She started building a line-up of helpers amid pandemic while posting huge volume
With International Women’s Day upon us – a day of celebrating achievements among women across the breadth of human endeavor – one is reminded of someone like Skylar Welch (pictured), a licensed mortgage professional at Maine Pointe Lending who quietly posted monster numbers in 2021 – $104 million in volume across 336 units.
Mortgage Professional America is reminded of her specifically, having chatted with her at the recent Hall of AIME event in Miami last month staged by the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts – an event that itself was celebratory in honoring the broker channel. In an impromptu interview, she discussed some of her strategies in achieving such high volume while providing hints on scaling one’s business effectively – the topic of her session at the AIME conference titled “How to build a perfect team.”
Bottom line: While it may now sound cliché as an oft-quoted nugget of wisdom – particularly in times of rising rates and shrinking volume – for Welch it’s all about relationships in weathering the economic storm. Historically important, the value of relationships has gained new currency amid a climate of uncertainty.
“I’m completely focused on relationships,” Welch said. “I expand to reach a lot of agents, I’m part of a lot of networking groups. I used to really find it so hard to go to everything to get my name out there, everywhere. Now that I’ve already built that business, I’ve recently just hired what I consider a relationship management person where she’s going out and building new relationships. She doesn’t originate.”
She also capitalizes on the power of social media: “I have a full-time marketing person. He basically puts us heavy on social media and makes us the local expert on mortgages but also provides a lot of content for our real estate agents – for any real estate agent, any title company, any insurance agent. We’re a resource where people can come in and create video content for their social media and we produce it and give it to them, just adding value as a resource for people.”
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Yet it’s not just forging new relationships, but cultivating existing ones, she noted. “Really the most important thing is building the relationships with people but not just going on to the next, going on to the next. You have to nurture those relationships and take care of those relationships and don’t forget what got you there. There’s so many real estate agents I started working with 10 years ago and I’m still working with them now. I can’t always be chasing the next best thing. You have to keep giving the same level of attention. All your client advocates, they’re your biggest fans already. They trust me.”
Special little touches don’t hurt either. Welch said she sends confetti-filled congratulatory cards to each client that’s pre-qualified. And who doesn’t love confetti?
Given her high volume, it’s hard to believe Welch celebrated her one-year anniversary this past October. But she noted it hasn’t been easy – especially with the specter of pandemic as a backdrop. After having closed on $88 million in volume all by herself, she decided last March to hire her first-ever assistant – the one now focused on building new relationships for her shop. The decision to essentially farm out some of the duties became necessary: “I was drowning,” the married mother of three small children said. “I didn’t have a team; I was working 17-hour days; I wasn’t sleeping. It was too much. That’s when I made the decision,” she said of forming a team to help her on back-end operations, training them via teleconference at the peak of pandemic. “I’m a producer,” she said of a personal realization that triggered expansion plans. “I’m not one of those other things.”
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Who said you can’t have it all?
She lauded AIME for having staged the inaugural event last month that served as celebration of the broker channel. “It’s bringing the best of the best from around the country – we’re all at the same table, we’re all in one room. The biggest and most beneficial thing of all of these events are the relationships you create with everyone, and the referral partners you create across the entire country. I know that anyone could come to me from anywhere in the entire country and I trust someone in each of these states. I love learning from other people. Everybody does their business so differently, and I never come to one of these events and leave without something that I’ve applied to my business that’s changed my business that I learned from someone here.”
While International Women’s Day celebrates the countless achievements of women, she sees the slowdown as a moment to celebrate what the industry has done in distinguishing itself. “It’s been a rough couple of years,” she said. “Everyone’s been grinding so hard. It’s such a hard environment.”
Yes, interest rates are going up. And, yes, inventory is low. But this too shall pass. “Let’s embrace this pause a little bit,” she said, “and celebrate what we’ve done the last couple of years.”
