In today’s mortgage market, success depends on strong, intentional partnerships between loan officers and real estate agents. In this episode of Lykken on Lending, David Lykken sits down with Steven Wynands, Co-Founder and CEO of RETR, to discuss how his platform is reshaping the way mortgage professionals and realtors connect. From his unique personal journey to the 15-year “overnight success” of building RETR, Steven shares how innovation, data, and relationship-centered technology are creating a new era of collaboration—empowering loan officers to deliver more value, build stronger networks, and ultimately serve borrowers better.
[David] Listeners, you know how excited I get about innovation. I love finding new ideas. I like people that are doing old ideas in a new way. We have joining us today Steve Wynands, who is the co-founder and CEO of RETR R-E-T-R. If you’re not using it, you got to use it, Stephen, good to have you here, friend.
[Steven] Hey, thank you so much for having me on the show, David.
[David] It’s a real honor. You and I are getting to know each other because we’re working on a project that we can’t wait to talk about down the road, a joint venture that we’re working on. We’re not ready to talk about that, but in preparation to do that, I want to make sure my listening audience now can be as many as 90,000 in a single day, are aware of you and getting to know you and are signing up for your product and services. The things that I want to get into today is innovation, but first of all I want to get into a little bit of your background, your journey to where you’re at. But one of the things I love about your bio is you celebrate your wife and you say how you find joy watching your two young children grow enthusiastic sporting interests in arts and sports. So you’re a family man. I love it.
[Steven] Yeah, man, they’re everything to me. They’re the reason I’m here and they’re the reason I do what I do. They give me so much joy.
[David] Yeah, it’s so good. There’s just, I think, about people that I mean those that choose not to have a family and things like that. I understand that. But, boy, if maybe it’s like it’s good, they don’t know what they’re missing out on, because if you did, you would be mourning it for the rest of your life. So it’s so exciting that you’re a family man and that and what you do, but you’re also a man of innovation. How did you get to where you’re at doing the innovation? Tell us your journey to RETR.
[Steven] Yeah, I accidentally got here and I count myself as one of those 90,000 listeners that you’re talking about. I never thought I’d be in this chair talking to you, and so thank you. Everyone else who might be listening, I’m one of you. I never thought I’d be here building RETR for this big mortgage and real estate data platform, because I set off to just be that family man that could provide for my family, get a nice job, stable, steady income, work nine to five and be there for them with my computer engineering job. That’s my background, born and raised as a technologist, and I accidentally got into real estate because, you know, no one really sets out thinking I want to be a realtor when I grow up, but I suddenly became a realtor, rose the ranks and then learned how the industry worked and just saw so many things. I wanted to make better and a few pivots later. Here we are building this platform, RETR, this mortgage and real estate data platform to help loan officers build better relationships with real estate agents. So we can all do better for our consumers, our borrowers, our buyers.
[David] Yeah, it’s so important and it’s data is becoming such an important part of our lives today. I mean, AI is a data, but it starts with data and mining the data and how it’s. But I like there’s a lot of other companies out there doing what you’re doing or working in the space that you’re doing one of the things is, I get to know you. There’s all these little Easter nuggets that just come out when you start learning about you, Steven, and so share with some of our listening some things they don’t know about you.
[Steven] Yeah, I think we started off with that nugget in the intro. It’s how much I love kids. I am a technologist, I love building things. But if money didn’t matter, if nothing else mattered, I would just be out there improving the lives of every child. I could giving them a better life, better education, and that’s why I’ve loved volunteering through different programs at different schools and universities, because kids just give me so much joy, making their lives better.
[David] And there’s a story behind that.
[Steven] Yeah, there definitely is. There’s a reason why I put so much of my energy and focus any free time that I have with kids. I mean growing up myself, I didn’t have the easiest childhood, and so any opportunity that I can help improve the lives of another child out there I want to be able to do that because you know kids are so wonderful, they’re so honest. I love that.
[David] I love that because where you had struggles, struggles and challenges and, by the way, you’re being very kind, because I know your story and we’re not going to get into all the depths of it, but it was pretty horrific and for you to now focus and dedicate your life. I think it’s oftentimes where we see where we’ve suffered that we want to go in and make a difference in the lives of others in those same areas. I just really applaud you for that, which is something that has prompted you to build the latest, greatest technology. And so let’s start with what prompted you to build RETR.
[Steven] Yeah, there’s two things that drive me in this world. If I see something that’s unfair, I want to fix that. If I see something that’s inefficient, I want to fix that, and that’s exactly what I saw and which is why I built RETR. I had no idea that there were any other solutions out there. I just wanted to make the lives of my loan officers that I use better, and I mean this whole journey. It didn’t happen overnight. We call this the 15-year overnight success. I think it might be 16 years now, but no one knows about that backstory. I’m happy to tell you about just building this company, or, if you want to go a little bit further back, I could do all that. It’s whatever you want, whatever you think it’s useful,
[David] I think, to the extent of what you did previously contributes to what you’re doing now. Yeah, go ahead, get into that a little bit.
[Steven] Yeah, so, going back a little bit to the beginning of that 15 year journey, like I wanted to just be there for my kids. And so I’m born and raised in the Northern Virginia area, really close to DC, and there is a playbook for growing up in the DC metro area With all these government jobs. What you’re supposed to do is you’re supposed to go to college, get a good job, start a family and retire on your pension and then just keep that system going, send the kids off on the same old path. And I was going down that path and that was so important to me because, my parents not being around too much when I was born, I wanted to make sure I was there for my children, and so I was working in the big consulting gigs in the DC area, those big firms that everyone knows. And then I was like you know what? It’s time? I took a big old pay cut to join the federal government so I could be that 9 to 5, clock in, clock out, drone and I was well on that path and I calculated how to retire early and what I should do with my HSA accounts, FSA, all this stuff. I was like I’m this Northern Virginia guy. I was on it, and then what ended up happening was I ended up buying and selling my first homes and thinking like, seriously, is this the value that realtors are providing for what they’re getting in return? And I thought, man, that is so unfair, that’s so not right. I got to go fix that and I combined that unfairness and efficiency of technology. I was like I’m going to do this, I’m going to disrupt real estate agents, I’m going to get rid of all of them. And then that’s like that’s not actually how the world works. So I learned that everyone’s going to need a real estate agent, and I became one myself. And as I joined the ranks of real estate agents, I realized, oh, there’s a lot of good realtors out here who are just trying to do good and feed their families, and so I was like man, they’re not getting enough credit. What I need to do is let’s build a system to highlight the good ones. And so we built a different startup where real estate agents were rating each other. So you can figure out who’s the best of the best. Because real estate agents were rating each other. So you can figure out who’s the best of the best. Because real estate agents. We can get our borrowers or buyers to think what we want all day, but you can’t trick another real estate agent. So I built that and then we had like half a million realtors logged onto that from around the country and what I learned from that was like, yeah, we built something cool that people want and it seems to be doing its thing, but realtors didn’t want to pay anything for it.
[David] That’s so true. It’s so funny you say that because it’s so true. Realtor starts to achieve. I know we have a lot of realtors listening, so I’m not going to cast this over all y’all, but let me tell you there’s many times that is very, very true.
[Steven] Yeah, I mean, I’m still a realtor myself. I get it now, and so I learn more as I go along and I improve on that, and so, during this whole time, I built the system right. I was a top real estate agent myself. I had five jobs, I think at this point, so I was still working for the federal government. I was a top real estate agent, I was flipping homes, I had a rental portfolio, and then I had that startup. So I’m doing all these five things and being a top realtor, I’m getting these calls from loan officers and title companies, all that stuff trying to take me out to lunch and coffee, and so, once they learned that we had this big old network of realtors logged in all over, the conversation quickly went from hey, Steve, why don’t you send a loan my way to you have that system. I want to throw money at you so I can advertise on it, but I’m no longer Steve the engineer, I’m Steve the realtor. I’m like realtors are my people. Leave us alone. I don’t want a spammy, ad-filled website Go away. And that was it, though, and going back to all this stuff, it’s like all right, I’ve got this system. No one’s paying for it really, not really changing our lives, but we’re having fun just making the world a better place. I’m still working five jobs and the pandemic market rolls around, right, and so all these people that were calling me for lunch and coffee all this time those calls just disappeared, and I couldn’t even get a call back when I reached out to a loan officer. I’m like what the heck’s going on here? But hindsight, we all know what’s happening and so that’s the new world order. But then, sometime in 2021, I started getting calls again from all these loan officers. I got five calls in one day, back to back to back, and I’m like what is happening? Then, by the third call, it’s like holy crap, I get it now. Loan officers their number one source of income are realtor referrals, and so they need to build realtor relationships. And the only way to build a new real estate referral business relationship is to provide some kind of meaningful value to help us do our jobs better. And then all the dots from the past 15 years are connecting. I’m just like holy crap. Realtors, they’re trying to get realtor relationships. They need to bring business value. I know what realtors need. This entire time, loan officers have been trying to pay me lots of money to get to these realtors. I’m like, wait a minute, I can’t help all the loan officers out there, but I can build this to shift this power imbalance, because loan officers do all this work but they get no credit for it. I’m going to build this system, put it in the hands of loan officers. They’re going to learn about it, they’re going to educate their realtors. Everyone’s going to get more value. The borrower’s going to get better value. And then I told my buddy, Steve, my co-founder, Steve, who I’ve been building all these businesses with over the past 15 years. I’m like Steve got this new idea we have to quit all of our jobs. Before we do that, let me get this home equity line of credit and then quit all our jobs, build this thing, let’s go. And that’s how RETR started being born.
[David] Wow, what a great story. I love the back channeling, I mean the back story behind the stage, how you got to where you are. I love the story. It’s entrepreneurialism and then, coming out of the background that you did, you see opportunity, not obstacles, and that’s why you’re so excited to get to know and folks. I can’t wait to get into some of the things they’re building right now because I share an idea with Steven and I and I was going to get into one of those ideas now in a minute here, but we got into this I shared. Could you, what do you think about this? Steven? I explained the situation. He called me back two weeks later says hey Lykken, take a look at what I built. I’m going son of a gun. You listened and you developed and you delivered. It was amazing what you did. So here’s the concept. I’m going to lay it out there, Steven. So then we can. I want to get into it because I’m so excited. Now, this isn’t out yet. Listeners, when is this what we’re about to talk about, going to be released out to the world?
[Steven] Maybe in like two or three weeks, so maybe early September.
[David] Ah, good deal. So, listeners, as you know, the last mortgage company I was a part, I was an owner equity interest in. We were the largest consumer direct company and we spent anywhere from million, three million, five on direct mail and I may be off a little bit of numbers, but today’s numbers that was a little bit. It was about money. But anyway, we spent oodles of money each month sending out direct mail and when the phone call came in we looked at how successful are we? the conversion rates, are we on that? And I had this idea what if we tested all of our loan originators or we actually had a call center where the initial call came into? We tested all of them and found out what their personality type is. I always anyone who listens to this program you know how much I love personality types. And then let’s figure out a way to match with the caller when the call comes in. Let’s make a reasonable, educated guess on how that, what type of personality they have sanguine, phlegmatic, cleric or melancholic, and which is also disc a cleric or melancholic, which is also disc, if you go direct influencer, supportive, what’s the other one, compliant, and so, whatever your, your disc profile is, we would match the caller id. We found some technology that, based on how they answered the phone call, steven, it was able to route the call to someone of like personality in our call center Our conversions went up substantially. I’m sharing that story, listeners, with Steven. He goes interesting, I like that. I said what if we could guess the personalities of the loan officers that you have on your platform with a reasonable guess? He goes let me look at that. And yeah, classic Steven, he gets that. Now I’m starting to read him. When the gears are turning, he gets even more muted in his personality and it’s like get out of the way because something’s about to have magical is about to happen. You have built this now and I want to get into sharing with our audience what you have built, because from a conversation you had to be two weeks later I think it was two weeks you had a concept out and you continue to enhance and build on it before it’s going to get released out to the world. It is a game changer. Talk about it, steven.
[Steven] Yeah, I think that’s one of the key differences in our company and everyone else. You’ll still find me involved in a lot of these conversations because, like the one we had, I just love hearing what’s going on in your head, because then that could bring so much value that we could create in our platform.
[David] And so when you told me I got a lot going on in my head. That’s no doubt about that.
[Steven] And so when you told me about how you could pick up on someone’s personality just by how they respond on the phone, what their tone is, and then increase your conversion rates by pairing them with the right person, I was like, yeah, I think there’s got to be a way we can do that in the mortgage world, because with the recruiters out there, everyone’s kind of I hate being treated as a number right, and so that’s why our system is all about helping people build better relationships, and that includes mortgage companies and their loan officers. So how can you approach people in the way that they want to be approached, the way that resonates, so that, one, you can actually have the conversation, so that, two, you can deliver your value proposition, and then, three, see if there’s an actual match, because I believe there’s the right place for everyone and not every place fits everyone. And so you mentioned that. I was like I think there is a way. And I was like, you know, I just went digging into my coding cave, which we are here in my basement in Reston, virginia, and I said, all right, how do we just do this? So I just dug, dug, dug and we found like, hey, if we take a look at loan officers. You take all their signals, their employment history, all their social media activity, their signals, their employment history, all their social media activity. There’s the way that we can load it into our AI engine and figure out what their personality is and that goes. You know the DISC types, right? So you’re going to talk to someone who is like a dominant personality, much different than you would, someone who’s that stability type personality, and so we take that we can feed you different scripts or hints and tips about how you might call them or how you might email them, which will set you up for success, that second and third round to deliver your value proposition. Right, see if there’s a fit.
[David] Yeah, and what you did, not only now, what I mean. I’ve seen it so many times. I’m so excited about it for the listeners that are listening to this. You know, you business owners, I’m sharing this idea. Now we’re adding another element to this that we’re not going to talk about yet because, until that’s ready, we’re in beta on that. But what you develop is that you give tools. When talking to David Lykken, you’re going to want to use stories. You’re going to want to because David’s a classic sanguine personality, he’s an influencer type. Surprise, surprise, I have a podcast and so I love telling stories. I love getting into people’s stories and it gives me joy to share someone’s story. I love it. Now, if you’re talking to Steven, you’re selling him and he’s a loan officer. Uh-uh, get the stories. He’s this guy that says don’t tell me about the labor pains, show me the baby. In other words, bullet, bullet, bullet. Steven goes I want to talk to you about a job. I see that you’ve done this, I see that you’ve done this and I want to get to it. Here’s the opportunity I want to present it. Steve, how’s that sound? That’s you are just cut the stories out. Get to the point. So if someone’s going to approach me like they would approach you, I go along. How rude. You just got to the point. What are you about that kind of thing? But if you’re talking to you, you’re going. I don’t want to hear the story, I want to get to the point. What are you selling? What are you doing? What are we doing here? And when we start using that kind of intelligence and add that to the recruiting platform, omg, we’re going to watch conversions, just like we saw with our inbound telemarketing. The conversion lift that we got as a result of that was significant. And what you’re going to, what your customers are going to realize, Steven, as a result of this I get so excited about because we’re here to help people get into the right jobs for the right reasons and alignment. James Collins says in the book good to great get every the right people on the bus, get the right people off the bus and those that are sitting in the bus, getting them sitting in the right seats. How we do that is through intentional conversations, and what you’ve built, Steven, is getting us to intentional conversations Really exciting.
[Steven] Oh, that’s just the start of it. Right, when we iterate on this, you can go from a system of record, which we are today, pipe this into a system of action, and, oh my gosh, the things that you could do with the data that we have.
[David] What do you mean by a system of action?
[Steven] Yeah, the world’s making a little shift, right. So systems of record have the data, like we do. A little shift. Systems of record are what you know, like the data repositories. That’s the gold, right, data’s the gold. But now, with AI, they’re creating these systems of action that will automate sequences for you and responses and different branches, and so that’s what’s happening in this world today, and so we’re at a very, very interesting time in the world, and mortgage as well is part of it.
[David] Yeah, no kidding., I don’t want to get into where we’re going down the road, but I do want to get into where your path, without this other joint venture thing that you and I are doing together. I want to get into your long-term vision. I mean, you are an innovator. You see all these options. What are the problems that you intend to solve, moving forward?
[Steven] Oh, I can tell I’m going to start off with our big hair eagle.
[David] And that is to become, yeah, good BHAG.
[Steven] Our BHAG is to become a part of every single real estate and mortgage transaction in America. Yeah, and that’s so. A lot of people don’t know. RETR stands for real estate track record and if you’ve used RETR and you’ve looked at this button, that says instant track record. The track record is essentially a resume for any loan officer or real estate agent and what I tell people is like you’re not going to, I ask them, you’re not going to buy a used car for five grand without checking out the Carfax right. And used car for five grand without checking out the car fax right, right, right and so like. Why would you on earth, would you, buy a million dollar home without checking on the resume for that real estate agent and the loan officer you’re working with?
[David] yes that’s such a yeah, and they should, and, as consumers, become more and more aware of that that’s gonna be so. That’s one of your visions is how to embed yourself into every single transaction.
[Steven] Yeah, but that’s like I don’t know the six to eight year goal. In between, We’ve got so much other stuff going on and our North star. Everything that we do is to help improve that loan officer realtor relationship, that mortgage company loan officer relationship, Because this industry what I’ve finally learned after like 15 years of trying to disrupt it, is it’s all about relationships. You can’t disrupt that relationship. Let’s make that relationship better. Let’s find the good relationships, because you know what? the borrower, the consumer, the buyer at the end of the day, they’re always going to need help from professionals, whether it’s realtors or loan officers.
[David] Yeah, and this gets a real important point, because I was just at a dinner celebrating. If it’s not someone that’s using RETR, it’s Brian Cooke, one of my good friends new clients, I love it. We’re selling his birthday. I’m sitting around with one of his loan officers. He says Dave, I’m really concerned that AI is going to put us out of business, loan officers out of business. I go. You couldn’t be more wrong. I think this is going to enhance. What it’s going to enable AI is going to enable. All this new technology is you’re going to be able to 10X your volume and still be able to do as good a job, if not better job, than you’re currently doing on the lower volume levels. And I think I want to get into what your position. You are, again, innovator, but you’re also a visionary when it looks at what is possible and what does the future look like. For those that are afraid of AI, steven, what would you say to them, especially in light of this relationship concept you just talked about?
[Steven] That’s exactly it. Figure out how to leverage it to your benefit and don’t worry about it replacing you and your relationships. No robot can.
[David] Yeah, simple to put end of story Mic drop moment One of those let go, you just can’t. And I think it is. And why do you think that is? I mean, I want to dig a little deeper into that, just rather than the mic drop, big, bold statement.
[Steven] Yeah, um, looking back on things right when we were trying to disrupt the, the, the real estate industry, and in that time, like I was going pretty crazy so a little bit of extra background my wife and I were she was carrying our first child and what I was doing when I saw that unfairness, what I felt was unfair, and trying to disrupt the real estate industry, I was spending my nights and weekends finding people on Craigslist trying to sell their home, or random people and just saying like, hey, let me help you buy and sell without a realtor. And they happily accepted it. And I was like, oh wow, all these people, we’re saving them tens of thousands of dollars, we’re making college affordable for them because we’re saving them all this commission, we’re giving them access to these vacations because they’re saving all this money. But at the end of it they would always say, Steve, we couldn’t have done it without you, you should get a license. And I didn’t understand why when we went through this. But now I do. The reason is because this process, although it feels or seems easy to me, it’s a very rare thing that happens. You buy a house like once every what, five, seven, 10 years? You forget the pain. And when you forget it and you’ve got that million dollar transaction, what happens? You get afraid. Got that million dollar transaction, what happens? You get afraid. That fear creeps in, that self-doubt creeps in, and then you look for that professional and that’s why that’s not going away. But then where do you look today, some people will look for ChatGPT, some people will ask Google, but you get the AI answers and what’s going to happen is when that answer is wrong once, twice, three times and that messes up someone else’s million dollar property. Yeah, they’re going to lose that trust and faith and they don’t want their million dollars to be at jeopardy. They’re half a million dollars, they’re even $200,000 home to be in jeopardy. They’re going to go back and look today All right, who has done this 5, 10, 20 times? I can just ask and make sure that I don’t put my money at risk. That’s what’s going to happen.
[David] It’s so true. Yeah, it’s really really true. You just summed it up really really well, and I think that’s why those that are in this business, that are focusing on the relationship, leveraging technology, are going to win at this game in exponential ways that most people cannot imagine. I really see a day where we’re going to see a loan officer doing two 300 loans a month because of them leveraging technology and so like, oh, you only do 50 loans a month. I mean, today you find that someone’s doing 50, 60, 70 loans a month. I have a couple Brian Cooke’s, one of those guys that does 80 loans. You know, we started looking at guys like that. You go like they’re freaks of nature, but they won’t be. Those guys are going to be like at the bottom of the pile, yet in the future. If you’re only doing 50, 60, 70, 80 loans a month, that’s where we’re heading to and, with your technology, what you’re building, aligning people up. Steven, it gets so exciting. As we wrap this up. What are the things that people need to know about you and RETR that are really important? You and RETR, that are really important.
[Steven] Yeah, RETR, we just love building stuff and we our key values. They’re our guiding principles for everything Honesty, integrity and fairness. Our philosophies are we want to give more than we get. We don’t want to be just an unused gym membership. We want to innovate and provide you with lots of value, and so if there’s any way that data might be able to support you and your business and you’ve got some ideas and you want a partner that loves building stuff that’ll make a difference in your lives, please reach out to us, reach out to me. I’d love to have a conversation and learn, like what else is going on out there that we could build and innovate on.
[David] Yeah, so if you have a conversation with Steven, he gets here’s a good idea, he’s going to innovate on it. How can people reach you, Steven?
[Steven] Yeah, LinkedIn Is a great spot. So there’s, only one, Steven Wynands. So I’ll be very easy.
[David] Let’s get it spelled it’s w-y-n-a-n-d-s. For those that are listening on this w-y-n-a-n-d-s. You can find him on linkedin. He connects with you quickly and he’s got a great team. I love the people. I’ve been now on the phone with the vast majority of your team and I got to tell you you’ve got a great group of people you’ve got surrounding yourself. That’s such an important part of this. Any success is not built on one person. It’s built on a team.
[Steven] That’s exactly it. Come join the RETR family man, my co-founder, I’ve known since seventh grade, his wife since fourth grade, and our first hire over here was my top loan officer. And so we just surround ourselves with good people, stay in each other’s orbit and just do cool stuff together. Have fun doing it.
[David] Speaking of being in an orbit, I’m so blessed and honored to be in your orbit and have you in mine, friend. I’m looking forward to it. I like that one saying you said we’re not going to allow for unused health club memberships. We’re going to make sure everyone’s active. That’s good. What a great time with you, Steven. I loved it. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story with our listeners.
[Steven] Thank you so much, David. Thank you everyone else for making it to the end here.
[David] Yeah, we have a 98% listen through rate. Is there statistics unheard of in the podcast world? So we it’s because of guys like you sharing their story and the way you did that allows that to happen. Thank you Steven, appreciate it.
Important Links
Steven Wynands is the co-founder & CEO of RETR, a leading mortgage and real estate data platform with a goal of improving relationships in mortgage and real estate. Steven attributes their “15 year overnight success” to having a founding team with the deep engineering backgrounds and industry expertise that is not influenced by outside money so that they can stay laser-focused on delivering value to the customer.
Outside of work, Steven and his wife find joy in watching their two young children grow and enthusiastically supporting their interests in art and sports. When he’s not hanging out with his family or brainstorming new ideas, Steven loves playing pickup basketball and devouring crispy, delicious chicken wings.