On Wednesday, March 3, the Mortgage Leadership Outlook featured Kathryn Pedersen, area sales manager for Fidelity Mortgage, a division of Bay Equity Home Loans. Pedersen and series' host Andrew Berman, head of engagement and outreach for National Mortgage Professional Magazine, explored how she's using Clubhouse to foster collaborations, feedback and business relationships while producing record-breaking volume.
Clubhouse is currently an invite-only audio-chat app for iOS users. So far, it has been used as a social networking app to help professionals in various careers connect with one another.
Pedersen has been in the mortgage business for more than 20 years and in lending for most of her professional life. She was voted, Best of the Boat Mortgage Lender 2013-2020, and has been in the President’s Club or Chairman’s Circle since joining Bay Equity seven years ago.
She believes that Clubhouse has opened up some opportunities (collaborations, feedback, business relationships, etc.) but has not helped volume. Currently, she sees the platform as a bit of a land grab to set a placeholder as more and more people get onto the platform. However, she feels that it will continue to grow and more opportunities will come.
Highlights From The Interview:
- Pedersen did 380 transactions in 2021, with the caveat of a booming market. In 2019, she did about 264 transactions. She was not primarily using Facebook to help market her business. Instead, teaching CE classes, participating in the community and participating on boards helped get the word out about her business. She also said that she tries to keep lending within the concentrated, small town that she lives on.
- “We do a combination of a lot of phone calls out to our past clients for three-month check-ins, six-month check-ins, we put them on campaigns via email and we also use Homebot, which is a tool that gives them information about their home.”
- Pedersen named a number of technology solutions that saves her time and help her reach more clients including Floify, Homebot and Mortgage Coach.
- “Am I a social media expert? Absolutely not. I know enough to be dangerous and I try to stay active enough. But I am not a social media guru by any means.”
- She first stumbled upon Clubhouse when a colleague posted an invite for the app, as it is now just invite-only. She reached out and began to explore.
- “I was like OK, I’m going to start watching everyone and see what they’re doing, start connecting with agents and connecting with other mortgage people. I immediately started some rooms just to kind of test it. I sat alone for a while. Then, I just started slowly connecting with some other people and getting other people started with the app.”
- “For me, Mortgage Coach started a mod group for other originators, which we do twice a day, which has been really great just to help other people and help other originators. That’s been really fulfilling because I think that as an originator, when I was new, I would have loved to have something like that. Even a year ago and now, I’ve learned so much. So, that’s been really great to connect with other people across the country because we just don’t have that comradery right now that we did at conferences and those other things. It’s been really great to connect with other people who do my job. I’m in such a small town it’s not like I can go have coffee with somebody and talk mortgages.”
- Pedersen offered practical tips on using Clubhouse. “Everything in your profile is searchable, so, if you have mortgage in there, homebuyer, your city in there all of that is searchable. Every single word. So, when I look at that I think, ‘OK, I need to put everything in here that could apply to what’s going on with me.’ You want it to be easy to read, those first three lines are the key. If you look at a list of 20 people that followed you that day, you’re only going to see those first three lines. So, those first three lines need to be impactful so that people know what you do and what you’re about in those three lines. You will get more followers if those three lines are concise. Down below it can be interests because you want to have a little bit of fun. If it’s just a paragraph nobody’s going to read that. The other thing is you want to link to Instagram because they don’t have DM, so that’s how people can get a hold of you.”
Check out the full interview between Pedersen and Berman below.
Click here to see the previous episode featuring John Lynch.
Previous guests include Robert Broeksmit, Josh Friend, Joe Dahleen, Tim Nguyen, Kristy Fercho, Tony Thompson, Mat Ishbia, David Luna, Barry Habib, Rob Chrisman and more.
See all the interviews from the Mortgage Leadership Outlook series on its YouTube channel.
