How To Be Your Best

BE YOUR BEST --> Pillars, Strategies, and Tactics

It’s a very challenging marketplace today and I’ve been speaking to thousands of loan officers around the country and noticed that way to many have lost their confidence and are feeling down. 

That’s why I focused on a recent Friday Mastermind event with Peak Performance Coach Jonathan Roche and Win By Noon founder Todd Bookspan on this topic. It’s never been a better opportunity to strive to be the best and focus on being YOUR best.  

“A lot of people reveal strong character attributes today that wouldn’t have been revealed in calm water,” says Jonathan. “So, as much as it has not been a blast for your industry, the hidden gift of it is this expediting of growth. Whether you’re kicking and screaming while you’re growing is another thing. But I think it’s just been tremendous to witness you and all these other rock stars in your industry execute and figure it out. And that’s something your entire industry should be proud of.”

“Success leaves clues. If you want to be number one, then don’t want to be number one; decide you will be the absolute best version of yourself. The mindset for taking action on the tools is key.”—Jonathan Roche

Here are 4 Pillars, 3 Strategies and 3 Tactics to BE YOUR BEST. 

4 PILLARS: 

#1 Set your mindset. You can’t win externally until you win internally. Until you win this, it will be hit or miss in the marketplace. You’ve got to learn to dominate your mindset—your own inner conversation. 

#2 Optimize your habits. People that dabble in habits dabble in results. Define your habits and then take consistent, inspired action on them. 

#3 Define your standards. Don’t stick your family with your B game because you’re in an evolving market. That’s for non-world-class people. If you’re doing the work on mindset and on habits, then you should be able to bring your family your A game. And the same goes for your teammates, Realtor partners, etc. There’s enough to go around if you pay your dues. Right now is the time for high standards, energy, focus and follow-through.

“You’ve got to have a vision,” adds Todd Bookspan, founder of Win By Noon:

• Where do you want to be? 
• Who do you want to be? 
• What do you want that to look like? 

“When we don’t cast a really compelling vision for ourselves if you’re a team leader, you’ve got to start thinking this through. If you want to be world-class, like Jonathan coaches, you have to make sure you’re laser-focused on that vision and what it looks like.”

Second, Todd says, you’ve got to know your numbers. If your vision is to be the number-one loan officer and be a $50 million producer, then you know what you’re reaching toward and you can figure out what reaching toward that looks like for you:

• What’s the goal?
• What are the basic activities that are going to get you there? 
• How many calls do you have to make?
• How many meetings do you have to have? 

Then once you understand your action plan, then you need to:

• Plan it
• Execute it, and 
• Review it regularly

#4 Focus on your controllables. Leaders in your space know you can’t change inventory, you can’t change the rates, and mentally or verbally, spending any prolonged period on that is a complete waste. And it robs you of execution and of the vibe you want to create with these families or these Realtors. It’s mindset, and it’s realizing that there are so many things you can control. The people who are thriving in any industry are controlling their controllables. 

3 STRATEGIES:

#1 Bookend your day for success. You’ve got to have a morning, end of workday and evening routine. If you try to wing it and you don’t have these three bookends, it’s going to be challenging. So think about what that should look like. 

#2 Embrace the ‘power 75’. We have 168 hours a week and if we sleep seven hours a night. That’s 49 hours. That leaves 119 (round up to 120). If you’re working nine hours a day, five days a week, let’s just call it 45; 120 - 45 = 75 hours. So we have 75 hours a week when we’re not asleep and we’re not working. World-class people know how they're spending those 75 hours. Conversely, non-world-class people think they don’t have the time. The truth is, we have the time. You could ask me how I spend my 45 hours and I could literally tell you down to about 90 minutes. 

#3 Know who your competitors are. Your number-one competitor is your negative voice, that inner critic we all have. And then your number two competitor is your prior self. You are competing with who you were in the first half of this year. Think about, are you becoming a better version of yourself than you were yesterday, last week, last month? As long as you’re doing that, you’re dominating your mind’s podium. 

ASSIGNMENT:

Review your first half of the year. Do a deep dive on how you did in 1H23. Don’t just look at what you didn’t do; look at what you did do, so you can become laser-focused on your goals for the second half of the year. 

3 TACTICS:

#1 Know you’re goals and know exactly what you need to do each day to get there:

• How many days a week do you need to work? 
• And how many hours a day? 
• And what are you doing to get meetings with referral partners?
• How many of those hours are you spending getting/having meetings with referral partners?

And know that it’s a process. Don’t get overwhelmed trying to achieve your goals the first week. It's a day-to-day strategy. 

#2 Think about the time you spend with a borrower. Track the talk time you have and how much of that time you spend advising transactional dialogue. People who are the best they’re not having transactional conversations—rate, payment, cash to close. That’s transactional. They’re giving advice that’s getting people into escrow. 

And they’re winning by noon. This means that they spend their mornings in business development, calling leads, following up on leads, and are saving paperwork and other types of calls until the afternoon. That way, they’re winning new deals by noon.

#3 Be an Ironman. Being an Ironman is being an effort-based coach of yourself versus a results-based coach of yourself. All the greatest coaches in history—John Wooden and Nick Saban at Alabama, Belichick at the Patriots, Dabo Swinney at Clemson. They’re effort-based coaches. Know your role…and nail your role. Many of you have been dragged through the mud for 18 months in this evolving market because your negative voice wants to be a results-based coach. Instead, be an effort-based coach. 

My pro-athlete clients text me after a game, and they report their peak game score. It’s not how many points they scored or what they shot in the round. It’s four things:

#1 Did you give world-class effort? It’s either a 0 or a 1. Either you did or you didn’t. 

#2 Were you a world-class teammate? It’s either a 0 or a 1. Do you have your teammates’ backs or not?

#3  Did you represent yourself, your family, your organization, and if you’re a person of faith, God at a world-class level? Like if you’re a pro basketball player and you run over a cameraman, you tap him on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, sorry about that. I want to make sure you’re good.’ He says, ‘I’m good,’ and you say, ‘Awesome.’ That’s leadership. 

#4 Did you dominate the podium of your mind? I wake up in the morning, I just want to see a bunch of fours. It’s not about, How many points or touchdowns you scored. I don’t look at any of that. Did they earn their peak score of four? That’s an effort-based coach. Our negative voice is a results-based coach, our positive voice is an effort-based coach. And when we nail the effort, when you do those four things, you get to sleep easy. 

JONATHAN ROCHE’S THREE SPECIFIC TACTICS TO DO RIGHT NOW:

#1 Avoid watching the news, or limit your interaction to five minutes a day if you must watch. Instead, consume positive content—motivational videos, things that lift you up and inspire you. 

#2 Sweat is rocket fuel. You can’t be who you deserve to be unless you’re sweating and you’re getting endorphins and dopamine—those happiness chemicals—flowing in your body. Forget about weight loss, forget about health, etc. We’re all 10 times better versions of ourselves post-workout than pre-workout. 

#3 Express gratitude daily. Gratitude and stress are inversely related. Be intentional about your gratitude, including within your bookends.

TODD BOOKSPAN’S FOUR SUGGESTIONS TO DO RIGHT NOW:

#1 Evaluate who you’re hanging out with. Who are the people helping to build you up outside of your family? Some experts say you are the sum of the five people you hang around with. So hang around with world-class people who lift you up and hold you accountable.

#2 Score yourself every day. When you get to the end of the day, score yourself, then plan and review daily. 

#3 Make a positive content list to help you grow, improve, and be grateful. Videos that Dave recommends, podcasts that fuel you, and books that come recommended, such as Jonathan’s. 

DAVE SAVAGE’S TACTICS TO DO RIGHT NOW:

#1 Document at least three top strategies you’re using to win in this market. What are the three most important strategies that will help make you more valuable for Realtors and help you grow your business? 

#2 Train on those with your team so you know how to get there. Every week, train on areas that will create the most sales and the most relationships. 

#3 Hold other people accountable. Track and measure how everyone on your team is doing, including yourself. 

TWO QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF, FROM JONATHAN ROCHE:

#1 What is your potential actualized score from zero to a hundred? And how much of your potential have you actualized? Answer this question once for personally and once for professionally.

#2 What is your potential actualized effort score? Rate your effort from zero to a hundred percent of how much you’re working to actualize your potential, both personally and professionally. 

Those four scores are game-changers, particularly for players who aren’t getting much external resistance.

CLICK to watch this How To Be Your Interview. 

game-changers

CLICK to review Jonathan’s book. 

CLICK to Win by Noon.

CLICK to schedule a TrustEngine demo.