’re going to get through an immigration process in the United States is to hire an immigration attorney. There’s no way you’re doing it on your own. No chance.
But to come here, the first thing you have to do is apply for a visa. Like I, as a Canadian, I could come vacation for a couple of weeks, but I can’t live here. Right. If I want to live here, I have to get a visa. Well, there’s hundreds of visas, right? Depending what you’re doing.
But step one is I got to get a visa. If I get a visa, I’m also issued a social security number. Social security number. I get a visa. Once I have a visa, then I can apply for what’s called a permanent residency, which is a green card.
Once everybody’s eligible, you have your green card. That’s what that means. Permanent resident. But I can’t apply for that if I don’t first have a visa. I have to have a visa first. Once I have a visa and I applied for a permanent residency, that’s two to seven years. I’m in visa status for two to seven years.
So how do I buy a house if I don’t have a green card? Because 99 percent of loan officers will tell you you have to have a green card to buy a house. Traditional financing. We do 97 percent financing for anybody with a visa. You get a visa, three percent down, you’re buying a house.
Now, imagine an immigration attorney sending one email out to their database. And if I’m an immigrant and I get an email from my immigration attorney, do I read the email? Yes. It’s my attorney.
Justin Ulrich
Do you’re like, let’s say for in this example, do those immigration attorneys also push it out like the rest of their firm or do they have a network of…
Eric Mitchell
Most immigration attorneys are solo practitioners. Like it’s XYZ Sam Smith, Office of Immigration. Typically. Not always, but most of them are solo practitioners, typically.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. I’m just curious on all these examples. It sounds like if you’re one of the only people that are doing this, that you’re so highly differentiated, you’d think that these folks know other folks, that there’s no stepping on toes, that they also want to share your services with their peers.
Eric Mitchell
Sure. With their peers. Yeah, they don’t though. So immigration attorneys, everybody cares about themselves, brother, right? They’re not about sharing. I found something that’s unique. I’m going to, they do this. Yeah.
They don’t give it to other immigration attorneys. No. Because we also show them like as an immigration attorney, you can use this to go get new clients.
So you can market to the universe saying, Hey, not only am I a great immigration attorney and I can help you through the citizenship process, but I can help you get a piece of the American dream faster because my real estate team does 97% financing for anybody with a visa. If you’d like an introduction, call me. So they use it for lead generation for new clients, not just helping their existing clients.
Justin Ulrich
So what is it that, and this may be way too, or going way too down the rabbit hole, but is what you’re able to do, it sounds like not all mortgage companies are able to do this.
Eric Mitchell
No, they don’t. Well, they can, they just don’t know how, right? Like it’s a level playing field.
So what I learned early on in my mortgage career, and I didn’t realize it before because I didn’t have to do it. My brain didn’t have to do it before, but I learned early on mortgage matrices. I have some sort of photographic memory and I learned it really early on. Cause I would read the back in the paper days, right?
I would read all the guidelines and my brain would just take photographs like this. Right. And I had instant recall on all the guidelines. I don’t know how I do it. I just do it. And so I’ve learned to tailor it into finding missing information, right? Like here’s the guidelines, but there’s no section on XYZ. So that I reach out to the underwriter or the rep and I say, Hey, there’s no section on that.
Yeah. We don’t care about that. Really? So, boom, here’s okay. How do I apply that? They don’t care. They don’t care about that. So like one example is one of our investors sent over the guidelines. It was a new investor for us.
And I go through their guidelines and there’s no condo section, like nothing about condos. So I reached out, I said like whoever wrote your guidelines, you should fire them. Like there’s no section on condos.
So yeah, we treat condos like single family residence. No, you don’t. So first of all, that’s just ludicrous. Like nobody does that. So what do you mean? It’s like, yeah, we don’t care if it’s a condo, single family, it’s the same thing to us. So you don’t ask for the condo docs, like the HOA cert and the HOA insurance. Nope. Don’t ask for it. Don’t care. Don’t want it.
Nope. I need to validate this. Right. Got the underwriting manager. So yeah, single family residence. We don’t ask for it. Don’t want it. Don’t care. Florida non-warrantable condos. Oh, right. Traditional financing. Don’t care. There’s open litigation.
Don’t care because I don’t know. I’m not asking for the condo docs. How would I know that there’s open litigation?
And so it opens up this floodgate of being able to do loans that nobody else can do, even though they can, they just haven’t read the guidelines to know that they can.
How do I do 97% financing for anybody with a visa? Well, a memo was pushed out three years ago that nobody read. I read the memos. I read the updates, right? And so I just saved it. And so if an underwriter questions me on it, I send them the memo like, oh, yeah. Okay. I guess I can approve that. Yes, you can. Thank you.
Justin Ulrich
Very cool. Well, let me ask you this. If you had to give some advice to maybe a loan officer or real estate agent or any local operator who’s really struggling to drive revenue, to drive business, maybe even drive leads, like what’s one thing that you could tell them to do today or even this week to start turning that around?
Eric Mitchell
Learn how to go after strategic partners to drive referrals so that you can give referrals to top realtors. Stop trying to call realtors saying, I got great rates, great products and great service. Stop it.
It’s a bad strategy. Like a good realtor, a good one is getting that phone call 10 times a week. You have to differentiate.
You have to be unique and valuable. And then you have to communicate that uniqueness and that value in a very effective manner. It’s not just…my grandfather had a great saying. He said, being in business without effective marketing is like winking at a girl in the dark.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah, perfect.
Eric Mitchell
You know what you’re doing, but it’s not getting you anyway.
Justin Ulrich
You know what you’re doing. That’s hilarious.
Eric Mitchell
And so you have to be able to communicate it effectively so that the person in front of you understands what’s in it for them. Like even if I’m talking to an immigration attorney for the very first time, right?
I’m not talking about asking for them to send out an email or referrals or no, no, no, no. I’m here to help you get new clients for free. Is that okay? Would you like new clients for free? No contract, no credit card.
I don’t want your money. I just want to show you how to get new clients. Now, most people are like, okay, too good to be true. What, what the hook? What’s the catch? Well, the catch is I’m a big believer in the trickle down effect.
And if I’m bringing you new clients, I’m probably going to get some of them from a financing standpoint. But if I don’t bring you new clients that I’d get no shot at anything. I’d like at least a shot. Yeah. Oh, okay. Now that makes sense. So what’s, what is it? Okay. Here’s how our program works. Right. And then, but, but I’m there to talk about them.
I’m not here to ask you for a referral. Now, once they agree and they go, yeah, I am going to market that. Great. By the way, I, you probably don’t handle your social media stuff. It’s probably somebody in your office, like apparently it was Sally over in the corner. She does that.
Great. If you could let Sally know, I’ll just go over and sit next to her and I’ll show her examples. And oh, by the way, and then I pull out a piece of paper and I show them an email. Do you mind, can Sally send this email out to your existing database while I’m over there? Your email says, Hey, congratulations. Guess what I found. Right. And by this time there’s like, yeah, send it, have her send out the email.
Justin Ulrich
Great. Yeah. We do a lot of, we, we, we would call that partner enablement. It’s like, you just create all the assets for them, make it super easy, set them up and give it to them.
Eric Mitchell
And like Evocalize is that’s exactly what that is.
Justin Ulrich
Exactly. We don’t, I typically don’t go too deep in the product, but high level, we basically helped to automate a lot of the process.
Eric Mitchell
You just, it was shockingly easy. Like when I set up my account, it was like one of the easiest no-brainers. Like, how do you not do this?
Like what’s like, like you have too much business that you don’t want more, more business, like your return on investment at this level is you don’t want, you know, 20X return on your investment. Like what, you know, I don’t understand that. Like, and you just click, click, click, click, click, click, click, boom. Out it goes and leads start coming in.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s, and it works for all sorts of industries, but for mortgages, really, really cool. And, you know, this is kind of letting the cat out of the bag a little bit, but we’re getting ready to push out a product that actually allows loan officers to co-market and so they could invite real estate agents to have their information on the ads, as well as the loan officer’s information.
So you’re basically splitting the cost. So you get the same amount of leads, same quality leads for half the cost, like that is a no-brainer.
Eric Mitchell
It’s already cheap, now you’re just making it almost free.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah.
Eric Mitchell
That’s silly. That’s great. It’s good. But it was, it was just really whoever designed your user interface, right? I mean, they clearly understand how to make things easy. It was, it was just so easy. Click, it was clicks. Just click, click, click. It was, it was great.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. And that’s good to hear. I’ll pass it along. Yeah. Digital marketing is tough. Even as a marketing leader…
Eric Mitchell
It’s super tough! Like until we found you guys, right. I didn’t really engage in it because it was, there’s too many moving parts.
Right. And I talked to my friends, like I’ve got lots of friends that are very successful in social media and advertising, etc. And you know, every time I ask them, like, what’s your client acquisition cost? They don’t know. And I have to break it down.
Where’s that? Okay. Well, hold on. So what do you spend on the person who’s following you, the camera, right? You’re editing costs, your manpower costs, your ad buy costs, boosting costs, your whatever add that all up per month. What is it? Right.
And one of my friends said, oh, I, if you had all that up, I’m like $12,000 a month. I’ll say $12,000, like, yeah. Okay. For $12,000, how many loans did you close last month? Like as a direct result of that effort, you said six.
Okay. So six in a $12,000 means you have a client acquisition cost of $2,000. You’re spending $2,000 to fund one loan. You can’t sustain that. I already know that your margins are jacked.
I already know you’re getting price shopped on all your loans. Cause you have to jack your margins to pay for that. Like, where’s that coming from? He’s like, yeah, I get price shopped all the time. So is it a good strategy? Not so much. Not if you’re spending $2,000 to fund one loan, it’s not sustainable.
And so I look at what you guys do. I mean, you start at $99 and you get leads. I close one loan a year, one loan a year. My client acquisition cost was $1,200 bucks. But you’re not closing one loan a year. It goes a lot, a heck of a lot more than that. So why would you spend $2,000 to fund one mortgage? It absolutely makes no business sense.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t. Yeah. We’ve got clients who are closing. We have one client who’s closed 650 deals as a result of the ads that those ads.
Eric Mitchell
I believe that.
Justin Ulrich
It’s pretty crazy. I’m switching gears real fast. So back to your, your dog rescue. I want you to give a little bit more on that. I just pull on that thread a little bit, cause it’s one of the things that makes you unique and it’s something that people typically don’t get visibility into on content that’s posted across, maybe LinkedIn or whatever, so tell me a little bit about your passion in rescuing animals and kind of how it helps you a little more.
Eric Mitchell
Yeah. Again, it comes from trauma, right? I don’t want to speak for everybody, but for me, big decisions for me usually come from some sort of trauma response. And so I had two events in my life that involved trauma around a dog. And so I never wanted a dog. Like I never had dog. I spent 40 years very focused on not having a dog. Don’t want one like, no, I won’t survive it.
And then in my most recent relationship, she was just so adamant about getting a dog and I broke down, we got a dog. And, I mean, I fell in love so hard with that dog. And then we got divorced and because it was present for her, she got the dog and the divorce.
Justin Ulrich
Oh yeah.
Eric Mitchell
And it’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is…I’ve opened up this thing. And so I went down to the–I live in San Diego, went to the Humane Society. Like, what does it look like to adopt maybe?
And they said, well, you can adopt, you can foster. And I was like, foster? What’s that look like? And so they walked me through, Oh, you’re like the bridge. So we have a dog that’s found on the street or we have a dog that’s turned in or whatever. Then they come, they stay with you instead of being here in the kennel.
Like, cause you walk through the San Diego humane or any kennel, right. They’re just in these little cages. It’s just like, yeah. Oh my God. That’s just brutal. Like living like that. I mean, it’s the best they can do and it’s not their fault, but it’s not good for the dog.
And then I Googled and I found a local organization called Second Chance Dog Rescue. And so it’s a charity, but all they do, so there’s no paid employees of any kind. And all they do is take the dogs from the kennels in Southern California that are set to be euthanized and they pull them.
And so these are dogs that are not adoptable, right? No, they’ve been in the kennel for X amount of time. Nobody adopted them, set to be euthanized, they pull them. And then they have this army of fosters in San Diego County. And I was like, that resonates with me, right? Like what they’re doing, that lands.
And so I called and said, Hey, I’d like to be a foster. I want to try this out. And they said, great, here’s how it works. And the first dog they gave me was, he had, teeth, jaw problems. Right. And all they knew is he had jaw problems. And you could look at him. It was a poodle mix. You could look at him.
It’s like, yeah, he’s like, he wouldn’t open his mouth. Like, unless he was eating something, but other than that, mouth’s not opening. And we ended up, he had 20 teeth that had to be removed. So I learned that dogs have 42 teeth, right? So, but half the teeth had to come out.
Justin Ulrich
Wow.
Eric Mitchell
And when the surgeon after said, 10 of the 20 weren’t even attached. I mean, they were just sitting on his gums. Like he was in absolute agony.
Correct. And so I nursed him through after the, like I got him before the surgery and I nursed him through the surgery. Antibiotics and, you know, I nursed him through and then he got adopted to this dream home. It was two women that were best friends their whole life. And they got divorced or whatever. And they just bought a house together and they were retired.
Yeah. And they’re like, like, we just want to love on a dog. That’s it. We’re both retired. We’re going to cook. We want a dog that just wants to be loved on. I was like, this is a dream scenario. Right. And they met and they adopted them and they just love on them. He gets home cooked meals and, you know, they just take them everywhere.
And I got hooked. That was it. I’m hooked. And so then they asked me, they were at the organization was asking me about my home. Right. I’m single, no kids.
They said, well, how are you with like, what if we had a dog that was a bite risk? And so when I was younger, I dabbled a little bit in training, mixed martial arts a little bit. So I’ve been in the ring and having guys try to punch me in the face.
I was like, not bite, but yeah, I’m okay. Like if you want to bite me, you can put a band-aid on it and like, whatever. Like it doesn’t faze me really.
And they’re like, can we try one? It was like, yeah, let’s try one. So that one, so that was my second. And they brought him over. And when I met him, he bit my foot through my sneaker, punctured my foot. Like he went, he like, right, right out the gate, right.
Justin Ulrich
He’s like, it goes hard. He goes hard.
Eric Mitchell
Let’s see how this, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I’m watching videos and like, okay, how do you deal with bite risk? How do you deal with, you know, Caesar Milan? There’s a few other trainers that are really good and right.
Same thing. Like we’ll go to someone who knows what they’re doing and just do what they tell you to do. Don’t have an opinion. I didn’t have an opinion. I’m watching videos. I do what they tell me to do. And that dog within about four hours-ish melted right into me.
Yeah, dude. I’m going to tell you, it was mind melting when it happened. I was just like, Oh my God. I think, I think I might be good at this. Like, I think, I think I can handle this. And then, he got adopted and another one who got adopted. And then I got another one who’s adopted. And some, this one I’ve got now she’s asleep next to me.
She was returned by two fosters. Both said, she’s a bite risk. Can’t have her. And then they brought her to me and this one, you know, I’ve gotten a little better at it. Right. This is about an hour. And now she looks at me. I might adopt. I’m telling you if a family doesn’t get her soon, I might have to adopt her. She looks at me like I’m a God and it’s just like, don’t look at me like that.
Oh my God. Jeez Louise, you’re killing me. And so I say it truthfully, like they heal me more than I heal them. Like to receive that much adoration and love just unconditionally. It’s pretty tough to say no to that, man.
Justin Ulrich
Well, I mean, I can see very clearly through the way you talk about it. You’re obviously super passionate about it. I thought it might be cool to drop you into AI as a hero to all dogs, you know, maybe, you’re new name is The Second Chancer.
Eric Mitchell
Oh, that is hilarious. Send that to me. Oh my God. Send that to me. That’s awesome. Oh yeah. This is my first beard that I’m growing. I’ve never had a beard in my whole life and going through all this. I’m gonna see what happens. I didn’t realize how white it was going to come in. It looked like Santa Claus.
Justin Ulrich
That’s perfect. Well, awesome. Tthat about does it for today. If you want, before we jump off, you know, let folks know how to follow you, what your book is again, what it’s called and where they can pick it up.
Eric Mitchell
Yeah. The Why of Money: How to Get Out of Your Own Way & Finally Earn What You Deserve. My website is eric-mitchell.com. And all my social media links, all my stuff’s right there. It’s super easy to find.
The book, I was a passion project and made some observations about the 1% of salespeople that make money and build wealth and the 99% who live paycheck to paycheck or less than paycheck to paycheck. And what was the difference? Right.
And people say, oh, it’s drive and motivation is no, no, no. When I went to those people and asked them the question of like, why do you earn more than you need? It was never about the money, not one single time.
And so what I learned is all of the answers came back into five buckets. There was only five answer variations. And so I wrote down the five buckets and then I started testing it like, is this…and then I would go back to the wealthy and say, okay, here’s the five. Like, is this accurate? And they’re like, no one’s ever said it to me like that before. But yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on.
So when I talk to people about making money and they’re focused on the money or safety or, you know, I want my family to be safe or I want, that’s not in the five answers. You’re always going to live paycheck to paycheck. You’re thinking about money the wrong way.
Yeah. And so there’s a video on my website as well. It’s a 15-minute video about the summary of the book. And in the video, I prove the concept. I go, okay, let’s see, let’s test it with a room full of people. Let me test it. Let’s see if it stands up to the theory.
And that’s when you go, yeah, that’s great. Yep. There it is. And so if you focus on your why, whatever that is, then everything becomes easy. If you focus on money, if you focus on activities, if you focus on all the things other than one of those five answers, then you’re always in the grind.
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. It’s becomes a game of like chasing the next “what”. It’s like, what do I do next? And it’s like, I can try this, try this, try this.
Eric Mitchell
Yeah. You’re not evolving. And what I say to people, when somebody says, oh, I closed three loans last week or last month, right. Okay. You closed three loans last month. How long have you been doing this?
Well, 20 years. Okay. No, you, you, you have not been a loan officer for 20 years. You’ve been a loan officer one year, 20 times. You haven’t evolved.
Justin Ulrich
You got to change.
Eric Mitchell
If you’re still doing mortgages today, the way you did five years ago, yeah, then you’re not evolving. You’re not changing. You’re not adapting. You’re in the grind. You’re in that minutia and I’ve been there. And so I understand it, but there are people, I’m not the only one, right.
But there are people that can grab you by the hand and pull you out of that minutia if you let them. But if you approach that from a standpoint of, well, my way is…
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your way closed three loans last month. That’s what your way did. Can I please show you how to close 20 loans a month, still working 40 hours a week? Would that be okay? Because your way closes three.
Let me try to close 20, still working 40 hours a week. Cause when you say 20 loans a month, people go, oh, I don’t want to work that much. It sounds like more work. There’s no more work. It’s not more work. You’re not understanding the sequence. That’s all. Can you be open to the sequence?
Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Very cool. Well, awesome. Well, this has been a ton of fun. Lots of excellent insights. I appreciate you taking the time to join us. Thanks everybody for listening. Eric Mitchell, thanks again for joining us in the lab.
Eric Mitchell
Great to be here, man. Thank you.
Justin Ulrich
As always, thanks for joining us in the Local Marketing Lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com.
If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook @Evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize.
And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.
Show More Show Less
