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NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
Blake Hanby: [00:00:00] I'm thinking, man, if I don't do it now, I'm never gonna do it. So resigned like the next day, and it was kind of scary 'cause it was 2011, the market was in the tank. We didn't have an office, right? So we started with some folding tables and computers in my pool house and just kind of going out and telling people, Hey, we're in the business.
We're trying to get set up, had to get software, had to get computers, had to get printers and all, you know, all that stuff. I got a call from the city of Springdale saying, Hey, you're kind of operating a business out of. I'm like,
yeah, but we, we have, we have an office coming outta your residential.
Blake Hanby: I figured out about seven or eight years ago that, you know, some people are motivated by money, some people are motivated by power or I, I'm motivated by not disappointing people.
And I think most people in our business are that way. They'll go above and beyond to make sure that nobody is disappointed.
Cameron Clark: Good morning everybody. We are sitting here in the city title office here [00:01:00] in Rogers, in the middle Pinnacle heart of NWA, uh, with very good friend Blake Hanby. You got myself, Cameron Clark, and then Nick Byer here, the Northwest Arkansas Founders Podcast, NWA Founders, a voice for founders, builders and owners that are driving growth here in northwest Arkansas.
Good morning, Blake. Good morning. Thanks for having me. We're excited to have you. Why don't you just give us some background on you, like personal life and start from the beginning here for everybody. Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to. So
Blake Hanby: I'm a Springdale guy, lived in northwest Arkansas my whole life. It's funny when you get people, you know, come in for closings and say, where are you from?
I got from Springdale. They go originally and you go Springdale, right? I'm a northwest Arkansas guy. You know, forever. Um, had opportunities to, you know, leave and go other places outta college or outta law school. And,
and
Blake Hanby: my wife and I chose to stay here and very, very thankful we did that. Just 'cause it's such a, such a great place to live.
Raise a family and live and married to Beth. We've been married for 33 years and have a couple of kids that are grown and, um, [00:02:00] everybody lives here, so it's, it's nice to have everybody here local.
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: Did you meet Beth here in Springdale too? We got set up on a blind date in college by a fraternity brother of mine and a sorority sister of hers.
Cameron Clark: Okay.
Blake Hanby: Only blind date I ever went on and that was it. I was like, you know, when we met I was like, okay, this is the one. And she was like, I'm not so sure. But I convinced her it took, it took a little while to progression. Yeah. The track. Uh, so when you say Springdale, just Springdale High School is where you went to high school
Cameron Clark: and Yeah.
There was
Blake Hanby: only one high school back then. Yeah. You know, so yeah, I went to Springdale High School, graduated in 85 and then went to university and then. Didn't know what I wanted to do and then kind of fell backwards into going to law school and, and then got out and went to work.
Nick Beyer: Was there a little break in
Blake Hanby: between college and law school or is just because I graduated a semester late.
I was, um, I was on track to go. I wanted to be an orthodontist growing up and I went, uh, went all the way through and took all these science classes and had to wanna switch to business. Kind of a funny story, and you cut this out later if you want to, but I wanna be an orthodontist my whole life and [00:03:00] was going through and taking comparative, vertebrate morphology and, you know, organic chemistry and all this stuff to go to dental school.
And, um, then HIV hit and I was like, man, I don't really wanna dig around in people's mouths when HI V's here.
Huh.
Blake Hanby: Wow. At which. It kind of changed the course. My dad had always made me take business classes for my electives 'cause he's like, you can't get out and be a doctor and not be able to handle business.
So I ended up switching over to business school and it took me an extra semester to, to get out. But where did the orthodontist drive come from? Was that family or what'd your dad do? No, well, no. My, both my dad and my stepdad were both in the building material business, um, different types of business. But, um, so we had, we had an orthodontist named Tom Lauder in Springdale that I always thought, man, that's, that's a pretty cool job.
He seems like he's, you know, probably a decent way to make a living or, you know, live here and like, help people and seemed like a good deal. And then I decided maybe I'd go do something else and got in, went, ended up being a marketing major at the university. Mm-hmm. Sam m Walden College of Business or whatever.
[00:04:00] Yeah,
Cameron Clark: yeah, yeah, yeah. Went to law school.
Blake Hanby: Mm-hmm. Went to
Cameron Clark: law school here.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. I went to law school with zero intent of being a lawyer. Um, my stepdad has some friends that were lawyers and actually in the title business, it's a long story, but some friends that he grew up with in border Texas, they're like, you gotta go to law school.
And I'm like, I don't wanna be a lawyer. They go, it doesn't matter. Yeah, go get the education. Go get, you know it. It'll help you later. And I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I was like, that's great. And my parents said, we'll pay for it if you wanna go. I'm like, I'm in.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, perfect. Let's go. Gimme, gimme options and yeah.
Don't have to grow up just yet.
Blake Hanby: That's right.
Cameron Clark: And so from, yeah. From there directly into the title business or was that No, I ended
Blake Hanby: up working, uh, I worked for my mom and stepdad at National Home Centers for a while. I was doing a little bit of securities compliance stuff, and I was doing just projects trying to.
You know, cost cutting projects and just different projects trying to help my stepdad, um, as he was running the company. 'cause it was growing a lot back then. And then I got into collecting, uh, bad debt in the middle nineties and I didn't like that as much. And so I started looking around for things to [00:05:00] do and we were selling, um, what is now the Home Depot store in Fayetteville and the, um, and the Lowe's store up here at Scottsdale Center and Rogers that we'd built, um, these huge big retail stores.
And
yeah,
Blake Hanby: we were selling those and I, he said, Hey, go over to the abstract office and talk to Jimmy Plumley and let's see what we need to do to get these things, you know, get titled ready to go. So when we get 'em under contract, and I went in and I was like, what do y'all do? Enjoy Drummings. Which, um, is a dear friend of mine still, she owned the company and she said, have you ever thought about getting the title business?
And I was like, I know what you do, but I don't know how you do it. And so, you know, fast forward, you know, two or three weeks and I had a contract to buy it, which ultimately didn't happen for a variety of reasons, but. Kind of backed into the title business too. I, I wasn't looking to get in the title business, but it kind of found me.
Yeah. And I've loved it ever since. So did you start, you started working there for a while and then you had the option to buy it and then I made a deal to buy it with, with Joy and it was kind of funny at the time I made the deal to buy it and I couldn't afford it. Right. Yeah. But so [00:06:00] Arve figure it out.
Arvest was gonna finance it and she was gonna carry back, uh, the debt that they wouldn't, they wouldn't carry. Um, but she said, but I want you to work here for a year 'cause you're gonna love it or you're gonna hate it. Yeah, sure. And she said, you, you, if you love it, you're gonna, you'll do it for the rest of your life.
If you don't, you, you need to go find something else to do. 'cause it's too hard of work to not love it. And so I started there in February 1st of 99. And. About probably November of 99 banks were buying title companies. And, uh, we ended up shifting gears and I said, I'll go do something else. And ended up staying and working.
Um, for the Ultimate Arvest bought it, the Walden family bought it and um, I ended up working for them for several years, which was fantastic.
Cameron Clark: And how old were you at the time, whenever you jumped in at the title business there?
Blake Hanby: Uh, so I was 32 when I, when I got in the title business. Okay. And. I was 44 when I jumped out on my own.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. I want to get there. That's like, you know, meeting the discussion there, right. Yeah. But, uh, talk about the time. When was it called Waco officially, and then like, kind of talk about your time through there.
Blake Hanby: Uh, [00:07:00] Waco, which was Washington County Abstract, was established in 1885. Um, it had been super old company, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, and the the best company, you know, around at that time and there was Bronson Abstract, which is great, and there were some other companies, but it was kind of the one that was really growing. Um, and so Ray called it Waco, just kind of as, not an acronym, but just a short version of it. So, um, when it, when ultimately it got purchased in 2000, they just said, we're gonna change the name.
'cause we were in other counties, not just Washington County, we were in Washington, Benton, a little bit in Madison at the time. Um, and they said, Hey, we're gonna change the name of Waco Title company.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Blake Hanby: So, yeah, that was first part of 2000. And when you say growth, how does someone measure. Growth of a title company is number of transactions, I think.
I mean, yeah. Nobody really knows how to measure it. 'cause it's all, you know, you kind of know what people are doing. But it, most of the time people track it by, this sounds silly, but they'll track 'cause no, I don't know how many orders other companies have. Yeah, you can get, you can guesstimate. Mm-hmm.
Right. But, but it really gets down to everybody measures and by the number of [00:08:00] recordings you do. Right. Okay. So if I go file a deed and a mortgage and assignment of rents, that's three recordings. Right? And so you can kind of figure out that most trans, if you have refinance transactions, there's not a deed.
So you kind of have to average the numbers out. But that's how everybody's always measured. Market share is based on the number of recordings. Okay? What skews that is that not everybody puts their name on their documents. And so the people that are recording that, that data, the information on who recorded, what if they don't recognize the notary that's on it and you don't have your name on it, they don't know you recorded it.
So, wow. When we started City Title, we intentionally didn't put our name on our documents. And so if they didn't recognize our notary, they're like, I don't know how they're doing.
Yeah,
Blake Hanby: we did, I mean, on purpose. So we kind of, yeah, slip under the radar a little bit and nobody, I mean, nobody in the public cares, right?
They just kinda like, Hey, do they have a good reputation? Are they, are they honest? They can take care of my money and take care, make sure I get everything done properly. And, but nobody cares. Market share really, other than us.
Cameron Clark: Well, and I would argue that like, you know, especially right now where it's, it's challenging for someone just to come in and buy a house who's, who hasn't jumped, made that jump [00:09:00] yet.
It's like. A lot of people have never stepped into a title. That's right. Title company where That's right. They're just like, yeah. They may not know completely. But back to the recordings, is that public knowledge where someone can go look in and say like, Hey, this is the amount of recordings this, you know?
Yeah. So used
Blake Hanby: to everybody posted their own title plants. Okay. And so you would look, I mean, you could run reports on that when it became electronic, how everybody's indexing all the records in their title plans electronically. Several people got out of that. I mean, when I was at Waco, we did a deal. We said, Hey, listen to our competitors.
Hey, you guys are maintaining a title plant. All of you are. And it's super expensive to do. So why don't we maintain a plant and we'll give you guys access to it. Mm-hmm. On, you know, online. And so Waco for years has been, well, for years, they provided that, that data. So you'd know where you were market share wise.
Mm.
Blake Hanby: Um, they subsequently quit providing that data a few years ago. And so now you just kind of have to guess where you are. You know, you. Way too many title companies in northwest Arkansas right now. And there, and there were back [00:10:00] in, you know, the two thousands and then a bunch of 'em went away and now they're back.
So, but there's a lot more probably than there should be.
Nick Beyer: And why is that? Is, is the barrier to entry low or is it
Blake Hanby: the barrier to entry is relatively low. I mean, the access to the data, I mean, you can go to the courthouse and you can search the tac rec records and search the probate records and search the circuit clerk's site.
You're not gonna get everything, right. Mm-hmm. If having a good index title plan, it allows you to get a lot more of that, that information I'm not, won't get off in the weeds of what the requirements are of a search, but like when we go do a search on a commercial property, I mean, Cameron, if you're gonna go get a commercial property right now under contract, we're gonna search all the way back and find any.
A lot of, a lot of the old easements and stuff like that are back in the, you know, thirties and forties. Well, you're not required to serve that far back.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: But last thing I want you to do is go out and buy a piece of property to develop only to find out you've got a, you know, a gas, you know, easement across it that makes it where you can't develop it.
Right?
Cameron Clark: [00:11:00] Yeah.
Blake Hanby: And so I won't get off in the weeds either on title insurance commitments and how, how you should review 'em and all that, but it's very important that you get all the relevant information. Mm-hmm. And so to go get that data is hard. Um, particularly if you have, if you're doing a standup search in the courthouse, which is legal, I mean, you can do that by law, but having access to a title plant that has everything indexed all the way back to, to patent when the, you know, the government gave out land.
You have all that data and I can provide it all to you, and you make a better educated decision on whether you wanna buy some, or whether you wanna l loan money on it or whether, you know, whatever. So it's, it's the barrier to entries load the barrier to doing it right.
Nick Beyer: Is costly. So are some of these smaller shops not tied to a plant?
Correct. Okay. Yeah, that's a great,
Blake Hanby: yeah. Interesting. And you know, a lot of people think that, well, with AI and with, you know, all this, you know, new technology is going to get way easier to get that data, but it doesn't make sense financially for somebody to go out and aggregate all that data. 'cause it's, [00:12:00] it's a lot, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: Um, to aggregate all that data and put it in a format that can be used is not economically, it doesn't make much sense. Unless you have somebody that's going to buy all that data from you, right? Mm-hmm. So, and there's people that do it in big, you know, big cities if you're in Phoenix, Scottsdale, or if you're in, you know, whatever.
There are people that go and do that and sell it, and that's what, that's how they make their living. But here, it doesn't make any sense.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. So let's keep going back to the time at Waco. I want to hear like you were CEO when you left Correct. And kind of talk about the time up up until then and, uh, what was that like, the growth of Waco at the time?
Blake Hanby: Yeah, so I, I mentioned earlier, Arvest bought it, um, in 2000 and with the goal, um, of kind of going, following where Arvest banks were expanding. Mm-hmm. And so we went and bought, uh, Madison County Abstract and we bought, um, Mosley Abstract in Fort Smith, and we bought Conway title and we bought, um, bought some companies in Missouri, up in McDonald County.
[00:13:00] Hmm. And kept, kept kind of growing just by acquisition. Yeah. Um. We had, of course we had Northwest Arkansas had a bunch of offices up here 'cause it was originally was uh, Washington County Abstract. And there was another satellite company that was owned that we ended up with, um, that was partially owned but just kept trying to grow the footprint to follow the banks around.
'cause Ourves obviously is a huge player in the mortgage market wherever they are, particularly in northwest Arkansas. Mm-hmm. But, um, what we found out is that while it was great to go in these other markets and serve the, the customers there when we were owned by our best bank, which is fantastic. I mean, um, but other banks would go, well, we're not sending our competi business.
And so yeah, some sometimes it hurt, sometimes it helped. 'cause if Arvest had a huge market share, it helped 'cause you'd get more business. 'cause they wanted to do business with their own company. But other banks in that market might do the go to the contrary.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. And I feel like that's with anything.
Some people don't. You know, whether it's [00:14:00] Rve Bank or who, whoever, it's like the, the big man. Not everyone wants to give their money to the big man. Right. And some people want feel like they're, you know, contributing to the small guy or the medium guy and it's like, know nobody's fault. Just kind of how that's, people have different styles.
That's right. So why'd you leave? Well, so
Blake Hanby: I kind of grew up with a family of entrepreneurs, right? So, you know, my, my dad was in business for himself. My mom and stepdad were in business for himself and always wanted to do that. And so I, when I'd left national and went to work for Washington County Abstract, it was with the intent that I was going to go and have my own company.
And sure, always wanted to do that. And when I didn't, I always had that in the back of my mind. Ah, man, I wish I'd done that, man. I wish I'd done that. And, um, so. I started thinking I'm 40 at the time, probably 43. I'm thinking, man, if I don't do it now, 'cause the where I was working was great. They took great care of me.
It was a great place to work. And I was like, man, if I don't go do it, I'm gonna be, if I don't do it now, I'm never gonna do it. Mm. Yeah. Right. I mean, and it was kind of scary 'cause it was [00:15:00] 2011, the market was in the tank, right? Yeah. Finally, Beth just said, Hey, you know, if you wanna do it, let's, let's go take the risk.
I was like, okay, let's go do it. Resigned like the next day. Wow. Um, and I'd, you know, it'd been working upright, so resigned the next day and then said, man, I gotta go find an office and set up a new entity and do all this stuff. I really hadn't, I hadn't planned ahead very well. Time to get to work. Yeah. So, but I was like, well, you know, I'm, I'm from here, I've known enough people, I can do a little bit of legal work, I can do a little bit of title and we'll kind of grow it.
And, um, so left and just got it started, I guess, when I was 44.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: And I was like, man, if I don't do it, I'm, I'm gonna always look back and think, I wish I had, I wish I would've. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I wish I would've at least tried it.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Um, and so, yeah. What was the, what was the beginning like, I mean, I know you say you're doing a, you kind of just do do what you had to survive, but did you start, where'd you start?
Where was the first office? Yeah, so,
Blake Hanby: um, we, we didn't have an office, right? Um, so I started looking around. We'd actually drove down on [00:16:00] Zion Road. Um, there's a new building where ultimately where we started there at 1450 East Zion Road.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Um, and. We went and found that, and the guy I was in rotary with was one of the owners and I was like, Hey, I want, you know, I want to rent some space from you.
He said, okay, well you gotta get it finished out. And so I called Dennis Moore, a buddy of mine. I said, Hey, how fast can you get this done? And he gave me a timeline and he said, okay, well what are we gonna do? So we started with some folding tables and computers in my pool house. Yeah. Three doors over from you?
Yeah. For a little bit. And just kind of getting, going out and telling people, Hey, we're in the business. We're trying to get set up, you know, get, had to get an underwriter. We had to get software, had to get computers, had to get printers. All, you know, all that stuff. So we worked out of my pool house, um, in this little, you know, bitty room.
You've been in there before? Mm-hmm. It was not, it was crowded. Then, um, I got a call from City of Springdale saying, Hey, you're kind of operating a business out of. I'm like,
yeah, but we have, we have an office coming outta your
Blake Hanby: residential. And so, um, I talked to the mayor and he's like, why don't you go get an office?
I'm like, yes, [00:17:00] sir. I'm, I'm going to do that today. And so we went, we moved temporarily into the Griffin Company building, ER, Griffin now? Yeah. Upstairs in one of their, their suites. And then, um, then got our space done on Zion Road.
Okay. But,
Blake Hanby: but yeah, it was, it was like, you know, not quite as, you know. It didn't turn out quite as well as like, you know, bill Gates starting his garage or, you know, but
Nick Beyer: it's a good story though, that it is a great story.
Well, meanwhile I'm in high school just kind of bopping around and you're, you're working outta your pool house, no idea. And you're like, why are, there's so many cars over there? Thought it was y'all just riding
Blake Hanby: bikes. But, uh, yeah, that's right. Well, it started out, so when I left, I, I obviously, I had an obligation not to recruit people from the company I just left.
Right. It'd be bad for 'em. And so, and did you have a non-compete? No. Okay. No, they didn't believe. And they said though, I mean at the time, I don't know if they do now or not, but. Um, Jim Walton's opinion was, Hey, we're gonna take great care of our people and if we are not taking great care of our people, then they'll leave.
If we take great care of 'em, they won't leave. And so That's awesome. Um, in my case, they were taking great care of me. Yeah. But I wanted to do something different, but I had, I had an obligation and I [00:18:00] told them, I said, I won't recruit them, but if anybody calls me it's fair game.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: He said, that's fine.
And so I was fortunate enough to have, um, some people I worked with call and say, well, the other thing is the first thing that I had to give up was my cell phone, which had, you know, every contact of everybody in Wow. Yeah. And so, um, went and got a new cell phone, and then it's like, I couldn't contact them, but I made sure my phone number became, you know, readily known as quickly as possible.
Yeah. And so I got some calls from. Um, there were six of us that started together, you know, over the next few weeks.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Um, but I left in, I guess, trying to think what April 7th of 11 is when I resigned and I think we set up a LLC online on April 8th and closed our first deal on May 1st. Wow. Off to the races.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: What was that? I said that's a decent amount of overhead coming in six employees. Yeah. Well, and I had to, I had to make some promises to some of 'em that, Hey, I've got X amount of dollars I can pay you for this period of time. Mm-hmm. If you're willing to take a chance. And fortunately for [00:19:00] me that they all were willing to take the chance and it worked out great.
And, and I, frankly, I mean I wouldn't, we wouldn't be near as successful if it weren't for those, you know, five other people that started and, you know, put their heart and soul into it. And they're really, really talented people anyway. And still are one, one guy, Jimmy Plumley has since retired, but, um, he came on and was like, I, I don't care if you pay me for a year.
I just, I wanna do this. And so, like Wow. Which I did pay him. Right. So he, and he was a partner for a while and we bought him out here a
Nick Beyer: few years
Blake Hanby: ago.
Nick Beyer: Before we get too far into the formation of it, 'cause we wanna dive into that, can you just tell everyone what a title company is? What a title company does?
I think Cameron alluded to it earlier, but there's gonna be some people who have never stepped foot in a title office. There's gonna be people who've purchased a home and signed, you know, 500 papers and that that's all they know. Yeah. About what a title office does. So can you like. Dumb it down like we're second graders here and walk through what a title company has.
Sure. That's, that's my level anyway. That's perfect.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. So, um, so what we do well, okay, so two sides of our business mm-hmm. [00:20:00] You have the title insurance and you have the closing side, which is the transactional side, which is what a customer sees.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: So most of the time our business is getting referred to us from a mortgage lender, from a realtor, some lawyers and some of that stuff.
But we get an order from whoever, legacy National Bank sends us an order for you to buy a house. We get a contract from the realtor and the question is, do they both pick the same title company or they pick different title companies? A lot of times we will end up with split closings with the buyer and seller, which is silly, but that's how it is.
We take it, we enter all the data from the contract, or all the data from the lender order, and then we go do a search. So we're gonna search the tax records, the probate records, the circuit clerk's records, everything, and we come up with all these documents and instruments that affect the title of the property.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Um, so we take all that same data and we put it in. Now it's electronic used to, it would just all be in your file and, and a title examiner, which has to be licensed. Now they go through and they read everything and they look for anything that could cause a problem or anything [00:21:00] that needs to be resolved.
So they end up ultimately take all that data and examine it and put together what's called a title commitment, which is a commitment to ensure a title to the property that you're buying or loaning money on or selling or whatever. So Joe and Sue Smith. The property description is this, and then you have to have a deed, obviously, and then if there's a mortgage and whatever.
So it sets forth all those requirements for the title insurance, title insurer to insure title in that property for whoever the insured is, whether it's the bank or the buyer or whatever. And then there's a set of exceptions, which is the key to when you review a title commitment is to look and it'll say, okay, there's an Arkansas Western gas easement from 1962.
There is a, you know, most, most of the time it's utility easements. It may be, um, I mean, there's a variety of things that could be mm-hmm. But it sets forth those, those exceptions. Well, you need to look at those if you're a buyer or you lender. Right. Particularly a buyer.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. The one thing you really, really need to look at.
Yes. [00:22:00] Yeah. For everyone listening when you're buying a property section B.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. Yeah. B two, look at the, look at the exceptions because. Not to toot our own horn, but we go and we look at all that data. Not everybody does. I mean, the good companies do, and they mm-hmm. Pull everything and they set it all, set everything forth.
That affects title of the property. By law, you're only required to do the last 30 years, but if you don't go beyond that, you're gonna miss some of these easements from six, the sixties that would, you know, could affect your property, particularly in the develop development situation or whatever. If it's a platted subdivision, you know you're gonna be fine.
Right. I mean, 99% of the time. Mm-hmm. But if you're buying land, I would look at those exceptions. I would, I would look at 'em anyway, but I would look at those exceptions to see what's out there. 'cause we had an instance years ago where a friend of mine bought some property and he said, oh, I, they, they told me I was gonna use this guy.
I'm sorry, I should've used you, but I, we didn't, this is when I was at Waco. And, um, he bought a big piece of property to build, to build apartments on, and then found out there was an Arkansas Western gas, like Maine, that ran diagonally across the property. Oh. It was several hundred thousand dollars to get it fixed.
And [00:23:00] ultimately he filed a claim and they got, it got paid for and the gas line got moved. But he's like, man, I didn't realize that. Like, and that's
Nick Beyer: a
Blake Hanby: title insurance claim, is that? Yes. Okay. Well if, yeah, I mean, now, so what, what happens is, and I always tell people, Mike Pryor kind of a, a friend and mentor of mine over the years, he said it's title insurance is the backstop.
That product is the backstop. What the real deal is, is the research and how you do the work if you do it right. So if I, if I go and I say, you know, Cameron Clark is entitled and the buyer's Blake Hamby, and the lender is this person and this is the amount of the sale and this is the amount of the loan, those are the amounts we're gonna insure for.
Here are the requirements. Those are easy. We can get those met. But where it really gets down to it is did you do the work properly, the search and examine and all that to, to set forth everything that can affect it. So, you know what I'm, I mean, 'cause it's, it's, it's an exception to coverage. But if you say, well, I'm not willing to accept that [00:24:00] exception, and maybe you don't buy it, or maybe you have 'em cleared it up, maybe it, some curative work has to be done, but there's a lot more to it than what it, what meets the eye, right?
Mm-hmm.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. So, so far in the, in the, what people know, what you're explaining about a title company is this is the backside, this is the title search side. So you haven't even gotten to the closing side where it's Yes, my wife and I walk in, we sit down. Yeah. We sign some papers.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. So, I mean, I think, I think the key to it is if you're a buyer or seller or lender, you need to look and see, you need to review the title, commit.
Don't just say, well, I've got it and I'm put it in my file and, and I'm ready to go close. Because there may be some reason you don't wanna buy the property, or maybe something needs to be, be cleaned up. And then that's where we spend, you know, a whole lot of our time is cleaning up things where, you know, it'd be like if I, if I decided to deed to my trust and I deed my trust, but I don't, I, I mess up the deed and I don't deed at all.
Well, we gotta get that fixed, right? Mm-hmm. Because you don't, I mean, you don't wanna buy my property if you don't get, you know, all of it. All of it, right? So that's a pretty simplistic way to say it. But you need to review that. And [00:25:00] then, but nobody really cares, right? They're like, well, they have it handled.
And you're like, well, you need to review it. Yep.
Yeah. And,
Blake Hanby: and, and ask questions. If you have questions. If you need to get a lawyer, get a lawyer to review it. But it's a big investment for people, and that that'll take it more seriously in a lot of cases.
Cameron Clark: Well, I think one highlight on this is commitment to excellence here is just unmatched.
Well,
Blake Hanby: thank you. I mean it, yeah.
Cameron Clark: Well, and I've got multiple stories like that that show it to, just so everyone knows here too, do you get paid if the property doesn't close?
Blake Hanby: No.
Cameron Clark: Exactly. And it's like, but like, but there's a reputation there that goes on like, Hey, I wanna make sure you know this, this, and this, and this.
I mean, you're talking about searching back to title back into the sixties, which is further than you have to go. You know, I've just switched out a brokerage, but to my time in brokerage, you know, y'all were dealing with a client for me here that, uh, was developing a restaurant on top of a site that used to be a gas station.
And, you know, the current owner didn't even know that, you know, and so it was like, were the, were the tanks removed? Is it a safe site? Is it like, is the bank [00:26:00] gonna do the loan? And, and, but more than anything, like, is it a, is it a safe place to operate a restaurant? And the fact that, you know, Shelby calls me and is like, Hey, I don't wanna make, I wanna make sure you don't miss this.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. I tell people that. People say, well, you know, what happens to something Enclo? I mean, some markets, they'll charge you a cancellation fee. We don't, because I mean, if you bring a deal and say, Hey, I'm trying to sell this property, and that deal falls out. Bring it back to me and we'll deal with it, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: You didn't make any money either on that, on that deal 'cause it canceled or whatever. So Yeah. So we don't make anything unless it closes and we, we want everything to close, but they don't always happen.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Blake Hanby: If we get a hundred orders, historically over the last 25 years, 12, 13% will cancel.
Mm-hmm. And so that's just lost revenue. 'cause you've done the work. Right. 99% of the time you've done all the work and then it just doesn't close. And for reasons outside of your control.
Nick Beyer: So we did, we walked through the title search, and then the closing side is we walk in, you hand us papers. Mm-hmm. And is that where y'all review the exceptions or is that the buyer seller's responsibility to, to review those?
Buyer,
Blake Hanby: seller, lender ought to review those ahead of time. Okay. 'cause when it comes to closing, it's kinda like, [00:27:00] okay, that's, that's kind of the celebration day of, you know, somebody's getting a house, somebody's getting to sell a house and getting some money, and a lender's getting a new loan, whatever.
Probably not. It's, it's not too late, but you, you should review it ahead of time. Right. Okay. So the close, so the other side of our business is the closing side, right? Yep. And, and we work hand in hand, but they're very, very different. Um, so on the closing side, we're taking all the lender information, taking the contract, we've ordered, you know, if there's a termite policy required mm-hmm.
Or a survey required, or, you know, whatever that may be, POA dues, homeowners association, dues, you know, delinquent taxes, if there's judgements or liens against the, against the seller that have to be cleared in order to provide clear title to the buyer or, or clear title for the lender. We do all that stuff leading up to closing.
Okay. And so if there's a lender involved, they'll say, Hey, we wanna close on October 1st. You know? Okay. Well that's where everybody's moving towards. Right. And that's, you know, typically the contract date or thereabouts. So we have people on the closing side that are gathering all that data, getting payoffs [00:28:00] for, you know, sellers existing mortgage and whatever.
And take all that and you put it into an, uh, you know, HUD one settlement statement on the, on the residential side or closing disclosure and put all that information in and then send it out and let people review it so buyer knows how much money they need to bring. Lender, make sure that you have the lender fees, right.
Realtors look and make sure that it, you know, their commission's right and that everything's getting taken care of, like they anticipated under the contract seller. Make sure they know they're getting how much money, or sometimes sellers have to bring money to closing. Mm-hmm. Which hasn't happened much here lately, but there are times when it has over the years.
Um, and so you'd get all that, and on top of that, you get, you know, a stack of loan documents. Mm-hmm. If it's a secondary market loan, if it's in it, you know, a bank in-house loan, there's not as many documents, but if it's a secondary market loan, it's a lot of papers. Right?
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Some of that's getting better because so much of it can be done electronically now on e-sign, but there's still, you still have to get a wedding note, wedding mortgage for 99% of the lenders now.
[00:29:00] So you come in and then ideally you get all that stuff, you're required to get it three days in advance now, so you get it and you can review it, and then ideally you would come in here and go, yep, everything looks good, and just start signing. Right. Great.
Nick Beyer: That's great. I think, I think what you did an awesome job of highlighting is like all of the back office work that goes into mm-hmm.
Making that process, five minutes of signing papers, and it seems like Cameron highlighted the diligence that y'all have at City Title is, is, I mean, far above par, so, well, thank you. Yeah. It's,
Blake Hanby: um, it's, I think a lot of people think that something comes in, we put the information in, push a button, and everything just comes out and it's very, it's a very manual process still, um, on the title and closing side.
But there's, you know, there's 44 or five of us that do this every day, all day. And I always tell people it's like doing homework. If you did, if you didn't, like, don't like doing homework. It's, it's hard. It's a lot of, a whole lot of phone calls, a whole lot of emails, a whole lot of. And handholding in some, some [00:30:00] circumstances, but more than anything, it's just, Hey, I wanna make sure this customer has a great experience and that they get what they think they're getting and everything's, you know, very transparent and, um, just try to take care of the customer.
Cameron Clark: And have you, have you always had that? I mean, has that just been like, ingrained and, and who you are? I mean,
Blake Hanby: um,
Cameron Clark: yeah.
Blake Hanby: I, I tell people that I figured out about seven or eight years ago that, you know, some people are motivated by money. Some people are motivated by, you know, power or fa whatever. I, I'm motivated by not disappointing people.
And so, and I think most people in our business are that way, that they're like, they'll go above and beyond to make sure that nobody is disappointed, right? And so there's a whole lot more that goes into it than what meets the eye. 'cause I mean, people don't get to walk back in our office, we have confidential information, so, um, you know, we have people's social security numbers and their, you know, sometimes their financial statements or tax returns or whatever.
That's rare, but it does happen. Um, and so. It, it's kinda like behind the curtain, you know? Yeah. [00:31:00] What, what's the wizard doing behind the curtain? And there's a whole lot of people back here, you know, in, in our offices that do, do all that work and spend a whole lot of time, you know, with a lot of TLC taking care of people.
Hmm.
Nick Beyer: That's good. So, back to the early days, y'all have six, roughly six people that you kind of mm-hmm. Cobbled together this team. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It sounds like you got business pretty fast within the first month of, of opening the doors. You said your first deal was in May and you, you opened in April 8th or something like that, right?
Blake Hanby: Yeah. So we opened April 8th, got set up and, um. I can't remember if it was Brian Moore or if it was Derek Gibson that placed it. One of 'em had the first order and one of 'em had the first closing, and I can't remember which order it was, but they're obviously friends of mine growing up and they're younger than me and I'd known them my whole life.
But yeah, so as soon as we opened up, it was interesting. I thought, you know, oh, you know, X person, they'll for sure send me their business. They'll start seeing me, everything. And there's other people that had never done business with us that I thought, well, we don't, we'll never get their business. And it turned out in a lot of cases, to be the opposite, some people just said, Hey, [00:32:00] Blake's out on his own.
I wanna help him out. Or maybe somebody on my team, I wanna help him out. Um, and liked the fact that we're independent mm-hmm. And that we're locally owned. And you know, it's, so there were people that kind of, kind of came alongside us and said, Hey, I'm gonna send you everything I can. Mm-hmm. Because they knew we would take good care of 'em.
Right. Um, and so that, that turned out to be surprising on both sides of the spectrum. Mm-hmm. But business started coming in pretty well. I mean, like we were, I was like, man, I hope, you know, by the first year we can make money. And it was like the first month we were making money
Nick Beyer: because we had very low overhead.
Relatively, right. Yeah. And so at that point, is it just friends and are you kind of going, not door to door, but are you, are you meeting with realtors? Lenders? Yes. Like putting your name out there? Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, it's not like you just set up shop and money started coming in. No. You were doing, you were doing hard work.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. And so, you know, of course I was involved with, you know, the chamber and involved with all this stuff that I'd Rotary Club and. Just stuff that I'd been here for mm-hmm. At that point, 44 years of my life. Right. And so, and [00:33:00] other people, and it kept kind of funny. We, when we started, there were six of us and five of us were Springdale High school graduates just so happened, right.
I mean, we, like, we looked back and like, oh wow, that's weird. Um, but we knew a lot of people and a lot of people trusted us, you know, fortunately. And so we were out calling on people saying, Hey, if you have, we'd love to work on some stuff for you. And it just starts coming in, right? Mm-hmm. So you get an order or two a day, and then it's three or four a day, and then, you know, you just kind of mushrooms from there and
Nick Beyer: co-founded
Blake Hanby: it with Jimmy, or that was
Nick Beyer: kind of a partnership deal at the beginning, or what did
Blake Hanby: Well, so Beth and I decided we were gonna do it right?
Yeah. So, so I, we founded it and then, um, had a couple people come on board and then Jimmy Plumley, which was kind of, I mean, he's, he was Mr. Commercial title and I mean, forever
Nick Beyer: Okay.
Blake Hanby: Around here. Older. Older than you, Blake, or, mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So he was a little bit older and I'd known him for years and known his family.
But, um, he called and said, Hey, I want in. I go, what do you mean you want in? [00:34:00] But I, I mean, I know how to do title work, but I'm not good at it 'cause I don't, don't have that different personality type and different skills. And so he said, I want in, I wanna be a partner. And I was like, okay. It wasn't really planning on that.
And I didn't think he would ever come. 'cause you know, he was getting later in his career and he's like, I was like, why would he ever leave what he's doing? Right. And so he said, I wanna come on board and I wanna, I want a, a stake in it. And so we agreed to do that with a deal that I could buy him out at whenever he got ready to retire.
And this is, how early on is this conversation happening? Uh, probably two weeks after we started. Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And so I did, I went in not knowing what I was gonna do. It was like, we'll have to figure this out. You know, we gotta get title plan access, which I ultimately didn't get, but at first, and then we did, um.
He came on, was a, was a partner with us, with Beth and I. And then, um, the others came in, you know, kind of started the company with them. 'cause some of 'em came on, you know, soon as they, they found out I left, they gave two weeks notice and came on. I was like, oh, thank God. Yeah. [00:35:00] Because otherwise it would've been, you know, it'd been a lot different story.
We wouldn't be sitting here, you guys be like, whatever happened to Blake Camby, he ended up going off and, you know, doing something different. Um, but yeah, very, very fortunate for that. But kind of went from there. And then my goal was, I always tell people, um, when I left Waco, everybody's like, you're an idiot.
Why would you leave that great job for a great company? I can't believe you're doing it. I said, well, I just always wanna try it. And then two years later, the mark came, market came roaring back, right? Mm-hmm. And we were doing great. And people were like, you're a genius. I'm like, the same people that said I was an idiot.
Were like, I was so smart. I knew it all the time. You're like, no you didn't. You told, you told me I was an idiot to my face. I still
Cameron Clark: remember what you said. Yeah. Yeah. We were at dinner. You told me that.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. Um, yeah. It's, I mean, but my goal when we started, I said, you know, 'cause Waco had grown a lot and it was very successful and had a lot of, I mean, had and has a lot of really great people, but we had gotten to the point where it was so big and it was, uh, a lot of HR and a lot of meetings and [00:36:00] a lot of stuff.
And I'm like, I can't, we don't, we don't staff for that. We staff for people that can handle work. Right. I mean, because it was, it's a pretty thin margin business. Mm-hmm. Um, so I said, well, I just want to go, if I could get 16 or 18. People, if we grow to 16 or 18 people, would be a boutique type of shop. Do you know, commercial and residential and keep those separate and, um, and do it really well.
That's my goal. I don't wanna be the biggest, I just wanna be the best at what we do. Hmm. Um, never had a desire for it to grow to the extent it did. Um, just lucky and grace of God. It grew to what it did. I mean, sometimes I, like, I wish it was still 16 or 18 people. Right. But it's not. Um, but we had a lot of people that came alongside us, customer wise and friends that came on and said, Hey, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna send you business.
And just kept growing. Like, we've gotta keep, gotta keep hiring people. Mm-hmm. We gotta keep taking care of these people and I don't wanna turn anybody away that, you know, that we can provide, you know, products and services for us. So it just kind of kept growing and, and really up through 22. And then we had a little decline in 23, which, you know, [00:37:00] knocked about 30% off everybody's top line.
Um, yeah. Just 'cause deals just weren't happening. It's the number
Nick Beyer: of transactions were down. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so what does that look to, what does that part of the business look like? Is it. When things are good, you're growing. And then when macroeconomic factors happen, like they have been, is it, is it layoffs?
Is that, is that common in your industry or? Yes. Yeah.
Blake Hanby: So I would say in a lot of markets, and for a lot of people here too, that when that, that happens, people start looking, we're gonna, we're gonna lay, we need lay people off. We didn't, um, just 'cause I was like, well, we've got great people. It's really hard to train people, particularly on, you know, your experienced people.
It's hard to train them and get them up to speed to where they, you know, they know what they're doing. Um, and so we held on to people. We had some people leave. Some people wanted to go, I'm gonna go be a stay-at-home mom, or I'm gonna go, I'm moving out of town to do this or that, or I'm going to work for a vendor, or whatever.
So we had some people leave, um, but until we, we didn't lay anybody off for, for lack of business. Mm. [00:38:00] Um, which I mean, some people let say, what is not smart financially, you should have done that. And I was like, well these people, you know, they've taken care of me. I'll take care of them. Mm. That's amazing.
And so, um. We went, we, we were up to 55 people just through attrition. Over two and a half years. We went down to about 42. And we're kind of going back up now. I mean, I would love to hire two or three title agents and a couple of closing agents right now, just 'cause it's coming. I mean, it's, it's already, I mean, it's already been good.
The commercial business has been great and you know, just kind of held on residential businesses coming back. But with the rate drop yesterday and mortgage rates starting to come back down, we're may see another little bit of refinance. Boom. Not boom maybe, but something. But the other thing is, you know, northwest Arkansas is gonna continue to grow and there's so many, so many tailwinds that you hear about, we may talk about, but it's just crazy what, how this market's grown since I was a
Cameron Clark: kid.
Yeah. Maybe talk about just as, as the company was growing, just like the number of transactions you've, you've just [00:39:00] seen, like from when the, when you first started in the business till now, like I. I think one of the things I've, I've heard is, is like on the brokerage side, people are like, man, you, you could, you knew every transaction off the top of your head, right?
Whether it was, whether it was in P Ridge or Farmington or wherever, regardless of product type, it was like, there just wasn't that as many. I mean, I don't know how it felt on the title side or,
Blake Hanby: yeah, so the title side is interesting. When the market started, when rates climbed so rapidly and deals started falling out, there were still a lot of transactions happening.
Um, a lot more, a lot more people had gotten in the business. So they're spread out over a bunch of different companies that are doing the same thing We are, but fortunately for us. Um, I mean, we, we make, so back to our two sides of our business, we make money doing searches and exams. That's part of our fee structure.
Mm-hmm. And, and title commitments and policies. Right. And so we have a title premium, um, and then we have a closing fee. And so, and are those
Nick Beyer: fees a percentage of the deal or is it just a flat fee for services rendered? How does that work?
Blake Hanby: Yeah, so closing fees and title search fees are just kind of [00:40:00] fees for services rendered and, and the market kind of dictates what that is.
Sure. The title insurance premium is like any insurance premium. Sure. It's based on the value or the face amount of the policy. Right? Sure. So in our case, even though the number of transactions declined with, in Northwest Arkansas, not everywhere, but in Northwest Arkansas, values were increasing. Therefore loan prices or loan amounts were increasing.
So some of our revenue lost, for lack of transactions was made up by the amount of title insurance premium going up because values went up.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Which helped. Right? Yeah. Um. Which, I mean, it didn't totally make up for it, but it, it helped. Yeah. It wasn't a total, you know, it wasn't like just 30% of our revenue was gone.
'cause as prices rose, some of that revenue stayed with us because of those values going up.
Mm-hmm.
Nick Beyer: So as we talk through, yeah. 'cause I, I, I wanna get, I wanna transition to like, we'll call it 2015 to 2020. So like the middle part of your company, Northwest Arkansas, probably rebounding mm-hmm. Experiencing some of that group.
But before we move on from that, just thinking back to those early years, were there any [00:41:00] big mistakes that, man, I wish I would've gotten a, a redo on that one, or, I wish I would've done this differently. Whether it's formation of the company, structuring it, partnerships, just anything in, in general.
Blake Hanby: I probably should have been more aggressive on hiring.
Um, when I had the cha, I mean, 'cause there were, there were some people I didn't hire mm-hmm. That I wished I had hired. Um, but I was like, listen, I've promised this. Select group of people that came on first, I'm gonna take care of them. Mm-hmm. They've got families and they've got, you know, yeah. Like, and so I was probably a little too conservative there.
Um, but I'm not much a risk taker for the most part. And so, I mean, I'm just aware of the risk and in that, in that circumstance, and I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna jeopardize what I could do for those first few people. Yeah. Because I'd made a promise to them. But if I had to do over again, I would've there, I would've hired some more people that were super talented that I, that I just didn't.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. Well that's good. No, I think if, if anything that just highlights your commitment to people, which we'll, we'll talk about later. Um, [00:42:00] but it seems like the people that work for you, you're, you're super committed to. So, um, what an awesome thing to, to look at from the outside. Uh, but yeah, moving into the next five years, 2015 to 2020, I mean, some growth starting to happening.
Things are picking up, markets rebounding, talk through like, okay, so you're at six employees, how that kind of starts to scale. At, at some point you, you, you shift up to Benton County and how that changes your business. Yeah. Let's, let's kind of diagnose some of that. Yeah.
Blake Hanby: So we opened in Fayetteville, um, which I, I had said, Hey, we're gonna start in Washington County.
That's where I'm from. That's where my sweet spot is. And there's, I, I knew a lot of people in Washington County, not as many in Benton County, but so in 2012 we started trying to get deals up here as well. 'cause obviously there was a great deal of growth going on up here. And it's amazing how many people said, when you open an office in Benton County, we'll do business with you.
I'm like, well, I'll come to you, I'll come to your house, I'll come to your office, I'll come to wherever. We'll come close your deals wherever. And they're like, when you get an office at, maybe it was like the fact the Chamber of Commerce was talking to me. Right.
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: And so we opened, um, [00:43:00] this office in 2000, well office in actually in World Trade Center.
We rented for Mrs. Hunt, um, in 2012.
Nick Beyer: And what was happening up here then Blake? 'cause I remember I was working at Pinnacle at the time. Mm-hmm. I was in high school and I remember getting off that exit. And, and all I would pass was farmland. Yeah. And then I remember when that Walmart was built in neighborhood market, I don't remember the year, but it was like the wildest thing.
So there was growth happening up here, but it wasn't, you know, you look at all the buildings now that that's what, 10 years old? Um, what, what, what was happening? 2012?
Blake Hanby: Yeah. Well, I think you had, um, you know, the, the Hunts were a big part, obviously did all the stuff here, the pinnacle and the cross of the promenade in different places.
They had a vision for what that was gonna be. I mean, I think we'd be remiss not to talk about the fact that the stakeholders we have in this market, whether it's the Waldens, the Hunts, the Tysons, the, I mean, you, you name it mm-hmm. The George family in Springdale with all, all they're doing. But there's all these people that are spending a great deal of money and their wealth and, [00:44:00] and influence to make Northwest Arkansas.
Cool. Mm-hmm. And I think we were just starting to see it then. And, and, and, and we kind of went from where it was, you know, Springdale, fable Rogers, Bentonville, Salem. It just kinda became Northwest a or just, it was kind of turning into a region more, right? Yep. With the airport having come on and, you know, all the development, the pinnacle area.
Hospitals are growing, the university's growing. Um, and I think we'd, we'd be silly to think that a whole lot of the credit should not be given to them and the local, local city governments and what was happening there. It was just, there was a whole lot of momentum. There's a ton of people coming in here, first of all.
Mm-hmm. Whether, whether it's for Walmart or Tyson or JB Hunt or whatever, but there's a whole lot of people moving here. One just 'cause it's a cool place and there's people that are moving here for, that are, have vendor jobs that they're getting transferred in here and maybe their spouse is like, I ain't moving.
And they come here and they go, oh wow. We can buy a house in the lake for that. Mm-hmm. Or we can buy a house in Pinnacle subdivision for that.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Way cheaper than Chicago or wherever they're coming from. So there's a whole lot of momentum. [00:45:00] By virtue of the fact that we had, you know, some of the large companies here.
Mm-hmm. And the university didn't help. I mean, it didn't hurt, rather, um, 'cause you know, university was growing, enrollment was growing, apartments coming online, there's a lot of development.
Mm.
Blake Hanby: Um, so I think it's, you know, I mean it's like better to be lucky than good. I mean, the market was go, was growing because people were just coming here, right?
Mm-hmm. And we were benefactors of that to a certain extent,
Nick Beyer: but still you had to have some vision, not, not benefactor beneficiaries of that. Yeah. Not benefactor. You had to have some vision though, to move up here in 2012. Like that still feels semi early on the, the curve you had. Well,
Blake Hanby: yeah. So we started looking like, okay, how can we go get more business?
What are we gonna do? How are we gonna take care of our, because we had customers up here, right? Yeah. I mean there's realtors and mortgage lenders. They operate, you know, all over northwest Arkansas. And so we started looking at deals, and deals were happening up here and had, you know, fortunately I've known some of those families I mentioned earlier for years.
And, um. Growing up and kind [00:46:00] of it's like, okay, we, we try to go get some of that, we're to grow our business. And so we came up here and at the time, Washington County, I would say was doing more transactions right now of the, of the orders we get, yeah. Two thirds of 'em are in Benton County. Wow. Wow. And I mean it, that's more recent.
It has, it's been 60 40 for a while and right now, like if you look at my order counts for the last six months, two thirds of 'em are in Benton County. A lot of that has to do with where the growth can happen. Right. And it's, it's infrastructure and it's roads and it's water and sewer and utilities and whatever.
And, um, a whole lot of action in Bella Vista. I mean, ton obviously has grown, you know. Crazy. And Pea Ridge is going like crazy. You grab it and Decatur and Gentry and you know, Farmington, some of that stuff's gone too. But I think it's just a matter of infrastructure in the different municipalities where, where you can get a new subdivision, where you can grow.
'cause there's people that need houses, there's a shortage of houses and there's a shortage of lots.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: And I don't know how it's gonna be a challenge to keep [00:47:00] up going forward to, for all the people that are coming in. Mm-hmm.
Nick Beyer: So in those middle years, 2015 to 2020, you've got the office open in Benton County, you've got your Washington County office.
Mm-hmm. And you sure that's where a lot of your relational equity was at that point, but at what point do you see the Benton County office start to like really pick up? Is it in those years or is it kind of
Blake Hanby: Yeah, I think, well last five
Nick Beyer: years,
Blake Hanby: no, I think it's, I think it was all along. It's just a matter of, once we got up here, 'cause there was, there were some great companies already up here mm-hmm.
That had their foothold in the market and we're like, how can we, how can we get, you know, get in that. And so we got up here, opened our office in Rogers and started working. Clients up here and just, you know, making those relationships. And, you know, most of our business comes from, you know, okay, you know, we closed, we end up closing a deal for you just because it got sent to us for whatever reason.
We don't know you from Adam, and then we get to know you and we close your deal and you go, Hey, that was great. And then you bring me the next one. And then somebody asks you, Hey, who should I use? I mean, it's, most of it's word of mouth. Mm-hmm. Because we don't have, we're not doing radio advertising and TV advertising.[00:48:00]
'cause like I said earlier, I'm not marketing to you guys as home buyers. I'm marketing to you guys as real estate professionals or lending professionals or whatever. Um, but there are some that we had relationships with through, whether it's through, you know, fellowship Bible Church, or whether it's through Rotary Club or whether it's through whatever, that we all the, our people or that are involved in the community every day.
'cause they're all from here. You know, people go, oh, well I'm gonna use City Title 'cause I know, you know, Carissa, Judy, I, she's, she goes to church with me
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: And she'll take care of my deal.
Mm-hmm. And
Blake Hanby: so, well it's just word of mouth and people know that, you know, you're honest and you're gonna take care of 'em and.
You'll be trustworthy.
Cameron Clark: Mm. I will say my favorite encounter with you in that, in that window, I think it was in 2021, we're sitting down doing a closing. And I asked you, I was like, I was like, how's it going? How's, how's everything going? You're like, man, it's, it is going, you know, I get here about 6:00 AM I leave about 6:30 PM come home, eat dinner, have a glass of wine with my wife, and then I work till midnight.
Yeah. And I, you know, I've done that for the last however many months and the [00:49:00] market was exploding. But your commitment to excellence was just, I mean, it was just so on point. This is incredible.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. I, I can tell you if you, if we have a transaction going on, and, um, if I'm still awake or if my phone buzzes and wakes me up and you say, Hey, we, we've had this change.
I can't go back to sleep until I go, I'll just go get on my computer and do it and send it out. And I don't know if that's just, then I can get it off my mind or if that way I know that you're taken care of or, or both. Right. That's my personality. Jimmy Plumley is the same way. You know, Pam and Dwayne are the same way.
It's like, okay, I, I'm not gonna be able to, you know, I don't want to let these people down. I wanna make sure they get, take care of. So there's a lot of times where, you know, people get emails from me with, you know, settlement statements on a commercial deal or something that's, you know, or it's one or two in the morning.
It's just 'cause I like, I wake up and see it on my phone, which is a, a blessing and a curse. Right. Uh, I can't go back to sleep till I get this done.
Hmm.
Blake Hanby: How do you hire people like that? I don't know. Um, you know, and so much of what we do can be, you can do [00:50:00] training, but so much of it for the people that really excel, you know, the, you know, Josh Height, um, yeah.
Dwayne Flint, Pam Weeks, you know, rainy Forbes was with Jimmy. They just have that desire to. Just to take care of people, right? Mm-hmm. And I don't, I mean, it's almost like you need to hire off personality more than you need to hire off skills. You can train this, you know, to a certain extent. You can train the skills, but you gotta find people that really have a heart for serving people.
Mm-hmm.
Cameron Clark: There was a moment with Josh too, just as I was when I was super green in the brokerage industry. And I was kind of needed someone to tell me, Hey, this is how things go. This is what's going on. But, and the deal was falling apart because the lender is an SBA deal. And I was like, Josh, like, tell me what, like what, what do I need to be looking for?
And all that stuff here. And, and, uh, yeah. I mean, he cared about the entire project. It was another super meaningful experience.
Blake Hanby: He's a wizard. I mean, he, he's one of the few people in our business, Jimmy Plum could do it. And I mean, there are some people that are okay at it. Josh can do title and closing Mm.
And can kind of flip back and forth [00:51:00] real really easily, and that's pretty rare. But he's, yeah, he's, he's great.
Hmm.
Nick Beyer: Okay. So let's, let's talk about the economics of the business. Mm-hmm. So I think you shared a little bit, y'all have kind of standard fee set forth and title searches and all that. And then a big piece of your revenue or growth comes from the title insurance premium.
Mm-hmm. Walk us through whether it's revenue, I know we talked through employee, but just where y'all are at now, the, the scale of your business. And how that's grown, whether it's keggers over the last few years, or just how you've seen your business grow.
Blake Hanby: Yeah, so up through 22, I mean, frankly 21 and 22, early 22, it's like we've gotta either hire more people or we've gotta figure something out because people were getting worn out, right?
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Revenue's great, um, profits were great, but we can't sustain this unless we either grow or we start turning down business. And I've never been known to turn down business, right? Like, well, sure we can help you. We'd love to help you. Um, even if that means staying up till midnight. Yeah, sometimes it does, right?
Yeah. And so, I [00:52:00] mean, then there's other times that, you know. When business isn't as big and you've gotta, you've gotta realize that with your people that you know, they need, there was a period of time where like we had more people than we needed. Right. Yeah. Which I mentioned earlier, and you're like, they need, they need to kind of recoup, it's like almost like they needed a vacation.
Mm-hmm. To a certain extent of like, we gotta kind of get everybody kind of rested and relaxed and then we'll come back and get ready to go. And I think it's getting ready to happen again. So, um, yeah. So from a revenue standpoint, we started and had, you know, just from starting from zero, um, revenue kind of went for a couple years and then just went upwards, right?
Mm-hmm. Quick and then kind of leveled off and then obviously 22 was kind of peaked out and then down a little bit, like I said, we're down order wise, we're down 30% and that's kind of na, nationally what you hear, um, revenue wasn't down, you know, 30% just 'cause like I mentioned earlier, the title premiums went up.
But yeah, it's, you know, in our business you kind of figure out, 'cause. Over half of our expense in our company is [00:53:00] labor.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: And, and of course, health insurance premiums are up, and salaries are up. 'cause there's a demand. I mean, right now, if I wanna hire, you know, one of you guys, which, you know, I couldn't hire you guys, you know, I'm kidding.
So, but like, if, if I wanna hire one of you guys, the, the market for guys with your talent at your age and your influence in the community and everything is huge. Right? So how do you go and balance that with, you know, what, what can I afford to pay somebody to do this job? Whatever. Right. Just any business decision.
Um, but, you know, going in, I know what my, um, what my break even is within, you know, a few thousand dollars every month. And I mean, some of that's affected by overtime or whatever, but, you know, health insurance premiums have skyrocketed and payroll has, has gone up quite a bit. And so you're like, okay, how do we do this because we have all these, these costs that are fixed and can we raise prices?
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: To justify like everybody else has. And yeah, we've tried not to do that, but we got the benefit of the title insurance premiums going up a little bit by virtue of the values, [00:54:00] like I mentioned earlier. And that took care of some of it. But I would like to see it come back to the 21 levels, maybe not 22, just as far as far as volume goes.
And some of that's just going out. We have, right now, we need, like, we need title agents, closing agents, and we kinda need people in all positions as we grow. Mm-hmm. But we particularly need those two. 'cause I can't go out and say, Cameron, you've got a new deal. It's, you know, 500 deals or whatever mean I'm making up.
If you had a real estate agency, like say we're gonna go 500 new deals, go, who's gonna produce title on those? Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: I mean, we have some because we have some capacity, but we may not have that much capacity. Or maybe it's, you know, maybe it's way more than that. But, so we've gotta, gotta figure out how to handle those deals because I never wanna.
Over promise, under deliver. Mm-hmm. And do just the opposite. So we can make sure we take care of people in a timely manner. Nobody's waiting on us.
Hmm.
Nick Beyer: So what are you tracking as a business owner? I mean, is it, is it revenue in your industry or is it, you said recordings and just to break that down for the audience here, it's, that's number of transactions.
And then you have transaction volume, [00:55:00] which is if you're doing less recordings or number of transactions, but therefore a way bigger number. Right. Right. Then your volume stays flat or goes up. So what, what are you really, so I track orders
Blake Hanby: Okay. Is what I look at every day. Okay. Um, just 'cause I know how many orders on average, you know, what, what average revenue per file is, you know, and now if we, occasionally we may have a deal on a commercial deal that's, you know, a huge deal that kind of skews those numbers for that month.
Mm-hmm. But overall over the course of the year, we kinda know what our revenue profile is and we know what our expense, you know, is overall. And so you can kind of just run those numbers pretty easily. So I always look every day and say, are we averaging X number of orders? Um. And if we are, then I'll, I don't really worry about it.
Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm, it's not that I'm not a numbers person, but I don't worry about that stuff as much. I just know, hey, if we're taking care of people, the numbers will take care of themselves. That's good. And then if the markets, if the market declines, which it's not going to in northwest Arkansas, I don't think.
Not to a great extent because there's so much momentum, but I just look to make sure we, we have x [00:56:00] number of orders and like what do we need to go out and do, we need to go out and push it a little bit more, which we should be doing that all the time. But like I said, I've got x amount of capacity right now to produce title and close deals.
And unless we gear up, I'm not gonna go out and make promises I can't keep.
Mm.
Nick Beyer: That's good. And then just kind of breaking down the business more, you said now, and we'll call that twenty twenty four, two thirds of your transactions are happening here in Benton County?
Blake Hanby: Correct.
Nick Beyer: And, and how does that compare to, we'll call it, 10 years ago?
Was it, was it flipped or, yeah, I
Blake Hanby: think, yeah, it was probably, I would say and may, maybe it's 'cause we were, we started in Washington County. Mm-hmm. That's where most of our relationships were. Early on. Um, but Washington County obviously had the lion share of the deals. Most of the developments were happening in Washington County, and you had Bella Vista that had, you know, 10,000 lots that weren't sold and you had Ton was just maybe just barely getting started.
Nobody was moving to Pea Ridge or to grab it, or Decatur or Gentry. People were moving to East Fayetteville, Farmington, Prairie Grove, you know, Tawny Town, whatever. [00:57:00] There's a lot more happening down there. It may just been that's where the market was, right?
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Um, but it's flipped. I mean, we do so many Bella Vista.
Sales. Now it's just crazy to like, people that are y'all's age are going and buying Bella Vista rather than mm-hmm. People that are older than me. Right. And it's that, I dunno what the average age is now versus what it was 15 years ago in Bella Vista. But it's drastically lower, right. Because it's you, you've got great schools, you're close to Bentonville and all the activity, it's still cheaper than everywhere else.
Mm-hmm. And not everywhere else but the big four. Mm-hmm. And it's beautiful, right? Mm-hmm. Like the amenities are there. Yeah. All the amenities are there and it's gonna get better with everything that's been announced. Right. Yeah. So it's really, it's turning into a cool place rather than a retirement village.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: And so there's that, and there's ton, I mean, pea Ridge, you know, there's like, there's just all the tertiary areas around these. The major four or five cities are gonna keep growing just because land's cheaper. And that's where they can develop. Presumably they can get utilities to 'em. Mm-hmm.
Nick Beyer: And then as your, as your business has grown and shifted mm-hmm.
Talk about [00:58:00] residential versus commercial. Has commercial become a bigger part of your business?
Blake Hanby: Well, it's, we are, we do quite a bit. We, we have a, a true commercial division. Right. Okay. Not everybody does. Some people they do some commercial and they may get an apartment complex, they may get a commercial building.
We have a whole division of people that, that's all they do. Which, where we deal with Cameron on his side. Right. So, um, we have, I mean, like, I, I tell people it's like, you know, we had, at one point we had 10 attorneys on staff. We have seven now, which is really unusual for a title company. But we have these people that they love doing title work and closing deals and being involved in the transactional side, but maybe didn't wanna be billing hours at a law firm or whatever.
So you're
Nick Beyer: saying that's unusually high for a title company? Yes. Okay.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. Most, most title companies have zero attorneys. Not that that's a big deal, but it mean it does give you, you know, a certain level of, um, expertise that, that comes in. Helpful. That's helpful. Particularly on the commercial side. Um, but the commercial side of our business is about 12 to 15% of our orders.
Obviously the revenue's higher just [00:59:00] 'cause the deals are bigger. Um, but the lion's share of our business is residential. It's, you know, buying and selling houses.
Nick Beyer: Let's talk about the size of deals now. Mm-hmm. Versus the size of deals then. And I think you and Cameron probably both have some really fun stories you could share, but as you've seen this market change a lot, I imagine I.
The size of the deals that are crossing your desk are, are pretty wildly different than they were five, 10 years ago.
Blake Hanby: Yeah, I mean, for sure. Like now, if every day if we get, you know, whatever, 25 orders in four of 'em are gonna be over a million bucks.
Mm.
Blake Hanby: Um, on the residential side. Mm. And then, and you'll get some of them that are, I mean, 'cause the prices of houses have gone up, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Blake Hanby: They used to be a commercial building. Now it's a house in, you know, wherever. But the, but the size of some of the commercial deals and, you know, people compete pretty hard for those where, but you know, if it's, you know, the hospital is refinancing or apartment deals selling on one of these, you know, selling to a REIT out of somewhere that these deals are, you know, 50, [01:00:00] $60 million apartment sale, you know, apartment complex sales and, and whatever it is, the deals have gotten, some of 'em have gotten really big and they're, they're more complex, but it's, the structure of the deals are more complex.
Closing them is not necessarily more complex. Hmm. I mean, a lot of times it's easier to close a commercial deal. The parties all know exactly what's going on. Mm-hmm. And they all have attorneys on staff and they're, it's wage. You close one of those deals than a $15,000, you know, piece of property out in the county that has messed up title.
Right. So, and you, we kinda, I mean, back, back to our fees, a lot of that you kind of average you like, okay, what do we need to make on an average transaction in order to make a reasonable return? And so that's what you set it at. Sometimes you get, you know, a $6,000 deal that involves a mobile home out in the county that is, it takes you countless number of hours to get it done.
Or I could sell, you know, a $10 million, not sell, but take care of a sale of a $10 million property, you know, across the street and it's way easier.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: [01:01:00] Revenue, you know, wildly different in those cases. And, um, and probably the expense side of it's wildly different too, just 'cause some deals are way more complicated and they're, you don't, you lose money on 'em, but you.
You do those 'cause those people need to That's right. Needs to be taken care of.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. And is there a focus from you there as a business owner? Are you, are you trying to focus more on commercial? Are you trying to focus more on residential or is it just Yes. Hey, we, we just wanna take care of whoever comes to us?
Blake Hanby: Yeah, I mean obviously the residential business for us is, is huge, right? I mean, that's the bread and butter of what we do. The commercial side of it is, um, I would say we just got, we just kind of a dual focus. I mean, like I said, I, I, I wouldn't want, um, you know, Shelby or Josh you deal with all the time, Cameron, I wouldn't want them doing residential transactions all the time.
'cause their expertise is more on the commercial side. Mm-hmm. By the same token, you don't want me closing your residential, you know, refinance. I mean, I can, I consider and have you sign papers, but you know, Pam and Dwayne and Leisha and Stephanie and o' Connie, they, they know all the rules of what you can do on FHA [01:02:00] or VA or whatever.
And so, and they're really good at that. So we just have specialists in each of the areas that. Or, you know, we have, we have a couple people that are mobile home specialists. 'cause mobile homes can be a pain in the backside. Right. Oh wow. For, um, just trying to figure out how to get titles canceled and get 'em, you know, or if you've got a lost title where we have a couple people that are really good at that.
'cause it's really cumbersome. But like, if one comes in, you go, okay.
Nick Beyer: That goes with them.
Blake Hanby: Hmm.
Nick Beyer: And so it sounds like you have a lot of expertise in, a lot of, a lot of your employees have expertise in D areas. Yeah. I was gonna say areas, let's clear that if I
Blake Hanby: don't, there we go. I, I, I'm really good at hiring people smarter than me.
Yes.
Nick Beyer: Which is, which is, I mean, no doubt as a business owner, one of the most important things Sure. You can do and have to do. You talked a a little bit about that expertise. Is any of that happening out of northwest Arkansas? We'll call it in the state of Arkansas. And then to go even further there. Do y'all do transactions that happen outside of the state of Arkansas?
We, what does that look like? So
Blake Hanby: we don't, we we're licensed in Arkansas. Okay. Um, direct title. We will occasionally close the deal that's somewhere [01:03:00] else. If it's for an existing client that maybe is in Oklahoma or Missouri. We have a couple deals in Missouri right now that we're gonna close for some really good clients of ours that we're not gonna write title, but we're gonna close the transaction and get all the recording done.
And, and then the title insurance company in Missouri Will, will issue title on those and we'll work hand in hand with them to get those done. But we do stuff all over the state on the commercial side. Um, just because, I mean, if Cameron has a deal on a one of a Dollar General in Pine Bluff mm-hmm. I can do that just as easy as I can do one here.
Okay. Um, 'cause everything's be done by mail or by, you know, people I can send it and they, they go have their, their notary take care of it, whatever. Right. So, so much of the commercial side is done. Mail out and email and e-sign and so much of that stuff. So, residential side on the contrary is here. So we, we do residential in Washington, Benton, a little bit in Madison.
We'll do, you know, some stuff in, you know, just kind of our adjacent counties. Occasionally if it's for a client, but most of the time it doesn't make sense for us to do that and order a search and have, you know, have that expense [01:04:00] and then on top of what we're doing. So it's better for the client that we just, we may say, Hey, we'll close it if you're here.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Um, but we're gonna let them do the title work somewhere else just because it's more cost effective for the customer.
Cameron Clark: So why not grow more regionally? Why not a Tulsa office, a little rock office? Like what's, is the value there for you? Or is it just, hey, we're just, we're just hyper-focused here?
I mean,
Blake Hanby: so when I left, um, my former employer, I decided, I said, I'm, I'm a northwest Arkansas guy. There's plenty here for me to do. Right. I don't want to be, I. I don't want to get back to like, what, what was at the old place where it was, you know, 150 people and tons of, of HR issues and all that. Like, I just wanna keep it small and boutiquey, right?
Mm-hmm. So we have people all the time go, Hey, why don't you, why don't you set up an office in this county? Like, 'cause I don't, it's not that I don't want, I don't have the bandwidth to go and spend time there when it's, I think it's better spend northwest Arkansas where all the growth is.
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: And there's, there's so [01:05:00] much momentum here that I think I would be, I would be better off figuring out how to get more market share here and take care of more people here than going and trying to set up a company in Carroll County, which is where my, my dad's from, and I know people in Carroll County.
But I'm better off using my resources and our expertise here because the number of transactions here just is not even close. Right. It keeps going up. It's going up. So I've, I've seen people, and I've done this in the past, where you go and say, okay, we're gonna go set up an office in this other county.
You go, we've probably been better off. Rather than going to this little county and getting, you know, two deals a day to go call on this real estate company or this lender and get two deals a day from them.
Mm. Yeah.
Blake Hanby: And so there are people that have that deal. We're gonna expand everywhere. We're gonna grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.
And I'm like, man, I'm gonna really try to do the best I can in northwest Arkansas, which is growing faster than anywhere else in Arkansas. Right. So it's, maybe I'm wrong, but it's, it's worked so far and it's just kind of dumb luck. I mean, it's like just lucky to be here.
Nick Beyer: No, I think there's, I mean, and [01:06:00] that's what our podcast is about here.
I mean, founders, business owners, people building things that make Northwest Arkansas a special place to live. And, uh, we grew up here like you did. Mm-hmm. And we are really thankful for the growth that's happened here. And we have all been beneficiaries. I'm thankful for h Hurricane Katrina that brought you here.
I know that I ended up here. I I'm so thankful for that too. Seriously. Um, but no, I think it's interesting because your growth strategy is still strategic. And it's not, you're not stumbling into growth. It's, Hey, no, I know if I keep putting my resources here. You're just focused on depth. You're not focused on breadth.
Right. And, uh, I think the quote that comes to mind is you can't be everything to everyone. And that's, that's what you're doing with City Title in Northwest Sergeant Sauce. So I think that's really neat, neat for you to share and for, for us to, to share as
Blake Hanby: well. And you guys being from here, you just look at all the great things that are, that, not, not just what's happening here as far as growth of companies and all that, but just, you know, whether it's the, the greenways or whether it's, you know, [01:07:00] having the lake or the university or all, just all this great stuff that's happening here.
Compounded by all the, all the people that are coming in. It's just gonna be, it's gonna be really dynamic and great to watch over the next several years. And I mean, some good, some bad, but I think 90% good.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. I mean, grow or die, you know? Yeah. I mean, no one wants to be stagnant. Stagnant doesn't, uh, isn't as sweet as, you know.
It may sound
Blake Hanby: Yeah, that's right.
Cameron Clark: What is the, I
Nick Beyer: mean, you, you see a lot of this stuff, Blake. So we, we've talked about population growth here. We've talked about size of the deals growing. We've talked about, you know, y'all are only focused here and we've talked about, and, and you did a great job recognizing some of the amazing names and, and people here who have billions of dollars, but are still choosing to invest in our community, which is, which is really special.
Are you also seeing. Out-of-state money flood into the area in terms of investments and what can you share that, that we can learn from there?
Blake Hanby: Yeah, no, I think there's, there's a ton of money. You know, Cameron could probably speak better to this than I, but whenever they [01:08:00] started show, we started showing up in, you know, lists of the greatest places to live and all that.
And COVID frankly helped us. 'cause people could, I mean, people that are living in LA like, I can work from anywhere. I get to work remote now. Where would, I mean, I'm, I'm gonna go, they come here or they go to Austin, or they go to Nashville and they're like, this is unbelievable. Mm. Yeah. And it, it has everything I want.
And then some, and it's a great place to live. And the people are nice and there's, there's a very generous, um, you know, attitude of people of, you know, all, I mean, just some of the nonprofits and stuff we have around here doing unbelievable work and they just, it's almost kind, kind of can't believe it, right?
Mm-hmm. Growing up here, you kind of take it for granted, I think, to a certain extent, but. But I think there's a lot of people coming in and spending money. 'cause they're, they, now we're on the map, right? And they go, oh, I'll, we'll go check it out. I mean, we, Beth and I live in Bentonville now. Mm-hmm. And there's so many people that came here during COVID because they heard they could come ride bikes and they, they couldn't, they couldn't travel places.
They'd get in their car from [01:09:00] Texas or from California or from wherever. And they came here and started riding mountain bikes and they've now bought houses here. And there's countless stories like that. But there's also a ton of money coming in here from, you know, REITs and stuff that are buying some of these big apartment complexes and buying office buildings and.
I, I don't have any idea, but, you know, there's a whole bunch of investment in our real estate that are being bought by these big companies that are, you know, buying them to rent out or feeding 'em vrbo, which I don't think as prevalent as it was, but there's a whole lot of houses are being bought, which I kinda wish they would stop for a little bit and let people mo, you know, get houses.
But it's an issue.
Cameron Clark: Do you track that internally? Money from, you know, outta state versus, no. An area. Okay. Yeah. Just curious and just kind of thinking about, okay, continued growth as far as like what's next? Like, does the organization of, of the company change, do you, do you kind of stay in this CEO role, you know, or is there, does that kind of stay the same for the time being and then also like, do you open a Bentonville office?
I'm just kind of curious. That's
Blake Hanby: actually on the, that's being discussed now. Do we need, I always, [01:10:00] when I worked for my former employer, we were putting branches everywhere.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Which is convenient, but for most people, I mean, if you guys are buying a house, if you're working in Bentonville, but you've gotta come for your closing every seven or eight years, whenever you refinance or buy a new house.
Sometimes it's longer than that. Mm-hmm. Is it a big deal to drive to my Roger's office? No, it's not. So I, we're not a, we're not a, um, we're more of a destination. We're not like, oh, hey, there's that. I'm gonna go close a deal. Mm-hmm. Like, it's not that way. Right. So I said, let's just put in a couple of nice offices, one in each county.
And at the time I, that made a whole lot of sense. And now I'm like, should we have an office in Bentonville? Should we have an office in Ton? Should we have an office in Farmington? Should we have, I mean, I don't know what the right answer to that is, but that's kind of being considered Now. Do we need to have, and, and how do you staff those and who's gonna go do that?
Right. Which is a whole different ballgame. 'cause you can't just put one person out at an office by themselves.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Doesn't make sense. So there's, there's some opportunities there to maybe grow within [01:11:00] our, you know, our region. That might make sense. Hmm.
Cameron Clark: What do you think is the biggest challenge for growth of the next five years for y'all?
Staffing.
Blake Hanby: Mm-hmm. People, um, there's, there's a big demand for people, talented people that are willing to work.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Right? Mm-hmm. There's, it's, that's a real big challenge for us. I mean, we, we always say, you know, they're not, they don't make title agents anymore, so we've gotta make 'em, we've gotta train them from the ground up.
And it's, it's a whole lot of, I mean, you know, lawyers will call our title agents and say, Hey, how does this really work? Yeah. Because they're really good at our lay people. We have a lot of attorneys on staff, as I mentioned, that understand that very well. But there's, um, the staffing side of it, and more so I think on the title side than the closing side.
Mm-hmm. Um, a really good closure has a bunch of knowledge and a bunch of experience, but you can train people and kind of bring them up through that title. People we're gonna have to do the same thing. Mm-hmm. Um, that's, that's probably the biggest challenge. The next, [01:12:00] or maybe, maybe a bigger challenge, but even than that is just the amount of fraud that's going on, whether it's seller impersonation, fraud, or wire fraud or some of the stuff that these.
Yeah. You know, people, fraudsters, scammers have figured out that, um, you kind of go where the money is. Right. And we handle a whole bunch of people's money.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: Um, and so there, you know, there's payoff fraud where they try to get you to send money the wrong places, and buyers and sellers are getting duped into sending earnest money to somebody because somebody got in their email and has been, you know, gosh.
That's the biggest threat, I think, to our business for the foreseeable future.
Nick Beyer: And is that, is that the last five years, Blake, or is that
Blake Hanby: Yeah. Used to, we were worried about people having fraudulent cashier's checks.
Okay.
Blake Hanby: And so we're like, well, we're gonna require wires. And now we're like, maybe we gotta go back to cashier's checks.
Yeah. '
Blake Hanby: cause, 'cause the fraud on the wire side and just, it's really just email and, you know, email fraud and somebody has a, an account that's not, you know. It's not a secure email site and somebody gets in through whatever mm-hmm. Because they clicked on the link and they just sit there and watch [01:13:00] and they see a transaction.
They just watch and then they say, okay, you need to send your $50,000 earnest money in. Wow. And they send the wire instructions and it looks like it's from the title company, but it's not. And then they send it and then they're like, Hey, did you get my earnest money? They're like, Nope. I mean, that's, it's only happened a couple times with us.
Um, it's happened a lot around the state.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Blake Hanby: Around the country.
Cameron Clark: Well, I feel like it's so popular now to where it's like, if you haven't experienced it yet, just just wait a year, you know? Yeah. Or whatever and whether, you know, whether you fall for it or not. Like that's another thing. But someone's coming and Yeah.
Blake Hanby: So what happens now is like, so if, if I say, Hey, send me your wiring instruction, I'm gonna send you net proceeds at closing, 'cause you signed early, you're gonna send 'em to me and then I'm gonna call you on your cell phone and you're gonna go, I just sent 'em to you. I know, but I'm calling to check because I wanna make sure it was you and I voice verify those.
We do those in every one. Wow. Because if you don't. One of 'em is gonna catch you. And depending on the size of the transaction, it might wipe, it might wipe you out, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. On these commercial deals, [01:14:00] we're wiring, you know, millions, millions of dollars. I don't have millions, millions of dollars to put back.
So
yeah,
Blake Hanby: you have insurance coverage for that kind of stuff, but still not pretty.
Cameron Clark: And are title companies similar to insurance companies, where someone coming in from outta market who wants a presence here is gonna try to buy title companies, try to take over a big market share through acquisition? Is that Yes.
I mean,
Blake Hanby: yeah, it's not, it hadn't happened here yet. Mm-hmm. I mean, there are companies here that are owned by bigger companies, but more so in bigger, you know, Dallas, Phoenix. A, there's big companies that come in and try to, our business is people based, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're going to come in, you probably need to do it by acquisition.
'cause it's really hard to grow unless you just come in and pay, you know, crazy amounts of money to people to get, come over and then build it over time. But if you wanna do, if you wanna have an instant impact, like all these people that are aggregating heat and error companies or Yeah. Whatever, yeah.
They're gonna do it by acquisition. Mm-hmm. Historically it's been, um, where a title insurer, first American or Fidelity or Chicago or Old Republican, they'll go into a market and they'll [01:15:00] start buying or go into somewhere and start buying up agencies.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: And then they don't take care. I mean, I'm not saying they don't, but I mean, like historically then they don't take care of your key people.
And those key people go, well, I'm going do, I can go over here. And then that next thing you know, they're selling 'em back out. So why haven't you sold? Because I still like it.
Hmm.
Blake Hanby: I mean, it's still fun to me. Which, I mean, I'm not any young, I'm not getting younger. Right. But, but I still get, I still get fired up about closing deals.
I mean, a lot of people don't think I closed deals, but I still, that's the, the reason I, a couple reasons why I left one, I just wanna go do it. And the other deal is I wanted to get back in, in the transactions, closing deals. That's, that's exciting to me. And it's, it's stressful, but it's fun. But I'd rather go in and close a deal that you guys are doing, rather than managing a bunch of people.
That's the, the transaction side of it's fun to me. Hmm. And it's exciting and you get to see what's going on, kind of, kind of get an insight to what's going on in the market.
Nick Beyer: And I guess that's even more fun 'cause you grew up here, so it's like, it's, it's probably really fun to see [01:16:00] you're seeing all that growth really firsthand.
Blake Hanby: Yeah. And I'm fortunate in that I have a bunch of people that, that I do, that I, I personally handle their transactions that I, you know, just have always admired and,
you know,
Blake Hanby: you, you could. You know, couple hands full of people that you like, you handle their deals like every one of them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that because, and it's fun to me, and they need somebody to take good care of their stuff and look after their stuff.
And fortunately they think I'm their guy. Right.
Cameron Clark: Well, you know, just through the ecosystem you do a lot of very big projects and so mm-hmm. And, uh, yeah. Cool to hear about. And so we're running a little short on time here, so we're gonna kind of start wrapping things up. I got a couple more questions here for you.
Okay. Um, how do you define success?
Blake Hanby: For me, it's just, I mean, I think it's, it, it is customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. Right. I mean, I'm, I'm not, like I said, I'm not really motivated by money. I like money, I like, you know, whatever. But to me, it's getting a deal that's [01:17:00] hard and making it happen and getting it done Right.
And having people appreciate the fact that you did it right.
Mm-hmm.
Blake Hanby: And, and the reputation, not for, not for me, but for my, for my team of, of having a really good reputation. Of being honest and trustworthy and doing the right thing, even when it hurts. Right. Just, but just that to me, gives me pride that we're doing the right thing.
And if you do all that, the money kind of takes care of itself. I mean, you'll, you'll make you make a decent return if you're, if you're handling people, you know, treating people. Right. Hmm. I don't, I'm a lot less involved in numbers on a daily basis than I am in trying to make sure we're doing things properly.
Yeah.
Blake Hanby: Which is not a challenge because I, the people we have are great, but, but that's, that success to me is closing the really big transaction. Everybody's like, man, that was awesome. Yeah. Best, best experience I've ever had. And like that gives me a lot of pride for me and my team.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Well, we've kind of talked about why Northwest Arkansas.
Blake Hanby: Mm-hmm.
Cameron Clark: What's your vision for Northwest Arkansas?
Blake Hanby: Man, I don't, I wish I had a better grasp of what all's really gonna [01:18:00] happen, because you hear all these deals and you've heard 'em for the last several years. Like, well, I can't tell you what's gonna happen, but this is gonna be big. And you're like, well, I can't wait to hear.
But, um, it's for Northwest Arkansas. I think it's gonna be how do we manage the growth from, from all the stakeholders? I mean, starting with, you know, cities and counties and how, how do we handle infrastructure and how do we get funding for all this stuff and all that. But that, and managing to keep it a great place to live, right?
Because there's so many people coming in from all over the place, um, that you hear people, I don't, you know. Don't, California not, or you know, cal ca fornicate, northwest Arkansas or whatever it is. Right. So, I mean, keeping a lot of the, you know, the values here and the great place to live and nice people and you know, people look after each other.
Keeping that in northwest Arkansas, which is how it was when I grew up. Mm-hmm. And still is. So, you know, for the most part, how do we keep that and manage all the growth? I mean, there's huge amounts of money being spent here to make sure it's cool [01:19:00] and, but how do we keep the culture here to where it's still a really great place to live?
I think, I think we're on track to do that, but it's, that's a challenge.
Nick Beyer: Hmm. Blake, thanks for your time this morning. Um, one thing we, we like to do at the end is just kind of roll through some of the big themes that, that we heard from our guests. And so the first thing that really stuck out as we. We talked with you as like your diligence.
I think that's something that, I mean, and you even said in the way that you hire people, some of it's innate, and so that's been innate in you and I, I don't know if it's from your parents or the way you grew up or your faith, but there's definitely something that stands out about your diligence, doing things the right way.
I think the story that Cameron shared, uh, back in 2021, really captured it. Just this commitment to doing the best work, um, and being hyper-focused on doing a good job. And even just the way you talked about tracking your KPIs. It's like, Hey, I, I look at our recordings, but I'm not sitting there looking at our revenue and our profit every single day.
Because what matters the most to [01:20:00] me is that we're taking care of our clients. Right? And so thank you for doing that, and thanks for sharing that with us and our listeners, because we can all learn from that. Um, the second piece is just the shared ownership, and I think you, you hit on it both on the family front and on.
Um, the employee front, but just hearing you talk about how your employees are committed to that same excellence, I think really highlights how you share ownership and how you delegate with trust. Not just, Hey, can you do this for me? But no, like, I trust that you will do an awesome job. Right. Um, when I give this to you, and then the way you did it on the family front, I think really stuck out to us.
I, I, I didn't write down how many times I heard it, but I heard you say Beth and I and sh I don't know if she's involved in the, the day to day on the business. I don't, it doesn't sound like she is, but the way that you gave her credit, I think, really stuck out to me as a husband. Um, and just something to admire as a business owner.
Blake Hanby: She's extremely supportive and extremely patient. Mm. And while she's not here [01:21:00] under, like, from, you know, six till six or whatever, she gets to hear a lot of it from six till bedtime. And, and then when we get up in the morning, I'm still talking about it. And I'm, she's really nice about it and very supportive, but I'm sure at times she's like, can we just talk about something?
Bless her
Cameron Clark: heart. Yeah. Bless her heart. Bless your heart. Yeah.
Blake Hanby: Everybody goes, oh, that
Nick Beyer: Beth's a saint. But no, I, I just think that shared ownership piece, um, that has just really stuck out to me as a husband and, and can, can challenge us all in the way that we view our spouses and, and their support of us and the way that we support them too.
And
Blake Hanby: honestly, I mean, you guys know this mean you couldn't do what you're doing if you didn't have somebody to, took care of the stuff that you don't have time to take care of. And they wouldn't wanna do what you do and you wouldn't wanna do what they do necessarily. But it's, it's a great, you know, partnership if you will.
It sounds stupid with Mary Couple, but it's really what it is. I mean, it's like I couldn't have. I couldn't have grown the company with all these people and, and done what we've done and supported my team if she wasn't [01:22:00] supporting other aspects of our life that had to be taken care of. Mm-hmm. You know, with Jake or whatever.
Mm-hmm. So it's, it's, it's truly a partnership.
Nick Beyer: That's awesome. And then the last piece, I think just your commitment to people, and I think some of that, Blake, is you've grown up here in the community. Uh, I think it's highlighted all throughout our conversation, but the community is extremely important to you, whether it's church or, or the way that you've invested your time in the comm, the Chamber and um, the Rotary Club.
Just things like that. You're extremely involved in the community. And I think the outflow of that or the fruit of that is your commitment to people. And I think one of the, the things that I thought was really neat was just the way, you talked about 2023 being a hard year, but you were committed to your people and, and didn't have layoffs and Right.
Some people left for different reasons, but. The fact that you were maybe at the time not making the right business decision on paper, but the right decision for your employees and your commitment to the community, I think was super inspiring. So [01:23:00] thanks for sharing that. Yeah. I mean, and you guys
Blake Hanby: know this, but I mean, you know, I didn't know this.
Maybe as early on in life, or maybe you just didn't realize it, but you know, you don't really get joy from making money or from spending, like, you get joy from community and from helping people and from, you know, serving others and not to get off in the, in the weeds on like, I'm, you know, some great guy or something.
But that's where ultimately that's where you get your satisfaction, right? Mm-hmm. And there's, there's temporary satisfaction, a lot of things, but long term satisfaction of knowing you did, knowing you did the right thing, and that you helped somebody and whatever. That's, that's, that's what builds you up.
Hmm.
Nick Beyer: Well, Blake, Hamby City title, thanks for the time this morning. Thanks for just sharing everything you, you did about your personal life and things you're passionate about, but also about your business and, and how you've built it and why. Uh, places like City Title Make Northwest Arkansas a great place to live.
So we're thankful for you. How can people get in touch with you or learn more about your business,
Blake Hanby: get on the internet or call City title? Yeah, I'm, I'm, we're here all the time. It seems like. I think everybody, including every spam call knows my number, so, um, but [01:24:00] yeah, we're really, really easy to find. But thanks for having me.
I was really nervous about this, but you guys made it easy.
Cameron Clark: It's great.
Blake Hanby: Good. We're thankful to have you.
Cameron Clark: Thanks, Blake. Thank you for listening to this episode of NWA Founders, where we sit down with founders, owners and builders driving growth here in northwest Arkansas. For recommendations are to connect with us, reach out at nwa, founders@gmail.com.
Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, then please consider leaving a rating, a review, and sending it to someone who you think would benefit from it. We'll see you in the next episode.