How Loan Officers Can Map Out Their Work/Life Balance Destination
Tony and Michelle Moore are extraordinarily successful, humble people. They’re both producing branch managers at The Mortgage Firm, and they know what it’s like to go from $0 to a whole bunch of money. I sat down with Tony recently to talk about how their amazing success as loan officers came about.
It feels wonderful, he told me, to come from hardship and know you worked so hard and put the time in, and now you can be more than comfortable (they reported $1.3 million on their W2 in 2020, and they’re at $1.2 million halfway through 2021). More importantly, they now have the means to help their family and friends and give generously to charities and organizations, which has been the biggest reward of success.
How They Got From There to Here
I love to ask people this question: What activities are you doing at this high level of income that you weren’t doing back at your just-okay level of income?
When you first start out, Tony said, you don’t know how to prospect, how to go out and get business. But you do it over and over again and get good at it. Then you have to learn how to manage it. He and Michelle have become better managers; they’ve gotten better at training, better at delegating, and better at hiring (and firing) people.
It reminds me of that 10,000-Hour Rule that says, if you do something for 10,000 hours, you become a master of whatever it is. If you do something 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, it would take about 4.5 years to get to 10,000 hours. There’s nothing like putting in the time, running a mortgage company, prospecting, and becoming a master at it.
Some people put in the hours but get stuck in a rut. Their mindset doesn’t change, so they don’t see exponential success like others do. I remember, years ago, I was doing around 18 loans a month and thought I was top dog. I went to my first conference for a mastermind group of loan officers and met a woman closing 75 loans a month. I didn’t even know that was possible.
I found out quickly that I was just a big fish in a little pond. When you threw me in the ocean, I was just a guppy. I didn’t know there was a different, better way of doing things, like this woman had figured out. I’m so thankful for that shift in mindset, or I wouldn’t be where I am today.
The 3 Activities That Generate the Most Business
Tony said one of the first things he learned from working with me was that he needed to start working his database more. Previously, 13% of their business came from their past database. Now it’s 30%. Staying in front of their database has been absolutely huge for them.
The second thing was that he went through his entire realtor list. When he closed 147 deals back in 2017, 97 different realtors sent him that business. He focused in and looked for the most qualified realtors, the whales. Since then, he’s landed more of them and works with higher producing realtors. Market to less realtors, but make them big ones, and you’ll close more loans.
The biggest thing is his status update calls on Tuesday. It has earned him so much business, he said. He called a realtor the other day who closed 124 buyer side transactions last year. The call was for an update, but it was really to get an appointment. Tony said, “Matt, how can I get in front of you?” Matt told him to call his assistant and set up an appointment. It was that easy.
“Nobody else is doing these things,” he said, “keeping them updated. I promise them three things. I’m going to call you every Tuesday with an update, I promise we’ll close on time, and I promise no surprises at the closing table. If I do those things I promised, will you meet with me? Those calls work.”
And using our loan officer scripts makes each of those calls a piece of cake.
Partners in Business, Partners in Life
Tony and Michelle both started as loan originators in the business almost 20 years ago. They were in competition with each other, the top two producers in the office month after month, year after year. Then ended up getting married and running the office together. How’s that for a love story?
Michelle does a lot of the accounting and payroll—everything on the back end. From the time they get a contract forward, she works with the processors and everything. Tony does all the prospecting up until the contract. He works more with lead generation while Michelle works with fulfillment. He’s going out and making promises; then she makes sure his promises come true.
He and Michelle have sat down with financial advisors and figured out their plan, their why. He says it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you don’t have a why in your plan. Their plan includes family time, friend time, their vacations, how many hours they want to work. They encourage people to meet with an advisor, figure out how much money you need to make to make your dreams/goals come true, then build your team around that.
It’s All About Reverse Engineering
Figure out your life goals, your why, Tony said, then you won’t get caught up in work. You’ll have the perfect work life balance, but you really do need to reverse engineer it. Ask yourself (and your partner, if you have one): what do I (we) want? A car? A house? This certain vacation? To go out to dinner x amount of times a month? Build a center for women in another country?
Once you know what you want, figure out how much money you’ll need. Now, how many loans do you need to close to bring in that much money? How many leads do you need to close that many loans? How are you going to bring those leads in? Which strategies will you use? Who do you need to help you do that?
It’s really that simple, but a lot of people don’t go through the process of figuring out what their goals are. It’s not hard to reverse engineer it and put it on paper. There’s just something about seeing it on paper that helps you build your dreams.
I thanked Tony for humbly using his success as an inspiration to others and asked him what advice he would have given himself six years ago. “Get involved with loan officer coaching as soon as possible,” he said. “We have teachers and coaches growing up, then once we’re adults, no more coaching. That’s when we need it most. I’ll never go another day without being coached.”
If you’d like some help with anything Tony mentioned—marketing to your database, qualifying real estate agents, making status update calls—we’d love to help you map all of this out. We’ll give you loan officer strategies and tips and scripts, whatever you need. We’ll even give you one simple script that’s been more responsible for getting people to over a million dollars on their W2 than anything else. It’s the same strategy we shared with Tony and Michelle back in the day. And we’ll give it to you FREE, no strings attached. Click HERE to schedule your FREE strategy call TODAY.