Shawn Kaplan: The Power of Social Media In Lending

Hunter: Welcome to CCM Talks. I am Hunter Marckwardt, and I am here with the world’s most handsome lender, Shawn Kaplan. Shawn, thanks for joining us today.

Shawn: I can see this is going to be fun already.

Hunter: It’s going to, we’re going to have a good time. Shawn, I mean, in all honesty, Shawn, you’ve been in the business 20 years?

Shawn: 24 years now.

Hunter: 24 years? Great story. I mean, like, you know, you go back to helping your mom buy her first house. I mean, he’s committed to what lending is all about. You want to just give a little background on, on your story?

Shawn: Yeah. So I’ve been in lending for almost 25 years now. I was waiting tables, met a mortgage guy, save you all those details. But I found that, you know, after 25 years, like, this is something that generationally changes people’s lives. It changed my own and changed my mother’s life. So, it’s not a job. I go to work every day now, and I get to help people with that. But, yeah, 25 years doesn’t feel like it.

Hunter: Crazy. You don’t look like you’ve been in the business for 25 years, but, so two things. One, podcasts. I mean, I want to talk about CCM. I want to talk about your podcasts. You’re all over the place.

Shawn: Thanks.

Hunter: I mean, that’s, would you say that’s your primary for people that are watching that want to, you know, you get freaked out about social media, like, like would you say it’s the pillar of your business at this point?

Shawn: It’s definitely a very, very important part. I mean, about 4 or 5 years ago, I saw it coming fast. And, you know, when you grow up, you know, resourceful, you know, that’s another word for being poor. But you learn how to use your resources. So when I came up, I was poor in mortgages for forever it seems. And I would always use my resources. So it’s in my DNA.

So when social came on, I looked at it and I said, wow, this is a way that I can go see dozens or hundreds in a week, or I can see thousands or tens of thousands too. And if I work at that, it may not get me business right away, but it’ll definitely open up the door a lot more.

Or maybe happenstance I’ll notice somebody at a mixer. I met a guy at a mixer a week and a half ago, had talked it up with him. He follows me on social. We had a meeting on Tuesday, 120 unit, I’m the preferred lender on it. Just like that all because of social. So, so that’s what it kind of does.

Hunter: Like what would you say? What do you have to do to be on social? Is it consistency? Is it, like what is it?

Shawn: Yeah. I mean it’s all, of course, looking cool and nice video and all that. That’s what we see.

Hunter: Which by the way, you have your own studio.

Shawn: Yeah. I took the conference room out, and then I decided to put a studio in there, because which one would we use more? Now we can do short form video, podcast studio. But, going back to it’s consistency. I always tell people, just block out, you got to block out like two hours. Do it on a day that you feel creative. I like Friday mornings, you know, a little bit more creative, a little bit more laid back. You know, be prepared going into it. Like what, what are a couple of things you want to do. And then don’t overdo it. Just be like, hey, I’m going to record three videos today for next week. And just be super consistent with it. Just like your traditional activities.

Hunter: Do you let your business partners use your studio?

Shawn: I do, it gets truthfully, it gets a little awkward because if you’re not doing business with them, then you’re kind of like, hey, are we going to do business together? So I reserve it for the people I’m doing business with, and if they want to come over and record. Yeah, absolutely. But I do interviews with them too.

Hunter: Got it. How long you been at CCM?

Shawn: Almost three years now.

Hunter: Me too.

Shawn: Yeah, yeah, we changed about, we moved over right about the same time.

Hunter: Okay. Obviously, we’re doing this video, so I can’t, it’s not like you can say you’re not happy, but, I mean, are you, are you happy?

Shawn: Yeah. I mean, 99% of everything at CCM I love. I mean, nothing’s ever perfect. I think the thing you hear is, like, it’s a big company. I look at that as a positive. Find your resources and use them. You know, that’s, that’s what I love about the company.

But I think the number one for me is like just energy match. And like the way that I see the leaders looking forward, I always wanted to be where, like, we weren’t the ones getting something later. We were the ones doing it first. I mean, just like the quality of this. Like, I just love that part of the culture. And, you know, obviously we got every product.

Hunter: I was going to ask you, what do you what do you utilize the most? Like if you talk about, like if you look at marketing, you look at technology, you look at products, you look at, I mean, like, where do you go, okay, if you’re recruiting a loan officer, where do you go like, this is what’s most important here?

Shawn: Well, our internal system does a great job of that, helping me start filtering out my avatar. And then once I see the avatar, then I can kind of look at production and seeing, you know, I think a loan officer, you know, I mean, if you’re not doing 10 million this year, you’re probably going to have to reevaluate your business, you know? But that’s where I kind of start. That’s I use that resource a lot at CCM. But like, as far as products what I’m using a lot…

Hunter: When you say that resource, you mean as far as being able to identify who you’re talking to?

Shawn: Yes, absolutely. So do you ever get the phone call from the recruiter and you’re like, they know nothing about me. The next guy on the list.

Hunter: They call me Thomas. It’s like what? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shawn: So they didn’t do any funneling down or filtering down to an avatar. Like for me, one thing I got to look at is.

Hunter: I got, I got, like I’m asking this question because I learned it for like, what’s an avatar?

Shawn: Avatar is like, if you wrote down a stick figure and wrote all the qualities of what you want in somebody, you would write the words around it. That’s what you’re shooting for. That’s your avatar.

And so like one of mine is I go to socials. If you don’t at least have a Facebook and Instagram, probably not going to be a good fit. Million a month. Hey, you got to at least have some sort of business. I’m not the guy that can teach you from the beginning, but I can take you to that next level.

Hunter: We have 4,000 loan officers. How many people, how many loan officers do you think they don’t know that they can pull up everyone’s data inside of LO One?

Shawn: I would probably say, by law of averages, it’s 70% to 80% are not utilizing our resource.

Hunter: Crazy.

Shawn: Yeah. And you can pull up your Realtors too.  And yes, it’s not 100% accurate but it gives you like a really good starting point.

Hunter: Yep. What, like what do you use daily?

Shawn: That I log into the system every single day?

Hunter: Yeah.

Shawn: I would probably definitely say, I mean Total Expert. I check my dashboard every morning, my birthdays, anniversaries, any target leads, those credit inquiries I’ve saved so many deals from the credit inquiry alert because we will call them immediately that morning. And we’ll say, Hunter, as an ongoing part of our service commitment to you as your lender for life. We do monitor certain things, and I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there was a hard inquiry done on your credit. Did you just have your credit pulled?

And then they will say, yes. And I’ll say, well, what do you got going on? Well, I don’t want you go somewhere else. Can I retain your business? And then we stole deals, like right back. So call your credit inquiry alerts at least.

Hunter: That’s, I mean, I hope everyone’s listening, like, I just, I mean, I’m going to go back and watch this and talk to my team.

Shawn: That’s definitely a good morning daily activity every morning.

Hunter: 25 years into this whole thing. Like if you had to pick your top mentor.

Shawn: Oh, wow. Number one?

Hunter: Number one.

Shawn: That was life changing? I’d have to say it’s Mr. Rick Ruby for sure. You know, Rick’s taught me so much about managing money. Running, running a business, having structure, systems, processes. And Rick also taught me a lot about myself, you know, through the years. Definitely. Gavin Ekstrom. Gavin’s just, he’s still in my life. I would say you, I mean, you’re someone I’ve always gravitated towards. And JJ. For sure you three guys.

Hunter: Right on. What do you want people to hear? Like. I mean, like, your level of passion for the business on a scale of 1 to 10.

Shawn: Right now? 9.2.

Hunter: Your level of passion for the company, scale of 1 to 10.

Shawn: I mean, no bullshit. 10. Yeah, I love the company. I love to see us kicking ass.

Hunter: I love that, I love that, anything else you want everyone to know?

Shawn: Listen, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. You know, the industry. Despite the toughest year I’ve ever seen in my career, I’ve never had to work so hard and improvise and try my, try new things and compromise. But it’s only for a season. Everything’s for a season.

And I do think that people that use, that utilize these moments, not only to do the work but learn are going to thrive in the coming years. Unfortunately, a lot of guys like us that don’t adapt, like we will get left behind. That’s why I like to try to stay looking young, try to do video and look cool.Because if maybe I could trick them for at least another five years here.

Hunter: So talking about that, is that why you are now a farmer?

Shawn: What do you mean?

Hunter: Like, I mean like, there’s a lot of, like, Farmer Ted stuff going on in your life.

Shawn: So I grew up on a, after my dad passed, we moved to a dairy farm. My mom met a new guy. He was my stepdad, and it was 1300 acres. And I was on a dairy farm for like five years. And I loved that life. I loved everything about it. That’s where I learned to hunt and take care of animals.

So when we moved to Tennessee and I rented and I was poor for a long time, just struggling, I always wanted I was like, I want to buy a piece of land. So ten years ago, we scraped together a down payment and just paid minimum on that land for like nine years. And then we just built on it.

Hunter: I love it.

Shawn: Yeah, that’s my passion. Like, I just want to be able to sustainably live there if we needed to. That’s, that’s what our goal is.

Hunter: You really are kind of, you’re I mean, you’re the whole story, like, like you should be proud of yourself. You’ve done a great job.

Shawn: Thanks, Hunter. That means a lot. It’s collectively because of dudes like you. So thank you.

Hunter: Thanks. Everyone, Shawn Kaplan. By the way, if you ever need anything from him, reach out to him. He’ll answer your calls. He’ll take your emails or anything. So thanks for joining us, brother.

Shawn: Yeah, thanks for having me.