Brian is President and COO at FinLocker, a certified mortgage banker, and a financial data platform expert with over 28 years of executive experience in mortgage banking. He has a proven track record of leading and growing successful businesses, driving innovation and transformation, and delivering value to customers and stakeholders.
At FinLocker, he oversees the strategy, operations, and product development of the consumer-enabled financial data platform that streamlines the origination and underwriting processes for mortgages and other financial products. He is the co-author of the book Rethink Everything: You “Know” About Being a Next Gen Loan Officer. He also hosts Fintech Fridays, a podcast that showcases the latest trends and solutions in the financial services industry. His mission is to empower lenders with digital financial tools that attract, engage, and retain customers, while improving the consumer's financial well-being.
“We are arguably in one of the darkest times in the mortgage and housing finance business. And it's never been harder for lenders and their loan officers. We need to rethink everything about what it means to serve. Our primary focus is addressing what we believe is the biggest challenge: effectively impacting the next generation of homebuyers.”
- Brian Vieaux
Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
Hello, and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell, I get to have a repeat guest today, people and the only reason that we do that is because we look at downloads, we're starting to look at all that kind of stuff, and today's guest was a highly downloaded guest. And so, please welcome to the show, Brian. There's a couple of things about Brian that I'm gonna have you introduce yourself a little bit, but I want to say a few things ahead of time. First of all, repeat guest. He was on Episode 71, which was almost three years ago. We're way over 200 episodes now. Brian is the president and CEO of FinLocker. He's the co-author of a really cool book called “Rethink everything you know about being a next gen loan officer”, which I'm really excited to dig into. Dude has 31,000 plus followers on LinkedIn. And I know enough about LinkedIn that that doesn't just happen by chance, like dudes doing some cool stuff on there. So anyways, without further ado, Brian, welcome to the show.
Jason, man. Thanks for having me back. I vividly recall our first episode at 30th floor and some hotel. Pretty cool backdrop. Three years ago, I was like, I think I was probably pretty nervous, honestly, because I wasn't doing a lot of this stuff back then. So hopefully, I'm a little bit better for you. Maybe the downloads back then were because it was such a rough conversation. I don't know.
I remembered a few things because we were still early in our podcasts. I mean 71. You are episode 71. So, we were a year into but still in the world of podcasting, babies. Heck, I still feel like we are. So, both you and I were kind of new at it. And we were having a look around this this microphone in this hotel room. And we made it happen. And I do remember we talked about your boxing nonprofit that you're involved with. And then this morning, I was listening to part of the show just to re familiarize myself. And dude, you said this, I had to write it down. “You can't lean on the shovel. You got to put the shovel in the ground and do the work.” That's a direct quote from you. And I was like, boom.
I have blisters all over my hand. Man. I've been digging and digging and digging so…
well for listeners that might be new to the show, or they haven't heard your name before, would you just give us a minute or two on who you are? And then you know, the two main projects, FinLocker and the book. Would you just mind giving us a little cursory overview of that?
Yeah, for sure. So, Jason, again, thanks for having me back on and super excited and a lot has been happening. A lot has happened in the last three years. So, I'm the President Chief Operating Officer of FinLocker. This summer, I'll hit my five-year mark with FinLocker And that's, I guess, an achievement only because 32 years of my career were in mortgage production. So direct mortgage originations. I started as a loan officer in the early 90’s and spent a lot of my career managing third party originations channels for some large banks, most recently Flagstar bank, and made a pretty big life decision to leave what I now call the comfy confines of, you know, bank publicly traded bank corporate America so to speak, or, and to take on a challenge and, you know, in a start-up FinTech at the time that serving the mortgage industry and so that that three years ago when I talked about the shovel, and you can't lean on it, I can tell you with all sincerity that we’ve just been we've just been digging and digging and digging and that's the only that's the only way out, man. You just got to grind and fight and so nothing has changed from that perspective. You know, FinLocker is a company and a product that helps lenders and originators to kind of tie this into the book rethink, how to reach, assist, engage and nurture early journey homebuyers. And we can kind of go down that path. About 10 months ago, I received this this package in the mail. You know, I'm like, oh, this is interesting. It's kind of thick. I open it up. And it's this purple book, which there it is over here yet.
I see it. Yeah.
And on the cover the purple book was this QR code. I'm like, alright, I'll play along. What's this? Today, I probably wouldn't do that. That's like a phishing attempt, I think. But anyways, I scanned it, and boom, this video pops up. And it's a guy, Scott Payne, who I'd never met, never knew of, and Scott's introducing himself on video to me not to do anything other than to say, I thought you'd like this book. There's some cool stuff in here. I thought of you and thought it would be interesting for you. That was it. That was the extent that I was the idea. I really started reading Kyle's book, and it is an easy read. 90 pages. You could fly through in a couple hours. And it was amazing. So that's the purple book that we now call it was this super cool concept of Kyle's writing, but each chapter had a QR code where when you scan it, boom, there's Kyle on your screen, going a layer deeper into the concepts that he talked about in the chapter.
Very cool.
And I was, you know, we could talk about LinkedIn and social as well, but I've been studying the platform intently. And so, his book came at a perfect time, because I was like, how do I really double down on this platform? And so, I started taking pages of his book, screenshotting it, posting it on LinkedIn with my own thoughts and comments. And I did it like over a 15-16 day period every day, like seven days in I get this DM from Kyle, he's like, and it starts off with, I don't know who you are. But now I'm like, oh, no, here we go. I'm in trouble. He’s like, it goes on to say your posts are incredible. You're blowing up my feed, and I just appreciate, you know, everything you're doing, and I you know, I'm like, Dude, I'm learning so much from your book. We scheduled a one on one. So, this is like last Septemberish.
Sure.
And out of that conversation, I learned that Kyle had a desire to take this rethink everything brand and publish additional books, maybe not him himself, but other people coming in and kind of like the XYZ for Dummies.
Yeah, yeah.
That was his thought. And so, I kind of left that call, and it was in the back of my head for about a week, and it just hit me one weekend. I'm like, I got it. It's we are in the arguably one of the darkest times in our in the Mortgage and Housing Finance business. And it's never been harder for lenders and their loan officers. We need to rethink everything about what it means to serve. My initial working title was rethink everything that it takes to serve the next generation homebuyer and then that morphed into to the title that we see. So, Kyle, and I, you know, quickly, were on the same page that this is this is something that's needed. And we started with just a handful of of experts, because we weren't going to be the experts. We knew that right out of the gate, it was going to be our us writing the book, it was going to be leveraging our networks and our the experts we know that could be helpful. And yeah, we had 10 people right away, say, yeah, man, let's do it. And people got so excited that first time that they would come back like a week later and say, hey, I've got this friend that might be interested in anyway, 37 people kind of raised their hand and said yes to our crazy idea. And that's what that's what is resulted here with, with now the green book, as we affectionately call it.
So, there's so many points that we can dig into there. So, let's, let's dig into the book for a minute. First of all, you just went through a little bit of the mechanics about how it came about. I want to dig into that a little bit. Because when I was with you in LA last month, you touched on exactly how that works. So, you authored the book, but you had 30 some odd people or however many people that took a chapter on it and kind of collaborated with you. So, you have a lot of co-authors to one book that is like jam packed with really, good stuff. Talk about that a little bit.
Yeah. So, we, in my mind when we were, you know, this idea was kind of framed up, it was the industry doesn't need another technical know-how book on originating mortgages. We get that. That's been done and there's people far more qualified to teach that and then Kyle and I.
Sure.
We really wanted to do something that would address what we believe is the biggest challenge which is how to effectively impact the next generation of homebuyers, right? If we as an aren't willing to change how we deliver messages and messaging and, and information to the next gen, they're going to be shut out more than they already shut out of the out of the out of the space, but somebody's gonna figure it out. And it's happening, right?
Yeah.
And so, one of the things we I talked about in my introduction in the book itself was that the next generation loan officer is not about age. It's really mindset. And I actually subscribe to this theory. And maybe it's because I've got a lot of, you know, gray hair and had been knocking around this this industry for so long. But I think that the experienced loan officers that have been through cycles before, not just as originators, but as consumers, in their lifetime, have an unbelievable knowledge base that deserves to be shared with all consumers, but especially the next gen home buyer.
Yeah.
But if they continue to do it the way they've done it for their first 10, 15, 20 years in the business, their message is just never gonna stick because, they're not talking in the places where these, this cohort exists.
Yeah, yes.
And so, we went about this. And we basically, you know, there's like six sections of content in the book. We start with mindset.
That’s a great place to start, by the way.
Yeah, you know, it was like, let's be everyone in the right frame of mind. So, you got guys like Dale Vermillion and Chris Vincent and you've got, gosh, Mark Perkins, who does an awesome chapter on the on the viewpoint of a real estate agent. Bill Hart, Bill Treadwell. These are like some of the who's who in in coaching and mindset. And they didn't have to. They didn't have to agree to write a chapter, these guys are, most of them are authors themselves, and certainly, they have enough knowledge to write their own book, but they were selfless enough to say, yes, I want to be part of something that's going to help people transform the way they think. So, we lead with that mindset concept, and then we go right into a section of personal branding, because that's really what you know, when you when you think about the LLO, how do you position yourself in your market and with consumers? People especially today aren't doing business with logos and brands, it's the people that really matter.
For sure.
And so, we've got some just unbelievable people that are experts in personal branding. And then that spins right naturally into kind of the digital space, the social media space. So, the sections really were organized after the content came in. That was what was cool is like, we didn't give a lot of direction, we just basically said we're looking for, you know, up to 1500 words for a chapter. We want you to write what you're expert on and passionate about.
Yep.
And then as it came in, it just ate the slots really started to line up and, and how the thing came together. And I was really worried that it was going to be this choppy experience and the feedback that's been then coming in so far is like, there's almost like this belief that we architected the cohesiveness between the authors, and that was that did not happen.
It just kind of happened that way.
All authentic. Yeah.
That that's phenomenal. And how, how is the book doing? And it may be too early, but what are the outcomes?
Yeah, so you know, as we record this, we're about four weeks post publish. I have never done anything like this. So, I don't know what's good, what's bad, what's okay. Everything feels good, based on the traffic that we see. You know, there’s nothing better than seeing people like take pictures of themselves with this and post it on social media.
Yeah.
We’ve seen that. We’ll brag a little bit, but we were the Amazon best seller in the mortgage category.
There you go. I know enough about Amazon and being a fellow author myself, I know that that's in any category, that's a big deal. So cool.
Could have been there'll be sold 20 books or 2000.
I get it, I get it.
But, we have that badge. More importantly, we here's how I would gauge success. The numbers are the numbers, and this we know that this book is kind of has a targeted audience, so, it's not going to have like mass appeal to the consumers and other people in other industries. Although in the last, you know, a few weeks, I've had people reach out to me and say, I'm not in housing or real estate, a friend of mine took a picture of this book, posted it, I bought it and even though I'm not at our industry, there's a lot of applicability to what I do and each of these sections. So, I'm like, that's kind of cool.
Well, I wanted to chime in there as You know, you said starting with mindset into personal branding then into digital. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, bro like both those things is really important. So, if you are listening to this right now and you lead an organization that has salespeople, I don't care what industry it is, this is going to be help these topics that you're talking about are going to be helpful. Now I know the book well enough to know that, yeah, there's some specific examples in there that do have to do with mortgage and real estate but substitute out your industry, and you've got some really helpful, not only helpful, but like up-to-date information from people that are practitioners right this minute. So anyways, I cut you off there, but I was thinking the same thing.
You just hit it on the head. The people that the contributors to this thing are, they all have day jobs, and they're all very successful and what they do in their day jobs and, they literally took time out of their day job to put on paper their thoughts around what they're expert in. And the most, the coolest thing about this whole thing is that, you know, our, our industry is pretty bifurcated. It's not a huge industry, but it's pretty bifurcated, and there's channels that you know, kind of is at war sometimes against each other. And there's, there's big brands that are sometimes at war against each other. And that's always bothered me, because at the end of the day, who sees all that? We do in the industry, and that's okay, but guess what? Consumers also see that.
That's right.
And that leads to like, questioning about the industry as a whole. And so what's most rewarding and refreshing about this project is how collaborative it has become, and we got people in the book that are competitors to each other, like even down to a loan officer level competitors in the same market that together, you know, shared, they could have kept it all here and just kept all the good stuff, but they shared it all. And now post publication, like, the Mortgage Bankers Association has asked us to conduct a series of six webinars for their members. And we're, we're bringing the experts that, you know, contributed to what I'm what I'm so excited about is that I'm watching people that you know, contributed a chapter get exposed, bigger exposure of themselves. And, and there's some folks that I know a lot of people probably didn't know about, that I knew about, and I'm like, they need to be in this book. And now I'm watching them, grow their network and hopefully grow their brand, and if this book in any little way helps them grow their business, that's even better. And so just the whole collaborative community feel that that comes with this has been super cool.
Well, and I know that you're passionate about that topic, not because of what you just said, but going from our conversation three years ago, kind of keeping an eye on you seeing what you're doing on social what you just said this idea of relationships and community is something that is very important to you. Let’s start to branch off a little bit in that conversation. Talk about, I mean, this is kind of a layup for you, but then I'm going to dig in what talk about relationships and community and the importance and maybe your personal experience with that.
Yeah, I mean, I've only ever been in the mortgage industry. So, you know, 1991 to current. And so we talked about this, at times, it's a feels like a massive industry, but it's really a pretty close knit, you know, industry and community. And then there's communities within the community based on your handle and other things. I've been fortunate throughout my career to be, you know, being able to be teammates with some of the best leaders in the business, some of the best teammates in the business, the roles I've had before coming to FinLocker where I was responsible for third party originations, gave me x exposure to you know, all kinds of different mortgage company and their leadership and their ownership. And even you know, at the at the street level, their donation team had been fortunate to have a lot of visibility to different business models, different business strategies and different executions. And through that, I have managed to keep connected, keep a lot of those connections in place. And, you know, a great example is Steve Majoris, who's the CEO of Synergy One Lending. He was part of a company in the 90s that was a client correspondent client of mine at the time. That's where we first met, and then our paths crossed in the early 2000s, when a company he was at was acquired by a company I was at, so we became teammates, right? And so that relationship trip took a different path and then post meltdown, we each kind of had to go down different paths for different reasons and sure, but always stayed connected, and when I was making the move to FinLocker, he was somebody I talked about before making the move really around this the product and the technology. And the solution we were trying to - the problems we were trying to solve for lenders. And he was a big, big believer and a big fan. And he was the very first client to sign by when I came over.
There you go.
So, does it happen without the, you know, the 15 years or relationship prior? Maybe, but probably not.
Right.
He would have been, you know, more ready for that.
"And so, I just always been a believer in that the business is about those connections and relationships, and you know, even at a consumer loan officer level, refinances may be less relationship driven and more price and execution, but in a in a purchase transaction, especially a first-time homebuyer purchase, there’s a lot of trust that goes into that. And so, I don't see technology just fully disrupting the loan officer consumer relationship, especially in a first-time homebuyer type situation and maybe even some of the other subsequent purchases that people do down the line."
So, I don't think we're going to get out of the relationship business anytime soon in housing finance.
Not as long as there's humans around. That's a good segue. I mean, at FinLocker, I saw your tagline is the all in one app to achieve financial fitness and mortgage readiness. What exactly does that mean?
Yeah, that's a great question and probably need to refresh the tagline although it still makes sense when I hear it back. But okay, so the example I like to give is that I talk a lot about first time homebuyers. And we do a lot in that space. But the average first time homebuyer doesn't wake up magically on a Saturday and say, I'm gonna go buy a house today, right?
Right.
They may go buy a pair of shoes, or maybe a car, but not even a car. But certainly not a house. There's an emotional and financial preparation process that occurs for somebody that's buying their first home, right?
Yep.
And most, you know, our industry has been set up in such a way that typically, the first time a prospective homebuyer is getting introduced to a mortgage professional is when they've got a contract to buy a house and the realtor says, let's get you in front of a LO. Hopefully, it's a little bit before that, where the realtor says, let's make sure you can get pre-approved, right?
That's right.
But even then, is that really the optimal place for that engagement to start? And so, my belief is that the average first time homebuyer typically doesn't have like a, you know, a financial planner, or this professional that's overseeing their personal wealth.
Yep.
Most of them, if they have a private banker, it's the ATM, you know, at the corner.
Right.
And so, our belief, my belief is that the single best resource and source of financial education as it relates to preparing for homeownership is a local loan officer. And so, with that, as the backdrop, we've engineered a technology experience that allows lenders and loan officers to provide a set of digital tools to these early journey homebuyers that literally can prepare them for all facets of financial readiness. And so, to maybe visualize it for folks that are familiar with some of the different, you know, personal financial apps that are out there, we take the best of apps like mint.com, and Rocket Money and Credit Karma, and even Zillow, and bring those features into one experience. And then on top of the data, that each of those tools relies on, consumer credit data, consumer financial account data, employment income type data, we then build a journey, if you will, that assesses where you are today, as it relates to meeting your homeownership objectives. So if you say in the app, your goal is to buy a home for $350,000, and you'd like you'd like to put 10% down, and you ideally want to be ready in the next 10 to 14 months, and then take those data points, and then create a very pointed journey for the end user that's on top of their direct source permission data. So, there's more certainty along the way. And the real magic, I believe is not the technology, it's how the technology aligns with that loan officer in the concierge level. The expertise and experience that loan officer is going to deliver and now that now the loan officer can be omnipresent, right like 24/7 365, because our products a mobile app. We live on that consumers phone, night and day. The loan officers literally a button away when that prospective homebuyer needs maybe a little bit more such as or maybe another question or two.
Well, thank you for that it, it must be working. I know enough about tech businesses to know that, you know, when you start, when we talked three years ago and things were kind of just getting rolling then and the fact that you're still around, FinLocker is thriving and doing well, and actually helping a lot of people, that alone is just a really, really big deal. So, I appreciate you talking about the nuts and bolts of it. And I'm just thinking, you know, I started in the industry right around when you did 93 and was in 21 years before I made a similar leap that you did when we started Rewire 10 years ago. But the thinking about that, and I just went through a sales process myself. We just sold her home and bought some other real estate and just the importance of that not only having things at your fingertips, but then also there's always the deeper conversation about an extra question or two, or what about this situation or whatever. And that's where like you say, your local realtor, your local loan officer like, man, it makes all the difference in the world. And really appropriately named, by the way. FinLocker. Not that you need that from me, but very cool. Just to have that at your fingertips in one place with your particular data, not just like Panacea, or like, hey, this would be a good idea. No, no, this is a plan for you with your data. Very cool.
Thank you. Yeah, we're excited. Nothing's easy. Nothing's a straight line. There's a lot of zigs and zags, and, you know, to connect the dots to three years ago, you know, we've broken a few shovels along the way, but we're still we're still here. And we're still digging,
You found some more shovels to work with. Is what you're saying?
Yeah.
Well, I've already appreciated this conversation, and it certainly has not disappointed. We've talked about the book, we've talked about FinLocker. You know, really, there's a confluence between both of those things. Like, they don't reside separately. They're together, which is, you know, your app with FinLocker is rethinking the industry and how the mortgage industry expresses itself and has a relationship with others in the industry and the buyers, the clients, and then your book, it goes right along with that. So that makes sense. Anything that I haven't asked you, Brian, that you want to make sure that we touched on today?
Well, you brought it up at the onset, you know, the gym that the Detroit boxing gym.
Yeah, give us an update, man.
Yep, I'm still on the board. Still active. And we just had something amazing happen for the kids that we serve. MacKenzie Scott, I think people are aware of MacKenzie Scott, and she's extremely generous. So, she had opened up a grant, and we applied for it. And we were hopeful to get anything. And we were we were awarded a million-dollar grant from MacKenzie Scott.
Holy smokes.
When she personally understood what how impactful the Detroit boxing gym was and the impact it was having on students in the city of Detroit, she doubled the gift.
Holy smokes.
And so yeah, that's like a game changing single donor event that is going to have domino effect for our little project in Detroit. We're in the process, we're going to be expanding our footprint in Detroit. So today, we serve upwards of 250 plus kids, and we have a waiting list of over 1500.
Oh my god.
We want to be able to bring more kids in and we're actively raising capital to expand our facility in Detroit. But even equally exciting, is our model has garnered interest on a national and, frankly, international level. And we're going to be expanding the footprint and helping folks in Buffalo take our model and deploy it in the city of Buffalo. It’s kind of our first franchised effort.
Very cool . Congratulations.
Lots going on there.
So those are 30,000 foot views, you know, vantage points. Bring us down to the kid level. If you wouldn't mind just telling maybe one story or one example, so that we can know you know, $1 million dollars, $2 million, great, amazing. Congratulations. Bring listeners down to like the ground level. What does that mean for a child a kid that's in the area?
Yeah. So, you know, we're primarily focused on serving children that are in the Detroit Public School District. It’s had its challenges. The DPS was in receivership and just you know a lot of challenges there, that quality of education has been challenging. And our founder, Kali Sweeney, who was a Detroit Public School student, you know, basically got to first part of his senior year in high school, I think it was a senior year in high school, you know, close to graduating, call it seven months away, and couldn't read. And basically, you know, he kind of his in his mind, he's like, this is a scam. They just passed me through. I can't read. Why am I even here? What is graduating gonna do for me? What's the difference? So, in his senior year, he dropped out of high school, right? And basically, in his mind, there was two paths where his life was gonna go. One was gonna be lead to incarceration, and then the other path was death. And he's like, those are my options. So that's it. I might as well just do what everybody else is doing in the streets of Detroit. And I'm just gonna run with these guys.
Jeez.
And they did that, and he was running with the wrong guys. And, you know, he was blessed to run into somebody that saw something else in him. And he ran into him because Kali, he's like, I need to learn how to protect myself and fight. So, he kind of sought the counsel of a neighborhood guy who was skilled in boxing. And so Kali learned how to protect himself and fight but the tradeoff that this gentleman made with Kali was I'll teach you to fight, but you have to agree to learn to read .
There you go.
Like that was the trade off, right?
Yeah, yep.
And when Kali tells a story, which, by the way, you should have him on an episode because it's an unbelievable story. But he tells the story of his world opening up when he learned to read.
Right.
He went from this very narrow view of the world to this expansive, unbelievably opportunists digging and so for him, it was like this aha moment. How do I, you know, he went out and got his GED and got a good job and he wanted to give back and so he started with a handful of kids in his neighborhood where he would trade you know, I'll teach you to box but you will, in turn, learn to read.
Paying it forward.
And so that was started in an old abandoned carwash, and now they're in a massive facility, that used to be a bookbinding facility, which is totally ironic and, and pretty cool.
Sure is.
But yeah, our graduation rates a 100% of the students that have come through the program over 15 years now, 100% graduation rate.
That’s awesome.
Every year we've got kids going on to college and now 15 years of doing this in our age, our age ranges typically eight to 18. We have students that graduated through our program, went on to college who are now back in the facility helping
That says a lot.
So, it's a pretty special place. And you know, people can picture what I'm saying but until you are physically in the facility, and you see the energy, and it's not just the energy of boxing because boxing is about this much of what we do, in fact that the tagline there is Books Before Boxing. That's the tagline there. So yeah, it's a pretty special place.
"In this world that sometimes you see in the media or social media or whatever it is that's divided and not good and all kinds of bad news, I listen to that story that you just said, and I'm like, yeah, I think we're gonna be alright."
That's very cool, man. Thanks for giving us that good news. That story. I’m reinvigorated. Ater the first conversation, I went to the website and saw it and got excited about it. And then as life happens that is dissipated now, I'm reenergized to go check it out again. And in fact, I'm going to be in Michigan, I don't know if you and I talked about this, I'm going to be speaking at the MLA event in August, I think it is.
I'm on the board there.
Okay, very cool. So, I guess I'll see you there. But anyways, maybe it’s a way for me to stop by the gym.
Yes, we have to do that that's a must do. You gotta get to it if you’re gonna come through Detroit.
We are, I think, we are in fact, so we might have to figure that out.
We're doing that.
We're doing that. Okay, you heard it here everybody. We are doing that Brian. So well done. Thanks for adding value to our audience. Thanks for doing what you're doing for the community. I wish you the best of luck with the book, with FinLocker and everything else. Thanks for just adding to what we're trying to do here at Rewire. Really appreciate your time and energy today.
Thank you so much, Jason. So great to be here with you.
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