The Playbook for Growth on LinkedIn with Rich Swerbinsky

Rich, the Executive Director of the OMBA, has over 31,000 LinkedIn followers, and he walks through live examples, simple scripts, and a weekly routine that you can immediately implement into your own schedule to build your brand and grow revenue on LinkedIn.

Originally aired live on August 25, 2026. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:18

Good afternoon, everybody. Richard Sorbinski with the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association. Give everybody just another moment. See who shows up for the live version of this season people sauntering in. And I'll go ahead and get started in about 30 seconds here. Good afternoon, everyone. Richard Swarbinski. I'm the executive director of the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association. Also run a coaching and consulting business called Onward and Upward Consulting. And uh this is a 30-minute version of a speech I've given gobs of times this year to mortgage lenders. Um, you know, it's it's the best 30 minutes from like a 75-minute presentation with the 15-minute QA at the end. So I'm gonna try to go quick. I'm gonna try to get to a lot. Um not gonna really have time for questions. If you have any, put them in the chat. I'll try to get to them. Um, but if you have questions, just I'm the easiest person in the world to find. Send me an email, a DM. I got like seven email addresses and I'm on LinkedIn 24-7. So I'm very easy to find. So um, this is a presentation I'm very passionate about because of what it has done for me personally. Um I didn't go to college. Um, you know, I, you know, live in Cleveland, last name Swarbinski. Like, I mean, this has been everything for me. Really being good digitally, professionally, centered really around LinkedIn. It has created everything for me in my career. And then these last three years, coaching executives in the mortgage industry, I've just watched how it has just completely changed not only the industry's perception of people, but the business results. Um, and you know, just being able to achieve them um just through consistent, strong digital presence. This could be the most impactful 30 minutes a year. I I say that, I swear to God, I'm not even being facetious. Like if you really absorb this and really buy in, um, I know this works. There's not many things in life where you could say, I know this, I know this works. What I'm about to go over in the next 29 minutes, it works 100% for sure. Just most people, it's like exercise, right? It's the same thing. Like, I know that if I go out and jog four miles four times a week and do 100 push-ups a day, I'm gonna be in better, much better shape in a month. In like three months. Oh my God. In a year? If I keep doing this for my whole career, oh my god, I'm gonna be in incredible shape. Same thing. So don't be one of those people that the the odds say everybody's gonna leave this fired up. 90% of you will forget it all in a week. Don't be that person. I'm gonna try to make the case why you should go all in on this because you can start literally the second this ends, and it costs zero cents. You can start immediately, it costs nothing, and it's not that difficult. Because the way that think about how we've promoted the mortgage industry and ourselves within it historically, is recently is not that long ago, right? Like open house flyers, bagels and donuts and realtor offices, cold calls, stupid flyers, radio ads, TV ads, uh newspaper ads, like all that crap is gone. Where did it all go? We still promote things in the mortgage industry, I'd argue more now than ever. It all went here. Like all of it. How can you not be here? How can you not be where everybody lives if you are growing or billing, building anything? Like, how can you not be? It doesn't register to me. Like, it's like trying to fight with it would be like me like trying to fight somebody I already can't beat up with my right hand tied behind my back is the way I I look at it. So um, so the rules have changed. If you don't get on board with this, you will be bled away. You know, how fast and by who, there's a lot of factors, but if you're just one of those people like, eh, you know, eh, you know, I listen, I hate social media. I'm on zero social media, none my whole life. I hate it. I'm trying to get my teenagers off of it completely. I'm only on LinkedIn strategically for my bank account because not being doing so would be idiotic, right? So the the game is changing. And uh, you know, it's you know, you you will get bled away if if you sleep on this stuff. So why LinkedIn for mortgage profession, you know, I hear it all the time. Oh, you know, LOs aren't on LinkedIn and real estate agents aren't on LinkedIn. If you're an LO and a real estate agent and you're not LinkedIn, not on LinkedIn, you're an idiot. I'm sorry. I hate to say it. Like, why would you not be? Right? It's growing like crazy. It's you, of course, if you're an LO or a real estate agent, you should be on Facebook and Instagram as well. So you should be on all three at a minimum LinkedIn, Facebook and stuff. You're a loan originator or a real estate agent. I'm LinkedIn only because I'm a coach and consultant and speaker. And, you know, I'm B2B only. You guys are B2C, a lot of you on this call, and uh and a combination of B2C and B2B. So um, you know, the bottom line is the platform is on fire. It's growing quicker than any other platform in America. Uh, it is where decisions happen. People are on LinkedIn in a business mindset, unlike other social platforms. So you have a little bit of an advantage, right? And the all the most important conversations in the industry are happening on the LinkedIn platform. I can't tell you how many people this last year have said, I love that I can now go to LinkedIn and get all my news for the mortgage industry. Same thing people said about Facebook 10 years ago. You know, a lot of people, Gary V, a lot of the business influencer community saying now, have been saying last six, nine months, LinkedIn 2026, very, very similar to Facebook 2015 underpriced attention. Um, algorithm changes that allow somebody with 500 followers to have thousands of views per post. On average, I'm coaching multiple people with under 700 followers that are getting, on average, 2,000 plus impressions per post. I kid you not. That is 100% true, which shows you that that's why LinkedIn is so powerful. Go to your go to your profile, go to your analytics. Your post the last 30 days, it shows you now. This is a like a two-week old development, what percentage of your impressions are for people that follow you and people that previously did not follow you. For me, last month I produced tons of content. It was almost 2 million impressions. 57% people that do not follow me. What a massive advantage and opportunity. Oh my God, to make content that will be shown to exactly the people you want to see. So the bottom line is, and then you know, and then your LinkedIn profile, anybody that's curious about you whatsoever professionally, they're gonna do one of two things. They're gonna go to LinkedIn and search you, or they're gonna Google you. Either way, it's gonna send them right to your LinkedIn profile page, right? So your profile has to be good. It has to be like it's no excuse. You can make it better in five minutes with AI. Literally, just take screenshots of your entire profile or copy and paste the text all the way up and be like, suggest robust LinkedIn profile optimization suggestions. It will tell you exactly what to do, it'll give you the sample copy, it will explain why each change helps you. You can literally do that in five minutes. Important to have a good pick, good banner, your headline, right? If it just says loan officer, right? How about helping families in the state of Colorado since 2021? Uh CMB, certified, you know uh home advisor, you know, like that versus loan officer at XYZ Bank, right? Um, you're a you're a and your headline shows not only right under your name on your profile, but it shows right under your name every single time you post or comment. Your headline is so important because so many people see it so frequently. It shows the first 80 of 220 characters every single time you post or comment. It is vitally important. I would argue everybody should fix it. Just below that's your about section. You know, your headline is what you do. Your about section is why you're different. Why are you better than your competition? What makes you unique? What have you done in your career? What are you doing now? What are the value ads you do? You know, in above and beyond your job. What makes your level of service unique? Tell a story, right? It's all prime real estate on your profile. And how about some kind of call to action? Like if you want to learn more about what we're doing at blah, blah, blah, um, shoot me a DM. Or pop me an email to blah blah blah at blah, blah, blah. So, what I always tell people I coach is once your profile is fixed, and I would argue I you could everybody here again, five minutes. Please fix your LinkedIn profiles. I'm begging you all. It's the time investment versus the pickup, it it's astronomical, a ROI of five minutes. So once that's fixed, there are three stools to the LinkedIn, three legs to the LinkedIn stool. One, grow your network to the maximum strategically every week. I'm gonna go through that in a second. Two, the hardest, make good content that supports your business goals. We're gonna go through that. Number three, use the platform for strategic outreach. So grow, make content, strategic outreach. What's strategic outreach? Liking, commenting, sharing with comments, sending direct messages, sending connection requests. So as far as building your network goes, you can send out on LinkedIn up to 250 connection requests a week if you do it the right way. The link you can only send so many connection requests per week. The LinkedIn clock starts on Monday mornings, but for years not knowing any better. I had a calendar block Monday morning, 7 to 7:30 a.m. It just said LinkedIn connections. And in my 20s and 30s, I would just go to LinkedIn and just connect using filters with it stops you at like a hundred people if you do it all in one day. Um now, if you what I've since come to learn is if you spread it out over the course of the week and send like 30 to 35 a day, you can send as up to 250 a week. It is crazy multiplication effect. People I coach that don't even make content for one reason or another, you're gonna add between 500 and a thousand followers a month just doing this a month. I kid you not. So um, it is, you know, on here it says 10 to 20 a day. I would start there, you know, use filters to identify people, right? You know, if you're a recruiting sales manager in Ohio, you're gonna make the geography Ohio, and you're gonna put loan originator in the search field, and you're gonna switch your connections from first to second. It's gonna show you every connection of a connection that has the title loan originator in Ohio. And just connect, connect. I don't even personalize my requests. I know on here it says to personalize, and it is a little better. I but here's the thing. I to me, there's more value in maxing out your connection requests every week. You know, and if you're personalized, you know, I have some clients I coach, like, oh, how many connection requests you sent last week? They're like, uh 18. I'm like, 18 the whole week? Like, and they're writing like books to everyone. Like, I just when I get personalized requests, it feels salesy. I don't, nobody wants to be sold to. I try not to feel salesy. So uh, but get your connection requests out daily. As it relates to content, a couple things. I start here, right? Um, well, I guess where I'll start is in general. I I get where most of you are that are listening. Like I, you know, every just know this 99% of the the professionals in the world are the same as you likely are thinking right now. Like, you know, I've been on LinkedIn the last 10 years. I you know, I you know, post once every week or two. It's typically just company paid shares. Use it to stalk competitors and you know, get industry news. Like everybody's in that same spot, right? So, like, how do you make content strategically for LinkedIn? You know, the the first thing I'd say is you have to be consistent and you have to commit to it because it's and it's so worth your time and commitment. Number two is you have to be selfless, completely selfless in your content. Nobody wants to be sold to zero percent. Your entire LinkedIn strategy is selling to people or begging them to do business with you, it's a losing strategy. It's barely better than doing nothing, right? I'm a believer in the opposite. Pour into your network, create value, follow the warm leads, right? Do the harder thing, the long game, right? Sales is quick, and that's why people like to go for it. I what I say is sales sucks. If you're good at marketing yourself, you don't have to sell. Like things come to you. It's opposite way most people look at it. So, um, as it relates to content, though, opening hook is so important. You can have the best post in the world. If the first 140 characters suck, nobody's ever gonna see it. And coaching all these people and pouring through their content every single time. And it happens with almost every client. Like, oh my god, this post, I was so excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

I thought I was gonna kill. Got 400 impressions.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

I could just before I even look at it, I'm like, your opening hook sucked. It is so important, and you know, how do you get a better opening hook? Work with AI, right? Like, that's how I do it. Like, I pressure test every post because I know the same post, bad opening hook and good, could be for me a thousand impressions or eighty thousand, you know. So, and that's the number one indicator of how many you know impressions it's gonna get. That's everything for me. I'm going for numbers. So um, there's some examples on here of what makes a hook work, what kills a hook. There's another slide here where it goes through some of the hooks that work, the contrarian, you know. For me, this would be me predict me correctly, uh Mike dropped predicting that Matt Ishbia was running out of money uh like five months before anybody else figured it out. Like that was the best post I've done all year. Because I was like, I think the opening hook was I've got a I'm coming to the conclusion that Matt Ishbia may have really bad cash problems that nobody else really knows about. There was something like that. It went crazy. Contrarian opinion, number one mortgage lender in America. Um, pattern recognition, every type of person says that, you know, like this would be like the you know, last four borrowers I talked to legitimately thought you had needed 20% down to buy a house in America. Like that's a good, you know, it's gonna get people's attention. The confession, I've done this post a few times talking about the early days of my consultancy, the humility, the vulnerability, how far behind where I thought I would be six months in, 12 months in, trust the process, patience, 18, 20 months starts to come together, be vulnerable. I, you know, I've I did those do great. The specific number, like, you know, uh just had my best purchase closing month ever in July at a time where a lot of lenders are struggling. Like that, you know, uh the cold open, this one's great. You kind of extract the climax of the story and bring it to the front and then do a little, you know, like retro telling, and then the comparison, like, you know, the hired Susie, you know, she originated 10 million last year, come to XYZ Bank, and she's gonna do 18 this year, on pace to do 20 this year. What was the difference? Opening hook, boom, everybody wants to click more. 50, 30, 20 content mix, right? Like, in thinking about my content in totality, what should it look like? Right? Like, I post all kinds of wacky shit to LinkedIn, but if you go look, at least 50% of my stuff is meat and potatoes. As much as I do funny and and goofy and you know, other personal brand stuff, like at least 50% is just pouring into my network. What is of the most value to the people that follow me? Uh insight as to things going on in the market. What does this really mean? What the hell does Jackson Hole mean for me in my rate sheet? Post I made this morning, right? 30% human content. Another recent example for me. Go look at my feed. I just made a post, I think it was last night. Pizza Hut. They're rebranding, right? I as a kid, I freaking died for to go to Pizza Hut. I'm like, oh immediately, as soon as I saw the pizza rebranding, I'm writing it down. Pizza Hut. I know there's a post there. And so my post was, you know, was very nostalgic. It is going absolutely crazy. Why is my stupid post about Pizza Hut going crazy? Because the vast majority of the people in the mortgage industry are my age, like late 40s, or uh, you know, going on 50, 50s, like Pizza Hut was the shit when we were little, and it resonates with people. I do a lot of 80s and 90s nostalgia content. Same thing. I know it's gonna do good. It's it people don't want to read mortgage stuff all the time. You know, this Pizza Hut post going absolutely berserk. It's gonna get like 60, 70,000 impressions. That's the algorithm telling me, you know, you're sure some people do, oh, LinkedIn, it's you know, it's like Facebook now. It's not, number one. Two, do you want it to be all work crap and nothing else? Like nobody wants that. You know, the fact why LinkedIn's grown, I make that Pizza Hut post, they show it to the whole world. What does that say to me? Make more content like that. That's all that these algorithms want, right? So, but think about it, it's it's no different than when I make the post about my stupid French Bulldog under my desk, right? Look at the comments on that Pizza Hut post. I'm gonna get like three clients off of it. You might be laughing. It's the truth, right? Because the same thing with the French Bulldog post. When I make that Pizza Hut post, somebody that Pizza Hut means nothing to, I'm not losing any brand equity with them. They still think it's interesting, maybe funny. Um, but the Pizza Hut people that commented like I'm their dude now, you know? Like my friend Erica that's in the comments, like that I've been talking to about coaching for months, like she might come to work with me now. You know? It's no different than the French Bulldog posts. The non-pet people, I don't really lose any brand equity. Pet people, I pick up some brand equity, but the Frenchie people, I've I've said this before, and it's got five coaching clients that are French Bulldog owners. That is not an accident, right? People, it's these little connections people make with you. And these little hooks that are the difference between them replying or not replying to an email or a DM or you know, your inquiry to do business with them or hire them. Like it's those little things that matter. And then one out of five selling, no more than 20% should be selling. Nobody wants to be sold to 0%. And if your strategy is 100% what zero percent of people want, I would say you probably need a new strategy, just being honest. So, you know, and then uh at the end of the day, that's what this is all about is the direct content. I I mean again, I'm only on LinkedIn to make money. I've grown 90 plus clients without spending one penny just making content. Right? And because when I make enough quality content that when I do ask, right? Like I made another post this morning. And it may not seem like sales, but it was sales. It was like a great piece of advice I give friends and clients of mine. Just DM five interesting people a week. The post is doing great. And it took me like ten seconds. I was like walking in my kitchen this morning when I made it. And but what does it do? One, I'm paying it forward, I'm giving value with asking nothing in return, I'm reminding People, I'm a coach and I have clients. Like it's that's sales. That's the that's the way to sell. I make posts with with deep knowledge about the Fed, the treasury. I make the Pizza Hut post. I I make fun of something. I do some stupid best name poll, and then I come in the side door with uh post that looks like advice, but it's really a sales post. Some things to think about. Um, other posts that always do good, client success story, market updates, community insights, local content does so good, right? We know 57% of my content is being shown to people that don't follow me. So if I make a post about the Vail, Colorado housing market, who are they gonna show that post to? Vale, Colorado real estate agents and LOs that are not currently following me. Behind the scenes leadership lessons. Um, the third leg of the school stool engaging, just beyond posting, right? You should be liking posts every day. I coach my coaching clients 30 minutes a morning, scroll, like, comment, connect. 30 minutes every day, you get all your news on LinkedIn. You can drop likes and drips on 15, 20 posts, make a couple comments and get your connection requests out. All in 30 minutes, if you make it habitual and systematic. All right. Um, so engagement beyond posting, liking, right? I'm not a social media person at all, right? Even I notice everybody that likes my posts. So what a great takes half a second way to drip on somebody important to you and stay in front of them, right? It's insane ROI of time. Slightly better than liking, commenting, right? If you get comfortable with the terrifying act of hitting the like button, then commenting is the next step, right? Like I always try to like, hey, good seeing you last week, or like, hey, it's been too long, let's catch up next week. Like, you know, that type of stuff. So, or or comment to what they're actually talking about. I'm a huge believer in the DM. Um, I just sent 100 this morning to uh mortgage collaborative non-member decision makers. And, you know, it's short, non-salesy. Hey, my name's Rich. You know, I used to run a company called the Mortgage Collaborative Freight and a half years. Back work with the back working with them on some strategic growth initiatives, trying to find great lenders that could be a good fit for the network. If you got five or ten minutes one day these next few weeks, would love to jump on a Zoom. That's it. Short, human-sounding non-salesy, right? I sent a hundred. I've gotten four replies already. Um, I'll probably get four more, if I had to guess, maybe five or six. So eight to ten out of a hundred. But it took me twenty-four minutes to copy, paste, change the first name. By four minutes. Um so but not only do I already have four replies, and I'm probably gonna get four to five more, but a week from now, when my calendar is already set, follow up August 25 DM campaign, I'm gonna get another seven, eight replies from the 92 people that I follow up with that haven't replied to the first one. Two weeks after that, calendar already set. The 84 people that still haven't replied, I'm gonna get another seven or eight. Right? So I'm gonna get like 20 replies off of something that took me 25 minutes and then two 15-minute blocks to follow up. Copy, paste, change the first name. So for not even an hour of my time, I'm gonna get 20 replies. Five will probably be pound salt, 15 meetings. I kid you not. This is how I grew the mortgage collaborative. This is how I grew my consultancy. This is how I'm watching clients grow everything. The DM is undefeated, people sleep on it. Um, I love LinkedIn because you can track everything, right? It I love that shit because you get a scorecard on every single thing. Every post I make, I'm looking at it. Did it exceed or not exceed my preconceived expectations for how it would perform? If it did, why and do more of that? If it didn't, why and do less of that? It's beautiful. AI, AI, AI, AI. If you're not spending an hour a day getting better at AI, I go, Oh, I don't have an hour. Okay. All right, you don't have an hour. Find it. Find it. Find it. I'm so glad I found it two years ago. I'm just dunking on people right now. I'm doing the work of like 10 people. I've got a staff of four that should be a staff of 15 to 20. Because I have gone all in on this. It is so insanely powerful. Its ability to help you with all this stuff is off the charts. And I I could do three hours on this and I don't have time now, but make getting being great at AI and content, professional superpowers. AI prompts you can use today, you know, for recruiting, for market updates, prospect research, referral partner outreach. So we could go on and on and on. Um, advanced AI cases, right? Like I got a lot of bank clients like, oh, we can't use AI for content. Like, you know, it's our compliance department. Like, no, just upload your social media policy to AI, be like, save the memory. It will never create anything non-compliant, like ever, like for the rest of your life. So um content repurposing. This is how I came to one of my Bescent Walsh posts recently. I was reading a few different columns I liked, and I copied and pasted them all in the claw. I was like, I like these columns, you know, remember this info and suggest 10 different post ideas I can make about Bessin's recent actions and the Fed and Walsh in Jackson Hall this week. So this is an actual person. This is an actual coaching client of mine. Um, this is from like September to like May, um, last September to May. Um, this is a female recruiting and producing sales manager for a bank, and these are actual numbers. Like all of you listening to this, it's the same excuses.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

It's I don't have time, I don't have an hour in the day. I, you know, I work at a bank, I'm in so many goddamn meetings, and I only have 600 followers. I've never really done social media before, and I'm too late, everybody's already started.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

No, everybody's not started, nobody started. The fact you're watching this year ahead of 99% of the people, literally. I'm not kidding you. The people that use it for recipes and emails, like they don't count. Um people that are really serious about this stuff. This is what she did in eight months. Almost 8,000 new followers, hired five new LOs with four more active in the pipeline at the end of this eight-month study. And four, not like, oh, I've connected with these, like four people feeding her deals that never had before. Like all of you watching this, it shows the same thing. She didn't have the time, she she didn't have all any followers, she she didn't hadn't done this before. She just figured it out. It's not that hard. You just got it. How bad do you want it? How bad do you want to be better at your job than other people? Like, how much are you willing to dig deep? That's what this all comes down to. It's it's just like exercise in that regard. So common pitfalls to avoid the no that nobody wants to be sold to, right? Nobody wants to see your your marketing department's flyers or or shared posts. I'm just being honest. Nobody wants to see it. Zero percent of people want to see it. I'm just being honest. The ghosting, this is like exercise, right? If I go out and run three miles today and then I don't run for two weeks, like it's gonna be like starting over. Um, the black hole, the megaphone, and you know, and then if you really are serious about this, right? Fix your profile, you could do it in five minutes, literally, by just copying and pasting everything into LinkedIn. Start to figure out content creation. Here's the prompt: like, literally, I suck at LinkedIn content. I I've been on LinkedIn most of my career. I mostly just share company page posts. This lunatic just screamed at me for half an hour and told me how important it was. Um, I think he might be on to something. Work with me to help me get better at LinkedIn content. It's it! It's all you need. Rabbit hole established, and then be like, save the memory. And then, like, you know, whatever. Your phone rings, you get a call, you get thrust into something. The next day, like, hey, remember that content? Uh request from yesterday? Oh yeah, it's in my memory. Should we resume? Um engagement strategy, right? Scroll, like, comment, connect, get your connection requests out and just commit to this, right? It's like exercise if you keep doing it. The benefits are so great and so many. You'll start, you know, sleeping better, you know, drinking less, sharper brain, all the exercise stuff. Like it's but you gotta stick with it. So that's my plea. Hopefully, this was of some value to uh some of you. I really appreciate every guy, uh, the live audience said, Yeah, 15 people in here, which is great. We'll get the deck out to everybody, and uh, we also record this onto our podcast network. So if you're listening to this on pod, we do all these live. Go to ohiomba.org if you want to watch the live version of any of these. And yeah, thanks for the nice comments in the chat. Uh Pradeep and uh William, yeah, I'll get this out to everybody. We'll get this out, and uh, we appreciate you guys. So um, any questions anybody has? I'm the easiest person to find. Drop me a note. I'm happy to help. And OhioMBA.org. We got all kinds of great stuff going on. Check it all out. So much fun stuff. Events, virtual, clippers game, golf outing, whole new OMBA. All right, guys, take care. We'll see y'all soon.