From Bank Teller to Mortgage Titan The Untold Playbook of Phil Jawny Ep 628

You are in for a treat. Imagine this. You start as a bank teller and fast forward a few years, you're a top producer. And a few years after that, you're a mega producer by mega producer. I mean, you're funding over a hundred million dollars per year, 20 plus units per month, and your pull through on that business is 80%. That's right. And 80% pull through, and you don't believe that you should pay referral sources for their business. In fact, your belief in your practice is they should pay you. If this is something that would benefit your business, if this is the type of professional you would love to become, then you are in for a treat because I have a special guest joining me today to tell his story and to give away some of the secrets inside of his personal playbook. Check this out. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children, 18 plus. You are tuned in to loan officer podcast with me, Dustin Owen, and a very special guest. This dude flew to Orlando, Florida, all the way from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a hundred million dollar producer. He is a six time Ironman finisher. He is a girl, dad to four daughters. And when he's not crushing it in the mortgage business, you can find him hanging out by his pool at the beach with his family or better yet up in Kentucky, sipping and tasting bourbon with the boys. He is my friend all the way from town bank mortgage, the one, the only Phil Johnny. Phil, welcome to TLOP. Thank you for having me. I'm stoked for this. I am too. I was so excited on the way down here. You know, I just, um, thought, wow, what a great opportunity to come hang out with you. You know, we got to spend time together at the town bank, uh, conference, our sales conference. We did. That's where you and I met. So we want to give a shout out to Taylor. Yeah. Right out. Taylor. Yeah. Shout out Taylor Malvin and the entire marketing department at town bank mortgage, one of the top lenders, if not the top lender in the state of Virginia. Obviously you all cover more than just one state, but that's, that's headquarters. And I was so fortunate that earlier this year I was invited to come up there and be a part of your sales conference where I got to interview you on the, on the main stage, I got to give a keynote. I got to do a breakout for the branch managers and really get ingrained in y'all's culture. Which by the way, I said this coming back from the town bank mortgage annual sales rally or sales conference. That's the type of company I would work for, right? Like I said that if I were to a live in that market or want to get back into production, it would be with y'all. Y'all do an amazing job. Thank you really do. Yeah, it's a great company. You know, they really focus on the loan officer and I know a lot of organizations say that, like we focus on the salesperson, we focus on the loan officer, but they do it in a different way. It's a much more personable approach where they, you, you feel like they care about you. What I got that sense. I mean, a hundred percent. I got that since starting at the top. Yeah. All the way from the top. But at the top, I mean, you have a fiery leader who has a huge heart, tiny body, but huge heart, right? And then you meet the marketing team and you see how much they care. And a lot of people think, Oh, it's a bank. Like, no, but it's, it's, it's not that type of bank. Like these are, these are like, pardon my French, bad-ass mortgage professionals who are sources of information who are funding lots of volume that are serving their communities. Um, and you all just do it right. And obviously you're in multiple states because the company's out of Virginia and you're in North Carolina, right? So I want to introduce the people to you. Like the way that I got to know you a little bit on that stage, but that left us saying, Hey, we got to do more together. We didn't introduce Phil to the TLOP community because you did fund last year, 108 million. It was roughly 240 units, right? Your pull through is 80%. That's the minimum. So my, my, my actual pull through is 90 to 95. Okay. If it goes below to 80, we have a problem. It's like pump the brakes. We need to create like, we need to create a new process. I mean, it's just, it's not good. Now, do you start judging pull through? We're going to talk more about this in a minute, but I'm just curious. Do you start judging pull through after the loan is apt locked and disclosed or is pull through like, no, that builder or that realtor called me. They gave me a phone number. They gave me a name. They gave me an email address. And as long as I have that information, 95% of the time, they're going to fund a loan with me. No, it's okay. It's a little deeper than that. Okay. It's a little deeper than that. So I base it on RESPA loan applications. Cool. So, and it's only with a contract. I do not submit TBDs. It's only when I have a contract, I have a full-blown loan application means all the fields are filled out. You have all your documentation. Then I RESPA the loan submitted in the ops. When I look at that, you look at Encompass or your operation system of choice, whatever your company uses. There's all these great tools, but they can get really muddy and dirty, and you can't see really what you have or what's going on. Because if you're not disciplined upfront with your process, you could cloud the entire system and all the tools that any company will give you if you're not disciplined. And so for us upfront, we really focus on making sure that we're submitting high quality loans into the operation center. And from that submission, and the loan's not locked. This is just, again, full loan application, contract, RESPA, go. Okay. That pull through from that point to closing is 90 to 95. So you and I have a lot to unpack then, because I want to first start with how many leads are you generating? Where are those leads coming from? I then want to say, how do you take a lead and then get them to take the next step, right? The next step is to be able to do the full-blown pre-approval. Sure. And then what are you doing to get that full-blown pre-approval into your pipeline? Because you know, once in your pipeline, 95% are funding, right? You basically know with, I mean, take your, your, your, your pipeline, right? Multiply it by 95%. And that's what you, and that's your volume. Multiply it by your comp, that's your income. Absolutely. So you have a process to first generate leads, then convert them into a pre-approval, but you really need to push the convert them into, let me disclose this because once it's been disclosed, you now basically have 95% of the time guaranteed income. A hundred percent. Cool. We're going to unpack that. We're also gonna learn about your journey and your story. I want the audience to learn what, what did you do early on that allows you to be where you're at? What are some mistakes you made early on that have shaped you that you could shorten someone else's learning curve just by sharing that story? Hey, I did this. It didn't work out. I can save you a lot of trouble, a lot of money, a lot of heartache. Don't do what I did, but I also want to want them to hear, do more of what I did. Sure. And then we'll kind of lead into the more techie geeky stuff. And at the end, I'm going to ask you to maybe wrap it up with either like one piece of advice that you have taught your daughters, which you have four of them, four of them, right? Ranging from five all the way to 21. Yep. So from five to 21, what's some, some piece of advice that you've now given them that maybe wasn't given to you as well as maybe your favorite book. So that's how we're going to wrap things up, but real quick, we're gonna take a quick pause or a break so we can listen and hear from today's show sponsor. Check this out. TLOP Unite is not your typical mortgage event. This is the first ever TLOP cruise experience built exclusively for originators. And for four days, it's not about the speakers. It's about you. We're talking breakout strategy sessions, real conversations, curated events, and uninterrupted access to a community that helps you grow. If you're serious about taking your career to the next level, this is where you need to be. Space is limited and the price is right. So click the link now and learn more. All right. So we're back. So Phil, I want to, I want to start here. You started as a bank teller, started as a bank teller, then became a loan officer, then became a loan officer. Okay. How did walk us through it? Like give us the, the 90 second, um, elevator, like rundown of how exactly this happened. Absolutely. I'll never forget. It was like yesterday when it happened, I was a bank teller, got a work permit in 1996 and work permit because you were under 18 because I was under 18. And so I would walk to the bank from after school and work the teller line. And there was this guy that would come into the bank every day. He, he wore a nice suit. He was well dressed, you know, well dressed, obviously very successful. He drove an M uh, five BMW, beautiful. I'm like, what does this guy do? Right. You're at home living, you know, with your parents and you're thinking like, I gotta get out of this house and get my own place. And like, I need to start getting it in life. And so I wanted to learn what this guy did. He was a loan officer. His name was George Dietrich. Is he still in the business? He's still in the business. And George, what's up George? And uh, so anyway, I had an opportunity one summer to, um, be a personal banker, which was the same thing as a teller, except you were sitting down opening checking accounts versus making deposits. And they ran a promotion where you filled out an application for a home equity line of credit, kicked it to a loan officer, and you got a $20 referral fee. And you're thinking 20 bucks is 20 bucks. Let's go 20 bucks. I, you know, I can make a couple hundred bucks a week or, you know, you were probably making eight, $9 an hour. It was like seven bucks an hour. It was nothing. Yeah. Right. Like you'd work a whole month and you got a couple hundred bucks. And so for me, I thought I hit the jackpot, like I'm going to be rich. So I was just rolling the second mortgage applications to the loan department. And I started getting some attention from loan officers over there and they were like, you should be a loan officer. I'm like, that's exactly what I want to be. That's why I'm pushing these loans over to prove myself. But I met with the management team and they wouldn't hire me initially because I was 18 at the time. And so I called one of my buddies. His mom was a big real estate agent. I'm originally from Chicago and she called the CEO of the bank at the time and was like, basically gave me a plug. Okay. Kind of talked with him for a little bit. The next day they call me up and they're like, Hey, we want you to come back in. We want to interview you. And was that you thinking outside of the box? You're like, look, I'm not getting their attention. What would get their attention for you? I was like, you know what? I know that, you know, in order to get these mortgage loans, you need realtors to support you. And she was a successful real estate agent in the Chicagoland area. And so I'm not really sure what she said to the CEO of the bank, but they rolled out the red carpet for me the next day. You know, there's a lesson to be learned in here. So I do so much for our industry because like you, I mean, I love it. I love what it's done for me, my family and my kids. Heck the grandkids I don't have yet. The mortgage industry has already shaped their lives and they don't even know it because they're not born. And I tell originators all the time, especially those that are younger and newer, I go, look, the opportunity you want, you will not find on Indeed. You won't find it posted on a job board, the opportunity you want, you're going to have to advocate for it. You're going to have to go out and hustle, but don't worry. Cause that's going to be your job, your job. When you become one of these full time, whether you're a broker or a banker, you work at a credit union is you have to get out there and hustle and become well-known and you have to stand out in a crowd of others. You at 18 stood out in a crowd of others first, because you were like Mr. He locked credit app guy. And then second, because when someone told you, no, you didn't stop. No, you're like, wait a minute. Okay. I'm just not catching their attention. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have my best friend's mom. Who's a top realtor. Basically call my boss's boss's boss in advocate for me. Right. And then bam, you became a, an originator at 18 at 18, but they kept me because I was a liability. So they kept me in the back office. So I worked directly with the underwriting manager, the processing manager, the closing manager. Oh, I worked with the secondary, you know, secondary. So they almost put you through a bit of like an apprenticeship a little bit out of their own, probably insecurity of having me out there slinging loans. Yeah, it's funny. You and I are pretty close to the same age and I'm thinking at 47, I bet there's still people that think I'm a liability, like, Ooh, I don't know if I can wind that guy up and let him go. He could be a bit of a liability. So then how, at what point do they allow you to start hitting the street and building relationships? Um, it was immediately right off, right, right out of the gate. But I just, every 10 Raleigh or was this in Chicago? This is in Chicago. Oh, this is the Chicago back then. Cause you're, you're. So you're a graduate in high school in Chicago. Yes. You're working for this bank in Chicago. Yes. Mid America bank. Okay. What part of Chicago? It was Hinsdale, southwest suburbs. Southwest. Like, is that like heading to like Tenley park and Frankfurt or is that even further? No, no, no. It'd be a little bit north of that. A little bit north of that. That's I have family there. So shout out to my family and Tenley park and park has got big loan amounts at Tenley park. Yeah. That's kind of where like all the suburban dual income white collar job people are all starting to go, but okay. So you're in Chicago. You weren't yet in Raleigh, correct? And then they let you start originating out in the street. Again, at what age were you 18? Oh, okay. So although you had to do back office, you still were hitting the street. Yeah. I mean, anytime I talked to a customer, they wanted to know about it. Whenever I had a loan file, obviously I immediately brought it in. Um, and, and we had to work through that loan file with everybody. How long until you started funding consistently five, six, seven loans a month? Ooh, that probably took me 12 to 24 months. Yeah. I mean, here's why I love this answer. This is late nineties, early two thousands. You're 18 years old, which I would say when you're 18, you're at a disadvantage compared to someone who's 26 and someone who's 26 at a disadvantage on someone who's 36, if aptitude and drive was all the same, right? Because at some point people want to see, do you have life experience? Right. And at 18, you just don't, I don't care how smart you are, how hard you work, but it still took you two years. I would tell a 36 year old in 2026, it's going to take you two years. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, okay. So, so it took you about 12 to 24 months. Looking back 20 plus years into your career, what's one thing that you did really well that if your daughters were going to break into the mortgage industry, you would make them go do that same exact thing. Stand up every time you fall down. That you did that really well at 18 and 19. Just, I mean, and we talk about this, you know, all the time. My daughter just went to DC this weekend for an internship and literally I just told her that. Now, remember I said, falling down as a part of life, it only matters if you can stand up. You need to welcome falling down and tripping that that is normal. That is, if you're, if you're not falling down and you're not tripping, you're not doing something right. So phenomenal mindset. How about tactical? What's something you did tactically that again, late nineties, early two thousands year consistency, you just, you have to be consistent. Consistency is more important than content. Okay. Um, because people are so absorbed in their own lives that it's the consistency that creates an imprint in their minds. It's, it's not necessarily, and they might, the content might hook them for something, but then that consistency of it again and again and again is I think a huge tactic in anything that you do in life back then was your business purchase. It was all purchase. I've always been a purchase guy. I've never really done. I've never done more than 10 million a year, five to 10 million a year in refinances ever. Yeah. Which for, for those doing math at home, at most 20% of your business, at the least 5% of your business, I'd say two to 5% of the business was, was refi even in 2020 when like everybody was successful. Yeah. Um, I still didn't do any refi. It's funny in 2020, 2021, I had two different types of coaching students back then I either had the student that I was begging them to go do more refis. That would have been you. I'm like, yes, I know you're killing it. I know you're doing 150 million, but I go, you're leaving money on the table. Right. Let's go hire you a junior. Let's put together a marketing strategy so that at least 20% of your business would be refi. Right. But then I had those coaching students where I saw like 50, 60% of their business was refi and I'm freaking the F out. I'm like, I'm like, we can not have this much of your marriage around stops. And then it's scary. Yeah. Um, okay. So your purchase focus early on out of the gates, were you focused on realtors or builders or financial advisors? I was focused on realtors and builders, primarily builders. Even then, even then there was another role model for me. And, uh, this guy was the number one producer at the bank and he would come in, he kind of officed out of every location of the bank because he had. Builder business. And I was like, I need to learn what this guy's doing. So I went up and started talking to him. Um, he's a, uh, divisional manager at rate. Oh, what's up, Jim? What's up, Jim. And I actually may have gone to the masters with Jim. Really true story. Uh, thanks to our friends at art gym. I, uh, back in the day I was working at Waterstone mortgage, running their entire Eastern division, and I was invited to go to the masters and I was there with like three or four guys from rate. Yeah. I think Jim may have been one of the guys. He's like one of the masters in new construction. Okay. He wrote the new construction playbook. So, so you learned under him? I learned under him. Absolutely. I saw everything he did. I followed his philosophies. I, you know, incorporated, um, a lot of consistency into, you know, my sales strategy with builders and, uh, it, it's paid off. So when did you move to Raleigh then? I moved to Raleigh in 2003. Okay. So you were still fairly young, but I'm guessing when you moved to Raleigh, you had to almost reinvent yourself. A hundred percent. That was actually one of the drivers for me in moving to Raleigh was I had a lot of support in the Chicagoland area. I had, um, mentors. I had opportunities that were given to me with builder accounts. Um, and so for me moving to Raleigh, it was a really, a great way for me to almost create some fulfillment in myself and my own ability to be able to go out and take what I've learned and implement it a hundred percent on my own. Yeah. But in a way you had to start over. Yeah. Which was, which was, that was driving. That was driving. You wanted that. I wanted that. You wanted that. So roughly 70 to 80% of your business does come from home builders. Yes. And what's cool about it is not like you're doing construction lending. Right. These are all in loans. These are not CP loans. Yep. So these are, you're doing FHA, VA, conventional and USDA, USDA and your standard jumbos. Yep. You got it. Yep. And you built those relationships yourself. A hundred percent. If you're talking to the next you, right, you're taking the advice that maybe you got from Jim, it worked for Jim in Chicago, worked for you in Chicago. Now it's working for you in Raleigh. How did you establish yourself as a builders lender when so many builders have their in-house lenders and so many builders, you know, are wanting to work with banks that are only giving them spec money. I mean, builders to me have always been the, if you can get one whole buddy, how amazing is it going to be for you and them? However, getting them isn't an easy feat. It's way easier for me to hit an open house on a Saturday and pick up a new real estate agent and start getting referrals by next week or next two weeks. Whereas home builders, I have found it may be at least my experience here in three, six, nine months of soliciting of showing up before I start getting even referrals. What does that playbook look like to you? Sure. It's not a, it's not a quick process. And I always, when I'm talking to other loan officers and peers in the industry, I always tell people that you need to celebrate your small wins because if you don't celebrate your small wins, the big, you know, home runs never come and you, you, you get burnt out, you get, you get fatigued. And so what are small wins? Small wins are the little milestones along the way that gets you closer. It's the little inches along the way that gets you closer to that finish line. So if you, you know, actually get out there and make sales calls this week, that's a win. Celebrate it. You got dressed, you got out of your office. You got in front of folks, you made conversations happen. What did you take away from those conversations? Where can you identify a gap in value? Where can you add value to that person that you're talking to and really, truly focusing on that person that you're talking to and listening to what they're saying? Because if you can add value to them and you can be consistent, you can hit those milestones along the way. How are you adding value to your current builders or better yet, if you were to go solicit a brand new relationship with a builder, who's not already working with you, what does value look like in 2026? Loan officers, if 2026 is going to be your breakout year, this matters. Most originators don't struggle because of rates. 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And so for one person, the value might be some organization around the top of the sales funnel. Another person, it just might be, you know, better loan programs and or ability to structure loans to convert more deals into closings. So it just depends on who you're talking to. But my biggest value add is that anyone who is working with myself in TownBank, we help you sell more homes, period. You sell more houses working with us than you will any other bank or mortgage company in the country. And that's why our referral partners stick with us. And they know it because some of the best relationships we have are ones that might have dated somebody else. And they realized, whoa, there's other things. Like one of the biggest pieces of feedback I get is from that dating someone else. So there's some referral partners that are onsite sales agents. And, you know, for six, seven, eight, nine, 10 months, even though you get a builder account, that's just one part of it. You still have 10 sales agents or 15 sales agents to win over. Yeah. That's step one. Like, and that's year one, right? So then, then the next step is you've got to win over the sales agents and the feedback from the sales agents are the value that you provide is so deep across the board when generating sales that it's difficult to really understand until you have it and it gets taken away or you've never had it and then you start experiencing it. So, and I'm guessing value is probably 10 of 30 things. It could be in value probably changes from one sales rep to the, to the other sales rep, but it's value as simple as accessibility. Value is accessibility. It's simple things following up, um, showing, um, urgency, um, uh, education with the customer, the overall feedback and experience, um, converting deals, limited cancellations, focusing back on that pull through, right? That's really the North star of our business is pull through. It, it bleeds into every category of anything that we can potentially talk about. Because are you, are you doing anything to drive traffic to your home builders? No. Okay. Um, are you doing anything that makes it financially in their best interest to refer you? Like, do you have any MSAs with them? No, no joint ventures, no MSAs. We don't, we don't sponsor stuff. We don't pay for things. Is town being given them their spec money to build or their lines of credit to build? No. And, and the reason why I'm asking this, I know the answers guys. However, I know what it's also like to be you, whether you're listening on Spotify, listening on Apple, or you're watching us on YouTube right now, right? You're sitting there thinking, yeah, but there's something he's not telling us. Or of course he's doing this because he's probably doing X, Y, and Z. Right. And by the way, I personally have no issue with joint ventures. I have no issue with MSAs. However, when you get to fill Johnny in the room and you realize that it can be done without those things, it gives all of us hope. It gives all of us that you don't necessarily need to go enter into a financial relationship to fund 60, 70, $80 million a year in volume. It truly does come down to, are you damn good at what you do? Yeah. Do you focus on making sure that their needs are met and their needs are accountability, their needs are speed. Their needs are like you actually doing what you say you're going to do. You have to be disciplined. The entire process is focused on being disciplined upfront and making sure that, you know, we, we take the philosophy garbage in, garbage out, and we don't focus on anything other than a high quality loan application. When a customer comes in, we want to understand this is a little bit of, you the initial intake, we put a priority on that customer upfront. We keep the momentum going. We want to make sure that that customer knows that we care about them. So anytime we talk to a customer, clients call, they want to know immediately. What's your rate? What's your closing cost? What makes you different? What are your incentives? What is everything about you that can add value to me? That's all the customer cares about. And so upfront, I like to flip that script a little bit and jump in the driver's of focusing on the client by asking them before we get into anything, tell me the top three priorities you have in purchasing a home or refinancing. Give me your top three priorities, because the first one or two are always going to be the common rate, closing costs, payment, whatever. But the third one is going to be something that you can hang on to and leverage through mini trial closes, micro commitments along the way upfront to where we focus on manufacturing funded loans, that's it. And so when we focus on these little trial closes upfront by understanding what's important to the customer, it allows us to really leverage and keep momentum going. If you lose momentum, the loss of momentum equals borrowers that are shopping rates. So you must keep that momentum going. Momentum creates loyal clients. I love this. And I bet you and your team are phenomenal at the next step is. And the next step is this, because everyone's going to ask us about rates and fees, right? And for all of us, and I don't need to talk about town or I need to talk about rate or anywhere, anywhere that you worked prior to where you work now, I'm going to guess you've always had competitive rates, but never the best, never the best. You've always had competitive fees, but never the best. Never the by the way, that's all of us. That's why I can say that. It's all of us have never had the best rate in town. You don't want to have the best rate in town and your client doesn't want you having the best rate in town, but you have to be able to overcome that. But you mentioned the micro closes. Can you give me an example of a micro close? Sure. I absolutely can. So upfront. So if I'm talking to you and I say, Dustin, you know, tell me what are the top three things that are most important to you about this loan process? And I would tell you, cause I'm a pretty unbearable client, but I'm an honest Sure. I say, look, for me, all I care about is value value. Don't screw me over and take great care of me. My wife is nervous the whole time. She's afraid that we're going to make the worst financial decision and I need her to be able to sleep good at night. So it sounds like financial commitment is something that you take very seriously. A hundred percent. Yes. Great. That right there is a label. So I use a Chris Voss sales love me some love me. Some never split the difference. Never split the difference. So if you don't have a sales coach and you're not following a sales process, that's your first step. Yeah. Go read the book. Chris Voss is the author. The book is called never split the difference. So you want to label that immediately. Once you label something, then you imprint in their mind. I'm listening to you. What you're saying to me is important, right? And then I'm going to go into something like, you know, so what, what I understand is Dustin, that if we can make sure that you're making the best financial decision by reviewing a couple of different loan options that fit your long-term and short-term goals, that would make you comfortable in moving forward with us as a lender. Yes. Boom. Mini trial close right there. That's how it's done. You do those little commitments, right? Is that fair? Yes. Boom. Just did it again to you, right? Those are mini commitments along the way. I am psychologically wiring your brain to follow me. And I'm doing that upfront at that initial engagement because momentum creates loyalty. And if you talk to a client upfront and you give them immediately everything that they're asking you for, your leverage is off the table. You're no longer needed. And so client comes in, they want to know, can I get a fee sheet? Sure. But here's all these things you're going to have to do to get a fee sheet. You need to value yourself and your team and your ability to truly, to your point, add value. Value means something. It doesn't just mean I'm going to roll over and give you any and everything you want out of the gate. You're going to invest in me and I'm going to invest in you. Law of physics, right? Things that come together quick, get pulled apart quick. Things that take time to come together, take time to pull apart. And so put in that extra time, that extra discipline upfront with that initial loan application. And these things like higher pull through, higher volume, higher income, better customer service, better loan quality. Those things naturally flow with that type of discipline upfront. Y'all, this is gold. Like if you're going to hear the difference between good and great, this is what great sounds like. And by the way, great got into the business at 18 after high school. Great. Wasn't born with it. Great. Didn't go to some fancy university to get some fancy degree. Right. Great. It's just like, look, I started by being consistent and then along the way I focus on getting 1% better per day. A little James clear atomic habits for, for those who are looking for a second book recommendation that right there, Phil was worth the entire episode. I want to ask you this though. You mentioned to me when we were in the green room getting ready for today. Yes. Right. By the green room basically means like the lobby right outside of my office. When we were asking Phil, if he wants anything to drink or he wants any granola bars that we have recently stocked, because my wife went to Publix and hooked us up. Um, but nonetheless, you're in the green room and you and I are doing our, our pre recording, uh, session and you mentioned something on the lines of. I don't pay realtors to refer me. They pay me. Yeah. Unpack that. The 92nd version of unpacking that. What do you mean by that? Sure. So to start, you have to bring, you have to bring value to that transaction in helping that referral source, close more homes, right? Sell more homes. Everyone knows that, but I think people use that as a soundbite versus an actual true North star. Like, what are you doing to help me sell more homes? Right. Yeah. How are you doing that? And so is it one magic bullet or is it, uh, uh, a gamut of multiple things? And so, you know, for me, I like to look at some of these real estate agents or onsite sales agents. And when you have the best in the industry, selling houses from a onsite sales agent to a realtor as the owner of that company, if you are, let's say a home builder and you have two, you have a community on the corner of one, two, three street, and there's another builder on the corner of one, two, three street. You both are equal in product pricing, um, value, but builder A is selling way more than builder B. Why? Because builder A has a closer out on site that understands a sale process, has the discipline to stick to the sale process. As salespeople, one of the things that drive us all is that shot of adrenaline. When we get a loan application that comes in the door, it's like a shot of adrenaline. When we get a deal, when we get a realtor or a builder that calls us with something, it's a shot of adrenaline. After that shot of adrenaline, it kind of fizzles out. That's just the real shotgun start. That's the pistol start of the loan process, not the end. And so many loan officers go wrong because that pistol start for them is the finish line and that's where they start losing deals because they lose the momentum. So when you say, how do you create a situation where the referral source is paying you, it's making sure that you can identify these areas because if you're a builder or a realtor and you're getting outperformed in a community and you see, hey, that sales agent is a better sales agent than the one I have, oh, but then I found out that that sales agent across the street, they're so good, but they're actually making an extra quarter of a point commission or an extra eighth of a point commission. If you could sell an extra three homes, would you pay an extra quarter point commission to get that salesperson on your team? Hell yeah, you would. Absolutely. Anybody would. I'm that guy. And so if you want me on your team, I'm going to come and work my butt off for you, but you're going to pay me to come work for you. I'm not going to, I'm not going to show up and make sure you sell more houses and then pay you on top of that. I mean, yeah. Yeah. You're crazy. I'm not going to do your Zillow. I'm not going to do an MSA. I'm not doing Zillow. I'm not going to open up a satellite branch and give you half the P and L on the loans that funds you there. I see this model going. Uh, there's, there's a mortgage company right now that is, is, is pushing really hard for these broker agreements and MSAs and, and, and, and as a mortgage company, I get it. I think it's great to lock that up, but those deals don't work and you don't sell as many houses and point in case. I just got a very large builder just last week that called me. I didn't even go out to get them called me and said, we need you. Yeah. We need you on the team. We got into this agreement. It's a broker deal with a, with a lender and they put a fancy spreadsheet together of how much money we're going to make and what we didn't account for is how many sales we were going to lose. And I said, great, I'd love to come back and go to work for you, but here's my requirements on incentives and deal structure that is going to help me sell more houses for you. And boom, let's sit down and talk about it. They agreed to it. And now we've got an incentive package that's going to make sure that that client is not going to waste my time by creating a rock fight in front of the house. In today's environment, buyers lack urgency. People are scared. Society is different than it was in our entire 20 year history of real estate. Right now you need something different than what used to be the conventional way of selling mortgages or homes. Right now you need, if you're a licensed originator, who's closing loans, but you're not consistent, this is for you. If you're brand new or just looking for motivation, trust me, this is not for you. Most LOs don't need more information. They need structure. They need proven processes and somebody to hold them accountable. TLOB's Originator Coaching gives you weekly live coaching, scripts top producers actually use in step-by-step business systems. And you can implement immediately. Not someday we're talking day one. You're not watching videos alone. You're executing in real time with other originators who take this seriously. Right now you can try it free for two weeks. That's two full weeks for free. You'll sit in on live coaching calls. You'll get access to the frameworks and see exactly how top producers run their business. If it creates clarity, if it creates momentum, or even if it puts wins on the board, you keep going, if it doesn't, no worries, you can cancel, no pressure at all, click the link, start the two week trial, and finally build this like a business, not a side hustle, a partnership at the top of the sales funnel to create urgency, to create conversion. Conversion leads to pipeline, right? And then your pull-through leads to funded loans and that's a revenue generator. No, that's the one thing I'm pulling from this. Your one thing is the next step, right? It's I'm going to generate leads, but the next step, the next step is I need to get you into my system. Then the next step is I need to get you under contract because then you know you have a 95% pull-through. Well, you have to keep that momentum. So when you say, do you pay these services? Absolutely not. Like, I'm not going to come to work and pay you to come to work. You want me to come work for you? I'm coming to work for you. This is how that works, right? That's a mutually beneficial relationship that is going to be something that lasts a long time. And so when we look up front at this type of discipline with the loan process, it naturally drives higher pull-through rate for then the realtor, the builder. They then see that, you know, the, the industry average cancellation rate and new construction is somewhere around 15%, 20%, right? That's a lot of builders would say that's a healthy can rate because that means we're writing contracts. But if you can work with a builder where you're helping new contracts get across the finish line and your can rate is 3%, 2%, that's a game changer. And once you experience that, then you believe and see the value. The, one of the biggest challenges sometimes is getting people to really believe how good the Kool-Aid is until they taste it. Well, cause it, it sounds too good to be true. You're like, look, you got to taste it to experience it. We coached this at TLOPS origin or coaching more on the real estate side. And you said this earlier, you have to help people win. You have to help people make more money. A real estate agent to me is like a loan officer. For the most part, we're teenagers. Yeah, we, it's all about me, me, me. Right. And we want done for us. Right. So, and we don't know what to advocate for or ask for. So we, we may ask for, Oh, I, I need more leads. Or we may ask for, I need money. I need an MSA. I need you to cover my Zillow, but you're teaching us. Cause you practice it. It's like, no, you don't need that. What you're really saying is I want to make more money. I want to sell more homes, right? I want to have a, uh, a better schedule. I want to have a more consistent process and you're able to come in and say, well, if you partner with me, I'm not going to pay you out of my pocket. I'm going to pay you with my performance. Right. That way we both win. Right. But here's what I will do when that home buyer calls me. And like right now I'm in central Florida, 20% of resale contracts are But all of a sudden, if you can figure out how to have only 5% of those resale contracts cancel, that realtor doesn't need your 500 bucks they need for when they work with you, one in 20 contracts cancel, not one in five. Exactly. When you look at the upfront part of the sale process, the discipline matters. Okay. Your momentum is what's driving everything. Idled buyers become shopping buyers and become cancels because they don't have that next step. They're not focused on that next part of the process and you always want to be creating momentum. Next step check-ins with your micro closings, which is gaining commitment along the way. I need to slowly help you gain commitment with me and following my lead because that's just putting you into my overall process. It's keeping that momentum going. Yeah. Momentum is the key driver. I love it. So let's do this. We find a way to put a bow on today's episode. Um, a, if people want to get ahold of you, I want them to figure out how to get ahold of you. Uh, and then B, I would do want to ask you that piece of advice in that book recommendation. I know we just threw out, never split the difference. So now Sure. No, I have a book. I have a book that I follow. Absolutely. Cool. So let, let's do, um, in no particular order. I'll let you choose. I want to hear about the advice that, that you raised your daughters with that maybe wasn't taught to you. Right. You learned it the hard way. Right. Uh, I do want a book recommendation and I, I need the people to know how to follow you, how to connect with you. If they're ever curious to learn more from the book of Phil. Sure. So I would say the advice for my daughters is what I shared earlier on the show, which is going to be, you know, falling down as normal standing up is what counts. And the amount of times that I still today fall down each week, each day, um, doesn't change. It's just the fact that I feel like that's normal and get up, dust yourself off and just continue to drive forward. Don't think the grass is greener. Don't think life is easier. Don't think that the discomfort is something that you can avoid. Discomfort is something you need to welcome. You need to be comfortable with discomfort. If you can master that, you can master anything that you do. The book coming from a six man, a six time Ironman who those men and women know what it means to be uncomfortable. Right. And still finish. Okay. Correct. Yeah. All right. Um, and then for the book, uh, it's diary of a CEO and, um, I think his name is Okay. And, um, why I love diary of a CEO is because it is a book that's driven off of five philosophies in life. Okay. And here's those philosophies that it's, it's about a game of filling your own bucket and there's five buckets. Bucket number one is your knowledge. So what am I doing to fill my knowledge constantly? Bucket number two is your skill. What can I do with my knowledge? How good am I at implementing the knowledge that I have? Buckets one and two are something that no one can ever take away from you. And how much time are you allocating to filling those two buckets? Bucket number three is going to be your resources. Am I leveraging using learning new resources, growing resources? What does my resource pool look like? And then fourth is my network. What's my network look like? Am I growing my network? Am I meeting new people? Am I leveraging my network? How am I filling that bucket? And then five is what do people say about you when you're not in the room? What is your reputation and what are you doing to build that on a consistent basis? And the reason I love that book is because those five buckets all flood into each other. If you're doing one bucket, you're doing all buckets. And if you look at any obstacles or challenges, it's typically because that bucket is low and you need to fill it. And so spending time focusing on those five things will help grow you and elevate you just as a human in life. Huge. Uh, I need to add that book to my reading list because I have not heard of that book, but I am due for, um, for a new book. I just finished, um, traction by Gino Wickman, which I think for anyone running a branch or a team is a must read. I wish I read it 10 years ago. And then his followup is what the heck is EOS, which is honestly what you should give to your teammates to read. Right. But I read it first. So now that I've read those two, I'm looking for a third book. So it sounds like it's going to be dire of a CEO. Lastly, if people want to get ahold of you, what's the best way to, are you a social media guy, YouTube guy, LinkedIn guy, or just a, this is my email address that there's everything I can do for you. Reach out. Uh, I'm a, I'm a LinkedIn guy, so I'm on LinkedIn. You can just fill Johnny. Um, I think we've got a leak link here on, on the show that, um, we could put up, but LinkedIn would probably be the best, easiest way. Uh, email is Phil at Phil Johnny.com. P H I L at P H I L J a W N Y.com. That's fantastic. Any chance I'm going to get you to come on the Caribbean takeover cruise with us in September? Phil? Um, I am going to this year, this year, I am in Italy for September and then I'm going to Switzerland and then coming back to Milan and coming home. That is so cool. Well, uh, for those tuning in, we're doing our first ever event. Wow. And we're doing a Caribbean takeover event. So it's going to be 150 plus mortgage professionals on one of the largest cruise ships of the world. And we're heading to the Caribbean for, uh, it's four days, four days, four nights. Beautiful. Super affordable. Uh, I'm going to have guys like you on the main stage, uh, presenting and teaching, I'm going to have guys like you that are also doing breakout sessions. And it's all about mastermind and all about networking. Okay. Only one day of it is speakers. In the future. I'd love to go. Well, you love the beach. I'm like, we're doing a private beach bash. I mean, this is, we'll have to double check the dates. Yeah. We're doing a private beach bash. We're doing, uh, uh, end of September or September 14th through 18th. That might be possible. Yeah. So I'm coming back, I think on the 12th. Okay. So the people who are like, Whoa, what is this? Go to our website, TLOP online.com. The event's called Unite. It's going to be an annual event. This is the first time we're doing it, but it's TLOP Unite Caribbean take over the websites. Uh, T L O P online.com. Uh, y'all that's all the time we have for you today. He's Phil Johnny. I'm Dustin Owen. You've just tuned in to Loan Officer Podcast. If you've enjoyed today's episode and you're listening on Spotify or Apple, do us a favor, give us a five-star review that will tell the algorithm to tell more people that this content doesn't suck and that they too should tune in. If you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel, you are missing out. Not only can you watch today's episode and actually see Phil and I in the studio doing our thing, but that same YouTube channel has over 400 additional pieces of content that are not podcast related. These are training videos. These are mortgage school. These are free coaching sessions. And if you're not subscribed on YouTube, you're missing out. Uh, go to YouTube, type in the Loan Officer Podcast, or if you really want to get geeky and technical, we are at TLOP entertainment on YouTube. He's Phil, I'm Dio. That's all the time we have for you today, but we do look forward to catching you on the next episode. Peace.