Daily Habits for Closing 250 Loans

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