Meet Latane Meade | CEO of Allied Title & Escrow

We had the good fortune of connecting with Latane Meade and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Latane, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I had sold a previous company in the sports and entertainment industry where we owned a sport and social club in San Diego and ran obstacle races around the world. If you remember the TV show Wipeout on ABC, we partnered with ABC and Disney and took Wipeout Run around the world so the masses could participate. We also owned a night race called Electric Run that had 300K participants in our first year…running a 5K at night with lasers and after parties are more fun than running 5ks at 6 AM. Soooooo it was a natural transition into title insurance once I moved back to the east coast to be closer to me and my wife’s family 🙂

I bought a house when I moved back and noticed the title process was archaic and boring. After looking into it more, my business partner and I felt like there was an opportunity to make closings a celebration, modern offices and implement much needed technology into the process (eg., virtual online closings, electronic options for earnest money deposits, etc).

Allied Title & Escrow was born.

What should our readers know about your business?
I think there is a misperception that there is a “playbook” that works for an industry. For example, “if I know the best marketing plan for a title company then I’ll be successful.” Or “if I do what that successful company is doing then I’ll be successful.”

I don’t believe in playbooks because industries are ever changing and what worked for the past company might not work for you. What we preach in all our departments is continuous optimization on existing approaches and continuous testing of new ideas.

If you keep testing out new ideas (no matter what dept it is) you find out what works and what doesn’t. If a new idea works, you keep doing it (until it doesn’t). Eventually you end up with a tool kit that is much more robust that your competitors. For example, we noticed our competitors had boring offices and we wanted to create a celebration feel for our buyers and sellers. After getting feedback from clients, our team and many others we kept focusing on making the experience different. Now you enter our offices to:
– music
– ping pong tables
– putting greens
– arcade games
– photo props
– photo booths
– polaroid cameras
– extremely soft merch that anyone can take
– beer on tap
– cold brew coffee on tap
– photos of their house on the screen in the room they are signing docs
– custom kids books to color
– “Things to do” packets we create for each area they are moving into
– and more…

Compare that to a competitor of ours who has mahogany walls with bad lighting… which one would you choose to do your closing at!!?? 🙂

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We’d start off with brunch at Big Pink in South Beach then walk around and explore the Art Deco architecture of the area. We’d also make sure to visit the Bass Museum of Art and end the day with happy hour at Broken Shaker at the Freehand Miami. The Wynwood area is also full of great artwork, amazing food, and coffee. Depending on how long you’re in town, a day trip to the Everglades or Key West is worthwhile!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d like to make a shoutout to the importance of minimizing meetings and 2 books that got me started down this path:

Death by Meeting and Rework.

In our business, it’s important that the owners are available to our clients to solve problems, set up strategic partnerships and spend time focusing on strategy and how to take the business to the next level.

One of the reasons we have been successful is my business partner, Matt Paulson, takes clients’ calls day and night and solves problems. We have 70 employees and with that many employees it’s human nature you could be dealing with employee communication issues / miscommunication full time. We’ve hired the best people to help solve issues and we try to only do internal meetings if it’s critical.

Although we aren’t where we want to be there yet in terms of minimal meetings we are moving in that direction and seeing the results.

Website: https://www.alliedtitleandescrow.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allied_title

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allied-title-escrow

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alliedtitle/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2K-x_RoqG6XxAEe0QaTR4w