Run Lean In Title

If your margins feel tighter than they should, it might not be the market. It might be the quiet spending you’ve stopped seeing. We sit down with Brandi Abercrombie, a recovering closer with more than two decades in the title business, to talk about expense management that actually works for title agencies, especially with the pressure from the Texas rate reduction and a slower, higher-rate housing cycle.

We get specific about where money slips out the door: payroll that never got resized after the COVID volume spike, overtime creep, courier and shipping defaults, wire fees you can negotiate, and software conversions that never deliver the automation you paid for because teams keep working in the old system. We also dig into the habits that waste hours, like printing and scanning documents that should have stayed digital, and we share why going paperless can save real dollars while improving the client experience.

Then we go after the invisible costs that hurt the most: re-recordings, post-closing corrections, tax shortages, premium mistakes, and “claims leakage” caused by weak processes. We talk through what leaders should review monthly on the P&L, what to track by cost per file, and how to protect what matters most: your top producers and the service your clients remember.

If you’re ready to run lean without cutting into the things that make your agency great, listen now, subscribe for more, and share this with a leader who needs it. What’s the one expense you’re finally ready to audit this week?

Transcript

Welcome To Shift Happens

Lauren Blair 0:00

Well, hello, everyone again. Lauren Blair with National Investors. I have Lisa Monte with me. Hello, everybody. And we have a special guest today for our Shift Happens podcast, Brandi Abercrombie. Brandi, tell everybody who you are if they don't know already.

Brandi Abercrombie 0:15

Well, hello. So excited to be with you guys today. I was the pro the producer on the first round. I got to sit behind with the headphones and look important. And so, but I am Brandi Abercrombie. And I know these ladies talked about how long they'd been in the business before. I've been in a little over 20 years, I guess 20, almost 23 years now. Started as the backup receptionist and have literally done every job at a title agency except for uh reconciling the escrow accounts, and it's because I simply refused. I said I don't want to, and I'm not gonna like I can fix an escrow reconciliation. It's messed up, but I'm not gonna do it.

Lauren Blair 0:50

So I've done data calls, I've examined, I've closed, I've but I think my favorite way that Branny introduces herself is she is a recovering closer.

Speaker 2 1:00

That I am. I still have moments of PTSD. Somebody actually called me not too long ago with like, and it was like a it was very much I had to call Lauren and I'm like, okay, you understand why I reacted the way I did. Like I had a full-on PTSD manic attack. Absolutely. Somebody called me with something and I was like, rah.

Misconceptions That Block Smart Cuts

Lisa Monti 1:17

Well, thanks for being here with us today. We appreciate it so much. And welcome. We're on episode two of Shift Happens. And if you missed the first one, you might want to go back and listen. We really talked about sales efforts, maintaining relationships, prospecting. And this time we're gonna focus a little more internally and talk about something that pretty much every title agent is, you know, contacting us about right now is talking about expenses. Of course, we all know March 2026, we had a rate reduction in Texas, and it's you know, it hurts everybody. And it's been a big effect, and it's started a lot of, you know, it's the conversation right now to have besides Finn CEN is expenses. And so everybody's taking a hard look at where they're spending money, where they can save, what can they do? And it's something we need to go over with you guys today. We thought we'd let you know what everyone else is saying about it and any ideas we have from our own past as well. So, first we're gonna start with some common misconceptions. Lauren, I think you've heard a common misconception out there.

Lauren Blair 2:20

Yeah. So in my travels across the state, I've heard many a time, you know, I mean, this is all always the way we've done it. I mean, do we really have to change? We've always done business this way. And I guess that is a misconception, right? We may lose people, they may quit, we may cost ourselves money. This lady's worked for us for 37 years. If we change, she's gonna quit, right? And so there are things that you can do that can help your operation that aren't gonna create those problems that you think. So I think we'll be able to debunk some of that as we talk. Good.

Lisa Monti 2:54

And then, Brandy, what's a common misconception you hear?

Speaker 2 2:57

Well, so I hear, I've heard that, you know, people are like, well, I'm just gonna downsize my way to growth, like to the point that really like the owner or the leader is like them and like a part-time person, or maybe just them, and they are working 22 hours a day and they live upstairs and they work all weekends, and that is a miserable existence that also does not work. Doesn't make you any money. Makes you a lot of stress, though.

Lisa Monti 3:22

So I would say the third misconception is I'm just gonna wait for the interest rates to go back down to 3%. Wouldn't that be nice? Whew, that would be the answer to a lot of our prayers right now. But I would say it's we should probably quit waiting if we've been waiting. I happen to be married to a realtor, and even I can't move out of my house right now, y'all. Because, you know, if if anybody has a really good interest rate, you're, you know what, you want to maintain it. And that's why a lot of sellers are staying put, of course, right now. Another thing I wanted to say is I've been in the title business so long, I've literally closed people at every interest rate you can think of. The first house I ever bought was at 11.5% interest rate. So this is really not, I mean, people are still moving around at every interest rate, right? Y'all, 11.5% had just come down from like maybe 17%, something like that. People were jumping all over the 11.5% as if it was our 2. You know, 3.4 or something like that. So anyway, people do still move at every interest rate. You know, people's jobs change, they have a baby, they want to downsize because they're empty nesters, their kid moves off to college. So there's still real estate deals happening. It's just not in the same volume that we would prefer, right?

Why A P And L Matters

Speaker 2 4:39

And I'm sorry to tell you if you haven't figured it out by now, I don't know that we'll ever see those interest rates in our lifetime again. So I'm sorry to burst your bubble if that's what I've done today.

Lauren Blair 4:50

So, in the event of bursting your bubble, let's talk about how you can look at your expenses in a way that really put you in a great position to be successful, right? Right. I think we all know, and all of us have sat in a seat where we had to look at that and like, what's the first thing we had to look at? A PL. That's right. And if you don't know what that is, welcome. We'll let you know now.

Speaker 2 5:13

So, kind of what they wanted me to talk about was just that PL, which of course stands for profit and loss statements, because we might have some owners and leaders here, and we have may have some people who are just kind of new to the business, but it's looking at your profit and loss. And so it's it's having some system in which to look at your expenses and your income, much like you should balance your checking account, not just by running, like logging in to see how much money's in your bank account, but actually verifying, you know, what expenses are still out there and knowing what your monthly outgo is compared to how much revenue that you're bringing in. Because that, you know, we talked about sales and business development in the last podcast, but just to be sure that if your expenses are up, then you need to double or triple your business development efforts, efforts, and exercises in that regard. I mean, there's it's eye-opening to me how many agents I talk to and they're like, well, I mean, like I keep an eye on how much money I have in the operating account and I know how you know how many months' expenses. I'm like, well, you're kind of doing that, but you need some software, whether it's QuickBooks or Peachtree, or there's probably something free out there, but you really need something, even if it's just an Excel spreadsheet. I don't know how you're how agents even complete their statistical data call if they don't have that with that chart of accounts built in there. So you know what those exact expenses and the like are.

Lauren Blair 6:37

Yeah, exactly. That's important, right? TDI is requiring you to keep track of that stuff. So if you don't have a PL, time to get one. Absolutely.

Lisa Monti 6:45

So starting by taking a look at it, and then what do you guys think? What are some expenses that are the most out of control?

Right Size Payroll For Today

Lauren Blair 6:52

Oh, so I think we went through a period of time during COVID where we thought we had to staff, staff, staff to be able to handle the volume.

Speaker 2 7:00

All right, anybody with a pulse.

Lauren Blair 7:02

Yeah, you got teeth, you can smile, be nice to people, come work for us, right? And so now here we are in a different market, right? Shift happens, and we probably don't need what we needed at that point. And we probably don't need that going forward. And I think there's a big shift happening where we even see with our agents that they're looking at their volume versus their staff, because what's the highest expense that you have?

Speaker 1 7:26

Payroll.

Lauren Blair 7:26

Payrolls. And so looking at that and really honing down like how much does it really cost us per file? How much how many people are touching this file to get us to the closing table? And is it really necessary that we have all of that involved? Because we have a lot of tools and technology that we can look at and spend money on that can eliminate some of that and not necessarily take your people out and just fire everybody because that's not the solution. But how do you better use them in a role to help you grow your business? Right. Yeah.

Make Software Work Harder

Speaker 2 8:00

So one way, you know, there's a lot of people right now that are actually changing software. And so I think there's a lot of software expense right now. There's a lot of extra expense on, you know, running both software platforms. You know, when I managed, we would basically pick, you know, okay, we're going live on this one May 1st. And so we moved literally all the earnest money out of the other account. And I would stay late and I would move all the earnest money out. I'd, you know, write checks to transfer that into the new accounts for the new software. And then that was mine. And I would have two other people help me the very next morning to make sure all that those funds got posted and those new orders open the next day. I think running in both software systems, because as long as you allow people to work in the old system, they're going to. They're going to. They're going to always find a need to do that. And it's delaying the training. It's also delaying the potential efficiencies that could be gained from the new software. And that's one of the conversations that I've had probably the most frequently with people about their software transition, is that they have gone through that conversion at such a manic pace that they've missed the efficiency opportunities because the vendor, I'll just be real honest, has been pressing them to just let let's go live, let's go live, let's go live. You know, because then it's like, okay, check now, I'm on to the next one, but it's not been about the experience of the agent who is the customer. And so there's lots of things, lots of automations in all of those software platforms that are out there, as far as whether it's checking Patriot Act hits, or it might be, you know, the tasking functionality, or, you know, maybe where it'll, you know, pull your emails back in, or you can email directly from there. So I think we're missing a lot of opportunities with and it's taking more time because the employees are not learning the new things that would make their lives easier. Yeah.

Lauren Blair 9:54

I think um I had a a recent conversation with an agent that switched from a software to a newer platform. And they were like, we didn't even know that we could do this, right? So, and they were operating on a very old program of one software and they had not done updates over time. And so they're like, You're telling me that I only have to do this thing one time, I only have to drop it here one time and it does everything else. Yes. So those are the things you're missing out on if you say, like, well, we've always done it this way, we've got to keep doing it this way. And I think, you know, to your point, your efficiencies for your customers too, right? So if your customer may be used to getting it a certain way, but what if you can make their life easier too? Right? The software vendor needs to make our agent's life easier. You, as the title agent, need to make your real estate agent's life easier too.

Trim Courier Shipping And Wire Spend

Lisa Monti 10:47

Well, speaking of that, something that I think people should be taking a look at is the way that they're, you know, sending things via courier, FedEx, UPS, I'm just gonna say shipping or courier and even wire expenses. So we, of course, go to very small towns to very large cities. So I know that some of this is going to be foreign maybe to your market, but we've got some markets that still where the realtor is expecting their commission check to be couriered to them in a certain amount of time. And so if that's happening in your market, that's something you need to deal with. And you might want to compare what would it cost to wire that versus the courier fee. Another thing is, you know, just your shipping when you're shipping your package back to the lender with your completed, you know, original documents or whatever, are is someone at their front desk just checking the fastest option out of a habit or because they're thinking that's the right thing to do, or can they actually slow it down to like an afternoon delivery? So I think things like that, taking a look at even how many checks you're cutting, maybe even for remittance to your underwriter, if you're not batching your checks and shipping, you know, to the tax office or to your surveyor or something like that. I think there are ways that if people would stop and take a look, uh, maybe they could slow their delivery speed down a little bit, taking advantage of a little bit lower rate. And then also just checking for, you know, maybe, maybe one bank has a different wire rate than another, or you have a certain amount of wires for free with your bank that you're not taking advantage of. I think there's a lot of places that we can take a look at that.

Speaker 2 12:19

Well, and to that point, I mean, I think that's one of the things you don't necessarily, not all of your employees need to see your profit and loss statement, and not all of your employees need to see your financials every month, but they do it is a conversation where you could say, this is how much we're saving in or this is how much we're spending every month in courier fees. And it's a conversation that you have to have, which means that you have to, as a leader, you have to work on your business and not just in it if you're still daily a producer. But I think it's, you know, having those conversations with those employees and help them to understand that they need to be managing their role in your company like they manage their own finances at home. Like if if they if it's not a luxury that they would do for themselves, then they maybe shouldn't do that, you know, on your dime either. I mean, because it impacts, although it's not directly coming out of their paycheck today, it could impact future pay increases, bonuses, additional benefits you as an owner or leader might end up giving to them. Those choices that they're making that they don't realize is are creating additional expense. It's not deliberate. It's not necessarily, yeah, because they're not joining on purpose.

Lisa Monti 13:28

Maybe when they started, somebody said, you know, you check this box here and this is how you send it. And that was three years ago.

Lauren Blair 13:34

I learned from Betty to do this. Yes. Betty's been gone for eight years. Yeah.

Lisa Monti 13:39

I also think polling your employees, sometimes they could see an expense or an area that, you know, might be able to be a cutback that it hasn't been realized by everybody.

Lauren Blair 13:48

And I think to that point, you as a leader have to be open to some of that because it might not be what you thought they were gonna say. That could be something that maybe you didn't realize was happening, or that's really maybe a non-negotiable for you. But you have to be willing to listen to them if you're gonna ask them.

Speaker 2 14:04

Well, in our conversation about this isn't saying, you know, the house is on fire and you know, and we're gonna have to shut down next month. But it's just, I think if you've not taken a good hard look at your expenses in the last little bit, and I know that probably, you know, after COVID, you know, middle of 22 and kind of the bottom fell out, you probably tightened your belt a little bit. But things have kind of seemed like they're on a little bit more of an even keel right now as far as with deals. So so it's it's expenses are something you can't look at and then five years later go, well, I need to look at those again. Like it's something you should be looking at all the time.

Lauren Blair 14:37

Yeah, we're gonna talk about that a little later on about like what you should look at and when, you know, to kind of help you with that.

Speaker 2 14:43

Well, because I'll be honest, I mean, when I first got here, I mean, it was like pulling teeth to get the financials, and I'm responsible for the profit and loss of what we're doing here. And I'm like, well, if you don't give me anything, then I assume I have an unlimited checkbook. And they were like, Well, you don't. I'm like, well, then you need to give me something that tells me what my limit is, you know. Otherwise, I'm swapping a good time. Yeah, I'm swapping that Platinum American Express everywhere I go, you know, party.

Lisa Monti 15:06

Yeah. I have a funny story about that that might apply to someone. When I very first started working as a sales rep, they gave me a company credit card. And no, that's not true. We used our own credit cards and then we got reimbursed at the end of every month. That's how it worked out. And when I had a meeting with my manager one time, they said, You're doing a good job staying within your monthly budget. And I said, Well, I didn't even know I had a monthly budget. And they were like, they couldn't believe that no one had even had a discussion with me when I started about what my monthly budget was. So there's little things going like, you know, on like that in companies that are just a little oversight that could be impacting people.

Speaker 2 15:43

And that happens in large companies and small. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're a four-man operation or a four hundred-man operation, I guarantee it is happening in your shop.

Lisa Monti 15:51

That's a true story. So, where are companies overspending without realizing it the most?

Lauren Blair 15:57

So I I kind of touched on this, you know, doing things the way they've always been done. I see this a lot. I think that's why I talk about it a lot because you've got to make a shift when shift happens. So I literally was in an office and saw someone print an email, take the email to the scanner, scan it to themselves to add to their file. I saw it in real time. It was a real thing. And so then that opened up the door for me to say, like, hey, did you realize that you could just drag and drop it? And they were like, What? No one has ever showed me this. I'm like, yes. And that cost you two pieces of paper. And a walk to the printer. You know, and all the time wasted to figure that out. So here we are, and you don't have to have a paper file, right? And it there are some things that you do want to print, some things that you want to keep. But I think there's a lot of money spent and time, time is money, on these workarounds that maybe you've always done it. Betty trained me this way. So I'm just gonna keep doing it this way. And those things are wasting your time and money.

Speaker 2 17:02

Well, and to that point, you know, as we were kind of talking through this, I did work for an agency where we had multiple locations, I think 15 or 16 locations. And Lauren and I, I she mentioned it in the last podcast, used to work together. So she was, I think, there when we did this, but we went paperless. And it was painful. And I am a I love to hold the paper and pep the paper and walk. I'm that person. Like I am that person. But I even I learned, and there were a lot of people that did learn, but it is amazing. I think we save like $3,000 a month in paper when we get when we quit printing everything, every copy of every title commitment, every variation of the HUD. Every update. When all I was doing was, you know, really all I needed to do was email it to the lender or email it to the real estate agent to let them see, you know, kind of what it updated. And so then it got to the point where we only printed the final documents, you know, and we made sure that it was the lender's actual package and not their 150-page third version of they keep making a mistake kind of papers. So so I it's amazing how much money you spend on paper. Oh yeah, and it's that much more painful when they're printing it, walking across the room, scanning it, and sending it back to themselves. That's crazy.

Lauren Blair 18:17

Yeah. I've seen it too though. Then you have to save that paper somewhere, right? Like stores paid to store it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 18:23

Yeah. So you ultimately you want to go digital. And TDI has gotten really good about allowing digital copies. And even for audit purposes, you don't necessarily have to have a physical file. There are some original documents, and I'm happy to talk to you guys about that for like audit or if you have to sue somebody for performance or something like that. So there's ways to store those originals that don't take the sheer volume of space that you know the entire two-inch thick file takes. And then I would also say one other place where we're continuing to overspend without even realizing it is that Sally Jane left and we have to replace Sally Jane. Well, maybe we could repurpose Lisa to take Sally Jane's spot. You know, maybe something Lisa's doing, our new software can be more efficient, and that might be giving Lisa now four hours a day that she could do Sally Jane's job. And so you've cross-trained Lisa, which makes her more valuable to you. She now knows more. And you have not added another headcount.

Lisa Monti 19:21

Yeah. I was gonna ask, what do you think about sending title policies out?

Speaker 2 19:26

I think most title agents have gone to uh sending those digitally. I'll tell you, you know, I got mine paper and I first thing I did was scan it um and save it onto my external hard drive because I was like, if this I the I told you I love the paper. My office, there's a lot of paper. Like I'll never find it if I need it. So the first thing I did is I scanned it. Okay. You know, and I think you're good, especially with these lenders. And then you've got you've got proof that you sent it, especially if you're keeping track of those emails in your software owners' policies. I think you could ask the the your insureds, you know, do they prefer it, you know, in mail, you know, by hard copies or or digital. I will tell you that investors, builders, like anybody that's doing any kind of volume, like two to five transactions a year or more, they want it digitally. They're taking it to as soon as they get it, they're scanning it. Yeah. And shredding it.

Lisa Monti 20:18

Well, good. That would save on obviously postage and paper. Yeah. If we can do that.

Speaker 2 20:23

So I I did see something the other day that apparently the post office is trying to go to 90 cents a deal for a stamp.

Lisa Monti 20:29

Wow.

Speaker 2 20:30

I was like, oh, I'll drive it. Well, I don't know. Gas prices on dollars a gallon. You know, um, you know, it depends on how far it has to go, I'll just drop it off.

Stop Re-Recording And Post-Closing Rework

Lisa Monti 20:39

Anyway. That's funny. Well, one place that I think that that's overspending that happens without people really maybe putting a you know their finger on it is re-recording, making an error with recording. When I was managing a branch before, we were right on the border of two counties. So it was, we were literally doing, you know, work in both counties every single day. And so we just made it mandatory that we had to use a recording checklist. Even if you've been a closer or an assistant or a funder for 15 years at the same place, we said, please use your recording checklist. And the very first question was, are you recording in the right county? Yeah. Because the easiest way to lose your money, you know, for nothing is literally to record in the wrong county and then have to re-record it in the correct county. And recording, just like everything else, is high. It's gone, you know, it's gone way up. So I think you've got more to say about, you know, you know, if people are having to redo the papers if the paper, you know, if there's corrections.

Speaker 2 21:35

Yeah, because they changed the statute. I think it was back probably 10 years ago now, where you've got either material corrections or non-material corrections. And so if it's a material correction, like everybody has to resign. If it's a non-material correction, you've got to do this affidavit. You've got to pay an attorney to do it. You have to send all these letters via certified mail, and that's like a hundred dollars now, not really a hundred dollars, but I mean it's number going up. You know, it's by the end of the day. When I was still managing any time that we did a correction by the time we paid the attorney who had to prepare the affidavit and everything, it was $250 to $300 per re-recording. Yeah, I bet it's more than that now. It's real, that is real money. It really is. That is real money.

Separate Emotion From Expense Decisions

Lisa Monti 22:14

And it's also a huge waste of time. So honestly, using a recording checklist or having a process in place for recording to cut down on errors can really be a huge savings for you. So agreed. So uh why don't companies adjust their expenses quickly enough, you think? I know Lauren's dying to say it.

Lauren Blair 22:34

She's dying to say it. Let her go. I think a lot of people let their emotions drive their expenses, right? I see a lot of agents that are like, well, she's worked here forever. She's the furniture, you know. Like, if June's not here, we're not gonna function. But really, what is June doing? She's 97, you know? I mean, and won't use a computer. Yeah. And she's has someone else print her emails and then she reads them. Like, I mean, so there are a lot of emotional things tied when you're in leadership and you're charged with that, and you know, like a lot of these people's livelihoods depend on it, right? But you have to step away from some of that emotional stuff and you have to really look at like how do we survive if I'm so emotional about it? You can't be. So you kind of have to pull yourself back from that and not let that drive every decision that you make. And I think a lot of us, I mean, I've been there. I have some loyalty to someone, right? Or I feel like they're super loyal to me. And really now we don't need that role anymore because we've utilized our tools to the best of our ability. And so I think that's hard. That's not an easy thing to look at. It's the emotional piece of it is super hard. It's real. Yeah. And it's things that you really have to think about.

Speaker 2 23:47

So well, and I had a conversation with an agent one time. I was like, are you willing? Because they were working around the clock to fund the title company and and and to help with that when the market kind of shifted. I was like, you are either going to kill yourself because you're working 22 hours a day, or you're going to bankrupt yourself if you continue to employ all these people. Like I understand your tie to them and I respect and appreciate that, but you have to decide what is important because you are now the leader.

Lauren Blair 24:16

Yeah. And I think that's hard. Yeah, it is. And I think, you know, sometimes when you're in a leadership role and you've been like the that person for so long, like you're like, well, we're known for this. Like we're known that we we always host this for our clients. And it like it doesn't matter how much it costs, we're gonna do it because that's what we're known for. But sometimes you should not cut your nose off to spite your face, right? So you've got to stop for a minute and say, like, is this really worth what we're putting in? Are we getting back what we really need? What is the ROI? Like, does June really help us at 97?

Lisa Monti 24:51

You know, I think uh you all know SummersWoe, but Summer has a pretty good story about this about a realtor she used to work with who was used to putting on a certain kind of Christmas party every year. She had a Christmas party, she invited all of her clients, all of their kids were welcome. They had a big Santa thing, gifts, all kinds of stuff, and she spent a ton of money on this. And this was like what she was known for. And then one year she decided to actually poll her clients and ask what they really wanted. And it turns out they really wanted more of an adult party. They kind of voted, everybody kind of got together and voted to do like a boat cruise, and everybody got a babysitter, so they ended up having a completely different night than the kids' event with the Santa and all of that. So I don't know if the realtors save money or not, but I think it it pays to pull your clients and like Lauren said, ask yourself, do we really need to do the exact same thing we've done every year? Or can we switch it up a little bit? Or can we, instead of having this every month, maybe we have it every quarter or every half year or something like that? So I think it pays to literally can pay to take a look at and pull your clients and make sure you're doing what's really important and valuable to them.

Speaker 2 25:59

Yeah. I think that's a really good point. You know, one other thing that that I've seen and heard a lot is that you'll sometimes see, you know, it's it's that same thing as like we've done it, that's what we're known for. And so sometimes, you know, you ask, there's a fear of asking the staff to change. I mean, and staff is, you know, we in this business tend to be sometimes a little hesitant to change, but I feel like we've come a long way. And so they're afraid to make any kind of change because they're afraid that staff won't buy in or that maybe staff will leave if they do make a change. And so I think as long as you have conversations with people, yeah, I think a great example of this is with the software stuff.

Lauren Blair 26:41

We talked about that a little bit earlier. People were forced to do it, didn't have a choice, and are still having to make that change right now in the time period that we're recording this. And so now's a great time to see how resilient they are to change and how they handle it. And you can see like the cream of the crop rise to the top. And that those are the people that are gonna stick with you through something like that. So now you've experienced something that was forced upon you, right? Shift happens, right? And now you know who's gonna stay with you in the long run. So now's the time to say, okay, guys, you guys handle this great. And here's what we're gonna do to even enhance that even more.

Speaker 2 27:19

Well, because yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, if if they if they embrace that change, then that just gives the the agency an opportunity, especially if they embrace some of those efficiencies, it gives them the 15 minutes a day to call their real estate agent, the one luncheon a month to call their real estate agent. And those are the people that you want to reward with that forward-facing kind of stuff. So with all that money you save. Yeah, with all that money you saved. So so yeah, I mean, I think that's I mean, and people don't really adjust their expenses quickly. And I think sometimes, you know, they another reason they don't is because they're either head down working in the business and the P ⁇ L hits their desk and they never make time because they're dealing with a customer to look at it, or this they title insurance is one of many businesses, just meaning they've got their finger and a lot of pies. And so they are, you know, dealing with a lot of stuff. And so maybe they're looking at the profit of the whole and maybe not the profit of of each individual, each each individual business entity or operation that they're running.

Lisa Monti 28:21

Okay. And next for leaders, where do emotions show up in their spending decisions most often?

Lauren Blair 28:27

Well, whatever's good for them, right? Like, oh, well, I always wanted to do this and I'm gonna do it. Whether it's really what our clients want, where it's really whatever our staff needs or wants, I'm gonna do it because it's good for me, right? And I think, you know, you can there's tons of examples of that that you can look inwardly and know if you've done that or not, you know. And I think even in your personal life, you do that, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna only do this because this is what's good for me, but maybe not like good for everyone in the family. And so I think you kind of use that as your guiding tool whenever you're talking about how am I being emotional in my decision? Is it only good for me?

Lisa Monti 29:06

I hope you're not suggesting that we slow down on like purses and shoes or anything.

Lauren Blair 29:10

No, you should keep going. Okay, thank you. Especially on boots and turquoise.

Lisa Monti 29:14

Because about some things I do feel very emotional.

Lauren Blair 29:17

Because now I can buy them for my child, her child.

Speaker 2 29:22

She can wear them until she's old enough. Exactly. So I think people do allow their emotions to get engaged and or they do it back to the very beginning, the way they've always done it, as far as, you know, to incentivize people, like because, you know, you do, you know, emotional, like, you know, they're telling me they need more, so I'm gonna give them two extra PTO days, or they're telling me we need more. So, like there's a not a title insurance company in town, but it's another company in the town that I live in where they went to a four-day work week and they didn't go to four tens. It's they didn't cut their pay. It's they're working four days a week, eight hours a day. And invariably I need them on Friday, and they don't even have like it's not even staggered, like they are just closed on Friday. And so I think that that sometimes people will make an emotional decision because maybe their staff drove it, or maybe it was driven by their own personal needs, because I think this person had a kid that was doing some competitive sports and they needed to leave by like nine, they were the owner, they needed to leave by like nine on Fridays to go to Dallas or Houston or wherever they might be playing. And and so that potentially it disadvantaged, in my opinion, their customers who I just left them, just moved my last piece of business from them uh yesterday, as a matter of fact, but because it did disadvantage me. And so, but I think sometimes we and we've even gone in and done different CIA trainings and stuff for agents where they're like, you know, I want to incentivize them, but like the things that I'm doing don't really seem to work. They don't work. And so like they brought us in, and one of our charges was, well, find out what'll incentivize them. Some of them, it was like, you know, getting off at three o'clock so they could beat the rush at the nail salon on Thursdays and get their nails done. Or, you know, be able to, you know, have the morning off to get their hair done. Like they won't. They weren't trying to go in at 10. They're trying to like get their hair done, like starting at seven to be at their desk by nine. Like they're not even asking for anything crazy. Right. And then Lisa, you had one situation.

Lisa Monti 31:23

Yes. Years and years ago, I worked at a title office and our branch, without spreading it around to everybody, our branch manager said, I'm gonna do, you know, y'all have been working super hard. I'm gonna do one thing just for you guys at the Christmas time during December, and everyone's gonna get a half day off to go shopping. You don't have to clock out for it. Like you're just gonna get a free half day to go shopping. Well, this was when most of the people in the office had young kids. So they were in school. So this was like the perfect time for a parent to leave, go shopping without their kids and get things done. And afterwards, I thought about it and I was like, that was so genius. Because first of all, it didn't really cost the company anything because the people who left at noon or one o'clock or whatever, you know how it is when you know you're having a half day? You cram all of your work. You're so efficient. So we literally got all of our work done between like 8 30 and 12 30 that we would have done for the whole day anyway. And so no one else really even had to pick up the slack for us or anything. So I but it meant so much to us. I mean, this was around 25 years ago, y'all. And I still remember it as one of the most special things any manager ever did for us.

Speaker 2 32:31

It was just very it was mean, it was meaningful.

Lisa Monti 32:33

It was meaningful.

Speaker 2 32:34

And I think that's the key is when you're when you're talking to your staff to find out, you know, because it's not always monetary. That's exactly right. It's not always monetary.

Lauren Blair 32:43

We had someone in that exercise, they were like, I just would like some free Botox. I would have never come up with that as a leader, but that would be something we could incentivize with. Yeah. So they your staff can be very creative. And I think another thing that I failed to mention earlier is like sometimes you overspend to look successful. And I think that is a huge miss on your part, right? Or you say, no, we're not gonna make any changes because that looks like I'm failing. I'm not gonna let someone go that I really need to because that looks like a failure. And I think those are emotionally tied decisions too.

Speaker 2 33:15

Well, you know, and we were talking earlier today, and this is I'm taking a little bit of a detour here. I apologize, but we were talking today. So Lauren's from Canton, and you had the car dealership who would meet you at two in the morning if he knew you were coming, Henry Lewis. And if you met him out and you did not know who he was, you he dressed like a homeless person.

Lauren Blair 33:35

Sweatpants, shirt with holes in it.

Speaker 2 33:37

Yeah, like if you had a golf shirt with like holes in it. Like, I mean, we bought two cars from him personally, and he he was the only salesperson, and it was literally an all-day affair because if there was anybody in front of you, you had to wait till he was available because nobody else made deals but him. But he was the wealthiest man in town by far that he didn't put on airs. And so I think it's just you probably need to look at, you know, your cause your expenses may be coming from things that, you know, you might think you have to sponsor the big gala in town, but what what retirement? What do you get out of that? You know, other than having your name out there, you know, how many of those people are people that can bring deals?

Lisa Monti 34:17

I wonder, I'm sure there are people, title agents out there who have added expenses to do the same thing as their competitor. Oh, yeah. Right? And maybe it's a good time to step back and say, do we really need to do that extra thing? We weren't doing it for all these years. We started doing it because ABC was doing it. But is it something that's really meaningful to our people or is it something that we could do without?

Speaker 1 34:39

Yeah, that's it.

Monthly Metrics That Keep You Profitable

Lisa Monti 34:39

It might be something as simple as that. Yeah. So, okay, on to the next question. What should leaders be actually be reviewing regularly?

Lauren Blair 34:47

I'm gonna let Brandy start.

Speaker 2 34:49

Well, so I think, you know, every month when I get my PL, I go, I'll first of all I'll look and see how much money we made because I like to see that. It makes me feel good and what our margin was. And then after that, I go sh the next place I go is straight to our expenses. What did we spend money on? Who spent money on our behalf that I didn't approve, you know, and that I might need to get that marked off because I've done that before too. I'm like, I didn't approve that. Like they don't really work for us, they can't charge that to us anyway. So uh it's good to look for errors though, but I do look for errors. I'm like, oh, I think this is wrong. But I I so I think you I think you've got to look at your expenses, and I think you've got to look at, you know, you've got to look at them at a cost per order. I think you need to be looking at your staff and you need to look at how many closings per employee or order you're doing. And I don't think you should make a knee-jerk reaction, but Lisa, you made a comment about like a closer needing how many.

Lisa Monti 35:41

Yeah, where I worked, we called it C P E E, like closings per escrow employee, and we got a report at the end of every month. And so, like, let's say we were recruiting or bring on a new closer and they said, Yeah, I'm probably gonna start with about, you know, eight closings a month. We would say, fantastic. That sounds like a reasonable amount that you can handle on your own. I tell you what, when you get your number up to 15 closings a month, 20 closings a month, 10, whatever works for you and your market. But we had a goal for them to meet. They knew that they would get an assistant when they got to a certain goal. We also had people who were doing 40, 45 closings a month who needed more than one assistant. So we had like a number in mind, yes. And that helped keep it fair for everybody. It also gave everybody goals to strive for to get another person added to their team.

unknown 36:26

Yeah.

Speaker 2 36:27

So another couple things, sorry to cut you off, but you know, overtime is something because you know, when they when the federal government made changes as far as payroll, I think a lot of us grow people were salaried. Now I think they've had to go back to Allory, but based on because it's now about specific responsibilities that you have. So overtime that isn't needed because you will have people, and sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it's not, but they are, you know, working through lunch or they're staying late just to stay late. You know, I used to, my office was in the corner and I could see people spend the first 30 minutes of the day in the in the coffee room. And I'd be like, okay, well, you've taken half of your lunch, you know, and they're like, What? And I'm like, you can't spend 30 minutes in the in the break room at the beginning of the day. Like I was kind of a taskmaster, but um so I mean, but I mean it's like there's there's visiting, but I mean, like if you want to spend 30 minutes in the room in the break room, like get here at 7 30. Like y'all agree to meet at 7 30, you know, find something else that works, but but just watch for overtime because that can creep up on you. And then this is kind of a weird thing to bring up because underwriter splits in Texas are regulated. But I will tell you one thing that you know that you could actually review is what benefit you are getting from and what support you're getting from the underwriting relationships that you have. Absolutely. Because that is something that can be leveraged, you know, if the larger of an agent, and this is something that like you don't really recognize when you're on your side of the business, which is yeah, so this is goes into that common misconception role, I think.

Lauren Blair 38:00

Yeah. Like as an agent, you think your underwriter does this, but what can they really do that they're not even doing for you? And so I think that's where we kind of set ourselves apart at national investors. We've sat in that seat. We know what we got before, and now we know what we actually can bring to the table.

Speaker 2 38:18

Well, and we knew what was needed before, but we it was it was things that a lot of times we had to find creative ways to find on our own. I mean, because the the larger or the bigger your relationship is with a different underwriter, the more, like I said, leverage that you bring on. But the more, you know, likely we are to maybe co-op an event or a supply, or, you know, there's there's other opportunities there. You know, I worked for another underwriter before, and most of the agents in Texas were, you know, had multiple underwriters and they had no idea because they had split their business so fractionally amongst eight or 10 underwriters that there were huge trips available for for people that, you know, wrote a certain level of business. It wasn't something that was advertised, it was just if you wrote that much business. And so there are sometimes perks to being, you know, bigger with one particular underwriter being more aligned. Yeah. And so I'm not saying that we have big trips. I mean, we might eventually, but I mean we We're up for ideas. Yeah, we're always open for ideas. I love Mexico.

Lauren Blair 39:24

Well, I think we you kind of hit on it earlier, but I mean, I would say if you're listening right now, do you know how much it cost to get an order from open to close? And if you don't, well, it's a policy, yes, correct, to policy. Because if you don't, you should. And if you need help figuring that out, let us know because we've done it. And there are opportunities for you to streamline some of that. And it could be working with us to do that as far as, you know, a search and exam and things like that, like where you can really hone in what the most important things are for you and your customer to hit on and let us take care of some of that on the other side. You may not realize that that's an opportunity, but it is. And how do you get there? Figuring out how much it costs you to do your business, right?

Speaker 2 40:09

Because there are, there's a lot of, you know, whether it's search and exam or whether it's escrow reconciliations, you know, we have eye tracks that, you know, you might have a really talented person who wants to learn more and you've got them spending all day, every day doing daily reconciliations by hand. And we have a tool for that. And we have a tool for that. And then you could have them there to solve whatever problems pop up, but then you might could have them checking files to be sure that they've collected the right amount of HOA dues or the right amount of taxes, or, you know, verifying that you're not going to have file shortages. You know, you can utilize those very detail-oriented people for other things.

Lisa Monti 40:45

Great. So, what do you think are some invisible expenses that people aren't don't even have their eyeballs on?

Lauren Blair 40:51

Well, I would say poor processes. I see it a lot. I worked on it whenever I worked for an agent. Being able to actually map your process, which also helps you figure out how much it costs you to do your business, is really helpful. I mean, we like Brandy mentioned, we had a lot of locations. We had a runner back in that time, back in the day. And so, you know, at that point, that might have been the only thing that we could have done to solve it. But today, that is not the only thing you can do to solve it. And if you think that having a runner run a file from office to office is the only way to do it, please call me because it isn't, and I can save you some money. Because there are so many tools that you can use today, like not printing and scanning the email back into your file. Okay. Just stopping and thinking and asking your staff, is there something that you do that that is causing you a lot of strife and harm and all these things that we can change? Because they can tell you pretty easily. Now, they may kind of hold things to the chest because they don't want to, they think it's gonna make them lose their job, right? But really, like, what if you could tell them we're gonna make your job better? We're gonna make this better for you, where you don't hate this part of what you do, you know. Have that conversation instead of we're gonna outsource everything and you're never gonna work here again. And, you know, those kinds of things.

Speaker 2 42:16

So for me, I think it's curative and claims leakage. Okay. So what I mean by that is where you're having to to rework files, you're having to, you know, you're closing them and you're having to pull them back up because there was a you, you know, you missed rental extension language or you missed, you missed the exhibit A and having to, you know, we talked about re-recordings, things like that, having to correct things after closing, you know, any any claims that are tied to you know, to process. Just chasing those kind of things would be one. And then another one, I have some notes here. If y'all know me, Gladys has been helping me. Office space. Yeah. I we've been in so many offices where it's like they're using the front three offices and there's ten in the back. I mean, after COVID, you know, just the things changed. Like some people went remote, some people, you know, stale came in the office. You know, I mean, there's still a need for an office presence if you're still doing closings, but do you still need all of that space? And if you own the space, maybe it's a revenue opportunity. Yeah. You might could, you know, rent out part of it to, you know, somebody who doesn't really have a lot of forward facing, or maybe it's like they're very quiet. Maybe it's like a CPA or a you know, somebody like that, or uh somebody in insurance processing, you know, insurance claims processing, you'll have stuff like that. But just looking at that square footage, and if you don't own that bill, if you don't own that space, is that space working for you? Because like for us, we're in a space that we spend, and I've kind of been on this on this train a little bit, like we spend a significant amount of money for us to get together and have our quarterly team meetings because we talk to you all about having meetings. I think it's important too. Tom and I think it's important. So, but because our office is not large enough for us all to be there, then we have to. rent space. And so, and you know, none of us hardly live in Austin. Like Summer and Tom and Lisa drive in and the rest of us have to, or they yeah, they're able to drive in in the morning. The rest of us have to come and spend a hotel room night. So we couldn't probably do away with the hotel expense, but definitely the the space rental and then you're required to use the hotel fee, you know, hotel food and all that stuff.

Lauren Blair 44:20

So I think another invisible expense is tools that you've paid for for a long time. Like let's say it's, you know, some software that you're using inside of your software to help you with things. But let's just say that only one of your offices has adapted to use that software, but you still have to pay the same price whether one office or all offices actually use it. And I actually have seen this where one office was using it, they love it, their customers love it, but the other offices were like, oh no, we've never used that and we're not going to because we don't want to learn how to do it.

Speaker 1 44:55

It's different.

Lauren Blair 44:56

Right. But really if it's a non-negotiable like hey we have this tool to make our clients life better. We are going to learn we're going to spend the time and the effort to utilize this tool because it's not an expense I can cut and it doesn't change by just using one office. Like I don't get a discount because only one of you guys is choosing to use it. So you really got to have some accountability right I think accountability is a huge invisible expense. If you're willing to let them do whatever and run in the wild wild west great but you're going to cost yourself a lot of money in the long run. So having accountability and even like if you have a bad apple like it's hard to talk about it's emotional again like you love her, but she's not a nice person. She's a cancer and she's really causing a lot of problems. That's an expense, you know? And you really have to be willing and have the accountability as a leader to hold them accountable as well.

Audit Subscriptions Escrow Losses And Overtime

Lisa Monti 45:50

Mm-hmm. Absolutely so if someone had to audit one thing this week what should it be? What's the top thing?

Lauren Blair 45:58

So I think the easiest money you're able to save is what you stop wasting, right? And if you have recurring monthly expenses subscriptions of whatever whether it's those like that software or whatever, looking at those things to make sure like I know I'm guilty of it. Like well and it's not me it's my husband. He signs up for all these things to watch on TV.

Speaker 2 46:19

My husband has a $12.95 recurring cost for a for a VPN from for that we use for one week a year.

Lauren Blair 46:26

Oh these things these things these recurring costs that you didn't even really sign up for right and so I mean I'm mad about it and it's an it's a monthly fight we can tell you know those are things that you can sit down and look at pretty quickly if you've got someone tracking that stuff on your PL that we talked about at the beginning. And so that's pretty easy low-hanging fruit that you can say you know what we're not using this or hey is this really valuable is it bringing value to our business okay if it is then we're going to actually start using it. And you guys are just going to have to bite the bullet and go with me.

Lisa Monti 47:00

You know that's a great thing to audit.

Speaker 2 47:01

So we've talked you know and I know we've given you guys probably lots of things and so I would say probably like we've we've talked about a lot of stuff and I'm not really wrapping it up. I'm just trying to try to kind of condense kind of what we got going here. Because right now we're talking about things that you want to look at you know weekly or monthly but you need to pick and as you are listening to what we're talking about you need to pick one or two things that you're going to start doing as far as with what we've talked about. But for me I would start with escrow losses because I think owners and managers I I don't think they really understand what they look like. And so you might be saying what are you talking about? I'm really talking about like where maybe you didn't collect the correct premium you didn't use the right rate rule or you didn't it wasn't you know you charged for residential and it really should have been non-residential. I think you should look at tax shortages. There's been a lot of those I get all the claims I see all of that we talked about re-recording fees like those are the things that I would be tracking in addition to overtime. So I think you look at what you're paying for that you're not using and then I think you look at where money's going out the back door after the deal's closed with it costing you money versus where it should have been born on the front end.

Cut Fat Protect Producers And Service

Lisa Monti 48:09

Yeah. Those are good ones and we've got a lot of tools as an underwriter to help people learn more about doing taxes the correct way. We've got a lot of you know webinars recorded for that you can ask us personally but we're happy to help with some of those things. So we're kind of coming down to the last of it now. What should be cut versus what should be protected?

Lauren Blair 48:28

So I think it's an interesting question because I think we've talked a lot about cutting but we haven't really talked a lot about protection. And so obviously any redundant expenses that aren't really tied to any growth or strategic growth in any of your your expenses that you see but I think protection is really important. If you have a top producer you need to protect them right because if they walk out the door that's a huge loss.

Speaker 2 48:53

Where's that volume going?

Lauren Blair 48:54

Yeah their customer base is not going to stay with you 100%. And so you have a huge loss there. And so I think protecting your top performers I think also protecting your client's experience right like you could say I'm going to cut everything that is ancillary and we don't really need these things and we're not going to have Dr. Peppers anymore. We're not going to have the cookies whatever it is. But like if that is an experience that you are trying to grow and cultivate in the culture of your company think about that and protect that because that's important for your growth.

Speaker 2 49:29

And I agree with you on that point. I mean I think that client experience is what really I think anything that's going to have a potential negative impact on the client that doesn't mean keeping a bad actor in your shop because you know this one high producing client really loves them. It might be trying to figure out how we can separate that stuff. But I think it's I don't think anything should be none of these changes should be knee-jerk and I think we should look it you should look with intentionality but again anything that's going to have a negative impact on the client or a negative impact on your high producers is really you know what should be protected. Yeah. I agree. Okay good I think we've talked about a lot of things that wouldn't necessarily have negative impacts on either you know that you may be spending money on that you might could trim a little fat on.

Lisa Monti 50:16

I agree. So I think we have a we've got an example from Lauren about a company doing things the right way.

Lauren Blair 50:22

Yeah so I have an agent that they're very mindful and they want to do things. They bought an agency that had been in existence for a very long time. This agent owner in particular has a lot of experience from you know plants to you know doing title work and now owning a title agency and even in software development and they look at things a little differently which I think is okay in this industry. Like we don't all just want to be like oh we're only title people right I mean I think we have to today's and so they started looking they had a bad apple they knew they needed to take care of it. It kind of took care of itself and then they were like you know what instead of us trying to hire someone to just sit in that seat and have to train and redo learn the process of everything that we do, I'm going to call Lauren because I think she told me that she has a solution for me. And so we jumped on a call we were able to come to an agreement we now are able to help them with a whole department within their company that they don't have to now worry and have the overhead and the payroll and the insurance and all of the things that are tied to hiring people to do that job where they can lean on their relationship with us and still be successful and fruitful in their efforts. And it's file based.

Speaker 2 51:40

So on months where the file flow is higher than their expense is a little higher on months when it's leaner it's not and so but what you've hired a body to sit in that chair the expense is the expense.

Lauren Blair 51:51

Yeah it's a fixed expense more than likely. So you know that's a really great thing that we've recently seen and we urge you if you have a situation like that reach out to us because we're happy to talk to you about it.

Lisa Monti 52:02

Please do. So I guess that pretty much wraps it up today. I think we've covered a ton of different topics and thank you guys so much for all of your um help and advice I think we could say that becoming profitable is not all about cutting it's also about protecting it's about really opening our eyes and seeing looking at the PL. How do we have our numbers down? Are they accurate? Where can we cut? Where do we need to save and where do we need to spend too right but we have to be honest right it take it's a it's taking off our blinders that have said this is the way we've done it for the last 14 years that we've owned this place. And let's take an honest look and you know come at it from a different approach and see if what changes we can make to perhaps make us more profitable.

Speaker 2 52:43

Yeah. And I we encourage you to make shift happen, you know, and I will tell you I asked I asked Gladys to help me kind of with a wrap up on this my AI assistant I do use AI. We all do quite a lot but you know what Gladys said I should leave you guys with is the agents who win in this market aren't the loudest. They're the leanest. They treat every dollar like it came out of their own pocket build operations that don't waste motion and turn efficiency into a competitive weapon. While others chase uh volume, they quietly stack profit. Love it. Can't wait to see you guys next time.

Lisa Monti 53:16

Thank you.