Category: Blog

Mortgage Loan Officer Blog

Are you too busy?

October 4, 2021

Busy is the poison of growth. Let me say that again, “busy is the poison of growth!”

If you’re “too busy right” now, I’ve got news for you…you need to hire help.

So many in our industry are almost drowning in business right now, which on the surface sounds like a good thing, but the comments and conversations I continue to have with loan officers is that they are just too busy to go out and get even more business.

As the loan originator, it’s your job to do the “loan getting” activities. You focus on bringing in the business. From there, you have a team in place who chase conditions, put out fires, etc. Without you, nothing else comes through the pipeline. So if you’re not sourcing and generating leads right now, what are you focusing on? If you’re “too busy” to source new business right now, what will your pipeline look like 30 days, 60 days, even 90 days from now?

To get off the loan officer roller coaster, that is one month you’ve got all the closings in the world and the next month you’ve got none, you have to have help.

“But Carl, how do I hire someone, and who do I hire to come on to my team? And can I even afford to hire someone right now?”

First things first, you can’t afford NOT to have someone on your team if you’re too busy. The cost of inactivity is always greater than the cost of taking action. The first step is knowing what needs to be done. When you know what needs to be done in your mortgage business, you can assign certain tasks to certain people. After that you can begin to hire the right person (or people) to help you carry out those tasks. In my branch, we use an assessment test called, The DiSC Profile. It helps us understand what someone’s strong suit is. Because we understand that, our branch runs like a well oiled machine because everyone knows what they’re good at and they are operating in their highest and best use.

We have our Loan Partners, Processors, Assistants, and others on our team take the DiSC Profile. Incorporating this assessment into our hiring process has been the catalyst for hiring what we like to call our “A” team!

Just as an FYI, you can take the Disc Profile for free on this site.  The report that it sends you is around 72 pages of great information of your personality and your workers’ personality to help get more production with less “office drama”.

Click here for the Disc Profile

5-star prospect

September 27, 2021

I was talking with my dear friend Dean Jackson not too long ago, and he shared something with me that I want to share with you…

You can’t turn someone into a 5-star prospect, but you can discover who already IS one once you have that first conversation with them.
And you can do this simply by using the following five-step criteria during that first call…

Number 1: They’re willing to engage in a dialogue…
Number 2: They’re friendly and cooperative when you talk with them…
Number 3: They know what they want…
Number 4: They know when they want it…
And number 5: They want YOU to help them.

Any 1 of these missing AFTER your FIRST conversation with them… well, there’s 1,000 of “them” and only 1 of YOU ☺

Never forget this.

That is all.

Want to see how we get so many referred leads, you know, the kind that checks the above 5 boxes AND actually closes with you?

Let’s get you on a private zoom call and I’ll walk you through it – schedule here < no charge >

What is Stopping you?

September 20, 2021

Most people don’t exhibit courage until things are so bad they’re forced to take action.

Left to their own devices, humans tend to stay in their comfort zone.

Something usually has to force them out of their comfort zone for them to do something about it.

Courage is life’s way of giving you a challenge.

The adversities and challenges of life will help you develop stamina, endurance, and physical strength.

Right now, think to yourself: “What is stopping me from getting what I want?”

Maybe you are scared.

You don’t believe in yourself.

You are in an environment that isn’t helpful.

You lack capabilities.

Whatever it is, if you can identify the obstacles, you can work towards transforming them.

You have the capability to do and become more.

Are you ready to do and become more?

Let’s set up a call here

Quick Question

September 13, 2021

I was talking to a friend of mine, Ryan Deiss, who is a 7-figure CEO.

We were talking about how we firmly believe that having the right question is more valuable than having the right answers…

One question that we ask each other is called The Pragmatic Question:

“Is our strategy not working because the strategy is bad, or is it not working because we are incapable of executing this strategy due to constraints we cannot resolve at this time? What are those unresolvable constraints?”

I have found that sometimes in the past, I would start a strategy, then quit it before I really had the opportunity to react to the results or I quit it before I could execute it on a consistent basis.

I have also found it’s a great plan to go over my planned strategies or my current activities with somebody else who is already “uber successful” to see what I may have missed, or how I could get even better results (more loans) with even less effort (or headaches).

It’s often the simple small “tweaks” that have made the biggest differences in results.

What are the small and simple “tweaks” that can make all the difference?

Let’s set you up on a 1 on 1 private zoom meeting to go over your plans and see what small tweaks we may see to get some serious traction, without more headaches or “fires” to put out.

Bring me up to speed here, then pick a time on the calendar that works for you.

I Was Doing It Wrong…

September 1, 2021

Early in my loan officer career, I was working 50-70 hours a week. The funny thing is, my co-workers at the time encouraged me to work those kinds of hours.

They patted me on the back and said things like “nobody works harder than you”, or the ol’ “Carl, you are a working stud.”

It was like it was a badge of honor.

It wasn’t until a very dear friend of mine asked, “How’s that working out for your family?” that I took an honest assessment of my “success.

”I responded back, “There’s no such thing as work / life balance.”

My friend squared me up and said 17 words that changed my life:

“If you think there is no such thing as work / life balance, you are doing it wrong…”

I went home that night and really pondered that.

I started questioning everything that I was doing.

And then it occurred to me, he was right. I was indeed doing it wrong.

I saw some of the top loan officers were working night and day, 7 days a week, while other top loan officers were working 32-hour work weeks, or even less.

So I started interviewing and studying those LOs that worked less than 40 hours a week, yet were helping even more families than I was, and making even more money than I was.

I compiled their top strategies and came up with what I have been using for the last 16 years with great success.

It’s called the Daily Success Plan or DSP.

It’s a very simple set of daily activities that we do Monday-Thursday from 9-11am. That’s our prospecting time.

We do it first thing in the morning, so that the “clutter and fires” don’t get in the way of prospecting.

Don’t get so busy building the farm that you forget to milk the cows…

We found that when we focus our first 2 hours on this Daily Success Plan, that we can close 20, 40, even 50+ loans per month of personal production, all while having that previously elusive “Work / Life Balance” by working less than 40 hours / week.

I found that I didn’t have to change everything, I just had to make simple tweaks to what I was already doing.

And honestly, it was just doing the DSP.

Simple activities, done 9-11am Monday – Thursday that provides massive results.

What a wonderful career we all have stumbled upon!!

Let’s walk you through the DSP. No gimmicks, no software to buy, just a simple set of activities that helps us close more loans with less headaches and more time for “coolness”.

We’ll even customize it to the activities that you are already doing, just with less

Click here to set up your call