How To Grow A Residential Mortgage Company With Sean Phalon

 
 Josh
 Good day, fellow dealmakers. Welcome to the deal scout on today's show. We're going to have a conversation with Sean Fallon, and he's going to give us an idea and overview for investors and deal makers in the residential area. I want to look for. So Sean, welcome to the show, man. 

 Sean
 Thanks Josh. Thanks for having me on man. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Why don't you give us of an idea of who you are and what you do? 

 Sean
 Yes. So my name is Sean Fallon. I've been the mortgage financing for almost 10 years now and I own independent branch office here at home. Several of them, you have a team that handles everything from the start of the process, all the way to the close. I run our business here. I'm also a real estate investor as well, and all things real estate. I love it, financing it, finding it, investing it pretty much all things real estate, but then doing that for almost 10 years now. It's been great are welcome here in the Bergen county area of New Jersey. 

 Josh
 Okay. Right on how'd you get your start into real estate, like where your FA what's your family into it, or you kind of fell into it. What did that look like? 

 Sean
 Yeah, so I really didn't have any family that was prominent in it at all. You know, my start was pretty wild. I was out of college. I dropped out, I was never a school guy. So I wanted to go into architecture. Wasn't really sure what I was going to do. Couldn't afford architecture school at the time. I said, what, I'm going to try to get into something with finance and we need your need and buddy, or they need something to do with their money. And that's translated well to forage business. Fast forward, I lied to about 63 job applications in two days, literally on my Palm pixie in my car. The first two companies to call me back were mortgage companies and interviewed them back to back the same day chose to go with one and, oh, here we are almost 10 years later. 

 Josh
 Awesome. Awesome. Being in this business, you're seeing, especially at the time of this recording may of 20, 22 is when we're recording this, there's a lot going on in the industry. I know that we can't discuss specific, interest rates now and such, but what do you see in the residential market right now for home buyers and for investors, where's there some challenges and where's there some opportunity? 

 Sean
 Yeah. The biggest challenge, I would say Josh is probably inventory, right. Have inflation, which is just too many dollars going after too few things. Right? There was a lot of money printed and thrown into the marketplace over the past two years. Now you have that, trying to find something in the marketplace could be plugged into translate that to housing right now, as we speak, there's about just shy of a billion houses for sale across the entire United States, to put it in perspective, there should be about two and a half million right now, upwards to close to three on any given market. On top of an inventory shortage, obviously we have inflation that's causing interest rates to go up, but because of an inventory shortage, you have increased bidding wars. You also have an increased expense, which is the higher interest rate because of inflation. 

 Sean
 So, those are the two big affordability challenges to where you're seeing somebody who is a million dollar buyer becoming an $800,000, $800,600,000 buyer and so on. 

 Josh
 Got it. So, all right. Talk to us on the investor side, how'd you get your start investing in what kind of investments do you typically do? 

 Sean
 I, I, I love investing in ventures, right? Obviously you got your standard 401k, which I participate in IRAs and other types of standard investments accounts, but I love being an operator. I love being involved in what's going on and maybe that's my control freak side coming out. As far as real estate investing, I love it for its tax benefits. That's probably, what actually got me interested in it in first place. As I was a teenager, some family, friends were also interested investing. I kind of watched it from R and always wanted to experience that. Being in a very high tax type of environment that we're in here in my state real estate has some phenomenal benefits, buying properties under LLCs we've flipped properties, contracted property done at Nana right now, certain areas of the south have much better returns than up here, up north as well. 

 Sean
 A lot of property trading hold it for a few years, CD appreciation, sell it off, keep them they're an LLC for tax benefits, those types of deals. 

 Josh
 Got it. All right. What was your first deal in, in real estate? What was your first investment? What did that look like? 

 Sean
 The first investment was a flipped short-term flip. We found a property off market, kind of a, just a for sale by owner situation, looking to just get rid of it. His mother had passed away and so he was willing to sell it because it stuck back into the 1940s of the house. They'll have original, pretty much everything, which was kinda cool. We took that three bedroom, one and a half bath house and turn that into a four bed, two and a half bath house and converted it kind of depreciation there in that particular zip code, they finished out attic with certain grasses can actually be legally, sorta better. Obviously it's really important to know, right. We're investing in and where you can kind of force that value. We took that and made it a three story completed four and a half, two and a half bath house. 

 Sean
 Were able to makes me expired cash on it. 

 Josh
 Very cool. We're still ever, we talked about your first deal. What was the worst deal that you ever got yourself into and what did you learn? 

 Sean
 I'm not a very patient person. So, we've had situations where it is just been delay after delay. I can think of a situation where actually, going on, I think it was four months delayed at the time. That's caused financial changes that caused rate adjustments on the carrying costs. Obviously the longer you wait, the world changes and that really adjusted our numbers, thankfully enough, it was at the point where we had enough margin in there to where it was still profitable. Right. It was just less than we thought, but it wasn't more than numerics of it. The financial part of it, that was the worst part. It was just the uncertainty and the constant delays, right. That you're having to Beauchesne we go through and every investor out there can attest to that, I think. 

 Josh
 Yeah, absolutely. Be patient as an investor is a learned skill set, right? It's not something that comes natural for hard driving entrepreneurs and people who have a mission to accomplish in this world. And, and, I want to know from your perspective, what do you put in place now and what could other investors put into place to guard yourself against your own impatience or, your own idiosyncrasies? Like how do you work through that? 

 Sean
 Well, that's a good question. I guess I can probably give what I do. Right. I'm a pretty wound up alter a type, kind of a personality by disc test is all Heidi, pretty much. That's the only thing on it. For me, what I do is I really, because I think from a lot of folks with my personality, what you're doing is you're trying to create something for yourself, for your family, right? There's a, there's a real rock, solid reason behind what you're doing. Maybe it's. I want to get my family into a great situation in a few years, I want to leave a massive inheritance to my children's children. Right? There's usually some very powerful goal that you're pursuing. Right? You feel that there's a delay, that there is something holding you back, or some, one, it, you almost get for lack of better term, like vicious, like, I wanna remove whatever this thing is out of my way, because it's holding me back, right. 

 Sean
 It's now my enemy. I had that mindset for quite some time. The one thing that has helped me is putting into perspective of life, and you've heard so many people say life is short. Life is short. I, you gotta hurry up and do what you can, which is true, right? You don't want to waste time. I think over recent years, especially over the past three years, I've learned that life is long. That there's a lot you can do in 24 hours in a day. There's a lot you can do in four or five days in a week. There's connections you can get, if you do a deal. If something doesn't work out, there is 7 billion that you can work with. Instead of that person, if a deal goes sideways, if there's money lost that there is an abundance of opportunity out there that you can also pursue. 

 Sean
 That it is you and the character that you are, the kind of person that you are, your values, your work ethic, seeing those opportunities and that skill set that you have that is going to constantly bring those other opportunities too. If something doesn't work out, yes, it's art wrenching as that type of person. At the same time, understanding that what got me here and what gets anybody else, there is the type of person that they aren't, as long as they maintain that consistency, those opportunities will continue to come. 

 Josh
 Yeah. You, you mentioned like the, some of the paradigm of what you're learning in terms of characteristics and values and virtues that you have, life is long. You're, you're learning to be a long-term investor, a longterm thinker for me, that was the challenge myself, because I wanted quick wins, right? Because that felt good. The dopamine hits the grand slams, aiming for the fences, but you could also go broke, chasing big deals. You could go broke, making risky investments and such. That is something that I am relearning in a, and I'm 40 years old, I w I don't know. I always hear people say, I wish I would've known that when I was younger. I don't know what I would've done with that information, but at least I'm learning it. Now, when we talk about like personal growth and mindset and these kinds of things, what are some areas that you're focused on right now? 

 Josh
 Maybe some resources that you're applying to your life to improve? 

 Sean
 The big thing for me right now is balance. There's a point married, I'm a father, and there was a point. I always refer back to this when we're talking about like principal wrote, there's a point where for about three and a half years, I actually, wasn't holding for dinner Monday through Friday for about three and a half years. And I look back on that. I was like, man, I missed those years, right? This, that time, even if it was 45 minutes or 30 minutes at dinner, just to catch up with everybody in the family. For some people they're like, oh, I do that all the time. And other people they're shocked, right? Depending upon where you're at with this thing. And for me, it's finding that balance. I took a lot of time, especially during 2020 in the pandemic, when you are forced to find some kind of balance, because you couldn't go anywhere, especially being where you were at in the country. 

 Sean
 And you had to work from home. If you had kids in school, they were holding for most of the time. You had to figure out how to take this work thing, this career thing, what your passion is about, and then to compartmentalize that, and also make time for what's true. You know? For me, really scheduling and putting some in the beginning of the day, some very deep three to four hours of deep work, uninterrupted, unhindered type of work that actually sets the rest of the business in motion has been key for me. Now I am in the office from, I call it my chair of four days a week, Monday through Thursday and Friday, I absolutely used to be in the office. I will not be in the office. If there's anything I need to catch up on from the week, I will do that on a Friday, but Friday is a day where now I spend time with my family in the morning. 

 Sean
 I have breakfast with my wife. We catch up on things at home. I think things that could be done with our family, that's why they found that in my crazy world. If I got done with work at Friday at seven 30 every week, then by the time I got home, I'll still wound up. Right. The time dial down, which really doesn't happen. So like Saturday at like 11:30 AM. Right. You're just starting to grill for the weekend. Right. You're just within your shot where you don't want to be, you want to be like bothered, right. That's not given the best of me to like my family. Now I take that Friday to wind down by Friday night. I'm like all their Saturdays a day. For my family, Sunday's kind of a day as well for them, especially in mornings. Towards the afternoon and evening wrapping ready for Monday. 

 Sean
 That's really helped me a lot having a 32 hour work week, which sounds crazy, especially in my business. I was one of those people who's for jobs, it's impossible. Don't listen to people, tell you that nonsense, those are a bunch of lazy, right? I pounded the fist on that for so long. Now after understanding and forcing myself to do that, it's amazing what can be accomplished with uninterrupted work at the beginning of the day, the key things that I need to do such as prospecting my business, managing the systems and making sure the systems are running properly so that the systems can do their jobs properly. I'm forcing myself to be present or where I need to be present at. 

 Josh
 Yeah, that is so cool. I think as an entrepreneur, there was almost like this badge of courage for how much you worked. I worked at some places where, in venture capital or whatever, where the first one in last one out always available always by your phone, right. Like shows, dedication. What that did for me is that it absolutely burnt me out, trying to build startups, trying to build multiple things. I wound up in the hospital and I, from there, I had to relearn how to work, man. It feels like my whole life as an entrepreneur. And I'd love your opinion of this. It seems like I'm constantly like getting to a level, getting knocked back down, building up stronger, better, smarter, faster, knocked down. Do you experience those ebbs and flows and in your deal-making journey? 

 Sean
 Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, what you said of wearing that badge of honor of being the hardest worker, which by the way, is a myth, right. There's so many other ways to be the hardest worker in the room. Right. But we think of that as time. Right. And activity. I deal with that all the time. I think I'm in one now. Right. Only, only recently did I start this type of new schedule and it has given me so much peace of mind and looking back, just like you said, you think, boy, what could I have done if I'd implemented this sooner? Right. Those meetings I took, and those times I sacrificed did anything was anything out of that. Soon now it's looking at what actually makes the metrics work. I'm kind of a number cruncher type of a person. I'm big on working metrics and the law of averages of working the numbers of numbers will kind of put everything in place. 

 Sean
 That's one thing that we've really changed, especially over the past couple of years, but I never did that before. And as like you said, an entrepreneur, it sounds crazy that you would do that. Right. Sometimes you're so busy that you never take the time to invest doing what's best, I think. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Especially so on the descale I'm high, I with a secondary D right. I'm a hard driver where you're full D so for full D the dominant, driver, turning off work and delegating out are some of probably your biggest challenges, right. Putting systems and processes in place. Cause it's just like get of my way. I'll do it myself. How are you, how are you learning to work through that? What are you putting into place to protect you from you? 

 Sean
 Yeah. That's a great way to put it protect you from you. So true. Cause cause were the worst destroyer of our own schedules and we're the worst destroyer of our own system because sometimes we think, oh, I found a way to do it better. Give it to me. Right. Let me handle it. A couple of years ago, about three years ago, I revamped of our operation system and we still use that same system out today. I'm going, of course over the years you refine it, right. Tweak the system, get better at it. What we did, something was what they call sometimes franchising. I didn't know were doing it at the time, but then later when I was just describing it to somebody, they said, oh, you've franchised. Is that right? They basically say you put together the process and the steps of whatever that role is right from, it could be processing. 

 Sean
 It could be the loan partner at the beginning of the process and document, whatever that step of the process is, you put together a plan and the exact steps to where somebody, if they were starting a quote-unquote franchise of doing that, they would be able to take the guidebook and learn to do it themselves immediately. That's what we began doing because then I basically put exactly what I wanted, how I wanted it to be done into this plan. That if you just follow the plan, the system works itself. To your point of just being too busy, I think the problem was I never took the time to actually do that. When you're a high D personality, sometimes you think that somehow magically your thoughts of how you want something to get done, just somehow embeds itself into your team. Of course like that never happens until you actually sit down and the training. 

 Sean
 What I found was there was it enlisted. It took a lot of time and maybe even took of a hit business to do that years ago. The peace of mind that I had sense knowing that things were being done the way I wanted them to be done in that franchise to a way that has helped protect me from myself and allow me to focus on what I do. 

 Josh
 Yeah. I'm learning to fall in love with systems and processes because I'm not a natural system and process operations kind of person, right? I'm a visionary, the sales guy, the people guy, me sitting down and starting building the processes just brutal. We're like hiring consultants, bringing on strategic partners and it's brutal for me, but every time I release a task and I no longer have to do it really, brings me great joy rest. What task are you the best at? Or activity business activity in what is your like kryptonite where you look at it and you're like, oh man, that's going to kill me. 

 Sean
 I think what I'm best at, especially in my physical and business, the mortgage business is going out prospecting, making new relationships, making your business relationships and not just doing that, but identifying the Bible, right? Identifying good business potential where to expand because I love studying markets. I love understanding, what the best is and where to put my time and being very tactical and strategic about it. That's definitely, I, I think what is, if I'm going to say the best, what has made me the most money over the past nine or 10 years, as far as what I am terrible at, it is trying to do any kind of tedious over-analytical tasks, such as viewing a document, even back to the early years of my career, looking over tax trends of self-inflict bar or which is every loan officer's nightmare, but could you do it? Yeah. 

 Sean
 It's amazing, no matter how good you get at something, you may be able to do it faster, but it's exhausting. Right. I feel exhausted after doing that for 45 minutes. Whereas next week I'm going to be on six flights per days, meeting with a bunch of new potential business partners. I'll be more energized when I get back then before I left. Right. That's when you find your sweet spot. So. 

 Josh
 Yeah, no, I'm very similar. The, the task could literally take me five minutes, but I'm done with that task. For me, it's like updating audio or titles or writing a description for a podcast interview or type, like that kind of stuff just completely wiped me out. I had to hire someone just to get those small things off my plate. It doesn't matter the cost because my value is better served over here, putting deals together. Right. It's hard for people like us to release that control because we're like I could do it and I could probably do it better, but it's going to kill me to do it. Do you still get that temptation to dive back in? 

 Sean
 I, I do. I think it's because you sound very much like a visionary, right? Like I highly recommend the book rocket fuel. Right. It sounds like you may have read it, right. Oh my gosh. Such a, such a good self-revealing book. Right. And so practical. I think as a visionary, one of our great attributes, but also crippling ones is that we can sometimes see it so clearly how we want it done and what we want accomplished that we also think, because we see it so clearly in our mind, we're the best ones to do it. When sometimes the execution is so much better handled by somebody. We just need to communicate how we want it better. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Yeah. On the disc scale, the dis C scale people who have the S or the C like actually enjoy that kind of work, the checklist, the task list, the details, the dissecting of things, the filling out forms. Like my wife enjoys that stuff. She's a high S she enjoys that. Like seeing a checklist that she has to do the same thing over and over, it doesn't bother. She puts them headphones. She crushes it for me. I'll jump out of a window bands. You can't do it. Right. What, what is your wife on the disc scale? 

 Sean
 She's more se much like yours, but she's also very artistic. Whereas, she, she can adapt to being dominant and being a driver in some ways, if it's with in the, like the artistic or within the lane, that she's good at. Right. If it's in her, if like she's an amateur photographer, she's actually awesome. She's one on some of the national graphic contests. She's good. Whereas it's so funny if I were to talk to her about just anything that maybe she knew moderately some or nothing about, she'd be like, I don't care. Tell me, I have no idea. I'm overwhelmed. Like I have no idea what you're talking about, but then if I were to step in and start messing around with something on photography, she'd smack my hand away and be like, what are you doing? Knock it off. Like I got it right. Standing like, this is kind of thing. 

 Sean
 Like I'm on top of it because she knows it. Right. In that sense, she's very more of an Aptible driver, but much more se, 

 Josh
 Extroverted or introverted, 

 Sean
 She's definitely introverted. 

 Josh
 She's like she could be my wife's twin. My wife does photography. She's an introvert high ass, loves the detail, work, loves editing photos and doing that stuff. So they might best buddies. It seems as though opposites tend to attract and I'm in the book, rocket fuel. I love that book. The, that group did an incredible job. We're fans of EOS. We're huge fans of the group that runs that organization with David Mann and Derek great group in that book. They talk about the visionary and integrator, which one. 

 Sean
 Probably about 70% visionary. 

 Josh
 Cool. Now we know the skillsets of a visionary, typically was sales, prospecting, people orientated, lacking in detailed systems processes. In your organization, are you tell us about your organization as a whole, in terms of the people that you have on place that the different types of partners that you have brought in to help you build this in, and maybe even some metrics of what you guys have accomplished over the years of you running this org. 

 Sean
 Yeah. My first priority was to get somebody in operations, right? Because salespeople, business developments, all of that is a strong suit. My number one priority originally was to find somebody who could save the operations off my plate and it kind of paperwork, tasks, any type of process oriented pieces of the mortgage process. I, right now I have a gentleman by the name of ed with me. He's been with me for almost five years now. I, I profiled him and I, what I needed. I was kind of looking for somebody who is used to doing the same kind of tasks again and again, but who like, kind of figuring it out, but also had of a competitiveness to them, to where they wanted to like, get it done. Right. They wanted to kind of, push to push a loan faster, get the process done quicker, ? 

 Sean
 I was almost kind of looking for like that like video game or type of person where they could sit there and they could go through something, sit there for nine hours straight, but have a competitive side to them. Totally. He actually fit the fit, the role, like almost perfectly. And, and now he's a dear, dear friend of mine and he was bilingual, which was awesome. He can sit there and he loves picking every little thing apart. He loves the aha moment of discovering something and figuring it out and figuring out, the way the puzzle is going to work. He loves it when the process goes smooth and he's always trying to tweak things himself. So each really takes ownership of that. His role is he runs the operation. Any time a deal comes in and he handles it really from the time that our front end administrative partners hand it off to him all the way until closing. 

 Sean
 So he's huge element. 

 Josh
 How did you find a good operations driven person? 

 Sean
 Oh, a lot of phone calls and a lot of calls out to my network, total light boots on the ground voice on the phone organically. He, he was kind of a, a very close acquaintance at the time and he was a mechanic. He was in the car business. And, but I d that because I said you were used to looking over integral pieces of an engine, putting it together, picking it apart, understanding how it works, memorizing, what needs to be done again. Again, could we translate that into the financial word? I don't know. Right. Maybe we can. We talked the one time and he said, I'm trying to get out of this. There's this definitely a ceiling over my head. I want to get into something where I think are going to use my brain more. I said, well, look I said, I'm going to have you answer a bunch of these questions. 

 Sean
 See if you fit this profile and maybe this will work out. And he did. And, and I, I, I, he was my first pure hire Josh that I made based upon personality profile. He's one of the best, if not the best hire I've ever had. 

 Josh
 Super cool as you're building this, what does the future look like for you? Like what are some goals that you guys have at as an organization, 

 Sean
 As a team, obviously production, we have production goals as a team. We do, somewhere in the ballpark of about a hundred million dollars a year. Now it's kind of a very difficult market because inventory is extremely low. We would like to get that up to double, to hit that $200 million mark in about 12 months, we're doing that through some strategic partners, expanding out into Florida, continually growing our presence in Atlanta, where we do about a third of our business now going places where the clientele from where we're at here in the New York Metro area is actually flocking to right. Following we're really where the money's going essentially. We're a great opportunity is in the future. We just, our sales systems for that. That's one goal, as far as like goals within our group, right? I don't think you need a ton of people to do a lot of volume the way our system is, so I'll go internally would be to have each of our guys right, closing a certain amount. 

 Sean
 They all have their personal goals. We coach them, I have a formal call with them every Monday afternoon, going over their goals and tracking them week by week, so that it's very fulfilling and it's, so we want them to reach their goals as well. And, and seeing them do that and seeing, some of them reach their goals ahead of time. When, then they thought is really neat. 

 Josh
 When it comes to training and working with salespeople, right. Your first integral hire was the operations, but you guys now have a team of people who are out selling deals, right. How, how many salespeople do you have at your organization. 

 Sean
 On just our team? It's four of us. 

 Josh
 Okay. It comes to managing, other salespeople, what are some things that you've learned to do and not to do when managing other salespeople? 

 Sean
 Yeah, so I I'd say one of the first things I learned is not to manage too many too thin. My first management position, a few years back was in more of a consumer direct model. We had a pulse center of 16 people, and I was in my early twenties at the time managing this. We recruited them all just bare bones. I came away from that experience going, oh my gosh, I'll never do that again. What I meant is I'll never do that again is I'll never hire so many people and be stretched so thin on a 24 hour a day. You know? I think for me, I've learned a lot about myself and I'd rather deal with people who see the business the same way I do, because they're in my role. I can coach them the way I operate. Right. Obviously my administrative staff, they need to be completely different than me. 

 Sean
 Right. But the salespeople, right. For the type of roles that they have, they need to be similar because the system that I have, I want to duplicate into them and I want to teach them. For me, it's definitely not stretching myself too thin because I'd rather go a mile deep with somebody than a mile wide with 10 people, ? I've found that for me, the way I roll four is good for me, four, maybe five at the most is good for me. If it doubles on finding another version of me to help manage that, because I want to make sure that they're given the time, the attention that they need. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Super cool. When you work with salespeople, are you looking at activity? Are you, are you managing like how many phone calls, how many door knocks, how many emails do you, or you, are you more of a outcome driven? Like what's your sales manager, I guess? How would you say that preference? 

 Sean
 Yeah, I, I, it's of both, honestly, so I'm not too keen on just doing, saying, well, as long as you do this, I don't care what you do, because I think that can work for a very small amount of salespeople. I think most of the people would hang themselves with along leash. So what we do is we have a meeting every Monday, we go over their goals at the beginning of the year, every December, they have the month of December. Before the end of the year, they need to get me back a business plan for the new year. Actually each individual we'll go over it within the first two weeks of actually we go, I'm sorry, we go over it the two weeks prior to the new year, because we want to kick it off right away at the beginning of the year. And some all tweaks. 

 Sean
 We'll say, listen, I think you can do much more than this. Here's why right when you're talking about metrics, though, I do manage through metrics, which is if here is your goal, right? What metrics do you have to work in order to get there? That's what we're going to coach on. That's what I'm going to manage on because this is the business plan that we've agreed upon at the beginning of the year, right. Rather than just kind of, well, what are you doing? Well, I have five meetings one week with new realtor referral partners in the next week. I had closed five deals last month. Now I'm not closing any this month. Well, inconsistent results typically are, the, the aftermath of inconsistent activity, right? It's not just activity, it's what activities are needed and how much of them within a given time to get the specific desired results. 

 Sean
 Because I do believe it's a numbers game in sales and I think process whims over personality. Even in the sales process, we have them calling and prospecting for new referral partners on Mondays on Tuesdays, we actually reach out to the people who are involved in all of the transactions that are going on right now, so that we're not missing any potential great contacts that many times slipped through the cracks on Wednesdays. It's all your past client database, which we touch twice a year. On Thursdays, we're dealing with all the folks who haven't gone under contract and we're prepping them for the week and we're kind of priming that pump and prepping them for the weekend and doing rate refreshes and whatnot. There's a set way of prospecting on those four days of the week that we're doing. And we're tracking that pretty tightly. 

 Josh
 Yeah, that's super cool. I like what you said, process beats personality, right? I. 

 Sean
 Think my original, 

 Josh
 Well, I still like it, there's nothing new under the sun anyways, but that you even remembered and you can spit that back out. It's super cool. What's your favorite like sales book or, sales resource trainer, w w what do you follow? 

 Sean
 As far as the book that I think really kind of brings it home for me, a book would be the one thing by Gary Keller, such a simple book. I read it over like a day and a half on a trip out to California for a conference. One time completely changed my perspective on how I saw business and how I saw myself. That book actually is what spurred me into doing that deep dive and figuring out what I did best in isolating all of my time into that. So, thanks Garrett. That book is if there was one book that I would say that everyone needs to read to kind of change your thing as a sales person, that would be it. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Super cool. All right. During this interview, we spoke a lot about deal teams. We spoke a lot about systems, process, visionary. We actually hit a lot on the, the business like that. Let's talk tactically about the kind of deals that you really enjoy and what makes you stand apart from other brokers, people, doing a similar business. 

 Sean
 Yes. So that's a great question. Kind of the right down the middle of the fairway for us is anything residential, one to four family, which a lot of banks do. I think what sets us apart from that competition, as opposed to other mortgage lenders or brokers or banks out there is the process that we have, right? You have a team like we have here and we put together assistance where, we'll close loans in two weeks, sometimes, or even less because of the efficiency, but anything, one to four family, residential, we are pretty strong in the jumbo market, in the high-end market. We have to be right. We're basically across the river from New York city. You have multimillion dollar condos and houses all around us. So it is a higher end area. Then, that's kinda, that's kind of the perfect deal for us. Aside from that, we do, we work with a lot of investors and leveraging private, a capital that we have to give them some great advantages as well. 

 Sean
 I think really the best thing that we do is when a client comes in, we actually will, through our system request the documents up front, they can actually automatically upload everything that they need per based upon their deal. We will actually not just look over it and say, yeah, you're good to go. We actually pre underwrite every file, as long as the client's okay with it. Most of them are, we pre underwrite every file to where, when they go out there to try to make that offer, we can send them an already approved loan, along with that offer. A lot of banks aren't doing that. We do that to just to try to give our clients a competitive advantage in the marketplace. That's something we began doing last year when inventory started really squeezed and something that's done very well. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Side by side, if people are placing, multiple offers, bid wars thing like that on a project, you coming to the plate with a pre underwritten loan, right? Like this thing's ready to rock and roll. We could close in a couple of weeks versus this person's maybe pre-approved or something like that. Like the side-by-side, yours is more valuable, gives the customer the competitive advantage. That is that's super cool. I like how you put that as you're building out, what's the next major milestone that you want to accomplish as a deal maker. 

 Sean
 So, volume wise, we'd like to double that in about 12 months that's, that's one and through some strategic partnerships, we're doing that within the team. We want to start another sales group. That's similar to the one we have now, and that can take over and kinda kind of hit hard in the south in Florida in that Florida, Georgia market. I don't have to travel around as much. So that's definitely a goal. Those are two very pertinent goals there, and then for me personally, in the business, it's, it truly is a level up, not even for position or monetary reasons, but it's just conquering those challenges. I manage the team for a while and you've had some great opportunities over the years to partner up with some amazing companies. So, events down the road in a perfect world, it's, getting our, our production to the point where, we merged some a corporate bank entity and, get some kind of, get some kind of a profit sharing. 

 Sean
 With that entity and, really run things on more of a company level rather than an independent branch level, that's kind of the end game for me in this. 

 Josh
 Nice, nice, nice. What, what is a good strategic, in my network who would be a good strategic partner that I can introduce you to, or maybe one of our audience members are listening in and going, Hey, I I'd be happy to, explore a, a partnership. 

 Sean
 You know, it's a great question. I mean, best partnerships for us are really, seasoned real estate agents or real estate professionals in there, right? Whether it's, whether it's a, a, a mid size or large scale, a real estate developer in the residential space that we can help market their properties, partner up with them in some way to help them liquidate those in, in a, in a great manner, in a more efficient manner. Then, those real estate agents and people who run teams especially are great for us because we have a team, right? We found that our team works well with other good teams also, right? Cause they have infrastructure, we have infrastructure and we can use the mirror, their processes, but the, those ones that are doing some heavy volume in the residential space, those are great people for us to work with. 

 Josh
 Cool. What questions should, I've asked you in this interview that I screwed up and didn't ask you, 

 Sean
 I, I guess may I, the one thing that usually comes up and you kind of asked it, which is what are you best at in the mortgage business? What are you best at? And, mortgages are kind of a funny thing. Sometimes what a lot of people ask me, especially who aren't in the mortgage business is, do you love it? Right? That's like, usually question is, do you love what you do? Because the angel mantra, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Right. I, I have a kind of a funky philosophy about that. I don't think you need to love the industry you're in. I don't think you need to love even the kind of line of work you're in. I think you need to fall in love with what you do best in it, and what can give you the most satisfaction we can give you the most fulfillment. 

 Sean
 And that is that networking. I love networking. I I'm a very much an extrovert. I love meeting new people and making those connections. If someone told me, do you love mortgages? My, my funny answer is actually no, right? The mortgage business is not something I love. It's the freedom that this business has given me to kind of create the team and to create the own system that has given me the freedom I want and being able to meet new people and do what I do best, which is created business relationships. 

 Josh
 Super cool. Where can people go? Especially if they're looking for, some support or maybe they're a real estate team, and they're looking for another partner to work with in the areas that you guys focus, where it's a good place for people to connect with you and do a deal. 

 Sean
 I would say Instagram is probably the easiest one. I'm on Instagram. My Instagram is failing my last name. P H a L N F w D. Failing forward, kind of a plan where it's on Instagram, I'm usually always on there. We do a lot of marketing through there, a lot of advertisements and whatnot, so that she's a good place to find me. 

 Josh
 Super cool, super cool fellow dealmakers in the audience as always reach out to our guests and say, thank you for being on the show. If what they're saying and the deals that they're talking about, look like a good fit for you. You could connect with them directly, go to the show notes. All their contact information will be in the show notes below connect with them directly. Let them know that you heard them on the deal scout and that you want to do a deal with them. If you're working on a deal or looking for a specific type of deal, you can always head on over to the deal scout.com, fill out a quick form and maybe get you on the show next until then talk to you all on the next episode. See you guys.