How I closed $35 million in my first 18-months as a Loan Officer after 5-years as a Loan Assistant.

Quick background.

First mortgage job was with Countrywide in 2007. I'd spend 10-hours & 2 Red Bulls a day sitting in a call center cubicle selling mortgages all across the United States.  Most of my time was spent reading Mortgage for Dummies books to better understand how mortgages worked! Sometime in 2008 or 2009, in the middle of the housing crisis, Bank of America bought out Countrywide. So now I worked for Bank of America.

Fast forward to 2013, my wife & I just found out in March she was pregnant with our second daughter. Then in April, Bank of America let me go. I was devastated! How am I going to tell a pregnant woman that I just lost my job. What now?

Started calling my loan officer friends who left the call center life for to work on the retail mortgage side. The retail mortgage world is where you need to go out & build professional relationships. Seeing I’ve always spent my time in a call center, I didn’t know how to build professional relationships.  But I'm a likable person & smell nice; this sounds easy. I mean really....how hard could it be?

IT WAS VERY DIFFICULT!!

Failed to close a deal my first 3 months and jumped around from mortgage company to mortgage company. I was broke and had a family to feed! Outside of not selling a mortgage my first few months, my 90-day Probationary period was running out & now I was about to be commission only. And when you have no business coming in, 100% of 0 is ZERO.

The FEAR of making no money is why I never took a commission only job. Didn't have faith that I'd succeed because I was always scared of being broke. The WHAT IF... moments scared the hell out of me.

My fear forced me to take a job as Mortgage Loan Officer Assistant. Being an assistant seemed like a cushy job.  I’ll have a base salary, day starts at 8a, leave at 5p, and I’d have weekends off.  This was perfect!!  At least, that's what I thought.

Little did I know, most loan officers are lazy & I like to work. My next problem was I always thought I was smarter than my loan officers. But there was one HUGE difference between them and me...I was the assistant. No matter how smart I was or how much more work I did, I was still the Assistant.

Then I realized that I was scared of being a Commission Only loan officer. FEAR limited my success.

Then just before my 40th birthday, I was done being an assistant...I was done making other people rich...I was done being scared. So in January 2019, I decided to become a full time loan officer. I was happy BUT had no referral partners and no book of business to call. So that FEAR started to creep back into my mind. 

Instead of giving into that fear again, I changed my mindset. Told myself every morning to achieve at least one goal. End the day one step ahead of where I started. There is still one problem, I wasn't closing deals & still making no money. But my mindset was always positive.

First part of business was to do Social Media Ads. Social Media accounts are free, so I did that.  For some reason, I thought social media ads were free. Seeing that I had no money, no ads.

Next, start calling friends.  Friends would feel obligated to work with me. Quickly realized there was a big problem, these people only knew me as an assistant.  They didn’t want to work with the assistant, they wanted the main guy.  Plus I had the same old pitch about low rates; quick closings; low fees; blah...blah...blah.  Needed to start asking different questions. Started asking about possible partners business plans & kept asking how can I help you grow. Listening helped me understand how our businesses could grow together. And at the end of every meeting, I always asked for business. Always said to give me a shot. Knew I had their business if they gave me an opportunity.  So meetings are now crossed off my list.

Seeing that all referral meetings were in a coffee shop or restaurant, I thought of a way to increase my social media presence. After every meeting, I’d ask the business owner or manager to do a quick 60 second video talking about their business & their favorite item on the menu. My only ask was they share video to their social media accounts. Now I was somewhat relevant on social media. Most important piece to these videos was it was FREE!

Then I started working on branding. So I’d attend EVERY free event I could find.

My favorite event were Farmer's Market.  I'd always have my mortgage booth next to a business selling cloth diapers or small business selling candles. Seeing that I did not have a tangible product to offer, I handed out branded tote bags for free. This way, people put items in my bag to take home.  My only REAL goal was to introduce myself to everyone.  I didn't hand out Mortgage Rate Fliers; or Market Index Articles…I didn’t even hand out business cards.  I was only there to say hello.  Plus the booth was free. All I had to do was spend 4 hours every Saturday saying hello to people & give away Mark Powell bags.

No loan officer in their right mind had a booth at a Farmers Market. Also, no customer in their right mind went to the Farmers Market wanting to Refinance or Buy a Home.  I understood my audience BUT again event was FREE.  

Now with COVID-19, I do not do any events.  So I have to adapt to a changing market. 

My 2020 approach was to not prospect for NEW business, again like everyone else. My focus is to solidify current client relationships. Now I call every client; friend; neighbor; asking how they're doing.  Never pitch mortgages, just make sure they're healthy. Technically they know why I’m calling but goal was to have them bring up conversation about mortgages. Some phone calls ended up with people talking about their grandkids or cats, but I genuinely cared about my clients.  Most clients would call me back & that would be where we talked about mortgages. Seeing that interest rates are low, 70% of calls turned into an application.  And as of June 26th, I've closed $17.1 million.

I’m sharing my story for two reasons. 

First reason is because it’s therapeutic.  Many people can relate to my FEAR.

Second reason was to help at least one person gain confidence early in their career to embrace failures and do not let FEAR keep you from doing what you truly want to do in life.