Come join me as I talk a little about why you and everyone else should start a podcast and why there should be no reservations about it.

In this snippet of LiveTime with Alec…

• You should start a podcast
• The content can be multitude of other content
• If you’ve ever done a zoom meeting then you’ve done a podcast
• There is an audience for every subject make sure you are passionate about it.

Episode Transcribe

– What’s up everybody?

 Welcome to LiveTime with Alec.

 I’m Alec, sorry for the yelling we see if I can fix this background here. The teeth turn purple. This is how you know you are messing up with stuff. What’s up everybody? Yeah, green screen. Dorking out it’s not working well screaming is gonna get better at it but we’ll play, we’ll play. Dude fun topic today, Podcasting. Whoo, I am such a proponent of people starting the podcast, I cannot tell you how important a podcast can be for all of you. And many people even the comments before we got live today, were telling me that they were scared of it, super scared of it or didn’t understand it or don’t have time for it, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So let me break down the power of podcast and why you should be doing it, but maybe not doing it the way you think. So don’t overthink this when I talk about it here. Let’s just dive into what is the purpose of a podcast, okay? Think about it for a second. What’s the purpose? Why would you put out content? Why is podcasting one of the most listened to mediums in the world today? Always, John Farrell, this guy, best one of the best radiators in the country continues to just, you know, speak the truth of what everyone feels. So why is podcasting such a great medium? Why? Do why? It’s obvious, but you should know why. It’s authentic. Yes, it can be produced and scripted and blah, blah, but it’s like real humans, guys out we’re so tired of the marketing bullshit, aren’t we? We’re so tired of it. We don’t want it anymore. So people gravitate toward podcasts because we like to listen to things we like, how many guys listen to things in the background while you’re doing work? Yes, I know, so many of you listen to it. And it’s such a great medium. Okay, so we recognize it’s authentic. It’s raw. Everyone’s listening to something. There’s an opportunity for you to dive into the space. So before we get into this question Shaun, cause everyone overthinks it. Let me break down some basic basic stuff for you guys right now. I joked about this on the in my text. But have you been on a Zoom call? Do how to hit the Record button on a Zoom call? Do you know after you’re done recording the Zoom call, not only do you have a video file, but you also have an audio file. Which means, you’re done, you just made a podcast. You sent somebody a link they clicked it. You had a conversation on record. We’re gonna get this Shaun right now. I’m telling you right now, okay? Here’s how you run a podcast. Here’s how you do a podcast right now technically, technically. You download Zoom into your computer. You invite people into that Zoom to have a conversation with you. What I recommend, according to John, is absolutely, we’ll get into what the podcast should be about. But let me show you what a good example is. You bring on somebody into the Zoom, you have a conversation, maybe you bring them on for five minutes, 10 minutes before you hit Record to kind of prep the conversation. You have a conversation with that person. At the end after you’ve hit Record, a screen pops up, guess what’s on it? An audio file and a video file. You now have a vlog video, whatever, a video podcast, a vlog, cast, whatever and you have the audio cast. Now look at this. Look at this, I’m gonna share my screen. Let’s do this. I’m gonna show you how to do it like right now. I’m totally cheating. Okay let’s make sure you can see this. Excellent. So this is I’ll trick myself. This is what I use guys. This is simple cast, okay? You can see right here my analytics in the last seven days. I’ve had 242 podcasts. Here’s my latest podcast. This is not complicated. You go to Add Episode right here, boop, boop Add Episode, Title. Drag your audio file right there where it says Audio File that you got from Zoom. Fill out the rest of the information. Put a summary. Add a picture I guess if you care, don’t worry about it and hit Save and Post. Inside here guys, right here, Show Distribution. You can pick where to distribute your podcast. So many people are like “I don’t have the right microphone.” I’m like “Shut up with your stupid excuses.” You have Zoom, you have Simplecast that cost like 300 bucks a year, you can put it, sorry to take you up I love you bro. And then you have a podcast now on Apple podcasts. Stop making excuses for the love of the Lord. Don’t, it’s just like you’re just, now you see how easy this is. It’s that easy. And by the way, go watch this again on YouTube. If you didn’t take notes fast enough, this will be, you can just do it again. And you’re set. So, the question is isn’t should you start a podcast? The answer is yes. And if you want more information on this, I just did a social media co lab for three and a half hours, I put myself in a seat and brought on experts. You see some links in there to like talk to my bot or if you’re on my Facebook business page, type in Hashtag podcast, Hashtag podcast and go watch my 30-minute interview with Phil Treadwell who’s run a podcast for two years. And just watch how it changed his whole career, how he got more control of his business. So click on the Talk to my Bob link, if you’re watching this on YouTube, or on LinkedIn, or if you’re on my business Facebook, type in Hashtag podcast and go watch this thing. And realize, oh my God you’re missing an opportunity now. Now that I’ve stripped away all the bullshit that it’s so easy to do. This is so easy to do. Let’s go and talk about what you should do it about, okay? I’m telling you you just start with Zoom and upload the audio recording to simple cast, podcast done. Now if you’re like, get up mic like my mic is down by the ground by the way, I’m so sorry. Oh my gosh, why didn’t you tell me my audio sucked? You know, you’re supposed to be my friends and you didn’t tell me that my mic is on the ground. So now I’m disappointed in you. Shame. Yes, watch later and if you’re watching this later, I hope you’re getting how easy this is. Do a Zoom call with somebody, have a conversation for 30 to 45 minutes, take the audio, uploaded to simple cast and it sends it out to all the places you’ve selected. Spotify Apple podcasts great, now you have a podcast, congratulations. Now you go to fiverr.com, fiverr.com, you go to a podcast, cover, podcast cover and you pay someone $5 to take a picture of you and make it look like a podcast cover with like a cartoon or you could be like, podcasts with Alec. I don’t care, whatever it is. And now you have a cool graphic on top of your podcast and it cost you $5 from Zoom’s and so yes, it’s that easy. Now what should it be about? Okay, for the rest of this conversation, what should it be about? Anything that you are passionate about, that there is a community of other people that is also passionate about this. I’ll show also passionate about this? Okay, let me say that again. Your podcast should be about anything that you are passionate about, where there is also a community of people that you want to influence that are passionate about the same thing. I know, I know, if you’re a loan professional and you’re like I need to make it about mortgages. No you don’t, no you don’t, you can, you for sure can. You can make it about sales which connects to tons of people who are in sales. But you don’t have to make it about mortgage. No one’s, I don’t, if you’re not on fire about mortgage topics. Like you just wake up burning light out of the eyes, by the way I have my light out of the eyes one, where is it? Hold on. Yes, if you don’t wake up like this every day to talk about mortgages. Don’t do it about mortgages. Okay, it does not, again, I’m gonna point to one of our great loan officers up in Seattle who’s doing a podcast about adult baseball leagues. Adults that played baseball in leagues. It’s called the comebacker. Yes, everyone knows he does mortgages. Yes, everyone knows he’s amazing. But do they care about adult baseball leagues? He’s bringing on refs and other people and teammates and talking about this and guess what’s happening? He’s creating human connection at scale across the country cause podcasts don’t have geography limitations. Anyone can listen anywhere in the world especially in the country. He’s making an impact. Guys, I’ve told this before, but I’ll say it again. You could do a podcast about your city. Interviewing the great business owners and politicians and small business owners that run around your community. You could bring on your favorite restaurant having talk about why they started a business and what hurdles are they overcoming and how can the community help them during COVID? You can be the digital Mayor with a podcast, by the way, you wanna know how to pro tip? I’m gonna bring the mic right here cause it’s super pro tip. Ready? Are you ready? Everyone wants to talk about themselves. I know. I know. I know. It’s incredible. So you go to somebody and you say, “Hey, would you like to talk about yourself? For 30 to 45 minutes?” They say yes to Phil. If you again, click the link and talk to my bot and go watch this 30-minute video with Phil Treadwell or type in Hashtag podcast if you’re watching this on my Facebook business page, and holy crap, he would just invite random people that were power players in his world to come on a podcast to spread knowledge. And even though they were like, “Who are you and what do you do? And what’s this podcast you’re doing?” They’re like, “Yeah, I’d love to come talk about myself for an hour. How can I do tomorrow? Like right away?” Guys, It is so easy. And then yes, after you get going, after you get excited, after you realize the power of connecting humans and the influence it gives you you can talk about getting a road caster 9,000 and this $300 shoe Mikes, you can be Joe Rogan and then you can go all in. Sure, but everyone’s frozen. They’re like, I gotta get the right gear and I gotta have a caster and I gotta have a producer and how do I get this thing? Go to Zoom, record yourself talking to somebody else, download the audio portion, upload it to simple cast and it will distribute it for you. All that’s done for like less than 400 bucks a year. Scott, this is what I’m talking about. This is 1,000% what I’m talking about. Check it out. So, my podcasts that are now live, right? I do live podcast every Thursday, there’s not this there’s because there’s a holiday but every Thursday and then I have, you know, 30 to 50 to sometimes when Anthony shake him on, 100 some plus people watching live and then guess what? I take the audio and I re-release it as a podcast. Scott, absolutely, your weekly act series with Sam is absolutely now a podcast, you always had one. You always had one. You just weren’t publishing it. I don’t know how else to say this. It is so freaking easy. And if you are excited about what you’re talking about, you can absolutely have a space in the world to create community and with community comes influence with influence comes opportunity. Start a fricking podcast and have fun with it. Like, don’t you wanna have fun in your business wanna go to your home, like doing about something you’re passionate about. It’s about entrepreneurship, great. Do about that and bring on entrepreneurs and get connected into their sphere. I joke about this but think a picture for yourself. Like if you’re gonna do it about your city, in town that you love and you live there for a long time and your favorite restaurant or bar is down the street. And you go to the owner, you go, “Look, I wanna host you on my podcast.” The owner says, “Who are you and what are you doing?” You say, “I’m starting a city-based podcast, I want you to be my first guest. And I want to share stories from successful businesses and business owners.” And let them talk to the community. I’m passionate about this. By the way, I have a database of 2,000 people I’ve done loan for in the city. I’m gonna send this to all of them. They’re all there know about how amazing your restaurant is. And I’m also going to post it on my social channels and here’s my reach. I have this many Facebook friends, this many LinkedIn connections, this many people on Instagram, and I’m gonna send all this out and share about your restaurant. That owner is gonna say, “Absofrickinlutely, do it right now, do it live, put it on there.” You send them a Zoom link, you spent 10 minutes talking about what questions you’re gonna ask. You can even send them the questions before like, why’d you start your restaurant? What’s your favorite food here? What hurdles did you overcome? Where are you going next? And then you end it with how can we help you as your community in this time of COVID? Not only can you send that out to everybody, but he is gonna send it out to his entire community. And yes, you’re sitting there as a loan professional, you don’t need to show it off. You don’t need to have a commercial brought to you by Alec Hanson from loan depot and I’m the best in loans. You could just share it freely, openly, create influence, great opportunity. He’s gonna do the same thing as the restaurant owner, you’re gonna get massive influence opportunity. And you’re gonna realize, holy crap, untapped opportunity here and you’re gonna go all in. By the way, for those of you scared about having a podcast, guess what? You don’t have to talk the whole time. You don’t even have to talk most of the time. You can introduce your guests and then ask questions and sit there and be like, so what do you think. And they’ll talk. Dramatic pause for the sad frustration of I have it’s so many of you that are watching this are not gonna do shit. No more silence. But how many of you are already doing stuff like Scott now you realize, holy crap, I have a podcast I’ve been doing the whole time. Scott, go back to your other episodes you’ve already done pull the audio. You got a library now dude. That’s so cool. That’s power. This is a no brainer. It’s a no fricking brainer. Do it about something you like. As long as there’s other people that like that thing too. If you’re so niched, you’re never gonna get there. But if you just have something like, this is low hanging fruit, guys, this is origination strategy, this is influence building. You’re gonna have a lot of fun with it. You’re gonna have a lot of fun with it, trust me. It’s gonna be something you look forward to. Not something you’re afraid of. Now the last piece of this the real opportunity, Phil dives into this, and again, if you’re watching this on my Facebook business page hit Hashtag podcast. Or if you’re on Facebook in general, my friend Facebook, my YouTube. Keegan, I’m gonna answer this for you, dude. I’m gonna answer this. If you’re on YouTube click the link that says talk to my bot, go watch the video with Phil Treadwell. Because here’s the crazy power a 30 to 45 minute to an hour podcast. Inside that podcast. It’s called pillar content. And Shaun if you hit Hashtag bypass, but you’re watching on my personal Facebook, is probably not going to work, you’re gonna have to find the link up there. But if you’re, it’s called pillar content. Pillar content is long form content that you can take and snip up into smaller pieces of content, smaller pieces of content. Holy crap. Let me give you an example of something crazy and where this can go. I said this 1,000 times, let’s say you produce a two-minute video talking about how much down payment you need to buy a house as a first time home buyer, a two-minute video. That’s a great topic lots of first time home buyers don’t know how much down payment they need two minutes, you bust it out, you put the video out. you go to rev.com, r-e-v.com. It takes $2 for every two minutes for every minute, $1 a minute, two minutes is two minutes, they’ll transcribe your two minute video, they will give you back the text, you fix it a little bit, check it out. Now all of a sudden, you’ve got an article to post on LinkedIn or Facebook. Then you can take that two-minute video, condense it down to three sentences and now you have a tweet, you can take a picture of that tweet, and now you have an Instagram post. On a two-minute video, I just created four to five if you’re created pieces of content. On a two-minute video we just created right here, four to five pieces of content that you can post across multiple mediums. Now guess what? You just filmed a 45-minute video and audio podcast, how many pieces of content can you create from that? There’s a great comment at the very beginning. And I’m getting calls he gets red phone this one, Matt I don’t even know if he’s watching but he wrote when I posted I’m gonna be talking about this is I can’t even commit to watching the podcast and I said, “hey, it’s listening but I hear you.” And I can’t pay attention that long. And I’m joking. I’m going yeah, you’re right, you’re right. Not everybody. Your podcasts not gonna be that fucking amazing. I’m sorry. I try not use the F word. It’s like too much. I’m super sorry. I get fired up on this. They’re not gonna watch it. They’re not gonna watch it. Your podcast is not gonna be that amazing. But what’s gonna happen over time is you’re gonna build community and people will be like, “yes, I resonate with this.” I see this person keeps showing up so you can continue to post pieces of your podcast. Snippets. Like I did a podcast with Rene Rodriguez this guy he’s incredible, thought leader, this guy’s amazing. I did a 45-minute podcast with him. So many nuggets dropped throughout the entire show. I had my guy writing down, like and I wrote, I walked back and like, wrote down. And then I’ve been releasing clips and snippets from Rene because he dropped all this knowledge. So do I expect someone listen to all 45 minutes? Kind of, yes, I do. Yes, I do, but I know they’re not. And so I continue to share it. And now I have more things to talk about over time, because I made a long piece of content. All of you can do this. You’re all doing right now, yes, I apologize, I am sorry, I’m sorry. I just you’re just not doing it. And it makes me mad cause I wasn’t doing it either. And now that I realized that it’s the power of this, I’m like, I’m on fire because you could be doing it too. Dude, that skip the ready for remodel show is a podcast. There’s just not being put out on the podcast channels. Here’s another, not excuse this is not gonna be excuse, but my son is gonna bust in here. This is a good question. Because, son I’m on a live show right now. I’m sorry. By the way this is gonna sound I’m gonna nerd myself out here he’s looking all sad. I’m not good at Dungeons and Dragons I don’t, I’ve never played it I don’t know what it is really except that you make up stories and then you play and I’ve been playing with my kids in a made up way and now I’m literally the dungeon master and I don’t even know what I’m doing. So if you played Dungeons and Dragons please help me cause I don’t know what I’m doing. But let’s go here. Here’s another not excuse cause I kick it I don’t think he meant it that way. But I got before like, I don’t know the gear to use and I’m like stop using gear. Just use your camera and do Zoom. And then like, oh you take away my excuse. And then you’ve got this. Where do I get graphics? Guys, don’t worry about graphics yet. I told you go to fiverr.com and on fiverr.com you can pay anybody anything to make you anything. But if you wanna make your own graphics, like should you sort of like this graphic right here that I made this graphic. It’s not good. It’s not good. But I made it cause I don’t care and we’re just doing it because you got to play the game. And I did all this with Canva. C-A-N-V-A. And if you want, I can send you a full tutorial on how to use Canva to create your own podcast. It’s not hard. It’s not hard. You’re not not that Keegan is doing this cause I love that you’re asking but you can go to Fiverr and have someone created for you. You can learn Canva in two seconds. I’m not technically capable and I learned it. Should show you what’s going on. But like everybody’s making an excuse not to start. Keegan is not making excuse is asking a great question, but I’m telling you like, I don’t have the right gear, shut up. You don’t need it. You need a mic and Zoom. How do I get graphics? Fiverr.com or Learn on Canva. Does it bring more business? Yes, yes, the question is this is the question. This is the question. If you wanna know how it transformed Phil Tredwell’s career, go type in Hashtag podcast or scroll up on Facebook or YouTube and click the link that says ‘talk to my bot.’ I’ll take you to my 30-minute conversation with Phil on how his whole life was transformed by a podcast he started. I got my guy up in Seattle doing a podcast on Adult men’s baseball league. I asked him how much of your business is coming from your podcast now? He literally said “All of it.” And it’s the community he wants to be a part of. So it’s the other baseball leaguer’s that he’s doing loans for and look, I’ve heard so many people use the question I’ve seen so many loan officers say “I just don’t wanna bend the knee anymore to my realtor community.” And I have a couple questions on that or comments on that. Number one, my dad taught me early on one of the best, best pieces of advice. I was running around talking to realtors in my early origination days and I was so frustrated because some of them were so to me, by the way, I’m a 23 year old like recent grad. So I’m like these people are all entitled. They just want me to pay them or bring them cookies. Like I’m a college graduate. I have value. And I was getting all snotty. And I know some of you right now feel me on this. And my dad sat me down he said, “Son, I got an important lesson to teach you” cause I was complaining to him. He’s like, “Look, in business, in life, you gotta serve somebody.” And I was like, And I realized that I was being an egotistical little punk and you got to serve somebody. And so our great realtor partners that are out there, you can bend the knee and learn to serve them and the other side of service as wealth and opportunity. Or you can start a podcast and serve your community in a different way. Again, if it’s about you, you will fail. If it’s about others, you will dominate. And so my question is for you, Who do you wanna serve? Pick your poison. But whether it’s our real estate community partners or you wanna serve your community in a podcast or adult men’s baseball leagues or the Adult Dungeons and Dragons community that apparently have to join, I don’t care. Just find the one that you connect with and that you’re passionate about and where there is a passionate group of people. And Tammie it will bring you unbelievable opportunity. It’s not about being a social media influencer per se. I mean, I know I talked a lot about influence, but there are social media influencers, right? That’s a thing. Like it’s gross, but like it’s a thing. I’m not talking about that type of influence. I’m not talking about cute selfie picture with an ice cream cone and like, you know, at the beach, I’m talking about you being in a place of influence as a connector of human beings. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about, you feel me? That’s what influence is about. My slack is exploding right now. So I got to close it cause it’s just, can you all hear the beeping at the end? Yeah, goodbye. Huh! Does this makes sense team? Like is this accessible? Do you get how, how obvious this is? This is so good, Mike. I’m buying property with a couple of avocado trees and I don’t know anything about growing avocado trees. Would you listen to a podcast about me learning how to grow avocados? No, cause I don’t care about avocado trees. Are there other people that do? Find the community of people that do. No Stacy this is the class This is the class on starting a podcast. Or you can scroll up a little bit since you’re on LinkedIn. And you can go to the talk to my bot link and you can go watch a 30-minute how to podcast with me and the podcast Master, Phil Treadwell, the guy is amazing and you can learn exactly how to do a podcast. But this is my point Mike. Like if there is a passion a community that you are also passionate about. Now you have a podcast. Now you have a podcast. You will absolutely be killing it. podcast topic right here Shaun, Guac is extra. Mike you’re welcome. You can see I’ll send you an invoice for the amazing consulting you just got. Guy’s team. This is so accessible. It’s so accessible. You do not need the crazy gear. You do not need all of the mixer boards and all the noise and all the stuff. You just need to find a topic you’re passionate about. Oh, this is it. This is it Tammy. This is the question everyone is gonna have right now. Where they are gonna freeze up and me and not that you’re doing this to me, but it’s a great place for everybody to kinda come into. Every time I talk about going live or doing a podcast. It all comes back to this every time guys, I have had podcasts where I have zero people watching live zero people. What sucks is there’s a little eyeball up here and I can see who’s watching. And then it changes. And it’ll go from like, like right now we’re at 14 people, 14 people up 13 tickets. It doesn’t matter. We’re such a like culture like I didn’t even have like setting enough engagement. Stop. Stop judging. You have to ask yourself two questions. If you’re not getting any engagement if no one’s watching, first of all, they’re gonna watch later. Like I got a comment here by a good friend of mine who I know watches a bunch of my stuff. And he goes Alec, I have a conference call with a client but will watch this on YouTube later love yah. That’s the truth there. People are busy. You’re busy. I don’t expect everyone to be like, holy crap, Alex live, I need to, I gotta stop all my stuff. And just immediately, you know, Gosh, please guys do you understand you’re not the center of the universe. I’m not the center of the universe, Understand that. And then that frees you up to just be you and share and contribute. And you’re missing out on the, they’re gonna watch it later on their time. And the second question you have to ask is, do I have it? Have I worked hard enough to build a community? Have I worked hard enough to build a community? If you have two Facebook friends then no one’s gonna watch. If you have 5,000 that you’ve worked really, really hard on in connecting and engaging and commenting and making it a two-way street. I joke about this all the time. Your podcast that is your video. If it’s about you and if you’re not engaging with other people, then they’re not gonna engage back. Period. That’s also why podcasts are so powerful because it isn’t about you the whole time. You’re interviewing somebody. You’re having a conversation in a dialogue, it’s not a monologue. And a dialogue creates more opportunity, more connection. It is so powerful. I have no doubt you will absolutely kill it. You just got to let go. You got to let go of the result. You got to have a posture of hands open. And you got to keep driving forward. Once you realize that’s the power, you realize, oh my gosh, here we go. Once you realize that, am I engaging enough with other people? Is this a two-way conversation or is it all about my content? As soon as you realize it’s a two-way conversation the power starts to flow back toward you. Guys, my encouragement for all of you today right now. Should you start a podcast? 1,000% yes. It’s so easy. You don’t need good gear. You need a mic, camera, light, basics. You need zoom. And you can pay 300 bucks a year for simple cast. And now you can push out your audio part of your Zoom to all the platforms you can go to fiverr.com. They can make you a cool graphic, for your cover page of your podcast and you’re done. Just focus on what you care about. And make sure there’s a community that cares about it too. That’s it. Love you guys. Appreciate you hanging out me today for almost 30 minutes. Again, if you want to watch the podcast with Phil Treadwell, we crush it he’s a you learn everything about podcasting. It’s so inspired. I’m telling you, type in Hashtag podcast if you’re watching this on my Facebook business page, if you’re watching on my personal page, I love you. If you’re watching on YouTube or LinkedIn. You gotta find that the the comment I put in it says talk to my bot. Click that and he will take you to my 30-minute conversation with Phil Treadwell on the power of podcast. It’s gonna blow your mind. No more excuses. I’ll see you on the podcast network. Have a great day everybody.

As a good friend once told me in a world full of uncertainty, Be the Guide not the Hero. Tomorrow’s LiveTime with Alec will have a more in-depth look at what this means.

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec…

• Don’t be that person that humble brags on their videos
• Create that human connection and help those find what they need
• Validate others and it will come back tenfold
• Be the best “extra” in someone else’s movie.

Episode Transcribe

– What’s up everybody welcome to another LiveTime With Alec. 

I’m Alec and oh my gosh, this is gonna be, like I have notes today.

 Notes for you fools today, super excited to be hanging with you guys on this Tuesday. Whoo, happy summer, for those who’ve been homeschooling congratulations. First of all, if you notice there’s like a LiveTime With Alec and the logos over here. So I bought a green screen I was so excited, I was gonna do this like weird wacky green screen livetime today. It collapsed on my head, hung from the ceiling, I don’t know how to do drywall screws apparently. It’s right there in the corner, it crashed on me. So you don’t get the cool background today, you just get this. All right, dude, let’s rock ’cause this is a fun conversation today. Holy crap, if you were part of the podcast with Dave Savage, if you haven’t, and you’re not a subscriber to my podcast, how dare you! But if you are, then you know that he made some, he dropped a bomb on there that he’s been talking about for a while but I hadn’t really heard it yet or I haven’t let it like enter my psyche yet. Where basically he said be the guide not the hero. The world has too many heroes you need to be the guide and that to me was life changing in a lot of ways, number one I knew what he meant when he said that instantly inside my psyche and by the way hello YouTube, hello Facebook, hello LinkedIn if you’re watching this, I love you. I want to talk to you, I want to give you things, so type in #bypassed and I’m gonna send you a bunch of free stuff, you’re gonna chat with my bot too so be nice, he’s young and learning things. Alright, so Savage dropped this thing be the guide, not the hero. In mortgage sales, my people, man, we always wanna be the hero, we do. And let me tell you what I mean. How many posts do you see from loan officers and companies bragging about themselves? How many? Like seriously, it’s offensive. Stop it, like Chad, what’s up, thank you. Nobody cares, like okay, so again, remember, like think of this. It’s a humble brag, it’s my favorite one. My favorite one is everybody out there who is posting their customer service reviews of themselves. Like, I see it and I’m like, Mmm, mmm, this is the answer. This is the answer. Like those stats, your stats, your Zillow scores, you know, your five star service. Okay, number one, you’re not gonna like this, but someone has to say it it doesn’t make you special. See, here’s the reality. All humans, all of us, all of us demand, expect, require five star exceptional customer service from everything. Everything, that’s the mic, from everything. From frickin everything, what do you go to? And you’re like, if it’s crappy, it’s fine. Like, yeah. And yet, we think somehow posting my survey of myself, let me introduce myself, is somehow gonna make some be like, yes, oh my gosh of course. Like, I saw his five star service. Guys, stop trying to be the hero of your own story. Think about this for a second. I want you to do videos, I want you to write articles and produce content and show the world the amazing person you are. I want you to do that. But your scores, your survey stuff, that needs to, that’s somebody else’s job to brag about you. That’s not your job. Don’t make your content, your videos, your articles about you. Don’t. I heard this great. Great quote that just stuck in my head and I can’t remember who said it. Someone said it to me ’cause I don’t think I’m smart enough to invent it. And it says, at best, at best, you are an extra in the movie of someone else’s life. At best, you are an extra in the movie of someone else’s life. Maybe for your spouse, you’re like best supporting actor or actress. But that’s it. That’s it, everything else you’re an extra and yet everything we do is about us, me, me. Look how good I am, look how great I am. That’s not gonna land where you want it to land. How are you building community and connection with your posts? I want you to ask yourself right before you post something, who is this for? Who is it about? If you can answer that, you’re so much closer to getting what you want from your messages. You’re so much closer. So let’s talk about how you can be a guide, okay how can you be the guide for the people you want to influence and help and support, how do you be the guide? Well the first thing is you gotta make your content about them. About what they, and by the way the them, the they, that’s the people you want to help, influence, support, build community with, do loans for, right? Like be referred to from. That was a lot of like I got that one, I was right. But like make your content about them dude, Minh is a great example of this dude, this guy is out there every day putting out pieces of content for people, for them on how to help them navigate this crazy world of home financing. Tell stories about them. Tell stories about the people you are being the guide for, tell their story. I’m so shocked by people that wanna explain debt to income which is a very important thing. Debt to income its a very important thing. It’s in the news now non QM, QM its like. But what does that really mean for somebody? How did you help somebody structure their debt or restructure their debt to allow them to buy a home they could never have thought they could have afforded? And how many people have the same situation they’re going through, they’re looking at their credit card debt, their student loan debt, going man I really wanna buy, rates are in the twos, it’s amazing. If they see your story about how a person just like them, was able to be navigated through this. Do you see the connection you’re making? Let other people brag about you. You don’t need to brag about yourself. Put a sticky note right next to your computer, right next to the camera that says is this content about me or about somebody else? If it’s about you, change it. This is why I love podcasting as a content strategy. See, most podcasts are in this format of you, the host, and the guest. This is perfect because you don’t have to talk about yourself, you just talk about this person and what they’re doing with their life and their career. It’s a no brainer. It’s amazing, because now it’s about the guests. This is why I love Gary Vee. I have so much respect for Gary Vaynerchuk, so much respect, number one because, he puts out tons of content for free, he teaches everything he’s doing for free, he just gives it away and I love that because he lives in abundance. But think about Gary Vee what you know him for. See, this is what people forget so quickly, like Gary Vee has put out I think, forgive me, because I’m not like, stalk him, but I think he did three Superbowl commercials. Three companies that are spending 10s of millions of dollars hired his firm to do three Superbowl commercials and I think I heard him talk about it like twice. That’s pretty badass. Like you’d think he’d be like, aha I did three Superbowl commercials. My agency, yeah. And yet what is he doing right now, like this morning, right now what he was doing was Tea with Gary Vee. He gets on a live stream conversation like this, he brings on people, and they talk. And he answers questions, gives advice, gives feedback, doesn’t expect anything, he’s not charging for it. He livestreams it for frickin free for anyone else to watch it at any time. He’s being the guide. He’s being the guide. And I know, I know, it’s so hard to get out of being the hero of your own story. I know how hard it is because trust me, I wanna be my own hero, man. I do, I want, I do and I have to check myself all the time. All the time, like what messages am I saying, is this, who’s this for? Who’s this piece of content for? Why am I doing this? Who’s gonna listen to this? How are they gonna experience it? You gotta ask yourself those questions all the time. Or else you turn around and you realize it’s all been about you, and you wonder why your opportunity, your influence, your goals aren’t changing. Friends, if you’re posting on social media often and frequently, and it’s about you, you’re not getting what you want, you’re not going to get what you want. That is the truest message I can tell you. How else can you be a guide? Build community. How are you building community? Online, digitally and physically and locally ’cause things are opening back up we’ll certainly get out again, that’s really exciting. It’s like, oh my God, we might be able to go out again. I know there’s a lot of cautiousness out there, but it’s happening. How are you building community online? How are you pouring into other people? See, everybody forgets that the digital world is a two way street. It’s a two way street. I don’t care how many pieces of content you put out, how amazing your videos are, if you don’t actually connect and comment and engage other people. You’re like at a party or a networking event just galling about your own self. You gotta ask questions, you gotta ask comments, you gotta validate people. Brian Colby crushed on a podcast of mine where he was like, people just wanna be validated. And I was like, ooh, that’s so good. People just wanna be validated. What an incredible opportunity you have to validate other people. Its like “The Wizard of Oz”, the wizard, the man behind the curtain, what did he do at the end? He didn’t give anybody a heart or brain, he validated that they already had one. Oh, it’s so good. So when you when you have to realize that the digital community is a two way street, you have to give as much as you receive. Thank you, Derek. Bummed we couldn’t hang to the day, dude, but I wanna get together. When you realize you can give as much as you can receive, you realize Holy crap, here’s the power. Here’s the power, when people are actively giving and by giving don’t only mean making their own content, I mean by like talking to other people, encouraging other people, validating other people. All of a sudden, when they put out videos, when they put out stuff, everyone’s like, whoa, and it all comes reciprocating back and you’re like, there’s the Power. There’s the power of being the guide. When you realize me the extra in the movie of someone else’s life, you can be the best damn extra you can be. And you can radically change your results of what you’re trying to get at with your content. It’s the game dude. It’s the game, how do you be a guide? And here’s how I encourage you kind of as we wrap down if you guys have questions, I love this conversation, by the way if you’re watching right now, I got a few of you guys across some platforms, throw in a comment about where you’re watching from I’d love to connect with you. And if you hit, if you’re watching this in the future #bypassed type it in and you’ll talk with my bot, I wanna give you some free stuff, appreciate you guys but the question I always get Yeah, dude, Steve, thank you. Just be the best extra you can dude. You know, I always joke that I wanna be the Gandalf like the wise old wizard who’s like here and then gone and like I’m in your life but like i’m not, then I’m gone. I don’t know, I’m a dork. Hi Jennifer from Chicago really cool to talk to you thanks for hanging out. So how often should you be the guide? This is a fun one, Joseph in Dayton Ohio, awesome dude what’s up? Good to see you buddy. Here’s, how often should you be the guide, often. I think you should be the guide as often meaning how much should you put out your own content? How much should you share your own message, your own core values, what you do, how you help people you should do it often and often and often, daily, over and daily and daily. And again, and again. But you should do it as often as you are contributing to the general conversation and to other people in the digital world. Balance it guys, balance it. If you’re putting out a video every single day, you should be engaging other people’s content, supporting, validating, communicating with people every single day. But I think you should do it often and aggressively because if you don’t, I said this before guys, and I know you recognize this, we are an internet-first society now. When you want information where do you go? I’ma give you a hint, it starts with I or A you’re Android people, weird Android people. William, what’s up? my apartment in Irvine. We go on the internet. We go on the internet for everything we want friends. And so my question is if you provide a service or if you sell something or if you’re a consultant, or if you’re a realtor, or a mortgage professional, and you realize everybody’s going online to get information, and then you go, where are you? Are you there? Is the guide present in the place that people are looking? Man don’t be a secret agent. Is the guide present? Are you present where the people are looking for answers? Man, how freaking cool is that? How amazing is that? That you have the ability for free, to go hang out with people at scale online, for free, this is incredible. You don’t have to pay big ads, you don’t have to be in a Superbowl. This is amazing. You can find your own community online, you can actually go out and search for people and connect to them yourself. And then you can be the guide when they’re looking. So friends, as we wrap down here, please stop the humble bragging. It’s not, It’s not that you don’t matter. It’s that the content is not gonna land in a way that you want it to. Having exceptional five star customer service is an expectation and the fundamental its not a differentiator, it does not make you different it makes you in the game. Congrats, by the way, for those of you that are amazing, and you work hard at that stuff, you should. It’s important. And when someone wants to look it up, they’ll see it all and you’ve done the job. Please stop posting it. Please, no one cares. And stop being the hero of your own story, I know we wanna be the hero of our own story. I know it’s important for us to be recognized and validated as the heroes of our own story, and I’ll tell you what, to do that you validate others. You want validation. you validate others. It’ll come right back. It’ll come right back. Kaya, thanks for joining us on LinkedIn. Thanks for being part of the conversation. Man, be the guide. Be it often, be it aggressively. And remember as much as you put out, make sure you go out and you validate and you connect engage with other people and it’ll come right back. I appreciate you guys today. Maybe next time I won’t rip off my green screen and we can have a fun little interactive thing. If you’re watching this in the future #bypass, Let’s hang out, hashtag, my bot will send you some free stuff that I got cooking right now. I’d love to be a part of your guys’ life and journey as we are on this together to figure out how to navigate this new normal. Alright, if you got any content questions that you wanna see later in LiveTime send a note, comment on this one, I’m reading everyone, we’re engaged if you want other things you wanna talk about let me know. But this Thursday, I have to say this for those of you that tuned in this long, this Thursday is going to be incredible. Incredible. Okay, you can already see it on YouTube, on LinkedIn, we’re doing a social media collab from 10 to 1:30, We’re gonna be going through seven topics. Seven core professionals are coming on, actual loan masters and practitioners who are killing it in mortgage. And we’re gonna talk about mastering Instagram, mastering video, mastering podcast, mastering Tik tok, how to tell stories with video, how to build digital community. You’re gonna hear from seven really amazing people who are doing it right now, this Thursday from 10 to 1:30. You don’t wanna miss it, It’s super free. It’s just gonna be a bunch of people talking about how to be great in these spaces how to learn it together. Do not miss 2020 Mortgage Industry Social Media Collab, you guys will love it. At that, I appreciate you. Have a wonderful Tuesday.

With everything moving to digital, we as local pros have a fight for attention, attention from not only just life but the digital stream. Let’s chat about how we can take our business to the forefront of people’s attention.

In this LiveTime with Alec, you will find…

• Conflict models…Earth, Wind, Fire, Water…
• We find ourselves uneasy about the word FIGHT
• I have 8 notes you need to take down
• You have this fight, if you don’t do anything, you automatically lose.

Today, brand matters so so much so let’s discuss WHY and HOW you can continue to build yours. Don’t let no brand be your brand. Lets use the power of brand.

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec…

• Do not let no brand be your brand.
• You get to curate your brand, there is a lot of power in that.
• Your brand is not a font, a logo, its you.
• Its okay if your brand is you and that you are unique.

Episode Transcribe

-What’s up everybody, welcome to the LiveTime With Alec,

I’m Alec,

It’s Tuesday, man, good to hang with you guys. In the midst of this chaos, in the midst of the unrest, in the midst of this COVID pandemic, it’s hard to move forward, it’s hard to stay focused, it’s hard to keep contributing and doing what we do, but you know what, at the end of the day, we gotta move on, with ourselves, our businesses, we’ve gotta push ourselves forward. We cannot sit back and not change. And I’m here to change with you guys today. Man, we need a lot of change, don’t we? I hope to be a voice to that in the coming weeks and months, I hope I will be a voice of that today, I hope to encourage everybody to change themselves because it’s time. Today, my friends, I wanna talk about the power of branding and wow, what more important time than now to talk about the power of brand and in doing that, let’s dump this out and bring up another little viewpoint here. In doing the power of brand, there are some things that we have to understand. Thanks for joining me guys, if we were live across Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, welcome, throw a comment, let me know where you’re joining me from, I would love to understand who’s watching and who’s hanging, but let’s talk about brand for a second. Every single new hire orientation than I do and I sit down with everybody, who’s brand new to our company at loanDepot, we talk about brand because it’s so, so important. And so, the first thing we have to understand about brand, is that you, make decisions based on the power of brand. Let me give you a example. If you shop at Amazon, let me hear you, throw a comment in there, let me know you’re listening and if you shop at Amazon, let me know, because I’m gonna do this right now. If I put Amazon… Hi Ohio, hi Melissa. If I put Amazon up on the screen, watch this. So let’s go here and let’s put up Amazon, boom. What emotions do you feel when you see that logo on the screen? What’s up Brooklyn, what’s up Stephen LA? What emotions do you see when you get this logo over here on the screen? What do you feel? A lot of you guys feel… Hey, Stephen? A lot of guys feel happiness because Amazon’s like Christmas every day, isn’t it? Like when you see this and you see the smile, by the way, that’s not a smile. That’s not smile, on the logo. I thought it was a smile, but yes, Brian, your wife does count because you’re in a relationship with Amazon, trust me. Shaun, Amazon prime member all day. This is not a smile. They have everything from a to Z and here’s the power of brand. Do you know that there is a store that sells the thing you’re buying at the bottom of the page, when you look stuff up on Amazon? There’s a store. I mean, did you know this? Look at this. Let’s go, let’s go right now. Let’s go to Amazon, right now. Let me share my screen. I wanna show you guys what’s going on here. Share screen, Amazon. There we go. You guys see this with me? Let me make it a little bigger. Okay, we’re on Amazon. And let’s go look at some of the products here. What’s up Kevin on Long Island? Let’s go check it out here. Sunglasses, awesome. I need some sunglasses. Look, you see all the stuff about it, all the stats, everyone who’s bought, the ratings, you’re feeling good. Who sells these sunglasses? Who’s selling these sunglasses? These guys. COASION is selling these sunglasses. But you, don’t even care, do you? You don’t even care, do you? That who’s selling those? Why don’t you care? Kevin, I cringe… . Yeah, brother, I’m telling you. So, when you see this, I’m gonna put it up again. When you see this, what gives you the confidence to buy that, without even caring, who who’s selling it? Brand. Now, you’ve built brand trust over the years, didn’t you? or your spouse did. Because you pushed a button and stuff showed up at your house. So, this matters. This is a thing. And yet you don’t care, because you know, you can return it, the next day. No questions asked. Ship at the mail. Melissa, now bringing it to me, I feel you. So, let’s do this. What emotions, experiences, thoughts come up for you, when I put this brand on the screen? Brooks, dude, I get it, bro. This is the truth. This is the power of brand. They’re giving you an experience. They’re dealing it in. So what about this brand? The Google. The powerful and almighty knowing Google. It became a verb in our society. It became something all of you do, you Google yourself. It’s a powerful brand. Represents a lot of things to a lot of us, but I’ll guarantee you right now all of you like Shaun, are having an emotional response to this brand. Aren’t you? An emotional response is happening, when I put the logo up on the screen. Let’s do this one. Let’s do a fun one here. Let’s dump this, let’s share this. Look at this guys, if I throw this one up, I want you to tell me, what you see. All right, new brand, new emotion, new feelings coming in. When you see this brand, what emotional thing is happening in here? Pretty fascinating conversation, isn’t it? Because this brand right now, it’s known for being elitist, expensive. But also kind of kind of green, kind of powerful, kind of cool, kind of fast. They just shot a rocket into space. Now, note Tesla did, but I’m sure and guarantee you that you are collapsing that, into one thing, when you look at this brand. Yeah, going to the moon. Lots of stuff happened. Hi-tech, absolutely, when you see this brand in front of you. Let’s do one more and then I’ll layer in here, why we’re doing this little experiment together because it matters, guys. It matters. Here you go. This is one of my favorites. All right, there’s a brand. How do you feel about that brand? Pretty interesting. Pretty interesting brand up there. I’ve got one, right here. And when I show this brand, I get a lot of emotion. Some people are like, “Ooh, yeah. “Ooh, sexy. Ooh, fun. Ooh, nice.” And then I get some people who are like, “Android, Android, yeah.” And there was always one person in the back who was like, “Google Pixel, yay.” Brands create connection. They create an experience, they create an emotion. They create trust, exactly what Stephen’s saying. They create distrust, exactly what Melissa is saying. They create popularity, like Shaun’s saying. Brands have a place, brands communicate something, and brands can take you down, which we’re experiencing right now. Brands can take you down, if you’re associated with the wrong brand at the wrong time or something happens, and it’s a problem. And we’ve seen some of those companies in the past. I worked for Countrywide, and Countrywide at the time, was one of the most respected and renowned mortgage companies in its heyday. It was helping underserved communities more than anybody else and then, all of a sudden it became a stain on the earth. Brooks made a really great comment here like CrossFit. So, some of you guys that know me, know that I have owned a CrossFit Gym that started in my garage for 13 years. 13 years, I’ve owned a CrossFit Gym. And right now the founder and CEO of CrossFit came out and said, for lack of a better term, I made a racist tweet as more of a joke, but it felt terribly, in the worst possible time and now the CrossFit community is up in arms because of something that somebody did that represented the brand. So my question, as we dig in and understand that brand matters, brand is powerful. That we have connections to brand. Let me ask you this question. Who is the number one lender in the country right now? Number one lender in the country right now, who are they? You don’t have to answer, you can Google it, you can figure this out, like the power of Google. But I’ll tell you right now, they’re an internet based company, and they’re a brand based company. They built their business on brand, super bowl commercials, major advertisements. Brand, brand, brand, brand. So when you call them, you don’t care who the person is that you’re talking to, you’re just comfortable in the brand. To me, this is something we have to be aware of as local sales professionals. We have to understand that this exists in our world and how it exists and the emotions that connects. Hello, I’m live right now. Okay, just throw it right there. When you go live, this is what happens. I gotta put signs up, that’s the truth.- I’m sorry.- It’s okay. So, the power of brand means something. Thank you. And if you’re not focused on your brand, you have a huge problem. Let me explain. I’ve said this before, and I’m gonna keep saying it until you pay attention and listen to the truth. We are an internet first society now, welcome. Welcome to an internet first society. What does that mean? That means if you want information, where do you go? You go online. If you want to look something up, you go online. If you get referred to a customer, your customer looks you up online period, we go look at reviews. We go to online before we go to our friends and family for advice. Fact, fact, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that’s the truth. When you want advice, you go live, I mean, you go online and you look for advice. That’s what you do. So the question you have to ask yourself, is how are you showing up in that space? Because I just showed you the brands that are showing up in that space. How are you there too? Because I’ll tell you this, if you’re not there, you are commoditizing the value you bring to your business. Let me say it again. If you are not at the top, the top of the sales cycle, which is the internet. If you are not there with your community, hanging out, sharing your message, telling the world why you matter and what you care about and what you do, if you are not at the top of the cycle, you are relegating yourself to a commodity because your years of experience, your consultative value, everything you offer a client, they won’t care as they get further down the sales cycle. They won’t care. You become an interest rate quote. And you can say, “No, I have 30 years of experience. “I’m amazing. “Let me help you structure everything. “Let me help you understand down payment assistance “and how much you should put down.” And they’re like, “Hey, I’m further down than that. “I’m, I’m ready to go. “So what’s your rate?” And you find yourself back into a corner because, you can’t express the value you bring, the consultative nature you bring because at that point it’s too late. They’re looking to make a decision, not to get consultation and you lose, you lose. I wasn’t gonna do this but ima do it. We gonna do it live. I’m gonna show you a picture of somebody. If can find it. If I can find it while we’re chatting, I’m gonna show you a picture of somebody and I want you to be there with me. Sorry, I wasn’t gonna do this but I decided to do it live, so we’re gonna jump in. Darn it, I’m not gonna be able to find it fast enough and I’m not gonna show you guys what it is. Here’s what I’ll tell you to do. The number one lender in the country put out a super bowl commercial three years ago. It’s three years old now. I know, time moves fast online. But I want you to go… sorry two years ago, I want you to watch it. I want you to specifically pause it and pause the screen, when they show the loan professional, the loan consultant, on the screen. Just go pause it. It’s the commercial with Keegan-Michael Key, you’ll you’ll get it, you’ll figure it out. I want you to go online, Google that, YouTube that, go watch it and then pause it, when the loan officer comes on screen. If you do not believe for one second that you are in hand to hand combat, developing brand identity, you’re gonna lose the game, friends. If you do not show up on the internet space, somebody is gonna show up for you, on your behalf and they’re going to tell the audience, what your brand is as a professional. That’s what that commercial did. It’s time. It is so pastime. Because I’ll give you one more piece of advice, you deserve a seat at the table. You deserve it, you’ve worked hard, It’s years in your local community, years sponsoring the kids’ soccer games and the girl scout cookie purchases and the fundraisers, and you spent years supporting your local charities and churches and gyms, and all this stuff you’ve done in your community, you’ve put roots down, you deserve a seat at the table. If somebody has a mortgage question, you deserve the chance to showcase your professionalism but if you don’t build a dynamic, an authentic, engageable, relatable brand of yourself, on who you are and what you stand for at the top of the sales cycle, on the internet, in social media, you will not get a seat at the table. That’s the power of brand. It’s a mandatory skill guys, that you got to develop guys and gals. It’s a mandatory skill you’ve got to lean into and build. If you do not, you will not be here because the conversation is going to move past you and you won’t even know, and you deserve a seat at the table. You feel me on this? Are you with me on this? Because the comments were going hot until I made this like real, real and then all of a sudden now, everyone’s like, “I don’t know, I don’t know how I feel about this. “You’re saying some stuff “that’s making me feel uncomfortable.” Yeah. yes I am. Because I want you to be uncomfortable. I want you to put the camera on. I want you to showcase your message. I want you to showcase your pride of who you are as a business professional, what you do, what you contribute to the world because you gotta lay out your voice, you got a lot to say. You should say it. Everything else besides that is just excuses. You have a message to share. Melissa has a message to share and you deserve the chance to share it. You do, you’ve worked hard. You’ve earned it, you’ve earned the right to share it. And then I hear this complaint, because I just said, you’ve earned the right. All of a sudden I get a newbie who was like, “I only have two years in the business, “what right have I earned?” You have your conviction. You have your purpose in this space and you have your authentic self to share. I don’t care, if you’ve got two days in the business, you’re here, show up. And especially for you and those of you that have five, 10, 15, 20 years in the business, you definitely deserve the right to show up. So, turn on the camera and share your message. Yes, you will want to be strategic. Yes, you’ll want to figure out what your content strategy is. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Of course, you can, you’ll figure it out. You’ll figure it out. I watched a guy do, 10 videos in 10 days challenge. 10 videos in 10 days. The first day he talked like a robot. He’s not used to it. He’s not used to filming himself. He’s not used to showing up online. And by the way, the seventh and eighth day, way better. Man, he’s just talking, I’m like, “Oh yeah, there he is. “There’s the guy, there he is. “I can see you now.” Takes practice, but you gotta have a purpose and your purpose has to burn inside you so much that the light doesn’t deter you, the camera doesn’t dissuade you, when you step into this space, and build your brand. By the way, this is the coolest piece of news about branding. You have the choice on what your brand looks like and sounds like, because you get to create it and curate it every day. How cool is that? Let me say it again. You have the undeniable privilege and opportunity to craft and curate your brand, your unique brand every day. No one can do it for you. You get to do it, which is awesome. What do you want to be known for? Who are you? Why are you in this business? What do you care about? What are your hopes and dreams? You get to share that, you get to create that. That’s incredibly powerful and awesome. Can you imagine if somebody else had to create it for you? Who knows what they would say? But you get to create it. There’s power in that. There’s power in that reality. Because you get to be the one that curates it and puts it on display. But I can tell you right now, and I’ve said this before. If you don’t do it, if you do not do it, then no brand is your brand and you’re being discredited, you’re being commoditized, you’re not in the sales game and you should be, you should be. And I’ll tell you one more thing, to give you guys the last bit of encouragement today on the power of brand. It’s okay, that your brand is unique and it’s you and let me go deeper on that. Your brand is not a tagline. A tagline is not your brand. Your brand is not your logo, or your color scheme, your brand is your character, your soul, it’s your heart, It’s what shows up when you open your mouth. when you’re in the mix with humans, that’s what your brand is. People are not going to remember your tagline, they’re gonna remember how you made them feel, and that means every single one of you, from Melissa, to Brooks, to Kevin, to Shaun, every single one of you has a unique authentic brand that has an audience waiting for them to show up for everyone that loves Apple, there somebody who loves Android, for everyone who loves BMW, there’s someone that loves Mercedes. For everyone that loves Brooks, there’s someone that’s gonna love Kevin and Melissa. Do you guys get that? That’s the power of this. Look, I lean hard into this stuff and I can tell you right now that I get unfollowed all the time, because people are like, “All right, I’m done. “That was great message Alec, thanks, “but you’re now sounding repetitive “or you’re annoying, “or I don’t agree with you or whatever.” To what Brook said right there, You are your brand. But you have to showcase yourself. And not in like, a egotistical braggadocious way. You don’t need to humble-brag about how great you are, how fast you close the loan. But you do have to show up about why you’re here and what you’re doing and what’s your messaging, and what do you care about, that is what’s gonna empower your brand and what is going to drive you to the top of somebody’s mind, when they go, “Oh yeah, it’s time to get mortgage. “Who do I talk to?” Now trust me. I’m not shitting on having a logo or a color scheme or a cool font. I don’t care. Do it, if it makes you happy. I have LiveTime With Alec written above me and I like this font. I don’t care what makes you happy, but I don’t want you to get stuck and think that that is the thing. That’s not the thing. You are the thing. Here we go, being all right and motivational again . But it’s not about being motivational, Melissa. It’s about getting you to do something. I want everyone to act. I want to press into the action of the world. Not in the talking of the world, into the action of the world. That’s why I’m live. I’m live because this is the action, because this is real. I had someone come in and drop off a parking pass while we were talking, like this is really what’s happening. I want you in the same space. I want you in the same space with your community because I want you to have the power of your brand in their minds, when they decide they need a mortgage, Gotta earn it. But it’s yours for the taking. Friends, thanks for hanging out with me today. As a reminder, alechanson.com, check me out. I’ve got a weekly download, a weekly newsletter that comes out this Friday. This Friday, I’m at my podcast, it’s live with Anthony Hsieh, the CEO and founder LoanDepot and I’ll tell you right now, if you’ve ever wondered about what a story looks like, man, this guy has got one. It’s incredibly powerful, inspirational. I can’t wait to hang with him on Friday, I hope you guys hang with us too. And I’ll see you guys on the internet. Thanks Doug. Appreciate everybody out there. Hope you guys have a wonderful day. Go make a video about, why you’re in this business Barry you’re doing a good job on that. Appreciate it you guys. See you later.

As we all start leaning into the digital marketing world, come hear an industry expert showcase how banks and credit unions are doing the same thing. Let’s pay attention to what other competitors are doing in the same space. 

Your Snippet of this episode of the Modern Lending Podcast….

• B.A.N.C.E.R.
• Content is the fuel
• In today’s digital age AQ, EQ > IQ
• Practice, Practice, Practice

Episode Transcribe

[Alec] What’s up everybody?

Welcome to another live episode of the Modern Lending Podcast. We’re gonna go down a rabbit hole today. With me is my man, James Robert Lay. Now James is the CEO of the Digital Growth Institute. He also is the bestselling author now of “Banking on Digital Growth”. I met this guy on the internet as you do. And man, there’s just tons of alignment that him and I have in our messaging and what we believe in stepping into. I cannot wait to get a copy of this book. I ordered it already. And this guy is teaching banks and credit unions how to go digital. Man, what an alignment! Let’s open it up. Let’s bring James on the show and rock and roll. What’s up, James Robert, how you doing, buddy?[James Robert] Doing well, Alec, it’s good to see you man.[Alec] I love that I had to figure out that you’re the man with two first names. I’m glad we cleared that up before we got on the show here. So I didn’t get your way through. So James Robert, congratulations, first of all, bestselling author, recently published “Banking on Digital Growth”. I mean, that’s a huge compliment. I think you said it was four categories that you got. Five?[James Robert] Five.[Alec] Dude, congratulations.[James Robert] Thanks, man.[Alec] So as I said, kind of in the intro, guys. I bumped into James Robert on the internets and realize right away that this guy was speaking my language and that there’s probably a lot of things that he’s doing, that I can learn from. So James, before we get into the questions, and we get down the rabbit hole, give everybody a little bit about your background, please.[James Robert] So, my last real job was waiting tables and playing a punk rock band.[Alec] So epic.[James Robert] That was the life and there was this girl. I was a sophomore in college and she said, “You know what, your band is not so good. “You actually kind of suck.” Do something with your life. And so I started this little web design company which grew into the Digital Growth Institute over the last 18 years. Actually, I got married to that girl. And now we have four kids. And along the way we’ve helped over 520 financial brands, simplify their digital marketing and sell strategies to grow from good to great and really generate 10 times more loans and deposits.[Alec] And by the way, what a better time than now? I mean, I think there’s reason your book is flying off the shelf, everyone’s going, “We don’t have customers anymore the traditional way. “How do we get to them?”[James Robert] It’s crazy because I started writing that book in May of 2019. And the world was a very different place. It’s like what a century this month has been. I used to say, “What a decade this month is nuts.” It should be a millennium. But just the amount of change we’ve experienced at the macro level, at the organizational level, at the micro level with ourselves. It’s a lot for anyone to process it, to try to comprehend. And I think we need to have a lot of empathy for ourselves, for our teams, for our organizations, for the people that we’re looking to help right now. Because we are really in it just a completely different time period.[Alec] Yeah, and we’re forced into it. So it’s kind of like we got to go. We don’t have a choice. And by the way, we’re live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook. Hi, Mary on LinkedIn. Chris, what’s up on Facebook. Thanks you guys, for joining us hanging out today. Always good to see you, Mary. So James, let’s talk about this for a second. When you talk to credit unions, banks, these banks, mega institutions about going digital, what does digital growth mean? What does that mean? Break it down in like layman’s terms?[James Robert] Well, let’s talk about the internal perception first, and that’s typically where the problem stems and internally, digital growth from the executive levels is viewed as, we have online banking, we have mobile banking, we have these online applications, we’re digital. And I’m like, you got the service side of the business lockdown, you don’t have the growth or the acquisition. So we have to actually go in and redefine or academically define what is digital growth. And simplified, digital growth is systems and processes that are centered around the modern consumer journey to attract, to nurture and ultimately convert leads for loans and deposits. And just that definition alone, if you can get that buy in throughout, that’s a light bulb.[Alec] By the way, I love it so much. Because if you’re a loan consultant out there, trying to grow your business and looking at, what is digital growth mean, for me? It’s the same definition guys. It’s the same definition. So once you get somebody to understand that definition, James Robert, what’s next?[James Robert] Well, once we get that, it’s okay, great. We have that alignment. Now, let’s actually define, what is our purpose? Why do we exist as an organization? Why do we exist as a team? Why do I exist as an individual? Because once again, we have to reshape and reframe the conversation that we have with ourselves, with our teams, with our organizations, because a lot of times, we exist to push loans.[Alec] Yeah, yeah, we exist to sell something.[James Robert] Push your product, a commoditized product. And like, “No, we exist for a much higher purpose.” And there’s something I read about in the book called “The Purpose Statement Pyramid”. Is we have what we do at the very bottom, and then we have the how we do it. And a lot of organizations and individuals, that’s where we stopped with the conversation. If we can transcend that just a little bit higher, we can talk about who we do it for. Which to me that’s critical if we can get really targeted and focus of who we’re looking to help. That’s a transformative exercise. It’s a very hard one to have, but it’s a transformative one. And then finally, it’s the essential of why are we doing this? What is our purpose? What is our higher goal, our higher calling? And that’s to get, in my eyes, if we’re in financial services, whether you’re on the mortgage side, whether you’re on the deposit side and small business, it’s to help people get beyond their questions and concerns, their fears, their frustrations, that are holding them back from them achieving a bigger, better, brighter future.[Alec] Done, dude. Well, so let’s unpack this some more. I know in your book, you talk about this a lot, but defining the customer journey. And you just alluded to it with understanding that we want to be part of that customer journey. You have the tools, but how are you really there? Maybe break down how you see the customer journey. And I think that’ll tie into this really nicely.[James Robert] So we could actually define that with an acronym. I call it “The BANCER Strategy Circle”. And BANCER…[Alec] I love it dude, I love acronyms.[James Robert] B, build an audience with data. It’s the very first step and that’s why we needed to find who we’re looking to help. Once we build an audience With data, we can then attract leads with personalized offers. So we have B[James Robert]A. The nurture part of this, the end of BANCER is to nurture those leads with automation and content. So to move them through, help them get beyond those unknowns that are holding them back. Because once we do that, it’s like any relationship. I have to know you, I have to like you, I have to trust you. And once someone finally trusts us enough, that’s when we can ask for the business, we can get them to click the Apply button, and that’s where we convert them for a loan. But the journey is not over yet, because then we can expand that relationship, the E by the lighting in that experience through some type of an onboarding process. And one of the biggest untapped opportunities that I see right now, in financial services, whether in mortgage or other types of lending, the business, it’s the R. And that is to repeat the entire process by asking for some type of a rating, some type of a review, and really most importantly, asking for a referral, because that’s just gonna put someone right back through that entire loop once again.[Alec] And I think the fear here or the problem here, is if you don’t go down that journey, if you try to go right to the clause, you’re gonna off ramp, you’re gonna fail the customer and they’re gonna go somewhere else.[James Robert] Exactly. People have options today. The consumer is in control of the buying journey. That’s it.[Alec] So tying that into real estate loans, it’s so crazy. I said that because in 2003, when I started, the consumer wasn’t necessarily totally in control. And for those people that are new to our industry, and even though 2003 is not that long ago, people, not that old yet. It was a world that was hidden. The internet hadn’t fully come into real estate, you couldn’t find houses that were for sale without talking to local professionals. It was kind of a closed environment. To your point now, it’s blown wide open, the consumer is in full control. And they have more options than ever before and more education. Sometimes misinformation, but than ever before.[James Robert] It’s interesting, you make the note of misinformation. And the way that I look at this is almost like a practitioner[James Robert]patient relationship, because if you’re symptomatic with something, something’s ailing you. What do you do? What’s the very first thing you do?[Alec] Google.[James Robert] You go to Google, and you Google your symptoms.[Alec] And then you realize you’re on Web MD, and then you’re too deep. And you realize you have 17 diseases.[James Robert] And you’re self[James Robert]diagnosing. And so even that’s not misinformation. That’s legitimate information. But I don’t have the context nor the expertise to understand how that applies to my unique situation or my reality. So what do I do? I’m like, “Okay, stop.” I call the doctor. I go see the doctor, the doctor then diagnosis me, he runs some tests. And then he says, “You know what, this is the problem. “Hey, and by the way, here’s the prescription. “Here’s the cure.” And the same thing is true in mortgages and lending. There’s a lot of information out there. And that can be very dangerous for someone, it can be a misdiagnosis, it can send them down the wrong path, it can cause them more pain. So what do we have to do? Physician[James Robert]practitioner relationship. We have to guide them through this journey to give them some calm, to give them some clarity, to give them some peace, to give them some hope.[Alec] Well, and this is… Bill, thank you my man. If you don’t follow Bill Gaylord everyone, you’re missing out, this guy’s incredible. Good to hang with us, dude. So let’s talk about this for a second. I actually want to go back. I want you to hit BANCER again. I want you to run it, people missed it. It was too fast, but it’s gold. So we got B, build an audience.[James Robert] Build an audience with data.[Alec] Absolutely. So and by the way, I cannot tell you how many loan professionals today are absolutely blowing a massive opportunity by not putting their customers they’re serving into their social sphere. They are relegating them to a CRM if they’re doing anything at all. And that’s okay. I’m not gonna trash that too much, but they’re not inviting them into a bigger cultivation, opportunity and relationship.[James Robert] What you’re talking about, it’s the transformation of community. Community used to be physically defined location, zip code, five mile radius, three mile radius. Community is now digital. And what we get with digital when building an audience with building a community, is a multiplying factor. Because it’s almost like a time machine to where I can be in multiple locations at once, like we are right now; LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. But we have to put that type of contextual thinking in how we’re looking at just presenting ourselves to the community that we’re looking to build.[Alec] By the way, so this is a little bit of a side note tangent, but this is what’s, your dead on. And here’s something that I think the mortgage industry isn’t really prepared for. So in retail mortgage banking, we’re used to geography. We’re used to how many[James Robert][James Robert] I can go to open houses that I can drive to, no zip codes, I have my office, this is my sphere of influence location. There’s no geography on the internet. I mean, you can be in any market at any time, multiple times and impact. Like to your point on the power of video in this digital community. Someone’s gonna be watching this, like three days from now. And then connecting in to this digital experience and this digital community. That’s why.[James Robert] Yeah, and think about that. You’re building like, video. That’s why post[James Robert]COVID. I’ve been doubling down on video, I’ve been guiding and coaching more around video, because it’s how we bring humanity to this sphere, the sphere of influence. There’s two sides of the equation when we talk about digital growth. There’s the DX, or the digital experience. But on the flip side, there’s the HX. That’s the human experience. It’s not one, it’s not the other. It’s about using technology to bring people together for good. And when we look at the digital experience, we can’t just look at it holistically, we have to break that down. We have the lead experience, and we treat those people differently. We have the customer experience. And then as I mentioned before, one of the biggest blue ocean opportunities, it’s the referral experience. And then on the human side, we have two things, help and hope. And to me a lot of times when it comes to the situations like buying a home, people need hope before they can even be open to help. Can I even do this? Can I even afford this?[Alec] I love that. The human side and help and hope is dead on accurate. So I want to hit BANCER though because[James Robert][James Robert] Build an audience. That’s our B, what’s our A?[James Robert] Attract leads with personalized offers. And let’s be very clear, what type of leads are these? These are MQLs or Marketing Qualified Leads. So the people who maybe they’re a good fit. Maybe we might be able to help them, we don’t know just yet. We don’t know what stage they’re at in this buying journey. But we have to extend an offer.[Alec] Yep. We have Brian like that hope for help. That’s killer. That’s a nugget right there. Okay, so then we got the N.[James Robert] Nurture leads with automation and content. And so at this stage, we’re bringing people into what we would call a sales qualified prospect. They’re moving a little bit further down. And that’s why automation marketing, automation to me is an exponential factor. And content must be the fuel of this engine that you’re running.[Alec] So then we got the E.[James Robert] The C.[Alec] I skipped C? Yep, I jumped ahead and then I ruined the customer experience.[James Robert] You missed the most important part of it, which is the conversion. We got to convert them for the loan. And I think it’s interesting to note at the stage of conversion, a lot of times we look at that is we’re gonna push them through our digital application.[Alec] This is a good point.[James Robert] But maybe not, maybe not. I look at three different types of calls to action. There’s your primary click to apply for the loan. But we have found by deploy, this is extremely tactical, but it’s a transformative tactic. A secondary call to action, right below the Apply button. Have a question? We’ll call you back. We typically see higher conversions on the secondary call to action. And there it is, it’s connecting the digital experience with the human experience because people still have those questions. They think they’re ready to apply but I need to talk someone to make me feel good. So then I can get pushed over the edge. So the conversion might not necessarily be 100% digital. Digital might just be an assist on that journey.[Alec] All right, now I’m ready for my E.[James Robert] Expand the relationship by delighting the account through some type of onboarding process or experience. And once again, there’s an opportunity to connect the digital world with the physical world. Gift boxes to me are like a transformative experience. Because it just adds that little bit of touch that says, “You know what, wow, this is making me feel really good.” Because coming back to those different types of consumer emotions and relationships, I have to know you before I like you, I have to like you before I can trust you. And only once I trust you finally then, in that onboarding, that’s where you really reaffirming the love of the relationship.[Alec] Love it, dude. And then obviously, we’re back at the R, which is to repeat.[James Robert] Repeat the process by asking for some type of a rating, whether that be on Facebook, Google places, on a specific website. Asking for not only the rating, but then getting the review of whatever it might be, and then following that up once more tying in the referral. And what better way to do that than to apply a system like NPS or net promoter, which I’ve always looked at as a vanity metric rate. Your net promoter score is 9.2. I don’t care, turn that insight into action, and then get your promoters to actually promote.[Alec] Totally, 100%. I like the vanity. It’s so true. And I wanna talk about the narcissistic marketing in a minute before I forget, it’s incredible. But let’s talk about maximizing technology. You know, we’re in a digital age, how do we build technology? How do we leverage technology in our growth strategy?[James Robert] The way that I’m looking to look at this is through building what I call a digital growth engine. And when we look at the marketing and sales technology available to a lender, to an organization, it’s insane. We’ve gone over the Martech like 10,000 now. So let’s just distill this down. What are the four key pieces or the four gears that are needed to make this engine run? The very first is going to be some type of ad targeting, email targeting system, marketing automation at the front end. That’s then gonna drive leads to a website that sells, not a glorified online brochure, which I see so many mistakes being made with that. It’s like, here’s all of our products. And here’s all the bullet points that get tied into that. No, no, no, no, we need to actually help first and sell second. Then we’re gonna take those leads that are coming through our website that sells and then we’re gonna put them into the marketing automation, use content to nurture those leads. And then ultimately, once we convert them, we have some type of sales and service platform, i.e CRM, that we can expand that relationship with. But here’s the thing, those are the four gears. What is needed for an engine to run?[Alec] Gas.[James Robert] Fuel. So if you look at each one of those gears, we need fuel to turn the gears, that fuel is going to be content. So content is the fuel of the digital growth engine. And now we take it to the next level. So our engine’s running great. If you want it to run even more efficiently, data is now the oil of the engine.[Alec] But let’s talk about the fuel. And this is maybe a little bit of a tangent, but it’s important. I talk to a lot of people whose main sticking point, I’m gonna say excuse, I’m a little harsher, is they feel like they have a lack of content. They don’t know what to say. And so, how do you address that? How do you coach through that? How do you take organizations through that?[James Robert] First and foremost, the content’s not about you. So let’s come back to…[Alec] Sorry. Let’s unpack that. That’s totally right. But I see a lot of people whose content is about them, but go on.[James Robert] Yeah, ’cause I think it’s hard because it’s like, “Well, what am I gonna say? “What am I gonna say about myself?” So there’s like a mental block already kind of tied to that. So let’s come back to purpose. And one of the things I talked about in purpose was the finding the who. Who are you looking to help? So now we need to identify personas. What are their questions? What are their concerns? What are their hopes? What are their dreams? What are their fears? What are their frustrations? Lean into the pain that people have. If you can start unpacking that, that’s where the gold is. Because now that gives me specific problems that I can solve coming back to the physician[James Robert]practitioner relationship. Now I can start using my content as potential cures to these pain points of these personas or of these people that I’m looking to help.[Alec] See, let’s open up the topic about narcissistic marketing, because you’ve clearly defined in that quick hit what we should be focusing our content on. Who do you want to serve? What are the problems you can address? Go into that space. And yet, we see tons of narcissistic marketing, which is a term, I saw that from your book ’cause you showed it to me earlier. But like, and I’ll give a silly example. Going off to a great job, gets a great review, post it on their social feed. Look at this great review, look at how great I am. Or loan officer does a great job closes a loan very quickly, very proud of that. And they post, “Record closing in six days, “look how good I am.” How do you define and come up with narcissistic marketing as a topic and what does it mean?[James Robert] Well, a lot of it comes from just observation. I like to think of myself as maybe a digital anthropologist studying human behavior digitally. So narcissistic marketing. Maybe it’s rooted in just our flawed human nature to where we try to make everything about us. That’s been amplified more I think than ever before. Because of things like social media. So social media, it’s like a double[James Robert]edged sword. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just kind of brings out the individual of a person at their core and amplifies that. So narcissistic marketing is where an organization, a loan officer even, has a solution to a mass market that might be called to action. And so it’s very broad. And when we look at that type of a narrative structure, an organization or a loan officer might have a solution for a mass market that might be called to action. Who’s the hero? Who is that narrative about?[Alec] That’s it. When it’s about yourself.[James Robert] It’s yourself. But here’s the thing. Shout out to Miss Bongo. Shout out to Miss Bradley. They’re my ninth and 10th grade literature teachers. Never thought what I learned back then would be practical today. When you go back to basic literary structure, there can only be two types of heroes in a narrative; your protagonist, and your antagonist. And I, me the consumer, and the stories that I’m telling myself conversation I’m having with myself in my head, I’m the hero. So enter the other hero, they’re already coming into the narrative, if it’s about them, they’re the antihero. They’re the antagonist. So if we’re using a narcissistic marketing[James Robert]like model, we’re already have been defeated before we have even had a chance to “win the battle”. But why are we trying to win battles? It’s a lose[James Robert]lose proposition. So let’s reframe this and take on another role and even more helpful role in this type of a narrative structure. Coming back to literary history, I think Joseph Campbell made everyone’s work in this so simplified when he wrote “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and he kind of looked at all the literary history going back to the earliest stories of Gilgamesh and whatnot. We have another role, and that is, enter the helpful guide. That is the Obi[James Robert]Wan Kenobi, that is the Mr. Miyagi, that’s the Yoda because without a helpful guide, there can be no hero, and without a hero, there is no story. Be a helpful guide.[Alec] And it’s so hard, by the way, I hear that. I had a great pod with Dave Savage and that theme came through again. But you know, in practical terms, it can be hard to be in that frame of this state of mind.[James Robert] So let’s make it practical. And that’s where we apply the storyselling methodology and the storyselling. Because here’s the thing, everyone’s talking about, “Yeah, you need to tell a better story.” I would go to conferences, I’d be speaking at conferences, I’d hear another speaker and tell the artists, “You need to tell a better story.” What? What the hell does that even mean? I get angry. So I spent like three years trying to figure this out. And really going back to ninth grade in my head and then doing my reading. Storyselling, coming back tie it all together. A consumer persona has specific questions and concerns who meets a helpful and empathetic guide. And here’s the key. This is the crux. That must first build trust with content. Because when you go back and you watch “Star Wars”. Luke, when he was introduced to Obi[James Robert]Wan, “Who’s this old man?” Every guide has to build trust before the hero will follow them or take the guide’s advice. And the way that we do that digitally, the way we build trust digitally, comes back to what we were just talking about, content.[Alec] You gotta show up. And there’s a lot of people not showing up.[James Robert] Exactly. But the journey doesn’t end there in the storyselling methodology. So now the guide has built the trust, what has to happen next? The guy has to call the hero to take some type of action. So I do see there’s a gap. There’s a lot of people pumping out lots of good content. But they never come back and ask, “Can I help you? “Can I take you to that bigger, better, brighter future?”[Alec] So I got to tell a story on this one. And James Robert, I think you’ll appreciate it. I posted a mini comment on this earlier but in my early days of origination, I was busting tail. Like I had the top 100 realtors in my market, I’m getting a monthly drip. I was going to every single open house, and broker preview, and board event, networking event. I was everywhere. People used to say like, “Dude, you are everywhere. “Everywhere you go, I’m seeing a flyer from you. “I’m seeing you.” But I couldn’t ask for business. And I had a fear of rejection that would happen from this. And so I built great rapport and I ended up getting business because I built relationships. But what happened one day was I decided to ask, and I was gonna get married the next month. And so I wanted to fund over $10 million, because that was a big number. Still a big number. And I was like, I’d never broken that metric. And I was like, “I really want to hit this as a personal goal.” And I sent out a stupid piece of paper with me on it that said the $10 million challenge and I mailed it out to all the agents, mailed it out to all my customers I’d done business with. And this in my first year of doing business, so it’s not a lot of customers. But, I got $13 million of business that month, because I asked. But I didn’t just ask, I had been busting my ass, literally, to make connection with everybody. And it’s the one[James Robert]two punch, exactly what you’re saying.[James Robert] You have to make the connection before you can ask for the business. And that takes time. And here’s the thing. Digital growth is a journey. Is a journey from good to great. It is a journey that begins in the mind. And it takes time. Digital has also shortened our patience. We want it now, now, now.[Alec] And we get instant gratification all the time kinda.[James Robert] We do. We get dopamine hits like, all the time.[Alec] Like, “I made a video, where’s all my business?”[James Robert] You said something there that was key. And I wrote this down, about the ask. The fear of rejection, because here’s the thing. It’s really a two[James Robert]sided equation of the ask because now if you come back to the BANCER Strategy Circle, you gotta ask for the business to convert someone. But then if you wanna repeat that process, you have to ask for the rating, the review, the referral. And I see fear holding a lot of people back on this journey. I’ve never considered the fear of rejection, though. That’s a really good one because what I write about in the book, the four fears that holds someone back whether they’re a mortgage officer, an executive team, it doesn’t matter. It’s first and foremost. It’s the fear of the unknown. We as human beings love the cave of complacency and the cave of comfort, it’s safe, it’s secure. It’s not dangerous. Complacency in this digital world of exponential change, it’s killer. It’s gonna be the downfall of a lot of people who, like here’s the thing. A lot of people up to this point I’m so glad the narrative is finally changing about, education and the way that we learn, the way our kids learn. AQ, Adaptability Quotient, and EQ Emotional Intelligence in this digital world, far outweighs IQ. I was just talking with someone in the FinTech space. And like, you get a lot of people in FinTech. They’re like, super, super smart. But their EQ is like, zilch and that’s why there’s a lot of challenges bringing FinTech into the marketplace, because we got the smartest people in the room, we got the IQ, but we don’t have the EQ. AQ and EQ. So we got the fear of the unknown. The other thing too, that I see is the fear of change, like coming out of the cave of complacency. We don’t like that change. Then we have the fear of failure. “What happens if I try this and it doesn’t work?” What happens if you don’t? Play worst case scenario with this. Because what got you to where you’re at today won’t get you to where you need to go tomorrow. Which then brings me to the last fear. And it’s the fear of success. Like, holy shit, what if this does work?[Alec] Yeah, then what?[James Robert] Then what? Can I even sustain something like this? But fear of rejection. That’s a great one. I appreciate that. I’ll put that on my radar.[Alec] Well, so let’s circle back to digital stories. I think that you nailed some key points there. And I want to just kind of hammer on it before we move on, because it was really well said. The fact is, we have to get out of our own way and be our guide, or else we’re immediately battling heroes with the customer we’re trying to serve. And it’s just all of a sudden, you’re dead before you even start. I loved hearing that. And then you get trust, you gain trust by content, by showing up, by being present, by being with them in the struggle. And that to me, lays out a wonderful opportunity to tell stories in that narrative tone. The more we’re reminded of that, the more we implant that in our brains, the more we can filter our marketing through that lens. We get away from the narcissistic marketing. And we turn into true guides and true value[James Robert]added people. And I want to say one more thing too that triggered me on this. For everybody paying attention now or later and Zooming, joining this conversation. James Robert said earlier, “You gotta get really focused on why you do what you do.” Because all content comes through that. And the ability to break through fear comes through that. If you get really focused on why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’ll turn the camera on, you’ll start telling stories. But you got to be really grounded in that. If it’s just another loan, if you’re doing it for money, all those things will come through your stories and they won’t last.[James Robert] I wanna address that. Because if we come back in and look at ancient wisdom, there’s an old saying, “Where there’s no purpose, where there’s a vision, “the people perish.” A really good book and a lot of people know “Think and Grow Rich”. But what they don’t know from, and what was the author’s name on that?[Alec] Napoleon Hill.[James Robert] Napoleon Hill. What they don’t know is another book that I highly recommend people read, especially now with everything that’s going on in this crazy millennium of 2020. It’s called “Outwitting the devil”. And it is a book literally framed around fear and overcoming fear. And Napoleon Hill puts the devil on trial and gets the devil to confess all of his secrets. And one of the things that Napoleon Hill writes about, you’re talking to specifically is the definitiveness of purpose. Once we lock that in, everything else becomes crystal clear. And I think a lot of people right now, with all of this exponential change, environmental change, changing consumer behavior, we get stuck in the circle of chaos, where we’re confused, we’re frustrated, we’re overwhelmed. Hey, I get it. And I got a lot of empathy for that. But the only way to escape that circle of chaos is step number one, you’ve gotta gain some clarity into what the future opportunities are in the first place. Because that clarity helps to come tie it all back, it helps to overcome the fear of the unknown. And one of the best ways to do that is just to define a purpose beyond the product, put transformations of people over the transaction.[Alec] So let’s get practical. How do you do that?[James Robert] In regards to, it’s a bit because we just unpacked a lot. Be more pointed, how do we do what?[Alec] How do we get out of the circle of chaos?[James Robert] Four steps, gain clarity, become a lifelong learner. Things are happening and changing way too fast. We already talked about the transformation of education. There’s no reason and what you’re doing is so valuable. You’re teaching. Be the student, but also be the teacher. It’s both sides and it’s like this upward spiral. Everyone wins, the tide rises together. So gaining clarity, be a lifelong learner, be a student. And if you don’t know something, Google it, YouTube it.[Alec] James Robert, I got to add on this. One of my favorite sayings is “Be a student of your own experience”. Think that the ability for someone to objectively step back, look at what they did, look at the content they make, look at the experiences they’re having, and go, “Do I like this? “Is it going the right way? “What am I learning from this? “What can I learn from this?” Is an absolute like skyrocket cheat hack to push yourself forward.[James Robert] So let’s talk about that. We have to, as an individual, a team, an organization, a society, a culture, redefine failure. And that to me is one of the biggest flawed things out of the public school system is, I have four kids. And I’m really trying to just let them learn and learn through experience, learn through failure. Because up to the time that you go into that grade school, you don’t know really what it’s like to fail because it’s all about play, it’s about experimentation, it’s about learning. But then you’re getting these grades and like, “Oh, no, I got a C.” Or, “Oh, no, I got a D.”[Alec] Yep, and this bringing up whatever they got, an A, and so they’re better than me.[James Robert] Exactly wrong. Your failure is nothing more than the best learning mechanism in life. I look at failure as the fertile soil, from which new growth springs from. And if we can be okay with that, and really dig deep and do a lot of like self[James Robert]assessment, self[James Robert]awareness, that’s a big, big thing when it comes to just gaining clarity into what opportunities are. What can I do and make it even better?[Alec] Well, you know, everyone makes everything, like a final exam. And so, it’s like, “Guys, no, this is practice. “All of this is practice until we die.” Like it’s just practice. Like every video, every piece of content, every article you write, every tweet, everything you’re trying to impact on your business. It’s just practice.[James Robert] I love that, I love that. It’s practice and let’s break down the final exam, if you will, because, we all work in annual cycles, and we have these goals that we set. Break it down. Let’s look at “The 90 Day Year”. There’s a book actually by that title. To where it’s not so big, it’s not so overwhelming. And this is a model and a methodology that I teach when it comes to growth and other acronym. What are our goals that we’re looking to achieve? And I learned this trick from Dan Sullivan. When we look out towards the future, it’s very hard to gain a sense of clarity of what that looks like. So we have to literally put ourselves two years ahead or three years ahead or one year ahead. So Dan Sullivan, he asked the question, “If you and I are having a conversation “three years from now, and we’re looking back, “what has to happen between now until then, “for you to feel good about the progress “that you’re making on your own journey?” And that’s how you get clear about the future state that you’re wanting to create, for yourself, for your team, for your organization, for the people you’re looking to help. Then you can follow that up. So that’s G. Then you can follow that with R. What are the roadblocks and challenges that I must eliminate because they stand in my way? You have to be very clear about that. Put them on a piece of paper. Continuing forward, what are the greatest opportunities available now for me to create a capture? And maybe it is, you know what? I have to commit to creating one piece of video content per week, and just getting it out there. I think a video, we’re gonna come back to that. I was working with a round table, about 30 CEOs of financial brands. And the fear, the sheer terror that I heard from them is that’s what’s holding them back. I said, “Hear me, here’s what you can do. “You get three takes, you get three takes to do a video. “Take number three, whatever it is push it, just go with it, “lean into the fear and make it happen.” And I said then as a bonus, “Maybe take a shot of scotch or whiskey, “take your edge off.” And I think something else that sometimes helps a person get over the fear of video, It’s like we get that I, that single I staring back at us with the camera. That can be intimidating. So what do we do? Get someone to stand on the other side of the camera, just talk to them. And that’s how… then it’s like anything. You’ll disconnect from them after say, you do this for a month. “Well then I can just use a tripod or a selfie stick.” So there’s ways that you can coach yourself through on this journey that you might take. So goals, roadblocks, opportunities. How do you want to grow?[Alec] So, James Robert, obviously, go buy this guy’s book. If you’re looking to hear all this wisdom pouring out of him just go by the book, it’s all there. But I always like to wrap down with kind of this conversation and this question. Put yourself in the seat. You’re sitting down in front of a brand new loan officer to the industry and a 30[James Robert]year veteran. So you got super experienced and you got brand new and they’re sitting out in front of you, and they say, “What do I do? “What would you tell me to do given all this landscape, “all this world?” And how do you lean into them? And what do you say?[James Robert] Collaborate.[Alec] That’s a great angle.[James Robert] Collaborate because you got 30 years of experience, and then you also have someone who is younger, has kind of grown up in this digital world. Why don’t we collaborate our capabilities? Because I think that a lot of times what we lack is capability. And if we can bring capabilities together, whether that be experience and expertise, or being able to navigate the complexities of digital, to me, it’s a collaboration opportunity. Raise the tide together.[Alec] You know, I love that so much because… Two quick stories. When I started in Origination, I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know what I was doing, I had a great mentor, but I gotta get my feet wet. And I realized, “Hey, wait a minute, “there’s some really successful people out there “that originate loans. “And they’re all in these lists, “and I can see them and they’re right here.” And we have this thing called phone in 2003. It was an archaea brick, but it still could call people. And I called them, and I sent them emails and I said, “Hey, I’m new, we’re at the same company. “So I felt like, I work with you. “And can I buy a coffee? “Because I’m trying to learn “how to be a really damn good Originator.” Every single one, every single one said yes. And every single one sat down and gave me their entire playbook. Free, no insecurity, no fear, just hear. And the reality is collaboration. The reason that I’m gotten better in my opinion at this digital world, it’s because I’ve been staring at people who are doing great things and learning. And then guess what? “Can you teach me? “Can you help me? “How do you do this?” And they go, “I do it like this.” And I go, “Holy shit, thank you.” Collaboration is, especially in a digital age when we can feel so disconnected because we can’t go get coffee with somebody. But you know what, you can still connect and collaborate. And that’s an incredible message.[James Robert] But I wanna address what holds the collaboration back. I like competition. We have to make some choices like now, as an individual. I’m either going to approach this world with a growth mindset, and there’s way more opportunities available for us to create together. And that’s just going to eliminate the competition. Or I’m going to approach this with a fixed mindset. And there’s some type of a fixed number that we can go out and we can fight for and we can compete against one another. Collaboration to me is the answer because it’s the learning opportunity. I mean, think of it this way, like what we’re doing right now. You get a 30[James Robert]year veteran and a new up and coming person. Cocreate a podcast together, cocreate something, collaborate and you’re going to get an exponential factor instead of trying to do this on your own by yourself.[Alec] James Robert, I appreciate you man. I appreciate your advice today. You dropped so many nuggets, I cannot wait to reshare this and cut some parts out and get it back to the world today. Any final words before we wrap down and say goodbye to everybody?[James Robert] Be well and do good.[Alec] Be well and do good.[James Robert] All right, thank you. Thank you.[Alec] Have a wonderful day, everybody. Thank you for tuning in on this episode of Modern Learning Podcast. If you liked it, share, comment, repeat, love you guys. Take care.

Let’s talk about some simple “hacks” you can do to trick your own way into more action and activity in this digital social world. Want to start a Podcast? I’ve got hacks! Need to enrich your YouTube library? Hacks! Let’s go have some fun!

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec:

• You will get hacks for to create more for your brand.
• You have have to show up with a core message.
• What is your why?
• You can create tons of content from “one pillar content”.

Episode Transcribe

Hey friends, happy Tuesday. Oh man. What an insane day. I scheduled this fun conversation about hacking social media, hacking podcasts, all this fun stuff, giving tips and tricks. And then we find ourselves in the midst of massive civil unrest. I thought about following a lot of people today that are going blackout on their social media. And I love that because I think the messaging there is right. But the conversation I want to have today, and I was tricking all of you on this hacking tips and tricks. Because I think now the time for human connection is just more important than ever. And so I want to give you guys some foundational stuff to work on. Some things that I think will really help you, and hopefully help heal some of the pain that we’re all in right now, in this time of not only a pandemic, but this terrible crisis, terrible situation with George Floyd. Breaks my heart. And I know a lot of people that are affected by it.Look, the topic of today was hacking content, which is the way to trick people or trick yourself into making cool things. Give you tips and tricks in order to kind of push you into a new space, get you going into the areas that you know you need to be going in, but that you’re not going. And so I want to just totally give it to you straight right now, so that you have the opportunity to play in the space you need to play in. Because look, if you’re watching this, whether on the replay or now, you understand that you have to build a dynamic, personal, authentic brand on the Internets. You have to. You have to show up for your digital community. And you have to show up with a core message.This is, I think, the first thing that everyone is afraid of, or not lining into. You’re not realizing, or not tapping into, the power of why you’re doing this. Because let’s be honest, if you don’t have a strong why, then you’re going to get really bogged down by all your insecurities, all your fears, all your excuses. And you won’t create amazing content. You won’t get your message out if you don’t have a strong why. Because it’s not just about doing loans. It’s about making an impact. Right? Why do you do what you do?So let’s talk about how to hack the podcast game. So you want to start a podcast. First of all, you should start a podcast. Why? Because podcasts are awesome. They’re great pieces of content. They connect human beings. What should your podcast be on? I don’t care. Whatever you’re passionate about. And I see a lot of loan people jumping into podcasts and they’re making them about the entrepreneurial spirit and all that stuff. And great if that’s your passion. Great! But I watched one guy start a podcast on baseball. And not just what you would think, not Major League Baseball. On adult league baseball. Adults who love to play baseball. And apparently there’s huge leagues all over the country, and this guy made a podcast about it, connecting all the people there in that space. That to me is incredible. Number one, he found a passion he cares about, and then he’s connecting other humans together with it. Trust me, he will get loans, but it’s not about loans, it’s about the love of the game. And that’s the power of that special hack. Finding what’s your why and connecting to it.But let’s go one step deeper, one step deeper guys. Let me turn my phone off. Interview people. There it is. That’s the trick. That’s the hack. That’s the podcast hack. Interview people. Look, if you’ve ever read the amazing book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, you know that everyone loves to talk about themselves. And what a time where you can give people a platform and a voice. I mean, think about that for a second. Think about how many small businesses are suffering. Think about how many people, right now, are trying to navigate this crazy time. And you in your community can give them a digital voice. And then you just shut up. You just ask questions. They answer the questions. Life is good. You just did a podcast. Now everyone’s freaking out and going, “Well, how do I cut the audio? And where do I put it?” And all that stuff. Guys, that’s the Google. You can figure that out. You can type in anything and figure it out. It’s not hard.But what’s holding you back is just the content, the actual strategy, the actual, “What am I going to say” thing is holding you back. It’s not how to Google where to upload my audio for my podcast. By the way, so look right now. Can you use zoom? Yes. Yes, I know you can. Yes, I know you can. And can you hit the record button on the Zoom? Yes. You just did a podcast. That’s it. Send the zoom link, bring in a business owner, bring in a realtor, bring in a friend, bring in anybody that has a compelling story to share. Hello? Now you have a podcast. Everything else from there is an excuse. “I don’t know how to take the audio out,” blah blah. Yeah, it’s fine. Google. You’ll solve it. But now you have a podcast. And now you know exactly what to do with it. Because right now I’m telling you the ability to drive human connection is going to drive your success in this world. And I think right now, on this crazy Tuesday, we need more human connection than ever before.By the way, your video that you just recorded on Zoom, your interview that you just recorded, is now a YouTube video on your channel. Absolutely. On your podcast playlist on your YouTube channel. So now you did the Zoom … By the way, don’t even do it live. That’s fine. Don’t even do the Zoom live if that’s too scary for you. You should do it, you should step into the space. Come on. The water’s warm, get in here and swim around. But even if that’s too terrifying, you can still record it, upload it to your YouTube channel, upload the audio to your podcast, and then share it back with the person that you interviewed. Guess what they’re going to do? They’re going to share it. And all of a sudden your messaging is starting to build. It’s starting to build.And now if I reverse engineer this and you look back and you go, “How do I hack the social media game?” Can you imagine? One interview, we’re going to call it pillar content for all of you that are paying attention, can be 45 minutes long, right? 30 to 45 minutes long, maybe an hour, maybe an hour because you’re pushing it. And let me just play this out for you. Let’s say you find a local restaurant. I got one here, three brothers from Italy who opened a pizza place because there was no good pizza in Costa Mesa. I was like, “Yes, bring your vision to life.” COVID’s here. They can’t do what they wanted to do. They’re having to figure out how to get pizza out more, people can’t come to the restaurant.Imagine, you grab those brothers, you get them on a Zoom call. And you say, “Why did you open a pizza place? What’s your favorite pizza? What’s the difference between Italian pizza and other pizzas? What’s your vision for your restaurant? What’s your favorite thing on the menu?” You just let them tell their story. From there, they can talk for 45 minutes to an hour easy, and share their story to everyone. Then you take that Zoom video. You drop it into YouTube under your playlist podcast. You take the audio, you upload into the pod stream feed, which you can Google. Trust me, it’s not hard. And then you share it on social media.Now, let’s go one step further in that 45 minutes of pillar content, you’re going to have snippets that are awesome. Little one minute, 30 second snippets. Or quotes. Repurpose that. Take the quote, put it into a graphic and a picture. Send it out, tweet it. I guarantee you, you can probably have 40 to 50 pieces of content from one piece of pillar content. If you do that once a month, so you just do one interview and now you have 40 things to play with for the rest of the month. You’re easily posting over once a day. And all you did was interview a small business owner. Here’s my favorite part about this too. Grab those small business owners or those realtors or whoever, at the end of the podcast, ask this one question. “How can anybody who listens to this help your business?”You’re welcome. There’s the hack. Just talk to cool people and connect people. If we can become great connectors of human beings, you could become great wielders of influence. It’s not about bragging about what you do, and how much business you do, and how fast you close loans. It’s about connecting other human beings. Now, we’re at the 10 minute mark. And I’ve got some more stuff for you guys. If you’re watching this now, or if you’re going to watch this in the future, I want you to type in hashtag bypassed, and a comment. If you’re watching it now or watching this later type in hashtag bypassed, and you’re going to get talking to the Al bot. That’s right, I have a bot. I birthed the bot. That’s not good. We made a bot. That’s all terrible.But the bot has one specific thing he wants to do. Number one, he wants to connect with you and connect you to me so I can share things with you. Right now, I created nine tutorials on how to do all of this stuff. All the stuff. From the banners, to GIFs, to hacking Canva, to all the stuff. By the way, how to GIF yourself, that’s a gold mine. I know you want to be a GIF. Blake over on LinkedIn wants to be a GIF for sure. Bypassed, Ira, Bypassed. Like the book. It’s a shameless plug. It’s super shameless. It’s right there.Oh, everyone’s doing bypass, duh, duh. I love you guys. This stupid bot that I made is going to send you nine tutorials that I made for you for free. Nothing. No, I don’t want anything. Just, I’m going to just give it to you, and it’s all yours. Oh, by the way on LinkedIn, if you’re on LinkedIn, you’ve got to click the link that I posted. Bypassed will not take you to the bot. Only on Facebook, my friends. Sorry, Ira, it’s my fault. It’s my fault. You did it right, dude. You killed it. And then I failed you. Because you’ve got to click this link. This link is on LinkedIn, click this and it’ll go there. It’ll take you to Al bot. Otherwise, you’ve got to be on Facebook.Sorry. It’s a Facebook messenger bot. I don’t know. LinkedIn doesn’t have any cool bots. I don’t know what to tell you. But click this link if you’re on LinkedIn, and I will send you nine tutorials, and here they are. I’ll just tell them to you right now. Video basics 101. Video basics, 2.0. Into editing, and music, and adding graphics and overlays, and all that fun stuff. How to turn yourself into a GIF, which is my personal favorite, because then everyone needs to be a GIF, that’s amazing. Let me go back to my YouTube channel and make sure I get them all right. Do, do, do. Yes, here we go. How to improve your YouTube channel, how to make it show up in the way that is incredible and how you want it. How to grow your social media. If your audience isn’t there and listening, then you’re not getting influence. How to graphic design like a pro without using Photoshop, because I can’t do Photoshop. Nope, not smart.How to multi stream live. Now that one’s going to be pushing some people to their own comfort zone, but that’s fine. You’ve got to go. How to hack your Instagram carousel. If you don’t know what an Instagram carousel is, you now will, they get more attention, and I’ll show you how to hack it and make them. And then finally, and this one’s a little stupid, I know. But I like it, so deal with it. How to turn yourself into a potato. This is worth it. This is worth all the videos. If you just download … I’m sorry. It’s that good. So click this link if you’re on LinkedIn, or type in hashtag bypassed, with an E-D at the end, if you’re on Facebook, and I will send you those nine tutorials because I love you. Because I’m trying to get better with you. I’m trying to figure this out the same time everyone else is figuring this out.And I hope that you come with me on the journey. That’s the whole point here guys, is that we’ve got to figure out these new skills together. So, I want to go back. I want to recap this hacking strategy to get you guys prepped and rocking in the social media game. By the way, if you don’t have enough followers, type in hashtag bypassed, I’ll show you how to get more connections and followers. All right. How to hack the podcast game. Don’t come up with any original content. Interview small business owners. Can you find 12? Yes, for sure. A fitness studio guy, a life insurance guy, a restaurant, another restaurant. You guys, you can come up with 12. Come on, that’s one a month. That’s incredible.Do a Zoom call with them and record it. Go live if you’re feeling a little saucy, right? Record it. Then upload it to YouTube in your podcast playlist, upload the audio into the podcast world. You can Google how to do that, it’s not hard. Once you have the video and audio you’re already there. And then from there, you probably can take 30 to 40 pieces of that conversation and make new pieces of content to share. Tweets, graphics, social media images, Instagram images, little 10 second video clips. And you’re rocking. You are rocking the social media landscape. And all you’re doing is having people tell their stories. Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense up here. Making sure it makes sense to you guys.This is how you do it. This is how you do it. You do not need to come up with your own original content. You can, and you should, and you will, but just interview people. If you’re making excuses, just interview people. I’ve seen so many loan officers and professionals who are starting their podcast, just say, “Yeah, I just interviewed people and it kind of tricked my way into it.” Yes! You do not need to stand up here for a 45 minute rant and just deliver content off the top of your head. You’re probably not comfortable with that yet. But you can sure as hell interview somebody, and let them tell their story, and you’re rocking.So again, if you want the free content, if you want the free tutorials, if you’re on LinkedIn, click this. It’s always a mirror, so I want it like, it’s … Anyway, you get it. Click it, or if you’re on Facebook, hashtag bypassed, and we’re rocking guys. And I’ll get you all the free tutorials and all the fun stuff. And that’s really all I got for your day. I think it ties in nicely to the message I think we all need to lean into today.You have the incredible opportunity to be a connector of people. And right now we need connection more than ever before. So be bold, be brave, and go out and let other people share their stories. And you magnify it. Magnify their story with your efforts, and you will find business at the other end of that, opportunities at that the other end of that, leads, loans, relationships. All that will be at the end of the opportunity of that connection of other human beings. Dead serious. Wanting to keep it short and sweet today, guys. 15, 16 minutes. I hope this is helpful. If you’re chatting with a bot right now, I hope it’s hilarious. And I’ll see you guys on the Internets. Coming up Thursday, time to have another podcast. We’re live every Tuesday 9:30 AM, and live every Thursday … Try to be alive around 10 with our podcast. Hope you guys have a wonderful day. Go connect and hug, at least virtually, some more humans today.

Take care, everybody.

Come hang with THE preeminent mortgage thought leader in the space, Todd Duncan. Todd’s been pushing and coaching the mortgage industry since he founded the Duncan Group in 1992. Come learn what Todd is teaching today and come experience how he his pivoting his own business during Covid19. 

Your snippet of this episode of the Modern Lending Podcast…

• Todd goes over the switch to digital.
• Salesmastryevent 2020
• Transformation is the key goal for Todd, Purposefully and Intentionally
• Spend more time looking for conversations

Episode Transcribe

Alec:What’s up everybody.

Welcome to a special episode of the modern lending podcast live. The guest today is a man who really needs no introduction. If you don’t know who Todd Duncan is, you’re not in the mortgage space. This guy has wrote I think 17 books. I’ll get the actual number on that when we come back. This guy has been leading the industry as a thought leader since I was like rent driving around with a Honda civic trying to talk to realtors. I’ve been to this guy’s conference for… it feels like decades, Todd decades. And now we’re going to talk about how crazy this world is changing and how this man is helping us change with it. So without further ado, let’s bring on Todd Duncan. The man, the myth, the legend dude.Todd Duncan:That was a good vibe.Alec:Oh, feel good to see you dude. I wish we could be doing this in person. I miss you man but this is as good as we get. I guess.Todd Duncan:Yeah. The world in which we live is a tad different right now. And one thing we have to look forward to is when we can get back together face to face. But you know what? This is innovation right here, right?Alec:Yeah. This is what I’m loving to talk about with you today because obviously you’ve been leading originators forever. You’ve been pouring into our community, our industry for decades. And you have a unique voice in space in the industry. And right now I think that leadership is so needed because we’re all a little adrift and we’re all trying to row or figure out where to go or what to latch onto and it’s crazy. And even your business is changing. And we will talk about the Virtual Sales Mastery which I’m actually super stoked about. But you know Todd, was that right on the books? How many books has it been? How many books have you published?Todd Duncan:Yeah, 17.Alec:Oh my gosh. So for everybody that is new to the industry because believe it or not there’s new blood [00:02:02] right now which is awesome and amazing. Give everybody a little bit of your background. When did you start getting into the thought leader game? When you start leading other people? And there’s my sister saying hi so we got a comment on LinkedIn. We’re live on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. So, thank you guys for hanging out with us today.Todd Duncan:[inaudible 00:48:49]Yeah. So I think my story is like a lot of people’s stories. I graduated from college. I had a degree in finance and marketing. And I was at a 4th of July party about a month after graduating. It happened to be hosted by my little league coach when I was a young boy. Good friends from my parents and he and his wife owned the largest independent real estate firm in the Western United States Tarbell Realty. And they had about 4,000 agents. And Don and I were talking in the backyard about me becoming a mortgage person. And I had no idea what that really meant.Todd Duncan:I got set up with an interview with the guy that was running the mortgage company that was owned by Tarbell. And within about four weeks, I was a $1,500 a month for only 90 days loan originator. And I had a 1970 Camaro with a ripped vinyl top with a hole in one of my headers. And the first real estate office I called on was in San Clemente California. And I’m driving back past the parking lot. I’ve got this beater of a car and there’s Rolls-Royce, BMWs and Mercedes in the parking lot And I’m thinking, holy cow, I am in over my head.Todd Duncan:So I parked my car about a block away so nobody can see it. And I walked in that office. And I remember to this day just see nothing but files like grades, big office under agents and I was out of my wheels over my skis. I had no idea what to do. And seven hours later, so I was making my way from San Clemente back to Panama. Seven hours later, I just felt no love. I felt no joy. I felt nothing. And so I hung a left and went to the beach. And decided to spend the rest of my first day in sales calls, thinking on whether I really wanted to do this.Todd Duncan:And that just shortly after that, probably two weeks after that. I ran into a guy that was another originator. Worked for another company. Different territory. We weren’t competitors. 34 years old. Funds 400 loans a year. And I just said to him, “how do you do it?” And he sat me down.Todd Duncan:I think Alec one of the great things is mentorship is real. People that are further down the path than you are, and we all need them, we are all of them. We have people behind us. We have people in front of us. We all need mentoring. That guy poured into me for about a month. We became best friends. At the end of my first year, with an average loan amount of $72,000 I funded $27 million in loans.Todd Duncan:So, I did that. I kept doing that. And at the age of 25, my company asked me to start training the new recruits that they were hiring. So I did that and kept doing my own business. They keep bringing in more people. And I keep training and kept doing my own business. And by the time I was in 10 years, I had trained about 400 loan officers and had done about 5,000 loans.Todd Duncan:So the next two years were interesting because I was feeling that like, what’s next? I mean, I’m crushing it and lending my agents and making a boat ton of money from me. What’s next? And you know what I did is I answered a question. If I could do anything I wanted, what would I do? And the answer was I would help people like me with. I would help people that are starting off in the business or have been in the business for any length of time and had been doing it wrong. I would help them win.Todd Duncan:So I remember in January of 1989. I decided that I was going to start a mortgage training company and did about a year of preparation and then hit it in 1990. And had a partner. It was originally called the Pratt Duncan group. And Jim was a founder of PMI. And he was a speaker. And so I relocated to San Diego. The Pratt Duncan group was birthed. We had a really good two year run. And I just had a big vision. I just had a bigger vision than I think Jim had at that point. And reasonably so, Jim was probably 30 years older than me. And different place in life. Right? And so in 1992, I incorporated the Duncan group. And since 1992 we have been helping mortgage and real estate originators make more money in less time with less stress. And that is what we do.Alec:When you’ve stayed so true to your mission Todd, over the years. And obviously I got into the game and immediately was exposed to your brand, your training, your efficacy, coaching programs, events. And it’s been a huge foundational building block for so many of us originators who are coming into this space. Even mature talented originators to come and get kind of another vision, another viewpoint from somebody who’s… I always think of it this way. You’re like at the middle of all these streams going to the ocean. All these different originators coming to the same place you’re right in the middle. And you’re also gathering all of their expertise and feedback and thoughts. And then able to kind of reshare that into your platform. It’s just been amazing. And obviously your books have had major impact across the industry as well.Alec:So really thankful for you. Really thankful for what your vision. And what you decided to do on that. And kind of on that note too, you’ve had given what you’ve been doing and that actually has been inspiring to me because I love people who are willing to go get uncomfortable. Who are like, you know what? The world moved as well I got to move with it. Like I wish I had my favorite book. Am I here at books who moved my cheese.[00:07:46]Alec:Every now and when I call some of my best managers and I’m like, Hey, “I’m moving your cheese right now.”[crosstalk 00:07:51]Is like all right because adaptability is huge. Like adaptability right now is paramount. So can you share what you’re doing? To manage through this as an inspiration for others who have their own businesses and their own origination strategies? How are you changing?Todd Duncan:Yeah. I want to answer a couple of ways. One is, I think that we all have to remember that we have a choice on what we do and when we do it. And I think most people wait for something like we’re going through right now to kind of force a need to change. It’s all talk about what do you do when you’re forced to change, when it’s the only thing you can do is change. But the bigger question is what are you doing when external change is not put upon you?Alec:I love that.Todd Duncan:Yeah. And so, early in my career, I understood a concept called the Sigmoid curve. It’s a typical bell curve where you start and then you climb. And then at some level you flat line. It’s either you’re flat lining because you haven’t built your client base enough or you’re flat lining because you haven’t built a team strong enough. You’re flat lining because you haven’t gotten skilled enough. You’re flat lining because, because, because. And what the sigmoid curves signifies is that on your decline, if you decide to change, you’ll never get higher than the trajectory you are on. You will only get back to where you were.Todd Duncan:And so the idea for mortgage professionals, for real estate professionals, the idea for leaders in those markets is to have a constant curiosity about change. And what does it look like? And what do I need to do? And I don’t have to be the first. And I don’t have to be the first innovator. But I have to be an early adopter of what’s working. And if I can do that, then I go to work on somebody else’s energy, and expense and intellect. But I’m an early follower. And that changes the trajectory.Todd Duncan:So what happen to the event business? So Sigmoid curve is… We’re cranking the company’s growing. And we’re in Savannah Georgia. We’re leading our elite group for a two day conference. And all of a sudden Saturday, this COVID thing announces. Boom, everybody’s going, “what is this?” And we got a group put together. We’ve got everybody ending on Sunday. We got airplanes that are supposed to be flying people home. And all of a sudden it’s like, okay, this is a new world. This is a 24 hour new world. And we don’t know what it means. We didn’t even know if we’d be able to get home.Alec:Oh my God.Todd Duncan:We get on the airplane and Savannah. And we’ve got the hand wipes, we’ve got the mask. Wiping down the seats. Wiping down where everybody sneezes. Wiping down all that kind of stuff. And we ended up getting home. And we learned within about 72 hours that basically if you’re in a mass gathering business, you’re out of business.Alec:Right.Todd Duncan:There’s no, like a year from now you might want to think about a different business model. It’s like now basically seven days into this deal, you’re done. And so we had to cancel a hydro sales Academy. We had to cancel about eight other events that I was going to be speaking at. We had to cancel our leadership event, which is still two months away. But[crosstalk 00:11:22] close the Island and the Caribbean is closed until August. So when you’re in the business of doing things that the world will not let you do, you have to be innovative.Todd Duncan:So what I did, I did a couple things. One is, I asked the question of my Facebook group. I said, what are your biggest pain points right now? And I got about 42 different things that were pain points. And so I went into my recording studio. Which was right behind this logo.Alec:[crosstalk 00:11:52] building all that out. Like you must be foreseeing the future because you[crosstalk 00:11:55]Todd Duncan:Yeah. My recording studio is like, if I were a rapper I can produce, I’m not. But I can produce anything I want when I want.[crosstalk 00:12:08]Alec:I think I need a Todd Dunkin rap at some point in my future, then this has to happen.Todd Duncan:Okay. I’m not going to do it right now. But let’s see. Wait, you do talk about impromptu, right?Alec:[inaudible 00:12:21]Todd Duncan:No. But the idea is that as the world’s changed, what are you going to do to continue to be relevant and be successful in the world? So we invented this brand new product. It’s a 16 hour product. It’s got…Alec:Please share about it. It’s awesome.Todd Duncan:Yeah. And so we did that. And then we decided to… what would happen if I just stepped up and lit the fuse on my social. And every day at nine o’clock, I just went live. Right. And I started going live like three and a half weeks ago. And we’re getting, I don’t know a thousand, 1200 people a day just coming in and looking at the videos. And sometimes we interview people like this. Sometimes I just do a ramp. Sometimes in the car on the way in, I see a sign or I think about something. And so we’re adding a lot of contribution to people.Todd Duncan:I designed to think called mindset moments. And I decided every morning I would try to find element of the day that was about mindset. And I’d record that and post it on social. And so we did all that. And then of course the Mother load decision is, if we don’t know what the world’s going to look like in 90 days, can we even in good conscience go to the marketplace and say, “buy your airline ticket, reserve your hotel room and be prepared to fly to San Diego for sales mastery?” I’d love if that were the world in which we live, but it’s not, it’s just not. And we don’t have any certainty whatsoever.Todd Duncan:So in terms of being able to hold live events. So what do you do? Well, you have to do the right thing, all right? And the next right thing is how do you take what you have and modernize it? You look at the logo, modern lending. How do you? How are you more modern right now as a mortgage professional than you were 90 days ago? Just how much more innovative have you gotten?Todd Duncan:I just hung up with a guy that all he’s doing is setting face time dates with his realtors. He’s taking them to lunch. Taking them to coffee and their face time dates. And he’s doing it regularly. He’s funded $50 million year to date. He’s got a pipeline of $18 million and he’s innovating, right? He’s just connecting.Todd Duncan:I locked on to how are we nurturing our CEO clients and how are we nurturing the people that we work with? We’re going to do something really special for them. We’re going to do something with sales mastery. That’s really special. We’re going to give everybody in the world. And I mean the world. I’m talking about Australia, Canada. I’m talking the of EU, I’m talking of to Italy, certainly talking about America. Everybody this year gets a front row seat.Alec:It’s crazy.Todd Duncan:At Sales Mastery. How do you have a front row seat? You don’t have to come. We’re going to bring it to you. Right? So we’re already in play. The studios are already getting built. The speakers are already hired and we’re going to take Sales Mastery to the client instead of having the client have to come with us. And we think here’s the innovation. We think that by doing that, we’re going to be able to quadruple or quintuple the size of the audience.Alec:I believe it.Todd Duncan:And maybe even more. Maybe more. We’ve got one group right now that might bring 2000 people. That’s usually our crowd size.Alec:Yeah, exactly.Todd Duncan:So I’m doing a lot of that kind of thinking. One of the things I want to say to everybody. It’s important to recognize, yes, that we are going through something, right. It’s important to understand that everybody watching this podcast. And everybody walking the earth. We’re all going through something. Right? And in varying degrees of level. The key is to grow through it. The key is to take this scenario which nobody could predict. And understand that you can choose to go through it or grow through it. And become something because of it. And I think that’s the big message I want to send to people is, what is good about this? What is it doing for you? What is it teaching you? What are the lessons that you’re learning from it? And most people just try to muscle their way through whatever pain point they’re in.Alec:Yeah.Todd Duncan:We’ve never been here before. And so the question is, how do you go through this? And how do you emerge from this? Whenever it is over, “better, stronger, healthier, happier, wiser.” I got stuff going on in my office right now that I can tell you. I hadn’t even really thought of. I hadn’t thought about how many less people do we need here if we do this there. How does this change here if we go do that here, I’ll give a breakthrough.Todd Duncan:So we do the hydro sales Academy as you know every year. We do two of them publicly. They both tap out at 150 people. And it’s live. It’s at a hotel. It’s highly experiential. But we have a sales cycle in the first quarter. And then we have a sales cycle in the fourth quarter. And in between those two sales cycles, we don’t do the high trust sales Academy. Okay. So what do we do? Let’s turn the High Trust Sales Academy into digital. Let’s just let somebody every day or 10 people a day. Not have to wait 90 days for a day. Just come through it.Todd Duncan:We’ve got the learning platform. I’m teaching it. I’m going to ask you the same questions online that I’m going to ask you live. And now all of a sudden people can buy that every day. Talk about a game changer.Alec:It’s accessibility again is amazing. And this is what I love your comment earlier. There’s something about changing without a catalyst moment. And then there’s something with changing with a catalyst moment. And COVID is a catalyst moment. Just like the credit crisis was for many of us back in 2008 where we were forced to change. Our company went away. Something happened. Our products suite went away. We had to physically change because there was a catalyst. And there wasn’t a catalyst happening to the local mortgage pro until COVID. And I think that as terrible as it is, and as much as I hate the social distancing and I want to hug everybody. Man I’m so encouraged by watching how professionals that you’re inspiring Todd. Step into these new mediums. Step into these new places. Becoming accessible. Turning the spotlight on themselves and sharing their expertise in a global setting. A digital setting. And it’s inspiring.Todd Duncan:Yeah.Alec:It was kind of needed because otherwise I don’t think people were going to move. I don’t think they were going to change.Todd Duncan:It brings up an interesting point that you can take any situation, and you’re right Alec, this was not like there was no warning call. There was not like this is going to happen. It’s not like…Alec:You were on a retreat with a bunch of professionals. Like God.Todd Duncan:What’s really wild about that, as one of the guys in the group four days later tested positive for COVID. He was in the hospital for 14 days and he was in that group.Alec:Wow.Todd Duncan:And that’s how… and nobody thought they had it. Nobody thought they were going to get it. But here’s the interesting point. And I want to have everybody that comes alongside you in your modern lending podcast to understand that stuff happens. And the key to life is not thinking that you can control stuff. You can’t. I mean rates go up, rates go down. You have zero control. Housing prices go up, housing prices go down. You have zero control. Unemployment goes up, unemployment goes down, you have zero control. Consumer confidence goes up, consumer confidence goes down. You have zero control. Consumer confidence right now is 55 points lower than it was February.Alec:Wow.Todd Duncan:Okay. And then just hit up 1% in May as compared to April. You have no control over that. So the greatest gift is to understand that for every thing that happens, there is goodness in that thing. But she got to find it. And so flow is about… like if I were trying to manage through the idea that the event business is temporarily shut down. If I try to manage my way through that, I would have gone crazy. But I understood, okay. This is a moment. And what everybody understands, whether it’s making a call, or failing on a call, or doing alone, or failing out alone, or making a listing presentation, or failing on the list. All that matters is that you have all these moments and how you go through a moment. We’re in a COVID moment, right? But it’s been nine weeks.Alec:It’s been a long moment,Todd Duncan:But there’s a hundred moments every day because of COVID. And how you go through the moment determines who you become. I was writing last night and I was talking about Charles Swindoll who’s one of my favorite pastors and theologians. And one of the quotes that he is most famous for ends with, “For us in life, life is 90%,” Okay, 90% happening to us. And we can’t control much of that. But all we can control is our attitude about that. And so in all things there is goodness. Everything does happen for a reason. It’s crazy as it may sound.Todd Duncan:And you only have two choices. I only have two choices as human beings. We can either be optimistic or pessimistic. It’s that simple. And if we’re optimistic, principally centered, we know our purpose. We know what’s important to us. We’ve got networks, we’ve got tight family, we got all that going on, we should be optimistic. We got great rates. We got our worst day is capacity issues. Loans falling out of heaven. It’s an easy market but it’s a hard market. But all you can do is learn from wherever you are and learn from whatever you’re going through.Todd Duncan:And so I think that for us, I’m actually very, very excited about how high trust has navigated through this. And I believe that our innovations are six major innovations that have happened in the last eight weeks. All six of those will change the future of this company in a way that it would not have happened. Had it not been for COVID. That is crazy.Alec:But that’s the perspective that I love hearing Todd. I love you sharing it because I think a lot of us need. I think perspective really helps just deal with our own hardships. And so just having you come out with optimism. The six things that are going to radically transform the future of your business. The future of your influence. It’s encouraging and I hope everyone hears that and is encouraged as well. Because the same opportunities available to everybody that Todd’s talking about for himself right now. And I’m taking a lot of from… I’m like getting all pumped up. I’m digging it.Alec:And so I’ve got two things for you here that I would love for you to lean into. The first, just for everybody that has been to Sales Mastery before and knows the experience and knows the amazing opportunity that presents to everybody to grow and learn. What’s your passion? What do you want people to walk away from this new virtual one because you’re pouring into it? I’ve already seen the list of speakers. They’re dynamic. They’re incredible. You’re pouring into a new style of event. What are you hoping somebody walks away from that? What would be your win for everybody there? Because I want people to hear your heart behind this. Because you’re leading this whole evolution of this new digital conference. And so what’s your goal for it?Todd Duncan:The simple answer is transformation. And I say that as purposefully and as intentionally as I can. When I had the vision to launch Sales Mastery, it was the same then. How can I help people in the area of impact and influence. And how can we come together every year and fine tune that. And do a kind of a tune up on that. I’m blown away Alec. That I look back and this will be the 28th year of sale. The same brand. Right 28 years of Sales Mastery. And millions of home owners impacted every single month because of the lessons people have learned at Sales Mastery.Todd Duncan:So this year I want transformation. And what does transformation mean? I think and I know you believe Alec that the next couple of years are going to be very, very interesting and how this world corrects around not only this virus, but also the realities of interest rate, change, and market volatility and all those types of things. And so, I’m talking about like what are the habits of the future?Alec:Yeah.Todd Duncan:What are the new habits of the future? And the new disciplines of the future that you’re not even aware of right now? And Mastery we’re going to bring 10 of them to you. And when you think about a habit, you think about, I got to do something differently. All of us have heard this idea that it takes 21 days to form a new habit and that’s absolute bias. It’s absolutely implausible that would be all it takes to change a habit. And the reason is because it didn’t take 21 days to form the bad habit. The bad habit got formed every day over 21 years.Alec:Yes.Todd Duncan:Okay. So, what you do uniquely and differently and there’s not a lot. But how do you adopt a mindset around knowing how many days and what is the operating system? So develop transformative habits that disrupt your market and change yours in your client’s life forever. And it might surprise you, but one of our speakers who is an expert on habits who wrote a book called Atomic Habits is going to tell you the most important habits take 266 days to form. So we’re not only going to bring Mastery Digital to the world but we’re going to give you months after it’s over to replay the information. So you informed the habit.Alec:I actually think that’s as valuable or more valuable than the moment because trust me sometimes it’s like a fire hose. Right like you’re just like, Whoa! Like you’re just getting all and you’re tribbling notes. And you’re trying to remember what everybody said. And then you’re debriefing with your fellow people there. But the fact that this time you get to have it on repeat for like I think it’s like six months. Is that right?Todd Duncan:Unlimited replays. Yeah.Alec:Unlimited replays of just going back and tapping into. To a conversation that happened that you just, I mean, you’re going to glean more things from it. I mean, Todd, that’s a gift. This is an incredible thing that you’re doing in Sales Mastery because you can’t… [inaudible 00:27:46]Todd Duncan:Yeah. I don’t know how I would change the future of events. I think at one point it’s like, I can watch the Rolling Stones on a Facebook live deal and have fun. But I’d rather be at T-Mobile Arena or Staple Center and watch them live. I would hope that the passion for live events comes back in a post COVID world. But I can tell you this, we’re never not going to stream Mastery even though we may have a line of live event. And that’s one of the breakthroughs of this innovation.Todd Duncan:It really is important to understand that there is goodness in everything that is occurring. And so when we look at the 40 different presenters that are already engaged at Sales Mastery, every single one of them has a COVID success story. And we’re going to be sharing that. And I don’t want to park on COVID as like this.Alec:I get it.Todd Duncan:It is what it is. But it has forced people to come up with new ways to do old things. Right? And that’s what Mastery is going to be about. It’s going to be transformative in terms of what are the innovations? What are the high producers doing uniquely and differently? How have we telepathed technology into a standard operating procedure? What is modern really look like?Alec:Yes.Todd Duncan:Surprisingly, it still involves a deeper percentage of humanity than it does technology. Interesting. So how do we have deeper human connection in a world like COVID where all you can use is technology? How do we do that? So it’s going to be solid man. And we’re really excited about it. We’ve got the production crews coming in tomorrow. We’re starting to kind of figure it out what are our build out looks like from a stage standpoint? And we’re going to use technology to bring these speakers in from all over the world and broadcast Mastery to all over the world. It’s going be exciting. The other thing Alec. I’ve just got to mention this.Alec:Yeah.Todd Duncan:Every single person needs to understand that this is like the moment of greatness where… let’s get your top 10 agents. Let’s get your business partners. Let’s get them a subscription to come to Sales Mastery. So remember guys, don’t even have to fly here. You can sit in front. I got a 40 inch monitor right here. You do too. I could look at Mastery right here. I can sit on my stool and just say, “wow, look at that.” My agent next to me, two bottle stools and we could be learning. And it’s simple. The cost is just stupidly low. It’s unbelievable.Alec:I’m a fan of this. I think it’s going to be a breakthrough moment for a lot of people. The accessibility of it. The replay action. The habits of the future help me to comment on their hope. It’s wonderful. You’re joining us on LinkedIn. What are the habits of the future? What an incredible little snippet of like… that could be the whole session. I’m looking forward to all this Todd.Alec:Here’s what I want to go for the next 10 to 15 minutes. We’ll see how we wrap and questions come in. Like I said before, I really feel like you have a unique space in the industry. You’re at this focal point of knowledge because not only are you coaching out across the industry and across the country but all that stuff’s flowing back through you. And I really like to get tactical to a degree on some of these episodes and share. What are people doing? What are stories that are happening? Like you shared one with the scheduling Face Times which I love. What are you seeing great originators leaning into anecdotally that can hopefully like trigger something or sparks something in somebody who’s watching this or watching this on the replay and just get a little bit of inspiration to go maybe do something they were or afraid to do today.Todd Duncan:Yeah. Things that come to mind that if you want to lean into it. And these are specific things that are happening. One thing I think that is going to be critically important in the future is that every lender understands what the future of marketing actually looks like for the local dialed in lender. And how is that landscape going to change? So I’ll give you an example. So one of the things that we’re leading the charge in is what we’re referring to as consumer centric marketing. Consumer direct, it’s not real term builder. It is consumer centric marketing.Todd Duncan:I had an interchange last night with one of the guys that we’re coaching in our elite group. And between July of last year and April of this year, he has engaged in excess of 20 new business development partnerships in the wealth management insurance world.Alec:Okay.Todd Duncan:Okay. And what is happening, is what led to that is the discipline around what really modern lending is. Modern lending is, I’m not doing a loan and saying goodbye to you. Modern lending is I’m going to be a better consultant. I’m going to ask you questions you’ve never been asked. I’m going to learn things that you are going to share with me. And I’m going to solve things that maybe have never been solved in your life. And every single year we are going to have a checkup and we’re going to measure the efficiency of your mortgage and your real estate strategy. And where you are in life. And we’re going to continue that for as long as I’m alive. And if I die my team’s going to continue it for as long as you’re alive. And if you die, we’re going to do it with your daughter and daughters and such.Right?Alec:Yes.Todd Duncan:And so what ended up happening is we start to look at why are we doing that? Why we’re doing is consumer direct. Most lenders can’t compete with that. The realtor builder market is still healthy but it is unsettled right now. The world of eye buyers has changed. Most of the real estate markets are level, if not down a little bit because people are losing job security. Consumer confidence went down, not up even though it got one point pickup in May it’s still low. People are not sure about their financial future and so on so that market is going to… It’ll come back but like I said, we don’t control when real estate values go up and down, we don’t control it. Here’s what we control. We’re going to control the center of the universe. And the center of the universe is every single human being that is not in a consumer direct cross fare region campaign and everybody who’s not coming in through our traditional channels right now of realtors and builders. And we’re going to go here. And in what here is, is faster trust, higher qualification, better FICO scores, bigger centers of influence.Todd Duncan:I’m attached status to a realtor or builder which is code for [inaudible 00:34:56] can now attach them to a realtor builder. And we’re going to do that every day. So the modern mortgage lender is spending more time every day nurturing their network than they are reaching out for leads and conversations. And if they’re nurturing their network then we’re activating what’s called the circle of cashflow which is… I don’t have to sell, people sell for me. If I’ve got a database of 2000 people and I am focused in this consumer centric silo, I’m actually a loan rep with a sales force of 2000 people. That’s a new mindset.Alec:It is. That’s radically a new mindset.Todd Duncan:Yeah. So stuff like that. By the way, we’re going to unleash that playbook at Sales Mastery.Alec:Yes. Yeah. I think it’s just crazy to me that consumer centric thinking is becoming so crucial to win Todd, I could not agree more with your comment. I love that you’re gonna be leading a whole group of people through this playbook on it because it’s part of the future and I know people who think it’s the whole future and I don’t necessarily think I agree with that totally. I think our realtor and builder partners are massively influential still. They’re fighting for customer attention. They’re working their butts off every day as well. So there’s really rich partnerships in that way. Cassie just commented to tell me how to sign up for virtual Sales Mastery 2020. I’m in. You go and Google Sales Mastery and you can’t miss it because Todd’s all over the internet and all of a sudden bang you’re in. Todd I think that it’s the right mindset. It is the modern mindset.Todd Duncan:Let me share something.Alec:Yeah. Sure. Share.Todd Duncan:Before I forget, you guys need… everybody needs to understand that the reason this model is not a suggestion but a mandate is because the buying SO has changed. The strategic operation of buying home has changed. So the reason why you have to be in consumer centric visibly deep entrenched markets is because the agent is not going to hear from that buyer the way they have heard from that buyer and when they have heard from that buyer. So if I’m going to be the bridge between agent success and matching buyers with agents, which is essentially what I’m going to do. I’m actually filling a need that if I don’t fill it, I can’t add the same kind of value to my agents. And my agents are going to lose because buyers are making lender decisions before they’re actually looking for property or even contacting an agent.Todd Duncan:So, it’s like, don’t think about this. You’ve got a plant on it. The guy I’m talking about right now has generated over a million dollars in commissions to agents this year already from the consumer centric market. Think about controllability there. Think about how much value you would bring them. Think about an agent that might hear from another agent that they just… that other agent just got a $22,000 commission because of a lender referral. My agent is going to call the lender and go, I want in on that action, right? So that there’s, there’s, a reason why we need to be in the middle. And if you’re in the middle, you have all of this other sourcing going on. And it’s just a flip of the switch. It is letting everybody know in your database that you are longterm thinking it is reassessing them. It’s if you have not looked at every borrower’s mortgage statement in the last four months. That’s an option. That’s a way to do it.Todd Duncan:You should do a mortgage review at least twice a year, for sure, once a year. You know how efficient is the mortgage. You ought to be asking that market, what are their real estate goals and dreams for the next five years? Because your agents aren’t asking that question. And if you’re asking that question of every single buyer, and let’s say out of your database of 2000 people, 113 people tell you they want to buy a home next year.Alec:Yes.Todd Duncan:There you go. You have an agent. Well the guy that helped me buy this house, I haven’t heard from him in eight years. So I wouldn’t say I don’t have one.Alec:Good.Todd Duncan:I have. I have one.Alec:I want to echo this for everybody listening because Todd hit this before. And I think it’s just the same. It’s the same conversation in this COVID social distancing world where we’re all on zoom cameras. We’re all in this little boxes on our internets. You know human connection has never been more paramount. And the fact that you have the privilege and opportunity to have a thousand to 2,500 people in your database that you could call today and just check in on and let them know that you care about them you’re thinking about them, you got their back. And to Todd’s point ask them some serious questions like, “Are you going to? How’s the house?” How many people aren’t happy with their house right now? Like so many people are like, “I am moving the second.” I get, like whatever that because they’re forced to shelter in place and they’re like over it. Like opportunity to make human connection has never been more important.Todd Duncan:So, Yeah. Let me say this and I need you to understand this. All of you and I hope that I meet you in a place right now where you can absorb what I’m about to say. All statistics right now in this business, outside of this business, in this country and outside of this country with the exception of two countries that are not us. Humanity is preferred over technology with about a 12 point differential. Humanity is 82% and technology is 69 or 70%. So what we’re starting to see is that technology which has had this ramp up, right? And still by and large is what everybody is expecting to kind of see the future doing, is nudging out humanity. And the loan rep or the real estate agent who doesn’t understand that technology is only to support a transaction. It is not responsible for doing the transaction, are going to miss millions and millions and millions of dollars of revenue.Todd Duncan:So there’s a book out right now called The Most Human Company Wins. It’s called Marketing Rebellion. And I read through that and I got really clear on this idea that you know what? The most human ello wins. The ello that has the ability to connect at the deepest core with a realtor, with a borrower, with a referral partner. I just did an interview an hour and a half ago and we were talking about… the 80 20 rule applies to questions and most loan reps don’t even know the questions are going to ask except the standard questions.Alec:RightTodd Duncan:And so if you’re not strategic about questions that you ask then you’re not demonstrating human interests which is code for empathy. And we also have stats right now. I could pull them up but Strathmore has taken a look at technology and they’ve evaluated three different things about technology. Is it appealing? Is the technology appealing to look at? Is the technology easy to use? And does the technology provide you with peace of mind in the form of updates on your transactions? Three things are measuring. The net promoter score deltas on those three things if the answer is no, to any one of them? Or over a hundred points. Meaning that if somebody is a nine or a 10 on a one to 10 scale. And that technology does not qualify on one of those three levels, they will go from a 10 down to a zero which means they have no influence.Todd Duncan:So if you’re relying on technology, that’s okay. Technology is lifting labor load. It is speeding along document aggregation. It is allowing us to be a little bit more quick on the rebounds and things like that but you can’t hide behind it. Humanity wins the race. Technology supports the human experience. So one thing we’ll be talking about at Mastery is in a modern day world, how important is humanity and it’s more important now than ever. And that’s important.Todd Duncan:I also want to say because three of you have kind of popped up here. Sales Mastery Event.com, sales mastery event.com sales mastery event.com. We’re releasing the agenda today. The keynote speakers are already hired. We have a very, very easy proposition. We’ve given you an entry point that is maybe one 10th of a loan commission. So it’s easy. It’s the biggest no-brainer in the history of mankindAlec:[inaudible 00:44:08] Thank you as we wind up. I have such a connection to your comment about humanity winning over technology. And I have a core belief that technology enhances our ability to be human and to do stuff but it doesn’t replace our humanity. I think that the consultation value of a loan consultant in the future is going to be paramount to the success of any loan consultant. And I just wanna encourage everybody who has heard that to realize now that you have these technological machines around you, like this thing and the camera in front of me to showcase your humanity. To show up to your digital ecosystem to your community and become an authentic human to them.Alec:I see a lot of people over producing content or just regurgitating corporate slogans or corporate logos and all that stuff has a place but your humanity actually needs to be forefront. And Todd just shared the whole proof of it right here. You heard the whole thing coming out of the guy who’s been leading our industry for 20, 30 years. It’s paramount and it was not going to change. And so Todd thank you for dropping that bomb at the end. That was going to be one of my golden nuggets. Mike you got to pull that out because that was killer. Todd, what do you want to leave the group with?Todd Duncan:I just want to say one thing about what you just said and everybody needs to understand that as humanity goes up, four things get triggered. Okay? Number one is chemistry. The deal of the future is, do business with people you like, do business with people that you’re attracted to, do business with people that are attracted to you. Every successful partnership, realtor builder, financial planner, borrower is built on chemistry. So, once you have chemistry then you must from a humanity standpoint have a conversation. And I believe that this is where having the right questions, having fewer of the best questions, going down that path. That conversation allows empathy and trust to transfer. When you have deeper conversation, it yields and opens the doors to collaboration. You should be collaborating with agents every week right now. Collaborating with your business referral partners every week right now. You ought to be collaborating and doing virtual lunch and learns and you ought to be doing the stuff that technology speaking is very easy to do right now. But you can’t collaborate if there’s no chemistry because nobody wants to have the conversation. Right?Todd Duncan:And if I collaborate, here’s what happens. If I collaborate, it spins up ideology, right? If Alec and I are talking for 45 minutes and all of a sudden we have a couple ideas and I’m going to say, “Hello,” let’s go on that. He’s going to go ” wait a minute” And then I’m going to say, “okay,” So we have chemistry. We’ve had a conversation we’re collaborating. Now we just have to resolve a little bit of the conflict. It’s not a negative conflict. The healthiest relationships on the planet have conflict-Alec:AbsolutelyTodd Duncan:…Because that’s the only way they grow. And so watch this chemistry, conversation, collaboration, conflict resolution equals connection. And that’s what we need. We need a connected society that is a universal tribe that wants to help people win. And in you, the form of lender to agent, to buyer, to… that’s never going to change for as long as real estate stays standing which will be forever. That’s not going to change. What is going to change is the human infusion of empathy, conversation and trust particularly because this is the highest value transaction anybody will make in their life.Alec:Bombs. Just throwing bombs. Todd, that’s why I wanted to hang out with you today dude. I love this. I think that everybody who’s going to hear this and check the replay is going to pull something different from it. And I love that you’re continuing to innovate, continuing to press the envelope pushing forward. I love coffee with Todd. It’s one of my favorite morning things. I dig it. I’m in dude. I just because it’s inspiring everybody else to realize that they have the same opportunity. They can step in and play a big game, be vulnerable, be human and watch themselves win. And I cannot wait for Sales Mastery.Todd Duncan:Refined.Alec:I cannot wait dude. All right my man. Hey, we’re wrapping it up. Everybody on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. Appreciate you. If this brought value, like share, subscribe. Love you guys. Todd. You’re the man have a great day. Everybody we’re out.

 let’s talk about some practical tips and practices you need to start doing to get off the edge and dive into the deep end!

In this edition of LiveTime with Alec:

• Just like everything the more rep you put in the better
• Where you should put intentionality  
• Stop over preparing and over producing
• Just start executing you are giving yourself a head start over those who dont.

Episode Transcribe

What’s up, everybody?

 Welcome to another Live Time with Alec.

How’s your Tuesday going, which is actually effectively a Monday? Mine’s going good. I got actually electricians here. We’re pulling internet out to the back. I’m tired of this WiFi stuff. I’m in a garage. Well, like many of you are probably in garages, and we’re doing this thing live.I hope you’re settling in. I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day. I know I did. It was a really powerful day. It always is every year for me. Some of you that know my grandfather was a prisoner of war for three years in the Philippines during World War II. And so Memorial Day always has a real special place in my family’s life and in kind of our day to day interaction. So thanks for hanging with me today.Interesting topic and a couple of fun announcements. So doing and learning. Man, I’ve been so energized by the amount of people who have come up to me through the last few weeks and just going, “How do I start engaging? How do I start creating content? How do I start getting out there, putting myself out there?” And I’ve been so encouraged by it. So I’ve got some announcements.Number one, I have put together a series of nine video tutorials to help anybody out there get more confidence to come play in this place. Hey Ben. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck with month end. Do you know it? We’re crushing it. Another record month, but you know what? It’s good to be in mortgages right now. So for those people that are willing to jump out and kind of play in this space, man, I’ve got some resources for you. And one of the things that I really had been committed to doing as a leader in my space to pour into my community is to create resources that are very tactical.You see, I know I’m not a guru. I don’t have this figured out. I’m a practitioner. I’m leaning into it. I’m I’m messing up. I’m trying to figure it out myself. The reason I did the hundred videos in a hundred days was because I was coaching people about the importance of making sure they put out content that represents them, that gets in front of the humans. And I realized I wasn’t doing it myself. And I was like, man, that’s not how I live. So I got into the space. And so if you are wanting to get more into this space, I have nine videos that I want to send to you. I’m starting up an email community because I want to be able to get you guys information. I know every time I go live, this may not hit you, you may not be ready on a Tuesday. Good morning, Jordan. Hey buddy. Yes. Hook up to me, send me a DM and I’ll get you connected to the people out there.By the way, you see this good stuff? LinkedIn comments, man. Streaming are stepping up their game. Now I got LinkedIn on here. I used to have my phone up to try to figure it out. So long story short, guys. I am building an email community to bring some of you guys into the content that I’m putting out so that I can continue to give you guys resources. I don’t like people who just talk and motivate, but don’t then turn around and say, “Here’s a tool” because that’s the real reality, right? We need a tool. We need to go into our space and be able to execute and learn. And this is why that this is the topic of today.Doing and learning. Hey, thanks, Jordan. Nowhere in there in the doing and learning did I say you need to start preparing. You don’t need to prepare. You just need to do and learn. Those two things are so powerful. It’s like practicing. It’s like practicing. You go out and you shoot free throws. You’re not good right away. But if you shoot 10,000, you’ll be much better. Doing and learning is more important than getting prepared.If you are struggling and over-preparing right now, you need to stop. You need to stop. Stop over-preparing. You need to start doing. And that’s why I’ve developed nine tutorials to send to you guys right away. DM me. Send a message in the comment. I will send them to you and it will give you the skills you need to start stepping into the space of doing and learning.I was on Lykken on Lending’s podcast yesterday. Very, very cool episode. I hope to share with a lot of you guys. One of the things I learned in having this conversation with David, whew, went out of breath, is the importance of actually doing. We over-prepare. We sit and we think, and we prep and we prepare and we don’t execute. Guys, that’s holding us all back. That’s holding us all back. I’m here to tell you that you need to step into the doing and you need to step into the learning and there you will succeed. That’s the message, guys. That’s the message on this Tuesday. What’s holding you back from doing? Seriously. Tell me. Tell me what’s holding you back from executing.I had a great conversation with a young man who is trying to get into the space. And one of the things that he said was, “I have a content limitation. I don’t have enough things to talk about.” That is a lie. There are a million, million things to talk about. All we have to do is put up a whiteboard, and I’m telling you in 30 minutes, I can give you 50,000 things to talk about. In 30 minutes. The amount of content at your fingertips is unbelievable. And it’s not a… Yeah, cool. Would love to stop procrastinating. See Nathan, this is the deal. But we procrastinate either out of fear, out of insecurity, out of a million reasons, but hopefully you can get some confidence if you can just get some of these tutorial videos I’ll send to you. And then all of a sudden you realize, hey, I don’t need to procrastinate anymore. I can really step into this space.Here’s some of the things that can pull you out of procrastination, guys. Accountability. Accountability. I love challenges. I live in challenges. I think they’re very fun. Here’s a fun challenge. I want you to post 10 videos in 10 days, right? That’s doing, and the 10 videos can be centered on why you do what you do. Very easy topic, right? You should know why you do what you do, and you should have at least 10 topics you could talk about to deliver that. Ten videos, 10 days. Make it public. Put it out to the universe and watch what happens. You won’t procrastinate. You’ll be pulled into it because you made it public.I sent a tweet out this morning. If you’re not following me on Twitter, please do. The tweet said, “The universe,” basically I’m paraphrasing, “will bend to your will if you publicly declare your goals.” You’ve got to put it out there. Yes, that puts you in a place of vulnerability. I get that. But that’s where life is, man. It’s in the beat. It’s in being vulnerable. So here’s the deal. Here’s my challenge. Ten videos, 10 days. Put it out in the public. Put it out in your social media. Ask for community support, and you will be radically surprised in how it works.Now, for those of you that are freezed up, I’m going to kind of try to unfreeze you, unstick you with a couple of pieces of advice. Here’s the advice. On my podcast with David, Lykken on Lending yesterday, we were talking about what’s too much with video, and here’s how I want you to see it. Imagine going to a business meeting, a very, very important business meeting. And you want to nail this thing. Whether you’re pitching a sale or selling a company, whatever, you want to nail this thing when you go in there. How do you get to show up? I’m telling you right now most people would wear a suit. They get dressed in a professional attire, right? They wouldn’t come in in their pajamas. They wouldn’t come in and sweat pants. They’d come in cleanly shaved or groomed. I don’t know what my beard is doing, but it’s not something. My quarantine beards are out of control.But they’d come in with intentionality. They come in with notes and a briefcase and a PowerPoint, and they’re ready to go in the meeting. That’s what showing up on camera is like. When you put on a light and you set the camera up high above eye level and you have a nice microphone, that’s putting on a suit. That’s preparing yourself for this conversation for this meeting. When it goes too far is, and I joked on this, like you get flown in on a helicopter, you land, you have a chorus line behind you, you have walk-in music, you have spotlights on your face, now you went too far. Now you’re in a meeting. And I think you’re kind of crazy unless that’s my thing and you went. But do you get me? That’s too far.That’s what overproduced content feels like for me. I don’t need the catchy jingles. I don’t need the catchy music. But I do respect somebody who has lighting, camera, sound. Now I feel like they’re wearing a suit. So for you, if that’s helpful, great. Use that as a springboard to launch into video.Here’s the deal. Here’s why doing and learning beats preparing. When you actually do, you start to get ahead of everyone else who isn’t doing. That’s just a fact. I don’t know how else to say it. When you do things and execute, you are getting yourself every day one step ahead of somebody. Who’s not, you have to view it like practice. You have to view it like practice. This is practice. This is me getting better. This is me chatting with you guys on a Tuesday, or whenever you’re watching this. This is how we improve.And then the next step is the learning. I step back now and I listen and I watch a lot of my content. I don’t sit there and play the whole thing. But I look for points of audience drop-off, audience participation comments. I start to understand. Are people with me? Are they not with me? Is my timing off? Is it just the day? Is it Tuesday and it’s hard because it’s after Memorial Day,? this is the learning opportunity we all have in this space.And so this is my encouragement to you: do and learn. Pay attention. I always had this great line, “Be a student of your own experience.” When you pause and you listen to what the world’s telling you, you have an opportunity to get better. It’s not negative feedback. It’s just a thing. Let it come through, flow through and go, “Okay, I can get better next time.” Or that obviously didn’t land, or et cetera, et cetera. But don’t beat yourself up. That’s the game. Stop preparing and just start doing. And then from doing learn, listen, pay attention. Does that make sense? It makes sense up here. I don’t know if it makes sense out in your land, but it definitely makes sense right here.All right. As a reminder, I am kicking off a email community. Man, I’d love for you guys to be a part of it. A lot of people when I go live or when I have my podcast, don’t know what’s going on because we’re all living our own lives, but I am creating an email community. Definitely drop a comment if you want to be a part of it. DM. I’ll get you into the loop. And then from there, I want to send you resources. I want to send you tools. I want to send you actual things you can practice and use to win and step into new space.I’m going to go live next week and talk about attention. We are in a war for attention for our customers’ and our community’s attention. If you don’t think that’s true, just pause and look around at your social media. Pause and pay attention to what’s happening around you. You are being attacked by advertisers, attacked by corporations, attacked by messaging all the time in your Instagram stories, in your slide. Alec is listening to it. Somebody just got triggered. For sure, Alec is listening to it.Where are you in that noise? Where are you in that process? Yeah, Renee. I’ll get you hooked up. You’re very welcome. I got some stuff to send you. I hope it’s helpful. Where are you in the noise? So you have this unbelievable opportunity. Yes, John. You’re in, brother. I got you. You have this unbelievable opportunity to show up with the same level of relevancy as the commercials during the Superbowl. You do. You do. In this media, you have the same opportunity to show up at the same level of relevancy as a Superbowl commercial if you are willing to get out and get in front. I know it takes guts. I know it takes intentionality. I am there. I’m with you. I’m literally with you right now. I’m here. This is it. Come play. Put the camera on. Put the light on and come play.Execute. Do, do, do, and then learn, learn, learn. That to me is the secret to your success. Do not get stuck in the planning. Do not get stuck in the over-producing. You don’t need a chorus line behind you. You don’t need a fancy tunes. You don’t need a helicopter to parachute you in. You just need to show up in a respectful, appropriate manner. And some of us don’t know what that means yet. And that’s why I recorded some of these tutorials send out to you guys because our dads taught us or somebody taught us, our mentors taught us how to wear suits, how to tie ties, how to dress up appropriately for a business meeting, how to come prepared. We roleplayed our business meetings. We roleplayed our pitches. And now we’re like, “I got to turn the camera on and I got to talk to people? What am I going to say?” It’s a whole new world.COVID exposed it. COVID exposed it. Without COVID, we would not be in a place like this. And as terrible as this thing is for our country and our world, it is absolutely powerful in the transition and the transformation that’s going to enable you to take. And that to me gets me really excited. So if you’re interested, I have some stuff to send you. I’ll email you some tutorials. They’re all on private YouTube links. I’d be thrilled to get you guys excited and part of my email community because we’re in this together.I made a decision in my career a long time ago to stay in the game. I like the mess. I like the fact that I’ll be live with you guys right now. And I’ll be off handling loan problems or HR problems or recruiting problems or recruiting successes. And in 20 minutes, I’ll be on a strategy call with the head of our company and our head of retail to try to what’s next for our technology platform. And then at the same time, we get to turn on the camera and hang out with you guys and talk tactics, talk about being what it is to be a loan officer, to be an originator, to be a salesperson in a digital age when we’re stuck in this little box.Guys, you’ve got to do. I have no other encouragement to tell you. You have to step into the space of doing and then sit back and step into the space of learning and then repeat the cycle. That’s the game. I’ll say it again. You are in a war for your community’s attention and I mean your digital community, those around us in our social spheres. You’re in a war for their attention because when they need help on a mortgage, who are they going to talk to?Here’s what I believe. I believe as we go back to work, I believe that once we leave this COVID land and go back into a new whatever this is going to be, I really believe that we’re going to see interest rates at the lowest point they’ve ever been in the United States history. I believe that I don’t think they’re there today because there’s tremendous risk in the mortgage industry today. Tremendous risk. Guys, tons of people are filing for unemployment. The world’s almost effectively shut down. Essential businesses are the only ones kind of still hanging around. It’s brutal out there. People are getting furloughed, losing their jobs, losing their companies. We are in a dark place, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We’re coming through it. And as we come through it, you’re going to see that risk leave the pricing of mortgage coupons. And you’re going to see rates in the lowest they’ve ever been.So my question is for you, are you prepared? Are you prepared for the wave of your lifetime? Are you posting every single day where the people are? Here’s my encouragement if you’re paying attention, guys. I get asked this question all the time. What social media platforms should I be on? Where should I be on the internet? Should I be on TikTok? Where should I be? Guys, go where the people are. Hello? Is this thing on? Go where the people are. Where are they? That’s where you need to be. You need to be in with the humans, talking, sharing your message, sharing your heart, putting the camera on, being vulnerable, leading, telling people what services you provide, showcasing what you do as a professional. That’s how you earn the opportunity. That’s how you earn the influence. And that’s how you get loans. That’s how you do it now. So my encouragement for you is go where the people are by doing, by showing up.And if you think you can do it without video, I’m going to challenge you and tell you you’re wrong. You’re wrong. This is how you make human connection, guys. Yes, you can make dramatic human connection through a blog. Lisa, I will send you. You said you commented. I’ll get you in. Yes. You can make tremendous human connection with a blog with written word. We know this. Yes. You can make tremendous human connection with audio, spoken word, podcasts. Absolutely. Some of you are listening to this live right now, but the tab’s gone. You covered it with your email. And I’m here with you. But you’re emailing.I cannot tell you though, how many people have reinforced my belief in this and have told me time and time again, “Alec, I’ve never met you, but I feel like I know you.” That’s the power of video. The other mediums don’t create that connection. Not as powerfully, not as quick. Fight me on it. I’m wrong. I don’t care how you view this, but here’s the deal. Every single one of you has a unique, amazing audience. That’s waiting for you to show up.I said this time and time again, every single one of you from Lisa Kramer right there to John Frank, to Renee, to Nathan, to Jordan, to Ben, every single one of you people have a unique audience that resonates with you, that resonates with how you think, resonates with how you speak, resonates with how you perceive reality, resonates with the experience and the background you have. All you have to do is be bold enough to go out and put the camera on. And that audience will find you if you stay consistent and you play the long game.Not everyone wants to listen to me. I know this for a fact because people unfriend me and that’s how I figure it out. There’s like we’re done or the mute game. Mute him for 30 days or forever. I get it. I totally understand. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. You are. You’re their cup of tea. You don’t have to be this gregarious loud, passionate, convicted person to have an audience that respects that viewpoint. You don’t. Guys, I said this again on Dave’s Lykken on lending podcast.Have you taken a personality profile test before ever in your life? Yes. Enneagram is the latest and greatest one, right? Enneagram. You know what I’m talking about. So clearly there’s different types of humans wandering around this world that we all try to categorize in different boxes, but there’s just a million types, billion types. And yet you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, they don’t want to listen to me because of how I look, sound, whatever I got in my package. No one wants to listen to me.” That’s a bunch of crap and you know it. There’s an audience looking specifically for you. You just haven’t shown up for it yet.So come join the email community. Join my digital community and let’s step into this space together. I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’m going to do my best to be in it with you. That’s my message to you. I don’t have a book to sell. If you buy my book, all the funds go to veterans. I have no dollar in this game. I have no play in this game to manipulate anybody. I don’t have an ebook for sale that I’m going to hit you with at the end. Everything I do, I do openly and free because I’m in this space together with you to figure this game out. That’s my commitment. That’s who I am. That’s what I believe in. And that’s what we’re going to do. So if you want to join the email community, I’m not going to spam you. I’m not going to send you crap, but I’m going to hang out with you. And I am going to learn new skills and I am going to push you in ways that I feel convicted in the same way as I’m pushing myself. That’s my commitment to you guys.If you’re watching this later, feel free to comment and I’ll get you into the email list. That’s my commitment to you guys. I’ll play the game. I’ll play the game with you and make mistakes with you, figure it out with you, live it with you, screw up with you, and push you forward the same way I push myself.So friends, that’s my message for you today. Doing and learning beats preparing every day every time. Doing and learning beats preparing every time, a hundred percent every time. This, Brad, thank you. Thank you for this. And by the way, I’ll add to it. I’ll add to it. Yes. Get out of your own head. Yes, just post and create. The fear part? Do it afraid. Do it while you’re afraid. Tell everybody you’re afraid. I had a really good friend who started to get into the space and realized they need to get out there, and their first video was on how they’re afraid. Great. Own it. It’s your creature. Own it and play in the space. And Brad, you’re totally right. This thing is holding you back.Let me end with this. Why do it? Why do it? You’ve got to have a burning answer to that, guys. My printer’s going. This is my wife. I tell her not to print when I have the sign up. I have a sign that says I’m live, but she doesn’t care because she’s homeschooling two kids and I’m not going to pick that fight. What is your why? Why make yourself vulnerable? Why face your fears? Why turn the camera on? What’s your why? You got to nail that. You got to have that tacked to your computer screen as your background next to your camera. What’s your why? Andy, I got you, bro. What’s your why? Otherwise, it’s not worth it, is it, to get uncomfortable. It’s not worth it to make a content list and a content strategy to post it. Why? Why do it? Why do it?I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you the best why I have and I really believe it’s your why too. It could be. Do it for legacy. Stay with me for a second because someone heard that and was like, “Ugh.” You can say I want to do it for success. You could say I want to do it for success. Yes, Lisa, God bless you. Yes. Because guess what? Another 68-year-old doesn’t want to listen to a 38-year-old. I mean, they do. You do. We’re hanging out around fun, but for mortgage advice, maybe, maybe not. But if they saw you and me next to each other, they’d be like, there’s Lisa. Look at Lisa killing it. And they’re more likely to call you and earn you and work with you. God bless you, Lisa. That was fricking awesome. Thank you for that. Yes, do videos because that’s where the humans are. And we’re not all 38 or 28 or 22 or 68.David Lykken on Lykken on Lending podcast is 70 years old doing the podcast. Guy’s crushing it. Seventy. He told me he was 70. And I was like, “Whoa.” Here’s the why. Legacy. Guys, every time you show up and you put a video out, you show the world what you’re capable of doing. And you spread your message. And obviously you’ll get business. You’ll get loans. That’s all good. That’s all good. Have a great career, make a lot of money, give it away. Serve a lot of people. Awesome. That’s a great why. Do it for your kids. Great. Good why. Do it for your wife. Great. Good why. Husband. Great. Good why. But do it for the legacy you leave behind.People forget every single one of these videos is going to live on forever. Live on forever. One of the things I’m most proud about is my stupid Drive Time with Alec YouTube channel that I did 10 years ago. A lot of you don’t know this. I used to be very embarrassed about it. I never said anything about it and I almost deleted it, but I never did. I never deleted it and took it down. But about 10 years ago, I started filming myself driving to work and talking about a topic that would pop into my head. I filmed almost 270 Drive Time with Alecs. I’m really proud of that stuff.Not all the episodes are good. Most are crap. Most are absolute dumpster fire, terrible. Some are really funny. Some were pretty good. But it’s part of my journey. It’s part of my path. It’s what I came through. How dare I delete that? It’s a stepping stone I did in my life. It brought me to Live Time with Alec. It brought me to my podcast. It brought me tons of confidence to speak to you guys now. Oh Mikey, no bro. No, there’s some nuggets and gold. When that jean on jean gal rode by me on a scooter and I almost crashed my car, that was incredible.But guys, legacy. What message are you leaving the world? What are you pouring into the world? That to me is an incredibly powerful why. Deeper than your career. What message are you leaving the next generation of originators? What message are you leaving the communities you’re inspiring and serving? That’s going to stay around for forever. I’m telling you guys, I don’t get many views today on my lives. Even though I go live every single Tuesday at 9:30, I don’t get tons of views. You know why? Because I’m not telling people I go live every Tuesday at 9:30. So no one knows. Not like everyone out there watching this puts a calendar invite going, “Let’s remember that Alec go in live at 9:30.” But I get thousands and thousands of views later because these videos live on forever. And that’s your opportunity, to leave a dynamic legacy of who you were as a human, who you were as a business professional, the lives you changed, the people you served. That’s incredibly cool.Hopefully that gets somebody off their ass to start filming some videos and start showing up in the digital community because you matter and you’re worth it, and you have an amazing story to tell any unique audience waiting for you. And if you want to be part of the email community, drop a comment, send me [inaudible 00:26:10] tips and tricks, things I’m learning, things like that. And so we can play this game together and win. Winning means a lot of different things to different people. I’ll tell you what winning means for me. Winning means for me that I go to bed every night saying I played the biggest game I could play. Whether I won the deal, got the recruit, didn’t get the recruit, helped the loan officer, didn’t help a loan officer, did I play the biggest game I could play? Come play with me.Thank you, guys, for hanging out today. If you’re watching this later on a replay, drop a comment, get into my email community. Let’s hang out. Let’s learn this game together. I appreciate all you guys. I hope you have a kick ass Tuesday/Monday, whatever this is. Hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day with your family and I’ll see you guys on the internet. Take care.