In this episode of The Loan Officer Wealth Podcast, Carl White from Mortgage Marketing Animals and The Freedom Club tells us how he trains loan officers to find their life of financial freedom.
THE LOAN OFFICER WEALTH PODCAST | Ep. 69 Guest – Carl White from https://mortgagemarketinganimals.com/ and https://loanofficerfreedom.com/
Watch as Chris speaks with Carl about…
- His passion for teaching and how that passion helps loan officers grow their business
- Creating success stories and helping mortgage professionals generate millions
- The concept of Prospecting and how valuable it is to your mortgage business …and more!
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Listen to the Podcast Below
How Carl White Helps Loans Officers Find Financial Freedom
Hello, everybody and welcome to The Loan Officer Wealth Podcast. Man, do I have a treat for you! We have my good friend Carl White on the show today.
How are you doing, brother? I had my herbal tea this morning and it has me in a chipper mood and DUDE I’m on your podcast! I’ve been calling your producer, like “Please, please, please! I want to be known! I want to be somebody!” And until you’ve been on the Loan Officer Wealth podcast, you’ve kind of made it but not quite. It’s like going on the Tonight Show or something! My life is now complete so it’s good to be here.
Well, thank you, brother. It’s great to have you. And for all yall listening, I just want to set this up properly because whatever it is that you’re doing right now, don’t half-listen to this podcast. Yall know that I’m big into personal development and I spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on masterminds to be around people that are smarter than me and further ahead than I am, so I’m around successful business people all of the time. I’ve known and worked very closely with Carl for easily over a decade and I have never met anyone in my entire career that has changed more lives than Carl White.
I have never met anyone in the mortgage industry that has created more millionaires, more success stories, and more people with freedom from their business. It’s amazing to see them being able to actually work only 9-5, take Fridays off, not pick up the phone on the weekend. I’ve never met anyone that has had such a transformational impact on people’s lives. So listen up because this is going to be incredible.
That’s really humbling brother. I noticed you left out good looking but there’s a good reason for that. You’re a man of integrity.
Well, I’m not done yet!
Let me also say this – Carl, what we see oftentimes in business is that there are some people that can teach things and they are really good teachers and then there are some people that are in the business actually doing it and being successful. It is a unicorn that can do both.
Carl runs, I believe the largest training program – the Freedom Club and Mortgage Marketing Animals – helping loan officers find that life of freedom. He is also one of the most successful branch managers in the nation and is in the trenches every single day producing hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage volume every year.
And by the way, it’s billions now, just as an FYI.
You know what, I do love teaching. I do. I love it. And I love the doing part also, I really do. And I think where it comes down from, I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you, literally growing up I wanted to be a high school teacher. The reason why I chose high school was that I didn’t want the younger kids because their heads are still full of mush. I know they are developing right, becoming who they are, but I wanted to catch them after they knew who they were and then those that said I want to achieve greatness, to be a part of their story starting at a young age like that I thought would be fantastic.
And I’d want to teach something that is an elective – you know something like Physics. Something that they went, you know I want to be in that class, not I have to check off that box.
So when I started writing loans and found a knack for it and I had the owner of the company I worked with as a branch manager call me one day and say “Hey man, you’re our number 1 out of 336 branches.” (And this was one year in the business, by the way.) “We have a sales summit that we do every year and we’d like you to come to share what it is that you’re doing.”
So of course I agreed to do it. I went and shared and I really enjoyed it, which is how I really got into the teaching side of things.
But you know what, nobody really cares about all of that stuff. What they really want to know, Chris, is that I’m in this market, and what the heck is going on. Where are we going? Am I ok? That’s the real question. No one cares that I wanted to be a high school teacher or how I got started. They want to know where am I at. Where are we going? And what do I do and do I even stay in this profession, frankly? I’m hearing a little bit of that? Do you want to talk about that for a few minutes?
Yes, absolutely! Because on Facebook, I saw a random testimonial post from a member of the Freedom Club who came out and posted their numbers and they’re business is growing right now. And not only that, but he just took a month’s vacation to spend more time with his family. His systems, and his business ran and grew while he was gone. And he’s still growing his business in today’s market conditions, so I would love to know, what is the conversation that is happening behind closed doors with you and the branch managers that are working in your branch. What are you telling them about the market and what’s going on right now?
So in my own branch with my Loan Officers, and even with Branch Managers and Company Owners in our Freedom Club Mastermind, it’s all the same conversation. So I go for a bike ride every morning. Been doing it ever since COVID started, you know the streets are empty so I think I’ll go ride a bike. I do it every morning rain or shine. And the lovely Mrs. White who is in much better shape than I am, who does yoga 5 times a day kind of stuff, goes with me from time to time too. Because I ride so much more than her, I have a little bit of a higher pace than what’s comfortable for her and so she went and got a little electric bike.
On the electric bike, you can set it so it pedals at 20% and you’re making up the other 80%. So you’re most of it by far – you’re 80% it gives you a 20% boost. So, about a month or so after she bought it, I thought I’m going to try riding that little thing. So I got on it and when you turn it on, it automatically is at that 20% boost and I’m riding it and I’m like gosh I can’t even feel it. I guess 20% isn’t that much. So I’m riding, I’m riding, I’m riding. I’m going a little faster than I normally do you know but not significantly. So I’m starting to think it might be the boost or I’m just extra good today, right? Because I couldn’t feel it helping out.
I was about 8 miles into my ride and I said I’m not even going to use this thing. I turned it off. Dude, I thought I put the brakes on. It was unbelievable. In fact, it was so bad I thought something was wrong with the bike. I stop it, I pick up the wheels, and spin them to make sure the motor wasn’t somehow holding them back. It really felt like somebody grabbed the back of my bike and was holding me back. It was a massive difference. The wheels spun, so I got back on and I was like “Holy cow, it’s amazing what that little bit did.”
So, let’s transition that into the mortgage business. We’ve all been (myself included) patting ourselves on the back for the last 2-3 years for how amazing we are. We’ve all been thinking “Look how smart I am! Look at what a great marketer I am!”
You know, last year I did just under 2 billion dollars in production. It’s been a dream of mine to hit that kind of a number.
Anyway, so we’ve been all patting ourselves on the back while we’re coasting downhill with a 50 mph tailwind. Let me tell you what’s just happened this year. We don’t have a headwind, we don’t even have a challenge, it’s just our tailwind, our boost, went away and we forgot how to pedal a bicycle. That’s what’s the problem.
So if you actually look at the purchase market for this year, as we’re recording this at the end of 2022, for purchase volume nationwide 2022 was one of the best years ever. We just lost that 20% boost and we forgot how to pedal. I literally was going to check my mail one day and I’ve had the same mailman for I don’t know 7 years, right, and once every month or so as I’m walking up he’s coming up and he just hands the mail to me instead of putting it in the mailbox. Just by chance, we get there at the same time. So I walk up to the gate, open the gate, go out to the mailbox, and wait for him and he pulls up and he says “How are you doing, Carl?” I say I’m going great. Then he says “Hey Carl, I don’t mean to be personal here, but you know I see the mail that you get in, and you’re in the mortgage business aren’t you?” and I say, “Yes I am!” He says “I thought so. Hey me and the Mrs. are thinking about refinancing our home, and wondering if maybe you could help us? Or at least point us in the right direction.” So literally, last year, I was checking my mail and I get somebody who wants to refinance their home.
Yep!
And so the point being, it was falling out of the sky when you can go check your mail and a loan comes in. It’s a very special time. That’s not happening now. We forgot how to prospect.
Yeah.
We forgot how to do outbound activity. We were so busy training up our team and figuring out how to handle the production levels that we had. We had so many leads coming in that we didn’t have time to call them. We were having to hire help to meet up with the leads. Same thing with real estate agents that are falling all over each other to work with a Loan Officer to get their closings done. It was a really, really, really good time.
When the tailwind goes away and the winds go calm and we’re not zooming down a hill we feel like “Dude what happened?!”
Let me tell you what happened. We are now like all salespeople, selling all products. We have to actually, oh I don’t know, prospect. Which is a new word for us in the last 3 years.
When I go around the country asking people how many hours they prospect, one of my famous questions is (I know you know this one) – What’s the number one thing you do that makes the most of your money? What’s the one single thing that you do that makes most of your money? Most people say social media, some people teach classes, and some people meet with realtors, but then when I ask, how many hours/minutes did you do that all of last week, the average answer nationwide is 0. I did that 0. And yet I’m still closing loans. That’s not normal.
Usually, the only person who doesn’t do a lot of prospecting but still makes sales is the crack dealer on the corner. When they say it sells itself, I guess that’s one of those rarities. Not that we’re recommending that, obviously. But for every other product, we have to sell it. And we’ve simply forgotten how to do that.
I think a lot of loan officers forgot and now they’re afraid. They’ve been sitting in the lounge chair, so to speak, with palm frowns and people feeding them grapes (me too) when suddenly they have to go back to work and spend most of the time prospecting and it doesn’t feel comfortable or normal. I honestly think we’ve forgotten how to do it so we complicate things. It’s just like dude, just go prospect. Whatever it is (social media, teaching, coffee appointments, etc.) whatever it is, however you got your last 10 loans in, how’d you do that? Go do that more and do everything else less. Right? It’s just that simple.
I think we are in a good time right now. I heard I think Brian Stevens (and Frank Garay), was saying here by the end of the next quarter, half the mortgage companies are going to be closed and half the loan officers are going to be doing something else. And I’m not much of a doom and gloom guy, I stay on the positive side, but in this case I think he’s absolutely right. We’re seeing it already. And so I think those of us that know how to prospect or are at least willing to learn, we’re going to do fine.
What you are going to find, is those that don’t (which is going to be half of them) they’re going to be gone. And that competition, well they never were competition, they’re gone, they’re out of it, and there’s half of us left. It’s going to be a good time for us.
We saw this same thing in the 07, 08, 09 crash that you know all the part-timers and the ones who got their loans strictly by going out and checking the mailbox and didn’t prospect, they went out of business and those of us that knew how to prospect, we did very, very, very well at that time. And I think we’re going to see the same thing this time.
I had a guy call me up 2 days ago and he said well Carl I don’t like prospecting, you know. What do I do? I said alright man, totally cool, you don’t have to prospect. I have an idea. We’re on a Zoom meeting and I said, here let me share my screen, so I open up my screen, he’s looking at it, and I said let me go to this website and I went to Indeed.com and I said we need to look for another job man.
Those that prospect or are willing to prospect are going to do very well. Those that say “Well I don’t want to do that”, you don’t have to. There’s a great website called Indeed.com and that’s where their help-wanted ads are.
We’ve forgotten, how to prospect Chris.
And so Carl, when it comes down to that and you’ve got somebody that’s having a bad day and they are willing to do the work, they want to succeed, they want to be in the business and they come to you and they’re like Carl I’m overwhelmed. Where do I start? Where should I start with prospecting? Where do you see results coming from in today’s market? What’s the first thing they should be focused on?
You know the first thing I would do, Chris, I would simply ask how’d you get your last 10? Do more of that and less of everything else.
Oftentimes, we really need to stop doing a lot of stuff. It’s not about doing a thousand different things. It’s about doing 1 or 2 things and doing those really well and doing those often. Whatever brought in your last 10 loans, whether it was social media, coffee appointments, videos, flying a banner plane over the Tampa stadium, whatever it was, do more of that. Me, I’m a coffee guy. But I know there are other people doing other things and doing very well with it. You just have to be honest with yourself about what’s really working.
I’m going to tell you something man. I was talking with a buddy of mine named Todd, he owns Summit Mortgage, super nice guy. And we were talking the other day and he brought something up that reminded me of a conversation I had about 35 years ago. My college job was as a butler for this very, very wealthy man. Well, I wasn’t really a butler. I was more of a hired companion. Honestly, I think he paid me just to have a friend around to talk to, right? He was just a very, very wealthy, very successful, somewhat lonely 81-year-old businessman. I think I was like a nephew to him.
So he didn’t drive anymore because he didn’t feel safe to drive and he wasn’t in the physical shape to be able to do that, so we had just come back from lunch, and he had a rolls Royce which I loved driving (that was really cool) and we pulled into the garage and he gets out of the car and he sits on the front fender of his car and he says “Carl, grab a chair I want to talk to you about a couple of things.” There was no chair, so I grabbed an old metal trashcan and sat on that. And he says “Carl, there are 4 things that you always want to monitor (you and I would call it to measure). Number 1, how many customers are coming into your store? Number 2, how much are they spending? Number 3, how many hours did you work to make that happen? Number 4, how much money did you save?” Basically, what was the difference in your net worth at the end of this month and the month before? So just the other day when I was talking with Todd, it was funny because he brought up those same 4 questions, just slightly different.
In mortgages, we want to measure how many leads are turning into contracts because that gives us our conversion ratio. Mine is 1 in 4. If you give me 4 people, I’ll close 1. So if my lead to closing is in good shape, I just need more leads. If it’s less than that, then I need to see where I’m dropping the ball. Is it a bad lead source, bad follow-up, no responses, etc?
If they are good-quality leads and I’m not getting contracts, I’ve got a follow-up and scripting issue. So you figure out what’s your issue there.
But if I’ve got 1 closing from 4 leads, don’t work on improving that, work on getting more leads. How do you get more leads? What was that activity that you were doing?
For me, it’s calling agents for coffee on Monday, calling those people that are in our loan process on Tuesday, giving them an update, asking them for referrals, calling our past database on Wednesday, and calling our pre-approved and looking on Thursday to make sure we aren’t just pre-approving people but we are actually getting them into a contract as well.
That’s the way I’ve always done it (I’ve dabbled in other things, but I always come back to that) because 67% of all home buyers use the mortgage company their realtor referred. So I’ve got a river that flows from North to South. If you’re paying me to paddle a boat 10 miles today, why in the world would I try to paddle upstream when I can paddle downstream? That makes no sense to me whatsoever. I’m like a feather in the wind, man. Whatever is easy and pays well, that’s what I want to do. So I’ve got this free army of people out getting my leads for me and by the way, it’s not one source, because if I just have Realtor Lisa, that’s just one source. But as soon as I get Realtor Bob also, or Realtor Sam also, or Realtor Debbie also, now I’ve got multiple sources of leads so in case one dries up, I’ve got other sources. So it’s incredibly diverse, it’s free, and they are doing all the work of finding my prospects for me that when I prospect to this one agent, that agent is prospecting to 300. So if I’m prospecting to 3 agents, I’ve got 900 people that I’m prospecting through those 3. As long as I’m prospecting to those that actually have something done.
Brian said something the other day that surprised me. I think there is something like 1.4 million real estate agents and 800,000 haven’t closed a deal this year.
That’s a shocking number.
So I need to find that small subset that’s actually closing deals monthly and prospect to those. Like when someone says, I prospected to realtors and that didn’t work or they told me not to call them anymore, that’s because they didn’t have any deals. Those that have deals, you aren’t bothering them, you’re helping them because they want to turn that lead into a contract and you’re the one who can help them do that.
Their number one complaint is that we don’t close on time, number 2 they don’t know where the lead is in the process, and number 3 is that they send over the information and they never hear back.
Prospecting, you just have to remember what it feels like to pedal a bike, what it is to prospect, and if you look at what’s the number one thing I do that makes me the most of my money (and it’s not closing on time, by the way, because something happened for that lead to come in before you closed on time). So what is the source of those leads to begin with? Just simply do more of that. Figure out what that activity is and do more of that. And if you’re doing anything less than say 10 hours a week of that activity (and getting ready for it doesn’t count) you’ve got a problem.
And Carl, man, thank you for being so generous with your time. This is phenomenal.
I know the answer to this question, but I really want to drive this point home for our audience. Your system works. I’ve seen it work I don’t even know how many times, exactly as you’ve laid it out here today.
What I want to know is, what is the difference between what you are doing and what other guys are doing? Because the exact same system that you’ve used to close billions of dollars in mortgages you give away for free in your training and you teach to your competitors through your coaching program. So everybody’s running the same system. What is the difference in the people, because it’s the same system so the difference is the people, right? Person A gets the system and gets phenomenal results. Person B gets the exact same system, exact same information, but doesn’t and says it doesn’t work.
What is it that you’ve found to be the difference between those people? What is the thing that people need to be aware of up here, that’s going to be the difference between success and failure?
You have to actually do it. Right?
So I can buy a book on how to bake a cake, but it’s not until I get the ingredients and mix it up and throw it in the oven that I’m actually going to get a cake out of it. Because you are right, I could have the exact same recipe as you, but if I actually crack open some eggs and put them in the pan, I’m going to make that omelet. If you just sit there and look at the eggs, the eggs aren’t going to cook themselves. So I’ve seen zero instances of somebody opening the book, doing it, and not having great success.
Like no little astricts, no your results may vary. I’ve literally never seen it not work.
I’ve seen people quit. But I’ve never seen it not work. And brother I’ve seen some challenging people. I’ve seen some major introverts that it’s worked well with. I’ve seen younger guys. I’ve seen older guys. I’ve seen skinny, heavy, all races, all ages, and all ethnic groups. I’ve seen people that are challenged with English because they came from another country. I’ve seen people aesthetically challenged like maybe something happened, they had an accident or something, or they talk funny. I had one guy go through our program that had a very challenging stutter. It was severe and it was extremely challenging but the dude did really, really, really well because he didn’t let that get in his way and he just followed the program and he just did it.
So I think you just have to want it.
I want you all to write down some things that you want to do. Do you want your kids to graduate college without student loans? Do you have that vacation that you want to go on with your wife or husband or girlfriend or boyfriend? All of these things that you want to do with your friends and family, write them on a board and when it comes time to prospect and you don’t feel like doing it, look at that board and start crossing out the things that you aren’t going to be able to do anymore. When I don’t feel like doing it (because I don’t feel like doing it sometimes too, right?), I look at my board and I go like Maria and I are going back to Europe here in the Spring, so that’s on my calendar, so here on Monday morning when it’s time for me to do my prospecting that’s going to motivate me to actually do it. But if I give up prospecting, I’m going to give up money. If I give up money, that means I don’t have as much money to spend, so I need to go up to my board now and get a red marker and put a line through that thing I want to help my daughter with. I’m going to draw that line through this college kid that we’re helping put through college. I’m drawing a line through the Angeles house were we participate in this home for severely mentally handicapped adults. I’m going to put that line through this vacation and then I’m going to have to go look my wife in the eye and say “Honey, we can’t do that vacation because I don’t want to go do prospecting.”
What I’ve found, Chris, is that I’ll let myself down, but brother I’ll never let down my friends and family. So if on that board I put I want to get another Rolex, it’s like whatever. But if I have to go look at my daughter or my son and say I know you needed help with this thing but I can’t do it because I chose not to make my calls today, you’re on your own. That’s not gonna happen. So I think it’s making those commitments to other people.
You have to want it bad enough and realize, once you do this activity, what does that enable you to do? Write that down and then when you don’t feel like doing it, go get a black marker and strike through those things. I can’t do that thing, I’m letting this person down. Chris, I know we’re running out of time but that’s what it’s all about!
It’s all good! But right there, folks, that will make you unstoppable. Carl, where do people go to find out more? How do they connect with you? How do they get more information on the Freedom Club?
We do a thing called the Loan Officer Breakfast Club, and that’s probably the best place to start.
It’s totally free, there’s no charge for it. You can just go to loanofficerbreakfastclub.com and sign up. We meet every morning, Monday – Thursday, from 8:30 am to 9 am. There are about 400 loan officers with you on a zoom call just going over here’s what’s working, here’s what’s not, here’s my challenge, and people pipe up to help them with their challenges. Very motivating and just a lot of cool people. It’s actually led by my dear friend Frank Garay.
It’s for loan officers only so it asks if you are a loan officer, but if you give us your email and phone number we’ll send you the zoom link.
You’re an awesome dude, buddy!
I appreciate your friendship and man I can’t wait until we get to meet again.
Alright, talk soon.
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Thank you so much for reading. I hope that you enjoyed our guest. This is a reminder that we have finished taking the greatest lessons from all of our guests and packaging them together into a brief online video presentation that’s going to teach you the ten most profitable ways to grow your mortgage business. We then show you how to automate those processes in your business with people and systems so that you get the results without you having to do the work every day.
This is quite a blueprint so that you walk into your mortgage business every day with pre-booked appointments with borrowers that want to meet with you and referral partners that want to send you business, so you are spending your time inside your mortgage business on the highest dollar per hour activities and truly become the executive of your business or a true business owner rather than somebody who’s going to a job every day and making a wage on the way through. This is an absolutely incredibly powerful training for you. I cannot wait for you to experience it. Head on over to ChrisWebinar.com to get that free training.
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Important Links
- ChrisWebinar.com
- ConnectionIncorporated.com
- Loan Officer Wealth Podcast | Episode 69 – YouTube
- Mortgage Marketing Animals – LinkedIn
- Mortgage Marketing Animals – Website
- Mortgage Marketing Animals – Facebook
- Ray Sclafani – Previous Episode on Apple Podcasts
- Dave Savage – Previous Post on LoanOfficerWealth.com
- iTunes – Loan Officer Wealth Podcast