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!
In this first session, Denise Donoghue covered topics such as:
- The circle of cashflow
- Scripts to use for CPAs
- Follow up tips
- How to most effectively meet with people
- Tips on using the Lost Leads Program
- How to stand out in meetings
- How to host presentations at title companies
- Green activities
- Social media tips: What to post, where to post, and how often to post
- The to 3 things that grew Denise’s business from $7 Million to $35 Million
- How Todd Duncan Coaching made a huge impact on her business
There’s a lot to dig into here, so without further ado, here are the questions and answers from Denise Donoghue.
Q: On the circle of cash flow, when do you ask for the CPA and financial advisor referrals?
So, like I told you guys, I failed when I tried to implement this, the day after I left the High Trust Sales Academy. But now what I do is in my website. So I do have a custom website. So if you go to the mortgage nerd.com, you click on get Started. And when they click on Buy a Home, I actually asked the client a few questions before they enter a normal mortgage application. And I started adding those questions to that page. Do you have a financial advisor, yes or no? If they hit yes, I ask for the contact information and I do the same thing with the CPA. And so I’m getting it on the front end every time they apply. Now, the reason why I moved it to the front is because nowadays we don’t need tax returns. And it is just an easier way where I get that contact form in my email. Now, if you have a team, fantastic, you could task that with a team member to do the introduction, but I moved it all the way to the front of the line and that’s been an easy way for me to implement it.
And the other thing is, I don’t know if all of you guys were in the room when I shared this, but I used to put the responsibility on myself to arrange a coffee or a lunch with the real estate professional. And let’s just say the financial advisor professional. And like we all know how hard it is just to nail down a real estate professional. It’s like a closing gets moved up or a last minute listing appointment pops up and they have to cancel. And now you’ve got to update another professional. It can get kind of chaotic. So this was just my choice. I eliminated that barrier from the equation. And all I do now is say, “Hey realtor, as promised, I’m introducing you to this power partner. Here’s the financial advisor and here’s a sample script.” And they can email them, they can call them, but I no longer own the responsibility of their success. At the end of the day, they have to go out and make those connections. But I still feel like I’m delivering on my promise. And I still feel like when I meet with new agents, I can tell them that I have the circle of cash flow or a power partner program. And it keeps myself honest. And if they, if they make contact, great. Now I also make contact with that CPA and that financial advisor and I also put them in my database because probably 90% of the time the realtor reads that email and then deletes it. Not a realtor like Eleanor, but majority of realtors would. So I don’t hold my success in their hands, but I’m gonna deliver on my promise and be different than the average loan officer.
Q: What’s the script you actually use to reach out to new CPAs?
It says,
“Hey Josh, Jeffrey has a CPA and I thought you might like his contact info to e introduce yourself. CPAs have lots of clients and if there’s ever a real estate need, hopefully they will think of you. Here’s his email and then below it, here’s a sample script that you can send to him. I’m working with your client, Jeff, to help sell his home in Rowlette, Texas. And he mentioned you were a great CPA. I’m always looking to partner with top professionals like yourself. So I wanted to reintroduce myself looking forward to working with you, with your client. Let me know if I can help in any way.”
Then you teach this agent how to do the Todd Duncan way where now they’ve done the soft introduction. You’re sharing that you have a mutual client. You could either go for the, let me try to schedule coffee, or you could friend request them. You could send them one of Todd Duncan’s books and leave a note that follow’s Todd Duncan’s Gifting strategy, that’s a wow factor. But these are professionals and realtors get so focused on repeat business and referral based business and we have to also help them think of other pillars of business like this and maybe a slow growing snowball, but it’s a snowball that they should be paying attention to that they’re likely not.
Q: What are you doing on your end to follow up with the CPA?
I do kind of a similar approach where I’ve got the information, we make a a passive introduction, we’ve got a joint client, we try to uncover something important about the transaction that requires us to have a phone call with them. We use something in the transaction as leverage, like, “Hey Joe, we’re helping this client get pre-qualified. I wanted to run by run something by you. Can I give you a call?” And we’ve got a little bit more leverage because they think that they need us, so then we have a conversation, they get added to my database where every single week they get an email from me. If it’s a financial advisor, I’m gonna talk about ways to keep more money invested and less into real estate or how to buy a home and keep the highest rate of return on your money. Financial advisors, they want their book of business to continue to grow. They don’t want someone to take that money and use it to pay cash for a house. So I’m gonna purposely send marketing items and campaign items and that shows that I’m a loan officer that thinks strategically and financially and like a financial advisor and most loan officers don’t think like that.
Q: Besides CPAs and financial advisors, who else in your circle of cash flow are you targeting?
This is my sales tactic. If any of you guys have people relocating to Texas and you’re not licensed in Texas, I’d love for you to think of the nerds. I’m not licensed in California, so I’ll send some people to the Bay area if I have them, but I only ask right now those two because quite frankly, those are the only two that I feel comfortable asking. But here’s what I’ve done in the last few years that has been a game changer for me, is I brought in my real estate attorney, I brought in a divorce attorney, and I brought in an appraiser. And what I did is I interviewed them short little two minute sections of how to have your house skip probate if something were to happen.
And I put my spin on the the cash flow method where I interviewed them, I asked them kind of the top 10 questions. I spliced it up into little two minute sections and I use that as content to send out to my clients. This is my big thing right now, and if you follow me on social, I’m preaching, how does your lender help you before you find a home, during finding a home and after you find the home? And if your lender doesn’t have a strategy on how they help you after you close on the house, especially when we’re in this high interest rate market, you’re not working with the right lender. And so every single client that I help, they go into a past client folder, so to speak.
I’ve coined it as the nerd club alum because it’s catchy. And every single month they will now get a video that I’ve created. It’s what Todd and I talked about. I’ve recorded this one video with this real estate attorney and I can use it for them saying, if you have questions about probate, if you have questions about a transfer on death deed, if you have questions about just any of that kind of stuff, how to set up a series LLC, I’ll play that little video in my past client drip campaign, but I can post it on my social media, I can post it on my YouTube channel. So I’m trying to bring my partners via video that way and share it with the masses. And so far I’ve gotten really good responses from it. And just two days ago, my December email that went to past clients, I said, you know what, I have failed you guys.
I haven’t done a good enough job having masterminds with my people. And so I lobbed out there nerd club alum, if it would be beneficial for you, your kids, your family, your friends, whomever, to jump on a free webinar with my financial advisor, kind of like what we’re doing right now, but with my financial advisor, let’s do it. Let me know, give me that feedback. And I got so many responses that was like, oh my gosh, I would love a free webinar cuz they’re so intimidated by them and I was intimidated by them. So I’m kind of using it that way as well and that angle. But to answer your direct question, I’m only asking for those two. I’m sure Todd would coach me and tell me I need to be doing more. It’s just where I’m at at this stage. It’s like when you leave any Todd Duncan event, it’s like you’re, you’ve got an onion in front of you and you really have to peel back layer by layer and each year you’ll, you’ll get deeper into a layer and you’ll make tweaks. And that’s actually the fun part of it. But this is where I’m at today. In 2013, I was waiting to get bank statements. I was waiting to get tax returns to see if there was a CPA and that didn’t really work for me. I would contact them and, and so fast forward to where I am now, this is what I have found is the easiest way to get at least those two.
Q: How are you meeting with people today? Do people prefer human interaction or a Zoom Call? How did meetings change as your business grew?
If you were to take me back to being a one man show, my feedback to you guys leaving the High Trust Sales Academy is that the light at the end of the tunnel is that you can get out of wearing all hats. But when you are a one man show and you’re wearing all the hats, it’s a grind. You’re working probably more than 40 hours a week. You’re working nights and weekends. It’s just like any business owner that starts a business. You are grinding at the beginning. So I don’t wanna lie to you guys and make it sound like I didn’t work my tail off at the beginning. I did, I sacrificed my twenties, I sacrificed having kids and getting married because it was so important to me. The light at the end of the tunnel is that if you build it right, you can hire and then you can scale and then you can be where I am today.
But let’s talk about when it was just a one man show. I, at the time prior to Zoom and technology, I was meeting a lot more people face to face. My job then was to take the application, pre-qualify them, get the pre-qual out, you have to meet with agents. Once I started doing roughly 10 deals a month is when I made my first hire to the team. And that first hire was my anchor. It was the person that was completely opposite of me. I wasn’t looking for someone with a high DNL on that DISC. I was looking for more of that SC because I wanted them to be the technician or the nurse, so to speak, where they’re pulling the credit, running the findings, doing the income calcs because I could be the face person. I didn’t like doing that kind of stuff.
So I found that first role to be that person so that if someone was applying and I was out meeting with a realtor, I didn’t have to play catch up because I had somebody that could do that part for me. But that meant making an investment. And so you have to have that conversation with your spouse if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year, but now you have to pay a $50,000 salary plus commissions to a new a person, your income’s gonna come down likely for a year or so. Like there’s a balance in that. But you’re doing that investment now to, to build and to scale. So then my third hire was someone more like myself that could help with those incoming calls that we get that just they need to talk to a human before they apply for whatever reason.
Maybe they wanna know if it’s a hard pull or soft pull. Maybe it’s that they wanna say, “I had a bankruptcy two years ago, am I wasting my time?” You know, there are some people that still want to talk to a human before they apply, but if I was a one man show today coming off of Covid, and even though I do not think that a Zoom connection will ever be stronger than a person to person connection. You know what I mean? It’s never, it’s never gonna replace that. But let’s say the in-office visit would create a hundred percent high trust or emotional connection. I do feel that video or Zoom could maybe get us to an 80, 85% connection. And I feel that that’s enough to scale and grow. So I would probably have more zoom meetings becauseI only have so much time in the day that if I can still build a strong connection, still answer their questions, but now I saved myself maybe 40 minutes of a drive there and a drive back that’s 40 minutes that I could save, that I could use to have a real term mastermind for 30 minutes with 10 agents.
So I think that there is a measure of opportunity cost. It’s tough because we all know face-to-face will build the highest emotional connection and the highest trust, Todd proved it. But what’s the emotion, what’s the opportunity cost of doing all your meetings person to person? There’s only so many hours and so many views in the day. So I do think you have to do a healthy combination and just be really strategic with your time.
Q: Do you use the Lost Leads Program in your business?
This is The Lost Leads Conversation.
One of the things that I felt was super important is that every time I met with a realtor, they said, “the biggest thing I’m frustrated with with my lender is communication.” Hmm. And it’s like what Todd showed us on those screens if a loan officer was to rate themselves before the application and after they would give themself a crappy rating, you know? And so that really resonated with me and I thought, how could I combine clients, realtors who want really good communication with the cost of a lost lead, right? Because I knew that those, if I could com that would just be like a double whammy equation, right? And so I, I created this PowerPoint, the Mortgage Nerd Playbook.
I printed it out, I used it for realtor masterminds. I would present this when I would go to title companies and say, here’s how the nerd is different. But the very first slide that I started with was the cost of lost leads. And this is what, like if you were doing a Zoom mastermind, so this is called the $96,000 truth on average, realtors lose 10% of their clients because they don’t have a good follow up strategy. Think about that. If you generate 120 leads a year, that means on average you will lose 12 clients. If your average commission is 8,000 per client, that’s $96,000 a year. Yeah. Because of this, I dedicated to two and a half years to map out each stage of lead. And so this is what I mean by we have to visually show realtors what we do for them. And so this was my way of showing when you send a client to me, here’s what you can expect.
Now this is all facilitated through my CRM but I couldn’t take my CRM and print everything out and try to digest it in like a 15 or 20 minute conversation. So I created this to be like, okay, when they’re a prospect, you’re gonna get, the client’s gonna get a call and an email. On day two they’re gonna get a phone call. On day three they’re gonna get a call, email, and then this icon is to show that we update the realtor of the status. Hey realtor, it’s been five days, blah, blah, blah. And then I showed them here’s what it looks like when they’re pre-qualified or pre-approved. Here’s now what it looks like.
Q: How do you stand out in your client and prospecting meetings?
I learned from Linda Davidson who’s the queen of one timing. I ask myself, “How can I get it in front of as many people as I can to share the same message?” And so a lot of the things that we learned from the academy, if you could just capture and put it into a PowerPoint, it doesn’t have to be fancy and you use that when you’re having coffee with the agent. Or you get brave enough to host an event with a title company and the title company invites 20-30 agents and you’re showing them this, when you lead with the cost of the lost leads.
I can’t explain to you how important it is visually to be able to show the client with a PowerPoint versus just trying to word vomit it. It’s so hard to understand and to grasp it. So I definitely would encourage taking some of the stuff that you see, try putting it in a PowerPoint and when you’re meeting them face to face or you’re hosting a Zoom, or if you’re newer to the business, I just talked about this week, that if you’re trying to build a realtor roster because you’re newer to this business, you could go at it in a way of, let me do coffees. How many coffees could you get in a day? How many cold calls could you make in a day? You could also just go straight to the title company.
Q: What if you’re presenting at Title Companies?
The title companies are thirsting for the type of loan officer that knows how to quantify things for realtors. Meaning, should I wait a year to buy emotionally? Everybody in real estate’s gonna say, no, no, you should buy now. That’s an emotional statement. But a true advisor is gonna be able to quantify that decision for you. And when you can quantify it and put it in numbers and facts, you’re removing that emotional conversation and you’re showing them the pain of, okay, waiting one year might actually cost me 25 grand here. But it’s not an emotional, it’s deep-rooted in numbers and numbers don’t lie.
Yeah. Like Todd has said, if you don’t have a follow up for it, then you’re just the hamster on the wheel and you’re chasing your tail. You have to have a follow up. But then I’d be trying to present as much of the stuff that we learned from Todd. Make it your own, put it in PowerPoint and go talk to the title companies. Cuz the title companies are trying to bring something of value to these realtors, but they don’t know how to quantify and they don’t know math they need us.
Q: What have you found to be the most valuable tools for realtors to communicate with their teams or their clients?
I feel like today, at least in my market, the average age of a realtor is 55 years old. A lot of people are paying attention to a market shift, meaning that interest rates are high and, but there’s a generational shift that’s happening that many people are not paying close enough attention to, and they’re even blind to it.
And what I mean by that is, is the Gen Zs are coming into the marketplace. They are going to become the largest generation and they’re gonna become our first time home buyer generation, which is the biggest pool of buyers around. And so the 55 year old realtor is not studying how to communicate and acquire business from the younger millennials and these Gen Zs.
They’re not researching and studying what problems they have, meaning the massive affordability issue that we’re having. It’s not just that rates are high, it’s the fact that home prices just jumped up for the last two years. And interest rates are high at a time when these Gen Z and early millennials have more student loan debt than ever, more credit card debt than ever. When I bought my first house in Frisco, it was $149,000. You can’t find a house that cheap in today’s market for these first time home buyers. So they’re not spending enough time studying how to acquire the Gen Z relationships. And these 55 year old agents, these big wigs, the ones with the big databases, and they are losing market share every single day because they almost refuse to learn social media. They almost refuse to learn video. And if you look at the data, these early millennials and Gen Zs prefer social media.
They prefer personalized communication. But when you talk about that to a realtor, they think of social media as TikTok dancing. And some of you on this call are probably thinking about it. And the reality is that you could be the biggest, baddest realtor in the marketplace, but if your social media is almost non-existent, or not very good, or not even business related, the message that you’re telling the younger generation, the biggest generation there is, is that your lights aren’t on as a business owner. It’s like when you drive up to Chick-fil-A every single day and the lights are off, you’re like, they must not be like in business anymore. That’s the same message that you’re telling people when you don’t have a social media presence. Like it or not, I have a love-hate relationship with social media, but you have to have it if you’re a business owner, you do, you have to.
Q: Why is social media actually important for your business?
It’s not that you’re gonna get leads from it. And, and most of us think, well, what’s my rate of return of X, Y, Z? So all that to say, is that with a lot of realtors, it’s a sexy topic to talk about social media. Video, video for social and your evergreen type video. The one timing type videos to beef up their YouTube channel. You know, I would encourage you to go to Tom Ferry’s website, follow his blog, follow his podcast. Tom Ferry is like the Todd Duncan in that industry. And he’ll give you all the great ideas that agents are thirsting for. But even Tom, I don’t think is spending enough time on this generational market shift. Like these Gen Zs, when they were eight years old, they had a freaking smartphone in their hand.I don’t even think I had a pager when I was eight years old. They weren’t even out yet. So imagine being an eight year old and growing up in an era where video is on your phone, the news is on your phone. They grew up, their parents went through the housing crash. What do you think that their feelings are about buying real estate? You know, they grew up with all these mass shootings that we see now over and over and over. Well, we didn’t really see that kind. It’s just, it’s fascinating. If you actually study the characteristic traits of these folks, and we need to be doing it more, it’s sexy to bring it to the realtors. Realtors aren’t doing enough of it. They don’t understand it. But if you can teach an agent something, you become really valuable. And so a lot of my masterminds lately are how to understand the two, one buy down strategy. I don’t call it a two one buy down, I call it date the rate. I’m giving them the tools to calculate it on their own. I’m giving them social media graphics that they can use their own cuz they suck at it. So I just try to, you know, it’s like Todd says, the person who solves the person who can solve the biggest problems, make the most money. So what are the biggest problems that agents have? Eleanor’s on this call, Eleanor, what’s your biggest problem you have in your business right now?
Imagine being an eight year old and growing up in an era where video is on your phone, the news is on your phone. They grew up, their parents went through the housing crash. What do you think that their feelings are about buying real estate? If you actually study the characteristic traits of these folks, and we need to be doing it more, it’s sexy to bring it to the realtors. Realtors aren’t doing enough of it. They don’t understand it. But if you can teach an agent something, you become really valuable. And so a lot of my masterminds lately are how to understand the two, one buy down strategy. I don’t call it a two one buy down, I call it date the rate. I’m giving them the tools to calculate it on their own. I’m giving them social media graphics that they can use their own cuz they suck at it. So I just try to, you know, it’s like Todd says, the person who can solve the biggest problems, make the most money. So what are the biggest problems that agents have?
Q: What is your post-closing strategy?
When they get clear to close, that’s a dopamine moment. When they get funded, we’re calling them saying congratulations. Three days after closing we call introduce our concierge post-closing concierge team. her job is to make sure that if they have any questions post-close, how to update their driver’s license, how to file their homestead that we’re still their lender. Let us know what questions you have. So it’s just kind of an introduction call.
Then when the loan gets transferred, we send them a text message and we call, they almost never answer the phone call, but they get our text message, Hey, be on the lookout. We just transferred your loan. Here’s what this means. We’re still gonna bug you. In this market, we’re planting seeds right now that interest rates are artificially high, we fully expect them to come down over the next 12, 18, 24 months. Follow our lead on that. When you start to see them come down, you’re gonna get a bunch of robo calls. You’re gonna get a bunch of junk mail, but the worst thing that you can do is pull the trigger too soon on a refinance. And so we will contact you when we think it makes the most sense of when you should refinance. There isn’t a rule of thumb like one point, but just so you guys know, we’ve tweaked that messaging a little bit because the robo calls are gonna come out.
We want them to refinance with us. So when the loan gets transferred, that’s usually for our team at about the two week time point. And then we don’t follow up with them until six months. And at that six month mark in Texas, the homestead stuff shifted a little bit. So we’re just asking them, did you update your driver’s license? Cuz that’s what you need to do to file for your homestead. Did you have any questions that we can an help answer for you? Did you get all situated in?
Every month we do enroll our clients into home bot. That is a tech tool. It is kind of expensive, it’s worth it. It’s a tech tool I would have in your, in your toolbox. So every month they get what I, I describe it as an equity analysis. They can see other homes appreciating and value. You can see how your neighbors are doing. But every year you can expect a home loan analysis. Where I personally look at is your mortgage operating as efficiently as possible? Meaning are you in the right loan program? Is your homeowner’s insurance still in place? Did you file for that homestead that you may have thought you did but you didn’t at the first year anniversary, we do encourage them to pull up their inspection report. There was a report that said buyers had the most buyers’ remorse in 2020. They felt rushed to make a decision. They felt rushed to buy that house and they don’t love it. We will expect to see those as listings, I’m sure, but that’s why we’re pulling up the inspection report. We couldn’t negotiate repairs. But is there something on there that we didn’t fix at the time that maybe we should to ultimately make sure that your assets being maintained.
First time home buyers have no idea how to maintain a home. I leveraged that to outsource contractors, they would get an email from my CRM that says, “Hey, this person’s annual review is coming up in a week.” I would go in and I would look at their mortgage. I would calculate what their loan balance is. I’m looking at can we remove their PMI insurance? Is their interest rate competitive? I would calculate how much money they paid down towards principle, what their current home value is, how much equity they have. And I would combine those and say, so here’s your current good news in green instead of renting, this is what you’ve paid towards principal and this is how much your home’s appreciated.
So the old me, when I had enough time, would proactively put that together, email it to them. I started doing a version of a screen share delivering. And then I found that I wasn’t getting a whole lot of responses. So the Denise today sends an email to them that says, congrats, it’s your one year anniversary, or congrats, it’s your five year anniversary, whatever it is. And it says it’s time that we do a home loan checkup. You know, I wanna check this, this, this and this. Do you have a will state in place? Are you over-insured or underinsured? I stole that from Wally, and I say, respond to this email with your mortgage statement and we can jump on a call and look at this together. And I started putting the ball on their court so when I get the responses now is when I do the annual review.
That’s not a proactive response, it’s a reactive response. I’m sure I could do a better job of it and if I had a concierge team to actually do it, I’d probably capture more. But that full disclosure is what it looks like today. And every year we do an annual asset review. And by the way, my CRM the day before this is a big miss that I think people have with their CRM, is that they don’t leverage it for realtor communication. And a text message goes out to my agent that says, Hey Eleanor, it’s Joe Schmoe’s four year anniversary tomorrow. Here’s the address. Here’s their contact information. Call them, wish them happy anniversary, deliver them cookies. Wow. But I’m giving that to them because I want to be their CRM.
Now I’m positioning myself as a partner. They don’t get that information, we already know they’re not great at follow up. They’re not behind a computer all day. We are. So I try to again, leverage myself like a true business partner so they don’t even have to think about it. But then I deliver it in a method where it’s super easy for them. Where it’s like, oh, I got a text message. Oh, I’ve got this person’s cell phone number. Okay, cool. I’m driving, but I can shoot them a text message that says happy birthday. So you have to always think about it when I try to email somebody or deliver something to somebody, try to think of what’s the most efficient method of them getting that information and doing something with it.
Q: At your stage of, of business, what are your green activities?
Social media is probably the biggest and most green activity I have. Um, and full disclosure, I know some of you guys have have asked about this. Deborah, who is at the academy, she’s my twin sister. She does run, I pay for her services and she does the bulk of my social media. And so she does predominantly most of the standard graphics. And then when I record my reels and such, there’s a package where I can send her the video, they put all the captions in, they do the fun, you know, they’ve got different stuff. But I still have to record and create the videos. And I do feel very, very, very, very passionate that you can’t just have a social media feed of just graphics. You can, and that’s better than not doing anything cuz it looks like your lights are on.
But it looks like you outsourced your social media. And if you think about it, that generation, they wanna know what you do. They wanna know what you ate for breakfast. Like there’s a level of business and there’s a level of personal that you do have to put on there because that’s what keeps them thinking that you didn’t outsource it.
And it’s not even just for myself, it’s for my realtors because they’re not good at it. And the same way that we struggle with it, I’ll invite a realtor into the office to shoot some videos. Guys, your videos can be shot with iPhones. Like don’t overthink it. It can be with an iPhone and a ring light. I have a ring light right here, like I’ve got fancier equipment. But right now what I’m doing is I have a webcam just like all of you and I shoot so much of my videos just like this. Don’t overthink it, just get it done. But realtors, you put them in front of a camera for their social and they’re like, I don’t know what to say. And I’m like, what do you mean you don’t know what to say? Pretend I’m calling you on the phone and I’m asking you, you know, what’s the market like?
And they just freeze. And they’re human, they’re just like us. They struggle. But again, if you can help them with it, then you become a problem solver. So I get them in here and they’re like, I don’t know what topics to talk about. I’m like, all right, let’s go to Tom Ferry’s website. He’s got a list of the top 25 things. Okay great, let’s take five of those, let’s shoot ’em. And they, as they do them, as you do them, you get more comfortable and but social. So you know, production pipelines are down, we can get $99 to deal with technology. And I see some loan officers scaling back on that marketing side and the social media side and I think it’s a super slippery slope. You have to say consistent there, not because you’re gonna get 10 leads next week, but if you wanna be credible and you wanna attract realtors to you versus chasing them. Cause I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t like to chase people. I wanna attract them.
You will attract realtors to you because they’ll be like, damn, she’s putting out content every day. Now plug and play is doing 70% of it. I’m still posting, you know, my banana bread that I attempted, that epically failed cuz that makes me human. Or at the toothpaste that’s stuck on my side of the sink and I’m like, do you think this is my side of the sink or my husband’s side of the sink? Because that kind of stuff is relatable. It’s toothpaste on a sink. So if you have to time block that and put it on a calendar of like three business posts here, two personal do it don’t skimp on the marketing side of things.
Q: What were the top three things you would attribute tripling your business to and growing it from $7 million to $35?
Todd Duncan Coaching. As soon as I left the academy I signed up for Duncan Coaching. They help hold you accountable. It’s easy to slip into four weeks pass by and you’re like, crap, I didn’t do my homework. You know what I mean? So the accountability is super important.
But outside of that, the number one thing that I did is evergreen videos. And if you go to my YouTube channel and you click on the oldest videos, they were so awful. But I recorded videos like how do I explain the debt to income ratio? What does that do? What does that mean? What type of documents do you have to give to a lender? What’s the difference between pre-qualified and pre-approved? Like all those annoying questions that we answer all the time. I quite frankly just got tired of answering it and I had to figure out a way to free up time for myself cuz I was a one man show.
And so I put ’em up on my YouTube channel. I bought a domain name, I have a domain problem buying problem, it’s called mortgage nerd.tv. But it’s an easier way to post in social or to give it to a client than your really long ugly YouTube channel. But I just started creating a library of content so that if I was on the phone with a client and a realtor texts me, Hey, my client’s asking when you pull their credit, is it a hard pull or a soft pull? I sometimes wasn’t even on the phone, but I’m, I’ve time blocked that I’m working on X, Y, Z, and I would shoot them a text and say, I’m so sorry, I’m in the middle of a zoom. Here’s a link to help answer that question. Let me know if you need more information.
And so I just saved myself from probably a 15, 20 minute phone call because I had the answer there. Now I could, when you’re a one man show and a business is slow, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of, let me just take that, but you’re, you’re also training them. Don’t text me that kind of stuff. Be resourceful. Look at the YouTube channel.
My Todd Duncan Coach also helped me drill down on my database. You need to start building a CRM that’s true to you and true to your business. Cuz you have to have a follow up process. And then I just shot videos one after the other, after the other. And they were for those one time videos. You know, social media wasn’t what it was today, but it was just to free up all those questions that you get.
Q: How much time do you spend creating videos and social media?
This is how easy this is. One, two hour session a month, two hours. Once a month I batch all my content ladies, I do my hair once, I bring a couple different tops, so that’s 24 hours a year that I spend on videos or social media stuff.
I research my topic, shoot it, email it over to plug and play. They’ll post it on all your platforms and schedule it and they research when you should post it and what hashtags you should have. And I don’t have time to consume all that stuff that that is an animal in itself. But if you just think about it, start baby steps. Pick, pick the first Tuesday of every month from 10 to 11, you’ll get three or four videos and those videos you can use for every Tuesday that you post, you know, for that month and it gets done. And then what you do is you start creating enough of it that sometimes you don’t even have to reshoot it cause you can just use a video that you did in March and post it in December and nobody knows. And that’s why nobody knows when I’m traveling or I’m on vacation or because my stuff gets posted and you think I’m in the office and you think I just shot it, but I didn’t.
So most of my December content is already done and created and I did it in November, the start of November. I took my Christmas photos like November 3rd. So I’ve got a picture of me in front of a Christmas tree. I’ve got a picture of me with a bunch of Amazon boxes in front of the tree holding a coffee mug that says, tired as a mother. And I’m gonna use it as a post of what the night before Christmas really looks like. Cuz let’s be real. It’s like all the Amazon boxes are coming in and you’re like, great. Now I have to wrap ’em all. That’s relatable. But I did all that at the first week of November. Just looks like I did it in December.
Q: How often do you post on social media?
A lot. I at least post once a day. Usually twice a day. Start somewhere.
Q: Which social platform do you think is seen most? What advice do you have on getting started with being more active on social media?
Making it a priority, putting it on your calendar and just doing it. I think Instagram right now is great. My sister would say TikTok, I’m not great on TikTok, but Instagram right now is great. Don’t stress about the followers cuz people buy followers. You want natural organic followers. You don’t want a bunch of bots.
I recommend you all use a free service called Link Tree. And Link Tree is kind of this new digital form. It’s super easy to use, and you can create however many buttons you want on it. And so if someone lands on my page, they can see get started with home buying. It’s kind of like a custom website, but websites can get so convoluted that these, it’s like quick buttons, and everybody wants quick right now. The cool thing is like you can put your YouTube channel. I do encourage everybody to have a my story on their page. If you click on most common questions, it takes you to another link tree with videos like how to buy a home with the lowest monthly payment. Pre-qualified versus pre-approved. What are current mortgage rates? We find the best rate for you ready to get started buying a home online form. How much money do you need to buy a home?
So these are little story buttons, rate updates, my reviews, you just try to think of it as what people wanna find information quick, you know, but hiring a coach, they will help keep you accountable.
Q: Why do you recommend hiring a Todd Duncan Coach?
In addition to keeping you accountable and organized, they’ll be able to answer your questions. They’ll help you with rebuttals. You could go at it alone or you can usually get to your destination faster if you have a coach. So just consider that.
I’m pretty sure the people who sign sign up for coaching will get access to the private Todd Duncan Facebook group, which is a great way to collaborate. So thank you guys. I appreciate you guys tuning in.
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