Mortgage 101 – The Future of Mortgage Education

Clinton Wilkins and Dan Ahlstrand discuss Rogers’ decision to shut down six radio stations, including their own in Halifax while reflecting on the evolution of their Mortgage 101 show.

Dan Ahlstrand
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the July edition of Mortgage 101. I’m Dan Ahlstrand, and as always, my partner in crime is Clinton Wilkins. How are you?

Clinton Wilkins
I’m doing pretty well, Dan. It’s been.. It’s been an interesting week, for sure.

Dan Ahlstrand
Yeah, it’s been a tough week. I think that’s the best way, probably, to describe tough. Yeah, I saw a lot of good friends and good colleagues and brilliant journalists from Halifax right to Vancouver put out of work this week, and corporate decisions get made. I’m certainly not privy to those, and the people who were affected by that this week certainly weren’t privy to those decisions. But at the end of the day, the sun came up the next morning, and it’s onwards and upwards, as they say.

Clinton Wilkins
The show must go on, and for the people that don’t know, and I mean, maybe you’re living under a rock if you don’t know, but Rogers pulled the plug on six radio stations across the country, and our station here in Halifax.

Dan Ahlstrand
Those were the news talk stations from across the country: Vancouver, Calgary, Kitchener, and Halifax. A lot of people who put a lot of time and effort into keeping people up to date and keeping local news alive are on the outside looking in today, and that’s probably the toughest part of the whole thing.

Clinton Wilkins
Well, this show would not exist if it wasn’t for 95.7, so the one thing I will say, as much as I may not be happy with the decision, because obviously it impacts us and our show, and you and your employment, and your spouse’s employment, they took a risk on me doing the show, someone who doesn’t have any media background, eight – nine years ago when I started doing the show with Todd, but the format’s changed over the years too, like we originally started this as a weekend show when the weekend live broadcasting started, and Dan, you thought this was a great idea to put in a mortgage broker. Back then, we thought it was gonna be one season; we’re gonna say everything that needs to be said.

Dan Ahlstrand
Try it out and see if it would resonate with the audience, which is half the battle, right? It is trying to create informative and educational programming that people can actually get their heads wrapped around. I find that a lot of stuff out there, particularly in this, in the podcast segment space, and or in on the on the social medias, and the in the TikToks, and the in the YouTubes of the world, is there’s some, there’s nuggets of really great information in it, but it’s very difficult for, for somebody from the outside looking in. Like when you have an expert as a guest, the expert is an expert in their field, doesn’t matter who it is. If it’s Clinton Wilkins talking about mortgages, if it was Dr. Rob Thacker talking about science, so he’s an astrophysicist, or if it was Dr. John Gillis doing his house calls. Gillis, who used to do house calls for us, you’re an expert in your field, and you understand how your job functions, but the real key and the real gift is being able to take that knowledge and and parlay it into something that that people can understand and and get something out of it can be informative, it needs to be entertaining, every once in a while the show’s entertaining.

Clinton Wilkins
Done a few zingers over the years, we certainly have, but it also has to be of value to people, and I think that’s why Mortgage 101 has worked as well as it has, because people find value in it. They learn stuff about it. Sure, it’s a show designed to get people thinking about their mortgages, and at the end of the day, give you a call, but we’ve actually done a lot of transactions off of just listeners that have heard us, and they enjoyed the entertainment piece and the news piece of it, and the education, they valued that, and they said what we deal with us, that’s not our number one MO here. Our number one MO is around education, right, and that’s really why we do it. I’m passionate about it. It actually keeps me on my toes. I don’t do this every day. Yes, this is your career, but I get to step outside my comfort zone, right? Once a month, or a couple of times a month, I put on my amateur broadcaster hat and share my thoughts with a really broad base of listeners.

Dan Ahlstrand
And now I’m going to get onto my soapbox a little bit here, but that is, is probably what the biggest loss of this decision that was made by Rogers this past week is, is that when we lose the ability to have locally generated content that is delivered. To the masses, when you lose those local voices, then everybody suffers, and be it news, be it that the talk show, and all that, and boy, did I ever get a lot of, a lot of texts and messages from people that are going to be that are going to miss that show, going all the way back to End of Crystal days, yeah, right up in 2020 and right up until the last show that we did a couple of days ago, but when you, when you turn that radio station off, like they have done across the country, then those, those local voices are silenced, and I think that’s probably the toughest part for me, and for those people that I talked about earlier, is that there’s one less place where people can can go to get some good local content.

Clinton Wilkins
I agree, and I think it’s so important. We’re losing more and more of this local news. I think the deal with it is that we’re not getting the news on Facebook and Instagram. I think, like, that’s really tough, but I think the one piece is that there was a lot of accountability to local government, local politicians that 95.7 did. It’s all great that we had a mortgage show, that, there was the, the house calls and all these other things, but, I think from a news perspective you guys were there and you were able to break that news a lot quicker than maybe other forms of media like TV, it takes a long time to produce a piece to go on CTV or global, but on the radio you can go to breaking news like immediately, doesn’t matter, like you can be in the middle of a talk show and you can just say, hey, something’s going on in the world, and you’re able to report it, and give the perspective and be there, and I think that’s the piece that I think we’re missing more and more in all regions,, across the world, probably news is really changing, but this is a big blow for us.

Dan Ahlstrand
But the good news is, is that where one void is created, somebody comes in to fill it, and there is opportunity. And I think that, and people that have come through my radio station over the last 20 years, I’ve told them all the same thing, is that that media is evolving, and media is changing, and the way that people consume media is evolving as well, and and that’s where I think shows like this one, not only does it live, or did it live on the radio, but it also lives in the, in a podcast form, and I think, and social media.

Clinton Wilkins
We did so many other things right. We did the traditional. I thought we sounded great on it on FM personally, but we did so many other pieces that I think helped us make this show sustainable.

Dan Ahlstrand
I think that’s the wave of the future, because people are busy, and people have a lot of pressure on them these days. People have a lot of things that are coming at them, right, and not a lot of time.

Clinton Wilkins
A lot of noise.

Dan Ahlstrand
But when they want to learn something, or they find something that they find to be entertaining, to be informative in the space that they’re in at that time, like, if you’re, I mean, everybody’s in the mortgage market, but, if that’s something that you’re focusing on, like, hey, look, it’s time for us to finally get that first home, or to refinance, or get that bigger home, then they find that podcast, and then that hour of 40 minutes or 45 minutes is everything to them, because that’s where their headspace is at, and that’s where traditional media, the broadcast media, has has started to lose ground to the podcast, because the podcasters are are specialized, right? They hit the market that they’re designed to hit; it’s not trying to get in amongst all that, like you said, all that noise, that it’s it’s it’s where it is, and it’s what people have, and it’s accessible, and you get to the people where they are, and when they want.

Clinton Wilkins
I think we’re saying a lot of what was in the past. Is the show gonna continue? I don’t know, but I think that’s the big question right now. This is not on FM. This is really people are listening to us on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, maybe on a blog post on our on our website, and on social media. So, this month we are doing this in a different format. So, if you’re listening to us, you might be listening to us for the first time. We’re talking a lot about the past. We don’t know what the future is going to look like, but we really were a hybrid. This was a show that was made for radio, and we’re able to distribute it through a lot of different channels. What will that look like in the future? I don’t know, I don’t know just yet, but our intention is I want to keep this going. We’ve been doing this for eight years, and we have a huge audience that listens to the show and wants this content. We just have to figure out how we’re gonna get it to these folks that were listening to us before. Some of our existing listeners will go and find us, but what? Chances are, if we try some new formats, maybe we will get some new listeners who’ll be hearing our show for the first time. I think that’s kind of exciting, as much as this is very challenging. Challenging, this is challenging for you. People go through lots of changes in their lives. We’ve talked about credit issues and matrimonial breakdown.

Dan Ahlstrand
Things change, and how that affects your lifestyle. And to be quite frank, I’m going through it right now.

Clinton Wilkins
You didn’t think at this stage of your life that you would not have a job. Well, let’s figure out how we make this continue. And as much as that’s happened, we’ve already been through a lot of changes with this show, so we’d like to give a little bit more of the backstory. We started on a weekend live show, COVID strikes, we can’t go in the studio anymore, then we’re doing it kind of on the phone, and then the weekend show wasn’t live anymore, we’re like, okay, is Mortgage 101 gonna continue, like, how are we going to make it work, and then we were doing it during the week, and, we’ve gone through so many different iterations already, but we forget, we forget that we’ve made changes. I think when there’s a change in life, we know sometimes people forge forward and they strive with change, and I think other folks put their heads in the sand when there’s change, but I think it creates an opportunity overall. So I’m excited about what the future will bring, and sometimes you’re forced to make changes where otherwise maybe you would have just let the status quo continue to go. So I’m excited. I always like new opportunities that I think sometimes, when one door opens, as much as a cliché, this is one door opens, maybe other ones, or one door closes, other ones are going to open.

Dan Ahlstrand
For sure. The best way to look at it, and the way that I’ve been kind of working my way through getting this wrapped around my head, wrapped around this, is that it’s onwards and upwards, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. What we’re going to do right now is, we’re going to take a break, and we’re going to focus on mortgages. Enough talking about damn, let’s move on. All right, and we’re not cutting in, for we’re not.

Clinton Wilkins
We’re talking about this now, but after the break, we’re going to talk about mortgages, and we’re going to talk about Pride, and we have a guest, and hopefully you will stay tuned.

Dan Ahlstrand
You’re listening to Mortgage 101. He’s Clinton Wilkins, I’m Dan Ahlstrand, and we’re back in just a couple of minutes.