AI Is Changing the Mortgage Industry Forever
And Most Mortgage Companies Are Not Ready
An Open Letter from Chris Johnstone
This is an urgent message to the CEO’s, Sales Leaders, Branch Managers, and Mortgage Professionals of 2026.
I have spent 16 wonderful years building an organization and team of incredible people with the sole purpose of using technology to help mortgage professionals connect with customers.
I’ve Been Early to Every Major Tech Shift
When Google business pages first came out and we had the ability to get new high quality leads and mortgage deals I was the first in the industry to offer a done for you solution to help get more reviews and rank.
(Our very first client on our Local Google Traffic had 8 out of the available 10 spots on the front page)
For 3 years straight I travelled across both the United States and Canada giving keynote presentations sponsored by NAMB, CMP, First National Financial , Remax and many forward thinking organizations on the importance of connecting with your database and building a process to get as many 5-star reviews and social proof online as possible.
Many (if not most) of the top rated professionals in the industry have used my brand building strategies from the hundreds of free webinars, podcasts, free training programs, and daily emails that I send out. You can check out the podcast here www.loanofficerpodcast.com
Many Millions of dollars in commissions have been generated as a result.
Then, Facebook ads were launched.
We were first.
We helped thousands of mortgage professionals connect with customers through social media and many more millions were made by loan officers connecting with clients through a new platform.
This worked.
Until it didn’t.
I no longer recommend Meta ads for consumer direct leads and we completely stopped all paid ads management and funnel building to focus 100% of REFERRAL BASED RESULTS. (This decision literally wiped millions of dollars in revenue from our bottom line and I still am very proud of this decision because it was the right thing to do for our members.)
Why?
Consumer behavior with technology changes — and when it does, it happens fast.
The Pattern Is Clear:
The only reason I share my professional story with you is so that you understand that I have been at the forefront of every major tech shift in our industry for a decade and a half and I am the only executive that I am aware of that has SCALED national solutions successfully every time.
This time, with A.I. it’s different and to be quite candid … we as an industry are totally unprepared for what’s coming.
This letter is detailed, but stick with me — it may be the most important turning point in your career.
Technology Doesn’t Create Customers — Customers Choose Technology
The companies that thrive through change adapt to meet customers where they are.
If you can provide convenience, speed, and a great experience while also offering a lower price at scale, you can massively disrupt an industry.
Do You See The Pattern?
KODAK camera’s had a 93% market share when they decided to bury the first ever digital camera. (Yes, one of their engineers invented it)
They didn’t believe that photographers would like digital images.
15 years later they were bankrupt.
Blockbuster was the largest national personal entertainment brand ever.
They had the opportunity to buy Netflix for around $50 million dollars but they didn’t believe that streaming video could disrupt them.
10 years later they were bankrupt.
Blackberry once owned 50% of the US smart phone market when they made the decision that customers wouldn’t switch from a keyboard.
They did not adapt to the iPhone, the app store and voice to text.
They no longer make phones.
The One Example of Perfect Foresight: Amazon
AMAZON identified the trends of where our customers are going to be in the next 25 years perfectly.
Positioned themselves in FRONT of where the customers were going and are now one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Amazon did $638 Billion in revenue last year from Amazon.com, Amazon web services, streaming subscriptions and the other business lines it continues to acquire.
Now they are in the direct crosshairs to be the next business that is massively disrupted if they don’t pivot.
Just like us.
Why AI Is the Fastest Disruption of All Time
We as CONSUMERS always move to the solution that is more CONVENIENT, FASTER, EASIER, and CHEAPER.
Enter A.I. (also blockchain, and quantum computing)
Today, you can open up ChatGPT turn on the camera in voice mode, go open your fridge and have A.I. give you a recepie, that lines up with your calories for the day from your fitness plan, see the ingredients that are missing and automatically add whatever you want to your shopping list in Instacart and choose the items that are on sale.
MEGA convenient, fast, easy and cheap.
What could massively disrupt Amazon?
If the AI assistant people use doesn’t recommend products on Amazon, Amazon doesn’t get the customer.
We as consumers are using the AI assistant to ASK WHAT TO BUY and TRUST the AI to deliver the choices for us.
AI Is Disrupting Everything
Daily news and market commentary? (Think Bloomberg and the $2.9 Trillion annual news industry)
You can set up a daily task and Chat GPT will deliver you a complete summary at the beginning and end of the day custom to you with the information that you care about.
You can even have it add a special section that only does news about the companies that you have in your investment portfolio.
Want to get crazy? Setup a quick automation and feed the data into Google’s notebookLM and you can have a custom podcast with a slide presentation for your daily news.
Or, anything else you want to know about.
Your A.I. assistant builds it for you automatically and it is 100% for you.
Honestly, with a personal automated research assistant working for you every day who is going to be doing Google searches and manually reading all of the websites in the search results in 5 years?
A.I. (pick a provider, ChatGPT, GROK, Claude, Co-pilot, META AI, it doesn’t really matter) — they are all racing as fast as they possibly can, backed by endless amounts of VC money to be the 1 company that gets to mass market adoption first.
“Once our customer experiences what it’s like to talk to an A.I. agent to answer their questions, they are never going to go back to the old experience.”
— Chris Johnstone
Traditional search engine searches as we have come to know them are the new VHS, flip phone, fax machine, pager of this generation.
Your Future Business Depends on the Decisions You Make Today
Which means — the majority of our customers are going to be using A.I. for their questions, their communication, their entertainment, and their finances.
According to SemRush Rocket Mortgage spends over $4 million a month (roughly $50 Million a year) on search advertising.
Zillow gets over 30% of their traffic from search engines.
Currently, you can’t run ads on ChatGPT results.
Massive amounts of our customers are pouring into AI to do their searches and they are never coming back to the traditional way of doing things.
The massive disruptors are the executives and the professionals that realize this and adapt to the change.
The Only Strategy That Matters Now
You HAVE to have a strategy in place to get the AI to recommend YOUR mortgage (and real estate partners) services to new customers.
Not only is this the largest consumer direct opportunity that we have ever had but it is the highest QUALITY source of customers because of the TRUST that our customers have in the recommendation of the AI.
We already have members that are getting fully filled out mortgage applications from people getting their online application link from a conversation with their AI assistant.
This is the future. Are you adapting and implementing an A.I. strategy to get recommended?
If not, the risk is massive.
If You’re Ready to Move
If your an executive of a national organization and you would like some help. Reach out.
chris@connectionincorporated.com
If you are an established loan officer that wants us to get your ranked inside the A.I. visit
https://loanofficercrm.ai/aiseo-demo/ — opt-in and then book a call on the next page.
Over 40% of our traditional SEO clients have already gone from not being recommended by AI at all to now being consistently referred to AI conversations, some of which are in the most competitive markets in the nation.
I now believe that we know how to get AI to recommend specific businesses.
I also believe I know how to do this at scale, and am looking for an organization with the network for us to implement and be willing to allow us to participate in the results that we produce.
After 16 years of experience I can confidently say that AI is is the next massive tech disruption and this time, there is Billions of dollars on the line.
Some will gain. Some will be left behind.
The difference this early in the game is simply having the knowledge and making the right choice to move forward.
To your success.
Chris Johnstone