After the High Trust Sales Academy, we conducted a series of three Q&A sessions with our Todd Duncan ELITE Coaching Members so recent HTSA graduates can see the longterm impact of what they learned put into action!
The first session was with Denise Donoghue, if you missed it, here’s the link!
In this second session, Wally Elibiary covered topics such as:
- How to replicate yourself in your business
- Stop doing the best you can do and start doing it the best way it can be done
- How to hire the right people to grow your business
- Using a Loan Officer Assistant to get more time in your day
- How to best use your time once you have it back
- Why you need to slow down in order to speed up
- What to teach the team you hire
- What is an inside sales lender?
- What is a loan officer assistant?
- Hire your opposites to fill in your gaps
- What is a production partner?
- Create a culture of learning to attract more talent
- Results of replicating yourself
- Investing in yourself and your team
- Teaching your team the Language of Sales
- Teaching your team Phone Verbal Skills
- The goal is to have your team become more knowledgable on the ground than you
- Your opportunity is your responsibility
- Personalized support to help grow your team
There’s a lot to dig into here, so without further ado, here is how you build a team, by Wally Elibiary.
How to replicate yourself in your business
Today I will not be going over how to do more loans kind of directly today. I’ll be going through how to reduplicate yourself. I started something called Team Wally University back in 2014, and it’s kinda a vision of ours.
All right, so TWU is what we created from the mindset of “I needed to work smarter, not harder.” And my Todd Duncan coach told me that many, many, many times. And it wasn’t until I kind of lost my call on the coach when he told me that, he told me, “Hey, you gotta work smarter, not harder.”
And my response was like, “dude, if I freaking knew how to work smarter, I would.” And he came back to me and he said something that really changed how I looked at everything and anything he said. “At some point in your career, you gotta stop doing the best you can do and start doing it the best way it could be done.”
Stop doing the best you can do and start doing it the best way it can be done
And when I started looking at it that way, the best practices that it could be done as you saw that there have been a high trust sales academy, I’ve been there nine times already. I’m sure I’ll go again next year and it’ll be my 10th, which I’m really, really proud of. You walk away from High Trust Academy with so many different things that you want to implement. And I’d come back ready to ready to attack the world and ready to accomplish this and that. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of failures or setbacks simply cuz I just didn’t have the time and wasn’t able to be efficient with my time. I created a model called Go From Leads to Loans.
And as I learned that leverage was gonna be the most important thing to help me get to that next level and have a quality of life, I learned the power of a loan officer assistant.
How to hire the right people to grow your business
Shane Sharp, who is on this call, was the first successful loan officer assistant that stayed on back in 2013 when he came on. And when I say successful, he was my sixth attempt. So five loan officer assistants before them that ended poorly. And the challenge was I kept on hiring myself. I dunno if you guys have ever tried that or if, if I’m the only one that’s ever made that mistake. But when I learned to hire my opposite, and if you’ve met Shane, he’s incredibly intelligent, very highly systematic, and very technology savvy. He deserves a lot of credit and he has a lot of attributes that I don’t have.
And what Shane really helped me do is really systematize what made me special, systematize what made me really good at my job, and put together a breakdown of model of standards, what I did on a daily basis. So Shane was definitely the first loan officer assistant that really transcended my ability to actually grow the business, be a better father and a better husband. Obviously, if you guys went to Sales Mastery, you heard me say on stage that it became unacceptable for me to miss dinners. It became unacceptable for me to miss sporting activities for my kids, it came unacceptable for me to not spend time with my wife and my two boys. And once I made that decision, and once Shane and I really tackled what was really important to us, and how to build a business, we were able to start to implement, which is the whole point of this conversation, start to implement what we learned at Sales Mastery, start to implement what we learned from High Trusts Sales Academy, start to implement what we learned from Todd’s books.
Using a Loan Officer Assistant to get more time in your day
If you’ve gotten stuff that from Todd’s books and implemented, it high five, I just unfortunately consistently failed at implementing it. And it wasn’t lack of effort, I promise I worked my tail off. It was just that there weren’t enough hours in the day to manage loans, manage pipeline manage teammates, or manage people in the office and handle distractions. So one officer assistant to me was able to give me my time back. And the thought process I want you guys to have is you can have a life and a big business. So what we started working on was what woulda career look like for a loan officer?
So I was able to help Shane dream of what that lifestyle could be. Shane’s got two boys. He’s married, he’s got investments, he’s got a great life. But he first had to believe and he first had to fall in love with the vision. So then leads me to purpose.
So as you guys are looking to grow your teams and you are taking what you’ve learned from High Trust Sales Academy, and you want to take over the world, you’re gonna need help. It’s as simple as it is. I needed help. I really, really desperately needed help. And as a loan officer assistant that becomes a production partner.
How to best use your time once you have it back
While I got my time back, I went out there recruited realtors, big mega agents that did a lot of business. As I recruited these mega agents, I brought the loan officer assistant up to being a production partner. And that production partner now took over the relationships and everything on each. Now they’ve made more commissions. An affirmation I’ve told myself literally for the last golly say, nine years is “Wally, what’s the point of dreamy big? If you’re not brave enough to live big, wow, why not?”
So what is the point of dreaming big if you’re not brave enough to live big? So grab life big. And the mindset behind it is we go to these seminars and we learn all these things, and we see the guys and gals on stage, and we’re so impressed by everyone, and that’s great. Then we come back Monday and we’re discouraged. At least I was. And then you’re disappointed that here’s somebody that’s super successful and why can they do it? And you and I can’t do it. What I’ve learned is the more brave you are when you’re absolutely terrified is all you need is succeed. You just gotta try.
So if you’re gonna attend High Trust Sales Academy, you’re building a career, right? You’re not gonna go spend $2-3,000 to go to high Trust Sales Academy and just go back and do a mediocre job. It’s not how it is. So when you walk someone through and you help them understand that the potential of what it could build, which is building a career, not doing a job, and you give them the platform for them to be able to learn why they earn it, it creates a culture of being able to surround yourself with a group of teammates that help you go from this level to that level, to this level.
Why you need to slow down in order to speed up
So let’s look at some factual numbers. In 2013, I did not have a loan officer assistant. 2013, I did $45 million in loans. Think of that, 2014, 2013, 45 million in loans. Think it was like over 200 closings and no system. That meant I was closing my own loans, I was pulling my own credit, I was doing my own pre-quals. I was, there was no mortgage coach back then, but I was doing my my own loan estimates. I was pitching loan clients, I was prospecting, I was doing how open houses. I was working 80-90 hours a week to do $45 million. The wheels have fallen off in my personal life. I was missing dinners right and left. I was missing kids’ practices. I wasn’t home. And if I was home, I was locked in my office doing calls. Not really the quality of life that any, that anybody wants to have. Then in 2014, I did $36 million in loans that year.
Now most people say, wow, oh, well, that, that backfired on wall. You went from $45 million loans in 2013 to $36 million loans. You went negative, you went the wrong way. Well, you’ve gotta slow down to be able to speed up. You’ve gotta slow down to be able to speed up. And as I slowed down to teach Shane, as I sh slowed down to help him learn and digest and understand, he started slowly giving me my time back to where in 2015, just that next year, we got from $36 million to $81 million just in one year. If you remember that back then in 2014, 2015, it was not a refi boom, it was purchase. What Shane allowed me to do is learn to reduplicate myself in him, which also allowed me to be able to reduplicate myself in a gentleman named Jewel, a gentleman named Tori, and a guy named CJ.
But the point I’m trying to make is we helped, they helped me give me back my time, which I split up the results of that. I went to go be a better father and a better husband and more time to myself, but also more important also, not more importantly, as importantly, I went to grow the business, and I had more time I could prospect.
What to teach the team you hire
So with that being said, what, what did I teach these guys? Well, first of all, before I go through what I taught them, let’s talk about the mindset and what I laid out for them. So the more you learn, the more you earn mindset. I focus on hiring learners, focus on hiring people that wanted to succeed more than I wanted to succeed.
And when you create a culture of, the more you learn, the more you earn. You know, this is not for everyone, and it’s totally cool. If you were in the office at noon, that’s up to you. I learned that I needed to be in the office early. So we’re all in the office every morning at 7:00 AM, and the point of it being that early is that we had a head start on our competition. So I wanted to hire teammates that wanted to hustle just as much as I wanted to hustle, if not more. So what I focus on doing is with the first six months, they were the inside sales lender.
What is an inside sales lender?
So some of the realtors that I worked with back then had leads, have online leads or had open house leads. So this person’s role was for the first six months, six months of their career with me, they would, I paid them $10-$15 an hour and they would go convert leads into applications. So realtor would give us a batch of leads back then we’d go convert them into applications. Then I got the applications, I referred deals back to my realtor. Do you think that was worth $10-$15 an hour paying someone? Yeah, I think it was. And what did that do? That also taught them to be verbally strong, that also taught them to take rejection. And that taught them the importance of conversion. Those three things are really important to build the foundation of a loan officer assistant.
So that’s the first six months of their, of their career with me. The second 6 to 12 months they were a loan officer assistant.
What is a loan officer assistant?
So that role paid roughly around $40-$60,000 a year. But what was different about that role? Well now you’re a loan officer assistant, so now you’re learning how to scrub my finals. Now you’re learning how to create my total cost analysis. I would put together a mortgage loan summary in an Excel sheet, hand it over to Shane, and Shane would go in there and, and he’d make it all pretty in Mortgage Coach. Well, I didn’t know how to use Mortgage Coach, but I knew Shane was smart. So what did I do? I gave Shane the links to mortgage coach.com, the YouTube page of how to create a Mortgage Coach. And he went and learned that I didn’t have to go learn that.
Hire your opposites to fill in your gaps
I didn’t have to go learn that. When you can learn to hire teammates around you that fill in your gaps. Computers intimidating. Like I just had Josh our technology guy teach me how to share the screen. And, which hopefully I remember how to unshare it here in a minute. But the point I’m trying to make is if you learn to hire your opposites, they’re able to fill in your gaps. And as I learn to hire opposites in me. So I’m an ID so high, high influence, high dominance. If you’re familiar with the DISC, Shane is an SC so he’s really big on systems and he’s really big on conformity. So the dude’s like, super safe and really, just really consistent, which was the opposite of what I was, I was kind of like a Tasmanian devil just going off and just trying to take over the world.
What was great about Shane, my files became cleaner because he’d scrub them for me. He’d catch things on credit cards that I would not catch. He would catch things up, banks, things I would not catch. He would create the mortgage coach if I would make like a two minute video. We’d go over the options for the borrowers, which really impressed borrowers and turn around and impress the realtor relationships. So the point we’re trying to make is, as a loan officer assistant, they’re still there to support you. So that role is roughly a $40-$60,000 role. The next one from there is called the production partner.
What is a production partner?
So the production partner, now you’re starting to learn to do loans with me. Okay? So when you’re starting to do loans with me, I’m still responsible at the relationship. I still went and captured the realtor relationships, everything across the board.
And I was still the one that was doing say the high trust interviews, but Shane now would do the lead to apps. The lead to app is we get a referral that came in from there. Shane would call him and say, “Hey, thanks so much. We’re referring John Smith. Wally’s in a meeting right now, but I wanted to reach out to you.” The next step is, which we learn from Cody Harridge. So the next step is simplest, most brilliant set of words ever is to go to our website, fill the application. Once the application would come through, Shane would scrub it, he’d schedule my high trust call. I would get on the phone to do the high skill, but the responsibility of Shane had, he needed to be in the room with me listening and learning why I’m doing a high trust call. The goal that I had is, if I’m gonna pay you and you’re gonna earn, you’re also gonna learn.
Create a culture of learning to attract more talent
So as, as he learned after every high trust call, every law call, he started practicing it. I started practicing it with him. And as you see that, that production partner role lasts roughly around 12 months to 24 months. But he made over a hundred thousand dollars his first year as that production partner role. And what’s great about that, he became a staple, he became someone that I consistently put on a pedestal to attract more talent. And when CJ joined our world back in 2016, I made Shane an example. And what was great about that is CJ was able to see specifically that, hey, here’s a dude that now she, CJ Shane are really close friends, but here’s a dude that, that want the same tracks as he can, can accomplish the same things if not more.
And there’s a proven result there. What’s great about that is that as they both grew and they both wanted to start managing their own relationships, they became producing production manager. So that role is a $250-$350,000 role, and that’s roughly an 18 to 24 month training cycle. But as you learned about that and you learned to understand that now it’s their responsibility to start focusing on the relationships. They would turn around and start managing the relationships with not only the, but also the referral partners. So as they’re doing all this and as they’re managing their relationships, as they’re building their relationships with the referral partners. And what did I do? I went and had a better quality life for my wife and my two sons, and I went and got small referral partners, you know, back then I probably had somewhere neighborhood, about three to four mega agents.
Results of replicating yourself
We got that up to seven or eight mega agents because I got my time back and I was able to go prospect. So what did that do to all three of our incomes? Shane’s income went up, CJ’s income went up, my income went up. The opportunity for all of us grew. And that’s what I want you guys to understand. You know, when you’re in the High Trust Sales Academy with Todd, he talks about all these big models, these big systems and these big successes and, and all this, it, it, it’s very difficult to do all that. So it really, really is. So if you’re, you know, and you’ve heard the story about Tim Broadhurst and how he’s, he had to convince his boss to, to hire his first assistant and, and all the work that he had to go through to get an assistant in the door. It’s, it’s something that today everybody’s got the ability to reduplicate themselves.
I just had to learn to cast a vision that attracted talent. And as I casted this vision, it’s a blessing and a half when you see teammates that earned over $1.4 million in commissions. Now what did that do though? You know, some people have asked me like, “Dude, you’re crazy. Why would you give away 1.4 million a year income?” It’s not crazy. There’s no way on God’s green earth, I could have built the wealth team that we built, whether with the CPAs, the financial advisors, the family will attorneys, the insurance, the client concierge team.
There’s no way, in no way I could have ever done that on my own, it just wasn’t possible. If somebody out there like a Denise or a Marty or a Cody can do that, cool. High five, I just failed at it for multiple times over. I had to learn to be in a position that they had to be able to take that off my mindshare, be able to do alone as good if not better than me, which I’m very confident I can say this today that my team can do loans as well, if not better than me today. Now what’s great about that is they care. They care because they want to be better than me. And as you build that culture and that chemistry around you, you’re able to see them blossom.
Investing in yourself and your team
So what was my investment in them? Well, before I go through my investment in them, what was my investment in myself? First, I’ll talk about leadership coaching and skills mastery. I went out there and became a John Maxwell certified speaker, trainer, and coach. I invested in myself just like HTSA graduates are investing in themselves. And as I learned leadership stuff from Maxwell, I came back and taught that to my team. And as I’m meeting with candidates to be on the on Team Wally University, I brought up things that I learned from Maxwell. I gave them books that I learned that I got from Maxwell, but it allowed to position me in a way that I was kind of a big brother. And the second thing I invested in myself was the one thing maps, certified coaching, speaking, and training.
So if you’ve heard the book, The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. It’s a phenomenal book. It’s very simple. Your concept’s very easy to read, and it teaches you to hit everything with a simple stick, which is asking yourself the focus question, what is the one thing such by doing it makes everything else easy or unnecessary. Do you think that would help you prioritize your day? Do you think that would help you prioritize your business? You think that would help you prioritize your life? I mean, I would say so. And then the last one and one of my favorites, um, in 2002, I became a high trust sales certified mortgage planner. So Todd had a certification, I’m not sure if he still has it now or not, but when you go to his High Trust Sales Academy, you’re able to get certified to be a certified mortgage planner.
But when you’re talking to a 24, 25, 20 70 year old person, that 6-9 years is not that crazy far, but that they’re attracted the income. But you can give them a short-term goal like, hey, in 12 to 18 months, you could be making six figures, in six to nine years, you can be making over a million, but you’ve gotta stay in this curriculum. This is what you have to master. So we focused, one of the first things we focused on training on was the phone and face-to-face skills or sales skills and mastery phone to face-to-face sales skills and mastery. So obviously that was a high trusts sales language and skills, which we’ve all learned. And we’ve read Todd’s books and we’ve gone to the academy. Basically what I learned from Todd and I learned from the academy, I came back, took his scripts and started teaching them to my team, started teaching them to my loan officer assistants, to production partners, to production managers, and all our verbal strength increased, which did what increased our conversion rate, which increased our production.
Teaching your team the Language of Sales
It’s not an accident to go from 36 million to 81 million in just 12 months. The language of sales skills. So you truly learn to how to listen to the emotions behind someone’s words, not necessarily just the words. There’s a great book, all the question behind the question and the story kind of tells itself on that. If you learn to listen to someone’s emotions, you can truly understand what they feel, then if you can really understand what they feel, then you can direct them where you want them to go. Sales 101, if you’re just simply listening to the words, then you’re not getting the full potential of that conversation and where you want, where you want to persuade. So language of sales is a great teaching tool that we u that we taught in our mastery class. Then phone verbal skills.
Teaching your team Phone Verbal Skills
So phone verbal skills are combination of pitch, combination of tone, and a combination of patience. Pitch, self-explanatory tone, self-explanatory. Patience. You have to learn to be patient. You have to teach someone to be patient over the phone to ask a question, shut up and allow them to answer. Because in phone verbal skills mastery, we teach someone how to listen to understand instead of listen to respond. If you can learn to listen to understand a person, listen to respond, your conversations over the phone will be just as successful as your conversations a person most time.
The goal is to have your team become more knowledgable on the ground than you
Today, I think loan officers on my team know the market, especially rates and pricing, what’s going on with the Fed and this and that 10 times better than I do.
Why is that? Because I hired learners and they learned the more they learn, the more they earn. That’s the culture that you can build. Building a team, obviously we focused on scripting, we did script practice every single morning, and that was really, really important, especially to build the foundation scripting you have. I can’t tell you how many times I’d walk up to Shane or CJ or whoever on the team and go, ring, ring, ring. Hey, this is Shane with Team Wally Home Loan, how may I help you? And it, we just go straight in the script and it, and it was the key was always, and you didn’t know what it was. If it was a lead to app golf, it was a high trust golf. If it’s a lock call, I had to say ring, ring, ring. And the point where we’d be driving to work or driving home one day or on, on the weekend, I’d call ’em up.
And the mindset behind it is now they’re able to learn the best practices and they’re able to understand what the standards are. So when they go to prospect to a realtor, they’re able to actually articulate those standards in a way that the realtor sees that they, they want to have a relationship with. So now I’ve taught them how to prospect. Now I’ve taught them about leadership and coaching. Now I’ve taught them by guidelines, but have I taught them how to organize their day? And when you, when you have somebody young in the business, prospecting is the most important thing that they’re doing. So we focus on building a culture that time blocked four hours a day of prospecting, four hours a day of prospecting, four hours a day of prospecting every day of the week. Now do we still do that today? In some faceted form we do.
Your opportunity is your responsibility.
One thing I would tell tell the team over and over and over is that, and I meant it in amended as humble as way as it sounds, hearing it today might not sound as humble, but I always said, I already have a high income. I’m already wealthy, you’re not yet. So I’ll give you the framework, but you have to be the one that steps up and builds it out. So your opportunity is your responsibility.
Want Support Building Your Team?
During this session, Wally talked about how much Todd Duncan Coaching helped him build his team, meet his goals, and identify the right hiring and training processes.
If you’re curious about coaching and want to see if it’s right for you and your needs, simply schedule a Free Coaching Consultation to see if it’s a fit for your needs and goals. Look at what Wally was able to achieve! Start crushing your goals and finding balance today with Todd Duncan Coaching.
