Turning Setbacks into Success [Voice Note]

Hey, my friend Jeff Zimfer. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Mortgage Market Radio podcast. Coming at you with another voice note. Here are Friday, January 24th, getting this out late on the weekend. It was a very busy Friday recording, actually hosting a coaching call, doing a live webinar, a sales call, preparing content and new classes for the members and major classes community. But what's been on my mind this weekend on today's calls is, you know, we just had an honest and frank conversation about the current state of the market. And I wanted to share with you some of the thoughts and frameworks that we had that will hopefully inspire you and perhaps guide you into the coming days and weeks of the beginning of this 2025 season. And so what I'm thinking about is how do we turn setbacks into success? So we're in a bit of a challenging market. We're in what I'm referring to as a transaction recession. Overall volume is down. There's some headwinds right in terms of interest rates and mindset around buyers around activity and engagement and different things like that. And we talk a lot about mindset in our community of mortgage professionals. And I was having a conversation the other day with somebody about the incredible story of, so Chiro Honda, hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly, trying to do my best Japanese there. The founder of Honda. And simultaneously, I've been talking about these three frameworks in a transaction recession, right? What do we do? What do we do when there's going to be some lag time between our activities and the results that show up? And that's usually the case, right? There's there's lagging indicators and activities. So I'm thinking about what I call the three C's that's C as in connection conversions. I'm sorry, connections, conversations and conversions. So I talk about the three C's framework connections, conversations and conversions. And it's a road map, I think, for thriving in tough times. And I want to relate the story of, you know, so Chiro Honda, a man who turned failure into a billion dollar successory. If you're not familiar with the story of Mr. Honda, he faced multiple setbacks. I'm going to give you the short version of the story. But the bottom line is this is that Honda's first factory was destroyed in by bombing during World War II. And he decided to accept the circumstances, the situation. It is what it is, right? And he decided to rebuild his foundation. So what's the lesson? The lesson is, you know, Mr. Honda could have let external forces derail his plans, much like today's market forces, you know, high interest rates, negative narrative that's out there in the marketplace. Or right, you can take action, you can reframe that you can change the meaning of that. And you can actually prepare yourself to succeed and benefit. So if that wasn't enough of a setback for Mr. Honda, setback two came when a devastating earthquake flattened his second factory. So think about this, he builds up a factory, World War II bombing destroys it, he rebuilds, and then a devastating earthquake flattens and destroys his second factory. What's the lesson? Lesson is resilience, persistence. And that's of course the key to survival long term. Keep showing up, keep taking consistent action despite the chaos. The breakthrough came when Mr. Honda had an idea to create motorized bicycles to address post-war transportation needs. So think about that. He adapted and pivoted to the current market conditions was resourceful and solved the problem. And that problem was the transportation needs in a post-war situation that had all the challenges and issues you can imagine post-World War II with all the bombing. So solve real problems for people to create opportunities. Focus on what your clients and your partners need most right now. And our conversations today with my coaching community, my agent classes, there was a lot of discussion around how to help referral partners, real estate agents solve problems, how to show up and be of service to not be of sales. And so you've got to figure out what are the problems that your key agent referral partners are struggling with and what are the problems in mass in general that you can be known for in helping agents solve. Let's bring this back to the three C's. What do we do in these challenging times when there might be some devastation? There might be some headwinds, there might be some right difficulties in the current market. What do we do? Number one, the three C's, connections. Here's what Honda did. He partnered with others and he leveraged relationships to overcome resource gaps. Specifically, what he did was he sent letters to over 18,000 bicycle manufacturers, handwritten personal letters to 18,000 bicycle manufacturers. So here's the situation. The country is on its knees, post-World War II. And Mr. Honda needed investment to produce these new scooters as he called them. These motorized bicycles. And at that time, of course, World War II post investment was almost nonexistent. Again, though, Honda found a way. It may seem incredible, but here's what he did. It's estimated that he wrote an inspiring letter to 18,000 bicycle shop owners to ask for their support to rebuild the country and invest in his new invention. Yes, that's correct. Hand wrote 18,000 personal letters, email, internet, long way off. So when you have a strong enough reason, you'll find a why to make it happen. Here's where it gets interesting. 3,000 bicycle shop owners responded to his letters and formed strategic alliances with Mr. Honda and helped him see how he could increase their bike sales. So basically, what he does, he's reached out to all these bicycle shop owners, right, makes a plea to them to help rebuild the country, right, needs to have an alliance, a collaboration, a partnership, 3,000 bicycle shop owners respond and they help together come together, leverage Honda's idea for motorized bicycle to see how they could increase their bike sales. So it goes without saying, he got more than enough of money he need to build his new scooters. So from these extremely challenging circumstances, Honda was able to become one of the most pioneering companies in the world and it's still the world's largest motorcycle maker. It employs over 200,000 people worldwide and has revenues of over 10 billion a year. How was it made possible? Luck? No. Good situation, good fortune? No. It was made possible through one man's sheer determination in the face of almost unimaginable odds. Can you imagine what he must have gone through, sleeping in his small workshop with no money? He sold his wife's jewelry, right, or how about seeing his factories destroyed two times, even a third time. All in all, his journey to success took 17 years. We don't often hear about the journey. All we do is see the person standing on the pedestal, getting the metal, getting the trophies. But it's so crucial to understand. And why I love this story is because Sochiro Honda was just an ordinary man, but he had a dream and he never, ever, ever gave up. And I want to remember bringing that front and center back to you is what is your dream for this year? What is your vision for 2025? Do you have that clearly mapped out? Have you really made a personal connection to what your vision and plan is for 2025? And are you willing to go the extra mile, to create the connections, to find the partnerships and leverage relationships, to focus on being a problem solver, the network purposefully at events online, on social media, hosting events and classes. The reason why you want to focus on connections is to create conversations. That's what Mr. Honda did. He created conversations with those bicycle shop owners. He created new conversations about transportation needs with this product. Where can you create new conversations where you can help your referral partners, your clients solve problems, whether it's through seller buy downs, it's through some of your unique products, it's through some of the training and coaching and marketing and classes that you might offer to real estate agents. Initiate conversations around these areas by which you can help solve problems and offer solutions that address current challenges. Be willing to team up and be a real partner with your referral partners to help them solve problems. Lastly, final step, conversions. If you make enough connections, if you have enough of the right conversations, you will get the conversions just like Mr. Honda, 3,000 bicycle shop owners out of 18,000 handwritten letters. How many calls do you need to make? How many means do you need to have? How many events do you need to host? Track and follow up relentlessly. Every conversation can lead to a closed deal. You better be using a CRM, a database management system to be able to track conversations and follow up and schedule tasks and reminders for yourself. Leverage obviously, marketing automation, AI for your outreach, whatever it is that you can do. Remember, just like Honda, this is a season of testing. Persistence and creativity will pay off for you. I promise you. Focus on the 3Cs, connections, conversations and conversions. Turn challenges and opportunities. I'd love to hear more about how you're applying the 3Cs. If you're listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there. If you want to follow me on Instagram, go over to Instagram, Jeff Zimper. Let me know that you heard this episode. I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts. And what are the 3Cs that you're focusing on? How are you helping people solve problems? If you want to learn more about how we help agents solve problems by becoming a resource of content, inspiration, and education through my agent classes, click the link in the show notes to go learn more about my agent classes. See the success stories, how our loan officers are helping to drive the 3Cs, connections, conversations and conversions, that's helping them win in the current market. I appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you 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. You're 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.