Episode 025: Casey Crawford, Movement Mortgage

Joel Epstein:
You guys innovated. It's funny, and please, no one be offended by this at any other company, but this is just from my view point, and I work with lots of different companies. You guys forced the market to the pre underwrite. To the out pre underwrite. No, you did. And when I first met Toby, it's an interesting story, because my good friend, Matt Schofield, we worked together in another company, and as soon as I was no longer involved in that company, I was a free agent, Matt's like, "Hey, are you a free agent?" I'm like, "Yeah." He goes, "Hey, I'd like you to go down to New Orleans, and I'd like you to... I want to hire you, and have you do a little work. We have some MSAs down there that are not performing, and I know that's a wheelhouse for you, and I'd like you to go down. But first I'd like you to go meet Toby. So, I went to Virginia Beach, and we went to Toby's favorite Italian place.

Casey Crawford:
Aldo's.

Joel Epstein:
So Toby and I started talking, and Matt left. He left in 10 minutes. He goes, "I'll be back in four hours." And literally we were there for four hours, but I looked at Toby. I'll never forget. And you know that I'm direct. I don't care. I'm direct. I'm not going to lie.

Casey Crawford:
You do care, actually. You do care. That's why you're direct.

Joel Epstein:
Right. And I said, "Toby, let me ask you a question. You're insane. Who takes a D underwriter and make him $110,000 a year, and has him underwrite loans that aren't going to close? What are you doing." [crosstalk 00:20:36] He goes, "We're doing it." I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait. What? I don't understand what you're doing." He goes, "It's working for us. We're doing it." And it's funny. And then I saw the rest of the market. Very slowly you guys ebbed a little on that, and the market came forward a little bit on that, and it was so cool, because if you're a lender for ever, one of the biggest sticklers for lenders, for mortgage people, if you're a real estate agent watching this, understand and know this is not having people completely pre-qualified or pre=approved before you show them houses, because when we get contracts, when you come to a lender and go, "Oh, I already sold them a house." We go, "Wait, what? Who is the person?" I don't even know who they are without doing that.

Joel Epstein:
For years we've always said, it's lender, then go buy a house, but it doesn't work that way. When you want to buy a house, you go online at 11:00 o'clock at night, a glass of Rose and your bunny slippers, and go whoop, and you end up on the phone with an agent, and you don't know what you can afford. You have no idea. And so when he told me you guys were doing that, I was like, wow, and I started looking into your whole culture, what you guys are doing, and I'm like, "That's pretty cool." It's pretty cool.

Casey Crawford:
This, to me, is one of 50 examples that I think our industry gets wrong, has gotten wrong, and you're right, we're turning back the right way now.

Joel Epstein:
Yeah.

Casey Crawford:
But it's foundational. It's foundational, and so everything... When we say foundationally we say, we exist to love and value people. If we're going to love our customer, act in their long term best interest, how in the world am I going to send you out shopping for a house with you having no idea how much you can afford?

Joel Epstein:
Zero, right.

Casey Crawford:
How in the world. So if my little sister was going to go, and she has, gotten two homes. Got them financed through Movement. First thing we did, had her talk to a great loan officer, and had a fully empowered credit decision maker look at her entire financial picture, and let her know how much she could afford.

Joel Epstein:
Then agent.

Casey Crawford:
If I would do it for my little sister, if that's the service I would provide for my little sister, why wouldn't I provide it for yours? And when we saw all the sigma paradox, "Oh, the D underwriter is the most constrained. Resource the whole system so you won't push them to the end of the thing. The problem is, foundationally, fundamentally, that's not the right way to treat your customer.

Joel Epstein:
I agree.

Casey Crawford:
And what we've seen, over and over again, is that treating your customer well, acting in excellence, acting in their long term best interest is the most efficient process. It is the most productive way to act, and it's been really cool to even watch the CFEV, then, come out with, you need to know before you owe. Now they framed it better than... I wish we had said that. We talked about output underwriting, I wish I'd come up with know before you owe, but we were know before you owe before it was cool.

Joel Epstein:
When it was pretty much insane.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. Everybody tells us it's the wrong way to do it. You guys will fail.

Joel Epstein:
I'm like, "Toby, you guys are crazy."

Casey Crawford:
Can't do that. It's not going to work. Can't scale it. Too expensive. All this stuff.

Joel Epstein:
Yeah. Crazy, crazy.

Casey Crawford:
Well, it's the right thing to do, though, so we're going to do it.

Joel Epstein:
And I would say every major mortgage company right now, playing ball at your level, we all know who they are, have some type of internal system now to do that. They're not doing it on every file, but they are.

Casey Crawford:
No, they'll advertise that they do that. I think that's a cool thing. Listen, whether you're in mortgage, real estate, whatever you are, I've talked to a lot of folks about this, because we have revision to change the industry, and to change cultures on things, and they go, "Well how do you do that?" Because you're not going to hire every [inaudible 00:23:51], and the go, "No, of course not. We have one and a half percent market share. We're not going to hire every body." All you have to do is change what the bar of excellence means. When you do that, every other competitor in the place, whether we're talking about football, west coast offense, whatever-

Joel Epstein:
Right. It's a good example.

Casey Crawford:
Everyone else has to start living up to that example, because if you want to compete, that's the great thing about a free market. It mandates innovation, and it makes everyone else compete with the best competitor out there, and either surpass them or come up to par, so that they get their market share. Otherwise, it all goes to one place, so that's what we continue to do. I hope some folks start copying some other things that we're trying to do in the marketplace, because I think it's important. I think it's important for America.

Joel Epstein:
It's a good, I always use as an example, one of the first things. I went to Tulane, in New Orleans. I owned a couple restaurants there before I came back here. And one of the guys that worked for me left and went across the street and opened a pizza place like I had, with all my recipes and everything. The same, right across the street, and I was freaking out. And this is when I learned a very core marketing and PR, and just a life lesson on that. Well, no, it's not a problem. Now just more people are eating pizza. That's all it is. It doesn't mean my business is going to down. It just means more people are going to be thinking about eating pizza. It's exactly what you're saying. Everybody rises up together. There's plenty, there's so much food at the table.

Casey Crawford:
Rising tide that sells ships. Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
And honestly, when you look at it now, and I know you're looking at this stuff. It's very timely. I don't know if you're seeing it dribbling all over the news with the fin techs, trying to get around some stuff that you and all your compatriots. Basically you, and I can name the eight or nine companies, you all could get in a room together and do some damage. They're trying to get around stuff that you have to be compliant to, by saying, by calling themselves something different, and at the same time, people are making these little blurbs, these little noises. There's big this, or big that, and every time I do a big presentation, I talk to anyone, I'm like, "Listen, let me explain something to you. Your job is to own the customer. If the customer loves you nothing could ever get in between."

Joel Epstein:
And what I tell agents all the time is, if somebody is sitting at 2:00 o'clock in the morning, pounding Rose, in their bunny slippers, literally looking at houses all night long and triggering all kinds of stuff, like Zillow and [inaudible 00:26:22], and getting all these phone calls from all these agents or all these ISRs, whatever. They're all pounding them, they can still get up in the morning at 9:00 o'clock and go, "Hey Casey, it's Suzy Q. Hey, I was looking at houses last night. Can you show me this house?" "Okay. Yeah." Because it doesn't matter what they're looking at if they're coming back to you.

Joel Epstein:
So it becomes, yes, there's technology in there, but it becomes a battle, actually, for the customer, because people want to... The transaction still so... I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Have you seen any faster, compressed, commoditized river, but where's the point where you can throw all this technology, and don't appraise any properties any more. You could title like this. Title [inaudible 00:27:09]. You don't even need a title company anymore. It's automated.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah, you should be able to do it faster still, and cheaper, but yes.

Joel Epstein:
Where's that point? We did an episode of this show with a millennial buyer and actually I interview Josh, who's in the booth, who was buying a house.

Casey Crawford:
A resident millennial?

Joel Epstein:
Yeah. Who was buying a house. And that dummy didn't say anything to me. He started doing it before he talked to me.

Casey Crawford:
Wow.

Joel Epstein:
And then he finally was, "Uh, can you help me?" And I had to undo 27 things, but he explained the mind. Like how they were thinking. "No, no, no, no. We want all this, but we want to talk to you. We still want to talk to you. We want the technology, but we want to talk to you." Where do you see, in maybe 12 months. Let's go 24 months. Is anything different in 24 months? What's different in the mortgage and real estate? Both sides.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. Look, so interestingly, it was about 18 months ago I was on CNBC and talking about what's going to change digitally in the mortgage space, and the first thing I brought up was appraisals. Right now, it's three weeks and $500 bucks. It should be .5 seconds and $3.00, period. All the data exists. There's actually more predictive data around the predictive value of your home, which is actually more important. What this house is going to be worth in three years, because of crime rates, because of school funding, because of potholes, because of escrows in the county and state, and all kinds of things. And that's what the ultimate owner of the collateral, the loan, is going to want. They want to know what this house is going to be worth over time, and that's shifting. We're seeing a shift, but here's the thing. It's such a complex inner connected eco system between our state, federal legislators. You've got Fanny, and Freddie, and Jennie all-

Joel Epstein:
Antiquated foreclosure laws, which stop a lot of stuff.

Casey Crawford:
Antiquated foreclosure laws, antiquated title laws. Antiquated title transfer processes at the court house. You still race to record states. This stuff could be managed digitally with block chain, and it is just a slow moving eco system because of that. I think our industry has actually had a history for 30 years of being dead wrong about the speed with which technology is going to transform it. How long have we had DocuSign capabilities?

Joel Epstein:
Exactly.

Casey Crawford:
E-signature?

Joel Epstein:
It's a great point.

Casey Crawford:
20 years. And we're still not fully digital in the package. It's crazy. So I'm always hesitant. If we could talk about what technology is capable of doing, but what our eco system is going to be able to adopt is a really different question. Now look, I think if you asked, what is the trajectory and what I think loan officers, realtors need to be thoughtful about right now is continuing to adopt technology on the front end of their business and process. Technology is helping consumers organize the home buying process like never before. We just, at Movement, came out with, integrated into our mobile app, the ability for them to do their post office change, order all their power, utility hook-ups, organize their movers. Do all these ancillary details.

Joel Epstein:
All the crap you've got to do.

Casey Crawford:
And do it all in one place, mobiley. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. That's important. That helps bring value to the home buyer, which is what we really have to fundamentally be about, but all this rhetoric about the loan officer being terrified. "Oh, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and my jobs going to be gone." That's a fallacy. For yourselves, I think what's going to happen is, loan officers doing well are going to have to be good, and then great.

Joel Epstein:
Be better. Yeah.

Casey Crawford:
They're going to have to do even more. And they're going to leverage technology to do that. Over time, yes, technology's probably going to bring down the amount that mortgage companies make on each loan, and the individual loan officers are paid on each loan. I don't think your incomes going to come down, because you're just going to be doing more loans, because technology is going to enable that. We're actually doing a complete technological overhaul on a lot of our processes, and it's probably going to make people 50% more productive. That's fantastic, but it doesn't mean you're not going to have sales folks. And so today, we close a lot of homes, we work with realtors all over America. If I'm moving to San Francisco, I'm going to get online, I'm going to shop like crazy. I'm going to look at lots of houses, and then I'm going to pick the phone up and call, because I'm going to want a local human being to walk me through and tell me about some of the nuances of the neighborhoods. And I'm not necessarily going to know online. Help me negotiate the contract, because laws are different in every county in the country.

Joel Epstein:
The analogy I use, I don't know if you've ever heard this from any of your people, if I'm doing something. The technology, I'm just going to use Easy App for a second. The technology is, I tell people to close their eyes and visualize a steel ball. It's steel. Cold steel. If you just throw somebody into the steel room, then you're going to get what you get, which is a quarter of an app. They're in there for a couple minutes. They leave, whatever. Your job is to put a fur coat on that steel ball. Take that technology, adopt it, don't run from it, but warm it up. Grab it and warm it up so the customer experience, they can still feel you all the way through. Some of your best loan officers, actually go in the system with the people. And these are people that do a lot of loans.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
They're not in there that long, but they actually go in, and they have the highest rate of, I'm going to use the work pull through. That's an old word, but I'm going to use the word pull through.

Casey Crawford:
Conversion, pull through. Yeah, sure.

Joel Epstein:
Whatever you want to do. Because right now, what it's all about right now. I sit down in front of loan officers right now and you'd love to be a fly on the wall for this freak out. I like to go, "Okay, we're going to do some math. Let's do some math. Ready? We're going to do some math." They're like, "Okay, okay, okay." I'm like, "Do you know how many credit pulls you had last year? This is for your credit pulls." They're like, "Well, what do you mean?" I say, "Okay. For Joel... Joel math. Joel math. A credit pull means interesting client. You pull their credit. Interested. You got to the point where you pull their credit." And they're like, "Okay, fine." I'm like, "Let's pretend you pull credit on a thousand people. 80 people a month. Whatever. A thousand people. Let's subtract can't dos."

Joel Epstein:
"Let me give you the definition of a can't do. Sub-par credit, where the customer would need to clean themselves up to get a loan currently offered by your company. Whatever it is. They've got to be below that line, they've got to clean up their credit, pay some stuff off. Whatever it is. Or can't buy for six months. Getting a gift from uncle Casey in a year. That's a can't do as well. So credit pulls, minus can't dos." And then I go, "How many loans did you close?" "300." I'm like, "Okay, so a thousand less 200 can't dos is 800. You closed 300 loans. Just curious. Where did the other 500 go? Literally, where are they?" And these guys will look at me like, "What?"

Joel Epstein:
And if they have their LOAs and stuff in the room with them, they're getting all fired up, because I work with a lot of guys that do a lot of loans. And they're getting all fired up. They're like, "Wait a minute. Where did those 500 go?" They're freaking out. And guess where they all vaporized? Vaporized. Sent into the technology with no fur coat. Like this. Gone like this. Poof. So we sit and work at a tactical ground level with loan officers putting fur coats on steel balls. That's what it's all about. They know that they've got to use it to be effective and to be more productive, but they also know they're getting their butt kicked if they just throw the people in there and it's not warm in there. It's like 20 degrees up in there.

Casey Crawford:
Well, I think we also take for granted a little bit the fact that, our top LOs, they're doing whatever, 50, 60 loans a month. They know loans inside and out. This is, typically, most people aren't going to get more than two or three mortgages in their lifetime.

Joel Epstein:
I bet it's 2.5. I bet it's less than three. I bet you're right. Yeah.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. And all they've heard about is all these scary mortgages that got people in trouble, they got their houses foreclosed on, the rates weren't adjustable. They moved, they didn't know. There's a lot of fear. A lot of trepidation. People don't even understand down payments. I'm still shocked at the number of people I've talked to that had no idea you can only put 3% down to buy a house. They're saving 20%, because their granddad told them they had to save up 30% to get a home. And not that there's not wisdom in that, but they're just not aware of what we know in the industry today.

Casey Crawford:
So I think we can never fall short of being that counselor of bringing that value, bringing that perspective, bringing that expert advice to somebody that's buying a home, and to your point, not just throwing them into some digital app. Yes, we can a digital app, of course. We can close loans digitally like that, that's no big deal. We get all the tech to do that, but I think our best loan officers are the ones that actually are having the conversation, that are still having the consultative conversation with the borrowers. Not just trying to push them into technology.

Joel Epstein:
But, when you talk to the best loan officers in the country, and I feel very fortunate-

Casey Crawford:
You coach a lot of them. So yeah.

Joel Epstein:
I coach a bunch of them. There are parts of the process that they don't bend on. They do it, and that's exactly what you're talking about. That bonding piece that make sure-

Casey Crawford:
That's what humans do well, right?

Joel Epstein:
... That people feel good about, arguably, the largest purchase they will ever make in their life.

Casey Crawford:
Largest debt obligation they're going to have. The biggest asset on their balance sheet.

Joel Epstein:
The biggest thing they will ever have. They're like, "No, no, no, no. This is not delegated. There's no technology that can replace this conversation."

Casey Crawford:
What I heard you say right there, too, is, they're going to make sure they feel good.

Joel Epstein:
100%.

Casey Crawford:
Very different than all the technical data collection. The machines are fantastic at it, and frankly, I've never met a loan officer that's just like, "Man, oh my gosh, I love stacking bank statements and sourcing large deposits." Fantastic, let's let the machines do that part. The part of giving comfort, giving assurance, making an emotional connection with the homeowner, that's the part that great loan officers are great at, and they should spend their time doing that. Don't try to outsource that part to the machine. Let the machine do what it's amazing at.

Joel Epstein:
Top three most stressful things in life. Death of a family member, divorce, buying or selling a house.

Casey Crawford:
Yes.

Joel Epstein:
It's right up there with a crying experience for most people. Whether it's tears of joy or tears of madness. Whatever it is, there's a lot going on, and to take the human being out of there, I-

Casey Crawford:
Huge mistake.

Joel Epstein:
It's a mistake, but it's also, I can't even... Maybe I'm not being forward thinking enough. I can't even see how. And I work with some loan officers that work for good companies, like your company, that have a lot of technology at their beck and call. I mean some really high tech stuff. You can probably name the companies that have high tech stuff, and they still take a right, and they stop right there. And they're like, no, no, no, this is all humans. If you're not breathing you're not allowed in this room. This is the breathing room. Then we go back to the technology.

Joel Epstein:
And then there's other loan officers, because sales people always want... I was just talking about this with the guest before you. A really cool guy. Basketball guy, Pat the Roc. Famous guy. In fact, you'll get a kick out of this. I didn't even know this. He's sitting here. When you watch the basketball games, NBA 2000, and whatever, and you watch LeBron James, it's his body, with the things on it. He's the one making the moves.

Casey Crawford:
No way. The Roc.

Joel Epstein:
Yeah, yeah. So he was talking about people being focused, and people being driven, and people being, anything is possible. He said when he was seven, "I want to be a Harlem Globetrotter." And wrote it down.

Casey Crawford:
Wow. Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
And so most loan officers, they don't want to work. They don't want to do the work, so when you get people that don't want to do the work, that kind of technology, it's like giving a two year old a black magic marker in a white room, and going, "I'll be back in an hour." What's going to happen? They're going to write on all the walls. And so, I always feel like, and I see this at lots of different mortgage companies, the technology is incredible, and there's a certain group of loan officers that just go all in.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
And they're just shoving people in that steel room, and the company, sometimes I just wish-

Casey Crawford:
Well, we're so excited about it, right? We're so excited to bring our new toys. Look at our new shiny toy.

Joel Epstein:
Sometimes I wish I could just get with the CEO for 15 minutes and go, "Yo. Let me tell you how many loans you're missing." Because they're going into this technology, but guess what? You spent a lot of money for, and it's cool, and they're taking it and using it as a kind of excuse to not do their job. You know what I mean?

Casey Crawford:
It's a tool, not a solution. So I was so proud. I don't know if you've got Kevin O. Great young kid.

Joel Epstein:
Kevin O sat right there.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
In the booth.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. I was just with him this weekend. We were talking about this. And I'm so proud of him, because he's a millennial. He's a guy, he moved from Texas, sets up a flag in Pittsburgh, within two years his branch is doing 15 million a month. Kevin's doing crazy by himself. A person that becomes top five originators in the state, the whole nine yards. Just smashing it. Young kid, knew nobody, just a lot of hustle, a lot of grind, all that stuff, and so you think millennial, everything on his profile is going to scream technology, right? It's going to scream it. And he was. He's an early adopter. He was taking this... We had Easy App. We had a partnership with [Blen 00:39:57], we have a partnership with [Blen 00:39:58] [Nemis 00:39:58], an awesome friend. We were just crushing the digital mortgage experience. It's amazing.

Casey Crawford:
Kev was taking that thing, firing it out to all those realtors, and he started to realize his pull through, when and where it should be. He said, "You know, I shifted. I shifted. I realized that my borrowers wanted to actually talk to me more." So he started to change the way he took applications, and the way he started interacting with his borrowers, and I think that's what the challenge is for realtors, for loan officers, for everyone out there, is to just understand you, your business, and where you can provide that human connection, that human interaction, and then leverage technology to do what it does really well. Which is the kind of automated data processing, data analyzation in a [crosstalk 00:40:34].

Joel Epstein:
Don't bunny hop the human piece.

Casey Crawford:
Absolute right.

Joel Epstein:
Which is what I'm seeing going on. Every single company, and the more forward they are with their technology, the more it's happening. And there's not enough people who are smart enough to take a step back and say, wait a minute. Let me tell you, Casey, when I do that drill, if you'd be a fly on the wall and do that drill with loan officers who do a lot of business. Just what I said, credit pulls minus can't dos, divided by closed loans, and I'm like, if your percentage isn't over this you failed.

Casey Crawford:
What is it? What's the percentage? What's the magic percentage.

Joel Epstein:
It should be at least 30%, at least, which no one is, probably. No one is.

Casey Crawford:
But when you were back in the day you rocked it.

Joel Epstein:
I didn't even know how to... We didn't have credit scores. We had to explain the credit report.

Casey Crawford:
Did you put your thumb in the wind and just kind of-

Joel Epstein:
We had to explain it. This guy paid it late because of this, but it is like a shocking number, and it's coming down to everything you're saying, which by the way everybody, is the reason that I don't see you being replaced anytime soon, because that's the difference. That percentage number, if some guys at 24% and he want's to get to 30, and we're doing these numbers, and I show him, "By the way, if you just do this, this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, you'd go right to 30." They'd go, "Wait, wait, wait. What?" The difference is the people that went in the steel room with no hand warmers. That's it. They vaporize. And guess what? Those people, when we go back, because I'll make the loan officers go back and call. They got a loan from someone else. And the loan officers are calling me, so mad, so mad about that. I'm like, "Do you know how hard you've got to work to get that referral? You've got to work really hard for that. Where did it go, man? Come on."

Joel Epstein:
So what you're saying is, it's coming. We know it's coming. It's going to be coming harder, faster. The appraisal thing is really interesting, because this is the first time that loan officers that don't do a lot of business are getting to experience the no appraisal thing coming back, because they're like, "Wait, what, no appraisal? What?" And they're starting to see it. They weren't doing enough loans to see it.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. That's right.

Joel Epstein:
You're a better producer if they saw it, but because of the refinances, they're getting to see it. Title-

Casey Crawford:
And there's more coming. There's some very quiet programs that are out there.

Joel Epstein:
Titles got to be. How can that not be completely automated. What am I missing here?

Casey Crawford:
What you're missing is [latius 00:42:55] and massive insurance. We're on top of this because you have to have one. It's great. It's a very profitable net income for us. We make lots of money from it, and I have told every legislator that will listen to me for 50 seconds, that this is absolutely a rip off of the American people. That if you want to increase home ownership in the great state of South Caroline, for instance, where we have our headquarters, get rid of title insurance. You don't need it. And if you want to put $2,000 in the pocket of every homeowner, this is averages, that's going to buy a home, get rid of the title insurance. We actually... And you know these stats, but the cost to produce a loan has gone from $2,000 to $8,000 dollars during the greatest technological revolution the world's ever seen.

Joel Epstein:
That's crazy.

Casey Crawford:
That's criminal. It's criminal, but there's no felt pain by the consumer. There's no felt pain, so no one notices that $6,000 tax the regulation has placed on them, and so they're not demanding that their legislators roll those things back, but between the cost of increasing origination because of regulation, and title insurance, you could be giving $8,000 to homeowners back in their pocket of buying power. Now that is not going to affect the man that's buying the two million dollar house on the coast somewhere. That is going to affect-

Joel Epstein:
first time home buyer.

Casey Crawford:
... First time home buyer.

Joel Epstein:
42, first time home buyer.

Casey Crawford:
Yes. If you're not passionate about that you shouldn't be in the housing business. We need to be passionate about it. It's important for citizens, it's important for America, and that's what we really need to be getting dollars back in the pocket of, to increase their buying power of.

Joel Epstein:
So tell me what your thought was. Everyone saw, "Oh, Casey just bought a bank." What's the deal with Movement Bank? Is that just furthering your vision of what you want to do? On how to give back?

Casey Crawford:
Well, not so much give back as much as setting a standard. Movement Bank is going to be, we expect it's going to set a new standard of what it looks like to think about being a community bank, and how you do that really effectively. I don't know if you know the back story on this, but this month, in two weeks, we are going to celebrate our 100th year anniversary of being a bank.

Joel Epstein:
Wow.

Casey Crawford:
So Movement Bank has a 100 year legacy. We were started in Danville, Virginia, during the Jim Crow laws of that era, that were explicitly discrimination against the black borrowers. So a group of pastors and professionals got together in the basement of a church, pooled their money, and created a church to serve black communities-

Joel Epstein:
A community that was being underserved.

Casey Crawford:
... That were being explicitly and legally discriminated against in lending. And then ran the bank amazingly well for 100 years. Gotten some loan issues, and we had the privilege, about 18 months ago, of coming in and recapitalizing that bank, and really taking it forward into the next century to go, "Hey, you addressed, at a time, some marginalized people and made sure they had access to credit in a really redemptive way. We want to carry that legacy forward into the next 100 years, and really think about how do you extend access to credit to marginalized folks." And the neat thing we're going to do at Movement Bank is we're going to take 100% of the profits and be reinvesting those back into the communities that we're serving. So we have Charter schools that are-

Joel Epstein:
That's what I was just about to ask you. We haven't talked about this yet, but I just got put... You know I'm on the board of a Charter School in Highpoint, North Carolina now.

Casey Crawford:
Oh wow. Which one?

Joel Epstein:
We have three schools. Yeah, it's Phoenix.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah, okay. Cool.

Joel Epstein:
Yeah, so I just started getting, understanding that.

Casey Crawford:
Oh man. Lots to talk about.

Joel Epstein:
Now I understand it, but that's another thing. I don't know how many people know that about your Moving Foundation, or whatever, but the Charter School thing, I know you guys started with one. Is there two now, or three? What's the deal with that?

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. We're breaking ground on two more right now. It's great and sad. We come into a neighborhood, we have 500 kids in K to fourth grade, and within two years we have a 500 kid waiting list. So our kids have 400% better academic performance than our demographic peers, and immediately, again, this is the great thing about the free market.

Joel Epstein:
Is this South Carolina or North Carolina?

Casey Crawford:
North Carolina. And again, that's what I love about the free market is, if you set a new bar of excellence you will attract resources. So we attract a ton of children, and we can't serve them. So now we're opening up two more schools, which we're incredibly excited about. And what we want to do start doing, Joel, frankly is exporting a lot of what we're learning and giving it away, because we don't want to be the only ones doing this. We want to give away everything we're learning so that more kids can have access to a quality education, and change that trajectory that so many of them are on. Charlotte, North Carolina had the largest disparity of being able to break a poverty cycle in the lifetime of a child. So a child born into poverty in Charlotte, had the lowest likelihood of the 50 biggest cities in America of breaking that cycle in their lifetime. And so we said we wanted to start being about a movement of change, of helping them break that cycle, and then giving away what we learn to other cities in America.

Joel Epstein:
I kind of got it, but didn't really totally get it until they put me on this board, and I went through the whole process, being a board member, to understand it. I was like, wow.

Casey Crawford:
It's a lot like the mortgage industry, it really is, because you're thinking about your quasi federally regulated and funded. And I love that, because we should be in partnership with our federal government to administer capital in really redemptive, thoughtful ways, and to be held accountable to how we do. So we're held accountable to how we educate these children. We're held accountable to how we issue credit. It's backed by the full [crosstalk 00:48:02]-

Joel Epstein:
It's very similar. Yeah.

Casey Crawford:
... US government. And I love that. I think that's a really good thing, is like, putting the capital in the hands of citizens, and then empowering them, and holding them accountable to the results of that capital.

Joel Epstein:
And it's a true free market thing.

Casey Crawford:
Absolutely.

Joel Epstein:
Because if you want to, okay, the public schools are screaming, okay, do better then.

Casey Crawford:
Yes.

Joel Epstein:
Do a better job then.

Casey Crawford:
Yes, do better.

Joel Epstein:
If you're going to scream and yell, then just do a better job.

Casey Crawford:
Just out perform them. We love them. No students. I wish we had absolutely no demand for our product. It's not the case.

Joel Epstein:
Yeah. You have to understand how the Charter School stuff works to get what he just said, but he's right on. He's wishing himself out of that business.

Casey Crawford:
We get 70% of the allocation per student of the traditional public school. Only 70 cents on the dollar. So we get $7,000 bucks a kid, they get $10,000 bucks a kid, and we're able to build our school at half the cost of our local school district, and then educate the kids at 70 cents on the dollar of our local school district, and have significantly out paced academic force.

Joel Epstein:
Now, they're giving me the Little Bo Peep. The hook.

Casey Crawford:
All right.

Joel Epstein:
They're hooking me, but-

Casey Crawford:
Let's go.

Joel Epstein:
No, no, but I want to ask you just a couple questions at the end here. So, if someone got lucky and got to hang out with Casey-

Casey Crawford:
Little Bo Peep hook.

Joel Epstein:
You know that big, you know that big... What's the guy called in charge of the sheep. You know that big hook.

Casey Crawford:
The shepherds hook.

Joel Epstein:
The sheep hook.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah. The shepherds crook. Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
Josh is back up there going...

Casey Crawford:
All right.

Joel Epstein:
So, if someone got lucky and got to sit next to you on a plane, or got to hang out and have lunch with you, whatever, and said, "Hey, Casey, what would you tell me. I'm a loan officer, and I've been in the business for a little bit. I'm closing two or three loans a month. What can I do to do more loans? What can I do to be more successful?" What would you, in a nutshell, what would you hit him with.

Casey Crawford:
So Joel, my passion, our passion as a company is just like yours. How do you bring more value to your partners, and I think being a loan officer is very much about B to B for a person at that stage. If you've only done two or three loans a month, you haven't grown your database to a point where you can really work from referrals from your database, you need to be working with realtors. And then the question is how can I bring value to the life of a realtor? So, we started answering that question early on, because we had the same question. We had four employees and we wanted more loans, and we'd say, "How do we help our partners get more successful?" Kind of a Zig Ziglar thing. Help more people get what they want, you'll get what you want. And we said, "Hey, realtors are looking for clients. And how can they get those. There's this thing, Facebook. And if we help our realtors on how to market themselves on Facebook, they'll get more clients, we'll do more business, because it refers more people, and the whole pot will grow. Won't that be great. And so we started teaching realtors simple, free marketing techniques to use on Facebook to grow their client database.

Casey Crawford:
Well, the same thing's true today. How do you bring value to the life of your realtors? How do you help them grow their businesses so that you can then grow yours? I promise you, if you bring value to 10 top producing realtors, you're going to be doing a lot more than two loans a month, but you've got to be in relationship with them, and actually figure out what it is they need to grow their business, and then go about serving them. Go about serving them.

Joel Epstein:
How about agents? How about for my agent audience? A lot of agents are going to watch this.

Casey Crawford:
Yeah.

Joel Epstein:
What would you tell a real estate agent trying to build their business today. They're scared of Zillow.

Casey Crawford:
Oh, come on.

Joel Epstein:
They're scared of this, they're scared of everything. What would you tell them?

Casey Crawford:
I would tell them the same thing I tell the loan officer. I would just change the customer. Your customer's now your database and your sphere of influence. How can you bring value to your sphere of influence such that they go, "Man, I've got a friend in the business. I've got a friend that's a realtor. I'll call them and ask, because this is a huge purchase. I am scared." It's a fallacy to think that people don't want your services. They absolutely are scared. The absolutely want expert advice, and they want it from someone they know, trust, and like. And the incredible tool that we have in social media, whether it's Insta, or Twitter, or Facebook, whatever you want to use, is that you can let people know in your sphere of influence that you are an expert in this field. That you're there to help them, and then just to be a story teller. Be a great story teller.

Casey Crawford:
I think the most effective thing to do, if I was going out to be a real estate agent, I would want to tell a story of a person in our sphere that I helped buy a home. I'll do it for free, because I just want to tell your story to the other 800 people that I know, and more importantly, the 800 people that you know, so that we can advertise there's this great person in real estate, bring great value, expertly guiding me. Shepherding me, for your other word. Guiding me through this process, and I think when you do that you'll just be shocked, when you do it consistently every time, the kind of business that you're able to grow.

Joel Epstein:
So, bring value, for loan officers, and I like this from an agent perspective, be an awesome story teller. And there's a lot more to unpack here. I'm getting a major hook. I'm seeing how long this is. We don't like to make these too long, because then we know you guys go to sleep, or you stop listening. So I'll have to have Casey Crawford on again. So anyway, today, Casey Crawford, CO of Movement Mortgage. There's lots of other title we can give him as well, but we don't even have time for all the titles, but Casey, thank you very much for coming on today. And again, if you all liked this edition of The Big Joel Show, please go on and like us. You can consume this podcast anywhere you want, on any major podcast platform. Any place you want. Please go on and like us. Also, you can comment with any questions. If you do have questions for Casey we can get those back to him when you comment on there. So thank you very much for watching or listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.