Why Relationships Create Fortunes—and Transactions Don’t with Todd Duncan

In this powerful episode of The Way, Dino sits down with the legendary coach, author, and industry icon to unpack over four decades of hard-won lessons on building a business that doesn’t just produce income — but creates freedom, longevity, and real wealth.

Todd shares why most loan officers stay stuck trading time for money, how systems unlock scale, and why relationships — not transactions — are the real asset in any lasting business.

The conversation dives deep into coaching, mindset, AI-powered learning, referral economics, and why slowing down is often the fastest way to grow.

This is not theory. This is proven execution from one of the most trusted voices in lending.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why transactions create income, but relationships create fortunes
• The “slow down to speed up” principle that transforms careers
• How Todd built referral-driven businesses without chasing leads
• Why most loan officers confuse being busy with being productive
• The real purpose of coaching — beyond learning how to do loans
• How systems create freedom, scale, and a sellable business
• The power of referral-by-design vs. transactional marketing
• Why confidence determines conversion more than scripts
• How AI coaching and role-play are changing learning forever
• What it takes to build a business that lasts decades — not cycles

Thanks for listening to "The Way With Dino Katsiametis"
For full show notes, links, and extra episode resources, visit dinokatsiametis.com.
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Learn more about Ethos Lending at ethoslending.com.

Transcript

Dino Todd Interview Raw: [00:00:00] Like I promised, here it is. It's gonna be in my famous, and most exciting interview of the year. Why? Because it's Todd Duncan. Todd, thank you for coming on, man. I appreciate it.

Todd Duncan Raw: Dino, great to be with you. We've talked about this for a long time. I am equally as excited.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: So it's interesting because there's a, there's so many things, that we're going through my head knowing that you were coming on and I know you better than probably most of the people that I've interviewed. But you also have, I don't even know how many years, but probably the most amount of years in the mortgage industry, and you are one of the most iconic guys in the entire industry.

So it's exciting for me but for also multiple reasons. One, I was thinking a lot about my dad, and he was my biggest mentor. There's no replacing that.

But number two, I would say you are. So it's extra exciting for me that you're here today.

Todd Duncan Raw: Oh for me to get a text from you 10 days [00:01:00] ago stating this stuff works. That's what I look for, Dino. And it's been so fun to just be by your side and your thirst for quality and innovation and lifestyle and balance and all those kinds of things is the most rewarding thing that any two people can talk about is how to have more of that and how to do it for the right reasons and to be intentional and purposeful about why we're doing what we're doing in the first place.

I'm excited. You're a great student. You're a great learner, you're a great leader and you're a great visionary. And I have no idea where this is gonna go, but I'm trusting it's gonna go exactly where it needs to.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: It's going to go exactly there. So let's just start, man. Who are you today personally and professionally?

Todd Duncan Raw: Oh man. I am a I would say that I am a student of opportunity and I am [00:02:00] a evangelist for hope. And why I say that today is because having started in the mortgage business in 1980 and having done my first loan on Veterans Day in 1980 in November, and then looking at where I am today, I've had both the blessing of stewarding and industry on the best practices of building a business the right way and building it profitably and building it in a way that it serves you instead of you being a slave to it.

All the way to today, having this enormous gratitude for what I refer to as crystallized intelligence, which is nothing more than substantially believable wisdom that I can speak to anybody because of that wisdom of watching this industry and just watching success in general. Dino, it's [00:03:00] just been, it's been a moment where you start to realize that I'm in this really sweet spot right now, and it's more than just a halftime spot.

It's it could even be a red zone spot if you look at the entire length of my career and where I am, right now, today, that there's still more to do and I am excited about doing it, and I'm excited about taking it across the finish line. Grateful, blessed, learned, bankable. People can trust what I say.

It's not some hyperbole. It works.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah. Yeah. I'll attest to that. So let me ask you you've always been, Todd Duncan, the coach, the speaker, the author. Now you are embarking into this whole new journey with fuel and that's pretty exciting and it's even, I know it, it seems to me like it started within the mortgage real estate, space.

But it's expanding now just to everywhere. Tell us all about fuel.

Todd Duncan Raw: I think what I'd like to say first [00:04:00] is if you go through life and you don't look for signs, you don't look for triggers that may intercept you or you intercept them, you will miss a lot of the opportunities that this world and in my world, that God presents to you. And it wasn't too, it wasn't too long after I listened to the Garth Brooks.

Two part docuseries and he was talking about his dad and and he said, one of the things that my dad taught me was that with every blessing there is a curse. And with every curse, there's a blessing. And I thought about that. And when COVID hit it was like, you could look at it two ways.

You could look at it as a curse or you could look at it as a blessing. I'm an optimist. I try to choose the best path of optimism and, what the result can be. And there is zero certainty in that timeframe that anybody would be allowed to fly to a hotel, and a hotel would be allowed to host an [00:05:00] event and you wouldn't have to sit six feet away from each other.

And do you know the short story is I just made one of those leadership decisions. It reminds me, Matt Damon and his son and the bows of the zoo. We bought a zoo and his son was thinking about asking this girl out. And Matt just said to him, he says, all it takes is 20 minutes, 20 seconds of courage.

And what happened with COVID is it took 20 seconds of courage to look at my team and say, I don't know how, but we're gonna live stream this entire event this year. So the blessing came that once we turned on all the cameras and we were in the studios that were broadcasting we had 44,000 devices connected to the Sales Mastery event, Dino.

And right then and there when Matt Herbert told me that number and he said, and there are 13 countries connected, it was like blessing received. I am now gonna create a technology company that takes learning all over the world. And if my bet is right, we can be in every language, [00:06:00] in every country, and we can democratize learning.

So everybody has access to becoming their best version of themselves. And, here we are. Here we are today, five years after COVID. And we're in 71 countries and we have the highest rated learning company with advanced generative AI coaches. And we speak in every language and think about Netflix for personal growth and personal development and and then coaching.

Unlike anything you've ever seen before where you can just access any coach anytime, any you want for anywhere, for any reason. For pennies. Pennies. It's, the coaching world has changed. Yeah. Fuels fuels happening. The fuel has taken off, if you will. The rocket is going and it's, it's been three years of just I always talk, you always have heard me talk about the 90 day burn, right?

And the 90 day burn is just, you can change the direction of anything in 90 days. This has been a three year burn. And and we finally got liftoff. And so it's a blessing. And to see, somebody sent a sent a text in [00:07:00] yesterday that they spent 16 minutes with me roleplaying in, in an AI conversation, and their confidence went from a three to a nine, and they set seven outta 10 appointments as soon as they were done being coached by my generative ai.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: All right. So for people that don't know, right? I understand what that means and I even saw the demo of it when we were at, at the last Sales Mastery event in Dallas or Momentum Builder or wherever it is now. But a lot of people have no idea what you're talking about. It tell 'em like what you can do when you get into fuel.

'cause the idea of learning is one thing. The concept of role playing with somebody like you is another.

Todd Duncan Raw: one of the things that everybody needs to know is just like Netflix, there's not a single content source, right? You have you have different directors, different producers, different authors, different writers. You have all that in Netflix with production shows, right? So Fuel [00:08:00] currently today has 65 instructors that cover every bandwidth of personal and professional success.

Whether it's money management, whether it's health and wellness, whether it's sales, marketing, customer service, leadership investing whatever it is that you would like to learn, think about a device centered microlearning company that teaches you things in very short modules. You can stand in line at Starbucks and learn something in two minutes.

And and so these 65 instructors have short form video lessons and courses. You can access their lessons and courses. We built a recommendation engine, so the more you watch of any one genre, the more fuel recommends to you that if you like this, you might try that. That's nothing new, right? But it's a beautiful learning modality to let you learn what you want, when you need to learn it, and then you have the opportunity to, with any [00:09:00] one of those instructors.

Have them anytime you want, anywhere you want, on any device you want. When we take all their books, we take all their video, we take all of their white papers, and we build a vertical closed container for that. That particular author, now, he or she has all of that to share with you without physically being in your presence.

You could be in your car and having a conversation with me. It would be my ai, it would be my version of me, it would be my voice. And the way that the automations are built is that everything I talk about with anybody, as is true for any coach that talks with anybody about anything that further populates that particular container.

Now, if you were to ask me to write a legal contract, I couldn't do that. I would tell you that I could point you to one of [00:10:00] our instructors that does. But if you wanted to sit down and let's say you're a leader and you wanted to role play a difficult conversation or you wanted me to write a vision plan for you, or you wanted me to show you a graceful way to terminate somebody, we get to do all that now in an environment where you can literally just turn on your phone and you can open fuel and you can hit a button that says AI agents.

And I hit AI agents, and then I pick. I pick me or pick anybody and it comes up

and I can talk to me and, and then I can say hey Dino, let's say Dino's a coach on the system, right? I can say, Hey Dino, would you email me that business plan or Dino? I've got a group of of Hispanic loan officers and can you give them what you just gave me, but give it to 'em in Spanish?

And it's just alright, so the world's changing guys, and you [00:11:00] don't have to, here's the new deal. The gift that I got in 2020 said, coaching's more important than having a session every two weeks. Coaching is more important to to optimize the minute I have today, or the 10 minutes I have right now.

And I don't wanna wait two weeks to bring this conversation up with a coach. There's nothing wrong with having. Coach. But now you have, imagine this. Imagine having a thousand minutes of coaching for $200 for, of any instructor you want in the fuel platform. It's 28 cents a minute. And we've just changed the modality.

That's all we've done. We've said coaching is more important and there's many more areas instead of one vertical that people need to be coached in. And now you have this ability to have interactive dialogue and the privacy you can practice in private, perform in public, it's just, it's a beautiful thing being know, I'm just, I'm very proud of it.

We're we are watching companies by million minute packages.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Wow.

Todd Duncan Raw: Can you [00:12:00] imagine buying a million minutes for your team?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: No, that's insane.

Todd Duncan Raw: So that's where fuel is. You can check it out@myfuel.io. If you haven't joined us, join us. It's most people lose more money in an hour than it costs for a year to be in.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah, and we'll have that in our show notes as well.

I think it's it's you're more relevant now than you were because you can do it faster, better

in any language, in everywhere.

Todd Duncan Raw: All right. And it's when I went to become a private pilot, I had to read a book and had to watch a bunch of video and had to learn a bunch of stuff. And, but the other thing fuel does, just like in that example, is everything I learned while on the ground, I had to eventually prove in the air, right?

And so what fuel is fuel is a performance platform that helps you become your best. It's not just about a one-way interchange of video [00:13:00] or audio lessons. It's now that you've heard this, would you like to practice it? Now you've heard this. Would you like to take a test on it? And just make sure that you are learning for performance rather than just listening to hear something.

And you were at Mastery. You saw what happened that when a speaker left the stage, within about an hour, their notes were in your phone in fuel, and they were a generative AI coach right then and there. So think about this. Think about, I'm sure everybody watching and listening to the way, I love that.

I just love that title. Dino. Imagine walking out of a three day event and having tons of notes. And the moral conflict that I've always had is I feel an ethical and fiduciary responsibility that when people leave an event, I've always wanted to shore them up, right? I've always wanted to make sure they have a kind of a track to run on.

And and now they do because they can talk to any [00:14:00] speaker from the event anytime about anything they learned at the event. And they can get coached like that the whole year. And then they come back for sales mastery the next year. And we now have this community of learn, grow, and get better and practice.

And when you're game ready, you know this as a leader, right? If you're not game ready, you will lose the conversation. If you're game ready, then you can pretty much handle anything that comes your way. Yeah, so I hope that's not too long-winded, but the it's. The safety net that fuel has built below the person who's trying to implement allows them to only fall about six inches, and then they get right back up and try it again, and try it again, and try it again.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: yeah. I love it. Todd let's just go way back for a minute you started 1980. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how long ago it was a lot of people listening right [00:15:00] now we got different levels of people that are brand new and always say the same thing.

Yeah. But you guys have been in it for so long, you don't have to do all the same stuff anymore. And it's different. So going back to when you were brand new in the business I believe it doesn't matter. You still have to have that special something in you to go out there and hit it hard and figure out a way to make it, make, make yourself succeed.

So first I wanna know how you did it back then. What was your special thing that got you elevated into the level of high producer.

Todd Duncan Raw: there's probably a couple things that happen. One, one, you know very well is I made a conscious choice to pursue relationship and not loans. My my coach that I ran into probably at day 100 when I had run outta my draw. Told me that if you chase transactions, you'll make a living, but if you build relationships, you'll make a fortune.

So that was a strategic operating [00:16:00] process that I unleashed at the very start. He said he said to me, never make a call on anybody that doesn't know you're making a call on them, and that is not excited to have you meet with them. And that was the second thing. So I always had to make sure that any phone call, anything I did to try to set an appointment with a potential relationship referral partner had to be such that they wanted to meet with me and I stepped into this.

Luckily because one of my first agents that I was working with said to me, she said do you have room to take on another agent? And I go, I think so. Why? And she goes, 'cause my good friend works for Century 21 Beachside, and her lender sucks. And I need you guys to meet. I started to realize, ho how did I miss that?

So when I called the agent at Century 21 Beachside, there was nothing but joy and happiness. 'cause she had a bad experience going on with her lender, and she ended up [00:17:00] needing somebody like her friend my agent had in me, right? And so then that's when I stepped into this referral by design thinking.

And I think my special sauce was that I never, from that moment on tried to do business with anybody to whom I had not been personally referred. Referred, and that they needed a different lender experience. So that was the start of it. And then I think what ended up happening, like what was my secret sauce early on, my secret sauce was by understanding the referral kind of mindset, right?

And the referral modality, I started looking at every borrower. As an asset for my agents. And so I, I said to my team, I said, if we do a really good job for the Johnsons the Johnsons probably know the Smiths and the Smiths, if they ever need a mortgage they're, we're gonna be referred to them.

And because Debbie referred me to the Johnsons, we wanna make sure that when [00:18:00] the Smith, when the Smiths are ready to buy, that we take them back to Debbie. And so what I got very early on, probably June of 81, was if I can help my agents get, refer to borrowers and sellers, buyers and sellers, and create an economic world for them I would not have any competition.

And then that became my rallying call for the next nine years to do almost, I think we were like 62 loans, short of 6,000 units in 11, almost 12 years. So that was it. And of course, everybody else, I did this. I had a webinar a couple weeks ago and and Dino, you said something earlier that was just very profound and it's like everybody says the same thing.

So on this webinar, I had, I dunno, 300 loan officers on it. And I asked let's do a hypothetical. I'm a real estate agent and I'm gonna ask you why I should do business with you. So why don't you just go to chat [00:19:00] right now and type in your answer. And as soon as it started, Dino, every answer was the same.

We give great service, we close on time, we did it, duh. It was all just blah blah, hogene homo, no differentiation whatsoever. And it just kept filling up. And I said, okay, that's enough. You guys are doing what every other loan officer does and it's not gonna get you to where you wanna be.

And so somebody said, what should we say? And I said, okay. So if a realtor calls me and asks me, Todd, why should I do business with you? My response is going to be because unlike any other lender, I am an integral part of your cash flow and will increase your monthly earnings through. And then I had in that point in time, my consumer [00:20:00] referral program, and that was it.

And as soon as I started saying that I helped my real estate agents build wealth through real estate, those are the kind of things that we give good service. You can't even play mortgage today without great service. You just can't, and you can't promise to get back to them. That's not a strategic advantage.

You can't, about 90% of what loan officers say today. Should be ripped out of their vocabulary and burnt in the field. And they need to start getting very creative with value interchange and value exchange as the primary vehicle to build relationships. And so that's all I did. I carried that on all the way to the end, Dino.

And I think by the time we were done, we had referred just shy of 16,000 transactions to real estate agents that were coming from that circle of cash flow as that model and the rest was history.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: [00:21:00] It's funny when you said that. I started I went to chat. And I built a clone for myself. So I'm almost curious to see what it would say. And I don't, I don't think about doing loans much anymore. 'cause I'm thinking about

finding other people to do loans and building them up and teaching them what I've learned over the years.

Anyways, this is, it went through this whole thing, but I just went back and said, gimme bullets, right? So I can just come back here. So it says, set yourself apart immediately. I don't chase agents. I partner with agents I can genuinely help grow. My role is to make your business easier, cleaner, and more profitable.

The positioning statement says, most lenders close loans. I help agents generate, repeat and referral clients.

My systems keep your clients loyal to you for years. Proof without bragging, my business is almost all referrals. Perfect. Five star reviews, fast communications, clean files, strong client coaching. Ask the magic question. What frustrates you the most about lenders right now? This tells you exactly how [00:22:00] to win them tailored value based on their answers. It says if they say communication, you'll never wonder where a deal stands with me. If they say weak buyers, I prep buyers early. So your offers get accepted.

They say, poor follow-ups, I'll keep clients engaged, so on and so on. Let's see. And then it says, the easy close, give me one buyer. Let me show you how simple I make your life. If I don't deliver, no worries. I'll if I do, we build from there. Anyways I was curious to see what it would say. That's a great exercise

is to go through and just put it in

Todd Duncan Raw: Yeah. And most s loan officers don't understand the power of personal branding as uniqueness, and you really have to do that. A bus, a business that rises above is a business that ha has a brand feel that's really attractive, right? And not cheesy, but really attractive.

And words matter. Words matter. And what we say [00:23:00] matters. And so the exercise for everybody is based on what you would say normally, would you do business with you? And that's a, that's a look in the mirror kind of test. And once you get the thing figured out, and you can, there, there's, Deb and I wrote a book called five Stars and it was all about succeeding and competing in the digital age, creating high trust, and so on and so forth.

And one of the things in the book is called story Selling. And Story selling starts like this. Understand. You have to say how you're different and if you can in that one statement, separate you in this case from any lender out there. So the way it would sound is unlike almost every lender I see my role as helping borrowers build wealth through real estate.

And unlike those lenders, we're [00:24:00] not ever one and done. We believe that if you buy your first home from us, you'll buy your fifth home from us. And that's the way that we nurture our client relationships. And because we nurture so well those relationships feed referrals back to us, which we bring to you Now, who's gonna say no to that?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah. Yeah. You know something that hit me when you were saying that lately, so the, it's I put myself on a 30 day AI sprint. I decided to wake up at 4:00 AM and do nothing but AI for three and a half hours before I start doing anything else. And I became a kid in a candy store. Like the, you open one door and there's all these neon lights, it's oh my gosh.

The potential is limitless, right? And then you open another door and the depth that you just discovered was a whole other, a universe. And it just keeps on going. And one of the things I learned [00:25:00] through this AI journey of mine, which by the way, I extended another 30 days just 'cause it's too good to to stop. But I discovered how I communicate with it. The more descriptive I am with my communication, the better the results. And when you were speaking just a minute ago. And saying what you would say. I don't know if anybody else picked it up, but it was so descriptive. It literally covered everything.

And I think what I'm, where I'm going with it is communication is so important and key to everything that we do. Whether you're on the phone communicating to a client or a real estate agent, whether you're talking to chat and you're trying to get a good answer what, how good your question is will determine how good your answer is.

And I do it, let's keep going, right? You relationship with your wife, [00:26:00] you know how good your communication is there, how good your communication with your kids with all, with yourself even, right? Because you can lie to yourself all you want,

but how good are you communicating with yourself? I think that is the first step to. Achieving some greatness is communication. And we should probably all be working on how well we can learn to communicate our thoughts. And I loved earlier when you were talking about role playing with AI Todd, how awesome is that? Because the best way to work these problems out is role-playing. As silly as it is, as uncomfortable as it is, I've never found anything to work better than that. Other

than pure experience. But how are you gonna get experience?

Todd Duncan Raw: yeah. You remember our good friend Brian Frazier, right? Who was was sadly sadly murdered in the Las Vegas massacre in 2017. [00:27:00] He and I would sit down. And we would role play for hours how to talk to the tower, right? So as pilots you have to get good in communicating with the tower and you can always tell when the tower doesn't like you because you're not saying the right thing, the right way.

And we would role play for hours on that. And I always remember him because that the role play made us really good pilots as it related to not only talking to the tower, whatever airport we were going to, or he would be going to, or I'd be going to, but also talking to other pilots in the sky, just what to say and how to say it in, in a reasonable way.

And one of the guys that helps is helping shape. The Destiny of Fuel is a guy named Gerhardt Schwan who owns the Selling Power Media Empire. And when I was a loan officer, I had his magazine on the passenger seat of my car. And every time I had a break, I would open Selling Power magazine and I would read something.

And what he said one [00:28:00] time was, if you don't know what to say in a selling situation, you'll lose. And I was like, wow, if I don't know what to say, so then I started keeping track of deals I didn't get, and then I wanted to learn why I didn't get it. And so I would call the borrower once I learned or when they told me and it was right there.

I would say so just so I could continue to improve. Why did you choose that lender instead of me? And for the first, three or four months, I got really great intel. And then I incorporated that intel into what I was doing and I stopped losing deals. And so Gerhard and I are friends today, 45 years after I did my first loan, and he is still shaping our company fuel.

And he said that one of the greatest attributes that we're bringing to the marketplace in this alternative education short form micro learning process is helping people build their confidence. And everybody just [00:29:00] needs to hear this. The higher your confidence, the more consistent your performance.

And so anyway, one of the things I did is I got a Radio Shack audio cassette recorder. There are people listening, that don't even know Radio Shack ever existed. And and I would record what I would say in selling situations and I would listen to those recordings and then I would improve them and then I would listen and then I would improve them.

The other day I had 14 loan officers in a room responsible for a hundred billion, sorry, $1 billion in volume. $1 billion in volume, 14 loan officers, pretty good producers. And I made them get up and it was like one of those used, like we have Dino at Elite. I just said, come up and pick any instructor you want to pick and just start talking to them.

And so the guy that's the senior partner in the firm and owns half the company is sitting here with these loan officers and they're getting up here and these guys, these [00:30:00] guys are 70, 80, $90 million producers, right? And they're nervous to talk to somebody who's, on their computer screen, but talking to them with, and by the time they were done, it was like game over.

And so what we're doing right now, anybody can do this. We're doing a 90 day sprint at fuel, and you can buy packages of a hundred minutes or 200 or a thousand minutes, and the a thousand minutes is $280 and you get fuel for a year. Plus the thousand minutes, and as soon as your minutes are out, you can just upload and it's reloading your Starbucks card.

I need another a hundred minutes. Boom. And so this whole journey can start for anybody. The minute they listen to this, the minute they go to my fuel.io and hit the the victory sprint. That's what we're calling it, the victory sprint the world. Do you know?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: not to take away minutes from fuel or your income, what would dawn on me is like going back to asking [00:31:00] good questions. Asking good questions doesn't require using a lot of minutes. The better your questions, the less minutes, right? Same with an initial consultation. You can sit and blab for an hour and get nowhere and or you can blab for 30 minutes and, or even 15 to 20 minutes and get yourself a great initial consultation down. That'll last forever.

Todd Duncan Raw: Not only will it last forever, but I need everybody to know that even though this is a generative AI coach, it is that coach's intellectual property. Therefore, then the way the program works is you can get anything that Coach does in public, in a book on a video. Anything he or she has done, you can get in this dialogue.

So you could start the dialogue and you could say this, you could say, I know I talk too much. I know I don't ask the right questions. I really want to get my hook [00:32:00] developed. How would you recommend we start? And then this thing starts, it just starts going back and forth. And then you, and then maybe I would say to you, so let's give it a try right now.

I'll be the real estate agent. You'd be the loan officer. You're being referred to me. Make the phone call and let's see how it goes. I could say, okay, I'm happy to do that, but when the call's over, would you rate me on a scale of one to 10 and tell me how good you think I did? And I will go, sure.

I'll rate you. No problem at all. You ready? And then we start. And so you pick up the phone, you call me, and then I respond to you. And then the experience stops. And I say, not bad Dino, but. You do talk too much. You used way too many words. You probably need to get to the point more quickly. And you need to move from using the word think to using the word feel.

You're in an emotional sale and people don't think about emotion. They think about feel. So let's try it again. Dino, you [00:33:00] ready? Boom. And so it's not it's not like a book with a cover that starts in a cover that ends, and if the content is not in that book, you're never gonna read it. It's like all 22 of my books are in there and all videos that I've done are in there and years of sales mastery are in there.

And so the AI engine is pulling my IP and it's in my voice. And I can do, I can, I can do anything you want, so you're worth.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: can somebody record, let's just call it an initial consultation that they have and upload it to you and Ha. And ask you to critique it.

Todd Duncan Raw: Yeah, they can co, they can copy it and put it right in the chat on my ai or they could dump it into the video and we can do the analysis that way. But here's the deal. Once we have it figured out in this role play, you can say, would you send me this script? And I will take everything we just [00:34:00] did, and I will email you the final script.

Just a regular GPT always suggests right at the end of everything,

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: and I just want to, I want to tell everybody that you brought up something Dino, that I think is mega valuable when I'm using other AI models. I used to think of AI as it, and it's not an it. It is a machine, but if you talk to it like it is a human, you'll have an entirely different experience with your AI interchange.

It's impossible not to talk to us at fuel like we're humans 'cause we are. But the regular open, open AI and all the different GPT engines talk to it like it's a real person, and the more you get this, the better off you're gonna be. I I had a and the other thing I wanna say is I chose about two years ago to rename ai.

[00:35:00] 'cause I don't think there's really anything artificial about it. I think it's very real and I think it is intelligence. And I think that even though there's, sometimes where it goes off in a different direction or hallucinates or something like that, at the end of the day, AI stands for accelerate income.

And if you treat AI as an income partner, it's gonna change your whole frame of reference around ai. And I'll give you an example that happened yesterday. I was on the I'm doing a without getting into the weeds, I'm doing a shares distribution within fuel ownership. And I reached out to our attorney and he blocked an hour.

And so when I get on with the attorney, I can see that we're going in a lot of directions right now where I don't want to pay his hourly rate. And so at 15 minutes I ended the call and I said, okay, I'm gonna do some work on this and then I'll get back to you. And he said, fine. And so then I go into a couple of my G GPTs [00:36:00] and within about, I don't know, five minutes, I had a board resolution legal document and I had a equity transfer shares document done.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: And so just that one move alone saved me a thousand dollars in five minutes. And so imagine going from wherever you are to great. Just imagine that. Imagine getting, imagine having a learning partner in your pocket where anything you need, anytime you want, we've got a chef in here, there's all kinds of things that are in here, but there's no reason in today's world why you can't be better faster than you've ever been in your career.

Period.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: yeah, a hundred percent.

Todd Duncan Raw: Yeah.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: I've with all this time I've been putting in, a lot of time now I've the, just endless boundaries and opportunities that I [00:37:00] can visualize now.

The one thing for sure is, and you said it is, don't treat it like an knit, it's my partner and it knows everything about me.

Every once in a while it would, everybody called my dad, Mr. Pete. And every once in a while it would say this, what would make Mr. Pete proud? So it's really exciting to be working with my personal and I've named my AI assistant Lindsay, which is my wife's name. And it's jokingly, right?

'cause it's oh she not only talks my love language, 'cause she knows what my love languages are. So she gives it to me every time except for the touch that she can't do that. But she certainly gives me words of affirmation. And then I've uploaded my disc profile and a couple other ones and I said, and yes, this is how I like to communicate, but. Don't forget, you have to have my back when it comes to my weaknesses. So I want you to always be looking out for my weaknesses

And it's [00:38:00] amazing that she does this for me, so anyways

Todd Duncan Raw: Let me bring up, let me bring up one other thing then, because you know that I teach one of the most formidable things I teach. Is conversion, right? And from all borrowers that you may talk to, all agents or referral partners you may talk to. The more that say yes faster, the better off you are going to be, period.

So you can come in to fuel and you can say, I'm gonna call a high D realtor. I'm a high, I I wanna make sure that my scripting is dialed in. Can we do a role play with a high D realtor and a high I loan officer? And just make sure I get that nailed. Or if I'm an S or a C. When you fill out your fuel profile and you decide to load your disc, then it knows in your profile that you're a [00:39:00] disc.

So any you're, that you're a DIS, or C. And so anything you do. That is going to be in fuel is going to correlate relationally with your style and the style of the person that you're gonna be working with. It's 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: That's cool. 

Todd Duncan Raw: when you start to understand that.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: That's so cool.

So cool. So I wanna, I want to go, I wanna touch upon a couple things. This came up yesterday, I was interviewing Justin Padrone. And it went down a direction which I enjoyed. And I want to bring that up with you. Coaching. I'm gonna go to coaching. 'cause I'm a big believer in it.

I think everybody should do it. And just to give like proof of concept, right? I've leveled up every single time I've sought coaching. And one thing I'll say is that it's not, it may be in the very early stages, it's the coaching on how to be a loan officer. But you gotta go out and learn that.

You gotta be good at your trade, get

good at it. And I've always [00:40:00] told everybody, and once you get good at it, forget about it. Forget about doing loans, and start worrying about how to get loans, how to make your phone ring right? And how to create relationships. And you actually said it. I loved hearing this.

You said transactions equals oh gosh. I can't even read my own writing. What'd you say? Transactions equals.

Todd Duncan Raw: income, right?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: And then relationships equals fortune. And learning how to do loans will get you income, but creating relationships will make you a fortune. And I'm a huge believer in that. 'cause that is my business model. And when I came to Utah I was already a good, I was good at doing loans. I knew how to do loans. Did I tweak a few things? Yeah, I did. I got a little bit better at certain things, but just like I told Justin yesterday, one of the, one of the number one things that I learned and I, and the, one of the first things I implemented after coming to you was not going through my emails anymore. So having somebody else go through my emails. So [00:41:00] let's progress beyond emails though. It's, learning how to be good in business that'll help you grow. It's learning how to create systems. And this is where I went. Justin. 'cause the very, I think I don't even remember, it's been a while now, but one of the first seminars I went to that you were at was down in San Diego and your whole thing was slow down to speed up.

And I remember Todd, you drove me insane for the first day because I didn't want to slow down. I wanted to speed up and you kept saying, slow down, speed up. And I was like, I am not interested in slowing down, dude. Teach me how to speed up. And by the second day it, it synced in. And then after, I truly joined you and joined the elite group and really got after it, I really realized how important slowing down is in order to speed up. But the one thing that I learned the [00:42:00] most is that without systems, you'll never be able to speed up. And, I did that presentation on kiss.

Keep it simple, stupid. And it's so interesting because when I was what it meant to me at first was something totally different. Couple years later and a couple years later, it dawned on me, you can't keep it simple by not doing things. You're never gonna get anywhere if you don't do anything. You've gotta create the systems and let the systems do all the work. And you keep it simple by letting the systems do everything. Because what I had to stop and get out of doing, and this is where, I'll credit you, is I had to get out of the fact that I had to, I was doing everything. I had to let, I had to start letting other people do things. I had to learn how to delegate and I had to learn how to create the systems and teach people how to use 'em otherwise. I'm just sitting there doing everything and I will say, all day long to people that when I was doing 30 and [00:43:00] 50 million, I worked my ass off way harder than I did when I did 150 million. How does that work? 150 million And I worked less and had more fun than when I was doing 30 or even 50 million.

Todd Duncan Raw: So there's a question in there somewhere, but I think all of us can appreciate the fact that some of the greatest grief and some of the most painful moments are when we're going too fast. Hurry up and get to some place and you get a ticket. Slow down to speed up. How long did it take to get your ticket?

How far behind did that put you because you were trying to get there sooner. My first lesson in doing loans was I was not spending enough time on the loans, so I needed to slow down and if I did that, then I would speed up the loan and my boss, Bob Reyes, said, I guarantee you if you spend 15 more minutes on this loan file and you present it to [00:44:00] processing in a different, better way the loan is gonna go through faster.

You're gonna have higher customer service scores and that's going to speed up your business. And he told me that you need to Picasso eyes your 10 0 3. Meaning that in the, in those days when you had to fill out the 10 0 3 with a pen and and all of that, you had to present a masterpiece to processing and underwriting.

And if you got processing and underwriting on your team, you had everything right. And so then it was like you, nobody gets paid because you were busy, busy email busy is not having a system. Busy is like a fly with one wing going around and around and around.

And what we learned and why you went to 150 million with less hours is 'cause you created systems that got you out of having to do the thing that you are not. Supposed to be doing as a high performance salesperson. [00:45:00] Formula One just came through Vegas. Every single one of those drivers does not do anything to make the car go faster.

They don't do anything on that car a hundred percent with the exception of driving. It is done by other people why they're not gifted at it. And they are gifted at going 225 miles an hour and potentially winning a race. So we look at a loan officer, do you wanna be A, do you wanna be a Formula One loan officer?

And if you do, the only two things you should do is talk to partners and talk to borrowers all day long in building a team around you that can allow you to take an hour of email and turn that into an hour of income. And when you do that, and you put the system here, my first email system. Amy, I want you to check email at 9 11, 1 3 and five, and by 9 15, [00:46:00] 11 15, 1 15, 3 15, and five 15.

I only wanna receive emails that I need to deal with, that have to do with a relationship a referral or a sale. Okay? I'll check email at five 30. And your job is to make sure there's nothing in my inbox, and the only thing in my email is my profit box, and those are emails that I have to deal with and follow up on, and I'll check those for 10 minutes every, every hour or two.

If I have a 9 11 1, 3, and five, that's a system. And we look at this and we look at, how much would it cost, how much do you make per loan? How many hours are you spending an email or anything that isn't producing revenue? How do you redefine what you think is revenue producing and how do you pull things like email out of that?

'cause that's not, you have a filter that gives you the emails that might, now you're not replying to all, now you're not sending emails. Now you're not creating more of a problem. 'cause the [00:47:00] more you send, the more of a problem you have and you're isolating this as a delegatable activity. Would you pay somebody a hundred dollars an hour to manage email for you to make $10,000 an hour by doing one more loan?

And the answer is obviously yes. And we have this addiction to this thing. And the greatest joy you can ever have is know that this thing doesn't matter anymore except for the phone calls you make to people. And the phone calls you receive back from people. And especially if they're high value relationships.

And that's where your world should be. And about, I'll say this to your entire audience. 95% of loan officers in America are making about half the amount of money they could be making if they change their thinking about what they're doing.

That's straightforward. I had a guy, I had a guy [00:48:00] yesterday. Dino, this is gonna blow your mind. So I had a guy yesterday report in, we had a coaching conversation with a group of loan officers two weeks ago, and I said, what I want you to do over the next two weeks before anything takes over in the day is I want you to call five partners and five borrowers, okay?

And by the time we get back together, which was yesterday, I want you to have reached at least 20 partners in two weeks. And reached at least 20 borrowers in two weeks. And then I'm gonna ask you a question when we get back on tomorrow about what happened. Super simple exercise, right? It's a system, it's an outbound call system.

So a guy, Tim, gets on. And [00:49:00] so we have share. We have share yesterday. And in two weeks he contacted 16 partners and 12 borrowers and registered four and a half million dollars in loans in two weeks that he would not have gotten had he not made those calls to those people.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: And by the time we got done with a share, everybody was fairly embarrassed.

You have 20 year veterans that know the only way to make it rain is to make a phone call.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: And it's just it begs for this, like I said to this group, and I'll say it to, to your group people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. And if you could really get your head around this, guys, your system, your rainmaking system should be [00:50:00] all around conversion.

And I'm just gonna tell you right now, the simple math. Think about this for a second. If I have four borrower conversations a day and one says yes, I can do 20 loans a month. If 90% fund, that's 18 fundings, if I work 10 months, that's 180 fundings. If I can get my conversion rate through role playing with our coaches and dialing that in, and I can get that conversion by still four borrowers, so I'm not increasing my time, but now the conversion goes to 50%.

I am now at 360 units a year funded, and if I do this again and I can get my conversion rate to 75%, still talking to four borrowers a day, I now have 540 fundings a year. If you did the math right now on 540 fundings a year at five grand each, that's two and [00:51:00] a half million dollars plus in income. If you don't have a system around increasing your conversion rate, because you are practicing and practicing and practicing and practicing, you're leaving not only millions of dollars in your career on the table.

You're gonna take an extra decade or two to make the same amount of money you could make in 10 years by getting after it. And the sooner you understand what Dina just said, the sooner you understand I need an origination system where I am not going to let phone calls not be done in the most accurate, purposeful, and intentional way.

And I am gonna get so good at my brand reputation that about 90% of conversion happens before I even speak to the person. And that's called endorsement value. And endorsement value is every one of your agents telling every single buyer, every builder, talking, every single buyer, you must speak with Dino.

He's the only mortgage professional I trust, [00:52:00] and he's been in the business a long time. He helps me help you get the best home for the best price. And I bank on him on every deal. So can you call Dino today? Or I can text Dino your number and I'll have him call you. You have to be so dialed in this way that you're not thinking about getting loans.

I get a chance to transform another soul. I get a chance to transform another life. That's what you're doing. You're the ultimate hand holder for somebody who's scared to death to buy their first home. And you're the ultimate hand holder to guide somebody through. How long are they gonna live in a house or house is, you're the perfect person to do that.

So I just and then what's your like what's your system for referrals? So Dino I showed these guys a slide yesterday that between the time I have a conversation with a borrower and the time the, and the time the loan funds and records, my team and I would have a minimum of eight strategic [00:53:00] points in the manufacturing of a loan where we could ask for referrals.

That system is the system that generates the revenue back to your business partners. And if you don't have that, then you gotta have it. Otherwise, you're one and done and you've done another transaction. The borrower is an epicenter for more borrowers, which is why you've gotta crush the consultation.

You have got to crush the experience that they have doing business with you and your team. And man, when you have 10 people that you fund in a month and you get 10 referrals from those 10, and you do this for the next 10 years, you'll have $20 million in the bank.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah. Yeah. So let's coach a little bit in this scenario. Somebody listening and I was like yeah, that makes a lot of sense, but doesn't know how to execute on [00:54:00] telling their realtors or their borrowers to tell everybody else about them. I don't know if it's insecurity, right? You one has to get over the feeling of asking people to tell them, to tell their friends that you're great, right? That. But in reality, that's what you're asking them to do. And I need you to coach on it, but I'll start with be great and then you don't have to feel weird about it, it's pretty simple but coach everybody on how to go about asking for that. What does it take to do that

Todd Duncan Raw: Yeah, I think the one of the one of the influence modalities we talk about in the academy is the embedded command. We also talk about power phrases and we also talk about pattern interrupts. So watch how this works. So when I have the borrower at a point where they're ready to go, okay, and everything's good, and we're, we've got all the [00:55:00] documentation and we're ready to go I'm gonna say to the borrower, this is an embedded command.

I'm gonna say now that we're at this stage, I just wanna let you know that we work 100% on referrals from our clients. Like you. We could spend a bunch of money generating leads. We could spend a bunch of money trying to make it rain. But because we spend 90% of our time making sure at the end of this you give us a five star rating, we cannot afford to take our eyes off the prize and have anything go wrong with your lump.

So if at the end of this transaction you give us five stars, we would also like you at that moment in time to be in a position to refer us to two to three or four of your colleagues or friends. Is that a deal? And now that I've set the hook and I've set the stage, we're going [00:56:00] to bust our ass to get five stars.

And you're not gonna get it on every single loan. You know our good friend Sharla and Sharla is getting five stars on 99.2% of her funded loans. Five stars. And when you're and basically you know what this is gonna do, it's gonna take you to a whole new level because now when anybody calls the borrower from the time you say that to the time they get the keys, the obvious question is gonna be, how are we doing on our five star pursuit for you?

And if you do that every single time, there's maybe a chance to do an outbound that you know the appraisal's in, or do something that you know the loan's submitted or do whatever they might be. And all of a sudden they've given you five stars at day seven. They've given you five stars at day 14, they've given you five stars at day 21.

You're there.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: [00:57:00] Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: here's what's so interesting about this, Dino. The world is so big that when you do the intentional referral by design culture on your team. You're gonna have these grand slam opportunities. One of, one of my favorite stories is I did a loan for a pilot. I love doing loans for pilots.

They're all qualified. Did that for, kind of him and his wife Janet. And at the end laid it out again. And I said I said to Tom, I said you've no doubt no other pilots, right? And he goes, yes. And I go, because you've given us a perfect ten five stars wasn't around yet because you've given us a perfect 10 between now and next week, could you refer us to one or two or three of those pilots?

And he goes, sure. And I go, could you talk about it in the cockpit? Anytime you're flying, you're a captain, you got first officers. Could you talk about, buying a home? And they go we have those conversations all the time. And I go, great. So he ends [00:58:00] up referring me to a couple pilots and one of those two pilots, three years later, okay, three years later.

Becomes the director for the California Airline Pilots Association, and we did 700 loans in 10 years pilots. Now listen to this. Listen to this. I am doing a podcast tomorrow with one of our instructors in Australia, and the circle of cash flow, you know how valuable it is. I landed on June 11th in Sydney, Australia.

This year I had 32 business appointments with decision makers for fuel. And the minute I landed those appointments were set, but I had never met one person I'm gonna meet with. I fly all the way halfway around the world to spend a month in Australia having meetings with people and a little bit of vacation time.

Didn't know anybody, but I knew one person, 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah. 

Todd Duncan Raw: person. Who set up all the meetings. And those meetings went great and we generated, I don't know, it could [00:59:00] be $10 million in revenue. It could be, these, like the number one bank, the number one manufacturing plant, the number one car dealership, the highest end car dealership Mattel toys, Quantis Airlines, 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: so Carrie is the guy that set those up.

Carrie's an instructor. Carrie told me last week, this is amazing. He goes, do you know how close the circle of cash flow is to us at any given time? And I said, I do, but tell me your story. And he goes, I've been going up and down the elevator in my high-rise that I live in for a year and I've probably seen this guy 20 times.

And I go, okay. And he goes, I finally got clear that when you said one thing changes anything, that until I engage with this guy. I'm not gonna know who he is or whatever, but we're on the elevator all the time together. Ends up, the guy is a gazillionaire. His horse just won the [01:00:00] Melbourne Stakes, which is one of the top horse races in the world.

And they start talking and the way he made his money, he's in the top 10 poker players in the world and Kerry meets one of the top 10 poker players in the world. So what's a top 10 poker player do? Invites you to the next poker game in his multimillion dollar suite that's higher than yours, right?

Kerry goes up there, they have this conversation, they start building this friendship. He just made a $50 million offer on a three level condominium in Melbourne and Carrie's commission is $1 million.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Wow.

Todd Duncan Raw: The guy in the elevator. Hello.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: Now you ready for this? So there's this developer in Australia.

His name is Tim Garner. He's [01:01:00] a 43-year-old billionaire. He finds this property called the Jam Factory, which was originally founded in the 18 hundreds to make jelly and jam. He bought the entire parcel. He's putting a St. Regis hotel to high-rise condominium units. The one is where the guy's making the $50 million offer.

Kerry calls me and he says, you should buy a place. So now I'm in Carrie's circle of cash flow. So I'm going to be reviewing a contract this afternoon to buy a multimillion dollar condo in Melbourne, Australia, because I love Australia. It's the second country I would live in if I have to live anywhere else.

And we do business there. Carrie's going, now I got the circle of cash flow, Todd, you're in my circle of cash flow. And I go, I'm not paying you a commission. I'll buy you dinner, but I'm not paying you a commission. He goes, don't worry about it. But it's just and do you know what I would say to everybody is you have no idea who you're sitting next to if you don't ask.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: I would [01:02:00] consider it a total failure if somebody in my circle didn't know what I did for a living. Cause I hear this from a lot of L guys where somebody said to them, oh, I didn't know you'd do loans. It's talk about a punch in the gut or the

face, right? You can never, ever be in a situation where somebody tells you, I didn't know that you did loans. And that's just a piss poor job on your end. 

Todd Duncan Raw: 100%. And the other thing that I think is also very important to that statement that you just made is at Sales Mastery during COVID clay, a clay, a bear spoke, and Clay has perfected what he calls the perfect intro. And when you really understand the perfect intro, it is about when somebody asks you what you do for a living, your answer has to create another question.[01:03:00] 

Just let this sink in for a second. So when somebody would ask me what I do for a living, I would say, and so this is me as a speaker, I would say I help people fall in love with their life. Achieve prosperity in the process, boom. What is the next logical thing that somebody is going to ask?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: How

do you do that? 

Todd Duncan Raw: that?

How do you do that? I'm glad I asked. So next time somebody asks you, what do you do for a living? I help people build wealth through real estate acquisition and achieve prosperity and happiness as a result. How do you do that? I'm glad you asked. Boom boom. So you have gotta be proud of what you do, and you don't have to run around town telling everybody, ask me what I do for a living.

It's just gonna come [01:04:00] up in conversation. And your closest circle of influence should be the ones that already know. And you gotta make it very clear, very clear because. The more people know what you do and how you do it and how it is different than any other lender out there, the more referrals you're gonna get.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: And I would say back to your original question too. You ready, Dino? This is gonna be a mic drop. When we ask to help the people that are afraid to ask for referrals or not comfortable asking for referrals, they're not afraid of not getting them. And they're not uncomfortable not asking for 'em. They're already doing it the wrong way, which actually is the gateway to the right way.

So what's the downside? What's the downside of asking a borrower in a well-thought out way for referrals?

There is no downside. [01:05:00] What is the downside of not asking a borrower for a lot of referrals. 700, 700 loans not gotten from a pilot who's now in charge of the entire association. 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: yeah. 

Todd Duncan Raw: what's at risk.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yep. I I joke around sometimes because the new generation never had to learn how to go out and meet a girl at a bar or random, so they never learned how to hunt and they don't have this particular skill that, that I think was a breeding ground for salespeople because, sure. A little bit of a, no, it happens, right? You're gonna get a no, you're gonna get rejected, but do you get back up? Do you keep seeking that? Yes. Or do you just give up and go home and I [01:06:00] think, that's where I. I don't know how to express what I'm thinking but man, people need to get past that. No. And the fear of the no, because the yes is so much sweeter. It is so much better. And you gotta always be able to get over the hump able to get over that fear. And, I don't know, let's speak to that. How, tell people how to get over that fear right now. Now we're getting into more of a philosophical piece of coaching but really that fear is what prevent, there's skill, there's, the level that they gotta learn and master, but then there's that psychological side of it.

And as a coach you gotta deal with people's skill levels. But I think the psychological might be even more 

Todd Duncan Raw: they're so symbiotically related that you have to deal with both. And so when you think about fear or you think about something that is stopping you, [01:07:00] you're actually giving your power away to an event that has not yet occurred, that is not intelligent. You're basically saying, if I make this call, because I usually get rejected, I'm probably gonna get rejected.

That's not the way you set up a call. You set up a call with a power statement, I'm unstoppable. This person is gonna be lucky to meet me. I cannot wait to have an enthusiastic conversation about how I can serve this person well. That's the mindset shift, right? And Carrie, again, one of our instructors says, I've got this negative voice over here, and I got this positive voice over here.

And I, this voice comes up all the time and I wanna hear the good voice. And I, so then you take fear, which is placing on an event that hasn't happened, a bad outcome, right? False evidence appearing real. And then you take fear and you say, okay, I have a choice. I make a call, or I don't make a call.

And I know if I have a series of decisions where I [01:08:00] decide not to make the call, I'm gonna feel less empowered, I'm gonna feel less confident, and it's just gonna get worse. The longer I hide from what I'm afraid of, the more I'm gonna be afraid of it. And so then you go to fear and you go, okay, so what have you just attacked?

What if fear stood for face everything and rise, right? Just attack. Just do it. You're already succeeding at not doing it. What's the worst thing that can happen?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: now. Now we have to get into the piece of knowing how to prevent the no. So now fear stands for feeling excited and ready. Now, I have no fear why I've roleplayed this for a hundred hours.

I am a master at this. I can call anybody right now and nine times outta 10 I'm gonna get a [01:09:00] yes. Who's next? And that's feeling excited and ready. What have I done? I've mastered my script. I've mastered it. And why would somebody say no if somebody they know love and trust is going to refer them to me?

And so now, no, doesn't even come into my frame of reference. Hey Debbie, this is Todd. I work for A, B, C Financial. A mutual friend, Ron Raf recommended that we have a chat. He said, you're the kind of agent that would really benefit from some of the things I do in the marketplace. In fact, if you have 60 seconds, I'll share with you one of the things Ron wanted me to talk to you about.

Is this a good time? Yeah. Good. Ron wanted me to introduce you to the Consumer Referral Program. It's a program where I bring you buyers and sellers on a regular basis for you to sell real estate to, for, or both? [01:10:00] We give this only to realtors to whom we have been referred, and Ron thought you would enjoy that kind of program.

How's it sound? It sounds great. Awesome. When can we get together so I can show you how the program works? Boom, that's it. It's if there is no fear, you finally get to a point where you're so c. That you're gonna become ultra choosy on who you do business with.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: And it's the power of leverage, right? You're leveraging somebody else.

Todd Duncan Raw: It's endorsement value. 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: yeah. 

Todd Duncan Raw: the most important thing that everybody here right now is that something that I stumbled across at the age of 24, I am using in my sixth decade of life to still build businesses. Who do I know, who knows [01:11:00] who I need to know? That's it. I ask that question every single day, multiple times a day.

Who do I know? Who do I know? Who do I know that knows who I need to know? Who do I know? Who do I know? Who do I know?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: you already know almost everybody you need to know. And then as you get to meet new people, you have new people you already know that can find and help you with people you need to know.

And it's just, it's that kind of deal. How did we get, how did Fuel get Mattel? There's a guy I know in Vegas who I accidentally we didn't accidentally do anything. He didn't know me. Gets on the plane, has the seat next to me. I'm on a phone call, he's sitting next to me, I hang up the phone call and he looks at me and he goes, I don't wanna be rude, but your voice sounds like you might be Todd Duncan.

And I go, really? And he goes, yeah, I listened to your podcast this morning. I [01:12:00] said, how are we sitting together? We've never met. I'm Todd. He goes, I'm Paul. We end up talking for three and a half hours on the way to Atlanta, and ends up that I am wearing of all things I'm wearing a stocking stuffer, a joke, gag gift that my father-in-law got me.

And it is a pink t-shirt that says Barbie.

He's looking at my t-shirt, it says Barbie, we get off the plane. He goes, can I take a picture with you? And I go, yeah, why? And he goes, 'cause my best friend is the CEO of Mattel. So we take the picture, send it to Steve Steve Tosky, and now all of a sudden, like, how the heck does that happen?

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: and my point is that, Mattel only has 75,000 employees around the world.

And I wore a shirt.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: [01:13:00] Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: I don't know if, I don't know if I hadn't worn the shirt, if he would've ever have told me that his friend runs Mattel. 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah. 

Todd Duncan Raw: I don't know how it happened, but I knew, here's what I know enough of when he said, my friend runs Mattel, it was game over because I have no fear in calling Steve, 'cause his best friend asked me to call.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: And that's where everybody has to get to. If a borrower says, you need to call my friend John and his wife Mary, I've told them that you are amazing. Call them. They're looking for a loan. Or if I have a realtor that says, in a staff meeting, I don't know who you guys are using for lender right now, but I've got this amazing relationship with this guy Dino at Ethos Lending.

The most unbelievable lending experience I've ever heard my borrowers talk about. If you're not using Dino, you need to, oh, Dino, call these three people. I told 'em about you. Okay, call 'em today. You'll have [01:14:00] three new relationships. I guarantee it. Dino doesn't have any fear in making that call. We have fear when we're making cold calls.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yeah.

Todd Duncan Raw: I don't, I've never done business based on cold calls. I don't even like leads 'cause they have low conversion. I like less referrals, higher quality referrals that decide faster and spend more and stay longer. And you can do the business either way. You can do a transactional business, make a living, or you can do a relational business and make a fortune.

I have one relationship right now that is in its 33rd year of me staying in touch with this relationship. And this relationship this year alone will produce a million dollars. 30, almost 33 years later,

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Wow.

Todd Duncan Raw: and all I do is call and tell John happy birthday every year, or send him a video and stay in touch with him.

But because we have this three decade experience together, he's always thinking [01:15:00] training.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: You know what's interesting is with ethos right there I asked myself. Why would somebody want to come work here?

and I had to sit and really think through this because why would they, there's plenty

of other good mortgage companies,

and let's face it, things are changing, right? So I had to come up with my value proposition was. But even more than that, I had to stay nimble enough to adapt because the environment is consistently, constantly changing. And one of the things that I came up with was really, a lot of everything I've learned through the coaching with you and trying to piece it together with kind of this new spin, right?

And one of the, I would say our biggest thing of them all is the mom and it's mortgages under management,

which is really a circle of cash flow. Mixed with all the other systems that I've learned through, [01:16:00] you and the elite group that I was part of with you.

And the big change though, that I'm doing is very simply this, that if you're not transactional, you're relational. It is a fortune. And not only is it a fortune in how much you make, but it's a fortune in the longevity of how long you're going to be in this business and whether or not it's ever going to be sellable

And sellable doesn't formally exist in our industry versus a financial planner and an insurance agent, right?

They have a sellable book, a business. But why does a mortgage advisor not have a sellable book of business? Multiple reasons. One, none of them ever know any of their stats. They might know how much they did, how many units

and their dollar volume, but. If they don't know what their p and l looks like, they don't know where all their referrals came from. They don't know how much money they spent to get those referrals. They don't know any of that stuff. And how does somebody [01:17:00] run a business without knowing these things? It's crazy to me. Even ones that are making a million or $2 million a year don't know their stats. Some do and it's impressive when they actually do.

But the true details, so we're taking all of that. We're adding this mom, which is really a book of business, and we're saying that if you do business the ethos way, which is the way you've always done business, the way I've always done business, right? If you do that, you will have a sellable book of business. And for the first time as a company, we're coming out and we're saying, in fact, we'll put our money where our mouth is and we'll even buy it from you. But the way we're gonna structure it is this instead. You wanna retire, you put your book up for sale. If you've met all the qualifications, any of the advisors at ETHOS can bid for it as a company, we're gonna step in with all of the numbers and financing to help facilitate a [01:18:00] buyout of this person's book of business. Not just if they wanna retire. Un unfortunate. Death get hit by a bus. All that work you've done. What about your family? It's still a sellable book,

but it's only sellable if you've gotten away from doing all your business on your cell phone and you've gotten away from doing everything yourself, right?

So going like bringing it all back around. Now, these systems that we talked about in the beginning are what create a business. If you're doing everything yourself and you're doing it all on your cell phone, you got no business. That's why you'll have guys go to your seminars. And knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb is happening. And they didn't even hear it 'cause they're trying to secretly reply to some borrower or underwriter about something.

Todd Duncan Raw: Yeah.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: So we're creating these systems, dude and we're creating a a buyout plan for all of 'em. And one of the things I'm really excited [01:19:00] about is 'cause I'm in the middle of, I've created it, but I'm in the middle of actually trying to push it out now. And we are we've done a weighted score of, what your book is and we've modeled it after the credit score evaluation. Like an eight 50 is a perfect score, right? If you're a borrower an eight 50 is now a perfect store score. If you're an a mortgage advisor and Fannie Mae guidelines will tell you where you fall within it. And then your book of business. Elevates every time you have another a seven 40 credit score, or a seven 80 or an 800. So I'm pretty excited about that and I am bringing this up because somewhere in there I'm trying to give you credit simply because these are all the things that I learned through being part of the elite group and through all the coaching. And I'm saying this because, there's a lot of people that are stuck and sometimes they're already successful, but they're still stuck, [01:20:00] whether it's in their personal life or whether it's that next level of their business. And I believe coaching and thirst for knowledge is so important for everybody.

And whether you're down right now or you're high as a kite on how great business is, whatever it is. I believe that you should always be coaching no matter what the situation is. And when it comes to coaching, let's face it you're one of the godfathers in the whole industry here of coaching.

So I'm bringing this all back to let you know, to let you know that you've changed my life. I'm hoping now through this and the generational piece that it, it pushes on and I can help push it on to other people. It's really important to me.

Todd Duncan Raw: and it should be, the mark of a great leader is transformation of the people he or she leads. And why ethos is such an important brand name and why your character stands behind it in such an amazing way is I know [01:21:00] that's your heart. And when I think about this idea of the valuation of a business and I think about your comment about mortgage not really being set up that way to do what we know we want to do.

You end up working to retire. At some point because you need more money instead of working to build an asset that somebody else would pay you good money to own. I have a friend in Australia who earns $70,000 a month having sold his $900 million book. And what I want you guys to understand is that there are buyers and sellers of every type of business.

I have a friend that you know is a 42-year-old periodontist and he bought the dental practice from [01:22:00] a gentleman that's 20 years older than him that was ready to retire. And, the price of that business came with the patients and came with the brand equity and came with the frequency of revisits by those patients and the less turnover they had and so on and so forth.

The valuation of a mortgage book has to do with. How many repeat pieces of business do you get per person and how many referrals do you get per person? You have a subscriber base and the reason why most loan officers are not enjoying the kind of wealth that they could enjoy is they don't see the business as a wealth machine.

They see it as a job. And there's nothing worse than being a lender and having a job, being a lender. You are gonna use lending as the vehicle to generate revenue for you and your family, but you're a business owner, just like my dentist friend is a business owner. Just like my father was a business owner of his medical practice.

Just like my uncle Jim was the owner of Foster, [01:23:00] foster Freeze. You have businesses. I'll make no mis, make no mistake about it. I think fuel's gonna have an equity event in the next 24 months. Great. If it does, great. If it doesn't, great, I'm still doing something that I know is building value for a worldwide audience.

And therefore then, if the metrics are right, the read sign rates, the longevity rates, the sign-in rates, the lessons complete. If all those are tracking up, then I get more value for the business. But the other thing I want to tell you is I played it real simple. In year 12, I sold my business to my ops manager and to my production partner, and they knew that they could buy that business.

I would do the self-funded buyout. I would take a percentage of my commission, give them, they keep their stuff, they keep their bonuses, they keep all that. But I think I went from, I'm gonna keep 75, you can have 25. And by the time we were done, I got [01:24:00] 25 and they got 75 and they took the practice and ran with it, and then they changed the name and they could change the name because it wasn't Todd Duncan Mortgage anymore.

It was owned by these two guys, and and they rebranded it and and, they made a fortune. So you can do all kinds of creative things, but the bottom line is, if you stopped prospecting tomorrow and your business dried up next week, you have nothing to sell. Your phone should be ringing without you doing marketing.

That's what the circle of cash flow does.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Yep. Yep.

Todd Duncan Raw: Yeah.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: got two last questions for you and then I got a, I gotta call it here 'cause I've kept you on a little longer than I was supposed

to, but, all right. Two questions. And I, this is probably a big one, a hard one for you 'cause you got so many, but gimme your favorite book or a couple.

Todd Duncan Raw: my favorite book, because it gave me the spirit of positivity was success through a positive mental attitude written by Napoleon Hill and [01:25:00] w Clement Stone. I read that book when I was 16. I've read it 31 times. It is tattered, it's on my bookshelf, in my Laguna beach house. And that book changed everything about seeing the world as positive and understanding that positivity is a choice.

And the quote that's in that book that I'll never forget is this quote. There's very little difference between successful people and unsuccessful people. But the little difference makes the big difference. The little difference is attitude. And the big difference is whether it's positive or not. And I have found that my life is supremely better when I see the glasses half full than half empty.

And that is a moment of adversity tells me that I'm either, I haven't either figured out how to do it right yet. Or my dreams are so big, I'm bound to have headwinds. And that's how I see that. So that book was was [01:26:00] great. I read a book recently called Two Chairs by Bob Bodine and two Chairs to me was a real gift because it had to do with me sitting in one chair and God sitting in the other chair and having a daily conversation with him.

And it was one of the most powerful reads I've had in a lot of years. And the author of that book is Bob Bodine. Bob Odein also wrote a great book called The Power of Who and the Power of Who Says You Already Know Everybody You need to know which kind of truncates up with a circle of Cash flow.

So those are my, those are two books that, I really love that, have history making tectonic shifts in my thinking and my soul. And the third book I look at every day is a Bible. I don't look at it. I actually open it.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Ho. Hopefully it's the most ta the tethered one on the bookshelf.

Todd Duncan Raw: and when I [01:27:00] say look at it, because I have my Bible on my phone and yeah. And so I do that, but it's so cool because yeah, we'll just leave it at that.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: All right. This is the last question. It's one of my most favorite ones. So you're still Todd Duncan, but nobody knows who Todd Duncan is. I am. All the, you have all the knowledge that you have, but I'm. Picking you up and I'm taking you away and I'm dropping you off Somewhere in the middle of the United States where you don't know anybody, have all the knowledge, you have just enough money to do a few things and to survive, but not enough to be extravagant. Todd Duncan style, extravagant, or even to go out and like really buy the business type of thing. What does Todd Duncan do to make a million dollars as fast as possible

Todd Duncan Raw: So in the context of mortgage.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: mortgage.

Todd Duncan Raw: Okay, so my business, I'm so glad you asked this question. My [01:28:00] business was in Anaheim, California. A hundred percent of the business I was doing was in Anaheim, California, FHA va just Anaheim, right? And I wanted to get my average loan amounts up. I wanted to make more money.

I wanted to change the profile of my clientele. I had never done business in Newport Beach, California. And so using everything we've talked about in this beautiful interchange, I just kept my eyes open for people that were close to Newport Beach. And I happened to be referred to a doctor in Newport Beach by a doctor in Anaheim.

And so when I made the phone call to the doctor in Newport Beach, I got an appointment with the doctor in Newport Beach. But it was a brand new market. I didn't know anybody else but that doctor. And it [01:29:00] was 35 minutes away by car to get to that market. so I did in Newport for a year, what I had done in Anaheim for about seven years.

And within, I would say the first 12 months, I had 12 doctor clients. And I would say that within the next three, two years or so, I had about 50 doctor clients. And then I think the last two years of doing loans, I had over a hundred doctors that I was doing financing for and investments for. And so what I oh, and then I'll tell you something else.

A guy named Ian is it Ian Thomas? I think he was trained by me at Wells Fargo. He worked in a little town that had 14,000 people in it called Husson, Minnesota. He was known to everybody, right? He was like the lender. He said, I can't do any more business. And I go, why? And he goes, 'cause I'm getting most of the business.

I got like a 70% market share in Hu Hutchinson, [01:30:00] Minnesota. And so I said, okay, so show me a map and tell me the five cities that are within a half an hour of you. So he wrote down a piece of paper, Hutchinson, and then wrote these five cities out. And I said, which one is the biggest market if you were to crack that market?

And he picked the top three markets in order two years later had penetrated those three new markets still had Hutchinson. And in no town having over 18,000 people in population, he funded 872 loans.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Jeez.

Todd Duncan Raw: And it's just it's just proximity. So you can have an A market, you can have a B market, you can have a C market. There are no boundaries as particularly if you're, with a company that's licensed in every state. You and I have a mutual friend, Rick Ward, and you know how Rick is getting business now outside of Colorado.

He got licensed in every single state and he's a veteran, and so he's, he just said There are no [01:31:00] limits. There are no limits. I can go to any market and because I'm serving veterans, it's an easy sale. It's an easy pitch. I help. What do you do for a living? I help retired vets build successful businesses in their community.

Loans are the byproduct.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: yeah. All right, so I'm gonna put you on the spot just a little bit more. I'm gonna push, I'm gonna push on this one.

Todd Duncan Raw: All 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: makes a lot of sense. I know somebody's, I can hear him right now. He's saying, okay, but how do you get those doctors? You don't know anybody. How do you start the process from scratch?

There's social media these days. There's old school. There's all these different ways of doing things, But what are you going to do? Exactly?

Todd Duncan Raw: I think I answered it, but I'll try it again. 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: It's actually harder.

Todd Duncan Raw: no, I don't have to find somebody. I have to find the body [01:32:00] that knows the somebody. That's what I have to do. So in any market that I'm gonna parachute into, and I know nobody and I need to make enough money to do whatever I need to do.

I'm gonna parachute into that market. I'm gonna figure out who's the first person I need to know that can introduce me to anybody I need to be introduced to. And so I'm gonna land and I'm going to call every title company in this new market. And I'm gonna ask them in this market who their top title rep is.

And then I'm gonna call that top title rep. I'm gonna tell 'em I moved from Newport Beach, California to Omaha, Nebraska. Don't ask me why but I need to find 10 of the best real estate agents in town. I'm a very experienced lender. Can you help me [01:33:00] out? And, oh, by the way, because I nurture my clients and I do a lot of refis, if you can help me on this end, I'm gonna give you all my title business that I can control on the backend.

Boom. Done.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Guess who I had dinner with last night, my title rep of 25 years. Yeah. Guess who probably my, actually for sure, my number one referral source of all times has ever been

Todd Duncan Raw: You're a 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: my title rep. 

Todd Duncan Raw: yep. But it's 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: and not because he's referred me to people that need loans. He has a few, but it's because he is referred me to everybody else. That needs somebody that can do loans, right,

But realtors,

so many realtors, it's ridiculous.

Todd Duncan Raw: I think about the story of Christie solar who gosh, one of the top producers of all time, she started off her [01:34:00] business in a brand new market. She went from doing cattle loans to doing real estate loans. She stood out in front of Dollar Store, dollar Tree, and handed business cards out to every single person that walked out a Dollar Tree and said, if you ever need a home loan, I just want you to know I'm one of the best, and I can help you navigate the process like no other lender.

And she ends up doing, I don't know, a billion dollars in home loans. It's just 

Dino Todd Interview Raw: wow.

Todd Duncan Raw: all right man.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: I want to thank you so much. That was amazing. I love you so much. You have no idea, and I appreciate you and I think everybody here today appreciated your knowledge bombs as well. So thank you. Thank

Todd Duncan Raw: thank you for being a dear friend. Number one, thank you for trusting me and trusting the group that we put together. And it's been fun to watch you flourish and to think big and, and for me, the great joy and the great honor is the indelible difference I get to make.

And you're one of, you're one of the guys that, that difference just keeps [01:35:00] on blessing others. So it's it's a joy to be in your orbit and more importantly, a joy to be your friend. So

Dino Todd Interview Raw: you.

Todd Duncan Raw: you.

Dino Todd Interview Raw: Hey guys, listen, we're here to empower, equip, and educate the way lending should be done and we're here to help you. If you guys enjoyed the show, if you guys enjoyed Todd, if you enjoy all of the different guests that I've had, please comment, good, share. Don't just keep it to yourself. Share it with your friends and let us know.

I love hearing that we're making a difference. So thank you again so much. Love you guys and we'll see you next time. I.