Latest / Mortgage Marketing Radio / Daily Habits for Closing 250 Loans

Transcript

Daily Habits for Closing 250 Loans · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Hello there, listener, first time listener. Welcome. Thanks for tuning into the mortgage
• 0:16
  marketing radio podcast. Long time listener been here before. Hey, appreciate you too.
• 0:23
  And if you've been listening for a while and you haven't yet left us a review, I would
• 0:26
  not sure, appreciate that. You know where you can do that. You're listening probably
• 0:29
  on your phone on a podcast app somewhere, Apple Spotify. We'll go find that little button,
• 0:34
  those three dots. Go leave us a review. You can even find me on Google by looking me
• 0:38
  up and leave us a review there. That helps us reach more people. So if you like what you're
• 0:41
  getting from these episodes, I appreciate you leaving a review. Before we begin with this
• 0:46
  week's special guest, I want to ask you if you struggle with getting enough done. Like
• 0:52
  you all have a lot of activities that we need to do every single day, every single week,
• 0:55
  we've got buyer approvals, consultations, realtor conversations, we've got listing
• 1:00
  agent side engagement. Hopefully you're doing that. You've got like different content to
• 1:04
  produce prequals, follow ups. You got a lot going on. How do you manage it? How do you
• 1:10
  get it all done? Well, in a moment, you're going to hear from my special guest who is
• 1:14
  going to break down his daily and weekly time blocking calendar and the specific activities
• 1:19
  that he maps out for himself on his schedule every single day and week. And that you can
• 1:25
  borrow some of these ideas from and yet still be able to do 250 units in production.
• 1:31
  Before we get into that, I've got another win of the week coming to you from one of our
• 1:35
  recently new my agent classes members. Jenny Wellington is a relatively new member in
• 1:42
  our my agent classes platform. And she decided to get on board and start building in a brand
• 1:48
  new area, by the way, where she doesn't know anybody, no database, no realtor engagement
• 1:52
  or anything she's starting from scratch from ground zero. And she was looking for a way
• 1:57
  to quickly accelerate her awareness and engagement with real estate agents in her local area,
• 2:01
  but to not be seen as a vendor solicitor, right, the usual stuff. And so Jenny joined
• 2:06
  our platform, my agent classes. And recently she shared her win of the week in our group.
• 2:13
  And I wanted to share that with you as well, because it's pretty amazing story. So here
• 2:20
  is her story. She types into our Facebook group that she was invited to visit an open house
• 2:26
  from one of the top real estate brokerages in her area. And while she was there, one of the agents
• 2:31
  recognized her and said, Hey, aren't you the one that's teaching that chat GPT class on Friday
• 2:36
  to which she said yes. And she told me she was signed up and coming. That was the first win
• 2:42
  in that conversation, right? Then the broker asked if Jenny had a flyer that she could share on
• 2:49
  the class. Jenny said, Hey, this particular class is full, but I'd be happy to hold something
• 2:54
  for your team. Long story short, Jenny is now teaching one of her classes called chat GPT
• 2:59
  for real estate coming up in May. You know, it's amazing. This brokerage is responsible for almost
• 3:06
  10% of the total market share in Jenny's area. And she's not even taught her first class yet.
• 3:14
  Talk about scaling your reach. Talk about showing up with impact. Do you think this would have
• 3:17
  happened if Jenny walked in with a finance flyer and rates and fees. And let me tell you about
• 3:23
  how great I am and how we close on time. Probably not. If you're looking to scale your reach,
• 3:27
  reach more agents and less time, leapfrog from solicitor and vendor to being seen as a partner
• 3:33
  in a peer, reducing resistance, increasing trust, and getting invited to write where all the cool
• 3:39
  kids hang out. Well, do what Jenny did. Check out my agent classes and see if this is for you.
• 3:45
  You can book a call with me right now by going over to mortgagemarketing.pro.
• 3:49
  Grab a time on my calendar. Let's have a brief conversation and see if we are the right fit for
• 3:53
  each other. Mortgage marketing.pro. Okay, my special guest for this week is in rare air.
• 3:59
  And I say that not only because is he an avid shoe head, is that what you call shoe head sneaker head,
• 4:06
  right? His shoe collector. And he's got, he said well over 200 pairs of air Jordans if I'm correct.
• 4:12
  John Cornish is become a friend. He's third time guest on the podcast. And I only have people
• 4:19
  on the show more than once because right because they bring tremendous value. So somebody bringing
• 4:24
  a third time visit, you know, John's going to bring the value. So make sure you carve out time to
• 4:28
  listen to this with intention notes and get ready to grab the idea as a John walks through on
• 4:33
  today's conversation because as I teased you at the intro, John's on schedule to do 250 units.
• 4:39
  And he is going to map out what his day in the life looks like, right? His time blocking,
• 4:46
  his calendar, his activities, unpacking his team, what he does for his buyer console process,
• 4:51
  how he connects with the past client database. I mean, if you're looking for a crash course
• 4:56
  in how to be a high functioning, high performing mortgage professional, this is the conversation for
• 5:02
  you. So I'm confident you're going to enjoy this. If you like it, please connect with John via the
• 5:08
  links we provide Instagram, Facebook, his website and just let them know that you listened and what
• 5:12
  was the one big idea you got from the conversation you get to listen in on with John Cornish.
• 5:17
  So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. John Cornish, welcome back to the show.
• 5:22
  I'm excited to be here again. I think you are in a rare air. We were just talking about
• 5:27
  air Jordans, but you're in a rare air man. Third time guest.
• 5:32
  I feel privileged, man. I really do. I do. I love being part of it. I was so nervous the first time
• 5:40
  and like many things that we do right when we get out of our comfort zone, what used to be
• 5:43
  uncomfortable becomes the norm and I'm excited to be back here. Well, for those who maybe have not
• 5:50
  heard your two previous episodes, they should go check those out. But who are you? What do you do?
• 5:55
  So John Cornish with Key Mortgage Group. I'm a loan officer, a loan originator, but I also
• 6:01
  lead a team of loan officers. So I focus on obviously business development and growing my business
• 6:06
  that is basically 100% referral based, getting a little bit from Google now and online and Facebook
• 6:12
  from some of the things we talked about in the last episode and leading a group of loan officers
• 6:17
  and trying to help them when trying to help them navigate this market, help out with recruiting when
• 6:22
  the time is right and we have the right opportunities. But right now, my focus is it has been during this
• 6:27
  downturn of making sure my people are more disciplined, focusing on the daily activities and helping
• 6:32
  them succeed. Having them learn the things that I've learned over 21 years and learn it quicker
• 6:37
  and with less pain than I have. Right. And for context, give us a range and I know, you know,
• 6:44
  varies based on year. What do you want to say about units in terms of overall production?
• 6:50
  So I think in 2021, I was north of 400 and right short of 100 million dollars production. I never
• 7:00
  hit 100. It was like 98 and a half. So I still got to get there at some point. Last year,
• 7:05
  $60 million in production and probably 250 units and in full disclosure, I think I'm probably
• 7:11
  more proud of that than I am the numbers in 2020 and 2021 because it was a lot harder to do that
• 7:17
  business last year. And on pace to go above that this year and training upwards. And that is just
• 7:24
  your own production for those that, you know, that is not it. That is just my production. Okay.
• 7:29
  Not the team. I just like to get out that out of the way because, you know, a lot of people start
• 7:32
  with that framework. I've obviously known you long enough to know you work very, very hard. And
• 7:38
  what we're going to talk about here today, I think it was appropriate. So I'm glad that we connected
• 7:42
  or reconnected. I should say on this topic, you know, before we hit record, I used the phrase,
• 7:47
  be brilliant in the basics. You and I message each other about, I think what you tell me because
• 7:55
  you obviously work amongst and with loan officers. And you probably hear their frustrations and
• 8:05
  challenges and probably observe some of their distraction in the market. And listen, there's
• 8:13
  more than enough reasons to be distracted. And there's more than enough excuses if you want to take
• 8:18
  that that route. Well, and so that's, let's start there then. How do you quiet the noise? How do
• 8:24
  you minimize the distractions and stay focused? What you and I are going to dive deeper on today,
• 8:29
  which is your daily weekly, you know, activities? Listen, I think the first thing from a leadership
• 8:35
  standpoint is leading by example. So if I share with them what I'm doing and how I view it and then
• 8:41
  actually do it, I think there's more depth to it. And I think people actually follow you.
• 8:46
  But listen, the excuses, the excuses, the distractions, the hurdles that we've been faced for the
• 8:52
  last two years, they're there for everybody. So it's not like my competition or your competition
• 8:58
  doesn't have to deal with them. There's nothing we can do about it. So if it's not something that we
• 9:03
  can change or something that we can adapt, then we shouldn't focus on it. You know, the mental,
• 9:10
  like the conversation I have with myself and what I tell the people on my team is when something
• 9:14
  happens that is that is distracting or bad, there's nothing wrong, right? You have to react
• 9:19
  for a human and we're passionate. We're going to react with passion sometimes and I get angry.
• 9:23
  A, you got to vent up, but you got to vent quickly. And then I look at it is, is there anything I
• 9:29
  did wrong? Is there anything that I can learn from this? And if it's outside of my control, I flush
• 9:34
  it and I move on and I get back to focusing on the things that I can control. And those are the
• 9:39
  things that actually impact our productivity and how we're going to do. And I think it also helps
• 9:45
  out with happiness because if you get into this woe is me and feel like you don't have control,
• 9:51
  it can become overwhelming. And listen, I'm not perfect. I've been there before. And honestly,
• 9:55
  that's why I've changed what I'm doing. I don't like when I'm there. So I'm trying to figure out a
• 9:59
  way that I can stay in the right mindset and the right frame of mind. And that is focusing on
• 10:04
  what we can control and focusing on the opportunities. Okay. I want, and I think you are on the same,
• 10:12
  you know, same wavelength with me on this particular conversation today is to get
• 10:16
  largely tactical, right? Because the notes you and I exchanged were very, I think, focused on
• 10:21
  what the daily weekly, I'll say that again, activities. And I think that it comes back to
• 10:26
  the fundamentals, time blocking as well. So why don't we do this? Maybe you could lay out a
• 10:30
  framework for us, you know, 250 units, that somebody has to be very intentional and focus
• 10:36
  with their time and activities. So do you want to start with kind of like how you structure or how
• 10:42
  you're advising loan officers today, kind of structure their day. And then let's, let's, you know,
• 10:49
  insert those activities that should be consistently done. Yeah, I could definitely do that. So
• 10:53
  I guess when it's far, when I'm when I'm advising other loan officers or helping loan officers,
• 10:58
  I believe in I have more luck when I get them to tell me what they need to do.
• 11:02
  A, everybody's business is different. And B, I think it's much easier to hold people accountable
• 11:07
  and get buy-in. Instead of me force feeding and say, you have to do this every day,
• 11:11
  the conversation is listen, you tell me the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly things,
• 11:15
  the nuts and bolts that you need to do to be successful. And obviously, if I don't agree with
• 11:21
  that, so if somebody tells me they want to be great and they're giving me a set of activities
• 11:25
  that is average, I'm going to call them out and have that tough love conversation and say,
• 11:28
  listen, you're telling me you want to be a $40 million producer, these activities are more like
• 11:33
  $8 to $12 million producers. So the first thing we have to do is we have to be honest with
• 11:36
  ourselves and figure out exactly what it is that you want to be. And if you just want to be average
• 11:41
  and that makes you happy, there's nothing wrong with that. And then we'll have average input
• 11:44
  to get average output. But if you want to be great, then we re-align those expectations. So
• 11:50
  I get them to do their own. And for myself, it is, it's kind of a constant evolution, but I can go
• 11:56
  through my day and I can kind of go through my week because it's extremely consistent. I do the
• 12:00
  same thing over and over again. Is that kind of what you want me to get to here? Yeah.
• 12:05
  So the first thing, the one thing that I do every single day, Saturday, Sunday,
• 12:11
  holidays, now major holidays, I'm probably not going to call somebody on Christmas. I call
• 12:15
  and wish every customer a happy birthday. It's an organic phone call. I'm getting back to the
• 12:20
  basics. I think the human interaction, I think kindness, I think genuinely caring is extremely
• 12:26
  important and that's who I am. So that's something that I do every single day. And that is customers
• 12:31
  that have closed, customers that have free approved, customers that are in credit repair.
• 12:35
  And honestly, there's some customers that went with different lenders and I still call them,
• 12:39
  but I can guarantee that their lenders are not calling them. And it's not a sales call,
• 12:42
  it's just to touch base and let them know that I care. So that is a daily activity.
• 12:47
  When in your day, do you typically block that? So that one is one of the only things that is not
• 12:53
  organized. I have reminders at three different time periods. So normally when I do that for
• 12:57
  efficiencies is when I'm driving, either when I'm driving to and from work or when I'm driving
• 13:03
  my son to either hitting lessons or baseball practice. I coach my son's baseball team and even
• 13:08
  when we're not in season, we have hitting lessons, we go to our own workouts. It's about 20 minutes
• 13:12
  to extra innings. And I'm usually doing those phone calls and the cool thing is my son knows the
• 13:17
  phone calls and some of the other players that come with us. Like last week I jumped in
• 13:21
  and can't contain. It was a buddy of mine kid is on the team is like, you got your birthday
• 13:24
  phone calls the day coach corners. I'm like, yep, I got my birthday phone calls. So that's when I do
• 13:28
  those. So I'm not I'm not taking up 30 minutes of my day. That is time period that I have and
• 13:33
  sit and listen to the radio. I just knocked those phone calls out smart. And they put me in a good
• 13:38
  headspace. Like the feedback I get from them is great. So selfishly I enjoy them.
• 13:44
  By the way, great point there as well. They put you in a good headspace. And how much of that
• 13:49
  is also one of those unspoken right little secret elements of succeeding in this business is
• 13:55
  you got to be in the right headspace too. You do. And what I found is everything that I'm
• 14:00
  going to be talking about today as far as a discipline standpoint time blocking has put me in a
• 14:04
  better headspace. And it's kind of raised the level. I am a better person and a more disciplined
• 14:10
  person than I was 12 months ago. And because that I'm happier. I feel like I have more control. I
• 14:16
  feel more fulfilled. The things that used to bug me don't bug me as much. So I think mindset.
• 14:21
  Listen, if you're not in the right mindset, I'm not saying that you can't succeed, but you're
• 14:26
  not going to hit your full potential. And you can view everything completely different depending
• 14:30
  on the mindset that you have. And one thing my dad told me who was in sales his entire life that
• 14:34
  attitude is everything. And I truly believe in that you can have the same thing happen to two
• 14:39
  different people. And the mindset that they're in can lead completely different to that day, that
• 14:43
  week and that month by how they react to it or how they view it. Yeah. Okay. Let's keep going
• 14:49
  with some of the time blocking activities that are regular. If I was to look at your calendar,
• 14:54
  like what would I see recurring? So Mondays, we have a sales zoom every morning at nine o'clock
• 15:01
  with the team that I lead. And it is a co-op of ideas. I'm usually leading the discussion,
• 15:06
  but I get just as much out of those guys and gals as they get for me. So we have a topic,
• 15:11
  we go over it. And then we stay on the zoom together for an accountability. And we actually
• 15:17
  use that time period to reach out to agents. And that's the time period that we've time blocked.
• 15:22
  So for mine, most of them are and I connect with my my my consistent agent and my top agents on a
• 15:29
  regular basis. But it's when I set my break breads or my lunches. So when I schedule most of those
• 15:34
  during that time period, hey, we haven't met for lunch for a while. Would you like to grab lunch?
• 15:39
  And again, a lot of these people have became friends. So that is not like, that doesn't take a
• 15:43
  whole lot from me. And they're not cold calls. They're people that I already have relationships.
• 15:49
  Now occasionally, I'm getting some new opportunities for agents. And a lot of them are coming from
• 15:54
  the classes, which I see such a value. And you've done a great job with the program that you have.
• 15:59
  But I'm doing educational classes in front of a large group of agents. And because of that,
• 16:03
  new agents are reaching out to me. So sometimes I'll take that the initial appointment or that
• 16:09
  opportunity and try to take it to a coffee or a lunch appointment. So that's my Monday.
• 16:16
  And those are usually in the morning. Lunches are always left open because I try to be,
• 16:22
  you know, I try to use that time period for the best so that I can. I don't eat alone very often
• 16:26
  at all. And then the afternoon is set aside for buyers consultations, buyer consultation presentations
• 16:34
  and pre-approval and loan estimate, creating loan estimate videos that I do custom for every single
• 16:40
  customer. And then the review phone calls from those. So that's what eats up a majority of the
• 16:45
  the meat and bones of my days. And that is, I mean, it's proactive, but it's also reactive depending
• 16:50
  on the amount of files that I have come in. On Tuesdays, every Tuesday and interrupt me whatever
• 16:56
  you want to. Every, every Tuesday is when in the morning is when I update agents on my active pipeline.
• 17:04
  Both buyer side and listing side. So the first week I make a phone call. I let them know what to
• 17:09
  expect. I let them know how we communicate. Not only am I going to reach out every Tuesday,
• 17:13
  you're going to get automated updates as a loan progresses through different milestones,
• 17:17
  which many CRM's have. Most of them want text messages because we're on the phone all the time.
• 17:22
  So I have a group text message. And every Tuesday, hey, the Smith file, here's where we're at. We're
• 17:27
  early on in the process. Disclosure has been signed. I went over the loan estimate video,
• 17:31
  customers on board with everything appraisal and title have been ordered. And then the following
• 17:34
  week, hey, we don't have appraisal in, but we have initial loan commitment. Everything looks good.
• 17:39
  And we're going to be we're staying contact with them every single Tuesday. So that's what I'm
• 17:43
  doing on Tuesday. Again, and then in the afternoons is the same thing. Buyers consultations,
• 17:48
  pre-approvals, and those are the same thing. And then those loan estimate videos and what we call
• 17:53
  our expectations call to read to go over those those videos. Wednesday is when I make phone calls
• 18:01
  to my pre-approvals. So in full disclosure, up until about six, maybe nine months ago,
• 18:07
  I used automated for that only. And as I was getting more disciplined with my schedule and
• 18:13
  figuring out how to free up more time, this is a space that I thought was more important. And it
• 18:17
  definitely is. So it's just reaching out. I can't call all of them every week because I have
• 18:22
  a blessed app quite a few of them. But I just call them touch base. And there's a lot of messages.
• 18:27
  And the messages are pretty simple. Listen, I'm just calling to reach out. See how things are
• 18:31
  going with the house hunting. Make sure you know that I'm here. Make sure you know that the whole
• 18:35
  team is here and we care. If you need anything, let us know when I connect with people. And you're
• 18:40
  probably less than 50% that I actually get a hold of. And I get a lot of the same input from them
• 18:46
  or a response. A lot of people having a hard time finding inventory. And I hear that. And I
• 18:51
  empathize with them. So listen, I get it. I understand where you're coming from. It's tougher right now.
• 18:55
  We talked through, you know, some of the winning offers strategies if we haven't talked about that.
• 19:00
  Again, empathy goes along ways, but it's just letting them know that I'm here, that I care. And if
• 19:05
  they need anything, it's just checking in. And obviously you know a big reason for doing that is
• 19:11
  nowadays we have people. I have people that are pre-approved for over a year. And if I don't stay
• 19:16
  in touch with them, and we still use automation as well with text messages and emails through campaigns.
• 19:22
  But if I'm not in front of them, I think I'm leaving it up to chance. And I want to remove that
• 19:27
  chance that they're going to work with somebody else. So again, I can't control certain things.
• 19:32
  I can control the outbound activities I have. And that's why I added that daily activities,
• 19:37
  or daily activity. And it's one of the ones that I feel can't believe I honestly didn't do it before.
• 19:42
  And the same thing for Tuesday. That's something I started pretty late in my career. And I missed
• 19:46
  the bonon. I should have been doing it doing it sooner. Thursdays are past customer phone calls.
• 19:53
  There are time periods when there's something to talk them about. When interest rates go down,
• 19:57
  obviously that's low-hanging fruit. But a lot of times the stage is checking in on you.
• 20:02
  How's the house? Are you still loving the place? How's everything going with the mortgage servicing?
• 20:06
  I remind them that I offer my team offers, like a concierge service for mortgage servicing,
• 20:11
  which basically whoever services their loan, if they have any issues, we encourage them to
• 20:16
  call us so we can control mortgage servicing that I think is inconsistent at best,
• 20:22
  and control that customer service on the back end. I try to do that at least one time per year
• 20:27
  with each customer. And there's things that do come up. And again, right now, the people that are
• 20:34
  at a higher interest rate, I'm letting them know that I'm keeping an eye on a form right now,
• 20:38
  does it make sense? But when it does, I'll be in touch. Are some of those phone calls that we have
• 20:43
  with past customers? And then there's questions that come up when you call, because I just
• 20:47
  ask, there's any other questions that they have. And everything comes up from planning to build a
• 20:52
  home in two years to, you know, how do you buy an investment property or a vacation home,
• 20:57
  and you just answer those questions for them. Again, that human connection staying in front of them,
• 21:01
  I think is extremely valuable. On Fridays, it's more past customer phone calls. How I prioritize
• 21:09
  that is we do our post closing calls on Friday. So all the closings from the week before I call
• 21:15
  the check-in, thank them, congratulate them, make a big deal out of it because it is a big deal.
• 21:21
  Make sure the process went smooth. Make sure we delivered on the five-star expectations that we
• 21:27
  set in our buyer's consultation. Very, very clear. Remind them about the online reviews. Let
• 21:32
  them know that my team's going to follow up with the link for that. And I've had a lot of really
• 21:36
  good luck with that as well. Just that human connection. We touch base on what to expect from
• 21:42
  first payments, because I've always kept track of questions that come up consistently in the process.
• 21:48
  And that's one thing that comes up a lot. How do I make my first payment? Who do I call with
• 21:52
  questions three, you know, three years from now? How do I set up automatic payments? I go over all
• 21:56
  of those things proactively. I let them know that I'm going to pay for them to be entered into home
• 22:01
  bot and explain to them what that's going to do for them. And then again, I explain that
• 22:05
  concierge service. And really, what I want them to know is that my service for them does not stop
• 22:10
  at closing. I look at this as a lifelong consultative relationship. And I'm here to proactively
• 22:16
  help them manage their home the debt and the equity that's associated with it. And that's kind
• 22:21
  of where we have the closure from that transaction. It really isn't closure. It's a continued
• 22:27
  relationship and making sure that they know that. On Fridays as well, my assistant and she
• 22:32
  makes this easy for me. She sends me all the basically an outlook calendar with a link to all
• 22:37
  the phone numbers. She also has a list of all the referrals we receive that week. And whether
• 22:41
  it's a past customer or an agent, my intention is to take a personalized video and send them a
• 22:48
  thank you video. So I literally turn the phone around backwards. Hey, you know, the past customer,
• 22:53
  hey, thank you so much. You sent over your sister. Truly appreciate that. You know,
• 22:57
  want to let you know how much that means to me. Want to let you know I'm going to take great care
• 23:01
  of them just so they know how much I care and I can have a connection with that particular
• 23:05
  customer. So that is Monday through Friday. And then there's things that happen on top of that.
• 23:12
  So the things that happen weekly, I do five, I try to do five videos for social media every week.
• 23:19
  In full disclosure, I'm much better at bunching those together because when I come in and film those,
• 23:25
  it takes me a while to catch a rhythm. And when I do, I can bump, I can knock out a bunch of
• 23:29
  videos. So doing five might take me 45 minutes and doing 20 might take me an hour and 15 minutes.
• 23:36
  So I'm trying to do those more and larger lumps and also coaching baseball and baseball season.
• 23:42
  There's not to meet weekends that were home. And I usually do those on on Saturdays.
• 23:48
  Another thing I try to do is look for things on social media to send videos to customers about.
• 23:53
  So if I see somebody got engaged, somebody had a kid, somebody got a promotion,
• 23:59
  somebody's kid hit two doubles in a big baseball game, softball game, whatever it is, I try to
• 24:05
  send that personal video to that customer, referral part, whoever it is, just congratulate them.
• 24:11
  So those are the things that happen daily, broken down. And then I also have things that are done
• 24:17
  monthly and quarterly goals. And those are bigger things. So like quarterly, I want to do at least
• 24:22
  one educational class. So whether it's a continued education, it's a lunch and learn for a real
• 24:27
  estate group, it's education with one of my builder partners. And then monthly is more making sure
• 24:32
  that I'm hitting the agents of my referral partners that I've done lunches, that I've done certain
• 24:37
  things. And again, there's a game plan for the day, there's a game plan for the week, the month,
• 24:43
  in the year, checking on our snail mail marketing and things like that.
• 24:48
  Okay, lots of notes here I've got. Roughly how many hours a week are you putting in?
• 24:55
  So that's increased. And that is by design. So I'm probably, you know, I was 70 to 80 hours a week
• 25:05
  for a long time before I hired my first business coach. I got down to where I doubled my business
• 25:09
  and I was probably 40 to 45 hours a week. I'm probably creeping back towards, I'm probably over 60
• 25:16
  right now. And I'm okay with that. And again, the reason for that is I knew what was coming
• 25:22
  after 20 and 21. And I work harder when things get more difficult. It is, and in full disclosure,
• 25:29
  that's not something that like I'm saying that I figured out that's great. To be
• 25:33
  perfectly honest with you, it's a fear tactic. Like it is, it is a defense mechanism for me
• 25:38
  to make sure, and I get a little bit barbaric with it, like to get in the right mindset. Listen,
• 25:44
  I want everything I can to provide for my family and be a good example for my team. So they're
• 25:49
  the motivation. So if I'm going to ask them to be tough during this time, I got to be tough,
• 25:54
  right? So if I want them to be disciplined, I have to be disciplined. And if I outwork everybody,
• 26:01
  it really removes the opportunity for people to make excuses, right? The younger guys that work
• 26:05
  for me that aren't married yet or they're married, they have kids that are younger and they're not
• 26:10
  coaching baseball and they're not coaching people that I am in work. It's hard for them to say,
• 26:15
  tell me that they don't have time to do these activities when they know that I'm busier than
• 26:19
  than they are. So the increase in work is intentional when things are down. There is a game plan
• 26:25
  that I don't want to do that forever. And I still make it a point to, I don't miss anything
• 26:29
  at home. So I have a work like balance still. It's just that honestly, the things that get
• 26:36
  sacrificed are things that other people think that are fun that I don't really care that much about.
• 26:41
  You know, I like my buddies, but I don't need a golf with them. I'd rather have time to go coach
• 26:44
  my son's baseball team or watch my daughter dance or watch my daughter play volleyball. Or I'd rather work.
• 26:50
  So it's really grinding out during this time period and trying to be the leader and also trying
• 26:56
  to be the best that I can be and really win these things that I'm telling you. So again,
• 27:01
  you talking about things doesn't do things. Doing things actually gets results.
• 27:07
  All right. Let's unpack. Thank you for taking me through that, by the way.
• 27:10
  And those those who are just listening, I want you to know, not once did John actually glance
• 27:16
  at his computer to my knowledge to actually right remind himself, oh, this is what I do. It seems
• 27:21
  pretty well entrenched in your DNA. It is. And listen, I'll tell everybody that's listening,
• 27:27
  like the guys that I coach are way ahead of me from their career standpoint. So when they come
• 27:32
  to me with frustration, like, listen, I'm 21 years in. I started doing some of these things as
• 27:36
  recently as nine to 12 months ago. So if you're not doing them now, there's no reason to be discouraged
• 27:42
  because I didn't do these things for a long percentage of my career. It's just that constant
• 27:47
  drive to get better, reaching out to coaching, finding new ways and then making changes and implementing.
• 27:54
  Yeah. And then market shifts, you know what I mean, changes. And then we need to adjust with those.
• 27:57
  And so like, you know, we said earlier, 2021, where businesses is just flooding in, like,
• 28:03
  there's not a lot of prospecting you have to do, you know. No, you didn't. It was, it was reacting.
• 28:07
  And complaining about it doesn't definitely bring results. So only complaining about the interest rates
• 28:12
  or the inventory or the challenges we face, that doesn't do anything like it. When I think it
• 28:18
  gets you the wrong headspace. Yeah, we can't wish things were different. The things, you know,
• 28:22
  it is what it is. All right. Let me take not a strategy. There you go. Let me unpack a couple of
• 28:27
  these. Let me go back to the notes too, as well, because there's a lot to we could unpack, but I
• 28:33
  want to be very intentional with the the next questions that I ask you. Overall, one of the things
• 28:39
  you said, so this is a bit more of a it does delve into tactical, but it's also a little bit more
• 28:45
  strategic. But you meant you made a comment about getting back to focusing on the human element
• 28:51
  and customer conversations. I think anybody hearing what you just articulated is very clear
• 28:56
  that you're having conversations and you're not relying on automation as much. I'm wondering if you
• 29:03
  feel that the market because of the changes, you know, inflation rates, we've got the NAR situation.
• 29:13
  Like are you feeling that some of the market conditions are also like that smart to do because
• 29:17
  of what's happening in the market? I don't know. And I'd be lying if I told you I thought that
• 29:22
  deeply about it to be honest with you. I just I really it's part of my job that AI enjoy. So like
• 29:29
  I like talking to people. I like people. So we're going to start with that. I also think that I
• 29:36
  as I've done this for a long period of time, I'm I'm very comfortable with who I am as a person
• 29:40
  in the business that I'm going to be. So I'm really good at being me. I'm not good at being
• 29:44
  somebody else. And this is just kind of who I am. And I feel that I'm good on the phone
• 29:49
  with people because in it's very simple. I genuinely care. And when you genuinely care about
• 29:54
  people, they pick that up. And listen, we use a lot of automation for things. We use a lot of
• 30:00
  efficiencies and processes. And my loan team is phenomenal. Our process is is is is incredible.
• 30:07
  It's dialed in right now, which allows me not to have to look at loan stuff very often at all.
• 30:12
  So there's automation in certain places. But I don't think you can replace the human elements.
• 30:16
  And I think as and if you can, then your commodity that's going to be replaced, right? If you're
• 30:23
  an order taker, in my opinion, and I've shared this with my team, the next thing that's going to
• 30:27
  happen is those people's earnings have gone down lower and lower throughout the years because they
• 30:31
  don't provide as much of a value. And with AI at some point, they're going to replace the human
• 30:37
  with AI and they're going to have the conversations and we don't even need a loan officer any longer.
• 30:42
  So what are the things that I can do that cannot be replaced? That is trust in relationships.
• 30:47
  I don't think those can be replaced with technology. So that's just what I'm listen, I'm diving into
• 30:53
  that. I'm all in on it. And I guess in time, we'll find out if I was right or I was wrong. But
• 30:59
  I enjoy it. It's who I am. And it's my customer seem to enjoy it. My agent seem to enjoy it.
• 31:04
  And I'm going to continue to do it. I think people want to do business with people that they know
• 31:08
  and trust and know that have their best interests at heart. And I don't see how you do that with
• 31:12
  automation. True. Well, okay. So can you briefly unpack your team like, you know, loan,
• 31:18
  assistant, front end, back end, whatever. So I can get familiar with that. Yeah, I do. So I have,
• 31:24
  and again, I'm not going to use the titles are not important because they do so many things. So
• 31:29
  Lindsay on the front end does a ton. So she is going to she our work phone, which is basically an
• 31:36
  app on my cell phone. She, she mans that she, she organizes everything on my schedule.
• 31:42
  She sets my, my customer appointments. She's involved with communication, the agents from when
• 31:47
  files come in for pre approval and communicating with them. Hey, we got the pre approval.
• 31:52
  Thank you. We're waiting for customer documents. So she is involved with that communication.
• 31:58
  She helps me stay on, on task. So she has my goal list for the week. She has my break bread.
• 32:03
  She sees my calendar. So if I get off on anything, she's the one that's redirecting me back in.
• 32:08
  She's also kind of like a personal assistant at work where if I have an idea, I get these ideas
• 32:14
  and where I put them is like random different areas until I hired her. So I just send them to her.
• 32:18
  We have a Google document. So the next time we have time to focus on a task or change something
• 32:23
  or an idea, we go back to that. She helps me organize my sales zooms as well. I have an inside loan
• 32:30
  officer who basically handles the transaction. So she's a salaried individual. She's not the one
• 32:37
  that gets the business. She's the one that works the business. So she does the application intake.
• 32:42
  She does the pulling of AUS. And she comes to me with, she's the first phone call that we have
• 32:48
  with our customers after the application. And she preps them for the consultation with me.
• 32:53
  So she's going to pull AUS. She's going to come to me with what she thinks we should do for
• 32:57
  this customer, whether we go FHA and conventional, what programs, how we should structure it.
• 33:02
  And over time, where I would have to look at a lot of those, as we've worked together in that
• 33:07
  role longer and longer, a majority of the now, we're on the same page. We like share, share
• 33:12
  a brain for the most part. And it allows me to walk into the consultation without having to do
• 33:18
  any of that background work and then focus on the consultation. And really, I'm allowed to spend
• 33:23
  more time and be more engaged with the customer during that buyer's consultation. I then have a
• 33:29
  processor and a loan off service system who handle the conditions and they do a phenomenal job
• 33:34
  as well. So one of them communicates more with underwriting and the other one communicates more
• 33:39
  with customers for the conditions and they work together. And they're so good that they can solve
• 33:44
  problems. They come to me with things. But when the loan goes the right way after the consultation,
• 33:50
  I'm not involved in less. There is somebody that we feel anybody's ever upset or frustrated
• 33:55
  with anything agent or customer. If we get any type of a thought of that, the team lets me know
• 34:01
  and I called him right away. So that's the next one that won't enough. That's a breakdown of the team.
• 34:07
  Very clear. Thank you. Does anybody attend your closings? No. Okay. I haven't been to
• 34:14
  I've been to a closing since COVID. Fair enough. And I explain that to customers on the front end.
• 34:22
  Yeah. Just curious. Some people do some people don't. You got a lot of units going too,
• 34:28
  so it's very hard. Okay. Let's jump into what I think is another very important part of
• 34:34
  anybody's overall process. But I think for various reasons, even more important today is the
• 34:39
  buyer consultation because you've referred to that a couple of times. And if let's go a little bit
• 34:43
  deeper on that. If you could articulate, even script, like how do you set that up? So whether it's
• 34:51
  a person on your team has done the call or you or whoever and they've done the whole, okay,
• 34:55
  let's get your talent. Let's submit all the stuff. Let's get you pre-approved, quote, some rates
• 34:59
  and stuff. Like take me from there to buyer consultation and how does that process happen?
• 35:06
  Is that virtually in person or depends? Go ahead. Yep. So when Taylor from my team,
• 35:11
  the inside loan officer, she sends, and we've actually created a PowerPoint or a PDF. I'm not
• 35:16
  sure which one it is. I'm not the brains behind the operation when it comes to that stuff,
• 35:19
  but it is actually a document that we use for two reasons. I am super hyperactive and I need
• 35:26
  to stay focused. So that allows me, and when you do six of those in a row a day, it's like,
• 35:31
  did I have that conversation with this customer already? Whereas that was the last cup. So it allows
• 35:34
  me to stay focused and be consistent and make sure I go everything that I need to. It gets
• 35:39
  something for the customer to look at and it gets something for them to take back with them as well.
• 35:44
  So she sends that to me sometime in between an hour and 15 minutes before and it goes to the
• 35:50
  customer and me and it said, hey, you know, use this for John's phone call or refer to this during
• 35:56
  your appointment with John. 90% of them are phone calls. 2% of them are face to face and occasionally
• 36:04
  somebody will do a Zoom, but usually it's over phone and we're looking at the same document
• 36:09
  together. And that document, the first thing it starts off with is kind of a little bio about me.
• 36:16
  It talks about my 21 years and real estate lending, you know, over 2300 families helped in
• 36:22
  the last 10 years and then we keep a track on how many five star reviews we have and it's
• 36:27
  we're up to 609 and it's on that document. And I point that out very early because, again,
• 36:34
  I say the same thing every single time. I tell the customer listen, I'm not telling you this to
• 36:37
  brag. I'm telling you this to make sure that it's crystal clear what my expectations are for me
• 36:42
  and my entire team. And that is nothing short of five star service from start to finish. And
• 36:46
  then I explain to them, we have a common goal. We review things on a monthly basis to try to get
• 36:51
  better or borderline obsessed with customer service and process, but I empathize and I'm real.
• 36:56
  I'm like, listen, we're people. We make mistakes. So what I ask them is to do me a favor and if they
• 37:01
  ever feel like they're getting anything but the highest level of service from us, let me know and
• 37:06
  I will jump in and I'll take care of it because I'm not just saying this. This is not lip service.
• 37:10
  I truly mean it. So you get that engagement very early in the process. You connect on that level
• 37:15
  and then the buyer's consultation after that is educating people on the different loan program.
• 37:20
  So we go over all the loan programs very quickly depending on the customer. If you're in 816,
• 37:25
  I'm not going to spend five minutes talking about FHA, but I'm going to explain why you're in a
• 37:29
  conventional loan and why you're not in an FHA. If we're close, right, if we're that 680 to 702
• 37:36
  where it made the FHA more conventional, we're going to dig in a little bit deeper and go over the
• 37:40
  pros and cons and the why behind each program. We go over the first time home buyer down payment
• 37:45
  assistance programs and even when somebody's not, I just tell them, listen, we look into this for
• 37:49
  everybody to make sure we're not leaving money on the table. Here's why you don't qualify. We educate
• 37:54
  people on 2.1 and 1.0 buy downs because I think consumers need to know about these things that are
• 38:00
  out there and not hear about them the first time at a listing or something like that or going and
• 38:05
  looking at a house. And then we dig in to talk about our winning offer package, winning offer
• 38:10
  strategy, and then we go over their budget. So at the end it is, what is it that you're qualified for?
• 38:17
  And not maximum pre-approval, this is the budget that they gave us. And this is where we find out
• 38:23
  and make sure that people's payment expectations are in line with their purchase price, right? So
• 38:28
  you don't have somebody coming in thinking they want to buy $150,000 house, but their payment
• 38:34
  budget is more than $80,000 because if I send that person out to an agent pre-approved that those
• 38:39
  expectations, their job's going to be really, really hard because they're going to show them all these
• 38:43
  houses at 150. We're going to get back and I'm going to show them the payments or even be like,
• 38:47
  I don't want that. So we dive into those things deep and if they're not comfortable with the
• 38:51
  payments, we realign those expectations and let them know what the purchase price would be.
• 38:58
  Yeah. And this is your opportunity to realign their what's the old saying, their caviar
• 39:07
  dreams and beer budget, something like that. Yeah, exactly correct. Yeah, because that also
• 39:12
  helps you get a properly squared off with the agent as well to put them in the right framework
• 39:16
  I thought I was going to buy half a million dollar house and it's just like, okay, let's have the
• 39:19
  actual affordability conversation. And most of them are pretty much in line and there's also
• 39:26
  sometimes people where the payment they gave me, I just don't realistically think that they're
• 39:31
  going to be able to find a home. So I'll tell them, listen, here's the payment range that you want.
• 39:37
  You're pre-approved for substantially more, you're going to be able to buy a house in this
• 39:41
  price point and where you're looking, it just doesn't exist any longer. So we talk about,
• 39:45
  you know, if we increase at what the payment is going to be, we talk through if they're going to
• 39:49
  be comfortable with their budget, if there's anything that they can realign with their budget,
• 39:52
  I'm big on budget and making sure that the home buyers that I work with don't get themselves
• 39:58
  into bad situations and we're in situations where they can live, live happy and be financially
• 40:04
  successful long term. So big on the buyer's consultation, like that's something that again,
• 40:09
  and I happened, I didn't, there's a lot more of my career, I didn't do that than I did it,
• 40:13
  and I wish I would have started it much sooner. How long is that conversation on average?
• 40:18
  I block off a half an hour in my schedule, I would tell you that it's 15 minutes to half an hour,
• 40:24
  occasionally it'll go over, there's been times it goes 45, and if people have questions,
• 40:28
  I don't cut them short, I'll text message my assistant and say, hey, can you text the next
• 40:31
  appointment and let them know that we might run a little bit late? And even when we set the
• 40:35
  outlook calendar appointment, we put in there, it's not abnormal for John to run a little bit late,
• 40:39
  he'll get back to you as quickly as possible, because when I'm spending that time with somebody,
• 40:44
  I owe it to them to be engaged. So email is off, I'm engaged with that customer because I'm easily,
• 40:50
  easily distracted. So if they have more conversations or more questions that I'm going to,
• 40:57
  I'm going to answer them for them. The document that you send them in advance, the buyer consultation,
• 41:02
  you mentioned that's either PowerPoint or PDF, are there, I'm picturing, like, you know,
• 41:07
  mortgage coach or MBS highway, do you use any visual elements in that?
• 41:10
  No, not really, it is just, I mean, we have my little cartoon, John, for marketing on the front,
• 41:15
  and we just something we created with our marketing team that focuses more on payments and budgets
• 41:21
  and explanations of things. But no, I don't, I have people, I use MBS highway, I don't really use
• 41:27
  any of their presentations, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't, and maybe I'm missing the
• 41:31
  both there, and I have people to use mortgage coach, I've been doing that the old fashioned way,
• 41:35
  organically for so long that I can figure it out pretty quickly. And like, when the market turns
• 41:40
  a little bit, we'll talk more about single premium buyout versus regular PMI. But right now,
• 41:46
  when at some point interest rates are going to come down, I mean, who knows?
• 41:52
  So I'm not, I'm not doing a lot of single premium right now because of somebody refinances
• 41:56
  in six to 12 months, even though it's refundable, I'm more to been consistently more with monthly,
• 42:03
  and then when rates come down, it's a more longer term loan that I'll look in the, in the,
• 42:06
  in the single premium. But we go over different down payment options with them as well.
• 42:11
  When I see somebody that is going to put down all the money they have in savings for a down payment,
• 42:16
  I at least want to challenge him and say, listen, I can understand why you want to do that. But let's
• 42:20
  look at what payment would be with 10% down, so you can keep $15,000 in your account. So you have
• 42:26
  a nest egg still, and you have a, an account of something happens because now that you're a homeowner,
• 42:31
  you don't call the landlord when the toilet fixes or breaks, you fix it yourself, you go to
• 42:36
  monards, your home depot or wherever, or you call a plumber. So those are the things that we kind of
• 42:41
  talk through. Have you gotten into any conversations yet with buyers regarding the new NAR situation,
• 42:49
  buyer's agent compensation, potentially adding that to purchase price, those types of,
• 42:54
  buyers don't know about it. Like that's the thing, and I told a lot of agents that like, I think people
• 42:59
  in the industry think that everybody knows about that, and no one outside of the industry cares about
• 43:02
  it or knows about it. So that has not came up. Now when somebody is thinking about doing
• 43:08
  for sale by owner, I have always, always believed in good quality buyers agents, and I'll explain to
• 43:13
  them. So one thing I will do is that they say they're going to make an offer and the seller doesn't
• 43:18
  want an agent. I'll say, okay, you can do it and you can pay for it, and here's what it would,
• 43:23
  here's what it would add to your monthly payments, and then I go over the value that buyers agent
• 43:28
  spring. But I haven't had a conversation with the NAR thing, and there's been times where people,
• 43:32
  oh, I didn't realize I could do that. So it only changes by payment by, you know,
• 43:35
  $18 per month. It's like, yes, and then you're protected because the person that you said that you
• 43:40
  liked working with, they can make sure that you're not overpaying for this home, and they can look
• 43:44
  out because you don't have any experience with foundations, and you don't know how to deal with an
• 43:48
  inspection when it comes back, and the legalities and all the things that buyers agents do. So it's
• 43:53
  it's not pushing them because I tell them, listen, it's your decision, but let's at least look at the
• 43:58
  raw, let's look at the information and give you the both sides and the cost, and you can figure out
• 44:04
  if the cost is worth the benefit that you're getting from that, from that buyer's agent.
• 44:08
  Okay. You also have something about a winning offer strategy, which I think you talked about,
• 44:12
  but then you said custom video. Are you doing something an additional video there?
• 44:16
  Yep. So started in 2020 when we were hit with a new curveball where, you know, the back then,
• 44:21
  if the hardest thing was finding a customer to get pre-approved and then all of a sudden it was
• 44:25
  getting an offer accepted. So we, what we did at that time period is I really honed in our
• 44:30
  pre-approval process. So we do way more work on the front end. It's basically a pre-underright
• 44:34
  because as a company and an individual, it's really bad if you don't execute on pre-approvals
• 44:40
  right now. And also it's not good for business to pre-approve somebody that doesn't close because
• 44:44
  no one makes any money at that time period. And if you get known for not executing in a multiple
• 44:49
  offer situation, it's really bad. If you get known for executing, which we have been,
• 44:54
  because we educate our agents on this, I talk about it a lot. So it's a very in-depth pre-approval.
• 44:59
  We explain that. And then I started creating a custom video. I did phone calls for a while,
• 45:04
  but you could never get a hold of anybody. So now I use bomb bomb and it's called a strength
• 45:08
  of buyer video and I literally go over with the customer's permission how strong they are.
• 45:13
  So I explain this in all of our pre-approvals. We do, you know, full application, income and asset
• 45:18
  documents running a U.S. where it's an iron-clad pre-approval. But for your particular customer,
• 45:24
  I have an additional layer of confidence because, you know, Joe and Susan Smith are a 802 credit score.
• 45:31
  And I verify they have 20% to put down. They don't have to sell their home. Their debt's income
• 45:36
  ratio is only 32%. So it's giving them that additional information and giving them the confidence
• 45:41
  that there's nothing to worry about in regards to financing whatsoever. And we've had a ton of
• 45:46
  success and I picked up, I think I've strengthened and also picked up new real estate agents and a
• 45:51
  little bit more respect in the market because it helps us win offers. And I get all the time we
• 45:56
  had two last week where the listing agent called me and said, hey, listen, your video is the reason
• 46:01
  that our sellers, that the sellers picked your offer because if four offers come in and everybody
• 46:06
  else has a paper pre-approval, someone that agents may or may not even trust and then you have
• 46:12
  my pre-approval, they know me, they know how I execute with this video that goes in depth and
• 46:17
  explains how far in depth we do our pre-approval and how strong the customer is. I like our
• 46:22
  chances of winning that offer and I have proven results that that works. Is there something in your
• 46:26
  pre-approval letter that you send to the listing side? Is that more than the usual than the norm?
• 46:32
  It is. Yep, it is. It's definitely it's a multiple page document that has some customer reviews on
• 46:36
  it. Some agent reviews talks about my history so they know who we are. In my market, most people
• 46:43
  know who I am but I do a lot of business in other markets as well and it helps because if I'm
• 46:49
  it's not my own backyard, I'm not as known and I just reach out to them and I explain it so
• 46:55
  they feel more comfortable. And then a lot of times I'll just reach out directly to the listing
• 46:59
  agent as well. I'm never out of buyer's agent be mad that I reach out to explain that I know what
• 47:04
  I'm doing. I've been doing this for a long period of time and making them feel more comfortable.
• 47:10
  I like that. It makes me wonder like the lost art. I remember back in the day, like selling yourself,
• 47:16
  especially in a multiple offer situation, but even just standard. Let's just assume not. Let's just
• 47:20
  assume where it's just like there's one or two offers. That just seems to me to be one of those
• 47:26
  fundamental basics that we should always be doing. Agreed. 100%. And again, you have to
• 47:34
  you have to show value to people and you have to provide a value in whatever that we do. So
• 47:40
  I mean, customers, when they get excited about home, you don't, there's nothing to be excited about
• 47:45
  if you don't win an offer. So again, it's a challenger hurdle that my customers and agent partners
• 47:50
  have. What can I do proactively to try to have a positive impact on that? And that is making sure
• 47:55
  our processes buttoned up and then doing those videos. And now my agents know them. So they'll call
• 47:59
  me and say, listen, can I get a video for this one? And listen, everybody doesn't get a video. I'm
• 48:03
  not going to send a video on a manual underwrite with a 605 credit score at a, you know, 47% back ratio.
• 48:10
  Not a whole lot that's going to get anybody excited. So we don't send them for those ones because
• 48:14
  A, I need to be genuinely sincere. And like I had a conversation last week, hey, can we do it?
• 48:20
  I'm like, listen, I don't think it's going to help us like a 660 credit score to multiple offer
• 48:23
  situation. Isn't going to get somebody excited. This is probably one where we need to leave that
• 48:28
  out, just leave the regular regular pre approval. Yeah, I suppose if you do that for everybody,
• 48:33
  then like the effectiveness of it wears off. And if you try to offer chosen and rise above,
• 48:39
  yeah, you don't have much to go on in that case. And with fair lending, we have a, I have a policy
• 48:45
  written on when we do them and when we don't. There's a little bit of a gray area or some, you know,
• 48:51
  that I can, you know, have a little bit of an impact. And also there's time periods where,
• 48:55
  let's see, I'm not 100% sure, but I have the conversation. Listen, if push comes the shove,
• 48:59
  can you get a gift from your mom or dad to pay off this credit card that'll bring your ratio
• 49:04
  from 47 to 49 to 43? Yep, I can do that. Okay, with that, I'm comfortable sending this,
• 49:10
  sending this particular video. So yeah, I don't execute and I'm no longer trusted. The videos
• 49:17
  work. Like the video is powerful when you've set the, created the, the reputation and you've
• 49:23
  executed over and over again. If I stop executing and continuous in the video, the video is no longer
• 49:28
  valuable. That's the way that I look at it. Would you use a video like that, though? And a
• 49:33
  FHA situation all the time. You what? FHA VA, yeah. And I also explained to people and educate
• 49:39
  agents about that in the videos. Like, listen, you shouldn't be scared of FHA or VA. And, and I'll
• 49:45
  explain that listen, a 680 credits score. I'm in there's time periods also that people qualify
• 49:51
  for FHA and conventional, but FHA is better for them. So I know you're scared of FHA, but I need
• 49:56
  to do it's best for my customers. So sometimes I'll send over the offer that's conventional and
• 50:00
  explain to them that we're going to try to do FHA. But if we can't, we'll go back to conventional. But
• 50:05
  VA got a bad rap and gets a bad rap. And that's ridiculous. Like, these people earn this service.
• 50:11
  And just because some agents don't understand how VA or they got burned one time because they
• 50:16
  worked with a lender that didn't understand VA financing, there's a lot of veterans that are
• 50:20
  rock solid and they can, they can utilize conventional financing. They're just not going to.
• 50:25
  And they should be able to do what's best for them. So yeah, I do it for government loans 100%.
• 50:30
  All right, real quick. On the Thursday past client calls, I was curious, how you identify
• 50:35
  who you're going to call? Is there an alphabetical thing or what do you do?
• 50:40
  inconsistent to be perfectly honest with you. So there are time periods. So like, if interest rates
• 50:46
  drop, we will pull a quarry and we'll reach out to the people that we have an urgent need to,
• 50:50
  which we haven't seen an opportunity to refinance very many people besides debt consolidations and
• 50:55
  divorces. And you're not going to make outbound phone calls for those. So I usually am going off
• 51:00
  the year and the month. So people that have closed. So like, you know, more recently, it's people
• 51:06
  that have closed last April, May around that time period, just reaching in around that 12 month
• 51:12
  time period. Okay. All right. That makes sense.
• 51:16
  Cool. So I'm just keeping an eye on the clock. We have covered a lot here. This has been like
• 51:19
  a clinic for people in executing a business plan for being a high performing mortgage professional.
• 51:28
  Okay, let's do this last thing here because you have it in your notes. You mentioned classes
• 51:33
  face-to-face to generate new age and relationships. What type of content are you presenting to them?
• 51:37
  So the ones I've done most recently, I did the five star review. I've done that multiple times
• 51:42
  in a mortgage bootcamp. And the mortgage bootcamp goes over the entire lending process from
• 51:47
  start to finish in detail. So in agents. What's that? How long is that mortgage bootcamp?
• 51:54
  It is two hours. It's approved for two hours continued education in Iowa. It takes pretty close
• 51:59
  to that time period. So it is in depth. You know, it's explaining what happens at pre-approval.
• 52:05
  Every step of the process, I go over manual underwrites versus regular full approvals. I consider
• 52:11
  them green, I refer to them as green light yellow light red light. So agents understand those things.
• 52:17
  We talk about, you know, when things come up and because people don't understand agents don't
• 52:21
  understand. And also how good the loan officer they work with, they also don't get the full story
• 52:27
  sometimes, right? When loan officers make mistakes, they do things to cover their own assets in my
• 52:31
  opinion. And they'll call somebody and say, Oh, it's not free approved because of this. And I
• 52:35
  get calls out of time like somebody's not being honest with you. Like that should have been
• 52:37
  checked sooner. So it's making sure that they understand the entire process. And then there's
• 52:42
  been other classes that I've that I've had people that have asked me to speak to their brokerage.
• 52:48
  And I find out what they want to talk about. One thing that I've added recently is this weekly game
• 52:53
  plan and time blocking because I think this wins and works for everybody in any industry. So
• 52:59
  and I've had some agents that have started doing it and they really like it. So it's literally,
• 53:03
  you don't, you're not going to do the same things that I do because you're a real turn out of
• 53:07
  lender, but you come up with your weekly game plan, weekly game plan, you put it together and then
• 53:12
  you time block because if you don't time block the day eats you up and you're reactive. So you do it
• 53:19
  at this time period, you turn off your cell phone, my team knows not the schedule appointments. And
• 53:23
  it's sharing that and how it's helped me be more successful. And also how it's helped me be happier
• 53:28
  during this during this time. I feel like I have more control. I focus on the day and then I go home
• 53:33
  and I enjoy my my wife and kids that that's what I do. I win the day. Right. A happy John is a more
• 53:39
  productive John, a better husband, a better father. Yeah. Right. Yep. That's really cool.
• 53:47
  Anything just let's close out on this. Anything on the radar for you,
• 53:52
  activity wise, project wise, that, you know, you want to implement but haven't yet.
• 53:59
  Try that. Yeah, absolutely. So it is the classes that I'm doing to agents. It's classes directly
• 54:04
  to the consumer. Ah, consumer. Inverse virtual or what? I'm going to need to go more virtual
• 54:10
  of that. We've done first time home buyer classes, but we the team and actually some of the guys,
• 54:15
  they're doing a better job in the start of some of these. We have a ton of different ideas and
• 54:18
  basically I'm going to try to create a course like a different courses, financial literacy,
• 54:26
  planning for certain things. I'm in doing zooms with customers because I think informed
• 54:32
  customers make better decisions and I think when we have better local consumers that make better
• 54:36
  decisions, it's better for all of us. So that's the something that I put on. And again, when I
• 54:40
  had that idea when my team brought it up to me in full disclosure, this is not something I brought
• 54:45
  up to them. We were talking about realtor classes and they said, what about consumer classes?
• 54:49
  And I'm like, this is brilliant. I literally text message, Lindsay and like, hey, we need to get
• 54:52
  on this. So the moment we have a time to breathe, I just did a big presentation. My first non-mortgage
• 55:00
  related speech on leadership and that took some time to prepare for. I got to get caught up on my
• 55:05
  brother's memorial golf turn with the tapping in a couple of months and once I get some progress
• 55:09
  then I'm going to dig in and create those classes. And I've already told myself, I'm going to
• 55:15
  expect to fail like five times and have no one show up or one person show up and you just got to
• 55:20
  keep grinding through because things aren't easy sometimes and the people that give up the first
• 55:25
  time aren't going to be successful with anything. So you do a zoom class, you're doing agent class
• 55:29
  and trust me, I've done them or that not that many people show up. If you get discouraged and you
• 55:33
  give up, you actually lost. If you learn something from it and keep trying, you're going to eventually
• 55:39
  win. Yeah, 100%. It's the long play. I had two conversations today with two loan officers,
• 55:46
  two different stories. It was agent-facing classes and one of them was like, it's funny how people
• 55:54
  like, what's your criteria for success because they both seem to be a little bit downtrodden. Like,
• 55:58
  one of them hosted a class over Zoom, only five agents showed up but he got two referrals.
• 56:04
  You know what I mean? And when one of them is already pre-approved and he's like, yes,
• 56:07
  I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. Like, did you know these agents before? No, not really.
• 56:13
  I'm like, so wait a minute. You showed up, you're a complete stranger and hour later, you're getting
• 56:18
  two referrals. That's a huge win. Come on, I would do that even with the production that I have.
• 56:24
  I would do that all the time. I mean, an hour for two new opportunities and new referral
• 56:29
  opportunities that if you execute for them, they're going to continue to send you opportunities.
• 56:34
  That's a huge win. The wall is going to run with your hand out and saying, I can close loans on time,
• 56:39
  doesn't work any longer. You got to provide a value. You got to help people win.
• 56:43
  Right on. All right. So where can people follow you, man? Facebook, Instagram, where do you want to put
• 56:48
  the links? Yeah, Facebook, Instagram, have a YouTube page. I'm big on my Google page for customers.
• 56:56
  I think Google is extremely powerful. But I've tried to, my recent or my coach now,
• 57:03
  Amir and Justin with Go coaching, they helped me redo my personal page more than my business page.
• 57:08
  So I'm actually putting more focus on that one now because it gets to more people and they
• 57:12
  learn more about just mortgages and honestly mortgages aren't that cool. Let's be honest.
• 57:18
  But yeah, Facebook is probably where I'm the most consistent. I think everything I post on
• 57:21
  Facebook, my social media guy puts it on Instagram as well.
• 57:25
  Yep. Well, I follow you and I see all the cool stuff from the shoes to the cut in the grass.
• 57:31
  I got to look inside your life, man. Yeah. No, I mean, listen, I'm unique. I'm different. But
• 57:38
  I do the things that make me happy and it seems to work for me.
• 57:42
  Hey, that's the whole, that's the big headline from here today, right? You got to be happy.
• 57:45
  You got to be in the right mindset and if you're going to be able to perform. So,
• 57:48
  yeah, man, this has been fantastic. I know people got a lot of value. So thank you so much.
• 57:52
  I appreciate the opportunity, Jeff. Keep doing what you do, man.
• 57:55
  Yeah, you bet. Listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, please leave us a review,
• 57:59
  share it with somebody you think we'll find value in it and follow the links in the
• 58:02
  channel. Let's go follow John. See what he's doing. Go to his Google page, check out the reviews
• 58:05
  and model some of the amazing ideas and tactics you got from here today. We'll see you on the
• 58:10
  next one. Bye for now. All right. Well, thanks for tuning into today's episode. Hey,
• 58:13
  you got a question for you. Are you struggling to get engagement and referrals from real estate
• 58:18
  agents and feeling like you're constantly fighting for business in a crowded market? What if I told
• 58:23
  you there's a way to attract agents to a provide unique value that helps them grow their business
• 58:28
  and generate referrals on demand, helping you become the dominant loan officer in your local market.
• 58:33
  Look, I've was an originator for over 10 years. I understand the frustration of feeling like you
• 58:38
  just another player and a sea of competitors and you're struggling to stand out and get noticed
• 58:42
  by the agents that you want to attract and engage with. What if I told you there's a way to flip
• 58:47
  the script and position yourself as the go to lender in your market attracting agents, not chasing,
• 58:52
  not paying for leads, not cold calling, but actually generating referrals on demand.
• 58:57
  And the best part, you don't have to ever make a cold call or chase leads again. You don't have to
• 59:02
  work with we need head agents if you don't want to. This is what we help originators do at the
• 59:06
  my agent classes membership. What do you get? You get exclusive access to our private
• 59:12
  community of like minded law officers where you can network, share best practices, get ongoing
• 59:16
  support to grow your business and you get a turnkey platform that helps you build your personal
• 59:21
  brand that moves you from solicitor and vendor to partner and peer. You attract agents, you
• 59:27
  increase conversations and you increase your referrals all without chasing without begging,
• 59:34
  playing the game, paying for leads, you just by doing what you love to do, which is help other
• 59:40
  people solve problems. So how do you learn more? Go to mortgagemarketing.pro. What could call
• 59:45
  with me? And I'll take you through the library. I've done for you agent classes that you can use
• 59:49
  to just plug and play and follow our proven system of train the trainer. You don't have to be the
• 59:54
  subject matter expert. Think of yourself like the nightly news reporters just sharing the news.
• 59:59
  You also get access to our marketing automation platform that will
• 1:00:03
  attract, engage and convert agents to referral partners for you. Scripts,
• 1:00:08
  checklist, downloads, automated email, SMS, text messages. I've done for you landing pages and
• 1:00:13
  more. You also get our market maker content, which is the social media images that help you
• 1:00:17
  promote your class online. And again, every Friday at our mortgage marketing mastermind call,
• 1:00:23
  you get access to top L.O. speakers, coaches, connect and collaborate. What's working right now
• 1:00:28
  in today's market to help you grow your business? So you don't have to struggle and try and figure
• 1:00:32
  it out all on your own. Don't miss the opportunity to learn more about what's helping so many
• 1:00:37
  originers succeed and become the go-to lender in your local market. What could call with me now?
• 1:00:42
  Mortgage Marketing Duff Pro. We'll see you on the other side.