My Perspective

Today the company is pleased to give details of the 10th Anniversary of Americas Money Center, Inc. It’s been a very difficulty period these past two years for our industry and in particular our training & education niche; many have closed down including several of our competitors – therefore I’m pleased we’ve reached this milestone!

Being in the number one position on Google for residential mortgage industry education and training, along with more than 5 dozen other key word/phrases on the first page of search results, has indeed helped us to attract new potential students to our website offerings, but it’s been a real struggle with all that’s been going on in the industry and the economy … it can only get better from here

As our industry has begun to heat up, I’ve found looking ‘back to the basics’ to help guide our students during these challenging times is worthwhile. Many of you know there is a significant philosophical difference between my approach to the business vs. the other residential mortgage industry educators & trainers.

As I think through the differences I have with many, I have been able to break it down fairly clearly in my own head. It appears the preponderance of those I interact with, whether they are potential students, folks inside an industry discussion board, those that I speak with who author industry publications – it looks almost like everybody started in our business since the cycle ‘correction’ of August 1998. I see that as a serious problem as we try to rebuild the industry on a more solid footing!

It appears to me, the generation of people that started during this post-98 cycle/correction, entered the industry for the ‘big easy money’ that was at hand via the new ‘big-commission’ business notion that developed back then. It’s been self-evident for the most part, that compassion toward the customer, has been substituted for ’selling & closing’ clients with this latest bunch.

In my lifetime I have seen too many sales pros use various props, scripts, and tricks of all sorts, to ‘close’ people. Even after all these years in the biz, I’m still idealistic about our industry. So this philosophical aversion to ‘sales’ which I have – as evidenced by most of my writings which highlight an increased need for Integrity and Ethical behavior – I think many actually want to have faith in my approach … yet our competition in the training and education niche, all seem to market themselves as ’sales’ guru’s and promise to show their seminar attendees how to earn the big bucks! And, considering those attendees came to the industry for the ‘big bucks’ and ‘easy money’ in the first place, those motivational speaker types – who prey on pumping up everyone’s ego – looks like the sort of industry education and training they are attracted to vs. the more wide-ranging career minded approach we offer through Secret! University.

And I know why this is; back when I started as a trainee it was salary and small bonuses, and all face to face with customers – not websites, cyberspace, text messages, & e-mails like now days – more personal. As a newbie, we were never promised the opportunity to earn enough income in a year or two, to purchase a house outright, so the ‘big-bucks’ wasn’t the draw like it has been lately – it was a ‘career’ I entered. We signed-up customers, hundreds and even thousands of loan customers face to face; often seeing their fears, desperation … relief and joy when approved. All of which made a lasting impression on me from my early days in training. I believe these two major differences are why I think so much like I still do. I can still see many of their faces in my mind.

I believe a move for everybody ‘back to the basics’ of providing Ethical Customer Service to customers, instead of “putting them together” is at hand during this defining period in our noble industry’s history. I hope you’ll join with me in this old-fashioned approach … it works!

Wanted to take a quick second to let you know we added a new short video on the main page of our website – here it is – take a peek!

PS: Oh and by the way, how well do you think I think I do on these little videos (after usually 10 takes)? Terrible … it’s almost like I have no personality :-}~

Now that the residential real estate mortgage lending industry has heated up, I’m hoping interest in industry education and training will increase as well – it’s been Dead As Kelseys Nuts at Secret! University for far too long and I’m getting bored outta my skull!

I decided yesterday to update the Free Lesson on our main website. That page is part of our outreach program to potential new students, encouraging them to check out some of our work for themselves, which may influence them to feel what we offer is worthwhile. There is no group more difficult to connect with than mortgage people, given soooo many of them have HUGE Egos, I’ve been told time and time again "… you expect me to PAY for education and training? I can get all the Free information from Google or an industry discussion board I could ever need…!"  (BTW, if any of you have read some of those so-called professional industry discussion boards, you too can see the pathetic level of industry carrer training many have had so far. In fact it was that serious glaring lack of training I used to see day in and day out on the ‘ever-dreaded’ mortgage grapevine I once frequently visited a few years ago.)

… back to my message … we had a lesson on ADVERTISING running on that page for some time; I decided to plug in our #1 Best Selling CD Mortgage Lesson "98 Ways to Find Customers" instead (took me almost 100 hours to put that lesson together in the first place – plus the 4 decades it took me to learn that stuff too). It’s there right now, take a peek if you like.

I got taught a lesson myself, as I changed out the old one for this one, now with a Vista computer and Power Point 2007 – there’s a zillion things that can go wrong - you can read more than you want to know about this issue HERE and HERE - with Windows XP and PP 2003 everything went OK; today’s a disappointment unless your use a FIREFOX Browser, then it works perfectly fine!

Next week I’m going to begin sending our Video e-mails announcing this update – I wanted you to know ahead of time.

A few years ago, I met ‘Bob F.’ a former huckster from one business or another. He like so many others, popped into our industry to do a little rape & pillage then move on. We all know the type, all greed with not much else upstairs. As I recall he was a recuriter for one of the more unlawful net branch operations out of Arizona (I’ve forgotten their name). He touches base with me via e-mail from time to time; in fact early last month he called and told me he (and his band of thieves) were planning on jumping into the latest hot topic – the Loan Modification niche – what did I think about that, he asked? As it so happens, inspired by him, I wrote on this topic in The Mortgage Land Journal’s January 2009 issue.

He obviously ignored my advice, as yesterday I received a bulk e-mail solicitation from him! In part it said: "You have thousands of dollars sitting in your file cabinet.  Let us help you access it. We are a Loan Modification — Mitigation firm doing business in all 50 states.  We are past Mortgage people and most of our current business is coming from our past clients.  Join us … you can become a branch of us, or simply refer your clients to us and you get paid either way…."

My reply to him:  Let me help you some more Bob: (I’ll finish this sentence for you with my language) “…or simply refer your clients to us and you get paid either way.   If you just refer your clients to us – you will make an average of over $500 per client – because as a group of people who only popped into the mortgage business for 20 minutes anyway, we don’t give a shit about violating RESPA and committing a Felony – so you shouldn’t be bothered by that either! And like us, doing a bit of research to see if what we offer is unlawful, we’re only focused on the $$$$$$."

How’s that Bob? You might want to add the rest of that text to your e-mail solicitation piece for full disclosure since what you suggest is definately a RESPA Section 8 Felony violation!

And, my point for you today? People like Bob, usully are fairly clueless on what’s acceptable vs. what’s unlawful, etc. Had Bob actually been a "mortgage professional" and seen this occupation as a career, then he would stay-up on what’s happening, as just over the horizion the all new (coming shortly) Bankruptcy Judge CRAM-DOWN authority will be law … then bye-by loan modification niche … BK judge’s will be doing that! Todays’ Lesson? PAY ATTENTION

Lately I seen several articles from prominent industry news sources, painting a negative picture on what’s happening out there; when actually it’s improving in a major way (we have the lowest 30 year fixed rates in all of YOUR life-time)! Here’s part of on I saw this last week … " How’s the mini-refi boom holding up? One rank and file retail LO for a top ten ranked lender — who requested his name not be used — told us he’s getting "lots of calls" on refinancings via the company’s 800-number. But it’s not a slam dunk by any means. The biggest problem with the applicants who are looking to refinance is "not enough equity," he said, "or poor credit."  I believe pieces like that are counterproductive and not good for our industry, especially coming from serious journalists!

I’m explaining my feelings about this, day before yesterday to my friend Rick Grant (a former Editor of a few well known publications and a major industry reporter I’ve known 20 years). I told Rick, ya know what Rick? That young man probably hasn’t even spoken to 50 inbound potential borrowers in all of the last 6 months, and now that only a small handful of them DO qualify, he’s whining! ‘How silly’ I say. All of his career he’s had potential borrowers that were ‘rejects’ – so what’s different today … except that his phone is ringing off the hook with potential cusutomers and his dream of closing them all isn’t being fulfilled – and to top it off, his narrow self-centered views are being published nationally! Potentally infecting other originators with that same short-sighted point of view!

So Rick tells me, ‘Peter imagine you’re watching TV and you hear a news teaser that say "500 planes landed safely at LAX today, stay tuned for film at 11"  How many people would watch that, he asked me? It’s the ‘NEGATIVE that sells newspapers’ – that’s why you hear "an airliner slid off the runway, exploded and landed in a ditch, watch film at 11!

BTW, my forecast is 2009 will be much better than 2008 for our industry, with the return of non-prime/subprime/non-conforming/Alt-A wholesalers no later than late Summer ‘09.

Wednesday, I mentioned the latest actions by the Federal Reserve Bank, those activities which Hank the Bald should have done a few months ago – except he was less than honest to all of us.  I’m very pleased at the immediate impact it’s having on rates (as expected) and also excited about the effect I know that will have on the securitization market for non-conforming loans by mid-2009 … and that is … IF the Fed continues to buy up those securitizations that clog the secondary.

I finished an analysis of our website traffic for 2008 vs 2007 and saw our oveall ‘unique visitor’ numbers off 10% (not good), but surprisingly enough our individual ‘page load’ numbers ended the year by being off from ‘07 by 22% – as Big Dip!

Some of the other stats were curious to me – the biggest was the number of website visitors that spend time on this Blog … I guess it means people had no loans to do, so they read! More than 1/3 of the total annual page loads within our entire website were right here!

Thank You :-}

PS:  Given the numbers of you that read, the number who COMMENT actually sucks - so this year, how about a few more remarks by clicking the "Comments" link at the end of each blog posting?  Speak your mind whether your agree or disagree with me, I don’t sensor.