leadership training

There was a trick that a professor pulled on her college class that taught me a great lesson, and this lesson has served me very well over the years, and now, perhaps it will serve you well too. Read on… it’s important!

She handed out a sheet of paper to each of her 30 students. On the sheet of paper was 3 words.

She told the students to look at the first word and give an anagram of it. That’s where you take all the letters in 1 word and make another word using all the letters. For instance, “Bat” is an anagram of “Tab”.

Once they had written down the solved anagram, they were to raise their hand indicating to the teacher and other students that they had solved the puzzle.

Here’s the trick…
The students all thought they had the same 3 words, but, they didn’t.

The students on the right side of the room had an easy one to solve, “Tab” to become “Bat”.

On the left side of the room, their first word was “Whirl”, which apparently has no anagram and is “unsolvable”.

So when she said “go” to solve the 1st word, the right side of the room all had their hands up in about 15 seconds because it was an easy puzzle.

On the left side, with the unsolvable word “Whirl”, none of them had their hand up even after about a minute, again, because it’s unsolvable.

You could see the frustration of the students on the left side of the room as they didn’t know they had a different word, and they saw how quickly some of the other students had solved the puzzle (those on the right side who had the easy word “Tab”).

The professor told them times up on word #1, and to now do the same thing for word #2.

Same thing, the right side’s 2ndword was again, an easy word, and the left side had an unsolvable word. Within 20 seconds, all the students on the right had their hands raised, none on the left side.

Again, keep in mind, that the students thought that they all were working on the same words.

So here again while watching the video of this study, you can really see the students on the left feeling frustrated, rolling their eyes, slumping their shoulders, and embarrassed that they couldn’t solve the puzzle when apparently many of their fellow classmates could.

Ok, follow with me here for just a minute, this is a big message. Read on…

When she told everybody to stop working on the 2nd word and to work on the 3rd word, and now for the first time all the students had the same word, an easily solvable word, well something amazing happened…

The right side of the room solved it pretty fast, but the left side, well, most of them couldn’t solve it, even though it was the same solvable word for everybody.

On the left side of the room, students had “learned” that they weren’t successful at solving anagrams so they just gave up and didn’t even try, which was totally inaccurate information they had “taught” themselves.

In a period of 5 minutes, they had radically changed their opinion of themselves that they weren’t smart, they couldn’t do “thinking” puzzles, others could and would be successful but not themselves, that they had acquired “Learned Helplessness”.

So what’s the take-home message here, for us as mortgage pros?

3 things.

1. It’s critical that you hang out with positive people that encourage us to do “good work”, “smart work”, and work on solvable things… strategies that are proven to work over and over.

Because if we don’t work on proven methods, we may be working on an unsolvable issue and teaching ourselves lies about how we aren’t smart enough.

For instance, make sure when you are working with referral partners and using methods and strategy to get their referrals, that you actually are using those strategies on agents that actually have referrals to give to you.

Otherwise, we may teach ourselves that we are helpless to use this strategy for success and that we are going to fail, so no reason to even try.

2. It’s critical that we know what to say to get referrals; and that we use the right words and the correct conversations that get results.

Otherwise, we are at risk of teaching ourselves that we are helpless and people are rejecting us because we aren’t worthy or not bringing enough value.

3. It’s critical that you recognize the fact that you are worthy. Period.
You are worthy of great success, you are worthy of agents and friends referring you business.

I believe that “Learned Helplessness” is one of the primary reasons that most LOs don’t reach out for help or guidance from those who have achieved great success. Instead, many are attracted to other “helpless” business people to agree with them that “it” won’t work.

They are attracted to others that say things like “you aren’t enough, they won’t refer to you, and “nobody is doing well”.

That, my friend, is the senseless poison to success.

The narrative of “Learned Helplessness” is powerful because it highlights a fundamental human tendency. However, with awareness and the right strategies, mortgage loan officers can steer clear of its pitfalls.

It’s crucial to guard your mindset and influences zealously, ensuring that you’re continually setting yourself up for success.

Surround yourself with positivity, refine your communication skills, and always, always believe in your inherent worth. Let us help here.

“What’s working now?’, you may ask, well it seems like it’s what has always worked.  Check out this interesting case study.

Doug Adamson and his wingman Reid Thompson (2 of the leaders in our Loan Officer Freedom Club) started reaching out to their database for the first time ever.

In the last 90 days, they have called everybody from A-Z.

Now most LOs wouldn’t do that because of the fear of “I haven’t called in forever and I don’t want to sound weird…” kind of crap.

Well, they pushed through all those fears and just followed the script.

The results of this case study?

$1.4M in closed volume.  Let’s just assume 100 basis points for this study.

That would be somewhere around $10,400 in the LOs pocket.

Wait, it gets even better…

They have another 10 loans that are likely coming from it because they have an additional 10 pre-approved and looking buyers that came from it already too.

That should shake out to another $3M or so in volume or an additional $30,000 in loan officer pay on top of the $10,400 they already have for a total of $40,400 from just the 1^st round of calls to their database.

Keep in mind, this is something that I have found maximizes the number of closings for you if you call them 4 times a year.

This case study was just from 1 round of calls to a database that had never been called before… that’s like a worst-case scenario.

It’s just a simple set of calls with a proven script.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I call it “Good sales activity instead of wasteful busy work”.

Keep this case study in mind as you journey through your work day.

When you are ready for the details of who to call, when to call, what to say to them, what voicemail to leave, and how to push through any call reluctance, I can help you with that.

Just Go Here and I’ll hook you up to walk through all the details for free.

After all, every $40,400 helps…

Carl “Your Wingman” White

Here’s a simple idea to help eliminate the “last-minute rate shoppers”.

I was on a brainstorming Zoom call a couple of weeks ago with my homie Jay O’Brien.
He shared with me an idea that I’m sharing with you now.

As soon as your pre-approved prospect gives you the thumbs up on a new purchase mortgage for them, send them a “Moving Kit”.

.. You know, a handful of empty boxes, some tape, and Sharpie magic marker kind of thingy.

This does a couple of things:
1. It actually helps them.  Hard to go wrong by actually helping people

2. It assumes the sale.  It’s like putting a ring on our spouse’s finger.  “Hey, we are doing this together.”

3. You become partners on their new move and they would feel guilty about shopping you at this point.

It’s not that this would work 100% of the time, nothing does, but I can see how this would really help solidify “the sale”.

For me, I think we are going to send out a “Moving Kit” right after they sign the disclosures and we have contract in hand.

I found this link to a company that sends it out to the home they are moving from for me here.

I have no affiliation with this company, I just googled “Moving Kits’ and this is what popped up.

Then on my Tuesday morning “Just Ask” calls (or what some may call the update calls), I will ask if they received the moving kit, and then of course end that call with our call to action script to get even more loans from their friends, family members, and / or co-workers. 

On what I would perhaps pay for some useless “closing gift”,  I’m going to get a “Rate Shopping Stopper Gift” instead / or in addition to it…

Just sharing an idea as we are all in this together ☺

Jump on Loan Officer Breakfast Club to get more cool ideas that we share every Monday through Thursday at 8:30 am EST.

“That’s small for me” he said.  I was taken back at first, and then realized he was right.

Let me take a step back and tell you what led up to this groundbreaking truth that all LOs should know about.

I was doing a private Zoom meeting with a loan officer who set up the meeting to discuss how to grow his business even more.

I asked him what his current volume was.

“My team did a little over $1Billion dollars last year,” he told me.  Knowing that my team still did more than that last year, but not too much more than that, I responded, “That sounds like a good solid number to me.”

But I saw the frantic look in his eyes, one of almost desperation as he blurted out, “But Carl, that’s small for me.  I know I can do so much more and I know you can help me.”

It then occurred to me he was right on both accounts, that number was small for him, and yes, I am known for helping LOs increase their loan volumes while decreasing their stress level at the same time.

So, when he said “That’s small for me”, I could see the desperate look in his eyes.  The same desperate look that loan officers have when they are closing 1 or 2 loans a month and they know that with just a few tweaks they could be at 5 to 8 loans a month.

Just like his own monthly mortgage payment was in jeopardy.

See, what normally happens is a loan officer gets to around 5 or 8 loans and they say to themselves, “This is good for me, this is what I’m capable of.” 

And then they back off and that’s where they stay… because in their minds, they have already pre-framed that 5 or 8 loans are “good for them”.

The real growth is when those people look at 5 to 8 loans is soooo much less than what they are capable of, look at that “low volume” as a reason to get frantic, and treat it like they are 3 touchdowns behind in the 3^rd quarter…

… That’s when mountains move…

Same thing for those of you closing 10 or 15.  Don’t be ok with that…

What if you found out that closing even more loans can come with even less stress?  When would you want to know that?

We all have to reframe that picture that we have of ourselves of “What is possible?”, or even, “What is POSSIBLY possible?”

That’s when the magic happens.  That’s when we see epic growth.  That’s when we begin to set real wealth for our family.  That’s when we can really give back to our community.

Now I’m not saying that we aren’t proud and encouraged by our / your current accomplishments.  You may have done very well so far, yes indeed.

But what if that is small for you?  When would you want to know…

When you are ready to see a walk-through of the all-new “Close More Loans Now” training site, Go Here and either me or my team will show you what’s available to help you Close More Loans Now.

I was hanging out with a buddy of mine, Tim, that owns an insurance company.  He was telling me how much better the insurance business is than the mortgage business because of residual income.

But see, he doesn’t know what you and I know…

First of all, the mortgage business is the best business I’ve ever seen. 

I’ve got a lot of friends that are in real estate, title, insurance, doctors, lawyers, restaurant owners, plumbers, you name it.

None have the unlimited upside like you and I have, AND the ability to call our own shots, and the option to be very successful AND have the evenings and weekends off (when done right, and myself and many others do it right).

You see, Tim thought that we get a customer, they borrow the money, we get paid (and we get paid well), and then we must find another customer.

What Tim didn’t know, is that isn’t how it works at all for those of us that have massive success following a plan.

First, we get a free army of salespeople that find the client for us… week after week, month after month, year after year…

… we call this free army of “lead finders” real estate agents…

<gasp>, that’s right.  We market to agents, and then the customer is naturally attracted to the houses that agents are helping to buy and sell, and then the agents refer them to us over and over, again, and again, month after month.

I call that “residual”.

I do a lot of upfront marketing to the agents, then once they start referring to me, our team simply closes them on time and gives a weekly update via a phone call (which we ask for more referrals on).  And that’s all the agents want.  We don’t have to buy them leads, they are the successful agents that get their leads from their listings.

But wait, there’s more…

Once we close them, we turn on our past database marketing program.

We call them 4 times a year with a proven script, we snail mail them once per month, and we send out a weekly email (not about mortgages… remember, they already closed).

Doing that, we average 1 to 2 closings per 100 people in our database each and every month. 

By the way, MOST of those closings that we get from that isn’t the past client.  It’s their friends, family, and co-workers that they refer to us.

Then we close them and follow up with them and they refer us even more friends, family, and co-workers who are buying homes or need a debt consolidation cash-out refinance.

Just like clockwork and resulting in a very predictable income…
… month after month, year after year, ummm, kind of like residual income…

The difference between my insurance buddy and you and me is, in the insurance company he gets a few hundred bucks year after year.

Whereas you or the average LO gets $3,000 (more or less) of profit every time we get a closing…

over and over and over…

Not a bad gig.

The secret sauce is, we have to simply follow the very simple plan and have the right scripts and say them to the right people.

I love this industry.

When you need help with mapping out the plan, or if you want to use the same scripts that my team uses, I’ll give them to you <no charge>>

These are the same scripts that our members use. 

We’ll show them to you here on a demo call.

Just click here and it’s yours for the asking.

See what you’ve been missing.