The Modern Loan Origination System: LendingPad

LendingPad is a modern, cloud-based loan origination system that streamlines the entire mortgage lending process with built-in automation, real-time collaboration, and compliance tools. Designed for brokers, lenders, and financial institutions, it enables faster decisions, scalable operations, and efficient workflows from application to closing.

In this episode, we speak with Kelli Himebaugh, Executive Vice President of Sales and Strategy at LendingPad. We explore the complexities of the mortgage origination process and how LendingPad’s platform addresses these challenges. Key topics include the importance of a seamless loan origination system (LOS), the adaptability of LendingPad across different business models, and the integration of automation and AI to streamline processes. The conversation highlights the platform’s ability to reduce errors, enhance collaboration, and support various stakeholders in the mortgage industry. Kelli emphasizes the significance of digital tools in enhancing human interactions and the importance of choosing the right partners for integration.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the SourceForge podcast. I'm your host, Bo Hamilton, senior editor and multimedia producer here at SourceForge, the world's most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions. Now, today, uh in this episode, we'll be talking about mortgage origination software and the challenge of keeping a pretty complex process moving when so many different people, so many different systems and handoffs are involved. If you've ever applied for a mortgage, you probably know just how many steps there are in the process. You have to get pre-approved. There's the loan application process itself, the document collection stage, the processing and the underwriting review period. The list goes on and on. It's pretty nerve-wracking for uh like a homeowner, for example, and for a mortgage lender that has to make sure every step of the process is done correctly and efficiently, I would say. Um and there are a lot of places where delays and things like duplicate work and miscommunication can start to like creep in and complicate the process, um, all of which can be kept to a minimum uh with the right tools and with the right platform. And so that's where uh today's guest comes in, um, talking more about the mortgage lending process is Kelly Heimbaugh, uh, executive vice president of sales and strategy at LendingPad. Kelly, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us here.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Hi, Bo. Thanks for having me. We're thanks for having LendingPad today. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Of course. Yeah, I'm excited to get into it and hear more about LendingPad and some of the problems and just the complex processes that um you know the platform works to solve. You know, a lot of people, I think outside of the mortgage world, they don't really realize how many moving you know pieces there are involved in getting a loan. Um, you know, like I mentioned in the intro, all the from the application phase to closing, um, and just all the communication that's required for each phase of the operation. You know, a solution for all that, all these moving parts, is something like a loan origination system or LOS for short. Um it's it's a software platform that aims to automate and manage all the various pieces of the mortgage or loan process. Um, I understand there are a number of LOS platforms in the market, each with their own set of tools and features. And I think that would be a good place to start the conversation, would be just to help us maybe understand a bit more about your company and your platform. For for people who might be hearing about lending pad for the first time, how do you usually explain what it is and what it helps mortgage teams do?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Absolutely. Of course, always depends on who's asking, right? But for the professionals in our industry, they're looking for technology to run their business. They're really looking for a platform that's going to be able to all of those things that you describe, every piece of the mortgage process, is looking at one seamless way to be able to connect that together. Um, but the other thing you talked about the complexity for the borrower as well. We sometimes we tend to not think about that in our selection process. And when you think about somebody buying a house, they're not just buying a house around the corner from the mortgage lender today and trying to stop in and put the loan together. They could be trying to buy a house 2,000 miles away from where they currently live today and put that process together. So that's really what the technology is designed to do to make it feel like it's all happening right in front of you, regardless of where the transaction's gonna finish.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Totally. I see the value there. And and yeah, thinking about things from the the lender's perspective and the borrower is important. I always remember like when I applied for a mortgage, it was uh, you know, it was stressful and I was constantly looking for the updates um and from each stage of the of the process. So yeah, I know one of the big themes in in mortgage tech, I would say, seems to be fragmentation. I know it's a big theme in a lot of different industries, really, but um, with the mortgage and the lending process, you have borrowers, you have brokers, lenders, processors, you have the underwriters, um, and then you also have outdoor, like outside service providers all kind of working on the same file at different points, I would say. So it gets pretty complicated fast, right? Um I'm curious, how does the lending pad platform help bring all those pieces together, all those parties together in one central place?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Absolutely. So it's about bringing because you really have different types of providers. You have service providers and then you have the technology partner piece of it. When you think about the service providers in the transaction, you've got to include the real estate agent in that and the title company and um all of those different pieces in addition to the technology. But all of them rely on the loan origination system to collect all of the pieces of that when the credit report runs and when the flood report comes back, and all of that data being able to come back into things like the underwriting process to figure out where there could be potential snags in the loan or to find the right investor that's gonna be at the end of that to either buy that loan or be the servicing on that, on that platform. So the loan origination system is bringing technology partners together to bring in data that can be analyzed and processed, but it's also including those outside service uh providers as well. You talk about the borrower being on edge, those real estate agents, it's highly competitive for them as well. They're they're accounting on that sale as well. So there's just a lot of both service and technology that has to be tied together in the platform.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Gotcha. Okay. So um that's good to know. There's a lot of different data sources that have to be kind of compiled and um parties and communication parties to work with. And um, I also know that every, you know, every mortgage business, I feel like tends to be a little bit uh structured differently, I would say. Like some operate um, you know, maybe as as like specific like brokers, shops, some are lenders, uh, there are maybe a hybrid um structure structures as well. Like you see a range of also businesses um strict like include structures including LLCs and S-corps and sole proprietorships, and um, there's a lot of complexity there. So I'm curious how flexible is LendingPad across all those different business models and structures? Are you able to like cater to all these different, you know, operations and and types?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Absolutely. I mean, that's the that's the one great thing about lending pad. It is truly a platform to where they're where they're and we've watched a lot of our customers grow over time where they may have started as a mortgage broker. And then as they built that business, they want to move into the lending space. So they eventually get a warehouse line and become a lender that may be reliant on a lender that's going to buy their loan, but then eventually, you know, graduate to be a fully delegated lender. So LendingPad has really positioned every piece of that process so we can easily graduate a lender, a broker to uh a medium-sized lender to even a very large-scale lender or for a financial institution down the road. So the whole platform has been built structured to support all of those things. And really what that basically means, it's just at every different level, it's just that lender is taking on a different level of responsibility. So the software has to be able to adapt to that without you having to throw out the software and then go on another technology search to replace that because that's one of the costliest things that can impact a mortgage banking operation.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Gotcha. Okay. Is there is there one particular um structure or type that of uh business that you cater to? Or is it, like you were saying, just really adaptable for any sort of structure?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

It's really adaptable for anything, but I think one of the places where Lending Cat has really excelled is that we supported for so many years we first started, really catered, and so many users on our platform from the broker side. But where we also know that sort of our sweet spot from a relationship building standpoint really falls in that mid small to mid-tier size lender. We really love those really close relationships, especially of those lenders we formed those early partnerships with, and we've been able to grow with them and we've been able to be that partner. But that's really in our search for really good partners for LendingPad because the technology is built so that it can be really affordable and adapted for that specific market.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Now, I know one thing that stood out to me um when researching LendingPad was just how uh customizable it is, right? Which, you know, it sounds important um in any industry really, which uh where teams all have their own processes and compliance requirements, but especially true with this um industry. Um I'm curious, like what are some of the ways customers can shape the platform around how they already work?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yeah, and I think um there's a big, you mentioned the word customizable. And I think what really sets LendingPad apart is because the word customizable can sometimes mean just long cycles of having things specifically built for a way a company needs to do that. And then they're bearing that individual cost away from a technology standpoint that we design lending pad is that it's highly configurable so that lenders in that small to mid-tier space can, with you know, with onboarding or implementation help and guidance, but then also learning the software. If they need to make changes as their business grows, whether they're they're graduating up or their volumes increase, our administration side of lending pad, we've literally built lending pad. It's been built by mortgage people for mortgage operation people to be able to manage that. And so it's really just a very high level of configuration and control management that the average mortgage administrator with a mortgage background can come in and administer for that company. They don't have to rely on writing long projects, going through that with their provider, and then having to take on pretty expensive, exorbitant professional services fees. So that is a major difference in LendingPad from our competitors.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yeah, that's neat to hear. I imagine it's the platform has um really, you know, continued to grow and adopt a number of tools and customizations just over the years, over the you know, decade plus that it's it's been operating. Um, I think that's always fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Well, you know, most people all want the same thing. Sometimes it's just really, you know, getting it down to that specific issue or problem or remedy and then really be able to set it so it can be controlled and configured by everybody.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Gotcha. Yeah. Uh what are some of the the automations um that are built into the platform? Because I I know like, you know, a lot of times we hear about automations and uh artificial intelligence and all these fun you know keywords um that are you know going viral. And um there's a lot of different meanings behind them, I suppose. But I guess in this in this context, like a lot of the automations can help kind of eliminate some of the duplicate entries and you know, the the things that slip through the cracks, so to speak, of of um, you know, miscommunications and just that kind of delay the whole mortgage process. So I'm curious, like how does, you know, what kind of tools or features are you using to help reduce sort of the the manual work, the the the things that kind of maybe slow down and and complicate and lead to various errors and whatnot?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah, exactly. Reducing errors is the the big thing. I from the standpoint, first of all, we talk about service integration things like being able to run credit and automatically have that data come back and populate with a lot of service providers where we're seeing some of the biggest lift and some of the newer what we call verification services today, instead of having to go out and have somebody supply you with their bank statements or tax returns or pay stubs. Now we have we can automatically integrate the verification services. So the bar very securely during their process can, for instance, say, yes, I would like to import my bank account information. And they can show them how they can securely log in directly into their bank and have that then transferred into lending pad. And then from there, with that automatically being populated, that can then trigger automated tasks in that lender's workflow to a processor or back to the loan officer or in the next stage of the process to just automate that and keep that moving rather than someone having to physically go and collect those documents and then upload them and read them. That all happens automatically today.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Wow, yes. That that's uh that's one of those big problems of of the um, you know, just just moving documents from one person to another, from one, you know, side of the business to another. Um we've alluded to that, talked about that um uh thus far, but I'm I want to uh continue to extrapolate on on that um complicated process. You know, I know it can lead to you know a lot of unintended consequences when you have people touching the same loan at once. You know, I kind of think of the game of like telephone or something where you you start with a you know the the message gets kind of lost once you once it passes from one person to another. Um but I'm yeah, I I'd like to know like how does LendingPad make collaboration, let's say, easier when you have all these multiple stakeholders, you know, all working on the on the same loan, the same file.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Well, and that's one really important part of LendingPad being, you know, modern web-based technology, but but but really built on the latest technology stacks. And we're constantly doing things behind the scenes on our platform to enhance our our performance and and how we can support a lot of these new tools that we can implement really quickly into LendingPad. Um, but it's you know, it's just really all about um about being able to make those things happen very, very quickly.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Okay. Yeah. So you you touched there on um uh the my next segue to my next question, which was kind of relates back to the fragmentation issue where you have a bunch of different, you know, different tools all being used.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, and I and just just to kind of come back around to your question there, you know, a lot of the older technologies are out there today, they're not making those improvements. They have it makes, even though you're using technology, it makes it very, very linear. Like this step has to be done. Some of the technologies that it has to get to a phase and clear the phase before it can go to the next one. With LendingPad, we've taken those barriers out of that. We actually can allow two people to work in the same loan at the same time. You can certainly have business rules and stops that if something's recognized in a loan, that it can stop that piece. But what it doesn't prevent is maybe the underwriting maybe working on part of the decision, but it doesn't mean that somebody else can't go out and upload different documents or work through some other parts of that process. You know, if you go back to the days of, you know, just in a regular mortgage department where everybody was in the office every day, you had people talking across their cubicles and people, different people that being able to do different files at the same time. That is kind of where kind of technology did hamper things, but that with good, new, good modern web-based tech, and it lets people from multiple locations be able to do that at the same time. So that's really important. The other piece to it is, you know, human factors still impact things. We still get snowstorms, we still get all kinds of things that happen. People go on vacation, but they're really needed on something. So you can have, you know, people come in from anywhere, or regardless, it's kind of something turns the table in the way the day-to-day business works, somebody else can still work on that file.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's a must, really, with today's uh, you know, hybrid workplaces. You have to have these tools capable of working with all those conditions and remote work. Yeah, I just lost power uh last week and like, you know, as a result, didn't have internet and I live in like a dead zone. So it was just a whole, you know, uh process. I had to go, you know, think about working extra remote at a coffee shop. And yeah, it's it unintended, unexpected um things like that happen.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Well, I mean, that's the other thing too. Borrowers want the same thing, right? They want to be able to, whatever you talked about of all you want us to be able to get updates, but what if that update comes and it you're needed for something, something else, being able to be web-based or mobile enabled, a lot of these things that you can actually, you know, do right from your phone. You can you sign documents today, you can take pictures of documents and upload them right into the system, have things recognized so it can keep that process moving.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

So let's talk about that. So I I know many of the tools that are in this industry or features, let's say, have been kind of consolidated, maybe built into your platform. They're like natively supported, let's say. But I imagine there's a whole ecosystem of third-party tools that you maybe can't incorporate natively or or have to integrate with, like uh credit providers, you know, you have pricing engines, you have document services and all the different compliance platforms. Um, how important are integrations in this space? And then how does LendingPad connect with the tools out there to just make for a more competitive, you know, all-in-one LOS platform?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

You know, it's it's really, really evolving. Um, first of all, you have to really be really good at picking those right, those right providers and those good partners. That's that's one of the most important things because you know, you're talking about, especially with credit providers or any other technology service, you're talking about two sets of technology constantly trying to always work together. And each side is either making enhancements or things happen. So you need to have really, really good partners, not just from how the integrations are put together, but how that relation continues to go. So if one side makes an update, the other side knows, and you're able to get ahead of some of those what we would call bugs or problems that would tend to occur with those partners. So one is just really, really good tried and true partners, but the technology is moving so fast. I mean, we used to build each integration one at a time. Now everything is very highly API driven. And then, of course, you mentioned at the top, it's the buzzword, everything moving toward the AI tools. And it is moving incredibly fast. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Um, what what are some of the um, I don't know, latest developments you you hear with the the on the AI front and in terms of how it affects your business?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

First of all, I always try to tackle those conversations. Are we really talking about automation? Are we really talking about workflow? Because a lot of things that automated, it's it's assumed maybe it's going to be through AI, but really everything through our partners that we talk to every day is that the AI tools that they're incorporating today behind the scenes on the development side, again, even three months or six months, we're having to go back and relook at it. Either is because there's something newer or better, or or it's just constantly improving. And then when you put those tools in place, you realize there's there's process improvement internally in other places that we have to really now quickly and have to adapt to to be able to make those work. So it is a fast moving train on the AI front. And where we are today, two years from now, the word is we all won't be using the same things we started with today.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

So I can imagine. Yeah, I know it's one of my favorite questions to ask is like, what's the forward-looking vision of like what can we expect in the next, you know, five years? But I have to always uh trim down the timeline to like six months to a year because things are moving so quickly. So what when a company you know invests in a platform uh like LendingPad, you know, they start to roll it out, um, where where do you start to see the payoff first? Like where do you usually see the some of the earliest and most uh noticeable improvements, would you say?

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Um, you know, when you of course, you know, anytime you're gonna make uh your make big main database of record platform change, you know, it's a it's a big upheaval for, especially for the customer. So giant change. You you don't always have everybody on board on that side, right? It takes, it can take some time. Um, but for us, once LendingPad, we go through the process and we implement it and those loans first start coming in, where I think the department that realizes the efficiencies most in our system, the earliest, is the closing department, because all of the things that we've talked about up front, the integrated services, how workflow can be better managed, business rules, pipeline management, all of that. But when it gets to the closer's desk, if all the all the boxes are green or they're all check marked, really what they have to do is just re-look at that loan, review those, whatever's come back to them, and just really look at any exceptions that might have to be looked at. You know, the whole idea behind this is, you know, that borrower wants their keys. They've got that moving band on a Friday night, you know, backed up next to the title company, waiting to sign documents, right? So um you just want to make sure. So what we've signed, we've seen that the the happy, earliest, happiest adopters of lending pet usually are right in the closing department in that first month they can start to close loans in the system.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Gotcha. Okay, so it's the closing department that really um really you know serves to benefit and stand out from from the first sort of uh initiation um adoption phase. Um okay, so let's let's talk about the um when you first uh adopt LendingPad, let's say in your your business, um, what what does like the the getting started process usually look like in in terms of like real world usage? Um and and then along with that, how how long does it take to realistically, you know, for a team to get up and running with LendingPad? Is there like a timeline that you usually follow?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about you know where LendingPad really specializes in that small to mid-tier lending space. What's good about that is because we're really tried and true with that. But when someone is coming off of another platform, the the most important thing to remember and what they don't want to have happen and what can happen is they don't want to move from where they are today onto the new platform and just get back to as good as they were. The whole idea is for them to get better. So for LennyPad, it's really right in the beginning is to really understand what their current workflows are. Our whole process through the sales process is determined. And you know, pain points and, you know, really important the the hits that they really want to make and really stay focused on that, but understand what they're doing today, how we can adapt that. There's also the things, what do you want to keep about like what you what you like today about what you were doing? How do we still keep that and incorporate it? Because it might be a big part of their business model. So we understand that. We start an onboarding process that again, tried and true, step by step, help our customers with a minimum of three resources on every onboarding, which includes the onboarding manager, their trainer, their project manager, and really work through. And typically what we see and what we do well, our average implementation is usually running about 120 days.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

So that's that's uh that's not too not too bad at all. I mean, there's a lot of uh moving parts and um uh it sounds like it's interesting. It sounds like you have to really kind of um, you know, understand obviously their business and help that help them, your client, understand their business and the pain points and the issues that that can be kind of um improved upon with this platform, I would say. Um and then also at the same time, you you need to make sure they're on board and they're committed to you know working with you too, so that they don't revert back to that basic um their their old workflow.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

They just, yeah, they just don't get back to the same place. And you and we have to we have to stay with them to to help push that. You know, a big part of it is making sure you're coming back six months later, a year later. Kind of we we sort of call it the tune up to to make sure the other thing that impacts that we have to stay close to to make sure that we're successful, especially in that first year or two, is staff turnover. That can be one on the customer side, it can be one of the most detrimental things. So we with account manager, we really want to stay on top of our customers to know if if their staff is turnover, maybe somebody was key that we had in a training process that that we need to make sure that you know we're backfilling and helping that customer to get them across in case they run into some of those challenges.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

That's such a big uh important part to to mention too, is that that turnover. And like when someone's working on a project, um, you know, you don't really realize, you don't know a lot of the the details of of what they were doing. Um you just start to find out when they're gone. They're no longer in that position. You start to find out things um, you know, you have to, you really sets you back a lot a lot because they're they're no longer in uh working there and and able to to help tackle the the problem. And a lot of times they haven't documented their um their progress as effectively as possible. So um that makes sense. And um I also I was just saying just gonna add to the learning curve. You want to make sure that, you know, uh clients and the the people you work with don't feel maybe overwhelmed and there's like a uh a natural sort of like adoption guidelines that you can follow so that it's not too complicated.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Well, and that's where project management really comes in is from our side, it's it, and that's the reason we really worked hard to phase this very specifically and making sure that homework gets in between. But I guess what I would caveat this is to say that the most important part of this process is the testing process. Um, you you're you know, you can start, you're setting up the software, you create all the workflows, you do everything, but everything hinges on with a loan origination system implementation on the testing process. And people are testing as a talent all on its own. And so you're taking companies, you kind of have to teach them how to test and how to run those files. So it's really important for a vendor like LendingPad to really know the mortgage industry because all of these companies have all different loan products that they sell or some nuances with that, especially if they have proprietary lending. So for us, we have to basically train people how to do that testing. But we want the clients have to do the testing on their own because they're the ones that are gonna be running those files after the fact. So I couldn't stress more that the most important part of this is the testing process.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Now, does the the testing process, does that involve um uh like having uh require an IT department or a large like in-house specialist team? Um, I'm curious like if if lending pad is fairly approachable, I guess, for smaller teams that might not have some of these resources.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah, so I, you know, I mentioned earlier LendingPad is uh is a platform that was built by mortgage people for mortgage people to manage. And so everyone on our staff, anyone that comes on and support and onboarding um and in our account management, everybody has more previous mortgage knowledge and experience. And some of them have sat in all of the desks that are sat inside some of these mortgage departments. So um that's really, really going to be a key factor. But with lending pad, I talked about being it being very highly configurable. The whole idea is so that you don't have to have an IT or a developer on staff to make those changes or configuration. And we really work with those, the mortgage departments to build each of those loan programs based on how they do business. So we want the mortgage company, when they run those test files, we want to do everything that right up to that moment so they can start running those through as if they were running live production.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

That's great. That's great to hear. I think that's gonna be um, you know, very valuable for for prospective, you know, clients, um, customers listening to this podcast and um learning more about lending pad. And I'm curious, like what you mentioned the um, you know, when you first roll out the platform, um the closing uh phase is like is really kind of what stands out and like really is is um one of the biggest improvements um that's first noticed amongst teams. Um I'm curious what kind of feedback do you usually hear most often when users um you know start to really integrate lending pad and and um start to have it kind of automate and make their their day-to-day work much easier?

SPEAKER_01 28:02

You know, I think one of the things is just one is having a happy UI to work in every day. So coming from some of the legacy platforms. So when I log in every day, um it knows who I am. It's it my dashboard that I'm seeing when I log in is based on my role. I have the ability to have to wear two hats, then I can change my role really easily. And that it each one of those roles might come into my dashboards telling me what I need to do. My tasking is right there. If I have any uh files that might be coming up with some compliance deadlines on them that we need to take a look at, it's all right there in front of me, but it's all easy to read. I can drill right down into it. I don't have to go run a report or search that out to be able to do that. And then it and it's really just me having the intuitiveness of being able to do it. I think the other most important thing is that, oh, wait, new platform, I need help. And so in LendingPad every day, we have a live chat feature anywhere I am in the screen. If I have a question, like, uh, I forgot where to go run credit. You literally can log in. It's not a bot. You can within a couple of minutes have somebody write online and say, hey, no problem. Here's here's where you go to the knowledge base, or you want us to guide you through that. We have someone that can immediately answer every single user's question. They don't have to run that back through a help desk in their own company to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

That's awesome. Yeah, that's so that's so important. And and not, you know, not incorporating um some of these uh AI uh chatbots to the point where it's at nauseum, where you have no human in the loop and it's impossible to talk to a real person and actually just solve your problem. And then just you know, the importance of having a good UI, I think is just like it's under uh it's under recognized in a lot of ways nowadays. I mean, having my background is is reviewing, you know, back in the day I'd review smartphones and like the biggest thing I would and applications and the biggest thing I would you know criticize or critique is just the UI and how friendly and user intuitive it is. Uh, because at the end of the day, if you don't have a a welcoming interface, you're not gonna want to actually use the features built into it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 30:10

And sometimes it can just be a personal challenge. So LeningPad for every single profile. Well, you can, as an individual, I can go in and I can set the theme of the UI. I can change the color of my buttons, I can change it from a light mode to a dark mode. If I'm colorblind, I can change my settings for that. So that is a really important piece. And we talk about the happy UI, it's just not because I'm happy to be there, but it actually enables me to make make my work easier. And it's not as hard on a long day on my eyes and and you know, and brain fog at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

That's that's great to hear as super valuable with you know, to hear some of the real world um examples and and kind of how companies are are are seeing um improvements with the platform. I also think you've done a great job just explaining, you know, what some of the problems are um and how just a platform like LendingPad is able to find solutions for them. Um I want to take a step back and and kind of look at the big picture. I I'd like to say. Um every industry, you know, they have they have things that people on the outside tend to oversimplify or maybe misunderstand. Um, and when it comes to mortgage technology or the mortgage process more broadly, um I'm curious, like what is one maybe misconception you wish more people understood?

SPEAKER_01 31:27

You know, I think that um, you know, we talk about UI, but I think that the most important is digital doesn't mean no human conversation. Digital, you know, should be the positive where it helps with the human conversation. And, you know, it's if we have these, we have good technology with the tools, and the borrower does have those questions, then the answers can be right there at the fingertips for a loan officer or processor or somebody, you know, you talk about, you know, your home buying experience. The worst thing is to call and ask a question and they say, Oh, wait, I got to go find the answer, and then I'll call you back. So digital, when I say the misconception is people worry about technology taking the human component out of it, but really the digital and the technology is really helping the human conversation because we we all are incredibly busy. And so I think that's part of probably a misconception. Of course, misconceptions change all the time, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

So no, that's a good answer. That's a good answer. I was, you know, I think there's there's a lot of um, you know, shifting uh public perception on some of these AI and automation tools, and um, they all get kind of grouped into the all-encompassing term AI. And it's like, well, there's there's some not so great components of of AI for sure. Um, but there's a lot of like, let's say, AI automations or digital, you know, technological components that are generally making a really big difference that um just need to be explained further, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Well, and there's nothing wrong with the dip creating the having technology create the happy conversation. You want if something has been very, very quick and resolved or gives an answer back to a borrower, the best thing is to be able to be that human interaction of the loan officer or even real estate agent to be able to pick up the phone call and say, Hey, did you see that? This has happened. This got your this came back faster than we thought. So it's the positive experience.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Yeah, and it's a the positive experience and just the constant reminder that, like, you know, hey, there's gonna be, you know, still it at the end of the day, it's the people that make all these these things possible and and they're still gonna be in the loop. And a lot of times you gotta remind everybody involved that um, you know, there's still there's still the human connection uh which is so important and often kind of lost or seemingly lost in today's world. But um, okay, great answer. And um I I wanna uh you know give you the chance to maybe look back um on your career, give you a little uh, you know, just your experience looking back at your your um your own career and your in sales specifically, or you know, you can take it whichever direction you want. But uh I'm curious if there's been uh you know, what's one of the toughest decisions you had to make in uh let's say the sales role, or maybe, you know, again, you can if if there's a particular tough decision um just that comes to mind in your career in general, I'm curious, like what did what did you take away from it? And if there's anything that comes to mind.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

You know, the the toughest decision I think for me was to get to where I could be in a good place with saying no. And that's really important, whether it's um, you know, it's prioritize, it's prioritization of projects or anything, but most importantly, especially with with lenders as customers and managing sales teams, it's when to say, no, I don't think this is a good fit. The hardest thing to do, we engage, we, you know, we want to close every deal. But, you know, what is the piece and key that makes a software company like ours survive is to make sure that the customers that we bring in, that they're really, really good fits. You know, salespeople want to close and they want to make a commission, but they're also the ones that are most impacted that if that sale was misconstrued or it's not a good customer, then it impacts not only the employees for tough implementations, but it also impacts the track of all the other clients that we have, whether the ones that are already onboarded or the waiting in line to come on for an implementation. So across my journey is really knowing to say this customer may not be a good fit. Um, there it's some of that or just some of the decisions that we make, even in terms of partners. Um, you may have colleagues that have left somewhere you knew and now they're at a new technology. And hey, you know me, so we should just integrate. But it is really, it's a vetting process to make sure that the business is going to run well for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Absolutely. That's a great, that's a great note and great message, is that it really is important, you know. I've especially um, I mean, you wanna you wanna default to pleasing everybody and you wanna like, you know, partner with everybody as much as possible. But in some some partnerships, some uh collaborations just don't make sense and you have to, you know, weed out the ones that were that you think will work and the ones that don't, and have those tough conversations and say no, and you have to say no. Well, I'm gonna underscore that and and take that away with me um after this conversation. So I appreciate that. That's something I need to work on is being able to say no um instead of just saying yes to everything and um overwhelming my schedule and you know um kind of losing focus on the on the on the prize, you know. But that's a that's a good message. And I I I wanna see, I'm curious if that maybe um was something you learned just through experience, or if you have a particular resource that um, you know, you you got some of those insights from. Is there maybe a a book or a podcast or anything that comes to mind where um you know you kind of help shape your leadership style?

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Um, yes. And I want to take, I'm gonna go on my way back machine. I'm not gonna tell you how many decades, but let's call it more than two. Um, but I think um is from a leadership standpoint, because I've been involved in just a lot of mid-size companies, technology um in the housing industry. And you have to wear a lot of hats, and you have, you know, you've got your not just your customers that need things, but all your employees, all your teams, how do you get there? And it's really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day. And so I think it was given to me back in my 20s. It was a book called The EMyth, uh, written by Michael Gerber. And really the takeaway from uh that book is if you're in a leadership role, is how you focus on working on the business every day rather than working in the business. And we get caught up in the business all the time, but I have to take a step back at the end of every day or the end of every week and take a step back and say, okay, I how do I how do I shift off to get help with those things, but stay focused on working on the business overall?

SPEAKER_02 37:57

I love that. Okay, the emyth by Michael Gerber. I'll have to add that to my list and check it out. And thank you so much for just all the insights there with everything you've shared with us up until this point. And um, I I want to give you the chance to uh tell listeners, you know, uh uh uh give them a resource, give them something, uh place where they can go get in contact with you and your team and learn more about the lending pad platform. Is there a particular link that you'd like to shout out?

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Well, absolutely, obviously. Um, and we have some really exciting news coming in the next few weeks at lendingpad.com. So that would obviously to our website, but please go to LinkedIn and direct to our LinkedIn page um with LendingPad. Um, we, you know, be a follower of LendingPad, watch our social media posts, myself and our team. We travel a ton, so we're gonna be a little bit of everywhere uh this year. And so if you want to find us, just look to see. We're always announcing where we're gonna be at conferences and our team. And we would love to meet with anybody. So just reach out and let us know.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Perfect. Okay, lendingpad.com. Follow Kelly and the team over on LinkedIn and stay tuned for those upcoming announcements. Uh, very, very exciting. All right. Well, thank you so much, Kelly, for again all the insights and the recommendations you share with us. I really appreciate it. And uh, I hope we can have you back one of these days. I think it'd be great to find out.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Oh, I would love that. Maybe when all the new announcements come, maybe later toward the end of the year. We'll look forward into 2027. It's going to be on us before we know it.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

I know it really is right around the corner. All right. Well, that's a that's a good idea. Um, thank you all for listening to the SourceForge podcast. I'm your host, Bo Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one.