Scaling Title Companies Without Losing Culture | Ep 114

In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Choumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Title Agents Podcast. I am your host, Mo Choumil, CEO of Alltech National Title.

Today, I have a pleasure of having my good friend, Mike Rubin, with Shattuck National Holdings. Welcome, Mike. Thanks, Mo. Glad to be here. Well, as we always start the show, I would love to hear your story and how you got into the title industry.

I mean, I'm sure everyone says this. It's, you know, nobody went to college to be in the title business. And, you know, for me, I'm very similar to that. I fell in at the age of 17. I was smoking cigarettes underage at a Denny's with friends at 2 in the morning, being a juvenile delinquent.

The eggs over my hammy? Yeah, no, more like a $2 coffee that you milk for 6 hours and just sit there and smoke a pack of cigarettes. I quit smoking 2 and a half decades ago, so this was a long time ago, but it was, it, my best friend who actually now is an agency manager for First American, but my best friend at the time and still today, his uncle owned a small title insurance agency outside of Chicago, Illinois, and they lost like 2 of their 4 employees. It was a very small agency and they lost 2 and they just needed human bodies. So he said, hey, I'm going to go to work tomorrow for my uncle.

He said, if I have a friend who wants a job, they're paying $8 an hour. And I thought, that's better than working at Domino's. So I'll go ahead and do that. So started from literally the ground up, entering orders. Had no idea what we did for probably a month or 2 before the owner's wife came in on a Saturday and actually taught me what it is we were doing.

For a while there, I thought that we actually People paid us their mortgages because I looked at these things. We have all these mortgages and they're, and I'm holding them. They're signed and I'm bringing them to the county and recording them, bringing them back. So clearly people must pay their mortgages to us because I have these things. So young and silly.

But that's kind of where everyone starts is this lack of knowledge of what it is we do because title's not a commonly thought about industry in the normal world. You know, people buy it 6, 7, 8 times in their life generally, if they're lucky and moving in and outta houses. But I went away to college, worked at title agencies in college while I was going to get my high school history teacher degree. So I would've been, had I gone that route, I would've been a heck of a high school history teacher, I think. I'm sure you would.

So that said, I loved title insurance and I just kept coming back to it. The owner of that small title insurance industry passed away young. I went back and effectively co-ran that agency for many years, ended up being an owner of it many years later, but always really enjoyed this business, learning new things. I remember being an 18-year-old kid getting my notary stamp and all of a sudden I was a closer. I was closing people's loans after school my senior year of high school.

I would park in the parking lot and I'd have files just open in the backseat of my car, checks, people's Social Security numbers out. It was a different time. And I'd go close a couple loans after school and then I'd drop the packages off and I'd pick up the next day's. Fast forward 30 years, here I am, and it's been an amazing career. It's starting off literally at a company where you got to learn everything because we all did everything.

And to this day, I can sit down at any desk in any of our title insurance agencies. Give me an hour, I'll pick it up and I could do any job. I may not be the best at it, but I could do it. What state was that in, by the way? That was in Illinois.

That was Glen Ellyn, Illinois, western suburbs of Chicago. That's awesome. Now you're in Texas currently, correct? Yeah. So I live in North Dallas now.

I've been here for about 3 years and I love it. Texas is a great place. That's where our home base is with Shattuck National Holdings and Capital Title and our various brands. So I'm at our home office now and it's a great place to live, a great place for the kids to go to school. It's just a wonderful environment.

That's awesome. I love Texas and especially the DFW area for sure. Yep. What is your role at Shattuck National Holdings? So I'm the president of Shattuck National Holdings and Shattuck National Holdings, it sounds big.

Really, my payroll is like 8 people. It's myself, a CFO, it's a handful of accountants and our escrow support director and admin for Qualia and a couple other platforms. So that's really what our company is. And then underneath that is a lot of other smaller, it's a lot of title agencies. In different markets that report up to our holding structure.

Now we do own a centralized tech group that does all of our technology and IT and whatnot. That kind of is a third pillar in that. But it's really our holding structure is really thin and it's just about M&A and then helping to support the agencies that we acquire. And really that's what it is, is about support. It's not us guiding them.

It's about us supporting their growth and supporting their missions locally. And that is completely separate from Capital Title, or is there? Yeah. So our groups in the— so the Shattuck Family Trust, which is really kind of what owns BNY Mellon. I had Bill Shattuck last year, so.

I know. Yeah, it was a great episode. Bill is such a unique guy. And honestly, I work with Bill every single day. I'm sitting 20 feet from him.

He's right over there. And Bill came to me in 2019, which is where this journey really started with Shattuck National Holdings, and said, I've got this great agency, Capital Title in Texas. We're the largest independent title agency in the country. And today it's 120 offices, 900+ people. It is a behemoth in Texas, and we're in every major market here.

Big operation in the Valley, big operation in East Texas. So it's a great company, but Bill had grown it to the point where he had an underwriter, First National Title, which is a top 10 underwriter nationally, and Capital Title. And he said, I think we've maxed out roughly what we can do in Texas. We keep growing, we keep adding offices, but it's not the same chase for him personally. It's like he needed a new thing to do, a new thing to conquer.

A new thing to win at. Bill is all about winning. He likes the fight. He likes beating Fidelity and First American and the bigs and whatnot. And I enjoy the competition of it as well.

So we definitely see eye to eye on those kinds of things. But he said, I've got to do something. I've got to get out of Texas. I've got to expand. And he said, I don't know how to do that though.

Is it expanding Capital Title into all these markets, plopping down offices in Phoenix or Las Vegas or so on and so forth? And I said, Bill, the best way I know to do this is through acquisition, but your success rate will be higher if you don't make it Capital Title. If you don't change the brands, if you don't change the overriding philosophy, what makes Capital Title special in Texas? is that it's built this amazing brand. It's got this amazing culture, and it really, it becomes its own attractor.

People opt into Capital Title. You don't have to convince anybody really anymore. People opt in. So there are all these companies out in these marketplaces that have this opt-in culture already. What we need to do is acquire large, well-developed, Sustainable title organizations in major metro markets and allow them to keep doing what they're doing, that keep doing what they do, but take away the HR, take away the IT, all the stuff that's hard, that really isn't about running a title agency, and then put more growth funds into them to go out and recruit more, to go out and acquire smaller title agencies underneath them and really develop the brand there as opposed to transition them to us.

So I described it to Bill and I said, it's not really the same thing, but think of it like a NASCAR. If you think of Jeff Gordon's car from years ago, the rainbow car, it was Tide. It was all these things on the outside. Sure, Jeff Gordon drove it, but it was all of these other things that made up the car, all those other logos. And so that's what we'll be.

We'll be This car. And yeah, we may have an overriding philosophy of the kinds of companies, the kinds of logos that are on the outside of it, but really it's egoless. We are just, we are these other brands. These companies aren't Shattuck National Holdings. They're not owned by the Shattucks.

Shattuck doesn't really have anything to do with it. They are themselves and we are the fuel in their engines. That's really it. As someone focused on expanding title operations across multiple markets. What trends are you seeing that excites you most about the future of the industry?

Oh God, the technology moving into our space right now is amazing. I know you've seen it. I know you employ a lot of it. It's really stunning to see what is— as somebody who's literally done every role, as somebody who's searched, as somebody who has typed commitments and closed loans and typed CDs and back in the old days, HUD-1 settlement statements, and has done all these things. To see AI stepping in and doing lots of those manual tasks that I used to type out, watching artificial intelligence do that is really, I'll tell you what, it messes with my mind.

It's fascinating. It really is fascinating and helping to develop some of those tools with some great partners and watching our— I was just in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which we've got a brand Santa Fe Title there, great brand. And I was sitting down with our production manager and talking about an AI tool that we employed there and just talking about the time savings that she's getting. And how she gets now to focus on the things that really matter as opposed to typing another exception for a first mortgage that everyone knows is there. It just happens now and she just gets to look and see, yep, that's right.

And then move on to the next thing as opposed to spend 5 or 10 minutes on every file doing that. It's allowing professionals to truly be the professionals that they are. And I'm so excited about that trend. I'm so excited to spend more efficient time working on the things that our title professionals really need to focus on. So we're investing heavily in it.

We're moving that direction. And I really think it is more automated intelligence is the future of our industry, at least over the mid-range. Absolutely. So what separates organizations that are poised sustainable growth from those that struggle to scale based on your experience? Technological backbone, of course.

I mean, first and foremost, you've got to have something that is scalable. So it's tough to do that now with an out-of-the-box platform. It is becoming difficult to do that. Now, some of the boxes are getting far better. I mean, you see the The Q brand in our industry that, you know, that we employ in some of our markets, they're really upping the game with their products.

The S brand, the big S brand is, you know, there's a lot of third-party plugins for that. We use that in a lot of markets. So we haven't centralized our operating system, but having, getting the most out of your operating systems, getting the most out of technology makes it easier to leverage. So having that, but then not forgetting to invest in growth. It's growth is about investment.

It's about investing and believing in your brand and having a dedicated budget to getting better and getting bigger. That's something that we do pretty darn well. If you think about it, the big drug manufacturers, they're always investing in development. Eli Lilly doesn't need to do that. Yeah, exactly.

They don't need to do that anymore. They're making money hand over fist and they'll make money hand over fist for the next 20 years. But then what will they sell 20 years from now when all the other brands have come out with new drugs and all? They understand that they're always investing in that R&D growth. They're investing a large part of, you know, 3, 4, 5% of their budget is in things that they haven't come up yet.

We come up with yet that they're hoping to sell 20 years from now. You always have to invest in growth, and that is something that we preach. That is something that we do. That is our mission, is to invest in growth. So that's really what we find works really well.

Awesome. As organizations grow through acquisitions, culture can become a challenge. How to preserve what makes a company successful While bringing in, bringing them into a larger organization. At the end of the day, culture is really what matters. I mean, it is, you know, I can put in really efficient systems.

I can recruit, I can do all kinds of things in a marketplace. But if you lose the culture that makes your company special, or you bring people in that don't fit that culture, it can really be damaging to a company. I've turned down more deals on the M&A side based on culture than I have on finances. And it's not to say these are bad culture companies. A lot of 'em have great cultures.

They just don't fit what our company's culture is, or they don't fit what I think works best long-term in the marketplace they're in. So I find with our local brands, with, we've got, Wonderful companies. I don't come in and say, you need to be this. I don't stick the Capital Title's values and ideals in Landmark Arizona. I mean, that's not really, that's not what we do.

First of all, it says Texas on it, so it really wouldn't work in Arizona. But that's not our model. What makes Landmark Arizona, for example, special Is the leadership there, the culture that is there, the amazing escrow officers, title people that we have there. They have a much different culture than Capital Title, but it is still about winning. It's still about driving.

It's still about success. It's still something that it really is an attractor to people. That's what we're looking to to allow to exist and thrive within our brands is that local culture. That is, if you're part of our companies, you, that culture is around winning, it's around success, it's around recruiting, it's around growth. But then all that fits in around that, that's all local.

That's all you, that's all your brand is how your people come together. And celebrate those successes and drive those successes. I'd stay the heck out of that. I'm just here to support it. So recruiting and retaining talent is always a challenge for any industry, not title.

What have you learned about building strong teams across multiple markets? Bill, I'll never forget, he came to me. Right after we started Shattuck National Holdings and had our first brands that we had acquired, and we were talking about growth, and he beat something into my head that is critically important. He just said, it was funny, he's like, you know, I could write a book on everything I've done wrong. And I could probably on a napkin Write down the things I've done right.

He's so humble like that. But he said, what's on that napkin is really good. So he said, on that napkin, we recruit escrow officers with established portable books of business. That's one of those lines on that napkin. And he beat that into me, beat that into me.

And I'll tell you what, we focus on business that we can move, people that fit our culture. Yes, that first and foremost, you have to fit our culture in whatever local brand that is. You have to be hardworking. You have to be certain. You have to be a servant leader.

But after those kinds of things, do you have business? Can you make us better? And so that's what those brands focus on. And that comes, that's really the driving focus from Bill is that, and then we look to grow escrow officers from the escrow assistant ranks. I mean, that's, we just in Santa Fe just hired a group that I'm super excited coming over with a, what somebody will be a junior escrow officer now and we'll learn and hopefully expand there.

Just, you've got to find those those future stars in amongst the groups to try and grow organically and try and mentor up the system. So I'm so excited about that as well. Awesome. So when, let's get back to M&A. When evaluating a title company for acquisition, what characteristics stand out beyond revenue and market share?

I'll be honest, I don't focus on market share. Unless a company is theoretically number one in market share, then I'm more worried about anything else. It's how much room is there to grow when you're number one? Yeah. So I worry more about that.

But beyond revenue, beyond market share, I want to know what makes that company special. I want to know what makes that company tick. And when you get an owner that lights up about their team, just beans about their team, you know, they've got something special. You know, I joke about what a title company is. A title company is really just a bunch of old computers and desks.

Like there's nothing to a title company. There's no really, you're buying that. So really it's about the people, it's about the relationships, it's about the culture. That's all you're buying. So I like to know what makes the company tick.

Tell me about your managers. Tell me about your escrow officers. Tell me about your salespeople. Tell me about your title department. Who's leading that?

Tell me the backstories of those people. Tell me about their families. Tell me about what's going on. And when I've got an owner that can engage with me in that conversation for an hour, And tell me about all those people and tell me about the people that make that company special. You know, you've got something special when you've got the owner who comes in and says, you know, I'm not really part of the operation much.

I don't really, you know, Susie handles all of it and that's it. And that's the one where I really have a little bit of trouble. Not to say it's not a great company, not to say it doesn't have a great culture. And sometimes you, you know, you meet a lot of different owners. There are truly investor owners and there are truly operational owners.

I tend to mesh more with the operational owners, the people that can describe the company, describe the opportunity. I don't buy a lot from private equity companies and things like that because I like to get into the weeds and I like to talk about the weeds because the weeds are really what makes the company. So that's where I focus. That's what I love. And if I can get through a few-hour dinner and have a good conversation with an owner, I feel real great about that company.

So it's the opposite of a private equity model. Private equity would prefer owners not involved, Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, for us, the, really the risk is in having an owner who's not engaged, having an owner that isn't, that is there but not there, having a culture that diminishes after acquisition. We want a culture to thrive even more after acquisition.

I used to work for a very large company up in Wisconsin, my very title, great people. Craig Haskins, great friend of mine, is the CEO. Him and I worked together for a couple of years, and this is where I learned this philosophy. Everybody on day one of an acquisition, everybody drove into work that day, and a lot of times day one of an acquisition, there's This many people that know the acquisition's happening, and then there's this many people underneath that have no clue. They're just driving into work, having their normal day, and then they walk in and they're told that their company is under new ownership, maybe a different name, maybe a different operating system.

That day's not going to be a good day for anybody. It's a hard day. But everyone came into work that day with some expectation of job security. They were a great employee. They were struggling, but they came in with some expectation of the security of their job.

They're not going to trust me day one. I'm an outside guy. They don't, it's, and I'm not here to convince them. I'm not here to sell you on me either. My job is to say, is really to create an environment where that first day is About building them back up to whatever same expectation they have had of job security coming in, that they walk out the door saying, that was a hell of a day, but you know, it'll be fine.

That's the end goal of that whole day. And that's the philosophy for me in buying companies and making people comfortable, or at least as comfortable as they were with the process. And it's a hard thing. It's always a hard pick. Absolutely.

So what are some of the biggest misconceptions agency owners have about selling their business or preparing for future exit? I have so many owners who come to me and assume the answer that I'm looking for is that they're no longer a part of the ongoing operation, so therefore they can step away and everything will be fine. And all I'm thinking the whole time is that, do they really know the operation still that they're selling me? If they backed away, are they really engaged enough to know what's happening in that org? Because what's happening in that org at that minute is what we're buying.

That is what we're looking at. It's not about your past performance. It's not about last year, the year before, the year before that at some 3-year average of EBITDA. It's not, That's past results. That's fine.

But you need, the owner needs to spend more time ensuring that their forward represents that past as well still. And if they're not engaged, if they're not with the operation, if they are, if they're stepping out as they're selling, I'm not saying you can't retire shortly after selling. It's not what it's about, but you need to be in it at that moment. You need to be thinking about it, engaged. If you're not, I have questions about its long-term success rate.

So that's what I'm looking for. And I think that's a misconception a lot of owners have that companies like us are looking to replace them or looking to hear that the company can survive without them. And it's like, no, that's part of the discussion. Don't get me wrong, but I want to know that you're engaged in it now. Well, you're a strategic acquirer.

You're not a financial acquirer. Exactly. And just to our audience, there are different buyers. Absolutely. Like, Mike is looking for people who want to stay, kind of keep building a brand and keep developing a brand.

Private equity, all they care about is the business. They don't care who's— Exactly. You betcha. So different. We don't mean to scare you away, but just a different type of buyers.

Yeah. And I've got a lot of friends who are private equity buyers. You know, we all talk. A lot of us are engaged in the same deals and we know we are, but we can only wink about it. Because they're, they're offerings and, and with brokers and whatnot.

So of course you can't talk about it. Yeah. But so I know it a lot of times I'm competing for acquisitions with those kinds of companies. And, but we're looking for different things. So we often don't really compete for the same things because they kind of rule themselves one way or another.

Either it's a real good acquisition target for private equity, it's a real good acquisition target for me. Sometimes a real good acquisition target for a direct of an underwriter, which is kind of the third shoot off of that. And I like the competition of all of that. And I like to think that, listen, our agent, our business breeds great companies. It breeds great people.

There are, that's really what keeps me in this business. I know it's, you couldn't run a successful podcast like this if you didn't like the people in the business. Amen. Amen. I know that you have the same feelings on this.

We've got wonderful folks in this industry. And if you build a good or great company, there's a buyer out there for you. There's somebody who wants that company and wants to carry on whatever the legacy of that company is. It's just there's different types. And what may be a perfect fit for me is probably not a perfect fit for private equity or an underwriter or things like that.

So we've all got our niche. Absolutely. So for agency owners who are looking to sell today, what are the most important things they should be doing now to build a stronger more valuable business down the road. That aren't looking to sell today or that are? They're not looking to sell right now, but— Oh, they're not looking to sell right now.

What advice would you give them? Uh, number one is, is— Prepare them to have a conversation with you in 2 years. In 2 years. 2 years. Okay.

With you or somebody else. With, with me, with private equity, with somebody else, uh, with somebody local. There's all kinds of buyers, but they're thinking about it. Maybe it's in the midterm, but not in the short range. Um, Get really comfortable with the numbers of your company.

Get really comfortable, understand what they are, understand where every dollar you spend is going. I'm not saying that you need to cut off spending. It's really important to keep spending. It's really important to keep running your brand. But understand where every dollar is going and why it's going.

That's really important because that'll come up in conversations later. It'll help you make better decisions over this timeline. And to understand if you want to invest in whatever way you want to invest in. That's key. And any buyer will want that, your comfort with the numbers, period.

Number 2, for me, keep investing in growth. Don't lose sight of growth investments. Yeah. Whoever's, yeah, whoever is buying your company or wants to talk about buying your company down the road will understand when you say, You know, it's a new office. Here's why we did it.

We we we acquired we we recruited over this book of business. It said it was going to be about a million and a half. It's only at a million right now, but you can see the growth arc, and and trust me, that'll get there. I love hearing that. That's my favorite part of the conversation because now you're telling me is that I've got a win coming, and now all I have to do is track it back and see that win coming.

So don't. Don't lose sight of that. Even if you want to sell in 2 years and maybe it's a 3-year ramp time, give it a shot. If it works now and you think it would work, and if you would take that risk, I'm going to want to take that risk as a buyer. So things like that are really important to keep doing.

And number 3, culture, culture, culture. Keep it strong. Keep it strong. Focus intently on culture because that's the culture that you're selling. That's the company.

The company is the culture. Can you dig a little deeper into culture? Like the, some, like, especially like the agency owners or managers that are early, like the early stages of running their companies, they may not understand the impact or how important culture is. Can you maybe a couple minutes dig in to kind of explain what that means to you? You know, think about— It sounds so abstract, but it's so powerful.

It is abstract, but I think about family. You know, the, for me, I've got my immediate family, my wife, my kids. There's a culture in our house and it's not thought about. It exists. It just exists.

Respect. We're not trying. Exactly. Respect, learning, trying hard, cleaning the table after dinner. Somebody picks up and moves onto the dishes and gets, it's, there's a way about about ourselves and to create our positive home environment.

Well, move that out a step because it's not, you don't need to create that home environment at work. Back it out a step. What's the larger family culture that you have when you get together for a family party, for the mass birthday party once a month or once every 2 months, and you all sit around with your aunts and your uncles and your Your cousins and so on and so forth. Many generations of family come together. I come from a big Italian family in Chicago, so I've got that.

So that's where I go back to, to think about culture. I'll be honest, a lot of those people outside of, back in the day before social media existed, I only really saw those people once a month. But we came together and the culture just fit. We all fit together and we fell into the same rhythms, the same conversations, picked up our conversations exactly where we were. We didn't, there was nothing faked.

There was no effort in it. That's what I think about culture and culture. It's created organically and it's created organically around 2 or 3 key points. For us, it was family and it was birthdays and it was all that stuff. So I like to distill down culture because a lot of people will, or you see some of the Fortune 500 companies with their culture statements and their culture, they've got 50 things that they care about.

And I'm like, Listen, I respect you guys. You're amazing. You've built amazing companies. I'm happy to buy your stock. It's like, you don't want to work there.

It's like, focus on 2 or 3 things. What do we want to do? What kind of people do we want to work with and how do we want to get there? It's, do we want to be number one in our market? Do we want to be a hard-charging, bull of a company that just, you're going to feel us one way or the other because either you're going to get run over or you're going to run away.

Do you want to be that company? Do you want to be the steward locally where you are? Listen, we are preserving homeownership. We are curing the public record. We're doing all these things that are good for local.

What do you want to accomplish when you close your eyes as an owner and a leader of a company? How do you want the world to perceive you? And then finding people that fit that perception of where you want to go, and then finding ways to really make that culture thrive where everybody eats it, breathes it, because that's who they are. Because you've literally recruited off of that culture, not off of the business they have, not off of, you know, how they may affect your top line or your bottom line. You've recruited around the culture.

And if you have that strong culture, you will win. You will win over time. Absolutely. For us, the 2 main things, innovation and growth. So if you're not willing to innovate and adapt or grow, you're not going to last long.

There you go. 2 things. Yeah. Very important. Yeah, exactly.

Let's switch to innovation as we're talking about innovation. And industry evolution. AI and automation, as we discussed earlier, are changing nearly every part of the real estate transaction. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for title companies to leverage technology without losing the personal relationship that drives this business? And as you know, Bill Shattuck is all about relationships.

He's like, we're in the business of relationships. So how do we maintain that? So I like to think about— so strip away AI for a second, strip away all that, which is, you know, we'll get right back to it. But The entire being of a title agency is really to support that one little relationship that exists between an escrow officer, a salesperson, a title person, whoever has that relationship, and a customer, a realtor, a banker, a broker, somebody that is directing business. So we're all tied to supporting that relationship.

Not really even the product. Not, not, it's that relationship that we support. So when you talk about, if you have your company set up to support a relationship, technology on the backend really doesn't matter. It's really just making that relationship a little stronger, a little faster, a little more efficient. A tool.

Yeah, it's exactly, it is just a tool. The, so when now we get an order And in some markets, and we send it to an AI search and it comes back with an AI search and exam and it comes back in 30 minutes as opposed to 3 days because we used to have somebody have to go out to the courthouse and all that. If you're doing it in support of the relationship and you're not thinking about, I'm not thinking about the bottom line there, I'm not thinking about the top line there. I'm really just trying to get a commitment out faster. And more efficient with hope, with honestly less errors, less human errors in it.

And trust me, I made a lot of errors when I was an examiner. So, and so I was not the world's best examiner. I wasn't a bad one, but there are way better ones that will work for us. As long as you're not viewing those tools as human replacements. That's where I'm at right now.

I'm not thinking about those tools as replacements for the people that support the relationship. Those are just tools for the people that support those relationships to use. It's more of an enhancement, probably the proper word. Yes, absolutely. Enhance those roles.

Yes. And having those people spend more time on the things that actually matter to support those relationships, on the hard questions, You know, AI's not going to solve an access issue to a property. AI's not going to solve really hard questions about the back child support payments, things that really hit home, things that are really— Excuse me, where's my earnest deposit? Exactly. No, no, that's not AI, but AI's going to do a good job of pointing those things out and saying, professional, please look here.

That's where we need your amazing brain. That's where we need you to shine. And that's where— that's exactly right. I'm so excited about that. I'm so excited about the lift there, and we're already seeing it, and it is amazing.

Uh, if you could change one thing about the title industry to improve the customer's experience or strengthen our profession, what would it be? That's a hard thing. It really is. Uh, I think about our industry all the time, and, um, obviously, And I was, I was the 31st person, I think, to get the, the NTP designation through ALTA. Um, and why I think designations are important is because— Well, what, what is that for people that might not know?

Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a National Title Professional designation. Thank you very much. Um, and it's something that ALTA came up with, oh, about, ooh, it was 2013, I think, when it rolled out.

So we're approaching 15 years of work on this program. And what it comes from is a realization that title insurance and title insurance employees, we are more of a trade than a college-educated profession like an attorney or a doctor or things like that. There are people that fall into this industry, wonderful people all the time, that that didn't go to college to do their role. We learn on the job. And I would describe it as a, you know, if I'm a plumber and I've got a plumber in the family, so if I'm a plumber, you start off as an apprentice.

You spend a good amount of time learning the profession on the ground, being next to a journeyman plumber, learning how to fit pipes, learning which pipes you need to use for which jobs. And then they, they, it all comes together. And after a period of years, you are now a journeyman plumber. You can, any residential house you pass on the street, that person can walk in and fix anything. They can do it from the ground up and they can plumb that house if they needed to.

You know, they're still not probably doing a high-rise downtown. Now that you need a master plumber for somebody who can see the world a little beyond it, who can understand how things fit together over time and space in a way that that journeyman Maybe doesn't quite get. So 20 years later, real focus, real career expansion. All of a sudden you are a master plumber and you can do any job and you've spent your whole career learning it from the ground up. That's amazing.

But if you wanted to go be an electrician, you say, I've been working Nexus Electrician my whole life. They're fantastic people. I think I want a new opportunity. I want to go work with electricity instead of water. Guess what you're going to be tomorrow?

You're going to be an apprentice electrician because you don't know anything about it. You don't know anything about it. It's like if I wanted to go be a mortgage person tomorrow, I've worked with mortgage people my entire career for 30 years. I've worked alongside mortgage people. I don't know a darn thing about what they do for a living, honestly.

Like I said, like I couldn't walk in and sit down at a desk and process a mortgage file. I couldn't. I could process a title file. Can't process a mortgage file. If I wanted to switch, I'm a master title person after 30 years, I guess.

Congratulations, me. That's what the NTP program was meant to point out. It was meant to point out years of service in the industry, connection to the industry that we don't have a co— that we don't have a college career program that's going to educate you. It's meant to designate people and say that, yes, I am connected to it. I am a national title professional.

I can help you. In these various ways. And yes, I uphold these various standards and ideals. And so that is something that I love and I was excited to be. Now there's hundreds and hundreds of members of this program.

I wish that we would do that. And you've also got all these states now with state programs. So I'm an Illinois title professional. Yeah. As long as well as that in Texas, there's a Texas title professional program.

I'm sure there are where you're at as well. In the DMV, I'm sure that there's programs with the state associations there. And by the way, to get the NTP designation, if your state has a designation locally, you have to have that as well. So it's further professionalizing our industry, raising the standards by which we care for our customers, by which we do our jobs, and then proclaiming it, saying that I am a professional. I deserve to be respected in this transaction as the person who's going to protect this property, who's going to protect this settlement.

That I maybe didn't go to school for this, but I have the proper experience to do this deal for you and to make sure that it goes well and to transfer this property from John Smith to Susie Smith, and that everyone is protected and safe. I want us to further professionalize ourselves, and I think that's going to be even more important as technology comes in and we say, who are the people sitting behind those computers really fixing the hard problems? Yeah. And it's taking pride in what you do and not being afraid to say no or let realtors or whatever, whoever bully you into a transaction, it's like, it's really, it's not about one transaction, it's about your career. It's bigger than that.

Exactly. Yes, sir. If you, uh, if you could sit down with every independent title agent owner or professional for 5 minutes, what's the one piece of advice you would want them to hear from you? Every owner for 5 minutes, one piece of advice. Um, like the, uh, off the napkin, Bill Shatner style.

Uh, yeah, I was just saying, we're working off the napkin, which I love. You know, for me, it's real simple. Be a part of your community. Be a respected member of your community. Be a part of it.

You service your community. Your employees are part of the community. Get up from behind the computer. It'll be fine. It'll be fine without you.

Get up from behind the computer. Go out into your community, check out the Rotary Club, check out the local environment, sponsor a float in the parade, be a part of your community. Know that your community cares about you or that you care about your community because the community will care about you back. And that's the one thing I think that translates whether you are a 3-person title company sitting on the county square, In surrounded by cornfields in Illinois, which is where I grew up, and you're the only title company there because the county can only support one. Or if you are a large title company in a major metro market, the community doesn't really change and the community supports people that support the community.

So that's where I would start. That's where I'd end. And by the way, it's a great thing for culture. To care about your fellow man. Giving back.

Yes. That, that you never go wrong there. Awesome. What's the biggest opportunity for title agents over the next 5 years? I mean, obviously at this point I'd be remiss if I didn't just say it was technological advancements.

I mean, it will allow you to Expand your company without adding as much operational staff. I mean, it's not about reducing staff for us. And that's what I found pretty quickly. Because you go in, it's like, what is this thing going to do? And you start playing with it.

You start thinking about it. It's like, is this where all of a sudden we lay off 100 people because we don't need it? And then the computer system's doing everything. And it's like, no, no, it's not actually that. But it now allows me to scale more.

It now allows me to say, I can add more escrow officers to this mix. I can invest more in growth now because I have got all this new capacity. I've got all this time where I've got real professional people looking at the real problems as opposed to typing taxes, like things like that that are real, you know, generally simple for us to do, but they take time. Now I've got capacity. Now I can invest in growth.

That is the, that I think is the real opportunity for people that ingest this technology. They become more efficient. Efficiency will lead to growth here in a way that probably will be detrimental to those who do not, who do not Bring that same scalability to their operations. And that's the thing that if I had another 5 minutes with those people, I would talk about scalability of operations and technology. But first, go be involved in the community.

What's one trend in the industry that does not get enough attention? Or blind spot? Blind spot. I mean, So I'm worried about the overarching belief in some of the lender community and the value of a loan policy. We do a lot on the back end in the transaction that isn't seen.

I think that we've got a blind spot around the value that we provide Regardless of the policy, the loan policy is, it's a staple that allows a mortgage to be sold and know that there is protection on the back end of that. But all the other escrow functions that we do to close that refinance, or that I worry, are those going to be done? Are they checking unpaid child support liens? Are they checking all these things that we do? That help our communities when you step up and you're just closing a loan that may or may not be protected with a loan policy, with a big shop somewhere that's not connected to the community.

I feel like that's a blind spot that our industry is trying to focus on. They really are trying to focus on that other value, but I don't know that we've defined it well enough. And I think that we as an industry need to define all the things that we do in a transaction to protect not just the first lien position of a lender, but to protect families, protect communities, protect the public record. I don't think that we've come up with the language to illuminate that blind spot yet. We're coming to the end of the show, so I always ask a couple questions.

The first one is, do you have a favorite quote? Yeah. So yes, I mean, so my favorite quote, I'm going to go way back and I think about this when I've had a hard day or when I've traveled a lot. And it's from the movie Ben-Hur. So it's, you're kept alive to serve the ship, row well and live.

Hey, I love it. Keep going. There are people that depend on you. Keep going. I'm kept alive to serve the ship, row well and live.

How about a favorite book? So I'll be honest, my favorite book goes back to when I was 10 years old. So it was the first real novel I read, and I now keep it. It is the first novel that all 3 of my children, or 2, my third one hasn't read it yet because he's not quite there yet. Have read too.

And it's Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Yeah, I love that one. It's easy reading. It's not a hard read. It's an easy read.

I've probably read it 15 times in my life. I love Ernest Hemingway as an author. He's my favorite author as well. But for me, being that solitary person and the thought process of You are in the inner monologue of a really complex person who's outwardly simple, but amazingly complex internally. I love that book.

All my kids are growing up to love that book, and my third one will do it soon enough. That's awesome. Do you have any last words for our audience? Be curious. We're headed into a curious phase here.

Look at everything. Look at technology and see where it can take you without fear or prejudice against it. If you're curious, you're going to see more and your people will be well served by it. That's awesome. That was tons and tons of nuggets, and I cannot wait to re-listen to this podcast and read the transcripts.

And you give a lot of wisdom. Hopefully our audience got at least one or 2 nuggets to write on a napkin they can use in their business. And I cannot thank you, and I truly appreciate you and appreciate your friendship. Thanks, Mo. Get out.

Thank you, Mike. And to our audience, thank you again for listening to another episode of the Title Agents Podcast. Please don't forget to like us and give us a 5-star and all that fun stuff. Thank you so much, and until next time. In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Choumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation.

With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey.