I’m sorry if this goes against your beliefs, but I promise…
If you give it a chance, keep an open mind and hear me out, this could prove useful to you as a SUCCESSFUL Loan Officer, but the truth is…
You DON’T want to be in it for the long haul.
Let me explain.
When I first got started in the retail lending world, and I moved away from the “big bank,” I had a tendency to want to get acquainted with coworkers, take their temperature, see who’s doing what, and just learn about people.
It’s just how I’m wired.
Well, at this new spot, there were 2 loan officers I remember in particular. They were kind of on the same “success path” advised to them by our branch manager.
Not to disparage them, however, both, if memory serves me, they each made under $40,000 in their first 12 months (it might have been in the realm of $30,000 to $40,000).
I remember both being “sold” on the growth plan expectations told to them by our then branch manager.
What I mean is, they wanted to make more, and the branch manager told them they would “eventually” make more. They had been lead to believe they’d make more, over some longer period (I think they were on a three year expected growth plan to hit their monetary goals.) The thing that baffled me was…
“Why would they have to wait 3 years? Wasn’t there anything they could do to speed up progress and reach their goals, quicker?”
For me, it was a knee jerk reaction type question I found instantly puzzling.
“Can’t they do things to help them sell more, sooner?”
It seemed obvious enough but, I suppose that’s the power of suggestion. It sort of primes you to accept probable outcomes as normal. Then, since the expectation is set, why bother trying to exceed that, right?
That’s kind of how averages and mediocrity works.
Expectations have been established. If you don’t meet them, you’re a failure.
If you exceed them you’re a genius. Still, if you don’t exceed them, and you at least fall within the normal range, great…
You can at least feel good knowing you’re like the rest of us; you’re normal.
Aside from them being sold on the branch manager’s ideas of how their growth should unfold if they were at least decent at this over the next 3 years, the other thing I noticed was, I don’t think they ever questioned his credentials.
As I learned, even though the branch manager had the experience, his entire method was based on old school principles; sort of the way things used to be done.
That means, it’s highly likely he wasn’t necessarily giving advice that would best serve them in today’s mortgage industry conditions.
They just accepted their path of progression was the only one available to them since they didn’t know what they didn’t know and they never really seemed to question convention.
The accepted “normal” growth path as laid out by the branch manager justified their slower, long haul approach, which, if you can’t tell by now, I’m firmly against and teach those Loan Officers that want to excel faster, exactly how to do that.
Where are you in this matter? Do you want to get rich slowly or would you rather take the shortcut to your goals, hopes, dreams?
How do you feel about this statement?:
“Long term success can’t exist without short-term wins.”
The solace you should take from this and the beauty is the freedom you should grasp in knowing you get to define what those short-term wins are.
You get to decide what accomplishments are to you and see how they all stack together to help you reach your long-term goals.
Think about this, as long as you’re not doing anything unethical or are going to harm anybody, you can do things that net you shorter-term wins faster and in greater transaction sizes that help you not only earn more, quicker, sooner, faster and harder today but pile up to nice big stacks later, in the long term.
You have the power to do more, sooner, but have to believe that’s possible before you’ll pull it off, yourself.
How do I know?
Well, within the next 364 days of having that initial talk with those fellows, who, remember, had each made less than $40k their first year, I made more than $100,000, myself in the same stretch of time.
Luck?
Coincidence?
I dunno…
Maybe, but I’d like to attribute more of that success to consistent, 80/20 lever focused efforts and my systematic approach to growing my business and doing the things I know I could control things towards that end.
After all, I could have accepted the same “expected” growth path sold to them by our manager, but, thankfully…
I didn’t.
I don’t want you to accept less than you’re capable of either.
Please, if you want to succeed faster, don’t sacrifice optimizing and getting the most out of short-term wins. Especially if you want to get the most out of your long-term rewards.
Why be content with less now?
Why be ok with not getting as much as you possibly can sooner rather than later?
Now, I want to pause here and point out, what I’m talking about is not the same as sacrificing or taking a step back now so that you can take 2 steps forward in the near future.
Sacrificing more now is doing something like testing paid advertising.
Doing that, you know, in the short term, you’re probably going to set yourself back as you figure out how to make it work for you (the same way I had).
No, but NOT doing everything possible to get the biggest wins, as many of them as possible, because you’re simply content in doing things slowly even though you know you can do and have more, sooner instead of later.
If this rant appeals to you and you want to learn how to stack BIGGER short-term successes sooner so that you’re not only successful in the long term, but those successes will also be bigger than you could have imagined…
Then book a call (use the link, below) and let’s chat.
With that, thanks for reading and I’ll see you at the top.
Michael
P.S. Want me to help you set up your own simple predictable profitable lead generation system?
Just click this link, book your live demo, and let’s set one up for you, today.