Getting Clear on Your Mindest for 2021 with Geoff Zimpfer

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Go check it out right now. Visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, welcome listeners. What's up? This is your humble host, Jeff Zimfer. Welcome to this edition of Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Repeatedly, if you've been here before, I appreciate you coming back. If you've not yet left us a review, that's one of the ways we stay relevant and stay top of mind on the podcast, Plats. By the way, podcast Plats, that's short for platforms. See how I'm trying to be cool and hip there, but I'm not. Yeah, so if you haven't yet taken a moment to leave us a review, I'd be forever grateful that you did. And whether you just want to reach out to me directly, as always, go to our private Facebook group, just for podcast listeners, go to Facebook, type in the search, mortgage marketing radio. We've got some cool things planned coming up in the next few weeks and months for you inside the group. So that's how you get closer access to me, to what's going on, to additional content and resources and stuff that you just can't get exclusively on the podcast. All right. So I'm coming to you solo episode. I don't do a lot of these, but I thought that now would be appropriate to do. This because of where we're at this time in the year. It is just about a week before Thanksgiving, a week and a couple of days. I'm not sure if I'm going to have another episode go live during Thanksgiving week. So I wanted to get this in. It's been on my mind lately. I've been thinking that I do need to come to you a little bit more one on one with some content ideas, some deep learnings, both from interviews and other people that I talk to, learnings in the field, because I have a pretty cross section of having a pulse on what's going on across the country with both mortgage and real estate professionals. So today, I wanted to bring you something that's kind of appropriate for what I'm working with a lot of people on right now for end of the year is at this time of the year, it's oftentimes that we begin to look back, look forward, reflect. What can we learn from looking back? I've been talking to a number of loan officers and talking about their plans for the coming year in 2021 and let's face it, this year, 2020 has been a banner year for most, right? All the best year ever, et cetera, et cetera, and of course, a rising tide lifts all both. So many people are benefiting from the market versus your mindset or your marketing. And so as I talked to loan officers across the country, I hear a variety of different things when asked the question, if I'm asking the loan officers this question, do you want this year's income to repeat? You might want to ask yourself that, do you want to, assuming you've made more income this year than you have previously, do you want to repeat that? And your answer, when I ask that of loan officers, their answer is often very telling of variety of things. Some of the answers I hear are, yes, other answers are here are, I don't think it's possible. Those are probably the two most common answers I hear or the other kind of version of that answer is I'm so overwhelmed, right, with capacity and with demand that I don't know that I could actually survive and do it, right? That would be left dead side of the road from either, you know, sheer exhaustion or not having the, you know, just pure overwhelm. Let's put it that way. And let's face it, you know, sometimes the worst thing for a business you can have is success. I mean, there's, you know, hundreds of stories of businesses who skyrocketed to success, whether they were featured, you know, by Oprah or they're on Shark Tank and all of a sudden, their business skyrocket, but it also implodes because they don't have the infrastructure, the systems in place to handle the growth. And I know for many of you, the systems in the infrastructure aren't 100% dependent or controlled by you, let's say, you know, you work for a company, you're assigned a loan officer, you're assigned a processor, an underwriter, etc. You may have a dedicated, well, dedicated one or not, right? However, what I've seen this past year is a lot of loan officers choose to hire if their company can't provide it for them for whatever reason, right? The right amount of quote support. I'm seeing a lot of loan officers who hire their own or outsource, hire their own business development person, hire their own virtual assistant to handle low dollar per hour tasks. So I think it's important at this time of the year, when we hopefully can take some time to be reflective to evaluate our thinking, and let me give you an example of that. So back to the question I asked loan officers, do you want to duplicate this year's income, etc. It doesn't matter what the answer is, I interviewed a loan officer who this year will last time I talked to her, anyways, she was doing 480 units, well over $100 million. She's been originating for 10 years. And she had told me that every year in her business, since she started over 10 years, she has increased her business a minimum of 15% on average every single year. And when I asked her if she plans on growing her business next year, this is after one of the most high volume banner years anyone has ever experienced. Her answer was yes, she does plan on growing. Now, she made a point in saying she doesn't know that she'll grow 50% per se, but maybe more realistically is 10%. But I share that with you because that's mindset. I mean, when most people are telling me I don't think so, I don't think I can do it. The overall volume is going to drop, yes, the Re-5 volume is going to drop, not the purchase volume. And more importantly, your business doesn't grow exclusively because of the market. Your business often grows because of you, because of your mindset. Mindset is everything, because mindset influences your thoughts, your beliefs, and then your actions. So accurate thinking is one of the greatest skills you as an entrepreneurial business owner, salesperson, mortgage professional, accurate thinking, versus opinion thinking, is one of the key traits to develop for successful life. And so with that, I want to lead into a reading from, trying to have some fun here. Where's my studio audience, a reading from? All right, there we go. So I don't know if you've heard of the author, his name is Ryan Holiday, H-O-L-I-D-A-Y. How's that great for a last name? Hey, take a holiday, Ryan. So Ryan Holiday has written a number of books of which I've read one previously, it's called The Obstacle is the Way. He also has ego is the enemy, check that out, and stillness is the key. And then he's got this new book that I just picked up called The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. And what this is, is it's basically a manual of thinking, of philosophy, if you will, from people like Seneca, Epochictus, or how have you say his name, Epochictus, these great Greek thinkers and philosophers, Marcus Aurelius, right? And I actually shared this book in one of the passages of it with my kids the other day. So it dawned on me, I was like, why don't I just take the first meditation, if you will, on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living and Share that with you, in the context of how I've set up this conversation, I think it's incredibly relevant. And by the way, if you're into this kind of thing, I suggest you get this book, or one of his books, because as I said, it's all about accurate thinking, right? And are you making decisions that are informed, right? Yes, I'm a believer in making gut decisions, right? And following, quote, your gut, but thinking accurate in the context of, what do you think is possible for your life? What do you think is controllable? What do you have influence over or not? Kind of like self-awareness. I think that is one of the most important areas for anyone to work on. And so I'm mixing it up here today, sharing it with you. Let me get into it. Control and choice, reading from the book now, control and choice. The chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself, which are externals, not under my control, and which have to do it with the choices I actually control. I'm going to pause there for a moment, I'll let you just kind of marinate in that. That says a lot right there. The chief task in life, I'm going to paraphrase now, is to identify and separate matters, which are externals, not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually can control. So in simple terms, right, what can you control, and what can't you control? So back to the book, where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable external, externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own. Cue the dramatic music. So what is this saying? Let me go on because there's an explanation, if you will, about this particular passage. So back to the book. Again, this comes from, by the way, and this is how I'm going to pronounce his name. Epidictus, I think that's how you pronounce epidictus discourses, right, one of these ancient Greek philosophers. So let me go back to the book. The single most important practice in stoic philosophy is differentiating, but we differentiating between what we can change and what we can't, what we have influence over and what we do not. Let me give you some simple examples right from the book here. A flight is delayed because of weather. No amount of yelling and an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can't make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. I'll continue reading. The recovery community practices something called the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to encourage, to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Attics cannot change the abuse of suffering childhood. They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future through the power they have in the present moment. As Epidictus said, they can control the choices they make right now. The same is true for us today. If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier. We will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle. So that is meditation number one. And that is dated for January 1st. And I'm getting to it early so I can give you a head start. So I can hopefully implant in you this accurate thinking as you look out the new year. And using this past year perhaps as a reflection as to what went well, what didn't go well, where perhaps were you not operating in the realm of separating manners, which are externals not under your control versus what you can actually control. And that my friends is easier said than done because we are often in our business in a reactive mode. Most people are in a reactive mode more often than need be. Most people are in a reactive mode for most of their life. And by the way, I'm not preaching, I'm equally guilty of this. The difference, however, is I'm trying to exercise not just the physical muscles to stay in shape as I get into the 50 plus years. So having a strong physiology and framework and body, one that's healthy and can support you into your future, that's important and relevant. But equally perhaps more important is your mindset and the clarity of thinking. And as I'll say again, the accurateness with which you evaluate a situation and determine, here's the key, determine your response. I go back to one of my original mentors, Jim Rohn, many of you probably know who he is. My next mentor after him that I spent some time working with Tony Robbins actually was trained by Jim Rohn and where he got some of his early original teachings. But Jim Rohn used to have this saying that it's not what happens. It's how you respond that determines your experience of that event. So when a deal goes south, so when your L.O.A. drops the ball, so when you get a denial, when the appraisal comes in short, so when you are working with a toxic referral partner. So when somebody says, no, when somebody says, yes, and then pulls out, et cetera, et cetera, fill in the blank for the external circumstance. Can you change that? In some cases, perhaps you can. In some cases, when it comes to taking a look at your pull-through rates, how many apps did you take, how many credit polls versus loan fundings? That might be a target you could influence and change. And if you want more help with that, we'll go back and listen to my previous episode with Phil Jones, which is magic words that sell. And that was just so if you guys want to look it up, that was episode number 186, magic words that grow your influence and increase sales. There's also a book that I'm suggesting loan officers get and gift to real estate agents. It's called exactly what to say for real estate agents. It's about 13 bucks on Amazon. I'd be gifting that book to my top 5 or 10 real estate agents with a handwritten thank you card or note. And taking some time to proactively acknowledge and appreciate your key referral partners. But I digress. I want to I guess that that be the focus of our conversation as you're going into the new year. Practice some of that critical thinking, some of that accurate thinking. Because I go back to the example of the loan officer who I interviewed who I mentioned a moment ago, 480 units over 100 million and she plans on growing her business this year versus the loan officer who says, I don't think I can do it. I the market's going to go down the volume's going to decrease, etc. Well, you can't control what the market does, can you? You can't control interest rates. You can't control prices, the housing market, right? Buy sales, supply demand, all that. The only thing you can control is what you focus on, the meaning you give it and what you do. And this young lady who said she's going to grow her business in 2021 and do even more. Well, here's the thing, many of you hear that and you immediately think, stress, you think, oh my god, there's no way I could do that. Are you kidding me? I'm already overwhelmed. Well, perhaps this young lady who I refer to has taken control of the things she can control so that she has less stress so that she can handle additional capacity. And so those things are, for example, things like hiring somebody, hiring people, outsourcing, delegating, getting control of your day, your time, your calendar, prioritizing, everything's not urgent, right? Go back to the four quadrants, Stephen Covey, right? The four quadrants of highly effective people. What are they? Let me pull them up right now. Four quadrants. I love this because it makes a lot of sense. They are, there's a few examples of this on the web. So I want to make sure I find the right one, most accurate one here. Okay, so a picture for quadrants on the top, we've got urgent, not urgent, that's quadrant one and quadrant two. And then on the left, the bottom, we've got not important on the top, we've got important. So basically got these four quadrants. One, two, three, four. Quadrant one is urgent and important, right? That means you've got to do it. Quadrant two is not urgent, but important. Those are things you plan for. Quadrant three is urgent, but not important. Those are things you delegate. And quadrant four is not urgent and not important. Those are things you eliminate. And so if you need to pull that up online, just Google, right? Stephen Covey, four quadrants. So you can get a visual of that, but might want to use that as a filter for your business planning for the new year. And where should you spend most of your time, by the way? Where do you think? Answer is quadrant two, not urgent, but important, planning. And you will go back and forth between one and two, right? Because there are some urgent things that come up, right? Urgent and important, which means they need attention. There's a fire. We have something to do, something that must be given immediate attention and so forth, right? But the most highly productive of people, such as this woman I refer to, 480 units, she's going to grow her business in 2021. It takes time, it takes skill development, and it takes awareness to understand that many loan officers and agents that I speak to are spending time in the wrong quadrants. They're spending time in quadrant three and four, urgent, but not important and not urgent and not important, right? So I'm going to refer back to this book occasionally. I'm going to be bringing new just one-off conversations on the podcast with just me. If you guys think this is useful, if you think this has been helpful, let me know. Jump in the podcast group on Facebook, Orange Marketing Radio, search it in Facebook, come on in, you got to answer a few questions, right? To get through, to join, please answer the questions. If you don't answer the questions, I'm not going to let you in. It literally takes you 30 seconds. By the way, that tells me a little bit something about who you might be, if for some reason you are declining to answer the questions about who are you, how long you've been in the business, your company name, etc. The purpose of that is to ensure we've got the right people in this group. It's not for everybody. Believe me, I've had people try to get into this group that have no legitimate reason to ask for being in a mortgage-related podcast Facebook group, okay? Once again, if you guys are into this, Ryan Holiday is the author, the obstacle is the way, is a great book, you might want to check that out, or the Daily Stoic. I'll put links to this in the show notes, and get yourself some critical thinking as you enter the new year and you do your planning. Because it's all about mindset, it's all about identity, and some people, I guess this will be the last point on this, think about that, think about identity, because that's another side of the coin and asking people, do you want to duplicate this year's income next year? And for many people, the income that has been thrown or thrust upon them is uncomfortable. They may not know it yet, they may not think it, they might be enjoying it, oh yeah, I love this extra income, but when the rising tide goes out, they're going to have to do certain activities to sustain that income. And many people have received a wonderful blessing of an increase of income without doing anything different. That's called a bonus, right? That's called a market benefit. So I hope you're thinking through this and looking at your business through both a wide and a narrow lens and being analytical and critical in your thinking. I mean, where do you need to perform surgery? Where do things need to be cut? Where do things need to be propped up and improved? I will say that the three main categories for any successful business to focus on for you, three areas, people process technology. Those are the three areas that I would encourage you to dig in and look at your business, the people you've got on your team, right? Both your existing support operations, front-end loan person, back-end, white, L-O-A, whatever it is, right? To the degree with which you can control who's in those roles, or if you are needing of a person, you can control whether you hire somebody or not and invest in your business, right? Spend money to make money, so to speak, right? So that's people. But the other category of people, though, is your referral partners. Now's the time of year to do a year-end analysis, run some reports on who you might think as your top referral partner might not be. You may enjoy each other, you may work together a lot, you may socialize together. But any good business takes an inventory amount, what is the primary source of their business and their customers, and get very specific. Maybe you think it's Janie over at Remax, but if you look at the transactions you were given over the past year, I've done this exercise with lots of LOs, and it's very surprising to them, or they think it's one realtor and it's not. The other number to look at is what are the total transactions that realtor did on the buy side, right? And what percentage of those are you getting? Other people to look at, of course, maybe your other affiliates, your title, your escrow, your home warranty, are you expanding your sphere of influence, your network? How about your social media sphere of influence? Are you expanding and growing that? So people, process. Okay, by the way, before I get off people, don't forget about past client database, what are you doing to stay in top of mind and touch with them? So back to people, so process. This is another area of opportunity that you can control your process, right? From the moment of first contact with you as a prospective client, from a referral, from a lead source, from wherever, what's your customer experience like? Have you ever audited your own customer experience to see what it's like? Where's the friction? Where's it broken? Do an analysis, do a review, by the way, ask your customers, put out an easy little survey or ask them in a post-close call. Hey, during the process, how did this go? How did my engagement with my team go? Did you get the information you needed? It was an end to timely manner. Look for where it's broken, or not necessarily broken, but where it can be improved. And then everything's a process, right? How about your communication, your conversation, your talk track, your dialogues, things like that, with clients, prospects, referral partners, and your team? And then technology. Where can you leverage technology to streamline, to scale, or gain more efficiencies, but without losing the human touch? So real quick, I'll give you the story. This is directly from my book Disruptor Die, how to survive or thrive the digital real estate shift, which if you've not got the book yet, you can do so. You can get it on Amazon, or you can go to Disruptor Die book, Get Disruptor Die book.com. I've been changing my URLs for this. Get Disruptor, I want to make sure this is live. I've actually had some technical challenges on the back end with my book sites. So for now, just get the book on Amazon. And let me know that you got the book, hit me up on the Facebook group, and I'll give you access to a free companion course that goes with it. Okay. So but within the book, I tell you my personal story about when I moved here to Vegas, and wanted to buy this house about a year ago, and applied at three different lenders for a mortgage. And the wonderful process that I went through was applying online on the online application, connecting my bank accounts, souped nuts, uploading W2s, you name it, right? Spend an hour plus doing that because I needed to make an offer and get a pre approval. Alone behold, this is on a Saturday. Monday comes. I don't hear from anybody. Crickets. Crickets. Do I have a cricket button here? No, I don't, but I've got this. Yeah. So Monday comes. I don't hear from anybody. Okay. Nobody. And I filled out a complete online application, you know, social, everything Monday, nothing Tuesday. I got a call from somebody I've never heard their name before. That's on the so and so's team. Don't know who this person is, but actually, sorry, it wasn't a call. It was an email. My bad. I didn't even get a call. I got an email. Day three. I got the email of the automated email that says, welcome to XYZ company. Here's where at next stage in processing. We're going to need a copy of your W2s, your blah, blah, blah. I'm like, what? Complete epic fail once there it is. There's the fail. Okay. So don't let that be you don't I talk to a loan office the other day who wants to automate everything. Want to automate sending books wants to automate writing hand written thank you cards wants to automate this automate that. Look, I'm all for automation, but when it loses the human touch, right, that's when it fails. And clearly that was an epic fail. That was a breakdown in technology that was had good intentions. But because it wasn't architected or set up properly or effectively it broke and it created damage for the brand. Damage for that person to which there was no coming back from I was already on off to another lender. This makes sense. So you've got to evaluate your systems and your process and your people. Critically look at the things you can control pick one to three things one to three maximum and they can't be major projects. That's why I'm leaning toward really just pick one at a time right one bridge that you decide to go across because if you if you try to create multiple things at the same time you create because every everything you create of you to quote to do requires your attention requires time which means that dilute your effort and your focus from other things that could be working for you. Right now. So it's one thing at a time until that thing is up and self fulfilling or you've delegated it or the management the micromanage has been passed on to somebody else so it doesn't occupy the bulk of your time. If you're solo person and you don't have perhaps people to delegate to you may be the only person that's responsible for implementing that system that process that hiring decision. It is what it is and sometimes as I shared with one of the law officers I coach who's got some difficult situations with his processing as ops understaffed overwhelmed hello can anybody relate. He decided that instead of it instead of continuing to complain that that it was broken here's what he did he took a look at what he could control. And the one thing he could control in that situation was who was going to be processing as files and he chose himself to do that even though it it's not right it's not fair that's what so and so's for that's what their position is well guess what. When you're getting shot at right in the middle of battle you can complain and bitch and moan about how you don't like the terrain and you don't like how right hey there it's not fair. And you can choose to get shot up and blown up in battle or you can just embrace the suck and do what you need to do to survive. And sometimes that's what we got to do we've got to take the baton we've got to take control and you know make it happen until we can reach a place where we can get the right person or process or technology in place. But that's why the takes thinking it takes critical thinking it takes quiet alone time. Like my friend Michael Gerber used to say who's the author of the wildly successful series of books the emath Michael used to say I want you to have a beginner's mind and a blank canvas. As you approach these challenges that you are looking at for the new year. Look at them with an open mind and yes as we opened up with here in today's daily stoic meditation look at them through the lens of what you actually can control and what you can't and. For some of you there's a lot more that you can control that you're just hoping somebody else picks up and takes charge of. But that's not leadership. Leadership sometimes is willingness to do the uncomfortable. Even when it doesn't feel good in this culture and society that seems to only care about if it feels good do it well you know what doesn't always feel good building a successful business. You know what's not always easy saying no to other things. But the rewards can be worth it so. That's my message to you here today prior to Thanksgiving remember it's a month of gratitude so be sure that you take time to be thankful and express your gratitude for those that support you professionally and personally and I too want to take a moment to say thank you. This is the fifth year of the podcast next year is going to be the sixth year of the podcast I mean you know did I see myself doing this five years down the road no no. All I started with was an idea and a desire to help desire to bring truth in mortgage marketing right that's what I call it air quotes bring truth to you. And hopefully if you've stuck with me a while you've listened to me if come back hopefully that tells me that we're doing something right here and I'm always open to your input and suggestions on how we can improve this. And I'm looking for some ways to do that. Lastly is if you are looking to grow your referral partners in a scalable way, a proven and predictable way you want to double your agent referrals in 2021 without cold calling without chasing without begging without paying for leads and doing in a way that agents come to you attract to you and they ask to meet with you. Want you to go to mortgage marketing.pro check out a brief video we put up there which is all about our educational platform that puts you in charge of the agent relationship that puts you in charge of the marketing and brings agents to you on a silver platter every single month. Casting a wide net so that you can sift and sort and get to the agents you really want to work to much more quickly. The name of the game is conversations with agents is 100 different ways to have a conversations we're leveraging an educational platform to cast a wide net to drive a lot of conversations at scale to create value and trust and expedite and accelerate the process of which you reach trust and rapport to earn referrals once again mortgage marketing.pro That is all I have for today on this session I wish you the best of holiday Thanksgiving enjoy it take time to unplug connect with those that matter to you, but also make sure you take time to reflect and look forward and get clear on your thinking for people process technology. Jeff Zimfer appreciate you see on the next one bye for now. 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