Craig Andriulli (pictured top left) and Michael LiPari (pictured top right), managing partners of Fortress Mortgage Advisors, now want to share their knowledge with other mortgage bankers to help elevate their businesses.
“I can tell you what’s different, and what we focus on,” Andriulli told Mortgage Professional America. “It’s harder to get your rhythm, because the business operates in a similar way forever. So you’re bucking the trend to some degree. And so with the referral partners, I try to train these guys and say you don’t want to position yourself as a commodity.
“If I pay for just marketing, now we have a relationship because I’m paying for marketing. Well, technically, that’s not really a relationship. You’re sharing an expense, and it’s a byproduct of investing in that relationship.”
Building a partnership
Andriulli said he examined those relationships to understand what made some of them stand out over others.
“There are obviously lots of relationships where you are sharing expenses, and you’re doing marketing together to grow your business,” Andriulli said. “What I was focusing on was looking at those relationships that we’ve had for decades, whether it be real estate agents, CPAs, or financial advisors, and seeing what the difference was between those and all the other ones. That upper echelon relationships were partnerships, versus everything else we considered a relationship.
