Lead generation architect with 20 years building conversion systems for companies like Zillow and Bankrate. My deep understanding of how lead aggregators and brokers operate comes from engineering their core conversion platforms.

I now use this expertise to help businesses build their own lead generation engines instead of relying on recycled, overpriced leads from brokers. If you're tired of paying for leads that have been sold to multiple competitors, let's talk about creating your direct-to-consumer acquisition strategy.

Every loan officer has the same pitch.

"I provide great service." 
"I communicate well." 
"I close on time."

Cool. So does everyone else.

When I ask LOs what makes them different, 90% give me some version of this. 

They genuinely believe it's their competitive advantage.
It's not. It's the entry fee.

Closing on time isn't a differentiator. 
It's your job. 

Communicating well isn't a selling point. 
It's the bare minimum.

Imagine a restaurant advertising "we cook your food" or a pilot bragging about landing the plane. That's what it sounds like.

Agents have heard this pitch from every LO who ever bought them coffee.

It all blurs together. 
You're not memorable. 
You're background noise.

The LOs winning right now aren't winning because they're better at the basics. 

They're winning because they stopped talking about the basics entirely.

They show up with something else:

Market data agents can't get on their own.
Leads they're willing to share. 
Tools that make the agent's job easier...

Or better yet, make the agent LOOK GOOD. 

They bring value before they ask for anything.

That's the difference between "I provide great service" and actually being someone agents remember.

#mortgage #rebeliQ

Andrew Pawlak

$10B+ Mortgage Loans Funded, 40K+ Success Stories, 20 Years | Mortgage Lead Gen & Digital Marketing Strategist | CEO @ rebel iQ

Someone fills out a mortgage form online.

They think they're requesting information. 
Maybe a rate quote. 
Maybe just seeing what they qualify for.

Here's what actually happens.

That form gets sold to four, six, sometimes ten different companies. 

Within 90 seconds, their phone explodes. 
Texts. Emails. Voicemails from strangers. 
Eight people racing to see who can talk first.

The consumer didn't consent to that.

They consented to "get more information." 
Not "become a target in a speed-to-dial competition."

And then we complain when they ghost us. 
When they seem "unresponsive."

They're not unresponsive. 
They're defensive.

We trained them to be.

Every ignored call is rational behavior from someone who got hunted the last time they filled out a form.

You're not struggling with bad leads. 
You're struggling with an industry that treats consent like a loophole.

The fix isn't a faster dialer.

It's being the only one who calls.

When someone responds to your ad, your content, your name—they didn't fill out a form that got sold eight ways.

They reached out to you.

That's a different conversation. Different energy. Different close rate.

You stop competing on speed when you're the only one in the race.

#mortgage #leadgeneration #rebeliQ

The first lender to call wins 35-50% of the time.

Not the best rate. 
Not the lowest fees. 
Not the best service.

Just whoever dialed fastest.

There's a whole industry built around this. 
Speed to lead. 
Call within 30 seconds. 
Auto-dialers. 
24/7 call centers.

And honestly? There's something to it.

The average response time across industries is 44 hours.

Almost two full days of silence after someone raises their hand and says "I need help."

If you're the lender who shows up in 60 seconds while everyone else takes two days, that IS better service. 

You're there when they need you. You didn't leave them hanging.

But here's where it breaks down.

When a borrower fills out a form on a lead aggregator, they don't get one fast call. 

They get thrown into a meat grinder.

47 calls in 24 hours. 
Texts from numbers they don't recognize. 
Voicemails stacking up. 
Emails flooding in.

By hour three, they stop answering their phone entirely.

They don't compare rates. 
They don't shop around. 
They pick whoever got through first just to make it stop.

That's exhaustion, not an informed decision. 

The best LOs are losing deals to the fastest LOs.

Every single day.

And the borrower ends up overpaying thousands because "first" beat "better."

#mortgage #mortgageindustry #leadgeneration #rebeliQ

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The LOs complaining loudest about lead quality are usually the same ones who stop following up after two calls.

#mortgage #mortgageleads #rebeliQ

Three questions most loan officers can't answer about their own business:

1. Without looking at your CRM, where are your next three deals coming from?

2. If your top referral source stopped sending you business tomorrow, how long until you replace that income?

3. What do you offer agents that the other 16 loan officers in their phone don't?

If you hesitated on any of those, you already know the problem.

Most LOs don't have a business. 
They have a series of things that hopefully keep happening.

That's not a business model. That's wishful thinking.

Here's the thing though - whatever question you couldn't answer? 
That's exactly what you need to build.

Can't answer # 1? You need pipeline visibility. 
Can't answer # 2? You need diversified lead sources. 
Can't answer # 3? You need a value proposition beyond "great service."

The questions aren't just a gut check. They're a roadmap.

#mortgage #rebeliQ

Call your Realtors every Monday, they say. 

Take them out for coffee, they say. 

Bring them rate sheets and open house flyers with your face on them, they say.

But has anyone stopped to ask what agents actually want?

What's going to make them answer your call? 

What's going to get them excited about the next opportunity to work together? 

Bottom line: what's in it for them?

Because those Monday check-in calls that go nowhere...
The coffee meetings that feel like going through the motions...
Your mug on their open house flyers...

It all feels productive.

But how many deals did it actually get you in the last 12 months?

If you can't answer that immediately, maybe the playbook needs to change.

Agents don't need another LO checking in. 
They need someone who brings something they don't already have.

#mortgage #realestate #rebeliQ

Chase agents. 
Run ads. 
Become a content creator. 
Work your past clients.

All of it works. 
All of it fails.

Depends on whether you stick with it long enough to see anything grow.

Too many LOs don't.

They try agents for six months. Get frustrated. Switch to ads. 
Run ads for three months. No ROI yet. Switch to content. 
Post for two months. Feel stupid. Go back to agents.

You didn't try four strategies. You quit four times.

Pick a hard. 
Any hard. 
They all work.

None of them work fast.
None of them work if you keep starting over.

So don't dip your toe.

Burn the boats.

#mortgage #mindset #rebeliQ

Blaming the market is easier than admitting you didn't build anything when you had the chance.

#mortgage #mortgagemarketing #rebeliQ

Found this tool last week: Wispr Flow.

It transcribes my voice in real time. 

I don't type anymore. 
I just talk and words appear. 
Punctuation. Formatting. All of it.

Emails. 
Slack messages. 
LinkedIn posts. 
Claude Code. 

All just me talking to (sometimes yelling at) my computer like a lunatic.

I've never been more productive.
I've also never felt dumber.

Every week there's a new tool that makes me faster. 
Every week I forget how to do something I used to do manually.

At this rate I'll be a genius who can't tie his own shoes by 2027.

Anyway. Highly recommend.

#ai #productivity #rebeliQ

You spend 10 hours on a lead before you know if they're real.

Chasing docs. 
Leaving voicemails. 
Following up on a credit score they guessed. 
Income they estimated. 
A timeline they made up.

By the time you find out the truth, you've already lost the time.

Multiply that by 30 leads a month. 
Most of them going nowhere. 
That's 200+ hours burned on maybes.

The math on lead gen isn't just cost per lead. 
It's time per lead. 
And most LOs are underwater on both.

The fix isn't working harder. 
It's knowing what's real before you invest the hours.

If you're spending a week chasing someone before you find out they're a ghost, your system is broken.

Been thinking a lot about what the opposite of this looks like.

#mortgage #rebeliQ

"Thank you sir, can I please have another?"

Agent sends you a referral.

You pull credit. It's a disaster.
The agent didn't know the exact score. 
But they knew something was off. 

This client had been "working on their finances" for a year. 
Already talked to two other lenders. 
Couldn't get approved anywhere.

Agent didn't want to be the one to deliver bad news again. 
So they sent them to you.

You spent an hour explaining why it won't work right now. 
You gave them a plan. 
You were the bad guy so the agent didn't have to be.

Then you said thank you for the referral.

Next month, same thing. 
Another cleanup job. 
Another client nobody else wanted to deal with.

Meanwhile the ready-to-go buyer? Went to someone else.

Agents learn how to treat you based on what you accept.

Keep saying thank you for the scraps and that's all you'll ever get.

#mortgage #realestate #rebeliQ

Most LOs spend more time looking for new leads than working the ones they already paid for.

#mortgage #mortgageleads #rebeliQ

"My leads suck."

You're right.
You designed it that way.

Fewer fields = more leads. 
More fields = better leads.

Everyone wants both. Nobody gets both.

Every field you remove increases volume and decreases quality. 
Every field you add filters out the curious and keeps the serious.

Most people optimize for volume and then complain about lead quality.
It's a choice.

#mortgage #leadgeneration #rebeliQ

Your agent partners are losing referrals they don't even know about.

Someone hears their name at a party. 
Gets handed their card. 
Sees their sign in a yard.

That person goes home and Googles them.

What happens next determines whether that referral converts or disappears.

Most agents have never experienced this from the outside. 
They assume they're covered.

They're not.

Their brokerage page shows up first - contact form goes to the company, not them. 

Their Realtor.com profile has zero reviews and looks abandoned. 

Their Zillow links to a generic page with no way to reach them directly. 

Their Instagram has 2,000 followers but no clear way to actually make contact.

A motivated referral - someone who was TOLD to call this agent - has to work to find them.

Most don't bother. They click on whoever's easier to reach.

The agent never knows. They just think the referral didn't pan out.

Here's where it gets interesting for you.

Spend 10 minutes. 
Google your target agent like a referral would. 
Click through the first five results. 
Document what you find.

Then bring it to them. 
But not like you're pointing out problems. 
Like you're genuinely curious.

"Hey, I was doing some research on your business because I wanted to understand it better. I Googled your name like a referral would and found something interesting. Can I show you what I ran into?"

You're not criticizing. You're revealing something they've never seen.

"I pretended to be someone who heard your name and wanted to reach out. Here's what I experienced."

Walk them through it. 
The dead ends. 
The extra clicks. 
The platforms where they're invisible.

Then ask: "Has anyone ever shown you this before?"
They'll say no. Because nobody has.

That's not a coffee meeting. 
It's a different conversation entirely.

You're not asking for referrals. 
You're showing them where their referrals are getting lost.

That's how you become someone they actually want to talk to.

#mortgage #realestate #rebeliQ

Claude Code -- Opus 4.5 -- both in CC and in the browser, is the most incredible toolset I have ever used... and it's not even close. 

Thank you Anthropic team.

#ai #coding #rebeliQ

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