At Whiteboard, we love to dive deep with our customers, discover their successes, and then share the information with everyone. We hope to inspire you to find your own path to success. That is why we’re introducing you to Ryan Speltz.
When you meet Ryan, you quickly realize he’s a man of many talents. He is not only a top-notch mortgage professional but also an entrepreneur, a teammate, a teacher, and an author. For the last few years, he has been living with his wife in St. Petersburg, Florida – across the bridge from Tampa – and building his business.
“Being able to be in the mortgage industry and work remotely, why would you not want to work on the beach?” Ryan said. “It’s pretty awesome. We love it, and we have a remote team, so having the right set up for that is huge.”
We (obviously) see the point he’s making there, and we think more LOs and Brokers might want to know about what else Ryan has to share. Keep reading to learn how he chose to invest in his team and is using Facebook Groups to boost his business.
Using 2020 to invest in his team
When the chaos of 2020 hit, Ryan made the decision to slow down and invest in the process of setting up his team for long-term success instead of attempting to ride the refinancing tidal wave. He spent time getting to know his CRM system and setting it up for success.
At first, he struggled to find a teammate who fit in with his business plans, but once he found the right person they began building around their connection. He now has a core team of three people (plus himself) who have a solid loan process in place and understand not only the business framework but their responsibilities within it.
“Throughout the summer, we really took refinancing opportunities as they came,” Ryan said. If people reached out to me that was how we got loans into the system. Mostly, it was me and the team investing the time to learn the process so that when we take off over the winter and we’re going to be stacked up with pre-approvals in the spring. We’re going to be on fire next year when everyone else is taking time to invest in going and getting more business.”
Utilizing Facebook Groups
Education is one of the pillars on which Ryan’s business is built. When he learned that 25 percent of the people who will close a loan in 2020 will do so with no understanding of how their loan works, he realized that is not how he wanted to do business. He is dedicated to making sure his customers understand the financial decision they are making when they work with him.
By utilizing Facebook Groups, he interacts with people – mostly first-time home buyers – who want to learn about how the mortgage financing process works. He shares information about budgets and financial literacy. He and his team develop educational videos and share them within the groups, which starts conversations on these important topics and helps people develop their financial situation.
In fact, his biggest success story with a customer resulted in him gaining a trusted teammate.
“We worked together in one of those Facebook Groups for a year and a half getting credit, getting income, getting everything situated for her to buy a house,” Ryan said. “She bought a house earlier this year and came on board this summer to work for me. So, that’s a pretty cool success story with the Facebook Groups.”
Ryan Speltz as an author
With education as one of the pillars of his business, it’s not surprising that Ryan decided to put his educational materials together in book form. His first book #KickButtMortgageGuy’s First Time Home Buyer Guide is available online and proves his dedication to teaching.
“I like the education piece, like I said it’s one of the pillars of my business. What partners better with saying it than writing a book?” Ryan said. “The book is an easy layout to understand – you don’t have to read it front to back to understand it and there’s no set order. It’s an A-to- Z guide that breaks down all the different pieces.”
He also is know to use the book as content in emails to follow-up. When you sign up for the book through email, in each email you'll get a chapter – or bite-size informational nuggets – once each week.
Investing in learning Whiteboard
When Ryan was working with Whiteboard to get on-boarded – working through the implementation and coaching phases – with the Customer Success team, he took the initiative to learn how each step of the process was set up. With that knowledge he’s been able to create his own style of using Whiteboard and rarely finds himself needing to use Whiteboard’s Support Team.
“It’s been really great to learn from the Whiteboard Team,” Ryan said. “It’s cool that [Whiteboard] allows and encourages that kind of interaction instead of just saying, ‘send it to us, we’ll do it.’ If someone wants to learn, [Whiteboard] puts it out there and walks us through how to do it.”
Cultivating relationships with partners
All communication starts in Whiteboard for Ryan and his team when the webhook brings the information from the 1003 into the system. The admin assistant jumps in and triggers the campaign, and it sends out the communication to all the interested parties – from the borrower to the loan processor – letting them know there’s news.
Ryan’s favorite part of this process is when his team can get an agent tied to the borrower and all that communication can start within 15-20 minutes of their client filling out an application and everyone KNOWS they are being taken care of quickly.
“I actually had a couple of wins recently when I reached out to an agent who’s been struggling with getting responses and her clients complained that it’s been three days since they heard anything,” Ryan said. “I’ve been able to accurately sell to that agent, letting her know that won’t happen with my team.”
Ryan loves that with Whiteboard CRM the communication starts shortly after a borrower fills out an application – within minutes or hours but not days. He adds that the cherry on top is that they don’t have to manually create the messages. His admin clicks a couple of buttons and the entire team receives communication that the process is moving, and everything is going smoothly.
Mid-2020 reflections
As Ryan reflects on the past year, he mentions that he and his wife went a lot of places. He reiterates that building his team has been so important to him because he is excited to make more time for family life. He and his wife see kids in their future and he’s looking forward to spending time with them.
“I want to get this business dialed in because I don’t want to work 70 hours per week,” Ryan said. “You are where you are and it’s okay to be there. As long as you are pushing forward and getting better, you’re going to get to where you want to be.”
He knows how good it is to be able to live in the moment and with Whiteboard he and his team are going to continue to be successful while being able to spend his time the way he wants to each day.
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