Endure and Thrive! Finish 2024 Strong

Hey, what's up, my friend, Jeff Zimphair coming in with another episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Appreciate you tuning in whether you're here for the first time or the hundredth time I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of your journey along the path to your success in this business. Hey, would you do me a favor? I've got a new link up to collect reviews. If you've been enjoying this podcast for any period of time, I'd like to read more people. And one of the ways you can help in doing that because you get access to this content podcast for free for eight years now, 320 plus episodes. There's a link in the show notes, rate this podcast, leave a review, whatever it says, but it's a link over to ratethispodcast.com slash radio, ratethispodcast.com slash radio. Also a link in the show notes, just tap it. And if you wouldn't mind, just take about 60 seconds and just leave a quick review, whatever it is you want to leave, if it's just be honest, obviously, what's the impact and value you've gotten from this podcast? That will help us a lot in reaching more people. Thank you for that. Hey, you got a question for you. Are you at a place in your business? Here we are July, 2024 midway point of the year. And it's always good to do a check in, right? On our systems or processes or attitude, check up from the neck up, whatever it is that you need to do, but it's always good to check your flight path. Are you on track? Where do you need to make some adjustments? Do you need to take a pause, land, and refuel? Get some nourishment. Well, hopefully today's episode is going to help you do that because we're going to unpack. What are the fundamentals and basics that will carry you through the rest of this year successfully and help you build ramp and momentum for 2025? More on that, just a moment with my special guest. But before we get there, of course, I've got to share another win of the week coming at you from our members of the membership at my agent classes. And this one comes up to us from a relatively new member, Tony Lady, Tony, what is up my hand? How you doing? Three days ago, he shared this win in the Facebook group, says he had a small, a meeting within in-house title company for Keller Williams this morning and presented the library, the suite of classes that we have available over 20 classes for our members to present to real estate agents, virtually, in person. And Tony goes on to say the content absolutely blew them away, saying that these classes are exactly what the agents have been asking for help with. So starting the third week of July, they want Tony to start with a weekly class teaching the various topics with hope to do one in person and one virtual class a week heads up. This particular broker covers two offices and has over 400 agents on the roster. Tony says this was by far the best meeting I've had in some time. Imagine that. He's a few months in, might not even be that long. A couple of laps around the track of following our process, leveraging our platform of content, education, and coaching, our community, and Tony puts himself in a situation where he gets an endorsement, an invitation, a red carpet to have access to 400 real estate agents at this Keller Williams brokerage. If the name of the game is conversations, exposure, engagement, and awareness, and you don't have to call chase, but you can attract, I think that's textbook right there for Tony. I can't wait to see the additional wins that come from Tony's engagement in those relationships in terms of conversations, referrals, and contracts. Hey, if you're curious about how Tony did this, and you want to take a look behind the doors, peel back the curtain, and see what it is exactly that we help originators do to move from Solicitor and vendor to becoming a partner and appear, book a time on my calendar right now. In the show notes, you go to mortgagemarketing.pro, as long as you've been in the business, roughly three years or more, and you're closing at least three to five or more transactions per month, this is ideally for you. If that's not you, well, maybe you need to lay some groundwork first to get going, get momentum, but the choice is up to you, you can go to mortgagemarketing.pro to check it out. Okay, so this week, my special guest, but a long time coming to bring this individual on the show, I've admired him from afar for multiple different reasons. Number one, he's built an incredible podcast, he's built an incredible community, he delivers tremendous value, he's crushing the YouTube game right now with 20,000 subscribers on his channel. I'm talking about Dustin Owen, also referred to as Dio, right? Dustin, what's up? My man, so glad you made time to be on the show today. Dustin is the vice president, East Division sales at Waterstone Mortgage. He's been in the industry for decades, much like me got in in the early 2000s, navigated through the challenging times of the great recession and came out on top and is now doing some amazing things with originators in terms of his content and the training and coaching that is providing for people all across the country, which we're going to link all that up in the show notes. So if you're intrigued and want to learn more and want to connect with Dustin, I definitely encourage you to do so today. The Lone Officer podcast is one of the most popular podcasts in the industry and for good reason, crushing it, you got to go check that out and make sure you follow him on LinkedIn via the show notes and then link over to his website, which is tealoponline.com and all kinds of cool free resources over there and amazing newslight of the Dustin writes. And I definitely bring Dustin to you with my highest endorsement of a good dude with good content that will help you navigate the choppy waters of this business right now and moving forward to build a long career. So what we're going to talk about today is because Dustin has a pretty wide breadth of originators at different levels of success, history in this industry, we're going to talk about finishing this year strong, how to finish out 2024 strong and what is the mindset, skill set, right, and actions that you need to take to continue building a momentum and maybe you also need to just do a check in and just go double check yourself and say, hey, am I doing the right thing? Do I have the right mindset? Am I around the right people? Am I intentional, right? What narrative am I buying into? The negative media narrative or the narrative of like you get to create your own destiny. So I really enjoyed this conversation with Dustin and I think and I hope you will too. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children, 18 plus you are tuned into mortgage marketing radio and I am your guest, Dustin Owen, along with the original G, that's Jeff with the G, Zimfer originally from Boston, Massachusetts today, he plays in the sand of Nevada. If he's not podcasting, he's probably rocking out at a concert. He is my friend, he is my co-author of the green book, rethink everything. He is the host with the most Jeff, Zimfer Jeff, thanks for having me on mortgage marketing radio. That's going to be the best intro I've ever had. Thank you so much. Way to kick it off. Listen to your very welcoming. The people need to know that we spent at least 30 if not 40 seconds working on that. Just goes to show, just show up and you know produce content, go. That's all you need to do. There we go. That's what we're going to do today, right? Yeah, professional content. Where do you want to start? You can do that so well because you've done so much content in so many episodes and so you're dare I say, I was going to say you're a natural, although how would you think you are? Did you have you just put in enough effort and time that now it comes naturally? I mean, yeah, how far back do you want to go? And if you saw how much I talked on the phone in middle school, as if I was like your stereotypical teenage daughter, I talked that much on the phone. So you can say I started practicing storytelling and holding conversations dating back to fifth and sixth grade. But to what you're getting at, yes, I mean, when you've hosted a podcast, even if there's no one else in the studio with you and you know this because you've done it for longer than me, that's 400 plus opportunity. It's for me to perform 400 plus times for me to story tell, which puts me 400 times ahead of anybody who has yet to do it, which then makes you better on the stage or better when you're pitching your product in front of your client or your customer, all because I'm spending two to three hours a week, quote unquote, practicing. Well, before we get into that, I think that's a good launching off point. For anybody who wants to know the short version of who Dustin is and what does he do? Do you want to tell them? God, short version. I do nothing short. I'm a mortgage dude. That's what I am. I'm a mortgage dude who loves this industry inside and out. This industry taught me how to be less of a financial mess. It taught me sales, marketing. It allowed me to flex as an entrepreneur. And quite honestly, let me see behind the curtains or under the bed or inside of the closet of everyday Americans. And I quickly realized I did not want to keep up with the Joneses that I wanted to do better than the Joneses. And as I started doing better for me, I started realizing the opportunity that being a mortgage loan originally gave me. And that was to be everybody's financial coach or their financial literacy teacher because these things weren't taught in the classroom. And for most of us, they weren't even talked about the dinner table. So on a very short as I can be version of, well, who is Dustin Owen? Yeah, he's a mortgage dude who's grateful for the industry and the profession that shows him. I didn't choose it. It chose me like most of us. And feels like he has this wealth of information that is so basic and so readily available yet no one either practices it or they understand it or more likely they weren't taught it. So as a mortgage loan originator, I quickly learned my job was no longer about calculating payments and figuring out DTI and understanding loan programs and products and running a U.S. My job was more of a calling and that was to help promote homeownership, help promote wealth generation through homeownership. But more importantly, hey, while I'm doing this prequel that you need to get done, can I teach you a couple of things about generating wealth, not just through real estate, but maybe by having a budget or maybe understanding compound interest. And then can I point you to the right resources so that you too aren't like me where when I entered in the industry, I literally didn't know anything. I didn't know what a 401k was. I didn't know how compound interest worked. I didn't know what a budget was or how to create one. So I think that's a little bit of a higher level of my calling, but at the end of the day to answer your question, I'm just a mortgage dude. So where does this calling come from? I mean, you get into the industry somehow and then you talked about didn't want to keep up with the Joneses. I want to better understand how did it turn from what might have started off as a way to make a few bucks to something of a higher calling to use your word? Wow, I love this. I feel like I'm having a therapy session with my counselor with these questions, Jeff. All right. Where does it come from? I mean, I'm a kid who grew up in the 90s, born late 70s, so 80s and 90s was my era. Have an amazing family, great parents. And I share the story. Like, I'm fortunate. I'm literally, I'm very fortunate. I think there's another term that people like to throw out there, where they're like, oh, well, so and so is, what's that term? I'm white. I'm male. I'm privileged. No. Help me out. What's that? Privileged. Privileged? Privileged? Yeah. Who can I'm privileged? I think that's where you go. I'm the first to admit that. We know where I'm more privileged. What? I'm more privileged. I grew up with two parents who loved each other and loved my sister and I. Yeah. I grew up in one house, my whole life. I went to three schools, my whole life. One elementary, one middle, one high school, four if you include my university. And you know, I think that is the root and that is the foundation. So me having that allowed me to understand all of my blessings, but I also grew up very working class, lower middle class. Blue collar. We didn't take vacations. If we're going to take a vacation, it was to go drive from Orlando to Annapolis, Maryland to visit my grandparents. And more than likely my dad probably had my sister and I stripping copper wiring that was left over from a job site so we could go recycle it to pay for the gas money. And we never stayed in hotels. We literally stayed with our grandparents. Like that was quote unquote vacation for me growing up. Or as I got older, my parents would go sit to a timeshare seminar so they could get the free vacation and Daytona Beach, which by the way, we call that dirt tona if you're a local. And we got to do that on the weekends. So that's a little bit of a background. So to say that I grew up with a chip on my shoulder or I grew up a little bit envious, yeah, I did. Like I'm not afraid to admit it. I'm not bragging about it, but I think it's very much part of the story. So I grew up wanting more. Like I wanted to give my kids everything that my parents gave me. I wanted to live a lifestyle at least as good as my parents, but there's definitely some financial things that I wanted. And there's also some things I never wanted to do myself. I never wanted to fix an engine because I saw how it used my dad's whole weekend and frustrated him when he had to fix his own engine versus pay someone else to do it. So I knew from an early age I wanted to make enough money that I could take vacations and that I could literally pay someone to fix my own engine when it broke. The coaching and the teaching aspect, I don't know where that came from besides I think I would have loved being a high school teacher and a high school varsity coach baseball football more than likely, but I was too money motivated. So this industry and the career I've had gave me that opportunity to work in a field with unlimited income potential. But at the same time, it let me flex into some of the fulfillment personally that I pull out of teaching and coaching. Yeah, because it gives you both sides. I mean, money in and of itself at some point isn't fulfilling once you achieved it, once you've got the things or whatever, right, at least for me, that's my experience. It's the other things that are more fulfilling. Isn't that so true? And you couldn't have told that to the 26 year old me. No, hell no. You couldn't have shared that with the 34 year old me. But the 45 year old me, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, it's not about the money. And what I've learned, it is about the money until it's not. Well, yeah, it's about the money until you get it and then it didn't you realize there's way more than to life than then the money. Right. And of course, you know, not to go super deep, it's like it's just meaning. That's all we do is attach and meaning to different things, right? So whatever money means for you, for some people, they still have their identity wrapped up in how much money I have. And it's hopefully, you know, you mature, sounds like you have, you have, I have where it's just like, okay, I want money, I enjoy money, because it gives me flexibility and choices. But my identity is not wrapped up in money. It's like who I am. How do I impact other people interact, right? Who am I being as a dad, as a husband, all that stuff? Yeah, money gives my wife and I one less thing to fight about. Money gives us one less thing to worry about. Money allows us to take awesome vacations. Money allows us to give back to our family and our community. Like there's definitely things, but then again, maybe, maybe that's because we're responsible positive people. I'm sure there's others that have all the money in the world and they still fight about it. You know, they have all the money in the world and they still worry about it because of how they choose to leverage that, that money. Yep. They're probably overextended or whatever and all that. If we're going to go all philosophical, we don't have to go there. People, that's not entertaining for the folks listening to you. I mean, you know, somewhat, I mean, you're listening to this right now. Think about your identity and association to money, you know what I mean? So anyway, we'll leave that for you to gel on, listener, for a moment. Okay, so it's funny, interesting, you hearing describe your background. Kind of ironic that you mentioned the vacation thing. I don't know what it was, but like a week ago, that whole idea of vacationing with my parents popped into my head and I started thinking, because I'm thinking about where we've taken our kids on vacation and we've been, you know, very blast and fortunate as well. And it's a very similar path in that number one on the vacation thing. The only vacation I remember doing is exactly what you said, going to my grandmother's house or we went camping, like that was it, like we never got on a plane. I don't think ever. I think the first time I've got on a plane was in my 20s, you know, when I was like leaving home or whatever, you know, crazy. So that's that. And then secondly, funny connection here is like, yeah, I, after high school did not go to college immediately afterwards because I wanted to get out into real world, right? And start making money. And so for me, that was construction. And then a couple of years in, I realized all these guys I'm around who are 40, 50 years old and they're still shoveling cement. And I'm like, hmm, I don't think that's what I want to be doing, but I'm 40, 50 years old. So I went down a similar path of like sales oriented, looking for those unlimited MLM, you know what I mean? I don't know if you ever dabbled in MLM, but I sure it's held dead. Well, I was yours. What'd you do? Yes. Correct. And it's funny. For our hiring managers out there, the branch managers, the area managers, CEOs of companies, I mean, there's, there are certain, certain characteristics I look for in order to have a successful hire, especially somebody who's like newly licensed or newer to the industry. I love somebody who starts telling stories about all of the multi level marketing that, they did. And I want to figure out how successful were they. Right. I mean, if you tell me that you made $30,000 selling cocoa knives between your sophomore and junior summer of college, I'm probably going to hire you on the spot. Right. And often you're like free coaching for six months because you can sell. You can mark it. Right. Mine goes back. I mean, I was legitimately buying, I wasn't buying. My mom was taking me to the store, the baseball card store. I was buying full boxes of tops baseball cards. And then I was selling the packs at garage sales because I could, let's say, buy a box for $10 and it came with 20 packs in it. And I was selling the packs for a dollar a piece. And as long as I didn't open them, then I was going to have a net profit of $10. The problem was for me at 11 years old, I probably opened half the packs, if not two thirds of the packs. So I never really made out. And then by middle school, I was buying blowpops and selling them for $14 or $1. Oh yeah, I was mowing grasses, working in the concession stand at the ball field, had my first job at 16. I have only known how to work. And I've always enjoyed work because there's a sense of purpose and fulfillment. But there was always that monetary reward that I was chasing. So I've grown up working and I've grown up making money. And that's all I know. But it's also, I guess, all I enjoy, I say all I enjoy, but I enjoy it, therefore I tend to not complain about it. Yeah. You have how many children and what are their ages? Two children, 16 and 19. 16 and 19. So one's going to be a sophomore in college and one's going to be a junior in high school. So mine are 22 and 20. And how 20 and? 20 and 22. Yep. Oh, 20 and 22. Yep. So just a couple years ahead. Both at home or? Well, both. Well, it's still sort of enrolled in college. That's like a whole separate, longer story. Both at home though. Yes, to answer that question. Sure. But yeah. I asked that. Yeah. Go ahead. You first. So I asked that because we have both ours at home this summer, because my home, my home, my son is home for the summer. And it's nice. Yeah. I like it. Like my wife likes it. We like having both the kids home, but I know that that goes away next month when he goes back to school. Well, I just had. So I've seen you. The reason why I'm asking this question and kind of going down this road a little bit just so you know. And for the listeners who know, if you don't, if you haven't followed your podcast or YouTube channel, we're going to link it up in the show notes. But you've got a killer YouTube channel, right? The loan officer podcast, tealoponline.com. We'll put all that stuff in there so they can listen and follow. But what I've noticed about some of your conversations is you, it's not all about mortgage. Like, you go, I'm trying to, how do I describe this? You talk about America. You talk about some of the quote issues, right? In modern America. And it made me think when you were talking about grew up working, cutting lawns and, you know, during your thing, and then asked about your children, if youth, isn't it different today? Do you think it's harder to just like, you know, how we used to go cut lawns and deliver newspapers? Like, those things are gone, right? Well, I don't know. I mean, my son mowed lawns until he got tired of the floor to heat. And then he went and his first part time job was at Chick-fil-A. He parlayed that to a part time job in Dick's sporting goods. Okay. And now he parlayed that experience into a just plush, kush job at this local kind of, I call it the high end bougie gym, like we're like professional athletes and like the high-powered attorneys work out. And he hasn't had much issue obtaining those. And then my daughter, even this week, I mean, she's doing all the normal kid jobs. She's driving a kid to vacation Bible school and back all week and the parents are paying her 50 bucks and she's taking care of the neighbors' bunnies while they're at a town and she's making a cup on her bucks. So I think they're still there. I would say we as parents don't promote it. I would say we as parents don't see the social benefits enough of our children having side hustles and part time jobs more than they're not out there. Yeah, I agree. Personally, at least that's me in central Florida. Those are my... That's why it made me feel like today, you know, there's no way, I know I say this, but it does vary about where you live. Most of my kids grew up mostly in Orange County, California, right? Southern California. There's three million people there. And like the cutting lawn jobs, those are spoken for. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. A lot of the manual labor jobs are spoken for. You're not going to go get that. That's the neighbor, you know, privileged, go back to what we said earlier. The privileged kid walking over. But I do agree it's a mindset and you've got to kind of condition your kids for that. I've tried to do that, but yeah, it seems to be the route is either you go fast food or something retail oriented versus can you develop a skill? Like I've had my son do some of my video editing. So that's a cool skill that you can develop, which is the new lawnmower maybe, you know what I mean? I don't know. I know what the way to do that is you know, we've had my daughter come in and she's probably 12 or 13. My daughter takes actually both my kids are good mixes, but there's certain moments where you have a conversation with my daughter and you're like, oh my God, your your father. There's just no denying that dude is your dad. And at 13, she was like child labor laws or BS. I'm like, what do you know what BS means? And she's like, I just want to work. And what she meant is she wants to party plan. She wants to when we were hosting our annual sales rally and our marketing team had to put together a hundred table setups and goody bags. It was a summertime and my daughter came in and she worked for four hours assisting the marketing team with preparing for this big event where we're going to have a hundred people in town and you know hotel rooms and fancy dinners. So I like what you said there because if we just expand our horizons a little bit and get creative with our thought process, there are opportunities for us to bring the young adults or the teens into a work environment and have them do minimum wage tasks, but maybe it's not necessarily washing cars or picking up poop in the backyard from some dog business they have or even mowing lawns like we were talking about. Interesting. Yeah. And there's the lessons you got to give kids too as well. Let's do this. Let's pivot because I think this is a good segue into speaking of lessons and opportunities. Okay. So here we are. Six month mark. 2024, July. You. How do you go a bit in the mortgage business now? I entered in 2004 so it's been 20 years, decades. Yeah. In you are VP of Eastern Division sales for Waterstone, correct? Yes. Okay. So you interact with a lot of loan officers. Correct. My day to day is staying on the sales side of things, working with the recruiting department, working with the marketing department, helping lead 13 branches, 100 plus loan officers, 300 plus associates, and by helping lead because they all have branch managers and there's other division executives that also pour themselves into the development and the support of that talent. But you know, if someone were to say, well, what do you do day and day out on a high level yet? It's a lot of coaching, a lot of training, a lot of teaching. There's some P&L management. There's some advice given, some team building, business development, but if it goes in that box, what you won't call me to do, you won't call me to do your compliance. You probably don't want me to do your accounting, although I could probably fake my way through it for at least a solid two quarters. And although I dig the secondary market, I love to talk servicing. More than likely, if you compared me to someone who's been doing that for 20 years and not sales for 20 years, that person's going to run circles around me. Okay. All right. So six months into 2024, what's, is if you were to describe, is there an overarching or a consistent vibe theme, recurring word that's coming up as you're interacting with these L.O.'s? Oh, a word? Yeah, I'm in Durham. In Durham? In Durham. Okay. I'm a endurance athlete. At this point, I have to accept what I am. For years and years, I'm like, I'm not a runner. My wife's like, babe, you run like four days a week. You're a runner. I'm like, I'm not one of those people. No, I'm just going to admit it. I'm one of those people. I'm an endurance athlete. I choose not to just run. I like to do like swimming, biking, and running all in the same day, all in the same race is my, my drug of choice. So I lean into that when, when coaching mortgage sales professionals, it's like, look, you're enduring right now. You are, you're building something, your payment for what you're building, your payment for your effort is going to be delayed. I'm not going to say you're not going to get any type of compensation, but the bulk of your compensation is going to happen in the future. And when it happens, you're going to turn around and feel like, oh my gosh, I don't deserve all of this money. And I'm going to say, no, you earned every bit of that money. You just earned it in 22, 23, 24. So endurance, grind, head down, blinders on. That's a lot of the conversations that we're having right now. And is there a prescription that you're handing out to these people to, you know, of activities to, you know, just like take two pills call me in the morning, like what are you prescribing to them? What's, it's interesting. You kind of alluded to this and I don't want this to be a big like commercial or pitch, but because I started this podcast four or five years ago and terribly named it, terrible name, the Lone Officer Podcast. And the reason why I say it's a terrible name is a terrible name because to me, it's like Dave Ramsey and Joe Rogan have a baby. I'm teaching the lessons I learned because I became an L.O. but these are lessons I've taught to realtors, to real estate investors, to home buyers. And yes, to the mortgage community. But so many of the lessons that we talk about are applicable to sales professionals and entrepreneurs outside of mortgage. I mean, it truly is a talk radio show, i.e. podcast that we produced twice a week. I just couldn't come up with a better name. So we called it the Lone Officer Podcast because of that. A lot of Lone originators really tuned in and started digging what we were doing. And I would get these compliments that people would be like, and by the way, my friends call me by my initials. So my first name is Dustin, my last name is Owen, but so many people call me D.O. and I accept that and embrace it. So I'll get these messages on IG or LinkedIn or even an email when people can figure out what my email address is and like, D.O. I learned so much more from you than I did my branch manager and I would pause. And I'd be like, oh my gosh, that makes my heart smile. But oh my gosh, that makes me so sad because I'm one dude sitting in a studio for two hours a week producing content that's not interactive. You cannot call in. You cannot raise your hand and ask a question. You cannot request for me to state that again or elaborate. So as I thought more on it and I sat on it, I'm a big follower of this guy, Alex Ramozi. And Alex Ramozi teaches and preaches, like create the content, put it out there, and if it's any good, your audience will raise their hand and they'll tell you what they want to buy from you. Well, my audience raised their hand and said, I want to learn more from you. Do you do coaching? Do you do sales training? Do you have any courses? And at the time, I was like, nope, nope, never been on my radar. Well recently, about a year ago, we went all in and I said, well, the people won it. Let's go ahead and give them our version of business coaching, our version of sales training for mortgage sales professionals. That's our version. There's other really good products and services out there. And I called them Coke, I called them Pepsi, I called them Mountain Dew, we're Dr. Pepper. That's our jam. If people love Dr. Pepper, they're going to love what we do. If they don't love Dr. Pepper, then we're probably not for them. But through this, and we call it the T-Lop MLO Coaching Community, it's a community. It's very much membership based and it's priced to be the most valuable coaching in the market. Like I did that on purpose. I get to help run a mortgage company for a living. I don't have to make tons of money by charging a lot of money to the mortgage community to teach them what I think are the basics. So I developed something called the Blueprint. If anybody wants it, they can reach out to you, Jeff, I'll get it to them. But to me, I love when I was a loan officer, a rookie L.O., I loved that the core had the greatness tracker. And you listen to these just beasts of mortgage professionals. You're like, girls like Shaila Gifford. And Shaila tells her signature story about how the greatness tracker is how she went from making 300 grand a year to a million dollars a year. It's literally a document on a piece of paper that looks something like that, right? Yeah. Well, I loved the greatness tracker. I just felt like the greatness tracker was not for the next Gen L.O., it needed some updating. So I built something called the Blueprint and by the way, not I. It was like nine of us. It took us six months, but it's as basic as that. So I think you asked me, are there, is there a Blueprint or a formula that I'm teaching? Yeah. Like we literally teach loan officers, you need to have ten meaningful conversations a day. Like let's just make it very basic, ten meaningful, then they'd say, well, what makes it meaningful? I'm like, well, were you building a relationship with somebody who could refer you consistently? Were you talking to somebody, whether it was a lead follow-up or a new lead intake that wants to use your product or your service? Were you connecting with someone who can introduce you to others, who want to use your product or service, or can introduce you to others who want to consistently refer to your business? If the answer is yes, it was a meaningful conversation. Your job, your goal, have ten of those a day. Now how we have ten of those a day, well, that's where we follow theme days, and I did not come up with theme days. It was taught to me. I use it when I wait train, right? I don't just do chest every day. I do chest on Monday, back on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday. I use theme days when I train for my Iron Man competitions. Today's Monday, so I swam, tomorrow's Tuesday, so I bike, right? Wednesday means I run, well, in the mortgage world, we have theme days. So we follow our theme days because our theme days let's us know who to call that day, takes all the guesswork out of it, makes it easy, and through those phone calls, I'm trying to have the bulk of my ten meaningful conversations. And then other things that I track, hey, did I get a lead today? Or for some people that I get three leads today, depending on what your volume goals are, you may need to get a lead today, you may need to get three leads today, and then I spend 30 minutes online proactively networking for my business, right? And we have this whole formula, it's 30, 10, 5, 5, 3, 1 that we teach about if you follow that formula, it only takes you 30 minutes a day to intentionally grow and market to your network online. And then I throw in things like how many faces do you have this week, how many networking functions did you attend this month, watch this, how many minutes of exercise, did you get in, and how many pages of a non-fiction type book did you read? And that would be how we try to simplify what mortgage sales professionals have to do daily, weekly, monthly in order to dominate not just in this market, but dominate in this market so that you can crush it in the future market. Sounds like you are suggesting people be brilliant in the basics. Oh my gosh, I'm way too dumb to ever try to be successful outside of the basics. I mean it is amazing if you just do the basics consistently, the results that anybody can achieve. I'm neither a good runner, a good swimmer or a good cyclist, there's three disciplines there, I'm not above average or great at any of them, yet I can compete in my age group at a respectable level in a sport that I didn't start doing until four years ago, all because I dominate the basics. Yes, I built my career, Todd Duncan, I built my career on the 12 week challenge. I was so broke I couldn't afford to go to sales mastery, but my buddies older brother went and my buddies older brother came back and told us about this thing called the 12 week challenge. The 12 week challenge is how I built my book of business, it's how I went from ear relevant to making top producer status in two years, and here's how simple it was Jeff. Back in the day I sent 12 letters a day. Now today there will be 12 emails, text messages or DMs, right? But 12 letters a day and then I made 12 outbound phone calls a day in order to schedule one meeting a day, so then the following day I could go on one meeting a day, and I did that for just 12 weeks. By the way, I didn't do it on Saturdays and Sundays, I was way too lazy, but I just did it for 12 weeks and what ended up happening is through that 84 day period, 60 calendar days, I was able to get Bella to Bella and face to face with 60 real estate agents, of which 30 of them didn't like me or I didn't like them, that facts, that's life, of the 30 that were left, man, we like each other, but half of them, they weren't serious professionals, they were never going to make it in real estate, they weren't going to have anyone to refer me, but then that left me with 15, and those 15 is all I ever needed to launch my business. So yes, the basics, it's not rocket science. I love it, I'm on the same page as you, let me throw a monkey wrench in here for a second because I know you've probably heard this narrative before, you mentioned the, was it 15 agents who you didn't gel with, or actually sorry, not didn't gel with, but didn't have any business, I believe, right, whatever that number was, there's always a percentage of agents you're going to meet and don't have business, etc. Do you hear this thing from LL's a lot of like, well, how can I figure out how to circumvent that and not even have to spend time with the agents who don't have business? Yeah, I think there's, there's a fine line between the shotgun approach and approaching things with intentionality, and you know, so like, if I'm using the same hunting analogy and I want to stay on it, you know, maybe I want to shoot with a shotgun, but I only want to go where there's the most prey, because too many times you end up getting that whole paralysis by analysis, and we spend all of our time trying to figure out, is this one even worth calling, is this one even worth texting, I'm like, by the time you all figure out your list, I've called through mine three times, and you have momentum now, and check this out. What's that? And you have momentum? Yes, well, and that's what I was going to get at, you and I kicked off today's show talking about what it means when someone like you podcast as many times as you have, all of those reps, all of that, that opportunity to practice to hone in your skill set. There's no such thing as a bad realtor meeting. That was an opportunity to hear a new objection, that was an opportunity to try a new pitch, it was an opportunity to get better at question asking, asking, and better yet, I coach and teach every meeting we go on, we should leave with two referrals. Now you might not have a home buyer referral for someone who needs a home loan that's going to be, you know, turned into a borrower for you. The referral, let's say Jeff and I met, and it was a terrible meeting, like Jeff's an idiot, and I can't stand the guy, or Jeff thinks I'm a total DB, and he can't stand me. It's okay for us not to like gel, but it's not okay for me to not get something for the time and the effort and the energy that I spent. So I may say to Jeff, hey Jeff, out of curiosity, who's someone you look up to in your office? Right? I'm just trying to get a name and a number. I promise you tomorrow when I have to make my 12 calls, I'm going to call that person, and I'm going to say, hey, I was just in your office yesterday, I was meeting with Jeff and he was bragging about you. And I figured if Jeff is willing to brag about you, you're probably someone I should meet. Or I could have said to Jeff, because maybe Jeff was the big dog, and maybe Jeff was big dogging me around and bullying me around the meeting, and that's why we didn't hit it off. Hey Jeff, let me ask you a question. So I'm the rising star in my company. Who's the rising star in your company? Because I've noticed that rising stars love to stick together. So I've constantly and consistently coach loan officers when you go on these meetings, there's no such thing, no such thing as a bad meeting, because it gives you opportunities to practice, it gives you another at bat, another rep, but you should walk away from every meeting with at least two referrals. That right there is worth the price of admission, whoever's listening right now. I mean, just asking those questions and then changing the mindset, because you're right, I had not thought of that in a long time, that there is no quote unquote bad realtor meeting. Like that's a whole shift, you know, and I've gone this far. I've said to somebody, hey look, I gotta be honest with you, I so appreciate your time and you obviously crush it. I just don't see this. I don't think you and I are going to be a good fit together, but who do you think would be a good fit for me? I'm a lot. I get it. But I would say that to somebody. I would literally say look, I'm a lot. I get it. But who do you think would be a good fit for me? And you'd be amazed, their whole tonality and their body language and their posture just sinks into the chair, they relax, they even smile and become a little bit nicer, because I dropped their guard. I've had three names, three names given to me. And you'd be amazed because usually this happens when that person was like the number one producer that I probably used every sales tactic to get in front of them and I forced them to have a meeting with me. But now all of a sudden those names they gave me when I called them and I said I landed a meeting with that person and everyone knows that that guy or that girl's a little bit prickly. And then I say that that guy or girl spoke highly of them and that they suggested that we meet. It's a layup. And usually it's a layup with the type of agents we do want to work with, like those that are actively selling 18 to 36 homes in today's market, who do run a sustainable business and they work well with local lenders like we are. 18 to 36 homes in what period of time? A year. A year. A year. That is your criteria for spending time with agents, 18 homes in a year? No. My criteria is quite honestly are you licensed? Are you full time? Are you serious and are you in growth mode? Those are my requirements. That could be somebody who hasn't closed but three transactions in the past six months but because it will have been licensed for 12 months. But I'm looking for full time, serious professionals who are in growth mode and then obviously we have to somehow gel. I spent too many years slamming square pegs through round holes and it had just learned there's enough fish in the sea. There's enough realtors in my market. I don't need to force it with someone where we don't see eye to eye. They don't play by my rules or I'm not willing to play by their rules. It's pretty balzy to in front of the person say, hey, you know what, really appreciated the time today. I just want to be straight up. We're both busy people. I'm really not sure that we're fit for each other, you know, just be like, take it away. Right. It's like anything Jeff, way easier with wisdom, way easier with money in the bank and way easier with a pipeline that's full. And I get that. I'm the first to recognize that. One of my first managers, the guy's name is Rob mentioned. He's not the business any longer but he's a hell of a guy if you ever meet him. And Rob came by my workstation. They're called cubes back then. You know, we can't call him cubicles anymore. We have to call him workstation. Okay. He came by my workstation and he saw I was working the same file for the same borrower for like four days straight. He's like, Dio, can I tell you the best four letter word in sales? And I'm going the F word, I'm like, he's like, next, he's like, next, it's the best four letter word in sales. Next. And it was easy because I heard him, but I don't think I was listening. You know, I think that's from Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Whiteman can't jump. You know, and I think it was Wesley Snipes character talking to Woody Harrelson's character. He's like, you know, you hear me, but you don't listen. And anyhow, I heard him, but I didn't listen. It wasn't until years went by that I could fully listen to what he was saying, which was say no and go out there and go meet with 10 new agents, call 10 prospects back, reach out to your circle of influence 10 more times because that's going to be more fruitful than you sitting here working this cold, dead lead. I love that. And that does take, like you said, some maturity, some wisdom, a couple of wins under the belt. You know, there's a lot of different ways we can go in this conversation right now because a lot of things are popping my head from like, you know, should you put up with the toxic, prickly, realtor, right? I think that was a question you and I commented on in a social feeds a couple of weeks ago, whatever. My answer to that was, you know, when you're starting out, you got to put up with more BS than when you're well established. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a process to everything that we do. Yeah. We have to pay our dues, but I think so many times you have to also learn the lessons the hard way. Yeah. How many of us, we entered into this profession because we're hard-headed because we're willing to bet on ourselves because we like to be like, hey, hold my beer watch this. So with that same type of gusto, also comes our unwillingness to heat advice, which is when I'm like, you know, Jeff told me about that. He told me that stove was hot, but I still go and touch the stove. I'm like, damn, Jeff was right. That stove was hot. What I don't do because Jeff gave me the heads up. I probably didn't put my entire hand on the stove. I probably will never touch it again, and I'll probably start listing the Jeff more often. So I do agree and I have lived it that, yes, this is all great advice. This is what top producers do and well-oiled machines operate. Yeah. However, it is easier said than done and it's easier with experience. Good advice there. All right. For the last couple of minutes we've got left, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to get the D.O. paint the picture on, you know, you're close to it as well. There's various, you know, psychologies circulating right now in the industry. It's a bit of a challenging time, whatever, all the stuff we know, right? The narrative we hear every day. What is the picture you would paint to the person who's in that space where their incomes down, transactions are down, there's not a lot of movement going on, a lot of, you know, the housing isn't hold pattern to some degree. Even though I know, like, I get the narrative, you know, there's shot binocene, did a hundred million in the month of May, like, you know, I get it, right? But then there's like, you know, you know, he's a good dude by the way. He's a good dude. He's a good dude. Yeah, awesome dude. Of course he is from Boston. But like, what are you telling your people right now if they're in that like, oh shit, it's a little, it's a little sticky right now, like, should I hang in there? Ready? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I had this realization because I actually had an opportunity to leave the industry. And when I sat down, the opportunity was going to require me to build a following, a network of referral sources, a network of clients. It was going to require me to work 50, 60 hours a week. some of those were nights and weekends because I was going to be managing a large venue in charge of ticket sales and advertising sales. I'm talking like big concerts coming through. And I was going to have to learn that industry. And here's what I realized. I could stay in the mortgage industry where I at least had some bit of a following. I at least knew what I was doing. All I was going to have to do is work really hard. While the other job, I was going to have to work really hard, but recreate a following and learn a whole different industry. So to those people, I would say, what else are you going to do? Like, what else? Like, let's walk through that. Let's actually visualize it. Let's go out of pen and paper and let's write that down. What did you do prior to the mortgage industry? What were your hours like? What was your best income year and what was the maximum you could have you could have made if you stayed in that industry? And what I would tell most 98 out of 100 would realize that they work in a great industry with good people with a higher calling. The higher calling is being financial literacy advisors helping people generate well through home ownership. And they have unlimited income potential. They know this industry and regardless of how slow they are or are not, they do have business coming in. They do have lead sources and there are plenty of people who know what they do for a living and how they can help them. So really it's a question for the guy or girl in the mirror. What are you doing about it? What does your effort look like? Where's your intentionality going? Because for most of us, this is a great gig in an industry that we know and love and there's not something better for us. And if there is, it's going to require us to work really hard, put in lots of hours and do things that are uncomfortable. We must while do things that are uncomfortable in an industry where we already have traction. It's good advice. Reminds me of the everything's hard. Choose your hard. That's awesome. All right. Well, this has been a cool, awesome coaching session from a veteran who has interacted with lots of people. That's got a nice scope and view of what's actually working in today's market. So thank you for that. We also want to allow people to be able to connect with you because there's a lot more great content you have. First and foremost, your YouTube channel is banging. You just crossed the 20,000 subs. Congratulations on that. That's a whole separate podcast in and of itself. So I'm going to put links in the show notes to the YouTube, also the T-LOP community. This is tealoponline.com, correct? Yeah. Look, T-LOP, the loan officer podcast. So the podcast is still the loan officer podcast, but T-LOP is now the brand because T-LOP brings the YouTube channel. It brings a newsletter that I write every single week. It's free to sign up for that information on T-LOP online. T-LOP online is our website. The reason why I don't have T-LOP.com is because someone already had it. So I had to do T-LOP online.com. We have the T-LOP coaching community for all of those people who are worn out of all the free resources, right? Podcasts is free, YouTube channels free. The newsletter is free. For those that want more, then we invite them. Hey, check out what we're doing. Come be a part of our community. Yeah. You guys got a good thriving community. I know because I've seen it behind the scenes and you got great content. So I just want to bring more good content to people because we need more people rising up, raising their standards in this industry, you know? And so it's about the people and the environments, the community that you're around that are going to help you to do that. So all the links you're looking for, including following Dustin on LinkedIn is in there because he's quite chatty on LinkedIn and that's probably one of the best places to find them. Thank you. Thank you for this. We've been trying to do this for months. I absolutely love what you're doing with my agent class. The T-LOP community is a big supporter of your product. I love teaching loan officers how to build their brand and their local market by being that educator and hosting classes and events just like you do it for them in a box. So keep doing what you're doing. It's a phenomenal product and more importantly, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. My pleasure, man, it was overdue, but I'm glad we have this conversation and I'm pretty confident you'll be returning as a guest if you would be open to that in a couple of months. I would love it. I would love it. All right, listeners, you know what to do? Yep, please leave us a review. If you like this one, share it with somebody else. You will find valuable to get it and of course check out the links in the show notes. We'll see on the next one. People, bye for now.