Episode 12: Joe Wilson, Founder & CEO of Social Coach

In this episode of Mortgage Tech Intelligence, host Dee Khullar sits down with Joe Wilson, Founder and CEO of SocialCoach, to discuss how loan officers and mortgage companies can build stronger digital relationships through social media, video, and AI. Joe explains why social media may be driving more mortgage business than lenders realize, the importance of tracking social-assisted loans, and why consistent video content is one of the most effective ways for loan officers to stay visible with referral partners and borrowers.

The takeaway is simple: technology can help mortgage professionals create and distribute content more efficiently, but authenticity still matters. The lenders and loan officers that combine consistent, human-centered content with smarter technology will be better positioned to build relationships and generate business in an increasingly digital market.

About Joe Wilson

Joe Wilson is the Founder and CEO of SocialCoach, a social media management platform built for mortgage and real estate companies. He has more than two decades of mortgage and fintech experience, including leadership roles at SimpleNexus and Ellie Mae, as well as experience in mortgage technology, sales, marketing, and loan origination. Today, Joe helps mortgage companies and loan officers build scalable, compliant social media strategies designed to strengthen relationships and generate business 

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Transcript

Introduction to Mortgage Tech Intelligence

Intro 0:00

Welcome to Mortgage Tech Intelligence, the podcast that dives into the latest in mortgage technology brought to you by Blue Sage Solutions. For more resources and insights, visit Bluesage Solutions.com. Now let's get started with your host, Ed Furbee.

Dee Khullar 0:15

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Mortgage Tech Intelligence. I'm Dee Khullar with Blue Sage Solutions. And today I'm joined by Joe Wilson, founder and CEO of Social Coach. Joe spent many years in mortgage and fintech, including leadership roles at companies like Ellie Mae. Yes, back in the day when it was called Ellie Mae, Simple Nexus. And today he helps loan officers and mortgage professionals build stronger digital relationships through social media and content. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Wilson 0:46

Dee, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Dee Khullar 0:48

Yeah. We're excited for the conversation today because everyone in mortgage, as we know, is talking about what word AI. And while AI is changing workflows and operations, it's also changing how loan officers market themselves and build their relationships. So let's just jump right in. Um before we dive into social media and AI, I'd love to start with just kind of your background so we have some context. You spent so many years in the fintech mortgage space, including like I mentioned earlier at LE and some which is where we met, by the way. Back in our day, it was so fun doing product marketing, I think it was, right? And you were then at Simple Nexus. And then what kind of led you to start Social Coach? What problems were you looking to solve and see in the market?

Joe Wilson 1:34

Yeah, I'll tell you, I mean, through the last 20 plus years being in the mortgage business, I attended a lot of mortgage conferences, and this particularly with Ellie and with Simple Nexus. And I felt like there were, you know, all these conferences, the the sessions ended up feeling very similar all the time. And I noticed there was not a lot of people talking about marketing. It was it was kind of like an afterthought under a sales or a growth session, and nobody was really

The Evolution of Social Media in Mortgage Marketing

Joe Wilson 2:00

talking about social media, but you know, back in the kind of mid-20 teens, this was part of my daily life, my routine, and I was starting to see more and more people get on there, but nobody really knew what to do about it. Every loan officer I talked to, every marketer was like, Oh yeah, we need to think about social media. People are starting to ask about it, but they didn't have a good answer. And they didn't have a good answer for how to make it a repeatable or scalable solution at the company level, but more importantly, how to make sure it's compliant because you get a one rogue loan officer saying the wrong thing, and man, your whole company can get in trouble. So I recognize there was a huge uh opportunity in the industry to create something that would help mortgage marketers really scale their efforts to help their loan officers, help loan officers really attract and attain retain like their business from referrals and potential clients, and then make sure everyone was safe. And so I just started talking to a bunch of marketers and compliance officers, sales officers, and figuring out what are they missing, what do they need, and that's how we kind of started.

Dee Khullar 2:59

Well, that's amazing. And you know what's cool about it is you know, it was very organically done. Yeah, you just kind of started asking questions and it came out of curiosity, right? You've spent a lot of time now watching how mortgage professionals show up online and social, and obviously it's changed so dramatically, which kind of leads us into the second topic. You know, we're seeing so much more activity on social than we've ever seen before. You know, so why isn't it translating as much into referrals and actual closed loans for a lot of the loan officers? And you could argue with me, by the way, I'm totally fine with that too.

Joe Wilson 3:35

No, I mean, I here first of all, I the average American spends two and a half hours a day on social media, right? So think about let that sink in. And that's a couple year old statistic now. So I would assume that that number has grown dramatically. And I mean, we were just talking about our kids earlier, our teenage kids and early 20 kids, and man, their numbers are probably triple that, right? Oh my god. And so the rising generation is spending way more time on social media. And the mortgage world is really not great at looking at numbers and stats when it comes to marketing and referrals and all those things. But who is really good are the realtors. The National Association of Realtors said they they come out with an annual technology survey and every year they do a lot of marketing studies and everything about that. And they

Understanding Social Media's Role in Mortgage Marketing

Joe Wilson 4:18

found that 90% of all realtors, that's the big R realtor, right? Are on social media finding business. And of all the different types of ways that they generate referrals or get business, you know, we're talking email marketing, dropping flyers, door knocking, you name it, right? B I groups, the largest, the largest answer, the highest performing type of marketing activity the realtor can do to get generate the best quality leads with social media. And so, yeah, that it's crazy, right? It's it's yeah. So when you think about that, you translate that to where do a what does a loan officer get most of their business from? Well, they get the most of their business from referrals from realtors, from builders, from attorneys, et cetera, right? Not as much from directly consumer. And you do that, you know, equal amounts of effort, but most people most loan officers, and if you talk to any LO or sales manager, they're gonna say you get a lot of from from referrals. And back in the day, a loan officer was gonna go to a realtor's office, take him golfing, go to these networking groups, but you gotta be where referrals are. And so if a realtor is spending all their time on social media generating leads, well, I want to be as a loan officer where those realtors are. So I should be online. And so a long way around to answer this question. But what I think the answer is really is that not that it's not translating to leads, but it's it's getting leads in different ways than what people are really used to expecting. Number one. And number two, is most companies are not really great at uh adequately uh showing in their database, whether that's the LOS, their POS, their CRM, where these leads came from.

Dee Khullar 5:56

The tracking of the referrals. Tracking referrals.

Joe Wilson 5:59

So I don't I think it's actually it's better off than than most may think. And and I think this there's this is a change that I'm trying to enact with with lenders today. Um, and could use your help. And so anybody listening to this right now, think about this. When you're in your CRM or your LOS, are you tracking where that lead came from? And are you asking your loan officers, maybe you know, you have some probably some automated tracking for you know emails and things like that. But are you are you maybe, you know, consider this? Um, and we've been working on this with a lot of our clients and and found some pretty great stats on this, but a simple full field in your CRM or your LOS saying, was this a social assisted loan? Just a simple yes or no. Because we know there's multiple sources where you might get a lead from, like, right? So if they saw my if they say they saw me on social media or that that's where the lead directly came from, that last touch was social, that's still a social assisted loan. And it's a super simple form to add in any one of those things. And we've been we've been doing this with a couple of our clients and did a couple years study, and we actually found on average lenders that used social coach, and I would assume this would be any social media program, but particularly ours, they they saw a 12% increase in their loans generated directly from social media year over year. And so 12% more business. And those, and even better than that, D, is that those loan officers that really took video content seriously were posting at least one video a week over a year, they increased nearly 25% year over year directly from social media. So one in four of their loans came from social media. Furthermore, we found you know, kind of digging into those that really used video as their sole strategy, they found they're getting two to you know if they if they do at least two videos a week over a period of at least six months, they're then getting two to three closed deals every single month directly from social media. That's number two downing. Think about what that what that means for a loan officer's business if they can close an additional two to three loans a month, all from just showing up on video.

Dee Khullar 8:04

Yeah.

Joe Wilson 8:04

So it's not that social doesn't work, it's a problem of not doing it right or not tracking it properly.

Dee Khullar 8:09

Yeah, I would say it's probably a little bit of both, right? Like there's a lot of guidelines, right? Like you said, you know, the inception of your of your company, like thinking about compliance, right? Making sure what can a loan officer say, not say, to keep it compliant, um, but also the tracking. I fully understand the tracking piece. It's so hard, so hard. But um that is really inspiring to see. I think when I continue to think about that evolution, as we know, one thing that feels especially relevant is AI. And it's made it so easy to create content that is incredibly easy.

AI in Content Creation

Dee Khullar 8:45

But you know, mortgage is still one of those mostly highly regulated industries out there, you know, and I'm sure you have a perspective and experience and thinking, right? Now, where do you see AI generated content creating potential compliance risks, right? That lenders may kind of want to think about as they're navigating that.

Joe Wilson 9:04

Yeah. I mean, a couple things on that. Um well, recently there's there's been some a few bulletins put out by federal regulators, including the CFPB, about the usage of AI in the mortgage process. They didn't talk specifically about marketing, but if they're talking about the process, the the next thing that is gonna their eyes are gonna turn into the to marketing. Absolutely. Um, and you know, right now we we have an administration in Washington that is kind of turning the other cheek to this, as it were. But you know, administrations only last for every four years, right? And so it the time is now to prepare for that pendulum to swing back again. Yes. And I I would imagine that that most likely will happen. Who knows though?

Dee Khullar 9:40

I mean, yeah anyone's gonna be able to do that. You still gotta function responsibly, people, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Joe Wilson 9:47

Yeah, but like AI, I mean, here's the problem is AI produces a lot of hallucinations around you know what they think is right. It's it's not it's not a that's not a person, it doesn't have a brain, it's predictive text trying to predict what's the next word, right? Yeah, and so oftentimes what happens is it's gonna say things that it reads, and it might talk about the best rate or the lowest rate or a guarantee, but you can't necessarily say those things online. So if you're using AI to generate content, you have to have really strong guardrails around what it's saying and how it's saying it. That's number one. Number two is this is a personal business, and we are every loan officer is selling a commodity, right? And so it you have basically the same rates, the same fees across the thousands of loan officers that are out there in the country today, right? Hundreds of thousands of loan officers. So, what's the differentiator? Why would people do business with you versus doing business with somebody else? It's because of who you are, that personal relationship you have. So, why on earth would you replace yourself with an AI bot? I'm seeing so many people just say, I could just create an AI avatar, and people are gonna know it's me. No, everybody they know, they know, trust me, they know. And I think we're getting

Leveraging AI and Maintaining Authenticity

Joe Wilson 11:00

better and better as a human species, as it were, yeah, in recognizing AI really quickly in text, in video, in images. You can sniff it out real quick, and it just looks kind of sloppy. So I think AI uh to generate content ideas is a lovely idea to generate automation to help you improve your your distribution of your marketing tools. But to have AI replace you and your personality is a really bad idea, and um from a regulatory standpoint point of what are they saying, but also just of replacing you, just a personal standpoint, right?

Dee Khullar 11:40

I think just giving loans and getting people into homes is still a personal, it's a very personal thing. And I just think there's yeah, you can't don't think AI will do it all. It really, it really can't do it all effectively.

Joe Wilson 11:55

There's a lot of talking heads on social media and at conferences right now that are telling you you can generate 90 days of content in 30 seconds using Claude or Perplex Perplexity or whatever.

Dee Khullar 12:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Wilson 12:06

Yeah, you can, you can definitely do that. But that engagement you're gonna get off of that is next to nothing.

Dee Khullar 12:12

Yeah, yeah. No, I love the personal, keeping it the personal component front and center. You be Yes, yes. And maybe that kind of leads into, you know, the next question, which is around, you know, there's definitely a lot of noise in the market, I hear, right? Content, more content, more tools, more automation. There's all these people. AI, I use AI for everything. It'll cook your dinner, it'll do everything for you, right? Um But you know, if you strip away all that, like what are the loan officers or the teams doing on social today, that's actually driving real business results that you're seeing.

Joe Wilson 12:47

Yeah,

What Actually Works on Social Media

Joe Wilson 12:48

what's driving actual, real results on on social at the mortgage company level is video content and personal video content. And whatever that means to you, you're doing it right. Well, it's like Yes. There's no like it's so funny because it's authentic. It's authentic. Yeah, I feel like so many people tried to get this right and they they worry themselves to death on the type of content to create and the time of day to post or how often to post or what type of content to post. Whatever it is, just post it and you know, create some videos of you at your desk answering frequently asked questions. Go on to Chat GPT and ask what questions should I be answering, and then just talk about it, right? Yeah, and if you need a teleprompter, go use a teleprompter, write it down beforehand, but just talk and show up because people want to see you. Um, you know, I got my degree in advertising and PR back in you know early 2000s, and the adage of the time was a a consumer had to see your message at least seven times before they even recognize you. In today's world, because we're so bombarded with messages left and right all day long on those hours that we spend on social media every day, that number is like triple. It's in the high 20s now that someone is your message. So, so much so

From Social Media to Social Selling

Joe Wilson 14:01

that the level of content that you have to continually post and reshare is so high. And so when I think about that, it's the volume and the consistency is really the best indicator for success on social media to generate actual new business, but it's also not just posting on social media. I think this is the point that I really want to make here, Dee, is that like social media is not all that you should be doing. It's I consider it social selling. What are the other aspects that you can think of that are like part of social selling? Well, it's creating a one-to-one video and sending that via text or email. Um, it's continuing to show up during the loan process in the same way that they first contacted you online. It's being that personal interaction that you can't always have because we're all so remote now on video. It's having a landing page with links about with educational content, it's getting reviews and showing other people those reviews. We're social creatures, that social proof is so important. All those things kind of round about are all social selling that is like you're leaving if someone's just posting on social media, especially for the posting crappy AI generated content, that's you're gonna leave those guys in the dust when you think about an overall social selling strategy. And that's what it is. This is this is a sales methodology, it's not marketing. Marketing is sales, sales of marketing. But like when you think about it, when you strip it all away, this is your business development activity is going online and finding people to do business with. It's just the same as you would have years ago, uh bringing donuts to your realtor's office.

Dee Khullar 15:29

Yeah. Or going to your local farmer's market and having a stand and a booth.

Joe Wilson 15:35

Exactly, exactly.

Dee Khullar 15:36

It's uh being authentic,

Key Takeaways

Dee Khullar 15:38

right? It's what I hear from you is you don't have to over over polish it, right? Don't over polish it, progress over perfection. Just keep consistency because it does take so much more to get influenced from a content standpoint. Now pivoting from that piece, so thank you, that was super cool insight, right? Because I think often we we kind of get into our own head and then we're like, oh, that I don't look great, or oh, that didn't sound right, or let me just take five takes, and then you're not saying the essence of what you just wanted to say if you just said it once. Yeah. Right. Um so but now we're gonna pivot over more on the technology side, right? Um you've built social coach around helping loan officers show up more effectively on social media. Now, what do you think about using technology like AI in the way that it enhances human element? I know you talked about it earlier, like, hey, don't replace yourself and the authenticity of it, but you know, just some thoughts and perspective around the tech, right? Because it is evolving so quickly. So somebody hearing this could be like, well, that's great, Joe. It doesn't work today, but give it a year, it'll be in a different place, right? Do you think that that could happen, or do you think no, it will always be very clear to be, you know, human and authentic?

Joe Wilson 16:51

Well, I think being our humanity is our differentiator today. Yeah. So if you want to stand out, being human is the is the more most important piece of this. But you know, to answer your question, when we think about technology and AI, you know, particularly in in the mortgage or you know, apply this to any highly regulated industry of sales, right? But particularly mortgage, when I think about the efficiencies we can gain in social selling or marketing in general, is through distribution, is through automated compliance, it's through um you know, helping with ideation and creation of that content, but still keeping that humanity. So a couple things on that, you know, that social coach is doing. You know, when you think about the approach of social today, it can be a joint effort between your marketing team and your loan officer, right? So because as a loan officer, you you're super busy doing loans and dealing with clients, all those things, and maybe you need some cons help and consistency of posting because you know, you you have to feed Mark Zuckerberg three times a day, you know? But like, you know, you just three?

Dee Khullar 17:55

You finish telling me like 23.

Joe Wilson 17:57

Yeah, exactly. You know, but but you do, you need to be consistent, and that's where like a marketing, a marketing team at a at a company needs to utilize AI to help randomize content to uh generate new and uh you know different content for all of their loan officers at all the different stages of their business, but allowing them to also post their own content as well. So that's the uniqueness of what of what Social Coach can do is help to allow for both those parties to be posting the same platform and in a highly personalized way. But more importantly than that is the regulatory side of this. So when we think about high volume of content going out, one of the biggest bottlenecks in that, and we see this more in the banking side and you know, you know, banks and credit unions, but some uh IMBs as well, with really stringent compliance officers, is there's a big bottleneck in in the review process. And one of the things that that we at Social Coach have done is created a proactive compliance filter to review all the content automatically before it goes out. So we're looking at the written caption, we're OCR scraping the imagery. We're also using AI to transcribe and analyze what's being spoken on video to ensure that that content is approved, is is approved according to that company's unique interpretation of the laws in which they the states in which they operate. So that's not something that you can do without technology. And I think about these poor compliance officers that are the bottleneck to getting content out the door, what a stressful situation that is because you know it disincentivizes a loan officer for posting consistently because it has to wait to get through a queue, but also those poor compliance officers having to watch all these videos before they even get posted. You you can have like multiple people paying them multiple salaries, full-time salaries, just to watch videos. That sounds awful. But like, you know, and like having to watch videos all day long, that would be just miserable. So, what we've done is is help negate all that and like you know, an exclusionary tool, right? So here are the videos that maybe you should watch or dig into more based on like the threshold that you've set of what is not approvable. So those are the kind of things that we're doing now, and I think in the future it's only gonna get better where more automation, more you know, creating more content creation faster, helping to get better content ideas that that are reflecting on the needs of specific individuals in their area, helping to target very specific people in the communities which you serve to get to the right people faster.

Dee Khullar 20:22

No, I think that's a fabulous use of technology. You touched on something in terms of looking ahead, right? AI is only becoming more capable, more embedded in how people work. You know, as AI continues to evolve, how do you see mortgage marketing and social media changing over the next few years, let's say, right? And what should lenders be thinking about right now?

Joe Wilson 20:45

Yeah, you know, I was talking with a CEO of an IMB the other day, and I won't say who it was, but you know, he was he was he was sharing with me that he's like, Joe, I am just consuming as much AI tools as I possibly can because I just want to fire everybody and have it be automated. I'm like, oh gosh, I don't know if that's the the right idea.

Dee Khullar 21:03

Yeah.

Joe Wilson 21:04

But the sentiment is there, and this is what most people are what companies are really trying to do today is how can I create more efficiencies? How can I lean out my organization? And it's for a couple reasons. It's for cost savings. You know, the cost originating alone is still at an all-time highs and is egregious when you think about it. LO comp is super high still, and it's not getting any better yet. But also, you know, we we've we have a boom and bust economy in mortgage, and most CEOs or leaders don't want to hire and fire people every couple months. So when I think about where is AI being used, I think we just kind of talked about this in the last segment, but it's it's all about efficiencies in the process, and it's helping you to create like let's take that compliance officer I was just talking about, right? Instead of having to watch 50 videos in one day that are all a couple hours, you know, a couple minutes long, yeah, I can watch two, and I can have I can rely on AI to transcribe it adequately, ping it against the compliance rules that apply to my company, and then move on to the next thing.

Dee Khullar 22:03

Yeah, make it so much more efficient.

Joe Wilson 22:06

Yeah.

Dee Khullar 22:06

Well, Joe, that was amazing. I thanks again for joining us today and sharing your perspective. And thanks everyone for listening to another episode of Mortgage Tech Intelligence. And be sure to subscribe and we'll see you next

MTI Outro

Dee Khullar 22:20

time.

Outro 22:20

Thanks for listening to Mortgage Tech Intelligence, brought to you by Blue Sage Solutions. Catch new episodes every other Thursday, and for more ways to elevate your lending game, head to Bluesage Solutions.com. Keep innovating, keep growing, and we'll see you next episode.