The Real Deal Podcast
Unlock the door to success in the dynamic world of real estate with your hosts, William Gomez & Alfredo Madrid. Join us as we dive into the inspiring journeys of loan officers and real estate agents, sharing their triumphs, challenges, and invaluable insights. Your key to navigating the ever-evolving landscape of real estate starts here.
The Real Deal Podcast
#10 What It Takes to Be A Loan Officer with Alfredo Madrid
Learn what it takes to excel as a loan officer with Will and Alfredo. Our candid conversation peels back the layers of this dynamic field, from the dedication and strategy needed for a strong start to the complex risk management and guidelines that can make or break a loan approval.
We highlight practical steps for those considering a leap into the lending arena, and advice on where to channel your efforts as a newcomer. Whether you're a fresh face or a seasoned vet in the industry, our insights promise to fuel your drive towards a successful and rewarding career in mortgage lending.
I think that you have to be a student of your craft. If you're in this business and you're getting into it, or barely been in it or just a couple of years, and you're not spending time reading guidelines, learning more about how to do things, not only are you doing yourself a disservice, you're doing your clients a disservice because that's gonna allow you to get somebody into a better program to qualify somebody that's not qualified to problem solve for them. I mean, that's what makes your value. That's like an attorney not knowing the law?
Speaker 2:Alfredo Madrid, what's going on? Will Dude, it's doing something a little different today. So, anybody tuning in today, you're tuning in to the Real Deal Podcast and the Willpower Podcast, because one of the topics that actually the topic we're going to talk about today is what does it take to become a loan officer? Sure, so we just hired a couple of brand new people that are going to become loan officers, and then this is a question that I get asked a lot as well too. So I figured, hey, this is a good, some good content for both of our platforms there. So anybody figured, hey, this is a good, some good content to uh, for both of our platforms there.
Speaker 2:So, um, anybody that hasn't listened to the real deal podcast? That's a a podcast that Alfredo and I host. That's just strictly real estate top producing realtors, top producing loan officers, and Alfredo and I will jump in here, um, from time to time to just talk about stuff like this and stuff that can add people value. So, man, you've been doing this a lot longer than I have. So what is the first thing that comes up to you when somebody asks you like out and about what does it take to become a loan officer?
Speaker 1:Sure, so, first of all, I think this information will be good, valuable for somebody that's already been in it, because I think it's always healthy to go back and remember what it was like to get started in it and to answer your question.
Speaker 1:That's when I get to talk and I've been talking to a guy in particular that me and you have talked to recently about getting into the business and it always takes me back to when I started and it's a love hate, a memory for me, because I love that I'm in this business, I love where it's gotten me, I love the life I get to live because I'm in this business. But I remember those first couple of years. I mean I'll go ahead and let the cat out of the bag here. It's not easy, right To get into it. And when I'm going through what's going to need to happen in the first three months, six months, 12 months, even up to two years for the people that are getting into this business, it's not easy. What you have to do, you just have to decide that you're going to do it.
Speaker 1:And that's something.
Speaker 2:I'm rereading the Atomic Habits book.
Speaker 2:You actually gave me that book.
Speaker 2:It talks about in there that whenever you do something time and time again like, for example, something we'll probably talk about is an activity tracker to be able to track what you're doing will probably talk about is an activity tracker to be able to track what you're doing, which so many people in the business don't do, and it it takes so long before before you finally reached a point to where, boom, you have a million dollar month, you have a $2 million a month or whatever that. That, um, that point is where you feel like you're catching a break. But that's whenever people see that they think you're an overnight success, right, like, for example, when I met you, you were already a top producing loan officer to where you know you sharing in the region meeting the other day that you remember seeing your W-2 for $12,000 the first couple I started a summer of a year in this business and went straight to like a little cold calling shop basically, and my first W-2 for that year was $12,000 for those six or seven months that I started with them.
Speaker 1:So that was rough. But you definitely have to have a dreamer mentality. You definitely have to have that delayed gratification in you of saying, hey, I know there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. I can see it. I can see other people having success in it, and if they can have success, I can have success. And so you really have to, you know, understand that you are going to go through that season of difficulty up front, but that it's worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one thing that I feel a lot of people do themselves a disservice. They come in into the business on each side and they think I'm going to make a lot of money and I'm going to have a lot of free time, and that's not really the case if you're really wanting to get there at some point someday. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about was the differences between where you start, because I started at the bank. I started as a part-time teller, worked my way up and then you started with a mortgage company, but then you've also had some experience with a call center, but this is kind of before the business turned into what it is today. So talk a little bit about the differences of somebody that's thinking like man. I think I kind of want to do that, but what is the best? Not necessarily even place to work for, but like the type of loan officer to be.
Speaker 1:Well, there's pluses and minuses to both. Right, if you go to a place like a Bank of America or another bank that you're going to go in there and start as a salaried employee, there's going to be less. The benefit of that. The plus is that you have a little bit more security. If you're needing a little more security and you can't handle going two to three months without income or without a big commission or with minimal commission, then you probably do need to go someplace that you're able to get some sort of salary while you're learning and training and going like that. It's like with anything the more risk, the more reward. You could go straight into a commission only which you stand to make more money per deal that you close but there's less guarantees. So the pluses and minuses are just that right. How much risk are you willing to take up front to try to earn more or less in the future or in these next few months as you're getting started? Another benefit of going into a bank is that you are going to have some walk-in business, supposedly right.
Speaker 1:There are people that walk into a bank that have checking accounts at those banks that say, hey, by the way, I need a mortgage. You get handed those leads at a bank, correct, and I think people overestimate how many of those leads you get People that don't work. Grass is always greener right. People that don't work at a bank just assume that these loan officers at these banks are just like there's a line at their door with people wanting to do mortgages, and that's not the case. You still have to work, you still have to establish relationship, you still have to have a sales process and be good at it, but there is some security in the fact that you are going to get people, whereas if you go straight to a mortgage company, most of the time there are some people that provide leads, but most of the time you're going into a situation where you you eat what you kill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the grass is always greener.
Speaker 2:It comes in every type of season of life that you're in, even in this industry, because I remember when I was at the bank, um, people would always talk about you know, well, hey, you could go somewhere else and make a lot of money, a lot of money per deal, but it's just going to be a lot harder to get any deals, cause you're not going to have the name behind it.
Speaker 2:You're not going to have, you know, these walk-ins which I mean, I personally worked at the bank that I worked at, and I would say, you know, my my first year that I closed over 50 deals, maybe not even five of them were from from the bank, and then I didn't have a salary as well too. So anybody listening that's thinking, potentially that's a good start for me. Not every bank will give you a, you know, a base salary, um it it, and normally the bigger it is, like you said, bank of America, or like a Chase or something that might give you that, you also have a lot of overlays. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I think that whenever I remember meeting with a realtor and he asked me, it was a guy and he said do you guys have any overlays?
Speaker 1:What overlays do you guys have, bro? I didn't know what that was. And every lender basically decides what kind of loan they're going to allow into their place from a risk standpoint, right Like. It could be risky for a bank to just follow the guidelines straight up for a couple of reasons. One, because the loan may not pay right, like if, say, the minimum credit score for FHA is a 540 or it doesn't have one, right? Well, it probably shows that people that do loans with a 540 credit score pay less than people that do loans with a 780 credit score. Well, every lender decides what they're going to allow into their portfolio and so that they can manage how much, how many people that they have don't pay right. And so I think banks, at the end of the day, they have more than just their mortgage business to think about. They're going to manage the risk based on how many mortgages they do, but also on everything else that they do in the bank, all other revenue streams. So a lot of times you will see banks have a little bit more strict guidelines of who they allow and what kind of loans they do. They might have a higher credit score requirement than a mortgage company that's independent out there because a mortgage company, that's all they do. So they're going to try to encourage as much business as possible while mitigating that risk as much as possible as well. So you'll see overlays.
Speaker 1:Let me give you an example of overlay. So one overlay could be. The most common one is credit score. What is the minimum credit score that you can have? Another overlay that you could have is, oh, debt to income. What is the max debt to income on certain programs that you have? You can also manage what programs you do and what programs you don't do. There's several overlays just like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for a quick example, fha the book says 580 with a minimum of 3.5% down payment, or as low as 500 if you have a minimum of 10% down payment. And whenever I was at the bank, if you have a minimum of 10% down payment and whenever I was at the bank, it was a hard stop. If you had a 619, couldn't get approved at all. So at that point I could send it to somebody else, like, let's say, you at the time and you're like I can go down to 580 and still approve the loan at 3.5. But if I at the time, the place where we were at before the, the mortgage link, uh, we couldn't go down to 500.
Speaker 2:That wasn't an overlay that that that, uh, the old place had. But now we can. So it's like there's different types of overlays and the reason I wanted to share that um example is because that can impact your business, because you're going to go out there, try to meet with all these people and try to get people that want to buy homes. But if you're, if you're constantly coming into a, a speed bump or let alone like a wall that you can't go past, then this is going to be a lot, even harder than than you thought it was going to be in the first place.
Speaker 1:Well, and not to mention that guidelines are like the law right you could take.
Speaker 1:You could take a law to one attorney and he's going to give you one interpretation, and you take that same law to another attorney, he gives you a different one. And so I think that's something that you need to keep in mind and that you need to be an expert on these guidelines as a loan officer, and that's something you're not at first. But I really encourage new loan officers that get into this business to really dive in into your guidelines because that can be a superpower for you. The same loan that a loan officer at another company can't do, you can do, and it's not because you have different programs than them, it's just you understand the guideline better and what's possible, and we are able to do a lot of loans that way. We get a lot of files where another lender couldn't get it done, and we're able to because we noticed that you could have this or this to make this happen. Not, you don't need both, and they might require both. Right, but the guideline reads with an or in it A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:So when I got into the business and I say the business, when I started working at the bank, um, I remember my uh manager at the time said hey, um, I started as a part-time teller and at the time he was a, you know, senior branch manager. And I said how did you get to be to where you're at? And I I thought he was going to tell me you know, well, I got this bachelor's degree, this master's degree. And he goes you just got to know how to sell. And I go what do you sell at a bank? Like, I didn't even know. You sold things at the bank and and then you know, you know that story I started with savings accounts, all that stuff. So I had quote unquote sales experience within the bank and, of course, different type of sales experience before that. But what do you think is some of the best sales experience you can have before coming in to become a loan officer?
Speaker 1:Like what have you done in the past that helps you Correct? I mean anything where you have faced rejection, anywhere where your emotional intelligence is tested to, where you're having to deal with people. You're able to conflict resolution, conflict management, anything I mean. I've seen teachers do a good job in our business. I've seen anybody in insurance come in and do a good job. You just have to be humble enough to come in and say you know, I'm willing to do what you tell me to do, regardless of who rejects me, regardless of how many phone calls I have to make, I'm willing to do it. Those are the best people. Like the most coachable people are usually the best people that help us out.
Speaker 2:As far as industries, any experience in sales helps, Um, but just being able to handle rejection and handle people, I think that one of the biggest things is being able to understand that what you're selling is not like a physical thing, cause we've seen some people come into the business that are were very great, like car salespeople or a furniture salespeople, and then the thought process of, like wait, I sold this realtor to give me business now, but they don't have any business to give me now, right.
Speaker 2:And then, hey, I sold this person to send me an actual client, uh, and then that client's not ready, or even if you, it's just a completely different mindset that you have to have as far as, like, what you're selling, because it's not a tangible thing that you're selling there.
Speaker 2:But I think that if you're able to, you know, make that that um change.
Speaker 2:I mean, one of one of the top loan offices around you know here, he used to be sell, sell cars and he's, you know, amazing and so, um, so, yeah, I, I think that it's just being able to to humble yourself, because it's also, if you were in some type of sales before, most likely you were somewhat decent at or really really good at that that made you want to look at, hey, I want to maybe sell mortgages, and then it's being able to humble yourself and leave that in the past, like not be like one of those people that, like back in high school, I used to be able to. You know, so um scored four touchdowns in a game, yeah, so, uh, education. So that's another thing too that I think it's very um, a lot of people think that you might need, you know, a bachelor's. You might need a. You know, and you know some of the people um in in this industry that that make a lot more than people that have master's degree, don't even have, you know, maybe have a GED.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what's crazy about this business and why I wholeheartedly rec, you know recommend it for anybody that that wants to get into a sales environment or a commission environment, that kind of thing. Because you know there's countless, countless people in the nation that make over a million bucks doing this. I mean, I've met them, you know we there's a ton of people at every event you go to that stand up when you ask if they've made a million bucks. So it's like there's the sky's really the limit on it, and it's and it's not this thing where you have to work a hundred hours a week to do it. You can have the team there's blueprints out there to do it and still have a full life outside of work while you're making this kind of money. And that's what's so awesome about it, that there's no requirement.
Speaker 1:Like I said, if you're coming in hungry, willing to learn, willing to get out of your comfort zone, to me those are the qualifications to get into this business right Now. Are you going to be able? Are you going to have to have a period or a season of your life where you're going to have to sacrifice a little bit at the beginning? I do believe that right, I don't want to sugarcoat this enough. That says you know, within three months you're going to be making, you know, $20,000 a month. This is something that you're going to have to build up to all those people that are making that kind of money. I've been in the business 10 years, 12 years, 15 years, because they built their business up over time.
Speaker 2:What is the a person that you've met in the industry? That what's what's like the highest earnings of somebody that does what we do? That that you've met in the past?
Speaker 1:I mean, I mean, I've seen W2s over $5 million.
Speaker 2:Just doing mortgages, just doing more just on their mortgage side, and that person could have just gotten a GED pretty much.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, if I was to guess, the person I'm thinking about maybe doesn't have that. I'm just saying like it's, it's something where just because you don't have a college degree or even a high school diploma and you only have your GED, that doesn't mean you're not smart, right? Um? It doesn't mean you're not capable. It just meant that that season of your life that's not what you were able to accomplish. But anybody can come in and do the work and go, meet with the right people and follow the blueprint and have success in this industry if they come in and do it. I will say this we talked about salesmanship. You do have to have that in you. We get paid commission for a reason, and we can all say that we love to do this because we're making the dream of homeownership come true, which is a great plus to this industry. But realtors, us insurance, all these people that are built around commission they're built around commission for a reason because we need to be motivated by making the sale. In order to be successful.
Speaker 2:We just have to be in order to be successful, we just have to be. Yeah. I don't know how many doctors and lawyers out there are making over $5 million a year just on that and having to get all the education and also the ROI behind it. Because if you're having to get into all this debt to go to school and spend all this time, a lot of the times the ROI is not there, especially from the start.
Speaker 1:with some jobs like that, and you throw in the schedule piece of it to me. I literally this morning dropped off my son and stayed there to watch his football practice and during football season I actually every single morning watch their practice Like I probably have missed two of his practices in the morning. Right, and I'm still able to come in, do what needs to be done. Leave it a decent time All that was. You know, built that over time, but that's totally possible.
Speaker 2:And something I want to squeeze in there as well too, and I looked it up right before I came here but the average loan officer in the country so 2023, last year made about $78,000, which is actually a lot higher than I thought. You thought it was lower than 78? I mean, I looked at the average realtor back in 2021. When I mean, if it's $78,000 for 2023 for a loan officer, I would assume that it was a lot higher back in 2021. But when I looked at the average realtor back in 2021, it was $38,000. But I guess there's a lot more realtors than there is loan officers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a big section of those people that aren't doing anything right they might be doing this as a side or trying it out that are bringing that average down. I think, like if you're really truly putting your mind and efforts into it, it should be higher than that even. I mean, I would think the average is close to a hundred to somebody that, like, actually dedicates 40 hours a week to doing this.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this If I'm trying to get in the business today and I'm leaving a job that, whether I was making a hundred thousand or I was making 40,000, my previous job what would you tell me would be a good goal for me to? To shoot for my first year Income Income?
Speaker 1:You know, I think if you come in and do like if you came into my organization and you did everything I told you, I mean $50,000, your first year, I think, is something that you should be like. Okay, that's probably what I have to like. Get my mind wrapped around 70, 80 to a hundred on the second year, I think is is pretty doable, and then the sky's the limit after two years. I think two years is the threshold that you have to break to go.
Speaker 2:Okay, I made it in this industry, right, like I can, I can make those bigger numbers, um at that point in time, one of the things that that I think what I was talking about was leaving the past in the past. As far as, like any success that you've had any anywhere else is coming in, Uh, you'll always like to say, like with your hands open, right?
Speaker 2:Like, just being like palms up palms up like being humble, um, and that's a thing that I don't think we see enough, uh, in this industry, and that was one of the things that I I did right away is like I was like what can I learn from all these people?
Speaker 2:Which it? That's when mentorship comes in, and you've been coached by very high level people around the country. Um, so, talk a little bit about the mentorship part, part of it, just because I feel like you know, we just sat done talking about income and I guarantee you that this $5 million earner a year he had a coach, has a coach. So it's like I feel like why so many people can't get to the next tier that they want to is because not necessarily that they're, they have to be coached, but it's just they kind of feel like, hey, I, I, I got it figured out. Now Maybe I'm and I'm talking about the people that you know we can talk about starting out, and then the people that have been doing this like three to five years you know, so what are your, so, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm only speaking of this for my personal experience and I think too many of us were like I was when I was first in my career. It's almost like I wanted credit for my success, so I wanted the ideas to be my ideas. That was part of the glory for it for me at first, for some reason, I don't know why, but I wanted to think of the ideas. I wanted to implement my thoughts. I wanted it to be part of my success involved me being doing, being able to do it by myself Right, and I think that was a huge mistake. Trial and error that caught that. That has a need for a lot of trial and error Right. And because I had a lot of trial and error, that was actually my biggest overhead and my biggest miss.
Speaker 1:My business really took off when I completely said you know what? There's people that know how to do it better than me. I'm just going to do it their way. Now for me. I didn't come to that realization until I pretty much lost my entire business Right. Then I came to that realization and I just said you know, I'm going to do it. You don't have to Like if I, if my own son, got in this business. I would just say you do everything that you're told by this person that does this much business until you do better than him, and then you find the next person. Right Now, we all have these ideas that we want to implement and I don't think that I don't want to necessarily suppress those things. I think they should. But they should be done on the sixth day, right. Implement your ideas on Saturday and on in the evenings when you have the extra time. The rest of the time go like you're going to work and like you're executing a game plan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the biggest things that I see people that even that they they're wanting to get mentorship and they're wanting to learn from other people, but they just don't ever do anything with that information, which is pretty crazy. And you know, one of the things, too, that I mean it's pretty obvious but you got to remind people is that, um, that and I saw it, uh, actually from an event that you and I went to in Dallas in 2022, uh, we were just coming off of a really big year and just because you made a certain amount of certain year, does it's not guaranteed the next year?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So just, uh, you know, this business reminds you that it's kind of like success is rented, is never owned, like you have to keep paying your dues every single month, time and time again every single year, in order to be able to have some consistency there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and here's the thing is you can't get to the top of any mountain if you keep changing mountains. And I think that's what a lot of people do is that it gets hard and they're like let's try a different way. And then that gets hard and try a different way. What does that look like, practically? Well, you read this book, or you go into this coaching, or you find this mentor and that mentor starts asking you to do hard things and you're like you know what? This over here looks easier and it looks like it fits my personality more. Let's try that. Or then I read a book called Sales Ninja. Well, that must be the way. Called sales ninja. Well, that must, that must be the way you know. And then, before you know it, you started the first few steps of a bunch of different things and you've gotten nowhere. So to me it's even more important than choosing the right path. It's staying on whatever path you chose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that going back to like the grass is always greener. It doesn't necessarily mean switching industries, switching companies, but it's just, it's your mind kind of just playing games on you. It's like maybe this isn't working Right. So, uh, when I started, uh I remember being walked to my office and they're like here you go, here's your laptop. And I said, okay, like where's the training? And they're like there is no training, just start calling people. That's literally what they told me. Now, there's been some.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a couple of different formal trainings out there, but honestly, I'm kind of glad that I didn't go through that, just because it's the. My personality is. I'm just like I learned by doing. But I actually wanted to come into this business and be an assistant to like a top producing loan officer. I read a book uh, it's called the mortgage storm for anybody out there. Um, it's like every chapter is the story of a top producing loan officer back in 2016. And they pretty much 80% of them said start underneath somebody that's doing a lot of loans so you can get a lot of experience that way. I they didn't want to hire me because I didn't have any experience. So what are your thoughts on the best way to maximize the first couple of years of being a loan officer. Starting out as a loan officer.
Speaker 1:I mean, I loved your strategy of meeting with top producers and whatever. And I think once you meet with people, that's the whole thing. This business is about relationships. Once you start meeting with people and you get to know them and you show interest in them, they're going to turn around and take interest in you. So that would be my start is to start meeting with some top producers and I guarantee you doors will start opening up for you via those people.
Speaker 1:Right, when somebody sees that you're hungry, when somebody sees that you're ready to learn, I do that. And spending a lot of time shadowing and learning for something that actually does it, I think that's huge. I think it's way more important to go find the correct leadership than the right pay structure. That's so good. I'll say that again Find the right person that can lead you to the right place than going and trying to find who has the best rates or who has the highest commission or whatever. I see so many people get sucked into a higher starting rate or a sign-on bonus or a higher commission structure and I think they're just not going to go anywhere. They're going to get paid. You know, I'd rather have 50, 80% of a lot than a hundred percent of a little right, yeah, no, that's a great way.
Speaker 2:So a great way to look at it, just because I think a lot of the times, you don't know what you don't know, like we see it with home buyers all the time, right, like it takes 35, 40 people to close one loan and there's so much surrounding buying, especially your first home or second home, and what's the first question that everybody asks, like as a homebuyer, they're like what's the rate? Because that's all they know, right? So is being able to look past that to be able to have some success led down the road. So, like we talked about, you don't need a G, you don't. You don't need a G, you don't. You don't even need a bachelor's degree, you don't need all this crazy education, um, and, and there's a potential to make a lot of money A lot of people don't ever get there, but would you say that that people, that that are making a good living in this industry have a good mix of knowing how to do, like the art of doing the deal pretty much, you talked about it guidelines, and then they're in their own way, whatever that is good at marketing, because that's one thing that we haven't really talked about you have to be able to market yourself and then, last, be able to be able to be good at creating and keeping relationships.
Speaker 2:Would you agree that, like you, those, you do need those three things if you want to have some type of success in this business?
Speaker 1:100%.
Speaker 1:I mean I think that you have to be a student of your craft.
Speaker 1:If you're in this business and you're getting into it, or barely been in it or just a couple of years, and you're not spending time reading guidelines, learning more about how to do things, not only are you doing yourself a disservice, you're doing your clients a disservice because that's going to allow you to get somebody into a better program to qualify somebody that's not qualified to problem solve for them. I mean that's what makes your value. That's like an attorney not knowing the law right. I would never go to an attorney that doesn't know the law. They went to three years of law school and obviously there's not as much of us to learn. But you have to know not only the guidelines, the programs, the market, where it's headed, have a little bit of insight on where rates you can't know where rates are going to go but you should have knowledge of all those aspects of your business and if you're not taking your time every single week to do that, I think you're falling short in a lot of areas as a loan officer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that I've seen a lot of people get out or make a shift within this business because they don't have the other one of the three. You know, for example, like you have people that might be really good at guidelines but just don't like to go out there and meet people. Um, you know, really just hate talking to people. Some people do. They're just like, hey, I don't, I'm not about that, I don't want to market myself, I don't, I don't have a Facebook, I don't have a Instagram, whatever. And then boom after, after a couple of years, they're more detailed, oriented, right, and even though you do need that in this business, I think that you got to bring in the business. That's the biggest thing that you're getting paid for, I I would say. And then you have people that are good at marketing, but once they get, the deal falls apart, because they don't, they don't know it Right.
Speaker 1:That's a really great point. I would rather have somebody, and you need all three, but I think there's some that are more important than others. How?
Speaker 2:would you rate?
Speaker 1:them. So it's marketer guideline relationship and knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's guideline being able to market yourself and then being able to create and keep relationships.
Speaker 1:Market number one relationships two, two and knowledge three, because I would rather have a loan officer that's starting, that's just like a like he'll go meet anybody. He's not. He's not scared to call anybody. Everybody likes him right when they meet him. He takes interest in people, just somebody. That's a big time relationship, guys, lots of friends, big circle of influence. And then, lastly, maybe his not his comfort zone or his down arrow is knowledge. I would rather have that guy or that person over the guy that knows all about the mortgage industry but is just deathly afraid to go out there and meet people. You're going to have a lot more success if you're able to get past those fears of going out there. There's some people that are introverted and just fight through that piece of it but do the knowledge where. And there's some people that are extroverted, that fight through having to know the guidelines and just are out there meeting people.
Speaker 2:But I will, I would say I rank them that way that a hundred percent, and one of the biggest things that I learned getting in the business, it was this phrase that I still use to this day. I used to yesterday with the client and it says uh, our goal is always to under promise and over deliver, Because I think that a lot of people that are those people that are very good with marketing, uh, but they don't know the guide part, the guides part of it they are always doing the opposite over promising people and under delivering right, it's like hey, can you help?
Speaker 2:I have a buyer that has a 400 credit score. Can you help them? Yeah, I think we can do it, but you're just like hungry and you're just like trying to get business and it's like that's, that's what could hold people back so much. And we've seen it, you know, with people that have came in and out of the business, so um. So once you have established yourself, let's say you're making a decent amount of money, but you're probably don't even have time to spend it because you're just in your work all the time.
Speaker 2:To where a lot of the times people are are like what, how do I make a change? Which is like when should I potentially get hire some help? What? What are your thoughts on, like, the best? When should I be evaluating? Now we're talking like, probably most likely for most people, past those two years I've been in the business. Now, no matter what type of income I'm making, but I mean, I would assume that you're making a decent amount, that you're wanting more freedom because you're spending so much time in your files. What are your thoughts Like? What questions should I be asking myself?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, you know I say this to loan officers all the time there's only two reasons why you should ever tell me you're too busy in this industry, and if it's not one of those two reasons, you're not doing the right things. And those two reasons are too many leads or too many loans, right. And so what you're asking is what do you do when you have?
Speaker 2:too many leads and too many loans too many things and too many loans.
Speaker 1:And it goes back to what you talked about. The coaching is you follow a business structure that somebody else has already proven works as far as that, because what I find is a lot of people start getting super busy and they go I need help, and so they start in this process of eating help, and some of this needing help is ego driven, like I need somebody to tell what to do. It really is as much as we'd like to say it's not and we have all these great intentions. It just kind of is, because I see people get ahead of themselves wanting to get somebody all the time and what I do is just follow a business plan, follow a business structure.
Speaker 1:When I hired my first person, it's because the person that I was being coached by said you need one person for every six units you're doing. Well, I was doing seven, eight, nine, 10 units at that time and I said I need a person because that's going to get me to 12. Right, and so then we started doing 12 plus and I hired the next person and the number of units depends on your market. I really encourage you to understand your numbers, understand. You know what the bottom line is as far as like what your team is bringing in and what's profitable. If you're a branch manager, make sure to look at the P&L. If you're not a branch manager, make sure to talk to your branch manager and say, hey, what? Where do I need to be consistently to be able to have one person, two people, three people? But I would say a good rule of thumb right now would be six units per person on your team.
Speaker 2:And we're talking consistent because we meet a lot of people that are like how many loans are you closing right now? And they're like, probably like 15. And you're like, oh, so you're going to end up the year with well close to 200 or something. They're like, oh, no, no, no, I'm not even going to hit 100.
Speaker 1:Well, I have found that when I ask people how many loans they do, it's like when I ask them their golf score, what they shoot in golf, and they'll typically say, well, I shoot an 80, 82. And they tell me an 82, cause they shot 82 once, right. And they don't shoot 82 there, they shoot 95 all the time, right, and so that's how it is. So I've I've ran into that situation. Well, how many loans do you do a month? Well, I do 10 loans a month. Oh no, I did 62. You don't do 10 loans a month, man, and so I think it's important, like you said, that it's a consistent. Again, it goes back to the leads and loans thing. Right, I just closed seven deals, I have eight deals in the pipe for next month and I have the leads that are going to get me at least that for the month after that. If you're not tracking all that first of all which is a whole nother topic you're not going to know those numbers. So first thing you need to do is be aware of your numbers.
Speaker 2:That topic kind of links into another thing I wanted to talk about, which was coaching. There's coaching out there anywhere from a couple thousand dollars a month up to 5,000, or plus a month that people are spending in order to be able to grow their business. So at what point should you be looking at potentially hiring a coach?
Speaker 1:I mean yesterday. Honestly, if you have the budget for it, I think that you need some guidance. Obviously, you could go work for somebody that's going to give you a certain amount of guidance, but I mean, the sooner you can get in a situation where you're being held accountable for clear productivity, that you should get into it Now. If the place you work already has that available, jump on it Right Um. To me, when I was in that higher end coaching, it wasn't so much about the info they were giving me although that was very valuable it was more about the accountability, and I was paying enough money to them that it hurt if I didn't take full advantage of it. So it's so important that you put yourself in a situation where you're vested into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like signing up for a lifetime membership rather than a Planet Fitness membership for the New Year's resolution, right? Well, we've all seen those $10 gyms. You know why they work? Because nobody cancels it. They pay, they, they have it just just in case they go.
Speaker 1:Just in case they go, but they never go they work because they never go, so they can have 10 times as many um members as, like, another gym that has a higher cost because nobody goes. If you're only paying 10, there's no, it doesn't hurt not to go when you only pay 10 bucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's another thing, too, to look at. Essentially, if you've listened to this podcast and you've said, hey, this, this might be an industry I want to just a little more information on, and, like you said, who has the best rates, who has the best uh comp, all this stuff, but it's like, what value is where you're going to work at, what are they giving you? You know, like one of the things that we have here is we're, you know, anybody that's wanting that coaching. You know which we've have.
Speaker 2:We have, uh, yourself, a couple of other people that have gone through um, different types of coaching has paid a lot of money, have the production, are currently doing it, and uh, and we, we have that coaching that we're able to, to have that accountability, which, at the end of the day, that's what it really is. But, man, I think we covered a lot of stuff and, uh, I'm glad that we kind of went through it. Hopefully, this, you know, help some people and uh, hopefully we have a good uh follow-up um episode led down the road with the people that we just hired.
Speaker 1:Man and I definitely think we need a part two to this one. We didn't really get into, like, you know what type of person uh should be thinking about getting into this industry? Um, we didn't get into the actual steps, like licensing, like education. Um, you know, what should you be learning right out of the gate? Uh, what should you be focusing most of your time on?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think there's a lot of subjects that we can go ahead and do a follow-up on let let's do it, man Cool, Appreciate you coming on and actually you know this was a little different, that we did it, but I think it'll be very valuable to a lot of people.
Speaker 1:So I agree, sounds good, thanks Will.