SPEAKER_01 0:00

How do you get the eyeballs?

SPEAKER_00 0:00

How do you get the attention?

SPEAKER_01 0:01

How do you get the opportunities?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

There's always been such a serious distrust between the real estate agent and the team to the broker. I've always thought that was really funny. I think alignment and a partnership is really important. How do I get people to actually do it? How do I get people to actually adopt it? What I'm most proud of is that we have 100% retention. You gotta be careful about who you choose to partner with. The act of finding customers is like a whole different endeavor. Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back. Grantwise with the Partner in Profit Podcast. Excited to introduce you guys to, as I said in the pre-show, my bald brother, Mr. Mike Benton. Uh Mike, man, thanks so much for being here today. How's it going? It's going well, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, I I appreciate you being here. Excited to kind of jump in. But for everybody that's listened to this that maybe doesn't really know who you are. Give us a little bit of background, man. How did you get to where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Sure. I mean, uh, well, I've been in the real estate and mortgage game for over 20 years. So it's uh You don't look like you could have been in the minute in the industry for 20 years. I've got a long story short, Grant. Um got my uh real estate license in 2004, starting started to work for a developer in Myrtle Beach, which is where I met my one of my partners, Preston Guyton, in 2005. Have been in real estate and mortgage since then. You know, I have a unique background that kind of led me, I believe that uh all of our past experiences lead us to where we are today. And, you know, selling over a thousand homes between 2004 and when the market crashed in you know, 2010, you know, and that's when I really went into real estate investing heavy. Met my old partner, still one of my best friends. He was in mortgage at the time, and we were running real estate mortgage and investment, you know, call redevelopment fix and flip type company that we sold in 2000, end of 17, uh early 18 to a family office. And that's when I went to mortgage full-time and we launched Responsive Mortgage. Uh, my the current venture that we're working on uh in July of uh 24. So it's uh it's been a good ride.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

And you've had some accelerated growth since 24 with responsive, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah, we I feel like we're as I mentioned to you earlier, it's uh we're excited about where we are, but blissfully dissatisfied to you know, when I want to be a little bit further along, but I feel like uh, you know, we're sitting at over 35 teams that we're partners with all across the United States. We have a billion or bus goal and funded loans for 2026, finished just under 400 million in closed loans our first full calendar year, which was 25, and about 150 uh teammates inside the the responsive mortgage ecosystem right now, between loan officers, team leaders, processors, you know, everyone combined. So it's building a solid foundation to hopefully continue to take that next jump.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

So walk us through this. I mean, we talked a little bit about it before we started recording is your model's partnerships. So kind of unpack that for us. How how do you guys how do you guys grow the business through partnerships?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah, uh I mean since partnering with John Chaplack, who's one of our mutual friends, yeah, um we have a that's the marketing side, right? It always starts there as like, how do you and you know, partnering with uh one of the biggest real estate coaches and one of the you know kind of biggest names in real estate helps our you know get eyeballs. But the actual partnership model is to partner with large real estate teams and small ones as well, but to teach them and open a mortgage opportunity with them, which is a branch opportunity, which entails them learning how to run a branch and hiring loan officers, sending business, and then building it outside of their existing team as well. Running a real estate team is not dissimilar to running a mortgage branch, very similar to rights get it in, get it out, get paid. The getting it in piece is very easy for team leaders because they have that uh existing funnel. We help them a lot in getting it out in regards to helping them attract the right loan officers, hire the right loan officers, we build systems and processes and have what's called you know the responsive way to have them run a profitable mortgage opportunity that assists their team. And then getting it paid is just a percentage of the profits for working together.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

So I feel like I obviously I know the answer to this question, but for people that are listening to this, like why target team leaders in real estate? What what's the significance of going after that specific group of people?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah, I mean it's the control of the transaction as well as attracting like-minded leaders who know how to run a business. It's not your typical MSA where you know there's something given for marketing materials or being in team meetings, and again, I'm not against MSAs at all. Just uh it's being in an alignment. I think alignment and a partnership is really important. And if you partner with other business owners they who understand the fundamentals of business, partnership works a lot better. Yeah, you know, we see in mortgage oftentimes you have high-producing loan officers who have never run a business, but they're really good salespeople. Yeah, and then they become branch managers and don't understand how to run a business. Yeah. I've found that in the past 10 years with working with loan officers versus working with team leaders, team leaders understand the principles of how to run a profitable business better than loan officers. So that's that's the reason why we target them. And in addition to they have they have the control of the transaction.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

And control, you just mean like they're doing a lot of business and they not they're not like steering people, but like they know how to market a partnership. They know how to like communicate the value, they know how to do those types of things so that it makes a lot of sense for somebody if they're looking at the options to choose you guys, you know, when it comes to partnering. Yeah, or mortgage business.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Sure, yeah. I mean, every team has partners, vendors that they they refer to, that trusted relationships, because in the end, the mortgage is is the commission insurance for a real estate agent. If they don't have solid partnerships, then that affects their bottom line as well. Yeah. But the the money piece is uh is obviously in any relationship is an important piece, but it's it's not the only piece. You know, having a predictable process and a and a team that they can count on in good times and bad times, meaning, you know, the transactions where none of us, you know, as agents and and loan officers can't predict what a what a what a buyer might may or may not do, or decisions they make and appraisals and things that come up. It's nice to have in partnership having that control and systematic way of doing business allows a lot you can be more nimble and make decisions uh that if you just have a MSA or just a preferred lender relationship, you can't make.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

How how do you you know really effectively market a partnership? Because you look at working with you know real estate, if if you look at working inside a real estate organization, there's solo agents, there's team leaders, and then there's uh there's teams, and then there's broker owners. And my entire experience in real estate has always been so funny. There's always been such a serious distrust between the real estate agent and the team to the broker. I've always thought that was really funny. It's like, well, I want to have my own thing, I don't want to do their thing. But when you get inside of a team, it's much different, right? Because if you want to be on a team, you kind of have to operate on the standards of the team. But it doesn't mean that there's not the same issues that come up with everything, which is adopting something. Like if I roll something out, how do I get people to actually do it? How do I get people to actually adopt it? What are some of the best strategies that you guys have have uh deployed with these partnerships you've got within responsive that really help drive adoption and get people to actually do the stuff that you're asking them to do or use the tools that you're providing for them?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, well, that's a great question, by the way. I love it because I think it's a missed piece to the puzzle. It's it's one thing to have the partnership, but it's another thing to drive what we call capture rate. So our goal in any any type of partnership is to drive 50%, depending on the size of the team, but uh if you said, hey Mike, what is the one number where you want to shoot to for a capture rate to kind of a measurement is 50% of all finance transactions. Well, when you're new to a team, if you're the in-house lender, if you're a preferred lender, whatever you want to call it, you still have to build a relationship. And like you said, you have to have the agents trust you. So anytime we have we've learned a lot a lot over the past 18 months, and it's how you uh roll it out. So not dissimilar to any new system, any new uh marketing channel. Agents don't like change because it can potentially that's just who they are, and you're dealing with a lot of different personality types, which you know, I think uh with experience you kind of learn to mold um and work with a lot of different personality types. So, number one, the the biggest piece to any opportunity when we're making a partnership go is the loan officer choice that we make. The very first loan officer has to be able to do those things, which is be able to build one-on-one relationships, they have to understand different personality types, they have to be willing to work extremely hard because teams are a little different than your traditional referral agents. Teams are pressed to a standard of conversations, they don't have the luxury of like, hey, we'll get back to you in an hour. No, they have, hey, we're gonna, our standard is we're getting back within 15 minutes, uh, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And, you know, there's there's pros and cons in anything, and that's a uh, in my opinion, it's a huge pro for a loan officer because they already have their existing business, but then we plug them into an opportunity with predictable uh lead flow of closing. And yeah, you have to work hard for that. But going back to your initial question of you know, how do you make it work? It's what's in it for the agent, why are we in partnership, why are we in relationship? So having that, then talking about previous successes that responsive's had with other teams. What I am most proud of is that we have a hundred percent retention of all the teams that we've onboarded. So just like agents, they can go work for any brokerage. Team leaders understand that there's a lot of different mortgage options out there for them. Maybe some that they can make more money at than even maybe in partnership with us. But our retention says, hey, we're doing a good job with you know delivering on what we say we're gonna deliver. The rollout is is is a big piece of that, just getting the buy-in. And sometimes it typically it'll take you a good three to six months to get hey, get a good flow going.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

In your opinion, what makes a good partnership? Because we, you know, we've all been doing this a long time, right? So I've I've been in good deals and bad deals just like anybody else, and I'm sure you have too. What do you think really makes a good partnership?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Man, people, I mean, I think it's just like you know, if you get into marriage, you know, who you choose. I tell everybody, I don't know if you've seen me post it before. I haven't posted it, I probably need to soon. But uh, you know, the single biggest decision that I think anybody can make is who they choose as as a spouse. I, you know, God granted me, like, man, was really looking after me, so I chose well on that one. Um, I wish uh I'd made all the right decisions in every business I'd been in because I've been in, like you said, partnerships that worked and partnerships that didn't, and that's okay. But who's on the other side? Because, you know, uh one of my mentors said it doesn't matter what's what's on on paper, it matters, you know, what's in their heart, and you know, what do they do when no one's looking? And you know, what does the track record of a partner look like? You know, what what is their what does their family life look like? What does their personal life look like? How do what are their habits? How do others talk talk about them? And I I just look at you know, my partners, John Chaplack and Preston Guyton, as men that uh I'm just humbled to be able to be in relationship, partnership with, and uh because they're men of faith, standards, a long track record of success and integrity. So, you know, you got to build build on a solid foundation because any business has its ups and downs. We you and I both know that, right? Like we've been in good businesses and bad businesses, and uh mortgage and real estate is just like any other business. We have good times and bad times, and when you're in partnerships, things go well, things you know could go up and down. And everybody's gonna be best friends when things are going well and we're printing money, and it's when things, you know, challenging times come up, obstacles, friction. And we've, you know, because of the people we partner with, and just because someone reaches out and they want to, you know, launch a mortgage branch doesn't mean we say yes to everybody.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah, so you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful about who you choose to partner with for sure. And then making sure that they I was talking to somebody else the other day, you know, on the podcast, and we were talking about follow-through. And I think it's such a significant point is everybody says yes, but not everybody follows through on the yes, right? Not everybody follows through and actually does what it is that they say that they're gonna do, and you've got to be careful about who you partner with. I couldn't agree more. Because you want to make sure you're choosing the right people because it's easy to get into partnerships, it's hard to get out of them. So it's yeah, it can feel that way. I'm gonna go back to something that you said um at the very beginning, and you know, we talked about types of server marketing, like that's my thing, it's marketing. And you you said you know, one of the one of your one of your best partners you got is John Sheplack, and and that's kind of a marketing partnership for you. So, hey, can you just kind of explain what that means for people that don't know and haven't been watching the the the show for the last couple of years, like I have? Like, what does what does it mean to have a you know, quote unquote marketing partner to help grow the business?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, well, I mean, for you know, having a someone that understands the principles and foundation of of marketing without paid marketing, right? There's a difference, you know, paid versus unpaid, you know, organic traffic, which is John has built, you know, multiple, you know, seven, eight-figure businesses with organic traffic, which I think, and again, you know more about marketing than even I do, but uh organic conversion is a longer sales cycle, takes longer to build, but once you have that audience, the trust is is such a high degree of trust. And when you mention, hey, partnerships, we go right back, right? So it starts with marketing, him building such a high level of trust with his audience, which his audience is our avatar of team leaders and like-minded entrepreneurs who you know to grow personally and professionally. So the people that are attracted to his community already. I didn't get the eyeballs, I didn't get the attention, I didn't get the opportunities. And so the handoff, a lot of folks are looking at mortgage if you're in the real estate business as an ancillary revenue source. I mean, it's been around for a long time, by the way. Like we've been doing these types of partnerships for years. You know, they looked different, you know, years ago than this is more of a traditional branching model, but um, there's a lot of ways to do it. But going back to the marketing pieces, you know, that that trust is already built. So when someone you know comes across our desk and we're talking about what what it looks like to launch mortgage, they don't have to ask, can they trust us? They just have to ask, like, hey, you know, what's the track record? How what does it mean for my particular business? Because every team, as you know, looks a little bit different. Small team looks different than a large team. And you know, there's pros and cons to both and how you run it.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

We talk obviously, I talk about this every day. Is like, you know, the the amount of stuff that you see online today and the amount of stuff you believe that you see two completely different things. But really, it's pretty simple. Like you find somebody that already has an audience of people that you know you want to work with, kind of like you just said, and then you structure a deal with those people so that you can get in front of that audience. And that's the essence of co-marketing. Like, this is this is all we're teaching every single day. It's what real estate agents do all the time. Some people buy their audiences, some earn them. A lot of people in real estate buy their audiences, right? Because they're buying leads all day, every single day, and they're earning trust through the transaction. So there's definitely you know different ways to to do it from a from a marketing standpoint. But the essence of what you're saying is, you know, everything that we teach in co-marketing, find people that already have the audience that you want to work with and partner with them, and then market together, and then boom, you build a half a billion dollar mortgage company in 12 months.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

It's pretty much 12 to 18 months, right? But it's uh Jason Flatlin talks about that all the time of you know, it's okay. I mean, sharing audiences is is perfect. That share that you get the borrowed belief.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

You get the immediate hey, that's trust transference. Like if Mike says Grant's cool, Grant's gotta be cool. But if Grant says Grant's cool, he's kind of an asshole. So it's like you've got to go to the people that have the trust so you can get that transference. And obviously, I've been around John for a long time. So anybody that John's like, that guy's cool, everybody flocks. And so it's it's definitely it's definitely the way to do it. Yeah, it's it's it's been a it's been a blessing.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

And it's it's you know, then it's just you're working on, you know, the most important thing is which which is you know servicing the client at a really, really high level, um, elevating the the because there's friction and mortgage at every company, and it's how do we reduce friction, provide a better experience, yeah, put economies of scale into place to lower the cost, increase you know profitability, the the whole everything that you really would love to spend time on, and so many you know, unfortunately, loan officers and agents are spending so much of their time finding the business, that's not something we have to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

I was literally just about to say the same thing. It's like, you know, there's so many people that I meet, and I know you've met them too, they're not really entrepreneurs, they're more artists. Like they really are good at what they do, but they're not very good at finding people that are gonna let them, you know, help like let them do what they do. Like some people are great at the mortgage business, but it's like the business itself, the act of finding customers is like a whole different endeavor. So if you can do what you're talking about, just partner with people that already have the audience that you want, and then you know, work with those people. It's it's totally the essence of of uh what we're preaching every day here with with co-marketing. And obviously, I could not agree more. Have so much respect for you. Uh obviously I have so much respect for John, you know, work so closely with him for so long, it feels like. Yeah. And so definitely, definitely know what you guys are talking about. I uh I want to respect your time, brother. Uh, I guess I'll just ask this one last question. I always like to ask this is how can we, as listeners of the podcast, how can we partner with you? How can we support you? How can we help you grow your business?

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Oh, well, first off, you're you're doing it by having me on the show. So I appreciate that. I want to thank you for having me. I think anybody that's interested, whether you're a builder, uh, you're you run a real estate team or you run a real estate brokerage and you're interested in exploring mortgage, what that would look like for your business, you know, increase revenues, create a better experience, and also join a community of of like-minded leaders. I think reach out. Um, or if you're running mortgage now and you want somebody to to give like a third-party kind of overview of, hey, is it being run effectively? Where are the gaps? Happy to look at anybody's current business. I would say 50% of our teams currently now, Grant, um, have run mortgage unsuccessfully. We've we've helped turn them around to become profitable. So great opportunity. I really appreciate you having me uh today on the show.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yeah. To slip some marketing in here, if you are somebody like he described, or you know somebody like he described, definitely reach out to Mike. Man, what's the best way for them to do that if they want to connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

You can connect with me on social, uh, Mike G. Benton on Facebook, Instagram, and then responsivemortgage.com has all of our contact info as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

All right, perfect. We'll make sure that we link all that stuff up in our show notes. I appreciate you again, man. It was uh it was wonderful to spend a few minutes with you today. Appreciate it a ton. And uh I know our audience does as well, so thanks again. Right back at you. And thank you guys for continuing to listen to the Partner in Profit podcast. Um definitely grateful for you as well. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.