EP #56: How to Get Control of Your Day and Get More Done With Todd Bookspan

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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. Thanks for tuning in. So question for you, do you ever feel like you never get enough done in the day? Do you ever feel like you've got too much to do? Do you ever feel like the days taking control of you instead of you taking control of the day? How about walking in to your day with the best intentions, only to be sidetracked by other people's priorities and urgency and interruptions that takes you off track, gets you off focus, down what's urgent rather than essential things. You need to be done to achieve your goals, we've all been there, right? Some of us are there a little too often, you come to the office and you immediately get sidetracked by a loan on fire or a urgent reel to your call. You spend your day reacting, which ends up in, now you're completely off course. The next thing you get to the afternoon where you want to get some a lot of important stuff done and you don't and then by the end of the day, you realize you've never completed your key disciplines, you're missing those really core activities you need to be doing on a consistent basis. Well, if you can relate to that and if you're a normal officer today, I'm shooting a camera. And this episode is just for you. My special guest, Todd Bookspan, Todd Bookspan, has become a mentor of mine from afar for a variety of reasons. Number one, he's got 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and a business leader. For the past 15 years, he's a mortgage originator and he's built one heck of a successful team in the Arizona market, right? He grew a mortgage bank from five to 85 employees in four branches and he took the lead role in developing and designing a coaching program for originators. And following his program, Todd coached his group of law officers for several years helping to expand their personal and team production, leading to being in the top 30 ranked mortgage originators in 2015 and yielding more than 540 closed loans and 113 million and loan volume. That is an impressive resume, people. And furthermore, Todd has recently become an executive coach with building champions, which is one of the premier coaching organizations out there for mortgage professionals. And Todd recently rolled out a fantastic plan, or if you will, for loan officers and for real estate agents. It's called win by me, right? And the concept is winning the day by me. And so in this conversation, Todd Knight unpacked, right, what are some of the roadblocks that most originators and agents face when it comes to getting the things done that they want to get done? Why do too many of us get sidetracked by other people's priorities by having their day explode on them rather than being intentional and being very focused and disciplined with the activities and high priority tasks you need to do during the day? You know, some people refer to this as time blocking, right? Maybe you call it priority blocking. I don't care what you call it, bottom line is, you and I both know we need to be intentional about our day, about our calendar, about our activities, and we need to have structure and a plan, and it needs to be repeated, refined, and mastered over time. So Todd Knight kind of unpacked this whole issue that, you know, as I asked him and I asked many, many other people that, you know, that are, what I would consider successful, highly productive originators, what's the number one thing that keeps them, that blocks them from achieving what they really want to achieve as a high performance person, as a, quote, top producing originator, and more often than not, almost 100% of the time. The answer comes back to effectively managing your priority, and taking control of your day, and being intentional about your tasks and your activities, and setting up a plan in the system, where you get your activities completely, when you build the discipline, right? To get done, what you need to get done, knowing that every day won't be perfect, there'll be times when you do need to manage a crisis, right, or a file or whatever. But having your structure, your plan, your intentionally designed calendar and activities in place, so you make the right decisions about how to take control of your day, instead of your day taking control of you. Start to do that, and you'll see amazing results. So with that said, let's get in to this week's show. Todd, welcome to the show. Super excited to be here, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Super excited to have you, man. I have been following you watching you for some time, and if anybody's not following you, yet Todd Bookspan, they will. By the end of this session, and they'll understand why they need to. So as you know, I kind of do the formal, you know, I already introduced people to who you are ahead of time, but why don't you just give us kind of the personal version of that, you know, who's Todd Bookspan? What's he all about? What's his secret to superhero strength? Well, I don't know if there's any superhero strength to talk about as a secret. Maybe that's what the secret is, there is none, but I appreciate that intro. You know, I've just been an entrepreneur since I was a kid, and you know, kind of stumbled after 10 years in the bike business, and going back to school, they ate my MBA, stumbled into the mortgage business about 16 years ago or so, and just loved the business from the get-go really, really fell in love with it, and started really as a producer, but I built a team early on. Everyone made fun of me. I was part-time as a loan officer while I was getting my MBA at night, and I had a part-time assistant. Everyone else in the office who had been doing it for a long time, I thought it was crazy that I had someone to help me do things, but at that time, you know, we still had to highlight 10 or 3s and mail them to people to sign, and had someone to run my database. I just thought that wasn't the most efficient use of my time, and really over the next 15 years, really built a team, spent some time along the way, you know, in a net branch that I owned with a business partner, spent some time along the way, building an Arizona mark, almost 104 branches, doing the recruiting there, and really always kept focus on my team and growing my team as well, and all the way exited, taking 10 or 3s last year to focus on coaching. My team still last year finished up the year at about 550 units, about $115 million, and so... Wow. So, just to reiterate, there might be a little bit of an audio challenge, but I've heard you say is, you grew the offices out in your market to over 100 offices? That would have been awesome. We grew from four employees in one office to almost 100 employees in four offices. Okay. Got 100 employees for office. Sorry, my bad. But I did hear that the units last year you said was, how much again? For just my team last year, the units were $551, about $115 million. Wow. Wow. So, how long actively originating for you? 15 years, the origination seat. Wow. That's amazing. So, I know now you've transitioned over to be an executive coach for building champions, is that right? Correct. And I can relate to that too, but I want for other listeners, you know, what was the motivation or the desire behind that? That's a great question. And, you know, one of the things I was fortunate enough early on was to fall into coaching. And I say, fall in, because I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I hired building champions as a coach, really when I was in the business for less than two years. And coach Bill Hart was my coach for the first four years. And then I was able to join a group, a smaller group, at that time I was a little over two dozen now. It's about 40 people in a group that they have called Masters Coach, which comes together once a quarter for a couple days and really a high level group of folks. And I really just helped me grow first and foremost in business at the time. That was why I joined it. That was really my focus. But what I realized as I was going through it, as I became a better human being right there, their focus on business and life really was a game changer for me and just relationships at home with my wife and kids as well as outside of there. And so as I was kind of growing as an originator and working on what my vision was, I always knew someday I would be a coach. And then at one point put, why wait on my life plan and just decided to jump in and start coaching earlier. And luckily for me, I've got a great business partner and my wife who runs the team now so that I could step out and follow my passion and help other people grow. That's awesome. That's awesome. And I can definitely relate to that too as well with the coaching thing. I think it's inherent in the DNA. Actually, a lot of us in this business in an interesting way. So Kudos to you for continuing to follow the passion and you're obviously very connected into the day-to-day activities of a loan officer on a regular basis. So it's interesting how you came back, I've known of you for some time, being part of the mortgage cost system and all that stuff and seeing some of the recordings you've done in the past. But then you came on in a big way. All of a sudden one day, Todd shows up with this thing called, Win the Day by Noon. And I'm like, what the heck is that, man? I love the title. So I watch the videos and all that stuff and I order it and I dig in and I finally understand this. And I love what you've done here is because you've taken what, and you know this from coaching, I know this and everybody listening probably understands this at some level that the, like what you say in your webpage, which we're going to put all the links in the show now, it's but it's winbynoon.com. But you've got a quote from Jim Rohn on there, which is either you run the day or the day runs you. And you talk about in the first couple of pages of your winbynoon manual, which we'll unpack here in a second, but I want you to talk about your realization. Tell me about that realization, was it like an epiphany and aha moment? Was it just after seven years of like, my gosh, there's got to be a better way where you realized like, you know, your biggest success was going to come from you controlling your day. So can you share with us a little bit about how you reach that point? Yeah, you know, I've always been sort of a productivity nerd and I've always known that, you know, if I was an intentional about what I was going to do, that it would be, you know, kind of a train wreck from there. I'm super easily distracted. You know, I think like most other people, you know, I was, I want to be a people pleaser. I wanted to help my business partners. I wanted to help my clients and I always wanted to be available. And what I realized was that that oftentimes led to frustration. I would get to the end of the day. And I just really hadn't accomplished my most important task for the day. I might have said, oh, awesome. I got to call these 12 people or I have to do these updates or, you know, do some outbound prospecting for new realtor partners or whatever it was. And I was just so often that I didn't quite get there. And after I got out of that, you know, spent five years focusing on growing branches. And you know, my team was still around and I was still involved day to day in that. But, but I had stepped out of the full time of a regenerator chair. I was doing a little bit of both. And so when I got back into a regeneration when that company got sold, I really made this committed focus that if I was going to do it, it was going to be done differently. And so I ultimately learned to say no, which is really hard for me. I learned to set boundaries for what my day was going to look like. And inadvertently I set up my calendar where nobody could schedule anything for me before 1130. And so I did that so that I could actually make sure that I could every day get the on time done that needs to do working on my business. I could get the proactive lead calls done that I needed to do that I needed to do for my business. And then whatever those other calls that I was going to do each day, whether it was, you know, update calls to my pipeline of loans that were closing, whether it was an update calls to my pipeline of pre-approved borrowers or my real tours. And then really just book any my week with proactive planning on Mondays for what I had going on for the week ahead, just to make sure I call it from the weekend. And then the same thing on Friday, right? Review bards, right? What did I do well this week? What didn't I do well? Are there holes that I had? Who else do I need to make sure that I connect with? And ultimately, I didn't realize I sort of had created this new philosophy until I started coaching. Because I had one my day by noon every day, by being intentional, by setting boundaries, by saying no. And just saying, I'm going to be really pig headed. I'm going to make sure I get this stuff done before I move on to something else. I really was able to do my business in the morning every morning. And then I also realized that I was supporting these big real estate teams. And I had other friends in the business who were also just, they were doing their work in the mornings. And those folks really all had a better business practice. They had a more relaxing business. They weren't all stressed out running around frantic and lo and behold, coin did as win by noon and created the planner. And here we are today. That's awesome. Thank you. So tell us why win the day by noon. What does that mean? Why is that important? I think it's such a great question. And maybe those of you listening can relate. I always woke up with the right intentions. I've wanted to accomplish everything I planned to accomplish that day. But what I found was that so many times I got so busy in my inbox, so busy reacting to phone calls and the text messages as I was talking about before, that if I didn't finish what I started in the morning, even though I said, oh, yeah, I'm going to get back to that at two or at four or whatever time it was, it was just really rare that I actually got back and accomplished that. And so as I was talking to clients who are asking me about my quote unquote success, if you want to call it that, I was realizing that they're all having those same challenges. And another one wake up and say, oh, I'm not going to accomplish what I want to accomplish today. So I'm going to say, I've got great intentions, I'm going to crush it. And then they get distracted, they get interrupted, they get phone calls and texts and mainly sucked into email. I mean, they just don't get it done. And so when I look back and I realized, you know what, I had my calendar blocked to 1130. I couldn't do anything else until I did those things. That was my commitment. And I was super focused on it, you know, I realized I won by noon. And so I do have other people who tell me that they're successful at, you know, working in the afternoon and getting everything done. But that's a few and far between. And so I think you just have to look at yourself and say, hey, is this a philosophy that I can, I can try and my will and adopt it. And I'm telling you that's working for people. So I would give it a shot. Is that help? Yeah, it does. And so let me hit you with a question that I'm sure you hear in coaching and so do I, because I present this concept of time blocking. And as you know, people have various associations to those two words time blocking. And here's what I often hear in coaching calls, right? Yeah, but I got a realtor call or I got to take this loan app. Or whatever, fill in the blank. I hear excuses as to why time blocking doesn't work for me. I can't not be available. You hear that? What do you say? You know, I say, I totally get it, right? I've been there and I felt that way before. So I do understand that, right? I mean, there is this whole ideal that people want us to be available 24 or seven. And my question always is, is, is what happens if I'm, if I'm not, right? What I found was when I went to 45 and went to an hour and then I went to this whole thing where I blocked my home morning. And you know, there was no emergencies, right? There really weren't. What I found was if there truly was an emergency, if there was a loan with a problem or an appraisal issue or whatever that was, somehow get a hold of a team member or my processor. And so, I mean, I don't even know if I can't think of an example of that, but I'm sure that there were. And you know, let's just say it was, you know, a couple times a, you know, I just didn't have that discipline not to answer it. I picked it up and they were just checking in with me on something unimportant. Or the, if I was a client who was calling me similar thing, right? They were just checking in with me on something that was unimportant. And if you're doing update calls every week and you've told your, your clients and your partners want to expect those calls, then yeah, they still may check in every once in a while, but they're typically going to be patient and wait until then. If they know that you are disciplined and blocking your time, they're going to be okay, leaving you a voicemail because they know that you're going to call them right back. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying then for people to make this transition is, you've got to set up the systems and communicate properly to let people know you're trying to, you're making this transition to more of a time blocked calendar. I don't know that you need to, right? There's going to be some critical people you need to say this to, right? I had to tell my wife, probably, probably a good idea because they wanted to talk to me in the mornings. I had to tell my team members, right? This is what I'm doing. And I had to tell them why. If you don't tell people why you're doing it to improve your execution, to improve your business for not just you, for all of them, then they may question it, right? You've got to empower those people around you. So when I've talked to people about this, like in the case of, you know, people having expected a 15 minute return call because that's what you've historically done in the past. Do you advise, though, that people leave, you know, an intelligent voicemail recording, you know, that simply says, you know, hi, this is Todd with ABC Mortgage. And currently I'm, you know, in, you know, block time focused whatever you call it, right? Anything with clients, et cetera, et cetera, I'll return calls between X and Y. I mean, does it make sense to kind of leave, or if you need a meeting assistant about a loan and profile contact, Jenny, my, you know what I'm saying, is that, is that a smart strategy? Yeah, sure. Why not? Right? I mean, it's a good baby step. I did that for a while where I would record a voicemail every day, telling people what my schedule was, but, you know, that was a lot of time. And I'm all about sitting time. And so if you listen to my voicemail during that time, it just said you reach Todd, you know, right? You know, and again, it had that same thing. If you need someone to meet the it to call, or I also forwarded my phone often times to an assistant so that they could answer, you know, answer those calls. I actually set up systems where my main phone number that you called it wasn't my cell phone. So, you know, again, that's probably a subject for a whole other call, but, but I didn't give clients my cell phone number. And so although there was times of the day where my phone forwarded, I mean, I set up, I set up systems to protect me from myself to make sure that I executed. But you know, I think that's a great opportunity if you've got someone that you can forward calls to why not then leave that on your voicemail that they can do it. If you're super brave and you're not worried about who's calling you, you can forward all your calls or do what I did and you can set up a system where you've got a different phone number than then you can actually not always be 24 seven because people don't actually all have your cell phone. That is a shocking suggestion for many listening. I am imagining because I've heard it said before for me, those are the, well, if I'm not available, they're going to go somewhere else. And that's always a possibility, right? I mean, if there's somebody, but, you know, who does business like that is always my question, right? I mean, I think that that is, you know, that's the risk is that someone is doing business that way where it's that hot of a call. What I tended to find was when I was working with agents and sometimes it was newer agents and sometimes it was experienced agents who were like, I need you to talk to this person right now. And then I would drop what I was doing. I would call that person and they'd be like, oh, yeah, I was telling them that I've got some credit challenges. I'm thinking, all right, well, what's the urgency around that? Right? I love helping people with credit challenges, but I could have actually called them tomorrow and I could have gotten their information or probably had a team member call and do that and then set up a credit planner, but it was really rare that it was truly urgent. Again, you just have to look at your business and, you know, maybe again, you need to set up systems around that. And then I would say, does it have to be you? Could you, you know, have a team member do that? But, you know, ultimately, what we think and what reality aren't always connected. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's usually in the person's head. Having a conversation with somebody that says, let's just say this is their core 5 or 10 agents and says, you know, hey, I'm going to be moving to this kind of a plan for my business blocking time. I know it's important to you as well, Mr. and Mrs. Agent, you know, but here's my commitment to you. So if you get my voicemail, right, et cetera, I think in some cases, that makes sense to let those kind of, right, really close partners know. But that's a good answer. All right. So let's, let's, let's talk about this. Let's transition into when the day by noon, this, this wonderfully beautiful planner that I've got here in my, in my hands. And I like the way how you've sketched out some, some examples of what a good day time block looks like. And of course, everybody's going to have their own version of this and you make a critical point of winning the day by noon, which is getting all those, like Brian Tracy used to say, right? Eat that frog first. Absolutely. Yeah. Getting all that critical stuff like I love here, you have a morning routine, right? What is your morning ritual? Is it exercise, meditation, you know, whatever it is? Have that as a way to set the stage for your success. And then you have these activities blocked out in here, like first thing in the morning, clear email and voicemail, 8 a.m., 9 a.m., lead and app follow up, et cetera, et cetera. And you've got all of these like themed blocks throughout the week. So let's say I've come to you for a consultation and I need help time blocking. How would you start with me? You know, if you were one of those people who has no routine and you're just kind of winging it every day, then I would say, try this, right, give it a shot. You can't just try it for a day and go, oh, that was really dumb. I mean, this Todd guy's crazy. No one can do this because it's not true. I've got super successful friends and clients who have been, who have been doing this. And don't make sense to you. That's okay. But try him first and then you can always move the blocks around, right? It's kind of like Legos, right? You can put a red one on top of a white one and a blue one over here and then maybe, you know, you just switch yours around different than mine. Yeah. And I like how you have in the afternoon, like from 130 on, there's a block from like 130 to 230 that says, react. And that that would be the time to react to those, you know, calm fires or whatever, at various degrees or issues that are important, but not urgent because too often people are reacting in the moment when they don't need to. And that's why we lose productivity, right? You're absolutely correct. And that's really is what our business is. We're reacting to our partners and to our clients, you know, day in and doubt. And what I found was is that if you schedule your time to do that and reacting also was proactive meetings with clients, right? And so, you know, getting for me, client would say, awesome, I want to come in and do a consultation. I'd say great. And then they would, you know, say, hey, we do that 10 o'clock on Thursday. And I would just say, you know what? I've already got a commitment then. I didn't have to tell him the commitment was to me in my time block. I just said, I have a commitment. Awesome. Hey, would want to clock work. And, you know, 99 times out of 100, they said, yes. And, you know, I always say that there's going to be exceptions you have to make. But I'll just tell you for me, they were very few and far between especially because I had half a dozen people who could schedule for me and they had to ask my permission to make an exception. But, you know, if it was a big business development opportunity and they only could meet me before noon and we'd already thrown a couple of other options at them, absolutely. We did that, right? If it was a big client or an important client and they could only meet in the mornings, you know, absolutely make an exception for that. There was one day a week where I went to a remax office meet or one day a month where I went to remax office meeting the first Tuesday of every month. And ironically, that was the day that I typically failed to get all my update calls done. I typically failed to do everything else I was supposed to do that day. And so, it was a perfect lesson for me, but it was a commitment I made and I wanted to keep that commitment. But once I gave that to someone else on the team and they had to show up there instead, then all of a sudden I was winning that Tuesday as well. Yeah. That's so funny. I had that experience this week with somebody who's got, you know, a call scheduled to me with me. It probably happened more than once, but, you know, or I get the email, it's like, hey, a client called and asked and said, you know, can they meet today at three? And that's the only time they can meet. I'm like, are you sure it's the only time? Again, they could be really busy. And so I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but in the end, I, you know, I often found that if I reproposed a different time, they would say, oh, yeah, that works. Well, you know what I'm getting? And most people just folded like, oh, my God, a client wants to be with, yes, yes. When were? Exactly. And then they put off something that could be even more important, right? I mean, you know, going to their kids, you know, school, software game or something like that. And so I just think you have to set those, you know, set those boundaries. It was really interesting. I was, I connected with a client, or I'm going to say a client, she's just a, a win by noon, a subscriber, let's just call her that. And I connected with her because I'd gotten a large number of real estate agent orders for the loan officer edition of win by noon last quarter. It was before the new real estate agent edition that just came out without. And I just had called her to find out to think her because I called a couple of realtors and say, how'd you find me? And they'd met her at a conference and they thought it was really cool. And she had said how originally she thought she might be able to double her business this next year, but now she thinks she'll be able to triple her business because of win by noon. And so I called her for feedback. And, you know, she said, I win my day by two. I'm like, all right, well, that's not quite as catchy as win by noon. But I love the fact that she's doing it. She's been in the business for 25 years. And she said for the first time, not every day, but for the first time now most days, she's getting done by two. And then she says she really doesn't know what to do at the end of after two. She could actually go home. She says at two o'clock because she's finally getting everything done. And so, you know, I love the success stories. I love that someone who's been in the business for 25 years, right? Longer than I was in the mortgage business and is willing to implement the changes to try something different to improve their life and improve their business. And that's a good transition. So what do you hope to accomplish then with each of these different additions? You've got a loan officer addition and a real estate addition and tackle whatever one you want first. Well, you know, I just want to help people reach their potential, right? Whatever that potential is, if someone says, hey, I want to be, you know, a $10 million real estate producer or I want to be a $30 million loan officer or $100 million producer as a loan officer, whatever that potential is, you're trying to reach. Let's, let's try to help you get there. The fun thing about it was, and I probably shouldn't have mentioned it before, but it would have been a shameless plug is part of the ways you get your best real estate partners to buy into the fact that you're blocking your time before noon is to share the real estate addition with them and get them, you know, on board with that as well. Because, again, it was just an observation I had with, you know, two big, huge teams. One of them did almost 900 transactions, you know, a couple of years back. And their whole team proactively lead generates every day, nine to noon period. If you're on the team, they're in far west part of Phoenix. If you're on their team, you're going to drive. You live in some hour. You have to be there, button to seat proactively prospecting, you know, for that time frame. And so, you know, my goal is the same with both of them. Ironically, once I created the loan officer addition, because I was a loan officer, and I gave it to friends. I called it the rough draft. The first, first person I talked to, when's the real estate addition coming out? It was on my roadmap. And so we kind of accelerated that and had some great real tours who were kind of enough to test it out and give feedback. But, you know, ultimately, I think it's a great tool for you as a loan officer to introduce to your real estate agents to help them grow their business. And, you know, really, in the end, again, I don't know that everyone's going to adopt it 100% the way that we created it. But if everyone can tell me that they just did a little better each day because of it, then I think it's a big winner for all of us. Okay, cool. So I really see a lot of opportunity for loan officers to, if you know anything about me, I'm a big believer in teaching classes. It's a, you know, leverage activity and adding value to agents. So I see this is a great platform for number one, L.O.'s, right? Apply it yourself, right? Get familiar with it, the content. And then start to offer this as a class, you know, for agents. Do you see that as a viable road? Oh, 100%. I mean, I think you're right. You have to adopt the philosophy yourself. You can't teach something that you're not embracing. So, you know, first off, figure out what version of WinBinune, you know, you can adopt and really hit it out of the park with. And then absolutely, I think it's a great opportunity again, the loan officer Mary I mentioned before. The next time I got a huge group of real tours who ordered it, she runs a mastermind and they all bought the loan officer planner and they were all working off of that last quarter. Now they've all got the real estate agent planner for Q4 and she leads a mastermind with them and they actually all talk through WinBinune together. We've got a PowerPoint that's available. So any loan officer who wants to teach it to real tours, I'm happy to share that with you. We're doing webinars all the time. So if you ever want to jump on one, we do one that's best practices for real estate agents. So you can get on there, watch, learn it alongside of real estate agents who are learning it from me. That's the same PowerPoint that I'll share with you so that you can teach it to them and be the expert yourself. But obviously, if you jump on that webinar, then you can certainly learn how I'm approaching it with them. And then you can swipe and adapt, right? There's nothing that can't be changed in there to adapt to how you believe in what your philosophies are. You say that loan officer has a mastermind with the real estate agents. What form is that? Is that in person? It's an in-person mastermind that she's doing and I haven't got another details on yet. She now are going to be connecting in the next 10 days or so and I'm definitely going to dig in and get more information because I think it'll probably a model that'll work. But I do have other loan officers who've purchased them. We created just for that reason a multipack so that people could buy them in bigger groups and I've got people teaching them in real estate offices. I've been requested to teach it in real estate offices to teams and really just try to figure out what's best to engage and I think a lot of people just do it one-on-one, just sit down with their buddy who's a realtor and teach him or her how to use this to hopefully improve their business because if you can help the realtor improve their business, loan behold, if you're their trusted partner, then guess who's business also just approved. Yeah. And so do you find that most agents are weak in this area of time blocking as well? Well, absolutely. I think that they're oftentimes equally or worse off in this area than we are as loan officers primarily because we still get the benefit of the doubt from clients that we work Monday through Friday. Not all clients think that you certainly have clients who call you at odd times but they kind of still view quote-unquote bankers hours where realtor's unfortunately, I mean they're clients think that they're available 24-7 and so I think for them it's even a bigger challenge, you know, a bigger struggle but they need to do the same things that we need to, they need to be connecting with their database, they need to be connecting with their leads, they need to be connecting with their clients and so these are all the same activities that need to be tracked and so we went through and really talked to the brightest minds in the real estate industry and saw what they were all tracking and came up with the changes to the original wind binding for loan officers to create sort of a custom version for real estate agents that track the most important things in their business. Very cool, very cool. Well, I know I asked you this question, I think when you and I talked before and of course on this podcast I interview a lot of top producers including people like you and one of the things I find consistently is that anybody who's a quote-high achiever but also who's balanced right and where their business doesn't own them and they're not completely reactive and super frazzled and stressed every day, the thing that I find that's consistent through those people that right meet that criteria is the ability to control their day and control their calendar and really manage their activities versus the other way around. And I don't know why it's such a struggle to have people get on that bandwagon, maybe you can shut a little insight on that in the last couple of minutes we have. Yeah, I still think it just comes where what's hard is, right? We're all people pleasers for the most part and we all want to be there and be available and help people and so I love that about all of us, right? I mean, I think that is a general industry. We are people who are here to help and so that's great news for the people that we serve but if we can't be okay with, it's not always, sometimes it has to be a no, never, but you know, if we're okay with saying, no, not at this exact minute, but I can do it in an hour or no, not right now, but I can do it later today. If you can get comfortable with that, then I think you can, you can progress. But I think that for me at least was the biggest challenge and for a lot of people that I talked to is they just really want to be there and make people happy and, and I think you still can. I mean, no one's going to be angry. If you say, gosh, you know what? I can't wait to help you where they get, goes to voicemail and then, but you follow back up and you're there to help them and you serve them at that time. I just think it's that whole idea of, you know, does it really need to be now? And how can you script it better so that you can say, gosh, I'm really sorry. Jeff, I was busy earlier, but I'm so happy to talk to you now. You know, what can I help you with? Right? They're probably going to be happy. They're not going to be angry. I just define that that was the case. Yeah, no, definitely. Okay, cool. So let's do this. Let's spend the last couple of minutes for those listening that want to learn more about what is this wind by noon planner? If you could just, you know, walk us through, how is it intended to be used? Of course, I love talking about that. You know, it's a quarterly planner, right? So quarter four, right? We're recording this as we're heading, wrapping up Q3 of 2017. So Q4 just came out. So every quarter it comes out. Most of the people who've purchased it are using it. They're bought an annual subscription. So they just automatically come out every, every quarter. It's just really designed where you're just being intentional about what your activities. You're going to do to be successful as a loan officer. And so you're just going to set your intentions. It's got a quarter ahead planner. It's got a week ahead planner. So you start macro with kind of the big picture for the quarter. Then you really look at it this week, right? What are my important time blocks? You know, what is it that I'm going to do this week? You know, how many people do I want to reach out to you? How many people do I want to meet with this week? You know, how many leads do I do I intend to get? Do I want to get? Do I need to get because ultimately what happens is as you start tracking. So you're in a basic goal and there's got a page for each day. If you can kind of imagine it's got your calendar for the day. And there it's got my top three activities. It's got what I'm grateful for. Then really just start to track the activities that a loan officer does. Who am I calling? Who am I talking to? Who am I meeting with? And then you're also tracking the results, right? How many leads did I get? How many applications did I get? How many of those applications turned into pre-qualified buyers? And then ultimately, right? Where the money comes in? How many people did I close? And so really start tracking that ultimately. So that over time, you can start determining what your conversion rates are. And learning from your successes and from your failures, right? It has a weekly review in there where you can kind of look at those, those things. But again, what I find is that if you actually know what your numbers are, which is really critical regardless of the business that you're in, is know your numbers because in the end, if you know exactly what activities I need to do today, how many calls do I have to make in order to hit my closing goal at the end of the year? That would be great, right? There's nothing wrong with that. So members of my team who've been doing this for the last few years, they know exactly how many dials they need to make in order to get the number of applications that they need in order to get the number of closings they want. So at the end of the year, they can hit their goals. So really create a planter that will help track that. Also, some personal stuff that we talked about, things like sleep in on time and annual mortgage reviews, things that I think are also extremely important, right? Your morning routine, how did I do? And so I kind of pulled in some stuff that was not necessarily mortgage-related, but life-related that people gave me insight that they would really like to have in the planter. And then, you know, kind of the last thing I would throw out there, some people would go, I don't want to keep my calendar in there. Well, you know, I keep my calendar and I'll look to, I live off of my calendar outlook, but I also actually put it in here so I have a visual of it. And again, that's probably one of the areas where someone says, well, I just only live on my outlook. Calder great. And you can leave that part blank in your book, use it for notes. But ultimately, what I find is, is that when people have embraced the philosophy, start tracking it in here, it's really weird how many people are like, gosh, I never thought I'd go back to paper. Eventually, we will have vision as well. But, you know, the paper piece has kind of, you know, been kind of fun. And so, you know, at the end of the quarter, as people wrap up to it, they'll look at back at their quarter, they'll see where they need improvement, where they want, they'll look at what those total numbers of their business were, what their conversion rates were. And ultimately, in the end, as we get this online community built, we'll be able to compare, if you're a loan officer who works only with real tourism, we'll have a community of people see how those conversion rates look, because that's oftentimes a question I get, what's a good conversion rate? Well, it kind of depends on your business. Do you work with builders, do you work in a real estate office? Do you work with online leads? I mean, those would be all different buckets. And we're going to kind of create this way for people to track it across the country. That'd be kind of fun as well as that gets up probably around the first of the year. Hopefully, that's a good summary of what it does. You've got a copy of it. I mean, what have you seen it do? Well, I mean, I'm just glancing at a page right here, and I'd love the fact that it's really all encompassing. So first of all, I'm a big believer in time blocking and blocking those priority activities. And so you definitely provide a structure for doing that as we had talked about earlier. But then as you get into taking a look at your day, I like the fact that you've got kind of a summary of the day at a glance, right? You've got your time block on the left hand column with your high priority activities by noon. And then you have a nice divider where noon is, right? That's wind by noon, make that clear. And you could even be having a lunch there because I say, hey, we got a lunch schedule with someone, so, right? But what I like too is that it allows you to, at a snapshot, map out your day, like, for instance, on the tops is today's top three. Meet with brandy, right? Meet with someone, so I'm grateful for filling the blanks. So not only are you planning the productive activities of your day, like you've got an activity tracker. How many partner calls did you make? Okay, X marks the spot, right? X, X, X, X. How many lead client calls? How many quality conversations with a space for their names? Who are they? Live meeting spaces here on the page. Today's leads with a name and email referred by and phone number. And then down the bottom of the page, right, is my daily activity goals. How many partner calls do I have as a goal today? How many lead client calls, quality conversations, et cetera, live meetings? Summary of my daily result totals. And then by the, I get to the end of the day, this is what's cool. I get to my wins, right? Did I win on my morning routine? Yeah, check out the box. Did I exercise? Yeah. Was I on time? Today was I proactive circle? Was I proactive or reactive, right, et cetera? And then what are the highs of my day? And it's like a complete, on one single page, right? Day in the life of somebody who's not perfect, but making progress, right? No, I love that. I mean, that's, that's what it is, right? How can I do better today than it yesterday? Yeah, and I love it. And I think the written thing does have some advantages. You know, I'm sure you've heard that whole thing psychologically, right about the, the retention and impact of something right to get down versus looking at a piece of software. But of course, the software is portable. And so that's an advantage there as well. Totally agree. And you know, it's been interesting too, because, you know, I often find now that people are going back and they're, you know, they're able to look at their accomplishments, see who they met with. And, you know, really look and say, you know what, it wasn't a perfect week, but it was a pretty darn good week. I really did accomplish a lot. And, you know, we, we got great feedback on the, on the first edition of this last quarter. And so the, the new edition that just came out adds in a, to do, to call task list. And then a full page of notes for every day. And that was the only other thing where people like, I can't write small enough to fit it all in here. And so, so that was, that was great. And you were listening to gay feedback, really, really appreciate that. And ultimately, you know, it's just a, just a different approach, right? What's, you know, what you're doing isn't working well. Why not try something new? Yeah, speaking of trying something new, before we wrap up, I know you are active involved with our mutual friend, Mr. Dave Savage, and insane productivity, right? So tell people a little bit about that for those you want to have them check you out there as well. Yeah, I love that. Thanks, thanks for talking about it. It's just a work group of people who are trying to become more productive around business. Got a couple of what we call mentors, other people who've been through insane productivity, who happened to also be great mortgage originators, leading great teams. And then we have special guests on there, but really it is a true mastermind. So, you know, today was a perfect example where, you know, we did a recap over the last couple of weeks calls, because we had had pretty some superstar guests on there talking on specific topics. And then we just opened it up to Q&A and had, you know, have people jump in and join us. And so if you're thinking about, you know, listening to all this and saying, it sounds overwhelming, you know, what's a good baby step to take, then maybe jumping in on that, on that webinar would be a good way to learn. And then you can go to Dave's mortgage coach, YouTube channel, and you can see some of the past subjects there. And he's had a really good job of cataloging those, but we would love to have any of your listeners join us there as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's youtube.com, forward slash mortgage coach, or you can just go to YouTube and search mortgage coach and that channel will come up. And definitely one of the places I go to very frequently. And by the way, you said those insane productivity calls are every Friday, right? Every Friday, 9 a.m. Pacific. Okay, cool. And I noticed you've also gotten started with video lately, huh? And so I applaud you for sharing the blooper reel. That was awesome. I really wanted to know more about peanut, the diaper wearing Chihuahua. Yeah, you know, that was awesome. And that was for Darren Harvey's daily, Darren. Yeah, you won that. You know, I did win it. Thanks for your vote. If you voted for me, I was, you know, Darren's a friend and challenged me to put in a video in my marketing guy. I didn't intend to put in my bloopers. You know, you all want people to think you do a perfect job. But nope, there's lots of lots of bloopers. In fact, I had to have him cut it down. It was so long. But yes, I could have a Chihuahua who sadly had to wear diapers. That's super embarrassing for him. And I called him a her on there, which was even more embarrassing. So my daughter totally made fun of me for that too. No, just, you know, what I'm applauding here for you is the willingness to break out of your comfort zone. And so video, is that something new for you to integrate into your business? You know, ironically, when I was a loan officer years and years ago, like early on in video, I was an early adopter. Coach Bill Hart, who was my coach, really pushed me to do video. And I did a video called Two Minutes With Todd. And then everyone told me that it would, that people really liked it and watched it because it wasn't very good. And I was kind of laugh when people said that, but they're like, no, no, it's not that it's not good. It's just that it's you and you're wrong. If you make a mistake, you don't rewind and record. And I didn't have a fancy introduction. I didn't have a fancy, you know, end to it. And so I just tell people, you know, we all look kind of funny on that, right? You know, I realized now I got wrinkles and I realized, you know, one of my eyes opens more than the other one. And just thought, you know, it doesn't really matter. But what I did find when I went to video was that people who would not read an email, I said them would watch it. And so I just did a video and I did a recap of it down below. And certainly would be something I would encourage someone to look to try. If they haven't done it because ultimately what it did was a established trust faster with anyone who saw it because they already felt like the new who I was. Right. Awesome. Yeah. So, so good. Cool. Well, thank you very much for sharing your time. And for those listeners, like I said, we're going to put links in the show notes. The website is winbynoone.com. Any other place you want to give out for them to connect with you? I mean, that's probably a great way to do it. You know, my emails just taught at winbynoone.com. And sadly, since I'm the only person at winbynoone, that my marketing guy, if you call the winbynoone phone number, even if you push zero, one or two for your extension, they all do ring to me. And you may get my voice mail because I am on the phone or I am time blocking in the morning. But certainly happy to connect with any of you who think that this is an opportunity for you to grow. And if you think that this is stupid and just want to challenge me out of it, I'd love to hear from you fact just as much if not more. But ultimately, I'm here to help people reach their potential. So I think that I can do to add value to you. Would love to be able to do that. Awesome. And of course, I always encourage my listeners to take advantage of the winbynoone.com. Take advantage of time blocking. Yes, it's going to be a process. It's growing and building a muscle, but it's going to be worth it because you're going to get control of your day and get more done and ultimately reach your goals. So once again, Todd, thanks for being here. I appreciate it very much. And for you listeners, as always, I appreciate you. If you haven't yet subscribed, please do so. iTunes, Stitcher, if you like this episode, leave us a comment. And we'll look forward to seeing 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 if 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. Our Mortgage Marketing Pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. 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