Key Takeaways from Over 1000 Coaching Sessions

Hello, my friend, and welcome to this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. So glad you tuned in. Today, I interview Coach Michael Regan. Michael is a performance coach, a podcast, co-host, and a self-described man of the people. Michael loves helping high-performance, housing industry professionals simplify everything so that they can experience more harmony between life and work with less stress. Michael is a leadership coach with building champions and has sat in the coaching chair for over 11 years and delivered thousands of coaching sessions with some of today's top mortgage professionals, whom names you would recognize. Michael and I talk about narratives, navigation, role, invention, and how to really craft and hone a focus for closing out this year's strong and building momentum into 2025. We talk about mindset, skill set, and one of the actual tactics that you may want to consider implementing, adding, removing, or starting in your business as we move into what looks like is going to be a promising year for those of us in the mortgage and real estate business. You can follow Michael via the links in the show notes, listen to his podcast, Building Bigger Lives, check out some of the free resources that exist over on buildingchampions.com. And with that, let's get into this week's show. Coach Michael Regan, welcome to the show. Happy to be with you today, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Long time coming. As I had told you just a moment ago, you and I run into each other that a lot of the same events you've been in the coaching chair for quite a number of years. And I'm sure you've got some stories, some wisdom, some patterns that you've seen. But before we get into that, what would you like to share with the listeners about who you are? Well, it is true that these are authentic gray hairs over here. So a little bit of time, I have been doing full-time coaching with Building Champions for about 12 years now. Prior to that, I did a little bit of blended coaching and origination under their certification program for about five before that. So yeah, a long time in this model, I am deeply committed to the way we coach, to what we coach and really passionate about being able to do it in the housing industry. I think the space that you and I both know and love so much. So let's start with this. What type of a person self identifies as being ready for coaching? Like, where is somebody at in their career? Is there, you know what I mean? Some some common denominators there? Well, I think when I look at most of the folks that are sticky, like once we have the opportunity to work together and we can look back a little bit and reflect on what was the formula, they tend to be people that come with some humility. They've got to have some ability to see themselves as coachable. If they don't come with humility, we're not going to spend a lot of time angling for lanes and that's never a great place in which to build coaching report. But that humility has to be tethered to a little bit of confidence as well. I mean, they have to believe in themselves. They have to believe in their ability to grow and do more than they're currently doing. And so the combination of that humility and confidence is different than arrogance and it's different than false humility. It's really that nice blend of the both. And those two are in place, I'd say the third ingredient that always exists if we're successful is they have some vision for what this should look like if they could just get the help they need. They see what's possible, but they just need some help getting over the hump. You know, our companies call building champions. We tend to work with people who either already see themselves in some sort of excellence or are vying to be a champion in whatever they do. So we're not typically coaching people that are figuring it out. We're coaching people who are really trying to fine tune those small things that are going to make a huge difference in their overall performance and the results. Very interesting. So that goes back to success, breed success and those, you know, you said a lot in there actually. You said about vision, humility, you know, coachability and things like that. It's interesting. I think that's when I think of both myself and this journey I've been on of trying to get better at what it is that I do in this chair. And it's interesting. We could flip the script and talk about how, you know, sometimes you get stale, sometimes you get a little bit going through the motions and I'm sure some people listening, they've been around in their career long enough. Do you do you find people that also come to you when they're in that state of like, you know, they're not challenged, they're not inspired or maybe they're also struggling? Yeah, for sure. In fact, Jeff, as you described that, I'd say that's probably the more common lane that we see are these are people that they've experienced some level of success, but maybe they felt some sense of plateau, maybe they felt some sense of, I don't know what my next level up looks like. I don't want to level down, but I don't know what the level up looks like. And so they just continue doing what they are currently doing and maybe hoping that market conditions and longevity equal improvement, but typically they don't, typically they need an additional boost in that formula. And so they'll come to me or come to building champions, hoping that what we've done over the last 28 years in the mortgage lending space and in real estate will translate to helping them figure, figure that out. So let's go back to my earlier comment. If they do have some vision, they, that vision may be really basic. It may not be really well built out. It just may be a clear sense of a goal they have or it may be a clear sense of what's possible. And my job is to help them break down the game film so that they can figure out how to design a new play in order to close that gap. So yeah, sometimes people do need some help with their, with their confidence in, in the dreaming bigger, believing more in themselves. And so yeah, there's a little bit of, a little bit of psychology in there too. No, I agree with that. People definitely need that. And also wrote down this thing, you mentioned something about people waiting for market conditions to change the way they feel. And let's, let's now pivot a little bit as we're heading into Q4 as we're recording this right October 21st. We had some really favorable market conditions for quite a while and then we haven't for quite a quite a long time as well, which is maybe why some people feel they're a little bit at the stage we just described. So let's say, okay, so what would you advise to people going into Q4? You've coached a lot of people, how many years you've been in the chair? 14 years? Well, 12 full time, let's call it 12 full time. How many coaching sessions would you say you've had approximately? Well, we could do some quick extrapolation, Jeff, and let's just say I typically coach on an average year about 30 to 40 individuals. And so you can kind of reverse engineer the math if I've got a couple hours a month with each of them. There's a lot of hours of coaching there over the last 12. Yeah, it is. And, you know, I don't tend to spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. You know, when I'm driving the car, I focus on the windshield, but the facts are the facts. And so let's go to your question. If we look at this through the lens of that reality, what people have just been through. And let's just call it the last four years in particular, the highs of the highs and the hard, maybe some of the hardest years that we've seen in the last, well, in the season that we've been doing this. I think you have to at some level throw out those highs and lows if you're going to get an honest view of what we're going to do going ahead because I don't think your best years or your worst years are going to define you if we're only looking at your last four years as a sample of your work. I think we have to look at, you know, how have you been doing over the last decade? Let's throw out the highs and the lows and let's look at the median for where reality sits in terms of your skill set. And then let's look at those market conditions through the lens of your vision and decide, do you have a unique value proposition to take advantage of that market that you see in the future? Do you have some way to stand out? Do you have some way in which to differentiate your offering? I think if I'm a real estate agent or a mortgage lender, those are critical to me because I feel like in a world full of technology, AI in particular, if I don't have those kind of differentiations, even if I think the market conditions might improve, I may not be able to accelerate as quickly as the market moves. So what comes first, mindset or skill set? Boy, that is probably a deeper question than our audience may realize you just asked because a lot of people want to call that the chicken or the egg, but how about I just nail it? I think mindset has to come first, Jeff. And it's not because I loved the Carol Duac book. It's not because I think that that's what's popular on a lot of the mainstream podcasts. It's because when you really look at what we do, if I can visualize this with you, all of us have some sort of inner gear inside of us. It's the beliefs that we come with, the feelings that are onboarded, maybe some of the thinking that's pretty disposed from some of the upbringing that we've had, but those come with us. And those are regularly driving the decisions that we make, the actions that we'll take, the relationships we'll build, and ultimately the results we're going to get. So if we don't first unpack some time unpacking some of those beliefs, some of those thoughts and some of those feelings, if we're afraid to dig into that, if that's too muddy, the risk is we spend a lot of time trying our darnedest to figure out how to make these course corrections on the outside, and we never really get to the heart of the matter. And I think that's one of the reasons I love coaching with building champions is we've always taken that holistic approach to what we do. We believe that we have to address a leader personally, but they have to really lead themselves well before they can lead their teams well, which means we're going to get into those deeper topics. So I think you're asking the right question, and I hope our audience understands, yeah, if your mindset is in any way not stable, it's going to be really hard to build your skill set, really hard. Yeah, there's a very interesting conversation. We could continue to kind of peel back the layers on this, because I agree with you, and I'm thinking like I'm getting these flashbacks to my own career trajectory and then other things that we try and attempt in or outside of our comfort zone. But I remember one time I had a gentleman on the podcast, and he shared me with this mindset, which you're familiar with, which is be do have versus do be have, right? And a lot of people feel like interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever heard that phrase that way before? Be do have comfort. That comes for us. I'm totally, yeah, I'm totally following it. Yes. Yeah. Which goes back to mindset, which goes, I'm a big fan of identity, and I kind of geek out on that stuff, because I think what you alluded to there is, you know, we talk about mindset. It's identity as well. It's like the baggage. How do we see ourselves? And this goes back to the quote unquote top producer kind of conversation, and you see who's right for coaching. So okay, back to Q4, I was going to go deeper on that, but I wanted to also shift to be a bit tactical here. Okay, so back to Q4, because you've been in the chair for so long, you've actually worked with a lot of very successful mortgage professionals. Is there a playbook that you are seeing, right, repeatedly, or that you're prescribing, as we head into this current Q4 preparing for 2025? All right, so I'm going to answer that on two levels, because I think both are present. Yes, I do have some, let's call it, it's kind of like a musician. Like once you've recorded enough albums at some point, the label wants to put out your greatest hits. Right. And the greatest hits is usually the collection of things that are, you know, the audience knows them. And true, and they want to hear them. And so yes, when it comes to this time of year, there are a few processes that I follow, using tools that I've embraced that I know produce the kind of results that help someone prepare themselves for the year ahead. So without a doubt, that's true. But at the same time, what I really love are using tools that aren't fill in the blank tools. They're designed to be customized from the moment we dig into them. So the questions may be standardized, but where we go with the answers are completely customized. And here's why Jeff, I want to work with people who have that entrepreneurial or that ownership mindset that want to design something that reflects their uniqueness. They don't want to be put in, you know, a box where everybody is thinking the same way and doing the same thing. So I'm really drawn to the idea that some of these resources that I'll tend to use, whether it's a role reflection journal designed to get them to really think deeply about the year they've just had in the role that they play, whether it's a New Year's business plan where before we dig into the numbers, we work out the narratives that are going to be in that plan because I really think the story lines are going to drive what we're actually going to do with those numbers. So let's get those narratives figured out. Of course, at some point, the numbers don't lie. We have to get those worked out. So I'm going to use a tool I like to call a navigator in order to break those things down and project forward over the course of the year, both where leads come from and ultimately where that nets into profitability. But all of these tools are just tools. It's the exchange we get to have once that tool is in play. And I love sitting down in one-on-one sessions or even in workshops with small groups and helping people prepare for the year ahead because once they're prepared, there's a sense of excitement and anticipation for that year rather than, okay, turn the calendar, time to erase the slate and do the same dang thing all over again. I want to give them that feeling of, hey, we're going to keep a few things because they work. But we want to improve on some things. We want to try some new things and we want to let go of some things that maybe have lived out their life cycle. Hmm. Wow. That's good. I wrote down a couple things. Let's start with narratives. Are narratives like a theme for the year or what are they? Yeah. Great. So it will start there for sure. I think every year does have a theme to it without a doubt. And as you and I look at the year of 2025 from where we sit today in late October, we're starting to talk to enough people in our industry to realize, all right, there's a sense of optimism, not too much, but enough to where they feel like, okay, if the dark days are behind us, let's start building again, even if it's conservatively. And so those themes are going to come out as people plan. But I think the narratives go beyond just a buzzword or a short catchphrase that's emotionally engaging. Themes are great. But the narratives are more like, tell me, if you're going to tell me what you're going to do in terms of businesses you're going to acquire, partnerships you're going to make, products you're going to design, social media campaigns you're going to execute on. Narratives are, tell me the story behind that. So as a good journalist, I want to know the who, the what, the when, the why, the where, and the how. I know those are journalism one-on-one questions, but we can really learn a lot about the narratives of these goals or plans that someone starts to unpack. And sometimes we find out there's not a lot of mission or purpose in the vision they have. They're maybe just doing it because they see everybody else doing it. So they feel like, well, I've got to do it too. And I want to work out that narrative early because if that's the false narrative they're working under, I'd rather smoke that out while we're in preseason rather than have them find out somewhere in the first quarter that, oh, shit, I'm not, I'm not making this work. Right. Hey podcast family, are you tired of chasing down real estate agents for referrals, making cold calls and feeling like you're just not getting the results you deserve? What if in just 90 days you could double your agent referrals and finally lock in that consistent monthly income you've been striving for? 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And don't just take my word for it, head on over to mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes and you can read real success stories for mortgage pros just like you. So if you're finally ready to grow your agent referrals without chasing and have fun doing it, check out mortgagemarketing.pro today. So is an error to then kind of the why, the story, right, that was the emotional connection to the right, the focus, the vision for the new year? Right on. And I think if you think of it in that exact phrase the way you said, what's the story? You would get to clearly then the mission and the purpose. The mission is simply, what are we trying to accomplish the purpose answers? Why? Why is it so important? And I'm a big believer that if I can get people to work on those narratives, two things will come from them. One is they'll get a little more excited about committing themselves to what it's going to take to make that happen. And the other is we'll be able to come back to those narratives when the dark days start hitting them in the face in January and February. And they're starting to feel like, oh, this is harder than I thought it was going to be. We're going to remind them of those stories. We're going to remind them of that mission and purpose because those are the things that they said we're driving this. So we want to hold on to those. We don't want this to be just an exercise in numbers by itself. Mm. Okay. So that's what I'm seeking a little bit more clarity on then. So the narrative, right? The purpose, the mission isn't necessarily the more like the next step you have there's the navigation, maybe tactical or whatever, like I want to add 10 referral partners or I want to add 10 million in production. That's not the narrative, right? The narrative is something different, am I correct? Correct. Correct. Because if you're going to tell me those things, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to go back to the why you want to do that. How would that work? Who do you need to partner with to be able to do that? What resources do you need? Let's build out the storyline because if we find out the emperor has no clothes, we better pause before we jump on that commitment and make sure we're ready. Yeah, I see that a lot too, where people just randomly, I'll ask that question a lot, like what's your cue for focus and, you know, no matter what's the primary focus or whatever. And there are, it's these one word thing, focus, execution, you know, no matter what the hell does that mean? But the narrative, like you said, is you've got to back that up. So keep unpacking that if you want. Yeah, in fact, one of the exercises I'll do with a client is I'll do what's called the five Y exercise. And so when someone gives me a clear mission, here's what I want to do, and a clear purpose, here's why that matters to me, I don't stop at that answer. I ask them why that answer is so important to them. And then they tell me why. And I say, okay, but why would you fight for that? And we'll keep going through five Ys until we get to the place where either they can dig that deep or maybe they tap out at the third or fourth and say, Michael, that's it. That's as deep as I've got. That's it. The purpose is not to need to get to five Jeff. The purpose is to push deep because often we know how we're smart people. We know how to give a good, why answer, but I'll give you a great one. People will tell me all the time, you know, oh, if I ask you, you know, why is it so important for you to close 200 loans this year? What? Tell me why that's so important. Well, we want to help families have, you know, financial freedom. Okay, tell me why that's so important to you. Well, because I think that creates a real important, you know, backbone in our culture when people have home ownership and they, and they have that belief that they don't have to rent for. Okay, that's why is that important to you that people have a home ownership and don't have to rent? Well, you know, I grew up in a house where we didn't really own a home. We rented and had to move every year. Oh, okay. So tell me more about that. Why did that happen? Well, see my dad, he was always changing jobs and my mom was doing her best work in two part time jobs and Jeff, we start getting into those stories where it's the real why behind the why and once we get there, we make the emotional connection of, okay, Jeff, that's why you're going to fight to serve 200 families this year because you know how it feels to be one of those families that struggles with feeling like they never get ahead of the financial curve and you understand the math and the potential of home ownership to change the trajectory of the next generation. So you're passionate about it because it matters to you personally. So I want to dig into those wise, otherwise we may miss the whole reason why we're shooting for these big numbers. Yeah. Yeah, and that's, that's pretty powerful. I'm sure it takes some time, depending on the person to get there and unpack that. Does it seems like some of them don't like it at all? Yeah, I know, right? Because they have to face the truth of what they're driven, why they're driven to do whatever it is they're doing. But that's sometimes the reason they don't like face in it, Jeff, is it shallow? Sometimes the answer isn't as profound as the example I was going to ask you next is sometimes it's, yeah, yeah, sometimes it's not. It's just about money, right? Well, and look, I don't want to minimize money. Money is a motivator for all of us at some level. But yeah, if the only thing that matters to you is making more money, then you have to really ask yourself, okay, well, then how do you know when enough is enough? How do you know when, now, now we'll look into that bigger picture of the life plan. So we can look at the accounts that they have outside of work, their, their relationships, their health, their personal finances, their, you know, hobbies, whatever else is in that life plan is, okay, so if we keep saying level up, level up, level up, level up because more money is always better than less money. When is there harmony between that and this personal life you're trying to design? Because if we only focus on making more money, what expense do we have it? I mean, look, I don't want to meet somebody spouse someday and say, hey, thanks a lot for helping my husband when, you know, mortgage lender of the year or five years in a row, we never see him anymore. And the guy's like a walking heart attack. Thanks a lot. Right. That's not a win for me. Well, that's the other cool thing that coaching can really do is help you get clear on what's really important. Help unpack some of those things that are driving you on the good or the bad side and, and then get to like enjoying your business or your life instead of it being a drudgery, you know. Fair enough. And you know, everybody gets to write, this goes back to narratives. Everybody gets to write a different narrative into that plan. And people, you know, want to get married and have kids and, you know, be a little big coach. Other people want to, you know, vacation and by cars and big, big homes. My job isn't to make a value judgment on what's motivating someone. It's just to get really clear on those narratives so that I understand what's motivating them and I understand why they're going to fight for these things. And you know, sometimes I get to play the perspective of the outsider. Because I'm the only one who's ever challenged them on why that's important. And it forces them to pause and say, you know, Jeff, I don't know. I don't know why that's important to me. And they really have to pause there and sometimes it's valuable to go point them toward an author or a podcast or, you know, something where they can maybe glean some outside knowledge to think deeply about why am I fighting so hard for this goal I have before we just go tackle the world? Yeah. Okay. So that was a bit about narrative. That's really cool. And navigation, what is that all about? Well, it comes from a tool that we use in order to break down the numbers because one of the things that I think is critical in you and I've sat in a lot of these production meetings with sales professionals who will, you know, spout out a big goal and a big goal is a starting point for a discussion. But I want to help them break down that big goal in terms of not just all of the lagging measures that are necessary to achieve that goal, but all the way up to the leading measures that are likely to drive those results in those lagging measures. And for our audience, what I mean by the difference of those is, you know, in real estate or in mortgage lending, lagging measures are going to be things like, hey, how many units did you close in the month? How much volume was that? Maybe how much profitability was that? Well, those are lagging results. Lead measures are going to be things like how many hours are you scheduled to spend with partners this month in one-on-one conversations? How many hours have you blocked out for follow-up phone calls with your prospects and your clients? And how many dedicated connections are you committed to make before you say, you know, I've hit the threshold of what it takes to drive those lag numbers that I want. So I'm going to help them break that down in an navigation tool so that they can see what it's going to take and then we're going to time block it to see where does all that fit in your daily routine because you've got to be if you figured out what it's going to take, you have to figure out where it's going to fit. And then at some point that's going to push up against things like eating healthy, working out, spending time with your spouse. And I'm going to push back on that as well and say at what point do these things end up like an NCAA tournament where, hey, the number one seed's going up against another one, number one seed. And only one of them gets to win. Like, we got to think about this before we go into the game or bad results can happen. So I'm going to get them to think through all of that and it's critical that we chunk down those numbers. Okay, I've just had the thought pop in my head, I'll put it in here right now. You've coached thousands of thousands of hours, coached originators across the spectrum of production, right, from the lower tier, whatever you want to call that to, the upper tier, 100 million plus producers, right? Just setting that as a stage, okay. So let's just say we had this, we had this Michael Regan AI and we could take the conversations of from all the coaching conversations he's had throughout the years and we could feed those conversations into the AI and that's the AI to identify the top three or five or whatever it is, right, patterns or consistent resistance or headwinds or challenges like mistakes, like what would be a couple of those main takeaways you've seen, the AI is telling you repeated, right, over and over and over again. If we just wanted the friggin cliff notes, like, how would you begin to answer that? Yeah. First of all, I love that question. We live in a world where we can actually hypothesize AI because we could actually do this and find out. That's great. Jeff, here's what's not surprising, you know, whether you're talking to a guy like Shant, who's the number one producer in the country or whether you're talking to maybe, let's say, well, I don't out my clients, we do operate under confidentiality, let's say I work with some folks that are in that same space. Sure. I think here's what you'd be shocked to find out, you might not be shocked by this, our audience might be, is it's this relentless focus on fundamental execution. And when you really follow their daily routines, it's so freaking boring and repetitive that most people think, no, no, no, that can't be it. It's got, you got to give me something fancy or shiny, no, they are absolutely driven by those fundamentals. I think maybe the person that first woke me up to this was my friend Todd Bookspan, you know, he and I used to think we were competitors down in the Scottsdale market for a while, but we figured out along the way that we had never once competed for one deal. It was a pretty big city. You know, when you got five million people in the metro market, it's pretty silly to think this guy is my competition. So we started meeting on Friday afternoons for these little mini masterminds. And we regularly said, you know, hey, if I can help you and you can help me, we'll both be better and we'll go compete with a couple of the thousand other people. Here's what I learned from Todd way back before, when by noon was even a brand, Todd would have these janky little notebooks full of, hey, these are the calls I'm going to make. These are the conversations I'm aiming to have. These are the handwritten notes I'm going to send. These are, I mean, it was so 101 that you would have thought, yeah, yeah, come on. But what else? And a hundred million dollars later, it wasn't a lot of what else. I think far too often we get attracted by bright shiny objects and we forget the fundamentals. And our everybody on our, in our audience today knows the fundamentals. The fundamentals are things like having a plan for your week before the week starts, having everything you intend to do time blocked, tracking everything you did so that you can match that up against what you said you were going to do. And being accountable to the consistency of what you committed to do back when you wrote those plans, those are fundamentals, Jeff. They're not sexy. They're not fun. Right. But, you know, like a good football team, we block and tackle and we move the ball down field. Yeah. I always think of a lumbarity whenever I hear people talk about the fundamentals. As a matter of fact, on my whiteboard here is written down, be brilliant in the basics. And I think if there's one takeaway, there's one right or down or for anybody listening right now, that's it. It's, you know, I think of some of the coaches I've been to over the years, including a more modern day coach like Alex Hermosi, for example, right, who has kind of come up on the scene as a business thought leader and who's definitely has a good track record to prove it. But that's, again, it always comes back to, it's whenever I've seen people achieving in business. Even athletes, right? I mean, think about the patterns, the practice runs, the drills, like over and over and over. And you get bored. Yeah. But I think the trick is how would you advise somebody to embrace the boredom or as I say, embrace the suck? Like, what do they have to change about their thinking just to realize I'm sorry you want something sexy, but this is it. Yeah. That does happen. And so I try to get people to think differently before I ask them, ask them to act differently. And so I'll lean into thought leaders. So I know you're a big fan of books like Atomic Habits. That might be a place where I get them to read about the mindset of those small things repeated over a period of time in order to get really amazing results. And then we work through the thought press on that process on that before we make a new set of commitments. I want to get them to think differently. I might tell them to tune in to your podcast. I mean, you've got some great guests that come on who talk about what they do. And I might say, hey, just go check out this episode. Just going to unpack this with this guest. And from that, you might come back to me with some questions that we can work out because if I can get them to, as you call it, embrace the suck, I'm more likely to get back to what we started with. Now they're humble. Now they're hungry. Now we're ready to really get to coaching. So sometimes you have to break them down to get there because let's face it. I mean, when you're working with champions, there's a little bit of ego in there. And they come to you and say, yeah, yeah, I'm sure the basics are necessary, but I know what I'm doing. Let's don't spend a lot of time tracking my phone calls this week. Let's spend more time talking about my new social media strategy. Well, okay. How's that going to go in three months when the results aren't there? Hmm. Yeah, interesting. All right, let's riff on that for a second. Have you seen that comma? I assume so, seeing it's, you know, over the last, since I was originating, right? I mean, I didn't have it, but over the last decade, obviously, social media has grown a lot. How do you kind of, or how often do you have to have that conversation with people to go, you know, like, oh, dude, it's just, I'm just going to rock it with video. Like, how do you talk people through that? I never want to be anti social media and I never want to be anti technology. I never want to tell them, I mean, look, we're on video today. I'm never against these things. It's when they come at the absence of the fundamentals that we've got a house of cards. So I just want to remind them, you know, let's, let's use foundation. We're in the housing industry. Let's think about it like a real house. I'm just talking about, let's make sure that what we're going to build with, you know, concrete and Adobe and whatever else we've got, uh, Stucco. What am I saying? I was trying to get your deserts. That's what it is. It's, it's Stucco. We've got to have that concrete foundation. It's got to be there. And so that's all I want to get them back to is I don't want to hold them back for many of their vision of cool things they want to do because that goes back to some of that UVP that I referenced earlier. Maybe some of what they can do on video really does create the separation they need. Maybe some of what they can do on social really does separate them from the crowd. Awesome. Let's just make sure it's not at the expense of the fact that real people need consultations. Real clients need annual client reviews, you know, real prospects need you to work through a total cost analysis or some version of that, uh, to break down their options. And so let's be really committed to those fundamentals. Hmm. Okay. That's awesome advice. Was there a part three, two narratives, navigation and? So when I, when I looked at this, uh, I think back in the, in the prep, I started with role reflection and it's okay that we skipped that one. But I start there typically because I find what most people want to do when they're planning is they just want to jump into, here's where I am and here's the year ahead. And we don't spend a lot of time reviewing the year we just had. We don't spend a lot of time, or that's not a habit people have. So I want to slow their role a little and say, Hey, we're going to plenty of time to do that. But let's start before we get into those narratives and into that navigation. And let's do a quick review of the year. And that's going to include some of the goals they had from a year ago. So we're going to pull out the scorecard and we're going to review it against the goals. And we're going to talk about those storylines. Hey, why did we exceed here? Why did we miss here? What's going on? Are those things? And you heard me reference the kiss filter. I want to look at what are we going to keep doing because there's some evidence that it's helping you accelerate. What are we going to improve upon because clearly what we're doing is it's working at some measurable level, but not an exponential level. What are we going to start doing because it's time to add this in order to take advantage of a market opportunity. And what are we going to stop doing to create some space because that's probably the hardest one. Jeff, most people are excited about the keep improve and start, but they don't like the stop. And I have to give them permission to say, Hey, just because something isn't working, doesn't mean you take it out back and shoot it dead. Maybe you just need to look at those beautiful bookshelves behind you. Maybe you just need to park that on a shelf. You know where it is. You can come back to it later if you need it, but let's don't burn any good fuel on that right now. It's not time. And so I have to help them with that. And so that role reflection is a critical first step. Yeah. Keep improved start. I like that. Role reflection. I got a full page of notes here already. When what would you evaluate? Is there a decision process you go through to terminate an activity or an objective or something that they've been trying to do that you realize just isn't paying off? Like, how do you know when it's time? Well, remember, if you think about what we had said, we're going to move into narratives and numbers. So let's presume in the previous year we had some narratives and numbers. So those are going to be the two filters we're going to use. Let's review the storyline that you told me. Is that how the story unfolded? You know, maybe that's where we decide to eject. You thought it was going to go this way. Your audience didn't agree with you. They didn't want to go that way. So maybe there's a storyline or maybe it is in the numbers. Maybe the idea is, okay, it's not that there wasn't some interest in, you know, I don't pick a, let's pick a strategy so this doesn't say, let's say someone's going to dive into reverse mortgage lending in 2025 and that's that's something they've decided to start. Well, now at the end of the year, we want to review that and say, okay, did your audience connect with all of your messaging to drive enough interest in this? And even if they did at some level, maybe it wasn't enough to where the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze. You put a lot of money and time and team resources into something that didn't multiply. So you know, just like the biblical parable of the seeds, you know, I don't think we're looking for a one to one ratio here. We're looking to a one to many. We need, you know, times three times five times 10. I mean, you know, Grant didn't own the 10X, you know, that existed a long time before him. We want that with our people. So yeah, I think it's going to be both. We're going to look for the filter of, does the storyline allow you to keep investing in this and do the numbers allow you to keep investing in this? And if the answer on either of those is no, isn't it my job as your coach to say, wait a minute, let's, let's pause and really ask ourselves why we want to put double down on this bet that's not paying off. Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Real quick, we're almost at a time. What would you, I tried to think of the, how do I ask this question? So it's one of two, one of two ways, the way I wanted to ask it initially was, what is the, what are the question or questions you wish somebody would ask you on a coaching call that they have not yet asked? Let's try that. Wow. I'm going to go back to your earlier comment after thousands of hours. I feel like, man, people are pretty transparent with me or what do they not ask that they should be. Right. Yeah. That gives you a little more latitude. Here's the deal. We're, we're all capable of this. We want feedback. Like if I said to you, hey, Jeff, after we record today, can I give you some feedback on the podcast? You're not going to say no, thanks. But the truth is, if I give you that feedback, there's a little party that's like, does he really know, I mean, he doesn't really know, he just has a little sliver of information. And I think if I could get clients to say, I'm not critiquing you just for my own pleasure. You know, you and I grew up in an era when being a critical thinker used to be an accolade, being literally like that, we were trained to be critical thinkers. Now if you're critical, it's like you're a bad person. I just want to help someone. If I really care about you, I feel like that's one of my responsibilities as a coach. People don't pay for me to be their buddy. They pay for me to be their coach. So I want to be able to give them that feedback. So I think that's my answer is I need them to have enough openness to say, help me see what I can't see. How do people perceive me when I'm in meetings? How do people perceive me when I'm at these events? How do people perceive me when they are watching my videos or reading my posts? And if they're willing to let me give them some perspective, I don't necessarily need to be right. I just need to give them permission to think through the idea that maybe it looks a little different than they thought and that maybe helps them sharpen it a little bit. That's a very valuable feedback. You can't get that perspective from yourself, you know what I mean? Like unless you watch, even still it's still you, like I'm thinking about watching video of like, you know, you're speaking or whatever or, you know, watching these podcast clips, which of course we've both probably done of our own podcast and then we self critique. However, it is not quite the same as somebody else providing their context about you. That's fantastic. And let me repeat, let me repeat what I said is I don't need to be right. I just need you to get as a client, give me permission to give you that perspective because the perspective of the outsider is perhaps one of the most unique things I get to do as a coach. And if you hold me back from that, if you don't let me do that, by the way, that doesn't usually work, I'll find a way to make sure it happens. But if you don't invite me into that, then I have to force it. And that's not always fun. You know, I'm not, I'm not afraid to pause somebody in the middle of their bravado. But I'd rather them come to me and say, hey, help me out. Why isn't this working? Okay. Well, let's, let's review what you're doing together. Yeah. Well, I would assume that to some degree, people show up for coaching because they are seeking answers and they should be somewhat open to constructive feedback, right? But we have. It depends. Yeah. All right. So for those who've enjoyed this conversation, which I have, and we can keep going for another easily 30 minutes, but I know we're tied on time. So you yourself actually have a podcast as well, right? Building bigger lives. Why don't you tell us about that and where people can find it? Yeah. Well, it's a little tip of the cap, of course, to building champions. We wanted to make sure it, it had some familiarity there, but it is not, in fact, a building champions branded podcast, Catherine Peterson, who is a 10 year client of mine in the Steamboat Springs area. I think you've met Catherine a few times and she and I both had talked about this idea separately. And at some point in a coaching session, I just challenged her and said, look, you're not getting off the ground with your idea. And I've got an idea that looks a little bit different than yours. But what if I said, let's do this together and let's push each other to get this into play. Would you play along? And a way we went. So we launched this about a year ago as a concept. We first started producing episodes in January. We're somewhere in our, you know, 40-something week of production every Wednesday on Apple and Spotify. We drop a new one. And the following week it shows up on YouTube for those that, for some crazy reason, want to see what we look like on video. And probably helps the algorithm a little bit too. And those podcasts are an amazing opportunity for me, Jeff, to be able to do two things that I think you get to do as well. A, I give people permission to get a deeper glimpse into the things that I'm going to tend to care enough about as a topic that we might dig into later in a one-on-one coaching session. So it's a great way to preview some of the things that I'm excited about. The other thing is sometimes I get referred to somebody who's never heard of me. I don't know who that guy is. And that's okay because I do keep a little bit of a low profile and that's all good. So they can go, you know, they'll Google me. They'll find these episodes and they'll be able to get a sense of, okay, either like where he's going or I don't, before we get engaged in a one-on-one coaching arrangement. So I like the idea that they can preview a little bit about who I am. Yeah, that's awesome. So I would suggest people tune in as well because you just got a slight taste and of course Catherine is awesome as well. So it's building bigger lives. We'll put links into that to the show notes, both to the Apple Spotify and the YouTube. And then what do you want to, anything you want to give a mention, a shout out we have to the building champions, right, for people who are curious about coaching, want to learn more? Yeah, I mean, listen, here's, I've got a very personal feeling about this. So I'll go ahead and use your podcast as a platform to say it, you know, Daniel Harkovie launched building champions on a sales mastery stage in 1996. Wow. I mean, we are literally the original coaching company in the mortgage space. And because of my dear friend Bill Hart moving along to another platform that I know you're familiar with. He perhaps was that, you know, really well-known part of our brand because he was out there. He was on stage as he was, he was online and I've decided that I'm not willing to let our brand die in this industry simply because Bill went on to do some cool new things on his own. Daniel Greg Harkovie and I still believe deeply that this is not just the industry we came from, but it's the one we want to be in until somebody's at our funeral. So if you'll just let me say today, I am, I probably haven't been this excited about the housing industry as I've been since I joined building champions. I think we're just about to enter a nice long run of growth in this industry and because technology is finally going to play a positive role in where we're going, I actually believe we're going to deliver a better version of being advisors than we've ever been able to deliver. And frankly, I'm excited about it. So yeah, building champions has has not left the building and I'm going to plan our flag strong and make sure we are present and hoping as many people as we can over the next decade. Well, you should because I agree with you. There are probably, you know, rank at the very, very top of the most impactful coaching organizations within our industry and if coach thousands and thousands and many people that I've had on the podcast here as well before. So that link will be in the show notes as well. Before I let you go, I got to switch up and get personal here for a second. Did I read something correct that you are a songwriter? Is that, is that true? Put me on the spot here, buddy. Let's just say I do enjoy playing music and I do occasionally enjoy writing music with my good friend Frank Boxberger and we had the pleasure of writing a song during the COVID season that we recorded did a demo track of it. It was fun and he got to play it for a guy that he records a lot with and publishes music with. The former lead singer of the band, Kansas, guy named John Elefante and John got to record one of the songs that we wrote and demoed and it's now on one of his latest releases. So yeah, that's kind of fun to get to get one of your songs recorded by one of those people. I grew up listening to Fight Fire with Fire when I was a kid and now that guy is singing one of my songs. Wow, that's crazy, man. That's amazing. So free tickets to Kansas whenever they're in town or what? I'm more likely to get us into a foreigner show, but that's another topic that's probably take us off on a left hand turn, but let's just say I've got a little more of an in road with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers at foreigner. Oh, well, yeah, I'm definitely going to ask you about that next time. Okay, cool. Are there any other things we wanted to share with people before we let you go in terms of links and how to follow you? Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, you referenced our podcast, building champions.com is where you'll find our company website. And I want to encourage people, you know, one of the things that they maybe maybe should know is right in the menu bar are resources and we have free resources available. So don't think that you're not signed up for coaching, therefore you can't get some of these tools that we just referenced in our show today, you know, please feel free to go there and check them out. And if I can be of any help to you, you can certainly get my contact information on the website. You know, you can follow me on LinkedIn. That's where I'm most active in our industry. And I just appreciate being here with you. I've been listening to you all the way back when my one of my clients, Brent Palmer, was a guest on your podcast probably six years ago. And Brent sent me the link and said, Hey, check this out. I'm a guest on a podcast and we both laughed and said, What if anybody listens to podcasts and look at Jeff Zunford, you know, you have not only led the way, I mean, I talk about us in the coaching industry. I think you in mortgage podcasting, you, you've literally blazed the trail. So I appreciate the opportunity to finally close the loop and be on a show with you today. This is great. It's, it's too long coming. I apologize for the delay, but ideal timing and really, once again, I want to stress for people who want to get started on your vision plan. Some of the things we talked about here today, building champions dot com does have lots of free resources like the personal vision guide, focus plan and other things. So go check those out. I mean, what the hell? Start doing the, the self work to prepare the mindset for 2025, Michael. I know you got to go appreciate the time so much, man. Really great to be with you, Jeff. I hope we'll get to return the favor on building bigger lives and I hope everybody in your listening audience continues to listen in because you're doing great work. You've got great guests and it's always good to be with you. Thank you so much. Listeners, Hey, if you like this, you know what to do, share it with somebody. First of all, and then secondly, leave us a review right in the app. Wherever you're listening on this right now, appreciate you tuning in. We'll see on the next one. Bye for now. Okay, that's it for today's episode. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes, your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to co call again, instead building real lasting relationships with top producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching. It's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.