Master the Art of Communication: 5 Essential Skills for Mortgage Mentorship

John Harcar (00:00.983)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar. And we’re here today with Roy Meshel. And what we’re going to talk about besides his real estate journey is how customer service is really important, especially in his mortgage business. Remember, guys, at InvestorFuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their business.

by providing tools and resources to help grow the business you want to grow, which in turn kind of creates that life you wanted to live. So Roy, welcome to our show.

Roy Meshel (00:36.486)
Thanks for having me.

John Harcar (00:37.675)
Yeah, I mean, I’m glad we finally got to get on here. I know we had some technical issues the first time, but I’m excited to talk about, know, customer service. I think it’s important in all aspects of life. But before we kind of get into all that, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about who you are, your background and you know, kind of what got you here?

Roy Meshel (00:40.908)
Yeah.

Roy Meshel (00:58.094)
Sure, so I grew up in New York.

I went to Arizona State for college and then after college I had a guaranteed job on Wall Street so I did that for a few years and really missed Arizona. New York, know, once you move out it’s kind of hard to get back to that lifestyle so I decided to move back to Arizona and like a lot of people I got into the mortgage business totally by accident.

John Harcar (01:09.536)
Nice.

John Harcar (01:19.809)
Right?

Roy Meshel (01:29.368)
there was a mortgage company that it was a refi boom, and they were hiring telemarketers at night. So I figured I could earn some money to pay rent, buy some beer, telemarket at night and during the day I’ll work, you know, I’ll look for a real job on a Wall Street type job. And there was…

John Harcar (01:32.439)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:39.681)
Yep.

John Harcar (01:47.927)
Right.

Roy Meshel (01:49.524)
one loan officer there who asked me why I’m a telemarketer and I told him I’m looking for a real job during the day. And so he showed me his pay stub in the year to date. And I was like, holy, that’s a real job. And he’s like, yeah, it’s a real job. And he’s like, if you become my exclusive telemarketer, I will mentor you. So that’s how I got into the mortgage business many, many years ago.

John Harcar (02:04.384)
Nice.

John Harcar (02:13.364)
Very crazy. So when you went to ASU, what did you study at ASU?

Roy Meshel (02:19.19)
I studied finance, but you know, like most people in the mortgage business when you’re in high school or you’re in college, I don’t think most of us have the thought that like, hey, someday I’m going to have people finance their homes. Like, you know, that was, that never occurred to me. Obviously, you know, there are people in high school and college who own homes. In fact, my business partner owned 12 condos to turn college. you know, most of us, just pay rent. So we never thought about like.

John Harcar (02:20.436)
Finance, okay.

John Harcar (02:31.776)
Right.

John Harcar (02:42.506)
There we go.

John Harcar (02:46.774)
Right.

Roy Meshel (02:48.738)
you know, how, what do you need to buy a house? We were like, I just need to come up with the money on the first. Right,

John Harcar (02:53.544)
I need to come up with the money for rent and have beer for the weekend. All right. when he so you know how important was it for you that you found someone to kind of mentor you and kind of guide you along as opposed to just you know learning other ways.

Roy Meshel (03:09.102)
So I think that was the total difference in my career. Like I don’t think I’d be as successful as I had been. it were maybe, you know, eventually I would have been, but I might not also gave up, but he was one of the, was a great mentor. He let you fail and then analyze your failure with you. So if you want a quick example, I could give you a quick example back then.

John Harcar (03:33.834)
Yeah, please.

Roy Meshel (03:36.236)
you know, virtual work wasn’t a thing, right? We didn’t have Zoom, just to kind of go with how old I am. There wasn’t Zoom, there was e-meetings, you know, there wasn’t Google Meet, any of that stuff. But so to meet realtors, you would go to their office, but the receptionist would never let you pass the reception desk, because they didn’t want to be bothered by mortgage people, home insurance people, title people, all that. So I would go back to them and, you know, after a few weeks of trying to get past the receptionist, go,

John Harcar (03:54.368)
Right.

Roy Meshel (04:06.178)
those receptionists won’t let me through. And he’s like, yeah, that’s a problem. And I’m like, yeah. And he’s like, so you need another place to meet them. And I’m like, yeah. He goes, have you ever noticed they put out little signs of where they’re hanging out? And I’m like, what? He goes, there’s these little signs. They put them on the road and they say, I’m a realtor and not here. And I’m like, open house signs. And he goes, yeah, open house signs. He goes, they can’t leave the open house. Like they can’t just leave.

John Harcar (04:32.618)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Great tip.

Roy Meshel (04:34.978)
when you walk in, so he’s like, you will meet them there, because they won’t leave. And they’ll give you like directional signs to get there. And I was like, huh, all right. That was like one of his mentor things that, you know, made a lot of sense, because then I started meeting realtors, because, you know, if you’re sitting in open house and I walk in, even though I’m a lender, you can’t be like, I’ll leave. Like you wouldn’t leave me in house alone. You don’t know me. So it was, you know.

John Harcar (05:00.224)
Sure. Okay.

Roy Meshel (05:03.022)
Things like that that he was a really good mentor on.

John Harcar (05:06.054)
Awesome. So you’re working for this guy for how long did he mentoring you before you kind of went off on your own or how long was that process?

Roy Meshel (05:17.166)
So I worked under him for about a year and a half to two years, I forget exactly, but he took a slice of my commissions. But it’s one of those things that everyone looks at the slice they take and not what they’re making. I think the short term view is people go, well, he’s taking 10%. That’s robbery. And on the other side, was like, well, I’m keeping 90 % of my commissions. And it became a sliding scale. It went on.

John Harcar (05:43.264)
Well, but also, also too, it’s like, I think a lot of people don’t think about what that 10 % gains you in the long run. What you learn. Yeah.

Roy Meshel (05:46.498)
But like you.

Roy Meshel (05:53.87)
Right, yeah, I could tell you today I would do the exact same thing again. Yeah, I would do it all over again. His style, like, you know, at the time I probably would have liked him to say, don’t go to real estate offices because you’ll never get through and save those three weeks. But, you know, so his style was let me fail. And when I started going to open houses, you know, it was another thing where he let me fail. I would bring in rate cheats and no one cared. And he was like, you know, after a couple of weeks of that, I said,

John Harcar (06:08.724)
Right.

Roy Meshel (06:22.434)
So I keep going to open houses and I bring in rate sheets and no one seems to care. And he’s like, cause you have an apple that’s 65 cents and the other supermarkets have an apple that’s 64 cents or 66 cents, but you all have red apples. I’m like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. And he’s like, yeah. He goes, why don’t you get to know the realtors first and then try selling them on how good you are. So, you know, that became a thing. So I became known as the cookie man. actually bought a cookie oven.

John Harcar (06:27.082)
No.

John Harcar (06:43.666)
Exactly.

John Harcar (06:50.346)
Nice.

Roy Meshel (06:51.886)
and had Otis Spunkmeyer back then used to deliver dough to offices and you had to commit to 40 pounds or 80 pounds of dough and I would do that on one day. So I would just bring in cookies and yeah, instead of rate sheets, no one said no to freshly baked cookies and I get to know realtors and that’s how I got to know a bunch of realtors and eventually they started giving me business and the mentorship continued.

John Harcar (06:56.395)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (07:01.29)
Wow, that’s cool.

John Harcar (07:15.99)
Sure, as you did those things, right? To stand apart, were there other things that kinda that you started doing more to help you maybe stand apart from the other folks or do something maybe a little bit against the wheels?

Roy Meshel (07:28.194)
Yeah, so you know, like his biggest thing that he taught me is people are lazy. And it was, you know, he wasn’t just, just not mortgage people, but people are lazy. So it was follow up, follow up, follow up. And then he said, you gotta like, you gotta solve a problem that they have even if they don’t know they have it. So if you go in there and you know, you pitched that, you know.

I do a great job and we close on time and we have great rates and great fees. He’s like, you know, and this is one of his greatest quotes. He was like, if you were at the gate to take a flight and you heard the co-pilot and the pilot talking at the gate and said, you know, we’re probably going to land the plane today. Would you get on that plane? I’m like, not if it was probably, no, I think I’d rent a car. And he’s like, right.

John Harcar (08:16.886)
You

Right? Yeah.

Roy Meshel (08:22.318)
You’re going to close on time and you have great rates and you’ll you’ll call back and all that stuff is you know, that’s what everyone said, right? Like we’re going to make it. Yeah, we’re going to land on time in Austin and your luggage will be there like yeah, that’s what I expected when I bought the ticket. To be honest with you, it’s not you like you’re doing an incredible job, so he’s like solve a problem. So he’s like find loan products that solve a problem like you know I want to buy a kid a condo for my kid for college. Solve that problem.

John Harcar (08:30.154)
Yeah.

John Harcar (08:38.837)
Right.

Roy Meshel (08:51.926)
and tell them about it. Even if they don’t have that problem, it’s something unique. And then when they have the problem, they’ll remember you, keep solving these problems. And so that was kind of one of the ways, you he told me to stand out. And then I did a couple of marketing things that really made me stand out.

John Harcar (09:09.206)
Okay, so what do you think are some of the techniques you use when you walk in and talk to folks? mean, when you go talk to these people, do you walk up, I’m with XYZ, this is what we do. Do you say, hey, how’s this going? mean, what is kind of your approach when you’re going into realtors now?

Roy Meshel (09:28.184)
So I really, so you now there’s the technology advantage is so great. So I try to look up everything I can about the realtor before I meet with them. And I can see who they use for lending, who they use for title. I could look up every address they sold, so what price range they’re in, you know, I could look up a ton. So now when I go in, I’m kind of armed that I kind of know your business, right? Like, so it’s not good to talk about first time home buyers.

John Harcar (09:38.624)
Okay.

John Harcar (09:53.942)
Right.

Roy Meshel (09:57.422)
if every house you sold in the last 36 months was over a million dollars. They’re probably not first time home buyers buying those, right? Right, so I know, so, you know, my big thing is first I I asked the realtor a bunch of questions. I want to know what they look for in a lender. I want to know what their hot button’s in. And then I never ask them who they use, even though I’ve already looked it up, just because you won’t bad mouth who you use if you tell me.

John Harcar (10:01.91)
Probably not first at home buyers. Yeah, that’s great.

John Harcar (10:21.942)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Meshel (10:26.402)
But if I tell you like, John, like, so tell me what you love about lenders and what you don’t like about lenders. And you know, it’s speaking from your own lender thing. And it might be that I don’t like lenders who don’t work on the weekends because that’s what I’m selling houses. Right. I got someone in bar. It’s a Saturday afternoon. We saw the dream house. We need to talk to the lender that afternoon. So they’re not going to say that if I know who their lender is already.

John Harcar (10:41.728)
Yeah.

Roy Meshel (10:53.816)
but when they don’t say the lender’s name, they’ll say that. So I usually start off by asking a bunch of questions, but somewhat knowing where I’m gonna gear my talk to, because again, if you sell million dollar houses only, I’m gonna gear it to some of our jumbo products and self, and you know, some of those people are probably self-employed, so complicated tax returns, complicated financial issues. I’m gonna say, you my strength is I’ve done over a billion dollars in loans, and a lot of those have been very affluent people.

John Harcar (11:14.856)
Right, right.

Roy Meshel (11:24.052)
And so I’m used to tax returns that have 20 LLCs and a holding company and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, that’s kind been my real house. Yeah. But if I see someone’s done a bunch of houses at three, four hundred thousand dollars, the finances probably aren’t complicated. It’s more like these people are having, you know, putting the down payment together is the challenge.

John Harcar (11:28.726)
complex situations and yeah, yeah. That’s awesome.

Roy Meshel (11:52.268)
So I’m gonna go more that route where we have zero down products and we have forgiving credit products and we have this and that. So it’s really, but you know, I’m gonna ask them upfront, like, you know, what do you like? What do you don’t like? What are your biggest challenges? And a lot of them, you know, in that price range are gonna say, look, I got a ton of people who pay rent, but they just can’t save for down payment because everything’s expensive, right? So, you know, they’re paying and some of the rents you hear these days are exorbitant.

John Harcar (12:14.526)
Mmm, yep.

Roy Meshel (12:21.228)
Like the mortgage payment would actually be less, but the part of down payment is where the issue is. But there’s so many zero down products that we could solve that problem.

John Harcar (12:26.39)
Yep. Yeah.

John Harcar (12:33.066)
Wow, okay. What do you think some of the mistakes are other people are making that are in mortgage, maybe trying to go out and grow business?

Roy Meshel (12:42.318)
So I think, and I mentored a couple of people who are in the top 200 loan officers in the country last year. So I can tell you that one of the biggest problems is people are afraid to deliver awkward or bad news, but it doesn’t go away. So it’s like when you have an infection or something more serious, if you think you’re gonna go to sleep that night and the infection is gonna be gone and you never took any antibiotics or put any Neosporin on it.

chances are the infection doesn’t go away, it just gets bigger. And you think it’s gonna get people to go away the next night. And what happens is, know, very professional realtors can handle the problems. What they can’t handle is you knew about it for two weeks and told me about it at the last minute. And there’s some realtors, right, obviously, just can’t handle bad news, because they’re not, you know, they’re not at that professional level where they can handle bad news. And the same thing with, you your buyers that…

John Harcar (13:29.496)
Right, yeah.

John Harcar (13:40.214)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Meshel (13:40.472)
You know, if I tell you, John, like you apply for a loan today and I tell you tomorrow, John, we have an issue because it’s showing that you haven’t paid your American Express card in six months. Like, that’s an issue. If I wait till the end to tell you that and say, where are my loan docs? And I go, John, here’s the problem with your American Express card. And you’re like, no, no, that was a mistake. I have something from American Express, you know, but why we, why’d you wait to tell me now? Am I closing late? I could have given you that three weeks ago.

John Harcar (13:51.444)
Right. Yeah.

John Harcar (14:10.398)
Right, no, no, 100%.

Roy Meshel (14:10.52)
So I think that’s one of the biggest things. The other thing is people don’t communicate or they don’t believe in less is more in the communication. So they over communicate and that’s an issue for a lot of people. And I’ll give you an example that my litmus test for our customer service is a doctor I do loans for. And I’ve done a lot of loans and he’s given me a lot of referrals and we used to send out communications like John.

John Harcar (14:32.118)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Meshel (14:39.682)
we ordered your appraisal. And so he would call me up and say, why would you tell me that? What am I supposed to do? And I’m like, what do mean? What are you supposed to do? He goes, well, am I appraising the house? I go, no, no, you’re the buyer. Why would you appraise a house? He goes, right, I wouldn’t, right? He goes, so why do I care that you ordered an appraisal? Like if you go to a steak place and you order a steak of medium, you assume the chef is gonna cook the steak because they have a raw steak. You want a medium steak. There’s a process.

John Harcar (15:07.574)
Mm-hmm.

Roy Meshel (15:08.854)
and they present the state to me goes, I do want to know what it appraises for, but I don’t need to know that you’ve ordered an appraisal, I assume you did. And he’s like, so tell me what it appraises for, because I’m curious. it’s that kind of over communication, we do a thing where we send home buyers an infograph that they could look at in 30 seconds and see where their loan is out every week. You know, that’s kind of been right, but a lot of lot of

John Harcar (15:17.131)
Yeah, right.

John Harcar (15:31.282)
Okay, yeah, makes more sense. Quicker.

Roy Meshel (15:37.836)
mortgage people don’t communicate well. And people are nervous. Even people who are really well qualified still are stressed.

John Harcar (15:49.3)
Yeah. Well, because there’s always that fear of the unknown happening that could just, you know, scorch your plans.

Roy Meshel (15:56.824)
for sure.

John Harcar (15:57.141)
What do you contribute to this maybe some of your key before we talk about customer service, like keys to your success?

Roy Meshel (16:07.256)
So, you know, one of the big things is I’m good at communication. And I always hate saying this because I think it comes off arrogant or weird. I grew up in New York, so I don’t have a lot of awkward conversations. So I’m good at delivering bad or good news because it’s not awkward to me. Like I don’t, I’m like, my God, what is John going to say when I tell him his FICO score is this? It is what it is. I didn’t make the score up. And you know, here’s

And as long as you’re kind of bringing some solutions, usually is okay. Like here’s you know, plan A, here’s plan B, here’s plan C. And then the other thing I think I bring by this point in my career is I’ve done over a billion dollars in mortgages. So like, it’s hard for me to see something I haven’t seen, right? I’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen complicated financials. I’ve seen good credit, bad credit, in between credit. I’ve seen, you know.

John Harcar (16:56.566)
You got it.

Roy Meshel (17:04.494)
appraisal issues. I’ve seen all that stuff. So I think confidently when I speak to a buyer or a realtor or a developer or whoever it is, like I probably have the depth of knowledge you need.

John Harcar (17:17.014)
Hmm, OK, awesome. Why is customer service so important and how do you and your company excel at it?

Roy Meshel (17:27.384)
So I’ve always been kind of crazy about customer service. Like it’s always been one of my things. And recently I read the book Unreasonable Hospitality and I think that took it to another level. But I’ve always been the guy who really likes really good customer service. And I’ve always been very appreciative of really good customer service. hotels or restaurants sometimes, you

at a certain price point, you’re getting better customer service. But I’ve always been passionate about it. I think everyone says they give good customer service, but most, at least in the mortgage business, most people say that really don’t. And I think the key to really good customer service in the mortgage business is not just to do what’s expected to, but exceed that. And then you’re gonna get referrals, typically.

If you just do what’s expected, then you’re going to say, well, you know, I did pay him a fee and we closed on time and all that. it’s, you know, it was kind of like, was good. It wasn’t bad. But, you know, I kind of, you know, he didn’t say he was going to suck at the beginning either. So like he did his job.

John Harcar (18:40.296)
You do what you get what you expected. You did what you expected to do. You get what you expected to do. You go over, you get more.

Roy Meshel (18:50.648)
So I think, you know, I think that’s it. If you want to really get a bunch of referrals from people, you got to kind of exceed their expectations in what you’re doing. And I think, you know, an analogy I use, another airline analogy is it’s kind of being a good pilot that if you can look it alone and, know, by this point in my career, I could look and see where there might be some bumps. And I tell you, John, like when we hit Ohio, we’re going to hit turbulence.

It still sucks you’re hitting turbulence, but you’re like, that’s the turbulence that pilot told us about. Like, so you’re prepared and you’re like, you know, we’re to have 20 minutes of turbulence and then we’re going to be out of turbulence and the rest of the flight is going to be smooth. So the other thing is preparing people. If you see a hiccup in their loan or something about it that you’re like, you know, this could be a point that we’re going to have some turbulence. I want you to know that, but like I’m your pilot, I’m going to get you through this.

John Harcar (19:26.888)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Roy Meshel (19:50.008)
but it might require some patience and it might get a little bit stressful.

John Harcar (19:54.646)
And that comes to building that trust in that rapport with that client, right? Is to be able to deliver that type of information in the right way. Well, that, yeah, that’s awesome. Um, if there’s folks that are listening to this, they maybe want to talk with you a little bit more, learn more about, you know, anything of your business or whatnot. How do they get in touch with you? What’s the best way?

Roy Meshel (20:00.14)
Right, yeah, that’s right.

Roy Meshel (20:15.832)
So roll it up, localmortgage.net.

John Harcar (20:19.414)
Okay. Are you on any of the socials that you want to share?

Roy Meshel (20:21.301)
is

I am, I’m under, so it’s under my name. Local Mortgage has Facebook and Instagram, but the one I use most is just Roy MESHEL. So both on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. So do a lot of videos. I’m a big video guy on social.

John Harcar (20:35.606)
Perfect.

John Harcar (20:43.094)
Awesome. there’s a guys, there’s a whole bunch more to learn. You know, if you have any questions, I suggest reaching out. We’ll put all your information down on the show notes so they’ll be able to get in touch with you. And I really appreciate you spending the time. I’m glad once again, glad we were able to get through this one and guys, I you enjoyed the show and we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Roy Meshel (20:51.694)
Okay, perfect.

Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Roy Meshel (21:02.456)
Cheers.