Ep #18: Breaking Free of Limiting Beliefs with Rene Rodriguez

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. I'm brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in Mortgage Marketing. Hi there, this is Jeff Zimperier, host of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Thanks for tuning in. On this episode, we feature Renee Rodriguez. And I'm very honored and pleased to have Renee as my special guest. It's taken quite a while to get Renee as a guest on the podcast because he's incredibly busy, sought out by many organizations in the mortgage industry and beyond multi-billion dollar corporations that want to bring in Renee in because Renee is a specialist. Let me ask you a question. If you ever had something that you know you should do, but you don't do it, right? Are there activities or actions or things that you should be doing in your business and your personal life and your relationships that you know you should do, but you never really seem to be able to get through the resistance and get it done. Do you not do certain activities because of the way you feel about them, right? If that's you and who isn't, right, who can't relate to some of that, then this podcast is perfect for you because Renee is an expert in behavioral neuroscience. He understands how the brain works and Renee and I unpack what are the key reasons, beliefs and strategies that we can use to break through the resistance we have in our lives when we want to go to that next level and achieve certain results. And I really, really enjoyed my conversation with Renee because I felt it was just truly authentic and it deals with, you know, it's one thing to talk about marketing things and the sales related things that we should be doing, right, making calls, setting appointments, managing our past database and all that's good and relevant. But if in any of those areas, you're not following through, there's a reason why and it's not just because you're too darn busy, right? It relates to the psychology behind that, the beliefs about that because the beliefs you have about any particular thing, whether it's making those extra calls or, you know, spending more time at home, whatever it is, the beliefs drive your behaviors. And so Renee and I are going to help you unpack. How do we, first of all, have awareness about what our beliefs are, what's our unconscious, subconscious beliefs that are even influencing us and how are they driving us, right? How are they impacting the results that we get in our life, whether those are results are positive or whether there are results that we aren't happy with and we want to improve those results. So I hope you enjoyed today's podcast because I really thoroughly did and we look forward to having Renee back to take some deeper dives. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Hey, Renee, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me. That's my pleasure. It's, you know, hunting you down, man. It's been a challenge. You're bouncing all over the world, speaking and changing lives. So I'm glad we could finally connect on this and, you know, I'm really honored to bring you to my audience because I know you've been in the mortgage space for quite a while. You're, you know, quite the influencer there. We have a lot of the same connections and friends, but you've been doing stuff for a long time in the mortgage space. So I was really happy to be able to, you know, get this recording together today and, and, you know, add some value to our listeners. Well, I appreciate you being as persistent as you have been because I, I definitely haven't made it easy for you. So I apologize, but I'm super excited to be here. Yeah, no worries. You know, it's funny. I'm looking back how long ago, how long we've been communicating and actually there's a LinkedIn message that I can see on my screen right now from 2012. So yeah, that's how long I've been chasing you. Well, I'm just trying to play hard to get, is that, that's, that's it. There you go. Exactly. But we got you now. So that's cool. All right. So let's, let's, let's kind of unpack our conversation of where we want to take this. So there's lots of directions to potentially go with you because you, you know, your experience and your expertise is, is, I think, pretty wide, but also it goes deep as well, which is kind of unique at the same time. But if you wanted to take maybe, you know, 45 seconds or so and just sum up, cut, you know, who is, who is Renee Rodriguez? What's your specialty? I mean, I know you studied behavioral neuroscience and all that kind of stuff, but what, what, what is it? What are you passionate about when it comes to dealing with other people? What are you trying to drive? You know, that's a, it's a deep question. What am I passionate about? You know, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to brain research early on in, when I say early on, I'm referring to, you know, in, when I was around 17, 18 years old and watching what's possible when you understand how the brain works. And the more you understand what's happening in the brain, you more you realize that there's a certain pattern, there's a sequence that has to happen. And when you don't understand that sequence, most of what we've been taught goes against how the brain learns, how it likes to respond, how it likes to retain information, how it likes to engage. So my life is in the last over 20 years has been understanding some very specific elements of how the brain functions, but then spending, you know, these 20 years applying it and applying it in terms of how do we help people become more effective leaders? And to me, as you and I talk before leadership, to me is about influence, there is no leadership without influence. And if you can't influence behavior, you're not a leader. You may be a manager, you may have a title, but you're not leading. And so applying it in terms of leadership, applying it in terms of sales, how do you help somebody sell more? And that, you know, I go anywhere from, you know, creating sales process to helping increase conversion ratios, because, you know, we know there's really only a couple ways you can make more money. And one is you increase the amount of activities you engage in that actually are profitable, or you become better at those activities and increase your conversion ratio. And so increasing conversion ratio comes into being a better speaker, so it ties into the leadership and speaking aspect. But then also change management, and this comes down to behavioral change. That's where I spent a lot of my time. And anytime we're talking about sales training, anytime we're talking about a new skill set, if you ignore the change process, you're missing 80% of it. And because you can show somebody all the best information in the information age we're in right now, you can Google anything I'm talking about. It's there. But getting somebody to make the change is probably where, if you were to ask me what is my specialty would be in that process, it's combining all those elements, but then really having a plan for creating change. Okay, so getting somebody to make the change. So there's, as I'm listening to this, right, I'm trying to put myself in the listeners shoes, I'm a mortgage loan officer, and I'm thinking about, right, I'm trying to grow my business. Obviously I'm trying to affect change when I'm working with potential clients or referral partners, getting them to take action to choose me, right, to partner with me, send me referrals. And that's, and I want to talk about that. But you raised a good point is that, I think what you're trying to say is the first person we need to influence is ourselves, right? Well, we definitely have to influence ourselves in, you know, there's a whole psychology around that piece of it where some people say fake it till you make it. There's a great TED talk, and I forget the woman's name, but you wrote a book called Presence. And her research talks about it, and I'll provide you the link so you can provide it to your listeners here. But her research really talks about the psychology and neurology around body language and how, you know, our body language can affect our emotional state and how our emotional state can affect our body language so that there's this sense of usually if we don't have the emotional presence to feel like we're in the lead or if we have the influence, then that emotional state internally affects our body language. But what's really cool is that if you can affect your body language, even though if you're not in the emotional place, that that body language will affect your emotional state in over a period of time, you will become different. And so her quote is, don't fake it till you make it, fake it till you become it. And there's some really, really cool stuff in that solve up, provide that for you as well. Yeah. It's funny. You say that. I actually had a blog post on her, probably about a year ago, Amy Cuddy, I just Google her. That's her. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the only things we can control. You can control your thoughts and your posture. Yeah. It's funny. You're reminding me of, so 25 years ago, I actually worked for Tony Robbins. And it makes, it reminds me of, you know, the study that he often refers to, which I forget the details, but it was, you know, dealing with depressed people, right? And all they did was, and you probably familiar with the study, right? They had them kind of look up and smile for like 10 minutes a day, whatever they wound up actually changing, reducing the amount of depression and meds they were on. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's, there's such a correlation because so depression, the feelings that is all about a chemical imbalance, and it's a very real thing. And you can affect the chemical balance or imbalance through many ways. There's pharmacology, which mimics the neurotransmitters that are already existing in our brain. And you know, you've got, you can take morphine because you already have neuro receptor sites for endorphins. It just fills the same receptor sites. But you can still trigger those same chemical changes through body language posture, through working out through your diet. And you know, I, when my kids start, you know, one of my children, when he, if he ever gets in a, you know, grumpy mood or something like that, one of the, the funny things that we do. I'm like, Hey, you're welcome to cry about this. I said, but you know the rules and he gets so frustrated, but he does it. He's got to sit there with his chin up in the air and it's, and his mouth spread open. So like, kind of a smile. I could be a fake smile. I don't care. You can pat all you want, but you got to do it that way. And within literally five to 10 seconds, he's giggling and he's laughing. He's almost mad that he's not feeling mad anymore. You know, awesome, but it's, it literally is one of those, those things we can control. Yeah. So that goes back to that, you know, kind of thought you opened up with is when you're a teenager, you're discovering kind of the keys to the brain and that you literally can take charge of how you feel in any given moment, which is going to impact what you do. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you think about, I mean, let's, let's just think about it. All of us, anybody here listening is facing some sort of challenge, whether that challenge is a goal that we've set or financial challenge or personal, professional relationship, all of that. And the way we tell that story to ourselves or what we call a frame, how we frame that for ourselves will determine everything. And that's an exercise I actually do with a lot of my leaders that we, you know, when I teach them about framing is, you know, we'll say, okay, let's take a current event and I want to frame it one way and then I want you to reframe it a different way and then I'm going to reframe it and we're going to go back and forth to see who wins. And you know, you can take any event where, you know, let's, let's, let's play with something very real. For example, so I've been a pain in the butt to get a hold of. So one frame is, you know, gosh, you know, Renee is so busy and thank you so much for making time in your busy schedule, right? That's a frame. So I'll reframe it, you know, Renee has been such a pain to get a hold of. What is he doing and why doesn't he, what is he lacking in the personal time management skills to be able to be professional? I can't believe it that it's been that it can't be that hard to get a hold of them. To same event, to completely different frames. Yeah. So what you're talking about, that's basically a filter for how we're experiencing a certain situation. And that's totally real. You can see a lot of that in social media lately with the reaction to political climate, right? But so how do we control that then? How do we, first of all, recognize this bad pattern we've got of viewing it through a certain frame that that's not putting us in the greatest, you know, state or whatever? Well, I think one, we got to be aware of the process. I always tell people watch the news. The same current event happens and then you get two radio, two TV stations that are going after two news to error. What do you call them? They're not stations anymore that, you know, that works. That works. Thank you. That race out to frame the event in accordance to what their political stance might be. Or you have different TV shows that will take the same event and reframe it. Look what happened with the gentleman that, the Muslim gentleman that had the, his son die in the Trumps at something and then of course everybody ran with that in every direction where, you know, some people acknowledged that, you know, that he was a war hero. Some people said, I can't believe the Trump did that. Some people said, you know, hey, I acknowledge your war hero, but you're missing a point and there's all sorts of, it's a, it's a battle for the frame around it. And I tell people, I say, look, just you need to educate yourself on the, the process of what's going on so that you can, number one, don't be a victim of what's going on. But two, there's some real positive uses to, to how framing works that really can help your business. So let's talk about some positive uses then. For example, and this is, you know, coming up for me because maybe subconsciously it's a personal struggle. So there's a lot of stuff we know we should be doing, right? Well, I should make those calls. I should do whatever in my business, right? Set up a proper database management system. I should, you know, get more real to whatever, fill in the plate. There's a lot of stuff we should be doing. So why aren't we doing it then? Is it come down to framing it? Well, okay. So the reason why we don't do it is, is, is a very different reason. Framing definitely helps, but let's go back to the core, core issue. I want you to think for a minute that your brain, just from a very, after 20 years, I finally come down to something and learn something that makes it much easier to understand. I want you to imagine that you have two systems in your brain. You have system one and you have system two. Now, your system one is a very fast acting, very quick to decide something that is very instinctual part of your brain. Very needed, very important part of the brain. If you were to see somebody that has a smile on their face, you would instantly know they're happy. If you saw a scowl and you saw their eyes in a certain position, you would know that they're maybe upset or confused. Those are system one sort of responses. Now, the challenge with system one is that it doesn't really deal with detail all that well. It looks at things and its surface information and it makes a very snap judgment. Now, I'll give you an example. And I'm going to ask you a question, Jeff, and just blurt it out as soon as you know it. How many of each animal did Moses bring on the arc? Two. Okay. That's what everybody says. It's two. The answer is zero because Moses didn't bring any. It was Noah. And so you got me. Well, it's one of those things that it's such a common thing that they dub that the Moses illusion. And so what happens? It's basically I'm playing with your system one. Your system one, here's near Moses and Noah, contextually close enough. System one says forget the details. Let's just win this answer and let's answer this the way we know it. And so your system one is the one that makes those really super snap judgments. Now, this is a thing called system two. The system two is the more human part of us. It's very slow thinking. It's something that's methodical. It thinks to the long term, you know, for example, what's 20 times 340? Oh, God, please. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody says, you know, large number. You know, some, you know, probably some of your listeners probably know exactly what that number is. For you to figure it out, you'd have to slow down, think, process methodically, you know, for me, I'd have to go grab my calculator and, you know, but that's our system two I play. It's a very, it's a slower thinking. So there's a great book that outlines us in detail called thinking fast and slow. Okay. And so let's look at the implications of that, those two brains, those two brains are constantly at battle. They're, they're fighting for, for really what, how do we best set ourselves up for the future, as well as protect ourselves in the short term? Obviously, system one is designed to protect ourselves in the short term. System two is designed to design for long term. So let's say, you know, someone's battling weight, they want to, they want to get back in better shape. You know, with all the travel I've got going on, you know, it's, I've, my diet and my workout routine has taken a hit. And you know, I wish it wasn't true, but that then takes a hit on your body, takes a hit on your, on your energy level, it takes a hit on everything. And so here I am, I'm like, okay, I'm back. My system, uh, two is saying, okay, Renee, you know what? Let's plan this out. Let's think the long term, all you got to do is plan on your meals, order the meals, get back in the gym slowly. Things will be good. Let's make a plan. We start tomorrow. And my system one, here's that and goes awesome, right? Let's do this. We're going to do this. Start tomorrow. We feel good. And system one's excited. System two has made the plan. We're good to go. And then tomorrow comes alarm goes off. And what do you think wakes up for a system one or two? Uh, yeah, they're both slow to start. Yeah. Well, my system one alarm goes off. So it's, you know, it's the excitatory response and it wakes up and the job of system one is to avert stress. That's what people don't understand. The first part of the brain, the most important job of the brain is to keep us alive. The only brain, the way the brain understands what is dangerous is the cortisol and stress. And of course, memory, but the memory causes stress and pushes us away from that. System one is measuring stress level and stress response. And so going through any sort of change causes stress and that stress triggers system one, system one says stress bad, move away and it pushes us away from that. While system two saying, hey, no, think to the long term, system one says, nope, doesn't have the ability to think to long term. You take care of the here and now. So when I get up in the morning, my system one is saying, Renee, it's a snooze button, buddy. You need more sleep. You know, and you know, system, and then of course, one of those two is going to win. But let's go back to when you say why we're not doing it and really it's about procrastination. So procrastination system one says to all go hand in hand. I used to do a course call overcoming procrastination and the main message of that is that procrastination is not a time management problem. And that's usually people are like, what? Because they want to go out and find a system like Franklin cover you're getting things done or, you know, what do you name it for managing procrastination? But procrastination is not a time management problem. Procrastination is a self-regulation problem. I'm not regulating my response to stress. And so here I've got to go do like what's one thing, for example, that you're putting off Jeff. A website-related project. Okay. So my guess is that it's not easy to do. Right. So by doing it, it's going to take time, energy. Maybe there's potential of like what if I, I don't know if you don't strike me as a person to think what if I fail, because yeah, I think you're, you're a doer. But some people say, you know, man, what if I fail? But all of the things are maybe I don't have time or, you know, if you're like me, I'm a perfectionist. So if it's not done perfectly, I don't want to do it, you know, there's all sorts of things that cause stress. So system one says, you know what, put it off a little bit. And the act, if you think about, you know, how we train rats and dogs and, you know, things like that, when they do a good behavior, you reinforce them, reinforcement happens two ways. People forget there's positive and negative. Now people make them stay thinking negative as in bad. And when it comes to behavioral, behaviorism, negative means a removal of. So if I were to, let's say pinch your neck really, really hard in a certain, you know, pressure point and it'd be difficult. And I would say until you do this, this is going to be here. And then you do what I ask and then I let go, that's a negative reinforcement, right? So procrastination, the act of procrastination is a negative reinforcement because the act of putting it off makes us feel better and reduces our stress. Not to think though that we all know logically that that action will create stress in the future, but system one doesn't have the capability of thinking to the future. Right. And so go ahead. That's just because it just wants that immediate needs to be fed right away. Absolutely. Yeah. So the issue of what I call proximity of consequence, you know, I know that that next greasy burger won't kill me. But you know, a couple thousand of those over 10 years may, I don't know if it's a thousand of those, whatever the number is. You know, that next cigarette, the person that needs to quit smoking, it's not going to kill them because the proximity of consequence is so far out that we go into denial. But if I were to lace that cigarette with cyanide and they asked him to smoke it, they'd be like, there's no way I would smoke it because now all I did was move the consequence sooner. So the, when it comes to putting things off, part of the art form or the skill set is how do I, it's like, you know, a lot of times I use the example that Jim Rohn uses is waking up, you know, a hundred feet from Niagara Falls in a boat with no ore and no motor. And it's like, you know, the inevitable thing is you're going over. The sad part though is what a really tragic place to find yourself. Wow. Right? Yeah. It's a little late to wake up then, isn't it? Exactly. And the sad part is, is it somebody knew that you were going down that path? And if you're a leader and you have people that that are waking up a hundred feet from the shore, I always tell people, is it white? Why didn't you have the skill set to paint a picture of the roar of the falls way upstream? Well, so part of the problem there I'm assuming is people can't see it or hear it. They can't, but let me tell you, the good storyteller, good leader, the good mentor, the good manager is very good at painting the picture of the roar of the falls before they get there. Those of us who, you know, there's, there's probably things Jeff that, you know, you talk about things you're putting off, but I guarantee you, there's a bunch of things that you're doing that are really good for you, your business, your health, your family. Absolutely. And those things are probably driven by a very clear connection to the negative consequence that's going to happen in the future if you don't do this now. The best salespeople, they get so much value out of picking up the phone and dialing. And they get so much fear and stress associated to not being on the phone. The person who's not selling is their exact reverse. They have stress around picking up the phone and they have, they get relief from not making the phone call. Okay. Yeah, I agree with that. But can we, can we rewire ourselves 100 percent? Okay. So how do we do that? How do we rewire our brain to say, Hey, I've been blown off making the calls or doing what I know I should do, right? How do I rewire that situation now so I can follow through where it's like, dammit, I need to follow through in this area. It takes, it will, one, it takes the person wanting to do it. You can't, if somebody doesn't want to do it, my company, Valentum, it really what it stands for is voluntary momentum. If they don't want to do it, then, and I tell people all the time, I want you to imagine, so results, the word results, we're trying to get results and sometimes we get positive results and sometimes we get negative results. But those results come from certain behaviors that we've engaged in, right? And so if we don't like our results, the typical approach is we're going to change the behavior. And that's the problem right there, is that we look at changing from a behavioral perspective. But when we try to change behavior, we can almost always predict that we're going to get resistance. Right. Yes. And so that is what system one is for. The changing behavior causes so much stress that system one comes into play and says, no, we're not going to do it. So when I told you in the beginning, when you say when you learn about the brain, you stop fighting it, you start working with it, I don't ask people and I'm, my clients outside of mortgage are hundred and some billion dollar organizations that are going through massive scale change, right? And the reason why we get hired is because we understand we tell them, like, you're hiring me for change, but I'm not going to ask any single person here to create behavior change. And say, what do you mean? I said, well, let's take a look at the thing that drove behavior in the first place, which is what nobody ever wants to look at. Our behavior is driven by what we believe in the beliefs that we have, but usually that's in a black box. That's something that's not explored. If somebody is overweight and not eating well, what was, what was it that they must, what is it that they must have believed to have eaten that way? I know for me, when I've struggled with my health, it comes from the fact that, you know, I grew up being surrounded by a family that loved, that used food as love and growing up, that was fantastic. You know, I didn't know my father. So I was raised by this family that was an amazing, she was an amazing Cuban cook and she loved me and took care of me and she fed me and, you know, so food, you know, I grew up living food was love. And so for, you know, things when things go tough and you feel lonely or whatever, guess what do you, what do you turn to? Well, let me get some love. Well, food. How do I do it with my friends when I cook? I feed them. And so if you don't take a look at those things that are there, now let's take a look at from a sales perspective, somebody not making a phone call, well, what do they believe? When you, I tell people, I said, I don't want to, I don't want to talk about getting you to make more phone calls. I want to talk to you about, what do you believe about making phone calls? So what do you, what, what, if you call, what, what does that mean to you? When somebody, I usually, well, I have to sort of use a backdoor approach with them and I, it's not tricking them, but I have to be able to get at what they believe without them knowing it right away. So I may ask a question. I say, well, how do you know? So let me ask a question. Somebody calls you to tell a marketer. Calls, how do you feel? God, I hate those people. They always call during my dinner, they're always interrupting, they're always pushy, I can't stand it. They go, interesting. And I tell them, I said, you know, what's interesting about that question is that oftentimes, the way you feel about a telemarker calling you is exactly how you feel. People feel about you when you call them. And if that's how you feel, let's say I'm talking to John, I said, John, if that's how you feel, there is nothing I can do to incentivize you because I'm guessing that that reaction is against all your values, isn't it? Well, absolutely. I don't want to treat people that way. And I said, so John, I said, there's nothing I can do to convince you or pay you to go out there and be a jerk to people. So it doesn't matter what the solution is. If that is how you perceive it and that's how you, what you believe, it's not going to happen. And so he's like, well, I, but I know I need to make these phone calls. I go, I know you do too. I said, but you need to really reassess your perspective. And so I'll give you, I'll give you a totally different example. I did work with one of the largest chain of schools for karate. This is a company by the name of national karate, great organization. I mean, the founders were really responsible for bringing a lot of American karate back to the United States. And it's just got a rich history. And what's amazing is that all of their instructors are, are just purists at purest at heart. They're, they're martial artists. They don't take on these, these, these, what do they call it, not dojos, but they don't take on these schools because I think there was like 24 or 25 at the time, they don't take them on to become millionaires or become rich. It's a very modest income. They care about people and they love what they do. And I was approached by the owner and he said, do you think it's possible to train these martial artists to be salespeople? And I said, well, let me ask you a question. Are they passionate? He said, oh my god, extremely passionate. Are they disciplined? He said, they're all black belts. I said, yeah, he goes, do they care about people? And he said, absolutely. I said, then we're going to be just fine. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you'll see in our first session, this is a sales training. In our first evening together, we went around the room and I said, I'd do a little thing on sales and things like that, but I said, I want to go, I want to learn about the first day you got into martial arts and we went around the room and we heard these stories. And man, I'm talking about some of the coolest stories, but there's one that always stood out for me. And as a woman, she said, and she said, I remember taking my daughter, my kids there and I was sitting in sort of the waiting area watching where all the parents were. And I wasn't in very good shape and I was just a mom. And I remember Mr. Smith and he comes in and that's what they call it, Mr. and Mr. and he throws a key at me, you know, a uniform. And he hits me kind of in the face and he said, two for one first month, brought me to join your kids. And she said, I was appalled to think that why me as a mom getting out there on that mat and throwing kicks, and he's got to be absolutely crazy. But his confidence, there's something about it that I really didn't have a choice. And I went out there and I did it. And she said, you know, at the time I was overweight and everything. And she goes in three and a half years later, I'm a second degree black belt in karate. And she lifts up her, that kind of just shows her abs, got crazy abs, like incredible shape. And she goes, and I can walk down any street and I don't fear anything. And it was just a beautiful story. And so I heard all of these stories. And so I went back and I said, I want you, so I heard these stories and I wrote them all down and I said, now folks, I want you to imagine that I have a time machine. I'm going to go back and I'm going to pull this day out of your life. I'm going to pull that event where Mr. Smith threw that uniform at you. He just didn't do it because he just, he didn't do it. I go, how are you feeling? And you watch this entire room grip their chairs and look at me like, don't you dare. Touch that day. Don't take that away from us. Right. I said, well, what would happen? She goes, you would ruin my life. Everything that I have, everything that I believe in, I would, you were, I would never let you do that. And so I stopped and I stood up and I looked around the room and I said, what I'm hearing here is that that day was important for all of you. And they're all nodding their heads. I said, okay, that day changed your life. They said, yes, for the better to make your life richer, more full, confident, healthier. And they're like, yes. And I go, and you guys tell me you guys care about people and they said, yeah, absolutely. I mean, no, seriously, I mean, do you, I mean, or is this just kind of for the money? They go, no, this is not for the money. That's a weak care. And I said, and it does all these things and I go, you know what? I got to tell you I'm looking at a room full of selfish people. And they looked at me with their jaws on the floor like, what did you say? I go, I don't know if I've seen a more selfish group of people. And they're looking at me like, what? And I said to them, I go, you're telling me that you offer something that does all of these amazing things and people walk into your school and you don't ask them to at least try even worse, somebody that may misunderstand what it is you're doing. You haven't taken the time to understand the skill set to communicate. This amazing life changing experience to at least give them the proper information for them to make the right decision based on the right information. How many people have you not served that needed your help? They all literally sat back in their chair, they sunk in. And I remember one guy looks at me and he goes, teaches how to do that, please. And we went off and some of these people went off to have 97% closing ratios. And when I look at that and I go, did we change the behavior? Or did we trigger a value and a belief and really help them reframe what sales was? Well, I think ultimately it sounds like, and that's a great story, by the way. So thank you for sharing that. I find myself getting emotional, just thinking about it. But what you did is you reframed their belief, right? And you re-associated the emotional attachment that they had to to knowing what the impact is that it's had on their lives personally, which didn't that ultimately then trigger that behavior to get into action mode because all those things seem to happen in a domino effect. So say, yeah, I'm not sure if I followed the key phrase. I know there's a lot, but I just want to make sure I'm answering the question. I think bottom line is, is what you allow you that you reframed for them, you know, what it meant to be in sales and attached the conviction they had about teaching karate and then impact it has on the lives. You attach that to the behavior of making sales. Absolutely. OK, they already had a pat. It takes energy. Think about, you know, you're either prospecting and putting like you're the putting on the foot on the gas of the break. There's no, there's no in between. Right. And all the energy was on the break because they go, I don't want to be this, this pushy individual. They had a perception about what it meant to be in sales. Right. And I personally hold a belief that the sales is one of the greatest professions on this planet. I believe that communicating something that you believe in is great. And people say, well, there's a lot of sales people are this. I said, those people don't understand those people are manipulators, but somebody who believes in their product, somebody who believes in a life-saving life-changing thing and can communicate it and can take somebody that doesn't want anything to do with you, but with a few questions can ask and that turn that person who doesn't want to talk to you into saying, wait, hold on a second, you can do this. And all of a sudden, they say, yeah, and they'd learn more and all of a sudden their life is different. That's, that's an amazing thing. And for mortgage, how many people will improve their life by owning a home? Can you get any cooler, any more meaningful than that? And there's so many people in the industry that take the easy deals versus the ones that actually might take a little bit of work, but those that do that, the fulfillment factor is huge, absolutely huge. Right. So I'm thinking the person listening right now who's been in doing this mortgage origination for 20 plus years or whatever, and you know, what happens with the law of familiarity, right? People get jaded or they lose that passion, perhaps that was once there. So are there some exercises or things people can do to bring that passion back up, right? To reinvigorate the fire? Well, you know, we, the, probably about almost four years ago, five years ago, I was turned on to Simon Sinek's start with why. And I did a presentation, a sort of adaptation of that because it's, it's very similar to a lot of the work that that I've studied and researched. And he had a great methodology for the why, how, what and the research that he uses to support that is at the core of what my research has been. So it was, I resonated very well with what he was doing. And so part of that process would be, and he's got a great methodology for it. I highly recommend that book is getting people back and touch with their why. And what I always find fascinating is the mortgage industry grabbed onto this concept of finding your why years ago with Tim Raheem and I doing a presentation and Tim talking about the why and then Tony Robbins always was a very influential person in the mortgage industry. So this whole thing ran wild around finding your why, but I don't think everybody really knew exactly how to do it. They talked about it, but they didn't really know how. And so the concept is is that everything we do, there's a reason behind to go back to the, you know, behaviors drive, excuse me, beliefs drive behaviors and behaviors, you know, generate results. It's the same thing your beliefs are, is your why, but what people forget is that your why is not something that you look forward in your life and say, what should it be or what is it? It's something that you look back and analyze your life and go, what is driving all these behaviors, the good and the bad. So the good ones, okay, what must I have believed? What's my why they drive behind this? All these really stupid behaviors that I shouldn't have been engaging in why in the world did I do that? What did I believe in that exercise of discovery for yourself can be an extremely emotional one. And if people have the courage to peel the onion back a little further, they usually take one or two peels and it's not there. But a lot of these wise, a lot of these values are set when you're in your early, early years, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. Maybe even earlier, those things are set. And so a lot of times I tell people I said, look at your parents, look at where you grew up. What, you know, if you're extremely tidy, is it because you had parents that were tidy or did you have parents that were slabs and you said, I don't want to be like that. You know, where was that? Where did you learn? If you're, if you like, if you care about people, great, where'd you learn that? Like, well, I just like care about people. I said, well, where'd you learn it? I've always been that way, really? I don't people that I haven't been always been that way. You learned it somewhere where and most people don't, because it usually takes somebody to ask the questions and to keep asking and to keep asking and keep asking and keep asking and then they finally get to it and they go, oh, my God, it comes back to my grandfather, I remember sitting with him one time when they have this aha moment, and I tell him that they go, that's the story that you also need to learn how to tell before you sell, before you talk about about your proposition, go back to your grandfather and what he taught you, lay the foundation of who you are, then on top of that foundation, tell me about what makes you different, because it'll carry weight then. So you're saying reconnect to that emotional experience as, you know, before you get into that mode of you're making calls or whatever. Well, I think for what? Yeah, absolutely. Your calls is part of your business. Right. When you're talking about like, you know, the fact that Tony Rob is not to keep bringing him up, but you know, as you know, he talks about like getting in state. And I remember, you know, going through training with him, it's like, hey, before you're going to make outbound sales calls, before you're going to engage in this important activity, I think what you're saying is connect to the why about, you know, what is your why around it, right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, absolutely. And so, for example, I mean, your mindset is is is is a lot of this. Obviously, and there's another word that's been thrown around and overused. But, you know, for example, I could tell people all the time when they're making a call to a realtor. And I said, if you want to call a realtor, I said, the biggest challenge you have is you're thinking about you have to get them to like you, and you have to make a sale here. I said, I can call call any single realtor, any single person, and it never feels like a cold call. And I said, there's one differentiating factor. One, I mean, obviously, I've had a lot of practice, but I'm not trying to sell. I don't even know if I want to do business with them. And the person that thinks, oh, that sounds arrogant is missing the entire point. The point of that is is I don't know who share the same values. I don't know if they have enough business to justify the effort. I don't know if these people carry the same commitment to excellent. I don't know if these people actually want a new partnership or if we deal with the same clientele, but what I do know, is that in life, personally and professionally, I want to be surrounded by people that share some of the same values that I have, people that push me to think harder, people that are committed to excellence. And so I can make a phone call, be like, you know, hey, but I tell people first, do some research on the person spend 30 to 45 seconds on their website and find something you like. And I said, here's, that's the big difference. Most of the time you're thinking about how do you get them to like you, but I challenge you don't try to get them to like you. What can you do to like them, find something you like, start with a mission statement. Maybe we'll mission statements are cheesy. I go, they're super cheesy, but have you ever written one? Have you ever, have you, I'm sure you have you've written one, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, I bet you that I get it. Yeah, they're cheesy, but the thing I was thinking of, they're cheesy because you have a certain belief about them. You need to change that belief, right? Because they can be very useful. Well, partially, I said, they're cheesy to the person who didn't create it. Yeah, that's true. Right. And so you have to change and say, don't look at the mission statement through your eyes, look at it through their eyes. And so I'll go and I'll see and I'll see a horribly done website. But in, you know, fonts that are just really disgusting and ugly. And I look at that and people are like, they're judging it. I'm like, call on a second. This is all, these are all signs. This person created the site on their own. They took time to do so. In essence, they did something that they don't have a skill set in and they're doing their best. Now, this mission statement, let's look at it and people will laugh about it. I'm like, hold on a second. If you were to remove the judgment and you were to say this person wants to make a better world through helping families one home at a time. Okay, but you know, everybody says that. I'm like, yeah, they probably do. I go, but you know what? I want to find out. Why did they choose those words? So I'll make the phone call and I'll be like, you know, let's say Sally and say, Sally, I hate Sally. This is Renee Rodriguez with, you know, whatever company. I ran across your website and I have to say I was drawn to your mission statement. You know, a lot of people create mission statements, but I really like some of the words that you use there. If it's okay, I'd love to ask you what can you tell me how you came up with it? What does it mean to you? And all of a sudden, what do you think she's going to, how do you think she's going to respond? Well, wow, well, somebody actually read it. Yeah. And let's, let's play a couple scenarios. One is she, most like she's going to be like, oh my god. Well, thank you. Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, I know it's probably not the best one, but it's something that, you know, and then if she goes into her story, we're already bonding over something that's really real. Let's say the other thing happens where she goes, I just copied and paced it from somewhere down the street. Instantly, I know probably not somebody I want to do business with. But I may ask the next question. I don't want to judge too quickly. It's system one. I may say, well, I said, okay, well, you could have copied any one of them. Why did you copy that one? And if they say, first one, I saw, then that's probably how they're going to do business as well. But if they say, you know what? No, you're right. I'm being a little facetious. I saw that one and it struck me. I said, well, what about it struck you? Because I, and before you even answer, I'll tell you why I'm asking. I go, you know, in my 20 years of doing this business, or 15 years of doing this business, I've come away with a conclusion this last year. Is that there's a lot of people that I could do business with, but there's only a few that I want to. And the differentiators, people that share some of the same values. And your mission statement, call my attention, felt like it was an alignment. It totally may not be though. So it goes, no, no, actually, let me just tell you about it. And it's always another bringing me back in. And then in, you know, once it gets that point, I might say, you know, hey, I got to get you run out of here. But, you know, I'd love to continue this conversation. I said, I know there's a coffee shop over by your place. Time next week, Thursday, Friday, we're free. And you booked the appointment, but you're talking about values, right, right, business is easy. Okay. Is there a cap on that business is easy dot, dot, dot, or no, just period. Well, it could be a business business is easy. It's the other relationship pieces. This should be a match. Once that's a match, the business is simple. Right, right. Exactly. There's gotta be the synergy match there. There's gotta be, as you said, shared values or whatnot. Absolutely. So that's, yeah, it's a great example. It's a great story. And I'm extrapolating that, you know, again, putting myself in a listener's shoes for those that are listening to this thinking, yeah, but agents don't have a mission statement on their website. They'll find something else that you like on the website. That's exactly where it's going to go. I would, you know, how, how professional their site looks, you know, the way they talk about, like a lot of realtors do have that kind of maybe not a mission statement, but just kind of a, right, personal description or whatever, what they're all about, things like that. So I think that's cool. That's kind of a unique way to connect. First of all, if anything else, it shows that you've actually done some research ahead of time and taken a moment to actually care, which virtually nobody else does. Absolutely. And it's so simple to do. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, don't you want to learn a little bit about the person before you call them and just say, hey, I noticed, you know, you've got someone so on your website or hey, you're in business with your husband. That must be a great experience, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, all kinds of things. That's awesome. Okay. So cool. Very good stuff, man. This is really good. And just a couple of minutes we have left, I wondered, I know you've got lots of different things you talked about. You and I talked about sales activities, money making activities in the sales process. There's one or two other kind of key things you want to leave with the listeners, regarding, right, those activities that are helping them make money. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, you know, so all the psychology and all of the sort of things that we're talking about at the, it's really to help us drive the business. And so what is quote unquote the business? And one of the things that I first learned when I first got into sales is that there's only six ways that you make money as a salesperson and it supplies directly towards loan officers, mortgage professionals. There's only six ways you make money. And the sooner you embrace that and you actually believe it. And I've tested this with tens of thousands of them. And I've never had anybody say, nope, doesn't work or nope, I don't get it. When the sooner you embrace this, the sooner your business will turn around. But there's only six ways you make money. And I call them the six money making activities. First one, and I'm going to warn you, Jeff, these are profound. Okay. And if you can see my sarcastic look. Love it. So first one is prospecting. Mm-hmm. Prospecting. I'm going to fact, I'm going to give you all six. Prospecting is a first one. Second one is setting appointments. There's a real sexy activity. Third one is presentation or presentation of value as I like to call it. Fourth is closing. You've got to get some sort of commitment. Fifth is aftercare or your service afterwards. And sixth is getting referrals. So prospecting, setting appointments, presentation of value, closing the deal, aftercare, follow up and getting referrals. Those are the six ways that you make money. Anything anybody does after that, if you're in sales, is a complete waste of time. Now, what's really cool is in between each one of those, that actually in that sequence becomes your sales process. Something else that a lot of people are missing in this industry. And here's the kicker. Your sales process is not negotiable. It's not negotiable. All right. What does that mean? So if I let's go back to a process of making paper, let's get out of the industry for a minute. If I want to make paper, I first have to cut a tree down. I can't say, wow, you know, we did that last year. We got something new and fresh. No, you need to cut the tree down. Right. It's not negotiable. You have to do certain things in an order. And last time I checked, if you want one loan, you have to have an application, right? You can't have a loan without an app. Okay. But if you want an app, last I checked, you can't have an app without actually presenting some sort of value to somebody. And if you want to have a meeting to present value to somebody, you have to have somebody that's actually interested and you have to have a lead. And I'll connect it. I mean, and I don't care what you believe about it. It's called reality. So they're whether you believe it or not, those are things that have to happen. And so the like any business, the more efficient and the word productivity comes down to how efficient you are moving through those six activities and those milestones that I just laid out. And so the movement between each activity, there's a bridge in between one that you have to basically earn your way to the next step. Prospecting, the goal of prospecting is generating leads. That's your ticket to getting out, setting an appointment. If you want to set an appointment, who are you going to set it with? Anybody or somebody that's a lead, a lead is somebody who expresses interest. Some people, and that's where I get very frustrated with technology and CRMs and LOS is because they all have a different definition of a lead. And you go into an LOS and a lead is somebody that actually took a full 10 or three or even pulled credit. That's not a lead. That's actually somebody you're working with. That's like a customer in process. And so a lead is somebody that expresses interest. And there's so many activities that have to happen prior to me pulling credit. And so you have to generate a lead. So now I set an appointment with the objective of getting a date time in a place. A very simple objective. And then once I have a date time in a place, I show up and I give a presentation. And the purpose of the presentation to achieve three things is credibility, differentiation, and trust. And there's a methodology for creating presentation. And once I create that presentation and they like that, then I can ask for a commitment. And the commitment requires a signature skin in the game. And then once I have that skin of skin in the game, I can then give the aftercare for the purposes of creating a wild experience. And if I've created the wild experience, referrals come very easy and I generate a lead and I go back up to setting an appointment. And so the process becomes very perpetual. So that sequence, you can tell people in the beginning is to make up the numbers, which you lack in skill, get in that sequence and talk to as many different people as you can and go through the process. And at some point, then you start working on the quality versus quantity, which means you're increasing the conversion ratio between the two of those steps. So that becomes a model for management, which is another huge missing piece in the industry right now that we don't have true sales managers. We need true sales managers. We have good loan officers that became managers and wanted the override for becoming a sales manager or a branch manager. And they go out and hire people. They don't know how to train them. They don't know how to do that. There's a few good ones out there, but we need to create more leadership. There's too many people being failed out there that aren't getting what they need. And so with that piece, those six money-making activities and those commitment objectives in between those creates the sales process. And one of the things I'm actually most excited about is I've been working very closely with NaREP, which is a national association for Hispanic real estate professionals. And it's really just one of the most class organizations and leadership that I've ever been around. We've got over 26,000 members. And when I'm not talking about just members, I'm talking about followers, a tribe of people that believe and care about this organization, believe in the industry as a whole beyond just Hispanics, but believe in the industry. And they have an annual convention coming up in September. And I've been fortunate to work very closely with the founder and CEO, Gary Acosta. And he wanted to do a mortgage event because there's a good 37% of the people at NaREP are in mortgage-related. And together we put together what we call the Elevate Mortgage Summit. And the Elevate Mortgage Summit is September 17th and 18th. And we're going to have, we're actually limiting it at 800 people, and it's filling up really fast. And we've got myself as a keynote speaker. We've got Dan Hardy, who's our closing keynote. If you haven't met or listened to Dan Hardy, Dan Hardy, Dan Hardy is a fighter. Dan Hardy, who's just an amazing presenter. He's an amazing business man and has written some amazing books and just offers some content that is just out of this world. Steve Hardy, who's by far my number one favorite industry speaker. He is the way he takes data and translates in into presentable information is second to none. He's just a good guy. And we've got some other really strong people, but it's going to be two, you know, day and a half, two days. They're in Los Angeles, but then it moves directly into the NaREP National Convention where you get to put into practice. Everything you just learned with over 4,000 real estate agents from across the country. And so the entire event is designed around the six money making activities. You're going to have a big, there's a big backdrop at the event where any time a speaker talks about prospecting, that's going to light up and they're going to come away with tangible, actionable methodologies and technology that supports the six activities. And so it's a powerful event for mortgage professionals and realtors. Yeah, actually that event sounds really cool. I'm on the webpage right now. So for those listening, I want to jot that down. It's elevate mortgage summit.org. September 17th, 18th is the elevate portion of that in Los Angeles at the JW Marriott. And as you said, then it spills it over into the actual convention for the NaREP, as you call it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ellie live. Ellie live. Yeah, great location. Awesome. Well, I definitely plan on being there. So this is very cool. You know, it's funny. You kind of closed before transitioning into there into about elevate mortgage summit. You talked about how we need more leadership in this industry, if you will, which is what we opened up with, which is there's no leadership without influence. Absolutely. And I couldn't agree with that more so. And I think today, and this has been really good because what you shared was a lot of how do we have, you know, more influence, right? And that's over ourselves, over our family, over our co-workers, over our partners and clients. And that's what it all comes down to, right? Is is influence. And we're obviously we're talking for the positive and hopefully people when they think of influence, right? They think of that in a positive sense. Absolutely. Yes. And I think that, you know, talking about families and I've asked the work I do, I always tell people I look, I go, I hope I affect you more personally at home than I do at work. Yeah. And we use a lot of examples. I talk about my kids all the time. And the reality of taking a look at, you know, watching your kids going down a certain path, knowing that if they continue this behavior, it's going to be something bad. But what if you didn't have the skill to influence them? What kind of the service is that? And I tell people it's worth it just for being a parent to learn it. Yeah. Absolutely. Especially with the things kids have to deal with todays in terms of the path they go down. And are you being a leader? Are do you have influence to help them help guide them along that path? Powerful stuff. Okay. Cool. So listen, we are out of time. I know you're busy. You've got other stuff to get to, but I want to for you wrap up if you wouldn't mind share with the listeners how they can connect with you. You're also obviously involved in a couple of organizations. One, you've referenced earlier, Valentum, you're also involved with betterloneoffices.com. So tell us a little bit about either of those if you want. Sure. And easy way to find me is see ReneSpeak. It's S-E-E, ReneR-E-N-E, speak.com. You'll see some, how you'd hold me videos, booking me for speaking engagements, things like that. But yeah, also we relaunching something I'm very excited about betterloneoffices.com. Something we started three years ago and we've gone through some renditions and the growing pains of a startup but really have found an amazing leadership team for re-bring this to marketplace. And betterloneoffices.com is right now the largest directory for mortgage professionals in the industry. We have over 500,000 profiles. In fact, anybody listening, if you have an NMLSID number, you have a profile with us already. You can go in and claim it for free. But we are the only mortgage-specific reputation management and review management and what I even call reputation marketing engine out there, the specific for the mortgage industry. So we provide tools to help you take your reputation, your gather reviews, and testimonials and present them in a very elegant way. And so very, very powerful tool. So that's betterloneoffices.com and go ahead and claim your profile there. But yeah, see where they speak. And those, it's just, well, Entom is my consulting business that we use to go out and work with other clients. So yeah. Yeah, good stuff. Check out betterloneoffices.com for sure, because that's obviously helping you have more influence online. And of course, we know the importance today of having third-party credibility, testimonials, what other people are saying about you, customers. People are looking at that online first. And if you don't have, remember somebody once said, if you don't believe in reputation management online, if you're not controlling your reputation, someone else is. Absolutely. Great quote. Yeah. So make sure you're getting control of that and apply all the stuff that's Renee has shared with us today. And hey, Renee, I can't thank you enough, man. And I have to tell you, right? The chase is worth it. So I appreciate it, man. You're doing a great thing, Jeff. And I commend you on, you know, you've grown to a really strong following and the people that work with you always rave about what you're doing. So, you know, as much as I've loved to, you know, have you believe that you're the lucky one? This is definitely a great opportunity for me and an honor to be a part of it. So thank you. Oh, thank you so much. I know we'll stay connected. Hopefully I'll see you up at the Elevate Conference in September and LA. But once again, thanks very much for making time and for those listening, you know, make sure you check out the resources. We'll put all the resources that Renee mentioned in the show notes, the links to the Amy Cutty TEDx video to Renee's websites and so forth. So just check the show notes there. And by the way, if you've enjoyed today's session, hey, just let us know. Take a moment, you know, like us, give us a review on iTunes, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss future episodes. And once again, we just appreciate you and thanks for being here today. I'm your host, Jeff's in for mortgage marketing radio. Take care and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for listening to mortgage marketing radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing. Get more free training and resources at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. Hey, guys, what's up? Real quick. You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. 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