Full Transcript is Below:
– You know exactly what this is. If you’re in the mortgage business you have seen this magazine. It is the magazine in the mortgage space. And joining us right now for the second consecutive year is Todd Britton-Simmons. He’s the Executive Director and Principal of Scotsman Guide. Todd, great to see you.
– Hey. Thanks for having me back, Greg,
– Before we jump right in, I wanna just take a quick look at last year. We’re seeing you, as I interviewed you last year, you were in a t-shirt. This year you have decided… I wanna know what went into this decision to wearing a striped, sort of almost like a club shirt, with a collar.
– That was one of my first video calls ever. So I don’t do a lot of these and now after, with COVID and everything else, I’m, it’s my preference to have to be able to see somebody’s face rather than on a phone call.
– We helped break you in. Maybe next year, you’ll put on a suit and tie. Who knows.
– Yeah. And maybe some pants, you know?
– Whoa. Okay, TMI. All right, so tell us what’s been happening at the magazine. How have you made it through this challenging year?
– Yeah, it’s been really difficult a year as a whole. We started off great, obviously with, we rolled out a new website, we refreshed the magazine departments, and we rolled out a whole new daily originator email. Things were really ticking up, top originators. Had a great year. Had a record number of submissions and then COVID hit. And so we took the hit along with everybody else. There was lack of liquidity in the non-QM market and I think everybody was just trying to figure out where to place loans. As a result of that there’s the lack of networking opportunities that originators have for themselves. They’re really struggling to find new connections with lenders and in employment. So I think we’ve been, we’ve kind of, we’ve seen an actual uptick, an increase in our searches on the tail, on the latter half of the last two quarters of the year.
– Well, you’ve created an incredible ecosystem for originators to jump into. What are some of the highlights that they can look forward to seeing if they go to the website? Well, with our website, scotsmanguide.com, the residential edition we’re experiencing, enjoying, our 26th year. It’s a great location to the three things that we’re known for. Our, of course, our content, our articles and daily news with our media angle. And we have our lender search and our limited search and job search. This year has been a breakout year for us. And then we had over 200,000 searches and over 100,000 connections were made through those through those searches. So we’ve turned into really kind of a go-to for people looking for networking opportunities when there’s a dearth of them currently.
– And that kind of has two different faces, correct? There’s the aspect of originators wanting to know where they can put their loans, especially those that are brokering, what lenders are doing what. And then there is the loan officer or branch manager that might be looking for a different, a better opportunity or home for all of their business to pick up and move into, right?
– Absolutely. Yeah. We are predominantly, there’s greater demand for the lender search on a daily basis, but a large portion of our business is through the job placement for sales reps. So it’s LOs, mortgage branch managers. We’ve been doing that for years and years. We recently expanded it to include wholesale AEs and some of your hard money or commercial sales reps. So we’re all about the originators and sales reps in general. We just wanna be the go-to source for them for either a loan or for a job.
– Well you saw unbelievable growth last year in the top producer edition. And I wanna talk to you about that because that’s what I know Scotsman’s Guide for. I know you do a million things but if you’re a high producing originator, this is where you wanna be. This is it. You wanna be in here. It’s like being on the billboard on the most busy street in the industry, in the eyes of an originator. So, when are you gonna start to take applications for the 2020 year? And how can people ship them in?
– Yes, we didn’t see a massive increase in 2019. We, almost 50%. So I think we really got on a lot more people’s radars. We’ve expanded our footprint with several more new marketing initiatives. In 2020 the rankings open up January 31st. The run, the submission period runs through the 31st. The cutoffs to make the rankings this year are gonna be 40 million in production and/or 100 loans.
– I think what a lot of people wanna know is how do you substantiate the volume? I know I asked you this last year, but just refresh the audience for us so that people can know that not only are their numbers authentic but so are all of the people they’re competing with.
– We’re clear in our methodology. And this is on our website too as well as scotsmanguide.com. That’s where we have all 12 years of the rankings up there. So we require everybody comes in, individuals come in, submit their production for this year. And then we would reach out to then request the production reports. So we wanna see their reproduction reports. We match that up with what their submission is. And then we go back and we ask for a memo certifying that that’s their actual production. So plugging all those numbers into that memo. It needs to be with a CFO or an officer of their company signing off on it saying that they actually did those numbers.
– Todd, what’s the vision for this company? You’ve been around now, 26 years. You’re in your 26th year. What are the next couple of years gonna look like for you? What what’s like the big thing on your radar?
– The big thing, of course, further enhancing our current products. I think that’s one of our main focuses is making sure we’re doing the best we could possibly do with our current offerings. We’re looking to really kind of get into more of the data game. I mean, with Scotsman Guide, we produce, we have a like I said, over 200, we do a 220,000 searches this year. Each one of those searches, I have six different data points for each one of those. So we’re, we’re collecting an immense amount of data and kind of like the top of the funnel.
– Todd Britton-Simmons, Executive Director and Principal of the Scotsman Guide. Thanks so much. We’re gonna plaster the website up here, again. All things mortgage. You gotta get there. It’s plain and simple. This is where you go, if you’re in the mortgage business, to stay up to date and make sure you’re at the right company and sending your loans in to the right people. Todd, we’ll talk to you again soon. Have a great 2021.
– Thanks for having me Greg, you too.
– I’m Greg Sher from NFM TV. We’ll see you again next time.