In today’s market, relationships matter more than ever. Strong associations with real estate professionals is a start, but mortgage professionals must also invest time and energy in connecting with their broader community. After all, the wider your sphere of influencemore business opportunities you have.
But how do you integrate into your local community and start building authentic relationships?
Ted Bogert, market leader with future mortgage loanshas found a unique way to connect with his community in orlandoFlorida and surrounding areas.
Bogert is the creator and presenter of “The Ted Show” a locally popular show that airs on Facebook Live. Invite guests with “amazing stories” to share their experiences, as well as talk about business, art, community, relationships, and more.
“I wanted to show … the amazing things that are happening in our community that you wouldn’t normally see,” Bogert said. “It allows me to connect those people with the community that follows The Ted Show. It just continues to snowball, and it’s a passion project that gives back a lot.”
Through his past experiences with nonprofit work, his current position, and the program itself, Bogert has a network of connections with a variety of interesting people in different fields. Bogert is happy to tailor that network to be a resource for people looking for almost anything, anywhere, even if it’s not related to their mortgage business.
“Desire [people] come to me,” he said. “I want them to think of me, to keep in mind, and to know that if they need to find something in Orlando or Florida or really anywhere in the world, I have connections, because the program is global. Strictly from a business perspective, staying in the mind is a beautiful thing, even if it has nothing to do with [mortgage]. I want them to keep thinking of me first, which goes a long way toward a long-term relationship.”
Here are their tips and lessons learned for building lasting community relationships:
- Do not run with business. Bogert said he doesn’t put business first in conversations, even when he’s working with other people on the mortgage and real estate industry. Instead, he will ask what he can do for them and encourage them to share the things that matter to them. He’ll even feature people from organizations they’re passionate about on the show.
- Be relational; not transactional. Bogert’s goal is to build authentic relationships through his work, both on The Ted Show and with Future Home Loans.
“If you live and work in a community, it’s important not to be commercially minded as far as making things transactional,” he said. “By showing people my love for our community, our global community, I am providing more of a relationship than a transaction. I’m not here just to ask, ‘What have you done for me lately? Be sure to use me for all your mortgages. I think anyone who takes that transactional approach is doing the whole world a disservice.”
- Be proactive. Bogert said the word she chose to set the tone for his year is “Ask.” He said that he has all these connections in Central Floridabut historically it has been passive in using them to grow its mortgage business.
“I wanted it to grow organically, and it did. And then I realized that by not asking, I was doing everyone a disservice,” she said. “People thought of me, they kept me in mind, but I didn’t make them think of me as a mortgage person, they were thinking of me as a resource.”
Instead, Bogert has begun soliciting business from people with whom he has built relationships, and that has opened doors and generated business opportunities he might not have had otherwise. On the contrary, he is consistent in referring businesses to others.
- Build trust.
“I’ve spent so much time invest in relationships, because they are real relationships for me, I have no acquaintances, “he said. “People [I’ve featured] They have become friends on the show. We do business together, and people recommend me. I feel like I finally built enough trust and rapport, and I earned that opportunity.”
- Get authentically involved in the community. Bogert recommends getting authentically involved in your local community as a way to build relationships.
“By messing around, you smart little one, you don’t have to do everything and be everything to everyone at once,” he said. “I think if you start small, you don’t have to call your entire database and you don’t have to spend all day throwing business cards at people. Really take the time to find out what they need and how you can be a resource to them.”
Bogert advises maintaining a mix of real estate and non-real estate community connections.
“When you get involved in the community, don’t do everything you do about real estate. [If you do,] you have no other footprint in the community,” he said. “I think it’s important that people [avoid having] tunnel vision.”
He noted that even LOs must have something other than the mortgage industry to talk to people about. You must have multiple interests and have real conversations with people about things like family and local happenings.
“I don’t like it when I sit down and all we’re talking about is business,” he said. “There have to be other topics you talk about, otherwise people will drown you out. It is very important to be multidimensional and not always lead with business”.
“Authentic relationships are critical, absolutely critical,” he said. “And I don’t know how to do it any other way.”
