How A Mortgage Loan Officer Builds Trust And Referrals with Robbie Gardner

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:57Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Robbie Gardner with Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group. Robbie, thanks for being here. How are you doing today, sir?

1:16Robbie Gardner:I'm doing well, Cliff. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, yeah. We're very happy to have you on. So let's go ahead and jump right into things. So for those of you who may not know it yet, who are you, Robbie? Who's Robbie Gardner? And what is Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group? So Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group is exactly that. We're a company that provides mortgages to be able to fund purchases and refinance for people to buy their homes, second homes, investment properties. I am a mortgage loan officer and I am in Northwest North Carolina, licensed in North Carolina and Virginia due to proximity. And so I've been working with Atlantic Bay for this is my sixth year and been in the financial industry for about 24 years now.

2:00Who are you personally?

2:02Robbie Gardner:Personally, I am. I live in Mount Airy, North Carolina. I married for 21 years. I have a 16-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter. And so we are in the throes of teenagers and all of their schedules and everything else that they have going on. Attitudes? You know, some days, some hours, depending on where we're at. But yes, all of the above. Okay, okay. All right, well, thank you for that, Robbie. Again, we're happy to have you here. So, yeah, Robbie, let's go ahead and get right into things. You know, real talk. What's something about running a business that people think is amazing, but it's actually complete BS?

2:45would you say?

2:48Robbie Gardner:No one's paying you to show up. That's kind of the biggest thing that I've had to learn from previous industry working in four banks. Your time, your commitment, people will pay you for your time for you to be there to be able to do a job. When you start in a business, you could be the smartest person in the world. You can be the industry expert. You can do all the things, but you're not getting paid or earning an income or running an actual business until people decide that they want to do business with you. And that takes time to build up that trust and knowledge within the industry for people to actually feel comfortable in my industry talking to you about buying a home.

3:34Robbie Gardner:And they have to be really upfront and honest with financial information, credit history, income, you know, their past. And so the biggest thing as far as running a business is, you know, it's not a business unless you're making money and you're not making money until you're actually able to be the trusted advisor within this world. And, you know, again, no one's paying you just to show up. You actually have to be the one working with real estate agents, getting referrals for their buyers, being able to walk them through the entire process of being able to borrow a significant amount of money over a 30-year period to purchase a home for them and their family.

4:17Robbie Gardner:And we're all trying to get to a closing date so that that transaction can be taken care of. And again, the biggest thing is no one's really paying you for your time until that takes place. Yeah, no, I like that perspective. That's good. And so what would you say is the exact moment where you realize, you know, this could either really work or completely blow up in my face? So in my specific example, I can kind of pinpoint it when I came up through traditional banking channels, not necessarily a mortgage lender, but had loaned people money as a commercial lender, as a retail lender and decided to go out on my own.

5:01Robbie Gardner:And when I did that, it was early COVID. It was fall of 2020. Interest rates were, you know, give or take three percent. And so there was a lot of low hanging fruit for people to refinance, friends and family. And that got you through 2020 and then into 2021. And then as 2022 started, interest rates started to go up. People weren't refinancing. People were in uncertain times. And so at that point, you're thinking, well, I've got to be the one that people refer their business to. I have to proactively be the one calling on real estate agents, providing value to them, getting their borrowers approved, pre-approved and approved and getting them to closing so that the real estate agent can actually get that transaction done.

5:52I can actually work on getting a loan closed.

5:56Robbie Gardner:And it was a learning curve, Cliff, because again, at that point, I'd been working at a bank and refinances were pretty easy. You are the hero to everyone, lowering their interest rate, lowering their monthly payment, paying off some debt to all of a sudden now you're going from 3 % rates to 6 % rates, 6.5 % rates. And you really actually have to sell yourself and your product and why people should do business with you and why you should be the one that they actually trust throughout this process. And so from 2022, you know, that spring, summer, you know, and through current day to day, because interest rates are kind of relatively the same as they were then.

6:38Robbie Gardner:They weren't on that drastic uptick as they were at that point. But from there on out, you had to be the one that, you know, adds value to the transaction. Why are real estate agents referring their buyers to you to be able to help them buy a home? where are you getting your clients from? Where are you getting your borrowers from? How are you marketing yourself? And you have to, at that point, I've got to devise a plan and I've got to work it daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, so that I can be able to depend on this amount of income, to depend on this amount of business, to be able to come in so that I can budget appropriately.

7:17Robbie Gardner:and it was a pretty steep learning curve. But I saw it to it on the other side and I feel really good about where I'm at right now. There was just a big uptick in the race and people just weren't buying. They were like, oh, we're going to wait for the race to go back down. And now we're, what, three years later and the race still haven't gone back down. So not down to those levels, at least. Let's put it that way. Correct. It's been a while, but people have adapted and moved on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what would you say is the most stressful moment you've had as a business owner? Like a, you know, how am I going to get through this type of moment?

7:54Well, I'll go back to that time period of, all right, you know, was this leaving a secure position at a bank with a salary and benefits?

8:11Robbie Gardner:Was that a sound decision for myself and my family? And at that point, again, you kind of just flip a switch and say, I've got to get into, you know, survival mode, so to speak. If I'm going to make this work, I'm going to give myself this time frame. I don't want to say, you know, burn the ships. There are no plan B's. There's always something else that can can happen. However, I wanted this. This is the decision that I made. I wanted to go out on my own with a mortgage business and I wanted to be able to add value to this process. I wanted to be able to market myself as a leader in the industry, knowledgeable and trustworthy.

8:55Robbie Gardner:And so I gave myself X amount of time and it was really ultimately like one year. I love the industry. I love what I'm doing. I don't know that it's going to love me back. right? In your case, you know, you might have liked what you're doing, but you know, you wasn't able to sustain that because the department was let go. It's not anything that you did, but at that point, if you're going to be an individual mortgage lender, you know, you have to commit to realizing that I can't sit around and think about what I had. I can't sit around and think about what my goals are for a year or two years down the road.

9:34Robbie Gardner:I need to figure out what I need to do today. What do I need to do this week in order to turn the month into the month that I want to have a quarter to be able to get ahead. And at that point, I just started working on a business plan and just working on day-to-day behaviors and gaining that confidence in what I'm doing. And then the outcomes just started speaking for themselves. Okay. I like that. I like that. So have you ever thought about quitting the business? And if so, what stopped you? Well, during that time period, you know, I thought about, you know, maybe this just isn't for me. Maybe I hit it wrong.

10:09Robbie Gardner:And, you know, I can dust the suits off. I can go back to the bank. And I always joked around like I can I can always go back. I'll run a teller window at the bank or I can go do something else. But what stopped me, Cliff, was the fact that this was what I wanted. And I was going to see through it to the end and make sure that, you know, I didn't you know, put myself in any grave financial danger of staying with it. But I didn't want to sustain something that wasn't going to be able to provide for me and my family down the road. And so at that point, I just started realizing that by working my system, working with real estate agents, by staying in contact with them, making their phone calls, providing value for them, providing educational points of contact for them by teaching classes and things, I realized, all right, I can grow this.

11:06Robbie Gardner:I can scale this. I can actually perform in these circumstances. People are still going to purchase homes. What we see on the nightly news that necessarily correlate to the market that I'm in, you know, I'm in mostly rural North Carolina, Southwest Virginia, Northwest North Carolina. And so people still need to purchase homes. People still need to refinance their homes every once in a while. People still need to or have a desire to build a home so you can get them a construction loan. You just have to be the person that they think of and go to when they need that. And so when you realize that it's still going to keep moving forward, you've just got to be the one that people actually consider when they need.

11:56Robbie Gardner:to be able to purchase, to be able to refinance or want to build their home. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So what would you say is something about you personally that had to change in order for your business to grow? I'll go back to what I was saying earlier was no one was paying me to be here. You know, no one was, no one was paying me to show up and make phone calls. And I have a processor, a loan processor. I have an underwriter that I work with. I have a closure that I work with and my job is to, you know, I'm a mortgage loan originator. And so my job is to originate loans, which means go get the business and keep filling the funnel.

12:37Robbie Gardner:And so I just had to make a conscious effort of who am I reaching out to today? What real estate agent am I reaching out to or how many am I reaching out to today to talk to them about a new product? what maybe something you heard on the news or some different plan or point of emphasis of a program that I've got so that I can try to get a mortgage application. How many buyers can I get in front of to be able to send out pre-approval letters? And again, that was a mindset shift for me of I need, I'm a loan officer. I'm a loan originator. My goal is to go get them, put the application in as clean as possible, have the conversations about budget, about credit, about their jobs and income and all the difficult conversations so that everybody feels comfortable about what they're getting into.

13:33Robbie Gardner:You know, as far as a monthly payment, how much money does that look like as far as a loan is concerned or how much money are they going to come out of pocket from their savings? And that's my job. And I get them and I bring them in. And once I get something approved, my processor works with the buyer at that point to get a few items that the underwriter may have required, maybe a new bank statement or maybe an explanation about something on a pay stub. And I keep moving on and try to find new deals throughout the day and throughout the week. So and obviously this is a hypothetical question, but if somebody was to shadow you for a full day, what would surprise them most about how you operate?

14:16Robbie Gardner:I think it would surprise the most about how much I'm actually on the phone talking to people throughout the day. And I share with folks that the Lord blessed me with the ability to have difficult conversations to come to simple terms. And, you know, it's it's a big deal. Purchasing a home, borrowing money over a 30 year period is a huge deal. It is the most, one of the biggest financial decisions anyone makes in their life. And to be able to have that conversation, to be able to answer the questions, how nervous people may be. A first-time homebuyer, they don't know the questions to ask. They don't know where, you know, where to go for right information.

15:07Robbie Gardner:And so I think people will be surprised of how similar a lot of experiences are for people. And they don't know what their payment should be. They don't know what a 30-year mortgage is. They don't know what information is needed to be able to do it. But also to know that everyone's individual circumstances are very different. You know, how do they get paid? Are they paid a salary? Are they paid commissions? Do they own their own business? how you're able to disseminate all this information from each person and put it into simple terms of, you know, Cliff, based on your information, we're able to borrow this.

15:47Robbie Gardner:That's going to have a payment of about this. You'll be able to shop for homes in this price range. And you have a lot of the same conversations and you answer a lot of the same questions, but the answers are different and based on each individual. And so, again, just a lot of conversations with folks, making them feel comfortable knowing that, you know, this is their monthly payment is going to be due every month for the next 360 months. And that's a big deal to be able to have someone to feel comfortable for you so they understand what they're getting into. So they don't feel like, wow, I bought, you know, I bought too much of a house.

16:26Robbie Gardner:I don't like this payment. I can't do anything. I'm not able to save. I'm not able to fix up the house. But I think people would be surprised just how similar a lot of the fears are, but how different everyone's circumstances are. Yeah, no, that's a good one there. So let's talk about numbers without getting too specific. You know, what would you say was the turning point where things started to scale and become profitable for your business? well coming out of 2022 when you kind of you know i forced myself to just make a realization of if i want to stay in it this is what i need to do this is what the business needs to be able to provide me and my family in order to stay in it and just kind of work backwards in that of if i want to have this type of production and it takes this many conversations to be able to turn into an application and it takes this many applications to turn into a closed loan, you can reverse engineer a lot of those things to give you ideas of how many conversations do I need to have during the day?

17:32How many applications do I need to take during the week to be able to not guarantee because

17:39Robbie Gardner:nothing's guaranteed in this world, but at least give you a projection of where you need to be at each month, each quarter. and during that time period I worked with a sales coach to be able to help me with those numbers help me with those behaviors and focus on the behaviors and not the end result because if you feel like well if I want to do 20 million dollars in production this year if you start if you just sit around day to day thinking about 20 million dollars you're going to be really disappointed because you're not close in April right you're not close in January it's such a big number but You know that based on that number, I need to be, you know, at this many conversations during the week, this many applications during the week, this many loan closings during the month.

18:26Robbie Gardner:And you sort of gamify a little bit on what you need to do and focus on those daily, weekly behaviors to be able to get the monthly, quarterly, yearly results. That makes sense. So what would you say actually moves the needle most in your business right now? Did you say leads, conversions, pricing, or your team's performance? I know you said you've got a little process on the underwriter. So, team's performance, once you get an application in, is how you're going to stand out against some competition. But initially, it's about having confident, confident conversations with buyers. Meet them where they're at.

19:05Robbie Gardner:Find out what their goals are. Let them know that I have a product for that. I can help with that scenario that you've got. Letting folks know that you can take care of it. You're confident in your ability to get that loan to closing so that they can go out and make an offer. That's what's going to make you stand out. Pricing is, you know, interest rates are like, you're always going to find a better interest rate. I don't care what website you go to. There's always something else to be able to provide a different interest rate. You may always find something a little cheaper. But at the end of the day, if people know, like, and trust you and they feel that you're going to get them to closing because ultimately that's what they want.

19:44Robbie Gardner:They want to buy a home and they want to be in a home and that you can get them within that time frame that's outlined on the purchase contract. That's what's going to set you apart with real estate agents so that they feel comfortable referring their buyers to you to be able to help them be able to borrow the money to be able to purchase a home. You know, what's one thing you're doing today that's giving you an unfair advantage over your competitors? So the big, big thing that. I feel that gives me the advantage over my competitors is, you know, accessibility, being able to speak to real estate agents and their buyers.

20:26Robbie Gardner:and being able to talk to them. I'm not at a bank. It's not nine to five and then no one answers the phone and no one's there on the weekends. I realized that people go look at houses on nights and weekends when they leave their work. And so being accessible during that time period, but also being able to add value and education moments for real estate agents, not just the buyers, because they want to be able to have conversations with their buyers to know what the market is doing to what to expect, what are certain loan products that maybe this property could be eligible for. And so I try to stay in contact with real estate agents with market updates, at least on a weekly basis.

21:11Robbie Gardner:Sometimes it's on a daily basis, depending on how volatile the market is. But also once a month, providing education moments for them to come. And, you know, this Friday I'm offering a class on construction loans, renovation loans and land loans. Those are not three everyday occurrences, but it's questions that real estate agents have. So they can come questions that real estate agents receive from possible buyers. And so they can at least come and gain some knowledge about the market. and if they need to be able to express to a possible buyer some of the advantages of building a new home or maybe doing a renovation loan, they can at least have the input and feel confident in their conversations.

21:54Robbie Gardner:So I do feel as if that is an advantage that I have is providing these learning moments within real estate agents so that they will be able to have confident conversations with their buyers as well. Okay. Okay. No, I like that. I like that. Now, what would you say is the fastest way someone could lose their job working for you?

22:16Robbie Gardner:Great question. I, you know, fastest way to lose a job is, you know, not keeping up, not anticipating some of the questions, as I mentioned earlier, how a lot of buyers have the same questions, fears, or concerns over the process. And so not anticipating some of those, but ultimately just dropping the ball within communication of keeping people abreast of certain timeline hurdles. You know, application's been received. Thank you for filling out your application. Here's, you know, we want to talk to you about your loan options based on your information or, you know, has the appraisal come in? Has a loan been approved?

23:00Robbie Gardner:Stay on top of those communication touch points so that everyone stays in the loop and there's no surprises as we get to closing date. That and just flat out, you know, given wrong information, right? We have a, you know, a very regulated industry. There's only so much that can be done. However, I like to joke around that everyone's one TikTok away from getting the worst information they've ever heard in their life. And so making sure we're up to date with knowledge of the market, knowledge of guidelines of certain programs between, you know, between like FHA or VA loans for veterans, you know, mistakes are going to happen, but at least knowing, you know, the nuts and bolts of each loan product so that we can have those conversations and people can know what to expect within that process.

23:57So have you ever had to make a tough call, you know, like letting someone go or cutting something off that ended up being the right move at the time?

24:05Robbie Gardner:Fortunately, in this industry, just over the past, you know, again, I'm in year six of being, you know, on my own as an originator within Atlantic Bay, I haven't had to have that conversation with, you know, someone on my team or a coworker. But I do, you know, express that, But as much as we do to get business, I can call on these real estate agents and I can work with these buyers that are possible borrowers to me. Sometimes no is an answer. And a lot of times we're not denying people credit, but we're having the conversation of it's not today, but here's the steps in order to repair your credit.

24:54Robbie Gardner:here's what you need to do time-wise on your new job. And so we don't really deny people the opportunity to borrow. It's more of a not today or a not right now, but here's the steps on how to make it in the future. Again, sometimes it's as simple as having credit counseling sessions with folks of paying down certain smaller debts to be able to get a quick boost on their scores within a short time frame, talking about 10 days to less than 30 days. They may be on the threshold of a minimum credit score or if someone, like in my case, I left a bank with a salary position and all of a sudden I go work and you're 100 % commission within your job.