Ep# 43: The Six Lies of Success

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey listeners, Jeff, and for welcome back to this week's episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. So glad you're here. We're talking about this topic. If you were with us on the last episode, this topic of the One Thing. And I'm pulling some excerpts and some learnings from the investment that I've made into the One Thing book, which is written by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. It's the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. And Gary Keller, of course, is one of the co-founders of Keller Williams, largely wildly successful real estate brokerage across the country. Some of you are probably working with Keller Williams agents. Maybe you're a listening agent and you work at Keller Williams. If so, hey, let me know. Leave us a little comment on the blog here below. But we're picking it up this week with part two of getting started with time blocking. And in the last episode I talked about getting started very simply by blocking out little chunks of time on your calendar, 20, 30 minutes at a time to focus on your One Thing. And today what I want to do is expand a little bit more on this whole concept of the One Thing. And I know it's a hard thing for people to, you know, kind of really take on and sometimes we struggle with, well, you know, I can't just do One Thing, right? I've got like 73 different things to do. And I agree that we, of course, have more than one thing to do in a day, right? We all do. That's just simply life. But how many times did you come to the end of a day and feel like you just didn't get enough done or more importantly, you didn't get what you wanted to get done? You ever feel like that? Well, if so, I want you to set aside your preconceived notions. I want you to, you know, your mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's open, right? And so it starts from, so, so why even focus on One Thing, okay? Well, let's talk about real quickly a concept in the book, which is called the Six Lies Between You and Success, okay? And I'm not going to dive in deep here. We'll do that another, another session. But I just want to give you a highlight on the six different lies that are keeping you from what you really want. Number one, everything matters equally, not true. Everything doesn't matter equally. We have different priorities, things that are more important, more urgent, and are day than others. There are certain tasks, actions, behaviors that we do that will get us closer to what we want and there's others that will take us further away. In the noise and the chaos of the day with multiple issues showing up on your radar, you've got to decide and make sure you understand that not everything matters equally. The second lie is multitasking, long and short multitasking is just a lie. You can't multitask. The brain can only exclusively focus on one thing. Research and studies show that if you try and multitask, you greatly extend the amount of time it takes for you to complete all the tasks and you wind up getting distracted, getting pulled away, and coming back and losing massive time productivity by trying to multitask. So very simply stop multitasking if you're doing it. Get focused, put the phone down, ever have that situation, that's the modern day version of multitasking, right? Are you trying to talk to somebody, your spouse, your kids, and what are they doing? They're multitasking on the phone, or that's probably not even a good word for it, right? Because what they're really doing is being distracted. So multitasking plain and simple doesn't work. What's the third lie? The third lie, a disciplined life. You know, there's a quote by Leo Babuta, it says it's one of the most prevalent myths of our culture, self-discipline. Now listen, I'm a believer in discipline, I'm a follower of Jaco, the podcast, and Jaco's got a tagline that says discipline equals freedom, and it does, right? But let's clarify the difference between the disciplined person who leads a disciplined life and then being disciplined about doing the right things. Because that's the different difference, right? Success is actually a short race, it's a sprint that's fueled by discipline just long enough for a habit to kick in and take over. So if you're attempting something in your business that you haven't done before or you're stepping into new activities and getting out of their marketplace you have and getting amongst realtors that you haven't before, right? That is going to be a discipline, right? But all you need to do is be, quote, disciplined long enough until it becomes a habit, right? For instance, smokers, do they need to be disciplined to smoke? No, right? Do drinkers need to be disciplined to drink? No, they just do, right? Do I need to be disciplined to work out on my schedule anymore? No, it's a habit, I just do it. I blocked the time, I put it on my calendar. So when you're disciplining yourself, you're essentially training yourself to act in a specific way, right? Stay with it long enough and it becomes routine. In other words, it becomes a habit. So when you see people who look like they're disciplined, what you're really seeing is people who've trained and conditioned their habits integrated into their lives, right? So it makes them seem disciplined when they're actually not. Does this make sense? So people would look at, I'll just, you know, again, talk about me, for example, because I take, you know, for me, my workout is something I time block. It's part of my daily routine. It is, in the beginning, was it a discipline, yes, now what is it? It's a habit. It's simply a regular part of my day. Does this make sense? Can you guys relate to this? It might be like your morning miracle time. If you wake up in the morning and, you know, discipline yourself to have some quiet time, well, soon enough that becomes a habit, right? So take this one on. You don't need to be disciplined, to be successful. You need to do the right thing and not worry about doing everything right, right? So the trick to success, the trick to achieving what you want is to choose the right habit and bring just enough discipline in to establish it. Wow, how's that for reframe? That's different, right? Choose the right habit and bring just enough discipline to establish it. This habit becomes part of your life. You start looking like a disciplined person, but you won't be one. You'll be someone who has something regularly working for you because you've worked on it. You'll be a person who used selected discipline to build a powerful habit. And when you do the right thing, when you make that choice, you can liberate you from having to monitor everything. And I think this is where Jocco's quote about discipline equals freedom comes in. So because when you're disciplined, when you've built those habits in, you have the freedom to make some other choices. You don't have to monitor every single small detail of your life or your business, okay? So the fourth lie, willpower is always on will call, right? Willpower is always on will call. Why would you ever do something hard way? Why would you ever knowingly get behind the eight ball, right, and get between a rock and a hard place? But most people do that every day, right? We use our willpower to conjure up the willpower to just, you know, set ourselves up to ultimately fail because we're relying on willpower. And willpower, have you noticed it? Willpower comes and goes. Sometimes you feel it. Sometimes you don't, right? Willpower can go AWOL. Think about when there comes to making the right choices of eating health, nutrition. Being patient with your kids, being patient with your spouse, right? So we have a finite amount of energy. This is why when I talked earlier about structuring your time blocks that you identify those times when you are highly productive, when you are most switched on, if you will, okay? Just as the old saying is, make hay while the sun shines, right? When you have your will, you get your way, okay? And we have your energy, your power. Think of your willpower like the power bar on your cell phone, right? We look down on your cell phone and we see, oh, full green, I got a full charge, right? So every morning you start out, let's assume with a full charge. As the day goes on, just like a phone, if it's not recharged, right? Every time you draw on that power, you're using app, you use its capacity, you're using up the power on the phone, right? It's a limited but renewable resource. So willpower has a limited battery life, but it can be recharged with some downtime, right? Does this make sense? So everyone accepts that limited resources must be managed. We fail to recognize that willpower, our willpower is also one of them. Okay, so wrapping up willpower, let me just sum it up with, you know, do your most important task, your most important, your one thing early before your willpower is drawn down. As your self control, your attention span, your ability to focus is sapped throughout the day, much like a cell phone that doesn't recharged, use your willpower when it's at its full strength on what matters most. Don't spread your willpower too thin, decide what matters most and reserve your willpower for it. If that's making calls to agents, if that's calling your past database, if that's getting belly to belly and meeting agents, if that's giving a presentation in front of a group of agents, if that's getting your CRM setup, if that's setting up your perfect loan process with your loan officer assistant or processor, whatever it is, whatever, your one thing is for that day, right? Do it when you're at your best, when your battery is fully charged. And then monitor it throughout the day, right? Never let what matters most be compromised simply because your brain is under fueled and what does this mean? It means eat, right? Right? Get rest, exercise, take care of you, the machine, the vehicle that's going to get you to the destination. And then lastly, do what matters most for each day when your willpower is stronger. Maximize your willpower means maximize success, okay? Don't fight it. And by the way, it's okay. It's all right to take the little, you know, you want to recharge, take time away. As I said earlier, on episode one about time blocking, block out your time, get your task done and take a break, come back, recharged, you're ready to go at it again. Okay? All right, let's move on to the fifth lie. We're getting to it. Are you liking this so far? I hope so, okay? The fifth lie, a balanced life, right? So is a balanced life possible? Well, I think it is, but in order to do so, you've got to choose what matters most, right? What are the important buckets in your life? Let me read a quote from you by Keith Hammons. The truth is balance is bunk. It's an unattainable pipe dream. The quest for balance between work and life as we've come to think of it is it isn't just a losing proposition, it's a hurtful destructive one. So as I read a few excerpts from the book here, a balanced life is a lie. The idea of a balance is exactly that, an idea. In philosophy, the golden mean is the moderate and middle between polar extremes. It's a grand idea, but not a very practical one. Idealistic, but not realistic. Wow. This is tough to conceive. For me, in particular, because I'm all about, let's have some balance, right? But you know, here I need more balance, right? We hear about balance so much, we automatically assume it's what we should be seeking. Let's put this in the context, right, of balance. So in your effort to attend to all things, everything gets short-changed. So the desire for balance makes sense, right, enough time for everything and everything done in time. It sounds appealing, but it's just not true because if you look at the history of the work life balance, there was a study that was done from 1986, all the way to 2011, and the work life balance is way out of whack. It's continued to grow more out of whack as time has grown, and that's probably just a sign of the times that we live in, right? The real reason we shouldn't pursue balance, I'll think about this now, the real reason we shouldn't pursue balance is because magic never happens in the middle. Magic never happens by just riding the median line. Magic happens at the extremes, I'll say that again, magic happens at the extremes. And by the way, it's not about long hours because when we work too long, obviously our personal life suffers, our health suffers. So don't fall prey to the belief that long hours is some type of a virtuous activity or task to take on, right? And that's of course propagated a lot in today's world on social media, 24-7 work ethic and up at 430 and work until midnight and all that stuff, that is also a lie. So sometimes we face personal and professional demands where things just suffer and something has to give, right? Okay, so let's try and make sense of the whole this thing, right? So to achieve an extraordinary result in your business, if you've got a goal, if you want to grow your origination volume, you want to hit president's club, you want to make a certain amount of money, right? To achieve an extraordinary result, you've got to choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. And for a period of time, this may require getting extremely out of balance in relation to all the other work issues with only infrequent counterbalances to address them. So what does that mean? That means that you're one thing. If it is to get in front of real estate agents, more of them, other things in your work life are probably going to have to suffer. And this is where having your processes set up, meaning you can't spend your days babysitting loans. You can't spend your day chasing down conditions. You've got to spend your focus time on your one thing that's going to make the biggest impact on your business. And therefore, if you're doing that, other things naturally have to suffer. You're juggling these balls, right? Now, here's the thing though, in your personal life, awareness is key. Awareness of your energy, your spirit, your body, your family, your friends, your personal needs, none of these can be sacrificed if you intend to have a life. So don't forsake them for work or one for the other. Here's the secret I want you to take away from this, the distinction, listen up. You can move back and forth quickly between these areas and often combine the activities around them. But you can't neglect any of them for long, right? Your personal life requires tight counter-balancing. So, whether you go out of balance or not really isn't the question, question is, you go shorter long. In your personal life, you go short and avoid long periods where you're out of balance. No, going short lets you stay connected to all the things that matter most and move them along together. In your business, right, go long and make peace with the idea that the pursuit of extraordinary results may require you to be out of balance for long periods. So, let me say this again, in your personal life, go short and avoid long periods where you're out of balance. What does that mean? Again, you can go out of balance for short periods, especially if you have the right communication with the people around you, your friends, your family, your kids. You can simply explain to them, look, for the next two days, for the next week, I'm going to be devoting a lot of time to this project, to work, right? But after that, I'm going to come back and we're going to spend some quality time together. So, that would be an example of a proper communication plan, right? And that's okay because you need to stay in check with those things, right? So, going short on that still allows you to stay connected. Everybody's aware, everybody's on the same page, you're not just going dark and going rogue, right? So, going short in your personal life still allows you to connect to all the things and people that matter to the most and to move them along together with the focus on your one thing in your business. So, this makes sense? It's a concept you've got to take on over time. So, in your business, go long and make peace with the idea that pursuing the results you want may require you to be out of balance in your business for long periods. So, what again, this means is allowing you to focus on what matters most even at the expense of the other lesser priorities. And again, if you can set up the systems, the communication plan with people and processes to minimize, right, the impact of those, then you'll be that much more successful there. So, in your personal life, nothing gets left behind. At work, it's required. How many of those little distractions, little interruptions, little, you know, tasks that are other people's emergencies and urgencies, but they're not yours. So, think about it like this. Let me wrap up with a couple of ideas. Think about two balancing buckets, right? You separate your work life and your personal life into two distinct buckets. Not to compartmentalize them, but just for counterbalancing. Each has its own counterbalancing goals and how you approach that. So, you want to counterbalance your work bucket, right? You work as, right, these are skills and knowledge that must be mastered, skills like getting in front of agents, giving effective presentations, converting better, right? Having better presentation, scripting, and so forth, okay? Focusing on this on your work bucket will cause you to give disproportionate time to your one thing, that one thing that you must focus on, that if you do, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. Focusing your one thing, it'll throw the rest of your workday, your week, your month, and your year out of balance, right? Your work life, those divided into two distinct areas, what matters most and everything else. You'll have to take what matters most to the extremes of your focus and your time, and you'll have to be okay with what happens to the rest. So again, in your work bucket, you have to be okay with focusing on your one thing, and that's going to throw off the other things that you've got in play related to loans in process, maybe administrative stuff, maybe, you know, taking those online, continuing ed courses that everybody's got to take, but you've got to set up some systems to be able to deal with that and counterbalance that over there, right? It's about communication, particularly in the area of, you know, your loans and file loans in process and things like that, right? Okay. And then let's talk about your personal life bucket, right? Is it your life actually does have multiple areas and each requires a minimum of attention for you to feel like you have a life? Don't ever want to be one of those people who say, I have no life. That means you're out of balance, yes. And as I said, we go, we swing in and out of balance. But if you feel like you have no life, that means you haven't gone short on your personal life with being out of balance, you've gone long. Does this make sense? So this requires you to be constantly aware, right? Where's the needle out? You must never go for too long or too far without counterbalancing your personal life bucket. Your personal life requires it so that you don't ever feel like I don't have a life anymore. Don't ever let your life be 100% consumed by the work bucket. This is again, why it's important to focus on your one thing because remember, the qualifying question is, what's the one thing you can do every day? So that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. For many of you, it comes down to sheer numbers of agents on your bus. If you're focused on building a referral-based business, most of you don't have enough referral agent partners. And so you're out of balance because you're spending a lot of time searching, chasing, looking, turning over stones and looking for these referrals and these agents and these. And you meet with these agents and you don't get any referrals after the lunch meeting, or they don't even show for the lunch meeting. And this is why for you, perhaps, deciding your one thing that you need to do is get more agent referral partners. And if that's you, if you haven't yet checked out, get powerfulpresentations.com, check it out. It is a highly leveraged one thing activity that when you do it, the act of attracting, and converting agents to referral partners becomes much easier and eventually unnecessary. So check it out. Get powerfulpresentations.com. It will put you in front of the law of large numbers, maximizing agents in minimum time. Okay. So to recap, everything matters equally, not true, multitasking. It's a lie. A disciplined life. It's about habits, building habits. The power is always on will call. No, it's not. You have to structure and plan for your highest and best energy. A balanced life doesn't exist. And number six, the final one, big is bad. Here's a quote from Robert Brolt. We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal. I don't know where you sit with big, the whole big is bad thing, right? And this started during the too big to fail phase and all the big banks and the big corporations just becoming huge and there's probably some of it behind that, but big is bad is a lie. What's wrong with wanting an extraordinary life? A big opportunity is better than a small one, isn't it? But a small problem is better than a big one. Because you want the biggest present under the tree and sometimes you want the smallest. Often a big laugh or a big cry is just what you need. And every so often, a small chuckle and a few tears will do the trick. This is all about what the meaning you give to the words. Big and bad are no more tied together and small and good. And this is quite possibly, according to the book, the one thing. It's quite possibly the worst lie of all. If you fear big success, you'll either avoid it or sabotage your efforts to achieve it. Because really, what's your ceiling? What's your ceiling of success? You may have consciously decided that, oh, I only want to do so much because this is my age and this is my stage in life, right? Remember, when they used to believe that the earth was flat? How many ships didn't sail because of that belief, right? How about the belief that man wasn't supposed to breathe underwater, fly or go into outer space? None of us knows our limits. You can't see borders and boundaries. They're good for a map. But when you apply them to your life, the lines aren't so apparent. How many of you listening right now look back on your life where you're at today? You're in a place that you never thought you would be at. Do you know what your limits are? I don't think anybody does. How about allowing yourself to accept that big isn't necessarily about money? It's not necessarily about loan volume and closed units and the wonderful stats we see of the top 200 producers in the country. What if you allow yourself to simply accept that big, going big, going for it, right? Go big or go home? What if that's really more about who you can become? How about visualizing you at your best? Being the best person, human being, that you can be. The best business professional, mortgage loan originator. Speaking of that, have you ever thought about your why? We'll do another session on your why. Why are you here? Why are you even a mortgage loan originator? Hopefully it's not just to pay the bills. So obviously success requires action. Action requires thought, but here's the catch. The only actions that become springboards to succeeding are succeeding big. Are those informed by big thinking to begin with? And make this connection and the importance of how big you think begins to sink in. So we've all got the same amount of time in a day, right? 24 hours. Hard work, it's hard work. So what you do in the time that you work determines what you achieve. And since what you do is determined by what you think, how big you think becomes the launching pad for what you achieve. And remember, I said this concept of big, what if you just took on for a moment that the concept of thinking big is about who you can become, who you can become, the impact you can have in your personal and professional life. So only by thinking, living big, by focusing on you becoming the best version of you, only that type of thinking will allow you to experience your true life and work potential and your potential. Obviously as a human being, the impact you have as a human being, what type of impact do you want to have? Do you want to leave? Are you playing close to your heart? Are you keeping your cards close, checked in? Are you sitting on the stands on the sideline? Are you in the game? Are you applying the things we're talking about here today to be the best version of you can be? An example that would be asked for, you know, ask yourself bigger questions, right? Set a goal so far above what you want that you'll be building a plan that requires you become that person to achieve it. Who do you need to become? See, it's not about the goals necessarily. That's part of it, but it's more about how you become in the process, okay? Act boldly. Big thoughts go nowhere without bold action. As you've asked the big question, pause to imagine what life will look like with that answer. When you ask yourself, who do I really want to be at my core? What do I want my business to look like? Who am I impacting on a daily basis? Who am I touching, right? An impacting in a positive way. Imagine what that looks like. Picture it in your mind. How are you walking? How are you talking? How are you presenting yourself? How do you enter a room? How do you carry a conversation? Are you in more control? You take more charge of those conversations with agents and with borrowers who are working you on price, are you more confident in your interactions? And if you still can't see yourself, there's study those who've already achieved what you want to achieve. Look at some of the models, the systems, the habits and relationships. Oftentimes the seeds of what we want to accomplish are found by the achievements of those who've gone before us. So act boldly, ask yourself the big question, imagine what you look like with that answer. And then look also at some models that might have been left for you in advance. And of course, don't fear failure, right? Guess what failure is? It's a part of the journey, right? It's a part of the journey. There is no success without failure, there is no growth without failure, right? Adopt a growth mindset and don't be afraid of where it can take you. Maybe this is your greatest challenge ever. Maybe you're bumping up against the ceiling of your greatness. Like if you envision a white circle, like draw a circle on a white piece of paper, right? And then inside that circle is a tiny little dot. And all the white space within that circle where the tiny little dot is, that's your comfort zone. And all you've got to do, perhaps, is shift your thinking just a little bit, just a tad outside the outer edge of that comfort zone. Go ahead, jump over that circle, that little dot inside that white circle now just stepped outside of its comfort zone. And now look at the white space, it has its new level. That's what's available to you on the other side. But extraordinary results are also built on failure. It'd be accurate to say we fail our way to success. When we fail, we stop, we pause, we evaluate. What do we need to do to succeed? We learn and grow. So don't be afraid, failure, embrace it, embrace it, because it's part of the journey. Don't let small thinking cut your life down to size. Think big, aim high, act bold, and see just how big you can blow up your life in who you can become, in order to have it all, in order to have more, we need to become more. We have to make choices, we have to make priorities, we have to be smart about choosing the right priorities. And the most important resource, most precious resource you have in your life is your time. Each of your areas of your life have different levels of priority. You have to choose your one thing, that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary. What's your one thing I'd like to know? Leave a comment if you like the direction we're going with this one thing and you want more. Leave a comment. Love your feedback. Do you think I'm full of bull? Leave a comment. Once again, much of what I'm sharing with you has come out of the book, the one thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, if you haven't got it, I encourage you to check it out. I'm going to continue this dialogue with you guys and we're going to be bringing on some special guests in the coming episodes as well, so that is coming. So stay tuned for that, make sure you subscribe. And once again, if you are at a point in your business where you recognize that the one thing you need to do so that everything else becomes easier or unnecessary is get more referral partners, real estate agents sending you deals every month, consider checking out, get powerful presentations. It is the law of large numbers in your favor. You know capturing and converting and attracting agents is a numbers game. And you don't want to be chasing agents. And if you're done with coal calling and door knocking and looking for a more effective leveraged way to get in front of and present your value proposition to agents and doing it away that has agents becoming attracted to you and having the competition fall by the wayside and you becoming known as the go to lender in your local market and actually having a proven system and plan for getting in front of groups of agents every single month so that you can sift, sort, convert, add, delete and doing it at scale so that much like when I started the same process and many other loan officers, you'll get to where you need to get much quicker if you put the law of large numbers to work in your favor. And that's what teaching agent classes can do. So imagine for a moment a library of done for you agent classes, turn key PowerPoints, speaker notes, handouts, video tutorials, teaching you how to conduct the class and share the topic. By the way, you do not need to be an expert in the class topics. We're talking about teaching agents how to get started with video marketing, millennial marketing for real estate, content marketing, Facebook. These are topics they are hungry to learn. You are hungry to learn. Check out getpowerfulpresentations.com. You'll see some of the success stories over there. And if it's for you, check it out. If you want to contact me personally, email me info at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com. To answer your questions any time. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Look forward to another one coming. And as always, I appreciate you. This is Jeff Simford. Thanks for tuning in to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Go out there, get you one thing done, and I'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. 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 purchased business. Let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you, agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attract and convert agents into referral partners, plus done for you proven marketing materials and plug and play content to make promoting your class, getting agents, butts and seeds, partnering with affiliates, real easy. But that's not all. 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