Ep #62: How to Delegate and Grow to $75 Million in Closed Loans

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. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute. It's your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey listeners, Jeff, it's time for a welcome to this week's episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Hey, are you looking for some swag? You have the swagger, would you like some help getting a swag? Get your swag on. I can help you do that. How so? If you haven't heard, we've got some mortgage marketing radio t-shirts. That's right, all ready to go for you. How do you get your own custom soft plush, form fitting, beautiful mortgage marketing radio t-shirt? I'm going to tell you how to do that right now. You like the podcast? Hey, share the love. How do you share the love? You go over to iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and you leave us a rating. Thumbs up, five stars, leave us a comment if you can. We just want to know if you like the podcast, help us get the word out. As a thank you for doing so, I'm going to send you a high quality t-shirt featuring the beautiful mortgage marketing radio logo right on the front so you can wear that proudly wherever you go, wear it out and about, wear it to coffee, wear it to your agent meetings, wear it to bed, wear it to work out, just wear it, wear it proud, get your swag around. How do you do this? Leave us the review. Once you've done so, email me info at mortgagemarketinginstitute.com and just put in the fact that you left a review, right? Put in the subject line, podcast review, and then in the body of the email, leave your contact info, your name, address, telephone number. So we can mail you a t-shirt and we've got two sizes, large XL, just let me know which size you prefer if you've got those muscles you want to be shown, so you can get the smaller size. Anyway, appreciate the love, we'll send you a t-shirt for doing so. All right, so let's transition to this week's special guest, very thrilled to have a dynamo, Tammy Saul, Federal Hill mortgage, Baltimore, Maryland. You know, what I love about the interview with Tammy as you'll soon hear is she has built business from the ground up, starting in the business, she was formerly an attorney and an NBA who transitioned into being a mortgage originator back in 2004, literally by accident, with no intention of staying beyond the three month mark. I know there's a few stories out that we can relate to that we had no intention of being a loan officer and here we are 10, 15 years later, right? So Tammy brings to this podcast some lessons and examples about building a business from the ground up and how to do it the right way, right? How to do it and not be distracted by the bright shiny objects like Facebook and running ads and things like that, and by the way, I'm not trying to say Facebook shouldn't be part of your overall business plan, it should, but do you have your core business setup first, right? The foundational relationship with your realtor is your referral partners. Do you have your past database follow-up system in place? Those should be in place before you venture onto some of the other opportunities that there are out there. So what you'll hear Tammy do is kind of walk through her process, her plan, how she grew her business and get this, right? She's literally started from nothing. Her business was in the basement, her and her husband and it's grown now to be a significant mortgage origination company in Baltimore area. How significant? Well, with a staff of five support people, assistants and processors, herself, she alone closed $54 million in 2016. Oh, but wait, there's more, right? She'll talk on the podcast about how she's going to properly delegate over the last couple of years, which allowed her to grow her business from $54 million in 2016 to $75 million this year in 2017. That's a huge growth, right? That's another $20 million in production. How would you like a $20 million growth in your production in 12 months? Well, listen to the podcast and you get some ideas on exactly how she's done that. Oh, and one last thing, she's got a big, hairy, audacious, not a goal, as she says, a commitment for 2018 and that is to do $100 million, another $25 million. So this is somebody who clearly knows how to grow a business, how to grow her origination, and how to do it in a very focused, efficient way. So hope you like this week's episode. Leave your comments below. If you want the swag t-shirt, leave us a review on iTunes and email me in fillet mortgage marketing institute.com. With that said, let's get into this week's show. Hey, Tammy, welcome to the show. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for having me. It is my pleasure. I am thrilled to have you here and I am excited because I want to share your story with our listeners. You know, part of my passion, if you will, is to bring valuable content through people like you to help L.O.'s minimize the hurdles and perhaps sometimes the timeline it takes to really get to where they want their business. And so when you shared your story with me about kind of, you know, results, your backstory, and all that, I said, you know what? We got to have you on the podcast. So thrilled to have you here. So obviously I do a formal intro, but let everybody know, what's the high level story about Tammy's soul? How did you get into business? Why? Why are you passionate about L.O.'s? So Jeff, I started out. It was very fortunate to have had from the very beginning a tough upbringing. My parents and I, you know, were first-generation immigrants. They brought me and my brother here when we were very young. They had no money, no language skills. They struggled, you know, the story of every first-generation immigrant. And they worked really hard, each had their own businesses. So I grew up from the very beginning with that privilege of being in a culture that constantly reminded me to be grateful, to work hard, to devour opportunity at every corner. And what happened is I applied that determination in my, in drive in school. So after college, I got my MBA in a year. I went to law school. I graduated from law school with semester early. And from there I was hired pretty quickly by one of the biggest law firms in the city. And that's where I was. I was doing what I thought I should be doing, going through the motions. But I really wasn't fulfilled. And what was bigger than that is that I didn't even realize I wasn't fulfilled because after going through the pain of law school passing the bar, I couldn't stop doing anything else. So on the surface, it looked like I was living the dream. I mean, I had a great job. I had this title. I had the two fancy degrees. I had an office and a high-rise building with a plaque on the door. But inside, I just wasn't happy going to work every day. And then what happened quite ironically, given where I am, now you're going to find this funny, is that I was let go from my job. And I was let go for lack of production. That time was probably one of the lowest points in my life. I was absolutely crushed. Here I was out of law school making all this money, working for the big firm. And then the job was gone. And I thought this is it. My life is over. My career is over. That event, though, is what changed my life and why I am where I am now. Because it was my catalyst for jumping into the mortgage business. My husband, then my boyfriend, was a mortgage loan officer, actually a sales manager at a small company. And at the time, I didn't take what he did seriously. But what was clear to me is that there was money to be made in the mortgage business. So I jumped in thinking, I'll do this mortgage thing for just a couple of months until I find another legal job, right? It wasn't planning to stay in. Not even after I was there for a few months. But on the first day at the mortgage company, the owner of the company sat down with me for two hours and said, OK, here is what loan to value is. Here is what debt to income is. This is how you qualify a borrower. And by the way, here is a script for calling people, which was strange for me. Two hours, he sat down with me. That was it. And that was the extent of my formal sales training ever. And then he put me behind a desk, gave me a list of names to call and said, OK, go. And it's funny looking back because that's literally how it happened. And what was funny is that even though he gave me a script, I never felt comfortable following the script. I maybe did it once or twice. But after the first few calls, I just felt like, this isn't really authentic. I'm just going to talk to people like people. I'm just going to be a person to them, be genuine. And even though I was uncomfortable with it in the beginning, it was OK, because for me, again, I had zero, absolutely zero intention of staying in this mortgage thing for more than a couple of months. And what happened, of course, is that I never got out, right? By my second month in the business, I double my income from law. And I started thinking, this could be pretty cool. Most importantly, I started to realize that I really loved what I did. And I felt like the business was made for me. I spoke to everything in my core that I loved. It fulfilled me. And then fast forward a year and a half later, my husband and I found ourselves together driving nearly 100% of the production for the entire branch. Not only that, but we were also working for someone who we didn't like and whose business practices we didn't agree with. So this individual who I won't name had a method of operation. Let's just say that wasn't honest, that was manipulative. It was indirect and so obviously we clashed. But out of that, we decided my husband and I that we would build a company that was essentially the antithesis of that, with the purpose to provide each and every client the utmost level of professional and respect, which is what I was used to in the legal profession. And that shift to this today is really our mission statement. Every borrower is a client. We don't use the word customer in our office. Every person that sent to us is a referral, not a lead. We don't use the word lead in our office. Everything else just falls under that umbrella professionalism, making sure that the client is communicated with during the loan process. That falls under professionalism, making sure that the real estate agent is given status updates at all times. That's professionalism, you know, responsiveness, email, phone calls, text messages responding to those seven days a week, all professionalism, knowing the guidelines so that a loan never falls through. That falls under professionalism, always doing what you say you would do integrity. So, you know, when clients come to us, their experience should be as if they're being handled by a high level doctor or attorney or not one of the bad ones, but the good ones. And that level of advice, that level of care that you expect from a professional. And that's who we are and what we bring. And that's why I like to think that people use us. They may not even realize that's why, but it's an energy and a standard. I'm an, I'm a big believer in the law of attraction and energy in the universe. So that's how we've gotten to where we are, that's how I've gotten from the legal profession to the mortgage profession. And that's how we continue operating to this day. Hmm. Well, great story. Thank you. There's a lot in there. And so I want to ask you a couple of questions. One, I want to roll back for a second. Just out of curiosity. When you were handed the phone and the script and, you know, good luck, call these people. Who did he have you calling? He had me calling people that were dialer leaves. So he had this massive dialer and it would call people and people, and it would, I don't even know what it said, but the people would respond and they would leave a message and some people were leaving a message just because they wanted to call back so that they could yell at you, right? So and I was calling these people and it was helpful for me because here I was an attorney coming out of the legal profession and just doing this work, it was very, it was a very humbling experience. Yes. Did you ever feel like, wait a minute, I've got two degrees, what am I doing? All the time. And it took me years to get over that. It took me years to get over that, but what I realized is that life is too short, Jeff, and you have to do what you love to do and what I do now, I make five, six, seven, eight times more than what I could make practicing law, but what I do now doesn't require any degree on the wall. Does it require any kind of education? Yeah, I know. And we could have a whole separate conversation about the average income for attorneys and some of the issues there. But the thing I wanted to ask you is clearly you love what you're doing and I can tell by the language you use just to kind of describe your process and who you are as a company. But why? What do you love about doing loans? I love giving advice. I love being the expert. I love producing results for people. I love when I get a phone call from a real estate agent saying, this loan fell through at another lender. This person talked to ten other lenders and they couldn't get the loan done. Can you get it done? And I love to get in there and really figure out what went wrong, find a solution that nobody else can and make it happen. That to me is so gratifying and so satisfying because not only does it speak to my core of my high D on the disc we were talking about that of being able to produce a result but also make somebody happy and love making people happy and also impress people. It just speaks to all of that. I really love being the expert. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so along your journey to where you're at now, you've had your own business for what? Ten plus years? Eleven years. Eleven years. Okay, let's roll back a little bit to, you know, you're now with your boyfriend slash husband. You know, you're you decided to break off from this other person, right, and start your own company? Does that would happen to you somewhere else first? No, no, what happened was, well, we didn't do it the right way. My husband broke off from the other company first. He started the company that we own now under a different name while I was still working for this place. This other place found out that we did that, which we shouldn't have and told me to leave. And when I left, I was doing $30,000 in commissions, which we were really counting on because we were starting our business from the ground up and we never got that because he held that back. Shocker. So that's how it happened. Okay. What I'm trying to understand is, you know, your transition from attorney and, you know, you're new and you're stepping in the mortgage business and you were, you know, working at this company that didn't jive with it, you know, you're who you are at your core. How did you navigate that? Because, I mean, you had your boyfriend slash husband, so he had been in the business. And how did you understand where to go and what to do? I mean, you know, you know what I mean, to grow the business. Yeah. You know, a lot of it was just learning by fire and following my gut. So I knew that just like any business, you have to produce income to survive. And so in the beginning, I was just doing what instinctually I knew I needed to do in order to close loans. And so in the very beginning, when we opened our business, the only clients I had were the ones that followed me from my job. And ironically, one of them that followed me became a real estate agent is now one of the best agents who refers me a large amount of business. But that's what it was. And I just developed relationships through the relationships I already had. I was always very determined. I was always very motivated. And I always work very hard. And that's clearly how that you're a hard worker. When did you begin to feel comfortable and, you know, build some certainty? I mean, you're already a confident person. I get that right? You're 95D on the scale. So you probably need less than others. But was there a period where you were kind of like, you know, I don't know what I'm talking about kind of thing? There were moments. I mean, there were moments especially, well, in the beginning, of course, when I was put behind a desk and given a phone, I mean, there was definitely, I didn't know, those were like refi calls. Those were refi calls, right? And the way that I was able to get through that is that I just didn't talk much. I just listened and found out that people liked you more when you didn't talk. That's when you just listened to them. So I just sat behind a desk and I listened and then, and I was very good at sounding confident even when I didn't know what I was doing. So they would ask me a question and I would be quick to respond and say, you know, that's a good question. Let me look that up. The guideline may have changed. And so eventually, you know, now I'm to a point where I never have to look anything. Right. Right. But that's an awesome answer. I love that because I oftentimes hear from L.O.'s, I don't want to do certain things because what do they ask me something? I don't know the answer. Yeah. Oh, I loved when I got to a point where I never had to be afraid of that anymore. I'm just bring it on. Any question you have, I've got the answer. You have that answer because I'm assuming you spent some time studying guidelines. Absolutely. I spend some time studying guidelines, but I'll tell you so much of what I learned was just by losing deals and having things fall through and then learning the hard way. Yeah. Interesting. Losing deals to your own fault? Losing deals to my own fault, yes, because they're a guideline I didn't know. I didn't know that a guideline for a manufacturer at home was different than another one. Remember, I had no formal sales training, so I would learn a lot just by making mistakes. And hopefully, frequently by catching them before the loan closed, before the loan fell apart. Okay. So you transition. You start your own company. Right? Kind of walk me through like the first year or so there. What did that look like? How did you generate business there? Well, the first year, we operated the company at the basement of our home. And within a three months, we hired our first employee. And that person's job, we hired that person as a professor. And that person just processed the few loans a month that we had closing every month. And then what happened was after I hired that first person and that first person was able to take a lot off of me that I was doing before. I realized I had more time to do what I love to do, which was to originate, to counsel, to advise, to help people. And of course, that grew and then we needed a second person. So we hired a second person. And we were operating as three. My husband was not involved in the origination. He was involved in the management and the accounting and the bookkeeping, which he still does. He doesn't originate at all. And after a year, a year and a half in the business, we realized that in order to grow, we need to move our location out of our basement. So we purchased the property. Met property. We lived in the second and third floor and the first floor was the business operation. And that made it possible for us to see clients in the office and people would come in. And sometimes they would ask, you live upstairs, but we tried to hide it. We built the walls, but they didn't know we lived up there. So, and really, that's how we operated from 2007 all the way up to 2015. And then in 2015, we got the location that we have now, which is on a central strip of the city where I now have five assistants and we have room for more and we're now having loan officers join us. Very interesting. That is an American success story, huh? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But I will tell you, Jeff, that the breaking point for me in the growth of my business was really in 2013 and 2014, end of 2013 to the end of 2014 when I engaged in landmark education, which I'm not sure if you've heard of or not, and that, yeah, the landmark education, landmark form, I did the entire year long curriculum, I did that while working and that really changed the game for me because it caused me to face that the way that I was doing things didn't really work as well as they could work and that it didn't work largely because I didn't have the support I needed to operate at my highest level because my highest and best use wasn't realized because I was the assistant in many cases and we don't have enough help. You are the assistant, right? Right. So, in my case, I was for assistance and once I came to terms with that and I learned how to delegate, which is a process that takes years, you know, and the loan officers have this difficulty all across the country, we're so good at what we do, we don't want to relinquish control, which really have to relinquish control. That's the key, you really have to relinquish control. But the other key that I think isn't spoken about enough is relinquishing control to the right people. So, in the beginning, I was relinquishing control a little by little, but I had one ungreat person, but the other people weren't as good. And so, I kept on feeling like I needed to pull back on them, I needed to watch them and micro-manage them and for good reason because they just weren't as good as I needed them to be. And then once I hired the right people and you know you've got the right person, when you can give them something to do and they do it right and you don't have to feel that you have to watch them. And when you have five of those people, you've got it made and that's what I have right now. Yeah. And we're going to talk about it a little bit more. I wanted to go back for a second and ask you, your first, you said you're in your first three months is when you hired after three months, you hired a processor. How many units were you doing at that time, roughly? You know, at that point, I wasn't counting as well as I should now. At that point, I would say I was probably closing anywhere from six to seven units a month. Okay. Good number. Because I think that is, you know, the magic number, the sweet spot, right? It's like, like you said, unless you have an assistant, you are the assistant. And, you know, you and I talked about this before is that that's, I see as the biggest block for LOs is there to their control fakes and they're trying to do it all and a lot of them are high seas, you know, like, like you, where it's like, hey, man, you're a tactician, you know, you want to be involved, but in order to grow, you got to delegate. So any advice, and I don't want to get like too far ahead of ourselves because I know you're a disc fan. I'm a disc fan. I've talked about disc as a matter of fact, I had the president of Wisehire on a podcast earlier and Dr. Marston, who founded the disc, is basically the founder of that company, Wisehire. So I forget what episode that is, but you guys can search that on the blog. But anyway, so that's how big of a proponent of the disc I am is that, you know, I use it in my coaching. I use it to help LOs bring on assistance. How do you identify the right team member to bring on? Do you have them do the disc? Absolutely. Every person that we interview, we have them take the disc. And for people who are processors, which is what I call four of my five people, I call them processors, even though they do a lot more than that, I'm always looking for a C of between 70 and 80. I'm looking for an I under 50. And then the D and the S doesn't matter so much. It's the high C and the low I that we want. And why do you want those? Because the high Cs have that high attention to detail, which is important in a processor. And the low I's are the ones that will fit and work and not talk all day, I found. We don't need chatty people in the office. We need them to work. And I've actually hired a couple people in the past who were high eyes and I regretted it every time. Right. Right. Because they're too much about the party and people, people, people, and they'll just chat you're off. Right. And they talk to me. And I'm busy. I need you to talk to me. I need you to talk to me as much as you need to talk to me to get the job done and then stop. And the high eyes, they just keep going and going and going. Yeah, absolutely. So where do you look for a D then in a processor? Yeah, you know, the D isn't that important to me. I mean, I'm a very high D and of the people I have now, I have one processor who's also a very high D and we don't clash. We do find together. I don't want the D to be too terribly low because I want them to be results driven. So I would say as long as the D is over 35, we're going to get along. Okay. Good. And that's exactly why I asked the question about the D is because to your point, if you get somebody who's too low on the D ranking, they're not going to do well with a sense of urgency and deadlines, which we all have. Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. For those that are listening and wondering how do I learn more about the disc, I'm going to pull up the actual podcast episode. So you can listen to that yourselves, I'll come back to that in a second. But how many units are you doing now on average? This year, we are on target to hit about between two 30 and 240, obviously, you know, some that may close this month may not close till next month. We all know that, right? And about 70 to 75 million in production. Wow. And what, where does the bulk of that business come from? What's your refi purchase business? Interestingly enough, we did have a good amount of refi business this year. But the refi business that we have are people who we did their purchase and then they came back to refinance. So we always call our clients after six months to see if they like to refinance, but definitely the majority of the business, I would say about, I mean, business purchase. So I would say about 70 to 75% is purchased. Okay. Okay. So I pulled up the podcast episode. It's number 55. So for you listeners, you want to check that out. It's mortgagemarketinginstitute.com forward slash 55, and that's where you can find my interview with the president of Wise Higher, W-I-Z-E-H-I-R-E, and I don't give you some info on how to learn more about the disk. But where would you, in terms of, you know, trying to get a sense of how important the disk profile is for you for building a team having the right people? I think it's critical, absolutely critical. The times in my hiring career where I've not followed it because the person just seemed great. I'm going to hire them anyway. It always proved to be a mistake. You've got to have a high C for a processor, it's got to be, if it's under 60, it's just not going to work. It's just not going to work. Lone officers are different, but for processors, for loan officers, for assistance, they have to be high C. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was going to transition to LOs as well because now you're hiring. You don't have any LOs up until recently, but now you're adding, right? We are. So, presently, we actually do have two loan officers that just started with us. They haven't produced anything, but they've just joined the team. Yep. All right. So let's unpack that a little bit. How do you find LOs? Are you looking for experience? Are you, you know, tell me a little bit more about that? So we're not actually actively looking. So we do have an add out on indeed where we let people know that we're now accepting applications for loan officers, word of mouth, and that one advertisement is all we're doing. So, my concern, Jeff, is I don't want to manage a team of people and then take away from my own production, because my highest and best use is in my own production. But if we can bring on loan officers with whom I have a mutual synergy, who have experience and who I can help, and at the same time, they can help our company, that's a relationship that we would talk to. And if you're going to be hiring LOs, do you use the disc profile as a pre-higher tool? I do. And for the LOs, we do look for high eyes and ease. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I love it. Were you preaching to the choir? I'm such a big fan of that. You know, seriously, I don't know if you're aware, but that company wise hire I mentioned actually helps hire for roles, particularly like in your case, probably LOAs more so than LOs. They can help with that. But I'm working with some loan officers right now who use them to hire LOAs and go through this whole process that helps score and qualify people and do job postings on that stuff. So that's not a plug or a commercial, because I don't get anything for it, but just for people listening, for your awareness. Okay. So, aside from the disc profile and so forth, how do you know if you've got a good loan officer, what are some of the obvious signs or traits? You know, it's hard for me to say the loan officer because the bringing on of loan officers is something that's relatively new for me, Jeff, so I can imagine over the next few months a year I'll make mistakes and bring on the wrong people. But in general, what I would look for is really, from a bird's eye view, the same thing that I would look for and anybody that comes on board is self-sufficiency. So if I see somebody coming on and they're constantly needing to lean on me and I'm having to do things for them, I'll do it. I'll do it for you once, but if you don't learn from that constantly having to repeat and do it for you and step then, then that's probably not a sign that you're going to work well with us. Yeah. Okay. You know, and looking at my notes, one thing I don't want to overlook is I think this is pretty significant. If I heard you correctly, you said in 2016, you closed $54 million in production. And in 2017, you're tracking what, $73? $70.75, hopefully $75. Okay. So that's a pretty huge growth. Okay. One year, tell me more, how do you do that? How do you grow your business? $30? Yeah. Well, what's an even bigger growth is from the prior year. So I was tracking only about $25 million. I wasn't even counting. I think it was about $25 million up until about 2012, 2013. And then it was in 2014 and then in 2015, 2016, that's when I saw the jump. And the two things that I did that created that were, like I said, the landmark education is huge, huge. And then just the delegating of responsibility to the right people. I mean, if I could talk to myself 10 years ago, I would have said, Tammy, delegate, hire the right people, delegate, hire the right people, that's the most important thing. And they've got to be both. You can't just delegate. They've got to be the right people. Did you go through some people? Did I go through some people? Yeah. Wrong people. Absolutely. Absolutely. And they're gone now. They're dead. Yep. The hard way. Well, give me an idea of kind of like your daily method of operation, if you will, or a glance out of where you could something, you know, what does it look like for Tammy out there generating business? You know, I don't have a set and stone method of operation, honestly. I do have certain things that I do every week and every day. I'll tell you one thing that I do do consistently. I am the in-house lender for a large real estate brokerage in Virginia. A relationship funny enough that I developed, I created 10 years ago. I could tell you the story about that, but every Tuesday I go there. It's a long drive there and it's a long drive back, so it basically takes out my whole day. And I teach a class every Tuesday to the agents there. And every Tuesday I find a different topic. And it's not me marketing myself to them. They're already using me. It's me supporting them, helping them, giving them ideas on what they can do to grow their business, giving them updates. For example, this last Tuesday we were talking about the conforming loan limit going up as of last week and how they can use that to increase their business next year, things they wouldn't have thought of, things they can post on Facebook. So I share what I'm doing in my business as it impacts their business to help them grow their business. So that's something that I do consistently every Tuesday. But otherwise the way I operate is I'll wake up in the morning, wake up my one and a half year old, take care of him, then go to work, and I deal with what's in front of me. And I have people calling in, every phone call that comes in, my assistant screams to call and then she sends them over to me so I talk to every single person that calls in. If there are issues with files and process that my processing manager can't handle that comes back to me. But generally that's how I work my day. How much do you are of a time blocker are you and being very structured and intentional with your calendar? I don't time block. I show it, but I don't. I knew that was a missed ask. Yeah, but it's okay because maybe it's something that I need to do and that's something that people in the mortgage business, anybody who's successful knows you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, right? And realizing maybe the way you're doing things isn't the best way and figuring out new and improved methodologies. And I think one of the reasons that I don't time lock is because I get calls from, I don't want to miss call from an incoming person. I want to miss call from one of my agents who may need me right away. But I'm not opposed to it. It's just not something that I've done. No, I know. And for you listeners right now, you know, I've done podcasts on time blocking and some of you need it. Right? Tammy, she's a 95D. She's going to get it done no matter what. So not if it was a 95D. How many core realtors would you say you work with right now that send you the bulk of your business? I have a feeling you'd ask me that. I actually have more, I have a large number of realtors who each send me some business throughout the year. As far as if you were, which real estate agent sends me consistently two to three transactions a month, that's what you're asking. I would say probably five or six, but then I have anywhere from 50 to 100 real estate agents who know me and will occasionally send me a client. Yeah. And so that's what makes up the total units. And I've heard that model before. I talked to, I interviewed somebody else on the podcast that did a couple hundred units or not. I can't remember. At least a couple hundred units. And his was the same way. And so the point is, you got to build a model that works for you. But the question I do have is, so now you've got a total of 50 who are part of your sphere of influence. What do you do if anything to stay top of mind with them? Well, I'm not a person who will call them every week to say hello. Again, maybe I should do that, but I don't. I'm just there and available for them. I'll reach out to them on their birthday. I'll reach out to them during holidays. I keep gifts during the holidays. They know I'm always there and they know I'm always responsive for the group of agents that I support in Virginia. Like I said, I'm there every Tuesday. So that's what I do. Are you more proactively engaged with, you know, those five or six realtors? I am because we have transactions always in process. So we're talking on a daily or every other day basis. Okay. And one of the things that you're doing to perhaps try and, I mean, clearly you've grown in your business and you said largely that was due to delegating it, freed you up to do more biz building stuff, but anything you're doing, you know, whether it's marketing to new agents or consumer direct anything on those lines to grow the business. We don't. We don't. And that's one of the things that I think that makes us very different. It's not that we can't or that we don't want to. It's just something that we haven't done because we frankly never needed to. And more importantly, Jeff, I would say is that I've been afraid to do that because I don't want to exceed our capacity. So right now we're at a point where I have, and that's a, I mean, that's a systematic issue. We really need to work on that. But right now I have, like I said, five people, my processing manager, three processors, each of whom are also loan officer assistants, and then the admin. And right now they're all busy and we're in December. So for me to go out there and do marketing to bring in more business, I first need to hire more people. Got it. Yep. Yep. You want to have capacity because that's not a good thing to have it be a bad experience. Well, I'm on your website and I'm looking at you look to be pretty active with online reviews. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So tell me about that. How do you get online reviews from clients? You know, I just at the end of transactions, people are happy because we do a good job. So what we do is we email them saying here are view sites and I'll personally ask each person who closes, will you leave this non-run line review? And some of them do. Some of them don't and the ones you see online are the ones that do. And you know, for me, the reviews are a big deal. Obviously, they help any business, but for me, it kind of comes from how I was raised. My mother always told me, don't talk well about yourself. Do a good job and other people will talk well about you and that's where that comes from for me. But it's as simple as when do you ask them for the review? Is it some some point up front or is it after the transaction closes? It's usually after the transaction, but it's usually after the transaction, but sometimes while while alone is in process, I'll ask them for a review. Sure. And it's a simple email link and they go, are you driving them to Zilla? So what I do is I have a form email and you know, at the end of the transaction, typically how it happens is they'll email me, thank you for doing such a great job. And that's when I'll email them back. Could you please leave those words on one of our review sites and I'll give them the Google site, the Zillow site, the Facebook site and then the Yelp site and let them choose. Let them choose. Okay. That's in the form links in the email. Right. And they'll typically pick one. Don't typically pick one. Right. Okay. No, that's awesome. I mean, you've got 203 reviews. That's pretty awesome. When you consider, right, today's, you know, online reviews are the currency of trust. I love saying that today online because if you get a referral, you know, that's right. You get a referral from an agent. What's the first thing they do before they call you and Google you, right? And see, okay, what's this federal mortgage all about? Let me check into that. Whoa. 200 reviews. Wow. 205 star reviews, by the way. Right. And what you'll find that that's interesting is that the majority of them are over the last year and a half because it wasn't until then that I actually started asking for them. You sound like, to me, based on what I've heard, you have, and this is meant to be a good thing and a compliment, a very traditional business, meaning you're not distracted by the bright shiny objects of how do I run ads on Facebook or whatever. Building business belly to belly, right, relationships in your local market. Exactly. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. One of the things that I've, you know, heard other people alone officers do is they're, you know, calling agents that they don't know asking for business and asking for coffee meetings. And I'm not opposed to that, but it's just something that I've never had to do. And I'll be honest with you, there were a few times that I've done that and it was just a very uncomfortable situation for me because it wasn't, it wasn't the way that I operate. The way that I operate is by building the relationships the traditional way, doing a good job, being noticed, letting other people talk about me. Are there any communication tools or technology things, you know, whether it's a CRM, it's a software, it's a whatever, anything you use in your business that you rely on heavily? What I rely on heavily, I use list reports. I like that. I do. I do. And you had with Paul Carter on the podcast. I did. I heard it. I listened to the whole thing and I was actually at the Todd Duncan sales mastery event. What about you, though? That's how I learned about it. I was there. I was there. I know you were. We could have met there. I know you were. I wish I knew. I would have met you. But I was there and what's funny is that I think I, I think you had Todd Duncan on a podcast, right? Mm-hmm. So that's how I learned about it. I was listening to your cast, heard Todd Duncan and something inside of me said, I've got to go to this thing. But it was only a week and a half out. And I had a one and a half year old at home and I had a business. But guess what? I got to take it. It was very expensive. I got on the plane and I went. Wow. That was great. It was great. It was awesome. So I thank you for that. I got to let Todd know. Yeah. It was incredible. And I actually, you know, got to meet the, you know, some, some, some leader of other people that I'm now in communication with in other parts of the country that do what I do. So I do that. I also have an online, I have an automatic pre-approval software that I purchased, setkey.com. I think it's, I think it's great. What's it called? It's called setkey.com, STEDKEY.com, great, my agents love it, where I can plug in and create a profile for any borrower and it gives the agent an invitation and the agent can go in and generate an automatic pre-approval letter at any point in time based on parameters that I've set. So it's, it's a great, it's a great software. Other than that, believe it or not, I actually don't have a formal CRM. I am in the process of getting one this week, actually. Hmm. Any, any that you want to talk about your value? Well, you know what? I actually, it, for me, the one that I've chosen to use is Jango, Jango, for self-force. Yep. Yep. But I did research into Jango, I did research into whiteboard, I did research into top of mine and I found that as much as I like the whiteboard interface, the Jango is what gave me the ability to store emails in a very efficient manner. Got it. Yep. Yep. I know I'm talking to them a lot being on the podcast as well. It's definitely kind of the 800 pound gorilla as far as the CRM goes in the mortgage space. What's on the horizon for you for 2018 for business plan or activities that you want to start launching? So every December for the last few years, what I do is I write a business plan on how much business I need to do the following year. And by the way, I don't use the word goal, I use the word commitment, that's just my language. I believe goals are easily forgiven, but commitments, you make commitment, you do it. So my commitment for 2018 is to hit 100 million in production. And my goal for 2019, not goal here as using the word goal, my commitment for 2019 is to be the number one originator in the state of Maryland. I love it. That's a big, hairy audacious goal. Yep. Yes, yes, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I need about 150 million to do it. Right. And so I'm curious when you set big commitments like that. If you then begin to work backwards, you know, to build out, or you don't mean like build in the house like, okay, here's the artist's rendition. Now it's like great for the foundation, put the studs, with the, you know, wiring. Do you get that? I'm assuming no, because you're a super high dean, you're just like screw it, I'm going to do it. No, but I'm also high C. So, so I'm a high D, but a slightly lower C. So no, I absolutely do that. So what I do is I say, this is what I'm going to produce. These are my referral sources. This is the amount of, and I have a spreadsheet. This is the amount of business that I can expect from each referral source. I add that up. And if that doesn't get me 200 million, I say, okay, what else do I need to do? What other actions do I need to take to get to that number? Well, I need to have a CRM. I need to do some Facebook posting. I need to maybe call on listing agents that I haven't called on before. I need to time block. I need, so I make a list. And that's what I did last year, and that's what I did the year before. And then how often do you check in? I mean, obviously you're checking in on terms of production. That's pretty simple and easy, right? Like your production report. But in terms of those, initiative you just mentioned, like, you know, time blocking, calling listing agents, whatever, how often can you self monitor? I think I self-monitor every day, big self-monitoring, big self-monitoring. Yeah, yeah. No, and the reason I ask is because, you know, I talked a lot of LLs about business plans and stuff, and people put these, you know, nice giant goals, which is like, you know, yeah, do X amount of volume. Great. How are you going to get there? Or it's like, work with more agents. Cool. What's that actually going to look like day to day, you know? You've got to map it out and you've got to make it specific, and you've got to create lists. And you've got to hold yourself accountable to those lists. And call them commitments, not goals. Hmm. And are you a reader at all? I love to read, but I love to read specific things. I love to read books on self-development. I don't like to read fiction. Is there a particular book that's really made a difference in your life or business that, you know, maybe you recommend others? I would recommend that everybody read Napoleon Hills, think and grow rich. How many times have you read that? I've read the whole thing once, but then parts of it 10 times. Yeah, I see. I knew you read it more one month. I think the parts that I like. Yeah, because everybody who's read that book tends to read it more than once. Mm-hmm. Because there's just so much stuff in there. You got to come back to it. Very good. Very cool. All right. So wow, big, big commitments for 2018. So if we circle back at the end of 2018, you're going to be a hundred million. Absolutely. You know it. You know it. Awesome. Well, look, I know you're busy and you've got loans to fund and stuff to do. So I am so grateful for the time that you've made available here today. It's been an education and I can't thank you enough. So appreciate you being here. Thank you, Jeff. It's a privilege. You bet. And by the way, hey, before I forget, if anybody wanted to connect with you or reach out with you, what would you say the best way to do that? And I can put them in the show notes, your website link, you know? Yep. The website link that they can email me through the website link or they can email me directly. It's my first initial last name at federalhomeworkage.com. Awesome. So listeners, thank you very much for tuning into this week's episode. We appreciate you. And if you like this episode, please do us a favor, take a moment to leave us a ranking on iTunes. It helps us reach more loan officers. So thanks for listening and we will see you again on the next one. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. One more truth in mortgage marketing. You get more free training and resources at mortgagedmarketinginstitute.com. Hey guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchased loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchased business. 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