Ep #54: Stop Talking and Take Action With Jen Du Plessis

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 Zimper, welcome to this week's episode of mortgage marketing radio. As always, I am so grateful you're taking time from your busy day to spend some time with us. If you're getting value, I'd love to hear how you're liking the podcasts. You can always email me at infoatmortgagemarketinginstitute.com. Once again, that's infoatmortgagemarketinginstitute.com. If you haven't yet subscribed, please do so. iTunes, Stitcher, Google S, Mortgage Marketing Radio, everything will come up for you there. It's easy to follow along. Check us out on Twitter, at MMI Content, and of course, search us up on Facebook, mortgage marketing institute. So let's get into this week, my special guest, very honored and humbled to have Jen DePlessis on. Jen is a mortgage originator's originator. What do I mean by that? I mean, Jen, 30 plus year career in mortgage origination, seen, heard, done it all. She's consistently named on the top 200 originators in the US and in 2012 and the top 1% for many consistent years. She's also not just an originator, she's a trainer, speaker, author, coach, her own company, CEO of Kinetic Spark Consulting is really, it's her passion project. It's evolved from Jen's desire to help others in her industry as well as real estate agents, fellow mortgage loan originators, et cetera. And I like Jen's approach because, as I said, she's an originator's originator and she's very pragmatic, practical, but also very smart and savvy with how she goes about building her business and a business that doesn't control her. And I really enjoyed the conversation we had on this episode where we talked about some of Jen's ideas about, you know, defining your role in this business. What is your role? Are you a finder, a minder or a grinder? Or sometimes, depending on where you're at in the business, maybe you're all three. And then we definitely talk about scheduling priorities and I asked her, right, this is a woman who's done a billion dollars in loans in her career. And I asked her, what's the number one, the biggest obstacle to most originators, building the business that they want that gives them the income and the lifestyle and the enjoyment that they seek? And in order to answer to me was managing priorities, managing priorities, okay? So this is a mini workshop on how to identify the roles that you're best suited for in building and growing your business and referrals and then creating a plan and a strategy for how to put that into work in your business on a day-to-day basis. And you hear exactly how Jen does it, how she coaches and teaches others, how to do it. And then you hear some of the resources that Jen's made available for us if you're interested in connecting with her more. You can do so by way of the show links. I provided links to her website to a lifetime membership offer she's got and I encourage you to go out and purchase her book launch. How to take your business to new heights. And I've gone through the book and I've highlighted, underlined, written, scribbled, made notes. And I've already pulled out lots of great ahas, strategies, tactics, and mindset about how to not only be more productive, right? But also lots of gems I'm sharing here with other people that I work with personally. So Jen Deplasses has my highest endorsement and recommendation and you would do yourself well to check out what she's got to offer a little bit further. So with that said, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Let's get into the show. Hey Jen, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. We are thrilled to have you and I appreciate you making time for us on a crazy busy day. And let's get right into it. So the listeners kind of heard the official formal intro before I brought you on. But why don't you give them kind of your version? Who's Jen Deplasses, what's she all about? Oh wow. And you want me to encapsulate that in a few seconds. Let me see what I could do. Well, let's see, you know, I've been in lending for 34 years. It'll be 35 March first. Wow. That's all I've done. And I've done pretty much everything you can do in lending, you know, the early years and ops, just like most women in our industry, you know, start an ops. And then I've been a, you know, national regional sales manager, a lot of management experience and then went into origination about 20 years ago, I guess, in 15, 20 out of, there's an overlap there. And you know, been in the top 200 a couple of times, always in the top 100% and have a team. But I'm in, you know, I'm going to place in my career now where I'm trying to give back to my industry in any way and capacity that I can. All right, Jen. Thanks very much for that. So, yes, you're in a place where you want to give back to the industry. You know, whenever I hear that, I'm kind of curious. Why? What happened because many of us have mentors that change in shape our lives? What happened for you? Why do you want to now give back? You know, I think the biggest reason for me is that I've been an advocate for education in our industry for years and years and years and years. Even when I was an originator, I knew I, you know, when I started off, I was an underwriter by the way. And I, you know, I started off saying that I'm not going to be delivering donuts and rate sheets or refuse. In fact, I, I don't even remember a time where I did rate sheets. And for me, I thought, I'm going to set myself up to be the resident expert on everything and teach, teach, teach. And so I was a huge advocate about licensing before it was popular years ago. And I think that it's just ingrained in my, in my DNA, you know, to be an educator. I teach classes left right and sideways for realtors, financial planners, attorneys, people in my own company. I'm, I'm the, you know, official mentor for our company. I'm, I mentor and coach people at my company as well. And I think that that just is ingrained in what I do. I just feel like, you know, as professional, I was real estate, sorry, not real estate, lending professionals. You know, we need to up our game. We, we are the professionals. We can't be rate quoters. We've got to up our game. And so it's just sort of a little, you know, a little all me out there trying to make us all better. You know, well, you're clearly having an impact. I mean, I, I've kind of seen you from a distance, you know, not that I stalked you by any mean, but, you know, it's a small, it's a small industry, you know, for those of us that are kind of in the circle. And you recently came out with a book called Launch, How to Take Your Business to New Heights, which will definitely provide links in the show notes to get that. It's a great book. It's a beautiful, hard cover book. I'm standing here with it in my hands. And so first of all, everybody gets a book number one. Number two, right? Whenever I do these podcasts and I've got someone who's an author, I kind of decide, okay, what can I extrapolate from the book that I think will resonate and hit home with most? And so I want to start there if that's okay. Yeah. Of course. I want to start with chapters three through six, where you talk about are you playing offense or defense? Because I know you see this very often as I do is, what do you mean by that? What's an example of somebody playing offense or defense as an LL? Yeah. Well, you know, where this started was, you know, years ago, I, it's a great, it's a fun story. I can't remember I put it in the book or not, but I was, I remember when Barry Habib and Jim McMahon and Greg Frost used to do their tours and stuff. And I was in one of their meetings and, you know, and I hear I was one of the very few women at that time. I mean, we're going back to the late 80s, you know, very few women that were in any kind of, any position they had to do with anything other than ops. And here I am learning about this and these guys kept getting up and at the time, that was never where the guys were, suspenders, but anyway, you know, and the Larry King suspenders in. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody, they would get up constantly from these meetings. I'm like, what are the heck is going on? Well, at that time, we didn't have phones. We had pages. And so they were, you know, responding to the pages, getting in line at the hotel, you know, to call back somebody figure out what was going on. And, you know, so I went to another one, not too long from after that. And I said to my husband, Brian, I go, hey, listen, anyone. I'm at the saying, I need you to page me five times. I need to look just as important as they do, you know, and so my page would go off and I'm like, who's look at me? I'd get up and then I'd be in line with them and I'd be saying, so you want me to get milk and bread? Yeah, yeah. Mortgage, mortgage, love, love, you know, and then, you know, fastward a little bit and I was a sales manager for world savings at the time. And, you know, now I'm managing these people that I was seeing getting busy when I found out they didn't have control of their business at all. And that's why they were being reactionary. So now my phone rings two or three times a day and it's for referrals. It's not to check on the status or anything else. So it became a game for me is like, how can I get the information out to everybody faster and at milestones, which is now everybody's building software around this. But I've been doing this for 25 years. I have this proprietary system in reaching out and communicating with people at every single milestone and anticipating what their needs are. So to me, that's a leaning in mode. I'm leaning into my business and rather than being a reactionary, not the other part of that is that when you make an offensive phone call, you know, not offensive, but when you make an off, right, offensive, when you make an offensive phone call, it makes people smile. It's two minutes long. It's like, hey, Jeff, it's Jen. I just want to let you know the appraisal was ordered and the next step is, right? And you know, and that next step piece is very important versus having a realtor call me and say, hey, is the appraisal been ordered? Well, I don't know. Let me check. And then you check it. Yes, it was ordered and they say, okay, great. When's it coming up? I don't know. Let me check again. So whenever you're in the defensive mode like that, I feel like you lose. So it became a game. If somebody calls and wants to status or is calling to find out what happens next, we've lost. We have lost. So building a system around being in an offensive mode, it's a time waster to be in defensive mode. It's a time saver to be an offense. It's a customer experience to be an offense. It's a negative customer experience to be in defense. Yeah, I love that. I love the analogy. I love the fact that you want to get ahead of it. And so never have anybody kind of surprised you with that question or those questions. Yes. So then what do you see as the biggest roadblock for LOS to stay in offense, which is, you know, proactive in action? Time management. And I hate using the word time management. I actually call it priority management. I don't call time blocking time blocking. I call it interval working because everybody needs to get over their damn associations to that word time blocking. You know, I know. It's crazy. It's silly. It's like, oh, it's a negative connotation, but the thing is time blocking will set you free. It will not constrict you. And so you've got to get control and start doing things, you know, in a timely basis. And, you know, in the book, I explain this, but, you know, it's fun when you hear it from me and it's my voice, but it's like when you're doing laundry, why do you take all your clothes out and put them in a basket and then fold them into piles? Why don't you just take one thing out and run it to the bedroom and come back and fold another thing and then run it someplace else? When you look at your email and you come into the office every day and you look at your email, that is a basket of clothing because the first email says, hey, did you get my pay set? Hey, what's the status of the appraisal? Hey, do you want to come to my grand opening? Hey, I have to talk to you about this alone, the DTI is too high. Hey, you know, in each one of those items represents a different type of clothing. If you can bucket those and compartmentalize those and then I go after them in one concise timeframe, you're going to be much more effective. The same story would be, have you ever done Christmas cards, you know, the first one's like, hi, Aunt Sue, we've been doing this that, you know, you sign it and you stuff it and you write down below and you lick it and you stamp it and then by the time you get to the 10th when you're like, hey, we've had a great year, hey, we've had a great year and you do all the cards, you do all the stuffing, all at the same time. And so what you've developed over the course of that is efficiencies by compartmentalizing. It's exactly the same way. So if you want to be able to get more done in a shorter period of time, you need to learn to compartmentalize and carve out the time to do those things, you know, and not be distracted by the shiny object or the phone call or the, you know, reactionary type things that we do as lenders. Okay. So you don't call it time management, you call it priority management? Yeah, because it's really managing your priorities. I mean, what is your priority today? And, you know, if your priority is to make phone calls to get business and you get distracted and that doesn't become a priority anymore, and the priority is standing by the water cooler and yacking about some underwriter, you know, I mean, spending hours and hours fighting over a condition instead of just going and getting it. It's like, do you want to make the money or no? I don't know. Okay. So now, I know you coach people, how often do you see, yeah, it's on my calendar and it is time-blocked. It is priority-blocked. But I still get distracted and I get, you know, pull up. You hear that? Yeah. A lot. So how do we fix that? So, well, there's a couple of ways that you're going to fix it. I mean, one is you've got to be true to yourself. You know, that's part of it. The other part is not. What does that mean? Be true to yourself. I mean, it's a great song. I think. Be true to your school. But what is it? Yeah. It's, you know, you have to be true to yourself. I mean, if you truly want to make money and you have your passion and your goals, your life goals, and you know what they are, then nothing's going to stand in your way. And so I would say that, you know, and Darren Hardy's a mentor of mine, you know, when he wrote the compound effect, he's got this great illustration of you being in a tall building and another tall building, there's this plank between them. And if I told you to go over there and get, you know, a piece of paper, you're really hesitant to do that. But if I told you that your child was over there and the building's going to burn up and explode in two minutes, you would do anything to get over there to save them. So I would say to you, you know, are you in the mortgage business that I love saying this? Are you a 7-1 or 10-1 loan officer? Because have you been in the business 10 years, one year at a time? Or have you been in the business for 10 years where you're growing your business? If you haven't identified, why are you in this business? Because for me, I'm not in this business because I like doing mortgages. I'm in this business because I want something for my kids. I want a perpetuity, a trust fund that lasts for perpetuity for my children. And so every loan is a means for getting there. So if I have my eye on a long term and what that is, then nothing's going to get in my way. So that's a long game, right? That's a long game of that. The short game is knowing what your priorities are. I think so many times, and at least with the people that I coach, and of course I speak at a lot of places, everyone gets up in there just like, okay, so, you know, I'm a loan officer today. I wonder what's going to happen. I have purpose every day. I know exactly what my time blocks are. I know exactly who I'm meeting and I know exactly the people I'm meeting and why I don't waste my time with people that aren't going to help move the needle in my business and move my business forward to achieve my life goal. And everyone talks about this, but no one ever sits down and actually says, well, what do I want? You know, it's not the monetary things. It's not, I'm going to work my butt off so I can buy a big massive boat or a $20,000 watch, or it's not those things. It's much bigger than that. And to have any stank power in this industry and to be able to fund, now I've funded over a billion dollars and loans now over my tenure, in order to be able to, in order to be able to have any of that stank power, you have to have real clear goals. And so that's why you have to be true to yourself instead of saying, you know, I don't have to be somebody's back and call girl. Yes. I mean, that's really what happens. And I want to provide good service and I do provide a good service and good experience for my client. But I think we need jerk reactants. It's like, you know, we need a, you know, a realtor cause and said, I need a pre-approval letter. You stop everything. If you're a church, you run out of the back of the church and do a pre-approval letter. And instead, we could just ask a very simple question. Great. When do you need it? Because they, oh, I'm not making the offer till next Tuesday. Great. You know, so we have to quantify these things and be true to ourselves instead of, you know, saying, okay, I'm going to drop everything. Instead of saying, I'll call you back at four, I'll call you back at 10 minutes. Say, can I call you between four and six because that's your time block when you call people back? Yeah. And then that loosens it up. And that is a question I get all the time is, you know, well, I get calls from realtor, so I have to drop everything because they have a referral. No. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the communication then because this gets back to there I bring in that other word scripting. This gets back to how you're, you have the conversations, how you set up, right, your business process with your referral partners like realtors. I'm sure you have a description for them of like, okay, so this is how I work, right? And then you walk through the conversation about time blocking whatever if I'm unavailable. People have system set up to deal with that. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think that's a very loaded question because there's different levels of realtors that we work with. Yeah. First of all, I think if you're a loan officer and you're, you know, like a cat on a marble floor trying to get any realtors guard in meet with them and you tell, you know, you sit there and tell them, you know, this is how I work. I think you're going to get a negative reaction to that. I think it's more about us in interviewing, you know, you have to remember when we interview with realtors, there's going to be, you know, three or four outcomes. One is going to be, you know, you're either going to, they're going to hire you. They're not going to hire you. Or the third truth we never think about is, I might not hire them, okay? So I have to first interview them to see if I'm going to hire them and if I do decide to hire them and they agree that this is a good mutual, you know, we all have common interest and then I'm going to address those issues with them on how each of us works. That's just how I work. It's not, you know, this is how I work. I don't call you back. If you're a top player with me, I'm going to, I'm going to bend for you. But if you're not, you're going to go into my voice mill and I will get to you. I promise. But it's the difference between being in demand and being on demand and you want to increase the level of your business, you know, I have clients that will wait for two weeks to meet with me because I'm so much in demand versus being on demand. So it's a psyche for yourself in saying that, you know, yeah, I want to help you and I want to want to help your business. But quite frankly, a realtor that calls you and is, I mean, to keep using these comparisons because I love them, are they complementing or complicating your business? So just because a realtor doesn't have control of their business, doesn't mean they have to lay that on me and call me, you know, at eight o'clock in the morning on a Sunday morning. So make sure you're aligning yourself with the people that aren't doing that. I would say that's how you solve the problem, not just tell people what to do, but, you know, align yourself with the people that have the characteristics that you're looking for and really the best way to do that is to identify what you don't want, you know, so I don't want a realtor who's part time. Therefore, one of my characteristics is they have to be full time. I don't want someone who works, you know, chaoticly, therefore I want someone who's a little more structured. So when you're interviewing them, we're sharing with them how our process works, but we're also asking them how theirs works so that we can make the decision whether we want to work with them or not. Believe me, there's thousands of them out there. So what do you then say to agents who, you know, come out of the gate with like, you know, here's what I expect from my loan officers and there could be a variety of, you know, oh, well, you know, my current loan officer buys Zillow leads or I expect my LOs to respond within 30 minutes, you know what I mean? Yeah, the four letter word because it doesn't align with my characteristics, right? If it lines with yours, if you're listening and that aligns with your characteristics, then take it. It does not align with my characteristics. So next. So now, everyone says, well, that's really easy to say when you've got business. No, no, no, that's real easy to say when you want to have some control of your life because if you start going down that path and you're new or you're, you know, trying to get business and you feel like you have to be everything to everyone, you will always be everything to everyone. And you will never be able to scale your business. Don't be a doormat. Yeah, because it's always, it's going to be like that forever and then you're going to wonder why you can never get past relones, five loans a month because you're still helping them in the manner that they've grown accustomed to and, you know, make that decision case by case. Right. You know, for my top people, like I said, I'll bend and I will do the things that I will never do for just took some Tom Dick and Harry realtor or any other referral partner for that matter. Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. Good stuff. Let's switch into defining your role. And I love how you call it. Find your mind or grinder. Yeah. Explain that. And is there a one that's better than the other? Well, yeah. Okay. All right. So break it down for us. Okay. Yeah. So finder is us. We're loan officers. Our job is to go find the business. So all of our activities should be, you know, again, compartmentalizing all of our activities and based around doing, you know, business, our high value, the highest and best use of what what we do. And really identifying, you know, two or three things that you do really, really well and you do them all the time. So for example, we would meet with our clients or talk to them on the phone and do loan structure, right? We're developing relationships with our referral partners. And maybe we're teaching a class or, you know, to realtors or maybe we throw networking in there or maybe we do both, but finding the business. Maybe maybe you're saying maybe if, if you like it and you're good at it. Yeah. If you like it and you're good at it, I have something else called the trifecta of triumph, you know, it's just, I only do things I really, really like that are really good at and that make economical sense for me. So for now, for example, this many years into the business, I don't do broker opens because I did them in the beginning because I wanted to meet realtors. I don't want to right now. So I mean, I'm otherwise is what I'm saying. Because you always have to be working. But I don't do broker opens because I'm okay at it, but I'm not that great at it. I don't like standing in the middle of the kitchen is, you know, that's, you know, one reason I don't like to do it either because I have other ways that are better for me. And so therefore, it doesn't make economical sense for me to spend $150 on a gift certificate and a lunch with someone who most likely will never be business, right? But for a new loan officer, I did it. I did it as a new loan officer. Yeah, I'm spending money. I'm not that good at it, but I'll get better at it. And I really don't like it, but it's the only way I'm going to be able to pick from the litter is these agents come in and say, yeah, I want to meet with you. Heck no, all you care about the food, you know, and being able to isolate who I'd like to follow up with. So as a finder, that's why I'm saying is do it, do what you really love to do. So if I say teaching classes and you can't, you know, you're uncomfortable standing in front of a group of people, then don't do that as a finder activity. Find another activity that you feel more comfortable doing. Got it. So the finder stays in their lane because if you move into somebody else's lane, accidents happen, right? So the minder, the minder part of it to me is the most important role to me that is that's the customer experience. That is my right hand person. That is the person who makes sure that the deal goes smoothly, you know, and you're sustained. You know, I mean, you know, all the different names that we have in our industry, the L.O.A., the mortgage planner, however you want to call it. So the minder is the one who makes sure that the customer service is taken care of. It's the nuts and bolts, a gritty, the nice and say gritty. This is all the nuts and bolts of making sure that the loan gets, goes through smoothly. And I don't want to know anything about the loans that are in process unless there's a problem. I don't need to know. And I've even had many times that loan closing is like, yeah, you don't, yeah, that loan closed. And I don't even know because we have such a strong system, right? And so my role, and I think everybody's equal, even as a team leader, you shouldn't think that you're above everybody else. Your role is to bring in business. The next person's role is to make sure that it closes and if they do a great job, then you can continue to bring in business so that everyone can make money. The grinder is your person who does your events and maybe makes your phone calls for me. It makes my appointments, manages my database, gives us, you know, lets us know when it's a time for an annual review and they schedule the annual review and they're kind of grinding out the business. And everybody's role is equally important because I can't do mine if I'm stopping and having to change lanes and work on something, then who's bringing in the business, right? If I have to change lanes and do something in the database, then who's making sure the loan closes on time? So it's easier to understand those three roles and as a new loan officer, someone who's not producing a lot, you have to be in all of those roles but you can't be all of them at one time and that's why the time blocking is so important. I love the way you just tied that together because I was thinking that exact same thing because- I knew you were. I figured you were. You've got the- You've got the- Been there. Yeah, the Jedi mind trick going on. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, I hear this every single day, right? Yeah, but I keep getting pulled back in and pulled back, but it's like I'm glad you point in. Look, early on until you have the minder or the assistant or whatever, guess what? You're going to have to wear all three hats and that's just how it is. Right. Don't wear them minute after minute after minute. Do it in time. Right. Very structured, focused time. Exactly. Which is what I'm trying to get a lot of people to do is, right? It's very clear. I tell them the worst thing you can have is white space on your calendar, right? Do not show unless that's like a total blow-off day, which you've scheduled, then that's cool. But don't show up on a Monday Tuesday, you know, with white, what am I going to do today? Like you said earlier. Right. And I think that's important. So, you know, I just wanted to share something about this, too, like if you're having that phone call for realtor, so let's say you have to answer the call because you're just freaking out. You got to answer the call. Hi, Jeff. Thanks so much for calling. Listen. I'm about ready to walk into a meeting. You don't even have a meeting schedule. Okay. This is how you start going from on demand to in demand. I'm about ready to walk into a meeting, but I just want you to know that I'm, you know, I want to answer the call. Can I call you back between three and five when I'm in front of my computer and I can dedicate 100% of my time and attention to serving you? Mm-hmm. Comes back to the script. Because otherwise, I'll listen now, but I'm not going to serve you and I'm not going to dedicate my time and attention. Yeah. So you're telling them that you're, you want to do a better job in another time slot. And most people will say, oh, of course, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was just calling you. You know, yeah. Call me back whenever. Love it. Love it. Yeah, because how many times you take that call and it winds up, oh god, I didn't really have to take that call. That's right. That's right. Awesome. I love that. So, all right. So for my listeners anyway, a lot of people are in that finder mode, right? Yeah. And you've got some finder basics from your book, which we're going to put a link in the show notes, which everybody listening must buy at least one copy if not 10 each. Finder basics. Yeah. People time activities, right? Yeah. So what do you, what do you coach people on what to do to, I love what you said, how do, how to move from on demand to in demand? So what am I asking you is, how do we get more in demand? Right. Right. So again, the people, the time and the activities that you're doing, you really have to isolate it. And, you know, recently, I was just talking to someone about this on, on my podcast as well. I just released it as, you know, just a simple ad is like, how do we bring this down to the, the lowest common denominator? And it's like, if you could just think of 12 apostles or apostles, right? 12 people. 12 people giving you one lead a month, let's just use the basics of that, we're all in this business, right? 12 people giving one lead a month, that's 12 referrals, right? These are your focus people, these are your people that you're going to spend the most time with and do the most activities with. So the PTA, right? So they each give you one deal a month, that's 12 loans a month, times 12 is 144 transactions a year. Now let's say that the people that you're choosing, your 12 apostles that will give up their other situations and be loyal to you, give you two a month, that's 288 loans a year, right? These 12 apostles don't have to be 12 realtors, they can be a combination of realtors, financial planners, attorneys, the guy who owns the Jerry sub who gives you referrals, your yoga instructor who gives you referrals, the, you know, person in your B and I group, the person in your chamber group, it doesn't matter, but you want to identify these 12 people that have the capacity to refer you 12 people every month, I mean, one person every month, right? So if we just bring it down to the lowest common denominator of all I have to do is find 12 people, I have to identify the characteristics so that I can select and say no to some other people, right? And put it still be dripping and dabbling, 12 people. Now understand that you know hundreds of people as a loan officer, you're still going to get business from all these other people, but your focus is on the 12. The others will get an email blast or you'll see them in a networking event and they'll occasionally send you a deal and that's wonderful. And maybe they'll become one of your 12 apostles at some point in time. The right now, just focus on those 12 to just one deal a month, one deal a month, one family that you can help every single month. And so that's the people, the time is then all of your time, you know, the broker open for them, the activity, sure, I'll do a broker open for you, yeah, I'll come out at six o'clock in the morning and freeze my tissue up and win her for some, you know, 5k race because you have a table, because you have a table that has a skirt with rocks on it, because I know when I get up to go do a 5k, I hope there is a realtor there. Nice. Right? I mean, I'll do those things for you, but I will not do those things for other people. I love the costume bowling event, that's like right up there. Right. Right. So that's the people and where you spend your time, you know, is checking in with them constantly and working with them and building relationship with them and helping their business grow and helping that expose their business. What do they need to get exposed to get more business too? And so how can you help each other? You know, it's like, I'm in my little boats, you know, rowing in a circle, they're in their little boat rowing in a circle occasion, we hit, a fish flops back and forth, right? And we go, thanks, that was cool, let's do it again and then we go row again. Instead, let's get in the same boat. Let's row together towards a common goal, but work really strong with them. The rest of you all do all the same little activities, but it's focusing on those people first and foremost. And they're going to be loyal. You want to get to the point where their business cannot succeed without you being in it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the right mindset to take. And too many times it's reversed, like we alluded to earlier where, you know, we're just so desperate for, right, that realtor to like us, you know, it's really not the right mindset. You know, and there's no rule that says that we can't go get our own clients. Why are we waiting to be hand clients from them? I mean, they're horrible again clients. So, you know, that's why we all struggle, right, is they're horrible at getting clients. They only have five deals at a year because they're horrible at getting clients. So why would you ever base your entire practice on relying on someone else who's less than you are at getting business, right? So we're better at it. We have more means to be able to do it. We just need to go out and actually do it. Any quick tips you would have for how to go outside of realtors and do that? Oh, my gosh. I have tons of tips on that. I mean, I, you know, remember, we are in the financial services industry. To me, realtors are in home services, okay? Therein lies the difference, right there. The most they know about, about, you know, calculating anything is their commission check, right? So we are in the financial services industry. If you want to level up your game and notice I call it a practice. I don't call it a business, right? I call it a practice. I'm like a doctor. It's my practice and because it's my expertise and what I'm good, you know, good at. And so if I'm in the financial sector, I want to talk with other people that can speak my language, who can talk about, you know, optimal use of funds, who can talk about effective interest rates, who can talk about return on investment, I are our internal return on investment, who can, who can talk about different, different parts of IRIS and, you know, all the pieces that go along with that. I want to level up my game. I can't level it up, always work with realtors and don't give me wrong. I love some realtors. Okay. I love some. I don't. That's right. I love some. And the ones I love, I love on them and they love on me because we, we, we gel. I do not have to subject myself to the other people that are out there. I will go replace that person with a financial planner. They want to love on me and then I can love on, on their practice as well. And the same, and I'm a divorce, a certified divorce lending specialist as well. So I work with a love divorce attorneys and, and we do that same thing. We're going to love on each other and heck, 53% of people get divorced. A divorce happens every 13 seconds in the United States right now. That's a huge market. They have referrals. Did you find it difficult to break into that? No. No. I actually found it, uh, it came a little too fast. Really? It came in where I, I heard you're a divorce specialist and now they're talking about everything. Should I give him, should I give him that set of books? I'm like, okay, that's not what I do as a divorce specialist was. Oh, you mean like all the, uh, the relationship books? I got, I got everything. I got all the questions, you know, can you help me with this and me? He said this. No. No. No, that's not my realm. Yeah. So it came a little too fast. You can find other resources to be able to refer business, but guess what happens when I refer them out for those types of things, they then in turn refer them back to me. So, um, so I would just say, you know, if you're truly going to be in the business for any extended period of time and you want to have a longstanding career that, that's to, you know, set you up financially, spiritually, emotionally, you have all these friends. You have a rich relationship with, with people not a deeper, but a richer. It goes wide and deep. Um, you know, you've got to level up your game and just not be the typical car salesman. You got to, you got to do something that makes you an expert in this industry. You're a mortgage expert, right? And so act like one, you know, and then, yeah, I love what you're talking about because you mentioned that in the book as well, you know, investing in yourself, go to conference events, right? Get coaching. Listen to tapes, books, it's after podcasts like yours. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's actually such a great point. It frustrates me to, at times, when I run into people who are kind of phoning it in, you know, and I'll ask them, have you read this book? Have you seen that? And they're like, no, never even heard of him or her. Like the dude. Yeah. Where are you living? Yeah. You know, the, the name of our book, my book, and it was so funny because when I, when I started writing it, I'm like, they, you know, my publisher said, what do you want to call it? And I said, I want to call it shut up. Go. That was awesome. And he goes, well, that's a little harsh. So then we changed it to stop talking, take action. And then he's like, I don't know. So in the book, I do say stop talking, take action. Because really what it's about is it's just that all this, this white noise around us about, you know, do this, go to these seminars, but we don't say about, what are you doing after you go to the seminar? Go to the seminar. Okay. I went. But now what? You know, so stop talking about the fact you went there and learned all these great ideas. Let's talk about, you know, carving out time rate after the seminar to implement some of these things. So it truly is an implementation issue because people have so much capacity, so many talents and they're just not putting one step in front of the other. And that's why this book was meant to be, yes, you know what you need to do, but I want to show you how to do it so that you actually do it. That's awesome. That is awesome. That's very inspiring. I love that title too. Okay. Cool. So we are at the end of time. But let's do this. I want people where they can reach out to connect with you more, especially those that are interested in going to the next level with you. You and I talked about this and you were mentioning you have a mortgage mastery lifetime membership, which for those listening, if you're not sure, you've been doing coaching for quite some time now with your company's called Kinetic Spark Consulting. I've seen you present and obviously, you know, you know, your stuff, a billion dollars in closed loans. So you know, we're thinking about getting it done. What do you want to tell us about mortgage mastery lifetime membership? Yeah. You know, what it is is I'm just giving you all my stuff. That's what it is. You're getting all my stuff, all my scripts, all my signature, you know, my email signature. So you don't have to duplicate. I'm trying to reduce the barriers or eliminate the barriers to you starting and getting going. So my my perfect loan process is there, all the emails that I send, all the scripts that I use for that. I've thrown in a couple of classes and CE classes and I will continue to add them. I've got several more that are coming out or that I actually teach. I just need to formulate it and get it prepared to be able to present them up there. But it's I did the syllabus and the time outlines, all you have to do is take it to your local association or whatnot and you become approved to teach CE classes to realtors. One is a math class. In fact, I'm teaching it tomorrow. I have 30 some people coming to my office to teach it tomorrow. You know, so it's a lot of really good, really good content, but you will get it for life. So as I continually, you know, put presentations in, get a new script idea, you know, have a new email signature, you're going to get all of it. I just I'm just giving you my stuff, you know, 30 some years and I just want to accelerate your success by just handing it to you. Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, implementation is the key. And sometimes the challenge with implementation is, you know, if you've got to build the boat or the plane, you know, that you're going to take to your destination. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. That's where people get bogged down. Exactly. It's done. It's done. You know, hey, you can do it. You can type out all your little signatures or you can just copy mine. I don't care. You can reinvent the wheel. You know, right. That would take much time. Right. That would take much time. Yeah. And like I said, it's for life. So anytime I ever do anything, I'm just going to keep throwing stuff in there. So yeah, so that's what they say. And then of course, I have my podcast, Mortgage Lending Mastery. Right. You know, I'm trying to teach people just like you are. We're doing the same thing and, you know, sharing and, you know, just how wonderful you are, you know, giving this information to people as well. And so we do that. And then the coaching, yeah, you just get more information on Kinetic Spark and reach out to me about coaching. Okay. I do consulting for companies too. So if you want your whole team, you know, come in and, and teach for a whole day and straighten everybody out. That's right. Right now we've got to help. In a very, in a very nice way. No, no, no, no. I know how you open up your training sessions. You open it up with, okay, first, first is two words. Shut up. Okay. Right. No, I don't know. You know, of course not. You're incredibly gracious. So I'm going to make sure I put all the links to Kinetic Spark Consulting in the show knows podcast. Obviously, the book is well, which, you know, I'm holding right here in my hands. I've got a highlight. So I have a question for you. Have you taken the sleeve off the book? No. Should I? Yeah. Take it off. All right. But then you can see what it is. Yeah. A little special treat that's in there for taking the sleeve off. And, you know, what I wanted to do is make this book be a workbook. Take the sleeve off. You don't need to have my picture on the front of it and turn it into a workbook, you know, dog gear it, highlight it, do make a mess out of it because it becomes a workbook for yourself. Oh, I see what you're saying. The cover on the front of the same printing. Okay. Got it. Yeah. No, there are very few books have that. That's right. Yeah. It has the nice. It's very, that's, that looks killer too. I love the kind of gold. Yeah. That's really sweet. Good job. I have an effort and money on this publication, so hats off to it. Yeah. So please buy some books. A labor of love. Awesome. We'll listen. I know you're busy. You got stuff to go get after and I just, you know, can't thank you enough for sharing some of your timeless wisdom insights and experience with our listeners and people for listening. Go out there and buy Jen's book, check her out. Get on the podcast. Thank you. Yeah. My pleasure. Thank you so much. I appreciate what you're doing too. It's very appreciated. But in the time that you have to put in to create this, so thank you as well. You betcha. And so we'll say goodbye listeners for you that are tuning in. Thank you for listening to this episode. As always, if you like us, leave us a review, comment, and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss another episode. It's Jefferson for your host, and I appreciate you, and we will 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 We need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. 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