SPEAKER_04 0:00

Who is our, you know, our customer type? And it really just it ranges, you know. Most of our folks are kind of just like mid-level. We don't have anyone that really can't afford, you know, or has a lot of financial struggles because they wouldn't get approved for any loan anyways, unfortunately. You know, so we're kind of like right in the middle, to be quite honest. You know, but then there's the other side of it too, where you kind of heard me mention like the financial, like personal trainer. And like that's the people that I like to, you know, help. I think they get the most out of it. You know, it's like if you hire a personal trainer, right, you end up like walking away with not only with the feel good of like the exercise, but you probably learn something. You probably learned something as to why you're doing this exercise or you know, why we're doing this a certain way or anything like that. So you come away with the knowledge too. So those are kind of the people I like the best. Like those are my favorites because they walk away being able to like turn around to like a friend or family member and go, hey, guess what? I figured out and that's always cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:03

Welcome to the Studio 321 podcast, powered by Brightway, the Steve Trout agency. We're sitting down with real estate pros, insurance nerds, mortgage masterminds, and local legends who are making moves on the Space Coast. Hosted by the best insurance crew in the 321. At Studio 321, it's all about community, real connections, and sharing a few laughs along the way. Strap in, let's launch into today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Today we're joined by Jason Tarmina, Senior Director of Mortgage and Insurance at Auto PayPlus. Jason has spent nearly a decade in the mortgage and financial service industry, helping homeowners better understand how their mortgage really works. His focus in on mortgage acceleration and payment structure strategies that can potentially remove years of payments, reduce long-term interest costs without refinancing. That's pretty interesting. Jason is also very active in the Space Coast real estate community, having served as the 2025 business partner co-chair for the Space Coast Association of Realtors. Jason, welcome to the studio 321.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

How's it going? How are you, man? Good, good, finally got you in here. I know, I know. Totally my fault.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

It usually is.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Hard guy to pen down, man.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Ah, yeah. So um work keeps me busy. Yeah. Between um, you know, like you said, the mortgage stuff that we do at AutoPay Plus, and then we also just launched a small insurance agency inside of our existing uh member network. So um I head up both those verticals. So you know it keeps me busy between the two. Yeah. And uh they're both kind of like in a pilot phase. So we're still kind of getting our footing um on both, mortgage longer than insurance. Insurance only launched, um probably in Q3 of last year. Yeah. Okay. And then uh mortgages a little bit longer than that, but still, you know, they're still in the business, man.

unknown 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:01

Yeah. It's been uh it's been interesting.

SPEAKER_05 3:03

Yeah, definitely has. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 3:06

Um it's a the the insurance industry, man, it's it's different. It's a different beast than people really think. It is.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

And you know, for us, the position that we're in, we're, you know, our goal is to always add value uh financially to our members. And you know, for us, we we call them members versus like just like clients because we like to really, you know, think of like BJs, Costco, things like that, things that you're like a member of. Um because we really want you to look to us first for anything that comes to financial. So it's not that we're setting out to be like the best insurance industry out there or ever gonna like, you know, self-insure or do anything, you know, like that. But anything that can add value to our members, we're gonna explore that as an option.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

That's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_05 3:52

Love it. So before we dive too deep into everything, uh tell us a little bit about your background, man. What how did you go from medical industry to mortgage in the financial world?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

What did you do in the medical industry?

SPEAKER_05 4:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:05

So um I went uh back to school when I was, I guess in my late 20s, uh, got certified as a PTA, which is a physical therapist assistant, and went to work for a small um I knew I wanted to do orthopedics. I knew I wanted to do like coming from a sports background, wrestling, I knew I wanted to do something in like sports orthopedics versus like inpatient care, things like that. So um hooked up with a a company called Ability Rehab out of Orlando, uh, picked up two great mentors there. Uh one was John Garina, the other one was Paul Lopes, just fantastic people. And I worked for a while in the Waterford Lakes area while I lived in Orlando. So I worked on like the east side of Orlando, lived out there too, in an area called Avalon Park. Uh I was with Ability for a couple years, and they decided to expand out into the west a little bit. I'll say west, but like west of like downtown into like the Claremont Winter Garden kind of area. We had a partnership with Jewitt Orthopedic. So Jewitt is like the ones that do ortho for like the magic, the solar bears, uh, Orlando City Soccer, things like that. They were opening up a brand new facility out in the Windermere area. They needed someone to be the clinical director. So I got tapped for that. So it created a commute for me from the east side of Orlando to, you know, the west side of Orlando. Right. But it was great, great opportunity. Um, got to meet some fantastic docs who I'm still friends with today. Uh, ended up meeting my current CEO. Um, but that's actually not how I got into what I'm doing. There was like a lily pad in between. And so I was at that clinic. I built that from a startup clinic to what it was when I left. That was about three years, give or take. Um, really, really great clinic, all sports focused, absolutely loved it. And then right around the time, like right before COVID hit, I was already kind of feeling a little burnt out, maybe, and maybe wanting to do something a little more, a little different. Well, a good friend of mine who I actually ride Harleys with for many years, vacation with the guy, things like that. He's in our group, he had been in mortgages for many, many years. And he had always wanted me to come work for him, to which my answer was, I know nothing about mortgages. Right. Why would I come work for you? I work in physical therapy. And he insisted that it was something that I would be good at. And so after him pressing on me for years and years and years, I finally decided just to make a switch. So became a loan officer for uh Home Bridge, uh, which was used to be Remen back in the day, I guess. And then Home Bridge. Home Bridge then got acquired by CMG Home Loans. So then I worked for CMG Home Loans. Well, in the midst of all this, one of the docs that I mentioned that I stayed friends with from Jewitt, we would go over to his house. He was a big Bengals fan. I'm a big Steelers fan being from PA, right? So we would all go watch like football together, and other folks would come over, things like that. Well, one of them was my current CEO. So he was a Dolphins fan, which is even more dismal. And so Dallas is we would always hang out and watch football together. And well, we start like talking shop one day, and basically says, you know, well, what are you doing these days? Because he knew me from being in the clinic. I kind of tell him I'm just writing and originating loans, and he goes in to tell me what he does, which is auto pay plus. And he's like, Well, there's got to be a way we can work together.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

And I was like, I mean, I'm sure there is.

SPEAKER_04 7:28

I was like, at the time, you know, Auto PayPal has been around for 20 years, but they've always been rooted in the automotive industry. And auto in Auto Pay Plus doesn't stand for automotive, it stands for automatic or automated. And a lot of people think that it stands for automotive, which it doesn't. So really, any trade lines that you have, they'll accelerate for you, whether it's an auto, a mortgage, a student loan, medical debt, credit card debt, anything like that. Like I said, the whole goal is to structure people so they can get out of financial debt, become more responsible, become more independent. So we start talking about all like the synergies that we could possibly have. And long story short, I write up a business plan for how we can make a move uh more aggressively into like the mortgage and real estate space in addition to what we're doing on the automotive side. And here I am.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

That's impressive.

SPEAKER_04 8:19

Is that a pretty good like three-minute elevator speech?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

But that's what I want to kind of dig into. Like, you know, what like sets you aside? Like, what do you do with um to your members opposed to what a normal brokerage can do?

SPEAKER_04 8:32

Yeah. So first and foremost, we don't originate loans.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

We actually partner with loan officers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:39

So you guys are like an added value to the loan officers in the community. We are.

SPEAKER_04 8:42

We are. Um you know, if we're talking about what we do for our loan officers, essentially we shorten the life cycle. So for our loan officers or even like our real estate agent partners, we're shortening the lifecycle because the faster a, you know, a consumer can build equity in their home, the faster they can do more with that. So, you know, if they're building equity faster, they can do the kitchen remodel faster. They can do a pool install faster, they can maybe even go buy a second home over on the West Coast or start their first investment portfolio with like an Airbnb. So we allow them to build equity faster. So from a business standpoint, our you know, mortgage and real estate partners see that as added value because it shortens the life cycle. So, you know, for you, Angela, we you know have a transaction this year. I may not see you again for four, five, six years. What if I could see you in two or three instead? And then same thing just reversed on the you know the consumer side. If you know that you want to put in that pool, remodel the kitchen, things like that, how do you build that equity faster so that can maybe become a cash out refi or a HELOC, something where it's usable and tangible faster?

SPEAKER_05 9:50

So how are you connecting though with the with the mortgage holder? You know what I mean? Like where's that transition happen? You know, between like the origination of the loan and then where does Auto PayPal actually connect?

SPEAKER_04 10:05

So we come in after the fact. Okay. Um, you know, you can we can connect with anyone like the day they close, or it can be, you know, weeks later, months later, things like that. Um one thing that happen we see often happen is you know, when you're first buying a house, it's like anything, right? It's like if you're first buying a car, you get the new car smell, you're super excited, you know, you don't like reality hasn't hit yet. Right. You know, that you just took on this massive financial obligation, right? And especially for folks that are at the higher end of like their DTI bracket, you know, they don't realize sometimes that, hey, life is good until it's not. You know, emergencies come up, you know, accidents happen, medical bills happen, you know, all the things that are kind of unforeseen. And that's when like the pain starts to happen. That's when people have to like start like strategizing a little bit differently. Um so with us, what makes us kind of unique is a lot of companies out there will offer to split your mortgage in half. What makes us unique is that we do it to your pay schedule. So as soon as you're getting paid, we're matching your monthly obligations to your pay schedule, not when the bank wants to take the money.

SPEAKER_05 11:12

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

And then along with that, too, a lot of times when it's like a payroll deduction? Yeah. Okay. And so a lot of times when you know banks will do that too, if they're offering to split up payments for you, they're only doing it 24 times a year. Which if you follow a true bi-weekly cycle is 26 times a year, which naturally creates one principal payment per year. So really it allows someone to make an extra payment to whatever that trade line is without really changing their pay cycle in their mind. They just know every time I get paid, half my mortgage is coming out or half my auto. So they just follow that cadence and that just becomes now their new budgeting norm.

SPEAKER_05 11:50

Gotcha. Yeah. So it's like the money's not there, it's not going into their account and then they're making a payment. It's coming straight out of their paycheck. Yep. Correct. Yep. So from a budgeting standpoint, it's coming out of their account and then we're escrowing it. We're holding it. Well, absolutely, yeah, yeah. But they're it's coming out of their paycheck, right? Not like out of their bank account. Comes out of their bank account. Yeah. Oh, okay. It does come out of their bank account. Okay. So it's but it's on the same day or scheduled at the same time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:16

So for people that you know maybe aren't financially responsible, right? We're taking it before they can spend it.

SPEAKER_05 12:21

Yeah. Well, that's what I was getting at. I was trying to get out as like how I could see from a budgeting standpoint that helping people.

SPEAKER_04 12:27

Yeah. And and you know, it's it's as close as we can get to doing that because we would have to partner with every major payroll company across the United States, because we're in all 50 states. So we would have to partner with every major payroll company, you know, to make that work. Um, but that is the idea. You know, it's the same thing. Like, think like financial personal training, right? It's the person that drags you out of bed to go to the gym when you don't want to.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:50

It's that, you know, hey, I'm gonna take this money from you before you go spend it on Black Friday deals.

SPEAKER_05 12:55

Yeah, yeah. So the principle behind Auto PayPal is at the end of the year, you're gonna make one extra payment, right?

SPEAKER_04 13:03

Um you can certainly do more, but that's just kind of organically. Yeah. So with 26, that's what happens.

SPEAKER_05 13:09

So it sounds to me like you guys are like almost like a consumer, almost like an educational company too, right? Because you're trying to educate them on budgeting and finances and stuff like that, I would imagine, is part of the the bigger scheme of things. Yep. So what are some other things that you guys do to help people as well?

SPEAKER_04 13:25

And that's kind of how like insurance you know brought its way into the fold, right? Um, so if we're let's say we take someone's premium, right, like what we just did with my house, right? We now what do you do with that savings? And so now what we do, if we just saved you X amount of dollars, let's say it's either total premium or per month, what we'll do is we'll basically send out like a new kind of analysis to say, hey, you just saved a hundred bucks on per month on your auto insurance. I'm sure you want to keep some of that in your pocket for savings or other things. But let me show you what happens even if you take 25 or 50 of that hundred and apply it to this car loan. And now you're gonna pay it down like even faster. So originally you were already set to pay the loan off, you know, six to eight months sooner. Now we turn six to eight into ten to twelve. So again, just reallocating those savings and it it is. It totally is. Yeah. So but that's what we do. We try and keep, you know, we try and keep them focused on on improving themselves financially and not just taking that hundred bucks and saying, okay, cool, and I have a hundred bucks more of like spending money every month.

SPEAKER_05 14:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

And then you give them like, you know, the perspective of like, you know, the how long this is all gonna take, you know, too. So I mean that's pretty hopeful, right? Yeah. Yeah. They like, you know, well because I know after you buy a house and stuff like that, it takes a little bit for you to get like obviously if it's the top of your budget to get equity into a home, but like that's you know, something that's encouraging to, you know, do that short-term disability, I mean discipline, and then um, you know, see a you know, bigger picture.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

And that's one thing that you know we'll hear people a lot, you know, we'll say, hey, you know, just a normal bi-weekly pay cycle will shorten your loan six to eight years, right? So you're taking a 30-year loan and you're making it more like 22 or 24. But and then, you know, uh the common response is well, I'm not gonna be in this house for 24 years. Right. Which most people aren't.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:18

But then, you know, you even look at like four years out or six years out, right? So like freshman to senior year in high school, right? When you become empty nesters, things like that. Even then, on a typical home loan in today's market, you're gonna be about $10,000 plus ahead in equity just in those four years.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

You know, so even in just four short years, you're gonna have, you know, a nice little acceleration from where you normally have been on a standard repayment cycle, even if you're not staying in that home for the 20 or 22 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:47

And it doesn't have to be a 30-year, right? It could be a 20-year mortgage, 15-year mortgage. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Well, like I said, I mean we all started an automotive, you know, and automotive loans are you know, four or five, six. Well, now the normal auto loan, I don't know if you guys know this, but the normal auto loan right now, um, I think the average is 82 months for an auto loan.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Oh, I know. I saw that.

SPEAKER_05 16:07

Uh on the auto side, are you guys uh like is there almost like banks that are saying to buyers, hey, we'll do it, but as long as you have auto pay plus attached to it somehow? Is there any kind of like you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 16:19

I know exactly what you mean. Um and the answer is no. Um, you think about it from like a financial perspective, right? That's how their name is on the skyscraper or on the stadium or on the whatever. They make their money off of our interest. You know, it's nothing that's nothing new, it's nothing surprising. Um yeah, they don't really want you know companies like us to exist. Oh, I guess. They actually make it challenging for us.

SPEAKER_05 16:43

We have an entire you know, I was thinking like along the lines of you know, maybe if you got somebody with bad credit or something, it was a way for the bank to feel correct.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

Yeah, comfortable with it. Like avoid like things like first payment default or things like that. You would think so. Yeah, yeah. And you know, we've explored that too. And those kind of like partnerships and integrations saying, hey, listen, you know, we can make sure that Steve doesn't default on his first mortgage payment before he ever gets started. Yeah. And it's not financially advantageous to them.

SPEAKER_05 17:07

Yeah, I gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 17:09

So yeah, I would think they'd rather take their chances.

SPEAKER_05 17:11

I would think on the mortgage side though that they love it. I mean, even though you are paying it down a little bit faster, but like in today's world, you know, people are putting five percent down. Sometimes 100% financing, you would think that the the lenders would go, hey, let's get us in a better equitable position on this thing.

SPEAKER_04 17:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:27

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 17:28

And that and actually, it's funny you say that because that actually became very popular um a couple years after COVID, uh, like around like 22, 23 on the automotive side. Because when everything you remember like the price of cars like during COVID, right? They were crazy. So now you have all these cars out in the world that have this massive negative equity. But when they bring that back to the dealer, that dealer has to try and do something with that and try and make a deal. And they're so far upside down in that vehicle that like, you know, they can't even move the money anywhere because it's just that bad. So that's kind of to your point, the automotive dealers were saying, you know, you almost have to use Auto Pay Plus on every deal now just to get us out of this wave of negative equity. Now, this is the only way that we're, you know, that was their path ahead to say, all right, well, these cars, we don't want them coming back in 24, 36 months with all this negative equity. We have to do something now to slow the bleeding.

SPEAKER_05 18:26

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could see you guys being, you know, a good partner for some of that for sure. But you know, it just depends on, you know, like you said, I mean, the bank's gotta think a little differently about it, probably. They do.

SPEAKER_04 18:40

And that's it's funny when you you mentioned education before, that's just something people don't realize. You know, they don't realize that if you buy a $300,000 home at 6%, that your total cost of ownership is $600,000.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

They don't realize that, that it basically costs, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:56

Yeah, if you keep it the whole time, you're yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

You know, and people don't realize that, like what they're really paying for, you know, for an asset, whether it's a car, whether it's a home, things like that, you know. When you look at like that total cost of ownership based on the interest, I mean Yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 19:12

So is it is the is the program I see, you know, you had kind of mentioned uh in in some guest prep stuff that you know it's not a one borrower-fit-all thing. You know, each borrower is a little bit different. So what are some of the different ways to structure it? Is there other ways rather than just like one payment a year or something like that?

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Yeah. So um, you know, naturally, just because of the 12 months versus 52 weeks in the year, right? If you get paid bi-weekly or weekly, you just organically create that extra 13th payment. If you are someone like our, like our military folks who often get paid one time a month, then it's more of a more of a coaching and convenience kind of thing. Whereas they're like, hey, listen, I still want to pay this asset down faster, but I only get paid 12 times a year. So what we then do is we basically chop that up and say, okay, if you wanted to make one extra payment, maybe they'll say two. We then will divide that up across their pay structure and make sure that that automatically happens as well.

SPEAKER_05 20:14

Yeah. So their monthly payment just becomes a little bit more so that that 13th payment is there. Correct.

SPEAKER_04 20:19

Yeah. Because you know, some people they just don't get paid that way. Yeah. They either get paid semi-monthly, which is only 24 times a year. Right. Like a lot of people don't even realize that semi-monthly and bi-weekly are two different things.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

I get paid.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

We know. We know.

SPEAKER_04 20:31

So a lot of people don't realize that or those a year. Yeah. So those people that get paid either semi-monthly or monthly, they wouldn't have it naturally built into their pay cycle. But I mean, I think last time I checked, I think it was like 84% of the nation is paid on either weekly or a true bi-weekly schedule. So most consumers out there, they fit into this box, you know. Yeah, got it. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Well, you said you did insurance, um, but did you have to get a license for that? Yeah, so you do have it. What license do you have?

SPEAKER_04 21:01

I was U20.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

You were T20. So I'm I'm the principal.

SPEAKER_04 21:04

Jack of all trades. I guess so. Yeah. I guess so. I do whatever my CEO tells me to do.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Did you pass it the first time?

SPEAKER_05 21:12

I did. Yay. So on the insurance side, where are you? So are you guys writing in Florida alone? Like are you right in multiple states, just Florida?

SPEAKER_04 21:19

What do you know? So um we piloted this program um last year with just a small handful of carriers. You know, it was kind of hard to get like started, really. Uh just like a strategy. Extremely difficult. Yeah, extremely difficult. Yeah. So really we had to leverage our book of business on the bi-weekly side to say, hey guys, listen, this is our potential. This is what we do monthly. This is like our our audience here. Um that was really our only way of getting anyone's attention at like the big like national carriers. And so um, we piloted in Florida. We built actually a we actually built a member journey inside of our website at autopayplus.com, plug plug. And we The basically members go through there end to end and it's pretty seamless. We integrated um a couple other things like with like um transunion and there's um other companies out there that will like do like data scraping to make the journey easier. And what I mean by that is instead of you having to punch in like your VIN or you know your make model of vehicle or things like that, it will scrape off your existing declaration page with those existing like integrations that we created. So we built that all out and then piloted that program in Florida. Once we worked out, you know, most of the bugs and got it to where we were happy. We moved on to uh second iteration of it. We've now moved out into Texas and Pennsylvania, and then we'll be moving out to more East Coast states throughout the year.

SPEAKER_05 22:40

Very cool, man.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:41

Well, good luck on growing that, dude. I know it's a ground. Yeah. Yeah. Insurance is a slow burn.

SPEAKER_04 22:46

Yeah. It's interesting. You know, it's um it's it's very satisfying to be able just to have another avenue to help our members and save them money. Yeah. Um, because that just always feels good. Yeah. Right. Um, but then you see like other sides of it too, like, you know, where um someone will, you know, default on a payment and look at their policy canceled, things like that. You know, I had to go and call the carry the other day and try and advocate for this person, you know, uh, because their answer obviously when that happens, they get a rate increase, you know. And um, so I got really upset. And I was like, so your answer to this person who defaults on their payment is to raise their payment, right? $243. You know, I was like, let me know how that makes sense. I was like, get back to me on that one. And you know, that kind of stuff upsets you, right? Because a major national carrier, do they really need, you know, little Miss Molly's $243? Not really.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:38

You know, so that stuff's upsetting.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

I mean, it's really hard, especially when you know you have to represent, you know, um, the carrier just as much as your cust your you know member. You do. You know, it's really hard. And uh, you know, I do find myself in um uh bits of arguments with them, like you know, going back and forth, like, make this make sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:57

And I will say though, like as we've grown and gotten bigger, don't get me wrong, we got some really good carrier partners, but like we're definitely not beholden to them anymore. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Like we're big enough now to where like we can really take care of the customer. I love that. You know what I mean? I love that.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

And so like Yeah, we definitely have some leverage.

SPEAKER_05 24:17

Yeah, we have leverage, you know. And uh, you know, don't get me wrong, I I love my carrier partners, you know. Don't go dropping me. But um but in all seriousness though, like we just we do so much volume, you know what I mean? Like if we have to, we can move it around, we can do a bunch of different things. Like, we're just not beholden to one carrier, you know.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

And that's one thing I've noticed too from you know, from when we started, right? It was a lot of like begging and pleading for us, like to be like, hey, you know, please like give us a chance, you know. Yeah, yeah. Um, and now I just had a very different conversation with one of our other carrier partners who isn't doing so well with our our member demographic right now. And um, you know, no, no heat towards us, but you know, she called me and she was like, Hey, like I see you guys doing massive volumes of quoting. She goes, What's going on? And I was like, You guys aren't competitive.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 25:11

And so, you know, that conversation again has just turned to full like 180. It went from being like, oh my God, please give us an appointment to sorry, bro. Like, you know, the you know, you guys got to do something on, you know, if you guys want more business, you have to be competitive. So like now I'm sending them kind of like analysis of, you know, are like chat GPT. Let me download this report. You make this make sense and turn it into an email. Okay, I was gonna say and um, but yeah, um, so the conversation has just totally changed. We're now we're starting to get some leverage ourselves to where we can say, hey, listen, like, you know, it's not that we don't love you guys. And and unfortunately, too, it was one of the first carriers that ever like, you know, threw their hat in the ring to like really play with us. And like, so I felt bad because they're one of the ones who helped us like really get started.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Right.

SPEAKER_05 25:56

It can be really uh the the barrier entry nowadays into insurance is getting tougher because of the carrier access. Yeah. Um, because the carriers are like, oh, you're too small, we won't do business with you, or you don't have enough, you know, experience or whatever it is, right? It's almost like I don't know, man, you really gotta like grind it out in the beginning to prove that you can do this because like it's a you don't have the product to sell because you don't get the carriers. Right. And then the carriers are going, you don't write any business, and you're like, I don't write any business because I'm not gonna be carriers. I made the joke.

SPEAKER_04 26:30

I I grew up in the restaurant industry and I uh I bartended uh like through college or anything like that. And I made the same joke because it was like the bartending thing. You apply for a bartending job and they're like, sorry, you don't have any experience. I'm like, oh no shit. Yeah, how am I supposed to get experience if no one will hire me? So, you know, but it's the same exact thing. You know, it's that you know, chicken and the egg type. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

But it's like that getting out of college in any career. Like it's just like no one wants to, you know, give you that chance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:59

But it's been good though. You know, I'm I'm really, really excited to see you know what we're gonna do in some of the other states, and then start to see like, you know, um, we're a very data-driven company. Like we just we're nerds. We love the data. Um, we love to look at like all the trends and the ebbs and the flows and everything like that, and look at what correlations we can find with things like that. Again, total nerds. And um, so we love it. So it's gonna be really nice to see too, like what we see now in like Florida and Texas as we move out into like some of those more like northeastern states and see it as well.

SPEAKER_05 27:28

Yeah, Texas is a tricky market right now. Texas is, yeah. Um I would say, you know, Texas, there's a lot of growth opportunity there. That's a hard market right now.

SPEAKER_04 27:37

So they're very protective of their customers when it comes to finance. Like even when um when I was at CMG, we had a proprietary product um that only CMG home loans had, and we had a version for 49 states and then had a Texas version of the product. And basically, long story short, without getting into it, was uh Texas requires all loans to have it can never have a balloon feature on any loans in Texas. You can't have a balloon loan in Texas of any kind. It has to at the end of that loan term be fully amortized. So basically, you can't get to like month 24 and they make the remainder of the loan due at month 24. Even if even if month one through 24 didn't add up to paying off the loan, they can't make that loan due at month 24. Texas law says that all loans have to be fully amortized, even if it's like not necessarily like linear, but if it's more like okay, you do what you want, but then like the last portion of it has to be amortized. But my point in saying that is that Texas is very they're very protective of their residents when it comes to financial updoings.

SPEAKER_05 28:48

Yeah, I just know in the on the in the insurance industry, Texas is you know, going it's it's a pretty tough market right now. Um, you know, they had the same issues as Florida had with the hail and all that. Yeah. Um Louisiana is another state, like really tough market, Colorado, tough market, California, you know, Florida. We were what probably the toughest market two years ago. Like where it was like the rest of the country was cranking and no issues, and then Florida was coming out of their crisis while the rest of the country was kind of getting into a really hard market. Yeah. And so like Florida has led that charge out of the hard market. And you know, like other states are now looking to Florida going, man, look what they did legislative wise. Like, we need to pay attention.

SPEAKER_04 29:34

And see, and you guys even have more you know optics on that than even we do, because we don't even write home. You know, so you know, you we've all worked together on the the mortgage side when I was still writing mortgages, you know. Um, but yeah, like we're we're not really you know plugged into what goes on on the home side other than like, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because we just we don't right now. It's just not part of our part of our strategy at the moment. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

So yours is just what, auto? Oh. Yeah. Yeah. That's good to know.

SPEAKER_05 30:01

Yeah, no, I didn't. I I mean I thought it was I didn't realize that. I thought it was Yeah, that's why you're here.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

We're trying to figure you out. We're like, what does he do?

SPEAKER_05 30:10

Good luck. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Well, I kind of want to pivot a little bit.

SPEAKER_05 30:12

No, I mean that's why I'm glad you're here, man, because I do think there's a lot of people that you know are just not 100% sure, you know, what what it is AutoPay Plus is and what it can do to help.

SPEAKER_04 30:22

It's kind of funny you asked earlier about like who is our, you know, our customer type. And it really just it ranges, you know. Um most of our folks are kind of just like mid-level. Like we don't have anyone that really can't afford, you know, or has a lot of financial struggles because they wouldn't get approved for any loan, anyways, unfortunately. You know, there that's more folks that you know are either um, you know, going if we're talking automotive, going to like a buy here, pay here kind of place. So we're not that isn't our our market because unfortunately those folks, we need them to have a loan to be able to help them to accelerate it. Um so but so we're kind of like right in the middle, to be quite honest. And then, you know, it's funny when you hear like Frankie explain our product to what it is. Frankie explains it more to like the upper tier like person. Frankie's like, just give them everything, they'll figure it out, and you don't have to worry about it. They'll make it, not only will they accelerate your payment for you, but they'll structure it the way you want it to be done, and then you just go do you go spend time with the family and the kids, go on vacation. Basically, it's on autopilot.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

And that's how like Frankie explains. So Frankie explains it as much more of like a convenience factor. Right, right, right. Where shout out to Frankie Labella? That's right, Frankie LaBella Bell Tell. He's a new baby.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

That doesn't matter. I had surgery on Wednesday, I'm still here.

SPEAKER_04 31:47

And um, so you know, but then there's the other side of it too, where you kind of heard me mention like the financial like personal trainer. And like that's the people that I like to, you know, help, because those are the ones that like I think they get the most out of it. You know, it's like if you hire a personal trainer, right? You end up like walking away with not only with the the feel good of like the exercise, but you probably learn something. You probably learn something as to why you're doing this exercise or you know, why we're doing this a certain way or anything like that. So you come away with the knowledge too. So those are kind of the people I like the best. Like those are my favorites because they walk away being able to like turn around to like a friend or family member and go, hey, guess what I figured out today? And that's always cool.

SPEAKER_05 32:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:26

What? So let's pivot and talk a little bit about how you market yourself with for this. Um, like what is the key for you guys when you guys are coming up with like your marketing strategies and what you're gonna do? What it what uh what's some of the keys to to marketing? Like, how can the real estate community help you, the mortgage community help you? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 32:45

Yeah, yeah. Um, so really we look for we look for really any type of relationship. It can be like smaller, you know, mortgage brokerages all the way up to like enterprise relationships that have, you know, that are in every state. So it could be a small, independent local brokerage. Um it could be, you know, larger, like nationwide groups. Um it really doesn't matter, like specifically. So, you know, we have probably just like you guys do, you kind of have like your segmentation of like your minnows, your guppies, your tunos, your whales, things like that. We do too. You know, so we go after like, you know, obviously larger enterprise relationships like take longer, you know, those kind of acquisition cycles are you know, six month to a year because you have to go through compliance and legal and all those kind of things. Whereas more like someone like a little like local like mom and pop brokerage might say, Yeah, we'll start, you know, integrating with you guys tomorrow.

unknown 33:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:42

Yeah, got it. And then uh You're you've been involved in Space Coast Association of Realtors, right? Yeah. Uh co-chair. Co-chair, that's right. Yeah. Me and uh, me and old Steve Thaggard.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Yeah, you guys were the best. The energy and everything.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

How is that how has that group?

SPEAKER_04 33:58

How has that group helped you? Um so that group's great. You know, they um I absolutely I had a great time. Even before I was co-chair there. Um you know, I was there for that's where you and I met.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah, events, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:13

Yeah, right through like Space Ghosts. Like through I'm pretty sure we met really is through Space Ghosts. Diana doing our marketing. Yeah. Because Diana and I, first time I I think Diana was like one of my first friends at the Realtor Association. And then, you know, we threw that one big like end of year party out on like Merriot Island there, and we're like, you know, her and I worked together on the task force for that. But um, you know, I always loved it. I always loved being involved with it. It was great. It wasn't the most convenient thing for me, scheduling wise, because I still had to get to the office in Orlando and things like that. So um it wasn't the most convenient thing, but I absolutely loved it. Like the people that are there are typically there for like all the right reasons. Like they want to give back to the community, they want to support our realtors in the community. They want to also, you know, interact and be surrounded by other people that are are leaders in their industry, whether it's mortgage, whether it's insurance, whether it's title, you know, you name it. And so I always like people like that that do the extra that don't just kind of like coast by, you know. So to me, uh it was always like a good group of people. And then I just got to the point where after doing like co-chair, um, Jamie Rude stepped up to be chair this year. And it was almost like a relief because I was getting so busy with insurance and you know, mortgage and heading up these two verticals that I almost had too much on my plate to begin with. So it was almost like a blessing in disguise um when you know, when Jamie and her team stepped into that chair and co-chair position. Um, but yeah, I absolutely love the events. I mean, um it was a lot, a lot of fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:54

Have you been able to connect with some people there that have helped you grow AutoPay Plus? I mean, is it is it has it been worthwhile for you as far as that goes?

SPEAKER_04 36:01

I can't say there was like a direct, you know, uh growth path there for us. It always just felt like it was a great way to stay plugged in with my peers. Yeah, I got it. You know, um, so I've definitely gotten, you know, some good business relationships out of it as a whole, but um it definitely wasn't like our main driver, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, in any stretch, but it was always was nice to be like plugged in through there. No, absolutely.

unknown 36:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:30

No, I was just trying to dig in a little bit on like, you know, how how we or how you know anybody listen to this, you know, can help AutoPay Plus and your business and and and you know what I mean? And like what how to connect you with the right people and kind of, you know, like what you really need to help grow this thing, you know, from a consumer standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Like in a conversation setting, what are we listening to? What are we trying to listen to? And what are we like, okay, this could be a good match.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

Yeah, yeah. Um, anytime that you have anyone who, again, you identify immediately. And if we're talking like to a uh lender, right, or a broker, um, loan officer, anyone you can identify as getting paid or weekly or bi-weekly, they're gonna benefit from this right off the bat. Okay. Um, also to anyone who is in that higher DTI bracket. Okay. You know, because they just don't have enough residual income to get over like those ebbs and flows of life. Yeah. You know, they have a car breakdown, they have a medical emergency, things like that. Chances are they're going paycheck to paycheck. Yeah. And they just don't have it, you know, set aside. It's it's harder when you know you're in like a 46, 48 or higher um, you know, debt to income ratio bracket. That means that 50% of your income is spoken for.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:43

Right. And that's before all the other things that we don't even take into account, right? The cell phones, the insurance, you know, um, gas, groceries, all those things, there's not a lot left on the bone after it's all said and done. So I, you know, I would say that anyone who sees, you know, at any point in time or even a lot of bars coming across that are, you know, facing more and more of these like tight qualification scenarios, you know, which I think more and more people are nowadays because the housing market is growing faster than our income is growing typically. So I think you're seeing more and more people in those higher debt qualification brackets. And I think that's a great way for loan officers to help serve their clients after the closing table.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:29

You know, it's a great way for them to, you know, look out for them and make sure that, hey, listen, we got you into the house. Now how do we take care of you after you're in the home?

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05 38:39

It could it could it could also be somebody right that uh you know maybe they're thinking about refinancing. And instead of refinancing, it's like, hey, let's, you know, look at this as an option. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:50

So I'll actually do you one better.

SPEAKER_05 38:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:52

Um, I actually just had this conversation the other day with um Charlie Gutierrez from cross country. And he had I was asking him how his week was going, basically said he had a bunch of refines, you know, that he had just got done doing. And you heard me mention earlier that if you started near day one on a bi-weekly strategy, you're gonna shave like six to eight years off your mortgage total, right? Well, when you think about a refi, a lot of people don't know you're resetting the loan clock. Oh, yeah. Typically, right? Yeah. So let's say you've paid three years into your 30-year loan. So now you're at year 27 remaining. Well, you refi, unless you refi down to like a 15 year or you know, a 20 year something like that, chances are you've reset the loan amount to a 30 year, the loan term to 30 year. Yeah. Well, how do you get that time back? You know? So at that point, the conversation we have was, well, you enroll them bi-weekly, not only do they get those three years back, but then they're basically another positive three years or so. So that's always an interesting conversation that I like to have at the time of refi because, you know, and we don't have that conversation right now a lot because we're not in a big refi market, you know, and I think that's you need to talk to certain people, that's probably coming back here relatively soon. But um, that's always the conversation I like to have if if someone doesn't want to refi because they don't want to reset that loan clock back to 30, it's like, how do you kind of get the best of both worlds? How do I get the lower monthly payment by refiing at today's market rate? But also how do I avoid just tacking those years back on every single time?

SPEAKER_05 40:21

Yeah, you might have somebody looking for different strategies to, you know, instead of a refi, like if they're at six and a half interest right now and the the rate in the market's, you know, 5.75 or six, you know what I mean? Like it might not make sense to refi, right? Like it might not make reset to refi that loan until it's five or less. Right. And so, you know, you gotta start looking going, okay, well, let's do something else, you know, to pay less interest. And that's make an extra payment, right?

SPEAKER_04 40:47

Because like you said, you know, the the cost of it, the cost of refi if you're sometimes, you know, a lot of um a lot of brokerages now like aren't charging that refi, like the admin fee. They're not charging that within like a certain amount of time when you purchase or letting you kind of do like a refi rebound kind of thing. But typically you're always gonna be on the hook for you know for title fees.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

You know, and then you have to look at, hey, how long's it gonna take us to pay this back to make it actually like worthwhile? You know, like do we have to stay in this house another four or five, six, eight years to really see the the benefit of lowering the monthly payment $75 a month. Like, does that even make sense? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's uh what's Jason Tarmino do for fun, man?

SPEAKER_04 41:28

Um big fitness guy, um, big foodie. Um they go hand in hand. Uh they do. Um so I have to I have to stay working out. It's a balance. So yeah, I have to stay working out, so I'm not like a thousand pounds. Um I love my food. That's why I'm a thousand pounds. Well, we're gonna start working out though, right? We're gonna come by the house for sure.

SPEAKER_05 41:48

I've built a home, I've built a home gym.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 41:51

So 100% no, but we're we're pretty close. Yeah, we're gonna have like romance gym nights.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

I did want to touch on something. I hope you don't mind me asking. You know, like you had a uh pretty life event that happened to you a while ago. A little bit ago.

SPEAKER_04 42:07

Oh, when I stubbed my toe.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

You know what I'm talking about. I want to know, like, you know, how did that change you and how was that make you like, you know, Jason Tarmino Tarmina today?

SPEAKER_05 42:19

Yeah, Tarmino 2.0.

SPEAKER_04 42:21

Yeah, yeah. Um so yeah, for uh for those of you guys who don't know, um I had Hodgkin's lymphoma. Um and it was interesting. I um it was a really like just busy time like in life. I I used to wear my beard like a lot like longer, like kind of like yours. And I had uh I'm Richard I'm very jealous of it. Well you can get it back, dude. I know, I know. I always used to cut it down like this for like triathlon season and you know, just make me go fast for the water.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

And so a little bit of hair. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 42:55

So I every bit helps.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:57

And so um I cut my beer back to like this, and I noticed this like lump like on my neck, and I couldn't feel it like through my beard. It was never painful or anything like that. And um, so me, I just, you know, I don't think anything of it. And of course, you know, I don't go get it attended to or anything like that. I'm like, ah, it's probably like a swollen lymph node or something, you know. Uh which it was a swollen lymph node. Um swollen with cancer. And um so I finally go get it checked out. Um, I actually went down behind my office in Orlando to a dermatologist because I was hoping that it was just like a cyst or something, right? And uh they walk in, they take one look at it, and they go, get out. They go, it's not a cyst. They go, we're sending you over down the road to um an ear, nose, and throat guy. So he kind of like reaches in and like kind of like starts like palpating things that he goes, I think you have like a blocked um salivary gland. I go, Oh, okay, cool. That sounds you know like a good thing, right? And um he goes, I'm gonna send you over, get like a biopsy of it, and you know, we'll um we'll go from there. So I go to the biopsy. I'm actually driving in to work that day. And I was going in early. I remember because it was the day of our national sales meeting. And I'm driving in. I'm supposed to speak that day at our sales meeting. And my phone rings, and it's like 7 15 in the morning. I pick up the phone. And the doctor, the ENT, he goes, Hey Jason, this is Dr. And I can't remember his name to save my life. Because I remember my oncologist's name, who was Dr. Grill, but I can't remember the referring doc's name. And I immediately go, I go, well, this isn't good. And he goes, no, no, no. He goes, it's fine. And I go, you have MAs that do this. I go, why are you calling me at seven in the morning directly? Right. And uh he goes, listen, he goes, nothing serious. He goes, I just want to call it you know you do have cancer. And I go, you and I have two very different definitions.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

Serious. What? Serious?

unknown 44:47

Jeez.

SPEAKER_04 44:48

He goes, listen, he goes, I'm gonna be straight with you. He goes, I had this very same cancer two years ago. And he goes, and I am fine. And he goes, and you are in way better shape than I am. He goes, you're gonna be just fine. He goes, I don't want you stressed out, I don't want you worrying. We're gonna get you right in. He goes, we're gonna get you taken care of. I go, cool. Doc's not worried. I'm not worried. Right. So I um this is actually a pretty funny story. My CEO hates when I tell this story. Um we go to the national sales meeting, we have that done. We go out that evening, um, take everyone out to to dinner, and like that. The very next day, we have clients in town. So we take them out for dinner when we're at um downtown, uh not downtown Orlando, Icon Park over there by the eye and stuff like that. And we take them out for dinner, we get out of the um elevator at the parking garage. My CEO starts going his way. I start going mine. He goes, I'll see at the office in the morning. I'll see at the office. I have cancer.

unknown 45:41

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Jeez.

SPEAKER_04 45:42

And he goes, What do you say? And I go, I said I'll see you at the office. He goes, the other part. And so I tell him and I was like, listen, I was like, you know, I was like, doc's not worried, says everything is totally fine, you know. I was like, I'm not gonna miss any work. I was like, so you know, don't worry about that. He goes, because that's what I'm worried about. Yeah, he goes, I'm he goes, I'm terribly concerned about you missing work and you not dying. And so um, but everything was really fast. They um, you know, after they did diagnose it, um, they went ahead and got me right in for surgery. So they did make like a little like incision here and take out like the whole like mass. Um after that I went back in for surgery to get a port put in. Um so I had four rounds of chemo and ten rounds of radiation. Oh honestly, it was really okay. Um, you know, I didn't have the next day after the chemo, I felt kind of like crummy. Um, but I always got it done on a Friday. Um so that way I had the weekend to kind of like cover.

SPEAKER_05 46:42

You think because you are in such good shape that it that it really helps you through? I hope so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:46

I mean, I like to think so. You know, it's one of those things where you know you don't have to get ready if you stay ready, kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And um, so yeah, I'd like to think so. That, you know, a little bit of healthy living helps out.

SPEAKER_05 46:57

And um I mean, I'll say, dude, knowing you through all that, man, like, dude, you're like you wouldn't even have known. No. Like you were so positive.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

You are always Mr. Smiley.

SPEAKER_05 47:08

Were you positive like prior to all that? Or was it that that that made you posit? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 47:13

Like, no, I I think that um I my my aunt actually uh has one of her favorite sayings is uh worry is interest paid on bills not yet due.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Oh yeah. Anxiety of the future.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

And um, you know, I've always kind of like lived by that. And uh shout out to Anjoy's and um you know, so it was uh I've always kind of thought about that. You know, like don't worry until you really have to like worry about it. Exactly. And you know, I have I'm extremely lucky. Like I have amazing people in my life. You know, I mean, like you guys are fantastic. Like I'm blessed to call you guys my friends. All my friends at my at my gym, uh, they made this awesome shirt, by the way. Um they made me a chemo shirt. So what they did was they all signed it, and then they all like someone at the gym put it on, and then they all painted the inside of their arms and hugged the shirt. So it was like this overlapping like hug. So if you look at the back of the shirt, it's a bunch of overlapping hands and arms like hugging it, and I would wear that like during chemo.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

That's so cute.

SPEAKER_04 48:13

And so, you know, um, and then Frankie and his sister Michelle, they threw me a 5k run. Uh Jen Clemens hosted it at uh Coastal Life, you know. Um so yeah, I mean I didn't even have I didn't even have time to like get it's hard, you know. You almost someone asked me that too, and I was like, you know, I'd almost you'd almost have to be like ungrateful or flat out stupid to kind of feel sad when you have that many resources around you. Like at any given time, I could have picked the phone up, sure, called anyone, said, I'm just having a day. Like this all just hit me like a ton of bricks, and any single person would have like, you know, driven over, talked me off the ledge, anything like that in a second. So it's almost like literally like disrespectful not to use those people in your life that are like sitting there lifting you up. And I had so many people like that that I really never had a chance to like get down.

SPEAKER_05 49:07

Yeah, that's a great way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

That is a great way to look at it. I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_05 49:11

Yeah. Um very nice. Yeah, man. Uh thanks for sharing, dude. Yeah. And uh congrats on beating it by the way. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 49:17

Thank you. Yeah. So I just have my uh my one year. Um, so all is good. So hopefully that's all like in the rear view now. Um there's no like family issue or anything, so it's kind of like weird. Are you the only child? I am, yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what's wrong with you. That is exactly the only thing that's wrong with it. That is not the only thing that's wrong with me. You can just add that to the list.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

That's so funny.

SPEAKER_05 49:42

No, I would think like going through something like that, man, like just the way that you've been able to stay positive through it. It's like you I feel like when that diagnosis comes down, you can either go the wrong way with it, get super depressed, and almost I think that your body knows that. You know what I mean? And reacts a certain way. Yeah. But like your ability to stay positive and go, we got this, no big deal. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 50:05

It was like So I kind of went the other way and kind of like got like weird with it. I uh I was like, if I'm going to the gym once a day, I'm gonna go twice now.

SPEAKER_05 50:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:11

I was like, I'm just gonna like totally like you know beat the shit out of this. Beat the shit out of it. Yeah. And my and my buddy who I trained with, um, he was like, man, he's like, he's like, that can't, he's like, I almost feel bad for the cancer. He's like, you know, the cancer just pops up thinking it's gonna like, you know, it found like a host to party in. Wrong because he's like you. He's like between the weights and the whiskey, he's like, man, he's like, you know, this thing's like it's probably like gotta be like Mars inside of there, just like unhabitable. And um, so he made that joke, and that was really funny. And um You know, but uh yeah, it was uh it was interesting. It really, really was. It was an interesting road. And uh looking back on it, it kind of feels surreal, you know, at times.

SPEAKER_05 50:55

Um but yeah. Cool, man. Awesome. Well, we we couldn't be happier for you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

Do you want to wrap up with some uh lightning round questions?

SPEAKER_05 51:05

Yeah, let's do it. Man, we've already been at it for 50 minutes. I didn't have that. Oh, I love that. Oh bad. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

So we do a little lightning round, some with some some you know.

SPEAKER_05 51:15

Well, before we get into that, man, is there anything you want to add or anything you want to make sure people know about Jason and and AutoPay Plus or anything at all, man?

SPEAKER_04 51:24

Um no, we covered a lot. Um we really, really did. I mean, I um you know, the one thing I will say is that like I said, in addition to, you know, having like great people like in my life, like my and we we joked about the only child thing. My my parents have always been just absolutely incredible. Like, you know, um my love of food comes from my mom. Um my love of fitness comes from my mom. My mom used to be a ski instructor um up north. She would work uh 7P to 7A at the hospital, get off in the morning, and then go uh teach at the slope. So I think that's kind of where I get like my energizer bunny from. Joanne, yeah, yeah, Joanne. And then um, you know, my dad's the same way. My dad, I think he's the one who gave me that kind of like do anything, like fear no failure attitude, you know, like growing up, um dad and I used to restore cars and stuff like that in the garage. That was always a big hobby of his. Yeah, and you know, he always would just tackle things that seemed obscure. Like I never knew how he got this like massive skill set, and really his only trick was that he just didn't care if he failed at it. Yeah, he didn't care if he messed it up because he would just redo it. Honestly, it's the number one way to learn is to fail, man. Yeah, it really is. So it was either you do it once and you get it right the first time, or you just end up doing it a second time. And I mean, really, what's the big deal and having to do it a second time? So uh yeah, my parents have always been um huge, huge like supporters of me. Shout out to the peeps, yeah, man.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

That's wonderful. Awesome.

SPEAKER_05 52:50

Um so born in Pennsylvania. Born in Pennsylvania, Western PA, Johnstown. Steelers or Eagles, I guess we know now. Steelers, man. Steelers. We're on the correct side of the stadium. Yeah, there you go. Um favorite way to spend a weekend on the Space Coast? Uh either on the motorcycle or on the boat. Okay, cool. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

You have a boat?

SPEAKER_04 53:10

Huh? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Oh, you have a boat.

SPEAKER_04 53:11

Yeah, yeah. So I love going out to the sandbar.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Just anything with uh I'm not a fan of the motorcycle, but I'm a fan of the boat.

SPEAKER_04 53:17

Yeah, anything that like brings like you know friends together and gets us outdoors, things like that. So yeah. Yeah. Favorite restaurant? Favorite restaurant, Yellow Dog Cafe.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

Oh, I love that place.

SPEAKER_04 53:28

Yeah, I'll never get down there, man, but what a fantastic place. So good. I was a dishwasher there when I was 15. So cool. Yeah. My dad, jerk, used to uh drop me off to wash dishes and then would go fishing at Sebastian Inlet. Oh yeah, and then come pick me up later. So he'd go fishing all day, have a time of his life.

SPEAKER_05 53:43

Meanwhile, I'm like covered in like, you know, the motto is discipline equals freedom. Yeah. How does that show up in your daily life?

SPEAKER_04 53:53

Um, people ask you that a lot, you know, and you kind of did too. Like, how do you stay motivated? And you don't, you know, you never stay motivated. Like motivation is a joke.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:02

You know, motivation's a feeling, you know, it's like being like happy.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 54:05

Um you have to be you.

SPEAKER_00 54:07

Gosh, I always see that. Like we'll be like, are you happy? I'm like, not right now.

SPEAKER_04 54:11

Right. But it's about like being disciplined, right? Like being disciplined is like doing the things that you you don't want to do and doing them anyways.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 54:19

You know, and um that goes with a lot of things. You know, that goes, you know, you run a business, you know, um, you there's plenty of days where you have to show up where, you know, you may have your own things going on at home, your personal things, whatever that may be. Um, other life events. And, you know, you have to be disciplined enough to to be able to compartmentalize those things and like stick to the plan and stay on track.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

You know, and you know, not to not to literally plug autopay plus back into this, but that is what we do. You know, we help people stay on track, on discipline with their finance, even when life happens and like life hits, you know. And but that really is the I think that is the key to success, is just staying discipline. Like if you're waiting to like feel motivated or feel up to it, it's never gonna happen. Yeah. You know, that's not the way that that success happens. You have to just stay the course.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

And I'm gonna go work out tonight.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

But I think it's with anything, you know. I think it's with like, you know, with your faith. I think if you, you know, if you want to have like a relationship with God or anything like that, you have to make it a priority. You know, and you have to be, you know, very, very, you know, intentional with it where you have to like make time for those things. You have to make time for for friends, for family. The only thing that you you have to intentionally make time for those things in your life, otherwise, you know, they'll never they'll never turn into anything. You know, if you want better relationships, you know, put it on the calendar, you know, put put date nights on the calendar, put, you know, time with like the guys on the calendar, put fitness on the calendar. You know, you have the those kind of things, and then you just start seeing the dividends that come from that. Like you don't, it's not tomorrow, you know, it's not like you know, you do three countries and you have a six-pack. Um, you know, but it's eventually you're just like, man, like I'm you know, this is different. Like I'm walking a different path. That's the challenge for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_05 56:05

Everybody wants instant gratification from everything they do. What's that? Instant gratification. Everybody wants that from everything.

SPEAKER_04 56:12

I mean, like everything is instant right now. And I think that you know, everything is instant, but there are just some things that inherently can never be instant. You know, you have to like literally course correct and stick to it. Otherwise, you know.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

So lovely message. I love that.

SPEAKER_05 56:28

Best piece of advice your parents ever gave you.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

He just said it.

SPEAKER_05 56:33

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 56:34

Um can it be a grandparent?

SPEAKER_00 56:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:38

All right. So I had to unfortunately read my grandfather's eulogy, right? So my cousin wrote this. My cousin is much, much smarter than me. And um, so he wrote my grandfather's eulogy. My grandfather um was in World War II. He was a tail gunner, and um, he was part of the Jolly Rogers 92nd Bomb Group, and he was very, very proud of his military service. And my cousin, who again is much smarter than me, but also um he's way more emotional than I am, couldn't read the own his own eulogy that he wrote. So I got handed the eulogy to read it. And um one of our favorite quotes, all of us, all the grandkids, was and after World War II, he became an open road truck driver. And um, so one of his favorite quotes was put your mind in gear before you let the clutch out. So just his own way of saying think before you speak.

SPEAKER_05 57:32

Yeah. I love it. Yeah. That is that's a great way to end it, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:36

Hey man.

SPEAKER_00 57:37

Oh my god, I love this.

SPEAKER_05 57:38

We really, really appreciate you being here, spending some time with us. Thank you guys. You're an awesome human being. Yes. Love you, brother. Yes, thank you so much for coming. So let's wrap it up. Let's get out of here. Thanks, guys. That's a wrap for this episode of the Studio 321 Podcast, powered by Rightway, the Steve Crowd Agency. We can't thank you enough for being part of our journey. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a friend. Until next time, 321, we're out.