301: The First 18 Months: The Hard Truths of Building Team Wiley

00:00:06 Ryan Wiley
Welcome to the mortgage game. I truly, truly believe that building a mortgage business, a successful one is like playing a game. There's winners, there's losers. There's certain things you try. Some of us are playing checkers while others are playing chess. I've had the ability to coach and mentor hundreds of mortgage brokers. I myself built a very nice business. So now I want to distill all that information, all the things I've learned from that and bring it directly to you in a simple to understand way. I hope you enjoy.


00:00:38 Ryan Wiley
All right. Welcome to the Mortgage Game Podcast. West Coast Wiley in the house, back in the Dodge Ram studio. We're mixing this up. We're doing some of these on YouTube, like videos, which are then we use for this as well. The podcast. I'm basically saying sometimes I do them in the truck. Sometimes I do them in my studio, the actual office recording studio, so we can put them on YouTube. So this is one of the ones we're going to do audio. And so this is a special. We just came off our 300th episode. What I thought was the most important thing in our industry we need to talk about, a pandemic. If you listen to that episode, you'll definitely have some takeaways there and you'll probably just feel like you've been heard on some things and that you're not crazy. But then like tools that you can deal with it in the moment because it doesn't have to be that way. And so this is a more of a personal podcast. I'm going to peel the curtain back a bit on the journey of why I started my own mortgage team. and what the vision is there and you know i thought there was a lot of things broken in the end there's a lot of amazing things in our industry but i also you know i found there's a this this type of broker that was underserved in our industry and i wanted to change it so i'm going to share some of that why i did what i did the challenges i had to get there i thought it'd be very intriguing you to hear there's a whole other side to this business if you're just a broker an agent like you carry on your your life might not seem simple but i'm telling you from going to that and now on the other side building a team oh my goodness there's so much to know and understand how the game is played how things are and there's a lot of stuff i was just sheltered from as an agent that i'm like wow thinking back now i'm like okay so that started to make sense in a lot of things for me and i'm going to share some of that with you so i originally you know i was a broker and then went part -time into coaching and then went full -time into coaching. And then I was doing one -on -one coaching and I was charging $750 an hour or three hours for $1 ,500. Really, I didn't even talk about the one -on -one offer. It just came up all the time. I could have filled my calendar with that forever. And so I was doing the one -on -one coaching. And what I realized was I would spend a couple hours with people and then they would go back to their life and maybe I'd never see them again. Maybe I would. But, you know, I'd make my, you know, a couple thousand bucks or $1 ,500 or $2 ,000. And there'd be a big improvement in there. If they execute the plan, there'd be a big improvement in their business. But the ones who were benefiting from it, as well as the agent, was the broker -owner. The broker -owner who literally did nothing and was not helping in that area. So I started to see this dynamic playing out. And then I'd be sitting there going, okay, I'm impacting all these logs. But... I need to build a business that makes sense, the economics of it. And you might be sitting there going, Ryan, but you were earning so much. Honestly, it just wasn't filling my cup. The one -on -one coaching I do is some of the favorite stuff I do, but it wasn't filling the cup because I wouldn't get, like I wanted ongoing coaching. And so I thought, I said, hey, why don't I just coach? Why don't I shut that down and only offer that up to people who are on my team? And I coached them. Now, if someone stays on the team for 10, 15 years, and we earn X amount per year off. I mean, if we improve, like if they earn money, we earn money. And so I started to look at this and I go, oh my goodness, I'm just going to build my own team. I'm going to throw everything I know in a simple business model and we're going to come over here, but we're going to do it the right way. So that's what I did. So I started to talk about doing this and I was like, okay, and I tried, here's the funny thing. I tried to do it 18 months before. I started my team in October, November, 2024. And really we were just like, hey, what are we doing? We don't have a plan. It was me and my business partner, Courtney. She's an owner in the team, and she's been my right -hand person for years. And she knows more about our industry than most mortgage brokers. And she's a Swiss Army knife and extremely valuable piece there. But we're like, what's the plan? We don't have a plan. The plan is let's just show up. Let's build a team that I wish I had, that I see there's a deficit out there. And so that was our idea. So I started to go and talk to networks and brokerages about division. This podcast is brought to you by... Americana.


00:04:53 Ryan Wiley
So I started to go out and talk to, and what I'm doing, I don't know anyone else. I've been told no one else in Canada has built what you built. Like the dynamic of how it's teams under different provinces, under a brokerage, not a brokerage. I knew I did not want to run a brokerage. Will I start a brokerage in the future? Not sure. To be determined, not on my list of things to do right now. I wanted to do a team. I wanted to stay in my lane and not deal with all the stuff brokerages have to deal with. I wanted to stay in coaching, mentoring, building tools, and just creating a really good environment for people to thrive. And so I started to approach all these people, just kind of figure out where do I want to start this? Where do I want my team to go? And it became very evident. I started to get really bad advice. If you're one of those people that gave me the bad advice, well, I kind of told you when you told me it was bad advice. And I was being slowed down. to starting the team because everyone wanted me to build my team in their version of their thing. And I'm not going to use specifics and names and everything, because that's not the point of this. I'm just trying to share with you, there was a lot of legwork I went into at the beginning, and I got told, it'll never work, Ryan. That'll never work. Your vision's not going to work. I started to reel a common theme here. People wanted me to build my thing their way. And it was so interesting. I'll give you a couple tidbits. It was, hey, Build a team and then you don't tell people about the volume bonus. Like these are conversations people are telling me. And then you keep the volume bonus because it's your business and you should earn money off that. And okay. And then you don't like right now, I still have lenders who I talk to and they're like, oh, I want to talk. Can I talk to your team about that? Should I mention conflict? They have to get a thumbs up from team leads and broker owners if they could talk about comp. It's fucking scary. Like, I don't care if you keep volume bonus, as long as everybody knows and the broke agents signed up knowing they're not getting volume bonus or whatever the hidden thing is they're getting. Because there's a lot of hidden stuff that agents just don't know about. And so as long as they know and they still sign up, okay, you sign a contract, you have to honor that. But if you don't know, and I was told to just hide this from people. And I was like, interesting. I was told, put everyone into contracts. because that way you have enterprise, you can build enterprise value and then you can sell it or then you can get signing bonuses. And then, and that's, so I go into a contract and I then get a big lump sum signing bonus. And then everyone on the team's in contracts. And then if I want to move over here or over here, they have to follow because they're in a contract. And like the whole thing is like, oh my God, it's not about the agent anymore. It's about me building my business and tying all these people up into contracts. And I was like, so why am I doing contracts again? Oh, because. That way your business is worth more. It wasn't, oh, because it's more valuable for the agent that way. Like it was never in the agent's best interest to sign the contract. So I said, okay, well, I'm not going to do contracts. Like you have to sign an agreement and there's certain thing, but you can leave whenever you want. I go, that's not negotiable. And you own all the data and you own. As I started to have all these conversations, I started to realize the industry was just broken. There was an old way of doing things and a lot of people did very well, very successful at building and earning off of the agents. And hey, there's always going to be great shops. There's a lot of great shops out there. And this isn't, I'm not throwing slight at them because they have contracts and they do this and that. Like, as long as it's all in the up and up. But I started to just have these conversations and A, people would tell me this isn't going to work, my model. And I like to call it the scaling the unscalable. And they're like, what does that mean? Well, I'm going to have an onboarding call with every person. Before they join, like, I'm going to be the one they talk to. I want to talk to them for an hour, maybe even more. I want to understand if we can help. Why are they over here? Like, we're not taking on people where we're the last resort. It's a life for zero. I want to make sure I'd have a beer with you if you're going to join the team. So they're like, well, you're never going to be able to meet with everybody. Well, you could do maybe 10 -minute calls, but you're never going to be able to hour calls. Well, I'm going to scale the unscalable. I'm going to do it. And then I said, I'm going to offer up one -on -one. I'm going to audit their business when they come on. We'll give them a 45 -day follow -up call after that. And then I'm always going to be available. And they're like, that's not going to work. How are you going to scale? You're not going to be able to do all that. I said, well, what if I could? What if I could do all that? I said, I want to give a place where they have a spot to show up every day and I'm there every day. And they're like, well, Ryan, the CEO is never there. But what if I could? What if I could like a safe spot where you come in and you learn? And you share with other people. What if it's a 30 minute? And then some days we have an hour and an hour and a half. Like, that's the vision I wanted. Like, that was just a piece of it. And everybody told me no. They're like, well, there was one person I did. But said, no, not going to work. Can't scale it. We need you to sign contracts. We need this. And then we need you to use this submission platform. I'm like, well, I don't want to use that. Why do I have to force that on people? Because it's the best. Well, to you. But why do I want to take, these are entrepreneurs who run mortgage business. Why would I tell them what they can use and not? So I'm like, I wanted to build something where you don't have to use it. Once again, no slight to other people, but that's just not the business model I wanted, but I was being told I had to. So I'm like, okay, well, that's not going to work. So I eventually went through all the people and certain people were like, yeah, yeah, we'll do this and we'll do that. And then it's like a year later and nothing happened. And I'm like, okay, I'm getting frustrated. I need to build my team. So I shut everything else down and I threw all my energy into this. I wanted to be a broker who did not compete. who's not running their own book, who just throws 99 % of their energy into the team, all the things they need and create a community there for you to show up and do things together. And so I put this situation out to Jason Anterbury with Tango and we're business partners already and some other things. And I laid it out and within two minutes, he's like, yeah, we're in. And I was like, he's had to get sign off and whatnot. He's like, how are we going to structure? He's like, we'll figure it out. He goes, but we want to be partners with you. Like everything you just said, that's us. We're there. And I'm like, whoa, okay. They're the only ones that allowed me to build it my way. Everyone else had all these rules in place and none of the rules were in place to benefit the agents who would be joining. They were all to benefit their business. And I just thought that was so interesting. And so that's why I partnered with Tango and Tango's big. I don't know, 550 agents across three provinces. They're growing like they're big. Like it's not like it was a mom and pop shop. And I was like, okay. And it was just like that. It was like, I found my people. Those people were always there in front of me. I just never really needed a partner like this before. This podcast is brought to you by Americano.


00:11:39 Ryan Wiley
And it was so interesting because there was such alignment from the top down with how they ran their business with no contracts. And they keep growing year over year with no contracts. I'm not against contracts. I'm not. I get it. I'm just like, but what if? What if I could build a team with no contracts? Guess what? It holds me accountable, right? If people can leave and they don't have two and a half years on a contract where I'm like forcing them to be somewhere they don't want to be, like, how does that make me feel? Like, so now anyone can leave at any time and they get all their data and they can just walk out the door. But now the onus is on me and the team to keep giving value, not just coming up with a big song and dance up front and then giving you some outdated tools, signing up to a contract, and then like just fighting you when you want to leave. Didn't want that vibe. So it was no contract. And then we started to get into all the other stuff. And there's so many things you have to understand when you're building a team. And we had to get into our split grid. We had to make sure it was fair, but people paid a premium. Not a big premium, but a small premium. But then we over delivered on our value, which we believe we've figured out. We need to figure out who our niche avatar was. Our avatar is someone doing 8 to 30 mil. We have people doing close to 100 mil. We have a bunch doing over 50. We're at 100 plus brokers now. And 1 .4 billion since we started. And I don't like talk about those numbers because then it's about me and it's not about the agents. I'm just sharing here is like what we're doing is working. So we wanted to build this environment to go after those types of agents. Now, why those agents? Well, it's because we're not set up for, we don't have an underwriter on staff. So we're not set up to help new agents. You need to understand how to package files. You know, most of the files, we have a community that absolutely helps out. But we don't have an underwriter where you come in and we train you up on all that stuff. So we have some agents on our team that joined up. They're like, well, I do seven or eight million. I've been in the game eight years. I know it's structured files, but I'm not really good at these other things. And I'm like, yeah, as long as you're not an asshole, because that's one of our things. And you're willing to share anything in your business at any given time and help out without questions asked. Because we all get, we want to go faster that way. If you're that person, you're going to give more than you take, right? And we're going to keep talking. It doesn't mean you're in it. Let's keep talking. So we knew we could serve those people. And we've helped a lot of those people double and quadruple their business. Inevitably, you're always going to have people who come in and they talk a big game and then their business is kind of the same, which I think for this year and last year, if you hold the line on your volume, that's really good considering what's going on in the industry with rates and how hard it is to put deals together. So some of you have crazy, unrealistic expectations and you should just be holding the line because I hear all the time, I'm 15, I want to go to 30. I'm like, cool. Like, do you know what's involved to do that? It's quite a bit of work. If you're 15 and you can get to 15 or 16 next year in this environment, that's a win. And keep building your foundational pieces so that, you know, you'll be able to jump up when the time presents itself. There are other agents who are just running with it. That's just life. You're always going to have the people who outperform like the ones who are more dedicated, more involved. They're just winners. They're going to win no matter what is in front of them. Almost impossible to have just a room full of winners all the time. But each of us judge how we win in many different ways. It's just not mortgage volume. And I wanted to also change that narrative. Podcast is brought to you by Americana.


00:15:14 Ryan Wiley
We only have a couple more of that sponsorship, okay? Now the coffee's getting low. So we wanted to do it. So we're figuring this all out and we know who we want to serve. Now we're like, well, how are we going to get them? Well, you have the option where you can go put a sales team in place. You can go hire someone, sales. And we all have that. Most places have that. They have someone out there just pounding the pavement, hitting you up on LinkedIn. calling you, texting you. Basically, they have a sales funnel. They're working and they're trying to, like, so you could do that. And I realized we've left agents on the table, money on the table, because, like, I have my sales calls. We've said no to over 100 people joining our team. By the way, we've said no for many different reasons. And some of the people, when I later found out they moved, I'm like, hey, so, okay, that's cool. Hey, what was it? Wow, they felt like they just wanted me more. And I was like, interesting. Yeah, because I told you I'm not going to do the follow up game because now I want you to join for the right reason. It's not because I have a good follow up game. My text game strong. I stay in front of you. I tell you all these things and, you know, I'm just like peppering you with this. We don't have a sales team. Everyone who's here is here. Word them out. Typically, they find me online. They go watch some stuff. They watch the webinar. Right. And then they're here not because I've like peppered them with stuff to be here. So. I thought that was interesting. I'm like, I know I can build this. I'm going to set it up the same way I did my mortgage business. I'm going to go and create eyeballs and I'm going to get them into one thing, which is to watch the webinar. If it resonates with them and they fit the niche avatar, then they book a call and then we get belly to belly and we get to know each other. It's not like, yeah, you're on the team because we just think you have a pulse and you have a license. That's not the game I wanted to play. I didn't want to build that. So we did that. Now, do we let all the right people in? No, but we're learning as we go. And we give a lot of people a chance, right? Because I have a lot of connections from coaching for so many years. And so we give people an opportunity to join in and kind of earn their way on the team. So it was just a completely different vibe we wanted. So we wanted A, to only have the right people, not us. You didn't join because we reached out to you a bunch of times. Are we leaving money on the table by doing that? You 1000 % we are. I'm okay with it. Number two. niche avatar, right? We're going to stick to that. There are certain people I've turned down 75 and $90 million producers. It just wasn't there. I'm like, I don't understand like what value I'm going to, you seem to know it all. You're a know -it -all. You've got it all figured out. So why do you want to be over? Well, I'd like to have you in my corner. I'm like, yeah, I'm not feeling it. So I'm leaving a bunch of money on the table, but not taking you on. But I think it comes with other baggage that I think isn't valuable to the team dynamic. And so we say no. And some people are just complete assholes and they have this huge ego and we say no. Because your volume, you can't throw the volume around. You doing 60 million does not impress me. Because you're an asshole. Like, and then you're going to bring that in and you're going to think you're better than other people and that's going to be felt on the team. So we're very conscious of who we let in. The front door, because this is a forever thing. In my eyes, this is a 10, 15, 20 year play. We're playing the long game. So we could have had 250 people pretty easily, but we chose not to because we'd be dealing with different shit store. And then the people who I actually like spending time with and who like the environments we'd create in the family style environment where we're all laugh, love and like cry together and like help each other out. Like that wouldn't be there because we would have taken the short term game and just get volume, volume, volume because our industry is obsessed with volume. And just because you did volume does not impress me. If you do $10 million a year and you're fun to be around, you're committed to the business, you are in it for the long haul and you're funny, you're quirky, you're hard work and you do what you say you're going to do. You just want to be around other like -minded people who are building instead of bitching. Like we don't bitch, we build. Like I'd rather that all day long than the $50, $60 million producer. Just not even close. I'd rather with that, it's for me too, right? To avoid burnout for myself because dealing with those types of agents, it's exhausting and they want everything for nothing. And that's not what we wanted to build. So we started to slowly figure this out. Like how are we going to get the agents? Well, word of mouth, talk about the podcast. We haven't even put a big marketing push on this. Like zero marketing push. I put out some socials and that's fine. The model's working. Gets people in the webinar, teach them what we do. Then we... follow -up email drip and we show them things we're doing and we haven't even done that that well we've done it just okay because we've just been spending all the time with the team so we haven't been able to build out this marketing machine we're going to slowly keep getting better at it but for me consciously i had this internal struggle that i deal with you know keeps me up at night because for the life of me like i feel like we will never be doing enough for our agents It's like something that just eats at me. I feel guilty about it. And when I step back and I read the comments from our, we have an anonymous survey that goes out once a quarter and we ask you three, four questions. And a lot of it's us just trying to find blind spots. It's not to pump our tires. It's more like, what are we doing? What can we be doing better? Like, I'd love, I'm curious if other brokerages would do that. An anonymous survey to your agents? Hell no. A lot of people would be like, oh shit, I don't want to hear any of that. And we're like, bring it on. And then when I hear the awesomeness that people have, I'm like, okay. So we're actually doing things like drastically better than the majority of the people out there. And it's like, okay. And then it's right back to, we're never going to be able to do enough. But that's a good thing. It's a good thing if you're on the team because it means we're hungry. We're always figuring stuff out. I might get into part two of this, like what we actually do differently and whatnot. But I wanted to just fill you in on my mindset around why I built the team. A, I wanted to build a better business for me and my family, a more sustainable model. And that was go build a team. It's a way bigger commitment than I ever thought. But I realized I need to burn all boats. I can only fly one plane. And it's Team Wyler. So when I made that commitment, it's like, ah, and now I'm like, people are moving over and they're families, they're talking to their spouse, their children, like they're all counting on us. So I have this heavy, heavy responsibility to always be there. And so when people throw out the word scale and scale, oh, I fucking hate that word, scale. Like to go scale something, it's really hard to scale good people, right? So it's just moderate growth. Over time, and I get asked, Ryan, what's the end goal? I don't know. We're just going to keep showing up. Keep showing up. Keep coaching. Keep mentoring. Keep being present. Keep building tools that help the agent get better at what they do. And I'll get into some of that later, maybe. I don't know. So that was what we wanted to figure out. And we're there now. But for us, for me personally, it's like that drive to just always end. Do we got it perfect? No, we don't. But I'll tell you now, sure, shit, we're going down swing. Like every ounce of every day goes into figuring this out for the agents and creating such crazy value that we don't want people to ever leave us. But we don't want that to be a case because they're in a contract. We want it to be a case because they feel like they're at home. They feel like they found a family and they have leaders who are all in. All in. And not just throwing parties. And showing up that stuff. It's like in the actual trenches. And when I was telling people my business model, they're like, you're crazy, Ryan. It's not going to work. I said, but I can be in the trenches. I'm going to build this so that I'm building it with the agents in the trenches. Structuring things in their business, helping them on some live files, help like building the tools, talking the strategies through, holding them accountable, building competition, accountability competition. All this in a very positive environment. They're like, well, we don't see the model. I don't see how you're going to be able to do it. Well, we're going to try. That's the model I want. I don't want the traditional brokerage model, traditional team model. I want happy people who are all in on their business. Positive people. Right. And so this is the mission we're on. This was just kind of like stage wise. Wanted to tell you some things here. The challenges went through. Now, my family, we've been attacked. I've been attacked both online, both on phone calls, both through emails. I've had broker owners reach out and say, hey, Ryan, can you stop showing this on your social? Can you stop doing that? Because my agents are coming to me now and it's creating. I just really appreciate a solid. It's like, fuck no. Why would I do that? Just get better. Just get better. I've had people you go. To conferences, I've been talking to people at conferences because I'm out there a little more on the beam path. And I'll be talking to agents and all of a sudden they're being shushed away by their broker owner. And I'm never selling anyone anywhere. That's not what I do. And I've had, I know most broker owners go to conferences and whatnot, not because they're there to learn, to bring stuff back, to bring it into the day -to -day for their agents. So they're there to play defense. That no one's talking to their agent. I've had people tell me this. Many people. They go to play defense. It's part of the game. And I'm like, see, I'll never do that. Why would I play desets? You want talk to agents on my team and recruit them? I'll give you a list. Don't be annoyed I gave you their name, but like, I'll give you a list. Talk to them. If they want to leave because you're better, oh, then fair enough. Then we didn't hold our end of the bargain, right? Then go. But that's not how the industry is wired. It's aggressive sales coming after you, playing defense, put you in. It was just like the whole vibe and energy was just something I did not want to be a part of. which was the big, big pull into Tango. They saw it exactly how I saw it. And it was refreshing. And it was nice to see. Obviously, I said, there's really good teams out there being run. So we have this model. And now I'm shielding a lot of people. I'm taking the backlash because now as agents start joining the team, guess what happens? Other people start noticing. And they're like, oh, they're joining that team. Oh, they're joining. Oh, they're joining. What the hell? And now they start coming down with lies and reasons about why they should not join us. instead of just looking in the mirror and wondering where they dropped the fucking ball and why they can't be better at building their team or brokerage. And the ones that are scaling, I find everyone just starts becoming a number. And we're very conscious as we grow, because we're going to keep growing, to not lose that. And we've got things in place that are not going to lose out the agents. And a lot of it is, I'm going to tell you right now, it's me being there. The last thing I wanted when people joined the team was, where's Ryan? Ryan peaced out. talked all this stuff. Some of the stuff's here, which was another thing I wanted because when I was doing my rounds as an agent talking to people, everything sounded good. Amazing. The grass was always greener. The tools, the training, it was everything. And then I get there and I'm like, oh, fuck, this was not. And it warms my heart when I hear people on the team going, this was as advertised and even better. And I'm like, ah, it's amazing because it's not always greener. The grass is not always greener. And so I wanted to make sure that. I wanted to make sure that they got what they thought they were getting and even better and that I was there. And every single day, they had the option to connect with me. They had the option to see me, talk to me, connect with me. Because I am that secret sauce. And Courtney's there with me. And then we build the tools that are going to help take your business into 2026 and further along and clean up all the outdated tools in our industry. The actual things that will help you in your business. And so that was part two of what we're doing. And we feel like we're still not there, but we're light years ahead of the competition. And we're going to get there. We just keep building things every month and adding them into the toolkit and then training on it. And I'll go over stuff later. But that was our vision. I'm like, why can't this be done? And I didn't realize that I'd create so many enemies. And I had people keep telling me, yeah, if that's the game and if you're taking agents from them, you will create enemies. And I was like, whoa, I just didn't realize they'd be that vicious. I didn't realize that they would go to the extent that they did. And it's crazy town. Absolute crazy town, the stuff I've heard. It's bonkers. And I won't get into it. It's sad.


00:27:55 Ryan Wiley
Really? But if that's the cost for me to build what I want to build and to help the families that I've made a handshake agreement with, to help them and their families prosper, I'm willing to take it on. If people are going to talk shit about me and come and attack me, I got big shoulders. I'm willing to take it on. And I already have, and I'm going to continue to do so because it's actually going to keep coming. Unfortunately, there's an underbelly to our industry that not a lot of agents know, nor do you want to know. Just keep on carrying on where you are. Like, you don't need to understand all this stuff. So I've removed myself from all the things. I just stay in my lane. I keep serving the people because that's what keeps me up at night. We're never sitting here figuring out how can we grow our team. it's how can we help the brokers grow? Because we came down to some simple business principles. And this is the last thing I'll say here on this and then we'll shut this one down. But we say like, if you make money, we make money, right? If you're capped, what incentive do I have for you to earn revenue? I'm capped. So at some point, like I just, I get you in and then it's like, hey, that's why you're here. You're capped. No shade on people capping. Commission. There's a lot of shops out there. More than you realize. Still, a lot of them don't talk about it publicly, but a lot of them are. They're getting people in because they kept their commission. Which, whatever. That's cool. Great. But I'm like, the motivation on my end, like, I want you to increase your revenue. And so, I used to coach people on how to build email drip campaigns. I used to coach people on webinars. I used to coach people on, you know, how to sell certain strategies, advanced strategies. How to coach people on like social media, like I used to coach on all this stuff. And then there's certain pieces in there that I just know the brokers, only 10, 15 % of them are actually going to do the work. But if you're on my team and if you make money, I make money, then why don't we do it for you? Because then it gets done. So a lot of the stuff we built into our side is we do it for you. And the one biggest example is the email marketing machine with Drip Campaign. I personally write all the emails because they work. It's the most like, The lowest cost, biggest return on investment you'll ever make in your mortgage business is your email marketing game. You should have 60 to 80 emails going out with value, value, value asked year round. It'll create so many opportunities for you and book calls while you're sleeping. And so we went and built this machine. We invested in personnel to go build it all. So that's one of the things you get. It's one of the things. It's a straight business model. So I'm going to get rid of my one -on -one coaching instead. coach, and earn long -term. Then we're going to build things into your business, which is really sticky and it's hard for you to leave. We're very upfront about this. We're like, yeah, these are tools that you're going to rely on to run your business. And then we're going to do a lot of the done -for -you things for you. We're going to build them and do them for you so you don't have to. We just remove the friction and the excuses on your end. And so this was the business model we had and nobody has ever done it. And nobody has set things up the way we have. And a team in multi -provinces under brokerages with the coaching and mentoring and the tools, it just does not exist in Canada. I've had numerous people, lenders, broker owners, other agents, people not even on the team going, nobody's doing what you're doing. I said, yeah, it's hard though. It's really hard. But we're winning. Our version of winning. And our agents are winning. And so I'm going to keep sharing things along the journey and I'll keep sharing stuff I learned. There's so many more things I've learned. on this path that I don't want to make this, you know, two -hour podcast. I'll drop other podcasts in just sharing. But I wanted to set the record straight on a couple things. And this team, Wiley team, this will be my legacy. So all my eggs are in this basket. How comforting is that to know that the person who you sign on and you're giving your hard -earned commission to, that they're all in probably more than you are. I'm safe to say that. Probably more committed to bringing the value for the split we're giving, then you are. And I'll go toe -to -toe with our offer against anybody's. And it's just different, right? We focus sales, marketing, mindset, process, systems, and we just keep talking about the same thing over and over again to build a very boring business that you can go live a spectacular life and go make some money. And we do it in an environment where we're doing it together because it's a lonely business and you end up being on islands a lot of times. And all of a sudden you're comparing yourself to others. You're wondering, why is this person doing so well and why or not? And then you start cycling around right to the bottom. We want to pull you out of that. We want to pull you into come and talk to us. And let's show you the other people who are in the same spot you're at, but what they're doing about it. And let's stop bitching and let's start building. We don't give oxygen to that stuff on the team. It's easy to say rates are going. We can never compete. Fuck that. So many opportunities to compete. You just have to tell the story a different way. And so we're trying to build tools and training and coaching around helping you tell a story differently to your client. Because mortgages are boring. And there's a lot of clients that have boring situations where you can only add so much value. And inevitably, you start getting back to talking about interest rate. And we want to give you tools and coaching so that you can tell this story in a better way for them to realize your value so that they will pay a premium to go with you. Because you're never going to have the lowest interest rate. It's going to be very rare that you'd ever do. So now you have to become a really good storyteller. So we're giving you the tools to help do that. So that's where our energy goes and what we do. But there you go. Anyways, that's the mission I'm on, where I came from, an agent to a coach to now all in here. We're not stopping. We're going to keep going. There is no stop. We're going to keep building something that no one else has built. And we're just going to keep getting the right people in. And one thing that I do realize from building the team is I was a guy who crushed mortgages in my basement and just did mortgages and wanted to just be alone, like just a loner over here, hitting the phones, just doing it, making money. I wanted to take that mentality into this as well. And I want everyone to make money. And now it's morphed into this other thing where we have a family. And I genuinely like hanging out together, the majority of us. And it's just interesting. It's now filling a cup I didn't know. that I had and didn't know that I need to be filled was that community aspect. No idea. And I'm like, wow, that's so cool. Like brings tears to my eyes. Cool. And that's something I just wasn't expecting nor thinking about. I was just trying to build a business. Now I start seeing, oh, there's a whole other side to this. And I'm like, interesting. And so we're going to keep leaning into that. Right. And we're going to make a lot of mistakes, but we're also going to get a lot of things right. Okay. So that's it, kids. I really appreciate the support. on everything and listening to this does give support. If you have any questions about anything, you know where to find me. Otherwise, enjoy your week. That's it, kids. Peace out.