Treadwell Talks Career, Clubhouse, Voice Marketing And More

On Wednesday, Jan. 27, the Mortgage Leadership Outlook featured Phil Treadwell, founder and host of the Mortgage Marketing Expert Podcast. Treadwell joined series’ host Andrew Berman, head of engagement and outreach for National Mortgage Professional Magazine, to chat about Clubhouse, a new app that is gaining traction in the mortgage industry; opportunities in voice marketing, secrets of successful podcasting, insights from his meeting with Gary Vaynerchuk a few years ago and more.

Treadwell is a 17-year veteran of the mortgage industry as both a top-producing mortgage banker and independent mortgage broker. He is the national director of sales innovation and strategy for Thrive Mortgage, and the host of the Mortgage Marketing Expert podcast. He was recently named one of the “40 Most Influential Mortgage Professionals Under 40” by NMP Magazine, and “Top 20 Mortgage Professional of 2020” by Yahoo! Finance.

Highlights From The Interview:

Treadwell grew up in Neosho, Missouri and got into the mortgage business after answering a newspaper advertisement for a mortgage company. In his first 60 origination deals, 45 of them were manual FHAs.
In 2008, Treadwell sold his own mortgage brokerage to Wells Fargo, which was recruiting through acquisition at the time. He went to work for Wells Fargo where he became a top originator. Later, Treadwell transitioned back into the independent brokerage side because he could not be competitive with its 30-day turnaround time policies.
Treadwell created the Mortgage Marketing Expert podcast after seeking a way to improve his recruiting results. He started content marketing online, combined with blogging so that he could build credibility. He later started a page on Instagram called Mortgage Marketing Expert and shared tips daily.
“After about 30 days there were like 1,000 people following the page and frankly after 90 days, I started running out of things to say,” said Treadwell. “There’s only so many one-liners you can come up with and I needed content. So, I actually didn’t have a really big vision for the podcast. I ended up starting the podcast so that I would bring on huge leaders in our industry [and] mortgage marketing experts. I wasn’t branding myself I was branding the guest that I was bringing on. I was using their quotes to feed that Instagram page.”
Once the podcast started to explode, social media roles swapped where he was now using Instagram to promote the podcast.
MME launched with five episodes on June 1, 2018 and it will be coming up on its 100th episode soon.
Treadwell was able to secure an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk through persistence and a little retail support. However, unlike many others, he didn’t have to pay to chat with Vaynerchuk, a well-known entrepreneur and chairman of VaynerX a modern-day media and communications holding company and VaynerMedia, a full-service advertising agency servicing Fortune 100 clients across the company’s four locations.
“The thing I learned the most from (Gary Vaynerchuk) is … effective marketing is the balance of trust and attention. With TikTok, you can do something outrageous and go viral, get a lot of attention but that doesn’t mean that people are going to do business with you. You could be a trusted industry professional and if people don’t know who you are, you’re still capped in the amount of business you can do. I asked him about that concept and the one thing he said was, ‘It’s not just trust or attention, it’s relevance.’”
Relevance has now become Treadwell’s battle cry because it is why people are connected and why something matters to them. It’s the reason that people can relate and form their own trust.
In terms of marketing being the ability to gain someone’s attention and sales being a way of making them a customer, Treadwell shared an important take from Vaynerchuk on marketing being the ability to gain someone’s attention and sales making hem a customer. “Ninety percent of the time people think they’re marketing when really they’re just selling. You’ve got to stop that. It’s coming across as spammy,” said Treadwell, quoting Vaynerchuk.
Treadwell also took a dive into the social media app called Clubhouse that allows folks to drop in and listen to conversations in an audio format. You can also follow people and have people follow you. You can see what rooms your followers are in. You can also raise your hand and become a moderator or respond.
Treadwell said mortgage professionals should participate in Clubhouse because it is blowing up in the real estate community. Most of the rooms he participates in are real estate related or run but real estate professionals. So it’s a good way to network with folks on the real estate side.
“You’re going to learn from some of the best of the best,” said Treadwell. He added that the information he received from one session was to him, worth $5,000 at a conference if he had to put a price on it.
“Audio and voice is going to play a much bigger role in business and in our lives.”