Why Most LOs Struggle in 2025—and the Few Strategies That Are Crushing It

Hey, you've ever had one of those months where every deal feels like a battle, you know, from securing the client to keeping the loan from falling apart and closing. Well, that's the reality for many loan officers in 2025. But what if you could turn this market from a daily grind into your biggest growth opportunity yet? You're listening to the Borgif Market Reader podcast, the place where we help you effectively and confidently grow your business without chasing, cold calling, or using outdated tactics. My name is Jeff Zimpert, and I'm your host. Today on the show, we're asking how do you scale and grow a top performing team of originators in one of the most challenging markets in recent memory? To help us unpack that, I'm joined by Natalie Overtur, division leader at CMG Financial and a true force in shaping culture, systems, and scalable success for loan officers. In this episode, you're going to discover why hard is your defining word of 2025 and how the best are adapting and thriving. We're also talking about what every LO must know about products and branding to stay competitive and the specific activities and strategies that are driving real production right now for open houses, to build on partnerships, events, and consistent, authentic social media. And we'll also dig into something that might shift your mindset, which is why the one loan a month producer is on the brink. And what today's new baseline for survival really is. So if you're ready to stop surviving and start gaining ground and thriving in this market, stay tuned for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. Natalie Overtur, welcome to the show. Hi Jeff, I'm excited to be here today. I wanted to bring your perspective to the conversation here today because here we are in May, gosh, 27th already, almost the halfway point of 2025 here, right? And so you are a leader, you're overseeing a region, a highly productive one of the top regions, you know, for your company. And I wanted to get your perspective on what is the vibe? So we're talking to loan officers across the country at all different levels, right? And experience level. Is there a theme or a word that you see kind of recurring for your team from a leadership perspective that you seem to always have? It's coming up that you have to deal with. Yeah, I would say the word is hard. Like it's the word of the year of 2025, hard loans, hard market, just hard. It's hard. And I feel like part of my job here in a leadership role is to make sure that my owner and exact leadership understands the complexity and the difficulties of this market. Like even when you get a deal in the door and you win the deal, it's keeping the deal. Like we're having more deals swiped at closing for price or instruction didn't go well or just people getting spooked and deciding to bail on a transaction and probably anything I've ever seen before. And so it support from your company, tools, resources, pricing, innovation, all of it matters today because you got to have all the tools in your arsenal to make it work. How big is the division that you lead? How many? What's the head count? I have it about 280 loan officers today in my division. I'm actually the largest division at CMG today. We last month we closed. I don't know. We're going to land for May, but April, we were about 438 million in close volume for my division. So it's a fairly large division. What are you seeing for like average units? I know it can skew, but I just looked at this interestingly enough because it is a really important metric right now as loans close per loan officer. There is a divide happening to where you're seeing the top when I would say probably 60% of LOs capturing more business in the bottom 30 to 40 losing transactions that I think will force out, continue to force out that bottom rung of originators if they don't step it up. But we're right about four, right about 4.3 loans close per loan officer, which is a really good metric in our industry. It's probably in the top one or two compared to the other IMBs nationally. Yeah, I would say so. I saw there was a post, I think I linked in recently about that like average transaction count. And there was a conversation around that was, what do you think the average unit production should be to keep somebody on? No, I don't want to put you on the spot here. It's two. You need to close two loans per month. And what I would say, maybe depending on your loan amount, it's one to two. Your average loan amount. I mean, I have in my division, I have Idaho small markets to LA, which is more metro, higher loan amounts. So LA loan officer can do one loan a month and survive. And my Idaho guy is probably doing two loans a month. But really, it's for the health of the company, it's for the health of the originator, like you can't survive. You're not in a career as a loan officer. If you're not close on a deal a month, right, you don't know how to work in the systems, you're not actively marketing, you're not a part of the community. At least that's not our model. What I would say, there's probably a place you can go where you might do a couple of deals a year, but I don't think that serves the loan officer or our profession, honestly. Yeah, I mean, I know, I know plenty of my old friends in Newport Beach, California, were, you know, where I now live here in Vegas, so the loan amounts are different. But yeah, I mean, you know, if you're doing a million to a million dollars, but as you said, it's like, is that a real business, you know, it is probably not, probably not. And I have, I'm having less of those conversations. We were having more of those when we came out of the 21 market, right, where, you know, volume just took a nose dive. And I mean, we've lost a lot of, I don't know what the number is now. I mean, over 100,000 originators have exited the business over the last two years. And so I feel like there's a lot less of those people here, at least inside of our organization. Well, that speaks a lot to your culture, who you attract, and who you keep also. I'm in a comment a moment ago when I asked you that question about average transactions, and you kind of alluded to something about another segment of the population of loan officers rolling out. And if they're not hitting a certain threshold of production, they're losing whatever the terms is you said. But what for the people who aren't hitting those numbers or, you know, the four per month, like I think you said something about like, they're not being able to convert. What's, what do you, let's go to a little bit deeper? Why do you think, because you see how many, you know, how many people are in the pipeline. I don't know if you're looking at rate locks to convergence or how you're doing it. Okay. And then you're seeing how many are losing, and by price, let's say, I think it's what you said, like losing on a quarter or an eighth or something like that. Well, yeah, I mean, part of it is for when we're get, you know, if the market moves, you know, down people trans sweat, you know, swipe a deal out of your pipeline at the last minute, we're seeing more of those kind of things happen where a loan officer lost the deal, the beginning and then tries to steal it at the end. We don't lose them a lot, but occasionally, we're having to come back in with a price exception to keep the deal. I mean, I talked a lot of my industry peers than it's happening, right? Or we just have really complex loans. And so if you're not a student of your craft and you don't know the guidelines, you don't know your way around, not just the standard 30 or fixed, but you understand our non-QM, you understand, you know, reverse construction, renovation, like all the pillars of your business and you aren't able to place loans correctly, you're going to be at risk of not closing as many transactions. And I think we actually do a really good job of that here. I do a Monday call, every Monday with my team, it's an optional call, but it's called our success stories call where I have a loan officer, it doesn't have to necessarily be someone, you know, that's in their top 10. Any loan officer that I see that's having success with a certain strategy or a certain product will come on and share it's a quick 30 minute kind of downedery call, but they share what they're doing. We really try and collaborate more, you know, the rising tide lifts all ships, you know, philosophy versus competing one against one another is more drafting off of each other. And so we really do try and spread the good word on what is working for others, because it is a hard market and if we can lock arms and help each other, you know, it actually helps the team at large. Well, it's funny, I was talking to somebody the other day about this and it was in the real estate context, but I've said the same answer when people talk about becoming a loan officer, because I have a fair amount of people who get on my calendar, a variety of different ways at different levels of experience. But when somebody's new or one of the answers I off and they ask about like how to, you know, succeed in this market, this business, whatever, I usually talk about, you know, find a team that you can join to get leadership, mentorship to kind of learn the ropes. So I love that you alluded to that. It seems like your company's strong on that coming together as a team. And as you said, the rising tide lifts all boats. Yeah, and I also think today it's, you have to be willing to put the work in. I think I, I saw a podcast that you did. I can't remember who said it, but it's like it's back to the basics. I mean, everybody's talking about it. It is back to the basics. It's eye to eye, toe to toe. Like we went to, we had a national conference and one of our very successful builder originators asked the group, how many of you are going out every weekend to visit builder sites and open houses. And you know, you might get 10% of your population that is doing that, which is a little shocking because I think loan officers feel like everybody's doing it. So I'm not going to do it too. That's actually not the reality. The reality is most aren't doing it. And so there is opportunity there. You know, that I do think we make assumptions that everybody else is calling that top agent or they're going out to open houses. It just isn't true. It's not true. We're missing that too. I used to think that too when I was a loan officer. I did. I remember having a conversation with Alec Hanson a few years ago. We were on each other's podcast and he was in my same market in Mission Viejo, Orange County, California. And he would tell the story about how sitting out in front of this open house and like the mega producer agent was inside the open house and you would pull up and you know, he talks about the story. I was like, you know, he's like working himself up, up on himself up to get the Kurds together. And he's like too fearful and drives off. He doesn't go in, you know, we've all been there. Yeah. We've all done that, actually. Exactly. Well, I want to go back to something else as well that you said. The hard is the is the word that you talked about. And then what I heard you say is something about you've got to know your stuff. Like you mentioned, you know, DSCR and non-QM, you know, new construct. My question for you is this is, do you, you know, because we hear a lot about marketing, we hear a lot about niching down specialization and things like that. So do you think you need to be today more of a, you know, the word that comes to mind is generalist versus specialist, but it sounds like what you're saying is you need to today have a broad understanding of products to be able to deliver a solution because of the market. I'm going to give you a really crazy answer. I'm going to say I think it's both. And I actually, in my note, because I did take some notes ahead, one of the things that I find is really helping our top top producers is niching, niching down, but that doesn't mean they don't understand a broad variety of what's available in the marketplace. I mean, I, you know, non-QM obviously is becoming a bigger, bigger part of the marketplace. I think we've got 95 total different non-QM products, you know, between all the different investors. I mean, obviously, no one person is going to know all those products, but you need to have a general understanding of what a DSCR loan is and what bank statement or 1099 or, you know, so that you can help your clients. But niching, I think, is very important today because it's part of your brand and you have to have a brand is to really, I think, be relevant today as an originator. So I think it's both actually. So you think the niche, the specialty, brings them in, right? And yet it's kind of that argument we've already heard of like, well, if I specialize, I'm going to lose out on all this other business. Well, I actually took some notes on just a few of our top guys that are, that I feel are in our top 10 nationally. Okay. A few of them happen to be in my world, but I can just give you three of them, are three out of these four are in my division. So Brady Thomas, he's in Oakland and he, I know Brady. Yeah, he's, he joined our team in January. He has the two home tango. So his kind of thing that he markets is basically being able to buy before yourself. That's his niche. That's his brand. He markets the heck out of it. But Brady does everything, right? He's not just doing the buy before yourself. And so I think he is a great example of someone that niches, but still, but still attracts a wide audience as well, because people look at him for his expertise on that by before you sell. And they're like, well, I don't need to do that. But this guy's obviously smart knows what he's talking about. That's what he does. That's what he's doing. Yes, he does a lot on social. So I also think he's done a really good job of branding himself on social. Another really good example is Carrie and Seer. She's not in my market. She's in Nashville. But if you go to her social, she's all about events. The girl does events all the time. Not just puts on events. She takes agents to events. She's like, you don't have to actually put the event on. You can just get a group together and go to events. She's like put on dancing with the start. She used to be a dancer. She puts on dancing with the start. She goes like big with it, but Carrie owns close 50 million. So far this year, like she's like already and may already and may Brady's clothes right about 50 million, too. So they both are at that 50 million dollar mark and they have chosen to find their niche. Next question, I'm going to jump in here. What's their primary source of business, do you know? Agents, realtors. What? Real estate agents. I'm sorry. I thought agents were becoming irrelevant. You know, and like we're going consumer direct and that's where everybody should be looking. You know, I think it's so interesting over all these years, everybody's looking for kind of that magic unicorn source of business outside of the real estate world, but we still the predominant source of business is real estate agents and builder. I would say these are not builder agents, but builder and real estate agents for sure. I'm having a little bit fun with it. You know, obviously. The reason being is because I'm sure you see some of the narrative out there about like people throwing agents under the bus like stop chasing the coffee up. No agent wants to meet you for like all the stuff we see, right? And there's like this narrative of like forget agents. Aren't you tired of, you know what I mean? That whole thing. And like you just proved the point. Yeah. I mean agents are there are partners, right? In this. And if we partner and look at it as a partnership and approach, we shouldn't work with every agent. Every agent shouldn't work with us, but there's a lot of very good real estate agents that approach this business, you know, professionally and want to partner with a good originator. And we work a lot of them every day. I will say Harrison and Boisey, the main source of his business, oddly enough, he niched down. We have our all-in-one first lane HELOC product, which is a big. Is that right before you sell thing or what is that? No, it's it's the all-in-one loan, which is basically it's a purchase mortgage HELOC product, right? So and he it's used with financial planners as a tool to buy after a home early. And so Harrison has found financial planners and YouTube influencers. He has a couple of YouTubers that he has found that he is actually working with to do lead generation with. And Harrison's right about he's 44 million year to date. So that's not Harrison. I know. So Harrison, he's in Boisey and George. George, I'm going to look him up. Yeah. Okay, cool. See now this is this is what's great. Okay, we're not saying you shouldn't think about going consumer direct and be smart and be a modern originator and think about building a personal brand, maybe having a YouTube channel or you know having social customer facing. We're not saying that. Now like what we're I think you and I are on the same page of saying don't chase that at the demise of the pillar, the one fundamental to you know referral partners all that. That's right. That's more than now business, which is what I always tell L.O.'s is like yes, like you need business now. Great. Go with the referral partners S.O.I. And yes, build these other pillars here, but just know that those are going to be longer term. Well, and what is longer term for Harrison? It took him a long time to build regular referral sources with the financial plan. It is. It's a longer term play. And I do agree. If you need business today, you need to be having regular conversations and meetings with real estate agents. It's the fastest way. Which most people need business today because they close it a long, long time. We all do. I agree with that. Starting over every month, man. That's right. I know I remember you remember Brian Hale. You did a Brian Hale. So I worked. He was our leader when I was at MetLife years ago. And I'll never forget the shout out to Brian Hale. He said on a call the self-sourced loan originator wakes up broke the first of every month. And I'm just like, there is no more true statement in this business having to recreate your success every 30 days. It's what makes our business so challenging and unique. But also we're well compensated for it because it is so hard. Yeah. Okay. So the word thus far for the year has been hard. I want to run the balance between strategy, strategic and tactical. Because I always want to give somebody tactical that they can walk out of here today listening to us watching us and apply. So is there any? Okay. So you've got your team meeting, your regional. You've got the people on the call. Do you have a like, okay, go in your local markets, execute? Is there some activities you'd like to suggest that work right now? Well, I would say open houses on the weekends are the place that people are going and getting business today, like visiting open houses. It's in very few loan officers are doing it. The other place that we're having a lot of success is being backup for builder preferred lenders. Right. Being the number two, like approaching the builder saying, hey, we know you have your own in house or build our own mortgage company. But what we find is they have a very small box of available products for clients. And so a lot of their fallout, they don't have any place for it. And so we actually have a couple of very large builders that we work with where we are actually getting the incentive that they would give the builder mortgage company that's tied to the builder mortgage company if it's a turn down that they give to us. So to me, those are the two places that you can meet people where they are, right? Hey, are you tired of cold calling realtors and feeling like you're getting nowhere with my agent classes? You don't have to chase agents anymore. We hand you a done for you system of ready to teach presentations, plug and play marketing and even 200 producing agents to invite. So you can double your agent referrals in 90 days or less. Plus you'll get weekly coaching and a community of loan officers sharing exactly what's working right now. Here's a quick win from one of our members. Been part of my agent classes for a little over a year and totally changed my business. I grew at least 25% and that was during a pretty down market and have only grown every single month that I've kept doing it. Community is great, jump to the Friday calls. It's awesome. Have fun with it. Teach as many classes as you can. Just do more. Do better. Are you ready to stop chasing and start attracting agent referrals on demand? Book a call at mortgagemarketing.pro or hit the link in the show notes now back to our show. What's the what's the approach to the builder? You know, give me an example. I don't want to put you in a spot that like, you know, the call or whatever, you know, hi, my name is Jeff with CMG and well, first of all, I do your research, right? We actually have a new technology called Zonda, which is a data. Is that that commercial? Yeah, it's the app that has all the builders in it. In my for buildings, right? So you can literally go in and see who's got standing inventory. You know, who's doing loans? What kind of product they have? So I always say you shouldn't use the pray and spray approach. You need to be strategic. Do your homework and then find out who who's the gatekeeper, right? It is visiting the site, meeting the site agent, find out who you need to talk to. You know, who are the decision makers? You know, bring in a coffee on the weekend, you know, start and build those relationships. I always say it's a long game, right? This isn't Rome wasn't built in a day, but find out who this decision makers are and then approach them with the proposal. Like we have this, this in this product, we can help you move. We do, we do builder forwards, many builder forwards. So a lot of companies do builder forwards are being able to lock inventory that's sitting with, you know, builder concessions that you can advertise a rate on. I mean, we bring them strategies and how to teach their sales team how to sell sitting in there's a lot more sitting in inventory today than there was three months ago. Yeah, for sure. A lot more. So there is an opportunity when, when homes are flying off the shelves like in 2021, you're just, you know, another loan officer. Today, we can be partners and approach it. Like, let me help you sell a home. So, right. So for those who didn't get you, that's called Zanda. I believe ZO NDA. Right. And that's a, that's a tool like MMI, but for builders, which is an intelligence database tool. That's correct. That's cool. Yeah, I've heard of other ideas because what the builder wants is they want traffic, right? Yes. And so I've heard of loan officers that will host events, you know, how they do the, the listing pitches, like realtor shop and they go, here's the listings. I have the hot listings or here's a hot buyer. That's a great idea, actually. Yeah, good. I can pour an idea into you today. But, but yeah, I've had a couple of fellows who've done that successfully because then they're like, Hey, can I host a listing pitch at this, you know, builder development, we're going to get 20 agents in the room and they're all going to see the development, the problem works. Oh, sure. And all that fun stuff. Now, depending on the builder requirements that they have with that, but that's useful and or other types of just social functions and events. Like, one of the ones we have here in Vegas in the city is there's a place called, it's called downtown and it's kind of older non-strip for those who aren't in the known Vegas. Oh, yeah. And there's a high rise being built in this area that's been totally refurbished and it's by Seagstrom Hall, which is this like place where they have these amazing symphonies and plays and concerts and stuff. Anyway, this is a high end high rise. I'm talking two million above per unit and realtors and lenders in title have been hosting their weekly month, you know, listing pitch meetings there. Right. Instead of the local restaurant. Well, that's such a great idea. If you have those places available, I love that. I love anywhere where you can get people together. And as far as strategy is concerned, I mean, I do a call every week with top producers who share what they're doing. And from a strategy perspective, there's a couple of things that I see are working. Number one, social media, people getting committed to a social media strategy. And that's not posting once a week, that's posting every day and really being very consistent. And what and I have recently really started going, you know, posting every day on my social media. And I am certainly traction and more followers, but it is a commitment and you got to commit to it. But the ones that I, I mean, we had a guy on my on my call a couple of weeks ago, he's out in New Mexico and he has doubled his business from last year to this year and the year before doubled from that year to this year. So he has literally had a 200% increase in his business year over year over the last two years, basically. And he credits it, social media, 100% his name is Paul Parsons, I'm going to New Mexico. And he's just an awesome guy. Small market, small loan amounts, going outside of his market, it's allowing him to reach outside of his market, his immediate market where it's a little bit slower or he's worked with a lot of the people there. So it's definitely allowed him to extend his reach. So social media. Do a content or which platform? Instagram has been mostly what he does. And he posts three or four times a day. You can go, you can go look at his Instagram handle, Paul Parsons, creative stuff, some funny videos, some of its educational content, some of its closing, some of its his personal life. He does a little bit of everything, market updates, a few, doesn't do. I mean, he says quit posting, you know, the boring charts, you know, that, you know, it's not that you don't put some of that on there, but you need more exciting content for people to engage. But he said he's just getting more. I found him right here. I'll put a link in the show notes, but it's home loan superhero. Yes, that is him. This is Instagram. Yeah. Very interesting. All right, go check that out. So people go follow his content, see what it's all about. What do you, because you obviously see a lot of loan officers with the size of the team that you have? Speak of the social media. What do you see as the most common areas of resistance that keeps people from really tapping that video? Don't want to be on video. Don't want to be on video. Yes, they don't want to be, they don't want to hear themselves. They don't want to see themselves. And I always tell them like, that's what you look like. That's what you sound like. So I can't hide that, you know, and I do think that it's interesting because I have twin daughters that are 20 years old. They're both in college. And I talked to them a lot about what's going on with AI. And it's a, you know, it's an emerging thing for them in the job market that they're looking at out of college. And there is a real desire for authenticity now, where people want to see the real you on video and talking. They don't want the polished, over edited, you know, they want to see real. And I think that trend will continue to be honest. And get on video, talk about yourself, talk about what you're doing, let people get to know you. Well, I want to geek out for a second on the video, because I'm sure you've seen the AI generated videos. I have seen the AI. I've tried that. Hey, Jen, and I just can't get the voice to sound like that. I just wanted to give it a try. I'm like, that doesn't even sound like me. Just give it time. It will. What's your take on that? Yeah, just open-ended question. Yeah. I, well, I'm an adopter, because I, I use Shatch BT a lot. I use, I am a big fan of AI. I use plaid. I use type set. Actually, Jeremy Forcier, turned me on to a couple of cool things a few weeks ago when I saw him in a mastermind. Like, I'm a big fan of AI. I feel like if you're not an adopter, you're going to get left behind. I do have some mixed feelings about it, though, especially with video, you know, your avatar being generated. You need to tell people that's not you. I mean, that's my thing. It's like, if you're not new, there needs to be disclaimer on there that this is a video. Or a generator. Yeah. So to me, we shouldn't be fooling people. We should, we should tell them what they're getting. Now, whether that will become, I don't, there's not a lot of rules around AI yet. So it's kind of that wild, wild west. We'll see where it goes. Well, I think it goes back to the point you're really making and this, you know, even further back to what is the number one source of your top producers business and it's, you know, comes back to having conversations. Isn't that the real game of everything we're trying to play? Whether you run ads, whether you're doing social, you're doing classes and events, the bottom line is how many people you're talking to. That's right. And I always tell my team, when I look at my six, the success I've had over the years, whether that was an origination or recruiting or business development, it always has been direct correlation with the number and quality of conversations that I have every day, whether that's over the phone in person. And so many of our loan officers are just resistant to the phone. I mean, I work a lot with my team on, you've got to pick up the phone and call people or get out and see people in person. Like, you can't hide behind email. You can't hide. You have to get out and talk to people. Those, those originators you refer to there that are resistant to the phone. How long have they been in the business? Long time. A long time. I don't know. That doesn't make me close. They don't want to call people that they haven't worked with in a while. And in fact, I had an interesting conversation with one of my lawyers who has worked for a really long time and actually did a lot of on in 2021. And I do think, and this is not to be critical or judgmental. They're, they're, we were in a decade of our business where if we were doing a good job with our database and we're staying in good contact with our agents, business kind of just kept rolling, right? We didn't have to do a lot of that extra. And we're in a market where you have to do the extra. I mean, I just saw what the purchase markets down seven and a half percent year to date. I mean, the purchase market is not growing right now. In fact, it's shrinking a little bit. And then the refiizer kind of like going like this depending on what's going to happen in the industry market. And so she's like, I just can't see myself out, you know, going to open houses and calling on these young agents that, you know, I know more than they know. And I'm just like, that, if that's how you think about it, you're right. You shouldn't be doing that because you're probably not going to stay in this profession for the long term. Is that you go getting in the way like, you know, open houses are beneath me? Yeah, I think it's part of that. I think it's just exhaustion too. I mean, there's a certain part of, you know, the originator that's been doing this a long time that just doesn't maybe have the energy. But I have younger contingency of loan officers that are, and I have one that's in their late 20s all the way into their mid to late 30s that just are getting after it, right? They just don't have all the kind of the same paradigms and the old stuff. And they're just excited for the opportunity. Well, it reminds me earlier today. I was on someone else's podcast and they were asking some of their questions and, you know, not to sound self-serving, but you know, five years ago, they're referring to this book. I wrote five years ago, which is called Disruptor Die. Thank you very much. I don't have my shelf behind me anymore because I redid my office here. But the whole point of this is, you know, there's something I talk about in there and I've talked about a lot, which is the whole notion of survival of the fittest. That's actually not accurate if you want to go back to it. And I don't want to be like, oh, my Darwin guy, but I actually looked up the actual original kind of writing of that survival of the fittest and that's not actually accurate. It was, it's not the strongest to survive. It is the most adaptable to change. That's right. Yes, I could not agree more. And if you are not going to adapt right now, you're going to be in trouble. Maybe not today. It's not going to take long. And I, I feel like AI is not going to take over. I don't, I mean, it's interesting. Everybody asks, what do I think about the, the rocket redfin acquisition there? What kind of impact is that going to have? You didn't ask me, but no, I'm glad you brought it up. It's a really interesting. I looked up like rocket has like four, four percent market share. Redsen had less than one percent, right? And so you, that's five percent market share. But they're saying that could four times, right? Because of the capability with search that it could go to 16 percent. They would go from four to 16 because of this one person acquisition because of the search and the brokerage and I don't know if I buy that. I got to be honest with you. Redfin was, he gives them some strategic players, but rocket is still rocket, right? It's, it's the bot that you're doing alone with. Our superpower is our humanity and our ability to connect and build relationships. And rocket has tried to have the self-sourced originator out markets and it didn't work. They tried to get realtors to be loan officers and that didn't work. They actually did away with that program. So I think they'll take some share and maybe I'm being naive, but I think if we do our jobs and we do them well, we can at least on the purchase front, refives are different. So what are you going to say? For me, the Mr. Cooper acquisition is a little bit more troublesome. Well, a request in general are going to be tough for the self-sourced originator unless comp comes way down on those. It's just going to be very, very hard, very hard to compete. Right. And well, I mean, I always lived and died by the refi, right? So you've got to build your purchase pipeline or else, what are you really doing? Yes. I agree. You know, your word that we open up with is pretty accurate because it is hard, harder. There's so many more things to consider these days with, you know, back when I got in in 2003, there was no social media, right? And so it was pretty clear, man, you know, go out and meet people, do events, all that fun stuff. You know, phone calls and it was like, and now it's just like, oh, I need a personal brand, I need video, I need this and this and this. And I think people get overwhelmed because there is like so many options. And my advice is pick one, right? Cindy Ermann, she's my coach with a defining difference. She's always says you can never have more than three cars out of the garage, right? You can't have more than three strategies. And that to me is probably too many. You probably need to have one or two. If you're going to go all in on social, then do your social. And I can name probably 5 or 6 LOs this last year that have done it and are starting to really monetize it and get results from it. It takes a year, right? It's not something that happens right away. Yes, sure. You've got to pick one. Yeah. And I think the problem is, is people do the hummingbird thing. They keep going from different thing to different thing to different thing, right? And deluding their power. Yes. I love this three car approach. And yeah, you might be right, it might be too many cars. Some people are extra special. I can have the three cars out. I'm probably one or two. The Gary Keller, the one thing. Just picking that one thing. That's where I've kind of found my success kind of going all in on one thing at a time. Yeah, very interesting. Okay, so here we are at the halfway point pretty much of the year, rolling into June here in a few days. You can't believe it. All right, before you know that, it'll be Christmas. Same. What type of coaching would you be doing for people to have to finish this year strong? Yeah, what would you advise them to do? And if it sounds repetitive, that's okay because, guess what, fundamentals always win. Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I'd revisit your business plan. And if you don't have a business plan, do a business plan. Yes, do a business plan. So, I mean, it really is, I don't want to say it's simple because it isn't simple, but the fundamentals are simple, right? You need to have a plan. You need to have systems. You need to have disciplines. And so you've got to go back to, do I have those things in place first and foremost? And do the SWAT analysis, right? Go through and make sure you've got your calendar dialed in, your discipline's dialed in. Because what I do know is, it's, you know, was at Atomic Habits, you know, rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. If you do not have those in place, you're going to be flailing. And so what I generally see is lone officers who just don't have any plan that are just kind of winging it. They're just, they're flailing and they're suffering. And it doesn't have to be that way. Get a plan, figure out what those disciplines are and commit to it and commit to it for 30 days. Do it every single day, find an accountability part. That's the second thing, Jeff. Like, I am big on coaching. I'm a big, I've been coach since 2005. I've had a coach. And if you don't want investing coaching, find somebody who will hold you accountable at least. Like that will hold your feet to the fire that you can declare publicly what it is that you're saying that you want to do whether it's a health goal or a professional goal, but get some accountability in your life. It makes a big difference. I love that so much. Get some accountability. And get a coach. And I don't understand if you don't have somebody else to essentially look over your shoulder. How do you see your blind spots? Honestly, it is so true. I mean, I've had two coaches at one time. I was coaching with Richard Milligan for recruiting and Cindy Ertman, because Richard was a specialist in recruiting and Cindy was helping me build my team. And people just thought I was kind of crazy. And I pay for all myself. I mean, if you're not going to invest in yourself, who will? In fact, there's that Instagram guy. I can't remember his name where he goes and he sees people driving up in really expensive cars and he asks them, how did you make your first million dollars? What's the most money you made in the year? And I saw him ask a gal who drove up in like a Lamborghini and really fit, you know, she was probably in personal development or training or something. And he's like, what's the most money you made in a year? And she's like, $10 million. And he said, well, what's your one piece of advice? And she's like, invest in yourself. Because if you won't invest in you, who will? And why should anybody else? And I think we forget that. In this business loan officers, we want everybody to pay for everything for us. And at a certain point, Carl White says that, you know, if your company won't pay for the assistant, pay for your own assistant. Because if you're so confident and get there, then pay for yourself. So we have to invest in ourselves. Yeah. How seriously are you taking it? I mean, you have the ability to earn a million dollars in this business, not saying you need to or want to, but you have the ability, the upside. And yeah, if you're in a place in your business right now, where you're frustrated, you're burnt out, you're challenged, I get it. We've all been there. Yes. And I think it's just like, you need to decide, what do you want to do? Do you want to continue? And do you want it to continue as it is? Because, you know, something's got to change, right? And well, you know, in order for things to change, guess who's got to change, right? That's right. The definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing, expecting different results. And I think we do that a lot in our lives. I'm just as guilty. I mean, I, luckily, have a coach and, you know, support system that shakes me out of it. Right. And I want to say that too as well before we wrap up here in terms of, I mentioned earlier about people, realtors, law officers who ask me, you know, and I suggested go to a team. And the other part I say with that is, look at company culture. So you're called company culture. Just, just by the 20 or 30 minutes we've been talking here, I've heard multiple references to your team, your infrastructure, your support, your accountability, your coaching. So it's no wonder people thrive in that environment. And I feel for people who come to me and I have a conversation, I ask about their current environment or situation, maybe they're at a broker or whether there's less support. Right. And it's like, okay, so maybe that's how you're going to pay for coaching. You're going to give up basis points, but you're going to go to a company, maybe like CMG, where it's just like you're going to be in an environment now who actually will lift you up and support you with different resources. And so what do you give up for that? Maybe some bips, but guess what? You make it up in volume. Yeah, I always say, I mean, for one, I will never badmouth any platform. I mean, you need the broker, you need the IMB, you need the bank, the credit union, it's an ecosystem. And it's very good for us to have competition. It's what keeps pricing in check. It's good for the consumer. It's good for our comp, product development, innovation, all those things. But what I will say is when people want to go to a broker for comp or price, here's what I tell them, you can have that same comp or price here because what are you giving up to have that comp or that price? There's always trade-offs. We all get the same amount of dollars in trading. Maybe your execution get a little sharper if you're bigger and you know, securitizing, but it's not a lot, right? So mostly we're paying with the same dollars. So what are you giving up? What are the choices? And I'm not saying that I'm the right place for everybody. There's lots of great companies, but I will say platform and support probably matter more today than, and I've been in this business for 30 years. I've never seen an environment where people need structure. They need accountability. They need strong leadership. They need coaching. They need cheering. They need all the things right now. It's really hard to be a solo preneur right now. It's lonely and it's hard. Oh, especially in the market that we're in. So volatile and dynamic. And there's a great big broker team that have banded together and all worked together, but that one guy's in his house. You know, that's a hard, that's a hard thing to do. I mean, good luck to you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can remember when I first started going back to the country, why days and the early days, one of the benefits I had was, you know, I had a sales manager and I could walk in and run scenarios by him. You know, like I was too green to understand, like, can I make this deal work? And then, you know, he and I would sit in his office and we spend 20, 30 minutes going through this file and figuring out, can we make it work? Like, what's that worth? Well, and we're back in that day because deals are so complex and so difficult. Like, I was just talking to our underwriting leader the other day and we have a, we have a chat open to all LOs that's underwriting where anybody can put a scenario in there. And I watched, I watched all the scenarios in there and I think goodness, we have a group that, you know, we can bounce things off of one another because we learn from that. But also some of the scenarios I'm seeing, I'm just like, that is crazy town. You think you see it? You've seen everything and it's like, you see something that you've never seen before. So it is important to have that community around you in my opinion. All right. So we're closing out with what to do for the balance of this year. It was have your business plan in order. Fundamentals are always in play. Anything else you want to add to that? Well, I would say don't settle. Like, you know, you can do more. And what, what are you compromising on? And most people are settling. When they say they want to do more, they're really content where they're at. And so I do a good check on that. I mean, we, what I would say, I heard Darren Hardy say, I go, you know, I go to lots of things and I remember him saying, we, there really aren't any new ideas. There's variations. We know what to do. We need reminders. Sometimes we need that accountability. We need to slip kick in the booties. Sometimes I know I do. But why, why are you stuck where you're stuck? And really do a hard look at that. And maybe it is you need a new company, a different platform. Maybe it is just a meeting with your manager to say, I need help. Ask for help. If you need help, this is the kind of market where a lot of us need help. We don't have all the answers. So, you know, for me, it's like, don't settle if you're feeling like you're not where you want to be. That's the love that don't settle. And it goes back to the environment you're in as well. Because if you're not in an environment that's lifting you up, if you're not surrounded by people who want to take the challenge of the market head on. That's right. Like, yeah, get around the right people who have the right mindset, who can break you out of that. You know, I wrote down growth mindset versus fixed mindset. If you're around here, I was looking at my notes on the few people that niche down. I mean, I was looking at just the handful. I mean, Brady's at 50, Harrison's at 46 million. Danny Meyer is 93 million year-to-date in personal production. He's my top producer up in Seattle, Snowhomish market. So, there are people doing remarkable things, a remarkable volume. So, the business is out there. That's the one thing. I remember Rosemary David. I don't know if you've met Rosemary. She's my boss. She's been my boss. We've worked together for 20 years. And she's been my boss since 2011. And I would never forget. She says that individual originator cannot own market share. So, the good news about that is, I can double the amount of my loans, right? I can go from two to four or four to eight or eight to 16. Like, it's much difficult, more difficult for CMG to double their market share, right? But for me as an individual, I can go double my market share. I can triple. I can quadruple it. That's within my power and my grasp. And so, it's just figuring out what are those strategies? How do I take ground? And the last thing I will say, the thing that is what gets me up and excited in the morning, is this is the kind of market where you can take ground because they need you today. They didn't need us in 20 and 21 when, you know, homes were 10, 12, 20 offers, right? They need us today. We're a valuable asset today if we're doing our jobs, right? Yes, absolutely. Reminds me of the phrase separation season. For that's a number of people. And I'll just kind of put a cherry on top of your point about you can double your business. One of the exercises I often take an L.O. through when they get in that fixed mindset. And I used to do this in Orange County whenever I would get down on me, right? And I'd be like, how come my business isn't growing? It's a tough market. I would pull up the purchase sales in my county. And I would look at how many purchase transactions went down. And I would ask obviously, how many of those did I get? Right. That's right. And, you know, it'll vary based on markets, but there are hundreds of purchase transactions going down in your backyard right now. That's right. You just heard from you, your example of Danny, do a 90 million, Brady, do a 50 million. You know, and it's just like there is business to be had. Let's completely. You did not share the pie. I mean, that's really what you got to ask. It's just harder to get it. Jeff, you're, I mean, you offer pre-done classes. Like to me, that's what I would be doing. I'd be going out and teaching classes and holding webinars and getting in front of the one to many strategy, right? Getting in front of as many realtors as I possibly could, even if only two show up, that's two more than you had, right? That show up for your class. A lot of loan officers get stuck on having to be, you know, CE certified. Right. It doesn't teach a class on what are the latest AI tools that they need to use. You'll get 10 agents to show up for that. I mean, to me, it's like, you know, education, lead with education, right? That's the key to winning in this market. Thank you. By the way, if we're bringing that up, but it goes back to, what is the problem? When I do web arts and all this stuff with the loan officers, you know, I have, there's five reasons why you don't get enough referrals, but usually it comes back to more often than not. The reason why most allies aren't getting enough referrals from agents is they're simply not talking to enough people. That's right. Period. That's what the one to many approach does. So yes, if anybody's interested in that, they know how to reach me. Anyway, we are officially out of time, but this has been fantastic. We could keep riffing for another 30 minutes, but I know you're busy. What's the best place for people who want to connect with you? Maybe just follow you? Because you put out some great content, by the way. I follow you on LinkedIn, predominantly. Oh, thank you. Yes. I am on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, and it's all just Natalie Overture. If I don't have any fancy handles, just Natalie Overture. If I post almost every day on Instagram and Facebook, at least weekly on LinkedIn. I need to see your inspiring me now, like to post daily. I'm still working. Well, I would have to give a shout out to Michelle Burman. Michelle, what's up? Listen to it. Michelle. Yeah. Yeah. She's the slipkick in the booty for me on that. She holds me highly accountable. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She will definitely hold a high standard. Yeah. She's amazing. Well, listen, I'm going to link up your social profiles in the show notes so everybody can follow you, say hi. And if, by the way, if you're listening to this and you heard this episode, just DM Natalie and let her know, hey, heard you on the episode. I would love it. Yeah. Let her know what's one thing that stood out from you for this episode. So Natalie, can't thank you enough. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Jeff. I'm a big fan. I love your podcast. Thank you so much. And listeners, you know what to do? Follow Natalie. If you like this episode, leave us a review. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. All right. Take care. 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 why 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.