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Welcome to the Live for Today, Plan for Tomorrow Podcast, your go-to source for insights on mortgages, retirement planning, and real estate. Hosted by Gabe Bodner, a seasoned expert in the mortgage industry, our goal is to simplify complex financial concepts for homeowners and potential buyers. Join us as we explore reverse mortgages and other retirement planning topics, featuring exclusive interviews and expert advice.
At the Live for Today, Plan for Tomorrow Podcast, we delve deep into the intricacies of reverse mortgages and various mortgage options, providing you with the knowledge you need to make informed decisions. Whether you're looking to refinance, or exploring the benefits of reverse mortgages, we're here to guide you through every step of the process.
The Live for Today, Plan for Tomorrow Podcast is brought to you by The Bodner Team, showcasing our commitment to empowering individuals with the financial insights they need to achieve their retirement dreams. Visit us at https://www.reversemortgagesco.com to learn more about how we can assist you in navigating the mortgage landscape.
Join Gabe Bodner as he interviews industry experts, breaks down financial jargon, and shares success stories to inspire and educate our audience. The Bodner Team Podcast is more than just a podcast; it's a community of learners and achievers looking to make smart, confident mortgage choices.
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Hello, and welcome back to the Live for Today, Plan for Tomorrow podcast. I'm your host, Gabe Bodner, the division president here at One Trust Home Loans. And I'm really excited today to have a friend and a colleague, Ian Ashton. Ian, welcome.
Ian Ashton:Thank you. Excited to be here.
Gabe Bodner:Yeah, absolutely. So Ian is the SVP or senior vice president of our consumer direct team. And I invited Ian to be on today because we were just really chatting the other day about the value and the importance of having a well rounded team. And so we're gonna dive into that topic here in just a minute. But Ian runs our consumer direct team, and he's got loan officers that he works with that do all sorts of lending.
Gabe Bodner:So from traditional lending to reverse mortgage financing and so forth. And again, we were really just kind of chatting the other day about, you know, I am a reverse mortgage specialist, but I do have, again, the power of a huge team behind me, and who offers all kinds of products. So again, Ian, with that, tell me a little bit about your background and what you do every day and let's just dive in.
Ian Ashton:So much like you, I'm a loan officer. Basically, even though I have people that I oversee, ultimately I see myself as a salesperson. And really, when you think of a salesperson or as a loan officer, it's not the high pressure, hey, we gotta get you in this house type of thing. It's a lot more solutions based. So as the SVP of Consumer Direct, I have a lot of roles within the company.
Ian Ashton:But what I do is I oversee what are basically our call center type loan officers. So if you see an advertisement or you're one of our past clients or you're working with a loan officer in a state that they aren't licensed in. Like if you're moving from California to Michigan and you need and you want to work with that loan officer, but that loan officer doesn't hold a license, we help with that. So essentially, I oversee loan officers across the country, across all of our lines of business. So reverse, forward mortgages, which is just like a traditional mortgage.
Ian Ashton:We even do like home equities. We have partnerships with furniture companies and that kind of thing where we provide financing like that. So lots of different product sets and like I said, at the end of the day, I see it as I'm a loan officer. So I started out in my career at 17 and just kind of worked all the way up. So my uncle was an executive and at the time I worked for my mom's car dealership.
Ian Ashton:And I was like in the parts department sweating all summer and I'm like, God, there's gotta be like a job with air conditioning. So I called my uncle and I was like, hey, what do you have? He's like, I need somebody to like build computers and help me build this mortgage company up and said, perfect and after a few years, I noticed that there was a lot of young guys driving a lot of cool cars and I like cars. I So, was like, what is it you guys do here? And it's like, we give people mortgages.
Ian Ashton:So I switched from an engineering focus in my college to marketing and finance and kind of worked up. I became a loan officer and then a producing branch manager and then an area manager. Yeah, the rest is kind of history.
Gabe Bodner:Well, that's awesome. Well, you said a couple of things I want to really kind of break down a little bit. So you said you're just a loan officer at kind of the foundation of what you do. Right? And so am I.
Gabe Bodner:Right? And I think that's very interesting because what that means to me is we come from a place when we work with clients in a solutions based conversation, number one. Excellent. And we're always looking to understand what the client's needs are and what their goals are And from that perspective, as a loan originator or loan officer, thinking about what product, right? What tool is going to be the best product or the best tool to serve that client given their current situation, given their goals and given their needs.
Gabe Bodner:So I love that. And interesting how you transition from, you know, engineering and computers to, you know, playing with cars and mortgages. But all that to say, again, my background, as you know, I spent the first fourteen years of my career telling clients don't do a reverse mortgage. And I think there's a couple reasons for that. Number one, I didn't know much about reverse mortgages.
Gabe Bodner:Two, they've changed a lot in the last ten plus years. And three, I didn't want to take the time to learn it. So what's interesting to me about that is many, many loan officers sell what they know.
Ian Ashton:Yep.
Gabe Bodner:Right? And one of the things that I love about working with you and your team is I don't need to know everything about every program. Right? As a company Yes. We offer hundreds and hundreds of programs.
Gabe Bodner:But I don't want to learn about all of those programs because I love being a specialist, but yet having the knowledge and knowing I have a team that can support my clients' needs when the products that I know best or that I offer aren't a great fit.
Ian Ashton:A 100%. And that's the thing is like a loan officer, they're getting to the point in your career as a loan officer where you can admit that is like, number one, it's liberating because you're not trying to spin a thousand plates and remember a million guidelines and that kind of thing. But it's also when we see the loan officers take it to the next level. Because if you are a truly focused forward mortgage originator, that's what I want you to be. Right.
Ian Ashton:If you're truly a focused reverse mortgage originator, that's what I want you to be because you excel at it and you're good at it. And not to say you can't be good at both, but even though they both have the word mortgage in them, they're wildly different products with totally different guidelines. My entire career I've been on the forward side. So over the last year or so, I've learned so much from you about reverse and I still am like my head spins. So like, I always tell people like, I don't know.
Ian Ashton:I have like two very good, you know, skill sets. I know a lot about cars and I know a lot about mortgage and that's about it. My brain is full of nothing else. And when I think about reverse stuff, I'm like, Oh my goodness, I don't know anything. And so having partnership like that where I'm like, Gabe, I am looking at this and it makes sense.
Ian Ashton:But what do you see? Having the ability to do that across all of the lines, whether it's like a bridge loan or where we cross collateralize multiple properties or a home equity line of credit. Within the company, my job is not necessarily to know every product, but it's to know who to go to help with every product so that we can make sure that we have the right fit and the right team behind it. Because ultimately, like I said, the hammer is going find a nail. You can get a deal through is going be the best experience for the customer, the best offer for the customer.
Ian Ashton:And that's what we want to make sure we're
Gabe Bodner:Sure. So I love, again, the idea of being a product specialist for lack of better terms, but having a team approach. And knowing that if a client comes to me with a need, and I can't fill that need through one of the products that I know or offer that we've got specialty lending behind us, we've got construction lending behind us, we've got equity lending behind us, whatever it is that we can refer that client to and know they're going to get the right product with the best service possible. So with that being said, how do you coach or mentor or train your loan officers when it comes to they've come to you and come to us as a company with a set amount of experience, right? And you want to help them grow, of course.
Gabe Bodner:How do you really dissect for lack of better terms, where they can really excel the most to help them and guide them to become a little bit more of a specialist and less of a generalist?
Ian Ashton:So in addition to the Consumer Direct team, I also have retail loan officers, which are the folks that work with local realtors and are out in the community, essentially finding customers themselves to bring in. I learned and that's what I was for the bulk of my career and still want to consider myself. I use a lot that I've learned from that job and from working with them across the board. That really is, it doesn't matter if the customer calls us on the phone in response to an advertisement they saw, or if the customer was introduced to us from a family friend or a realtor or whatever. It's a 100% let's focus on what the customer's needs are.
Ian Ashton:So from developing a loan officer standpoint to become a specialist, the first thing is you have to serve the community that you want to be a part of. And what I mean by that is in the retail side, I'll use an example. I live in a really small market. There's maybe 26,000 people in our county or in our town. So if you think about it, if I've got a bunch of loan officers, we're all going to go after the same realtors.
Ian Ashton:There's the same referral sources. And the way that we've been able to survive and succeed is that if you're really into golf, you are going to partner with the realtors and referral partners that are really into golf or if you're really into car. So you have to find those commonalities. And that's where we found so much success in building out the team is that it's not about being I'm the mortgage expert. It's that everybody that is in your sphere knows that you're the mortgage expert.
Ian Ashton:We've had very little overlap and taking that into the consumer direct thing, what we say is when you're trying to develop our team skills, it's so much more about getting to know the customer and building that rapport and that trust with the customer. So the traditional call center or phone loan officer, their incentive is based on and their whole process is based on get this loan closed, get this customer committed and in the pipeline so you can answer the next call. And while I want my loan officers to be efficient, I want them to be caring and put the customer in the right products and make sure that we're building the rapport and the proper trust and relationship with the borrower. Because ultimately lending is not a single transaction. It sounds corny to say, we always hear like, I'm your loan officer for life.
Ian Ashton:That's a real thing. If I do your home purchase and you're 25 years old, if I'm still working in fifty years when you're looking for that reverse mortgage, I hope my phone rings and I hope I'm going to send them over to Gabe to get that handled. And that's how the long term successful loan officers have really built their careers is just that constant repeat business and they tell two friends and they tell two friends, whether it's it doesn't matter what line of business or what product is. I think it's just about doing the right thing for the customer always pays off.
Gabe Bodner:Sure. No, I totally agree with all of what you said. And I think you know, I really enjoy working with clients that are of pre retirement and in retirement because they've reached a stage of life that they're really trying to navigate in a weird way. And Yeah. Due to family circumstances and other things, I've learned a lot about, you know, pre retirement, retirement, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and all the things, right?
Gabe Bodner:Long term care. And I really enjoyed those conversations. So, to your point about hanging out with realtors that like golf, right? I really like working with clients that are in this stage of life and that want to continue to live for today and plan for tomorrow, as I call it. Right?
Gabe Bodner:And how do we do that best? And one of the things I also find very interesting that being a specialist versus a generalist is really where it's become very valuable for me is I've learned over the years the questions that I need to be asking that the client may not even know they should be asking, Right? So if you ever had that situation where a client comes in and says, Gabe, you know, or Ian, I'm here to learn, but I don't even know where to start. Right? And go, that's great.
Ian Ashton:Those are the most fun ones. You're like, awesome. Let's get into it, you know? Right.
Gabe Bodner:So the idea, again, of being a specialist is I can now come into that conversation and not just anticipate what that client's going to ask, but help them to ask the right questions as well. Because again, when it relates to retirement, the conversations, the needs, the concerns are very different than a first time homebuyer, right? Or active duty military personnel that's serving, you know, overseas, that wants to Yeah, buy
Ian Ashton:trying get home for his families while he's deployed.
Gabe Bodner:Exactly right. So the documentation is different that you're going to ask for, the needs are different. Again, everything is very different. So again, I love the concept of what we've been able to build together, this idea of each loan officer is a specialist and not a generalist, but we work as a team. And when we need an additional product and or service, we can bring somebody in from the team and or just simply refer them over into your one of your earlier points from a licensing standpoint.
Gabe Bodner:Right? If that loan officer is not licensed in a particular state, we can refer them over and so forth. So I love your approach. Love your humor as well that you always bring to the table and bring to your team. And I know you're extremely passionate about what you do and teaching and coaching and mentoring loan officers, not just originating loans.
Gabe Bodner:So thanks for being here today. Thanks for your insights, and thanks for all that you do for your team and for the company.
Ian Ashton:I'm looking forward to our next Power Hour too. So if you're not well, I guess nobody on the on the podcast probably outside of the team knows what power hour is, but Gabe hosts a a great power hour, basically, like a sales rally every every couple of weeks. And, yeah, we got one a week from today, I think. Right?
Gabe Bodner:Yeah. Every other every other Friday, we do that. So, great opportunity to bring the entire team together, both sales and operations, I think, which is very unique as well. Many other companies I've worked for in the past, sales is one organization. I like organization and they never cross.
Gabe Bodner:But, no, I've I've really enjoyed, again, working with you and bringing both sales and ops together under the same team meeting and and having that camaraderie and interaction. So, again, thanks, Ian, for your time today. Thanks for being here, I look forward to, chatting with you again real soon.
Ian Ashton:Sounds good. Thank you.
Gabe Bodner:All right. Take care, guys.