Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Recession Looming? 3 Power Plays to Fill Your Pipeline Fast

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Recession Looming? 3 Power Plays to Fill Your Pipeline Fast · Mortgage Marketing Radio

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  You ever feel like you're working hard doing all the right things, you know, posting on social,
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  showing up to events, calling agents, but your business still isn't where you want it to be?
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  Well, you're not alone. The problem may not be your hustle, it might be your system.
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  Imagine if instead of chasing leads, you built a business where opportunity came to you consistently
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  and predictably. You're listening to the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast, where we help
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  mortgage professionals get more leads, close more loans, and make more money. My name is Jeff
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  Zimfer and I'm your host and Mortgage Marketing Coach. Today on the show, we're asking the question,
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  what does it really take to build a sustainable mortgage business in 2025? One that thrives no
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  matter. What the market throws at you? And to help us dig into that, we're joined today by John
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  Donnelly, strategic sales leader with Service First Mortgage. He manages the team of 75 loan
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  officers and John is someone who's built a culture of execution, not excuses. So in this episode,
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  you're going to learn three specific things. Number one, the overlooked way to convert real estate
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  classes into referral partners and why the follow-up is where the real money is. Number two,
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  we're going to unpack John's strategy for how commenting on other people's social posts can
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  drive more business than creating your own posts. And number three, the simple Monday morning test
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  you can use to instantly improve your online brand and attract better relationships. Plus,
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  we'll explore how John uses voice to AI workflows while walking, yes, literally,
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  walking his dog to build better content and save hours every single week. So if you're ready to
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  stop spinning your wheels and start building a pipeline that sticks, stay tuned for this episode
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  of Mortgage Marketing Radio. John Donnelly, welcome to the show. That'd be to be here. It's
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  awesome. Thank you. So if we're recording this Monday, March 31st, there is another noteworthy
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  news happening in our industry. That is the acquisition of Rocket, acquiring Mr. Cooper and
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  their entire servicing portfolio for a few bucks. That's right. A few bucks is right. They're
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  going all in. It looks like all kinds of stuff happening there. So I'm curious, somebody in your
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  chair, strategic sales leader, right? How many sales individuals do you oversee? My team is about
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  75 LOs. 75 LOs. So when this happens, and then previously, there was a few weeks back rockets,
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  acquisition of Red Finn, do you get a lot of noise from the streets? Does stuff bubble up? And
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  I'm curious, that's what I was thinking about is like, do people then look to you to give them
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  context or meaning around this? I think yes. And I mean, I'm a leader at the company. So they're
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  going to kind of key off of my energy. Is it good? Is it bad? What should I think about it?
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  Because people are trying to form their opinion. I don't think we know exactly what to think of it
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  a little bit yet. It's pretty interesting. So how do you position yourself to win if you're going
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  to go up against this behemoth? Is what I'm immediately thinking about? Yeah. So what I wonder is
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  because I put myself in those shoes as a loan officer and I think about, you know, it's all about
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  what do you pay attention to and what you can control? Yeah. And it makes me really empathetic and
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  then sometimes curious how much time how much time lost loan officers might spend mentally,
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  cognitively, like spinning through these cycles. My go to and I believe this is 90% of the things
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  that you worry about don't come to pass. And so you could spend time and energy on it and let it grow
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  but it's a waste of time. What can you control? You can control what you talk to. You control
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  the number of calls you make. You got to focus on the things you can control. If they come out and
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  have the greatest product and the lowest rates and they're smoking everybody, I mean, you got to
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  pay attention but we're going to see what happens here. I think you, I think that if you do your
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  business right, there's plenty of business for all of us, even those big guys to succeed.
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  I want to I want to shadow you through an average day or week. We're entering into a new quarter
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  of this year. What is the strategy game plan roadmap you're laying out for yourselves people?
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  Yeah, that's great. The one thing that I'm talking to, we're a referral based mortgage
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  company. And so our business is coming from, you know, realtor partners, builder partners,
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  past customers, very traditional. There was a feeling in the last year that those relationships
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  with realtors, they're not very meaningful anymore. If you look at numbers, they're not
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  controlling transactions. They're not real oil to any particular lender. Maybe because they don't
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  have enough business and they, they don't want to try to steer. I'm not really steer, I guess,
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  but try to direct to their partners. I don't know all the reasons, but what I'm finding,
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  I've been out teaching a lot of classes. I've been boots on the ground with a lot of realtor
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  groups. There are, it's a viable source of business. Referral partners are still a great source
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  of business. There's some of them that are really out hustling and they actually will give you
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  referrals. You got to win them. Oh, it's up to you to win those deals. So business is still being
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  done by realtors, even when, you know, the news headlines would lead you to believe that it's not.
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  Yeah. I know you look up and you think that buyers agents are struggling and there's not business
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  to be had, but I'm telling you a lot of our business has come from our referral partners. And so
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  don't lose sight of that. Don't go out and chase other lines of business, especially if that's
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  what you know and you're good at. So that's one thing I've noticed, you know, is people are having
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  success. What are some of the things you guys do to build a fence? Well, I guess there's multiple
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  things, right? A, build a fence around the existing referral partners you have, but then there's also
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  reach new potential over for all partners. What are the, okay, we're going in the battle, man. I got
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  my friggin, my side or my gun. I got my boots. John's at the front. He's leading us. What are we
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  tactically doing? Yeah, tactically. I mean, we're having one-on-one conversations on how to refer
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  each other and how our teams work so that when I get a referral as a loan officer, I know how to
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  sell you back so that customer stays sticky between the two of us because we both have potential
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  to lose. The agent can still lose the deal as much as we can nowadays. So we really have to work
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  as a team, you know, if you look at it that way, we're going out trying to expand our network by
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  teaching classes. We've built lead-gen classes, mortgage-based classes. I personally do LinkedIn
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  classes because that's my little lane I live in a lot and trying to show them how we can give them
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  benefit and grow their business. Their business growth, ours growth is real obvious.
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  Okay, so that makes me curious for anybody who's listened to me for some time. They may know that
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  a very huge advocate of doing agent classes. We have a whole platform that helps people do that.
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  Can you give me any use cases, examples, case studies of leading with classes? I apologize if
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  this sounds self-serving, but look, if it works, let's share it. So any specifics you want to share
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  around how that's helped people in the field? Oh, yeah, for sure. How does having a class? I mean,
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  for me, I go out and offer classes to my loan officers. So I'll say let's go out and put together
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  classes. On my class, particularly I've been teaching here lately is LinkedIn. So for sales,
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  basic 101, you have to make a lot of calls to get these agents into the class. You get those
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  opportunities. And then, obviously, if you can teach, I would encourage all my team to be the
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  instructor. When I teach the class, everybody comes to me. I'm the one that gets the messages. I'm
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  the one that builds the rapport. But if I can get them to teach the class, they're the expert.
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  And then the money's in the follow-up. After that, then that's where you really need leads.
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  Well, take me deeper. What does follow-up look like for you? Let's say you had a magic wand and
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  you could get this, you could get any loan officer to do the John Donnelly approved version of
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  follow-up. What does that look like? Yeah. So what it looks like for me is, at the end of my class,
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  I've got a landing page with the QR code. You've got the presentation. You've got your take away.
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  And you've got a chance for people. They enjoy the class, the register. And then when they do that,
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  they're getting emails, text messages as part of a drip. And then it's on you as the loan officer
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  to call and go deeper in that connection. So are you making a phone call as a minimum best practice
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  follow-up? Yeah, minimum. You've got to have a conversation. Come on. John, you'd be surprised.
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  I don't know. Maybe you wouldn't because you felt that was not your whole life. Yeah, yeah. No,
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  I get it. People maybe try once and they don't ever try again for sure. No numbers. But yeah,
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  if you don't have that conversation, you're not going to get any way. Okay, so if you don't mind,
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  I'm going to go down this, I'm going to continue on this thread for a moment. Is that okay? Let's go.
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  Because I think it's really instructional for listeners because there's a lot of loan officers who've
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  heard, look at classes isn't new per se. People have hit or miss, tried it, have asked what not. But
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  I really want to illustrate, you'd be surprised how many conversations I've been having about this
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  fundamental activity. So that's why I'm talking about it right now for anybody who's listening and
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  wondering, what were the initial hurdles? Were there any that you had to personally overcome?
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  How long have you been teaching classes? Let me ask that. I don't know. Maybe five, six years.
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  When you first thought of that, was that daunting? Or you're like, yeah, shit, no problem.
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  Let's go. Actually, one of my loan officers brought to me is kind of a real quick story.
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  We had an office back when we went in office. We were in Arlington, Texas. She was, hey,
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  come here. And I was like, what? She brought me next door in an office. We didn't have. She was,
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  if we blow through this wall, then our office will connect to this training room. And we're trying
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  to figure out how to grow our business here. She was, I could have a class in that training room,
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  you know, three weeks out of the month and grow our business. So we said, okay, let's put a plan
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  around that. And that began teaching and instructing for me for her. And the idea was, for her,
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  this was the vision we casted. She wants every realtor in Arlington and Mansfield to know her name.
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  So by having invite to all these classes that is going on, you know, she's going to brand
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  herself. So when a contract comes in, she can call the listing agent and say, who she is,
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  and what she's doing. And they'll know her name and it'll help her soften the beaches. That was
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  kind of the idea. The classes she taught as many as she could. We got title companies, teaching
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  classes, you know, all the things that you do to different types of classes. We had underwriters
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  teach classes. We had hobby lobby teacher class on how to make closing gifts. We got pretty creative
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  on on the different types of classes. I believe classes work when you teach especially,
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  like if you're the instructor, that's where that's where it's at. And she's still with you.
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  She's still with me. She's, uh, she's kind of semi-retired. Just taking it's coming after.
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  It's good coming after. So yeah. But that built her book of business and helped you guys collectively.
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  She made President's Club in the next couple of years and was the affiliate member for Arlington
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  Board of Realtors the following year because of how much it worked. So it definitely can work.
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  Yeah. It works if you work it like anything, right? Yeah. For sure.
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  For sure. We had somebody behind her calling and doing the invites,
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  calling and following and setting appointments. We're going to see our M-sending messages,
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  you know, sharing that information with her partners. So we took it to the right level that it
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  needed to to really be successful. You mean you used it as a system? Yeah. How about that?
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  How about that? Wow. Unbelievable. Right? It's amazing. You know, I always go back to one of my
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  favorite books is The E-Mith by Michael Gerber, that series. Yep. You probably know of it.
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  Your book guy. Yep. Yep. And one of the one of my takeaways from that book is every successful
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  business has a process for lead attraction, lead engagement and lead conversion.
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  A process, not a wing it, not a once in a while, not a shoot. I got to make those calls and
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  I blow it off because something else came up. No, a repeatable,
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  difficult system that will scale. Sounds like that's what you guys applaud. Exactly.
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  I think of the atomic habit books too. You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall
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  to the level of your systems. Absolutely. So same idea, right? If you don't have a system,
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  you're never going to get there. Okay. So by the way, everybody listening right now,
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  huge, huge takeaway. Okay. You just heard the system. So stop procrastinating, get after it.
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  I often ask John, I ask these questions of loan officers. Do you need more agents or better
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  quality agents? The answer is both, right? And so therefore, how do you get them? And you just
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  laid out a very duplicable system for people to do that. Okay. I want to transition now into
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  I'm thinking about loan officers listening always. Okay. They're like, Jeff, thanks. Got it.
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  Agent classes. What else? What else? John, you got this audience. You know, people,
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  let's just face it kind of overall volume is down, right? Affordable like all the stuff,
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  all the noise we know. And yet people are still out there doing deals. What do you see
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  besides from getting in front of realtors at scale? What other activities, you know, would you be
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  coaching people on right now? Showing up to any event you can get in front of. I believe whether
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  it's an open house, a realtor event, whether it's a chamber. I don't really care what event it is.
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  But when you show up, you got to dress up. You got to be professional. You got to do sales pitch.
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  You got to practice in that momentum. It gives you energy and you just get better. The people that
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  are having success right now, I feel like are out doing things. They're counters full. They're
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  driving around and they're busy, but they're not all doing the same things. You know, they're doing
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  different things. I get a lead today from my fantasy football league. So, you know, you just don't
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  know where things are going to come from, but you have to engage with people you can't sit around
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  and wait and hope. Yes, you have to be active. Hey, are you tired of co-calling realtors and
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  feeling like you're getting nowhere? With my agent classes, you don't have to chase agents anymore.
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  We hand you a done-for-you system of ready-to-teach presentations, plug-and-play marketing,
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  and even 200 producing agents to invite so you can double your agent referrals in 90 days or less.
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  Plus, you'll get weekly coaching and a community of loan officers sharing exactly what's working
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  right now. Here's a quick win from one of our members. Been part of my agent classes for a little
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  over a year and totally changed my business. I grew at least 25% and that was during a pretty down
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  market and have only grown every single month that I've kept doing it. Community is great,
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  jump to the Friday calls. It's awesome. Have fun with it. Teach as many classes as you can.
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  Just do more. Do better. Are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on
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  demand? Book a call at mortgagedmarketing.pro or hit the link in the show notes now back to our
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  show. Where do you rank then, you know, social media engagement video? Like you're obviously pretty
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  strong on LinkedIn, but what coaching do you have around that? I think that you got to post the
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  leads a couple of times a week around what you're doing, but the money is in the commenting and the
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  messaging. I think that's the key to the whole thing and it feels good to make a post and have
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  people like it, but if you don't get any leads, what's the point of it all? I mean, that's kind of
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  where I'm going at with my team is like, is a direct message, is as good as a phone call nowadays
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  in my opinion, comments build our on other people's platforms, bring awareness to you just like
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  your own post do. And so engaging on the platforms is more important for most of my all those
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  than it is posting and putting out amazing content. So you're on LinkedIn. I want to talk a little
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  bit about why I say you're on LinkedIn. That's where a lot of your focus is. And I think that
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  perhaps could be because of who you are, your position as an executive sales leadership,
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  things like that. I'm wondering though, if you, you know, as loan officers evaluate their time
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  and presence on social, let's just face it, it takes time. You need to get good at certain
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  skills, right? In terms of, like you said, commenting, being present, let alone content producing
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  and things like that. Do you see loan officers getting deluded trying to be too many places at once
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  or what advice do you have around choosing a social platform? I think I think you should, yeah,
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  I think you can get deluded. I think also if there's one that you love leaning hard to that.
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  And so I mean, I've had some, I had one yellow build is business off LinkedIn targeting
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  realtors. And you're like, how does that happen? Well, you got to have a strategy around it.
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  Personally, I can reach out to most realtors. I can Google their name and see that their LinkedIn
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  profiles on their top five search results. And so I can call them up and say, okay, you know,
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  Microsoft owns LinkedIn. It's it's always up there in those top few. I can call that
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  realtor and say, you don't have a banner. Your last referral was 2011. If I'm a person who got
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  a couple of realtors names and I'm thinking about calling you to be my realtor and I use LinkedIn,
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  I'm not sure you're in the business today. Let me show you how I can in 30 minutes update your
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  profile to attract somebody to you instead of defer him away. I'm not saying you have to be a
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  LinkedIn guru that you got to post all the time and have all these connections, but at least put
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  your best foot forward. You know, and so that one conversation can really take a relationship to
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  the next level just by giving a little bit of value, you know, just that one thing. Yeah,
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  like that. So I call that doing a digital audit. That's that's an easy win. And it works on other
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  places besides LinkedIn. So I love the fact that you said, John, like wherever you're hanging out
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  the most, wherever you're all in on social, like make that the one. Just because you heard John
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  talk about this one LinkedIn idea and you're like, you got a strong presence on Instagram,
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  doesn't mean you should all automatically pivot me. Let me go do them. No, you can use that exact
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  same principle identify agent general market who are under optimized with their profiles,
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  Instagram, Google, business, whatever and offer tips, suggestions, et cetera. But, John,
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  how do they know? How do they get educated on what to recommend? How do they on what's a recommend?
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  Yeah, the loan office or how do I know if you're LinkedIn banner is weak or your Instagram
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  profiles missing things? Yeah, they have to do it themselves, right? Are you saying they have to
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  learn the modern? I learned it. That's right. Come to me. I'll show you. I'll teach the class.
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  At least on that, I'm not a guru in all the platforms because I do what I'm telling you. I
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  lean into the ones that are the best for me. But yeah, self leadership proceeds team leadership
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  always. And if you have to always be learning, you have to be reading, you have to develop your skills.
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  And if you feel your cup up, it'll pour over to other people. I mean, that's just how it is.
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  Well, and we're going to put we're going to link up your LinkedIn profile in the show knows for
• 18:18
  people who can go follow you. But if you look at your headline, like, here's an obvious place to
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  start, I know you know this, helping mortgage professionals break through ceilings and build
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  thriving careers. Well, it's pretty obvious what your called action is, what your offer is,
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  right? To capture somebody's attention. Yeah, the point of that is I call it the Monday morning
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  question. Whoever your target is that you're going after on your LinkedIn, they have a problem on
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  Monday morning. Well, what what are you trying to solve? What is it? How can you solve that problem?
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  Because then you're connected with the people that you're targeting, right? So if you wanted to,
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  you know, attract realtors, you know, to call you, how can you how can you change your headline up
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  to speak to realtors to help, you know, help them know that you can be their coach and guru and
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  partner. Obviously, mine's targeted to other people in my industry, loan officers, branch managers,
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  you know, it's pretty clear. There's hopefully they, you know, I'm answering the Monday morning
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  question. If they're up there on a Monday morning, they don't know where to take their business
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  and they run across me. Maybe that's the sign they needed. Absolutely. Yeah, whatever platform
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  that is true, by the way, in terms of headlines and examples of your bio. Now you've got
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  at 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. Man, congratulations. Thank you. I know that just magically
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  showed up overnight. You didn't have to do much to get that, right? Oh, yeah. I've been working
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  at it since 2018. So on purpose. How now this is again, I'm just going to focus on LinkedIn
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  because this is John's profile. So if you're listening, again, put this in the context of your
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  social platform profile of choice. How has building a presence and a brand awareness on LinkedIn,
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  specifically for you? How has that impacted your business and your goals? Man, it's interesting
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  because for a long time, I didn't know that people were seeing me the way they were. And then
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  I'll go to an event like a TNBA, Texamori's Bankers, and five people will tell me about posts that
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  I've made and stories about things I've talked about, but nobody commented, nobody liked. That
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  really early on that gave me a lot of energy. It's like, okay, something's happening here, but
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  I don't know how to gauge the success of it exactly. And then I'll interview people, especially
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  in operations, and they'll pull up my LinkedIn profile and tell me about it. So it's a tool
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  that it softens the beaches for me. It doesn't necessarily bring a whole lot of leads in and
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  make your phone ring off the hook or anything like that, but it softens the beaches for me when
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  I reach out to people and they look at my profile and they feel like, okay, you know,
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  I see who this guy is, and I can tell what he's about. So that's what it is for me.
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  I like that term you've used it three times now, softened the beaches. Yeah, I think we're all trying
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  to, you know, in sales, trying to make it a little bit easier on ourselves and try to get some
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  influence where people recognize us, so it just makes it easier. Well, I mean, a warm call is
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  better than a cold call, right? Right. All day long. All right, so where are you ranking the
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  different types of content you post? I'm looking at your feed here. You've got a fair amount of
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  mix of video and text. Tell us how you decide what your content strategy is. Yeah, I look at
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  my best days for content and the most interaction on LinkedIn is probably Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays.
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  So I really geared my best stuff that's really industry related, you know, tips for other people
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  in the industry. I'll put them into those days most of the time. Mondays, not as strong, Fridays,
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  not as strong. And so my goal is to post Monday through Friday, sometimes on the weekends.
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  And, you know, Fridays are dead to me. They're not a lot happening. I do personal posts on Fridays.
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  You know, all that stuff just hangs out there in social. So if I throw up a picture of me,
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  my family doing something or at the, at a game or whatever, that's out there. People can connect
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  with it, but it's not my best stuff. So I like mixing in a video a week. Sometimes I'll do a video
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  every day. It just depends on how I feel. I also like to sometimes I'll just just do text only.
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  You know, you get a selfie picture in there. If you don't know what to post, just document something
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  that's going on your day. It's not that hard to come up with some things to talk about on your
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  LinkedIn. But I mean, I'm just about to launch a newsletter, just a long form content that I'm
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  working on. I don't know. I just like mixing it up. It's about, I post around a couple of things.
• 22:37
  My core values, who I am as a leader, what it's like to look at my work in my company. Because
• 22:42
  that's the target audience that I'm aiming at. So, right. I learned about me. Which by the way,
• 22:49
  that right there is a key point we could spend 15 minutes talking about is your target audience.
• 22:53
  You've got to be specific in your head of like who your, your ICP, your ideal client profile,
• 22:58
  whatever, right on who your content is for. Because to your point and I go to look at your LinkedIn
• 23:03
  content, it's clearly for that person you're trying to reach versus a loan officer listening
• 23:08
  perhaps. Who is their content for? Well, maybe it's for a buyer. Maybe it's for a financial advisor.
• 23:14
  Maybe it's for a realtor. I don't know. And you can kind of cross three of those with your kind
• 23:19
  of content. How do you think? Yeah, I think on that, I mean, in your content, in your post,
• 23:25
  or ever call out that audience first, too. I mean, I try to do that specifically. If I'm
• 23:30
  posting the realtor's because I'm teaching a class, I'm going to say, hey, realtor's,
• 23:33
  you know, I'm going to call you out because I want your attention or hey, loan officers, you know,
• 23:37
  I'm going to call that out first to try to narrow the focus of who's going to read that post.
• 23:42
  So I think that matters. Yeah, 100%. Do you actually have a content like
• 23:46
  schedule or calendar or how do you actually, you know, get you do? Yeah. So I started,
• 23:51
  I started using a tool called air table. It's just like a Google docs, you know, real simple.
• 23:58
  And I started putting together a history of all of my posts that I was making. And I didn't
• 24:03
  know where I was going with it. I just started making posts. This was a few years ago. And then
• 24:08
  over time, I had this huge database that I could search around different topics realizing that,
• 24:14
  you know, you talk about a lot of the same stuff over time. And you decide to rework it and
• 24:19
  make it sound fresh and new. And so I just every time I make a post, I put it in, I put the date
• 24:25
  and the image and a link to it. And I have that history. It was pretty cool because it's like
• 24:29
  you're writing a book, you know, if you want to look back on it. But also anytime I have an idea,
• 24:34
  I've probably already posted about it or written something so I can search it and see what I've done
• 24:38
  before and then use that going forward. And then back to my same ideas, you know, I'm generally
• 24:44
  posting, you know, some kind of a tip during the week. I'm part of my personal stuff on Friday.
• 24:49
  You know, I just kind of have my themes that I'm working off of, depending on what's going on.
• 24:53
  I share some people's content, you know, also it's still real critical that you got to comment
• 24:58
  and post on other people's stuff. I just think that's been one of the things that's really helped
• 25:02
  me elevate. How do I get a lot of connections is because I engage with other people, especially
• 25:07
  people with a big platform. And they see me and the next thing, you know, I'm getting more
• 25:11
  connections because they see me engaging with those other people. It's such a great idea to jump
• 25:15
  on there for a second is, you know, it's like the largest networking party on the planet and
• 25:19
  it never closes. Are you using GPT or any other AI and helping you with content? Yeah, I am. I think
• 25:26
  it's, I love it. I think it's great. It's 90% good a lot of times, but you better pay attention
• 25:32
  to what it's producing. You know, and so I've kind of taught mine to write a format like my
• 25:40
  post the way I like it with a hook and bullet points, you know, talking seventh grade level
• 25:46
  because it's got to be quick and easy, you know, all that type of stuff. So it kind of knows me
• 25:50
  and then I'm a big, I go and walk all the times kind of my thing. And so I'll sit there and I'll
• 25:56
  have some ideas and I'll just talk into it and say, here's what I'm thinking. And I'll turn that
• 26:01
  into a post. Sometimes it's pretty good. Sometimes not so good, but you don't just blindly trust that
• 26:06
  stuff. I mean, look at it and see, but it definitely what I like is that it learns me and it kind
• 26:11
  of knows my voice and it can, it can pull other aspects of other posts into it. And so I'm leaning
• 26:17
  into it and learning. When you say you walk and talk, are you tell me more about that? Are you
• 26:22
  actually using the GPT phone app and speaking or what we're doing? Exactly. Exactly. I taught it,
• 26:28
  I know this is like kind of funny, like I'm telling myself, but I taught it our entire HR review
• 26:34
  system and we wrote, we had to do reviews recently for our managers. And so I literally went on
• 26:39
  about a two hour walk and I just told it based on the format I put in. Here's all the things I think
• 26:44
  about this person. For me, that's way easier because I'm a verb, I can verbalize a lot better than
• 26:48
  I can write. And then I said, just professionally put it into the format. I need, bam, it was just
• 26:53
  done. Samey storm works time. Yeah, you know what's interesting. I was watching a video of somebody who
• 26:57
  runs a social media marketing agency and she was talking about how she uses GPT on behalf of her
• 27:02
  customers. And she said that she gets better results by actually talking to chat GPT because it is
• 27:08
  easier for it to understand context because it can hear how you talk and the different nuances and
• 27:13
  then you know how you talk is different than you write. And so writing is kind of a little bit more
• 27:17
  finite and tighter versus the audio is actually, you've got that kind of wider lane to go down.
• 27:23
  Yeah. So last night I went on a walk and I just mentioned I'm working on newsletter. I've never
• 27:31
  done a newsletter in LinkedIn. I feel like I talk about it, but I should do it myself, you know,
• 27:35
  I'm going to teach classes. And so I had a plan of what I kind of wanted it to be like. So I told it
• 27:41
  act as my social media coach. Here's what I'm thinking. I want to write a newsletter, but I want
• 27:45
  you to ask me a minimum of 10 questions as an interview and help me develop my name, how it's
• 27:51
  going to look, the format. I want to write a one sheet for my assistant to help me understand how
• 27:56
  to do this. And it kept, I had a conversation for 45 minutes with chat GBT. And it kept asking me
• 28:02
  questions and help me come up with a name and to help me build what I think was better than I would
• 28:07
  have come up with in a 45 minute window. Like it's really fast. So do you have, I know, do you
• 28:14
  use in the audio where it talks back? Yes. Yeah. Because that's like you can turn that on or off.
• 28:20
  Some people just like it reads your voice and types it out, but I'm talking about the actual
• 28:24
  dialogue like it's your version of her. Exactly. I haven't named it. I know some people have, but
• 28:30
  I haven't named her or him, but there's like a friend, you know, it is coming that way. And I think
• 28:36
  people are going to find that they actually enjoy the conversations at some point more than they
• 28:41
  think about. Side note, I named mine Carmen. Okay. And my wife is not a fan of the female voice
• 28:48
  Carmen that I have conversations with. I don't have a name, but it's coming. I know it's not far.
• 28:55
  I know in Google, Google maps, there, there's a voice that I have and I call him homie.
• 29:00
  Because I was like, Hey, homie, thanks. You know, I always joke about that. But you know, I'm sure
• 29:06
  it's coming. That's awesome. Yeah. By the way, guys, again, listeners, that's another takeaway. If
• 29:10
  you haven't used the audio version, download chat GBT to your mobile phone, the actual real
• 29:15
  chat GBT app, not some of those third party lookalikes that are out there because you can use
• 29:18
  the free version and it'll change. It'll take it to the next level. Your usage and output
• 29:23
  on which at GBT it'll be easier. Okay. We got it like two minutes left. We're in a sales meeting,
• 29:28
  John. We just wrapped up Q1. You got some people who, you know, are on track. You got some people
• 29:32
  who aren't. Let's just say people are wondering, how do I build Q2 pipeline? Let's just let's take
• 29:39
  that. I don't want to get too far ahead of our skis here. Q2 pipeline, not to be redundant, but it's
• 29:44
  okay. If you can go back, you want to go back to the fundamentals of what we said doesn't matter.
• 29:48
  But what do you coach in our table right here sitting around the round table? Okay, guys,
• 29:52
  go hit the streets. This is what you do. Yeah. This is what you do. First thing is you got to know who
• 29:56
  you're targeting. I mean, sounds really basic. But for us, if we're going to target realtor
• 30:02
  partners, I want to qualify a list and make sure they're actually doing business before I go put
• 30:07
  a lot of effort into them because there's a lot of them that aren't, you know, we hear all those
• 30:11
  stats. If you're going to lean into builders, we do a lot of builder business too. We have a lot
• 30:16
  of relationships that you can kind of work and utilize. Get strategic on which ones you're going
• 30:22
  to go after and why you're going to why you're going to go after the certain builder you're targeting.
• 30:26
  But then go back to what we just said. What is the plan to make the calls and then follow up with
• 30:32
  the people because the money is made in those calls and that follow up, not even in the event
• 30:38
  itself. I don't know that many people, you know, it's just a place for you to showcase yourself
• 30:43
  and attract people to you. But until you call somebody afterwards, you're not going to get a lead.
• 30:47
  You're not going to grow your business. So that's the basics. There you go, man. Reconnocence,
• 30:54
  getting the field, right? Make, get to turn rocks over and make contact. Let people know you
• 30:59
  exist. That's awesome. Okay. So for people who want to connect with John, I'm going to assume
• 31:04
  linking you up on the link in as a place to go. That's the place to be. Yes, sir. So you just
• 31:08
  got to go to LinkedIn and search. The John Donnelly is your actual profile handle. I guess
• 31:14
  is that what you call it? Profile. Yeah. John, this has been a wonderful education on how to get
• 31:20
  back to the basics, you know, and execute on what's actually working. Yes, sir. I appreciate it.
• 31:26
  Thanks for having me on. I love your show. Yeah. And by the way, if anybody is interested in learning
• 31:30
  more about your organization, right? I suggest you to check out what John's doing there as well,
• 31:34
  because you guys have quite the culture at service first. It's all about culture and leadership. So
• 31:38
  if you are considering a change, I would encourage you to check out John and service first, because
• 31:43
  they clearly have a culture of leadership and leading from the front. So just wanted to say that.
• 31:47
  That was unsolicited, John. You bet listeners, you know what to do. Follow John, link in the show
• 31:51
  notes. Let them know you heard this podcast episode. Let him know on a comment DM him in LinkedIn
• 31:57
  at a minimum or comment on his content. Let him know what your one big takeaway was from today.
• 32:01
  We appreciate you guys tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Okay, that's it for today's episode.
• 32:06
  Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes. You're proven system to
• 32:11
  double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to co-call again instead building
• 32:17
  real lasting relationships with top producing agents who want to send you business with done for
• 32:22
  your presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching. It's all designed to make growing
• 32:27
  your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow
• 32:33
  your income, visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes and why you're there.
• 32:37
  Don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen
• 32:41
  incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.