Episode #42
Living in the Controllables
What do you do on a day when the ten-year is at its highest since 2003 and you still have to walk into the office and lead a team? Mandi is joined by Meinoh Kim of loanDepot, who she first interviewed a year ago for the Origination Boost book. They recorded this one on a genuinely bad rate day and they say so in the first two minutes instead of pretending otherwise, which is most of why the conversation is worth an hour. Meinoh's answer is to live in the controllables. His routine hasn't changed with the market, but his product mix has. He picked up renovation loans because homes are sitting longer and need work, then called his referral partners and asked which listings had been on the market a while and which buyers were priced just under what they wanted. He did the same with reverse and with down payment assistance, after years of running mostly VA. The method is that simple and he says there's no version where it works without starting before you feel ready. They spend real time on why a thin pipeline makes you worse at the job, not just poorer. Put all your attention on one loan and you'll drive your ops team, your agent, and yourself crazy without changing what happens to it. On AI, Meinoh's point is that clients used to find loan officers on Google and now they ask an AI tool, so showing up there is the new top-of-mind problem. He uses it for templates and for knowing a client's dog's name before he calls, not for answering on his behalf. He borrows a line he credits to Anthony Shea: HI, human intelligence, is the part that doesn't get automated.
