Guests: Ryan Yardley, Daniel Ramsey
Recorded: October 3, 2019
Excerpt
Mortgage brokers like Ryan Yardley have put virtual assistants to use in the mortgage & loan-origination industry to save time, reduce costs, and dramatically leverage their lending business —and in this special webinar event, you’ll learn exactly how they outsource their time-consuming, repetitive tasks to virtual assistants to give them more time to grow their business.
Ryan is a mortgage consultant at American Mortgage & Equity Consultants, with management experience in all three major aspects of the real estate industry: Mortgage Origination, Title Insurance/Escrow, Real Estate Broker & Sales.
Ryan says, “As a loan officer, I want to create relationships with REALTORS®, and I use my VA to help me acquire the relationship. He set up 51 one-on-one meetings with agents in the first quarter I had him, which is awesome because acquiring the relationship will acquire the mortgage. So right now, I have him calling to create new meetings & relationships for me, and then I focus on calling agents I already know who are parties to transactions. The thing is, my VA is so good at his job that my schedule is booked solid – I haven’t had availability for any new appointments in months!”
Transcript
00:00:02:06 – 00:00:26:08
Ryan Yardley
I owned a title company for 15 years, and before that I did mortgages. And after 15 years I had so many employees, I decided I wanted to run a much more nimble business and not have a million offices and not have 50 employees. And I could make as much money being back to being a mortgage consultant with four or five employees than I could with 50 and 12 offices.
00:00:26:13 – 00:00:58:08
Ryan Yardley
So I’m on that journey to get back. I was closing 1000 deals a month as a title company, and I want to make the revenue today, the profit today that I did during 1000 deals in title with SEAL Team six of five people in mortgage. And I can be a true consultancy and I have a personal value in the transaction, whereas the owner of the title company, I was simply an owner and I had a big staff and I managed the staff building.
00:00:58:08 – 00:01:24:18
Ryan Yardley
The company was fine. Maintaining it at its size was not fine. And then as the market scales up and scales down at that size, there’s a lot of hassles that comes with that. So I came back to mortgage. I’m in my fourth year and I’ve more than doubled my business in the last year and I had hired Dialer locally and that was very frustrating to say the least.
00:01:24:18 – 00:01:46:14
Ryan Yardley
I could go on much more than that. But you know, we had to have a big celebration and a small break every time we had a decent conversation, stuff like that happened, right? And then hiring them and then firing them in such a so when I, I actually what’s great is that I learned about your company through one of these interviews that you did this.
00:01:46:14 – 00:02:08:22
Ryan Yardley
This is what we’re doing right now is how I learned of you. I knew of an agent locally that was doing big business. And I watched the one hour interview five times or so. And and then I jumped in. Well, there was a lot of really good information in there. And I’m a I’m a big studier, so that’s what’s going on.
00:02:08:22 – 00:02:38:04
Ryan Yardley
So I learned from that. And then I go in and we acquired my first ba, my only vague yes. And still with me and it’s been it’s unbelievable. It’s like having a robot, you know, that’s got a personality. But as far as tasks go and execution, it’s stellar. Is knowledge of the software a stellar ability to, you know, to try to execute a strategy can now be done.
00:02:38:04 – 00:02:46:05
Ryan Yardley
Whereas before, without my hands on, I couldn’t execute strategy. So I’m kind of an alchemist and I’ll come up with ideas and things and then need to test them out.
00:02:46:05 – 00:03:02:22
Daniel Ramsey
So sure. So I got I heard a couple of things I want to confirm. One, you doubled your business. How do you how would you like equate working with my our desk? And what was our part in that doubling, in your opinion?
00:03:03:20 – 00:03:23:15
Ryan Yardley
Well, you know, as a loan officer, we want to create relationships with realtors. Right. And before you can create a relationship with a realtor, you have to be introduced to have an introductory meeting and start to see if there’s some commonality and if there’s somebody you want to work with or not. So you have to have a lot of belly to belly.
00:03:23:21 – 00:03:42:21
Ryan Yardley
Belly to belly. Hey, how are you? Meetings. And so I definitely use my VA to help me acquire the relationships at the appointments to meet with agents. Quarter four of 2017, I had 51 on ones with agents I had never met before, sat by my VA.
00:03:43:11 – 00:04:05:14
Daniel Ramsey
Wow, wow. And, and, and they said and and and you met the person and you created a relationship. How has the VA like helped you acquire mortgages? I mean, because that’s acquiring the relationship that will acquire the mortgage, but. Correct. Have they done any cold calling for you or service to the agents?
00:04:05:14 – 00:04:28:14
Ryan Yardley
Yes. So one of the reasons why I have the VA call the unknown ones, right? I call the agents that I know are the parties to transactions. The agents that are on the other side. But I use the VA for raw new contacts. Right. And so I have them call people and we there have been they’re targeted. I research and I have a targeted list.
00:04:28:14 – 00:04:50:01
Ryan Yardley
So I’ll have like I just had a new list of 105. This is the season. The thing is, he got me so busy and we had so many new relationships and business. He has not been able to set any new appointments from me since February of 18. All year to fall. I couldn’t. I can’t. You want to get a relationship, you have to take care of it.
00:04:50:01 – 00:05:15:09
Ryan Yardley
And so I can’t just keep prospecting. I have to take care of them. So I had. But he does call the agents every Wednesday and ask them what new listings they might have and if they have any opens this weekend. And then he’ll help out with prepping for the opens and getting me. You know, I have open house fliers and other joint marketing things like that and then he’ll take care of all that for me.
00:05:15:09 – 00:06:01:18
Ryan Yardley
So he’s maintaining my relationships and doing some weekly things that help them out, you know, being able to generate more business. We also, of course, I claim to have a leak proof lead funnel. Okay. So when an agent refers me a client or a potential client, they go into my CRM. My CRM is is through follow up by us and follow my boss has really helped me develop a very high level CRM situation where we’re using my virtual to make sure that all the leads go touched at all times so I can hold leads and potential clients for a year and a half, two years, and still convert them because agents, as you know, they’ll
00:06:01:18 – 00:06:21:22
Ryan Yardley
get a lot of clients and they’ll get out in the car and things will be going well. But then the customer will just go on, hold the customer, say, hey, you know what? I’m, you know, it’s not really our time. I think we’re going to wait, right? The agent then gets busy and the agent loses those. The agents can rely on me that if they give me their client referrals, that the stranger and I are going to stay in touch with them.
00:06:21:22 – 00:06:42:06
Ryan Yardley
We’ve got, you know, a drips don’t work, man, right? They sort of work. But come on. It’s not you’re not going to convert business on drips. You’re going to convert business on texts and phone calls. And with the protocol that we’ve developed, I’m able to contact and maintain thousands of potential clients and turn them into deals for my realtor partners.
00:06:42:06 – 00:06:47:17
Ryan Yardley
So there’s there’s an unbelievable amount of value to being able to execute strategies. Well.
00:06:48:06 – 00:07:08:19
Daniel Ramsey
That’s awesome, Ryan. You’re crazy. I love it. What’s your protocol? I you’re crazy. And I love it because you’re a business person using leverage to create revenue. And for me, I mean, you’re like, that’s exactly why my office exists. So what’s your protocol or so go ahead. Where are you going to say?
00:07:09:07 – 00:07:35:00
Ryan Yardley
Well, yeah, I mean, so I built the title company, you know, and we closed 50, 60,000 transactions over a 15 year period. So I’ve got to be able to figure out how to run. And, you know, that was its own process, right? There’s a process and a system to that. Although the gestation period for title transactions is very short, the gestation period for real estate transactions can be very long.
00:07:35:07 – 00:08:02:07
Ryan Yardley
And I think the biggest when I got into the business really started going through it. I think the biggest loss in our game is the transactions that take longer than six months to develop. And if I can be a valuable asset to realtors in in them not losing that that revenue, that income, that potential that they’ve already paid for and they’ve already put effort in, then I’m pretty valuable to them.
00:08:02:07 – 00:08:05:10
Ryan Yardley
And that’s really kind of a key part about what I’m trying to do.
00:08:05:21 – 00:08:12:02
Daniel Ramsey
Well, I think you said it best when you said I’m a no leak scenario like our complete.
00:08:12:02 – 00:08:12:11
Ryan Yardley
Funnel.
00:08:12:24 – 00:08:47:13
Daniel Ramsey
Leak leak proof lead funnel. I love it. What’s your so if you get a new client in like walk me through the protocol of how you share responsibility with your bank because. Because everybody does it a little bit different. You’re obviously having success. Doubled your income from 17 to 18. You’re on a call with me, obviously. Sure. So walk me through how you guys are married in the process and what your part is, what his part is, and then how, you know, how you create that good bond, you know, with with it.
00:08:47:13 – 00:09:13:24
Ryan Yardley
Well well, I mean, he is really trying to make he’s making sure that we make the contacts and find out and and and the, you know, the politeness. When I first met Scherzer, it was my when I first met him on the phone, you know, it was totally new to me, right? I hadn’t done anything. And when I got done with that initial interview, I’m like, that guy reminds me of, like, what the suit salesman would be like in a Nordstrom’s, right?
00:09:14:10 – 00:09:39:21
Ryan Yardley
Professional, articulate, polite, you know, but but the professional, articulate and polite, like, you know, kind of kind of classy and stuff. And I was like, this is great because that’s what I want my, my image to be in, in connection with the clients, you know, with the customers and with the realtors. I needed to have an assistant that could speak for me to both the agents and to the customers.
00:09:39:21 – 00:09:43:02
Ryan Yardley
And that’s hard to find. Yes, it’s really hard to find.
00:09:43:08 – 00:10:00:21
Daniel Ramsey
And when you find them in the U.S., what happens is you train them up, they get licenses, then they go out and compete with you. That’s exactly I mean, that happened to me all the time, you know, so. Okay. So how do you guys work through your protocol together? Like, what’s your part? What’s his part like? Walk me through, like when.
00:10:00:21 – 00:10:20:09
Ryan Yardley
We get the leads. So we get the so like referrals from the agents that are sending me people that I need to call. I’m going to make that phone call. So anybody that the agent has spoken to or that that’s there and sometimes I’ll just part shot off deals. I mean, I’m not afraid to call anyone. You can you can.
00:10:20:10 – 00:10:38:22
Ryan Yardley
I know if you’re familiar with Rene Rodriguez, he’s a national speaker guy out there. And and he’ll tell you if anybody knows he’s scared of nothing. I am scared to because I like to test this stuff out. Look, there’s nothing that anyone who works for me that I haven’t done or can’t do myself right. And so I have no problem.
00:10:39:00 – 00:10:45:14
Ryan Yardley
So I test out a lot of the things myself. Then I put them on it, you know, and there’s my will. Shut that down.
00:10:45:14 – 00:10:46:23
Daniel Ramsey
There’s another referral.
00:10:47:04 – 00:11:06:04
Ryan Yardley
You never know. So. So, no, I take the referral cause I still do answer my phone and take stuff at night. You know, I’ll admit, too, that Saturdays and Sundays, I’m still grind in the game, you know, and I’ll have to find some way to ease out of that. But I just I know that the realtors need that coverage.
00:11:06:09 – 00:11:21:08
Ryan Yardley
So even if I ease out of that or I’m not able to take those calls all the time, if somebody has to, somebody has to. So so I may wind up with the virtual is to be in that role at some point in time to make sure that I have the coverage. I know this. I can depend on them.
00:11:21:09 – 00:11:40:12
Ryan Yardley
If they have a schedule there, they’ll be good for it. That’s that’s been impressive but no so I take the calls are people that just talk to anyone the realtor feels I need to speak to because I’m the consultant and I’m the one that I feel needs to land the deal. Get the fish in the boat so I get the fish in the boat and chase or get them in the landing net or such.
00:11:40:13 – 00:11:58:12
Ryan Yardley
You know, he’ll follow up to make sure where are they. A lot of leads or new business comes in and he will do follow up calls. Hey, just checking in to see, you know, how it’s been going, how has it been working with. So we have clients that have various realtors, large realtors with large swaths of business coming in.
00:11:58:18 – 00:12:18:07
Ryan Yardley
So we get daily leads. There’s daily leads and we’re not necessarily the converters of it, although I would like to make I think I would prefer to just run the whole thing from scratch if I could, when the new lead comes in that we start talking to them right away. But a lot of times it’s. It depends upon how the agent wants to run it.
00:12:18:21 – 00:12:38:16
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what I think you’re better at and what I hear in your value is, is that you have a systematic, process based approach to incubating leads, and that is a massive value to real estate people. Because I’m a real estate guy, we like to talk. That’s what we do. Yeah. We don’t want to run a process.
00:12:38:17 – 00:12:45:12
Daniel Ramsey
We want to talk and be face to face. And so I think you’re adding value to people at a high level. I think I mean, it makes sense.
00:12:45:12 – 00:12:58:12
Ryan Yardley
Yeah, I love the stories. You know, every new customer that I get when I get to talk to them, I kind of love to hear their story a little bit. When I hear a little bit of it, I was asked for their story What are we doing? And a little background. And then I remember everything about them kind of triggers my memory.
00:12:59:21 – 00:13:33:18
Ryan Yardley
But as far as jays are and the protocol over time is that we use a cleared the list system versus a follow up task system because you can manage a much larger quantity of people that way. I think that’s where a lot of things get lost is agents use their CRM or other users CRM and they have follow up, follow up our task and it just it’s easier to run this is about was taught me how to use this clear the list model instead and that’s so everything is set up over time and they get put on a time and how far out are they.
00:13:33:21 – 00:13:55:02
Ryan Yardley
And they’re in the six month list time then and they’re going to get caught up on when that expires. Then their time expires. They’re back in the list. So he has to clear his lists every day. And the computer is telling him what his lists are and then he categorizes them if they’re shifting into a different zone. So we’ve got the zones and we can literally manage 10,000 leads in that system.
00:13:55:22 – 00:14:17:02
Daniel Ramsey
So it’s almost like once you cause, you know, buyers, it’s motivation and timeframe. Those are the things that matter and it matters big time for you because you need to know, you know, when they plan to move and then the why behind that they’re planning to move. So in your system, what you’re doing is you’re just saying, okay, this is a three month deal.
00:14:17:09 – 00:14:23:04
Daniel Ramsey
And so in three months it comes back up and then your VA has to clear that list in that three month time frame.
00:14:23:04 – 00:14:27:00
Ryan Yardley
Is there anything that puts a six month the customer tells you had six your column in three?
00:14:27:20 – 00:14:29:08
Daniel Ramsey
Well, that was what I was wondering is like.
00:14:29:19 – 00:14:47:06
Ryan Yardley
You don’t take a literal for it. Yeah, you have these things and then there’s past client follow ups and there’s other protocols and things that go out. I mean my then my sure fire software, that’s another I mean he knows how to run all the different softwares, right? I got a number of them. And so then you’re looking at past client sitting and sure fire.
00:14:47:06 – 00:15:09:17
Ryan Yardley
And we can see when people put their house up for sale, we can see we know when people’s birthdays are. There’s just there’s just so many different things that they can do with a best is that they’re able to use any of the softwares that I have right is ringcentral for the communications. We can do the same type of Zoom video that we’re doing right now with.
00:15:09:20 – 00:15:29:00
Ryan Yardley
I just I just had one the other day with them twice on face to face and an outage at I don’t what I’m glad but I’ll tell you the biggest thing is I didn’t have to do a lot of training and I don’t really do the morning scripting calls or any of that. I see and hear a lot of that out of a lot of people and, you know, if it’s necessary, great.
00:15:29:04 – 00:15:40:19
Ryan Yardley
But I was blessed with the situation with them that I didn’t ever need to do any of that because he had worked for real estate people and been in this game for a couple of years before me. So it was it was just off and running.
00:15:41:04 – 00:16:02:03
Daniel Ramsey
What I mean, what was the beginning like when you first heard us having a conversation made us and the concept, what was this like? What was the decision point that made you move forward? Like, how did you decide, I have a need, I’m going to move forward? And then what did you learn after you hired him? I’m curious.
00:16:02:04 – 00:16:18:18
Ryan Yardley
Okay. I’m not a procrastinator. I throw I test a lot of stuff. How are you ever going to know if that works? We don’t test it. So I test crap all the time. I burn through, I take phone calls. I take a lot of phone calls. I know a lot of us get these calls from places and then I beat them out.
00:16:18:18 – 00:16:32:07
Ryan Yardley
I hammer them with hard questions and I tell them that they got to give me. So I just had one the other day and I said, there’s three things. Everybody wants to know when they’re doing a deal. What am I going to get? When am I going to get it? And what’s the probability it’s going to happen? Right?
00:16:32:07 – 00:16:47:14
Ryan Yardley
And so I make them tell me, what am I going to get, you know, when am I going to get it? And then I’m like, okay, now you need to give me somebody who is a customer who’s going to tell me this stuff works that I can validated. You can’t. I’m not going to just, you know. And so you guys covered those bases.
00:16:48:08 – 00:17:09:13
Ryan Yardley
I certainly knew who was on that video. I knew who it was and I knew the numbers they were doing. And I’m like, okay, that’s it totally makes sense. And so then I checked it out. The interview stuff and the barrier to entry wasn’t very much with you guys. So and then my company hired, I think four or five more days from, from my desk because of what I was doing.
00:17:09:20 – 00:17:28:20
Ryan Yardley
But they but many of them didn’t really quite gather the whole thing. You can’t just hire a VA and not have a full plan and have kind of a regimen of what you want them to do. And it won’t work. So not everybody met that with success, in all honesty, right? A couple of them did, but a lot of them didn’t because they just weren’t designed for that.
00:17:28:24 – 00:17:30:07
Daniel Ramsey
You know, they didn’t have that.
00:17:30:07 – 00:17:33:18
Ryan Yardley
Stuff to go along is probably not going to need a VA.
00:17:33:18 – 00:17:47:20
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. So if, if you were telling another mortgage person how to do this, what are the what are the 3 to 5 steps that you went through that made you successful versus your peers who screwed this thing up and didn’t get you didn’t.
00:17:47:20 – 00:18:04:21
Ryan Yardley
Screw it up. They didn’t screw it up. They didn’t have a plan. They don’t know what to do with them. I mean, quite honestly, I share about all the time I if you’ve got a plan, they’re so effective. I, you know, I need to hire two or three. I need two or three else to work under me, honestly.
00:18:04:21 – 00:18:30:01
Ryan Yardley
But I like perfection before I start expanding like that. And so I’m trying to finish this thing up. And I also like to prove theories before I go bragging and telling everybody, you should get on board with this. So I’ve been proving my theory. I’ve been getting things buttoned up. I’m making sure the system works, and then I’ll say, Hey, I could use a couple of guys and we’ll get you some realtors who will make this work and be a part of my my team.
00:18:30:01 – 00:18:48:09
Ryan Yardley
But really, my team is is just me focusing on, you know, I doing is doing as many deals as I can. I actually just added another two staff to my team to help me with the deals that I’m doing. But I do have a very active role in the transactions. I do a true consulting job with the customers that I’m given and and I enjoy that part.
00:18:48:09 – 00:19:07:02
Ryan Yardley
So I don’t I don’t foresee passing that part up that that’s the part that I enjoy. So you got to do the part you enjoy, right? I do want to nobody enjoys calling grinding 10,000 leads in a system of various levels. Right. We have hot ones. Ones we’re hot. We’ve got ones that are cold. Never been called before.
00:19:07:14 – 00:19:26:23
Ryan Yardley
We’ve got the gamut in there, but somebody’s got to do it. And that’s where the gold is. There’s a lot of gold in that big pile of dirt, and you just need to know how to extract and have the best machine. You know, I watch that, but I could do very well what’s called the gold show. On, on, on whatever channel it’s on even, I don’t know.
00:19:26:23 – 00:19:28:18
Ryan Yardley
But those guys are going to love.
00:19:29:08 – 00:19:30:07
Daniel Ramsey
Discovery, right?
00:19:30:08 – 00:19:47:08
Ryan Yardley
Discovery. Yeah. And then they have these big gold catching machines and those machines don’t always work, and then they lose the gold through the sluice or whatever. Well, I knew that I had to build the best gold catching machine possible, because that’s very similar to what this real estate business is about and all these leads that agents have.
00:19:47:16 – 00:19:50:21
Ryan Yardley
So I’m just trying to be a better miner.
00:19:51:16 – 00:20:04:03
Daniel Ramsey
I love it, man. Brian, I appreciate you. Thanks for your time today. This has been this has been fun. One last question. What was your production in 17 and what is your production in 18 if you don’t mind sharing like that?
00:20:04:03 – 00:20:33:18
Ryan Yardley
And so, I mean, I got out of title at the end like throughout 14. So at 2050 I didn’t even know how to run Encompass, which is the loan education system. So I knew what a Channel three was. I’d taken loan apps, I, I quit being a loan officer the last time in oh, 1998. So 1998 I left lending went into Title 2014, a lot of title came back to lending and I had to really relearn the whole thing.
00:20:33:24 – 00:20:59:07
Ryan Yardley
So I think I did 12 million in 17. And so, you know, I’m around 18 million or more for 18. Okay. Where we’ll wind up 19 million, something like that. And then I would expect, you know, without staff and just the one other person I’m hoping to get between 25 and 30 million for 19, you know, in all honesty.
00:20:59:07 – 00:21:23:19
Ryan Yardley
And it could double. The thing is, here’s the thing. I just don’t have the capacity back at the office to do the deals. Well, at that, you know, only that much. If I had that, I could do more with the marketing systems and with the VA. I could easily triple that. Getting a lot of transactions isn’t really the challenge as much as it is making sure you do a great execution job once you got the loan in the door.
00:21:24:04 – 00:21:44:00
Ryan Yardley
Sure. Yeah, that’s my staffing problem. Now is if I’m going to expand more than that, I’m for I’m currently staffed, capable to grow to that level right now so I can I’m already set to do that. And if some adjustments happen or things that I can go more. But again, I don’t like to make claims that can’t be executed.
00:21:44:09 – 00:22:01:14
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, it makes sense. And on that 18 million, what do you think the your VA is responsible for? I keep asking you the question different ways, but I love to nail down clients and say if you really had to say is eight of the $8 million, is that how much the VA is now?
00:22:01:17 – 00:22:21:10
Ryan Yardley
I suppose it’s hard. I mean, the VA is an integral part of what I do, so it’s not like they’re like this part runs through this channel, in this part runs through another channel. They touch all my agents, everything. They they don’t touch every deal per se, because if an agent calls me and we’re writing right now and I’m out here, they just call me out of the blue.
00:22:21:17 – 00:22:41:04
Ryan Yardley
Then Chase is not a part of that individual, but he is a part of that agent’s weekly operations. As we talk about the opens and we talk about the things that got going on and we’re following up on other referrals have given us that are straggling or whatever. So is an integral part of my operation, so it’s hard to separate it out.
00:22:41:07 – 00:22:50:01
Ryan Yardley
I would say that I increased the whole amount of increases because every component of my operation of which is an integral part.
00:22:50:16 – 00:22:54:23
Daniel Ramsey
Awesome. Brian, thanks for your time today. You’re awesome. I appreciate you so much.
00:22:55:06 – 00:23:02:06
Ryan Yardley
Thanks. No problem.