The latest episode of the HousingWire Power House podcast delivered a masterclass in real estate and mortgage innovation. HousingWire president Diego Sanchez sat down with Ryan Young, CEO of Fello and owner of Ohio's #1 real estate team, for an eye-opening conversation about automation, database management, and the future of productivity.
The episode, titled "Everywhere all at once: Automating engagement with Ryan Young," revealed how modern agents and mortgage pros can truly be everywhere at once through smart automation — without losing the personal touch that drives relationships and referrals.
Ryan's unique perspective comes from an unexpected background. After a decade as a professional chef, he transitioned into the real estate business in 2009. The career switch required intense focus and work ethic, but his hospitality background proved invaluable. As Ryan has explained in other webinars and podcasts: "In the restaurant industry, you build these incredible relationships with your regular customers who know you, as the chef, personally. Hospitality builds that relationship, and it translates perfectly to real estate transactions."
Here are the five core concepts Ryan discussed with HousingWire president Diego that enable agents and loan officers (LO) to automate engagement to be everywhere, all at once:
The Problem: Most agents and mortgage pros treat their CRMs like filing cabinets — static collections of outdated information that never change. Meanwhile, the people in those databases are constantly moving, refinancing, and changing their housing situations.
The Solution: Transform your static database into a dynamic, living system with automated data enrichment that updates your contacts' ever-changing information, like address, equity, property info, so you're always working with the most accurate information.
Ryan's Evidence: During the HousingWire podcast, Ryan revealed a shocking reality: "Less than 20% of the 50 million contacts connected to Fello's system have addresses attached to them when they first sync." Even more eye-opening — after enrichment, "just under 60% of them are actually homeowners."
"Databases are essentially static tables of information. They're very one-dimensional," Ryan explained to Diego. "But in reality, our database every day is moving, right? We're helping people buy and sell in home ownership and moving them around. But yet our database is static."
Ryan discovered this firsthand when his team was doing manual background checks for safety before showing homes."Every time we'd go in there, there was an address, their home address sitting right above it. And we would never take that address and actually go and put it in the CRM." The realization hit him: "Why are we just approaching them as a buyer when they're also a homeowner?"
The Problem: Agents and LOs often focus on transactions rather than relationships, missing opportunities to build long-term connections by providing a solution, and actually solving their clients' real problems.
The Solution: Approach every interaction as an opportunity to identify and solve problems, which naturally builds deeper relationships and creates loyal advocates.
Ryan's Evidence: Ryan's philosophy, shared on the HousingWire Power House podcast, centers on this principle: "It's our responsibility to be problem solvers, right? It's my job building software to listen to our customers and users and identify what are the pain points. I'm also a user. And so it's articulating what my pain points are currently and continuing to solve those problems and build great software around it.
"As long as [we] continue to do that, we'll continue to ultimately have raving fans and continue to enjoy what we're building for a long time to come," Ryan explained. The result? Fello is the fastest-growing real estate and mortgage platform in the U.S., and Ryan's team became the number one real estate team in Ohio by focusing on solving problems rather than just closing deals.
The Problem: Many AI tools are complicated and require technical expertise, adding burden rather than reducing it for busy professionals.
The Solution: Leverage automation that responds to natural language, making powerful data analysis as simple as asking a question.
Ryan's Evidence: Ryan demonstrated this perfectly during the HousingWire podcast: "I can just type into Fello Ask AI, basically show me anyone who's been in their home for over 10 years that doesn't have a mortgage on their property. And whose home has appreciated by more than 50%. [...] I type it in, hit enter, and it literally just filters down all the people."
He emphasized that mortgage and real estate marketing automation should simplify, not complicate: "We build really complex technology, but leverage AI to make it very easy to use." The goal is enabling [users] to access sophisticated insights without needing technical skills — true "everywhere all at once" capability through simple commands.
The Problem: Even with perfect lead identification and engagement, agents and LOs become the bottleneck when it comes to making calls and setting appointments, limiting their ability to be "everywhere at once."
The Solution: Deploy voice AI that can handle initial conversations, qualify prospects, and warm up leads before transferring them to agents for closing.
Ryan's Evidence: Ryan revealed the future of real estate automation during his conversation with Diego: the upcoming voice AI feature that will fundamentally change the agent / lender-technology relationship.
"We used to joke that it's a 50-50 relationship. I'm going to take your database, provide you with all this data, create all this engagement. That's my 50%. I need you to meet me the other 50% by calling them, setting an appointment, and closing them," Ryan explained.
But agents and LOs kept getting busy and missing follow-ups. So Ryan's team asked: "What if we actually called for them?" The solution: "We're building these just wild human-like voices and experiences and conversations."
Ryan's personal experience testing the technology speaks to its potential: "Last week, I was laying in bed with my phone on my chest, and I'm talking to one of our voice AI. It's so real and it's so good... I'm almost talking to someone I enjoy having a conversation with."
The Problem: Real estate and mortgage professionals operate in silos, despite serving the same customers and facing identical database and engagement challenges.
The Solution: Recognize that solutions for one industry often apply directly to related industries, creating opportunities for expanded impact and revenue.
Ryan's Evidence: Ryan initially resisted expanding Fello into mortgage, telling the HousingWire podcast: "I'm a real estate guy. I don't think that's going to happen."
But customer demand told a different story: "After you have hundreds of people coming to you saying, 'We also own a mortgage company, can you bring this into the mortgage industry so our mortgage company can do what you're doing for our real estate team?'"
The breakthrough came when Ryan investigated: "I started having conversations with loan officers who are friends and asking them what their process looks like, how they look at their database, and the way they market to their database. And I realized this is not just a real estate problem. It's a real estate and mortgage problem."
Post-close engagement — keeping in touch with past clients for future refinances, HELOCs, or investment property loans — mirrors the exact challenge real estate agents face with past clients who might sell again. The database management and automation solutions translate directly.
Based on Ryan's insights from the HousingWire Powerhouse podcast, here's how to implement true automation that lets you be everywhere at once:
The era of choosing between personal relationships and scalable automation is over. As Ryan demonstrated throughout his conversation with Diego on the Power House podcast, the future belongs to agents and lenders who can be everywhere at once by leveraging smart automation to amplify impact while maintaining their personal touch.
Ready to start your own everywhere-all-at-once action plan? Schedule some time to see the Fello platform in action, and how it can be tailored to your unique needs.
Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to the complete episode of the HousingWire Power House podcast featuring Fello CEO Ryan Young and hosted by HousingWire president Diego Sanchez.