The 4AM Routine That Built a 9-Figure Portfolio with Joshua Mettle

What separates top producers from everyone else—and why do so many loan officers stay stuck?

In this episode of The Way with Dino Katsiametis, Dino sits down with Josh Mettle, a 25+ year mortgage veteran who built a 9-figure real estate portfolio and a highly scalable lending business.

Josh breaks down the real drivers of success and it’s not what most people think. From waking up at 4AM to mastering outbound calls, building teams, and creating leverage through marketing, this episode is a blueprint for anyone serious about growth.

You’ll learn why success is attracted not chased, and how your daily habits, mindset, and discipline determine your future outcomes. 

👉 If you’re stuck, burned out, or inconsistent—this episode will challenge how you think and operate.

🔑 Key Takeaways & Bullet Points

• Why “doing the work” still beats technology and marketing hacks
• The exact daily routine (4AM–Noon) that drives consistent production
• How 2–3 hours of outbound calls can outperform everything else
• The difference between working IN your business vs ON your business
• Why most loan officers stay stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle
• How to know when it’s time to hire and build a team
• The biggest mistake originators make when scaling
• Why niche marketing (like physician loans) creates massive leverage
• The mindset shift: “You are at cause, not at effect”
• How to turn income into long-term wealth through real estate investing
• The simple financial formula wealthy people follow:
→ Income – Savings = Spending
• Why burnout happens—and how to fix it with structure and routines
• The truth about balance, family, and long-term fulfillment
• How to rebuild from zero (including Josh’s $1M restart strategy)

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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instagram.com/dinokatsiametis | linkedin.com/in/dinokatsiametis
Learn more about Ethos Lending at ethoslending.com.  

Transcript

Dino - Josh Raw: [00:00:00] Josh Meddle. What's happening, man? How are you?

Josh Raw: It's been too long, Dino. Great to be here, my friend. Let's, uh, let's have some fun today.

Dino - Josh Raw: You know what, dude, your name has come up so many times on this podcast, so I'm actually really excited that you're on, and I get to kind of revisit some of the, the reasons why your name came on with other people and ask you a million questions. I know you've always been an open book, and, uh, I hope that you enjoy this as much as I do.

Josh Raw: Thanks. I'm flattered. I appreciate it. Hopefully we can give, uh, a tremendous amount of value today.

Dino - Josh Raw: All right, so first of all, I've mentioned how good of a head of hair you have. So you gotta take off that hat for a second just to let everybody see

Josh Raw: Not, not... I'm not sure it's that great today, everybody. We got the bowl cut going. It's Friday. We're just, we're just winging it. We're just winging it today.

Dino - Josh Raw: And, and you're not a young man anymore. I think you just turned 50, right?

Josh Raw: I'm damn close. I'm [00:01:00] 48.

Dino - Josh Raw: Okay. All right. And healthy as could be still. Like, when I met you, you were super fit. Now you're still super fit, only older.

Josh Raw: Yeah. Thanks, man. Uh, I appreciate the, I appreciate the compliment. You know, um, the reality is I was a chunky kid growing up. My, uh, uncles, both my uncles were over 300 pounds at once, uh, at one time. Um, my grandfather, you know, was a really hard-working, always at it 12 hours a day, kind of owned a landscaping business guy, and even at that, he pushed 260 at times.

So I didn't come from a genetically lean, uh, family. Um, and it's just taken... I- it, it's been a, it's really been a lifelong pursuit just to kind of figure out like what, what kind of foods, what kind of calories give me energy and, and make me feel good versus what kind of calories make me feel like [00:02:00] shit, and, um, and just kind of continually, um, tinkering with that and playing with that.

And what's interesting is I've found as I've gotten older, I've been able to really dial that in, and I know, you know, carbohydrates in the morning work really good for me. Um, lean, uh, not necessarily lean. Let me say that again. Proteins, vegetables, um, and, and a healthy amount of fats, to be honest, later in the day work good for me.

So it's just figuring out that rhythm, and I think being in tune with your body to know How did that meal make me feel? And if that meal made you feel sluggish and your energy came down, your mental clarity came down, it's because your body's not processing those foods well. And by the way, you're probably not gonna look good as a result.

And just like paying attention to what your body's telling you and then, you know, refining it over 30 [00:03:00] years.

Dino - Josh Raw: So I'm gonna-- I, I wanna come back to all that, 'cause ultimately I think we can tie a lot of that back into business as well, and how paying attention to, to what works in your physical way, also paying attention to what works in your business, you know, day to day can make a big, you know, difference in, in the outcome, right?

So before we get into all of that though, 'cause I, I just, you know, I know you well and I'm, I'm already going into questions, but maybe somebody doesn't know you. Who is Josh Meddle personally and professionally?

Josh Raw: Hmm. I'm, I'm a, a father and a husband and, uh, someone who still loves getting up early in the morning and getting after it, first and foremost. Um, I have two great teenage kids, and the, the window is getting smaller and smaller and smaller with the time that I have to spend with them. Uh, we spent the last six months [00:04:00] down in southern Utah in a small town called St.

George, Utah. And, you know, when I'm not working at 4:00 in the morning, I'm on a mountain bike or on a hike with m- my dog Cosmo or getting my butt kicked by my son in pickleball, um, wake surfing. You know, like just I'm, I'm, I'm trying to squeeze every ounce of juice out of this life. I was, uh, I was on a retreat, Dino, with, uh, Tim Brahim and his, his coaching group, and Jesse Itzler came and spoke with us.

And he had, he has this way of thinking about time. I don't know if you've ever heard him. He's, there's lots of TED Talks and podcasts with him talking about this, but this was an intimate group. There's like 30 of us, and Jesse Itzler, we're right on the, on the, on the roof of a hotel looking over the PC, you know, PCH on one side, the ocean on the other side, waves crashing.

Really fun, intimate group. [00:05:00] And Jesse described this concept around time not being minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, but experiences. And he used this, this analogy like, you know, how old's your, how old's your mom? My mom is 76. And how many times do you see her a year? Well, I'm kind of an exception 'cause all my, many of my businesses are with my mom, so I talk and see her every day.

But most people in the audience were like, "Oh, I see my mom twice a year." Okay, cool. Well, the average length of time that a woman lives today is 84. So if you've got eight more years with mom and you see her twice a year, you've got 16 more chances to see your mom. That really changes, like, the construct around time.

And so that was really impactful for me. And then, you know, the other thing he, he said, he's got this saying around the fear of tomorrow. And the [00:06:00] fear of tomorrow is if you don't do that thing, then you have regret, and down the road you look back and you have this regret that you had this window of opportunity to take this massive action or accomplish this thing or do this thing with your kids or have this experience, and once that window's closed, that's it.

You don't get a second chance. Like, you can't do the stuff at 88 or s- 78 or 68 that I can do at 48. So, um, that thought around the fear of tomorrow and the pain of regret being more painful than whatever amount of energy or determination or, um, grit to overcome our fears to do something, that has always stuck with me.

And I've, I've tried to live as much as I can in congruence with the idea around I don't wanna have regret. I, I, I [00:07:00] look at the fear of tomorrow to motivate me to do what I wanna do today and stack as many experiences in the time that I have left with the people that are important with me. So that's, that's just, you know, some of the guiding, um, constructs that, that, that help me make decisions and help me live my life, uh, in a way that's congruent with what I believe in.

Dino - Josh Raw: So, so it's interesting. I, I grew up with a dad that, uh, he was always seeking ways to get better. He was always seeking wisdom. He was always seeking, uh, you know, back then the Ted Talks didn't exist, right? All that stuff. It, it wasn't the same, but he seeked it. And I remember he would force me to go sit in the car with him and pop in the cassette and, and just sit and listen for like an hour, right?

To Tony Robbins equivalent from the '70s, right? Whoever that was. And...

Josh Raw: Was it Jim Rohn? Are you a Jim Rohn kid?

Dino - Josh Raw: Absolutely, [00:08:00] yeah. Like I had, I had some of that. There's some other guy named Roy Masters too with like an English accent or something. Uh, and, and I remember as a kid, right, it was, it was tough. But I look back now and, and man, my dad made my mind so strong and, and, and it created something in me that even during hard times, I don't view that as a hard time.

I view it as an opportunity that something good's gonna come of it, right? And, and I know you're like that a lot, but what I wanna do right now is I wanna go back to when you were a kid and find out, did you have that? 'Cause I was fortunate. Like I, I, it was, I, you know, I was dropped into this. I didn't have to go find it.

I, I did as an adult, and I had to keep seeking it, but man, a lot of people don't have any of that, and I, and I wanna know, like, did you have it growing up, or did you have to go find it and seek it and become that [00:09:00] later?

Josh Raw: I'm gonna answer that question, but I'm gonna reverse the roles here for a second, and I wanna interview you for a second. W- w- did, did, did that ever bug you? Like, was it always, like, if you go back to 12, 13, 14-year-old Dino, and maybe this started when you were eight, eight-year-old Dino, like, did that level of, um, kind of determination and inspiration and motivation by your father, did, did you ever resist it and feel like, you know, "This is a bunch of horse crap," or like, "Dad's always trying to get me to be this way v- versus who I was"?

Or did you always appreciate it? I'm curious.

Dino - Josh Raw: It's a good question. So, you know, I grew up in a Greek, traditional Greek family. Um, it wasn't the...

Josh Raw: [00:10:00] [00:11:00] Thanks for sharing that, bro. Um, I j- I... The reason I ask that question is because sometimes, sometimes I wonder [00:12:00] is-- am, a-am I too, too much the way that you just described your dad to my kids, and does it... Is it landing or is it going to end up in kids pushing the other direction? So the answer to the question

is 

Dino - Josh Raw: until they're ready, right? Like it's, it was a lot, but, but man, it sinks in. And now as an adult, I can look back every single time and say that, that came from my dad, you know?

Josh Raw: Good. Well, thank you. You, you, you, you're inspiring me right now, so thanks for sharing that story. Um, to answer your question Uh, so I was raised by a single mother. My mom and dad were divorced before I was born, and, um, you know, we were-- I had-- It was a rough, uh, childhood. Like, I was in and out of the welfare system.

You know, it was, it was 12 or 13 years old when I was old enough to realize that we were buying food with food stamps. [00:13:00] And, um, and so what, what, what my mom at that time lacked in money, she more than made up for in love. And she taught me from a very young age that you are absolutely responsible for where you are right now in your life, good, bad, or indifferent, and you are not a victim of circumstance.

You choose whether you are either going to be at cause, meaning a creator, or you are at effect, and you gotta make that decision every single day. Um, and I think, you know, if there's, you know, there's a lot of lessons that I've learned from my mom, but the one I'm probably most grateful for is that construct in my mind that I am at cause.

Whether I like my circumstances or don't like my circumstances, the results are [00:14:00] good or the results are bad, it's because that's how I showed up. That's because that's what the market is telling me my services, my products are worth. And if you don't like the results, fricking get better.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah.

Josh Raw: can always get better.

So, so to answer your question, yes, um, but I would say maybe in a little bit of a different way than you were mentored, and that was a, that was a beautiful gift that she gave me, and I, I hope, I hope I can pass that on to my kiddos.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. I, I think mindset, right? And I, and I still wanna bring this back to, to mortgage advisors out there, or I-I'll even say loan officers, right? And, and part of my mission with this podcast is to convert loan officers into mortgage advisors, right? I, I... It's like, gosh, uh, if, if you're gonna be out of business, it's 'cause you're a loan officer.

Sooner or later it'll happen, right? Mortgage advisor will be fine. But I think a lot of it still applies and, and I, I wanted to have this conversation with you [00:15:00] because I know how, how deep you are into all of this stuff and, and I know how I am in it. And I think when I look at people having a hard time, it's like, okay, well, what are you putting into yourself, you know?

Let's try putting something better into yourself, whether it's, it's food, like better choices there, better books, better people. And, and you do all that, and I think there has to be an outcome that's going to end up better than the current circumstance. Just has to be.

Josh Raw: That success is not something that you pursue. Success is like a butterfly. Good luck catching it. Um, success ultimately is something that you attract by the person that you become. And that's a big statement. Like, you could probably spend a decade thinking [00:16:00] about that statement and, and really what that means.

And I remember reading that, I'm gonna guess mid-20s, and at that moment, you know, the slogan on my email, uh, signature and the slogan on my business card was, "The hardest working loan officer in the business." And y- for the first 10 years, you know, that worked. You know, I didn't have kids. Um, when you're raised on food stamps and you saw the things that I saw as a eight, nine, 10, 11, 12-year-old, y- y- you have a drive.

Like you, like check that box. Don't ever wanna do that again. Like I, I only need to see my mother sell her wedding ring at a pawn shop so she can buy me a hamburger once. I don't need to see that again in my life, right? I don't need to relive that. But [00:17:00] that took me down the path of having, you know, what, what I would call kind of an insatiable drive.

You know, I, I still wake up. I was up this morning at 3:30 in the morning, um, spent two hours working on my business, creating a marketing GPT for my team, uh, before the sun rise. Um, uh, got my workout in, got my nutrition in. You know, I, I c- I accomplished a day's worth of work before our 8:15 morning meeting.

And so, so that, that drive will take you so far, but then you'll realize that going faster on the hamster wheel for more hours a day will actually keep you from what you ultimately want to accomplish. Because when I was running that fast and that hard, I was neglecting myself and what I needed, and that means I was showing up for my teammates like an asshole.

I [00:18:00] was, you know, ruthlessly trying to squeeze more out of the day and run harder and burning my candle at both ends, and sooner or later you're just gonna burn yourself out. And there's a lot of burnt out mortgage advisors, loan officers in this industry right now. So, you know, if you're hearing this and you're like, "Man, I feel like I've been running really hard and really fast and I'm not really getting to where I wanna get," revisit that quote from Jim Rohn.

Per- you know, when, when, when work s- stops working You need to stop working, and you need to start focusing on yourself and your personal development and being the person that people just gravitate towards. Like, they just wanna be around you. Like, I don't know what it is about Dino, but every time I'm with him, I feel better.

His, his energy vortex, the way he compliments me, the way he shows up, his energy, I just wanna be around that guy. That [00:19:00] is the manifestation of that quote, "Success is what you attract by the person that you become." And so I think that that realization for me and that pivot in the, you know, I'm 26 years in the mortgage in-- No, I'm sorry, 25 years in the mortgage industry today.

But if I would've kept running year 15 through 25 or year 10 through 25 like I did the first decade, I would not be in this industry today. I would not have a team. I would not have been able to build what I've been able to build. So, um, that's an important pivot or, uh, or change of direction that I think everybody has to

Dino - Josh Raw: let me a-- let me ask you this question. Do you get tired or could you just go?

Josh Raw: Oh, I told my team this morning. So in 2010, in the Great Recession, um, my business just completely exploded like, like many [00:20:00] of yours that were around then. And my coach at the time, Bill Hart, said to me, "Hey, man, why don't you start a gratitude meeting? There-- I'm coaching this realtor out of Arizona, and she does a 15-minute meeting at 8:15 every morning, and they just talk about two things: What are you grateful for, one thing you're grateful for, and one thing you're gonna accomplish today," and they go around the team.

We've been doing that for 16 years.

Dino - Josh Raw: Wow.

Josh Raw: 16 years times 52 weeks times five days, I've got over 4,400 meetings with my team, and m- many of them have been there for more than 10 years, where we've shared what we're grateful for. So this morning on our gratitude meeting, came to me and they said, "You know, what are you grateful for?"

And I'm saying, "I'm, I am grateful that I love getting kicked in the nuts." Yesterday sucked. [00:21:00] Um, I bought a new, uh, wellness business. We lost 25 grand last, last, uh, last month. Um, my mortgage practice in January, February, and March were negative. Um, we had a rough January, February, March. Thank God, you know, April and May look a lot better.

Uh, and I just felt like every meeting I went into I just got kicked in the nuts over and over and over again. And by the end of the day, like, I just wanted to drink vodka . You know? Like, it was just one of those days. Josh could not win on May 7th. And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, I found myself in bed at 6:45 PM reading my favorite kind of literature that I read.

Um, and at 3:00 this morning, I woke back up and I was like, "Let's get after it. I'm so fired up." Like, "Let's go. I got my cup on today. [00:22:00] Bring it." And I got to work, you know, two hours on building this GPT that's really inspiring for me 'cause I get to, you know, help people with leverage. So I do get tired, but I know how to handle it now, Dino.

What I used to do is let that bad feeling, I would try to mask that feeling by let's go out and do an expensive dinner, or let's drink a bottle of wine, or whatever, right? I would just try to disassociate with the bad feeling. Now I know when I feel like I've just been kicked in the nuts over and over, get your ass to sleep and get up tomorrow.

And by 8:15 on our gratitude meeting this morning, I felt great. I felt like I got shot out of a cannon. So yes, I get tired, but I, I rest back on my routine to get me back into that feeling of motivation and inspiration, and I don't let myself fall to the easy button, which is I'm gonna watch TV till [00:23:00] 10:00.

I'm gonna go ruin my sleep tonight. I'm gonna go drink a bunch of alcohol. Like, that stuff is not gonna get you where you wanna go

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. So I'll tell you, uh, there's been all too often, and I'll use me as an example in this case, where I can be super disciplined, I can do all sorts of things, but then I forget that I'm affecting the people around me, and I'm talking about home. So I do everything right here, but then I'm exhausted when I get home because I woke up so early.

Or I wanna go to bed early so I can get my hours, but then that left no time for my wife. And, and all too often I feel that hard chargers are not even remotely balanced, and I don't even know if balance is a thing, a, you know, a reality. [00:24:00] I mean, the majority of our day is spent working, but how quality of hours, how many hours of quality can we spend with our family on a day-to-day basis, uh, i- so that we don't neglect them?

And, and I'll say, you know, I got four kids. The first two I did a terrible job on. Maybe I'm harder on myself, right? But it was also after 2008, and all I did was work. Like, all I did was work, and I, and, and I had to. Like, there was no option, otherwise you just lose it all, right? And, but looking back now, I got a 19-year-old as of today and a 20-year-old, and 20-year-old fortunately talks to me and loves me.

The 19-year-old, struggling. She's not happy with me, and it affects me so much. And I look back and I'm like, "Was any of it worth it?" All because of that, that one daughter [00:25:00] That struggles with me, you know? I, I, I think you spend time with your kids, right? I see that. Um, I, I hear you even saying all of that.

Did you, though, when you were a younger man, when they were younger?

Josh Raw: I mean, the first thing I'd say is like give yourself some grace, right? Like those of us who were around during that time, our backs were up against the wall and every day someone was coming to beat us up with brass knuckles. It was an extraordinarily challenging and difficult time and that wasn't like a regular lifetime.

That was a triage time. And in triage times, unfortunately, you save those can be-- that, that can be saved and the ones that can't be saved die and it's not perfect but it is It is life. Like, that is the physical life on planet Earth that we're all playing at this moment. [00:26:00] So I would, I would give yourself a little more grace than you- you're probably giving yourself, because the alternative was your kids are living out of the back of a car, right?

Like, you didn't have a lot of optionality there. Um, and to answer your question, um, you know, because I didn't grow up with a dad in my family and I had a lot of trauma I had to work through with that, a lot of abandonment issues, a lot of, uh, worthiness issues of being loved, those types of things. It was, it was always really important for me to be there at the important moments in their life, if not all the moments.

So I tried to never miss a sporting event. I tried to never miss, uh, a date night. I tried to never miss, uh, a family outing, and we did regular vacations. So I, I, I tried to be as engaged w- as I could in the moments that I thought [00:27:00] mattered the most, and then I wasn't at a lot of things that I didn't think matter as most.

Now, my, my situation has changed a lot over this period of time. You know, I've spent the last 26 years, um, building a real estate portfolio with my mom, and, uh, you know, by the grace of God, like, we've escaped the rat race. The, the, the, the cash flow from those properties are greater than our expenses, and I don't have to do any of this anymore.

Um, so I can now, you know, take six months and move to southern Utah because I wanna homeschool my son, and we wanna work on his golf game, and that is a freaking gift. Um, I could not have done

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah.

Josh Raw: 15 years ago. Um, and so no, I didn't... I was not perfect. Nobody gets a perfect owner's manual for every kid, and every kid needs to be loved and, and cherished and, and spoken to differently.

Um, but we do the [00:28:00] best that we can. And if you can be there for the moments that matter, and if you can do what your dad did for you, it's the best we can do, man. And the good news is she's 19, and you got a lot of years to overcome that rift that you guys have, and, and you're an amazing man, so I'm sure you will.

Dino - Josh Raw: I appreciate it. Um, I love all the, the personal stuff, uh, so I could stick on it for a little too long probably. Uh, but so nobody else gets bored, let's go back to day one of

Josh Raw: Yes.

Dino - Josh Raw: when you started in the mortgage business and, and why. And, and really the format is like, you know, who are you today? 'Cause that's-- it builds credibility.

But then I always like to go back to day one because we all started there. You were no different than anybody else who's struggling right now. And then I, I wanna kinda just kinda quickly but dwell maybe a little bit on the, the, the, the timelines that [00:29:00] matter of when you really started jumping and how you got through that journey, right?

'Cause trial and error a lot of times, unless somebody's there to tell you, which is also, I think, a, a point I want to get across throughout this whole thing, 'cause I know you've gotten a lot of coaching. Uh, and, and I think everybody should get coaching, right? And, and everybody should be trying to do self-help so we can always get better.

So anyways, go back to day one, and let's get through that journey back to today again.

Josh Raw: Yeah, I'll actually go just a little bit before that. So, um, I was an overweight, uh, no father having, not that smart, um, not that talented, uh, kid. And I remember thinking like, "Okay, dude, you don't have a lot of assets. So like, what are you gonna do to figure this out?" And the first glimpse of [00:30:00] me being something, the first glimpse of somebody saying, "Hey kid, you've got something there," was with, was in athletics.

So, you know, I pursued that in Little League football and then high school football, and then I became the team captain of our football team, and then I made it to college and I got a, a full ride between, um, uh, for, for, for football. Um, and that was absolutely everything to me, the camaraderie, the team, um, the connection, the winning, the practices, the, the losses, you know, like all of it.

I just loved it. And in my second year of playing college football at the University of Northern Colorado, um, I had a shoulder injury, dislocated my shoulder. My team was actually going to the national championship game the next day, and I got injured in a walkthrough practice, never made it to the national championship, ended up having surgery that was career-ending surgery while my team was playing the national [00:31:00] championship game.

Like, what a fricking dagger in the heart. Um, but like you said earlier, like every challenge can become an opportunity in the rear view mirror. Doesn't look like it when you're looking at through the front window, but when you look through the rear view mirror, it's an opportunity. And I quickly there, then thereafter got into sales, and that feeling of seeing my name at the top of the page or seeing who was at the top of the page and climbing to the top of the page- Like, that was addicting to me.

It was that same high that I got when, you know, we scored a touchdown or won a game or what have you. So I kind of parlayed that energy into sales. I go into... I started working out at a gym after my college football career, uh, become their number one salesperson, uh, then become a manager, became the number one manager.

Ended up leaving there, getting hired by somebody who was in the mortgage [00:32:00] business. And, uh, my first mortgage company I worked for, Dino, is called The Money Shop. It was, like, half pawnshop, half, like, um, stripper recovery center, 'cause they'd come in to process loans, and half mortgage company. I remember this.

I, I do recognize there's only supposed to be two halves in, in a half, so it was a third. A third. A third of each. And, um, it was wild, man. It was the Wild Wild West of mortgage. Like, this is literally why the mortgage industry exploded, because of shops like this. Um, and ... But I learned a lesson from the owner of this company that stuck with me, and he just said, "Hey, you know, Josh, what, what do you think's the difference between the people who are making $30,000 a month here and the originators who haven't closed a loan yet this year?"

I was like, "I got no idea." And he says, " The people who are making $30,000 a month do the work." [00:33:00] I was like, "Okay, what does that mean?" And he's like, "Here's what you do." I said, I said, "Great. Well, what, what, what did you do?" 'Cause he was, you know, he was at, before he kinda moved on to growing that business, he was the top producer for a long time, and he had all these awards and stuff up on his wall.

And he's like, "Here's what I'd do. I'd come in at 9:00, and I'd work with my processing team to get loans through till 1:00. At 1:00, I go to the gym." That's where I met him. "At 4:00, I'm back in the office, and here's my rule: I don't get to go home unless I dial 100 leads or I get three loan applications," which include, with, like, a piece of paper that, like, mimicked a 1003, right?

'Cause they, I didn't have... Like, they didn't give everybody computers back then. Um, "Or I wake three people up. That's my rule. I dial 100 calls, I get three-" applications or I wake three people up. Those are the only reasons that I go home. [00:34:00] And I do that Monday through Friday. And I did tha- and I did that for years.

And then on Saturday, I go to open houses, and I go to eight open houses, and I take something to every single one of them, and I have conversations. And then on Sundays, I go to two or three open houses. So in a week, in a week, I'd visit eight to 12 open houses. I'd have eight to 12 face-to-face conversations with realtors.

I'd try to line those peoples up for lunches the next week, and then I would follow that script. And I was like, "Okay, easy enough. Got that. Notes." And I just executed on that. And in the first year in the mortgage business, I became their number one producer. I made, like, $118,000. And the, guys, this was, like, in 1971.

No, I'm not that old. But this was in, uh, this would've been in 2001. So, like, I'm a... How old am I at that point? I'm, like, a 21-year-old, 22-year-old kid, 21-year-old kid, something like that. I made $118,000 on a 1099. I didn't know how to save for taxes. That was, like, more money than I knew how to spend. I had no idea how [00:35:00] to spend $10,000 a month, uh, back in those days.

And that kind of, I think, work ethic, Dino, of, like, you just show up and do the work. Like, no excuses. You're here till 8 or 9 o'clock at night. You're back here at 9:00 a.m. You get a couple hours off to go hit the gym and work out and relax a little bit and get your shit together, and then you're back, and you're gonna put in another five to six hours pounding the phone.

And, you know, s-surprise, surprise, there comes success if you just do the damn work.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. So, uh, one of the other stories that I've told about you before on the show, uh, I don't know if you remember, but back in the Citywide days, I, I gave you a call. I'm like, "Hey, can I pick your brain?" And you walked me through what your day looks like. And, and I was like, "Ca- I, I do all that stuff, but why does he do so many more loans than I do?"

And, and then you hit the one thing that I didn't do. And, and you said, " Every morning between 8:00 and 10:00 AM, [00:36:00] everything stops, door closes, nobody calls you or bothers you until 10 o'clock, and all you do is make outbound phone calls." And, and I was like, "Gosh, it seems easy." So I said, "All right, I'm gonna try it."

And for whatever reason, man, I gotta tell you, it, it was kinda hard. Like, I started putting together my list. I started trying to come up with the perfect thing. I started doing this, and then finally, it took me two weeks just to, like, do it. It was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life, taking that long.

But the day I did it, the very first day, I made $25,000

Josh Raw: Oh, yes!

Dino - Josh Raw: two hours. So putting the work in, like you said, right? And, and, and I wanna bring it to kinda like today's day and age, where everybody thinks they have to get so technical. They have to have this social media game going. They have to have, like, the best technology, the best this, the best that.

And I, and I still truly believe that two hours' worth of phone calls every single day will make you more money than [00:37:00] any of that other stuff.

Josh Raw: I could not agree more. So here's how that came about. Fast-forward 10 years into my career, now I have kids. I was the fast- uh, the hardest working loan officer in the industry tagline for a while, burning myself out. The Great Recession happens, and now I'm being coached by Coach Bill Hart, and he's like, "Dude, the good news and the bad news.

You got nothing left. Everything you've done in the last 10 years just Chernobyled. It is gone. So the good news is now you get to rebuild it on your terms. So how do you do those things that were successful for you, but do it in a way that works for you today?" Children, married, you know, y- if you, you run that hard for 10 years, you're gonna just burn your ass out.

So I, I recreated my, my perfect day. And, um, interesting, um, Todd Bookspan was being coached by [00:38:00] Coach Bill Hart at the same time. He eventually went on to create Win by Noon. But Todd and I were being coached by Bill Hart and, like, were doing the Win by Noon for years before Win by Noon was Win by Noon.

And, um, you know, we just created this ritual around we're gonna go to bed early, we're gonna wake up early, we're gonna work on ourselves first, we're gonna work on our business second. Working on your business is things that gives your business scale. Working in your business is doing the dials, having the conversations, going to the closings, et cetera.

You're gonna work on your business first. You're gonna get in the office before anybody else, then you're gonna dial. And that, uh, that period of time, that time block, Dino, um, started at two hours, but when I was in my, my biggest years, I'd expanded that to three to [00:39:00] three and a half hours. So I'd go from 8:30, which is when my gratitude meeting ended, till noon, and I would literally just dial that entire time.

And there was, just like you said, there's a sign on the door. It says, "Do not enter," big red letters on my door. My, um, oh, I wasn't using cell phones I don't think at this point. Um, we were using office phones. But my office phone or my cell phone, doesn't matter, call forwarded to my secretary. My Y- um, w- I was in my email 'cause it's part of your follow-up routine when you're working through your CRM, but I was in my outbox, not my inbox.

I would not allow myself to go in my inbox from 8:30 until noon. So I'm in my outbox. If somebody calls me, if somebody texts me, I'm only responding if it's somebody I've already called and they're responding back to me via text. So it was just outbound activity. We called it green activity. And what I found was [00:40:00] if I dial for two hours, like money just falls from the sky.

It is just crazy. And when I used to do that from 5:00 at night until 9:00 at night, doesn't work if you wanna stay married and, and if you wanna have, you know, a relationship with your children. So I just moved it to the front of my day when I had the most amount of energy, and it was just an absolute ritual for 15 years, and everything worked if I did that.

If I controlled everything in my day from 4:00 AM until noon, everything worked. If I didn't control 4:00 AM till noon, nothing worked. It was just a shit show. So I just got relentless at protecting that time, and then the rest of the day I can respond, I can react, I could do all those things. But that was like the most successful thing I probably ever did in my career, to your point.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. You know, I just got back [00:41:00] last-- late last night, actually. Uh, I went to GrowthCon, which is Amir Said's, uh, gig. It was over in Chicago, and Dr. Benjamin Hardy was, was one of the speakers. Great,

Josh Raw: I know Ben.

Dino - Josh Raw: Oh, you do?

Josh Raw: Yeah. I was in a, I was in a networking group with him for a year. I saw him do, um, his first ever... He, at the, at the time, I think he was 17 years old and he gave a keynote presentation at the Genius Network. Like this kid is next level. So anyways, please continue.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, so something that just really stuck out, which I think for every salesperson, it, it, it should resonate. future, you could-- you can know exactly what your future is gonna look like if you look at your present. What are

you doing today, 

Josh Raw: That's an important statement right there

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, and you'll know what's gonna happen in the future.

And, and he, he had some [00:42:00] illustrations and a few other things and, and it really resonated. And I was like, you know, when you look at the typical sales guy, um, let's just start it on January. January through December, right? It, it always kinda low. Why? Because they typically took December off or thought, thought nobody buys houses or needs to refi, so they just don't work.

And then in January, they got this motivation, but they got nothing, so they're still down here, and then February kicks in, and they're-- what, really what they're saying is like, "Oh, shit, I don't have any business. I better hustle." They start hustling, they go up, and then what? They get so busy working in their business that they stop working on it, and they stop doing what got them there.

Then it's this, and this is just all they do, up, down, up, down. And you can see it quarter after quarter from January through December, and it's the most vicious cycle. And, and I think- You know, where I wanna go with this is first, you were s- the hardest working person in the mortgage business according to your tagline.[00:43:00] 

You probably, because of how disciplined you are and how structured you are, had a way of being able to do all this, but every loan officer starts off by doing everything, and then gets to a point where he can't. He can't put a file together. He can't keep making those phone calls. He can't go out and make appointments and do all that stuff.

So at some point, every great loan officer decides they have to hire, make their first hire, and that usually is that next level up. When in your career did you decide that, and, and why? Where, where were you that finally said, "I have to do this"?

Josh Raw: Yeah. Um, so I wasn't that disciplined for the first 10 years of my career. I was just, um, I was just scared, to be perfectly honest. Like, I, I, I just didn't wanna go back to the things that I saw when I was a child, and I was just running, right? And then my, my, my course for running away from that fear was working [00:44:00] relentlessly hard.

I wouldn't say it was disciplined. I wouldn't say it was focused. I just outworked your ass. Um, and, and that's fine. Like, the first half of life in, in, in my opinion is, is all about attainment, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing. The second half of life is about attunement. And so the first half of life is about what you say yes to.

The second half of life is about what you say no to. And so back to your, your question around the higher, um, I had gotten to a point where that combination of controlling 4:00 a.m. to noon, working i- on my business first and then working in my business second, um, was starting to... And, and during this period of time, Dino, I got really-- When I rebuilt my business after the Great Recession I got really curious and excited about, um, a type of marketing [00:45:00] called direct response marketing.

And this is the type of marketing where you put a message out to the world, doesn't matter what kind of message, email, postcard, text message, keynote presentation, social media, website, blog, doesn't matter. And it, it evokes an emotional response from the person who's getting the message in such a way they say, "That's my problem, and I need a solution to it," and they raise their hand for help.

And that means they call you, they text you, they give you your contact information on a landing page or what have you. And so I was really fascinated around this, and I started waking up at 4:00 in the morning, and the first couple of hours I would read books and newsletters from Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer.

Um, Dan Kennedy wrote the No BS marketing books. Um, then, um, I got onto people like Eben Pagan and Frank Kern, and they were basically taking what Dan Kennedy had taught them, and they were doing it on the internet. And these guys were making, [00:46:00] like, $3 or $4 million a month selling info products on the internet, and I was just, like, enamored.

I was like this light I had to go towards, you know? I was like a moth chasing a

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah.

Josh Raw: And, uh, after a while of, of working on my business, creating marketing ideas and scaling my business and those types of things, I started creating so many leads that I had to build a team. Like, it just, I, I, I... It was impossible.

Uh, I remember one day...

Dino - Josh Raw: then though, you were still just all on your own? You were doing all of it?

Josh Raw: Yeah, I, my first hire would've been in, like, I had a processor who was assigned to me, but I didn't have anybody, like, necessarily on my team for the first 12 years. And then I hired a, a production partner, a loan officer assistant. That was my first full hire. Um, then I moved him to a loan officer, and I hired another l- loan officer assistant.

We now call them production partners, so I'll just use that phrasing. [00:47:00] So then we hired another production partner. Then that production partner moved to a loan officer, and I hired another production partner, and then I went out and I grabbed two other loan officers and brought them in, and then all of a sudden I started to have a team.

But the, the, the genesis of all of that was creating more leads than I could, I could handle. I remember having... I remember one day distinctly, I'll never forget this day. We, um, had started marketing online to physicians, and I was just executing exactly what Eben Pagan was telling me to do. And I got off a phone with a do- a phone call with a doctor.

I hung up, looked down at my phone. I had 13 voicemails. I cleared my 13 voicemails, all new leads, uh, that had found me from this online thing that I was doing. When I hung up the phone, seven more voicemails popped up And that wasn't like a moment where I was like, "Eureka, I've made it." It was like, "Oh, shit.

What do I do with [00:48:00] 20 leads in 30 minutes, and I still gotta get back to the first doctor that I was having a conversation with?" I literally just walked down the hall and I was like, "Drake Bleibom, you're now my business partner. Here's 13 leads. Call these people, get loan applications. I'll be back at 5:00, and I'll tell you how, what we're gonna do with them."

And so it just forced me to, to, to grow a team because I generated the leads. I think what originators do that is a, a hallmark mista- mistake around this is they hire too early. They hire when their c- p- production isn't really consistent enough, and they don't have a lead generation model. If you don't have more leads than you can get back to in a day, keep grinding.

And then once you get to six, seven, eight loans a month consistently, then you need to hire. And I, for me, the b- first hire was a production partner. The next hire was an or- was a, you know, moved him to an originator and hired another production. So I started scaling loan officers from there to build the [00:49:00] team.

Dino - Josh Raw: What about an admin? When did you hire that?

Josh Raw: I didn't hire an admin until 2017, so that would've been five years into me, i- into my business post-rebuilding from the Great Recession. Um, and I'll tell you, a great admin gives you an insane amount of lift, for sure. But again, you gotta have the production to support it. And, and the other problem, the other mistake that I see originators make is they wait to hire too late.

Like, um, you know, there's a woman inside of, um, The Loan Atlas that will remain unnamed, but she's doing 200 transactions a year, and she does not have an admin or an LO assistant. It's literally her and a dedicated processor that her company gives her the dedicated [00:50:00] processor, and she's doing everything.

So, and, and, and what's usually the root cause of that is that they're looking at the hire as an expense versus an investment.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah.

Josh Raw: you have the scale and the economics to hire, it is not an expense, it's an investment. In other words, it's gonna get you from eight loans a month to 15 loans a month. And when you look at the revenue on those additional seven loans, whatever the investment is in that hire is a total no-brainer.

Dino - Josh Raw: 100% agreed. And at this stage, um, so let's see, you've been in the business now for 12 years? 14?

Josh Raw: Yeah, so I started in 2001, and I kind of like recreated myself in this- online lead generation by about 2012 is when I really kind of started and started to get a tailwind behind me.

Dino - Josh Raw: Okay. And you picked the physician loan, like that became your thing. [00:51:00] You even wrote a book, I believe.

Josh Raw: Yeah. Why physician home loans fail.

Dino - Josh Raw: And, um, were you ever at any point scared that it was just a little too niche?

Josh Raw: Uh, yes, but my fears were quickly alleviated by the books that I was reading. And, um, you know, Dan Kennedy is very, very, very clear on this. His millionaire entrepreneur inner circle all have small niches and multiple-- and, and some of them multiple small niches, and maybe you're only getting 0.5% of the entire market, but that 0.5% of doctors is more mortgages than you or you and me can write.

Um, and so the, the danger, the real danger is actually usually not that the niche is too [00:52:00] small. The real danger is that your message is too broad, and you're not correctly identit- identifying the avatar that you wanna go over. You wanna, you want to, you want to go after, I should say. And because of that, your message is watered down, your process isn't as good, and your acumen in terms of your knowledge isn't as good because you haven't had as many at bats at those people.

So it's usually not the market's too small. It's usually that your message is too broad, and you're not speaking cleanly to your audience and what their problems are and how you're uniquely suited to solve those problems.

Dino - Josh Raw: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you a, a question at the very end. Um, so I'm gonna ask you another one now, but I don't want you to go too deep into it because I want you to reserve it for the very end. The big question at the end is basically, if I was gonna drop you off right now in some other state where you don't know anybody, I give [00:53:00] you just enough money that you can survive, but you can't just go buy all the stuff you need and do whatever you need.

You have to, like, earn it, right? How are you gonna do it? And, and oh, by the way, you have to make a million dollars before you can come back and, and either talk or see your family again. So that's where we're going at the end, so don't, don't spoil it. But right now, just going back to that little, that little box that you're talking about.

If you were to do it right now, would you go back into physician loans or would you pick something else?

Josh Raw: pick something else. Um, the, the physician loans right after the Great Recession was a blue ocean strategy. And for anybody who's not familiar with this book and this framing, blue ocean versus red ocean Blue ocean is where the fish are plentiful and, and there's no other hunters in-- and there's no other fishermen, there's no other sharks.

Red ocean strategy is a saturated market, and there's [00:54:00] blood everywhere in the water because all the other hunters are there. And in, in 2012, all of the big banks had pulled out of physician lending. And dude, like I'm not kidding you, at one point, this was right when Google bought YouTube, at one point I went into Google and typed in physician home loans, and in the first three pages there was only five links that weren't my links.

So imagine how many pages of results are in a page of Google listings. Out of three pages, there are only five other people who made it, and of those five, three of the five didn't have physician loan programs yet still. Google was just ranking them because they used to have them. So, um, that was a blue ocean strategy.

It is no longer a blue ocean strategy. So today, if you go to my, uh, LinkedIn, just search for Josh Me- not LinkedIn, I'm sorry. If you go to my Instagram, um, you'll see that [00:55:00] I speak directly to self-employed entrepreneurs and I speak to real estate investors because that's what I've become, right? I'm a real estate investor.

I'm a self-employed entrepreneur. And, you know, the-- I think, I think the mortgage of the future that is last to be disrupted by AI and call centers who are paying originators 25 basis points is that non-QM loan, and if you can figure out how to speak to these people and talk about their problems, you can, you can really do a lot of good for them.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. Yeah, agreed. So, uh, and you don't have to answer this, um, but I, I know you own quite a few properties. How many properties do you own, if that's okay?

Josh Raw: Yeah. Um, I have 17 commercial buildings 'cause we've 1031 exchanged most of our single-family residents. So we had 73 single-family residences at one point. We've 1031 exchanged most of those [00:56:00] into, uh, commercial buildings. So I own a, a bunch of medical office buildings, a bar and restaurant, uh, a retail center that has like Target and Big 5 and, um, y- you know, Old Navy are like my tenants.

Um, so I've moved into triple net commercial buildings. We have 17 of them. And, um, look, I've been freaking blessed, man. We, you know, we, we've been able to put together a nine-figure real estate portfolio over the last 25 years, and the greatest pleasure of my life's been having my mom as my partner. My wife's worked in that business since day one.

My kids work in that business. They're invested in our projects. Like it's been the absolute greatest pleasure of my life Yeah

Dino - Josh Raw: is how broke they usually always are. [00:57:00] If, if there was a, a younger guy, and maybe there, there is in your company, that, uh, came to you for advice, how would you structure their life they don't go broke?

Josh Raw: So I did a podcast with a guy who summed this up the cleanest way that I can think of to answer the question. And he was an incredibly intellectual young man, master's degree in finance, then went on to get his, um, uh, certifications as a financial planner. And I was interviewing him, and I... And, and, and what was interesting was after he got his master's degree, he went and worked for the government in a financial advice capacity, and his job was to advise senior citizens that had gotten to retirement age and didn't have enough money to make it through the month.

So his job was to, like, help them figure out, you know, you need $5,000 a month to survive. You only have 3,500. [00:58:00] How do we bridge the gap? And he did that as a social service for several years before starting his own financial service firm. And, um, he, he said it like this. He said, "Josh, it's super simple. The difference between everybody else and wealthy people comes back to one thing. The people who are not wealthy follow this equation: income minus spending equals savings.

Wealthy people do this: income minus savings equals spending." It's just a sequence. You have to save first and spend what's left. And if you don't do that, you will be the 50% of the US population that owns 10% of the wealth in the country or, you know, whatever that, whatever that number is.

But the top, the, the top 10% of the population or, or households in America [00:59:00] own 67% of the wealth. Two-thirds of the wealth to 10%. What did they do? Well, one capacity or another, they figured out income minus savings equals spending. They all spend less than they make, and they all prioritize savings first.

And I think it was probably that fear that, that still drives me in some ways tonight, to this day, around growing up on food stamps and watching your mother buy, um, or sell, sell a wedding ring to buy a hamburger. Like, I just knew I'm saving first and I'm gonna spend next, and I just innately kinda fell into that behavior.

But that's the thing. And if you're at a place right now where you're saving last, you're making a choice. You are not at effect. You are at cause. You are choosing in to being, to being, to living in poverty or getting to retirement and not having what you need. [01:00:00] Change your fricking course right now. Save and then spend.

It's your choice, but it's on you.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, and what's that saying? Um, you do the sacrifice the things today so you can do them later, as opposed to doing the things now and then not having the option to do them later, you know?

Josh Raw: Yeah, and, and look, I'm, I'm... You know, if we go back to this Jesse Itzler thing, like, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't create some incredible memories. But if you wanna look rich, you're probably not gonna be rich, right? So drive the Jeep for an extra decade, um, instead of the BMW. Um, if you're gonna spend money, make it on a memory you're gonna remember the last day of your

Dino - Josh Raw: go fishing at the lake

Josh Raw: Yeah, man.

Dino - Josh Raw: going to Alaska.

Josh Raw: right? Like, it doesn't cost that much money to go surfing. It doesn't cost that [01:01:00] much money to get to Costa Rica and live somewhere, like, affordable in Costa Rica for a little while. Like, spend the money on the, the, the, the things that matter and the depth of life and the memories of life, not the things, and prioritize savings first.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, for sure. Um, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try bringing this to, to an end, but I do have a couple more in between. Uh, I know you've gotten a lot of coaching, and you've had some great coaches, Bill Hart being one of them. Tim Brahim, right, a- another one. And when did you officially start coaching? How early into your career?

Josh Raw: It was right after my mor- right when my mortgage business was blowing up, so call it 2010.

Dino - Josh Raw: 2010, okay. And from there, so, you know- I forget what the, uh, uh, what the terminology. I think it's askhole. Um, people that, that are always [01:02:00] asking you, "How do you do this? How do you do this?" But yet they don't ever do it. You know, and it's like, uh, I, I've given away free advice forever, and it's just like... And somebody asked me like, "Why do you tell them all that?"

I'm like, "Eh, they're never gonna do it. It doesn't matter," right? They wanna know the secret sauce, here you go. Anyways, with, with you, um, are, I know you, I think, are you coaching, um, at Atlas Group now?

Josh Raw: Yeah, so I,

Dino - Josh Raw: you've moved it on, right? Like, you're passing it along.

Josh Raw: Yeah, I ca- I coached with Bill Hart for, I think, five years, and man, he got me a long ways. And then I, I've been coaching with Tim Brahim since then Um, maybe it hasn't been quite 10 years, but it's been a good stretch. And, um, in 2025, Tim asked me, he was launching The Loan Atlas, which is essentially taking everything that he'd been doing for the previous 20 years to small group coaching.

He only had 12 people go through his coaching program at a time. He wanted to systematize everything that he'd learned in his business and all the things that he'd learned through coaching, well, h- very high-end [01:03:00] clients. Like, these clients are paying him $50,000 a year or some big number to be a part of it.

So these are like, you know, these, these women and men are crushing. So he'd systematized all that, and he's like, "Man, we can bring this to the masses. We can do something that is not 50,000 a year. It's a couple grand a year, and I can teach them everything I've learned as an originator and as a coach, um, over the last 20 years."

And, you know, we built that into the Atlas, and I'm, I'm, I'm learning so much from him in a... You know, when your coach becomes your business partner, it's really fun. And I'm learning so much for him, and I'm, I'm, and I'm learning so much as a coach inside The Loan Atlas. Like, it's one thing to study something and learn something and implement it.

It's a different level to teach it, and I'm getting so much better personally by being a coach there.

Dino - Josh Raw: that's great. I love it. I think, I think passing it on, right? A legacy. When I think of legacy, yes, legacy for my kids, my family, but I also wanna leave a legacy in our industry. It's been, it's been such a [01:04:00] good industry, you know? Um, so, so now as far as coaching goes, um, and I promise I'm gonna start bringing this to an end here, um, what would you say is more important: mindset coaching or how to do a loan coaching?

Josh Raw: Well, I always like to start with the inner game, but I think back when I was young into the industry, I probably needed the, the ABCs and the one, two, threes before the inner game stuff r- really would've been able to help me. Um, inside The Loan Atlas, we've built it ca- um, Tim has structured it called the eight disciplines of origination mastery.

And discipline number one is just product knowledge and all of the fundamentals. Discipline number two is a system for selling. Discipline number three is marketing and lead generation. Discipline number four is building a team. Then there's a couple of personal [01:05:00] disciplines, and then the final discipline is legacy and freedom, and how do you turn this revenue into a perpetual annuity income stream for the rest of your life.

So I'll probably follow the same eight disciplines of origination mastery that Tim created, which is the blocking and tackling when you gotta pay the bills, Maslow's hierarchy of need, like that has to come first. But if you s- are stuck there, you're gonna burn yourself out, you're gonna ruin your relationships.

Like, you have to get into that place where you're working on the inner game, and that unlocks the upper levels. But I think in terms of sequence, you gotta pay the bills first before you can really kind of start looking at yourself and figure out, how do I, you know, how do I un-F myself?

Dino - Josh Raw: What's your favorite book or two if, if you're stuck?

Josh Raw: Uh, c- compound effect for me was something that's completely changed the way I looked at, um, grinding it out every day and just [01:06:00] staying relentlessly focused on, you know, like calls in the morning, realtor meetings in the afternoon, open houses on the weekend, and having that understanding that doing f- five of those days isn't gonna get you there.

Doing 500 of those days is going to get you there. So the compound effect for me was absolutely huge. He also talked a lot about the people you hang out with. Like, "Hey, are you 20 pounds overweight?

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah.

Josh Raw: w- how, tell me, I'll tell you who your friends are. Your five best friends are probably 25 pounds overweight."

Like, there's not a lot of chunky dudes that hang out with guys with six-packs. I don't know why it is, it just is what it is.

Um, and so that was really great. Um, and then the other one that is completely like a hallmark of my franking- of my thinking is, uh, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. And, you know, in that he talks about the power of a mastermind and group and community [01:07:00] kno- uh, learning and energy.

Um, he talks a lot about stopping six inches away from hitting success, and he, he talks about at the end of the book creating this indelible image of what your future's going to look like. And back to the Ben Hardy quote, you have to line your life up today to, to al- uh, be aligned with where you wanna go 20, 30 years down the road, or you'll never get there.

You can't live incongruent and then all of a sudden get to where you wanna be. You gotta live that life today to get to where you wanna be.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. Have, out of curiosity, have you, um, started getting your kids to read any of these books yet?

Josh Raw: It's so funny, when we moved down here to St. George, um, we were in between terms for my son, and the first month I was literally homeschooling him. Like, I was creating the curriculum for him. He wasn't getting any credit for high school, but I was doing it. So I had him read, um, [01:08:00] uh, Jocko's Extreme Ownership.

I had him read The Four Agreements. Um, I had him study Chad Wright, who's a Navy SEAL. I got an opportunity to meet a couple times, and he has this incredible framework about resiliency and controlling your rudder. I had him reach, uh, read, um, oh, the other guy who's the ultra-marathon runner, used to be fat.

He wrote the book Can't Hurt Me. David Goggins. Thank you, Xander. Um, Goggins. Um, so I, I just got out my favorite books, and I had him watch videos and read book summaries, and then I wrote him like 10 essay questions, and he had to, you know, d- do all the work and then write the essay questions. So, um, so yeah.

Dino - Josh Raw: Now, I- I'm curious now. Why did you pull him out of school and do all this?

Josh Raw: Um, a lot of reasons. There were some family reasons, which I won't go into. Um, and he's super passionate about golf, [01:09:00] and I live in Park City, and it snowed yesterday in Park City. It's May, May 8th today. So, um, he wanted to accelerate or fast-forward his progress from his sophomore year to his junior year in high school, and the only way to do that is increase the frequency of golf, and he can golf every day here.

Dino - Josh Raw: That's awesome. Is it just the two of you guys right now?

Josh Raw: Yeah, we're bachelors. And we got a dog, a dog, Cosmo, so it's just three dudes in this house. We need some female energy like nobody's

business. 

Dino - Josh Raw: what a memory that's going to be years from now. I mean, that's gonna be, it's gonna be something. What's your vision of your son t- 10 years from now, 20 years from now, right, as an adult?

Josh Raw: Boy, that is a great question, Dino. Um, you know, I hope he pursues something that he's passionate about and that, that he's excited about, whatever that is. Um, I would [01:10:00] love-- I've had so much fun working with my mom over the last 25 years. You know, I would just be tickled to death if that thing that they were interested in happened to be working in our various businesses or our, um, real estate investments.

Like, um, you know, w- we, we need bright, driven, uh, honest people to get the, uh, the businesses I have to the next level, and nobody I'd rather have is our, my kids. But, you know, they may have had enough of me, Dino. They might have said, "I'm good. I don't, I don't need to work with you for the next 20 years, dude."

Dino - Josh Raw: you know what though, man? It's like my, my dad came from Greece when he was 20 or 21, something like that. He worked his tail off, like just worked his tail off. He never played catch with me 'cause he didn't know how to, right? Like, I'm the one that taught him not to play basketball, but how to, like, how to watch it, right?

He didn't know. But I didn't get to experience any of that stuff that kids talk about. But I [01:11:00] worked with my dad every day, and, and that, I think at the end of the day, is really what it was about. It was like we were together often, and in those little lessons all the time is what I think, looking back, right...

A- a- and here's a quick little story. When my dad passed away, yeah, I mean, I was, I was sad, but I, but I wasn't. And, and it dawned on me, and it's because I had such a good relationship with him, I was fulfilled with who I had as a father and how I was as a son to him. When I see people that really struggle with the death of a parent, I really truly feel that it's because there's so much unresolved stuff happening there, right?

And, and I, I love, um, I love it when, you know, just family, parents, kids can be together, and, and I think it's the future of how to change the world, and that's [01:12:00] parents and kids doing a good job right now, you know, and, and raising kids the right way.

Josh Raw: And there's not enough of it, man. Like, you know, you-- two parents are working full-time jobs. Kids are-- get to see them for a couple hours if they're lucky, then they go off to college, then they move across the country, and it's like, I, I, I mean, I don't know, man. That's kinda sad to me. Like, I, I think that, um, if that bond is the way it should be, that there should be a lot more intimacy there for a lot longer period of time.

Dino - Josh Raw: Do you care if your kids go to college?

Josh Raw: No, I don't. Um, I don't, I don't know how valuable knowledge is anymore. Um, I can figure an-

Dino - Josh Raw: I disagree. Hold on. I think, I think knowledge is very valuable. I don't know how valuable education is.

Josh Raw: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, great way of saying it. Anything I would [01:13:00] learn in many of those classes, I can find out on Claude or in ChatGPT in seconds, and probably have someone giving me advice that's smarter than any of my professors. Now, what it is great for is for relationships, for social structure, um, and, and there's value there.

But if they chose not to, I just wanna make sure they're doing something, you know, productive or, or they're creating memories that are gonna last a lifetime

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. All right, so let's, let's get to this last question now. I'm picking you up, I'm dropping you off, let's just call it, uh, Indiana. Do you know anybody in Indiana?

Josh Raw: I do. There's a great mortgage team. Uh, I can't remember his name, but I, I kn- I'm very... Yes.

Dino - Josh Raw: All right. Well, let's, uh, let's say St. Louis then. Hopefully you don't know anybody there. And you have to make a million bucks before you can come home and visit your family. How are you gonna do it?

Josh Raw: I'd probably

Dino - Josh Raw: Get granular with me.

Josh Raw: I'd probably join a team. I'd probably go to the highest [01:14:00] producing mortgage team in that area, and I would find a leader there that I jive with, and I would probably join that team because great leaders that run successful teams are creating leads. So I would have an immediate in to leads.

Like tomorrow I'd be on the phone with 15 or 20 lead opportunities versus if I was starting brand new from fresh, that might take me six months. So if my goal is to get home to my family and I've lost everything, so I also need to buy my first rental property because the first thing I wanna do is start replacing my passive income.

So I would join a team, I would mentor under that leader. I would become his right hand. I would be his number one producer. I would work relentlessly 'cause my family's not there, and I would just rock it until I had enough [01:15:00] money to buy a rental property. I'd probably live in a 200 square foot room for nothing until I had enough money to buy a rental property.

And then once I essentially learned everything I had to learn from him, her, and ripped off all of their processes and sy- systems and got ingrained in the community, then I would go out and start my own thing. But I think joining a really successful team where you can have a high velocity of lead, um, lead generation, and presumably they would already have a perfect loan process and systems for getting loans done.

Because one of the hardest things as an originator is how do I learn the company? How do I figure out how to get my loans through the system? How do I get relationships? How do I close leads? You can essentially just swipe and deploy all that stuff and just step in as a badass executor and, and 10X the t- uh, uh, or, or drastically reduce the, [01:16:00] the time it takes you to become successful again.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. And quick question for you, and I maybe I didn't phrase the question the right way too. You have all the knowledge you have right now and the skill and all that stuff, just not the database, right? Or the money.

Josh Raw: I, I'd probably do

Dino - Josh Raw: the same?

Josh Raw: bro. I, I really would. Like I, I think I could become the number one guy inside that team in a very short period of time. So l- let me back up. The reason I give you this answer is leverage. If you wanna become a billionaire, y- be looking for leverage everywhere. And the reason I would join a team is because I get to leverage the last 20 years of work that this producer's done, and I just get to go do the thing, and that'll help me generate revenue super fast.

And then when I have revenue and I have, I have systems, now I can move out [01:17:00] on my own, and I have... I can hire people, and I can replicate, replicate the system. Even if I knew what I knew today, I'd still go join a team. It's the fastest way for me to get a, a huge paycheck.

Dino - Josh Raw: It's interesting, man. You're the first person that said that. I, I, I... You're 100% right. You don't know anybody, right? It's the fastest way to go get a check. All right, just off the top of your...

Josh Raw: and I don't have any, I don't have any, um... I, I don't have a team, and, like, not-- I know how hard it is to d- do all of those things when you don't have a team. I don't ever wanna do that again. Like, been there, done that. Um, I wanna step into a team that's a well-oiled machine, and I want you to feed me leads, and I'm just gonna crush it.

And then I'm gonna be... L- look, here's the thing. Every high producer's looking for the next number one on their team. You want more leads? Show up earlier, respond faster, close at a higher frequency. They will just start [01:18:00] funneling you leads. It's happened to me everywhere I've been. I show up in a company, I'm the first one there, I'm the last one to leave, I'm always on it.

They just start giving me leads. And, and, and if you're not pulling that in, it's because you're not putting the effort out that deserves it. But I would, I would have maximum leverage on day one. That would take me a year or more to replicate if I had to go try to rebuild everything on my own.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, 100% right I, I, I'm gonna-- I've never asked this question. I, I'm kind of interested to see what you say. Um, forget Scotsman's Guide and all that stuff right now. Just off the top of your head, the, the, the five best loan officers you know.

Josh Raw: Oh man, that's a great question. Um, well, I'll start, um, in my own team just because I know them so well. Um, you know, I've got a couple of originators in my team, uh, immediately comes to mind, Skyler Ford and Ross Zimmerman, [01:19:00] um, Drake Blahaum, and I'm, I'm, I'm missing others. I'm gonna piss people off. But the reason that I answered the question that way is because they're beautiful humans.

They have amazing families. They have thriving businesses. They go on mountain bike rides for two hours with their realtors They're well-rounded. They're incredible, incredible humans. And I, um, you know, several of them I've told them, like, you know, "I hope my son becomes like you. I see the way you show up for your family and your kids, and you still have-- playing basketball tournaments, and, like, you're living such a beautiful, full life."

Um, so those are the guys that, that, that come off the top of my head. Um, Katrinka Condie is another originator. Um, she did 12 million, uh, in March in production. Um, I hired her as a loan officer assistant at $13 an hour, uh, seven years ago, and she did 12 million last, uh, the month before last. She's another one.

Um, [01:20:00] I've always really loved the way Jeremy Forcier plays the game. He plays loose. He has fun. He's an incredibly dynamic and intelligent guy, and he crushes. Um, and you know, I, I, the Mortgage Nerd is rad. Just her, the way that she takes a consultive financial, um, approach to originating, um, you know, she's, she's absolutely incredible as well.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah. So, so now the fun question. Again, I've never asked this question, so I'm just kinda curious though. Uh, because we are a different breed in this industry, right? Like, you kinda have to be, uh, uh, especially at that level. If I had a competition right now where I took five of you, right, including Jeremy and, and the mortgage nerd Denise, and, uh, and said, "All right, dropping you guys off.

Who's gonna make a million dollars first?" Who do you think would do it?

Josh Raw: Um, well, I would because [01:21:00] my properties are spinning off so much cash flow they can't catch up to me.

Dino - Josh Raw: Uh, just doing loans, man. Just doing loans.

Josh Raw: Uh, oh, I don't know.

Dino - Josh Raw: you off somewhere where you don't-- you guys don't know anybody. You guys all live in one house, and you guys have to go out and crush it.

Josh Raw: uh, those two would both, both beat me for sure. Let's say, uh, let's say Denise is first and Jeremy second, and I'm third. I don't know. I, I got n- I got no ego, bro. Like I, um... Yeah. The, the... A- and, and, and f- in all fairness, those two are still in the game talking to clients every day. Like, that's not my, that's not my jam anymore.

So honestly, not just being modest, like, those two would definitely beat me.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, dude, thank you so much. I'll tell you what, there's something I really enjoyed about our conversation, and that is that I left this conversation feeling, like, more knowledgeable about [01:22:00] stuff, more motivated about things, and, like, I wanna go out there and grab it, you know? So thank you for that.

Josh Raw: My pleasure. I feel the same way. It's great to reconnect with you, and hopefully the audience got a bunch of wisdom. Now, one of my favorite originators of all time His name is Craig Strent, one of the only guys I know really well who's done over two billion. I think he did 2.4 billion in origination in his career.

He taught me this very important phrase, and that is, "The genius is in the execution." So hopefully this wasn't just like mortgage amusement, like, you know, you just watch a sitcom. But I want you to pick something that you heard today, either Dino or I talk about, and I want you to go execute on it. And the faster you execute on it, the faster you put it into your life and into your systems, the higher probability you'll actually do it.

So, um, the genius is in the execution. I hope you guys get after it.

Dino - Josh Raw: Yeah, thank you so much. And guys, [01:23:00] do me a favor. Drop that in the comments somewhere. Let us know what that one thing is that you're executing on. All right, guys, thank you so much. We love ya. We really appreciate it. By the way, 103 in the business category in Apple Podcasts, so thank you so much. I appreciate it, guys.

See you next time