Ep 151: Planning Your Best Year Ever: Lessons from a Billion-Dollar Producer

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey, Lister, what's up, it's Jeff Zimper and welcome back. By the time you're listening to this, it's a new year. It's a new decade. Welcome to 2020. What will this year have in store for you? I know this for a fact that much of what this year will have in store for you is based on you, based on what you do, who you become, the habits and disciplines and systems that you implement, who you hang around with, who you listen to, who you're influenced by. All those things are going to impact what type of a year you have this year in 2020. My wish and hope for you is that you have your best year ever in all the categories of your life. I believe that that's possible. It doesn't happen by chance. It happens with self-mastery in all those relevant key areas. That's why I think it's so relevant that we're talking about the topic I am today. Before I get into that, one quick shout out to you, our podcast listeners. As always, I'd like to share reviews because it helps us remind you to leave a review for us. Should you be inclined to do so? Here's a review from one of our loyal listeners, Danny McDonough. Danny references a specific podcast she was listening to about the power of habits to change your life. I'm just going to reference these real quick because I think they're relevant for our topic today. But here's a couple of quotes that she she pulled out of episode number 122. Your habits are how you embody your identity. Identity is who you are being every day. Anything you do or don't do is based on your identity. Decide who you want to be and prove it to yourself with small wins every day every week. I thank you for sharing those quotes, Danny. As a matter of fact, those quotes largely come from one of my favorite most impactful books called Atomic Habits by James Clear. If you haven't yet read that or listen to the audiobook, I definitely encourage you to do so. I've continued to go back to and listen for me because it's one of those things in life that always evolves, right? Your identity and who are you being? So anyway, Danny goes on to say thank you for your efforts in sharing this material. She's finding excellent value in spending time with me online and in her ears. That's so sweet. I appreciate that. Danny, if you haven't yet reached out to us and asked for your swag box of podcasts, goodies, you know what to do, message me on Facebook, tell me you're mailing address and your preferred t-shirt size and we'll get you going with some brand new swag in 2020. So that said, let's get back into my special guest for this episode, which is relevant to the conversation. That is none other than Shishank Shikhar, who I have known for quite a number of years now, was one of my guests on the podcast several years ago, you know, it's 2020. This actually marks the fifth year of this podcast. Yeah, started in January 2016 was the very first episode. And if you've been with me for any length of time, whether you're from the beginning or new, I appreciate you and you know, just reach out to me. You can email me anytime podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com, message me. But back to my special guest, Shishank, I'm just grateful because he was one of those folks early on when I was, you know, kind of an unknown entity before podcasts were even really a thing, a big thing, if you will, in this industry. Shishank is back on and we are talking about his journey to success. And you're going to get to hear his personal story, how he came to this country with literally nothing, an English being his third language and has grown his business. He started in 2008, grown his business to, you know, in 2019, closing out about $118 million. Total funding's career to date, you know, to date is a billion dollars in funding. He's written three books, he's a very much sought after speaker. And he, what I love about him is, first of all, he's real and transparent and honest and, you know, tells the truth. But secondly, he's also built quite an efficient system and a business. And so we're talking about business planning. We're talking about obviously the impact of having a personal brand and what that means today. But Shishank's going to really lay out kind of his best practices and tactics and strategies for how to build a, you know, a successful mortgage origination business. And I think you'll be surprised with some of the responses he has to some of my questions that I often ask some of the top producers we have. So I'm confident you're going to enjoy. We're going to talk about conversions, apps to closings, et cetera, re-five versus purchase business. And it's just a wonderful crash course in how to be a successful, efficient mortgage professional. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Shishank Shikar, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure, man. I had you on the podcast. I'm trying to remember two, three years ago. Yeah, I would think so. Yes. Yeah, early stages. One of my early guests willing to be on when I was a nobody, and you're still willing to be on. So thank you very much. Okay, so why not, obviously, you know, the listeners heard kind of my introduction of our, you know, you, but why don't you give them kind of your version of how long you've been in the biz, what kind of, you know, units production and what do you enjoy about this business? Sure, of course. And of course, not, not to bore the listeners with, with a very long drawn bio of mine. But really, I started in the business in 2008. And we all know probably the worst year to get in the mortgage business. I was year and a half in the country, literally, you only three people in the entire country back then started the business with about $1,900 from the, from my rented apartment. And then fast forward about 10 years later, I have closed over a billion daughter in sales last year. I close 180 million on track to close over 200 million this year, top 15 loan officer in the country. And the part that I enjoy the most is really the education part. That's the, that's the fundamental, that's the pillar on which I built this business from pretty much nothing to where I am. And that's the most interesting part of it, which is you get to educate people, especially first time on buyers through my three books that I've written and hundreds of blog posts, videos, podcasts like this, really all kinds of platforms online and offline. And that's the most interesting part. You want, I got in the business when I could see the, the mayhem that a bad education can create to the mortgage in the real estate industry. And I personally never wanted to be part of it, of course. And I'm sure a lot of listeners can identify to that. So whatever little that I can do by educating them to pick the right mortgage programs so that we never go through that 2008, 2010 cycle ever again, I'm just trying to do that. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I do recall your personal story from our original conversation. What makes me curious though, is why this industry, how did you come about choosing to be a mortgage professional versus anything else? So it's, yeah, it's an interesting story. I was, I was in India, I was working for a startup of VC funded startup. And they were on the mortgage side of the business and I wasn't an active originator when I moved here to the US when I got transferred here, I was the head of business for that company. So the company did some mortgages, I was, I wasn't really, I was running the show, I was not really running the origination. So when the 2008 crisis happened and they folded up the one thing that the only thing that I knew was mortgages, even though I really didn't know the details of how to get clients and all that. I always wanted to get started with my own business. I always wanted to run something and not just work for someone else all through, through my life. And I saw that as an opportunity that if it's maybe it's a good thing that I was let go or the company closed down. And in the short run, it may not work because we wanted to get in the mortgage business in 2008, but I was hoping more, more hope than anything else really, very little talent or skill to, to, to run mortgages or the industry dynamics at that time. But I saw that, I still saw that as an opportunity, yeah, I was looking more medium to long term. And the one thing that I knew and kind of made sense. Yeah. How long did you work for a company as an employee or, you know, 1099 originator until you started your own company? So I had, I ran two different branches, two different lenders I got in the business and then ran a branch for a company, kept that for about two, two and a half years and then ran another branch for another lender and then kept that for two, two and a half years. It was 2000, I would say 14. So yeah, about six years into the business then when I started my own brokerage, I was at a point where I wanted to call the shots and I wanted to run it like the way I wanted to run the business plus just the pride of ownership for me was huge. It wasn't so much about how much money would I make or lose. In fact, 2015 when I moved to the independent brokerage platform, nobody was again, it was again, again, against the tide, just like getting in the business in 2008 was against the tide, getting into a brokerage and getting away from a direct lending platform was again against the tide. And as we can see, as a brokerage is the fastest growing platform now in 2019, but that wasn't the case in 2015, but for me, it was really important to own the business that I was running and have the independence of building my personal brand around it and that's why I moved. So let's talk about that. You mentioned personal brand and I know that's a big thing for you and I've made a couple of notes here. You've done. I want to unpack a little bit. If you could set up for us because my listeners right there in a variety of different stages in their career, they've been in 20 years and they're at that stage, they're still passionate or maybe they're something else and then we've got some people that are kind of just starting out and ramping up. And you mentioned personal brand, I think that's been important to you all along. How important or relevant do you think that is for a loan officer today? So if there was one thing that I will go back and repeat all over again, like if I went to a brand new business today that I knew nothing about, which was kind of the case in 2008 with Mogegis or 2009, that's one thing that I will repeat all over again. He Mogegis per se is a commodity business, let's be real about it. Really that the one thing that you are trying to sell or if the only thing that you're trying to sell is rates because that's the number that everyone's looking at, then you turn this business into a commodity business, or if you are, even if you're trying to sell service, it's a promise of service, which means they can't see the service before they hire you. So you're just saying, I'll give you the best service, but then everyone can be saying the same thing. And so there is no proof in the pudding per se because they haven't tasted it yet. And that's where personal branding comes into the play is because when they are looking at different options, they're trying to see who is the one I would believe when they say that I'll give you the best service or I'll give you the best education. And when they see you that, okay, you have written books or you've written blogs or you've been on the media, like that's the person that I find more credible than somebody else with saying, we're just saying the same thing. Yeah, I'll do this, but there's really no proof to match that kind of a promise. Personal branding is what really separates you from everybody else. As we are sitting in 2019, 2020, and one of the biggest threats to the industry or to loan off this versus FinTech. And I talk about all the time is that the best way to counter FinTech or any other challenge really is to build that personal brand, because at the end of the day, people are not working with a company. People don't work with articles lending. People work with Sashankshaker and what they see in Sashankshaker is the fact that, look, this guy really seems to know what he's doing, especially if you work with a lot of first time home buyers, which I do, then they want to be sure that this is super anxious, super, I would say uncomfortable step that they are taking from their current state. They're dependent on somebody and that person better be somebody like me. And that's why personal branding was as important in 2009, probably it wasn't even that important and then when I started working on it, it's way more important now because it's a little crowded now. And some people have caught up and when I was writing books and blogs back in 2009, it was nearly unheard of and I would consider myself one of the OGs, but now there are more people doing it. But really, as a way to separate yourself from the crowd, as a way to set yourself apart, especially if you're in a competitive market, as an Ivan Silicon Valley, San Francisco area, probably the most competitive market in the country when it comes to mortgages or real estate, I compete with banks who have over a percent lower in rate. I'm not saying pricing in interest rate. So Bank of America would go 2.75 and I'm coding 3.75 on over a million dollar loan where the payment difference could be substantial even with an eighth interest rate. And if I still get to close over 200 million dollar in business, that's the proof there is in the pudding that personal branding works. So what are some of the things you're doing today to create that differentiation through a personal brand? What are the tactics or strategies? So I'll take it actually all the way back to 2009 and the reason I would do that is because a lot of listeners may be at the very early stage or maybe considering it, because a lot of times you listen to someone who's already accomplished something and you would think as a listener or being in the audience is that of course he can do it, as a need so good at it. Of course she can do it, she's really good in front of camera or whatever. What I want to take the listeners back to 2009 is because I want to show where I came from. 2009 when I had closed seven loans in the last 12 months, meaning when I got in the business I was doing half a loan a month. So this thing of doing 30, 40, 50 loans a month is not something I was born with. So first of all, understand that's what my production was in the first 12 months, half a loan a month, two, English is my third language, it's not as if it's like, okay, I've written all my life in English or whatever that is, it should be so easy. Or I've never spoken at really on the stage on platforms. All of this was really getting out of the comfort zone because one problem that I see with personal branding is that people are like, okay, I don't think I'm good at it. I don't think I can do it. I have this fear of doing this. It's not as if I had any less fear. In fact, probably I had more or more in security is around it. But the one thing that I figured in 12 months of doing half a loan per month is that I had to do a lot of begging even to do that half a loan a month. Like I would have to go to realtors and ask for business and realize that I wasn't good at it. I was really good at this begging business because I was new to the business. I really did not have any USB to sell to anyone. And I decided around mid 2009 is that I will build a business where people come to me versus me going to people. And that's how I will build this business. And if it doesn't, I'll just go back to corporate American work and then I'll realize that this is not my thing. And that's when I started investigating into one of the key tenants of marketing is that you go where your consumers go. You should not be doing something where your consumers are not watching. It's one of the things that I started looking at trends is of course social media was up and coming. Facebook was just about taking hold. There were more and more people joining Facebook. But also what I would think that I as a consumer was reading more and more blogs at that point of time. I was reading more consumer review sites to review a certain product or a certain service. So you as a consumer and if your target audience is the same as you, you should know what you are consuming and that's what your target audience will. So there's no one answer to saying if you're sitting in 2019, 2020, what you should be doing or if you're sitting in 2009, what you should be doing, what you should be doing is what your consumers are doing. So once I started seeing that trend, I knew that if I want to reach out directly to the consumer, which by the way, should be a huge part of your marketing is to go direct to the consumers that we are not dependent on your overall partners all the time. I knew that I had to write blogs. I knew that my consumer review sites and we should be up to people looking at things like yellow or Google or Facebook review come back later and zero review came. But really, I started working on all of that not because I was good at it or I really wanted to do it more so because that's what my consumers were consuming. That's where their attention was. And so if you're sitting in 2019, 2020, if you're making a business plan for the next four, five years, you should be seeing what is your target audience because San Francisco, various target audience may not be the same as Mississippi target audience, which may not be the same as New York target audience. So this thing of coaches and trainers and speakers talking about this is what works is like the worst advice you could give. Just like real estate is local, consumers are local and they have different preferences depending on the market that you live in. So first of all, it's social media the only way to build personal brand and the answer is no. There could be markets. I know tons of producers who have zero social media presence and do an amazingly good job of producing. So first of all, just because I'm good at it, I will not give you that advice. That's probably the wrong advice to give. And two, personal branding can be built around so many things. I started writing books. I started writing blogs, which one of my friends Tim Davis once said that the number of blogs that you've written could be put together in a book, which was a great idea. Probably one of the best that I've ever heard and thank you, Tim, if you're listening to this. But really, that's what I did. It was the worst book somebody could write. So cringy that I do not have a copy of it because I don't know how I want to go back and read it off of it again. But it gives you that branding. I was then a published author which imagine back in 2009, getting on a platform and saying you're a published author, how many people could have possibly said that. And that helped me bring that brand that I'm a first time home buying expert. I started speaking about FHA loans, which nobody was doing in the barrier because the loan amount limits were so low before the crisis that no house qualified for FHA. I studied really, literally back to back cover to cover the underwriting guidelines, everything that was happening. And then I started presenting on that topic to a small real estate offices and real estate meetings and marketing meetings and all that. What I'm trying to arrive at is that to come up with any kind of marketing plan, especially personal branding if you're trying to build that, you need to do the basic marketing one or one of segmentation targeting and positioning, which is to segment your market, figure out which what you want to target and then position yourself accordingly. This mentality that we have is that we follow what we call successful people blindly. So whatever works for Shashank will work for me kind of a mindset is totally wrong. If I followed in 2009 what worked for successful loan officers then, which is that networking and working with real estate agent, which I tried to and failed miserably at it, I would not be here interviewing, interviewing on this podcast. So whatever that your market demands is the way you built your personal brand. Interesting. Yeah, that's a nice crash course. Thank you and personal branding. I have to agree with you, there's a saying that I tend to fall back on regarding marketing, which is everything works but doesn't work equally well for everyone everywhere. So to your point, and yes, it's contextual based on the activities you're going to do to your point. It's like realtors, I know realtors who succeed with door knocking, is that going to work in San Francisco? No. It will work in wherever like Idaho or the small town where they still have that community feel and all that. So you've got to adjust accordingly. Okay, so let's fast forward then to today, 2020 we're entering or when people are listening to this happy new year, everyone. Anything that you see that you do that is working, comma, results may vary, but is there anything you've changed or you're doing significantly differently now than maybe wasn't available back then or that you just think is worthy of mention? So one of the things again, and I'll probably go against the grain here is that focus, pay huge attention to refinancing, get a lot of coaches and trainers will tell you or speakers whatever is that, purchase is the only way to go and I have gone against the grain like literally the entire decade, last decade. If you saw the interest rate market trends over the last last 10 years, you would be stupid if you did not focussed on the refinance market. If you came to me and said 94% of your business is purchase, I'd be like, you must be really stupid to run this business the way you are. And I don't care what your production is, even if it's higher than me, that basically just means that you have let almost 80, 90% of potential business go. I just find it so in coherent and illogical that people would say that I entirely focus my business on purchase and then what happens after that? What happens when you get years like to have 2016 or 2019 where interest rates drop and you get three months of this huge refinance opportunity that you do? What kind of database management that you have had to make sure that you are able to get back to these customers and be able to refinance? And I see the same trend not just for the next year in 2020, again, depending on when you're watching this, but really for the entire decade, in 2009, I was speaking at a conference and I said, I see a low interest rate not just for this year, but actually for the entire decade. And a lot of people came back to me after the event and say, you must be crazy to make prediction like that. But now we are entering a new decade and other than a few months here and there, we saw a relatively low interest rate and very high refinance rates throughout the entire decade. We will have a similar opportunity for this new decade. So if you are not prepared for it, you're like, purchase, when you're doing a purchase loan, you should be setting yourself off for refinance. You should be doing two loans at the same time, as in I have had clients that I have probably done four, five, six refinances over the last decade. Imagine if I was not doing that, as in where would my volume be versus where my volume is right now. So my biggest advice to you is that put as much emphasis, if not more really on client retention, on database management, or managing that relationship, so that when the refinance opportunity comes along, which it will, I can guarantee you, it will come every 18 months to 24 months for you, is that you're set up to do that. As in I'm in the midst of doing a huge amount of recruiting for my company, your license is now 14 states. And that's one of the things that changes for the loan officers that are higher immediately after the joint-arcus lending is that they come from this mindset of, okay, I've had these loans, which are the new purchase loans, and I asked them to run through the database. And suddenly, I don't know where, which did not think they're like this 25 year refinance opportunities. And suddenly, they're making that extra 100 grand that they never thought they would be able to make. And that's a mindset change is that you need to move away from thinking that purchase is the only business. And if you do that, for some of you, that could be 40, 15, and 100 percent increase in business. So what percentage is your, or has your business been of 2019 RIFI versus purchase? So for 2019, we'll probably end up at 60 percent purchase, 40 percent RIFI 2016, we're at 70 percent RIFI and 30 percent purchase 2017, 2018, we're probably at the reverse, which means 70 percent purchase, 30 percent RIFI, what I'm trying, what those numbers tell you is that my marketing plans, my database management, my entire business planning is based on how the market moves and how to grab that opportunity that presents itself. Because if you're not in that position, then when, because RIFI and Windows typically happens for two, three months, and then all of your database refinances, if you do not somebody else well, and then not just you lose that refinance, the future referrals guess what goes to you, not to you, or to the last person who helped them refinance the law. So you're not just losing one refinance, you could potentially be losing, I don't know, dozens of referrals, because if you look at the referral chain, the first seven clients that I did in between 2008 and 2009, my first 12 months, are each probably worth half a million dollars to me, if I were to really branch out all the referrals that I've gotten from them. So for me, database management was a key from the very first loan, I actually have the very first loan track, even now in my Google Sheets tracker that I have. So I'm trying to, the importance for that, again, is that because a lot of people are like, okay, with the kind of production that you have, of course, you will do 100 million in refinance every year, because you have 1000 people in your database already, but I was doing that when I had zero people in my database, I was working on my very first client that I got on how can I get more refinance and more referrals from them. So don't get daunted by the fact that I am at the production that I am, I was doing this back in 2009 when I had zero, literally almost zero production that I had. Well, it's why you're able to do the production you do right now, it's because you've maintained kind of control, if you will, to a degree of those relationships. No, I love that, that's great lessons, man. What do you say then to the excuse, if you will, right, about what I've seen the pattern happen with loan officers is when the ReFi boom comes, what they do is they get bogged down with the ReFies and leave their realtors by the wayside and that back and forth game, how do you mitigate that? So one of the five daily habits to master that I typically talk about. One of those is spending 30 minutes daily on your long term business, just basically getting away from what's happening today. In the mortgage business, it's, there are always urgent stuff, there are always ones. And so again, time blocking as a concept is something that I'm not a huge fan of other than those 30 minutes. In the sense that if you time block every single minute, every single hour of the day, it becomes very difficult because there's so many fires that come up and then there's, you can just leave it because saying this is my time blocking to call past customers and I don't care if someone is sitting on the closing table and the wire is not in or whatever. It's that kind of a business where Russia's happened all the time, problems happen all the time and you have to solve it as you are the person to be solving it. So I actually keep most of my day open and work the day according to whatever urgent stuff that I could reach. But one thing which is non-negotiable is my 30 minutes of working on long-term stuff, which is what your, if you're in a refinance boom, how do you still focus on purchase? How do you continuously improve your operations? One of the things that I'm big fan of is creating Amazon Prime of Movages, creating consistency, creating predictability in your operations. If I get a contract says 21-day close, I'm like, I will close on the 21st day. It's the guarantee that you have. If I write a pre-approval letter, I tell the listing agent that if you have a pre-approval letter signed by me, that's 100% guarantee that the loan will go through. I can't tell you about your appraisal or your title issues, but really the credit qualification of the customer is 100% guarantee that it will go through. Those are the kind of predictability and the confidence that I'm trying to build in the system. All of that does not come overnight. You have to make continuous improvements on your systems. You have to make continuous improvement on your marketing. You said, what are some of the things that you're working in 2020 on personal branding? It's every year. It's about taking the game up. It's every year. It's about, okay, so this, if I wrote five blocks and I do 10, if I do 10, can I do 15? If I wrote blocks, can I do a book? If I do the book, can I make sure I'm going on media? If I'm going on media, can I go on a better media platform? So it's for everything, it's about continuous improvements. If you put the 30 minutes, so even if you do not have the time because you're in the refinance boom of meeting, see a lot of realtors for coffee meetings, whatever. Just take the time. Even if you have 30 minutes, you can text five realtors. Hey, I was just going anything I can help you with. You can write thank you notes for them. You can DM them on social media. It's not your, your, the amount of interaction can still remain the same. You might not be doing so many as so many 101 so that they do not think that you went completely near. Yeah. You're still there. You're probably not meeting them face to face, but not everyone wants to meet face to just the fact that you texted them every six, seven days. Just the fact that you DM them or send them thank you cards or, or what, depending on the season, send them like I, for my realtors, I send them $20, $30, Harry and David, cookies or whatever. Again, it's not important how expensive the gift is. It's just the fact that you're thinking of them and sending them a birthday card, whatever it is. So if you do that 30 minutes for your clients, for your realtors, for your other referral partners, even that's enough if you were, if you were saying the refinance boom. And when you're not, then you, again, adjust your business and then go do more one or once with them that that's how you work on it. Yeah. So you got to get more efficient and intentional with your time and then who you're pouring into. That's a lot of great stuff. So let's pivot for the remaining time we have left briefly to talk about business planning because obviously you're running a pretty sizable business there. You've got a lot of volume. You're growing, recruiting people. And I know you did a business planning webinar recently with Barry Habib. What are some of the best practices or kind of what's your structure around business planning for 2020? So I have a one page business plan that I do. I, if you know me, I try to keep things very simple. My pipeline tracker has been on Google Sheet for literally forever and a lot of people. And it's not that I'm, I'm not tech savvy as in, it's just that I try to keep stuff simple wherever possible. And similarly for business plan, I do not like to do eight hour business planning. I like to do one page business plan and your visitors really want it as they can, they can get one. I don't know how they reach out to you, but they reach out to me one way of, I can send them one page of PDF, but really in a nutshell, if I can, if I can boil this down to about three, four minutes, the biggest thing I'm looking for for, for in business planning I'm doing for next year is first that all your numbers for the last year should be ready. If you did not track your business the year before, there's no freaking way you can plan for the next year. It's impossible. So if you, if you have not done that in the past, your first goal really should be to track and that should, all your business plan be because there isn't much you can do if you don't have data to play with, unless you are a year one and you have two in the business that's fine. But really the way I'm looking at is that I'm looking at data on of what happened the last year. And then when you're looking at it, there are really only three, four ways of improving your business, going into the next year. And by improving your business, I'm saying pure revenue goals here, not all relations and recruiting in other ways. So pure revenue goals, the only two ways that the most loan officers are looking at is you increase the conversion from the leads that you're already getting. So if you're getting 100 and from 100 leads, your leads to app ratio is 50%. So that's 50 applications and then from app to closing is 50% you're closing 25. You need to increase conversion either at one stage or both. So if you're getting the same number of leads, I, and then again, that's where the data is important is because you need to see how come out of 100 leads, I got 50 applications. What happened to the other 50? Did I email them once and then forget about it? Did I not have the product because they were like, okay, I'm looking at 0% V alone and I do not offer one or whatever. So what happened between leads and application? Were they not motivated? Were they not referred to me well? And that's why tracking every single lead is important. Similarly, when you're tracking from application to closing, I have a 90% closing ratio from application to closing, which is one of the highest in the industry. Of course, there are no real stats for that. But I'm just assuming that it has to be one of the highest in the industry. But even for that 10%, I track why, where did it fall through? What happened there? Did the appraisal come lower? Did they go shopping after they locked with me? Or because if you do not have that, how do you improve? And then I tell, and then the way you're looking at business planning is that for most people, the fall through in the first stage, which is from the leads to the app is communication. Your communication platform is not efficient enough. It's not built into, it's not set in a way where you follow it all the time. You might have it somewhere in your head. As a system. Yeah, you might think that, oh, every pre-approval that I call them, every once in a while. But if you do not have that, if you do not have, how do you follow up with warm leads and cold leads and hot leads and how quickly you do it, how regularly you do it, what will be your content, what will be your script. Again, I don't want you to memorize all your scripts. You should be natural. But what I'm trying to arrive at is that most of the time you'll see that's the reason between leading app. Your 50% conversion can easily be 60%, 70%. If you build better communication platform. Real quick, but also I assume by better communication, perhaps that can also mean you get better at selling, communicating, value proposition, positioning, dealing with objections, all that, right? Absolutely. When you get the lead, I think the first call is your best indicator of how good converter you are, so to say. You should always lead on by listening. One of the problems that we have is that especially as we get older in the business is to say how great we are. Because we get a new lead and like, as an, I'm sure you know, I'm one of the top producers here. I do all of this and I'm so good and I'm author and people interview me all the time. I always let them do the talking and use their need as, so it's like building credibility through empathy is what my tone for that is that, that you're building your credibility not by saying how great you are, but empathize with what their need is. If they're a first time home buyer, you build your credibility by saying that you've helped dozens if not hundreds of home, first time home buyers buy by their first home and this is how you've helped them. But if someone is trying to buy a real estate for investment, then your, your credibility through empathy is completely different. Then you're trying to tell them how good you are at getting them, say, better interest rate on investment properties or connecting them with real estate agents who specialize with investment. So if you do not listen that and if you're trying to tell them how great you are at this, but their need is completely different is so you're not able to make that sale. So for me, the high lead to app conversion is because of their first interaction with me. And of course, in my case, a lot of my director consumer leads come from the, the personal branding or the online platform that I built, which again is their kind of half sold even before they have made the call. They're read my blog. They've seen the video. It's something where they've already seen that I'm an expert at what I'm doing. All right, so let's get back in there more specifics about business plan. I love the, you've got to look back at your numbers from the previous year. Start to look at conversions, look for areas of improvement there. Anything else? Yeah. And then so that's, that's on the conversion side. And again, even app to close ratio is the same thing. Why is it that you're losing the lead? Are you being shot? Are you not seen as an expert? They're looking, you can do loan comparison charts as mortgage coach, mortgage, MBAs highway, I've, as in the past, I've just turned it on Excel. But I'm, I'm trying to build systems wherever I see that might be guessed, might be guessed fall through is. So that's on, on the conversion. Let's talk about the, let's talk about the other thing, which is, how do you get more leads? Like, so, so there are two ways, as I said, is, is where you, you can get more business, which is one by increasing your conversion and two by getting more leads. And again, when it comes to getting more leads, my first focus always are my existing clients, always. If I have 50 people in my database, how come I'm only getting 10 referrals? If I have five people in my database, how come I'm only getting one referral? Irrespective of the size of your database, and again, if you don't have a database because you've never created to build one, then your first goal for the year should be to build one irrespective of the size of it. But if you have a size, and whatever that size is, you're, that's your first focus. Because whenever people come to me and they're, they're, they're asking about new ideas to gain leads, my first question to them is that, what are you doing with your existing clients base? And most of them are like nothing. I have this, this girl out of Los Angeles mover business from 10 million to 27 million this year, which is a substantial improvement, as you can see, mostly by just doing what I'm telling you now. First, I helped her like literally go to her phone, get all the emails and text and everything that she could from the last two years of her business because she had zero database built. Put that into the system and make an entire client retention map on how do you remain in touch with them to improve that business. So first of all, when you're trying to get more leads, focus on your clients because that's should be the biggest source for your business coming from. Again, if you have tracked your source in the past, you should be able to know where your business is coming from. You need to double down there. So if you're really good with realtor relationship, that's where you should double down. You should be meeting more of them and then get more from the realtor that you're already working with. So if you're working with somebody and they're doing 10 transactions a year and you're getting six referrals, they already like you and trust you. Why are they not sending the other four? You not have the product base to they not like you with a certain demographic like what's going on? Try to figure that out. So get more from the people who are already referring you and get more from the same channel where you're already good at. Maybe you're doing something that makes you good with real estate agents. Why don't you get more? Why don't you ask the current real estate agents to refer you their friends? Everybody has one or two or five or you can go to the office and make presentation. So before you get on this bandwagon of trying a new lead source, figure out how you can maximize what you already have. And if you get on the bandwagon of trying a new new lead source, give it a few months to a year to even two years because most lead sources take time to materialize, especially if you don't want to do personal branding like the way I did, which as I said, it's probably the best thing I've done for my business. Give it time. These things do not happen overnight. Making content, letting people see you and observe you and then consider you as an expert is a very long-term planning. But if you do it, it's probably the best way to get business. So what I heard there was obviously some fundamentals when it comes to database and building that and getting that kind of set up and optimized, but also look at the areas of strength that you already have, whether it be real to referral partner CPAs or whatever that thing is and invest in there and then perhaps and only then to optimize that, do you bring on an alternative source? So again, that's one of the things that I encourage to work on one additional lead source all the time, because one, all of them won't work, two, it will take time to do it. But if you're working on one, because ideally you should have four pillars of your lead acquisition. But if you work with four pillars, then irrespective of which market you are in. If you're in a purchase market, you have the real to referral source and if you're direct to consumer and you have say a CPA or financial planner, whatever you have, your client relationship may not work so much because your refinancing market may be dry. They can still refer you other people, but they won't be refinancing. But if you work with irrespective of whether you are in year one or year 20 of the business, if you start working with four solid pillars of lead acquisition, you will never have a truly bad year. It's the business cycle where you'll have a decent year and a great year and all that. But you will never have a bad year because you have built it and that's where I've, I always had my, my real to relationship, my client relationship, my direct to consumer, which was, which is my online branding. And then the online branding, which by the way, which media and radio and television, all that. And then blogging, which has always been my, my strength where people find me on Google to blogging and the consumer review sites like my biggest transaction I've closed in my life came through Yelp. So Yelp and Google and Facebook and Zillow, all the consumer review sites have been my huge pillars of acquisition. Let me ask a question, not prepared to you, but I'm curious how you rank blogging today versus back when you started in terms of relevance. If I'm going to look to build a personal brand, right, because you know, there's lots of different options now and some, some SEO issues and all that stuff. Very high, especially on the mortgage side of it, not so much on the real estate because you're competing with the likes of the Zillow and the red fence of the world, which pretty much for every keyword, they're going to rank higher. On the mortgage side, I see it as relevant now as before. Mortgage is one of the fields where people don't watch a lot of videos. I know videos is a huge thing and what's probably great on social media because people are on Facebook, so they'll probably watch you. But if they're just googling for something, people are not going on YouTube, googling for how to buy your first home. What's the difference between points, paying points or not? It's not something people are searching on YouTube, so YouTube's trending searches will not be mortgage terms. People want to read content on mortgages. Videos work great for fun industries, for real estate and what's great because people get to watch like homes and shiny countertops and all the cool things that comes with the home. Mortgage is still a very boring subject and for boring subjects, unless you're really good at video and some people are natural and they can be super humorous or they can make some really creative videos. If you're really good at that, of course, you will get traction. If you're like me, as in you'll probably do better with blogs and I've done a lot of videos by them on YouTube, but not a ton of traction. I still think that mortgages as a concept is something that people want to read more than watch. Interesting. Good advice. All right. Listen, I know you're busy. We are almost out of time, but before we let you go, why don't you tell us about this new project you have that looks pretty amazing, the MLO masterclass. What is it? Why? And then we'll leave with how people can learn more. Sure. MLO masterclass is really all my decade of learning condensed or distilled into one product. I speak across the country and I'm always asked by loan officers if I do personal coaching which I don't. By the way, I don't have a bandwidth. But I always thought it will be, if I offered one, it will be so expensive that it will be prohibited for most people. Right. And I did not want to do that. I did not want to let people be left out just because they could not afford me because back in 2009, if that happened to me, I would feel really bad. And so it's my way of really giving back everything that I've known as and everything that we talked about in podcast. Imagine if there was a masterclass on each one of those topics. So I have distilled all that knowledge put into MLO masterclass.com and made it so affordable that somebody if they started in the business today will be able to afford it. So everything from client retention to realtor acquisition to database management to time management, which by the way is huge for me because I usually just work about 8 to 5 and then spend rest of the time with my family, have two young daughters that I like to spend time with. It's huge on time management and a lot of other stuff that we talked about, personal branding, sales psychology, mindset, all of that is really condensed into this MLO masterclass.com and I was just fortunate that Barry Habib agreed to be a faculty member for that as that's what we call them because these are classes in the masterclass that we are teaching. So you get all of that along with the tools I talked to you about the pipeline tracker that I have used on Google Sheets, the one page business planning, literally everything that I have done in my business, all the templates, everything is available on MLO masterclass.com and I'm really proud because I set out with a vision to make this the best training platform for loan officers and at the same time still keeping it super affordable and I, from the initial feedback that we received, it seems that we are on the right track. Wow, that's great, congratulations to you, I know it's been a labor of love, you know, heavy on the labor and the love too. That's really cool. So for those who want to learn more about that, I'll put links in the show notes. Is it MLO masterclass.com? That is correct, it's MLO masterclass.com and for the listeners it's usually priced at $12.95 for the year or $129 I think for the month but they can go to MLO masterclass.com forward slash 2020 and then they get discounted pricing as low as $95 a month or so. Super discount, $995 for the year, that's about 25% discount on the price, on the price which somebody would go to the website and get it, so that's MLO masterclass.com forward slash 2020 and not just that, they get seven day all access free trial, their credit card is not even built until they ate this, so you can go in, take a look, you can see everything that I talked about and if you don't like it, just cancel it, send us an email and it's really no question asked, we don't make it very difficult for you to cancel by doing all that. Send us an email and tell us you want to cancel it and that's fine, we want to fill your car. Like that, it's a good way to do business, cool man. How about if any, just personally or directly somebody wants to reach out to you website, social media, where do you want to direct them? Facebook is the best platform, shashankadarkaslinning.com, it's another way of looking at it. But yeah, those two are probably the easiest and the fastest way to get to. We'll make sure we put links in the show notes and I appreciate you making time out of your busy day, especially as we're heading into, you know, what's busy for all of us, which is the holidays and just, you know, thank you for all the value you bring to our listeners, but the community as a whole, always great to check in with you, my man. Absolutely, it's always a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you so much. And listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode, feel free to check out the resources and the show links and make sure if you feel like it, leave us a review on the socials and wherever you're listening to this podcast. We appreciate you and we'll see you on the next one, bye for now. We'll see you on the next one, bye for now.