As a Mortgage Advisor, Real Estate Professional, or Financial Advisor, there are three things you must always work on:
- Yourself
- Your Systems
- Your Team
Yourself
It all starts with you. One of my favorite quotes from Jim Rohn is, “Work hard at your job and you can make a living. Work hard on yourself and you can make a fortune.”
What are you doing to grow and improve your own capabilities? How are you increasingly becoming invaluable to your clients, partners, and teammates? How are you striving to become a better leader? How often do you block out time to read and learn? When’s the last time you had the courage to try something new that you know would improve your business or make your life easier?
Your Systems
Everyone has a system. In our most recent 10x Growth Summit I hosted, a real estate agent shared that her top priority was to get a system in place for prospecting. She said she had no system, just a bunch of sticky notes of all over the place of people she needed to follow up on and call, and things she needed to do in her business. I corrected her and said, “You DO have a system, just not an ideal one!”
Good systems can bring predictability and peace of mind to your business for you and everyone involved. How much time are you spending reviewing and improving your systems? Once you have systems worth bragging about…from onboarding new clients, to proactive communication throughout a transaction, to post-close stay-in-touch activities…they actually become a unique selling proposition to clients and partners and can become an incredible leverage tool.
Your Team
The ultimate form of leverage is adding great people to your team. Acting as a “rugged individualist” and attempting to do everything yourself only works for so long. Eventually you’ll hit a ceiling where no more growth is possible. You’ll be frustrated. Too many loan officers, real estate agents, and other sales professionals admit to me they are working 60 to 70 hours per week. Or they use various excuses such as, “I just can’t let go” or “I’m a control freak” or “Nobody cares about my clients as much as I do.” These are all beliefs you have to overcome. Eventually that great chef that opens his own restaurant must eventually teach someone else how to cook his recipes if he wants to scale up and be able to take a real vacation.
If you continue to work on yourself, and create good systems in your business, then you must add great people to your team that believe in your mission and are excited to help your clients.
Commit to blocking out time each week to improve these three things. It all starts with you!
